The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  “A Way disintegrated?”

  He nodded. “I’ve never seen power like that, and there is no reason that I survived it except that I had an extremely swift and frightened horse under me.”

  “Could it have been an illusion?” This from Jeredon, his jawline firm except for a tic of muscle.

  “I’ve never known one of us who could cast illusions, let alone one like that. I can send a scout back to take a look at it to confirm that it is destroyed.”

  “That will be done.” Lara’s voice, low yet disturbed. “You may have been there by coincidence.” Her lips thinned as thoughts filled her eyes.

  “It remains,” Jeredon said tightly, “that no Way once established has ever vanished.”

  “Perhaps,” murmured Lara. She raised her hand. “As awful as this is, it’s not the news you raced to bring me.”

  “No, Highness, it is not. I cut this from an enemy.” Solemnly, he took his grisly souvenir from inside his vest, where he had the limb in an oilskin pouch. He opened it and passed it to Osten who took it and began to examine it with a great sniff of curiosity. The appendage looked even more bizarre than he remembered.

  Lara did not touch it, but her gaze fastened on it and did not stray. Jeredon poked a finger at it, examining a length of retractable talon.

  “Intelligent?”

  “Very and the most wicked fighter I’ve ever come across. Daravan says to tell you that he believes it to be one of the Raymy, although he is getting confirmation.”

  Nutmeg drew her breath in with a hiss. Lariel merely paled a little, her eyes darkening in contrast to her fair skin.

  “This is true?”

  “He says it may well be.”

  “He isn’t a man who would stir us up in vain,” her voice drifted off. “I cannot let us be sandwiched between two enemies. Abayan Diort will be destroyed before those things make land. Destroyed or bowed to us, entirely. You are dismissed, all, and not a word outside these gates. Jeredon, I want you to recruit and train archers as ably as you can before we go to council. Osten will give you whatever men you think suitable. Sevryn, send that scout out you recommended. Thank you for your attendance.” She opened the gate with a wave of her hand, and their leave to go seemed obvious.

  Not another word did she utter until she was alone, and the gates had swung shut behind her guests. The silence seemed complete when she whispered, “And there you are.”

  A shadow stirred. She did not turn but said wearily, “Have you brought confirmation, Daravan?”

  A tall, broad-shouldered shadow separated itself from other shadows on the other side of the river Andredia. He crossed its narrow bed in a single leap to gain her side. “My pardon, Lara, for seeming to eavesdrop on you. I did not wish to interrupt.”

  “You didn’t surprise me, although I’m surprised that Sevryn didn’t sense you. He’s keen that way.”

  “Preoccupied, I think, with the news he had for you.”

  “They were Raymy?”

  “According to sources, yes.”

  “Have you reason to doubt them?”

  “Not at this time.” He pushed his cloak and hood off his shoulders. “I hate bringing you news like this.”

  “Think how much worse it would be if you hadn’t caught them, to bring it to me.” She let herself sit on one of the curved benches. If it had been the one where Nutmeg perched, no vestige of her warmth had been left behind. The stone held a chill that the garden itself tried to deny. She watched the Andredia flow by.

  “You need to rethink your position with Diort.”

  “Never.”

  “That sounded intractable.”

  “It is.”

  “You can’t afford not to consider options, Lara. Osten had a point, if you’d been of a mind to listen.”

  “Giving in to a tyrant who impresses his people into following him isn’t an option.”

  Daravan took a moment of silence before asking mildly, “You’re certain that’s what he is doing?”

  “I’ve seen evidence of it myself.”

  “But not in all villages. All cities. All towns. Many take up the sword and follow willingly.”

  “Many aren’t willing to wait to see what destruction he intends to bring them before he extends his rule over them. With that war hammer in hand, who could refuse him? I won’t let him follow the path that Quendius has set down for him.”

  “I’m not so sure Quendius has a hand in this.”

  She looked at him sharply. “By what reasoning?”

