It was paradise.
So Borenson bought the land with its thatch-roofed cottage; its stone fences and a pair of sway-backed old milk cows; its pond full of perch and pike and singing frogs with a quaint mill there at the river’s edge; its rope swings and rolling green meadows filled with daisies; its orchard with cherry trees and apples, pears and peaches, apricots and almonds, black walnuts and hazelnuts; its vineyard full of fat grapes and the wine press that hadn’t been used in twenty years; its dovecotes and doves; its horse corral where a tabby cat lived; and its old cattle barn where the owls nested.
It was, quite frankly, the kind of place that Borenson had only dreamed about, and though he knew little of farming, the land was fertile enough to be forgiving.
Even a fool like me couldn’t botch it, he thought as he opened the barn door and found a plow.
He looked at the rusty old thing and wondered how to sharpen it.
Much as I would a battle-ax, I guess.
There so far from the coast, the days were free of fog and rain. The sunlight filled the valley each morning like a bowl, so that it seemed to spill out everywhere.
And life grew easy. The children found their smiles and learned to be children once again. It didn’t happen in a day.
There were wars in Heredon and Mystarria, and in various far places.
Borenson heard about it that fall at Hostenfest.
Fallion’s kingdom is slipping away, he thought.
Heredon seemed so far away, it could have been on the moon. And Fallion had been a prince so long ago, it could have been never.
Fallion came home that Hostenfest, as did Draken. Both of them had quit the Gwardeen, giving up their graaks. Fallion’s hair had begun to grow back. It looked only as if it had been cropped short.
“I’m too heavy to ride anymore,” Fallion said, and he went out on the farm and helped bring in the harvest, picking buckets full of apples and laying up a store of winter wheat as if he had never been a Gwardeen.
Unknown to his foster parents, Fallion still kept watch, as he had while serving in the Gwardeen. Sometimes he would climb the hill out behind the house and peer down over the valley. From its height he could see all of the cottages in Sweetgrass, and many of them up and down the river. He’d light a small fire, and by its power he would peer about, into the souls of men.
He could see them, even down in their cottages, their soul-fires burning brightly, guttering like torches; if any of them had borne a shadow, he would have known.
But as the weeks and months dragged on, he realized that there would be nothing to see. The loci feared him. They would stay away.
He did not wonder at his destiny any longer. His father had been the Earth King, the greatest king that the world had known, and Fallion had no desire to try to walk in his father’s footsteps. He did not long to build armies or fight wars or squabble with barons over the price of their taxes or lie awake at night with his mind racing, trying to decide the fairest punishment for some criminal.
I am something different from my father. I am the torch-bearer.
Shadoath was still alive, he knew. He had been too far away from her to burn the locus when he released his light. But he had scarred her.
What his destiny might be, he did not yet know, but he did not fret about it. He left that to Borenson.
He does a good job of it, Fallion thought. The old guardsman was still protective of Fallion, and probably always would be.
Fallion practiced with his weapons for no fewer than three hours per day. He grew more and more skilled, showing blinding speed and more natural talent than any young man should have.
After all, he was still a Son of the Oak.
But he lost some of his drive, his consuming need to be better than his opponents.
I will not win this war with a sword, he knew.
And in time, even he seemed to find his smile. One autumn morning as Myrrima and Talon were busy in the warm kitchen baking apple tarts, he came from hunting for mallards alongside the river, and Myrrima saw him smiling broadly.
“What are you so happy about?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said.
She looked for a reason, and realized that it was true. He was just happy.
He deserves to be, she thought, wiping a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron.
Rhianna was another story. She didn’t smile for many long months, and often at night she would wake in terror, sweating furiously, so frightened that she could not cry out, or even move, but only lay abed, her teeth chattering.
On such nights, Myrrima would lie down beside her, a comforting arm wrapped around the young woman.
Over the course of the summer the dreams faded, but came back sharply in the fall and through much of the following winter. But by spring they were gone, and by early summer, she seemed to have forgotten the strengi- saats completely.
Myrrima would never have known, but little Erin, who was now seven, came into the house eating some particularly fine-looking cherries, deep crimson and plump. Sage claimed that they were hers, that she had hidden them in the barn in order to save them from the predations of her siblings, but Erin had found them hidden in the hayloft.
In a rage, Sage shouted, “I hope the strengi-saats take you!”
Myrrima had whirled to peer at Rhianna, to see her reaction to such a foul curse. But Rhianna, who was washing dishes, seemed not to have noticed.
As Borenson marshaled Sage out to the shed for punishment, Myrrima told her, “You apologize to your sister, and to Rhianna, too.”
She apologized, but Rhianna seemed baffled by the apology.
Myrrima added her own words of regret, saying, “I’m sorry for what Sage said. I’ve told her never to mention them here in the house again.”
Rhianna seemed distracted and only vaguely alarmed. She didn’t even look up from her work as she replied, “Oh, okay. What’s a strengi-saat?”
Myrrima peered hard at her, astonished. Rhianna still bore scars over her womb, and always would. But she seemed to have totally forgotten what had caused them.
“Maybe it’s better that she forget,” Borenson told Myrrima later that night as they lay in bed. “No one should have to remember that.”
And so Myrrima let it go as completely as Rhianna did. She watched the young woman revel in her beauty. She was the kind that the boys would flock to at festivals. Rhianna’s skin remained clear, and her red hair grew long and flaxen. The fierceness was gone from her eyes now, and only rarely did Myrrima ever see a flash of it. Instead, she seemed to have learned to love, had developed an astonishing ability to feel for others, to be considerate and watchful. And it was Fallion she loved the best.
Of all her features, it was Rhianna’s smile that was the most beautiful. It was broad, and infectious, as was her laugh, and when she smiled, the hearts of young men would skip a beat.
One chilly spring night eight months after they’d moved to Sweetgrass, Borenson had a dream.
He dreamed that he was shoving down the door to the old kitchens, inside the Dedicates’ Keep at Castle Sylvarresta.
He used his warhammer to bash through the locking mechanism.
Inside, two little girls stood with brooms in their hands, as if they had been sweeping the floor. They peered up at him, screaming in terror, but no sound came from their mouths.
Mutes, he realized. They’d given their voices to Raj Ahten.
In the dream, time seemed to slow, and he advanced on the children as if a great weight had descended upon him, horrified to the core of his soul, knowing what he had to do.
And there, at last, he dropped his weapon to the floor, and refused the deed.
He took the girls into his arms and hugged them, as he wished that he had done so long ago.
