The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  A brilliant trap. If it could be worked.

  Bistel and her brother led troops as bait. She and her troops were the jaws.

  She opened her eyes.

  “What do we do?”

  She hauled back on the reins, spinning her mount around sharply as he squealed in protest. “We ride,” she answered tightly. “And pray we get there in time to be of some help. Bistel will hold them as long as he can.”

  “Five days.” Bistane sounded grim.

  “If anyone can do it, the warlord can.”

  Bistane signaled the troops to fall in, and they set out at a collected, steady run back the way they had come. They dared not run far or long, but they would press themselves as they could. Lives depended on it. The thought of victory had been swept away. Now the Warrior Queen concentrated only on survival.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  RIVERGRACE DRAGGED HER BOOTS. She walked in gliding, searching strides even though she could see a little in the torchlight cast around her, more in worry that there would be something in shadow she could not see. The weight of the rock pressed down on her. Her throat fought to close against the dust she raised. Last time she had walked a route like this, Cerat had been in her hands, talking to her, taunting her, urging her. Not that she would ever want to hold a presence like that again, but it had distracted her from the reality closing about her. Then, those other forces had driven her, had led her. Propelled by a River Goddess wanting freedom, a souldrinking Demon wanting mayhem and a trapped elemental Goddess of Kerith seeking cleansing, she had been pulled and pushed to her destination. Now she had no idea where to go except that she could not go back.

  How did the Ferryman know to find her, to take her from Larandaril, and for what reasons? Had they been his own or was he nothing more than a thrall to a Way, a Way that even other Vaelinars found a mystery? No one seemed sure what House made it or brought the specter into being or how he tamed his river. Few knew that he could tame other rivers, bridging them with his phantom presence. So did he have a master who lived still, as Vaelinar could and often did? Had that master sent for her, and the Ferryman failed, or did she walk to him now? What could he possibly be, under all this rock, let alone where? Now it seemed she could wander down here, lost, until she no longer had the strength go on.

  Grace halted. She put her right hand to her chest to see if her heart still beat as she thought it did. It pulsed strongly under her palm. The gesture echoed the touch she liked to give Sevryn, her palm over his chest to feel the strength of his heart as if she could cradle the life he carried within him. She closed her eyes. She could not feel him, whether he lived or died, whether he had betrayed himself to Lara or whether he kept himself confined and coiled, waiting to strike. He would come after her, she knew, if he could find the means to do it. Even through death, he would find a road. They had done it before. This time, though . . . her thoughts faltered and her hand dropped to her side. Lara’s attack on her had scattered her trust to the winds. What was she that she had earned that betrayal? What did the queen fear from her? Narskap’s daughter. Who was she but lost? And if she were lost, how could she hope that anyone else would be able to find her? She had no way forward unless she found it herself.

  Grace stopped thinking, shutting down her doubt, her shadow wavering in the orange-yellow glow of her torch. She stiffened her spine. Betrayed or rescued, punished righteously or persecuted, how could she know what transpired? She could only know herself. And she knew water. Fresh water. Droplets of rain and puddles and the beginnings of the smallest brook to the deepest, white-water current. Water ran through sand and stone, through ash and branch . . . it ran wherever it could until it was free. If she found it and followed it, it might take her into depths where only the merest rivulet could run, or it might take her to freedom.

  She took a deep breath and let her senses go, senses she had kept tightly wound because of her fears, fear if she touched the rock it would tumble down to crush her. She brushed granite and quartz, jasper and stone, and plain old dirt . . . and she found its essence. It ached for sun and water and wind, just as any leaf or flower would. Abandoned in the dark, it lay still and silent and hurting. It was earth, alone and separate, and yet it was not. It was meant to be part of all: earth, wind, fire, and water. Even here in the depths, water would trickle down and run through, touching it, tumbling the stone, bringing out colors with its wet brush, moving it, springing seed to life that could crack recalcitrant stone in two. Lifegiving water, denied. Rivergrace tucked a curling strand of hair behind her ear. A dry winter. As a Farbranch, she understood the cycle of farming and ranching. Wet years, dry years. Trees that harvested well only every handful of years or so and trees that harvested abundantly every year. Vines that grew well only if severely cut back first. Insects that came and went according to the moons and the seasons. All natural.

