The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  My argument, however, begins with recent testimonials of a much more horrific Returning in which the dying is torn asunder as if the soul itself were involved in a tug-of-war between two vastly different spiritual planes . . . as if the Gods themselves were warring over the dead. In at least two cases, the suffering Vaelinar had not even passed into death before such a battle took place, the suffering a dreadful thing to behold. The testimonials are quoted verbatim in the text of this pamphlet, but I warn the reader that the matter is difficult to read. Before digressing into the testimonials, I repeat my assertion that the Gods are indeed awake, and their attention upon all of us will be dreadful when it is focused. Gods are nothing if not jealous of the powers of creation and the world which They have brought to life. Their anger is likely to be dropped upon us all when we catch their eyes again. A God can only be banished by another God and likewise the world of Demons mirrors that plane, although on a much lesser level, and mortals have been known to defeat Demons only with the help of Gods. Therefore, we must live circumspectly and with reverence lest we be caught between warring armies of Immortals.

  Rivergrace closed the book on her finger, trying to decide if she wished to read further. A draft found the side of her cheek and played upon it, as if a cold, still hand caressed her. Once touched, always touched, even beyond death. Herself, Sevryn, even the River Goddess, did not lie beyond Cerat’s corruption. Gods, and Demons, were not to be crossed. It lay in her hands to find the way to quiet them, if such a resolution existed. Silently, she replaced the slim tome into its place on the shelf.

  Grace found Nutmeg asleep, her head back against the hard wood of the bookcase, her lap and hands empty as if she’d long ago finished the journal she’d started. She tapped her sister gently on the head. Nutmeg stirred and gathered her feet under her.

  “Find anything?”

  “History,” she answered. “History of being Suldarran, the Lost, without a beginning or knowing the end.”

  Nutmeg rubbed her eyes as she rose. “That makes no sense.”

  “And now you know what I found.” Grace smiled sadly. “Let’s go before we’re found here.”

  They left quietly, listening for footsteps in the wing, staying in shadows when they could. When the key shimmered on Nutmeg’s wrist, catching a glint from the sun’s low slanting rays, Rivergrace looked at it and tried to remember if she had locked the vault doors when she left, and could not. “Go on,” she said, giving Nutmeg a loving push. “I have to check the gate and see if it’s locked. I’ll catch up.”

  “Wait! You’ll need this, silly beans.” Nutmeg undid her bracelet and wound it around Grace’s slender arm. The key swung back and forth in a golden glimmer.

  She retraced her steps quickly as she made her way back through the labyrinth of rooms and shelves, and then saw the final door ajar. She put her hand on the lock, ready to close the door shut as it should have been, when she heard a sound inside. Quietly, she lifted the latch and stepped inside.

  Narskap turned to face her, hand in the air, caught in the act of placing a book upon the shelf. Gaunt beyond knowing, in riding leathers of brown and gray, his hair pulled back in a tight queue, and his face bruised from Nutmeg’s attack. They stared at one another for the most fleeting of moments before he said softly, “Do not call out.” His broken voice cut the air into whispered shards. His words fell like shattered stone.

  Fear rippled through her, and anger followed in its wake. She stood frozen with her hand on the door, his gaze on her face, and then she felt a calmness flowing from him. Of all the things she associated with the Hound of Quendius, serenity was not one. Curiosity piqued her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same.” Narskap shifted his gaze, scanned the shelves of the small, enclosed room, before looking back to meet her eyes. “Ferstanthe keeps these memories forbidden, but there are things I need to know. I presume you also search.” He slid the book in his hand back into place. “Have you found what you needed?”

  Why should she tell him anything? Yet, the difference in his voice, even his posture, told her that this was and was not the same man who’d held a knife to her throat days ago. How had he changed and why? “No.”

  “Nor I.” He turned slightly to face her, holding both hands at his sides palm out, unarmed. “Give me a moment?”

  She gathered her thoughts warily. “To do what?”

