The Dark Ferryman (43 page)

Her long silence before answering told him that she had considered just that. “They are all dead. They were gone centuries before we were lost upon Kerith.”

“I think, if a God were determined to wipe out myself and my family, I would find a way to stay very, very hidden. Wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not possible.”

He waited for her to stir restlessly before adding, “Why else would a River Goddess of Kerith choose her as sanctuary? There are much more suitable fleshes to take as Her vessel, unless that Goddess saw and recognized something in Grace that you and I can’t.”

“The Goddess is a minor deity, anchored to the Silverwing, as near as I can tell, although Grace seems to be able to call her up in other waters. The only deity I fear is Andredia. The river and font we guard is the anchor to her being on Kerith, and she calls herself one of the main elements in the making of this world. We have Gods of our own, but she’s not one to be ignored or crossed in any way.” Lara paused a long moment before continuing, “Rivergrace hasn’t the guile to bargain with Diort.”

“She hid successfully among the Dwellers from all her enemies for years. Do you think an innocent can do that?” He released his hold upon her, and Lara sat.

“I think what I know. If you had word that Tiiva had done this, hoping to supplant me, or the ild Fallyn, then it would be believable.”

“Tressandre has tried a number of times over the years to supplant you and failed. She thinks Jeredon is her key now.”

“She’ll fail there, too. Jeredon wants to be whole to help me, not to replace me.” Lara combed her heavy hair back from her face, its gold-and-platinum strands cascading through her fingers onto her neck and shoulders.

“You’re certain of him.”

“Yes.” She could feel Daravan watching and measuring her, but she did know Jeredon’s heart, didn’t she? As well as she knew her own. From her first days walking, he’d been there for her, teasing and teaching, and he had been relieved when it was soon apparent that she was the heir their grandfather hoped for, and would mentor, and would appoint. He’d have the freedom to be what he wanted. He did as all expected and vied with her for the title, but no one thought he would be chosen and he wasn’t. Never had he expressed disappointment or envy. She would know if he had, wouldn’t she?

Just as she would have known if Rivergrace had carried an ambition inside of her. If not Grace herself, then who might manipulate her? Sevryn was Lara’s right hand. He’d put his life before her many a time, the latest when Quendius had aimed his arrows at them. Did he resent her for not endorsing Rivergrace? Yes, but he’d made that known. He had done nothing underhanded. Rivergrace was his heart. He’d never give her over to Abayan Diort. Or offer her as bait.

Lara closed her hand tightly. She knew the few she trusted well. Did she not? As Jeredon the hunter studied the signs of his prey, she the queen studied the signs of her people. This was part of the power of her Anderieon blood, the blood her grandfather so coveted that he’d committed incest to ensure its continuation. But even her heritage couldn’t sift through Rivergrace. Who could know what rested inside a woman of unknown lineage and who had sheltered a Goddess? She couldn’t afford to be wrong or ignorant.

She murmured a word not meant for his ears, but he, trained to the silence of forests as well as stealthy men heard it: traitor. She reached for her gown. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Stay in bed with me.”

Her back stiffened, but his other hand moved there, powerful, seeking out and rubbing knots of tension and worry until she returned quietly, then willingly to his arms. He made love to her again, and she drifted away to sleep. And dreams.

It was the dream she feared above all others. A battlefield that left her people annihilated and their future in bloody ruins. Hounds howled in distress, horses wandered, bloodied and heads down, limping lamely among litters of bodies. Moans rose from the dying and filled her ears, tore at her heart as she stood, both hands wrapped about her sword, almost too weary to lift it a final time. She’d had this vision before but never so complete, so real, so devastating. She wavered upon her feet when the unmistakable feeling of power and weaving ran over her. Someone within their ranks plucked at the threads of creation, plucked and chose elements, and began weaving a Way. The survivors rallied behind her. She could hear those whole of body picking up the wounded as the Way gathered strength and then opened in front of her.

Trevilara. The Way home. She saw into the gap as plain as any sight she’d ever had, and knew the land of green and gold that met her eyes was real, and waiting for her, and was her birthright. It was their escape and their destiny and she called for her people, the survivors, to follow her into it.

