The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  Behind the touch of the river lay the soft nearly unheard sound of a woman’s voice. Grace tilted her head to listen the better amidst the quiet of the forest and meadow. She could not catch words, only a melody, a song of nearly unbearable loss and mourning. The dew about her fell away as if loosened, becoming moon-tinged teardrops that rained about her. They gathered into small pools that caught the moon’s glitter.

  They were not her tears. It was not her sorrow. Yet it flooded her, rose in her throat, surrounded her like tiny orbs of the silver-and-blue moon itself. She did not pull her hand from the water. It would do her no good to do so, and the dirge beat upon her senses.

  A loss. A nearly incomprehensible loss. Not hers, though her father and mother had been torn away and an unborn sibling she had known nothing of until the Goddess granted her the barest touch of the other’s soul. The loss, then, was of the Goddess. Did she mourn the sundering of their forms? That seemed unthinkable. The River Goddess had never acknowledged her openly all the years that Rivergrace had sheltered her within. She had lived most of her life unaware that her body had been a shield, a vessel, for one of the essences of Kerith summoned forth unwillingly. But with the destruction of the Souldrinker Cerat, the Goddess had been freed. Why then did she now weep as if inconsolable? Cold water ran through her fingers like the questions for which she could find no answers.

  The formless element seized her. Suddenly, Grace found herself yanked down to the ground, her entire arm and shoulder immersed, her hair soaked and trailing upon the waters. What had been a babbling of water became a roar in her ear, a cascade of furious tide surging against her, drawing her down into it.

  “Return to me what is mine.”

  Water filled her mouth as she tried to answer. Grace spit it out to manage, “I have nothing.”

  “Thief. I am emptying!”

  She could feel the silvery strands of herself drawn thin and fought the unweaving, the unraveling of her very being. She had been through this before, when the loose Goddess unmade her to free herself entirely and then remade her in gratitude. This was death and dying, and she had already made that sacrifice. She fought it this time, gently, protesting that she had nothing left to give that she had not already given. “I carried you in my heart and soul for decades. How can you not know me? How can you not know the truth in what I say to you?” Grace thought her heart would break as the elemental railed at her, about her, and then the tide began to ebb.

  The near inaudible song surrounding her, all but drowned out by the frothing of the brook rising to claim her, stilled for a moment. Then it began again, quietly, resolutely, a new melody, of incalculable puzzlement underlaid with strength, and the whitecapped waters about her slowly receded until she found herself lying across the small freshet once more, soaked, shivering, and alone.

  Grace sat up, hugging herself against the cold, and combed her hair from her face with her fingers, hand shaking. What happened to the world when a Goddess began to die? What would happen to her?

  She staggered to her feet. A warmth came out of the dew still blanketing the ground, a soft current of air which swirled about her once, twice, thrice and then faded away, leaving her dry, except for the icy core of fear inside her. The Goddess had given her back her life. Yet was this a gift Rivergrace could hold onto? Was it being reclaimed from her? She put her hand out, looking at it. Unbidden, the stalwart form of her sister Nutmeg swept through her thoughts, bringing with her the cinnamon spice of her words and nature, an upwelling of optimism and sass. Nutmeg would have had words about the Goddess, no doubt about that. The weave of life was greater than one mortal or immortal strand, and gifts given were like flowers gone to seed on the wind, out of sight, out of mind even if never out of heart. Grace closed her hand as if she could feel Nutmeg’s hand within her grasp, keeping her always anchored to the practical nature of life.

  She made her way back into the sleeping camp and fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

  Lariel watched her silently from her tent canopy, the night framing Rivergrace’s slender form as she gave way. She could only wish the evening would embrace her again, but she doubted it would. She had too many thoughts running through her mind for sleep to calm her again. She’d seen Daravan go to Sevryn and take him away, and then Grace follow, and none of it had been a surprise to her because he’d pierced the wards she’d set up, alarming her. Like a knife parting shadows, he’d slipped into the camp, and none had sensed it except for her. He did not even know he’d awakened her. She wondered if she should have challenged his boldness at taking her Hand from her, and had decided against it. Daravan kept his own counsel and it was unlikely he would tell her his plans lest she block him. He would report to her later. His presence had been a surprise, awakening her from a dream which she still saw vividly in her mind: Abayan Diort standing on a bed of flames and wearing a fiery crown. A woman watched him from a distance, a slender graceful woman but the dream had bled all color from her, casting her in shades of dusk. Was it Rivergrace who watched him . . . or herself? Omen or a shred of restless sleep? Lara had no way of judging, and even if she should fall asleep again, she knew that the moment had been lost to her.

