David Farland - Sons of the Oak

Besides, he had one more task.

Nodding to Rhianna, he jutted his chin, pointing upstream. “Up in the hills about thirty miles from here, the river will fork. Take the right fork up. There, about fifteen more miles up, you’ll find a Gwardeen fortress.”

“What about you?” Rhianna asked.

But Fallion was already diving. His graak swooped out of the sky, and Fallion reached up one last time, drawing cords of light from heavens that suddenly went black, and then his graak was almost on the ground, skirting the flames.

Its wings thundered, and the world blurred and changed, and suddenly the graak was rising up from the ashes, into a sky where a million stars blazed profoundly.

He was in a stony valley, and all around were dark pines, towering, mountainous, almost blocking out the light.

Below, a vast army had congregated-tens of thousands of golaths and Bright Ones, all camped beneath the shadows of the giant trees.

Fallion soared above them, and he heard frightened shouts, saw golaths pointing upward.

There in the midst of her army, Shadoath sat beside a campfire. Fallion’s sharp eyes were quick to spot her, sitting so regally, a diaphanous jewel in the night.

Fallion let the graak dive, winging only three dozen feet above the heads of the golaths, and he saw Shadoath rise from her chair as she spotted him, her mouth falling open in rage.

Make an offering of her, Fire whispered. Burn her.

Fallion did not give her time to cry out.

He released the heat stored in him, blazing brighter than the sun. It felt as if his skin caught fire, and everywhere cries of pain and dismay rose up from those that were infested by loci.

Bright Ones cringed and cowered, unable to mount a defense. The golaths saw their masters’ fear and then turned to run.

Fallion peered down at their souls, saw wounded loci by the hundreds breaking free from their hosts, then streaking away to safety.

He bent his will most of all upon Shadoath.

She cried out in horror, the locus ripping free from her, a shadow hurtling away like a comet.

When it was gone, Shadoath stood, raging at him in defiance. She grabbed a great bow from a cringing golath, drew it to the full, and fired an arrow.

It blurred in its speed.

Fallion unleashed a fireball, sent hurtling toward it. The fireball raced down far faster than a horse could run, caught the arrow in midair, and turned it into cinders. The fireball roared along its course.

Shadoath took another arrow, fired again. But it met the same fate.

Shadoath barely had time to curse before the fireball took her full in the face.

An inferno washed over her, and she raised a fist and shook it, screaming in pain. The fireball turned those around her into flaming torches, yet with her endowments, Shadoath refused to die.

Shadoath cursed and raised her hands, shaking her fists, even as flames lashed out all around her, charring her flesh, bubbling her skin, melting her fat.

Her cries, by reason of many endowments, were amplified a hundredfold, so that her voice seemed to shake the heavens.

She roared and reached down to pick up a huge stone, and suddenly the cooked meat of her joints gave way, so that the bones of her hands ripped free, borne away by the weight of the stone.

The fire roared all around her, and she stood in the midst of the inferno, as if she would keep screaming endlessly.

Slowly, she began to collapse. First one cooked knee gave way, and she stumbled to the ground, as if compelled to kneel to her young master.

Still she shouted obscenities, even as her tongue boiled. By now her hair was gone, and her face a bubbling ruin.

Then she lowered her head as if in pain, and at last collapsed among the flames, falling forever silent.

Now the children are free, Fallion thought.

He fought back tears and pulled his mount up, soared back toward the world gate, and in moments he was gone.

And in Shadoath’s Dedicates’ Keep, babes that had not seen in years sud denly opened their eyes to the light.

The deaf heard other children shrieking in delight and laughing.

Those who had been too weak to walk suddenly leapt in the air and cavorted like frogs.

The sick became hale, and fools suddenly recalled their names, while many a child who had given away beauty discovered a new luster to their skin.

There was not enough room in the Dedicates’ Keep to contain all of the joy that was unleashed, and so the children ran out of the shadowy retreat into the sun and rolled about on the green grass.

It was a short journey to the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Fallion did not want to make it, but he had to. He needed to see if any of the children had survived.

When he returned from the netherworld, rising up from the world gate, he was surprised to find that Rhianna had waited for him. Her graak was high above, circling the field.

There was a fire in him now, a constant companion, endlessly burning.

He flew by the bright light of the sun, with Rhianna beside him, and at the fortress he found a twig and summoned a flame, and held it as if it were a candle.

As he held it, he peered at his hands and saw that they looked smoother than before, as if they had been shaved. The hairs on the back of his arms had turned to ash. He reached up, found that the hair of his head had met the same fate. He’d come perilously close to bursting into flame.

He hesitated outside the entrance to the tunnel and steeled himself. Nix could be there, dead, or Denorra or Carralee or any of a dozen other children that he had been training. He loved them as if they were brothers and sisters. He did not know if he could look upon their corpses and remain sane.

Rhianna landed her own graak and stood at his back.

“Stay out here,” he told her.

He took a deep breath and dove under the stone arch, into the blackness.

Inside, he found the corpses. It had been a bloodbath, and the sight of it left him ill, but he was relieved not to find Jaz or Nix or several others.

There was no sign of Valya.

He searched everywhere in the little tunnel, following it back into the mountain for nearly a mile.

One of the most dangerous times to ride a graak is on the takeoff, he thought. And a certainty filled him. He knew where to find Valya.

He raced to the mouth of the cave and peered down, two hundred yards below.

In the full sunlight, his eyes made out her form.

Valya lay on the rocks at the edge of the stream, her arms and legs splayed wide, as if she were reaching out to embrace the heavens. Her skin looked as white as parchment.

He let out a strangled cry, and Rhianna came up behind him, put a hand upon his shoulder, and tried to offer some comfort.

He left Rhianna on the bluff, and had his graak land beside Valya, and then waded through the shallows and pulled her to shore.

He’d never touched a human body that felt so cold. It wasn’t just the cold of death. The water had leached the heat from her, too.

He brought her up on the shore and peered into her face. Her eyes were closed, her face expressionless. It did not look as if she had died in pain.

Fallion combed her dark hair with his fingers, and just held her against his chest for a long time, until the body warmed a bit.

He did not know what to feel for her. Pity. Sadness. Regret.

I promised to set her free, he told himself. But what did I give her? If she could talk now, would she thank me for what I’ve done, or curse me?

Late that night long after the sun had set, Fallion and Rhianna flew high into the mountains up onto an arid plateau where an eerie fortress stood, a compound formed of white adobe bricks that gleamed like the bones of a giant in the starlight.

They landed at the gates, only seconds before a weary Sir Borenson arrived, hopping along on a tired rangit.