Sons of the Oak

Warily, Fallion made his way into the Dedicates’ Keep, convinced that at any moment a dozen guards would ambush him.

But as he passed the small guardroom where Abravael and the ape had slept, he found it empty of all but a cot.

Fallion marched forward, past the bakery with its open hearth, beyond a hallway that led to some more guards’ quarters, then to the buttery and the kitchens. A pair of matronly women worked inside. They huddled away in a corner, terrified, as he passed.

At the end of the hall, he opened a door to a darkened chamber. There he found the Dedicates.

The room was lit by a few candles, enough so that Fallion could see everything well enough.

The room was full of children, dozens and dozens of them. Some were toddlers, not more than a year or two. Others were Fallion’s age or older.

Many laid upon cots, invalids. Some cried out or moaned in pain. They’d given brawn and grace, given their sight or their beauty, and could only wonder why they hurt so badly.

Of course, Fallion realized. When Shadoath captured a city, she used the elderly, the infirm, as food for her strengi-saats. The strong ones she’d keep as workers. And their children served as Dedicates.

It looked more like a nursery than a Dedicates’ Keep. Fallion had never seen an instance where a Runelord took endowments from children. Such a deed was horrific.

But he understood the cunning of it.

Fallion stood there numb, as if wounded. He dared not advance.

He remembered Borenson sobbing in the night, and Myrrima warning Fallion, “Do not repeat our mistakes.”

He’d heard Borenson cry out in his sleep many times over the years. Now Fallion began to understand why.

He looked at the faces of the children, some lying fast asleep, others peering at him in terror, and searched in vain for an adult target, someone evil, someone cruel, someone worthy of death.

He’d imagined that Shadoath’s servants would be vile, like her. He’d dreamed that their cruelty would be written plain upon their faces, and that in slaying them, he would feel secure that he’d done the world a favor.

But there was no evil in this room. Only innocence.

And then he saw her, there across the room, not forty feet away. A young woman with pale skin and dark red hair, slumbering, perhaps lost in a dream. She had aged in the past five years. She now looked to be more than twenty. It was Rhianna.

Without thought he moved across the room and found himself peering down, trying to make sure that it really was her.

Over the years, a thousand times he’d dreamed of going back to Syndyllian to rescue her. Or he dreamed that she found her way to him somehow.

A rune of wit was branded on her forehead, the scar a cold white and puckering.

She’s given Shadoath her wit, Fallion thought. I could kill her now, and she’d never even know what happened. I could slice her throat, and strike a blow against evil. If I am going to do this, if I am to defend my people, then I should take her first.

Fallion peered down at Rhianna, and a seemingly ancient oath suddenly rose from his throat, escaped his lips. “Sworn to serve.”

He let his blade clatter to the floor.

He sank to his knees and hugged her while fierce tears welled up in his eyes.

Shadoath’s graak struggled for purchase in the air, its leather wings ripping the sky as it made its way up to the little bluff.

Half a dozen white graaks still waited in the shadows. They were hungry, and their reptilian brains seemed to not be quite awake. They were going to sleep for the night. And so they stood, almost like statues, while Shadoath’s own mount landed on the bluff, panting from exertion.

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.

For what seemed an eternity, Fallion had stood above Rhianna, unable to strike either her or the boy beside her. Part of his mind knew that this was a trap.

Shadoath had taken endowments from babes, knowing that he could not cut them down.

Sweat had broken out on his forehead; his hand trembled and would not strike; his mind raced down a thousand paths, seeking an alternative. Time stopped, and the earth ceased its course through the heavens. Rhianna awoke and bade him to give her his knife.

And in despair, Fallion reached out and felt the heat of a dozen candles, and the life-warmth of hundreds of bodies. As his rage grew, he wanted nothing more than to cease to exist.

Serve me, the fire whispered. Take them all.

Let the fire come, he told himself. Let it take me, eat away my soul, and take these others with me.

It would all be so easy to burst into flame, to feed his own rage, let it blossom into an inferno.

He exhaled, and smoke issued from his throat, even as Rhianna raised the knife, preparing to strike.

Sacrifice to me, Fire whispered.

He had grabbed her hand as it fell, wrested the blade, and just stood for a moment as it sat buried in the straw.

