The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  Chapter Ten

  "SHE’S IN HIGH TEMPER. They’ve called for healers, stabled the horses, and done little else,” Jeredon said to Sevryn. His arms wheeled his chair across the grounds, moving to keep pace with Sevryn’s booted strides. A night in Larandaril, in what served as his own bedroom, had eased the pains of the past few days, if not the worry. He’d said little to Jeredon upon his return, and his friend had accepted that, with a hurt look in his eyes, but no admonishment in his words. They had an unspoken agreement that Sevryn’s findings would await Lariel’s arrival. This morning had brought word of spotting the queen’s patrol at the borders.

  He responded only, “The news I bring won’t do anything to ease that.”

  “Thank you for the warning. Perhaps I should hitch a goat to my wagon to increase my speed of retreat.”

  “From what I’ve seen of you and goats, I doubt that will help much. You’d both insist on going separate ways.”

  Jeredon chuckled, although a bit breathlessly. He added, “If you see a Dweller chugging after us, run for it. I left Nutmeg behind and forgot to tell her Lara and Rivergrace were riding in.”

  “You’ll pay for that.”

  “No doubt of it.”

  Sevryn lifted his chin, and his strides stretched, taking him ahead of Jeredon, as he saw the group by the stables, Rivergrace surrounded by dusty and bloodstained troopers. He recognized her movement, her presence a moment before he could actually see her features because he knew the way she made her way through the world. She worked among the healers who’d come out first, bringing out litters for the wounded and tending those they could on the spot, but his attention stayed on her alone. Her auburn hair caught the low-slanting gleam of the late autumn sun, burnishing it in red-gold highlights as she wove among the litters, bending here and touching briefly there. She couldn’t replace the high healers of the Vaelinars but she had a soothing ability of her own which aided any she touched. She wore blues and golds and grays, and he would have known her anywhere, just by the way she moved her hand to her brow, lifting back a strand of hair that had fallen across her face, or took a step across the yard. If he had been blind, he would have known her by her voice, her step, and her aroma; if deaf, by the silk of her skin and the gentleness of her touch; and if dead, he still would have known her, as he had once before, by the brilliance of her soul.

  She turned as if hearing his thoughts, let out a soft cry, and began to run toward him. Troopers laughed as she jostled through them before they could step aside for her.

  Sevryn caught her by the waist and swung her once. Her face lit ever so briefly with a smile before the quiet worry curtained her expression again. The blood on her was not hers, he could tell that immediately as he ran his hands lightly over her shoulders and arms before catching her hands. “I thought I might miss you, that Lara wouldn’t be bringing you back here, but this seemed the only place to go. The tides may be determined to carry us apart.”

  “It doesn’t matter as long as we’re equally determined to return to each other,” Grace finished for him. She considered him thoroughly, her gaze searching him from head to toe before relief lightened the color of her eyes and she smiled.

  “Confirmed,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her forehead. “We’re both all right.”

  “I felt you,” she answered. “At the river’s crossing.”

  “When you were in battle?”

  She turned her face aside. “I don’t remember much of anything but the horses panicking and the yells, the fighting.”

  “And that was before you ran into raiders,” Jeredon added dryly as he rolled his wheelchair into the group. “I know how my sister drives a war party. No time to think, just well-honed instincts.”

  “You may not think, but I do, and aplenty.” Lariel heard him, striding out of the stable’s wide doorway. She stripped off her riding gloves, and leaned over to pull her brother’s hair affectionately. “We could have used you out there. We’ll be needing archers trained.”

  “They did not acquit themselves well?”

  “They did well enough, but there are fallen.”

  “What happened? How bad was it?”

  “This is best discussed elsewhere. We are in Larandaril, the center of my power and my holdings, my dreams and my desires . . . and there are those who listen to every heartbeat, every sigh. After Tiiva, we know this now.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  “This.” She waved a glove overhead in signal. A moment passed, a sighing of breath, and then from the mews beyond the stables, hawks took to the air two by two, loosed like flights of arrows, with shrieks of joy at being free to ride the wind. War hawks, not the usual messenger birds, but birds which would not be stopped in their errands easily and which would, because of what they were and how they had been trained, reach their destination.

