The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  Bregan lowered his sword point a bit, so that Diort could not see it shake in his hand, not out of weakness, but a spate of anger. “No one leashes me.”

  “Good to know. I have sprung mine, but not without a great deal of effort. Taxing. Quendius is a man who knows the weaknesses of others, and exploits them.”

  “So do many other men.”

  “True.” Diort turned his face briefly, revealing the sharp outline of his profile, his hooked nose and proud brow, as he listened for something outside the firelight of the small camp. When he turned back, he said quietly, “I did not expect to find you here, but having found you, I think we should speak. If you cannot or will not talk with me, give me the courtesy of that acknowledgment and I will leave.”

  “I would never be so discourteous to a former business partner.” Bregan sat down, and indicated the stump across from him. He opened his pack and took out several cloth-wrapped parcels, the aroma of which filled the air with goodness: fresh bread, cheese, a delicately spiced and salted meat, and some good red apples. “Share my dinner?”

  And they ate quietly before they began to speak earnestly of many things.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  IF BREGAN OXFORT HAD BEEN THE ANSWER the oracle spoke of, Diort could not begin to fathom the question posed. He left the trader at his campfire, curled in sleep in a still night-dark morning, and made his way back to the pathway where he’d left his horse on a grazing tie. A feeling of discomfort crawled down his back as he did so, strangely not wanting to leave the Kernan alone although he knew Bregan’s prowess with the sword and his ability to take care of himself despite appearances. It felt as though an obligation had been laid on his shoulders, a beholding he could not shrug off though Abayan knew he neither held nor could fulfill it. No rhyme or reason lay behind this sense of obligation, and he gritted his teeth as he walked away from it. It seemed that the farther he got from it, however, the more it compelled him to return to Bregan’s side, until he took up his horse’s reins and led him back on a pathway. Then it disappeared with a snap! as if a taut line had broken.

  His horse walked wearily after him, brown-and-yellow stems of grass hanging from his lips as he still chewed. The pathways he remembered from his youth still existed, although roots choked them now and gravel falls, and nests of ferocious rodents the size of his torso. He had cleaned and cleared what he could, and the branch he chose now should take him all the way to the shores of Hawthorne in far less time than it would take him to ride there. Time did not exist in the tunnels as it did elsewhere. How its string was knotted up by the magic of the Mageborn, he could not tell, for he was not a Mageborn, only the son of generations created to protect them. It was not a magic like those worked by the strangers, that he knew. This came from Kerith, from within its very being, and did not have the twisted sense to it that anything made by the Vaelinars had when he touched upon it. Abayan could not declare that Vaelinar magic was unclean but only different. As different as clay from water, neither being good nor bad on their own till used or misused.

  He had ridden through many of the paths and had to lead his horse through still more, but as fast as they moved him, and as powerful as they were, they were for him alone. He could not move an army through, even one by one, if he wished. Perhaps a handful of guardian Galdarkans might be suffered, but he doubted the pathways would allow more. If they could be enlarged or re-made . . . Rakka growled at his back as if sensing his thoughts. But Abayan would not wield the war hammer unless a rockfall impeded his way, for the weapon was not a maker, it was an unmaker. To use it unwisely on the pathway would be to bring the whole thing collapsing upon him, burying the tunnel and himself forever. Rakka, earthmover Demon, did not care. It was its way to find the flaw in stone and bring it shivering, quaking, down to nothing more than gravel. It held no care or thought other than to destroy. Diort was more than a Demon, or so he prayed. He moved toward the ocean, toward a faraway light that was now no more than a spark in the twilight of the pathway’s gloom, knowing that when he got there, he would do no more than look and then return the way he had come, no answer in hand other than that his duty as a guardian had been performed as foretold.

  Or had it been?

  “My bottom hurts,” Nutmeg announced, “and this is boring.” She threw one leg over the saddle and bounced a moment sideways on her trotting pony. “Three days on the trail and nothing.”

  Rivergrace reined up. “Would you rather,” she asked, the corner of her mouth turning up a little, “be practicing in the arena?”

