The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  He checked the shelves for dust, and the mites that hid almost invisibly within, and for other pests that he had the apprentices smoke out of the various wings of the library on a regular basis. All seemed to be in order. His robes billowed about him as he savored the moment, his chest swelling in a bit of pride that he allowed himself. Spring would bring him a new handful of apprentices, in answer to his plea, to be trained for other libraries, perhaps one in Hawthorne and one to the east among the Galdarkan lands, knowledge being taken to be used and disseminated, as he’d always argued it should be. There would be no Books of All Truth in those libraries, but that would be his next crusade. Memory could be a fragile thing, as fragile as truth, and he wanted to encourage his people and other peoples to document their lives. That, he told himself, was what lifted them above animals, the tales to be told to educate and illuminate. Knowledge.

  Azel brushed his fingertips across a shelf. A very, very faint sheeting of dust met his touch. He lifted his hand and saw not the gray dun of ordinary dust, but a rusty, near-black soot. It had a greasy feel as he rubbed his fingers against one another. A nasty, evil feel. He sniffed at it. The odor, so faint he could not detect it until held to his nose, permeated his senses. A rotting smell. A wrong, destructive stink.

  Azel wiped his hand against his robes before turning to run out of the room, yelling for his apprentices.

  When he finished concocting a defense, he would have to send a message to Lariel Anderieon and tell her that corruption had been brought to the library of Ferstanthe, and an enemy had struck at the heart of the Way of the Books of All Truth. He would have to name those who had most recently been there, even though he quailed at the thought of doing so. He watched as a handful of his best came running in, faces flushed and hair wild, tugging their robes and tunics into place.

  “We’ve mold in the books. Not any mold, but a corruption of epic possibility. We could lose every book in here. They must be separated and treated, as quickly as possible. There may be a handful which will need to be copied. If there are, they are to be treated and put aside for me. Your vows hold you even against this dire circumstance, am I clear?”

  Six faces, complexion paling, three white, one ash, one copper, and one bronze, nodded at him. He clapped his hands together. “Now move!”

  The senior apprentice pointed at two juniors. “Prepare isolation rooms. Set wards. A sitting table per book. You, Isargth, go get the pots to boiling, I want mold rot potion in gallons readied. The rest of us remove one book at a time. Wash your hands in herbal antiseptics before you touch another. Clear? Lord Azel, I presume you will do your work, if necessary, in the Star west room?”

  He dipped his head in confirmation.

  “Done, then.” The apprentices turned and dashed in their assigned directions.

  Azel could feel his heart pounding in his chest. His library was a Way, the Way which had built the House of Ferstanthe, and now it felt as though it had begun to tumble down around him. He looked at the volume in his hand. It seemed to be at the heart of the contagion, and he knew he would have to treat it and then copy and replace needed pages. This Book had been written by the founder of House Pantoreth, of which Tiiva had been the last direct descendant. “I’ll be in my room. Send the disinfectant and potion there immediately, whatever we have on hand while the large vats are being brewed.” Afraid to touch shelves or even his other hand with the contaminated memoir, he made his way out of the cabinets of All Truth. He brushed shoulders with Lonniset, the youngest and most promising of his apprentices. He looked at her wide eyes.

  “We’ve been through worse,” he said reassuringly to her. “We’ll weather this.” He did not believe his own words as he passed her by.

  Lonniset finished pulling on her gloves as Azel left the cabinets. She pivoted, looking at all the volumes, most of them small, delicate journals, the truthful and priceless recollections of the dead. A faint odor hung in the air, beyond that of leather and the mustiness of aging paper. She took a hesitant step forward, uncertain of where to start, but she could feel the darkness which had struck at the library, feel it like a black arrowhead in her chest, expanding with each breath. As she took another step, trying to decide where Azel had swept the first volume off the shelves for that should be her beginning place, her elbow smacked painfully at the end of the rack. She sucked her breath in at the smart of it as a journal tumbled to her feet. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands, not recognizing the item. The apprentices knew all the books, even though they rarely touched them, but they knew the look and title of each and every one, emblazoned into their fiber. It was not only part of their job, it was the Way which braided itself into them when they were inducted. She did not know this one. She ran a gloved finger over the title, punched into the leather.

