What has Smoker been teaching him? Rhianna wondered. He hasn’t been training for long. Is he really that gifted as a flameweaver, or is it desperation that makes him strong?
It could have just been the tiny fire, but it seemed to Rhianna as if there were too much light in Fallion’s pupils, as if distant stars were captured in his eyes.
29
THE MERRY JIG
Knowing when to strike and when to hold still, that is half a battle.
—a saying of Rhofehavan
Stalker took the captain’s chair at the inn. It was a sloppy dive called the Merry Jig, one that he remembered well. It was famous for featuring sour ale to go with its overcooked fowl, all served by wenches so ugly that they threatened to give womanhood in general a bad name. But the inn did have one redeeming feature: it had kept musicians playing nightly now for over a hundred years.
Once a lively place, it had apparently fallen on hard times. The serving wenches were gone, replaced by a couple of lads with greasy hair and bad teeth. The other ships lying in the harbor apparently didn’t have crew ashore, for the establishment was empty of all but the most hardened of customers—a pair of the drunkards.
“Let’s have some ale, and some of your lousy bird for dinner!” Stalker shouted as soon as he took his seat, waving his hand in general so that the lads would know that he was buying for the whole crew. He waited sullenly.
His men were coming ashore in waves, a dozen at a time rowing across in the ship’s boats. It would take the better part of an hour to unload.
Just after the fourth shore boat had unloaded, bringing some of the guests from the ship—which included Myrrima, the babe in her arms and her brood of children clinging to her robe, Shadoath arrived.
Shadoath strode into the inn wearing no armor, for she needed none. She was a Runelord at the height of her power. Her speed and her grace served as her armor.
Shadoath was a petite woman of tremendous beauty. It was as if sunlight had entered the room, all somehow captured and subdued beneath a surface that glowed like a black pearl. She held her back straight, eyes high, a study in poise.
Her beauty contrasted greatly with the creatures that followed on her heals. They were not apes, at least not of any variety that Stalker had ever seen. They were hairless, with warty gray skin as thick as a warthog’s, and arms so long that they walked on their knuckles. They had no ears that he could see, just dark circles, tympanums behind their jaws. Their huge eyes had no whites to them at all, and they squinted as if the room was too bright for their liking. They wore no clothes, only belts that carried strange weapons—clubs with animal teeth for spikes, curved knives that fit around the hand like brass knuckles, and other things that were stranger still.
And there was no joy in their eyes, no emotion that he could discern. The deadness of them, that’s what made Stalker shiver.
Shadoath’s eyes were dark and sparkling, as if her pupils were black diamonds. Her ebon hair fell over one naked shoulder, curling in toward her cleavage.
Every curve of her—shoulders, breast, stomach, thighs—seemed to drive him mindless with reptilian desires, and Stalker had to struggle to restrain himself.
Stalker had often admired Myrrima when she walked the decks, but Shadoath—Myrrima was a pale shadow beside her. Shadoath had to have forty or fifty endowments of glamour at the least. No man could linger in her presence and not desire her. The smell of her alone ensured that.
She killed your children, Stalker reminded himself, hands shaking while his whole body quivered with desire.
Among the men, only Smoker seemed immune to her charms. The wizard stiffened as she passed, and his eyes glowed brighter, as if he struggled to keep from unleashing some hidden fire.
“Captain Stalker,” she said, her voice as sweet as any birdcall, “I’ve missed you.”
He forced a smile. Her voice was high, and though she tried to move casually, she did so with great speed. Four endowments of metabolism, at least, he imagined.
She stepped to his table, took a seat. Her body was all air and poise.
This woman is battle-ready, he realized. Brawn and grace to the hilt. A hundred endowments brawn and grace and stamina she has at least, perhaps even hundreds.
He could see the scars left by forcibles there deep between her breasts. Her body, beneath the silks, was a mass of scars.
Where are the townsfolk? he’d wondered when he first peered out from the ship. Now he suspected that he knew. She’d put the forcibles to them, and now held them prisoner in her Dedicates’ Keep.