  “Don’t have to practice. Jeredon said my talent was in fisticuffs, and my brothers had already taught me well. That, and the branch club.”

  “I suppose chamber pot swinging would be an offshoot of your club prowess.”

  Nutmeg grinned. “It had better be.” She pushed her straw hat back off her head. “Do you suppose he even noticed?”

  She undoubtedly meant Jeredon. “I rather doubt it,” Grace answered sadly. “I imagine all their thoughts were on Osten. Losing him is a great blow to all of us. I can’t think of what it will be like to have him gone.”

  “I can’t either. Word on the back stairs was that Bistel Vantane will come to replace him, and all the servants are shaking in their boots. Bistel is a hard man, they say, and gives no quarter to any under him, from the lowest to the highest.”

  “Would you rather have a man command who gives favors to the high and frowns on the rest of us?”

  “No, but . . . he is stern. Not like Bistane.”

  “I think he’s very like Bistane, from when we met him last high summer. He doesn’t sing, of course, but he notices everything and forgets nothing. His eyes are like the war falcons their House is named for, I think. Bistane can let his humor show because he doesn’t have to command yet, but he never forgets he’s his father’s son for all that.”

  “How could you forget that?”

  “Perhaps if you don’t know who your father is.”

  Nutmeg’s face went red. “Grace, I didn’t mean—you don’t think I meant ...”

  “What? Oh, never! How could I forget my own family? Pull your hat back on, Meg, I think the wind is whistling straight through your ears!” Grace put her boot toe out to jostle her sister’s boot with a small laugh.

  “Oh, well, I suppose that’s better than having a head thicker than wood!”

  “At least wood floats.” She sobered a bit, as she gave rein to her horse, listening to Nutmeg snort as she tugged her hat back in place and followed.

  Nutmeg had said only once that she could not believe with all Grace had gone through, that she had not been given her father’s name when she died . . . her true father. The River Goddess had revealed her mother, Lindala, to her, but nothing of her father or her lineage. Not a one of the Vaelinars queried later on her behalf could report a Lindala in their bloodline. She might as well not have existed among a people who clung to their Houses and Strongholds and family lines as if they were ropes thrown to a drowning person. Even now, with half-breeds and more thinning down the Vaelinar heritage, names were told, and known, and remembered. Stigma, yes, for going outside their boundary but remembered. An errant talent here and there might yet be recovered. Sevryn had told her some of the Houses were recruiting and even abducting mixed breeds and trying to refine the Vaelinar in them. Pride no longer stood in their way. So, then, why did no one claim Lindala? Why did no one know her? Why wasn’t anyone able to name the man who’d courted and won her, and then lost them both to slavery?

  Yet, as he’d also said to her. “No one claims Quendius either and his Vaelinar heritage is indisputable.”

  Grace held her Dweller raising deep inside her, a core around which the rest of her existed. She knew she’d be a different person if anyone else had found her on the Silverwing River, and she thanked the fates for the loving family who had. She would not carry shame for it. But it seemed she needed proof and more of who she might have been so that the Warrior Queen Lariel Anderie
on could also trust who she might become, and for that she knew of no other place to turn than the historian and scholar Azel d’Stanthe of Ferstanthe. There were answers buried in his library to questions no one could dare to ask, and she would beg his permission to seach for the information she needed. More than that, she hoped to find her true self. She’d had enough of Lara telling her what she could and could not say or could and could not do with the magic that did course through her veins. How could she not help if she held the means within her to do so? How could the Vaelinars look at the other peoples of Kerith as nothing more than beggars? It was not a matter of fearing Lara’s wrath. It was a matter of not being able to look within herself and see what she wished to. She did not remember her mother or know her father, but she knew herself. That, she would not let anyone take away from her, be it a Warrior Queen or a Goddess of the Rivers, even though she knew now that her hold upon it was frail. She needed an anchor. Once she had thought that anchor would be Sevryn. Now, she didn’t know. But Azel held the key to knowledge and knowledge would give her answers she needed.

