David Farland - Sons of the Oak

On the morning of their first practice, Borenson watched the two of them spar for an hour, Rhianna weaving back and forth, her movements mesmerizing, the little finger of her left hand always drawing runes in the air.

Fallion had to wonder at that. Were her spells meant to slow his wits or to make him stumble? Or was she just trying to enhance her own abilities?

Then she’d strike with a swiftness and a fierceness that were jolting, demonstrating thrusts and parries in combinations that Fallion had never seen before.

Until at last, Borenson demanded, “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“From my uncle. He taught me when I was small.”

“His name, damn it?” Borenson demanded. “What was his name?”

“Ael,” Rhianna said. It was a lie of course, but only half a lie. Instantly Fallion knew that she spoke of Ael from the netherworld, the Bright One who had given her mother the pin. That opened a whole world of new questions for Fallion. Had she been trained by a bright One? Where had she met him?

But Borenson just searched his own memory, trying to think of a fighter by that name, and came up blank.

Later, Fallion pressed Rhianna, asking her about Ael.

Rhianna’s mother had sworn her to secrecy, but Rhianna looked into Fallion’s dark eyes and thought, I would do anything for you.

So, haltingly, she broke her silence. “He came here, from the netherworld,” she admitted at last. “My mother invited him in a Sending. They can only come if they’re invited, you know, and even then, they can’t stay forever. There are laws, you know, laws there in the netherworld the same as there are here.”

There, I’ve told him, Rhianna thought. But I haven’t given Ael’s real name.

“But what was he like?” Fallion said.

Rhianna thought for a long minute, and gave an answer that surprised even herself. “He was… like you.”

“In what way?”

“He was kind,” she said. “And handsome, but not so handsome that you’d think your heart would leap out of your chest when you saw him. He looked like a normal person.”

“But he was a Bright One!” Fallion said. In his imagination, men from the netherworld were shining creatures, as if some greater glory sought to escape them.

“No,” Rhianna said. “He didn’t look special.” They were hiding between a pair of barrels on the main deck, crouched with their backs to the captain’s cabin. It seemed to Rhianna that you could never really be alone on a ship, and just then, a pair of sandaled feet padded past, some sailor. She waited until he was gone. “You know how everyone says that the world changed before we were born?” Rhianna offered. “They say the grass is greener, and us children are stronger than they were, smarter, more like bright Ones than children in times past?”

“Yes,” Fallion said.

“Well, it’s true,” Rhianna offered. “At least I think it’s true. You look like a Bright One.”

“If I look like one, then you do, too. And how do you or I look different from anyone else?”

“Other people, old people, are divided in halves,” Rhianna said. “We’re not.”

Fallion gave her a confused look and she said, “My mother showed me. She held a mirror to her face, and showed me the right half of her face, doubling it. Then she moved it, and showed me the left half of her face. The left half of her face looked like a different person, sad and worn out. But the right half seemed younger, prettier, and still had hope.

“I had never noticed it before, but now I see it all of the time. Most people are torn in half, like they’re two different people.”

“Hearthmaster Waggit showed me that trick,” Fallion said, suddenly remembering a demonstration from when he was very, very young. “Most people aren’t the same on both sides.”

“But we are,” Rhianna said. “You are. When I look at you, both halves of your face are the same, both perfect. It makes you look more… handsome than you really are. And both halves of my face are the same, and so are Jaz’s and Talon’s.”

Fallion thought a moment, then said, “But you couldn’t have been born before the change. You’re too old.”

Rhianna smiled and took off her left shoe, then showed him the scar from a forcible on her left foot-a single rune of metabolism. “I got this four years ago. I was born a few months after you.”

Fallion thought back to blade practice. No wonder she was so fast!

Hearthmaster Waggit had told Fallion that for both sides of the face to mirror the other was a rare trait. But now he realized that Rhianna was right. The Children of the Oak, the children born in the past nine years, nearly all had that trait, and when he saw someone like Borenson’s son Draken, someone whose halves didn’t mirror each other, the child somehow looked wrong.

“It isn’t just people that have it,” Rhianna said. “It’s everywhere. In the cows and the sheep in the fields, in the new grass that sprouts. In trees that have sprung up in the past few years.”

Has anyone ever noticed this before? Fallion wondered. And what changed the world, made it so common?

His father had slain a reaver in the Underworld, one that hosted a powerful locus.

What does that have to do with me? Fallion wondered. Why are children now different from children born before the war?

There was more going on than just the way that he looked, Fallion knew. It was as if some great wrongness had been mended.

Fallion couldn’t see how the pieces of the puzzle connected. He was determined to find an answer.

Each morning, Fallion and the other children made a game of climbing the rigging up the mainmasts and looking out to sea for sign of ships or whales.

Thus one morning they spotted a great serpent finning in the waves, playfully swimming in circles as it chased its tail, its coils undulating as it swam. A sixty-footer-not huge, but respectable.

During the days, Fallion went back to work for Captain Stalker, struggling to gain his trust along with the respect of the crew. Fallion learned how to navigate by the stars, and to trim the masts in a rough wind. He learned the names of every crewman.

By day, he tried to gain their respect, and in the evenings sometimes he even sought to make friends. The men would often go to their quarters at night to drink ale and play dice. Fallion played with them twice, learning games of chance, but learning far more. In their company he began to gain familiarity with the hundred islands and atolls across the Carroll Ocean, learning not just their names, but tales of their peoples. Soon he spoke enough pidgin to speak with any sea hand within a thousand miles.

Myrrima put limits on his visits, telling Fallion, “I’ll not have you learning sailors’ filthy habits.”

Still, Fallion earned some trust. He ran errands for the captain, brought messages, and the men spoke to him with respect. The other refugees were often called “cargo” to their faces, and “ballast” behind their backs. But his shipmates didn’t see Fallion as just ballast anymore, like the other refugees. He had become “crew.”

Some men would never like him, Fallion felt sure. The steersman, Endo, was one. Fallion often would hang around the forecastle, where Endo steered the ship at night. The sea ape, named Unkannunk, was his. Most of the day, the white ape could be found lying near the forecastle, sunning on the deck, its folds of belly fat hanging over its hips. Often it would leap into the water and hang on to a rope ladder by day, peering into the water in hopes of snagging a fish. Once, the huge ape even caught a small shark by the tail.

Fallion began petting the sea ape, but when Endo caught him one afternoon, the little albino man said, “Hands off. ’E don’t like you. Never will.”