  “Talk with you. I’m sane now. I don’t know how long it will last, but as I stand here, I’m not the man that Quendius calls to heel. For the time being, I’m myself.”

  This was the man who could entrap Gods. What did she risk talking to him? And yet, if he could trap Gods, what chance did that leave for her? She balanced her weight so that she could slam the door and move quickly if needed, the very slightest change of balance, but he caught it. Awareness flickered through his eyes. “Don’t run,” he asked of her.

  “What choice do you give me?”

  “To listen first. If I begin to . . . lose myself . . . you’ll know it, and then, close the door, lock it, and find Azel d’Stanthe. Until then, give me a chance and listen.”

  “How do I know that you don’t use words as quickly as you use a knife?”

  “You don’t. I’d give my word, but I doubt you’d take that, nor should you. My word is only good as long as my mind is sound.” Narskap tucked a loose string of hair behind one ear, a nervous, quick gesture. She thought she could almost see the man he might have been once, behind the face which now was skeletally thin.

  Grace took a slow breath. She tapped the power that rippled just under her skin, the power of her birthright and that remnant of the River Goddess, and held it as she might a skittish horse on a tight rein, waiting for her command. To do what, she did not know. “All right. I’ll listen.”

  A smile broke on that stony face as quickly as a raindrop hitting parched ground to be soaked in, so quickly come and gone that she thought she might have imagined it. He turned his face quickly to hide any further emotion which could betray him. “I’m here because you are and because Quendius has long desired to break into these rooms. I’ve a standing order, if you want to call it that, to seize the opportunity.”

  “You followed us here.”

  “Yes.”

  He admitted that he would do mischief here, if he could, and only she stood between him and that deed, but need tugged at her before she would decide on her actions. “Do you hope to capture me again?”

  “If I did, you would be under rope and chain.”

  “Then why? What do you care what I do?” She would not tell him of her search and why, because it struck her that the knowledge would be as sharp to him as any sword he could carry. Yet his next words struck her.

  “Because you hold yourself like your mother did, and you’ve her eyes, and because you could take Cerat from me and carry it.”

  “Don’t talk to me about my mother. I don’t want to hear about her from you. I don’t want to know what . . . what she might have gone through.” Her eyes stung and her throat threatened to close. She blinked fiercely.

  His right hand clenched and opened as if still thirsting to hold the Demon sword she’d taken from him. The movement distracted her.

  “Sometimes,” Grace said carefully, “it still burns my hand.”

  “It didn’t burn mine. It came to me as if I called it. As for your mother, she wasn’t my slave . . . I was hers.” He dropped his shoulder as if he might turn away to avoid meeting her eyes again. “The Warrior Queen won’t give you your legacy.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “She doubts me.” And why not, Grace told herself. Here she stood, talking with the enemy. Perhaps she deserved that doubt and more.

  “What I’m telling you won’t ease her mind, but it’s all I can offer you. I loved Lindala more than life itself, but little good it did her. I called Gods and Demons for her sake and she paid the price.” He took a breath that sounded like stone grinding upo
n stone. “ I’m what’s left of your father. Fyrvae . . .” He stopped, as his eyes glittered brightly, and then he began again. “I was once known as Fyrvae. When you took the sword from me, and carried it, I should have known. I think Quendius recognized it. Only I or one of my blood could even touch Cerat.”

  “You lie.”

  “To what purpose? To estrange you from your queen? From your man? You’re here, alone, already. And I can see the strength in you, a cord of blue and a cord of gold, from your mother’s gift of water and mine of fire, and they’re braided strongly in you.”

  Fire. She shrank back on one heel. Was it both he and Cerat that burned inside of her? Yet another reason for Lariel to turn her away. Rivergrace turned her face, unable to bear another word, but he filled the air with them, hoarse and grating.

