Sons of the Oak

On a lazy summer afternoon at a tiny inn called the Sea Perch, built high among the branches of the stonewoods, Fallion sat listening to a minstrel sing.

“Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak,

Strong of heart and fair of face?

His people mourn, and their hearts are broke,

They say he dwells in some far-off place.

In Heredon’s wood, on Mystarria’s seas, one can hear the ravens cry.

Their calls disrupt the dreams of peace

That in tender hearts of children lie.

Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak?

Exiled to some fairer realm?

Does he follow his father’s roads?

Calling a field his fort, the forest home?

Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak?

‘Lost,’ some say, to light and life.

But faithful hearts still hold this hope:

His return will herald an end to strife.”

The song struck Fallion to the marrow. It wasn’t just the quality of the singer’s voice. Borenson had warned Fallion that the people would cry for his return.

Not yet, Fallion thought. I’m not ready yet. Do they really want me to come so soon?

Fallion had hoped to wait until he was sixteen. On his sixteenth birthday, it was customary to crown a prince as king.

But Fallion doubted that there would be anyone to crown him by the time he returned home. By all accounts, Chancellor Westhaven had tried his best to hold Mystarria together. But the Brat of Beldinook had torn it from his hands, and then had begun a reign of horror over its people, “punishing” them for the death of her father at Gaborn’s hands, persecuting any who dared admit that the Earth King may have been right in executing him.

There were tales of starvation in Mystarria, of forlorn crowds rioting at the Courts of Tide.

In Fallion’s mind, such “nobles” were waging wars that only weakened themselves and destroyed the very people they hoped to govern.

The song brought a little applause. Few people were in the inn at this time of the day. Fallion tossed a small coin to the minstrel.

“Thank you, sirrah,” the minstrel said.

The man was fresh off a ship from Rofehavan, and Fallion hoped for more news from him.

“Are all the songs that you sing so forlorn?” Fallion asked.

“It has been a rough winter,” the minstrel said. “The folks in Heredon liked it well enough.”

“How fares Heredon?” Fallion asked, for it was a place close to his heart.

“Not well,” the minstrel said. He was a small man, well proportioned, with a gruff voice. “The Warlords of Internook seized it two years back, you know, and the peasants there all remember a time when they were ruled by a less-cruel hand. Many a tongue was singing that song last summer at the fair, and so in retribution, the lords at Castle Sylvarresta set fire to wheat fields. They say that the sky was so full of smoke, that in Crowthen it became as dark as night.”

“It seems to me that any lord who made war against his own peasants would only weaken himself.”

“Aye,” the minstrel said. “Still the people croon for the return of their king. It’s that Earth Warden Binnesman that put them up to it. He told them that ‘the stones’ woke him at night, troubling him, calling for the new king. Lord Hagarth would have sent the old wizard swinging from the gallows, but the Earth Warden ran off into the Dunnwood, where it is said that he lives among the great boars, gnawing wild acorns.”

Fallion wondered at that. Binnesman had anointed his father to be the Earth King. Fallion had never met the man, at least not since he was very small, but he knew that Binnesman was a wizard of great power.

“Do those beyond the borders of Heredon share the hope for a new king?” Fallion asked.

The minstrel smiled. “About half and half, I’d say. Some hope that the Earth King will return from the dead, or that his son will reign in his stead. But there’s a good many that never want to see a Runelord sit a throne again. ‘Death to all Dedicates’ is the call of the day.”

“What would we do without Runelords?” Fallion asked. “What if the reavers were to attack again, or the toth?”

“Our people have more to fear from evil leaders than they ever have from outside forces,” the minstrel said. “There’s some that whisper that it should not be so. It’s said that long ago, the Wizard Sendavian and Daylan of the Black Hammer stole the knowledge of rune-making from the bright Ones of the netherworld. They took it, but such knowledge was not meant for man. Only the truest, the noblest among the Bright Ones, were permitted to bear such runes, and no man is that good.”

Fallion had heard this rumor before, too, not six months back. Yet Shadoath had come from the netherworld, and she bore such runes.

The door to the inn opened, and outside stood a young girl, nine years of age, with skin as pale as milk. Her silver hair fell to her shoulders. She wore the gray robe of a graak rider, and held under her arms a pair of baskets of fruit and bread that she had bought at the local vendors. She was one of Fallion’s troops. It was time to head home.

Fallion nodded at a young maiden with raven hair who was scrubbing tables, getting ready for the nightly crowd. Valya had been living in town now for nearly three months.