  “Quendius is, by all observation, someone who revels in destruction and subjugation. Diort has done little more than unify, although as much by power as by seduction, I’m willing to admit. He had destroyed, twice, but the dam he took down last year held contaminated water, water that the wasteland had been seeping into, and the city it bordered was no less contaminated. The area you visited held sign of dying aryns, did it not? He is not wanton with his actions, no more than you are, unlike Quendius. I believe Abayan Diort is at odds with Quendius. He was never more than a reluctant ally, and now he knows his strength. He is of Kerith, to the bone. Quendius is of nothing and cares for nothing.”

  “And he will stop at nothing.”

  Daravan dropped his chin in a nod.

  “I can’t meet Diort as an equal if we haven’t beaten him.”

  “You think not?”

  Lariel blushed faintly. “I presume that to be the case. Even if I wish alliance, it would have to be out of strength, or he’d absorb us the way he has the common folk. We will not be absorbed, Daravan. Whether we go down as one, or Stronghold and Holding by Stronghold and Holding, we will not be absorbed meekly. You know that.”

  “I’m not suggesting that. There is more than one way to forge an alliance.”

  “And who would you suggest I hold up for him to marry? Which one of us would suit him? Myself? Someone else? He may already have the woman he wants in the traitor Tiiva.”

  “If she went to him. Perhaps only the best would do. If you married an ild Fallyn off to him, we’d never have a truce.” Daravan chuckled dryly at the thought. Contentious to the core, there was not an ild Fallyn alive who did not think that they could and should replace Lariel and her brother.

  “I’d rather not think on it.” Lara folded her hands in her lap, slightly bruised and swollen by her sword handling, and chafed the stiffness out of her fingers lightly.

  “Then what it is you’re not telling me?”

  She glanced up. “Do I tell you everything?”

  “Decidedly not. But I thought you might share this time.” He sat down on the bench, not too far from her, but not quite close enough to touch. She could smell his horse’s sweat on him, as well as the perfume of her pavilion, and his own unique, masculine scent.

  “Abayan didn’t call his raiders off. I deem that he would have, but one of us rose against his maneuver in such a way, we were all surprised. And she has little or no recollection of it, nor does anyone else in the troop. Only I saw, and remember. Even Osten seemed foggy about it, so that I question myself. But I saw it. I know I did.”

  "What happened?”

  “She built a fire on the water against the raiders, Daravan. I have never seen its like or even guessed it could be done. She raised a tide of fire on the river and brought it down on them.”

  “It can’t be done.” He didn’t ask, she noted, who Lariel referred to.

  “Rivergrace did it.”

  “Her Talent is water. We all know that. And you’re telling me she has no memory of it?”

  “Dazzled at first, and then seemingly unaware of what she’d done altogether. Or afraid to admit to me that she had. Osten doesn’t remember seeing it, only that the raiders fording the river turned back in disarray. None of the others remember even that much. The waters were running red with blood.”

  “I’ve never heard of an ability like that. Perhaps to set fire to oil on water . . .” Daravan’s words trailed off.

  “No.” Lara ey
ed her hands briefly. “Not like that. None that I know of.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t her but something other. Hunter’s Cut didn’t collapse without provocation. We’ve often wondered how long it would take the Gods of Kerith to acknowledge us, to work against us. Perhaps those days are here?”

  “Did you come to encourage me with that news? First tell me the Raymy are returning, and now hostile Gods?” She laughed, in spite of herself. “Is there never any good news about you?”

  He took one of her hands and brushed his lips across her knuckles with more of a breath than a kiss. “The good news is that you were born to be a Warrior Queen, and now it appears we have need of one.”

  Chapter Eleven

  BISTEL VANTANE REINED in his horse, and eased back in his seat, stretching his long legs in the stirrups for a moment. Intermittent sunshine bore down on him, through long thin clouds that scattered across the sky, forming a blanket only to wisp away before blanketing again, rain or snow from the chill of it, that might or might not fall that evening. The rider at his flank reined in, quiet and solemn. Bistel looked down across the Dweller and Kernan homesteads, five of them laced together in a massive farming operation, one that might equal one of his own winter grain fields. They had worked hard here for generations; he knew the heads of the families back to their great great grandfathers and perhaps even beyond that, if he cared to remember. He had not, from those early days. He would be one of the first to admit that the disdain the Vaelinars carried toward the first races of Kerith had been one of their greatest faults. It was a fault still resting in many Vaelinar. Not him, or so he hoped. He had finally learned.