  Nor could she let herself dwell upon it. That way would take her down a path Lariel could not afford. She must keep her eyes upon the horizon which stayed boundless, and if a singular, undeniable path presented itself, then and only then would she let herself travel it. As her grandfather had told her shortly before he died, when she began to dream, to truly dream, it would be the death of all that she knew to be Vaelinar.

  She could not let that happen.

  A slight pain arced through her left hand, and she looked down to see her fingers crabbed into a tight fist, the scar of the missing finger pulsing in soreness. Lara opened her hands slowly. A hundred twisted paths and one true one might lead into the future, and a hundred true paths and one twisted one might lead away from it. Of all the Talents Vaelinars could summon, the one they could not was certainty. No one could sift through destiny and its myriad of choices and say, this is the one you must take, this is the best and only road. She was as blind as anyone.

  As for Rivergrace, Lara knew that she had come to a fork in their friendship when she must assert herself as a queen. That Rivergrace had Vaelinar blood in her veins seemed certain, although her maternal lineage had been untraceable and her father’s line altogether unknown. Lara saw that which Grace did not: why would two Vaelinars allow themselves to become enslaved to one such as Quendius, giving up not only their lives but that of their child? They had made a pact with a Demon, surely knowing that they did so, but to what advantage? They had to have been outlawed or in hiding, and if they had been, there would have been good reason to cast them out. Lara did not want to lay the burden of her parents’ past upon Rivergrace’s shoulders but the truth needed to be known. Grace held unknown qualities within her, and as Warrior Queen, Lariel had to be able to assess them. She would not have another traitorous line such as the ild Fallyns facing her, if she could help it.

  Lara dropped the tent flap back into place and retreated to her own blankets, kneeling upon them, rather than lying down. She bowed her head in meditation and stayed until dawn.

  A merciless sun beat down on the queen’s finest.

  “I want to understand how you could lose an entire army.”

  Rivergrace looked across the landscape to Lariel Anderieon who sat on her hot-blooded Vaelinar-bred horse, her wrists crossed casually at his withers, her easy posture belying the irritated tone of her voice. The tashya mare pawed the ground, telegraphing her rider’s annoyance. The bulky general being addressed merely held himself quiet, waiting for the queen to finish. “We were hot on Diort’s tail.” Lara stared down at a valley baked by an unseasonably fierce late autumn sun, floodwaters having left a slick of clay over the basin, now crackled and dried like tile over what had once been fertile fields. The river which had cut through, bringing its life with it, was gone, the bed nothing more
than a cut in the soil, pebbles and sandy bottom gleaming. Its source had been broken within the stone foundation of a narrow pass which had once protected the valley. “First Sevryn, now this. Was it easy to lose an army?” The sun glittered off her mail, and she shook her head, her hair falling loose from the jeweled net which had bound it, silver-and-golden tresses tumbling down to her shoulders. She put a hand up to retrieve the net and yank it aside, frowning at Osten whose horse flanked hers. The general’s face wore his perpetual weathered grimace, his expression pulled by the great scar which cleaved his face in two, a death blow meant to do more than scar him but which, miraculously, had not. His voice rumbled in reply.