  Save for this.

  A dry year which would never end, not until the spiteful River Goddess could be appeased and there was no excuse Grace or anyone else could give Her which would placate Her. Like Sevryn, the Souldrinker had corrupted the Goddess with his merest touch, with his burning presence. Perhaps the only uncorrupted part of the Goddess lay within Rivergrace. She understood now the desperation of the being. Could she heal the Goddess or had Cerat bridged the distance between them, bonding Demon to deity? Could she even survive attempting it?

  Had the Ferryman sent Rivergrace under the mountain to make one last sacrifice?

  If so, he did not know who he meddled with. She was a Farbranch, and she had family and a love to return to. She curled her fingers tightly about her torch. She would find water, sweet water, and she would find a way out.

  Chapter Fifty

  "I HEAR WATER.”

  "What you heard,” Bregan rasped, "was me pissing air in the corner.” He leaned over, hands on his knees.

  Garner took out his waterskin and passed it over, knowing that he carried a bigger store than the trader did, and that Bregan’s supply was probably nearly exhausted. Bregan waved it off. Garner shoved it into his hand. “Last thing I need is to carry you. Your legs would drag.”

  “Aye, the one thought that keeps me going is the image of you attempting to hoist me over your shoulder.” Bregan carefully untied and uncorked the skin before sipping gently from it.

  “I could carry you, but you’d drag. I cannot help it if you folk grow like weeds.” Garner took his waterskin back and tied it off tightly, hefting it a bit before stowing it. Not much left, but it would have to do.

  “Weeds, yes, most of the races are weeds compared to the sturdy Dweller. Now as for this water you hear . . .”

  “No way of knowing if ’tis drinkable or not or if the stone flavors it. Could be full of sulfur or other minerals.”

  Bregan flexed his shoulders and rolled his neck. “I bow to your expertise. Having been brought up on only the finest wines and liquors, I doubt I will know good water when I see it.” He gave a bow before following after Garner who snorted faintly as Bregan fell in behind.

  They trudged along for a bit before Garner asked the question that kept simmering at the front of his mind. Bregan would either answer it or ignore it. “So how is it a clever fellow like you came to partner with a man like Quendius?”

  “Partner, mmm? A good word. Less than alliance, more than acquaintance. I tell myself it came out of good intentions. I had no doubt whatsoever about those intentions until the Jewel shattered. Istlanthir was not given a good death.” Bregan scratched his jaw as he walked. “My hatred of the Vaelinars is well known and I doubt I have to explain that to you. It stems not only from this by virtue of the Ferryman,” and he rapped his hand against his brace, “but that they feel they can tax us on our own lands, that they have holdings which they tore from our ancestors, that they enslaved many of us when they first appeared, and that they still feel as if we are beneath them. They strangle us with steel hands hidden by velvet gloves under the pretense that they hold together a nation torn apar
t. We were mending. We did not and do not need them.”

  “You can’t deny they have given as well as taken. That brace o’ yours is Vaelinar.”

  “Aye, this brace that keeps me on my feet . . . I have clerks at the countinghouse who could not see but for the spectacles they make. They gave us better spindles for spinning and looms for weaving. Built bridges that span impossible reaches. Kid yourself not, none of that was done for us out of the goodness of their hearts. They had needs we could not meet, not for centuries, and so they brought their knowledge to us as sparingly as they could, to help themselves. The Vaelinars are infamous for helping themselves to whatever they want.”

  “They have grafted themselves onto our lives and sometimes the fruit is sweet, sometimes bitter.” Garner shrugged.

