The Dark Ferryman (20 page)

Someone with a voice that bordered on coarse yet melodious sang loud enough that his guild office filled with the noise, and Bregan Oxfort gritted his teeth against the interruption and sat with his hand covering his left ear, but he could not mute it enough. The slanting winter sun came streaking into the room, setting his leg brace on metallic fire even as it did little to actually warm the limb. The song put him in a foul mood, but it was everywhere on the city streets this season and now some trader had brought a troubadour into the guildhall salon and he could not even escape it here.

The grinding of his teeth did little to drown out the cursed song either, nor did the scratching of his pen on the papers he glared down at. Bregan lifted his gaze, looking out the glazed windows at the nearby span, one of the Seven Sisters which bound Hawthorne to the mainland. Built by common hands, the Kernans and the Dwellers and the Galdarkans, wonders of engineering that the Vaelinars could not lay claim to. One of the few, but all the same, his people could claim it, and any time one wanted to dispute who ruled these provinces, he could point out the city of Hawthorne even on a wintry day like this, when forbidding clouds swept in from the sea, heavy with threatening rain. For half a crown, he’d forgo the bridge and swim to shore if it meant he could get away from the tune.

A knock came at the door. He pulled his attention away from the bridge long enough to bark out permission to enter. An apprentice pulled the door open wide enough for his long thin face and long hooked nose to peer in at him, letting the room flood with sound from the nearby tavern singer. His anger must have showed, for the apprentice broke into a series of nervous, almost petrified coughs rather than spit out what he had come for.

Bregan waited as long as his short temper allowed before growling, “Either tell me or leave.”

“Your father, Master. He sent this.” The apprentice held up his shaking hand.

“Toss it here, then and get out.” He didn’t intend to hear another lyric about the abusive suitor and his poor downtrodden bride who was all but dead from his care of her by the time they reached the Nylara. The apprentice managed to drop the bundle of letters in his lap amid another fit of coughing before bowing and backing out as the singer revealed the husband’s deciding to cross the Nylara without the Ferryman and his goods-laden barge being tossed on waves as it swamped and the Ferryman watching as he and his bride began to sink.

The door shut. It could not totally muffle the relentless singer as the heartless husband offered the life of his bride for passage across the river, and the Ferryman accepted. The irony of it was that his acceptance saved her soul even as it doomed that of her husband, but the girl hardly cared by then as she passed into the shadowy immortality of the phantom Ferryman. Shouts accompanied the gods be praised, last verse.

Bregan popped open the waxed sealing string on the packet. Several notes from his father fell open, as if the man could not confine all his thoughts to just one letter. Actually, as was his wont, each missive probably concerned a single topic. It made for ease of concentration among his underlings and for record keeping, and even though it was his son whom he addressed, Willard Oxfort was not likely to change decades of dictating habit. Also, it was likely at least one of these letters had not been copied for the files and archives and had been meant for his eyes alone. The smell of the wax was still new, meaning his father had probably written these no later than last night and possibly even this morning.

Bregan tapped the letters open with an unhappy grunt. The old man could sit in his gentleman’s estates, retired from everything but meddling while he still rode the caravan trails as well as handling the politicking his father set out for him to do. Meanwhile, actual leadership of the various traders’ guilds was kept dangling just out of his reach like so much bait by the elder Oxfort. When he had proved himself, the mantle would be settled on his shoulders. Proved himself! Did the brace he wore mean nothing? He would have had the old man assassinated years ago except that, unfortunately, it seemed he still had a thing or two to learn from Willard Oxfort. His gaze fell on the letters in his lap.

One of those things seemed necessary to be learned at the lunching hour. He glanced at the small timepiece on his desk, a thing of extraordinary gears and water flow that needed to be turned but once a day, at the darkest hour. He had apprentices who would come in and do the chore, although he was often working that late himself, if not on the roads. If he took a carriage, he could make the lane of the Gods by the time indicated. He shoved that paper to the side and read the other notations sent him. One involved the marketing of forged items by various Bolger clans and if one might benefit by getting them to elect or assign a three-man council to unify the bargaining process or not. The last detailed a possible new trade route east which would undercut one of the Elven Ways, thereby saving on tolls and permits, although the road would be exceedingly rough going at first, having not been established or trekked. Willard thought armored caravan beasts might make their way through the undergrowth to help establish the route, and did Bregan have any input on the matter?

He dropped that last with a sigh and rubbed his eyes. He had worked the last two decades of his life trying to find a way to skirt the spiderweb of Vaelinar influence that cobbled the lands together. Much easier hoped for than done. The scarring of the southern and eastern lands by the Mageborn Wars left gaping holes in the firmament, not only of the land itself but of the atmosphere about it. The very wind could not be counted upon, nor the waters, for the elements themselves had been turned and corrupted. Ofttimes, only the Ways could skirt those lands safely, or if not a true Way, only a road laid down by the Vaelinars. He hated that, hated it far more than that despicable Dweller song about the Ferryman of the Nylara. And the Ferryman, who’d taken the youth from his body and the strength of his limbs, he hated with every fiber of his being.

He kicked his leg aside and stood, the brace moving with an oiled smoothness to cage his weakness. Kerith belonged to those born of Kerith, placed by the creating hands of the Gods to inhabit these lands, but the Vaelinars were like an insidious parasitic plant that managed to seed itself into every crack and entwine itself upon every living thing it could possibly feed upon. If it were up to him, he’d kill them off one by one, quietly but surely, but it was not. And, indeed, that would be an insanity even he could not carry out. Quendius was another matter. Bregan was not certain what Quendius had in mind ultimately, but for the moment, he wanted to see an ending to the Ways as much as Bregan did. That made him a useful ally. He wondered if his father held his own alliances with Quendius, cutting Bregan out of his own future.

