calls of distress. The bull’s horn, lacquered in black and gilt with silver, hung on the wall behind Fallion’s head.
Quietly, his mother took the horn down, and cracked the door just a bit. She blew loudly, five short blasts, a sound that hunters made when chasing game.
Suddenly the great boars squealed and thundered away, each lunging in a different direction.
But one huge boar charged straight out of the fog, its snout lowered, and slammed into the carriage. Fallion flew against the far door, which sprung open on impact, and hit the soggy ground. Bits of paneling rained around him, and for a long minute he feared for his life.
He sprawled on the ground, heart pumping, fear choking him.
But in moments all that he could hear was the sound of the great boars thundering over the hard ground, and his heart thumping, and he realized despite his fear that he had never been in real danger: his father had not used his Earth Powers to whisper a warning. If Fallion had been in real danger, his father would have told him.
Now, outside his window, Fallion heard a strange howl. It started like distant thunder, turned into a long catlike yowl, and ended like some bizarre animal cry.
Jaz looked up to the window, worried.
Now, Fallion knew that he was going into real danger, and he had much to prepare. He put his clothes into a bag: a pair of green tunics heavy enough for traveling, a warm woolen robe the color of dark wet wood, boots of supple leather, a cape with a half hood to keep off rain. And that was it.
But as he worked, he had to put up with Humfrey, his pet ferrin. Humfrey was only six months old, and not much larger than a rat. His back was the color of pine needles on the forest floor, his tummy a lighter tan. He had a snout with dark black eyes set forward, like a civet cat’s.
As Fallion and Jaz worked, Humfrey hopped around them, “helping.” The small creature understood that they were going somewhere, so he made a game of packing, too.
Peeping and whistling, he shoved the mummified corpse of a dead mouse into Fallion’s pack, along with a couple of chestnuts that he trilled were “beautiful.” He added a shiny thimble, a silver coin, and a pair of cocoons that Fallion had been saving over the winter in hopes that he might get a butterfly in the spring.
Fallion reminded Jaz, “Don’t forget Mother’s birthday present,” and pulled out a small box of his own, checked to make sure that Humfrey hadn’t gotten into it. Inside was an oval cut from ivory, with his mother’s picture painted in it, from when she was young and gorgeous, filled with endowments of glamour from beautiful young maidens. Fallion had been working for months, carving a tiny, elegant frame out of rosewood to put the picture in. He was nearly finished. He made sure that his cutting tools were still inside the box. Humfrey liked to run off with them.
When he was sure that he had everything, Fallion pushed the box into his bag.
Humfrey hopped up onto the bed and whistled, “Food? Food?”
Fallion didn’t know if the creature wanted food, or if was asking to pack food.
“No food,” Fallion whistled back.
The little ferrin seemed stricken by the statement. It began to tremble, its tiny paws, like dark little hands, clutching and unclutching-ferrin talk for “worry.”
Humfrey made a snarling sound. “Weapons?”
Fallion nodded, and Humfrey leapt under the bed where he kept his hoard of treasures-silk rags and dried apples, old bones to chew on and shiny bits of glass. Fallion rarely dared to look under his bed.
But Humfrey emerged triumphantly with his “weapon”-a steel knitting needle that he had filed to a point- probably using his teeth. He’d decorated it like a lance, tying a bit of bright red horsehair near the tip.
He jumped up on the bed, hissing, “Weapon. Weapon!” Then he leapt about as if he were stabbing imaginary rats.
Fallion reached down, scratched Humfrey on the chin until he calmed, and then went to the blades mounted on the wall above his bed to select a knife. There were many princely weapons there, but he chose a simple one, a long knife that his father had given him, one with a thick blade of steel and a solid handle wrapped with leather.
As he took it from the wall, he marveled at how right it felt in his hand. The blade was perfectly weighted and balanced. For a nine-year-old, it was almost as long as a sword. At the time that his father had given him the blade, a belated gift for his sixth birthday, Fallion had thought it a trivial thing.
It was a custom in many lands for lords to give young princes weapons with which to protect themselves, and Fallion had been gifted with many knives that had greater luster than this one. Even now some were mounted above the bed-fine curved daggers from Kuram with ornate golden scrollwork along the blades and gem-encrusted handles; long warrior’s dirks from Inkarra carved from reaver bone that glimmered like flame-colored ice; and a genuine assassin’s “scorpion” dagger, one whose handle was a scorpion’s body and the tail its blade-complete with a hidden button that would release poison onto the blade.
But for right now, his father’s simple knife felt right, and Fallion suspected that his father had given it to him for just this time in his life.
Did my father’s prescience extend this far? Fallion wondered. His mother had told him that his father sometimes sensed danger toward a person weeks or months in advance. But it only happened when his father looked long at that person, and then he would cock his head to the side, as if he were listening for something that no one else could hear.
Yes, Fallion decided, his father had recognized danger. And so Fallion claimed his knife now, believing that his father had known how right it would feel in his hand, perhaps even knowing that Fallion’s life might depend upon this blade.
Even as he drew the weapon from the wall, a strange compulsion overtook him, and Fallion found himself strapping the blade to his side.
Just to be safe, he told himself.
Indeed, everyone in the castle was trying extra hard to be safe tonight. Jaz had lit a dozen candles in the bedchamber, and the scent of precious oils filled the room along with the light. Every lamp had been lit in every hallway. It seemed that everyone was wary of what might be lurking in the shadows.
As Fallion considered whether he should hone his blade now or wait until morning, Jaz went to the window and opened it, looking out.
“Fallion,” Jaz said in wonder, “the hills are on fire!”
Fallion strode to the window, peered out. Humfrey scurried up Fallion’s pant leg and then leapt onto the windowsill. The window was too small to let a man climb through, and too small for both boys and a ferrin to all peer out of at once.
Fallion’s nostrils flared at the taste of fresh air.
There in the distance, high up in the hills above the fog-covered bottoms, an angry red star seemed to have fallen to the earth.
“They’ve set the forest on fire,” Fallion said. “Mother sent Daymorra to find the bodies of those girls-the ones that had the babies in them. But the strengi-saats must have carried them away first. So Daymorra probably set fire to the hills, to burn them out.”
“I’ll bet that the monsters carried them in their mouths,” Jaz said, “the way a mother cat will move her kittens once you’ve found them.”
“Maybe,” Fallion said.
One of the monsters snarled in the distance, across the river to the north of the castle. Jaz turned to Fallion, worried.
“Fallion, I think we’re surrounded. Do you think that Mum will have us fly out?”
In Mystarria, each castle had a few graaks, giant flying reptiles with leathery wings, to carry messages in times of distress. The graaks could not carry much weight for any distance, and so the graak riders were almost always children-orphans who had no one to mourn them if they were to take a fall. But if a castle went under siege, as a last resort the royal children would sometimes escape on the back of a graak.
Fallion felt an unexpected thrill at the thought. He had never flown before and would soon be past the age where he could ride a graak.
Why not? he wondered. But he knew that his mother would never allow it. Graak riders were given endowments of brawn and stamina, so that they could hang on tightly and endure the cold and lonely trips. His mother wouldn’t let him ride a graak without endowments.