  “What can sweeten that bitter fruit? The petitions they grant us now and again to get our lives back? Never!”

  “Seems t’ me that if anyone had a stranglehold, it could be the trader guilds.”

  “The coin purses. Oh, yes, the holder of the purses. Let us never forget that the Vaelinars are uncanny when it comes to the making of fortunes. They can see through stone to the gems that lie within. Refine gold to its purest state. Tan hides so that they are as soft as silk . . . and yes, let us not forget the silks as well.”

  “Yet you have a change of heart.”

  “The man who said that the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend is a fool. I am trying to be as little foolish as I can. Pray that it’s not too late.”

  “What would you do now?”

  “What you would. Stop him. What Quendius truly desires is probably no less than the annihilation of all he sees on Kerith. He is a man full of poison who can’t look upon life without despising it. I didn’t unleash him, but there is a faint hope you and I can trip him up.”

  Garner could not argue with him on anything he said. Whatever hope they both held, it was faint indeed. He stopped talking to concentrate on the very faraway sound of water he thought he had heard, a wet lapping against stone, a tip-tapping of a drip now and then. It drew him as a flame drew a moth, and he could only hope it was not a trap.

  Demon light played about the caverns with an eerie red-gold glow, giving Sevryn the feeling that he walked into the heart of a forge, melting stone. He would blink or narrow his eyes, and the glow still reflected although it was lessened. He gave it off, and it would not stop unless he stood with eyes closed, and even then he wasn’t certain that the light wouldn’t seep through his eyelids. He could feel its heat and steam of the forge, its unforgiving fires that melted iron, copper, tin and alloyed them into more than their individual selves. He could feel the toughened ridges on his hands that came, not from handling weapons, but from making them for twenty years under the lash of Quendius and Narskap. Sweat dampened his armpits and ran stingingly into a scratch or two (or perhaps they were deeper, he hadn’t taken the time to look) left from his skirmish with Daravan. He had no idea how long he’d been entombed in stone. It could have been a candlemark or two or even the full turn of a sun, although the way his cuts bit at him, he doubted that long. Cerat crawled under his skin, hot and itchy, as if readying to tear his way out. Sevryn scratched at his arms until he drew blood, but nothing stopped the feeling. Nothing would until he laid Cerat down, and that he could not do as long as Demon-sight took him through the underworld beneath the stone. Did he believe Daravan that Rivergrace had been brought this way? He had no choice, but, yes, he did. Not only for himself and his own beliefs, but through the hunger of Cerat who had had a taste of her once and longed for more. Always thirsty, never sated, the Souldrinker quested tirelessly in search of lost but very sweet prey.

  So, by the eyes, by the soul, Cerat took him after Rivergrace without hesitation. Rockslide, bottomless abyss, nothing mattered to it, not even the frailties of the flesh which might need to eat or drink or sleep. Sevryn would not deny the demon, not yet. He only prayed that he could deny Cerat once his love was found. Footfalls echoed hollowly within the tunnel as he trotted. If there was a fiery hell for souls who had failed or faltered in their purpose, he knew he glimpsed it now.

  If he could do one thing, it would be to deny Cerat a stroll through the battlefield, picking and choosing what souls to harvest among the dying and severely injured, those on the brink of life and death. He had hoped to beat the Demon out of him or extinguish it, but nothing he had done worked. He used it now to find Rivergrace and when he’d found her, and delivered her, he would walk away. He knew the burden she carried. When he found out how to excise that which possessed him, then and only then could he return and help her without adding to that burden. He loved her with all he had, and it was not enough. She had family to lend her strength while she waited for him, and he trusted that would be enough. Love sometimes must mean letting go as well as holding on.

  Sevryn stopped in his tracks. He put one arm across his ribs to hug himself as that realization cut through him. What he had decided could apply not only to lovers, but to mothers and sons. . . .