He glanced at the clever clockworks again. Opening the door to his offices, he gave a shout for a horse as he grabbed his cape, and he could hear the apprentices scattering on the landing below him to do his bidding. He could hear threats echoing in the stable yard as underlings scurried. He would not throttle the lad who did not have his horse ready by the time he strode into the guild yards, although he had the temper to do so. No. The lads were not responsible for his unhappiness, and they would not, for the moment, bear the brunt of it. Quendius had spoken to Willard only of smugglers, and as of this moment, he was still uncertain of what ultimate outcome had been planned for him. Was he to have been assassinated by those who waited and were driven off by Daravan and his lackey? Or was there to have been a historic meeting, corrupted and befouled by Daravan as only a Vaelinar could twist happenings? Did he trust Quendius or not? And that, he supposed, was the ultimate crux of the matter. That Quendius had come to him, a sly whisper on the night wind, was undeniable, and yet Bregan supposed it would be too much to assume the man held as much contempt for the Vaelinars as Oxfort did. Far too much.

A horse waited for him, one of the hot-blooded elven breed, and Bregan curled his lip as he mounted it. The nervous beast danced a side step or two as he bent down to make sure his right boot fit the stirrup properly. The feeling in the leg came and went, and he’d learned the hard way that he could not ride well if the leg had gone into one of its numb spells. Today he could feel pins and needles, but that did not reassure him. The arm did not need to be braced, although he could no longer use it with the strength and accuracy he had before. No matter. His sword fit his other hand equally and lethally well. He turned the mare out of the guild yard, flipped a coin to the stable lad who looked the most hot and mussed and had probably done most of the work (or the yelling), and headed onto the public streets.

The mare stretched her legs in a long-striding walk, her head up and ears flipping back and forth to catch the sounds on the city streets. He could smell hot wax, cooking fish, and the salt of the sea. As they moved closer through the trade and market streets toward the small row of temples, the aroma of incense grew stronger. The horse flared her nostrils at the unfamiliar odors. Some smelled sweet and others pungent and still others downright unpleasant, the last meant to keep away the spirits of the deceased Mageborn who had brought a downfall to all the Gods and temples and believers. He had little faith in anything that held sway on Temple Row; he’d seen much in his years on the road that influenced his judgment of mortal flesh. He slowed his mount down as the streets grew crowded, and even the riding lane filled with the jostle of bodies, all it seemed, intent on going the same way he was. The thought passed through his mind that he ought to turn back; he disliked crowds, and he could see nothing here of any use to him, despite his father’s instructions. There would be an interrogation later, as always, if he had done as bidden by his father, yet that did not influence his decision one way or the other. He simply took a shorter hold on the reins to calm the mare as they pressed onward. It was his own curiosity, the interest in what his father might be thinking about, and what profit might be had by this visit that kept him going.

From the growing press of flesh about him, Bregan thought he might have forgotten an observance day. He searched his mind for a religious rite that might explain the growing numbers descending upon Temple Row and could not find one. Yet here they were, flooding toward the Row, their lunches carried in sacks or gripped in their hands, meats still steaming, juices dribbling onto the paving stones where dogs darted in and out among the crowds to lick up the goodness. He caught words and breathless phrases over the jumble of noise and clatter of horse hooves. One of the priests was going to speak, one who had a reputation for fiery rhetoric and insightfulness and just plain entertainment, one who promised to cast enlightenment on recent Events and Omens. Bregan stifled his disgust at the thought of being forced to stand in one of the squares and listen to inflammatory talk, but the assignment might have its possibilities. There was always trade in fear: goods for protection and retribution against that which might attack you. Even if reason should prevail, the short market should be profitable.

Letting his senses guide him to the square teeming with activity and anticipation, he forced the mare into the crowd, making his way to a corner where he would have good access to the oratory and be able to cut through a nearby narrow lane to leave quickly if he so desired. That lane now held little traffic, being out of the way and not nearly wide enough to accommodate more than a person or two at a time, and the flow of listeners into the Row coming from much easier directions. He held his riding whip in his right hand. There was no need for tremendous speed or accuracy to protect himself with that; it was mostly to keep the opportunists away from himself and his mount. He could feel people sizing him up and, wisely, turning away. He noted the Town Guard lining up around the edges of the square, their red-and-gold tabards quite visible among the more drab colors of the crowd.

It was then, too, he realized that he saw no Vaelinars, veiled or otherwise, among the onlookers. Likewise, no Bolgers—who commonly skulked around the edges of the city—could be seen anywhere. Not being seen did not mean there were no elven about, but the Bolgers lacked that sort of discretion and freedom of movement in the towns. In the countryside, that was another matter altogether. A flurry of activity rippled by one of the temples and he saw a tall, thin Kernan emerge, flanked by young apprentices. They wore light blue and light green, with a silvery border, and he could not for the life of him remember what God or Gods that symbolized. This man, not a youth but showing no true lines of age on his face, thin to the point of being spindly, with hair of nondescript brown bound back with leather thongs so tightly that it left his hooked nose to be his only prominent and interesting feature, stood between two youths wearing green and silver. Did he look as if he waited to be noticed? Bregan watched him closely. No. He looked more as if he were steeling himself. A reluctant prophet? Or one as yet unused to and unsure of his effect on his people?

His mare snorted as someone brushed her hindquarters and he flicked his riding whip that way, cracking the air, a warning to give them distance. A muttered curse and a stumble followed. The horse flicked her ears before quieting. As she settled, so did the crowd, but only because the Kernan priest raised his hands, palms out to them. A hush settled over the square, packed shoulder to shoulder with listeners, with only a pocket or two of exception. Bregan sat his mount in one such area.