The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  The corridor filled even as the murk dissipated. Bistane reached them first, a handful of guards at his heels, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. He sheathed them as he reached Lara’s side. “Are you all right?”

  “I am. Rivergrace is gone.”

  “Do you want her followed?”

  “No. I want her killed on sight, if we are fortunate enough to see her, otherwise, I can no longer afford the distraction. Get my regiment ready to move out.” Lara made as if to stride past, before looking down on Sevryn. “He goes with us.”

  She signaled then for the others to accompany her, leaving Bistane to give Sevryn a hand up. He bent over to offer it, and Sevryn did not respond.

  “Let me go after her.”

  “I have orders. We have orders,” Bistane amended. His blue-on-blue eyes sparkled sharply.

  “I can’t follow them.”

  “We have little choice now. When you made your pledge to her, as you did to Gilgarran, you knew there would be difficult times.”

  Sevryn managed to get to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. “Do you trust your father?”

  The corner of Bistane’s mouth pulled. “He is a difficult and demanding man, but, yes, I trust him with my life and soul.”

  “And does he trust Lariel?”

  Bistane hesitated even longer, unable to meet Sevryn’s eyes for a moment, before answering. “He has his own lands and his own life. He has seen the queen from her birthing to her leadership.”

  “But does he trust her?”

  Bistane stayed silent.

  “Do you know?”

  Bistane shook his head. “I am my father’s son, but I don’t share his mind. Remember that I have feelings for Lara and would be at her side, if she allows it. You ask me to say that which I don’t know and that which I can’t say, as well as much that we both know, because he is at Ashenbrook as she asked.”

  “That is doubt enough to let me go.”

  “And have her think she is beset with treason?”

  Sevryn cleared his throat. With that one movement, he regained his balance and knew instantly where his weapons were on his body and which ones he could gain first. A calm and icy sense of purpose replaced the rage and fury. “There is someone who moves among us, and has from the very first days, one whose name is not written down, one pursued by both Gilgarran and Daravan. He blinds us when we should see and confuses us when the truth is clear, and we don’t know his name. Not yet.”

  “You think he turns us around here?”

  “I think it’s more than possible, but I can’t say it’s certain. Lara is beset with doubt and anger. Does it cloud her decisions? I fear that, but I can’t say. I do know that if this enemy wishes to do anything, he must first turn us against each other. Let me go, Bistane, and know that it’s not because I want to betray Lariel but because I must go after Rivergrace.”

  Bistane put his hand out, and Sevryn clasped it for a long moment. “Go then, because I understand the heart.”

  “May we meet next as the friends we have always been.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  HER SENSES OVERWHELMED, IT CARRIED HER. She could not feel or see anything but a swirl of nothingness about her, yet whatever it was had body enough to hold her aloft. She feared a minion of the River Goddess, but this was nothing made of water, although it carried the deepest chill of snow and ice throughout it. She could not hear breathing, but she could hear evidence of their passage through the manor and out a door as it banged shut behind them. The wind rose as they emerged outside, and she felt as if a whirlwind had hold of her, she spinning around and around inside the funnel as she had seen once in her life before they had all been hustled down to the cellar. The wind sucked air out of her lungs every time she fought a breath down. She tried to focus her eyes and could not as everything spun around her. The cold sank into her bones, making her teeth chatter uncontrollably. The force that contained her clasped her tighter as her body shook in violent tremors. Fear made the cold worse, the shaking worse, and she couldn’t find a way to drive it off. The only thing she could tell for certain was that this thing was not a Raver, for she knew the stink of them, and that they were solid: shell and pincer, mandible and antenna, razorlike stick arms hidden by wisps of rags. She knew Ravers by how they fought and how they died.

