The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  Then Quendius nocked the arrow again and took his position. The fighting grew fierce as Bistel opened a wedge for Diort and the tall Galdarkan warlord stood at the tunnel’s opening and raised his war hammer Rakka, earthmover, to strike.

  “Can’t have that,” Quendius said. He pulled the string taut.

  Narskap felt Cerat as the Demon churned hotly inside of him. His mouth drew tautly to either side in a rictus of pain. He drew the strength of the arrow within him. He drew on Rakka, which he could feel nearby. He called on the small but bloodthirsty demon he’d imprisoned decades ago in the sword Quendius carried. He called them all back. All home, to him. To him. He waited to see what kind of death Cerat might bring him.

  Nutmeg raised her head from Jeredon’s bloody chest. She stared with anger at the rocks above. She knew who had shot the arrow. She gently laid Jeredon’s still form down and pulled his short sword from its sheath. By branch and root, leaf and flower, she would take her vengeance or die trying. She climbed over a split boulder and through a handful of stunted pines, their needles gray green with dryness and sharp as sewing needles. She scrambled over a quartz-shot bit of stone that would normally catch her eye with its beauty, and a slide of gravel slipped under her boots, taking her with it in a hail of pebble and dust.

  “Now, for the love of the Gods,” Bistel said to Diort. With a grunt, he twisted his sword to let a Raymy carcass fall from it, turned, and parried a razor-sharp pincer on his aryn staff. Bistane held the corridor a length away, a sword in each hand, afoot, and busy. Father and son and Galdarkan had carved their way up to this rocky gate and held it free. It would only stay that way for a breath or two, but they had cleared it. Raymy boiled inside, hesitating, their voices in low growls and piercing hisses, bottle-necked at the cavern’s exit.

  Diort bunched his shoulders and swung his great war hammer upon the rock arch. The hammer hit with a noise like thunder, but he did not hear Rakka’s voice sound. Rock split at the impact, but the arch of the tunnel stayed in place. Diort wrapped his hands tightly about the handle to strike again, and he felt the absence. Rakka had gone. Where, he did not know. Died, disappeared, gone. The hammer had emptied of the Demon God. He put his head back and roared in disappointment.

  In a curtain of gravel and dirt, Nutmeg slid under the hooves of Bistel’s immense warhorse. She let out a tiny squeal as she did, and Bistel stared down in amazement.

  “Quendius,” she got out. “Arrows!”

  Bistel dismounted in a leap and grabbed Diort by the shoulder, swinging him about. As he did, the air whistled and crimson blossomed deep in his left shoulder.

  "Father!”

  Bistel put a hand to his wound and the arrow. He looked to his son. Blood splattered his stark-white hair and sharply-chiseled face. A knowing expression passed through his blue-within-blue eyes.

  “Get the warlord mounted and out of here.”

  Bistane kicked a body out of the way to get to him. “My lord . . .”

  “Do it.” He took Nutmeg by the elbow and hoisted her to her feet. In chopped strides, he pulled her over bodies strewn along the trail.

  “Father!” Bistane had Diort mounted and stood at the reins of his own horse as it reared and danced among the blood.

  “Son. Go.” He paused a moment longer, and then he tossed the aryn staff, its wood bitten and nicked with the blows it had parried.

  Bistane caught it from the air. His face hardened. He threw himself on horseback and whipped both the horses with the staff, bolting from the scene.

  Bistel turned back. He stumbled. His chest gurgled. He broke the arrow shaft. He looked down at Nutmeg and seemed to really see her for the first time. He touched her wet face. “This is far less safe than a library.” He pointed their way.

  She could see the copse he led her to, and put her small weight under his shoulder to help him to the shelter. Behind them, the Raymy and Ravers quarreled among themselves over the carcasses of their own as they issued from the cavern, and the two of them were forgotten. He sank gratefully to the ground. He took off his helmet, let it drop, and lay down beside it, his snow-white hair glistening with sweat.

  “Did you . . . find what you needed . . . at the library?”

  “Not what I hoped.”

  “And . . .” He paused to take a long, sucking breath. She could only wonder why the arrow had not eaten him inside out, but it mattered little. It had killed him anyway. “And what had you hoped for?”

