Sons of the Oak

But it was not strengi-saats that came against Castle Coorm.

Iome stood upon the walls above the gate and looked down upon a small contingent of warriors, perhaps fifty in all, mounted upon their horses out in the darkness, out beyond the moat. Three of them bore torches, and Iome could see the party well. They were a mixed bag-knights from Crowthen in their black mail upon black horses; minor nobles from Beldinook in their heavy steel plate, their tall white war lances raised to the sky; burly axmen from Internook dressed in gray.

Behind them came a train of long wagons, the kind used for transporting horsemen’s lances.

Taken altogether, they looked as scruffy as poachers, as cruel as a band of brigands.

Their leader though, he was something altogether different: he was a tall man, and lean, and sat aback a reddish destrier, a blood mount from Inkarra, bred to travel dark roads.

The leader wore no armor or device to tell where he came from. Instead he wore robes all of gray, with a deep hood that hid his face. His cape pin was made of bright silver-an owl with flaming yellow eyes-and his only weapons seemed to be a boot dagger and a war bow of black ash that was very tall, strapped in a pack on the back of his horse.

There was a darkness about the man, as if shadows bled from his pores and drifted about him like a haze.

He is not of this world, Iome thought, her heart pounding in fear. King Anders of South Crowthen had given himself to a locus, a creature of the netherworld, a being of pure evil, and if anything was left of Anders, Iome could not see it. The creature before her had been transformed into something altogether different.

Iome studied the warriors around the dark rider, looking for anyone that might be his accomplice, the man she had heard called Shadoath.

One ruffian spoke up, a fat strapping warlord of Internook, “We come to parley.” Iome recognized him.

“Draw near, Olmarg,” Iome said, “and speak.”

Olmarg glanced at the shadow man, as if seeking his permission, then spurred his own potbellied war pony to the edge of the drawbridge.

Olmarg looked up at Iome, the old cutthroat’s face a mass of white scars. He wore gray sealskins, and his silver hair was braided in ringlets and dyed in blood. “We’ve come for your sons,” Olmarg said.

Iome smiled. “Never one to mince words, were you,” Iome said. “I appreciate that. What happened to your face since the last time I saw you? Was it eaten by wolves?”

Olmarg grinned. In his own lands, friends often exchanged insults as a form of jest, and Iome was relieved to see that he took her cut in the proper spirit. Olmarg shot back, “Harsh words-from a hag. To think, I once dreamed of bedding you.”

“Eunuchs can have such dreams?” Iome asked.

Olmarg chortled, and Iome felt that she had won. She got to the point. “So, you want my sons?”

“Give them to us and we’ll raise them like our own: good food, ale in their bellies, women in their beds. And a promise: your boy Fallion, he can have the run of Heredon when he’s fifteen.”

Iome grinned, a smile that was half wince, amused that Olmarg would think that she’d want women in her son’s bed. “Royal hostages?” Iome asked. “And if I say no?”

“Then we’ll take them,” Olmarg said, “dead, if need be.”

Fifty men didn’t represent much of a threat. But these weren’t commoners. They were Runelords, and would put up a fierce battle. More than that, they represented half a dozen nations, and might well have powerful allies back home.

And then there was the shadow man. Iome couldn’t even guess what powers he might bring to bear.

“I see,” Iome said. “You want to make it easier for the assassin’s knife to find them?”

“We’re coming as friends,” Olmarg said. “We want Fallion to know us as friends, and allies. That’s all.” He smiled as persuasively as possible, the scars on his face rearranging into a mockery of friendliness, and his voice became sweet. “Come now, think on it. You’re wasting away. You’ll be dead in no time, and who will raise the boys then?”

Iome gave Olmarg a dark look. Olmarg was a pig, she knew. A murderer and worse. She could dismiss his request without a thought. But she gazed down upon the shadow man. “And what of you? Do you wish to raise my sons as your own?”

The shadow man rode forward, stopped next to Olmarg. He did not look up, and Iome could not see his face. Thus he kept his identity hidden, causing Iome some lingering doubt.

It’s not Anders after all. If it were, he’d show me his face.

“You have my word,” the shadow man said, his voice as resonant as a lute. “I will raise the boys as my own.”

