The song brought a little applause. Few people were in the inn at this time of the day. Fallion tossed a small coin to the minstrel.
“Thank you, sirrah,” the minstrel said.
The man was fresh off a ship from Rofehavan, and Fallion hoped for more news from him.
“Are all the songs that you sing so forlorn?” Fallion asked.
“It has been a rough winter,” the minstrel said. “The folks in Heredon liked it well enough.”
“How fares Heredon?” Fallion asked, for it was a place close to his heart.
“Not well,” the minstrel said. He was a small man, well proportioned, with a gruff voice. “The Warlords of Internook seized it two years back, you know, and the peasants there all remember a time when they were ruled by a less-cruel hand. Many a tongue was singing that song last summer at the fair, and so in retribution, the lords at Castle Sylvarresta set fire to wheat fields. They say that the sky was so full of smoke, that in Crowthen it became as dark as night.”
“It seems to me that any lord who made war against his own peasants would only weaken himself.”
“Aye,” the minstrel said. “Still the people croon for the return of their king. It’s that Earth Warden Binnesman that put them up to it. He told them that ‘the stones’ woke him at night, troubling him, calling for the new king. Lord Hagarth would have sent the old wizard swinging from the gallows, but the Earth Warden ran off into the Dunnwood, where it is said that he lives among the great boars, gnawing wild acorns.”
Fallion wondered at that. Binnesman had anointed his father to be the Earth King. Fallion had never met the man, at least not since he was very small, but he knew that Binnesman was a wizard of great power.
“Do those beyond the borders of Heredon share the hope for a new king?” Fallion asked.
The minstrel smiled. “About half and half, I’d say. Some hope that the Earth King will return from the dead, or that his son will reign in his stead. But there’s a good many that never want to see a Runelord sit a throne again. ‘Death to all Dedicates’ is the call of the day.”
“What would we do without Runelords?” Fallion asked. “What if the reavers were to attack again, or the toth?”
“Our people have more to fear from evil leaders than they ever have from outside forces,” the minstrel said. “There’s some that whisper that it should not be so. It’s said that long ago, the Wizard Sendavian and Daylan of the Black Hammer stole the knowledge of rune-making from the bright Ones of the netherworld. They took it, but such knowledge was not meant for man. Only the truest, the noblest among the Bright Ones, were permitted to bear such runes, and no man is that good.”
Fallion had heard this rumor before, too, not six months back. Yet Shadoath had come from the netherworld, and she bore such runes.
The door to the inn opened, and outside stood a young girl, nine years of age, with skin as pale as milk. Her silver hair fell to her shoulders. She wore the gray robe of a graak rider, and held under her arms a pair of baskets of fruit and bread that she had bought at the local vendors. She was one of Fallion’s troops. It was time to head home.
Fallion nodded at a young maiden with raven hair who was scrubbing tables, getting ready for the nightly crowd. Valya had been living in town now for nearly three months.
She smiled back, went to the hearth, and began to set the fire. Fallion felt uncomfortable. He had seldom practiced his skills as a flameweaver through the years, yet month by month, the call of the flames grew stronger.
Valya was a sister to him now, but a sister that he hardly knew. Soon after they landed, Borenson and Myrrima moved to some hovel up on Jackal Creek, an area so sparsely inhabited that it was easy for the family to get lost, but hard to make a living. The farm was too poor to support much of a family, so Fallion had volunteered to join the Gwardeen. Draken joined a few months later.
Shortly afterward, Jaz had gone to work for Beastmaster Thorin, an elderly gentleman who raised exotic animals.
Now Valya had moved here, coming to the coast, waiting for a ship that would carry her far, far away.
Fallion had seen his family rarely in the past few years, only on winter holidays.
So Fallion went outside where three other children had gathered with today’s purchases, and stretched his arms, enjoying the sweet cinnamon scent of stonewood trees. The evening light was turning golden as the sun plunged into the sea.
The boles of the stonewood were gray, streaked with brown, like petrified rock. Only the upper branches really seemed to be alive. The elegant limbs were more of a dark cherry in color, hung with mosses and lichens and flowering vines. Epiphytes grew on their bark and put out brilliant crimson blossoms that smelled faintly like ripe peaches. As the evening sea wind stirred the leaves, the air filled with pollen, and then in the slanted sunlight that broke through the boughs the vibrant-colored day-bats flitted from flower to flower.
It was a scene that was as eerie to Fallion as it was beautiful.
“Come,” he said. So they trundled across a catwalk that spanned through old stonewood trees. The bridge was made of gold-colored planks that seemed to be hundreds of years old. In places it was rickety and worn, and the handrails looked as if they’d fall off. But always the bridge was in at least a usable state of repair.
Fallion walked slowly, bearing the children’s stores of food from time to time so that they could rest.
He was the oldest and largest of the graak riders, and bore the title of Captain. But he was more than a captain to these children, he knew. Many of them were orphans, and they looked up to him as something of a father.
Below them they could hear choruses of peeping frogs and the squeals of wild boars.
Fallion was deep in thought, wondering about the plight of his people- not just the children of the Gwardeen, but the people that he should rightfully be leading, the people of Heredon and Mystarria.
They walked for half a mile before they could glimpse the Gwardeen Wood, which could be seen ahead as a knot of stonewood trees on a peninsula that jutted out into the sea.
There, among the trees, stood an ancient fortress, a high tower used as a graakerie.
These were all sea graaks, white in color, the kind with the widest wingspan. They could fly from island to island out here in the Mariners, and if a storm came, they would sometimes ride its front for hundreds of miles inland.
The group was rounding the bay, still a mile from the Gwardeen Wood, when trouble struck.
Fallion heard a buzzing noise just overhead, almost a loud clacking, and a giant dragonfly, as long as a child’s arm, flew past. In the shadows it had been invisible, but then it lunged into a slant of sunlight, and Fallion saw it-a vibrant green with mottled yellow on the carapace, the color of forest leaves in the sun.
It buzzed into the air and grabbed a cinnamon-colored day-bat that was no larger than a sparrow; the day- bat screeched in terror.
As Fallion’s eyes followed the creature, he became aware of the dim clanging of bells. A deep-pitched warhorn sounded, as if the very earth groaned in pain.
The call was almost too distant for him to discern. He barely picked it up, buffered as it was by the trees and the sounds of the sea.
But instantly he knew: Garion’s Port was under attack.
When he held his breath, he could discern distant cries. Not all of the cries were human. Some were the deep tones of golaths.
Fallion had passed the last house trees nearly half a mile back. From here forward, there was nothing but the catwalk.
“Run,” Fallion told the children. “Run to the outpost and don’t look back.”
The children all peered up at him with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?” the youngest girl asked.
“Shadoath is coming,” Fallion hazarded.
So the children ran.
Fallion followed at the rear, where a young boy named Hador tried in vain to keep up with the older children.
For several minutes, no one pursued.
Fallion heard footsteps slapping behind and turned to see Valya racing toward them for all that she was worth.
Fallion sent the little ones ahead. They were only half a mile from the fort when he caught sight of the first of
