Sons of the Oak (27 page)

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Authors: David Farland

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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THE CELL
Why should I weep for a man in prison, when I am held captive by my own desires?
 
—Mad King Harrill (upon the imprisonment of his son)
 
 
 
Fallion clung to his rangit as it raced along an open road. The dusty road itself shone a steady silver-gray in the starlight, but the foliage beside the road ranged in hues. Open fields that basked in the moonlight were a darker gray, while in the shadowed woods the boles of trees were black slats beneath the foliage.
Strengi-saats, attracted by the sight of running beasts, raced beside them, but dared not attack the well-armed troops.
The land seemed dead. No dogs barked or raced out from the shadowed cottages at the sound of approaching strangers. No cattle bawled in the barns as if wanting to be milked. No smoke coiled lazily from chimneys.
The land had been swept clear of life. Even the sheep were gone.
Where? Fallion wondered. But he knew.
The strengi-saats had eaten everything that moved.
The ride was jarring. Within an hour, every bone in Fallion's body seemed to ache, and he could hear Jaz whimpering on the rangit behind him.
They climbed hills and rode through shadowed vales. And in the cool hours of morning, when a chill wind had begun to numb his hands, they topped a mountain pass and looked down into a valley beyond.
At last, there was a city with smoke coming from chimneys. The valley below was black with fires, choked with them, and in the silver moonlight, he could see masses of men—or something that looked like men—toiling in the darkness.
It's an army, he realized. An army hidden here at the edge of the world.
And what an army!
As the rangits bounded down the slopes with renewed energy, eager to be home, they passed fortified bulwarks and deep trenches, until at last they reached the encampments. Fallion soon saw that what he'd thought to be cottages were in fact tents. What he'd taken to be hearth fires were forges, burning in the open air.
Hammers rang in the night, and manlike creatures called out with strange groaning cries.
As he neared, he saw creatures with warty gray skin scampering about on their knuckles, bringing fuel for the forges. Others were dragging logs down from the hills, denuding the mountainsides.
They stared up at him as he passed, and their gazes chilled Fallion to the bone. The creatures were not human, he was sure. There was no joy in their eyes, no sadness or any other emotion that he could name.
Just deadness, yawning emptiness.
At the forges he saw workmen, some Bright Ones, some gray men, hammering blades, fashioning helms and axes.
They're preparing for war, Fallion realized, but with whom?
And quickly he figured it out. Once, long ago, in days so far past they seemed to be legend, black ships had sailed from the west, surprising the folk of Mystarria.
The ships carried the toth, and their assault had nearly decimated the world.
The creatures hammering out weapons in this dark vale would be far more dangerous than toth, Fallion suspected. They formed the heart of an army from the netherworld.
There would be men who would join their cause, Fallion knew, men like those that had ridden with King Anders—mercenary warlords from the north, embittered nobles from minor houses, cruel and cunning men eager for a profit.
Fallion tried to guess how large the army might be. Two hundred thousand? Five hundred? He could not guess. The unending city sprawled across the valley, rose into nearby hills, and spread beyond them for unguessed distances.
How will anyone save me? he wondered.
He thought of Borenson lying on the ground, his belly pierced by a lance.
They won't save me. He realized. They can't. Even if whole armies sailed from Mystarria, they wouldn't be able to bring enough men to penetrate the enemy defenses.
It was with a rising sense of despair that they passed through the vale, rode up a winding mountainside, and entered a bleak fortress, its walls crude but thick and functional.
Once inside the city walls, the Bright Ones dragged Fallion and Jaz to a heavily guarded building, and into a dungeon where the tortured cries of men and women could be heard.
They passed a cell where a young woman sobbed noisily, cradling her right arm, trying to stop the bleeding from a stump where her hand should have been.
They were taken to a small cell and chained to a wall, their hands stretched overhead, the weight of their whole bodies resting on their wrists.
 
 
 
