The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  “If you meet in combat, excepting the rout you witnessed at the river a few days’ past, I cannot predict who might win, but I can predict that there will not be enough survivors of either army to stand alone. You both may well waver on the threshold of annihilation, and what sort of victory is that? Quendius will wipe out the remnants, his work having already been done for him.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “She,” answered Daravan slowly, “is a very wise woman.”

  “I would hate to settle for second best.” Diort stood slowly. His jade eyes crinkled at the corners from the sunlight flooding the encampment.

  “If not her, there is another . . .”

  Abayan glanced to him.

  Daravan cleared his throat. “She has asked me, independent of the queen’s offer, to put herself before you.” He shifted in his chair purposely. “Lara has kept her hidden, and she’s not been publicly embraced by the court, but I imagine you’ve heard some tales of her. She holds the Talent of water, and no one’s been able to measure how strong it is. Your lands to the east are often in frequent need of good wells.”

  Diort’s nostrils flared slightly as he gave a mild snort and said, “I can hire a dowser.”

  “This woman cleared the Andredia of corruption and poison. Think of it, Abayan, sweet water when and where you need it. With water, even stone can bloom.”

  He blinked.

  Daravan pushed his lies a little. “Rivergrace asks only for peace. If you agree, she’s naïve enough to politicking that she would leave the details to such as you and I. Consider her suit as well.” Daravan left his cup sitting on the table.

  “A queen or a foundling with rare magic. I would be a fool not to consider either, if either considers me.”

  Daravan thought of mentioning the Raymy and then decided against it. If the Galdarkan’s intelligence was good enough, he would know. If not, Daravan didn’t wish to let him know the coast seemed vulnerable without the Jewel of Tomarq and that Diort might not have to move a finger to have Lariel beg him for an alliance when the ancient enemy came after them. She had strength in her current position, and he would barter with that, whether she liked it or not. He stood, matching Abayan’s gaze. He’d lit a fire in the man, and felt pleased to note it. “You have much to offer each other. My thanks for listening.”

  Diort dropped his chin in acknowledgment. He beckoned to his pavilion. “I’ll have my men show you out. There are areas which, despite your sharp eyes, you’ve not seen and I would rather keep to myself for the moment. I’m certain you understand.”

  Daravan reflected on the way out of the hills that he understood war all too well.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  GRACE SAT ON THE CUSHIONED LEDGE of her window and watched the mists of evening curl outside. The hour had grown late, but she hadn’t found sleep yet and had finally given up on her bed. What was she that Sevryn avoided her, and Lariel no longer felt she could trust her, and the Goddess who had cradled her had turned against her? She had come so far, only to falter. She tucked her hair behind her ear and then traced the tipped outline of it gently with one finger. Vaelinar and yet not. Whole and yet not. The fog billowed up against her window, and she put her palm to it. She could feel the dampness in the air, the crying out to be fulfilled with rain and yet to be denied it. She reached out and plucked the thread of water as it spun through the air toward her before realizing, too late, that the River Goddess might be trying to trap her.

  With that thought, she lost herself.

  Water of the deepest blue dragged Rivergrace plummeting downward. These were not the waters which gave her peace and hope. These were bitter cold and sharp and biting against her skin, swallowing her whole and flooding her with fear. Gray shards of ice lanced through the liquid, numbing her as they swirled around her, biting and tracking her plunge into the depths. She struggled against the fall, but another held her arms, clasped her from behind within an iron embrace, murmuring harsh words in her ear.

  This is my kingdom and you live here by my will, not yours. Give up to me that which you have stolen, and I will let you rise from here unharmed. Keep it, and you will remain here, chained until your flesh dissolves and your bones decay and all that stays will be your fettered soul. Keep that which you have taken from me, and all whom you have loved will become as nothing more than ash on the face of this earth while you cry after them and your tears feed my demesne. You will witness every agonizing moment of their mortality while they search uselessly for you and mourn your loss and struggle with lives which I shall knot and tangle in hopelessness until their return to dust. Neither they nor you will ever know peace. But you and I have sheltered together, and I am not heartless to you. Let go that which you hold that belongs to me and I shall reward you for its release, keep you close in all your long days to me, and you will prosper in your freedom.

