David Farland - Sons of the Oak

He wished that he believed it. They were the Sons of the Oak, the children of the Earth King. Borenson believed that with a word, whole nations would rise up to follow at their command.

And so, Fallion realized, to someone like Shadoath, they might represent a danger. They might just be worth more dead than alive.

The manacles were cutting into Fallion’s wrist; he wriggled painfully, trying to ease the pressure.

“How long?” Jaz asked. “How long will they… keep us?”

“A few weeks,” Fallion calculated. “Someone will have to sail back to Mystarria, raise a ransom, come back.”

“Oh,” Jaz said forlornly.

Fallion offered some more words of comfort, and after a bit he asked, “Would you like me to sing to you?”

That had always worked when Jaz was small and troubled by bad dreams.

“Yes,” Jaz said.

Fallion remembered a song about rabbits, one that had been Jaz’s favorite a few years ago, and he began to sing, struggling for breath.

“North of the moon, south of the sun, rabbits run, rabbits run.

Through winter snow, summer gardens, having fun, having fun.

Faster than wolves, fast as birdsong,

Rabbits run, rabbits run.

North of the moon, south of the sun.”

Someone came marching toward them. Fallion saw a flicker of light and heard the jangle of keys. His stomach had begun to tighten, and he hoped that it was someone bringing food.

But it was only a brutish man who stubbed past their cell, bearing a smoking torch. He wore a loincloth, a blood-spattered vest, and a black hood that hid his face. In his right hand he carried an implement of torture-a bone saw.

Fallion peered at Jaz, saw his brother’s face pale with fear.

The torturer went past their cell, and Jaz asked, “Do you think he’ll come for us?”

“No,” Fallion lied. “We’re too valuable.”

Down the hall, the torturer went to work, and the screaming began-a man whimpering and pleading for mercy.

He must have been round a corner, for Fallion could see little light.

“Are you sure?” Jaz asked.

“Don’t worry,” Fallion told him. “They… just want to scare us.”

So Fallion hung against the wall, his weight born by the manacles around his wrists, and sang to his little brother, offering comfort whenever he could.

His were small manacles, made especially for women and children, he realized.

They cut into his wrists, made them swell and pucker. He had to wiggle his hands from time to time, try to find a more comfortable position, in order to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. He’d seen a man once, Lord Thangarten, who had been kept hanging in a dungeon in Indhopal so long that his fingers had died, and he was left a cripple.

Yet if I wiggle too much, he knew, in a few days my wrists will chafe and begin to bleed.

So Fallion hung on the wall and tried to minimize his pain. With his wrists bearing all of his weight, his lungs couldn’t get air. After the first few hours, he learned that it would be a constant struggle.

In the darkness, Fallion was left to focus on sounds, Jaz’s breathing as he hung in his cell, deep and even in sleep, ragged when he woke. His brother’s weeping and sniffing, the clank of chains against the wall, the sobs of the tortured as they lay in their cells, the squeaking of rats, the snarling of strengi-saats.

He would not have minded the rats, normally. But after he had hung against the wall for a few hours, he heard one squeaking below. It rose and bit his big toe.

He kicked at it. The rat squeaked angrily as it retreated.

It will be back, Fallion knew. It will be back, when I’m too tired to fight.

He found that he had to pee. He held it for as long as he could, then let it go.

In the darkness, deprived of light, accompanied only by the smell of mold and urine and cold stone and iron, as days began to pass, Fallion despaired.

Several times the torturer passed by their cell, never looking toward them, his torch guttering, his keys jangling.

He came at dawn, Fallion surmised, and left at night.

“How long has it been?” Jaz asked time and again.

Only three days, Fallion suspected, but he told Jaz that it was a week.

One cannot despair forever, even in the worst of times. The body is not capable of sustaining it. And so the despair came in great waves, crashing around his ears sometimes, threatening to drown him, and then ebbing away.

Sometimes he dared hope. Straining for every breath, he’d babble to his brother.

“Maybe they’ve sent… messages to Mystarria, demanding payment for our release,” he’d offer. “We’ve been, at sea for eight weeks. It will take a ship that long to reach Mystarria, another eight weeks back.

“Four months. In four months we’ll be free.”

“When will they feed us?” Jaz begged.

“Soon,” Fallion promised time and again.

But they had been hanging on the wall for days. Fallion’s mouth grew dry and his tongue swelled in his throat. Greasy sweat became his only blanket. He woke and slept, and hung on the wall, sometimes unsure if he was awake or asleep any longer.

Now when the torturer passed, Fallion and Jaz would both cry out, their dry throats issuing only croaks. “Food.” “Water.” “Help.” “Please.”

Down the hallway, lost in time, Fallion heard a woman’s scream echo, followed by the snarl of a strengi-saat, the sound of it grunting, and more screams. The strengi-saat was filling the woman with its eggs, he realized.

Who are all of these people? Fallion wondered. What have they done to deserve such pain?

He had no answer. Like him, he suspected, they had done nothing.

Waggit had taught Fallion about the lives of evil people. He knew that there had been lords in the past who tortured others for their own amusement.

What had Waggit told him? Oh, yes. Such people eventually went mad. “They ride into power on a steed of fear and violence, doling out favors to those who support them. But as their inhumanity grows, their supporters fade away. Fearful of losing support, they begin to kill the very lords who brought them to power, and the foundations of their empire crumbles. In time, in fear and madness they dwindle away, and at last they tend to die by their own hands, or the hands of their people.”

Waggit had cited examples of men and women so cruel that even to tell of it was harrowing.

Is that how Shadoath will end? Fallion wondered.

At the time, the lesson had seemed… boring, a mere recitation from the pages of dusty old books.

Now, Fallion was learning of such things firsthand.

Hunger gnawed at his belly. Thirst became a nagging companion.

It was under these circumstances that the boys received their first visitor. Fallion had expected Shadoath herself to show up, but instead he woke in his cell, his vision blurred, and peered up to see Deever Blythe peering through the bars, a torch in his hand, grinning inanely.

“ ’Ow they treatin’ you boys?” Blythe asked.

Jaz was unconscious. Fallion peered at him, saw him pale and vulnerable. For the first time, Fallion began to worry that his little brother would die.

“Last couple o’ days been nice, ’ave they?” Blythe asked.

Fallion did not want to let Deever see him beaten. Choking, he said, “I’m well, and you?” But his voice betrayed his outrage.

He’s the one that told on us, Fallion realized. He’s the one that betrayed me.

“Not like back ’ome, I’d imagine?” Deever asked. “Not like those hoitytoity dinner parties, what with the lords in their silk tights, struttin’ about and dancin’ with their plump ladies. Not a bit like that, is it?”

Fallion had never been to a ball. He’d seen one or two, and it sounded to him as if Blythe had only some garish approximation of what it was like at a ball.