The Dark Ferryman (21 page)

The two youths in green and silver set down vases filled with incense sticks and knelt, lighting them quickly. They stayed on their knees. The priest waited until thin blue-gray smoke curled from every one of the herbal sticks before clearing his throat.

Not a good voice,
Bregan thought, when the other began. He wouldn’t be heard by most of his audience. The next few moments proved him wrong as the man began to talk, his words growing more powerful and distinct with every breath. Bregan scanned the people about him, listening. Acoustics of the square. Of course. The great speaking rooms at the guild were built for such, and he should have recognized it when he saw it. As cobbled together as Temple Row seemed, it was anything but. Every architectural feature here from shrine to temple to shrine down the Row had been placed deliberately. Coincidence, then, that this priest emerged from a temple facing the square most propitious for such talks? He did not think so. If he did, he’d be an even greater fool than the enthralled common folks about him. They paused, sack lunches in their hands, fistfuls of food halfway to their mouths, caught up by his words.

As for what the priest said, it held no deep meaning for him. The spindly man merely recounted recent events that any tale-spinner at a toback shop might tell. Bregan quickly lost interest in his words and surveyed the listeners instead, wondering what it was his father had wished him to observe.

Then he heard it. Words caught his attention like heavy rocks dropped into a still pond. “The Gods are bending close to us again. They will speak as they have spoken to us in centuries past, voices to guide us and to punish us. This I know for a certainty, because I have heard their whispers. Surely they will get louder! Surely they will return to thunder in our ears! We must prepare to listen. We must brace ourselves to be chastised before we will be led by them again. Are you ready?”

A blending of voices called back, echoing among the buildings and columns, shouts of joy and fear and derision. Did they believe him? They must. They pushed and shoved against one another now, lifted small children among them to their shoulders to hear better, pointed and shouted. Lunches forgotten, hooded cloaks against the promised rain pushed back to see better, bodies crushing closer to hear better as if this priest knew for a certainty what they had only dared hope.

How, after all these centuries, could they believe?

A better question, Bregan thought, as he reined his now nervous mare close. How could they not? How could any people stand forever as forgotten, shunned? How could they persevere against that without hope that they would one day be forgiven?

What day would the Gods speak? The tall priest did not know, but it would be soon. The judgment was upon all of them, even as the Warrior Queen built her troops for a war that would envelop them all. She would be called to the Court of Gods as all of them would be, accountable for her deeds against Kerith. The Gods had been watching the Strangers and come to a decision about them, and their trial would be at hand along with all the other peoples of Kerith.

The moment of clarity faded for Bregan, as his thoughts raced ahead, tumbling over one another with an eagerness he had not felt in years. He could use this building tide. Oh, yes. This fervor could be used.

He put a heel to his mare, reining her out of the crowd, moving slowly for the listeners still stood in rapt attention, their faces uplifted to the speaking priest, and he ducked her out of the way along that narrow, ill-used lane. He looked back once.

And saw, in the shadowy threshold of the temple behind the priest, a visage. He should not have seen it. He knew he was not expected to. What man would expect to be noticed in shadows the color of his sooty skin?

Quendius stood listening, as well.

The clouds opened up. A spattering of fat, heavy, and cold raindrops began to fall. It would be a deluge in a handful of moments, dispersing the crowd far more quickly than the Town Guard could. Bregan put his whip to his mare, then, to urge her down the lane and away as quickly as possible before his attention had been noticed. He did not want those flint-dark eyes to look his way.

LARIEL SAT IN A QUIET ALCOVE of her rooms, a small retreat built to overlook the gardens from a corner of her apartments. From-its windows, she could see the Andredia below, a bright blue-and-silver rib bon among the greenery of Larandaril. Even winter frost hardly touched here, although it did, and would, despite the evergreens which flourished everywhere, and the winter grasses which the wind sowed prodigiously and which even the rodents and grazers could never quite keep cropped down. Here was a land which the harshest of seasons might never touch more than briefly. The only seasons which affected it were those of man, and the deadliest one of war loomed now on the country’s borders. It had already survived a season of plague, and she wondered how resilient her country could be.