  This being of force had a familiar feel to it. She put her hand out to thrust herself from its suffocating hold on her and a small shock ran up her arm. She did not slow it; but it loosened its grip on her somewhat, and she inhaled a long gulp that did not feel as if it left ice crystals in its wake. The bitter coppery taste at the back of her throat stayed. She could not see clearly, if there were anything to see, but she was buffeted as if her carrier ran. Twigs broke and stones skittered away from their passage. Branches whipped by her though she could only hear and smell their evergreen aroma. She closed her eyes against the dizziness that threatened her senses, and that helped a bit. Then she heard the slosh of water as they crossed a stream or river. A heartbeat or two later, and gravel crackled under them. It moved with a speed that she could not match to the lands of Larandaril, as though it could hurtle whole pastures and groves with one stride. What was it that held her?

  And, as Lariel had asked of her, was it rescue or attack?

  It slowed. She could only measure the time by her own heartbeats but she sensed that it, whatever it was, tired. It swung her to her feet, one hard grasp still on her forearm and waited until she steadied. She could see they had made it to the mountains, the blue-green evergreen boughs rustled about them and russet needles lay strewn about the forest floor, and whatever creatures were here had been stilled by their appearance. With a purpose she could not decipher, it pulled her roughly after it as it headed toward a sharp, cutting mountain peak and the rockfall at its base. Scrub brush ruffled the rocks, sere and yet managing to live still among the stone they had split with their determination to grow. She could feel the need for rain everywhere; it touched her like a crowd of children on the streets of Calcort, begging for food and water, for life itself. The need drained her.

  A twisted root caught the toe of her boot, and she fell to one knee. The being holding her yanked her back to her feet as it uttered a hissing sigh that might have been either sympathy or disgust at her clumsiness. Her shoulder aching, Rivergrace clambered after the thing as it found a crevice in the foot of the peak and drew her inside. Cobwebs fell about her shoulders like a shawl, bits of rock quartz caught in them like diamonds which sparkled only briefly until they lost all daylight as they moved deeper into the mountain. Her throat began to close.

  “No. No farther. Not here.” She pulled back. Despite the chill surrounding her, her forehead felt clammy with sweat. Not the mines, not the shafts and tunnels, she could face anything but them, the stoneworks that had taken her family from her.

  A light flared. It dazzled her for a blink or two. The being thrust a torch into her hand, a small wandlike object whose light settled to a soft blue white as she took it. She felt the being itself flicker as though the light fed from it, was fueled by it, was eating it away.

  Its implacable hold on her faded.

  “Don’t. You can’t leave me here!”

  She tottered back a step and whirled about to go the other way, to find the way out. The mountain shimmered, and stirred, and then a soft curtain of gravel and dust began to fall from its side, obscuring her exit altogether, blocking the only way out. Dust and noise hung in the air taking its time to subside as she covered her face with her sleeve.

  The thing lifted a hand and pointed down the cavern. “Go,” it said. Then it wavered within its veils of darkness, growing strong, then weak, then disappearing altogether.

  In that last moment of sight, she realized it had been the Dark Ferryman who’d snatched her from Lara’s clutch.

  She moved forward the only way which had been left to her, her steps echoing loudly over the broken stone. Then a sound came to her, a multitude of footsteps over
the stone. It drummed from far away as though a secret heartbeat of the mountain but she heard it, and it sent a deep chill into her being.

  Nutmeg grabbed a horse from one of the archers who’d been out on practice from the looks of it, and had come in for water and a bite to eat. She could not mount the tall beast on her own, but she got a boot into the stirrup and held onto the saddle as the startled animal flung its head up and bolted away. She held on for dear life, unable to pull herself into the saddle, her body bumping alongside the beast as it ran. The horse slowed by the pasture fencing as if puzzled by her odd position, and her hand knotted in the reins, trying to pull it about. It sidled up against a fence post in a wary halt. That was all she needed. Weak in the knees but determined, Nutmeg scrambled onto the fence post. She snubbed the horse securely and got the stirrup on the near side shortened, slapped the tashya gelding on its rump to turn it, and got the stirrup on the far side adjusted. Then she climbed into the saddle and set her feet.

