The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  “The closing of our agreement grows near.”

  Daravan shifted weight. “It shall, one day.” Did Sevryn hear more than uneasiness in his tone? He stepped back, as if to free Daravan from whatever the Ferryman might ask of him, but the phantom faced Daravan once more.

  “Done, then,” he said. “But the consequence lies upon you both.”

  Daravan hesitated, then dropped his chin in agreement and fetched out the coin piece from an inner pocket in his shirt, dropping it upon the hand the Ferryman held out.

  “Stay close,” the being instructed them. “Do not let me out of your sight.” The Ferryman turned to ford the river, his movement through the water undetectable. Daravan tossed him a glance, but he gestured that he knew the drill and Daravan hurried after with Sevryn on his heels.

  The river swallowed him up to his chest, cold as ice. His horse snorted at his back, throwing up his head and tugging on the reins in protest as they began to ford against the current. Sevryn kept his eyes on the back of the Ferryman’s unfurled cloak, not knowing their destination but knowing if he lost either the specter or Daravan, he could be more than merely left behind. What magic the Ferryman worked he could not tell, but he did not wish to be in its wake if it went awry. They strode across a river that spanned more than its bed, more than its shore, more than this night. He felt it in the very marrow of his bones and in the hairs prickling at the back of his neck and in the tightened sinews of his neck as his body tensed.

  The river fought his passage. It pulled and surged at him, trying to drag him away like two great arms wrapped about his legs pulling him down. Sevryn slogged after, trying to keep close and falling behind by a hand’s length with every step. Fear shrouded him. He grasped his horse’s stirrup with both hands, driving the horse after the others with his Voice as one might use a whip to keep the animal moving, dragging him along with its passage.

  Sevryn spit river spray from his mouth as he gulped down a breath to shout for Daravan to stop or slow for him, and then he felt it. Idiot. Gilgarran would have boxed his ears for it. He wasn’t just crossing a river, and he’d known it, knew it when Daravan had said he waited for the Ferryman. He just hadn’t realized it down to his marrow despite his knowledge. He traversed a Way, one the Ferryman built with each stride . . . and one that ended not far from his wake. He could see it now, rippling like a haze over the still water that surrounded the phantom form, and he cast his thoughts into it, anchoring himself on the Ferryman as he had to his horse’s saddle. The pull and drag on him eased slowly. Sevryn thrust closer to the two men ahead and the Way opened fully to him.

  From impeding him, the river now seemed to carry him, as though he journeyed along a bridge just over its waters. Its icy touch still inundated him, but the level dropped to his knees, and even his horse found the going much easier. Now, though, now he could see things reflected in the still water mirroring the Ferryman, things he wished he could not see. A black crimson flowered on the current, pooled and growing. He could smell the coppery smell of fresh blood, and he could see bodies, gashed and writhing, carried downstream past them, white-skinned and copper-skinned and even light gray ash, rare among the Vaelinar. Soldiers. He saw a Vaelinar warlord carried past on the river’s crest, his eyes sightless in his despair. Sevryn thought of the battle of Ashenbrook which had brought the great Kanako to death. But this was not the river Ashenbrook. Or perhaps it was, and the Way took them across it, opening up the past like a fresh wound. The blood and the bodies moved downstream, below them. He saw other things, timber on the waters with log runners poling their harvest, trappers washing their snares in the waters, a hunt or two of wild animals bounding through the shallows. A wildfire that paused only to lick at the dampness and then gutter down to nothing but glowing embers as the night passed. They drew along the Way closer to the end of their journey.

  In the shadows of the shore ahead, he could see a figure coming to the water, wrapped in blues and coppers, her russet hair unbound and shining to her shoulders, her hand in supplication to the river’s edge as she knelt to it. His anger rose in him. Not Rivergrace. The Ferryman would not show Rivergrace to him! She did not belong entrapped in the Ferryman’s doings. He let out a bellow. “Let her go!”

  “It is as it is,” the Ferryman answered.