  Fyrvae of DeCadil Forgotten.

  It was clean. Worn and the leather aged, but clean. She pocketed it to both take it to the decontagion area and to show Lord Azel. As she did so, and put her head back up, the odor lingering in the air intensified. Lonniset turned her head slowly as her body went rigid. The smell of putrid flesh, of rotting stench, filled her nostrils. She gagged and brought her hand up to cover her nose, even as she examined the nearby shelves closely. Here, centered here . . . her free hand came up, palm down, as if she would grasp something with it and yet she did not, only brushed the air above the cabinet and then, her hand went icy cold, all the way to the elbow. A dark oiliness coated the back of her throat, despite her gloved hand. She tried to swallow it down and could not, her whole mouth filling with bitterness. Then her searching hand, fiery numb with the aching cold, plunged down on an object wedged between two books and came up with a hard, round ball which stabbed into the fabric protecting her flesh.

  A pomander filled her palm. Lonniset stared at it in wonder. Not a fragrant sachet of herbs studding a small fruit meant for a ladies’ drawer or purse, this thing had been built of the most vile Kernan witchery she’d ever seen—or tasted—in her young years. She had a small strain of Kernan blood in her, the embarrassment of her family, two generations back, but now it pricked her like the sharpest of thorns and she thanked it. Without it, the object might have gone unnoticed for most of the day until the shelves were emptied. Azel himself hadn’t sensed it as the heart of the attack. She let out a sharp whistle signaling, Found it, to the others, for she’d no doubt that this abomination was the source of their problems. Finding it, however, gave no promise that its influence could be stopped or reversed. She stepped out of the cabinets as Silman the senior apprentice and then Lord Azel himself answered her whistle and they all stared in shock at the pomander.

  The words of Fyrvae went forgotten in her pocket.

  Nutmeg stood in her saddle and bounced for a few strides of her pony, her nose wrinkled, and her hat flouncing off to be held only by the ribbon firmly tied under her chin. The wind had chilled her nose to an apple red, matching her cheeks. “I am not wading across this river.”

  “I agree, it’s too cold.” Grace brought her mount to a halt and peered at the body of water cutting across their path. Cold but not deep, certainly not deep enough to make it dangerous to ford. Runoff from the hills and mountains had not hit to swell the rivers and brooks they’d come across. Too dry. Where had all the winter rain and snow gone? She wiped one eye with the back of her hand. She wanted to be with Sevryn, to tell him what she’d learned and what she feared. Would she be able to read an expression on his face, a face he had schooled to keep his emotions silent, a face that he had schooled in the service of Lariel? Would he accept her? Could he? He had suffered the worst degradations a man could endure under Quendius and Narskap. If he left her the slightest hope, she would fight for him, fight for both of them. But only if he could give her the faintest glimmer of hope. She needed that, as the most stubborn blade of grass needed the slightest drop of rainwater and hint of sunlight.

  “Grace? Grace, are you in there?” Nutmeg squinted up into her face as she pulled her recalc
itrant hat back onto her head.

  “I am. Just thinking.”

  “That library gave us a bushel to think about, didn’t it?”

  “It gave me a whole cartload, I think.” Grace smiled briefly at Meg. “I’m sorry I’ve been thinking too much.”

  “You’ve always been the quiet one,” she answered. “I’m used to that.”

  “You’ve been quiet a lot lately, too.”

  “I have thoughts running around in my head like two squirrels fighting over a nut.” Nutmeg fussed a moment with her thick and lustrous hair, trying to tame it under her hat without much success. It had started out the morning braided, but with every bouncing step of her mount, it had slowly come unwound.

  “Jeredon.”

  “Aye. Am I so foolish, Rivergrace?”

  “Maybe.” She looked away for a moment, not wanting to see any hurt in her sister’s eyes before looking back again. “You can’t love him.”

  “But I do, and I thought he loved me, too.”

  “Oh, Meg.”

  “I used to think it was meant to be.” It was Nutmeg who looked away then, unable to meet her gaze. “And when we . . . whenever he made love to me . . . I thought the world had stopped and started again.”

