Farland, David - Runelords 05 - Sons of the Oak by Farland David

Author:Farland, David [Farland, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, epic, Fiction, General, Fantasy Fiction, Supernatural, Fantasy - General, Fiction - Fantasy, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Fantasy - Epic
ISBN: 9780765341082
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-08-28T08:54:00+00:00

24

THE PRICE OF A PRINCE

Every life has value. Some imagine that their life is worth nothing and onlydiscover too late that its worth cannot be measured in coin. Others valuetheir own skins far too highly.

—Gaborn Val Orden

A couple of weeks out from the Courts of Tide, Fallion celebrated his tenth birthday. On that morning, the children spotted a giant tortoise, nearly fifteen feet long, swimming just beneath the waves, its shell a deep forest green, and thus Fallion knew that they were in warmer waters.

Captain Stalker was walking the deck and said, “Down in Cyrma, I saw a ’ouse made out of one of those shells. Big ol’ mother tortoise crawled up on the sand to lay ’er eggs, and some villagers cut ’er throat, cooked up most of ’er insides, and used the shell to make a nice ’ut. She was bigger than that one out in the water, of course.”

“Do you think the water is warm enough for sea serpents?” Jaz asked eagerly.

“Close,” the captain said. “Serpents all ’ead south this time of year. We should come up on ’em soon, if the weather ’olds. . . .” He gave a worried look at the sky. “If the weather ’olds….”

It was late morning, and a thin haze had been building across the heavens all night. Dawn had come red.

The black ship was spotted that afternoon, and the captain came above decks and nursed every stray breath of air into the sails.

A squall rose that evening, driving the ship inland. They’d been sailing well out to sea in order to avoid Inkarran warships, but now they were driven almost to the beach, even when the sails were dropped and the prow turned into the wind.

The captain was forced to drop anchor in the sand, and the Leviathan nearly ran aground.

They hugged the shore all night, and set sail again before dawn, the captain nervously keeping watch for both the Inkarrans and for the ship with the black sails.

For the next few days, Fallion kept busy with his studies—weapons practice by morning, the work of running a smuggler’s ship by day, and his magic by night.

The death of Streben was the topic of conversation for much the first week, but soon it faded from memory, just as the death of Fallion’s mother and father began to fade.

Fallion took Humfrey’s little spear, the polished shaft of a knitting needle with some mallard feathers and horse hair tied to it, and put it in a box under his bed, where he kept the promise locket that showed the image of his mother when she was young and beautiful, and where he kept a gold button like the one on the coat that his father had worn.

That box had become a shrine, a special place for him. Sometimes memories came unbidden to Fallion, like the morning that the cook fixed muffins with dried gooseberries in them, and as Fallion ate, he recalled how much his mother had loved the tart taste of gooseberries, and he’d feel a stab of pain at the memory, deep and bitter.

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