The Dark Ferryman (46 page)

Garner danced back into place as he waited for the Bolger to straighten and ride back to them. The two entangled in the bolo spat grit out of their mouths and reached for their water as soon as they could stand, while the one with a boot put to his gut sucked air in greedily with wheeze after wheeze.

His instructor came back, bailing out of his saddle with a grin that stretched his leathery face ear to ear, revealing his tusks. “Gud, gud,” he told them. “Kilt me.” He pushed his pony aside and then pointed at them. “You, you, you, wrestle.”

Paired up, they waited until their defeated brothers had caught their breath, and did as told.

Wrestling now, a Dweller’s stock in trade nearly, at least in a large boisterous family like Garner’s He put down every man standing, before he retreated, and waited. Garner expected their instructor to take him on last, and braced himself for it, though it would hardly be a fair contest. Bolgers had far more strength in their arms and bowed legs than any Dweller or Kernan could hope to have, but before the final bout of their day could take place, their training camp had a visitor.

He saw a look of dislike crawl across the Bolger’s face, and turned to see what he watched. A lone horseman rode into camp, reining toward the caravan where Bregan stayed when he was about, and he was about on this day. Garner recognized the man known as Quendius from a brief but fateful encounter one day as the hair on the back of his neck prickled. His instructor jerked a thumb at Garner. The Bolger could not whistle because of his tusks, but Garner could, and let out a long, piercing blast for the horse line boys to come running, and they answered, panting, in front of the Oxfort caravan before Quendius swung off his lathered and dusty tashya mount.

Garner turned away as if disinterested. But he wasn’t. This was why Sevryn had asked him to join the Oxfort ranks, and this was one of the men most specifically Sevryn had needed followed. He would not find out now, but he would watch and listen.

Quendius did not leave the caravan all that long afternoon or evening, and his mount was still tied at the horse line, being massaged and groomed and given grain, when Garner woke in the morning and uncurled from his blankets on the ground.

What had the trader and weaponsmith met about? What was their game?

A low, misty fog hung over the training camp, blown straight off the bay, and even the Jewel couldn’t be seen through it, although he would bet his day’s wages that it would burn off by the time the sun was halfway up in the sky. While they sat hunkered over their skillets of hash, he debated sending word to Sevryn. But what word? He knew little or less. He could report a meeting, nothing more. That would only worry at Sevryn, and the man was already worried; that was why he’d put Garner in place. Garner scraped his pan clean before taking it over to the boiling cauldron for a quick dunk of cleaning. He had more to learn; he had only to find a way to do it.

The way found him first. Bregan emerged from his caravan dressed not in his trader finery but for a ride. “I need four men,” he announced. He pointed at the Bolger instructor, Garner, and two of the other trainees.

Quendius came out behind him, a dark shirt that matched the sooty color of his skin under his long, white woolly vest, and frowned. “Not the Bolger,” he said. “I need men.”

Garner’s pulse thumped heavily in his chest at the sight of the weaponsmith.

The Bolger lifted his upper lip in disdain as he turned away from the Vaelinar.

“Mount up, field gear.” Bregan pointed at a fourth, a young Kernan who had shown some promise in training although he was greener than a summer apple.

They were in their stirrups and ready before the horse boys held mounts for the trader and the weaponsmith. As he watched, Garner scratched at his chin where a smudge of a beard had taken root. Oxfort caravan guards trained close to a hundred men in this camp and the ones staying behind were quickly formed into drilling units by the tough Bolger and a scar-faced Kernan, Stickle by name, who had far better guard sense than gambling sense. He rode out after Bregan and Quendius with his Bolger instructor uttering another long, scornful hiss after them. He cast another glance at the sky where a pale winter sun fought to beat down at them through thinning clouds and fog.

Of all the places where he thought Bregan and Quendius might lead them, he would never have bet on the rear gate to Temple Row in Hawthorne. The horses moved restively in the close quarters of the alley, their hooves loud on the clay tiles that paved the way. The temples of Hawthorne were grander than those of Calcort and far more than the simple houses in Stonesend, but they were not opulent by any means. The tiles had been broken by time and wear and relaid with new mortaring, rather than replaced, so that whatever pattern they’d once held had been scattered and rearranged, and the glazing over their surface long faded from sun and salt air. A priest had come out to greet them, the wind even under the sheltering eaves of the temple finding him to ruffle thinning brown curls about his head as he spoke in a flustered manner.

“Master Oxfort! Is there a problem at the countinghouse? I deposited the sales as per your command, and they had told me that all was in order. I trust I have not offended you in any way!”

“I’ve heard nothing amiss. Collect yourself, good priest, and take a deep breath.” Bregan swung down, the only finery glittering about him the metal brace upon his leg, curling metalwork done by the most cunning of Vaelinar and holding him steady. “I am glad our people have taken your sermons seriously and purchased the listeners for their households. We don’t want to miss the words of the Gods when They speak to us again.”

The priest bobbed. “No, indeed not. Never. Yet, here you are. How may I help you, Master Oxfort?”

“A grave situation has come to my attention, which only you can help me solve. What I propose to you now has been brought to me by great effort and through a long meditation of what to do about what I have learned.” Bregan frowned, and brushed his hair back from his forehead, a gesture that seemed almost boyish. The Kernan priest’s eyes never left his face. Oxfort lowered his voice a little. “What I will suggest to you is near treasonous. Have I your confidence?”

“Absolutely, my son, as any who come to a temple must have!”