She sat beside him, leaned forward. Stalker’s eyes fastened on her cleavage, the mesmerizing sway of her breasts, the skin so rough down there, like rippling waves above a clear pool.
“So,” she said, “tell me, where are the boys?”
“What boys?” Stalker asked.
“The princes of Mystarria. The Sons of the Oak.” Shadoath said loudly enough so that all could hear. She smiled, but there was a predator’s hunger deep in her eyes.
“Not on my ship,” Stalker said evenly.
She looked at him as if she’d caught him in a lie. “Two boys, dark of skin, with raven hair, both of them nine or ten years of age.”
“No one like that on my ship,” Stalker said. “See for yourself.”
She peered as if her eyes alone could pierce him, shatter his wall of lies, tumble down a fortress of deceit. All around them, sailors muttered, “That’s right,” “That’s the truth, ma’am.”
Without turning, still peering into his eyes, she said softly, “Is that the truth, Deever Blythe?”
Blythe stepped away from the bar and stammered, “In a manner of speakin’. We dropped ’em off, up the north shore, ’bout an hour ago.”
There were gasps from the crowd and soft little cries. Stalker tried not to let Shadoath see the rage boiling up in him. Smoker gave Blythe a fierce look.
You’re a dead man, Blythe, Stalker told himself.
Blythe smiled broadly at Stalker, downed his beer, and hurried out the door. Smoker made as if to follow, but one of the crew grabbed his arms, restrained him.
“Go and get the boys,” Shadoath ordered the ugly creatures at her back.
The pair whirled and headed toward the door, walking on their knuckles.
There was a ring of metal, a swirl of robes. Myrrima plunged a dagger into the neck of one of the imps.
The blade should have driven between the monster’s top vertebrae and its skull, but the steel was no match for that ugly gray skin. The blade snapped and the creature fell forward, flailing to the floor, knocking over stools.
Before Stalker had a chance to rise to his feet, Shadoath was up from the table.
What happened next was a blur. Myrrima whirled toward Shadoath to do battle, and there was a hiss as fog came pouring in under the door, rushing through cracks in the window. The whole inn suddenly filled with mist so thick that Stalker could hardly see from one wall to the next.
But Shadoath was faster still, too expert for Myrrima. She became a blur. She leapt in the air, kicked Myrrima in the face, somersaulted, and landed lightly on her feet. Somewhere in that time, there may have been a roundhouse kick to the legs. Myrrima went flailing backward with a groan, her flesh smacking to the floor.
The other imp caught Myrrima and held her firmly.
Blood flowed freely from Myrrima’s face, running from her nose, from a split lip, from a scrape above her eye. Stalker wondered what had stopped the fight, and then stared in horror as he saw that Shadoath had grabbed baby Erin from the counter.
Myrrima struggled lamely, the little imp gripping her, grunting with delight, his face pressed against hers.
The babe shrieked in terror as Shadoath held it by the feet, a dagger laid to its throat.
Shadoath whispered, “You have a choice: you can die while your children watch, or I shall kill your children as you watch—starting with this babe … .”
At the end of the bar, Smoker exhale
d a breath of smoke while fire blazed in his eyes. He was ready to go incendiary.
“No!” Stalker shouted, throwing the table aside. But he didn’t dare attack. Shadoath, with her endowments, couldn’t be beaten by the likes of him.
And he knew that she would gut the baby quicker than another man would gut a rabbit.
“They’re under my protection,” Stalker shouted. “‘Safe passage.’ That’s what I pay for. Safe passage for me and mine. These folks is cargo, bought and paid for.”
Shadoath smiled for an instant. Stalker knew that she was thinking about killing them all. There was nothing that any of them could do to stop her.
All he could do was to appeal to whatever vestiges of humanity remained in her.
At last she tossed the babe to Myrrima.
“These you can have,” Shadoath said, “but not the princes. The princes are mine.”