  A lump thickened his throat. He swallowed it down with difficulty. He rubbed a thumb across his mouth, found his lips cracked and swollen with dryness, and his eyes stinging without moisture. Never once had it crossed his mind that his abandonment might have been as much out of love and necessity as it might have been self-serving. Then a smile stretched his face. It was a wonder Tolby Farbranch had never knocked that sense into him. He’d taken him to task more than once over the courtship of his beloved foundling daughter. No doubt the imcomparable matriarch Lily Farbranch had talked him out of it and was just waiting for the maturity to sink into Sevryn on its own. He could almost see her now, reigning over her tailoring shop, scissors in one hand and a handful of pins in the other, looking at him as though she could not decide whether to skewer him or slice him or hug him.

  Sevryn staggered back into movement. Hot, still heated, everything about him glowing like coals in a banked fire, and he burned from the inside out. Water, he needed water. His blood boiled as if laced with kedant, and delirium ruled his thoughts and his words. He talked, he could feel the dry husk of his voice moving through his throat, tearing as it emerged, and yet heard nothing of what he said. Did he spew his thoughts out randomly? He could not hear. He had lost the ability to know thought from voice. But he had to have water, that he knew, and he also knew that where he would find it, he would find his Rivergrace, for she needed water as a fish did. Not that she was a mermaid of legend but that water soothed her and replenished her, and . . .

  Sevryn croaked to a halt. He blinked his eyes furiously, so dried out he could hardly see through them. He reined in Cerat, strapped down the delirium. He needed water, or neither of them would live. The Demon seemed to agree, or perhaps it sensed as much as Sevryn did that Rivergrace would be found somewhere like that as well.

  It led him in a staggering rush through the tunnel. Walls rose from nowhere to slam him in the shoulder. Overhangs snatched at his brow. He had unleashed something terrible in his desperation and if, when, he found Rivergrace, he did not know if she would survive the meeting.

  She found a pool. Still and silent and somewhat brackish, normally to be replenished and purified by winter rain, yet the basin held onto its moisture. Rivergrace knelt by it and put one hand into it, singing quietly the song she remembered from her first days in dark, twisted caverns and mines just like this one, a song from her mother that she remembered better than she did the person who’d birthed her. The song flowed with her Talent, twisted through the water, bubbling it up gently, cleansing it. After long moments, the song stopped of its own accord, the last notes falling from her lips into quiet. She swished her hand through the pool. The moisture felt tepid. She put her wet fingertips to her mouth to taste it tentatively. It lingered on her tongue a moment, sweet water, good water, with only a hint of staleness and dirt within it. It would give life. She knew that as soon as she left, whatever lived inside these smooth, carven walls would skitter out to partake of the bo
unty. She cupped her hands and drank deeply before washing her face.

  Rivergrace sat back on her heels, resting. The torch guttered low and she knew it wouldn’t burn forever. The water had found a way in, so it might have a slow, trickling, way out. She eyed the widened area of the tunnel. Although cut or chiseled smoothly in the main tunnels, it still had its nooks and crannies, as though the builder had followed the natural geography of the mountain’s crevices and caves. She would have to trace it. A weariness settled over her in a cloud of aches and malaise. She secured the torch in a brace of rocks to let it burn. Her eyes dipped once and stayed closed for far too long. Rivergrace forced herself to stand and to move away from the comfort of the water to one of the nooks big enough to hold her body. She sidled into it and then sat down, finding a cradle within the jagged rock, and closed her eyes again. With the dampness of the pool still upon her cheeks, she slipped into sleep.

  Click, click. Tap, tap. Click.

  Hard nails or talons upon the tile and polished stone of the tunnel. Rivergrace’s eyelids fluttered in an effort to open, dried shut in her sleep. How long, she did not know, but she knew what she heard. Something large moved along the tunnels toward her. She wiped her eyes open. Her torch still burned fitfully, throwing its orange glow off the small pond and its environs. Its smoky scent gave its presence away, drawing whatever trotted across the stone toward it.