Sons of the Oak Read Free

the wilds was so … lush. The garden behind the house was lavish for a lone woman, and it was kept behind a tall fence so that her milk goat, which stood in the crook of a low apple tree, could not get the vegetables.
    Bushes and trees had been planted around the house to break the wind and offer shelter to birds—bee eaters and sparrows that, like the chickens, cleared the garden of worms and beetles.
    Wicker flower baskets hung from the eaves of the cottage, drawing honeybees, and Fallion did not doubt that the widow Huddard knew where the hives lay.

    This woman lived in harmony with nature. Her home was a little island paradise surrounded by rocky hills.
    Fallion said, “She works hard. Nobody around her works as hard. We’ve seen a hundred cottages along the road, but none like hers. She doesn’t want to raise some man like he was a baby.”
    Sir Borenson laughed again.
    Waggit agreed, “I suspect that you’re right. The other shacks that we’ve passed were poor indeed. Their owners merely survive. They look at the hard clay, the rocky ground, and don’t have the heart to work it. So they let their sheep and cattle crop the grass short and live off what scraps of meat they can get. But this woman, she thrives on ground that breaks the hearts of lesser men. One widow with the heart of a warlord, forever battling the rocks and clay and cold up on this hillside … .” Waggit spoke with a note of finality. The lesson was done.
    Fallion asked Waggit, “Did you bring us all of the way up here, just to see one old lady?”
    â€œI didn’t bring you up here,” Waggit said. “Your father did.”
    Jaz’s head snapped up. “You saw my da?” he asked eagerly. “When?”
    â€œI didn’t see him,” Waggit said. “I heard the command last night, in my heart. A warning. He told me to bring you boys here.”
    A warning? Fallion wondered. Somehow it surprised him that his father had spared him a thought. As far as Fallion knew, his father had forgotten that he even had a pair of sons. Fallion sometimes felt as fatherless as the by-blows that littered the inns down on Candler’s Street.
    Fallion wondered if there was more that his father had wanted him to see. Fallion’s father could use his Earth Powers to peer into the hearts of men and see their pasts, their desires. No man alive could know another person or judge their worth like Fallion’s father.
    Fallion’s horse ambled forward, nosed a clump of grass by the roadside. Fallion drew reins, but the beast fought him. “Get back,” Fallion growled, pulling hard.
    Borenson warned the stallion, “Careful, friend, or the stable-master will have your walnuts.”
    All right, Fallion thought, I’ve seen what my father wanted me to see. But why does he want me to see it now?
    Then Fallion had it. “With a lot of work, you can thrive in a hard place.”
With rising certainty he said, “That is what my father wants me to know. He is sending us to a hard place.”
    Borenson and Waggit caught each other’s eyes. A thrill passed between them.
    â€œDamn,” Borenson said, “that boy is perceptive.”
    Movement up on the hill drew Fallion’s eye—a shadow flitted like a raven between the trees.
    Fallion could not see what had drawn his attention. The wet trunks of the pines were as black as ruin. The forest looked as wild and rugged as Fallion’s father.
    He focused on the tree line. A few great oaks sprawled silently along a ridge, offering shade to a pair of brown cattle, while smaller oaks crowded the folds. But still there was no sign of what had drawn his eye, and again Fallion felt uneasy.
    Something is there, Fallion realized. Something in the shadows of the trees, watching us—a wight perhaps. The ghost of a shepherd or a woodsman.
    The loud bleat of a sheep rode down from the woods above, echoing among the