  “Not as easily as it might appear, Lara. We know Bistel harried them down from the north, and sign pointed them here.” Osten stood in his stirrups, easing his body a moment, before settling back onto the saddle. “And we know the Galdarkan’s been here.” He surveyed the damage done by the war hammer Rakka where it had split the valley and the small pass which had once guarded it wide open, sending the brook which fed its fertile valley into a flood before rock slides had shut it down altogether. They could see the fractured lines running through the valley floor up into the meager hills where the village perched on hummocks and hills. The stone spine of the mountains ringing the area, barely tall enough to be called such, lay bare with chasms chiseled open in a web of flaws. It was not the first time Diort had struck his hammer and the Demon within had thundered open the very bones of the world. But why here? What would he gain by loosing the Demon here? A few heavily laden carts trudged from the devastation, a handful of family members to each cart, the pitful survivors of Abayan Diort’s attack. Others had either already fled or joined Diort’s army in fear for their lives. Lariel’s hand twitched on the reins in distress, and her horse tossed her head in a nervous response.

  “I know he’s been here. It’s where he’s vanished to that concerns me.” Her gloved hand cut the air. “I want someone down there to talk to the villagers.” She looked to Rivergrace. “You have Dweller upbringing, you know the farming life, but you can promise them nothing. I know this will go against your grain, but hold your tongue. They think we Vaelinars can heal all that is wrong with their world with our magic, and curse us whether we do so or not. If we helped everyone who pleaded for our magic, we would create a world full of beggars who refuse to do anything for themselves. I won’t have you contribute to that.”

  Her brusque request shook Rivergrace and scattered her thoughts about Sevryn’s disappearance in the night. “But—” protested Grace softly.

  “Rivergrace,” Lara answered softly. “No one can heal the earth here. All we can do is find Diort and put a stop to him.” She put a heel to her horse’s flank. “Stand down the men. More than a handful of us will panic them. Grace, come with me.”

  Pursing her lips in quiet obstinacy yet obeying Lara’s order, she reined her mare after the queen, and they descended down into the valley. The beautiful red-and-gold leaves of autumn had fallen, but the flood had drowned their glory in mud, and the horses soon trotted over baked silt, puffs of dirt greeting the strike of each hoof. Rivergrace looked down, feeling the water below which had sunk into the earth—deep, still water. Spring would bring the life back to this land again, but the people who had lived here couldn’t wait through a harsh winter in that hope and with the fear that the demolished pass which they could easily have guarded against raiders and Bolgers was now laid wide open, a shattered gateway into their midst. All but a few had already fled.

  Lara signaled a dismount as the carts and their Kernan drivers halted, looking at them with expressions both frightened and curious. Rivergrace slid to the ground, one hand on her mount’s neck. She wondered if any of these farmers and tradesmen had ever seen a Vaelinar before, thinking from the widening of their eyes that likely they had not although they’d undoubtedly heard many things about them. She knew what they would see, a tall, handsome folk with tipped ears and eyes as bright as gems with streaks and specks and whorls of color within color, eyes unlike any ever seen before on Kerith. Those eyes were not native to Kerith, belonging to a people some God or forbidden magic had flung into their world centuries ago for reasons the Vaelinar could not remember and the races born to Kerith had no way to discern. She knew what they thought if they thought the worst of them: invaders, slavers. She took a deep breath, feeling the old manacle scars prickle high on her wrists. All but faded, the pain could still chafe at her now and again. Vaelinars were often no kinder to their own than to others. Hammered onto Kerith, they had suffered no less damage to themselves and their culture than this valley had from the Demon Rakka. She dropped the reins of her horse into a ground-tie and stepped away, letting a soft smile curve across her lips, hoping it would ease the looks she faced.

  Lariel had been ill at ease, and no wonder. The Vaelinars were strangers in the lands of Kerith, their existence here at the forbearance of the native peoples. Or perhaps not forbearance, perhaps they’d supplanted those originally in control here. Yet they weren’t exactly conquerors, although they were treading a fine line there. The Vaelinars had brought with them intelligence, experience, and magic, and used all they had to establish new domains among those who had been born here.

  Rivergrace had been isolated from her people for most of her young life and had only recently started to know them intimately, her previous view of them that of her adopted family of Dwellers who had long protected her from her strange beginnings. Vaelinars guarded each other’s backs from the native peoples of Kerith, yet within their own society they could be vicious and deadly as the assassins sent after Lara proved. The queen faced not only murderers from within but civil war from without. Her own seneschal Tiiva, head of her household staff for many, many years, had sent death after her before disappearing. Did Lara think that Tiiva had conspired with Abayan Diort? If she did, the Warrior Queen hadn’t confided that to Rivergrace, but there was a doggedness about this pursuit that suggested it.