Those boundaries threatening to be breached lived and breathed with the magic that was Larandaril as well as the land itself. No one crossed them unless one of the Anderieon blood gave them free passage. She was safe here as she could be nowhere else, and yet she knew it could be an illusion. Had not her friend and confidante, Tiiva, the last heir of House Pantoreth held the keys to this manor for decades, and still planned her death? Had attempted it once in Calcort through the assassin Kobrir and attempted it a second time through Quendius, Narskap, and the great sword Cerat? What safety remained for Lara, then, if not here?

Despite seeking, Lariel had not yet found the fled Tiiva Pantoreth. Death and betrayal still awaited her from that source. Lara gave a dry chuckle.
Join the crowd
, she thought wryly.
May you all have a very long wait
.

Still, although the thought of her death weighed on her, it didn’t weigh as heavily as concern for her lands and the people she tried to protect. That, she supposed, was as it should be.

She had other business to attend. Lara put her hands palm down on her knees, and took in a deep breath, preparing herself. A momentary distraction caught her attention as she took in the missing digit on her left hand, the purpled scar at the point of amputation, and then she dismissed it. A scar only in the sense that it disrupted that which others called beauty, but a trifle to be considered in the overall scheme of things. She had been trained to be a warrior, and the toll of such a life came in scars and maiming, more to be feared than the loss of life. To be maimed meant she might live but without the ability to act as she chose. This was a warrior’s legacy, and the only one she shrank from. If she could find a Way, she would have it be the one which led to victory without the fight, before the battle, a subjugation or compromise of wills before the massacre of bodies. Such a Way would be worth universes.

She took in a second deep breath, willing away the sight before her eyes, and looking inward, centering on that which rested inside of her, waiting to be called forth. This, one of the least of her abilities, and yet at times one of the most valuable, was to extend herself into the senses of another, giving her vision where most could not see, knowledge which might otherwise take days or even weeks to gain. She worked at plucking the threads of the living things she sought, bridging them to hers. She had not the ability to twine them together for more than a few moments, but that would be all she needed. Whether now, when she sought to look through the eyes of flesh, or later when she sought to anticipate the actions of another, moments were all she had to touch and learn and plan her own decisions. It worked the same with lesser or greater beings.

Hawks loosed against the dimming sky, like arrows shot into the horizon
. She’d ordered them sent out and seen them taking wing, and she linked her memory of that moment with their passage now. Hawks winged their way to the northeast, across Hith-aryn where the aryn trees blotted out the hillsides and fenced off the wide-ranging fields of grain against the wilderness of the blighted and scarred areas left by the Magi. She could hear the beat of wings against her ears, feel the pulse of strain rush in her bloodstream, see the land below as they banked in tandem, drawing near their destination. She could feel the crisp early winter wind like a tide carrying their flights, bearing them, coasting when wings had grown weary but the destination was in view. The lord of the aryns would have them in a moment, unrolling the message she had sent, the ripple of destiny come his way. Bistel had already sent Bistane to them in anticipation, but this would be her formal declaration and call for mustering.

Lariel’s breath fluttered in her throat. She closed her eyes, wiping away the brilliantly colored view of Hith-aryn, and pulled to herself the senses of other hawks, wings outspread, as they spanned the forests of the north over the libraries and lands of D’Ferstanthe. She could see through the eyes of the bird the vibrant colors of the northern forests, the streams flowing with ice-cold waters and lumber being sent downstream, chimney smoke rising from the many scattered cottages and, as they neared their destination, even the image of a great, lumbering giant of a Vaelinar came out into the courtyard to look upward at them. Azel d’Stanthe in his usual robes of indigo, broad shouldered with a bit of a girth at his belt, glasses glinting in a beam of sunlight escaping the clouds which had been rumbling in from the north all day. Lara could see his eyes on the birds, see his lips purse, and hear a sharp whistle pierce the air which caught the hawks’ attention and brought them swooping in lower.

