The plumes had been painted with blue eyes, staring wide, the ancient symbol of the Gwardeen. A pair of young men, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age, rode upon their backs.
They’re on patrol, Fallion realized. He longed to be up there, riding a graak himself. It was something that his mother had never allowed him to do.
Even if I fell, he thought, the worst that would happen is that I’d land in the water.
And end up a meal for the serpents, a niggling voice inside him whispered, though in truth he knew that a young sea serpent, like the ones he saw finning now, were no more dangerous than a reef shark.
The ship didn’t even bother to drop anchor. The captain just let it drift for a bit.
“I’ll let you folks row in from here,” Captain Stalker said. “No sense attracting any notice, if you can help it.”
That was the plan. They would row in during the night and follow the river inland for miles, hoping not to be seen for days perhaps, until they were far from the coast.
Meantime, Captain Stalker would rush home and get his wife, then sail north and scuttle the ship near some unnamed port.
Fallion was suddenly aware that he’d never see Captain Stalker again, and his heart seemed to catch at his throat.
“Thank you,” Myrrima said, and the family grabbed their meager possessions as the crew lowered the boat.
There were some heartfelt good-byes as Fallion and the children hugged the captain and some of their favorite crew members.
Stalker hugged Fallion long and hard, and whispered in his ear, “If you ever get a hankerin’ for life on the sea, and if I ever get another ship, you’ll always be welcome with me.”
Fallion peered into his eyes and saw nothing but kindness there.
I used to worry that he had a locus, Fallion thought, and now I love him as if he were my own father.
Fallion hugged him hard. “I’ll hold you to it.”
Then he climbed down a rope ladder to the away boat. Borenson, Myrrima, and the children were already there, each child clutching a tiny bundle that held all that he or she owned.
Myrrima was deeply aware of just how little they had brought with them: a few clothes that were quickly wearing down to rags, some small mementos, Fallion’s forcibles.
We must look like peasants, she thought. She took the oars and rowed out toward the city.
“Make north of the city, about two miles,” Stalker warned her, and she changed course just a little. The sound of waves surrounded them, and the boat splashed through the waters with each small tug of the oars. Droplets from the oars and spray from whitecaps spattered the passengers.
Fallion watched the Leviathan sail away, disappearing into the distance.
All too soon they neared shore, where small waves lapped among the roots of the stonewoods. The scent of the trees was strange, foreign. It was a metallic odor, tinged with something vaguely like cinnamon.
Two hundred feet up, peeking through the limbs, lanterns hung. Among the twisted limbs, huts had been built, small abodes made of sticks, with roofs of bearded lichens. Catwalks ran from house to house.
Fallion longed to climb up there, take a look around.
But he had to go farther inland, and sadly he realized that he might never set foot in Garion’s Port again.
“The Ends of the Earth are not far enough,” he recalled, feeling ill at ease. He scanned the horizon for black sails. There were none.
So the boat crept among the roots until it reached a wide river. The family rowed through the night until dawn, listening to the night calls of strange birds, the rasping sounds of frogs or insects-all calls so alien that Fallion might just as well been in a new world.
As dawn began to brighten the sky, they drew the boat into the shelter beneath the great trees, and found that it was a place of eternal shadows.
The murk of overhanging trees made it as dark as night in some places, and the ground was musty and covered with strange insects-enormous tarantulas, and various animals the likes of which Fallion had never seen- flying tree lizards and strange beetles with horns.
They found a barren patch of ground and met up with Landesfallen’s version of a shrew: a tenacious little creature that looked like a large mouse but which defended its territory as if it were a rabid she-bear. The bite of the shrew was mildly poisonous, Borenson was later warned, but not until after he discovered it through personal experience.
The shrew, disturbed by his approach, leapt up on his leg and sank its teeth into Borenson’s thigh. The shrew then squatted in the clearing, squeaking and leaping threateningly each time that he neared. Sir Borenson, who had battled reavers, Runelords, and flameweavers, was obliged to give way for the damned shrew.
As Fallion nursed a fire into being, using nothing but wet detritus, the others set up camp.
He marveled at the raucous cries of birds unlike any that he’d heard before, the weird twittering calls of frogs, and the croaks of lizards.
The earth smelled rich, the humus and dirt overpowering. He had been at sea for so long, he’d forgotten how healthy the earth could smell.
But they were safe. There was no sign of Shadoath’s pirates. They were alive, and tomorrow they could push farther inland.
For at least today, he thought, we are home.
43
We cannot always run away from our problems, for too often they follow.
Five years passed before Shadoath heard the words “We have found him.”
The spring that Fallion had gone missing, she’d sent her agents through every port in Landesfallen, searching for the boy. Bribes were offered, threats were made. After a few months without any progress, innkeepers went missing and wound up in her torture chambers.
The Borenson family had disappeared, and apparently never made it to any port.
Yet Captain Stalker had found his way home, Shadoath knew. His wife, in the village of Seven Trees Standing, disappeared, and six months later Shadoath got word that the remains of the Leviathan were crashed upon some rocks on the shores of Toom. The captain and all hands were reported dead.
Shadoath had changed the focus of her search then, sending men to the north countries of Rofehavan. She imagined that the Borensons had decided to flee back home to safety.
He might be in Mystarria, she reasoned, or even off in his mother’s old haunts in Heredon.
Thus, the trail grew cold, and in time Shadoath turned her thoughts to other things. Her armies began making raids into the southlands of Inkarra, slaughtering villages and bringing back gold and blood metal. Her assassins struck down powerful leaders in far places.
She took endowments of stamina, sight, and glamour. In time, she smoothed the scars from her body. Though her right eye remained forever blind, with enough endowments of stamina and sight, she regained vision in her left.
She sent out an army of minstrels to sing new songs, powerful songs that called for change, songs that reviled decent lords, accusing them of tyranny, while true tyrants were praised within their own borders as men of great strength and vision.
And the peasants responded.
Chaos washed across the world, and in a dozen countries revolutions arose. In Orwynne, good men refused