  And, as she’d found in the past, possibly answers she had not hoped for, or wanted, but would have to deal with. So be it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  BISTEL BROUGHT HIS ARM DOWN, stroking the falcon which bobbed his head to rub his hooked beak against a proffered finger, before ripping into a strip of bloodied meat that Bistel held. The bird made small sounds of warning off as it ate and Bistel heeded its cries. No mere messenger bird, this was a proud vantane who had been trained to fight his way through the skies and across enemies, if need be. The bird had flown far and hard, and his message had been difficult indeed. Osten, dead. His services asked for. She dared not demand, not after the disagreement over warfare they’d had, but she asked. His life turned, in a way which he had hoped to avoid for a few decades longer. How do I count my sins, O God of War, or will they be counted for me? He watched the bird devour its reward, bloody gobbets of flesh that had moments ago been a small coney which also had no doubt wished for a few more moments of life. Such was the way. He handed off the vantane to one of his falconers, stripped off his glove, and headed back to his house to make ready. He would meet Lariel Anderieon at the appointed place but not before his time. He had a few arrangements to make, first. He would honor his pledge—but in his own way.

  He walked through his manor, lingering a moment here and there. Matters had been settled for Bistane who knew every corner of this home as well as he did. He also had in writing what he needed for Verdayne. Those papers he had placed in two sets of trusted hands, and would place in a third, lest there be any argument. War could take any of them. He paused in his bedroom long enough to pluck a cloak pin out of a carved box on a side table, fingering it a long while before pinning it in place. Created with a distinctly female craftsmanship, he had no real idea who had smithed it. Bistel gave a thin smile. He liked to think his wife had done it, although he had no idea who his wife could have been, that life torn away from him many, many years ago. He was young then, barely more than a stripling lord, a very young, knee-high squire. He and his father, whom he’d served, had been the lone survivors of their immediate line when the world exploded and Vaelinars found themselves on Kerith. There were others close enough in blood and temperament that they’d formed a House and kept a front against the ilk of those who became known as the ild Fallyn.

  They had all had an affinity for one another then, those who grouped into Houses and Strongholds. Bistane walked as if he had been born to step into his footsteps without a single falter. He had his own mind, for which Bistel was grateful, for he had never intended to rear an exact replica for himself . . . Gods forbid his same mistakes would be repeated endlessly on Kerith.

  Bistel placed his palm over his cloak pin and then left his room. He pored over ledgers and books in his study, called in a scribe to make a few changes and notes and then, when the last page had dried, he closed his journal solemnly and told his scribe good-bye. The wizened Kernan corked his ink bottle, gathered up his kit of pens and whittling knives and his sheaves of paper, and backed out of the study after a deep bow and an even deeper sniff to hold back what looked suspiciously like tears in his eyes.

  Bistel waited until the house had emptied before packing his kit and leaving himself. He paused by a silver-backed mirror near the main doors. His sharp nose, his bristle of close-cut now shock-white hair, his eyes that blazed blue upon blue, this face was not likely to look upon itself again in these halls. He knew that even if the mirror, once storied to be an oracle of the Vaelinar, did not.

  When he rode his horse out, his warhorse on a lead behind him, he did not look back although he could hear the stir of stableboys and men scrambling out to look, and falconers, and cooks, and tailors, and gardeners, and smiths, and their wives and children, all watching their lord ride out to his last war. They could not know what he knew in his heart, that when he went down if he went down, it would not be in defeat but victory. That was part of his pledge to Lara.

  Verdayne walked out with him, striding at his mount’s shoulder, as far as the gates at the lane’s edge, beyond the earshot and view of the holding. He wrapped his hand about Bistel’s boot and squeezed the foot as hard as he could.

  “No,” said Bistel to him, and dismounted, and took his second son in a hug and held him for a very long time. “I loved your mother as much as I have ever loved anyone, and you and Bistel still hold my heart. Never forget that as long as you live, which will be by anyone’s standards, a long and full life.”