  “You know them all,” Verdayne noted.

  “I do. And so did Magdan.” His gloved hand twitched slightly, and Norda tossed his tashya head in response, dancing sideways under him. His hand moved down to stroke the red-gold hide. They’d come three days’ ride from home and it would be three days’ ride back or longer if the weather did not hold. A tashya did not have the stamina of the sturdy Dweller mountain ponies, but there was no discounting a tashya’s speed or intelligence or willingness or smoothness of ride. Norda blew his nostrils. He would call for the Ferryman, but the capricious phantom might or might not show. It seemed others were learning of that being’s abilities if one’s strength of will were strong enough to compel him. He had his suspicions the ild Fallyns had learned the secret long ago, but now Daravan and even Sevryn were moving great distances in untimely manner. He wondered about the unnamed and unknowable creator of the Ferryman and what he had harnessed by Voice, voice ruling over the air which resided in water, for air was undoubtedly a component of water or else how could fish and all other creatures which lived in it breathe? As for the distance, the Talent ruled earth. He had known, in his youngest days, Vaelinar who could leap from place to place in the blink of an eye. Not far, mind you, but far enough that a sword stroke or arrow’s flight might miss them. That Talent had faded long ago, except for the ild Fallyn ability to levitate.

  An exhalation disturbed his thoughts, and he glanced over his shoulder at Verdayne where an impatient look faded abruptly. “I shouldn’t have brought you. This isn’t an easy task before us.”

  Bistel sat for another long moment before reaching up and removing his half helm, freeing his short-cropped snow-white hair to the afternoon wind. The chill in the air intensified, and the sky took on that sharp blue hue that matched his eyes somewhat, both of them signifying a tempest to come. He took his farglass from the quiver sheath by his knee, put it up, and examined the farmlands, particularly the barrier of aryn trees to the southeast borders. The fields had been shorn of their summer crops and winter crops that could stand, no, make that thrived on the cold, barely pushed up through the soil. It looked barren from here, but his glass showed the shoots growing upward. He sat immobile for long moments as the farglass sharpened in focus, bringing the trees into detailed clarity.

  “How do they look?”

  “Not as they should.” Their strength tempered only by their beauty never failed to move him. A man of war, he found peace among the massive trees which had grown from a single staff from the old country, a staff which should never have sprouted but apparently had been green wood, like its carrier, a green young boy sent off to war and flung from one world to another. Once planted, that single aryn had sent off saplings and seeds, determined to replicate itself, and he had carried them, transplanting and planting accordingly, to watch them thrive. Magdan had eventually grown to help him in his quest, and then Verdayne to help Magdan. The aryns had a quiet, deep magic of their own, a steadiness which held against fire, flood and drought . . . and chaos. He’d carved an empire with the aryns to fence it off and keep it safe. Now he could see the black threads of disease winding and coiling in their emerald beauty and it felt as if those same dire threads squeezed his own heart. After long moments, he lowered the farglass and slipped it back into its sheath.

  Verdayne commented on their mission. “Magdan would say you’ve no choice.”

  “Would you disagree with him?” Bistel found and held the young man’s gaze, blue upon blue, so dark the eyes looked like indigo.

  “He raised me like a father. I won’t ever live to gather the experience he held, but I might naysay this. Those are farmers down there, Lord Bistel. Can’t they cull and burn the stands clean?”

  “They will ask me the same thing. I will give the same answer: no.”

  Verdayne made a noise in his throat. “It’s true, then. You’ve sap in your veins instead of blood.”

  “Sometimes I think it must be so.” Bistel looked away from the boy who was both Vaelinar and Dweller. “If that were true, though, my blood wouldn’t be running through your body.”