Another message delivered.

She shook herself lightly. She forced herself northwest, to the harsh coastline and countryside where Stronghold ild Fallyn reigned. Only one hawk flew here, meaning that the other had been lost somewhere along the way, faltered, or perhaps even died in the effort. When the sharp fortress walls came into view, Lara made a noise of disdain and broke her contact. Lara did not stay with this hawk long enough to see the wild beauty of Tressandre ild Fallyn as she moved off the parapet to call down the hawk to her wrist, where sharp eyes would meet an even sharper and more predatory gaze of verdant green flecked with smoky gray and leaf green.

Southward to the cliffs surrounding the bay where the Shield of Tomarq reigned, she found herself already hooded and in jesses in the tower of the Istlanthirs and Drebukar, message scroll already taken and delivered. Blinking against the enforced darkness, she found one last hawk body to will herself into, wings wearied by a long flight eastward . . . and found herself falling in pain and confusion from the sky. Wings beating, she flailed against the ground until firm hands enfolded her, stilling the wings and drawing them close to her body, drawing the arrow from one wing and straightening it gently. Hawk eye sharp, she looked into the tattooed face of Abayan Diort.

With a hiss, Lara burst away, drawing her soul back, heart beating as wildly as that of the injured bird, the feel of the man’s wide and strong yet gentle hands still upon her. She heard his firm voice coax the bird into heeding his attentions as he freed the arrow and cupped the wings to its sides, letting it know that no further harm would come to it, should it settle in his hands. The hawk would struggle but another moment before succumbing to the commanding nature of the Galdarkan who held it. Lariel wrenched free of the bridge she’d built. She spat to one side. With another hiss and shake, Lara got to her feet, leaning on the window’s frame. She had not revealed much in the letters she’d had sent, but Diort would undoubtedly know and understand. He had taken the bait.

Without having a Way into peace, she would settle for a trap.

She took a deep breath and rose to her feet, putting her chin up, preparing to go downstairs and talk with the others to begin a war.

She never got in a second breath before the vision took her and swept her up.

Abayan Diort faced her. They crossed blades and he threw her back on her heels, keeping his block across his chest, the sword glinting silver in her eyes. And behind him . . . oh, behind him lay an opening to a land that called out to her, a land of such indescribable beauty that her throat stilled even though her heart thumped wildly in her chest and
he held her away from it
. Home. She knew it had to be home and that a Way had wondrously opened onto it and this man, this arrogant Galdarkan denied her.

Lara shuddered as the vision fled as suddenly as it had come upon her. She lifted her hands to her face to stop their shaking and to clear her eyes. The incident filled her with resolve. The clearest vision that had come to her yet, and it stiffened her spine. Bistane had refused the position which Osten now filled, but if he could have seen this through her eyes, he would know why she must stop Diort in his tracks. He stood between them and all that they hoped for most dearly. She could not allow that, any more than she could allow him to distract her from the enemy which would come from the western sea.

She stood up slowly as her breathing steadied. She saw her path clearly.

“It’s the middle of the day. I thought this sort of thing demanded blood in the dark of night.” Quendius squinted at the tower’s shutters which had been thrown open for the sunlight even as he mused that once again the servant had sent for the master.

Narskap canted him a look part annoyance and part fear, rather like a skittish wild pony about to bolt away before sizing him up as a threat. “You are safer with the sun at its brightest.”

Quendius waved away Narskap’s concern. “We do it whenever the time is best for the most fortunate outcome.”

“That time is now. All preparations are ready.” Narskap put a hand to the table where he had a longbow shaped and waiting to be strung and four arrow shafts waiting to be fletched and finished.

“The wood is seasoned already?”

“I swallowed a God of fire long ago,” Narskap said wearily. “Kilns are not a problem. The wood is dried to my satisfaction.” He picked up a very sharp knife, the blade long, thin, and slightly curved, a flensing knife. He could draw far more than blood from Quendius, and quickly, if he wished.