The Four Forges

by Jenna Rhodes

  “The river’s at flood tide. I won’t risk my family for a few half crowns.”

  “Da! That’s our seed money,” Garner protested, Lily’s voice shadowing his own. “We’ll go downstream and take our chances there. Or take Bregan Oxfort’s route,” he added, with a threat deep in his young voice.

  “You’ll do no such thing! He’s a robbing beast, but I’ll pay it.” Tolby dug in his pants pocket, deep, where he had his small leather bag of coins stowed safely away, his shoulder shrugging out of Rivergrace’s hold, sending her off-balance.

  It was the phantom that caught her. His icy touch cut through her like a sharp blade and she gasped, and the pain ebbed almost immediately, but he kept his transparent ebon hand upon her wrist.

  “Aderro,” the Ferryman said to her, his voice hollow, yet the tone somehow warm.

  Rivergrace blinked up into that cowl, searching for a face, a hint of one, a soul, too, perhaps, something stirring deeply in her mind. Not the joyous hail of her family, Derro!, but aderro, with an unfamiliar accent, the same word yet not. She stared at the Dark Ferryman, her thoughts as tumultuous as the Nylara thundering past them.

  He said more to her, then, but she understood not a word of it, the language lilting and flowing, and when the phantom came to a halt, he paused, as if waiting for her to respond. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand,” she managed, as Tolby reached out and gently took her wrist back from the Ferryman’s hold.

  “Leave her be,” her father ordered. “Get back in the cart, Grace.” He clenched his coin bag in his other hand.

  “But . . .” she paused, unable to say what she felt, shivering in the chilled presence of the other. “I should know, shouldn’t I?” She looked at Tolby. He raised his hand then to brush her hair back from her brow.

  “Now is not the time. Let me settle with the Ferryman first, and then we’ll talk.”

  “He knows me,” Rivergrace said firmly, and the realization grounded her. She lifted her chin, frowning, to look back into the emptiness leaning over her. “I speak common,” she said. “And we are not traders or haulers. This is all we have left after a raid. We can’t pay the toll you ask.” Talking to the Ferryman was like throwing small pebbles into the deepest, darkest pool of water in the Silverwing when the river was quiet at late summer, flood tide gone, rains waning, the water still and moving deeply. She and Nutmeg used to do it, just to see the ripples that would spread outward in serene circles. Once, they’d frightened a bottom-dwelling fish and it came leaping out, thrashing and splashing and like to scare a year’s growth out of both of them. She waited now for a reaction from the Ferryman.

  He flowed over and through her, before drawing back and coalescing in front of Tolby again. “Toll,” he said, “one silver crown bit.”

  Tolby blinked rapidly. He undid the string to his little pouch and fetched the coin out, dropping it into the outstretched inky palm. The coin sank into sooty nothingness and disappeared. “Board,” the phantom ordered, and turned his back on both of them.

  Tolby tossed her onto the cart where Garner and Keldan caught her, and he jumped up to his seat beside Lily on the wagon. The fare was a pittance compared to what the Ferryman had asked before, and Tolby wanted to get across before the capricious being changed his mind a second time.

  Both carriages jolted onto the rough wooden bed of the barge, and the Ferryman leaned into his rudder and cast off, unbothered by the force of the river or any other nature other than his own. Rivergrace hugged herself as she settled down next to Garner.

  Nutmeg put her arms around Grace. “Mistress Greathouse dropped the apple right out of the tree. It’s time, and past time, we tell you.”

  Grace leaned against her sister as she tried to fold her long legs and settle in between them and the bales of goods. “If you’re going to tell me I’m not Dweller-born, I think I know.” They held each other, laughing on the edge of tears, as the carts rocked roughly back and forth against the Nylara’s swell, and the Ferryman fought to take them safely across. The laughter seemed to work against the forces of nature which tried to beat them back, for the river settled a little, and other than a constant bucking against the current, the ride was smoother than anyone anticipated.