  Verdayne flinched. He pushed a hand back through his dark, curling hair, hair that would one day be as snow-white as Bistel’s although it would not be the color of winter wheat first. “I cannot speak like that.”

  “No, you cannot. Not yet. I won’t put you in that position. One day, though, you’ll be known. It can’t be helped. You have my love of the aryns even as Bistane has my ability for war.” Bistel gestured downslope. “Usually welcome in this valley, today we will blow in like an ill-wind, and leave in bad graces.” He closed his knees in signal, and Norda moved down the gentle slope toward the farmlands in a long-swinging gait that showed no trace of the gelding’s tiredness. Taking the trail down to the main dirt road with ice from last night’s frost still melting in the deep ruts, he crossed to the Dweller great house of the farmer who held the bulk of the land. A reedy line of blue-gray smoke trailed from the chimney. They would find a warm welcome even if it were only for a moment.

  Bistel did not slow his horse as he reached the valley floor, nor did he turn in his saddle, but he did look over his shoulder as the feeling of being watched washed over him. A hot, hostile gaze tickled at the back of his neck and shoulders. He freed his bow to nock an arrow, letting his feet guide the horse. “Verdayne, ride on in and do not stop.”

  The lad did as told. Bistel toed Norda about to see nothing in the heavy forest edging the farms, nor did he expect to with a glancing survey. All he could do was telegraph his awareness so that whatever watched him would know that an attack would not be unexpected and, indeed, ill-advised. He did not relax the bow string until he reached the great house’s swinging front gate, and even then the back of his neck burned. Reluctantly, he swung his bow back over his shoulder after replacing the arrow in its quiver.

  A Dweller boy clattered out of the stable yard, his vine-woven hat flying off his brunet hair as he skittered to a stop in front of them. “Lord Vantane! Derro, m’lord! Master Verdayne! May I take your horses?” Words spewed from him like a river flooding in a spring thaw, his cheeks apple red from the cold and his excitement, his hands waving in the air under Norda’s muzzle. The tashya stepped sideways with a snort and threw his head up. The Dweller paid no attention to his deficit in height, springing up to put a hand to the bridle and lo
wering the proud horse’s head to a manageable position. He then stroked Norda soothingly. Bistel swung down, saying only, “Remember this is a tashya horse. Quarter him in a corner by himself till he settles and we’re ready to leave. No feed and just a sip or two of water.”

  Verdayne’s horse was more biddable and went quietly beside the prouder Norda who always held himself as if he knew it was a warlord he carried.

  “Aye, m’lord, it’ll be done as you ask.” With a nimble hand, he caught the coin tossed him. The lad led Norda away, singing a merry song that Bistel barely caught the words to, a popular song in the taverns that season.

  “What song is that?”

  “That one? A ditty about the Ferryman taking a wife. Bistane can sing it by heart already.” The first shadow of a smile in a day or two crossed Verdayne’s face.

  Bistel turned, stripping his gloves off as he approached the house. Faces must have been pressed to the window shutters for the door was thrown open before he had one bootheel on the step. The farmer himself came out, Pepper Straightplow, tugging on a coat over his work clothes, his sons in a wing behind him. His hand brushed his sword hilt, and then paused as Verdayne put a hand on his elbow. The warlord in him flexed a bit. He shrugged away a momentary guilt. Old habits, distasteful as they might be among the civilized, make for old men. He relaxed his hand on his sword hilt. Master Straightplow never stopped beaming, having not caught Bistel’s movement or, if he had, not comprehending. His sons, gamboling along in their father’s wake like so many fuzzy puppies, certainly hadn’t. Bistane would have slit someone’s throat by now in reflex to so much boisterousness he thought wryly, as Straightplow put forth a square callused hand. Verdayne released his hold on his arm.

  “M’lord Vantane, so good to see you! And the young master. You bring dry weather with you, for a bit anyway.”

  “So it seems, Master Straightplow. The moon was feathering the clouds like fine lace last night, so I doubt the weather will hold for more than a day or two longer. It would be nice to have rain, if it’s been as dry here as it has been up north. Forgive my imposing on your hospitality without notice. I won’t be here long.”