His tone drove a spike of fear into Iome’s heart. There was something wrong with it, something dangerous, as if he had taken hundreds of endowments of Voice. Iome could not tell if it was Anders who spoke or some other being. He sounded too pure and lofty to ride with these men.

And Iome knew that he would be handsome, that he had taken endowments of glamour. If so, the luster of his appearance and the persuasiveness of voice would combine to seduce the boys, bend them to his will. He’d have them eating from his hand in no time.

In Rofehavan it was said, “When you look upon the face of pure evil, it will be beautiful.” Suddenly Iome wished that the shadow creature would pull back his hood, reveal his beauty.

“I know you,” Iome said, and she spoke the name of the locus that had crossed from the netherworld, “Asgaroth.”

The stranger did not deny it. “If you know me,” he said, “then you know that you must submit.”

He glanced back at his men, gave them a nod.

Half a dozen men dismounted and rushed to the lance wagons, then removed their wooden lids. What they pulled out were not lances.

Instead, they pulled out three large stakes, like thickened spears with dull points, and even in the shadows Iome could see that each was elegantly carved and painted, like some gift that a foreign dignitary might offer a neighboring lord.

Yet impaled upon each of these stakes was a human form. The bodies were not just thrust through. Instead, the victim’s hands and legs had been tied, and the stakes had been driven up through their nether regions with great care and threaded upward until the lances’ points broke through their mouths, like trout upon a skewer.

The soldiers rushed forward and shoved the stakes into the ground so that the bodies were raised up high. Then they stood beneath, waving their torches so that Iome could see the identities of their victims.

What she saw shook her to the core of her soul. Among the impaled were Jaz’s personal guard Daymorra. Next came Iome’s childhood friend, Chemoise. And last of all was Gaborn’s uncle, Duke Paldane, the man that she had planned to place in charge of her kingdom as regent.

Iome gaped in amazement. Of all the dark deeds she had ever witnessed, none struck her with as much force. It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine such evil having been done. It was that she couldn’t imagine how it had been done so quickly.

All three of these people had been under Gaborn’s protection, and he had been dead for only a few hours. Chemoise had been in Heredon, hundreds of miles away, in the Dedicates’ Keep. Paldane had been in his own castle. For both of them to have been abducted and put to torture-it could only mean that Asgaroth had known for weeks that Gaborn would die this day.

How can I fight such foreknowledge? Iome wondered.

“So,” Iome said, looking at the grotesque forms on their splendid skewers and trying to remain calm. “I see that you have made an art of murder.”

“Oh, not just of murder-” Asgaroth said, “of viciousness. ”

There was a soft moan from Daymorra. Paldane moved an elbow. Iome realized to her dismay that both had survived the impalement. The stakes had been threaded past vital organs-heart, lungs, liver-in the most ghastly manner.

Through the haze of shock, Iome registered a movement at her side. She glanced down, becoming aware that her sons had come up to the parapet despite the fact that she had ordered them to stay in her rooms. Iome felt angry and alarmed, but she understood how hard it was for the boys to restrain themselves. Now the boys leaned over the merlons to get a better look.

Fallion seemed to stare calmly at the impaled, as if he would refuse to be intimidated, while Jaz gaped in shock, his face leeched of blood.

Iome feared how such a sight might scar the boys.

The shadow man shifted his gaze slightly, stared hard at Fallion, and Iome suddenly realized that this demonstration had not been for her benefit as much as it had been for Fallion’s.

For his part, Fallion could almost feel Asgaroth’s eyes boring into him. It was as if Asgaroth looked into Fallion’s chest, into his soul, and everything was stripped bare to see, all of his childhood fears, all of his weaknesses. Fallion felt that he had been weighed and found wanting, and now Asgaroth scorned him.

Fallion’s knees trembled no matter how hard he tried to stand still.

That’s what he wants, Fallion realized. My fear. That’s why he did this. That’s why he brought the strengi-saats.

And with the realization, Fallion suddenly felt a sullen rage blossom, one that left him in a numbing trance.

There is an end to pain, he realized. There is only so much that he could do to me.

Fallion said steadily, and not too loudly, “I’m not afraid of you.”

The shadow man made no move. But as if at some hidden signal, Asgaroth’s soldiers went to the impaled victims and clubbed their shins with the torches so that Fallion heard the snapping of bones, and then held the torches to the victims’ feet. Both Daymorra and Paldane cringed and writhed, and Fallion could hear them choking back sobs, but neither gave in. Neither of them cried out.