An answering call challenged her, and Abayan Diort stood between her and the Way, weapon in hand, blocking her. The Way to Trevilara framed his head in golden flame and the Guardian stood unrelenting. His troops flanked her, kept her from retreat, and now he stood between her and the desire of all their hearts.

Lara woke in a sweat. She put her palm over her mouth to still her cry of despair. Daravan stirred faintly beside her. The cords of her throat strained as she swallowed tightly, holding back her vision, her omen, and her sobs. Then she managed a breath and sat, swinging her legs out of bed.

Daravan rolled over and murmured a quiet protest.

“It’s almost dawn. I have things to do. You rest. I’ll have some food sent up from the kitchen.” She rose and drew curtains about her bed, shutting it out of her sight and mind while she prepared for the day.

Azel opened the gate to the inner cabinet, enjoying the smell of paper and leather, and the satisfaction of having gotten Bistel Vantane’s memoirs in his collection at long last. It was not a rite of death although many of his brethren had made it so. He had Vaelinar, though, who came in every few decades to update their writings in case memory faded or life took them unexpectedly. He knew what Bistel thought he faced and felt the old warlord to be wrong. Few could hope to best the man in strength or strategy and, barring treachery, Azel thought the head of the Vantanes would live for many decades more.

As a historian, he itched to read what Bistel had written but that was not allowed in the
Books of All Truth
. They were to stay inviolate once written and completed. He would not even read the partial compilations. He did not totally understand the destiny intended for the books, but there was one, and his understanding—or not—of it did not make it any less real. It only made a thorn in his side which would both pinch and itch because of his interest and passion for knowledge. At night, sometimes, he would muse if he himself would live long enough to see that destiny reached and he could at last quench his desire for the books.

He checked the shelves for dust, and the mites that hid almost invisibly within, and for other pests that he had the apprentices smoke out of the various wings of the library on a regular basis. All seemed to be in order. His robes billowed about him as he savored the moment, his chest swelling in a bit of pride that he allowed himself. Spring would bring him a new handful of apprentices, in answer to his plea, to be trained for other libraries, perhaps one in Hawthorne and one to the east among the Galdarkan lands, knowledge being taken to be used and disseminated, as he’d always argued it should be. There would be no
Books of All Truth
in those libraries, but that would be his next crusade. Memory could be a fragile thing, as fragile as truth, and he wanted to encourage his people and other peoples to document their lives. That, he told himself, was what lifted them above animals, the tales to be told to educate and illuminate. Knowledge.

Azel brushed his fingertips across a shelf. A very, very faint sheeting of dust met his touch. He lifted his hand and saw not the gray dun of ordinary dust, but a rusty, near-black soot. It had a greasy feel as he rubbed his fingers against one another. A nasty, evil feel. He sniffed at it. The odor, so faint he could not detect it until held to his nose, permeated his senses. A rotting smell. A wrong, destructive stink.

Azel wiped his hand against his robes before turning to run out of the room, yelling for his apprentices.

When he finished concocting a defense, he would have to send a message to Lariel Anderieon and tell her that corruption had been brought to the library of Ferstanthe, and an enemy had struck at the heart of the Way of the
Books of All Truth
. He would have to name those who had most recently been there, even though he quailed at the thought of doing so. He watched as a handful of his best came running in, faces flushed and hair wild, tugging their robes and tunics into place.

“We’ve mold in the books. Not any mold, but a corruption of epic possibility. We could lose every book in here. They must be separated and treated, as quickly as possible. There may be a handful which will need to be copied. If there are, they are to be treated and put aside for me. Your vows hold you even against this dire circumstance, am I clear?”

Six faces, complexion paling, three white, one ash, one copper, and one bronze, nodded at him. He clapped his hands together. “Now move!”