  Campfire light glowed over all of them, as the night air smelled of burning wood and supper and herbs steamed for drinking. Lily pressed a warm mug into her hands, and sat down next to Rivergrace, settling with a soft rustle of her skirts. “It’s not that you have Vaelinar blood,” she started. “We all know you do, and you know you do, surely, by now.”

  She hadn’t thought of it, before the fair at Stonesend, but it had stared her in the face there, much as the Ferryman had stared into her face that morning. The only question would be, “How much, do you think?” Grace tilted her face to look up at Lily, for she sat on the ground, and her Dweller mother on a keg.

  “We think . . .” Lily paused, wrapping her own slender fingers about her drink, the knuckles showing white. “We think full-blooded. You’ve the eyes, which we can’t hope to hide in Calcort, and the height, the slenderness . . .”

  “The beauty,” finished Keldan. He cleared his throat and picked up another skewer of meat and turned his attention to that.

  Family, she thought, and took a sip of her drink to savor that. Other family. “If you knew I was Vaelinar from the beginning, why . . .”

  “Why didn’t we return you?”

  Nutmeg said petulantly, “You were mine. I found you. I pulled you from the river.”

  Grace nudged her booted foot with her own. “You’re my only sister. That won’t ever change. I want to understand what Mistress Greathouse meant.”

  Tolby knuckled his daughter’s head with the bowl of his pipe. “Let your mother talk.”

  Reaching down, Lily lightly traced the marks on Grace’s wrist. “These scars, faint now, were raw and fresh wounds then from the shackles that made them. It wasn’t just a chafing or rubbing. They were gouged and branded, horrible to see even though they’d mostly healed by then. You were someone’s slave, and there was no way we intended to give you back. You were barely alive when the Silverwing brought you to us. Wars were fought with the Strangers over their slavery, and it was ended, but some Vaelinars still manage it. And for one to enslave another, an even deeper crime. It would have meant your life, and possibly all of ours, to unknot the question of where you came from and how to return you.”

  Rivergrace took a long, slow breath. “I escaped.”

  “Somehow, yes. If there were others with you, they never made it. Your raft was little more than kindling and splinters and falling apart bit by bit even as Nutmeg pulled you out.”

  “The Bolgers came looking for me.”

  Tolby lit his pipe. “We don’t know that. They always raided before, and there’s little doubt they’ll raid after we’re long gone.”

  “And the Ravers?”

  He shook his head again. “No more murderous around you than they are around any living thing of the First Home. We do not hear of Ravers for years upon years, and then they be back, raiding, then gone again. No sense to it. Fear, if you must, Grace, but fear your own. They’re the ones who put shackles on you, and if you had family . . .” He paused. “You’ve a much longer life to live than we do, and time to find the answers.”

  “Time,” she echoed. “And care.”

  “Yes.” A puff of grayish smoke wreathed his head and faded away in the night air. “When you search, you must do it very carefully.”

  Hosmer slept by the fireside, but groaned a little as he tried to roll and couldn’t, for Lily had bolstered his leg so that he couldn’t do just that when he slept and twist or hurt it. She moved to his side to stroke his temple and quiet him. Rivergrace stared across the tiny sparks and motes of glowing ash that drifted upward and burned out. There would be a time when her Dweller family would leave her, like it or not, for her years would be different from theirs, and the thought settled about her uneasily, for she’d never really consi
dered it before. Her drink grew cold long before she remembered to drink it down, as Nutmeg spoke up about the adventure facing them, and the others broke into noisy plans, noticing but forgiving her silence.

  When she put her head down to sleep, it was with the faint roar of the Nylara still in her thoughts, underscored by the voice of the Ferryman who had spoken words to her she didn’t understand.

  Or had part of her remembered? And would that part whisper it to her in her dreams? And if not in tonight’s dream, then when? She closed her eyes uneasily.

  Sevryn stood in his saddle a moment, easing his legs and ass and thought that if Gilgarran could catch him now, he’d get a swift slap to the head for being saddlesore after so brief a time. Gone soft, he had, although the ride from the Stronghold to Larandaril, and then to the great library and then angling back toward ild Fallyn had scarcely been an easy one. Still. He chewed on his lip briefly. Gone soft.