  Rivergrace looked up, unseeing, as they staggered onto the shore. She pulled her hand back with a slight smile, tucking a stray bit of hair behind one ear, and turned away, unharmed, untouched, unknowing. She did not fear fresh water, never had and, he prayed, never would.

  He did not relax until her ghost faded into the evening air.

  On dry shore, the Ferryman turned to Daravan and said in a low voice Sevryn was not meant to hear, but did. “One day you shall serve me as I serve you.”

  They stood like stone, the two of them, then Daravan nodded to their escort. Behind him, the first rays of dawn began to lighten the sky. They were no longer in verdant forest, but at the edge of a salt marsh, and the river behind them could barely be called a freshet. Sevryn could hear the cries of the kites off the bay as they rose into the air and hung over the inlets, waiting for fish to break the waves. They had come the length of the west coast of Kerith in one night. He mounted his horse without waiting for Daravan’s signal. Whatever awaited them, Daravan and the Ferryman had turned the earth in its tracks to get to it.

  Daravan waited until the Ferryman had gone before he pulled a vial from his saddlebags and passed it to Sevryn. “Two swallows,” he counseled. “No more.”

  “What is it?” Sevryn took the vial and sniffed at it when he uncorked it. It held a musty, smoky smell under the medicinal odor.

  “An antidote for kedant.”

  He’d been hit with the viper’s poison before and nearly died of it. Assassins favored coating their weapons with it. Those of Vaelinar blood had a particular weakness for kedant. Sevryn swallowed. It latched onto the back of his throat with a burning heat that made him swallow convulsively again and again, as he thrust the vial back to Daravan, his hand shaking, tears in the corners of his eyes. Finally the awful potion went down and smoldered in the pit of his stomach. “Velk! I am not so sure that isn’t worse.”

  “I hear that.” Daravan corked the vial and returned it to storage.

  “We’re meeting the Kobrir?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He’d said assassins earlier, and they were famed for their skill and elusiveness. Sevryn respected them as much as he hated the Kobrir. No one knew how many there were, or even if they were of the race of man, so supple and quick were they. But they weren’t invincible, any more than he was. His only concern was that Daravan seemed uncertain of what they rode to meet. What Daravan did not know might only inconvenience him but could mean the difference between living and dying to an ordinary man. Next to the full-blooded Vaelinar, Sevryn knew he was ordinary.

  Daravan pointed across the salt marshes. “To the bay. We’ll have a little cover from the abandoned village there. Take to the shadows, use them as well as you can. And, Sevryn.” He paused. “Your Voice will be of little use. Keep to your other skills.”

  “All right.” In a pitched battle, Daravan had just saved him time and effort, although it would have been nice to have advantages.

  They rode toward the bay and its sky curtain of floating kites, their calls sounding thinly. They found their enemy waiting for them beneath the scavengers.

  “Go to melee and keep them there,” Daravan said, kicking free of his stirrups and leaping from his mount, pulling his sword and hand shield as he did.

  Sevryn followed suit and found himself in pitched battle before he could inhale twice.

  The sun beat hotly on them. Sweat ran off him in sheets. Feint, a thrust to the exposed flank from his left, and his opponent went down.

  Screeching filled his ears, as did the hard breathing of Daravan at his back, and his own rasp. His katana ran with blood as did the wicked dagger in his off hand, and puddles of it pooled at his feet. His o
wn body howled with the fierce joy of the fight, and he wanted more. Heated blood, tortured sounds of death and dying. He stoppered a growl in his throat, instead kicking sand over the pooled blood to keep from slipping. The enemy ringed them, their fallen lying where they had dropped them, but more stood than decorated the bloodied marsh. He’d expected Kobrir or perhaps even Ravers, but what faced them now, he held no name for.

  He did not want to put a name to the ferocity that raged within him, and he tried to ignore it like the old ghost of an ancient demon. Blood hunger echoing inside him should not be heard.

  But he did hear it.