  “I can’t cage you, lady called Rivergrace, even if I tried. I can’t promise you that Quendius can’t, or Lariel or another of the high Vaelinars. But I can’t. Nor do I want to. Seeing you fills me with pride and shame.”

  “Fyrvae.” She almost sighed the name.

  “My blood, if it’s listed in here anywhere, is listed so briefly you might see it only as a mist between the pages. Trying to open a Way had become illegal, and yet there were those who would still attempt it, to become a House with standing and land and fortune . . . and my father’s attempt and failure brought the full brunt of punishment down upon us. We were DeCadil and he wanted a House for us. I fled, with Lindala, ahead of the extermination of our line. We had no place to go. Quendius took us in, and then he enslaved us. Gods forgive me that you were born in darkness and lived in the mines where no child should ever have hoped to flourish, but you did. I think it was because of your mother that you grew with love and hope. And the river. I worked in the forges to either please Quendius enough so that he might yet release us or make a weapon so powerful I could kill him and escape. I did both, and neither freed me, but broke me and killed my love.” His voice wavered, and a strange light came and went through his eyes. He shook all over. Rivergrace knew that whatever moments of sanity he had left would be fleeting. He stared over her shoulder then, beyond the threshold where she stood.

  He would bolt. She saw a tremor run through him. She had so much she needed to know. “You called Gods to your weapons.”

  “I made a Way. The God followed it into my forging. Gods,” he said, “are like catching the wind and the sun and the rain. They know little of the earth which is where we come from when we begin and return when we end.” He opened and closed his eyes fitfully. He shook his head violently, twice, before speaking again, his voice rasping, nearly choking. “The one you cradled within you . . . She lies to you, Daughter. Cerat has a bridge to the Goddess. You’ve stolen nothing of hers. What you have, you nurtured. It came from the same great being which begat all of us, even the Gods, and it stays with you because there it flourishes, to become what it was meant to be. Do you understand me? You stole nothing.”

  “But how can I—”

  His body jerked violently and hunched over, cutting her question off, and she flung herself to the side as he let out a howl and burst past her, and was gone. Not even an echo from his running footsteps reached her. The Hound of Quendius had returned and fled.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  AZEL SAT ENJOYING THE HOT CUP in his hands and watched Rivergrace over its wide rim. "You found nothing with the name Lindala, then, is what you’re telling me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s as if she didn’t exist.”

  He lowered his cup to lean forward and pat her knee. “We know that she must have, you’re living proof of it. My suggestion then, is to leave the stacks of histories, since she has been expunged, and go to the boring, muddled stacks of wills and levies.”

  “Wills and levies?” echoed Nutmeg.

  “Aye, little one. When Lily, may it be many years from now, goes, does she not have a record of who gets what pot, and who gets the loom, and who gets the spinning wheel, and so on?”

  “Of course she does!”

  “Those things are oft filed with the levies every two-year, I believe, despite good health and hope, especially among those who live in the country, where rough weather, disease, and raiders make life uneasy.”

  Rivergrace straightened in her chair. “Even among the Vaelinars?”

  “Especially among the Vaelinars who do not have a House or a Stronghold to shelter them. I have found in my studies that it is most often the women who file such wills, as the main inheritance goes through the paternal branch, so the land and outbuildings or business would go to a son or sons, undisputed. But a woman’s things, ah, she would want to place those quite specifically and did so.”

  “I get the good dishes and the shop,” stated Nutmeg. “To share with Rivergrace.”

  “My point.” Azel lifted his cup again.

  “A will might have been overlooked,” Grace murmured. “But not filed by Lindala but perhaps left to her before she was excised. Something recorded, often for taxation purposes, but rarely amended might be overlooked when her name was removed.”

  “Yes. Also,” and Azel stared off into the dust motes dancing in a ray of sunlight for a moment. “An odd thought, but possibly a useful one. Check the registration books for the hounds and falcons. The breeders are noted as diligently as the animals themselves, and if your mother was involved with either, it’s possible her name would have been overlooked there as well. Many of our young women breed dogs and horses and the birds.”

