Read Sons of the Oak Online

Authors: David Farland

Sons of the Oak (22 page)

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
5.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Stalker grinned suspiciously, nodded with his chin, and asked, “Understand those books?”
“Your handwriting is all scribbles,” Fallion said, “but I understand. You're a smuggler.”
The captain looked at him narrowly, as if considering. “Sometimes, a man is forced to cut corners, do somethin' 'e don't care for. Even a man that 'as scruples.” And it was true. Stalker had bills to pay, money that went to shadowy types that he didn't even want to think about, and he had been forced to smuggle more and more these past four years. But the truth was, he'd always carried a little load on the side. “So's I work some deals under the table. The fancy lords in their manors don't know. But no one gets 'urt much. Do ya 'ate me for it?”
Fallion thought for a long moment, wondering if Stalker had a locus.
If he does, Fallion wondered, why is he trying to befriend me?
Stalker interrupted his thoughts, “Who owns wealth?”
“Those who create it, I guess,” Fallion said.
Stalker considered his own ill fortune, and frowned. “That's who
should
own it, but that's not who
does
own it. Not in the end. Gold flows into your 'ands, and gold flows out. There's many a man who works 'ard for his pay, works his whole life. But in the end you're just food for the worms in the ground. You'll lose it sure, when you die, but probably sooner. Maybe you lose it 'cause you're a fool, so you throw it to the wind on a ship that runs aground. Or you lose it to drink or whores—or worse, you waste it on the damned poor, them what never has figured out 'ow to make it on their own. In the end, we all lose it.
“Now, me father, he would 'ave told you that them what can't keep wealth don't deserve it. It's like givin' a monkey a carriage, or a pig a castle. They may enjoy it for a moment, but they 'aven't the brains or the discipline to hold on to it. And you know why? Because in the end, the ones who
own
wealth, the ones who keep it, are those that are strong enough, cunnin' enough, and cruel enough to take it and 'old on for dear life. That's who the wealth really
belongs
to.”
Fallion gave him a questioning look. Hearthmaster Waggit had taught that wealth flowed from the creation of goods. But Waggit's teachings didn't mesh at all well with what Stalker had to say.
Stalker continued. “Look, it's like this. A king collects taxes, right? He takes the wealth from his vassals, sends his lords out every autumn to gather in the 'arvest. But did 'e do any work for that? Is 'e the one who milked the
cows and turned the milk into butter? Is 'e the one that broke 'is back with a scythe out in the fields, reaping the wheat and grinding it down to meal? Is 'e the one that dug the clay and burned 'is hands when 'e baked the bricks to build a house? No, the king—'e's just a lord, a man with weapons and an army and the guts to cut down any honest folk what stands up to 'im.”
Fallion understood Stalker's reasoning, and he could easily argue against it. He could argue that a lord performed services for the taxes that he collected, that he fought and suffered and bled to protect his people, and in doing so, he was partly responsible for creating wealth.
But Fallion knew better. Even as a child he could see the truth, and the truth was that Fallion was raised in comfort, given the best of everything, and he had done nothing to deserve it.
The only difference between Fallion and the utterly impoverished towheaded boys who herded hogs in the hills above Castle Coorm was that Fallion's family had a history of taking from their vassals, keeping their families in relative poverty while his own family enjoyed the spoils.
Fallion didn't believe for a minute that he worked harder for his wealth, suffered more, or deserved any better treatment than the peasants who worked the fields. He'd watched the smith's apprentice, breathing coal-fire at the forge all day, hammering out metal. What a wretched, cramped little life the lad lived.
But Fallion had never worked so hard.
Hearthmaster Waggit had tried to explain the truth away, but Fallion saw behind the lie.
“So, 'ow is a king different from any other thief?” Stalker asked.
“He's not,” Fallion agreed. “He gives just enough service so that he can tell himself that he's a good man and get some sleep at night.”
Stalker gave Fallion a long appraising look, as if he'd expected some grand argument.
“That's a sad truth,” Stalker said. “Them what owns wealth is them what's strong enough and cunnin' enough and cruel enough to seize it.” He knelt down so that he could peer Fallion in the eye. “So now I ask: why shouldn't that someone be you and me?”
So that was the whole of his philosophy, Fallion realized. We are all destined to end up with nothing, so why not grab all that you can for as long as you can?
The notion sickened Fallion. What's more, he could see that it sickened Captain Stalker, too. He argued, but it was only words coming out of his mouth. His heart wasn't in it.
“Was your da a pirate?”
Stalker grinned. “No. Now, me grandda was a pirate. But Da, he swabbed another man's deck.”
Fallion found it intriguing. Stalker was steeped in an evil culture, and Fallion wanted to understand evil, to see the world through the eyes of evil men. He thought that in doing so, he might better understand how to fight a locus. And Stalker was giving him a primer in evil, discussing philosophies that Fallion would never have heard from Hearthmaster Waggit's tame tongue.
Fallion decided that Stalker was a likable fellow underneath it all. And Fallion knew that sometimes even an honorable man got backed into a corner and had to do things that he didn't want to. “No. I don't hate you.”
“Good boy,” the captain said with a grin. “Now go tell Cook to make you some rum puddin'.”
Fallion raced out of the room feeling light of heart, secure in the knowledge that he had made a friend.
THE PRICE OF A PRINCE
Every life has value. Some imagine that their life is worth nothing and only discover too late that its worth cannot be measured in coin. Others value their own skins far too highly.
 