  “Still with me?”

  He pulled himself back from his thoughts. “I am.” He weighed his weapons in his hands, keeping an eye on the warriors who did the same.

  “Marked?”

  “A scratch or two. You?”

  “Well enough. Tough buggers. Try for their knees, or what passes for them. Bring them down. Then . . . I think their eyes are at their throat level.”

  Daravan had a better assessment than he’d been able to make about the eyes. The knees he’d discovered fortuitously, or they’d have cut him down long ago. They wrapped themselves in rags, disguising their look, skin, build, but they did not move as a race of Kerith did or as the Kobrir did. The cries of the kites above had grown faint when the fighting started. Screeching instead came from the ones they faced, fighting and wounded. It tore at his ears and his thoughts, making it near impossible to think. Perhaps they knew it, these devil fighters. A group had come in at pole length, swinging weapons similar to a harvest scythe, but they’d dispatched that half a dozen quickly with thrown daggers. Now they stood at melee and had for a bit, furious sorties balanced with breathers such as this one while they assessed one another.

  Sweat ran through Sevryn’s hair and soaked his shirt. His cloak wrapped one arm. He could feel dampness running down his trousers into his boots, not an inch of his skin that did not sweat profusely. Or he hoped it was mainly sweat.

  To Sevryn’s far right, one moved. The faintest of twitches, but he could guess that it was the start of a lunge that the others would copy in a wave, and he could ill afford that. He stepped away from Daravan’s back in a sweep of his own, aiming across the throat, which seemed to be mid-torso, and the thing went down in a spurt of blackish red and a squeal cut short. He moved back into line an instant before they charged. Blades flashed. He took aim low, then high, his hands moving in a blur, his mind thinking only of staying alive. His thoughts hummed, his hunger fed. Warmth splashed his hands.

  The breather he’d gotten was forgotten, and his muscles began to knot into numbing weariness. He’d been marked four times, one deep, when Daravan stumbled against his back, then swung around. He heard a thud behind him, and one of the fighters fell at his right foot, twitching into death.

  “A thought.”

  “Aye?”

  “Run a wedge through them. It should break this last wave, unless they’ve fighters in reserve I cannot spot.”

  “With you, but it’ll leave our backs open.”

  “Dispatch the fore and spin about.”

  “Done.”

  In a fluid, synchronized movement, they left each other’s back and joined side to side. As the enemy bunched, ten of them, momentarily confused, Sevryn let out a loud, hoarse cry and charged ahead, Daravan at his elbow. He dove and rolled, legs kicking out and sweeping four down by brute force, getting back on his feet before they did. His katana swept through them, and wetness sprayed upward. He spun about. His cloak-wrapped forearm took the brunt of a chop. He rocked back on his heel to counter with a thrust and dropped the being where it stood.

  Three bore down on Daravan who grunted as he punched with his knife-filled hands, and Sevryn put his attention to the last three standing. He had to bet that Daravan would stay standing long enough for Sevryn to put his away and turn back to help.

  One froze as he swung his katana, and his body crumpled over his sword. Sevryn pulled it free with a spray of blood. The last two let out harsh screeches, turned as one, and ran.

  He dropped his sword and reached for a last throwing dagger. Daravan shook the dead off him and put his hand out. “Don’t.”

  Sevryn didn’t. Air rattling in his lungs, he bent to pick up his knives and went to one knee in dizziness. He lifted his head to watch the two pelt through the shambles of the ruins and disappear toward the waters of the bay. “Letting them carry word back?”

  “Most definitely.”

  He’d get to his feet if he could, but it seemed beyond him for the moment. His blood thundered through his body. His mind sang, not with melody but with the cacophony of metal meeting metal and flesh meeting death. It was not a song he wished to remember, but it took him now at full flood.

  Daravan gulped a mouthful of air himself. He took a hand and dagger off the closest attacker. “Take a breath,” he managed. Shading his forehead, he peered at the sun, now at noon height over them. “We came to spare someone this welcome.” He kicked bodies out of his way before kneeling himself and taking deep gulps of salted air.