Myrrima caught the babe, fumbled to get her upright. Little Sage was screaming, fighting to get to her mother, but one of the crew had grabbed the child to keep her safe. Draken and Talon both were weeping bitterly, but had the good sense to keep their distance.
One little imp surged out the door, eager to do his master’s bidding.
Outside the inn, there was a strange snarling, a roar like thunder, and Myrrima’s eyes went wide with terror.
Shadoath peered at Myrrima and whispered, “Relax. By now, I’m sure that the boys will be eager to be captured.”
Shadoath smiled at her secretively and strode from the inn. It was as if the sunlight went with her, the glory departing, leaving the room to look dull and dingy. Without her, the room was a cave full of cobwebs and shadows. It almost surprised Captain Stalker when Smoker moved, went to the door to watch her depart. Compared to Shadoath, they were all dead things.
30
ON THE BEACH
To rob a man of his money is a foul thing, but to rob a child of his childhood is far more grievous.
—Jaz Laren Sylvarresta
Fallion lay beneath the boat with Rhianna, sweat pouring from him, and struggled to keep the flames at bay.
There was a fire in him indeed, he discovered. It glowed, and it was strong enough to light other fires.
He was feeling helpless and outraged at the fates that had tossed him here on the beach.
Why can’t the world just leave me alone? he wanted to shout.
But the fates would not leave him alone. Fate seemed to hunt him, shadowing him like wolves, and now he lay upon the beach with Rhianna beside him while Borenson bravely held off the strengi-saats.
Jaz had not hunted for firewood for more than three minutes before he raced back, his teeth chattering from fear, and proclaimed softly, “There are shadows out there.”
The strengi-saats had found them.
“Stay close to the boat,” Borenson whispered. “Watch my back, and when I tell you, dive under the boat with the other children.”
Jaz was silent for a long, long moment, and then whispered, “What good would that do?”
What good indeed? Fallion wondered. The strengi-saats were huge. If Borenson lost against them—and he surely would lose, Fallion believed, for he was but a common man now—then the strengi-saats would take them all, play with them, batting the children around, nipping at them with massive teeth, the way that a cat takes pleasure in tormenting a mouse.
And so the fear grew in Fallion, fear and a bone-crushing sense of helplessness. He peered at his little flame, one that had sprung to life not from any match or any piece of flint, but from his own heart, and he struggled to keep it from growing, to keep it from raging across the island.
For he was filled with wrath.
Rage is born from desperation, he thought. It came like a memory, and Fallion wasn’t sure if he was just repeating something that Waggit had once said, or if he had just heard it from fire.
But then he seemed to remember. “Whenever we grow angry,” his father had once said, “it is in response to a sense of helplessness. We all yearn to control our lives, our destinies. Sometimes we wish to control those around us, even need to control them. So whenever you grow angry, look at yourself, and figure out what it is that you want to control.”
Fallion remembered now. It was back when he was a child of four. His father had come home from his wanderings, from the far corners of Indhopal. He had brought Fallion a present of bright parrot feathers—yellow, red, green, and blue—to wear in his hats.
His father’s voice came clear now, almost as if he were still speaking. “Once you know what it is that you want to control, focus your efforts upon that thing.”
His father had always seemed so reasonable. He always took specific instances and tried to draw larger lessons from them. He was like Smoker that way, always trying to see beyond the illusion, to learn the lessons that he insisted “life” was trying to teach.
What had it been that Fallion was angry about? A puppy. A little hunting hound that he had brought up to his room to play with. The puppy had peed on the floor, and Fallion had grown angry, for even as he told the pup to stop, it stared at him with sad eyes and finished its business.
Fallion smiled at the memory, and his anger diminished somewhat. His rage shrank, along with his desire to make a furnace of this island, burn it and everything on it.
“Sir,” Jaz whispered to Borenson. “There’s three of them on the beach behind us, I think. Maybe four.”