—Gaborn Val Orden
 
 
 
A couple of weeks out from the Courts of Tide, Fallion celebrated his tenth birthday. On that morning, the children spotted a giant tortoise, nearly fifteen feet long, swimming just beneath the waves, its shell a deep forest green, and thus Fallion knew that they were in warmer waters.
Captain Stalker was walking the deck and said, “Down in Cyrma, I saw a 'ouse made out of one of those shells. Big ol' mother tortoise crawled up on the sand to lay 'er eggs, and some villagers cut 'er throat, cooked up most of 'er insides, and used the shell to make a nice 'ut. She was bigger than that one out in the water, of course.”
“Do you think the water is warm enough for sea serpents?” Jaz asked eagerly.
“Close,” the captain said. “Serpents all 'ead south this time of year. We should come up on 'em soon, if the weather 'olds … .” He gave a worried look at the sky. “If the weather 'olds … .”
It was late morning, and a thin haze had been building across the heavens all night. Dawn had come red.
The black ship was spotted that afternoon, and the captain came above decks and nursed every stray breath of air into the sails.
A squall rose that evening, driving the ship inland. They'd been sailing well out to sea in order to avoid Inkarran warships, but now they were driven almost to the beach, even when the sails were dropped and the prow turned into the wind.
The captain was forced to drop anchor in the sand, and the
Leviathan
nearly ran aground.
They hugged the shore all night, and set sail again before dawn, the captain nervously keeping watch for both the Inkarrans and for the ship with the black sails.
For the next few days, Fallion kept busy with his studies—weapons practice by morning, the work of running a smuggler's ship by day, and his magic by night.
The death of Streben was the topic of conversation for much the first week, but soon it faded from memory, just as the death of Fallion's mother and father began to fade.
Fallion took Humfrey's little spear, the polished shaft of a knitting needle with some mallard feathers and horse hair tied to it, and put it in a box under his bed, where he kept the promise locket that showed the image of his mother when she was young and beautiful, and where he kept a gold button like the one on the coat that his father had worn.
That box had become a shrine, a special place for him. Sometimes memories came unbidden to Fallion, like the morning that the cook fixed muffins with dried gooseberries in them, and as Fallion ate, he recalled how much his mother had loved the tart taste of gooseberries, and he'd feel a stab of pain at the memory, deep and bitter.
But he was learning to keep his memories in that box, to take them out only when he wanted.
So the days wore on, blurring into one another the way that the haze blurred with the waterline on warm days, so that one could not see where the haze ended and the sky began.
In three weeks, Rhianna healed enough so that she could join Fallion in weapons practice, and Fallion suddenly found that he had a peer. Until then, he'd always imagined that Talon was the best child-fighter that he'd ever seen. Talon was quick and tenacious. But Rhianna was a little taller than he, and heavier, and she showed a grace, a level of skill, a speed, and a ferocity that Talon didn't possess.
On the morning of their first practice, Borenson watched the two of them spar for an hour, Rhianna weaving back and forth, her movements mesmerizing, the little finger of her left hand always drawing runes in the air.
Fallion had to wonder at that. Were her spells meant to slow his wits or to make him stumble? Or was she just trying to enhance her own abilities?
Then she'd strike with a swiftness and a fierceness that were jolting, demonstrating thrusts and parries in combinations that Fallion had never seen before.
Until at last, Borenson demanded, “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“From my uncle. He taught me when I was small.”
“His name, damn it?” Borenson demanded. “What was his name?”
“Ael,” Rhianna said. It was a lie of course, but only half a lie. Instantly Fallion knew that she spoke of Ael from the netherworld, the Bright One who had given her mother the pin. That opened a whole world of new questions for Fallion. Had she been trained by a Bright One? Where had she met him?