  Human banter paused a moment as they all considered the birds climbing fiercely into the skies, circling once and disappearing, each pair winging in a slightly different direction.

  “Where do you send them?”

  “Wherever I must. All the signs tell us this will be a long, dry, and unseasonably warm winter, so I gather a war council. No longer will we speculate on the wisdom of fighting a war and how. Now we plan the assaults. No sense in waiting until Spring. The enemy won’t.”

  She gave Jeredon’s hair a second tug, before slapping her gloves into her belt and beckoning at Osten’s burly bulk. “Join us when ready? I’ll be at my gate.”

  The general raised an eyebrow before nodding and returning his attention to the healers aiding his fallen troopers. He would be along when this duty was discharged.

  Sevryn traded a look with Rivergrace even as she laced her fingers tightly with his. No one trespassed through Lariel’s gate to the inner pavilion of Larandaril. Few even knew of the pavilion, although one could note her absences and assume she had gone to her quiet place, the meditative hideaway to which she sometimes disappeared. No one had a key to this innermost heart of the Anderieon kingdom but the ruler of the moment and, in memory’s time which stretched long enough for the Vaelinar, no one outside had ever been invited in. Larandaril held still the vibrant greens and golds as though untouched by black frost of coming winter, but the green had deepened and the golden leaves shivered as if the next strong wind might bring them down. Even this valley could not resist winter entirely. What magic it held, its heart lay in the queen’s pavilion. Disbelieving of the invitation, they watched for a moment as the Warrior Queen strode by, and followed only when she gave them an inquiring look over her shoulder. The lightheartedness of her actions toward Jeredon immediately became shadowed by her destination. Jeredon shrugged to no one and began to wheel his chair after her, the cartwheels lurching uncertainly in the raked and wood-chip-strewn grounds of the stables.

  Out of breath and apple-cheeked with exertion, Nutmeg caught up to them, her skirts flying, no more than elbow high to the shortest of the Vaelinars. She grabbed Rivergrace with a cry of happiness and hugged her tightly before rounding on Jeredon to block his wheeled chair, hands on her hips and eyes sparkling with indignation. “You can cart yourself from here to the end of Kerith,” she told him, “but you’ll not escape a scolding from me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. Such scoldings, I am certain, keep men such as myself in line. All of Kerith would suffer if your mouth should suddenly go silent and there were a dearth of them.” Jeredon pulled a contrite face to reinforce the solemnity of his words.

  “Does this run in your family, m’lady Queen, words that fall from the mouth without end and without sense?”

  “If it did, I wouldn’t admit to it. And good day to you, Mistress Farbranch, ” Lara said mildly, although her eyes of silver and gold shone a little as if the sun illuminated a hidden gleam in them.

  Nutmeg dropped a hasty curtsy, neither low nor graceful, but sufficient. “Mark my words, I’m glad to see all of you, Your Highness, and most especially my sister. I
hear that others aren’t so fortunate and there will be mourning this evening.”

  “Your gossips are well-informed, as usual.” Lara glanced down at her brother Jeredon and then back to Nutmeg.

  “I told her nothing!” Jeredon protested before shutting his mouth as if deciding silence might be the wiser course.

  “It was not from him. There were women at the ovens and in the laundry and the sewing rooms. They felt their husbands fall. They shrieked and clasped their bodies and toppled themselves, as if struck by the same blow. I’ve never seen such a thing. Is it Vaelinar, to know when your mate has been harmed?”

  “It has happened, but most do not share such a close bonding,” Lara assured her.

  “More than likely histrionics,” muttered Jeredon, “which seem to be at a high this time of the season. One female falters and the rest topple.”

  Rivergrace, however, murmured so quietly that likely only Nutmeg and Sevryn heard her as they stood the closest, “I have felt such a thing.”

  Sevryn squeezed her fingers a little, finding them cold in his hand. Osten caught up with them, slapping the dust off his riding mail, and lifting a waterskin to take a deep draught from it, before taking a stand next to Lara.