She smiled back, went to the hearth, and began to set the fire. Fallion felt uncomfortable. He had seldom practiced his skills as a flameweaver through the years, yet month by month, the call of the flames grew stronger.

Valya was a sister to him now, but a sister that he hardly knew. Soon after they landed, Borenson and Myrrima moved to some hovel up on Jackal Creek, an area so sparsely inhabited that it was easy for the family to get lost, but hard to make a living. The farm was too poor to support much of a family, so Fallion had volunteered to join the Gwardeen. Draken joined a few months later.

Shortly afterward, Jaz had gone to work for Beastmaster Thorin, an elderly gentleman who raised exotic animals.

Now Valya had moved here, coming to the coast, waiting for a ship that would carry her far, far away.

Fallion had seen his family rarely in the past few years, only on winter holidays.

So Fallion went outside where three other children had gathered with today’s purchases, and stretched his arms, enjoying the sweet cinnamon scent of stonewood trees. The evening light was turning golden as the sun plunged into the sea.

The boles of the stonewood were gray, streaked with brown, like petrified rock. Only the upper branches really seemed to be alive. The elegant limbs were more of a dark cherry in color, hung with mosses and lichens and flowering vines. Epiphytes grew on their bark and put out brilliant crimson blossoms that smelled faintly like ripe peaches. As the evening sea wind stirred the leaves, the air filled with pollen, and then in the slanted sunlight that broke through the boughs the vibrant-colored day-bats flitted from flower to flower.

It was a scene that was as eerie to Fallion as it was beautiful.

“Come,” he said. So they trundled across a catwalk that spanned through old stonewood trees. The bridge was made of gold-colored planks that seemed to be hundreds of years old. In places it was rickety and worn, and the handrails looked as if they’d fall off. But always the bridge was in at least a usable state of repair.

Fallion walked slowly, bearing the children’s stores of food from time to time so that they could rest.

He was the oldest and largest of the graak riders, and bore the title of Captain. But he was more than a captain to these children, he knew. Many of them were orphans, and they looked up to him as something of a father.

Below them they could hear choruses of peeping frogs and the squeals of wild boars.

Fallion was deep in thought, wondering about the plight of his people- not just the children of the Gwardeen, but the people that he should rightfully be leading, the people of Heredon and Mystarria.

They walked for half a mile before they could glimpse the Gwardeen Wood, which could be seen ahead as a knot of stonewood trees on a peninsula that jutted out into the sea.

There, among the trees, stood an ancient fortress, a high tower used as a graakerie.

These were all sea graaks, white in color, the kind with the widest wingspan. They could fly from island to island out here in the Mariners, and if a storm came, they would sometimes ride its front for hundreds of miles inland.

The group was rounding the bay, still a mile from the Gwardeen Wood, when trouble struck.

Fallion heard a buzzing noise just overhead, almost a loud clacking, and a giant dragonfly, as long as a child’s arm, flew past. In the shadows it had been invisible, but then it lunged into a slant of sunlight, and Fallion saw it-a vibrant green with mottled yellow on the carapace, the color of forest leaves in the sun.

It buzzed into the air and grabbed a cinnamon-colored day-bat that was no larger than a sparrow; the day-bat screeched in terror.

As Fallion’s eyes followed the creature, he became aware of the dim clanging of bells. A deep-pitched warhorn sounded, as if the very earth groaned in pain.

The call was almost too distant for him to discern. He barely picked it up, buffered as it was by the trees and the sounds of the sea.

But instantly he knew: Garion’s Port was under attack.

When he held his breath, he could discern distant cries. Not all of the cries were human. Some were the deep tones of golaths.

Fallion had passed the last house trees nearly half a mile back. From here forward, there was nothing but the catwalk.

“Run,” Fallion told the children. “Run to the outpost and don’t look back.”

The children all peered up at him with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?” the youngest girl asked.

“Shadoath is coming,” Fallion hazarded.

So the children ran.

Fallion followed at the rear, where a young boy named Hador tried in vain to keep up with the older children.

For several minutes, no one pursued.

Fallion heard footsteps slapping behind and turned to see Valya racing toward them for all that she was worth.

Fallion sent the little ones ahead. They were only half a mile from the fort when he caught sight of the first of the golaths. The gray-skinned creatures came rushing from the city on their knuckles, thumping along the catwalk, curved reaping hooks and strange clubs in their hands.

The children heard their grunts, so they screamed and redoubled their pace. A pair of young Gwardeen skyriders came flying along on graaks, their course bringing them near the catwalk. Fallion could see fear on their faces.

