The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  “Hold that damned Dweller tongue! I do what I can, and what I must. I can’t spend a season or two swimming about. I haven’t the time!” His hand closed tightly about hers. “And you can’t be arguing with me about it. I will do what I will, and you’ve got to abide by that.”

  Nutmeg bit her lip. She knew she must have taken on the look that her recalcitrant cart pony Bumblebee often did, for Jeredon’s own eyes narrowed.

  “Have we an agreement?” he said.

  As if she could stand by and watch him undo himself.

  “Have we, Nutmeg?”

  With her free hand still under her apron, she made a sign of warding which any of her brothers could have told him meant that she was going to lie and was sending the bad luck out of it, and she nodded. Her hair tumbled about her face, and she tossed it back.

  “Good, then. And now for the hard part. You can’t be looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  He sighed. A sadness crept into his expression. “I’m Vaelinar, lass, and you’re Dweller. You can’t be hoping what you hope. It’s not possible for there to be anything stronger between us—”

  She snatched her hand away and said hotly, “It’s a wonder you can sit up, let alone stand wi’ a head filled with stone as yours! Good evening to you, m’lord Jeredon. I’d wish you sweet dreams, but it’s clear your thick head is already filled with them!” And she turned abruptly and left him before he could say another word.

  At the kitchen door, she put her sleeve to her face to catch any hot tears that might have spilled free, before bolting into the house and up the shaded part of the stairs, her heart thumping wildly which told her that that, at least, hadn’t broken.

  She found no need to creep quietly into Rivergrace’s rooms, as they were empty, and the hot bath she’d drawn cooling down unused. She turned down the quilts, made herself ready for bed, and crawled into the center, where she usually slept. Grace, when she came in, would take one side or the other. If she came in. Nutmeg let out a long, quivery sigh and gave herself to sleep.

  Beyond the reach of the great manor house and the stables and mews and outbuildings, beyond the touch of anything Vaelinar built in the heart of Larandaril, her feet came to a halt on the bank of the Andredia River. She sank to her knees and then lay on her stomach as if she were that small child again who used to sneak out of the loft of the Farbranch homestead and go down to the Silverwing and trail her fingers through the waters. Little enough light to see herself in the Andredia as it rushed by, little enough light to see that it was a river and not a stream of ever-deepening shadows, little enough light to reveal anything to her that she might ask of it. Rivergrace put her hands in, feeling the push and pull of the cold water, the silken flow of it about her skin. She could feel the ice in it from the mountains, the silt carried in it from the lands it passed through, the promise of life and the promise of unknowing strength when it should begin to flood. The Silverwing had always held an awareness of her, on some deep and primitive level. This river did not seem to know her although she had freed it from foul corruption at its font. She did not expect that it would. Water was not a creature that roamed the world, it was a force within and without the world that shaped, often careless of its effect.

  Hands numbing from the cold, she decided to pull free. The river rose about her fingers and tugged back, holding her as tightly as if she’d been fastened into ice. Grace crept back on her stomach, arms stretching, and hands unmoving.

  A moment of panic flashed through her. She could feel the river as if it had hands of its own, holding onto her tightly, dragging her down to its shore, determined to pull her in. She got to her knees to brace herself. The mossy bank gave her little purchase. Too much of a struggle and she would tumble in headfirst. The Andredia swallowed her arms to her elbows and greedily sucked up her bare skin for more. Head down, being drawn in, she saw then that a silvery luminescence filled the river and hands did indeed grip hers, hands of flesh that never warmed, hands the temperature of the water itself, hands that would refuse to let her go.

  Give it up.

  The voice without a throat of the River Goddess flooded her mind. Give it up. Return to me what is mine. Come to me, if you would, be one with me.