  He kissed Verdayne’s cheek, tasted tears, got back on his horse, and rode off, his heart full.

  “You seem vexed.” Tressandre ran her hand through her hair, tilting her head to one side as she looked up at Jeredon. She sat at his feet, her slender legs crossed, as the archers he’d been instructing took a break for water and fresh bread and cheese laid out for them. “They’re doing well.”

  “Very well. It’s not them I have a complaint with. I haven’t seen Nutmeg for a day or two.”

  “Your little nursemaid? Should I be insulted, that I haven’t taken care of you?” She let her voice be light.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Never, Tressandre. I just realized I hadn’t seen her.”

  “She is a country lass, is she not?”

  “Raised on her family’s ranch and orchards, yes, although they now own a fine cider house in Calcort, and her mother’s tailoring skills have made her mistress of a good shop.”

  Tressandre could not catch his gaze. Jeredon searched the archery field and the open lands beyond it as though he hoped to see the object of his thoughts. She stirred, putting her legs out in front of her to stretch them, showing a good bit of flesh, and knowing that, finally, had drawn his attention. The wind held a cold, nasty touch to it, but her ultimate goal made momentary discomfort bearable. “One of my men said that he saw her leave on her pony, with hat and packs and what might have been a fishing pole. Perhaps she took a day or two off. It is difficult work being a caretaker.”

  Jeredon made a noise at the back of his throat. “I’m not the easiest of patients either.”

  She searched his profile. One did not supplant a rival with ill words, she decided. Not this one, at any rate, though she could scarcely believe a Dweller could rival her. “She has worked hard, m’lord Eladar. Without her diligence, you would not be what you are today, with muscles still strong and willing so that I could bring you to your feet. Let her go for a day or two and find some peace. She deserves that, I think.”

  He let his breath out slowly. “Yes, yes, I imagine she does.” Jeredon looked at her then. “You surprise me, Tressandre.”

  She let her mouth curve slightly. “In good ways, I should hope.”

  “Very good.” His hand on her shoulder tightened. “I’m seeing substance I’ve overlooked before.”

  “You surprise me as well. What my family counts as base, you seem to prize. I’m not afraid to show my true self before
you.” She put her head against his knee, a gesture she hoped he would see as tender and not designed to hide the expression on her face. Jeredon had not seen the true side of her. Most never would. He would, well and good, but only when it was time and he was bound to her with ties that would be unbreakable. Perhaps even an heir from the endangered bloodline. Until then, she played at this charade to get what she wished from him. “After a day in this wind, it’ll be welcome to swim at the hot pools. Good for you, m’lord Jeredon, as well.”

  His hand dropped from her shoulder to her back, massaging her lightly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Oh, yes. She would make certain that their visit was unforgettable and that he would look forward to it, day after day, until the battlefield drew them. He had a chink in his armor, the arrogant Eladar, and she knew exactly where it was now. She would conquer him first, as surely as she was female and an ild Fallyn. A genuine smile flushed her lips.

  The cheerful prattling fell at last into blessed silence. Quendius dropped into a crouch to watch the girls as they approached a sharp-banked brook, surging high with runoff from a highland snow. They halted with their backs to him, their horse and pony swinging their tails slowly from side to side, while the tall one seemed to have a concern about crossing. This time of year, they were fortunate they weren’t up to their mounts’ hocks in snow and ice, so why would a little high water bother them? His mouth curled as he watched. He did not know how the two of them had lived thus far. He had trailed them for the better part of two days and neither had the slightest notion. He could have slipped into their camp at any time and slit their throats. After listening to the little one talk endlessly, he was almost ready to, except that did not fit his plans for the moment. He did not think the tall one would go on without her companion if something untoward happened.

  After long moments of watching, he realized they had fallen into complete silence and were waiting. For what? To rest their mounts? Then why not build a fire and do something reasonable like dismount and let them graze a bit as well? What were these soft, silly creatures thinking? Behind him, his own mount stamped as if reading his impatience.