“Pirates!” one of them shouted needlessly. “Pirates are coming. There’s a worldship just off the coast!”

A worldship? Fallion wondered. Eight hundred years past, Fallion the Bold had created huge rafts to bear his army across the oceans to fight the toth. Those strange rafts had been dubbed worldships. But none of their kind had been seen in centuries.

Now he recalled the denuded forests on Syndyllian, and he realized what Shadoath had been up to. She had been building vessels to carry armies to Mystarria.

Valya reached him, and with her longer legs could well have raced ahead. Instead she pulled even with him.

He could hear the golaths coming, glanced back to see a dozen of them only a couple hundred yards back.

The Ends of the Earth are not far enough.

“Go,” Fallion told her. “Get on a graak and head inland to safety. The Gwardeen can protect you.”

“What about you?” Valya asked.

“I’ll hold them back.”

Valya stood there a moment, obviously fighting her desire. She didn’t want him to stand alone.

“You go,” Valya said. “You’re the one Shadoath is after. If she gets you now, all of our efforts will have been wasted!”

Fallion knew that she was right, but he wasn’t prepared to let Valya die in his place.

Fallion peered up the catwalk the last quarter of a mile. Ahead he could see the graakerie, huge white graaks nesting in trees devoid of leaves. Here, even the trees were white, stained by guano.

A high stone wall surrounded the Gwardeen Wood itself. The only easy way into the fort was over the catwalk.

As the children raced ahead, Fallion saw a young man run out from a small wooden gate, Denorra. He was watching them, waiting. He had a hatchet in hand and looked as if he’d cut the rope that held the last little span of bridge.

“Hurry!” Denorra shouted.

Fallion heard an animal cry, excited grunts and shouts. He glanced back. A golath with tremendous endowments of speed and brawn was rushing toward them, taking fifteen feet to a stride. He made as if to pass a pair of his slower kin, and merely leapt ten feet in the air.

Valya drew a boot dagger, but Fallion knew that it would be useless.

“Cut the ropes!” he shouted to Denorra even as he suddenly hit a span of bridge held only by rope.

He raced for all that he was worth, stretching each stride to its fullest, his lungs pumping. Valya matched him stride for stride. They were in the shadow of the fortress now. He heard the thump of heavy feet rushing behind him, became aware of two large graaks rising up from the tower. A few arrows and stones came flying over his head, thudding onto the deck.

The children were fighting back!

The golath warrior grunted and wheezed, its iron boots pounding the walkway only paces behind.

An arrow whipped over Fallion’s head, and thwacked its iron tip into golath hide. But a golath with endowments wasn’t likely to be stopped by a single arrow.

“Jump!” Fallion shouted to Valya just as Denorra swung the ax down on a rope.

They hit the ground together, and the left half of the bridge dropped from under them. Fallion grabbed on to the rope that held the right half of the bridge up. Valya got only a single hand on it.

The golath cursed, just feet behind, and grasped onto the rope.

Fallion held there for a second, swung up so that his feet hit the landing near Denorra, even as the young boy swung wildly, trying to cut the second rope.

The golath cursed, and a pair of children rushed out of the fortress with long spears. The oldest, a girl of eleven, blurred past Fallion and stabbed at the golath, hindering its progress.

Fallion grabbed Valya and pulled her to safety just as Denorra swung one last time, severing the rope.

The golath cried out in rage as it fell into the sea.

Valya turned and caught her breath, stared in shock for half a second. On the far side of the causeway, golaths growled and cursed. Some threw double-sided blades that spun in the air like whirligigs falling from a maple tree. One blade spun just overhead, then Fallion, Valya, and the rest of the children raced into the fortress.

It wasn’t much of a fortress. The stone walls would keep a determined force warrior out for only a few minutes; inside there were only a couple of small rooms to give shelter from the weather.

A dozen young Gwardeen boys and girls cared for the graaks. The oldest of them, besides Fallion, was only twelve. These were children of mixed Inkarran blood, with skin as white as bone and hair of pale silver or cinnabar. Fallion was the closest thing to an adult.

The Gwardeen were hastily throwing bridles onto the graaks. Most of the children were already mounted. Indeed, Draken had saddled a beast, and a young recruit was clinging to it tightly. Her name was Nix, and she was only five years old.

“But how do I steer?” Nix was crying.

“Just lean the direction that you want to go,” Draken said, “and gouge with your heels. The mounts will head that way.”

“But what if I fall?”