“Let go,” Rhianna said, “you’re burning me!”

She peered at him, and Fallion could see himself reflected in her pupils. There was a brightness in his eyes, a hidden fire about to be unleashed.

He peered around the room.

There’s something I’m missing, he thought. There has to be a way out of this. All that I need to do is see!

Instantly, the candles around the room blazed, as if responding to his need. Fallion keenly felt the heat of the room, conscious of how hidden flames played through the bodies of the children, how their own life heat was exhaled in every precious breath.

He peered closely at the children before him, and as in the prison, it suddenly seemed that their flesh fell away, exposing the faint undulating lights of their tiny souls. Blue lights were everywhere, like rafts of luminous jellyfish in the summer seas.

All that he had to do was look.

There was a brightness in them, a brightness in each and every child.

They are all Bright Ones, he realized.

Shadoath took for her Dedicates only the best.

Rhianna was trying to pull away from him and at the same time grabbing for the knife. He saw her flesh and bones in a vague outline, saw warm tears streaming from her eyes.

“If you won’t kill them, I have to do it myself!” she shouted. Grabbing the knife, she went after the nearest girl.

Then he spotted it: there beneath her flesh, a shadow attached to the back of her spirit, a dark parasite that fed upon her.

A locus! he realized.

He had never seen one so close.

She raised the knife, and Fallion shouted, “Rhianna, you have a locus.”

She turned to him, her face a mask of terror and disbelief.

“We must kill them,” she said, shaking. “Help me.”

“Is that what you think?” Fallion said. “Or is it the locus speaking?”

Rhianna trembled, and with great difficulty threw down the blade.

Fallion peered at the locus, saw it there. It was obviously alive. It had a form, vaguely shaped like a worm or leech, and where the leech’s abdomen should have been, it latched on to Rhianna’s spirit.

Fallion saw movement at that point, as if some attachment on the locus were tearing into her, doing mortal damage to Rhianna’s soul. But the whole creature was wrapped in shadow, and he could not see it clearly.

More light. I need more light to see by.

There were torches in sconces on the wall. Fallion reached above Rhianna’s bed, grabbing the nearest torch, and at his touch it burst into flame.

He raised it high and held it above Rhianna, willing it to brighten, but as if in response, the locus wrapped itself in deeper shadows, as if seeking to hide.

More light, he told himself. Let the earth blaze.

The torch blazed in his hand, and all around the room, other torches burst into flame.

Feed the flames, a voice whispered in the back of Fallion’s mind.

He drew heat from the torches, thin coils that raced through the atmosphere, until his own flesh felt hot to the touch. He let the heat escape from every pore in the form of light, so that at first he glowed warmly, and then began to blaze.

He was in a rage and felt as if at any moment his skin would take fire like parchment, and when it happened, he would destroy this place, let it all burn.

Yes, a voice whispered, that’s what I need.

Rhianna staggered back, tripped, and fell to the floor.

“Stay back. You’re getting hot!” Rhianna said.

Fallion struggled to maintain control. He fought the urge to burst into flame. But he knew that he had to do something. There are many powers among flameweavers, Smoker had said. Not all of them are evil.

Rhianna’s voice softened, and she pleaded, “Fallion, help me kill the Dedicates.”

Then Fallion understood! Suddenly he let the heat out of him in a gush of radiance. Brilliance washed through the room, light bleeding from his every pore.

Rhianna gasped, and her face seemed to go white, all colors washed away. She held up her hand as if to keep from going blind, and the whole room blazed.

“Now let me see you!” Fallion commanded the locus, and the light shining from him smote the creature, revealing it in every sickly detail.

It trembled and shook, seeking to escape, and as the light flowed through Fallion, it seemed as if pure knowledge came with it.

He peered at the locus in all of its filth and ugliness, and he knew its name.

“Asgaroth!” Fallion shouted. “I see you!”

But how had it come here?

“Asgaroth?” Rhianna cried, her voice high and frightened; she cringed and tried to scurry backward.

Fallion would have none of that. He raced near, loomed above her. Rhianna glanced at him briefly, and when she did, the locus shuddered, until she glanced away.

“Look at me!” Fallion commanded Rhianna. “Look into my eyes!”