  The horse put his head up with a snort, one ear flicking back, as if to acknowledge he finally had a proper rider in place. “That’s right,” Nutmeg told him grimly. She reined him off the fence and eyed the hills stretching along Larandaril’s border. A dark cloud moved against the leaden sky, not in the direction of the wind, but along the ground as if it had a singular destination in mind. She had no idea who had taken Grace or where she might have gone, but that caught her sight by dint of its menace and strangeness. That was the way she would begin her search.

  She put a heel to the horse’s flank. “Show me what you’ve got,” she called to him, and stretched out low against the horse’s neck, her hand laced in its mane and the reins. The horse flew at her command, lean body stretching out and long strides eating up the countryside as they went after the whirlwind. As she hung on tightly, her heart racing in time to the horse’s flight, she thought of a tale the miller used to tell at the Stonesend toback shop, a story of the perils of harnessing the wind. She felt as though she had caught this windstorm by the tail and could only pray to hold on long enough to find her sister. The wind caught her hair and tore at her blouse, sending shivers down her spine. It howled dark things in her ears, but she kept her eyes on the storm cloud ahead, a cloud that seemed to have arisen from the ground and flowed upon it like a dire presence.

  Her horse ran as if his hooves were on fire.

  He found Aymaran and saddled him quickly, pulling blanket and leathers into position, listening to the confusion of the stable yard as he did so, as the queen’s orders were shouted down the ranks and no one paid attention to him. He swung up and rode out quickly. At a small freshet that ran across the upper meadows, he dismounted long enough to kneel in the water, praying that he could sense Rivergrace through its touch. The chance of that, he knew, would be little, but it was the only way he had to track her, and it failed him as he knew it probably would.

  Sevryn’s chin dropped to his chest while he thought. Larandaril’s border stretched far and away but only a fourth of it was passable, even without wards upon the boundaries. Forbidding ridges and peaks cut across much of the river valley and although they could be assayed, it could only be done by someone who had scouted it carefully and laid out a trail. An attack such as they had suffered precluded that. It had been done too swiftly for much detail in planning. It struck him as opportunistic. As someone who might have breached the border by coming in on Nutmeg’s and Rivergrace’s entry, following them closely and lying in wait until they could pierce the wards themselves.

  Aymaran tossed his head impatiently as Sevryn mounted up again, and turned him toward the hills where his love had been arrested for treason. Along the way, he could see fresh sign of a running horse. He slowed Aymaran to a walk while he leaned out, looking at the prints closely, seeing the barred shoe of the ild Fallyn Stronghold, as distinctive as a tattoo upon one of their tashya horse’s ears. He didn’t know who rode that horse, but that alone boded ill, and so he turned Aymaran slightly to follow, even as storm made the gray clouds grow ink-dark and ominous on the hills and mountains. He could taste rain on the air, but none ever fell. It might as well have, for the hoofprints he tracked disappeared into thin air, as if washed away.

  Sevryn dismounted. He walked the rough ground slowly, looking for sign.

  A low whinny greeted them as they crossed a rockfall, Aymaran’s hooves clicking and kicking loose stone. The horse stood quietly, pulling at scant bits of winter grass, his ears flicking back and forth in welcome to their presence. Sevryn thought he recognized the horse. He scanned the peak of the cliff, and a shadow of granite upon stone stepped out to greet him. When Daravan moved, he revealed an opening slit into the ridge.

  “You ride point for Lara?”

  “Not this day.”

  “You’re after Rivergrace, then.” Daravan smiled ruefully, his gray upon gray eyes crinkling at the edge, lines etched by sadness rather than laughter.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “I have. A dubious rescuer brought her this way and took her into the mountain.” Daravan stood, one hand upon the opening, not to reveal it but as if he blocked it. “You can’t pass. She was taken inside and let free. It’s not her day to die, although I cannot say the same about you.”

  He would not be stopped, only delayed. He surveyed his chances, his position, even as he answered, “You saw her led in there? She’s afraid of dying under stone, of being trapped in it forever. How could you leave her to that?”

  “What she fears, and what she deserves to fear, are two different things. She’ll do better than most of us lost in there, and it will keep her safe while the rest of us face what tomorrow brings.”