Fallion saw Asgaroth’s game. He would try to enlarge his realm through intimidation.

Fallion reached down to his sheath and pulled his own dagger, then held it up for Asgaroth to see.

“Is that the worst that you can do?” Fallion asked. He stabbed himself in the hand, drew the dagger across his palm, opening a shallow wound. He raised his palm in the air so that the blood flowed freely. “I don’t fear pain,” he said, then added calmly, “Is that why you fear me?”

Asgaroth trembled with rage. He sat upon his destrier, clenching the reins, and Fallion looked over to his mother’s soldiers on the wall, many of whom were staring at him in open amazement. Fallion curled his bleeding hand into a fist, and drew it down quickly, as if striking a blow, and against all of the rules of parlay, he shouted, “Fire.”

Fallion had never ordered a soldier to kill. But in an instant, every archer upon the wall let fly an arrow, and the marksmen fired their ballistae. It was as if they had been aching for permission.

Arrows swept down in a dark hail. A dozen cruel Runelords were slaughtered in an instant, and many others took wounds. Horses screamed and fell, bloody rents in their flesh. Fallion saw dozens of men, arrows lodged in them, turn their horses and beat a hasty retreat.

But Asgaroth went unharmed. Before the command to fire had even left Fallion’s mouth, the shadow man reached over with his left hand and grabbed the fat old Olmarg, lifting him easily from the saddle, and threw him upon his pommel, using the warlord as a human shield.

It happened so swiftly, Fallion barely saw the movement, attesting that Asgaroth had many endowments of both metabolism and brawn.

Then, as Olmarg filled up with so many arrows that he looked like a practice target, Asgaroth raised his left hand and a powerful wind screamed from it. In seconds every arrow that flew toward him veered from its path.

Fallion could hear the twang of bows, could see the dark missiles blurring in their speed, but Asgaroth tossed Olmarg to the ground and then sat calmly upon his horse, taking no hurt.

Many an arrow landed nearby, and soon Asgaroth’s victims, impaled upon their stakes, had each been struck a dozen times, putting an end to their torment.

And though the archers kept firing, Asgaroth gazed hard at Fallion and shouted, “If viciousness be art, then of you I shall make a masterpiece.”

Asgaroth calmly turned his blood mount and let it prance away, its hooves rising and falling rhythmically as if in dance, until it rode off into the darkness. The shadows seemed to coalesce around the rider, and in moments he became one with the night.

He’s coming back, Fallion thought. In fact, his men are probably surrounding the castle now as they wait for reinforcements.

Fallion looked up at his mother. Her jaw was clenched in rage, and she looked at the blood dripping from his palm. He thought that she would scold him, but she merely put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, pride catching in her voice, “Well done. Well done.”

Iome strode from the castle wall, hurrying down the steps. At her back, she heard an old veteran soldier telling Fallion, “You ever need to go into battle, milord, I’d be proud to ride at your side.”

It was a sentiment that Iome suspected more than one man shared at this moment.

A healer in a dark blue robe, smelling of dried herbs, brushed past Iome on his way to bandage Fallion.

Sir Borenson met Iome in the courtyard, rushing up as if to ask orders.

Iome said swiftly, “How soon can we leave?”

“I need only to get the children,” he said.

Iome had not packed a bag, but it was not a hundred miles to the Courts of Tide, and the heavy cloak and boots that she wore would suffice until then. She carried a sword beneath her robe, and a pair of dueling daggers strapped to her boots, so she would not lack for weapons.

“Get your family then,” Iome said, “and I will meet you in the tunnels.”

Borenson turned, racing toward his quarters, a small home beside the barracks, and Iome hesitated.

After what she had just seen, she felt certain that Fallion was almost ready to receive endowments.

It isn’t age that qualifies a man to lead, she thought. It’s an amalgam of traits-honor, decency, courage, wisdom, decisiveness, resolve. And Fallion has shown me all of those tonight.

But dare I take his childhood from him?

Not yet, she told herself. But soon. Too soon, it must come.

Which meant that she needed to take only one thing on this trip: Fallion’s legacy.

She raced up to her treasury above the throne room, where she kept hundreds of forcibles under lock and key.