Free Sons of the Oak by David Farland Page A

loud. Too loud for a creature that moved as silently as a strengi-saat.

    The monsters had been trying to draw us away from their young, Fallion realized, the way that a peeweet will fly up and give her call to draw you from her nest.
    Breathlessly, he raced to the lower levels of the keep, burst down the short hallway, and threw open the door to Rhianna’s room.
    He found her lying quietly in bed, her face unnaturally pale, almost white, drained of blood by the healers’ opium. Someone had brushed the twigs and leaves from her hair, and washed her face, and Fallion felt astonished that he hadn’t noticed before that she was pretty, with flawless skin and a thin, dainty mouth.
    The room was dark. There should have been a candle or two burning by the bed, but either the candles had gone out, or the healers had blown them out so that Rhianna could sleep more easily.
    Yet as Fallion held his torch aloft, it seemed that its light grew wan, unable to penetrate the gloom. He felt a faint breeze tickle his right cheek, and glanced toward the window. Shards of glass showed where it had been broken, and other shards lay on the floor. Something had hit the window from the outside.
    Humfrey came creeping into the room, hissed a warning. “Dead. Smell dead.”
    Fallion inhaled deeply, caught a whiff of putrefaction. He could not see beyond the bars of the windows. It seemed that the gloom grew deeper there, so deep that even the torchlight could not penetrate it.
    Humfrey hissed in terror and bolted out the door.
    Fallion’s heart raced, and he held the torch aloft. He drew his dagger and held it before him. “I know you’re there,” he said weakly.
    There came an answering growl, so soft, like the whisper of distant thunder rolling down from the hills. The torch sputtered and began to die.
    Fallion saw the flames suddenly diminishing in size, fighting to stay lit. There was no wind to blow them out.
    The strengi-saat is doing it, Fallion realized, sucking away light, the way that it had in the forest.
    Fallion’s heart pounded, and he suddenly wished for light, wished for all of the light in the world. He leapt toward the window, hoping that like a bear or a wolf the monster would fear his fire. He thrust the torch through
the bars, and suddenly it blazed, impossibly bright, like the flames in an ironmonger’s hearth.
    The fire almost seemed to wrap around his arm.
    And then he saw the strengi-saat—its enormous head and black eye right outside the window, so much larger than he’d expected.
    Many creatures do not look like their young. Fallion had expected from the young that the monster would have soft black fur like a sable or a cat. But the thing that he saw was practically hairless. Its skin was dark and scabby, and though it had no ears, a large tympanum—black skin as tight as a drum—covered much of the head, right behind its eye. The eye itself was completely black, and Fallion saw no hint of a pupil in it. Instead, it looked dull and lifeless and reflected no light, not even the fire of his flaming torch.
    If evil could come to life, Fallion thought, this is what it would look like.
    â€œYaaah!” Fallion shouted as he shoved the torch into the monster’s face.
    The torch blazed as if it had just been dipped in oil, and the strengi-saat gave out a harsh cry—not the bell-like tolling that it had given on the hunt, but a shriek of terror. It opened its mouth wide as it did so, revealing long sharp teeth like yellowed ivory, and Fallion let go of the torch, sent it plunging into the monster’s jaws.
    The torch blazed brighter and brighter, as if the beast’s breath had caught fire, and giddily Fallion realized that this creature feared fire for good reason: it seemed to catch fire almost at the very smell of smoke.
    The strengi-saat leapt from the wall and Fallion saw it now in full as it dropped toward the road. The light shining through the membrane