  Heedless, Rivergrace fought back. She had nothing belonging to the Goddess, and nothing she wanted lay at the bottom of that riverbed. She twisted and turned her arms in the manacle hold of the being which pulled her, bit by bit, fighting into the depths. Her thoughts, invaded, spun in a maelstrom about her. The solace, the cleansing of the water became a murderous sinkhole sucking her into it. That which had cocooned and protected her for unknown years now actively sought to drown her, to destroy her. What could she give the River Goddess? She had nothing, nothing but mortality, and that she knew the other did not want. She’d kept nothing from the immortal being who’d shredded her down to the last fiber of her flesh and soul before reweaving her. Yet, it was not enough. The other wanted more. Of what, she did not know and could not offer. Choking and clawing at the water, Rivergrace fought back. Anger and frustration battered her mind and soul as the Goddess drew her down into the water.

  When the chill splashed her face and water seeped into her nose, Rivergrace reared backward with a strength born out of sheer terror, gasping for breath. Her arms wrenched free, aching with bitter cold, the pull gone so suddenly she sat back on her rump. Lurid marks ringed her wrists and fingers. Chafing her hands, she staggered to her feet and away from the Andredia. The howls of dismay, of comfort and threat, of longing and want, followed her as she retreated. The river splashed up against the crumbling bank in a curtain of white foam and drops, splattering her. With each drop that hit, a stinging word beat at her mind. Return. Come back. Mine. Give it up. Stay with me.

  Rivergrace turned away from the river and ran, wobbling with numbing cold and drenched from her nose to her toes, as the river . . . or perhaps now it was the wind . . . howled after her. What was she that her very life offended and threatened the divinity of Kerith? She had had her bloodline and heritage torn away from her. What more did the Goddess intend to take from her?

  Trembling from the violent cold encasing her, Rivergrace stumbled up to her rooms and stood by the banked fire, hoping to thaw herself out. The flames seemed to sense her need and licked upward from the coals, renewing themselves without being stirred or her needing to add more kindling. She shed her clothes into a sodden heap on the floor, dried her hair, and then slid into bed, hoping that she would not awaken Nutmeg.

  Futile. When her still cold feet grazed the warmth of her sister, Nutmeg’s eyes flew open. “Grace!”

  “Ssssh. Go back to sleep.”

  Her soft admonishment, which used to work when they were very young, didn’t. Nutmeg put her arm out and drew her close, her warmth blanketing both of them, her crisp chemise crinkling as she did.

  “Your hair is still damp. How can you stand it? The river is so cold in winter.”

  “It clears my mind.” Then the fear, the disappointment, stirred in her. Rivergrace began to cry, softly, unbidden. Nutmeg stroked her hair, braiding it gently so that it would not greet the morning in untamed curls.

  “What happened?”

  “The river tried to take me,” she managed, putting her forehead to Nutmeg’s nightgown. “The bank gave way and it swallowed me up, wouldn’t let me go. It was as though it had hands and was determined to drag me under! I’ve never been afraid of drowning before. I’ve always gone to the river, always.”

  “I know, Sister, I know.”

  She swallowed tightly. “I never thought I would find water that did not lift me up or cleanse me.”

  Nutmeg’s hands slowed as she cajoled Grace’s hair into obedience. She could hear the sadness, the forlorn note, in her sister’s voice, and echoed it. “I never thought I wouldn’t be able to climb a tree tall enough to get me close to my dreams.”

  “What is going to happen to us?”

  Her sister’s voice, mu
ffled and thinned, in answer.

  “I don’t know. But I do know that fearing it won’t make it any easier or cause it to go away. The river gave you to me, and by all the water drops on Kerith, it’s not taking you back. You have my word as a daughter of Tolby and Lily Farbranch on that. We Dwellers have strong roots.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  WINTER SUN, BRILLIANT BUT PALE and brittle as if it might shatter in the cold, streamed in across the hearths of Larandaril. Song greeted the early risers as Bistane straddled one of the kitchen chairs dragged into the dining room, all doors flung open to allow his melody passage. Nutmeg heard it as she scampered down the stairs in hunger. His voice rolled in a merry tune that belied its words.“. . . Proud Nylara River holds her dead most dear

  Only the Ferryman can cross her tempest bed

  Wrapped in shadow but casting none,

  Boatman who alone can tame her shores.