The prison cell consisted of three walls made of heavy black basalt blocks piled one atop another. The fourth wall was formed of iron, bars with a small door in it.
The bottom of the door had a clearing of perhaps three inches, just tall enough so that a plate could be slid under, for those who were lucky enough to eat.
Fallion and Jaz were not afforded the luxury of food. They were left hanging against a cold stone wall, slick with greasy water and mold.
There was no light.
Fallion could sometimes hear the snarls of strengi-saats deeper in the prison, and he feared that they prowled the hallways. He hoped that the bars would keep the monsters out.
And he heard Jaz crying, his young frame shuddering.
Fallion wanted to hold his little brother, offer him comfort, but he couldn't even see Jaz's face.
Jaz asked after a long while, “Do you … . think that they'll kill us?”
“We're worth … more alive.” Fallion could not get his air. “They'll probably hold us—for ransom.”
“What kind of ransom?”
“Forcibles, gold. Maybe … land,” Fallion said.
He wished that he believed it. They were the Sons of the Oak, the children of the Earth King. Borenson believed that with a word, whole nations would rise up to follow at their command.
And so, Fallion realized, to someone like Shadoath, they might represent a danger. They might just be worth more dead than alive.
The manacles were cutting into Fallion's wrist; he wriggled painfully, trying to ease the pressure.
“How long?” Jaz asked. “How long will they … keep us?”
“A few weeks,” Fallion calculated. “Someone will have to sail back to Mystarria, raise a ransom, come back.”
“Oh,” Jaz said forlornly.
Fallion offered some more words of comfort, and after a bit he asked, “Would you like me to sing to you?”
That had always worked when Jaz was small and troubled by bad dreams.
“Yes,” Jaz said.
Fallion remembered a song about rabbits, one that had been Jaz's favorite a few years ago, and he began to sing, struggling for breath.
“North of the moon, south of the sun,
rabbits run, rabbits run.
Through winter snow, summer gardens,
having fun, having fun.
Faster than wolves, fast as birdsong,
Rabbits run, rabbits run.
North of the moon, south of the sun.”
Someone came marching toward them. Fallion saw a flicker of light and heard the jangle of keys. His stomach had begun to tighten, and he hoped that it was someone bringing food.
But it was only a brutish man who stubbed past their cell, bearing a smoking torch. He wore a loincloth, a blood-spattered vest, and a black hood that hid his face. In his right hand he carried an implement of torture—a bone saw.
Fallion peered at Jaz, saw his brother's face pale with fear.
The torturer went past their cell, and Jaz asked, “Do you think he'll come for us?”
“No,” Fallion lied. “We're too valuable.”
Down the hall, the torturer went to work, and the screaming began—a man whimpering and pleading for mercy.
He must have been round a corner, for Fallion could see little light.
“Are you sure?” Jaz asked.
“Don't worry,” Fallion told him. “They … just want to scare us.”
So Fallion hung against the wall, his weight born by the manacles around his wrists, and sang to his little brother, offering comfort whenever he could.
His were small manacles, made especially for women and children, he realized.
They cut into his wrists, made them swell and pucker. He had to wiggle his hands from time to time, try to find a more comfortable position, in order to keep the blood flowing to his fingers. He'd seen a man once, Lord Thangarten, who had been kept hanging in a dungeon in Indhopal so long that his fingers had died, and he was left a cripple.
Yet if I wiggle too much, he knew, in a few days my wrists will chafe and begin to bleed.
So Fallion hung on the wall and tried to minimize his pain. With his wrists bearing all of his weight, his lungs couldn't get air. After the first few hours, he learned that it would be a constant struggle.
 
 
 
In the darkness, Fallion was left to focus on sounds, Jaz's breathing as he hung in his cell, deep and even in sleep, ragged when he woke. His brother's weeping and sniffing, the clank of chains against the wall, the sobs of the tortured as they lay in their cells, the squeaking of rats, the snarling of strengi-saats.
He would not have minded the rats, normally. But after he had hung against the wall for a few hours, he heard one squeaking below. It rose and bit his big toe.
He kicked at it. The rat squeaked angrily as it retreated.
It will be back, Fallion knew. It will be back, when I'm too tired to fight.
He found that he had to pee. He held it for as long as he could, then let it go.
 
 
 
In the darkness, deprived of light, accompanied only by the smell of mold and urine and cold stone and iron, as days began to pass, Fallion despaired.
Several times the torturer passed by their cell, never looking toward them, his torch guttering, his keys jangling.
He came at dawn, Fallion surmised, and left at night.
“How long has it been?” Jaz asked time and again.
Only three days, Fallion suspected, but he told Jaz that it was a week.
One cannot despair forever, even in the worst of times. The body is not capable of sustaining it. And so the despair came in great waves, crashing around his ears sometimes, threatening to drown him, and then ebbing away.
Sometimes he dared hope. Straining for every breath, he'd babble to his brother.
“Maybe they've sent … messages to Mystarria, demanding payment for our release,” he'd offer. “We've been, at sea for eight weeks. It will take a ship that long to reach Mystarria, another eight weeks back.
“Four months. In four months we'll be free.”
“When will they feed us?” Jaz begged.
“Soon,” Fallion promised time and again.
But they had been hanging on the wall for days. Fallion's mouth grew dry and his tongue swelled in his throat. Greasy sweat became his only blanket. He woke and slept, and hung on the wall, sometimes unsure if he was awake or asleep any longer.
Now when the torturer passed, Fallion and Jaz would both cry out, their dry throats issuing only croaks. “Food.” “Water.” “Help.” “Please.”
Down the hallway, lost in time, Fallion heard a woman's scream echo, followed by the snarl of a strengi-saat, the sound of it grunting, and more screams. The strengi-saat was filling the woman with its eggs, he realized.
Who are all of these people? Fallion wondered. What have they done to deserve such pain?
He had no answer. Like him, he suspected, they had done nothing.
Waggit had taught Fallion about the lives of evil people. He knew that there had been lords in the past who tortured others for their own amusement.
What had Waggit told him? Oh, yes. Such people eventually went mad. “They ride into power on a steed of fear and violence, doling out favors to those who support them. But as their inhumanity grows, their supporters fade away. Fearful of losing support, they begin to kill the very lords who brought them to power, and the foundations of their empire crumbles. In time, in fear and madness they dwindle away, and at last they tend to die by their own hands, or the hands of their people.”
Waggit had cited examples of men and women so cruel that even to tell of it was harrowing.
Is that how Shadoath will end? Fallion wondered.

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