  Grace didn’t understand the politics of the Vaelinars and took what solace she could in the countryside, looking at it with the eyes of a Dweller as Lariel and Osten approached the head of the raggedy caravan. Her feet took her wandering off to the side, to the bed of the river that had been, and she knelt there, reaching out. She sifted the pebbles and soft dirt and sand, thinking of the fish that had swum in the river once, their fins fanning the sediment, of the water cold and harsh in the winter and soft and languid in the summer. There were prints on the far side bank, from animals which had come to drink as if not believing the water had gone. A wilted weed tangled across her palm, drying out, dying, as the whole valley would, slowly. Rain and runoff might fill this riverbed again, but . . . she looked up. The hammer strike had shifted the rocks in the hills to block the water from the river, and she doubted it would ever run true again. Like high desert land, rain would fall here and sweep away, disappearing into porous, infertile sand that would not, could not, hold it. The river’s source spoke to her from the depths of stone, a wounded presence that struggled to be free, to be whole. She sighed.

  A tiny sigh echoed hers, and she looked up into a small, oval face. A hand reached past hers to finger the dirt. “Grampa says we hafta leave because of the river. Without the river, we can’t live.” The Kernan lad looked askance at her, brown eyes crinkling a little at the corners, as if she were too bright to watch directly.

  “He says that, does he? He’s probably right, don’t you think?”

  “Probably. He’s awful old, and you don’t get that way bein’ stupid.”

  She smothered her reaction. “Indeed. I’m going to walk up. Would you like to come with me?” She stood, dusted off her hand, and held it out to him.

  He studied it, then her. He wove his fingers into hers carefully. “You’re not like the others.”

  Rivergrace nodded. The bane of her life. She was, and she wasn’t, like the other Vaelinars. She wasn’t sure if he meant that she did not wear mail and carry we
apons like the others, although she did have a short sword slung on her left hip. With the eyes of the young, he might be able to see that imperceptible aura that she wasn’t quite Vaelinar, and was most definitely not anything else of Kerith either. Not a tall and arrogant Galdarkan, the nomadic guardians bred by the long-ago Mageborn race, nor a humble Kernan who populated these lands in the greatest numbers and certainly not a short and sturdy and boisterous Dweller. They began to walk up the riverbed toward the broken landscape, leaving behind the elder Kernans telling what they knew of events to Lara and Osten.

  “I’m Barton,” the lad said.

  “I am called Rivergrace,” she answered, half-listening to him and half-listening to something dancing on the wind, the voice of the water if it had such a thing.

  “They came a few days ago,” he offered. “Lots of Galdarkan lived here, they came out to listen to him. Grampa said only a fool doesn’t listen to a man with a sword if he wants to talk before using it.”

  They skirted a fall of granite and slate. “Then what happened?”

  “He said . . . Diort . . . that we had to leave. Come with him or leave by ourselves, that it wouldn’t be safe.”

  “Not safe?” But it was Diort who’d splintered open the pass which held the village close, as if a wall had been built by nature to cozen them. “Did he say why?” She paused to help him up a boulder as they began to climb cautiously over the edge of the rockfall. Pebbles skittered after them as they moved upward.

  “Grampa muttered something about Mageborn and badlands. Stuff I don’t understand.”

  Nor did she, yet. She did know that when the elder civilization, the Mageborn, warred and the Gods of Kerith stripped the magic from them in angry retribution, backlash currents of chaos anchored into the lands where the Mages had established their kingdoms. The badlands to the east, the wastelands of those wars, expanded and contracted erratically except where the Vaelinar lord Bistel’s holding of Hith-aryn seemed to keep the tide at bay. The great aryn trees the Vaelinar had brought with them in seed and staff sprang up in groves like windbreaks and bent their limbs against the chaos like a shield. Here, though . . . she was uncertain how close or far they might be to an errant spear of wasteland. The wasteland was rumored to move, to devour. But did it? Would Diort have lied to them to force them into his alliance? What good had it done him to destroy their farms and village here? Or did he intend to destroy something else along with it?