Fallion heard the rustle of clothing as Borenson craned his neck to see. Fallion wished that he’d heard the clink of chain mail, but Borenson had been on ship too long, where mail was bound to get rusty or bear a man down into a watery grave. He wore no mail tonight.
“Just two,” Borenson said. “Those others are driftwood. Tell me if they come closer.”
So Jaz was imagining things.
Fallion’s heart was pounding. Rhianna squirmed a bit, and Fallion clung to her. He could feel her heart, too, pounding in her chest, like a bird fluttering against the bars of its cage.
The moon continued to rise; a silver light spilled out over the white sands. A ghost crab came scuttling under the boat as if seeking to hide under a rock, and Fallion watched it dully, then flicked it back out with his fingers.
At long last, Borenson breathed softly in resignation. “Fallion, light the fires.”
Fallion did not have to think about it. Light poured from him. He did not see it, but he could feel it. It raged from his chest, slammed into the pile of grass and driftwood, and suddenly there was a beacon of fire, blazing with light, sending oily smoke into the sky.
The light was far brighter than any normal fire, brighter even than a forge. Fallion wanted it what way. He wanted to flood the sands with light.
There was a snarl of surprise from a strengi-saat, and faintly Fallion could feel a pounding through the sand as one of the monsters leapt away.
“All right,” Borenson said with a chuckle. “You can stop now. They’re gone. For the moment.”
What Fallion didn’t know was that Borenson breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d seen a shadow growing before them, knew that a strengi-saat was sneaking in. But he’d never imagined how close it had come. The monster had almost been breathing on him.
Fallion crept out from under the boat, and Rhianna followed. Both of them held naked blades, and it felt good to see the firelight reflect from them.
The little bonfire was still blazing, pulsing like a star. Fallion felt inside himself. His rage was gone. He felt spent, empty, like a fire in a hearth that is remembered only as ashes.
Rhianna took his free hand in hers, looked up at him with admiration and a hint of fear. “Your hands are very warm. You’re an incendiary now.”
Borenson grunted, peered down at Fallion with sadness in his eyes, as if Fallion had lost something dear. He hadn’t wanted to leave the boy here on the beach, trade him for a flameweaver. But that is what he had done.
And Fallion knew that next time that he needed fire, it would be easier. His
master would heed his call.
Even now, he knew what he had to do. “Help me get more wood for the fire,” Fallion said. “We have to keep it burning.”
It wasn’t to keep the strengi-saats at bay, Fallion knew. It was more than that. He needed to show his gratitude, his reverence. He needed to feed the flames.
It was while Fallion was dragging driftwood to the fire that the soldiers came.
There were seven of them, seven men in dark chain mail that jangled as they rode.
Rhianna was the one who spotted them first, lances glinting in the moonlight.
At first, Fallion thought that he imagined them. They moved at a strange gait, leaping high and then floating back to earth.
They’re riding rangits, he realized. A rangit was like a hare or a jumping mouse in shape, but much, much larger. They lived upon the plains of Landesfallen among the sand dunes at the edge of the desert.
Like all mammals from Landesfallen, they were strange beasts. They laid eggs in late winter, as soon as the sun began to warm the sand, and guarded their nests through the spring until their young hatched. Then they nursed their young, though the mothers had no nipples. Instead, the rangits squirted milk from glands in their mouths, feeding their young like mother birds.
And so the men rode rangits, creatures broad of feet, that hopped like hares over the sand, racing along the beach much faster than any horse could have managed.
As they neared, Fallion saw that these were no common troops. They were handsome men and women, unduly so, as if they had stepped out of a dream.
“Force soldiers?” Fallion wondered aloud. But he’d never heard of anyone nowadays that granted endowments of glamour to force warriors. There was a time when forcibles were plentiful, in ages past, when vain lords would endow their honor guards with glamour. But blood metal was now too rare, and forcibles were put to better use.
Borenson seemed to accept that these men were force soldiers, but Rhianna disagreed. “Bright Ones,” she said with a tone of certainty. “From the netherworld.”
Sons of the Oak Page 25