  Grace fought for breath against the grip upon her body, her ribs and arms bound tightly, the cords on her throat straining, but she could not breathe and every sense of her body screamed silently against the death pressing in on her. Her hair and the other’s hair tangled about her, long streamers of ribbon flailing about her face and shoulders, a net through which she could barely see the endless blue of the water as the River Goddess bore her down and she sank like a stone. She prayed for that moment when her toes would touch a sandy bottom and she could kick upward, she could be centered, she would know where the surface lay above even if she could not hope to reach it in time . . . but nothing met her feet. The fall seemed endless and her lungs about to burst.

  Pray for drowning if you will, the Goddess hissed in her ear, but that mercy will never come. Not until I allow it.

  They fell deeper where sunlight could barely touch the water, and its blue became the color of a storm-filled night, dark and turbulent and unknowable. Her hair veiled her face in a gossamer curtain as she fought to keep her eyes open, feeling that if she closed them, the weight of the water would keep her from ever opening her eyes again and she would be truly blind in this kingdom. And if she could see again, what would she see? A troubled Sevryn who had gone to the arena day after day since their one night together, and who would barely speak to her after, battered and bruised and quiet, turning his face and eyes from her when they met. A love who would not, could not, share his mind with her though she could see a deep troubling which he could not hide from her, no matter how marked from training he might be. Would she seek then her sister, an absent Nutmeg who devoted herself to Jeredon’s well-being, her cheer and glow undeniable but meant for another now and not for Rivergrace’s comfort. Perhaps her gaze would fall upon an unbending Lariel who would neither avow nor disavow Grace’s own existence as a Vaelinar, though as Warrior Queen, she held all of their fates in her hand to crush or set free with a blessing. Did she truly wish to hold these in her thoughts any longer, as painful as they had become?

  A tremor ran through her. That she thought such things chilled through her, and she knew they were true thoughts, but they were not the ones by which she loved and lived. They were only clouds that might drift by, darkening her momentarily, but they were not what commanded the way she lived.

  She would not be turned as a weapon against herself! Rivergrace dragged a hand free and sliced it through the water in dismay, silencing the intruder in her thoughts where the River Goddess’ voice had invaded so slyly she almost could not tell her mind from the other’s. A quiet coldness bled from inside her head, a feeling so real she could not believe that crimson did not stain the waters capturing her. A frustrated hiss followed her small triumph.

  Give me back what is mine, and I will be gone from you, and you from my kingdom, with my blessings. Hold onto it, and this cursing will be but the beginning of many. . . .

  Grace found her voice. “You unraveled me into a single thread of life and soul, and then rewove me after I had given you shelter for twenty years. You held me as a child and only gave me up to live a true life when you couldn’t hold me
any longer! You tore me from my father and mother in floodwaters and let them die because you had no strength, and I became your vessel to shelter you. When I found the strength to grow, so did you, and we survived. You took everything from me, not once, but twice. I have nothing of yours, nothing!”

  Midnight-blue water churned about her in swirls of ice-white anger and silent rebuttal. Tiny bubbles danced through the froth and burst against her skin in staccato and painful stings.

  One arm freed, she reached across to free her other arm, her hand splayed across the pale-as-marble hand of the Goddess, a hand without warmth to it, with strength that seemed to melt as she touched it as though it were nothing more than ice. She pried the fingers off her forearm and then shrugged the cloaking weight of the Goddess off her.

  “I won’t let you take my freedom from me again! I am alive, and I am someone, not a shell holding your crippled essence. Give me that due, as I give you yours!”

  The water screamed.