The senior apprentice pointed at two juniors. “Prepare isolation rooms. Set wards. A sitting table per book. You, Isargth, go get the pots to boiling, I want mold rot potion in gallons readied. The rest of us remove one book at a time. Wash your hands in herbal antiseptics before you touch another. Clear? Lord Azel, I presume you will do your work, if necessary, in the Star west room?”

He dipped his head in confirmation.

“Done, then.” The apprentices turned and dashed in their assigned directions.

Azel could feel his heart pounding in his chest. His library was a Way, the Way which had built the House of Ferstanthe, and now it felt as though it had begun to tumble down around him. He looked at the volume in his hand. It seemed to be at the heart of the contagion, and he knew he would have to treat it and then copy and replace needed pages. This Book had been written by the founder of House Pantoreth, of which Tiiva had been the last direct descendant. “I’ll be in my room. Send the disinfectant and potion there immediately, whatever we have on hand while the large vats are being brewed.” Afraid to touch shelves or even his other hand with the contaminated memoir, he made his way out of the cabinets of All Truth. He brushed shoulders with Lonniset, the youngest and most promising of his apprentices. He looked at her wide eyes.

“We’ve been through worse,” he said reassuringly to her. “We’ll weather this.” He did not believe his own words as he passed her by.

Lonniset finished pulling on her gloves as Azel left the cabinets. She pivoted, looking at all the volumes, most of them small, delicate journals, the truthful and priceless recollections of the dead. A faint odor hung in the air, beyond that of leather and the mustiness of aging paper. She took a hesitant step forward, uncertain of where to start, but she could feel the darkness which had struck at the library, feel it like a black arrowhead in her chest, expanding with each breath. As she took another step, trying to decide where Azel had swept the first volume off the shelves for that should be her beginning place, her elbow smacked painfully at the end of the rack. She sucked her breath in at the smart of it as a journal tumbled to her feet. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands, not recognizing the item. The apprentices knew all the books, even though they rarely touched them, but they knew the look and title of each and every one, emblazoned into their fiber. It was not only part of their job, it was the Way which braided itself into them when they were inducted. She did not know this one. She ran a gloved finger over the title, punched into the leather.

Fyrvae of DeCadil Forgotten
.

It was clean. Worn and the leather aged, but clean. She pocketed it to both take it to the decontagion area and to show Lord Azel. As she did so, and put her head back up, the odor lingering in the air intensified. Lonniset turned her head slowly as her body went rigid. The smell of putrid flesh, of rotting stench, filled her nostrils. She gagged and brought her hand up to cover her nose, even as she examined the nearby shelves closely. Here, centered here . . . her free hand came up, palm down, as if she would grasp something with it and yet she did not, only brushed the air above the cabinet and then, her hand went icy cold, all the way to the elbow. A dark oiliness coated the back of her throat, despite her gloved hand. She tried to swallow it down and could not, her whole mouth filling with bitterness. Then her searching hand, fiery numb with the aching cold, plunged down on an object wedged between two books and came up with a hard, round ball which stabbed into the fabric protecting her flesh.

A pomander filled her palm. Lonniset stared at it in wonder. Not a fragrant sachet of herbs studding a small fruit meant for a ladies’ drawer or purse, this thing had been built of the most vile Kernan witchery she’d ever seen—or tasted—in her young years. She had a small strain of Kernan blood in her, the embarrassment of her family, two generations back, but now it pricked her like the sharpest of thorns and she thanked it. Without it, the object might have gone unnoticed for most of the day until the shelves were emptied. Azel himself hadn’t sensed it as the heart of the attack. She let out a sharp whistle signaling,
Found it,
to the others, for she’d no doubt that this abomination was the source of their problems. Finding it, however, gave no promise that its influence could be stopped or reversed. She stepped out of the cabinets as Silman the senior apprentice and then Lord Azel himself answered her whistle and they all stared in shock at the pomander.

The words of Fyrvae went forgotten in her pocket.

Nutmeg stood in her saddle and bounced for a few strides of her pony, her nose wrinkled, and her hat flouncing off to be held only by the ribbon firmly tied under her chin. The wind had chilled her nose to an apple red, matching her cheeks. “I am not wading across this river.”