  "Meg ...”

  “No. Don’t be disappointed in me. I couldn’t bear it if you were, or Da or Mom.” She sighed. “I couldn’t bear it. And now he won’t even look at me, and I should have known, I should have, that it couldn’t be. He tried t’be telling me. I wasn’t for accepting. But it was in the books, Grace. In all the books and scrolls. Vaelinars have never taken a Dweller to wife. Never. Never.” Her voice trailed off.

  “It has nothing to do with you. He’s Vaelinar, and I’ve begun to learn that has meaning far deeper than any of us could know unless we were born and raised as one.”

  “You’re an outsider, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not Sevryn.”

  “Oh, he is. Just not at Lariel’s side. She raised him up, and she can cast him down, too, if she wishes. But he’s a half-breed, and the others don’t forget that.”

  “We picked a fine pair, didn’t we?”

  “They are a fine pair. I’m just not sure if we can hold onto our dreams with them.”

  Nutmeg looked to her then. “You wouldn’t leave Sevryn.”

  “I would if he didn’t try. It’s like a pony and cart, I think. It’s a partnership, or neither goes anywhere. I won’t do all the work. I’ll walk away first because part of love is respect, and if he doesn’t have it for me, I won’t hang on and hope he finds it somehow. I can’t give him all my strength for what faces us if he doesn’t value it and give back his.”

  “Respect,” echoed Nutmeg. She nodded. She pointed at the river. “That’s settled, then, I think we should get our respectable butts home.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  SEVRYN OPENED HIS MAP AGAIN, carefully, the paper protesting with a crackle as he did so. Years had made it ever more brittle and even with care it would not last long as he used it, but he hadn’t taken time to have it copied. Nor, he reflected, would he want it scribed by someone else. The slightest bit of error or straying or overlook would give him an entirely different document than the one Gilgarran had secreted. A fast horse and the peculiar work of the Ferryman had brought him here and quickly. Aymaran lifted a hoof as if to stomp in protest against the skirling wind and icy mist that gusted off the escarpment, but he put it down in silence as Sevryn used his Voice to soothe and quiet him. Carefully, he returned the map to its original folds and stowed it away. He kneed the horse down off the ridge a little, getting as close to the weathered structures he’d found as he dared without encountering a sentry.

  This then, was where Quendius had withdrawn. A thin curl of blue-gray smoke rose from the main fortress building and a large outbuilding to the rear. One would be for the kitchen chimney and the other, unless he was greatly mistaken, would be the forge. The fires in the forge would be banked, coals only, kept going mainly for minor repair work and to avoid having to lay an entirely new fire if needed. He could see a lone man pass by every now and then, bent against the stinging wind, cloak wrapped tightly about his body. On occasion it would be a Bolger. But as Sevryn assessed the area keenly, he could see that whatever forces Quendius had held here had been moved out. This had been a training facility and barracks as well as forge. He could see the working arenas, the targets, the trenches. He knew what he looked down upon. The only thing he did not know was where Quendius had taken his men, but he thought that obvious.

  Both the Vaelinar and the Galdarkan armies would have their backs to his raiders. Both would be equally vulnerable in the aftermath of their battle.

  Sevryn turned his horse off the ridge and dug his heels into Aymaran’s flanks, hard as Time spurred him. If sentries spied him, they’d still have to catch him.

  At the first hard-flowing river he could find to cross, he reined up, steam rising from Aymaran’s warm body and his. He dismounted to stand with the toe of his boots in the water and he called for the Ferryman. He knew that, if the Ferryman had taken him from the banks of the Nylara to another river, the Ferryman would also show up to return him, as if the trip were a circle and must be completed. So had the journey Daravan taken him on worked. Summoned and crossed, then he was there to summon again for a return crossing. But Sevryn was not at all certain how Daravan could order up the Ferryman otherwise or if the phantom would obey anyone else. There had been payment promised between the two and when the specter had thought to garner the same from Sevryn, Daravan had denied the Ferryman. Would there be a payment required now, if the Ferryman appeared, and could he afford the price?

