David Farland - Sons of the Oak

Shadoath leapt off of her graak onto the sandstone, her powerful muscles catching her weight as if she were as light as a windblown leaf.

She drew a long knife and stalked into the little cave.

The room was small and bare. It held the embers of a fire, but no water or other supplies. There was nowhere that anyone could hide.

Most of the children had raced down into the tunnel ahead. Only Valya stood her ground.

She had grown. She was lithe and beautiful. Her breasts had filled out.

“Mother, leave here,” Valya begged. Her lips trembled, and her hands were shaking.

“I’ve searched for you for years,” Shadoath said.

“I… didn’t want to be found.”

Shadoath stepped up to her daughter and lovingly stroked the girl’s cheek. Valya tried to recoil in fear, but then stood her ground, head bowed.

Shadoath kissed her forehead.

She betrayed me, Shadoath realized. She chose to go with Fallion.

“Come,” Shadoath said, using all the persuasive power of her Voice. The command slipped beneath the girl’s defenses like a knife, and she lurched forward a pace.

“Come,” Shadoath said again.

Shadoath took Valya’s hand and strode out of the cave, toward the ledge where her graak waited.

She stood by her mount for a moment, peering up into its eyes, and the reptile watched her.

Valya stood, trembling. She was no match for her mother. She didn’t have the strength or speed to fight her. Any attempt to flee would have been futile.

Without a word, Shadoath took Valya’s arm and hurled her over the ledge.

The young woman screamed once, then made soft thumping sounds as she dropped, bouncing off of rocks, a hundred yards, two hundred, then landed with a rip like a melon splitting as it hits the ground.

Shadoath stood for a second, then turned and stalked back into the recesses of the cave to hunt for the rest of the children, hoping that Fallion would be among them.

Fallion felt a strange sensation, an emptiness inside.

The world seemed a darker place, as if someone had blown out a candle in the corner of a room.

For years now, Fallion had been growing more sensitive to heat and light. He was aware of it on a hundred levels. He could feel the soul-fires of his friends.

Now he stretched out with his senses, questing, to discover what had changed.

And like the great flameweavers of legend, he recognized when one of his friend’s soul-fires went out.

“Valya?” he cried, fearing the worst.

He climbed to his feet, sure that Shadoath had found his friends.

Shadoath’s own Dedicates lay before him, easy prey, and he knew that if he did not act quickly, the guards could come. He might never have another chance.

Do I kill them? he wondered. Dare I?

Killing the children is evil, he knew. But so was letting them live.

He knew the arguments, had heard them all of his life.

He reached down to the floor, retrieved his blade, and peered around the room. He couldn’t kill Rhianna, not first, so he moved to the bed next to her. A boy no more than three lay there so still that he might have been dead.

Fallion leaned close, smelled his breath, a baby’s sweet breath. Metabolism, he decided. The little boy had given Shadoath metabolism.

He had a vision of Shadoath sitting with the child, her arm wrapped around the boy, whispering softly into his ear. “Do you have a present for me? Do you want to give me something nice?”

And the boy would have loved her. He’d have been mesmerized by Shadoath’s beauty, beguiled by her liquid voice. He’d have ached to give Shadoath something, anything.

Kill him, Fallion thought. Do it now, before you have time to regret it.

More guards could come rushing back at any moment. Maybe Abravael has gone for reinforcements.

The world hangs on your decision.

That thought stopped him. It was true. Shadoath was raising an army from the netherworld. Fallion didn’t know her plans, but it was obvious that she intended to invade.

And Fallion was the only person in the world who knew where her Dedicates lay hidden. With them intact, there was a very real possibility that she could take control. The world’s supplies of blood metal were dwindling. No great Runelord would arise to fight her.

Fallion needed to play the part of a hero now.

I wish that Sir Borenson were here, Fallion told himself. Borenson the assassin. Borenson the Kingslayer.

But even Borenson would shirk from this task, Fallion knew. He had killed innocents once before, and it had wounded his conscience, crippled him.

Now it’s my turn, he told himself.

Oohtooroo knew that she was dying. She clung to Abravael with one hand, and with the other tried to hold in her innards.

“Love you…” she told him. “Love oooo.”

She was gasping, trying to hold on, wanting to protect him with the very last of her strength.

But Abravael fought her, tried to shove her away.

“Let go!” he shouted desperately. “You’re bleeding all over me.”

He struggled to escape, his strength boosted by endowments, but it was not enough. He swatted at her face, and Oohtooroo grasped him harder, as if by doing so, she were clinging to her own life.

“Love ooooo,” she said desperately, her heart pounding as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. She needed him to understand. She had loved him fiercely for years, and always would.

She took him by the neck, her enormous hand encompassing it, and tried to cling to him for one last moment, one last loving moment.

Abravael frantically kicked and struggled as Oohtooroo’s heart suddenly gave out, and her vision went gray.

Rhianna woke, her heart pounding in terror. “Abravael!” she shouted, her love for him seeming to swell as big as the universe.

She found herself peering up at Fallion, who stood nearby, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his blade, ready to strike down a sleeping boy. She did not know where she was.

Her last memory was of holding Abravael, trying to explain to him the depth of her love, trying to bore the knowledge into him with her eyes.

She had heard a snapping sound, the crunching of bones in his neck.

And now she was staring up at Fallion, and with the same ferocity, wanted to bore the knowledge of her love into him.

He turned at the sound of her startled voice.

She stared into his eyes, and memories came flooding back-her bargain with Shadoath, the torturous touch of the forcible, her time spent as Oohtooroo, loving her master with a fierceness beyond man’s ability to understand.

She knew that she was in some Dedicates’ Keep. Fallion stood nearby in the darkness, only the candlelight revealing his shape.

Sweat poured down his forehead and broke out upon his arm. He trembled, his whole body shaking, as if he had been standing for hours, or might stand thus forever.

“Do it, if you must,” Rhianna whispered.

Fallion gasped, as if to cry out, but managed to hold his pain inside.

Carefully, Rhianna climbed to her elbows and peered at the children still sleeping nearby, innocent children by the dozens, and she understood his predicament.

“And if you can’t do it,” Rhianna whispered, “then I’ll do it for you.”

Reaching up, she gently unclasped his fingers from the hilt of his knife, and took the blade into her own hand. There was a little girl nearby, a child with blond hair and a pinched face. Her skin was leathery and wrinkled, for she had granted an endowment of glamour.

Silently, Rhianna whispered to herself: By the Glories, let her feel no pain.

Rhianna raised the knife overhead.

This is how I will serve Fallion, she thought. This is how I will prove my love. She let the knife plunge.

“No!” Fallion screamed and pulled on her wrist, spoiling her aim. The blade buried itself in a straw mattress.