  “I wanted to find out if I could love a Vaelinar, and if he could love me back.”

  “Ahhhh.” He touched her wet cheek again. “That is not . . . the sort of thing . . . we Vaelinar write in our books. We feel it, but we do not write it.” His chest bubbled and she could see his pulse throb in his neck, and his skin pale. “When this is all done,” and he turned his head, peering down the slope toward the river savannah where two armies melded to fight a third, “Ask Bistane to tell you about Verdayne.” He sucked in a breath. “I have something . . . I want you to take. It is a burden, a trust.” He licked his lips. “You can say no.”

  “There is no one else here.”

  He smiled thinly. “Bistane will come back for . . . me. But it is not something . . . I wish him to have . . . yet. You are honest. By the very stock of your blood, you are honest.” He gathered another breath, in great pain from the creases across his face. “Take the book from inside my mail, tucked in my shirt. Keep it. Give it to your sons to keep . . . until the day you feel it should be given. And to whom you would give it to.” His eyes of brilliant blues locked onto hers. She did not quite know what to answer.

  “I will,” vowed Nutmeg. She unlaced his chain and found the book inside as he told her, wrapped in cloth that had become drenched with blood. She pushed the cloth aside to reveal a hand-sized journal. Book of Ways, it read. She tucked the book inside her bodice. “Until the day comes when I think it should be given.”

  “Thank you.” Bistel managed a shallow breath and then shuddered. His body gave a terrible wrench as if it fought to hold on, and failed.

  And then his form began to rise from the ground. Nutmeg stepped back, her eyes wide. He floated in the air; a silvery glow came over him, and he turned slowly. Tendrils of gold wavered about him, weaving, and his skin grew as translucent as the finest gossamer. It danced about him, weaving and caging, then wisping away as if a thousand small wings had covered him. Then, as quickly as it had come on him, the glow left and he dropped back to the beaten earth, dead.

  She stayed with him until Bistane thundered back, to watch as the son lifted up his father’s body in his arms, and looked at her. His horse’s nostrils flared at the smell and the mount lifted his head warily.

  “Thank you, milady Farbranch, for not leaving him alone.”

  “He . . . it . . .” Nutmeg stammered and stopped. Then she found a word or two. “He glowed. It was beautiful. Gold and silver, all about him, and peace.”

  Bistane studied her face. “Truly?”

  “Truly.” She hugged her arms across her bosom, over the book, which still held the warmth of its previous carrier.

  Solemnly, he strapped his father’s body to the spare horse, and gave her an arm up to ride in front of him, and took her down to the lines where warriors wept before going back to fight again.

  Rivergrace found Sevryn. Or, rather, Sevryn found Rufus, grinding new edges on troubled blades, with Rivergrace perched nearby. He gathered her up and swung her around, murmuring, “Aderro,” into her neck, over and over. He finally let her feet touch ground again, but he did not let her go.

  “You are mine,” he told her, “and no king or queen or kingdom will take me from you again.”

  “ ’Bout time,” Rufus grunted. He held a dagger to a grindstone and pumped his legs again, turning it.

  She smoothed his tawny hair from his face. “How goes it?”

  “The only hope we had was Diort closing the tunnels, but the hammer failed. The Demon held within it is either gone or dead.” He ki
ssed her softly again. “We may not leave here alive.”

  “But we both know what lies beyond death.”

  “Aye. It’s the dying that I don’t look forward to. The Raver are not gentle and the Raymy . . .” He stopped.

  Grace looked at the sky, the sullen sky, always promising rain but never delivering. But the Ashenbrook held water. It had once fed this grassy plain, although the savannah now was dry as tinder. A thought struck her. “Take me to Lariel.”

  “Rivergrace . . .”

  “Take me to Lariel!”

  He blew out a breath and took the newly sharpened dagger Rufus handed to him. The Bolger stood and wiped his hands on his apron. “Go with.”

  “Good.” He cupped Rivergrace’s hand within his. “She’ll be in the thick of it.”