  His arm ached. He rubbed it through his cloak and shirt. The wound healed quickly, as if the dire arrow of Quendius had barely struck him, but it had drilled deeply before rejecting his flesh. He couldn’t call it anything else. The arrow had rejected him, denied itself the taking of him as prey as its brethren had taken Osten. He could only be happy that it did, but he knew Cerat’s voice when he heard it, knew the Demon’s touch when he felt it. Quendius had imbued the Demon into his arrows. Why, then, had Cerat not killed him? He knew the sliver of Cerat he carried inside himself called for anger and rage, blood and death. Would he not have been the desired target? The meat that Cerat could not resist? Would he not?

  Or, perhaps, like bards and toback shop tale-tellers liked to posit, there is a time and a season for all things, even death.

  If the Ferryman would take a chunk of Cerat as his toll, he would gladly pay.

  Sevryn’s mouth eased into a thin, dry smile. He kicked at the lip of the river. “I’ve no caravan or goods, all I have is need, Ferryman. Come, and take me across.”

  He waited. A falcon winged high overhead, its cry swallowed by the wind. Trees sounded like a restless tide on both sides of the river. The water itself rushed and gurgled and spun away from him. Aymaran lowered his head to drink, slowly, wise horse not to drink too fast or too deep after a hard ride but unable to resist a drink at all. He squatted and cupped the freezing water for a drink himself.

  A vision stabbed through his eyes, a lightning moment, a view of Rivergrace and Nutmeg at water’s edge. He felt her as keenly as he felt the stabbing cold of the river he touched.

  But how and why did she ride as he did? Why wasn’t she back at Larandaril’s hold, safe for the moment where he’d left her? He cupped the river again, thrusting his arm fully into the whitecaps meeting the shoreline but no other sight came to his eyes. Had the two been alone or riding with Lariel? Did the queen hasten her way to war and to join Bistel?

  He pushed both hands into the water, making Aymaran throw his head up with a snort and back away as he cried out, “Aderro! Rivergrace!” The illusion had no answer for him.

  A dry voice over his shoulder said, “ Aderro? That is how you cry for me?”

  Sevryn pivoted in a spray of icy water and the Dark Ferryman stood waiting with his cowled head low
ered to look upon him. Did the being have a sense of humor or need? Had it ever been part of the living world? Sevryn would have sworn not, but he’d just been greeted by a voice filled with irony. He looked into the abyss of the cowl and saw nothing.

  The Ferryman held out his hand to seek payment. “Who will you die for?”

  A chill danced upon Sevryn’s neck, as the Ferryman eerily echoed what Daravan had said only so many days ago to him. He answered, “For my lady Rivergrace. And for my queen.”

  With a nod and a beckon to follow, the specter moved past him, into the river. Sevryn caught at his arm as he did. “Wait!” The shock of contact rocked him onto his heels, but he did not let go as the being looked down at him again. Sparks flew along his sleeve and the robes of the Ferryman as he held him. But the being paused.

  “The Andredia. Can you take me to the Andredia River?” Sevryn was not, could not be sure, that the Ferryman even existed in the same time and place that he did, for all its actions and reactions. A Way of the Vaelinar, yet not a Way that any one admitted to creating or directing, the Ferryman did what he did.

  The abyss of its face looked into his for a very long moment. “Payment will be rendered,” the Ferryman said flatly. He shook off Sevryn’s hand and waded back into the river. Sevryn grabbed for Aymaran’s reins and hurried to follow. A deal seemed to have been struck. He did not know the payment or when it would be collected. Too late to worry about the consequences, he strode in the Ferryman’s wake.

  The river rose before them like a wall, a tidal wave coming in from the sea, and its silty bottom grabbed at his steps as if it were quicksand. Aymaran whickered in alarm as Sevryn bent his head low, forcing himself into the spray as water threatened to curl over them, wiping them all out. Yet it never engulfed the Ferryman. Every step he took, the wave retreated, still towering, still undulating, still threatening, but never crashing down upon them. Icy water soaked him to the bone, and his horse slogged behind, moaning in pain. Sevryn put his hand to the chin strap, rubbing Aymaran, encouraging him with a hope the river’s bank lay only a few more strides away.