  The knowledge scarcely eased the pain.

  Sevryn laughed at himself as he reined his horse down toward the river plain where the Nylara cut through like a hot knife through soft butter, and the Ferryman awaited his duties. Although the rolling hills gave way, the ride took longer than the vision promised, and the sun held a high throne by the time he made the ferry dock. No caravans or farmers waited; he pulled up alone and dismounted, waiting for the Ferryman to notice and appear. It gave him time to catch his breath and stretch his legs and ease the kinks, and he looked longingly at the northern mountains. Far beyond them, a good week’s ride or more, lay the ridges which circled the ild Fallyn Stronghold, made passable only by the bridge which their House had made, a bridge which only Vaelinarran engineering coupled with Talent could have even attempted, the Work of a lifetime. It was the Work which had established ild Fallyn as its own Stronghold, its own dynasty, in a world which magic had left, and the Vaelinars regained their own, strand by twisting strand. A Work like that was not done by one individual but by several, working in concert, braiding their Talents and molding their world to fit their dream. It had destroyed a few. A few of the Ways had been horribly corrupted. Most had never come into being at all. He wondered at the strength of the Vaelinars who’d attempted a Way and if he could ever have dared.

  The Ferryman approached, taller than Sevryn but not by much, but all the more impressive by the voluminous robes he wore, all of dark and shadow and magic. The Ferryman requested his toll and Sevryn paid it, wondering as many others before him where that coin actually went when it dropped into the Ferryman’s palm. He led his horse onto the raft as it bucked the strong current of the Nylara and shifted underfoot in violent rolls. Sevryn wished he were farther north, closer to the road’s end, crossing the wide and milder Greenbank River which bordered the ild Fallyn lands.

  He would indeed have to toughen up, he thought, scratching his horse under the chin and calming him as the Ferryman pushed away to struggle with his will against that of the surging river. Tressandre regularly rode down from the north, driving her horses and goods for sales and fairs, to spy and to meddle, and to find new lovers. She never gave a care for the length of the road, nor had the journey ever seemed to drain her.

  He could feel the power of the Ferryman and it made the hair on the back of his neck rise as the creature gained safe passage for them. The raft rose and fell, heaving back and forth, and his stomach lurched queasily. His horse put his head down, whickering uneasily, the whites of his eyes showing despite soft words from Sevryn. For a moment, it seemed as if the center of the river was a whirlpool and they swirled about wildly before coming about to safety.

  They landed finally after long, inexorable moments in which the river fought to wash them off the raft, and spray drenched them, and the ropes which guided the raft across the river strained and came near to snapping but did not. Sevryn moved to lead his horse off the raft, more than a little unnerved. The horse jumped aside skittishly, and he took a firm hold on the reins.

  The Ferryman stopped him from stepping onto the bank.

  “Seek the Forges,” he said, deep voice rolling out of the cavernous opening of his hood.

  Sevryn rocked back on his bootheels. “What?”

  Had he even heard it? His horse took a bolting leap off the raft, dragging him alongside, and Sevryn turned him round, and curbed him to a halt.

  “Wait.”

  The Ferryman turned. “Crossing?” he asked.

  “You just brought me here. What did you say to me? What Forges?”

  The being did not elucidate. But he lifted his hand and pointed. “Go.” The Ferryman boarded the raft and left.

  Sevryn watched the Dark Ferryman disappear into the spray and white-water caps of the Nylara, and then he stepped back, still trying to soothe his unsettled horse. As he turned to the horse, hand stroking the curved neck, he saw they had landed on the far side of the Greenbank River, and the flesh rose and danced on his arms.

  He spun about. The wide, shallow, and tranquil waters of the streambed faced him; gone was the mad and furious Nylara, and the Ferryman, and the docks. Everything gone but the verdant shores for which the Greenbank had been named.

