for clues.
“The southern route?” Iome asked. “Won’t that take longer?”
“It will add a month or so to the voyage,” Borenson said. “But we can’t go by the northern route this time of year-ice storms.”
Add a month or two to the voyage? Fallion wondered. They were sailing far away, leaving behind everything that he had ever known.
Iome nodded reluctantly. “You didn’t pay too much, did you? We can’t arouse suspicion.”
“Just about the only people who take this voyage are outlaws,” Borenson said. “The price is always high. But I managed to keep it down. I told him that I’d made too many enemies here in Mystarria, aroused too much jealousy. I have too many kids and too much to lose. And I told him that I’d grown tired of the constant fighting. He seemed fine with the story.”
“And it’s not far from the truth,” Iome said. “I’ve seen it in you. You don’t love battle the way that you used to. So, we take the southern route, trading ice storms for pirates. Well, I’ll bet he’s glad of the bargain. He’ll want another sword if we’re attacked.”
Fallion lay quietly as Borenson grunted agreement, whispered good night, and slipped back out the door.
Rolling over as if in sleep, Fallion peered up at his mother. She sat in a rocking chair, slowly rocking, her silver hair falling loosely over her shoulders, a naked sword across her lap, its blade a brighter silver than her hair.
She’s keeping watch, Fallion realized. His mother had so many endowments of stamina that she almost never slept. Instead, she sometimes just paced late at night, letting herself relive a memory or fall into a waking dream, in the way of powerful Runelords.
Iome saw him looking up; she laid the sword aside and smiled, motioning him to her with the wave of a hand.
Fallion picked up his blanket, then climbed into her lap and curled up as she pulled the blanket over him.
“Mother, you said that a locus could be anywhere, in anyone. Right?” Iome hesitated, and then nodded. “That means that it could be in the innkeeper downstairs, the one that doesn’t like ferrins. Or it could be in one of the minstrels. Even in you, or me, and no one would know?”
Iome thought a moment before answering. “It isn’t good for a child to ask such questions so late at night. Asgaroth’s power is too frightening. But it is important that you know the truth…”
She hesitated, and Fallion felt as if he were trying to pry some secret from her. She didn’t want to tell him what he needed to know. He decided that he would find out, even if he had to discover the truth himself.
“And you said that it feeds on evil?”
“It seems that they make their homes in evil people,” Iome said. “I’m not sure what it feeds on.”
“And there is more than just one locus,” Fallion asked. “Lots of them?”
Iome began to recognize a pattern. Fallion was asking questions as if he were a captain debriefing a scout. Where is the enemy? That was always the first question to ask. How great are their numbers? What arms do they bear?
“Yes, there is more than one. Some are big and powerful,” Iome said, “like Asgaroth. Others are small and weak, little shadows of evil.”
“How many are there?” Fallion asked. “If father could see them, he would have told you how many there are.”
Iome peered at him, her dark eyes sparkling. “You’re so much smarter than the rest of us. It’s a good question, and I don’t think your father even knew. But I don’t think that there are many. Your father told me that not everyone who is cruel or greedy has one.”
“So, in a way,” Fallion said, “the loci are hunting us. Right?”
“I suppose,” Iome said, wondering what he was getting at. It was the next question: what is the enemy target?
“So do they hunt like wolves? Or like hill lions?”
“I’m not even sure what you mean?”
“Wolves hunt in packs,” Fallion explained. “They follow herds of elk or deer or sheep.”
Fallion had seen some wolves once, from a distance. On an early morning ride with Waggit, he’d topped a ridge one morning to see a pack of hollow wolves chasing a stag. The stag was racing across a field, its head held high so that its magnificent antlers could be seen glinting in the sunlight, all golden and amber, for it was late spring and the stag’s antlers were still in velvet.
A trio of wolves ran hot on the stag’s trail, and Fallion’s heart had hammered, hoping for the stag’s escape.
But the stag had bounded down into a draw, through the green grass, past an old fallen log. And suddenly there was a flash of gray as a hollow wolf lurched to its feet, scattering dust as it lunged from the shadows to grab the stag by its haunches.
The huge wolf didn’t just nip. It gripped the stag in its teeth and held on, throwing its weight against the noble stag so that its legs twisted out from under, and it fell in the grass, rolling, rolling, while wolves yipped and growled and clung on, one of them holding the stag’s throat in its teeth, and then they began to feed even as the stag struggled, peering in a daze for some means of escape.
Fallion suppressed the image and tried to explain his question to his mother. He searched for an unfamiliar word but couldn’t find it. “Wolves work together in the hunt, choose an animal and go after it. But a hill lion hunts alone.”
Iome licked her lips; in her mind she had a vision of three knights charging toward her on the road south of Carris. She didn’t want to frighten her son, but she didn’t want to lie to him, either. “They hunt like wolves,” she admitted.
So they’ve chosen me, Fallion realized. They’re trying to cut me out from the herd. But why?
“What can I do about it?”
“Prepare,” Iome said. “Be courageous, seek to do good. That’s how you can fight back, I think,” Iome continued. “We can even beat them, your father believed, if we are firm of purpose.” This last was only her husband’s hope. She had no idea how to beat them.
“You can’t kill evil, can you?” Fallion asked.
“I don’t think so,” Iome said. “You can kill evil men, but I don’t think that that kills evil. But you can fight evil. You can fight evil in yourself. You can drive all evil from you.”
Fallion squeezed her hand, as if she had told him all that he wanted to know, but then he asked another question.
“Father fought a locus, didn’t he? When he went to the Underworld?”
“Who told you that?” Iome asked. Few people had ever heard the full story, and Iome was the only person who had witnessed the battle.
“I thought of it on my own,” Fallion said. “People say that reavers are evil. But Hearthmaster Waggit says that they’re just animals. So there had to be something more, a crazy reaver or something. That’s what I used to think. But then it just came to me: maybe the reaver had a locus.”
“You’re right. Reavers aren’t evil,” Iome said with a shudder. She had seen the monsters in their lairs, five times the weight of an elephant, enormous and cruel. She’d seen how they cut men in half for sport. But she’d also seen how they protected and cared for their own young. “But they aren’t just animals, either. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that they’re as dumb as a dog or a bear. They’re as intelligent as you or I. Some of them are brilliant. But they’re also bloodthirsty, just like some wolves. It’s in their nature.”
“Was Asgaroth the one that Father fought?” Fallion scratched his chin and looked intently at his mother. Perhaps he thought that this was a vendetta.
“No,” Iome said. “It was Asgaroth’s master. She was called the One True Master of Evil.”
Fallion nodded. “Hearthmaster Waggit says that she tried to take over the netherworld a long time ago. She tried to master the Runes of Creation, and the world shattered into a thousand thousand worlds.”
Iome talked to him then for long minutes, telling him of his father’s battles against the reavers-how their mages created giant runes that poisoned and polluted the land, and how his father had gone to the Underworld and battled the One True Master, and then afterward defeated Raj Ahten, who also was afflicted by a locus.
Fallion thought for a long moment, then asked, “If loci have to live inside people or animals, why do they want to destroy the world? Wouldn’t they die, too?”