  But oh, no one passes without a toll, a toll

  No one fails to pay the price.”

  She stopped at the bottom stair, looking back over her shoulder, wondering if she should warn Rivergrace or if the other would even pay heed to Bistane. With a shrug, she decided that a hot breakfast was more important, her stomach growling in agreement, and Nutmeg scurried into the kitchens to grab a trencher of whatever she could find. Almiva, one of the younger cooks, her hair held back in wispy brunette strands, her face dewy with the heat from the ovens, ladled a coddled egg out for Nutmeg. “Listen to that man,” she said. “Rode in late last night after days on the road, and up this morning warbling like a songbird. Ought to be a poet that one, not a warlord.” She paused, head cocked, to catch another word or two before waving Nutmeg on. Bistane held a steaming mug and saluted her as she passed to grab a seat at a nearby table. The aromas of her meal wafted up to make her mouth water as she gathered up her spoon and fell to eating.

  She’d heard Bistane sing at Spring fairs and Midsummer balls, his magnificent voice filling grand halls, and he did it because he loved it. He had no audience now but herself and one or two other early eaters, and the kitchen staff which hung back near their ovens and pots and pantries, listening when they could around the bustle of their morning chores. Even for all the Vaelinars in this manor, he was handsome. His eyes blazed dark and light blue, and his hair was charcoal black, with a soft glistening to its tied-back waves and a deep blue cast to the darkness. His father’s hair held that same blueness, deep in its white. They were both, like the war hawks from which they took their lineage and name, the Vantane, fierce and yet direct. The music, the poetry in Bistane, could be heard in his singing as well as seen in the way he walked and the way he wielded his weapons. A little shiver danced across the back of Nutmeg’s neck as she realized this.“In Hawthorne they tell this tale in whispers

  Of a pretty lass with skin snow pale and berry-stained lips

  The healers foretold a strange destiny

  Of short-lived years unless she found true love

  And so her family looked to make her a wife

  Her family could not bear to hear it said,

  But no one wanted to gain a love just to lose her,

  Until a Kernan from the north answered their plea,

  He’d love her till her last breath and not just for money

  Yet she looked into eyes that promised only lies.”

  She thought of great and grand Hawthorne where Grand Mayor Randall lived and ruled these western provinces. A magnificent city, built on an island, with bridges that connected it to the shore, and she wondered what it might be like there. Rumor said that Lariel intended the war council to convene there, and if it did, she might be going there in a week or so. She would have to keep a sharp eye out for what the citizens wore, and if the fabrics held bold patterns and colors, and then send word to her mother of what she’d seen. Rivergrace would be aghast at seeing the great sea. She’d seen it once herself, and it had made her knees weak even as her ears filled with the sound of its roaring waves. She fell to daydreaming as Bistane sang on.“She begged not to leave them, that his vows weren’t true

  But they hugged good-bye, telling her he meant best

  She kissed them farewell as her life was sold.

  With dowry purse sealed, the husband steered her down the road

  Impatient for home across the wide and furious Nylara.”

  Someone with a voice that bordered on coarse yet melodious sang loud enough that his guild office filled with the noise, and Bregan Oxfort gritted his teeth against the interruption and sat with his hand covering his left ear, but he could not mute it enough. The slanting winter sun came streaking into the room, setting his leg brace on metallic fire even as it did little to actually warm the limb. The song put him in a foul mood, but it was everywhere on the city streets this season and now some trader had brought a troubadour into the guildhall salon and he could not even escape it here.“Oh, you stay at the banks till he’s good and ready,

  For the Ferryman knows he rules that shore

  The wild Nylara answers only to his barge and him.

  Only the worthy can board his boats, and

  He’ll take the measure of your cargo and soul

  The weight of your very soul, your soul,

  Oh, the weight of your soul.”

