Sir Borenson secretly hoped that Fallion would lay hold on the world, claim the throne of every evil lord and usurper, but his mother was afraid for him to even think that way.
And then Fallion had faced Asgaroth, who also hoped to lay hold on every throne, and he would do so using terror as his weapon.
It seemed a great deal to hold in one small mind. Fallion thought about these things and realized that yesterday he had been a child, hunting for shiny stones beside the streambeds and lifting up logs by the mill to look for mice.
Now, he had fallen into affairs far beyond his ability to understand.
Jaz crouched beside Fallion, his breath coming ragged, and whispered, “I wish that they would have let us fly.”
Fallion smiled. So now Jaz wanted to fly?
Fallion felt trapped here on the boat, too.
“Did you see the snails on the bottom of the boat?” Fallion asked, wanting to comfort Jaz. Jaz loved just about any animal, and Fallion knew that talking about such things would distract Jaz from his fears.
“Snails?” Jaz asked.
“Big ones,” Fallion whispered, “big pale ones.” Fallion had seen one under the hull, the yellowish brown of ground mustard. He’d tried to reach down to catch it, but the water was so cold that it bit, and so clear that the snail was farther away than it looked.
“I saw a fish, I think,” Jaz said, “a shadow in the water. Did you know these caves were here?”
“No,” Fallion whispered.
Hadissa turned, hissed through his teeth, a sign for them to be quiet.
Hadissa came with us, Fallion thought, and he took some comfort in that. Hadissa had been an assassin, the grand master of the Muyyatin, and thus it was rumored that between his training and endowments he was the most dangerous man in the world.
So it was that the boat jostled down its dark course, until at last there was a thin light ahead, and the boat neared a curtain of ivy. Jaz suddenly threw his arms around Fallion and squeezed, trembling with fear.
I’ll take care of you, Fallion promised silently, hugging his brother.
Because Iome had taken endowments of metabolism, she bore her two sons only four months apart. Though he was only four months older than Jaz, Fallion was the larger and the smarter. It was Fallion’s self-appointed duty to watch over Jaz.
Rhianna reached out and clutched Fallion’s leg, and he patted her hand.
The dry vines hissed over the canvas roof as they passed beneath the mouth of the cave and rode out under the stars.
Fallion peered up through the flaps of the tarp.
This was the most dangerous moment, for they came out in a narrow gorge with steep canyon walls, into cold night air that smelled thickly of hoary woods and bitter pine bark-the kind of woods that the strengi-saats seemed to like.
The stars burned brightly through a thin haze that lumbered over the water. A reedy breeze wound down the canyon, lightly stirring the air, which was so heavy with water that Fallion could nearly drink from the air alone.
Fallion’s heart hammered, and he peered about, watching for shadows flitting by.
Humfrey came and snuggled against Fallion’s chest, his paws wet from the deck, and Fallion reached down and scratched the ferrin’s chin.
They rode quietly for several moments, and he remembered a boating trip that he had taken with his mother on the River Wye when he was five.
The sky had been pristine blue and the day warm, with dragonflies darting above the water and perch leaping after them. Mallards had flown up from the cattail rushes, quacking loudly to draw attention away from their nests, and Fallion had watched a mother muskrat paddle past the boat with fresh grass in her mouth for her young, and had watched a water shrew bob up from the surface and crouch on a rock to eat a crayfish.
It was one of his best and brightest memories, and as he lay back down in the boat now, he tried to pretend that this trip was like that one.
There are turtles that live on this river, Fallion reassured himself, imagining how they would sit sunning on logs, like muddy rocks, until you got too close.
And in the springtime the frogs probably sing so loud that you couldn’t sleep if you wanted to. And I’ll bet that there are river otters here that slide down muddy trails into the water, just for fun.
Fallion was just beginning to think that they had come through safely when he heard a sound up in the trees like rolling thunder: the snarl of a strengi-saat.
8
Peace comes not from an absence of conflict, but from an absence of despair.
In the watchtower at Castle Coorm, Chancellor Waggit-who only an hour before had only carried the title of Hearthmaster-paced beside the far-seers, expecting a siege. By all of the signs, it appeared that he had one.
He had often come to the watchtowers at night, looking to the far-seers for news. The far-seers had many endowments of sight, hearing, and smell. Little happened near the castle that escaped their detection.
On most nights they kept their silent watch, amusing themselves and the chancellor with the antics of the townsfolk. The cobbler’s wife had several lovers, and could often be seen tiptoeing to some tryst while her husband slept off his nightly drunk, blissfully unaware that there was only a slim chance that he had fathered even one of his nine children. Other nights, the far-seers would relay the words to screaming fights that took place outside the alehouses, or just watch the stags and bears sneak into apple orchards on the hillsides to eat the fallen fruit.
But tonight, there was danger afoot. A wind picked up just after midnight, less than an hour after Prince Fallion had ordered the slaughter of Asgaroth’s troops, and it blew this way and that, signaling a storm. The air was thick and fetid, as if it had blown out the Westlands from the swamps at Fenraven.
It sat heavy in the lungs, and made breathing tiresome. Worse, the air carried clouds of gnats that seemed to want to lodge in Waggit’s throat when he breathed, and mosquitoes that acted as if his was the only blood to be found for twenty leagues.
Heavy clouds began to lumber over the horizon, blotting out the stars, and grumbling could be heard, the voice of distant lightning.
Sometimes a bolt would sizzle through the clouds, creating a burst in the heavens. By that light, the far-seers reported strengi-saats at the edge of the woods in the southern hills, dark shadows flitting between trees. Earlier in the day, Waggit had thought that there were perhaps a dozen of the beasts, but with each hour the count grew. Strengi-saats were filling the countryside, and Waggit realized that he and Sir Borenson had only stumbled upon their advance guard. There were not just a dozen of them. The far-seers reported several dozen, perhaps even hundreds.
And over the hill to the north, even Waggit’s poor eyes could see that campfires glowed, limning the hills and trees with light. An army was gathering. From time to time, the far-seers reported that troops rode in haste over a distant hill to the north, lances like a forest against the sky, or they would spot small groups of warriors scrounging around cottages, poking through barns.
Warning of the siege had come too late, and most of the livestock was still out there, waiting to fill the bellies of enemy troops.