  “Then put all of us in a grave today, to ensure that we’ll be safe tomorrow. Who put you in a position to judge the future of any of us?”

  Daravan looked at him mildly. His brow arched slightly as he did, and he dropped one shoulder as if anticipating exactly what Sevryn did next, to bring his sword blade up.

  The blades met and crossed in a lightning movement. Daravan stared at Sevryn through them. He said quietly, over the high, keening sound of the two steels rubbing against one another, “She was meant to die. Be thankful enough that Rivergrace did not, nor will, at least not this day.”

  “And are you deaf? What you have sent her into is, to her, worse than death. Do you think she fears dying? She has done it before, well aware of the frailty of her nature, and she will face it again. She knows that better than any of us, or any other living thing I’ve ever met. But there is a dark side to life that tortures her, and I won’t leave her to face that alone!” Sevryn surged against the swords, breaking their stalemate, kicking sharply at Daravan’s ankle as he did so, and whirling about with his sword now free. Daravan swung only to be parried. They closed on each other. Sevryn flexed his wrist, freeing his wrist dagger to be carried as a shield. They fought silently, with only the swords sounding above their grunts and sighs of effort, and the shuffle of their boots in the dirt and grass.

  He caught Daravan in the upper arm, a slashing cut that would do little but bleed him, a wound that would weaken him in time if they fought long enough, but he knew Daravan would never allow their duel to drag out. Nor could he afford to either. He had to reach Rivergrace before the mountain swallowed her whole, with its twists, turns, and—Gods forbid—abysses.

  He did what he swore to himself he would not willingly do, but he could not afford to be kept dallying here. He called upon Cerat and felt the white-hot rage rise within him. It roared along his veins, filling him. Daravan’s eyes widened as he saw it reflected in Sevryn’s eyes.

  “My Gods,” Daravan got out, as he brought both hands up to parry Sevryn’s blow that nearly drove him to his knees and he staggered back to gather himself for the next. “I’ve loosed the wrong Demon.”

  His ears hot as molten steel, his arms moving of their own volition, Sevryn drove in after Daravan. Cerat wanted to taste his blood, to see the hot, crimson fountain, to smell the coppery sce
nt, to taste the metallic bittersweet flavor, to hear the wetness splash, and most of all, to know the frightened leap of the opponent’s heart and flutter of his soul as if it knew it was being hunted.

  Steel rang. Sevryn twisted his right arm, bringing the blade in a circle and Daravan’s sword went flying away from his hand, clattering to the ground. Daravan kicked at him, inside his dagger hand, and Sevryn fell back a step but only a step as Daravan lunged for his dropped sword.

  “Leave it.” His Voice shivered through his command, and Daravan hesitated.

  His arm out for the weapon, Daravan looked up at him, frozen in motion. His jaws clenched, his teeth gritted, the man forced his words out. “What father gave you that Talent and the Demon?”

  “No father gave me the Demon. An enemy granted me that. As for the Talent . . . something Vaelinar in me lent it.” Sevryn sucked in a calming breath. It hissed over his lower teeth and across his tongue and into his throat in a slow, deep, movement. “Stand aside. I’ve no more time to waste.”

  “You’ve an enemy who might have plotted centuries for this moment. Did not Gilgarran warn you of such things?”

  Something clicked in Sevryn’s mind, like a shopkeeper’s lock on a door, as the keyed tumblers fell into place. He made the slightest motion backward, on guard, balancing himself. One unnamed who managed to be everywhere, turning, meddling, directing. “It was you,” he answered slowly. “The Vaelinar not named. Gilgarran warned of the meddler, the manipulator, the obstructionist, the schemer. I thought it was Quendius, but it was you.”

  “It might be both of us, if you live to find out.” Daravan moved.

  Not a straight-ahead lunge or even to his side, but a somersault that took up his weapon and brought him to his feet at Sevryn’s open flank, in under his dagger hand. It did not matter. Cerat had seen him coming, from the corner of Sevryn’s heated eyes, and met him, the dagger cutting across his face.