  “Then,” said Nutmeg briskly as she rose and dusted off her skirts. “It’s back to the books.”

  “Today?”

  “We’ve still reading light left?”

  “For a candlemark, at the most. Then, I fear the sconces aren’t strong enough for my old eyes although they might be for yours.”

  Rivergrace stood as well. “We’ll make do.” Gold glittered at her wrist as she did before she quickly pulled her sleeve down into place.

  Azel pursed his lips and let out a piercing whistle. His answer came in the form of running footsteps. “I’ll have one of the apprentices take you to the documents section.” He appraised Rivergrace. “I think I would go back about 120 years or so, 150 at the most, to begin looking.”

  The apprentice appeared, hair sticking out of her tight braids, her face flushed from her run to answer. She dipped a response to Azel’s clipped order and beckoned for the girls to follow her. They angled off into a different wing altogether, where the windows gave most of the illumination, and clouds winging overhead sent shadows skittering through the book-cases. There they were left. Rivergrace watched Nutmeg as she ran her hand over the great, flat-bound books, where the edges of the documents held inside of them looked like ruffled sleeve cuffs. She had her answer, which she had no intention of sharing with either Azel or her sister, until she’d turned it over and over inside of herself, searching. Searching for what, she wasn’t sure. The truth of it? Did she trust Narskap to be able to utter the truth? Not sharing with Meg pinched at her a bit and, yet, she knew that they had both reached the age where they were withholding part of their lives from one another. They had grown.

  She found a ledger book from a decade suggested and took it down to flip through it gently, not really seeing the entries, her mind tussling with what she already knew.

  “Listen to this,” said Nutmeg quietly. “To my daughter, Lisan, currently the bedslave of a Vaelinar craftsman, if she returns as a free woman, I will my first good set of cooking pots with lids and my set of metal needles and the quilt of my grandmother and feather mattress.” She took a breath. “And we thought slavery ended long ago.”

  “It was supposed to have.” Rivergrace rubbed the scar on one arm absently. “We know better.”

  Nutmeg looked up at her. Then she put her finger to the entry. “This is from a Dweller family, the Mintleafs.”

  “Are you thinking of what people might say about your being a nurse for Jeredon?”

  Her rosy ch
eeks paled. “No.”

  “It’s not the same, not at all. And who knows if the woman who wrote that was not mean-spirited and angry, and this was her way of calling her daughter a name which would reach her even from beyond death?”

  “Some people are like that.”

  “To our sorrow, yes.” She reached over and closed Nutmeg’s ledger carefully. “What we need isn’t in that book. Find a new one?”

  They worked quietly for the next candlemark, now and then lifting their chins to read softly to the other some point they’d uncovered, feeling the weight of decades upon them until Rivergrace finally closed her ledger with a sigh.

  “We won’t find it in here either.”

  “Not without years of searching.”

  She ran her hand through her tangle of hair, pushing it back from her face and over her shoulder. “I’ve learned that I have to deal with this on my own.”

  “With Farbranch help.”

  “Aye, always with the help of my family.” Rivergrace smiled gently at Nutmeg. “It’s time to go back.”

  “Good!” Nutmeg bounded to her feet. “I don’t want to be left out of things.”

  “That would never happen.”

  Nutmeg flashed a grin. “Not if I can help it!”

  They left the libraries of Ferstanthe in the morning after a hearty breakfast and a rib-cracking hug from Azel. Their mounts, frisky in the brisk morning air, took to their heels with a squeal as if they could outrun the winter wind with the promise of ice in its sting.

  Abayan Diort pored over his maps one last time, and then sent for Tiforan. His third-in-command arrived promptly, his eyes alert despite the faintly puzzled expression on his face. “Warlord?” The tent flaps framing him showed the campfires burning low on the browned hillsides, the thinned evergreens of the region, the closeness of his army to their ultimate destination.