But Borenson just searched his own memory, trying to think of a fighter by that name, and came up blank.
Later, Fallion pressed Rhianna, asking her about Ael.
Rhianna's mother had sworn her to secrecy, but Rhianna looked into Fallion's dark eyes and thought, I would do anything for you.
So, haltingly, she broke her silence. “He came here, from the netherworld,” she admitted at last. “My mother invited him in a Sending. They can only come if they're invited, you know, and even then, they can't stay forever. There are laws, you know, laws there in the netherworld the same as there are here.”
There, I've told him, Rhianna thought. But I haven't given Ael's real name.
“But what was he like?” Fallion said.
Rhianna thought for a long minute, and gave an answer that surprised even herself. “He was … like you.”
“In what way?”
“He was kind,” she said. “And handsome, but not so handsome that you'd think your heart would leap out of your chest when you saw him. He looked like a normal person.”
“But he was a Bright One!” Fallion said. In his imagination, men from the netherworld were shining creatures, as if some greater glory sought to escape them.
“No,” Rhianna said. “He didn't look special.” They were hiding between a pair of barrels on the main deck, crouched with their backs to the captain's cabin. It seemed to Rhianna that you could never really be alone on a ship, and just then, a pair of sandaled feet padded past, some sailor. She waited until he was gone. “You know how everyone says that the world changed before we were born?” Rhianna offered. “They say the grass is greener, and us children are stronger than they were, smarter, more like Bright Ones than children in times past?”
“Yes,” Fallion said.
“Well, it's true,” Rhianna offered. “At least I think it's true. You look like a Bright One.”
“If I look like one, then you do, too. And how do you or I look different from anyone else?”
“Other people, old people, are divided in halves,” Rhianna said. “We're not.”
Fallion gave her a confused look and she said, “My mother showed me. She held a mirror to her face, and showed me the right half of her face, doubling it. Then she moved it, and showed me the left half of her face. The left half of her face looked like a different person, sad and worn out. But the right half seemed younger, prettier, and still had hope.
“I had never noticed it before, but now I see it all of the time. Most people are torn in half, like they're two different people.”
“Hearthmaster Waggit showed me that trick,” Fallion said, suddenly remembering a demonstration from when he was very, very young. “Most people aren't the same on both sides.”
“But we are,” Rhianna said. “You are. When I look at you, both halves of your face are the same, both perfect. It makes you look more … handsome than you really are. And both halves of my face are the same, and so are Jaz's and Talon's.”
Fallion thought a moment, then said, “But you couldn't have been born before the change. You're too old.”
Rhianna smiled and took off her left shoe, then showed him the scar from a forcible on her left foot—a single rune of metabolism. “I got this four years ago. I was born a few months after you.”
Fallion thought back to blade practice. No wonder she was so fast!
Hearthmaster Waggit had told Fallion that for both sides of the face to
mirror the other was a rare trait. But now he realized that Rhianna was right. The Children of the Oak, the children born in the past nine years, nearly all had that trait, and when he saw someone like Borenson's son Draken, someone whose halves didn't mirror each other, the child somehow looked wrong.
“It isn't just people that have it,” Rhianna said. “It's everywhere. In the cows and the sheep in the fields, in the new grass that sprouts. In trees that have sprung up in the past few years.”
Has anyone ever noticed this before? Fallion wondered. And what changed the world, made it so common?
His father had slain a reaver in the Underworld, one that hosted a powerful locus.
What does that have to do with me? Fallion wondered. Why are children now different from children born before the war?
There was more going on than just the way that he looked, Fallion knew. It was as if some great wrongness had been mended.
Fallion couldn't see how the pieces of the puzzle connected. He was determined to find an answer.
 