  Nutmeg did not seem to notice the tension in the Warrior Queen. “He never tells me anything,” she declared, her glance flicking disdainfully off Jeredon and back to Lara, “but excuses to avoid work the healers and I’ve set out for him. Despite long hours at the maps and with the stores’ keepers, he’s gotten some exercise, to good advantage, I think, even though I nagged him into it. He’ll be able to stand and toast Sevryn and Rivergrace at the engagement party. No dance, but definitely a toast.”

  “Meg,” Grace said softly, putting her hand on the other’s forearm. “There won’t be a party. Not for a while, at least.”

  “No party? What nonsense is this!” And she swung about on Sevryn as if he’d made the rash decision.

  Despite himself, Sevryn took a step back. Jeredon made a choking sound, and when Sevryn looked to him, he’d ducked his chin down and had one hand over his face scratching at the bridge of his nose. Osten crossed his thick arms over his chest and managed to have little expression on his bisected face.

  “That was my decision,” Lariel interrupted. “Mistress Nutmeg, we’ve had a long ride these past days, and have much to discuss of war and mourning. Although I seldom stand on decorum, I think you’ll agree with me that celebrations are not the focus of any discussions we have planned this day.”

  Nutmeg tilted her head, looking up at Lara’s fair beauty, and pursed her lips as if in thought or argument with herself before answering, “On the contrary. I’ll not be knowing, Highness, what your family schooled in you, but mine taught me that love is one of the only things that makes war bearable or worth the cost. If you toss that away, then it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose at what you’re doing.”

  Osten made a gruff humming sound at the back of his throat. Other than that, the burly and scarred general made no movement or expression in the midst of the stillness that had fallen.

  The corner of Lara’s mouth twitched ever so slightly. “We were headed to a brief council on affairs that I was . . . schooled . . . in. Shall I presume you will join us, Nutmeg?”

  “Only as Jeredon’s nurse and cart pusher. I don’t know anything about planning for wars. When you’re ready to talk about th’ bonding party, then I’ve an idea or two.”

  “I daresay you do.” Lara turned on her heel. “Keep up, all of you.”

  She led them across the stable grounds and toward the gardens which bordered the manor houses which had become, over centuries, the heart of the Anderieon holdings in Larandaril. Beyond that lay a grove which few ever entered except for Lariel, and at its heart, a gated pavilion. With a twitch of her hand, she produced a key seemingly out of nowhere which made Nutmeg’s amber eyes grow big, and Rivergrace’s face go thoughtful.

  Grace entered last, hanging back, and taking one final look over her shoulder as she passed through the gate, she saw that the pathway which had brought them to its latticed arches disappeared as if it had never existed. Would the pathway exist again when they left or would it remake itself, in the tradition of the Vaelinar, a maze of possibilities which only Queen Lariel could traverse safely?

  Her worry bled away the moment she stepped through the gates. Inside, the heart of the land lay in springtime. Flowers bloomed, their perfume on the air. The spears of grass held that new tinge of green, of tender young shoots just pushed from the soil. She could hear the gentle burble of the Andredia River which came to shore, somewhere near the carved benches and font, she guessed, under the bend of trees heavy with new growth. The only thing unenchanting about the place was the lack of living things. She could hear no rustling in the undergrowth of tiny rodents or insects scurrying about their business, nor could she hear the chirp or song of birds in the branches. They might be the only things alive in the pavilion besides the flora. How could such a thing be? How could the flowers and trees fruit and seed without the insects, the birds? It could not, not and be natural. She felt a frisson of fear at the magic which created such a place.

  Grace looked down as her boots whispered through a branch, and she saw the unmistakable bitten ends of a leaf trail around her ankle before it whipped away on the stem. She smiled then, to herself. It was not that nothing living trod here besides them, it was that the queen hid their presence away, so that nothing living might be used to spy against her, later. The smile faded with the realization that even a sanctuary was not truly a sanctuary for Queen Lara.