  The grinding of his teeth did little to drown out the cursed song either, nor did the scratching of his pen on the papers he glared down at. Bregan lifted his gaze, looking out the glazed windows at the nearby span, one of the Seven Sisters which bound Hawthorne to the mainland. Built by common hands, the Kernans and the Dwellers and the Galdarkans, wonders of engineering that the Vaelinars could not lay claim to. One of the few, but all the same, his people could claim it, and any time one wanted to dispute who ruled these provinces, he could point out the city of Hawthorne even on a wintry day like this, when forbidding clouds swept in from the sea, heavy with threatening rain. For half a crown, he’d forgo the bridge and swim to shore if it meant he could get away from the tune.

  A knock came at the door. He pulled his attention away from the bridge long enough to bark out permission to enter. An apprentice pulled the door open wide enough for his long thin face and long hooked nose to peer in at him, letting the room flood with sound from the nearby tavern singer. His anger must have showed, for the apprentice broke into a series of nervous, almost petrified coughs rather than spit out what he had come for.

  Bregan waited as long as his short temper allowed before growling, “Either tell me or leave.”

  “Your father, Master. He sent this.” The apprentice held up his shaking hand.

  “Toss it here, then and get out.” He didn’t intend to hear another lyric about the abusive suitor and his poor downtrodden bride who was all but dead from his care of her by the time they reached the Nylara. The apprentice managed to drop the bundle of letters in his lap amid another fit of coughing before bowing and backing out as the singer revealed the husband’s deciding to cross the Nylara without the Ferryman and his goods-laden barge being tossed on waves as it swamped and the Ferryman watching as he and his bride began to sink.

  The door shut. It could not totally muffle the relentless singer as the heartless husband offered the life of his bride for passage across the river, and the Ferryman accepted. The irony of it was that his acceptance saved her soul even as it doomed that of her husband, but the girl hardly cared by then as she passed into the shadowy immortality of the phantom Ferryman. Shouts accompanied the gods be praised, last verse.“The banks of the Nylara are in stormy tide,

  Passing o’er the river looks grim

  There’s no one crossing from side to side

  We’re all a-waiting on him

  He’ll come when he’s ready and not a whit sooner,

  For the Ferryman’s taken a wife, a wife,

  Oh, the Ferryman’s taken a wife!”

  Bregan popped open the waxed sealing string on the packet. Several notes from his father fell open, as if the man could not confine all
his thoughts to just one letter. Actually, as was his wont, each missive probably concerned a single topic. It made for ease of concentration among his underlings and for record keeping, and even though it was his son whom he addressed, Willard Oxfort was not likely to change decades of dictating habit. Also, it was likely at least one of these letters had not been copied for the files and archives and had been meant for his eyes alone. The smell of the wax was still new, meaning his father had probably written these no later than last night and possibly even this morning.

  Bregan tapped the letters open with an unhappy grunt. The old man could sit in his gentleman’s estates, retired from everything but meddling while he still rode the caravan trails as well as handling the politicking his father set out for him to do. Meanwhile, actual leadership of the various traders’ guilds was kept dangling just out of his reach like so much bait by the elder Oxfort. When he had proved himself, the mantle would be settled on his shoulders. Proved himself! Did the brace he wore mean nothing? He would have had the old man assassinated years ago except that, unfortunately, it seemed he still had a thing or two to learn from Willard Oxfort. His gaze fell on the letters in his lap.

  One of those things seemed necessary to be learned at the lunching hour. He glanced at the small timepiece on his desk, a thing of extraordinary gears and water flow that needed to be turned but once a day, at the darkest hour. He had apprentices who would come in and do the chore, although he was often working that late himself, if not on the roads. If he took a carriage, he could make the lane of the Gods by the time indicated. He shoved that paper to the side and read the other notations sent him. One involved the marketing of forged items by various Bolger clans and if one might benefit by getting them to elect or assign a three-man council to unify the bargaining process or not. The last detailed a possible new trade route east which would undercut one of the Elven Ways, thereby saving on tolls and permits, although the road would be exceedingly rough going at first, having not been established or trekked. Willard thought armored caravan beasts might make their way through the undergrowth to help establish the route, and did Bregan have any input on the matter?