  Her senses flooded back. Rivergrace came to herself, thrown across the room into a tangle of blankets. Her pillows tumbled to the floor and the hollow at the far side of the bed where Nutmeg usually slept, was yet still cold and empty. She brushed her hair from her face and stared toward the window for a long moment, feeling her throat pulse with the agony she had just experienced. She put a hand there, to feel it, to assure her that her heart still beat, that her body did not struggle for life and breath as it had. Dew sparkled upon her skin, and she felt her hair lying wetly upon her head as she pushed herself from an otherwise dry bed as dawn broke fitfully through the windows. She combed her hair through, smelling rain and lake water upon it. She put her hand out to a mound of blankets, feeling for Nutmeg just in case, but found no sign of her except for pillows that had been pounded into a hollow to match the small one in the mattress.

  She might as well be up and about as, no doubt, all the others were. She held little hope that she could find someone she could speak to about her vision. She’d asked before, vaguely, of one of the Vaelinars who healed soul as well as body, only to be told that dreams of suffocating water were dreams from beyond birth, and of the mother, and influences that weighed upon the mind. That much, she knew without arcane knowledge or study. As for it being only a dream, the manifestation had lain about her like a mantle. The River Goddess haunted her. She would until she had what she wished from Rivergrace or saw her dead and beyond surrender.

  She washed her hair quickly, not waiting for warm water or help, unable to bear the smell of the Goddess upon her. She dressed for a day where winter had finally crept in, solidly and in gray tones, rain drizzling quietly against the manor through a fog. She found no sign of Sevryn at the dining tables, and made her way outside to the showering racks where she could hear Bistane’s clear and handsome voice singing, a ballad that seemed to fit the somber tones of the morning.“At summer’s last bloom, at winter’s fall, at sword blade ever turning,

  The war came to an end on the banks of Ashenbrook.

  Through fields of death the river ran, its waters laced with blood,

  Bearing a fallen king upon its tide, carried onto his Returning.

  Spring has come and gone in time, with grasses ever greening

  Still the Ashenbrook flows through killing fields,

  Its dark and bitter waters running through banks of clay and bone.

  Only men can sing of memory, of war and its darkest gleaning.”

  He sang of Kanako’s death, the Vaelinar warrior who had quelled the uprising of the Bolger clans once and for all, a bloody conflict that had cost both the Vaelinars and the beastlike Bolgers dearly. It was their greatest and dearest triumph. She could not think of them united in an army that could sweep across the lands and slaughter all of Kerith they faced, but they had once. She could not think of Bolgers at all without thinking of the one she’d befriended in the mines where she had spent her earliest years. Rufus, with whom she’d shared bits of meager food and who had brought her flowers from the outside. His nature was fierce and gruff but honorable, and she could only think that the war his people had carried had risen out of desperation and misunderstanding. She ducked her head against a spattering of raindrops from the eaves of the outbuilding as she approached the showering racks.

  Barrels rested on overhead catwalks, and loosed water on those standing in the stalls below, a primitive but quick way of showering off sweat and dirt. Her father Tolby had built a similar arrangement, stalls that ran under barrels with spigots, in order to spray herb dips over his livestock. She could see Bistane, his bare torso rippled with muscle, as he turned under a spray of cold water, his song giving way to the process of getting cleaned. Beyond him, she could see Sevryn toweling off his head and shoulders and called out to him. Both men pulled on their leggings as she drew near. He frowned as he looked back at her, but he came out of the racks, his hair wet and glistening, bruises purpled against his skin, scars she knew intimately a faded white line against his arms and flanks, a rough towel in one hand and his tunic in the other.

  “Aderro,” he said, and his eyes warmed even though his face looked solemn. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s plain to see,” Bistane said, jostling him slightly as he joined them, “that only one thing can tumble a maid out of a warm bed so early on a bitter morning. She’s come to hear me sing and catch a glimpse of me.” He winked as he pulled on his shirt and began lacing it over his well-muscled chest. “We all know it wasn’t to come hear you sing.”

  “I sing.”