  Jeredon pointed a finger at the bench and raised an eyebrow at Nutmeg who pursed her lips but sat down in a bunch of skirts and petticoats, folding her hands, and becoming primly quiet for a Dweller. Sevryn drew Grace close to him, hip to hip, as if unwilling to be away from even the slightest touch of her.

  Lara did not settle on the bench, but leaned her back against the slender trunk of one of the trees ringing it. “We were attacked by Bolger raiders who had been as finely drilled and outfitted as any troopers we could bring to field. They scattered our defenses and would have brought us down nearly to the last man standing but for two things: 1) the river we were fording working as much against them as for them, and 2) Abayan Diort did not order them to slaughter us so much as test us. Having done what he instructed them to do, the raiders pulled back but not before leaving us with an impression. If Diort can hone an edge like that to his Bolger troops, we must consider gravely what he can do with his Galdarkans and Kernans. We cannot afford to be in a civil war with this commander. We must, therefore, bring him down as quickly and uncivilly as we can, before he consolidates himself and his troops. We may be too late even in that. Street gossip from the cities tell us that the Kernans and others have begun a resurgence in the religious belief that their Gods will begin speaking to them soon, instructing them against a great calamity which will befall civilization. As we know, religious fervor goes in cycles but this seems inevitable and due, as well.” She tugged on her dusty tunic, her loosened chain-mail corset chiming faintly as she did so. “I would like to say that this had all been a strategy to inspire him with overconfidence and lure him into a trap, but unfortunately, I cannot. We have not fought a true war in centuries, even among ourselves, and it catches us—if not unaware, then unprepared.”

  “I won’t ask this lightly, Lara, but are you certain it was Diort who sent the Bolgers after you?”

  She lifted her chin before answering Osten. “He appeared near the end of the rout, looking over the skirmish, and then whistling them off. Why would you doubt anything other than that he’d ordered it?”

  “Because I haven’t seen or heard word that the Galdarkan welcomes Bolgers among his troops as raiders. Laborers and craftsmen, yes, but not raiders. Quendius used them in my experience, and still does.”

  Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Diort and Quendius work in concert.”

  “They did. Diort’s mov
ements this last season indicate that he has left his alliance with Quendius and consolidates his people on his own. I think that any involvement he may have had was coerced and Diort no longer sees fit to bow his head to the other.”

  “He called them off.”

  “Or they noticed him and decided not to be caught between two armies? I play the contrarian here, my queen. It seems unlikely that Diort would have moved upon you and then drawn back when he could have taken you. Remember that I was up to my knees in Bolgers, so my observations may be a bit . . . inaccurate,” added Osten wryly.

  “So noted. But, it remains that we were routed by raiders when we shouldn’t have been, and he was a witness. Yes, I am humiliated, but more than that, I don’t like to give a man hope that taking us will be easy. Whatever his reason for being there, it remains that Bistel engaged him, and we went out looking for him after to ascertain the strength of his troops. He saw us in weakness and that can only encourage him to trespass again. Are we in agreement on that?”

  Osten gave a half bow, graceful in contrast to his massive build. Jeredon and Sevryn murmured agreement as well.

  “Will we have time to prepare?”

  “If the winter holds as predicted.” Nutmeg agreed with an affirmative chuff, which Lara ignored, adding, “It will be a long, relatively dry winter according to weather folklore and our own observations. Osten will be taking muster.” Her brilliant gaze turned to Sevryn. “You had other news for us?”

  “Nothing which would lessen or soothe anything you’ve told us thus far. Daravan gathered me in the night to take me on a sortie with him. We encountered a small war party by the southwestern bay shore. I took a souvenir. Before I show it, however,” and he paused a long moment. “I have a second, unexpected tale. I traveled as quickly as I knew how to return to your side. The Way known as Hunter’s Cut exists no longer. It came apart as I traversed it, and I swear to you, I don’t know how or why.” He paused. “It was as if Kerith noticed me, and saw the bondage the Way put upon it, and threw it off. I can’t support that. Only that Hunter’s Cut is ripped apart, and in its stead lies a whirlpool of chaos that has ripped the mountain apart.”