David Farland - Sons of the Oak

They were all struggling to escape, but the process of bridling and saddling a graak took too long.

The forcibles, he told himself. I have to save them. They’re more important than the children.

Valya had just helped a child with a saddle, and now she helped the child mount a graak, and slapped the beast’s rump, sending it over the cliff.

She whirled and went to help another, a broad smile on her handsome face.

Jaz wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to save himself. Riding a graak wasn’t easy. How would he carry both the forcibles and himself?

He didn’t have time to answer as he raced outside.

Another child had managed to pick up a bridle for a graak, and was trying to throw it over the head of her mount, but she was too small. Jaz finished the job as she carefully climbed onto the reptile’s neck, without a saddle, and perched there, clinging with fright.

Jaz peered up at her. “Get out of here. Fly inland and find the fortress at Stillwater.”

The girl nodded, and Jaz slapped the graak’s rump, yelling, “Up! Up!”

His heart skipped a beat as the reptile hopped forward. In that moment, when the beast lunged, if the child was going to fall, this would be the time.

The graak dropped from the sky a dozen yards, its wings unfolding gracefully, and then it caught the wind and was gone, flying away. The girl cried out in fright, but managed to hold on.

Jaz peered down below. Shadoath was close now. No more than a minute away. Jaz didn’t have time to harness more graaks.

Expert riders could command a graak even if it wasn’t harnessed, Jaz knew, but he wasn’t an expert rider. Such riders usually had years of experience to help them.

Jaz had none of that.

Weary to the core of his soul, he scrabbled up the side of the nearest graak, somehow climbing from knee, to hip, to back, and to neck by sheer will.

Shadoath was drawing near, less than a quarter of a mile away.

Maybe she won’t hurt me, Jaz thought. She’d treated him gently when she took him from the prison. He’d seen her then as a vision of mercy, a savior, someone to be adored.

But she was the one who put me in irons in the first place, he told himself, and he knew that it was true. She could show kindness, but it didn’t come from the heart.

He had only one chance. He was taking a rested mount. Shadoath’s would be tired. He could hope to outfly her.

He looked to the side. Valya was throwing the bridle on another graak, sending off another child. She wouldn’t have time to get away herself.

“Valya,” Jaz shouted, “come with me.” It would be dangerous for his graak to try to carry them both, he knew, but it was their only chance.

Valya raced toward him as if she would climb on, but then she slapped his graak on the rump and shouted, “Up!”

The graak surged, stretched its neck out, and with a little warning cry took flight. The warm evening air smote Jaz in the face and whistled through his hair, and he felt the great reptile take flight beneath him.

Valya is staying behind, he realized. She’s giving her life for mine.

Shadoath was racing toward him, her graak twenty yards above his. Her face shone with an ethereal beauty, despite the scars from her burns, and she sat astride her graak with the easy grace of one who had hundreds of endowments.

I was fool to think I might be able to fight her, Jaz realized. She’s a powerful Runelord still, and there is no way that I could win.

Jaz worried that she’d dive, have her mount claw his, knocking Jaz from his seat.

But Valya shouted, “Mother, I’m here.”

Shadoath turned her face up to the cave and urged her mount toward it, willing to let Jaz go.

Jaz felt miserable inside as his graak dove toward freedom.

There were still several children up in the cave. They were screaming now, abandoning their mounts, racing into the depths of the cave in the hopes of escaping.

Jaz was buying his own life with theirs.

Warily, Fallion made his way into the Dedicates’ Keep, convinced that at any moment a dozen guards would ambush him.

But as he passed the small guardroom where Abravael and the ape had slept, he found it empty of all but a cot.

Fallion marched forward, past the bakery with its open hearth, beyond a hallway that led to some more guards’ quarters, then to the buttery and the kitchens. A pair of matronly women worked inside. They huddled away in a corner, terrified, as he passed.

At the end of the hall, he opened a door to a darkened chamber. There he found the Dedicates.

The room was lit by a few candles, enough so that Fallion could see everything well enough.

The room was full of children, dozens and dozens of them. Some were toddlers, not more than a year or two. Others were Fallion’s age or older.

Many laid upon cots, invalids. Some cried out or moaned in pain. They’d given brawn and grace, given their sight or their beauty, and could only wonder why they hurt so badly.

Of course, Fallion realized. When Shadoath captured a city, she used the elderly, the infirm, as food for her strengi-saats. The strong ones she’d keep as workers. And their children served as Dedicates.

It looked more like a nursery than a Dedicates’ Keep. Fallion had never seen an instance where a Runelord took endowments from children. Such a deed was horrific.

But he understood the cunning of it.

Fallion stood there numb, as if wounded. He dared not advance.

He remembered Borenson sobbing in the night, and Myrrima warning Fallion, “Do not repeat our mistakes.”

He’d heard Borenson cry out in his sleep many times over the years. Now Fallion began to understand why.

He looked at the faces of the children, some lying fast asleep, others peering at him in terror, and searched in vain for an adult target, someone evil, someone cruel, someone worthy of death.

He’d imagined that Shadoath’s servants would be vile, like her. He’d dreamed that their cruelty would be written plain upon their faces, and that in slaying them, he would feel secure that he’d done the world a favor.

But there was no evil in this room. Only innocence.

And then he saw her, there across the room, not forty feet away. A young woman with pale skin and dark red hair, slumbering, perhaps lost in a dream. She had aged in the past five years. She now looked to be more than twenty. It was Rhianna.

Without thought he moved across the room and found himself peering down, trying to make sure that it really was her.

Over the years, a thousand times he’d dreamed of going back to Syndyllian to rescue her. Or he dreamed that she found her way to him somehow.

A rune of wit was branded on her forehead, the scar a cold white and puckering.

She’s given Shadoath her wit, Fallion thought. I could kill her now, and she’d never even know what happened. I could slice her throat, and strike a blow against evil. If I am going to do this, if I am to defend my people, then I should take her first.

Fallion peered down at Rhianna, and a seemingly ancient oath suddenly rose from his throat, escaped his lips. “Sworn to serve.”

He let his blade clatter to the floor.

He sank to his knees and hugged her while fierce tears welled up in his eyes.

Shadoath’s graak struggled for purchase in the air, its leather wings ripping the sky as it made its way up to the little bluff.

Half a dozen white graaks still waited in the shadows. They were hungry, and their reptilian brains seemed to not be quite awake. They were going to sleep for the night. And so they stood, almost like statues, while Shadoath’s own mount landed on the bluff, panting from exertion.