Rhianna peered up at him, and her pupils constricted down to pinpoints. Fallion saw himself reflected in her eyes, a luminous creature as bright as the sun, and for a moment he worried that he really would blind her.

He could see beyond her eyes, through them, into her soul. His father had used Earth Powers to see into the hearts of men. Now Fallion used Fire to do the same.

And he saw how Rhianna had succumbed to despair and given herself to Shadoath, surrendering not only her wit, but her soul. That was when Asgaroth had taken her.

Fallion felt as if he were blazing with righteous indignation. The locus shuddered and trembled, seeking to escape his burning gaze.

“Why?” Fallion demanded. “Why are you here? Why now? Why do you trouble me?”

Rhianna fought Fallion then, fought him savagely, twisted onto the floor and tried to crawl away, but Fallion threw her onto her back, pinned her with a knee, and forced her to look into his face.

Asgaroth trembled and shuddered, and in a fit of rage, Fallion blazed. It was as if the sun suddenly flared, and Fallion heard children screaming and realized that many of them had come awake. Rhianna was screaming as Asgaroth shuddered and bulged and tried to break free.

“Answer me!” Fallion demanded, and the flaring light seared the locus, burned off an outer layer of skin.

“Nooooo!” Rhianna wailed, but Fallion did not even register her complaint, so intent was he upon the locus.

As it burned, layers of skin and flesh peeling under his scorching gaze, Fallion stripped away its secrets.

This world. For ages the loci had searched for this world, for it was like a large shard of a broken mirror, or a key piece to a vast puzzle. There was information written upon this world, a memory of the Great Rune.

The loci needed this information, this piece of the rune, to bind all of the shadow worlds back into One True World, flawless and brilliant, and under their control.

Asgaroth had taken Rhianna in the hopes that through her, Asgaroth could lead Fallion astray, make a tool of him, until a locus infected him, as it did the bright Ones that were under Shadoath’s sway.

Fallion saw it all so clearly, he was amazed that he had never understood. In that moment his attention flickered, and Asgaroth fled.

One moment the locus gripped Rhianna and the next it released, surging off quicker than thought, so that Fallion saw it only briefly, escaping from the corner of his eye.

“Kill it!” Rhianna was shouting, and her voice suddenly rose above the pounding of blood in his ears. “Kill me if you must. Just get rid of it!”

Fallion suddenly found himself growing cold, shaking. The light in him had died, and the torch in his hand and the torches all around the room had all but burned out.

Dozens of children had come awake, and they huddled around him, peering with huge eyes, some of them screaming in terror, many of them coughing from smoke.

Fallion heard guards rushing toward the keep, iron shoes clanking down the hall. With a thought, he sent the smoke hurtling from the room, billowing down the corridor toward the guards, filling the narrow passage.

Fallion had Rhianna pinned to the floor, his knee in her chest, and now he crawled off.

I’ve burned her, he thought. I’ve blinded her.

But Rhianna was crying, shouting, “Kill it. Do it now!” and Fallion realized that whatever harm he had done to her, she would bear it gladly.

“It’s gone,” Fallion told her. “The locus has gone from you.”

Rhianna choked on a sob, reached up and hugged him, weeping bitterly.

“Can you see?” he asked.

“I can see,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good.” She repeated the words over and over, as if to comfort herself or to comfort him.

Fallion held her, hugged her tightly. “I know,” he said. “I know you’re good.”

Far away, Shadoath rode upon the back of a white graak, soaring above the tops of the stonewood trees, when suddenly a shadow whispered to her soul.

“The torch-bearer has awakened. He comes to destroy us all.”

She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw what had happened to Asgaroth. Fallion had burned him with light, pierced him, devastating the locus.

Indeed, even as Asgaroth whispered to her, Shadoath could sense that he was dying.

For long moments, the shadow wailed in pain, until at last it fell silent.

Shadoath was stunned.

No locus had ever died.

We are eternal, she thought. We are spread across a million million shadow worlds, and not one of us has ever died. Asgaroth was one of the great and powerful ones.

But Fallion had awakened, had summoned a light that even the Bright Ones of old could not match.

If Asgaroth can die, so can I.

In rising fear, Shadoath raced her graak to Garion’s Port. Fallion would be coming for her, that much was certain. There was a new terror in the universe.

Shadoath was not ready to face him.