 
 
Each morning, Fallion and the other children made a game of climbing the rigging up the mainmasts and looking out to sea for sign of ships or whales.
Thus one morning they spotted a great serpent finning in the waves, playfully swimming in circles as it chased its tail, its coils undulating as it swam. A sixty-footer—not huge, but respectable.
During the days, Fallion went back to work for Captain Stalker, struggling to gain his trust along with the respect of the crew. Fallion learned how to navigate by the stars, and to trim the masts in a rough wind. He learned the names of every crewman.
By day, he tried to gain their respect, and in the evenings sometimes he even sought to make friends. The men would often go to their quarters at night to drink ale and play dice. Fallion played with them twice, learning games of chance, but learning far more. In their company he began to gain familiarity with the hundred islands and atolls across the Carroll Ocean, learning not just their names, but tales of their peoples. Soon he spoke enough pidgin to speak with any sea hand within a thousand miles.
Myrrima put limits on his visits, telling Fallion, “I'll not have you learning sailors' filthy habits.”
Still, Fallion earned some trust. He ran errands for the captain, brought messages, and the men spoke to him with respect. The other refugees were often called “cargo” to their faces, and “ballast” behind their backs. But his shipmates didn't see Fallion as just ballast anymore, like the other refugees. He had become “crew.”
Some men would never like him, Fallion felt sure. The steersman, Endo, was one. Fallion often would hang around the forecastle, where Endo steered the ship at night. The sea ape, named Unkannunk, was his. Most of the day, the white ape could be found lying near the forecastle, sunning on the deck, its folds of belly fat hanging over its hips. Often it would leap into the water and hang on to a rope ladder by day, peering into the water in hopes of snagging a fish. Once, the huge ape even caught a small shark by the tail.
Fallion began petting the sea ape, but when Endo caught him one afternoon, the little albino man said, “Hands off. 'E don't like you. Never will.”
One night they stopped to take on water and fresh supplies at an island called Prenossa, a place where the fresh stores included mangoes, dragoneyes, breadfruit, and a dozen other things that Fallion had never tasted before.
That night, Stalker took a seat in the local inn, a bawdy place by any standard, where the tables were cleaner and the women were dirtier than most. His seat. His place of business twice a year when he visited the island. He bartered some of his goods with the locals, traded for fresh supplies, then leaned back to get comfortably drunk.
Fallion sat beside him, learning how the trades worked, discovering what fair prices for goods consisted of here. Metal was expensive, food cheap.
Fallion basked in the captain's presence. Stalker treated Fallion well, and he seemed like a fair man despite his tough talk. Fallion liked him. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to have Stalker as his father.
Then Blythe and Endo blew in through the doors. Fallion didn't like either of them. Both men were cold, hard. They pulled up chairs. Endo looked at Fallion and said, “Get lost, kid.”
Fallion looked to Stalker, to see if he really did need to leave, and Stalker nodded. “Give us a moment?”
Fallion went out under the starlight. A fresh breeze blew through the
palm trees, and Fallion walked for a while over tropical beaches where ghost crabs and scorpions fought over scraps that washed up on the beach. After weeks at sea, it felt strange walking on land again. He kept waiting for the world to tilt.
BOOK: Sons of the Oak
5.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Jeweler by Anderson, Beck
House of Mercy by Erin Healy
Delivering the Truth by Edith Maxwell
The Way Home by Becky Citra
Little Green by Walter Mosley
Killing Ground by Douglas Reeman