  They found her behind the lines, with Bistane as he gave his father’s helmet to her, its stiff, white brush of horsehair unforgettable. Lara turned to them, holding it, her lips pale and curving downward. She looked as if she would say one thing to them, and then changed her mind. Instead, she turned the helmet in her palms. “The toll is great. Jeredon is dead. Bistel. Many, many others. I could not get here in time. The Ferryman is gone.” Lara looked around, dazed. “The Ferryman is gone. He left the banks of the Nylara and exists no more. He is a Way, and he is undone.”

  Rivergrace’s heart twisted in her chest at the news, but she pressed forward. “Where is Nutmeg?”

  “With the body, at the nursing wagons, I believe.” But uncertainty flashed across Lariel’s face.

  She didn’t know. She had become unsure about all of what they were doing in that place, at that time. Rivergrace took a step back in realization. She put a hand to the hollow of her throat. With a look at Sevryn, she turned and ran.

  Ran to the Ashenbrook where the water called her. She skirted the dead and dying, weaving across the savannah field as though it were a loom and she weaving a crazed pattern upon it. Behind her and to her flank, Grace heard Rufus grunt and the sharp cries of triumph from Sevryn as they kept her path cleared. The sky might rain arrows, but she could not think on it. At the bank of the Ashenbrook, she raised her hands and waded into its chill, turbulent waters, waters swirled with blood and gore. Rivergrace went to her very core, uncaring if she unmade herself by loosing all that she had. Sevryn would live. Nutmeg would live. Tranta. Bistane. Others. If the river took all that she offered it and more, she did not care. She called for it to rise, to rise and sweep away the fools made of flesh who would deny its power.

  She could hear Sevryn call to her. Words fell on her ears, but she lost the meaning of them. Water rose to her knees, and she felt the River Goddess in them, full of hatred and fear, and she reached for the deity, and flooded her with her own essence. She gave all that she had and found more.

  Fire answered her. Rivergrace blinked at the acrid stinging in her eyes and looked out on the river plains, the fighting fields, and saw flame. It burst in leaps and bounds in the dried grass and shrubs, swirled into the wind in great chimneys of heated sparks and flame. It carried its voice in a dry roar and lay across the parched land, ready to consume all in its path.

  Her fire. Cursed fire of her cursed line. She stumbled back in the Ashenbrook. No.

  Traitor.

  Killer.

  No.

  Cerat leaped and danced inside of her. The Demon capered with an insane joy. Hidden within the tiny spark of the River Goddess she’d carried unknowing this bit of the Demon, welded inextricably together with the Goddess it had not answered Narskap’s call. Slowly it had gained strength from Rivergrace. And now, within its element, the fiery Souldrinker took the Goddess first and then struck with all that she had given him.

  Rivergrace saw the fire racing toward Rufus and Sevryn. Toward troops locked in combat. Toward Abayan Diort who’d gained a mount and raced along the river, exhorting his troops to turn and fight yet another enemy, on a fire-fury front. No!

  Her strength gushed out of her body, the dam of her flesh broken, washing her spirit away. Rivergrace took a stumbling step to fight it, to fight herself. She could feel the blasts of heat as the grass fire took hold. Wildfire would sweep the valley and then the hills. As night drew close and the wind picked up, nothing could stop it. Nothing.

  Save water.

  With her last coherent thought, she called again on the one thing she hoped might save them. Her serenity, her hope. She spun herself out in a singular, brilliantly blue thread. It was not enough. She took a heartening breath, tasted the bitter smoke upon it, and braided that thread with the gold of herself. The gold of abandonment and chaos, of destruction and yet as much life as water was. Water and fire. She threw it out again, seeking. Her soul thinned until it was nearly nonexistent.

  She thought of him, the Dark Ferryman, the being who had ferried her across many rivers, and spoken to her, nevinaya aliora, remember the soul. The being who broke through the wards of Larandaril to carry her off. The being who left her underground to find herself. She spun out her love of water, her need for it, her hope for it. She called with all she had in her, her life and death and new life . . . and she found him. Time had passed. A tight ring of fighters surrounded them, all with weapons drawn, and she could hear fierce battle nearby. Very nearby. One of them reached her, wading to her, threw his arm about her waist and anchored the shell that was left of her.

  Rivergrace felt a tug on her thread, a pull that nearly unraveled what was left of her, and then an answer.