  “Antidote worked well.”

  “Good, that. I wasn’t sure.”

  Sevryn raised an eyebrow, turned his face toward Daravan.

  “Messed about with it a bit, had some failures, seemed it should work this time.”

  “Glad I could help clear that up.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Daravan sucked down another deep breath, and then grinned hugely. Sevryn put his boot to his hip and knocked the man over into the sand.

  Over the noise of his breathing, Sevryn could hear the sound of a carriage bouncing its way through the broken street lanes of weathered sea-port ruins. Still laughing, Daravan rolled to a stand and gave Sevryn a hand up. He got to his feet then and cleaned his sword quickly before sheathing it. Then he gathered up his daggers and throwing stars as he moved through the bodies. He opened up the hoods and cloaks to look at a thing he’d never seen before. Its mottled skin, eyes far out of place for eyes, its six-fingered hands with supple claws, high-ridged head pate brought a belligerent desert lizard to mind. The sight brought sourness up the back of his throat, and he spat to one side. “What are they?”

  “I think, my lad, that you are looking at Raymy.” Daravan took a second hand for a trophy. “Not that any of us have ever faced them since our First Days, but their fighting prowess is legendary.”

  The Vaelinar had appeared on Kerith, thrown onto the western coast by a catastrophe none could explain, from their world to this, and as they grew more settled, they’d come to realize that if the Mageborn had survived, if the Raymy had not annihilated much of the fighters before, they would not have gone unchallenged in their supremacy. But the Mageborn had incurred the wrath of Kerith’s Gods and lost their magic as they battled one another after the Raymy defeat, when it seemed that holding small domains was no longer enough and the Mageborn decided one or another had to reign supreme. In disgust, the Gods had turned their faces from the races of Kerith. The backlash of their punishment and the self-destruction of the Mageborn generated a maelstrom that swirled about the continent’s southern interior and created badlands no man would ever rule. Still, the Raymy were legend, one he’d never thought to meet. He toed a body at his feet.

  “Then Lariel’s fears are true.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps it only seems reasonable that they send a scouting party across the seas now and then to see what might face them if they return. If they had, and met with less resistance than ours, who would know today?” He tucked one of the hands into his belt and carried the other with him. “Let’s see who approaches.”

  Despite the heat pouring off his soaked body, Sevryn pulled the hood of his cloak up to shade his face. His body stiffening, he forced himself into a trot after Daravan, and they rounded a fallen heap of building to accost the carriage driver.

  Bregan Oxfort stood up in surprise, as he reined his horses down and he set the brake. His trader finery had bee
n exchanged for field leathers, his gold filigree leg brace glinting in the sunlight over them, his hair tied back, his Kernan handsomeness settling into a mask of neutrality. “Lord Daravan! A surprise to see you here.”

  Sevryn found no less a surprise in seeing Bregan. Son and partner to one of the foremost trading dynasties, and not known to be doing his own dirty work, his appearance in the hinterlands, in the salt marshes of a tsunami-destroyed bay, could only raise far more questions than he could answer.

  Daravan cut the air with a bloodied hand. “A fortunate one for you, Trader Oxfort. We chanced upon an ambush.”

  Bregan paled. He sat down on the carriage seat, the vehicle squeaking slightly under his weight. A robe hid whatever the small vehicle bed behind him might carry, nor did he give the slightest sign of body language that he worried about a cargo. But he most certainly knew it was there, even though his light blue eyes rested firmly on the two of them. Bregan Oxfort was not the type of man who did not know. Kernan eyes, holding only one distinct color, plain eyes signaling no power such as rested in a Vaelinar, gazed solidly on them. “A friend sent me down this route, asking me to assess the site, see if it might be suitable to invest in. The tides along this bay have been harsh, but it was once a good fishing port. We hoped time had healed it. We’d like to rebuild here.”