“You won’t fall if you don’t lean too far,” Draken replied.

Fallion wondered why the children hadn’t left yet, but then realized that they had been waiting for him.

“Draken,” Fallion shouted. “Go inland. Take a message to Marshal Bellantine at Stillwater. Warn him what we’re up against. Tell him that we’ll await his command at the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Afterward…go home.”

Draken peered hard at him. Fallion was sending him to safety, he knew, and Draken resented that. But Fallion was also sending him on a vital mission. He nodded his acceptance.

With that, Draken leapt onto his own reptile and gouged its sides. In a thunder of wings it jumped into the air, and several other riders followed.

Fallion rushed forward to the landing platform as some boys led two more graaks forward, the huge reptiles waddling clumsily, tipping their wings in the air.

Fallion peered about. Eight hundred years ago, Fallion’s forefathers had left the Gwardeen on vigil, commanding them to watch for the return of the toth.

Since that time, it seemed to Fallion, the famed Gwardeen had dwindled to little more than a club for youngsters who liked to ride graaks.

Most of the older Gwardeen were out making a living, marrying and having babies, planting gardens, growing old and dying together-the way that people should.

Few of them took their ancestors’ promise of eternal vigilance seriously.

The Ends of the Earth are not far enough, Fallion thought.

A young man of eleven brought a bridled graak forward, a large male, a powerful thing that smelled as strong as he looked. It glared down at Fallion, as if daring him to ride. His name was Banther.

Valya stood at the edge of the platform. She looked at Fallion, as if begging him to ride this monster, leave her to a tamer beast.

“You’ll need a large one,” Fallion told her, “and Banther is not as dangerous as he looks.”

The large sea graaks could carry an adult, and a small woman like Valya would not be hard in most cases, but they would be flying high into the mountains where the air was thin and the flight steep. She needed a sturdy mount.

“He’s yours,” the boy told her, “if you dare.”

Valya raced forward, as she’d seen other skyriders do, and planted her foot in a crook at the back of the graak’s knee, then leapt and pushed off. Her second step took her to the graak’s thigh, and she leapt from there onto its long neck.

Valya settled onto the beast’s neck and grabbed the reins.

“Go inland,” Fallion said, “to the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Know where that is?” Valya shook her head no. “Just follow Carralee and the others through the flyway.”

Valya nodded, gouged her mount lightly in the pectoral muscles at the joint of its wing. With an angry grunt, the graak lunged forward, took a pair of clumsy steps, leapt, and flapped its wings.

They say that if you’re going to die, it will most likely be on the landing, Valya assured herself.

The beast’s wings caught air, and it was suddenly flapping over the water and into the woods.

Fallion helped the last of the children onto their mounts, assigning some to fly to various forts and warn the Gwardeen, sending others into hiding, and then got upon his own huge graak.

Its name was Windkris, and he was the one of the largest and strongest graaks within a thousand miles.

It was only upon such a mount that a boy Fallion’s size could fly. Fallion ate little and kept his body fat down to nothing so that he could remain a Gwardeen. Even so, he was growing, putting on muscle, and by the year’s end he would be too heavy for a graak to carry far.

Fallion spurred the beast into the sky. Ahead he could see other graaks flitting through the trees, and his mount gave chase.

He looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see if the fight for Garion’s Port went well. Distantly, he heard the sounds of crashing blades, cries of pain. The battle was raging down there, but he could see little through the trees, only the smoke of raging fires.

Dozens of Shadoath’s warriors raced along the burning gangplank, helpless to catch him.

He peered back one last time, and then looked ahead as his graak soared into the trees.

That’s when he entered the flyway.

From the ground it was invisible, hidden by the limbs and leaves of ancient stonewood trees, concealed behind curtains of lichens and flowering vines.

But the Gwardeen children had cleared a path. It had been done over generations, at great cost and effort. The children had cut away limbs high up in the trees, a path sixty feet wide and forty feet high.

It led through the deep forest, inland.

Now that he was airborne, Fallion’s heart raced. He was in a precarious position, perched aback the enormous beast. He had no saddle, nothing holding him to safety.

Beneath him, he could feel the enormous lungs of the graak working for every breath, feel its iron muscles ripple and surge as it sought purchase in the air.

For long minutes the creature flew, and only once did Fallion hear any sound of pursuit. He was winging through the flyway, with the day-bats ahead flitting among shafts of sunlight, the air mellow crimson and sweetly scented by pollens, when he heard a whoop below, the gruff voice of a golath.

They’re trying to follow us, Fallion realized.