David Farland - Sons of the Oak

“I’m not little,” Fallion whispered. “I’ll be ten in a month.”

“You are to me,” Iome said. “You’re still my baby.”

“If you want,” Fallion said. “Just for a little while more.”

Fallion lay against her, his head pillowed by her breast and cradled in her left arm, while his feet dangled over the edge of the rocking chair, too near the fire. He saw Humfrey slinking about the hearth, laying a bright button in the pile of treasures he’d brought up from below.

Fallion smiled.

It was rare that he had his mother all to himself. For as long as he could remember, his father had been out saving the world while Mother seemed busy ruling it. He looked forward to having her nearby, just being with her.

His hand was throbbing in pain, but he put it out of mind and fell asleep, imagining how someday he would drive a spear through Asgaroth’s heart-a creature who was somehow a tall thin man with impossibly long white hair, leading an army of minions in black. In his dream Fallion was now the Earth King, and he imagined that he would slay evil once and for all, while the world applauded.

So he lay, his mother stroking his hair as if he were a puppy, content for the moment to be nothing more than a child.

David Farland

Sons of the Oak

Military commanders all know the value of training soldiers while they are still young. After all, twist a child enough, and he shall remain twisted as an adult.

— Shadoath

Out on the open ocean, the Pirate Lord Shadoath rode on rough seas, her ship rising and falling beneath mountains of waves. Her crew was panicking, but she feared nothing, for she had laid heavy spells upon the ship. The masts would hold and the hull remain intact. They would find their way through the storm.

So she stood, lashed to the mast, grinning like a skull, enjoying the ride. Her crew was as frightened by her apparent madness as they were of the storm.

It was then that Asgaroth appeared to her in a dream.

“The torch-bearer has faced me,” Asgaroth said, “and slain me.” He was dispassionate about his death. He had taken countless bodies over the millennia and would take an endless array in the future. “In doing so, he drew upon his powers.”

He showed her a brief vision of Fallion thrusting a torch into the face of a strengi-saat, the flames bursting like a flower in bloom; and then he showed her Fallion drawing back storm clouds, so that Asgaroth was limned in light, revealed to his mother’s sight.

Shadoath smiled. Fear and rage. Fear and rage were the key to unleashing the child’s powers, drawing him into her web.

“Does his every defeat taste like victory?” Shadoath asked.

“Of course,” Asgaroth assured her. “And now he is fleeing-right into your hands.”

Fear and rage. Fear and rage.

“Excellent,” Shadoath said. “I will greet him with open arms.”

In his sleep, Fallion had a dream that came startlingly clear, more visceral than any dream he’d dreamed before. It was much like the vision he’d had when he picked up the owl pin, as if all of his life were a dream, and for the first time he tasted reality.

In his dream, he was walking along the side of a hill, in a little port-side market. The houses were strange, little rounded huts made of bamboo with bundles of dried grass forming the roofs. In the distance he heard the bawl of cattle. The road wound along a U-shaped bay, and on the far beach he could see a young girl with a switch, driving a pair of black water buffalo up a hill for the night.

He’d never seen a place like this before, and he marveled at every detail-at the odor of urine by the roadside, the muddy reek of rice paddies, the song that the girl sang in the distance in some tongue that he’d never heard before nor imagined.

As he ambled along the road, he passed between two huts, and in their shadow saw metal cages with black iron bars, thick and unyielding. Two of the cages were empty, their doors thrown open. But in the third squatted a girl a bit older than Fallion, with hair as dark and sleek as the night. She was pretty, all skin and bones, blossoming into someone beautiful. She kept her arms wrapped around her knees.

She peered into Fallion’s eyes, and begged. “Help! They’ve got me in a cage. Please, set me free.”

The vision faded, and Fallion woke, his heart pounding. He wasn’t sure if it pounded because he was afraid, or because he was angry to see such a thing.

He had heard of Sendings before, and wondered if this was one. Usually Sendings only came between those who shared some deep connection-a family member or a close friend. When one received a Sending from a stranger, it was said that would come from the person who was to be of great import in your life.

But was it real, or just a dream? Fallion wondered. Is there really a girl held captive? Does she need me to free her?

He wasn’t sure. Hearthmaster Waggit had told him that most dreams were just odd thoughts bound together by the imagination into what sometimes seemed a coherent story.

The girl could have been Rhianna. She had a similarly pretty face, but the hair and eyes were wrong. Rhianna had dark red hair and deep blue eyes, not black hair.

No, Fallion realized, the girl looks more like the picture of my mother, the one on her promise locket from when she was young and beautiful.

And the cage?

Rhianna is caged, too, he realized, seemingly caught in a maze of fear and pain.

Was I dreaming about her?

And if so, why did it feel like a Sending?

At almost that instant, he heard Rhianna whimper, wrapped there in her blanket by the fire.

Nightmares. She was having a bad dream.

That’s all that it was, Fallion told himself. I must have heard her cry out in her sleep, and that’s what made me dream like this…

Outside the hostel, a driving wind blew over the sea, thundering over rough waves, lashing them to whitecaps.

The wind rode into the bay, veering this way and that, like a starling that has lost direction in a storm.

It hit the coastline, whistled among the pilings of the pier, and then rose up into the streets, floating over cobblestones, exploring dark shanties.

At one loud inn, where raucous laughter competed with pipes and the joyous shrieks of whores, a pair of sailors opened a swinging door. The wind rode in on their heels.

In a dark corner, at a round table littered with empty ale mugs, sat a man wide of girth, a man with a black beard streaked with gray, and curly hair that fell to his shoulders. His bleary eyes stared at nothing, but suddenly came awake when he felt the questing wind on the nape of his neck.

Captain Stalker came awake. He recognized the two men who had just entered the inn, and as he did so, he kicked back a stool, inviting them to his table.

His table. Stalker didn’t own it, except when he was in port twice a year. On those days the inn, with its raucous noise and the reek of fishermen, became his court, while this stool became his throne.

Even lords flocked to his table at those times, dainty men who held perfumed kerchiefs to their noses in disgust. Wheedling little barons would beg to invest in his shipping enterprise, while bright merchants with an eye on profit margins would seek to sell him goods on consignment.