David Farland - Sons of the Oak

Rhianna felt unnerved by the fellow. He was obviously a flameweaver. At first she had thought that he was just bald, but now she saw that he had no eyebrows, no hair of any kind, for the roots had burned away, and that was all the proof that she needed.

She pulled Fallion’s arm, urging him to follow. But as if on impulse Fallion took the pipe and drew a deep breath. The other children all peered at him with wide eyes for his audacity. He inhaled deeply, as if the weed tasted sweet in the back of his throat, but he coughed and hacked it out anyway.

The old fellow laughed. “Maybe not flameweaver. Not yet. But great light in you, Torch-bearer. Why you come here, hey? Why old soul hiding in young one’s body?”

That seemed to trouble Fallion. “You can see that?” Fallion asked. “You see inside me?”

Smoker answered, “Not see, feel. You walk by, and I feel heat in you, light.” He reached out as if to touch Fallion, and Fallion touched the man’s fingers, then pulled his hand away quickly.

“Hot,” Fallion said.

“You want feel inside of people?” Smoker asked, taking a couple of quick puffs on his pipe. “Take much smoke. Maybe then you will see…”

Fallion didn’t want to smoke. “Can you see the shadow creatures that live inside men? Can you see a locus?”

The old man got a secretive look. “Shadoath,” he said. “In Landesfallen, we call it a shadoath.”

Rhianna hissed in surprise, for it was the name that Asgaroth had used when talking of his master.

Smoker turned to her. “You know this name?”

Rhianna nodded.

Smoker smiled, showed his yellow teeth. “Is pirate lord by that name, yes? Her fame grows. She knows what inside her.”

“She?” Rhianna asked. “Shadoath is a woman?”

“Children, get away from there!” Myrrima shouted.

Rhianna whirled. Myrrima had come up behind them, and though Rhianna had never seen her angry, her rage was palpable now.

Water wizards and flameweavers did not get along.

The children stood in shock for a moment, and the little ones were quickest to run to their mother, but the old flameweaver tapped Fallion’s chest with the bowl of his pipe. “This one, he not yours. You know that. He know it now, too.”

That evening after dinner as the children slept, Myrrima took her husband up on deck for a late-night stroll. The winds were light, the evening cool; stars burned down like living coals.

“I caught Fallion talking to that flameweaver today,” she said when they were alone. “I think he suspects what Fallion is.”

“Have you caught Fallion trying to shape flames, set fires?”

“No,” Myrrima said. “But we will soon enough. You saw how he burned away the clouds when we fought Asgaroth, summoning the light?”

“I saw,” Borenson said with an air of resignation. “We knew that this day would come.” He said the words, but he did not feel them. It seemed an irony that Fallion’s father had fought a bitter war against Raj Ahten and his flameweavers, only to have sired a flameweaver of his own.

“It’s a seductive power,” Myrrima said. “Those who use it learn to crave destruction. They yearn to consume.”

“Fallion is a good boy,” Borenson said. “He’ll fight those urges.”

Myrrima’s voice came ragged, “He’ll lose that fight. You know it, and his father knew it.”

Borenson gritted his teeth in determination. Unbidden, he thought of the curse that Asgaroth had laid on Fallion, predicting a future of war and bloodshed. Is that why Fallion was waking to his powers now?

Or was this part of Asgaroth’s plan, to push the boy, force those powers to waken before he was mature enough to handle them?

Borenson had never really known a flameweaver. Oh, he’d fought them in Raj Ahten’s army, and he’d seen a couple of folks demonstrate some small skill at bending flames at summer festivals, but he’d never known one intimately. He’d never tried to raise one.

Gaborn had warned him that this would happen, of course. He’d warned him long ago when he begged Borenson to become Fallion’s protector.

“Give him something to hold on to,” Gaborn had warned. “He won’t always need your sword to protect him. But he’ll need your love and your friendship to protect him from what he can become. He’ll need a father, someone to keep him connected to his humanity, and I won’t be there.”

Borenson stopped and rubbed his temples. Why did I let Gaborn talk me into this?

But he knew the answer. There were some jobs that were just impossible for common men, jobs that would cause them to falter or break. And some combination of stupidity, audacity, and the need to protect others forced Borenson to accept those jobs.

Wearily, he led Myrrima to their bed.

In her dream, Rhianna lay draped over the limb of an elm, the cold moss and bark pressing into her naked flesh. Her clothes were wet and clung to her like damp rags, and her crotch ached from where the strengi-saat had laid its eggs, the big female pressing her ovipositor between Rhianna’s legs, unmindful of the pain or the tearing or the blood or of Rhianna’s screams.

The rape was recent, and Rhianna still hoped for escape. She peered about in the predawn, the light just beginning to wash the stars from heaven, and her breath came in ragged bursts.

She could hear cries in the woods. The cries of other children, the snarling and growls of strengi-saats, like distant thunder.

As she listened, the cries rose all around. North, south, east, and west. She dared not move. Even if she tried to creep away, she knew that they would catch her.

Yet she had to try.

Trembling, almost too frightened to move, she swiveled her head and looked down. The ground was twenty feet below, and she could discern no easy path down, no way to go but to jump.

Better a fast death from a fall, she thought, than a slow one freezing.

With the barest of nudges, she leaned to one side, letting her body slide over the limb. As she began to fall, she twisted in the air, grasping the limb. For a moment she clung, her feet swinging in the air, until she let herself drop.

Wet leaves and detritus cushioned her fall, accompanied by the sound of twigs snapping under her weight, like the bones of mice.

Her legs couldn’t hold the weight, and she fell on her butt, then on her back. The jarring left her hurt, muscles strained to near the snapping point, and she wasn’t sure how fast she would be able to limp away.

Nothing is broken, she told herself hopefully. Nothing is broken.

She climbed to a sitting position, peered through the gloom. There were shadows under the trees. Not the kind of shadows that she was used to, but deeper shadows, ones that moved of their own accord.

The strengi-saats were drawing the light from the air, wrapping themselves in gloom, the way that darkling glories did in the netherworld.

Do they see me? she wondered.

She waited for a brief second, then leapt to her feet and raced to keep up with the rhythm of her skipping heart.

With an endowment of metabolism, she hoped that she could outdistance the monsters.

But had not gone thirty paces when a shadow enveloped her and something hit her from behind, sent her sprawling.

A strengi-saat had her. It held her beneath an immense paw, its claws digging lightly into her back, as it growled deep in its throat.

She heard words in her mind. More than a dream or her imagination. She heard words. “You cannot escape.”