  “Of course you do! Like the croaking of a drunken Bolger. Now, Rivergrace, lass . . . I’ll bet you sing. Raised by Dwellers, surely you do.” He appraised her, a teasing smile on his finely etched features, his eyes of sharpest, cleanest blues that seemed to look not at her, but through her. She caught a sense of what it would be like to meet him on the battlefield. A frisson of fear ran through her.

  “What would you know of Dweller songs except those you hear in taverns?” Sevryn nudged him back, as he pulled on his tunic and tugged it into place with the slightest of winces.

  “Ah, lad. I know the Dwellers sing their orchards into blossom, and chant their beers into brewing, and even move their looms to the beat of a drum. There isn’t a moment in their lives go by that a song doesn’t run through it. Isn’t that right, fair Grace?”

  She had not thought upon it before, but now that Bistane spoke of it, she knew that he was right. Her family and the others she knew did weave a song throughout their daily lives, from the humming of her mother Lily as she tailored a fine new gown, to her brothers who whistled and jeered at one another as they did their chores, to Nutmeg who knew all the new dances and tried teaching them now and then to Grace who held few of the virtues of her nickname. “It seems you know my family well, Lord Bistane.”

  He finished lacing his shirt, and tilted his head, looking both at her and beyond her, and his tone saddened a bit. “Lass. Not only your family but many before it. Although my seeming to you is young, my life is filled with generations of families.”

  “Lived long and learned little,” Sevryn gibed. “Lyrics from the taverns and bathhouses about sum up your wisdom.”

  “Hey, now! Perhaps it’s time you and I have a go at it in the arena. I feel my virtue and honor need protecting.”

  “You can’t defend what you haven’t got. You lost your virtue long ago.” Sevryn put his hand on Rivergrace’s shoulder even as he answered lightly, “I won’t be held accountable for your actions from beyond my birthing.”

  “I am wounded!” Bistane placed his hand upon his chest. “Fair lady, you must witness for me. I should demand a duel. Although . . .” and his tone trailed off. “I will be defending myself enough, shortly. I should not alienate the very man who is likely to stand at my back protecting me from the Demon who crosses the borders of Larandaril even as we speak.”

  “Demon?” If a Demon had pierced the borders of Larandaril, her disturbing dreams perhaps had reason beyond her
own fears. It could not be Cerat. She knew his touch almost as well as she knew that of the River Goddess, yet if there existed one such a thing, there would be more. Like raiders, like Ravers.

  Bistane tossed his toweling aside onto the shower racks and dried his hands on the thighs of his pants as he answered her. “A She-Demon, Mistress Farbranch, one of biting meanness.”

  “Surely Lariel or Osten is putting together a detail to go deal with it? And how can such a thing get past the borders?”

  “Just such answers as I’ll be sent to get. I had hoped Sevryn might join me.”

  “I wouldn’t count on any alliance with me, Bistane. You’re on your own against that she-force and the grievances she brings with her.

  “Wounded again! Perhaps mortally now. Is there no honor among soldiers?”

  “Not this time.”

  Grace made a perturbed noise, and Sevryn’s hand rubbed her shoulder gently. “How can you joke about such a thing?”

  “Is not laughter a weapon? One I think such Demons would flee all the quicker. They have no sense of humor, for that would imply the warmth of life, and that they are bereft of as well.”

  “How can you stand to sense them?”

  “That’s not all there is to the world.” The levity left his face for a moment as he looked keenly at her. “Can you not see it? Feel Kerith? Is it true, then, that you freed the sacred Andredia River with little sense or knowledge of your skills? You were raised as a slave?”

  Sevryn’s fingers tightened on Rivergrace’s shoulder, so firm that she nearly cried out both from the surprise and pain of the grip, but instead she inhaled deeply, reminding herself that although she was in Larandaril and this was a gathering for war; not all who came here were true allies or friends. “I was enslaved, yes, and as for my skills, I’m learning to look upon the land as you do.”