  The Ferryman had taken him the Way he’d wished, and left him with two burning questions. How had the creature done so, and how had he known about the Forges?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  HOSMER GOT TO HIS FEET and walked, slowly and gingerly, with Garner under his shoulder as a crutch, something that would never have been possible normally because Garner was taller, but with his own injury, he walked crouched over. So the two fit together like some odd puzzle. It worked well whenever their journey paused or stopped for the evening, with the exception of Garner’s spirited rendition of “Two Frogs,” a Dweller ditty that involved a good deal of hopping during the chorus, much to Hosmer’s muttering. He had no choice but to join in the hopping if his “crutch” did, and the two of them would curse and hop about the campfire while Lily, Nutmeg, and Rivergrace melted into pools of laughter. The return of the two to health brought smiles to everyone else’s faces despite the good-natured ribbing the two constantly aimed at each other.

  Even Bumblebee would swish his thick tail and give pony snorts of humor and toss his head. The stiffness left his legs while in the Greathouse stable, and Rivergrace thought it was because one stable lad had taken a liking to the barrel-bellied pony and massaged and rubbed his legs down twice a day while they all rested and healed. Whatever it was the lad had done, Bumblebee hit the road with them looking like a new, or at least, much renewed equine and very proud of himself with ribbons woven in his thick mane. Tolby winked at Bumblebee. “Don’t let that old man fool you,” he commented to his sisters. “He can run a great deal faster than he lets on, particularly with a hungry Bolger or two on his tail!”

  Lily cleaned her last pot and put it away carefully, nestling the lid next to it. She wiped her hands on her apron as she sat down by the fireside. “If we must talk of fooling, then we must decide on our story for Grace. It’s time to deal with what Mistress Greathouse, and we have known all along we must come to dealing with this.”

  “Me,” responded Rivergrace faintly.

  “The story of you, aye.”

  “Best to stay as close to the truth as possible, when telling a lie.” Tolby put his pipe away. “Less to get tripped up on, later, and, Tree knows, we all have our share of stubbed toes in life.”

  “You have to lie about me?”

  “Perhaps. There are hard questions we’ve no answer to, and you could suffer because of that. We didn’t take you in and love you to lose you.

  “A truthful lie will be our best defense,” concluded Tolby.

  “That shall be our plan then,” Lily responded softly, and she looked at Rivergrace. They all turned considering expressions on her at once, and Rivergrace shrank back a little to have her entire family staring at her. She knew, or thought she knew, herself, but she found herself waiting with her breath held.

  Nutmeg said firmly, with a toss of her head
that was like Bumblebee’s. “I found her.”

  “And we kept her, for it was obvious she’d come from poor circumstances, thin and bruised and very quiet.” Lily folded her hands on her lap.

  “We cannot mention or let the scars on her wrists show.” Hosmer’s jaw tightened.

  “The slavery quit long ago.”

  “Or so we were told, and then—” he gestured at Rivergrace. “We find her with shackles.”

  She rubbed the faint scars, grown up her wrists with age and barely visible if she wore long sleeves or bracelets. “Someone could . . . claim me?”

  “Maybe. It would take a lot of nerve and power, but the Vaelinars have never been shy that way.”

  She sat back from the glow of the campfire, hoping the night would hide the shadows she felt across her face.

  “We hope that the risk of claiming you is, in their minds, not worth it.” Lily put a hand out, brushing the back of Rivergrace’s head in apology for her words. “And, after all these years, they may have forgotten a child who escaped on the Silverwing River. Someone built that raft, meager as it was, and sent it on its way. That someone would be the person the slavers looked for, not you.”

  “You never found them.”

  Tolby shook his head. “Not a scrap of them. We looked for days, upstream and down, but you were the only one washed to our doorstep, and you barely made it, as it was. So . . . we tell the truthful lie that you were found, but not that you were a slave. A wasting child, left behind, and we took you in. Then there is the matter of your lineage, and that might weight the matter—why they didn’t scour the countryside looking for you? Mixed blood.”

  “Though she has Vaelinar blood, she’s never shown a scrap of their magic.” Garner poked a stick into the campfire, stirring up ash and spark.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Keldan frowned. “She has a way with animals and the like.”

  Tolby grunted. “That’s the Dweller upbringing. There’s not a one of you who can’t charm a seedling from the ground or a rabbit from the bush if you needed to. No magic in that.”