  He coalesced in front of her, a towering wraith wrapped in dark and shadow, hooded and caped, and when he raised his head, she saw his face.

  Daravan pushed back his hood, storm-gray eyes filled with sadness as he looked down at her, and asked, “What do you need?”

  Sevryn bunched to spring at him, but Rivergrace held him tightly by the hand, her fingers laced in his. “Give me the Ferryman. Turn the waters,” she said, “Master of Rivers. Wash the battlefield clean. Answer the fire with the only defeat it will accept! Bring me the Ferryman, Daravan.”

  He shrugged his black cloak from his shoulders and looked at his hands as if they were strangers to him, then looked at her again. “I am the Ferryman. Before I was torn asunder and anchored to the Nylara. But I am still a Way.”

  Sevryn said, low and urgently, “Forget him. Grace, they’re breaching. We have to run now.”

  Locked in his solemn gaze, she could not move. “It’s not you. Stand aside, Daravan, and let the Ferryman through.”

  Flames had driven the fighters close by to the brink of the Ashenbrook. She could see Lariel from the corner of her eye, and Diort stood with his war hammer defending her, his body in front of hers, hers stained and blossoming with blood, her hair wild about her shoulders, and she wore Bistel’s helmet. She could see Rufus wrestling with a Raver and bringing it down. She could hear Nutmeg, muted, crying, “And take that from a Farbranch!”

  Daravan looked at her, his eyes creased in sorrow. “Don’t ask this of me.”

  “It’s for all whom we love. How can you not ask it of yourself?”

  Sevryn set himself between Daravan and Rivergrace. “He’ll mislead you. He’s unnamed from the beginning, a traitor from the first day he dealt with the Suldarran.”

  “Suldarran.” Daravan shook his head slowly and set his gaze on Lariel. “We were never the lost, my queen. We were always the Suldarrat, the exiled! I was sent with the first, to watch, to guard, to obstruct, to meddle. I had but one love, Trevilara, and I did all that I did in her name, even forsaking the mother of my son. You are the Vaelinars who warred and yet broke from her when she planned a weapon to end all wars. From both sides, you met to carve out a peace, and she unleashed her powers on you, sending you ripping through the planes of existence to another place. You are Suldarrat, the exiled, and I am meant to keep you here.”

  Smoke filled in about them, like a fog off the river. Flames licked toward the lowering sun.

  Rivergrace reached for Daravan and pulled at his shadow-cloaked
form and drew it out, a single obsidian thread glittering in the air. An icy jolt numbed her, but she felt a familiarity in it, and then the being was there, the Ferryman, as like to Daravan as a twin, but his face was abyss and his form was phantom. Daravan let out a despairing groan.

  “Brothers . . .” murmured Sevryn.

  “One broken by the journey. The other bound by it. Yes, we’re brothers although he is truly only a shade of himself. Together we were a bridge. He wandered until a House reached for a deity of water and air to navigate the Nylara and he could not resist answering. He hadn’t the strength, and he was trapped. You freed him, but you cannot heal him. He can’t raise your waters, Rivergrace. Not alone.”

  “None of us are alone.” Rivergrace stepped into the arch of both men

  She felt Sevryn move to her back. She had no time to argue with him. She put her hands out, and let her anger rise in her. Anger at the blood and the pain and the desecration of life around her. Let the silvery blue fire fill her and she called to the Ashenbrook and she swung about so that she could fill her vision with the sight of the Ravers and the Raymy as they swept through the flesh of her people. She did not deny the fire. She wanted to, as it grew in strength and speed but instead, she let it herd the enemy toward the tide the Ferryman raised.

  And the river answered. It gathered the bloodied, the hissing, the vicious enemy and bore down on the savannah to crush them, curved in a never-ending crest. A tide came from all rivers and even the sea with its sharp salted water in answer to their call, crashing down to drown the wildfire and sweep across the battlefield. The Revela filled and could not hold them all, the tide of warriors, even in her sharp and narrow bed of flooding water.

  “Neither but both,” Rivergrace said to herself, and she fell back against Sevryn, spent yet whole.

  Raymy boiled down the mountain, a diminished tide but still in numbers they could not meet. The Ashenbrook and Revela crested to sweep over them with no place for the tide to carry them.