Sons of the Oak

Five years passed before Shadoath heard the words “We have found him.”

The spring that Fallion had gone missing, she’d sent her agents through every port in Landesfallen, searching for the boy. Bribes were offered, threats were made. After a few months without any progress, innkeepers went missing and wound up in her torture chambers.

The Borenson family had disappeared, and apparently never made it to any port.

Yet Captain Stalker had found his way home, Shadoath knew. His wife, in the village of Seven Trees Standing, disappeared, and six months later Shadoath got word that the remains of the Leviathan were crashed upon some rocks on the shores of Toom. The captain and all hands were reported dead.

Shadoath had changed the focus of her search then, sending men to the north countries of Rofehavan. She imagined that the Borensons had decided to flee back home to safety.

He might be in Mystarria, she reasoned, or even off in his mother’s old haunts in Heredon.

Thus, the trail grew cold, and in time Shadoath turned her thoughts to other things. Her armies began making raids into the southlands of Inkarra, slaughtering villages and bringing back gold and blood metal. Her assassins struck down powerful leaders in far places.

She took endowments of stamina, sight, and glamour. In time, she smoothed the scars from her body. Though her right eye remained forever blind, with enough endowments of stamina and sight, she regained vision in her left.

She sent out an army of minstrels to sing new songs, powerful songs that called for change, songs that reviled decent lords, accusing them of tyranny, while true tyrants were praised within their own borders as men of great strength and vision.

And the peasants responded.

Chaos washed across the world, and in a dozen countries revolutions arose. In Orwynne, good men refused to serve as Dedicates to their young king, suspecting that he was a tyrant. He responded by outlawing all minstrels-a group that by ancient law could not be silenced-and thus in the minds of many proved that he was a tyrant indeed. When the Knights Equitable slaughtered his Dedicates, and then put him to the gallows, only his wife and children protested.

In the northlands of Internook, folk who had always been too poor to afford forcibles heard songs that decried the “tyranny of the Runelords,” and were taught to long for a day when none existed. It was no surprise when the peasants revolted, slaughtering the few Dedicates that lived within Internook’s borders.

The folk of Alnick soon tried to follow in their footsteps, marching upon the castle. There Queen Rand threw herself from the battlements, ending her life so that she might free her Dedicates, sparing them from murder.

The call for revolution spread, even as the blood-metal mines in Kartish gave out.

The world grew ripe for destruction, and as it did, Shadoath prepared. Her army of strengi-saats had multiplied and grown fat on the carrion left in the wake of her small wars in Inkarra.

Shadoath had almost forgotten Fallion. But last fall she had been visiting a small port in the north of Mystarria, and as she walked down the busy streets, studying the work of local weapon-smiths, she spotted a sailor that she recognized.

She’d only seen him once, for a few seconds, yet with a dozen endowments of wit, Shadoath remembered his face vividly. He had been just another sailor in the crowd on the night when Shadoath had fought Myrrima. He was supposed to have been dead, washed up on the rocks of Toom.

She took him then, and a few days under the hot tongs loosened his tongue.

Fallion had gone ashore near Garion’s Port.

She sent her agents out again, had them search up the Hacker River with its many tributaries, and told them what to look for.

She knew Fallion better than he knew himself. She’d fought him time and again, over many lifetimes.

“Look for a lad well versed with a blade, one who has made a reputation for himself. He will be quiet and unassuming, driven and as sharp as a knife, but well liked by others.”

And so now one of her scouts had returned, a minstrel in green-andyellow-striped pants with a shirt of purple and a red vest. He looked like a fool but sang like a sweet lark, plucking his lute as he danced around.

“I found him. I found him. And for a fortune I’ll tell you whe-ere,” the minstrel sang, doing a jig around the throne, glee shining in his eyes.

Shadoath grinned. “Fallion?”

The minstrel nodded secretively.

She reached down to her belt, threw her whole purse full of gold onto the floor. “Where?”

“He’s a captain among the Gwardeen, and goes by the last name of Humble. For three years he has led graak riders at the Citadel of the Infernal Wastes, and only recently has he been transferred to the Gwardeen Wood, just north of Garion’s Port.”

“A captain-so young?” she wondered. Instinctively she knew that it was true. Young, ambitious, well liked.

The name “Fallion” was common in Landesfallen, and the boy had apparently kept it, changing only his last name.

The Gwardeen were notoriously closed and secretive, and their graak outposts were often difficult to reach. The Citadel of the Infernal Wastes was a fortress only eighty miles east of Garion’s Port. But it was high in the mountains, some said “impossible” to reach by foot.

Shadoath tried to imagine the life that he had been living. Fallion would have spent years flying missions over the inland deserts on his graak, making certain that the toth had not returned. He might even have spent the midsummer and winter months down in their ancient tunnels.

No wonder she had not found him.

The minstrel plucked his lute, as if begging attention, and then continued. “He has a brother serving under him: a boy named Draken. And there is an older woman that he visits in Garion’s Port-petite and beautiful, with raven hair.” The minstrel strummed a few notes to an ancient love ballad.

Valya.

Shadoath smiled.

The minstrel strummed and sang, “How will we catch this bird? How will we clip its wings? For with only a word, other larks will warning bring.”

Obviously he had been thinking. The Gwardeen kept watch at all times, and Fallion would be ready to fly away at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t have to find him,” Shadoath said with a smile. “He is a Gwardeen, sworn to protect Landesfallen. I shall make him come to me.”