“Good, then. I’ve been brought information which tells me that our efforts, so hard worked upon and so needed, will come to nothing.”

The priest sucked in his breath sharply. “Tell me not.”

“Yes, and yet there is a glimmer of hope. All these centuries,” and Bregan paused until he was certain the priest, and the two boys hanging back in his shadow, listened closely. “All these centuries of punishment for our sins and the arrogance of the Mageborn we took because we felt it our lot to do so. We have hope now that the Gods are about to speak to us again, but their efforts will be futile, as they have been for many, many decades. It is not our failure. We’ve proved our humility and our love. No. Those who would rule us have blocked the voices of the Gods.”

The priest wrung his hands. “Who would do such a thing? And how could they?”

Bregan pointed, away from the temple, over the rooftops of the city, across Hawthorne and the bay, his finger aimed at the great Jewel of Tomarq which, like the sunlight, had finally broken through the haze and shone like a faraway ruby on the cliffs. “That,” he told them, “is a Shield not only for the bay and our coast but a Shield from the Gods who would deal with the Vaelinars. So I have been told, and so I have come to believe.”

The priest swung about to follow the line of Bregan’s hand. He swallowed down a gulp or perhaps it was a tremor, for Garner saw the man shake from head to toe. When he turned about, it was to say in a quailing voice, “But you ride with one of them.” His gaze fastened upon Quendius and slid away.

“Not all wish to rule. Some quest for the truth. This man came to me after many years of finding evidence of his suspicions, and now I am come to you.”

The priest put his chin up. “What, if anything, can we do?”

“I intend, with your help, to confront them. To demand they put their Shield down and let us live as the Gods command us to.”

The priest managed a quick look at Quendius. “You stood in the temple with me. You said you wanted to know how we worshiped.”

“I did.” The Vaelinar’s deep voice rolled out with the tenor of thunder coming from far away. “I wanted to see if the people I was willing to risk my life for were worth it. I came to the conclusion you are.”

The priest bowed deeply. “Tell me what you would have me do.”

“I want robes for the six of us, and we will go with you and your most devoted priests, up to the Gate of the Jewel.”

“Today?”

“Now,” said Bregan firmly.

The priest spun about on his heel. “Quick, quick, then! Robes, you heard the master!” He scurried into the depths of his sanctuary, leaving behind only the echo of his running footsteps.

Quendius looked to Bregan. “Selling merchandise with the temple? Is there an agreement I should perhaps have a part of?”

“That agreement pays for the guards you use and I recruit, feed, train, clothe, equip, and board. I think we are quits on this deal.” Bregan’s jawline hardened, and Quendius only chuckled.

Garner sat quietly, feeling the heat of his horse’s flanks warm the inside of his legs. He had become part of something he could neither stop nor warn Sevryn about. He tried not to let the thoughts running through his mind show in his expression. They had not brought him along to think. Yet that’s what he was, a man who thought, wasn’t he, and he’d be a fool not to be one; and did they think that they were just going to ride up to the Gate where the Istlanthir kept guard over the great Way their House and the House of Drebukar had made, and did they also think the Vaelinars were going to say, “Come right in and, of course, we’ll undo the Way so that your Gods can talk to you?” If they thought that, they had another think coming. But he kept his musing under tight wraps, all the long ride out of Hawthorne and up to the cliffs of Tomarq where they picked out the trail cautiously until they came to the great abyss known as the Gate of the Jewel where a barracks house blocked the trail. He expected the Vaelinars to come boiling out like hornets from a fallen nest but only one came forth.

They sat on horseback. Woven robes covered their bodies and great, floppy hoods hid their faces. The Vaelinar who stepped out had the distinctive faintly blue skin and hair the color of the ocean that he warded, so Garner knew it must be either Tranta or the younger of the two guardians, Kever. He hadn’t met either although Nutmeg might have, being part of Lariel’s entourage, so he could not say who they faced. Whoever he was, his dark green upon lighter green eyes gave them all the once-over before seeking out the priest who rode in front.

“Greetings, my friends, on a dry and gloomy winter’s day. What can I do for you?”

“We come on a mission for our Gods,” the priest answered. The wind pushed his hood back on his head, revealing him, and a tremor ran through him as if he feared the sudden exposure.

Istlanthir smiled thinly. “Gods and sorrow are in attendance aplenty down the trail at House Drebukar, if you’re looking for the memorial of Osten Drebukar. Here, only the sun, wind, and sea can sway a man.” His dark blue hair fanned out about his shoulders, and the great jewel sat turning slowly in its cradle behind him, almost as if it rode his shoulder.

“Our mission,” said the priest, “is the Jewel. Would you put down the Gate so we can approach?”

The Vaelinar tilted his head slightly. He waved a hand through the air. “Even with the Gate down, you can’t cross the chasm from here. The only way to get truly close to the Jewel is to climb the cliff.”

The priest’s hand shook violently. He stilled it by grabbing onto his saddle, startling his rough-maned horse as he did so. “It . . . it has become known to us that the Shield is blocking us from our Gods, that it stills their Voices so that we cannot hear them and we implore you, to drop that barrier.”

“What are you babbling about?” The thin veil of weary humor about Istlanthir dropped immediately. He took a step back as if to widen his view of all of them. Garner saw shrewdness spark in his eyes.

“It is a wish, a plea, milord Istlanthir, for you to stop the Jewel in its Way, so that we may hear our Gods, as is our right and hope.”

Garner watched the priest as he literally shook in his stirrups, but the man would not give ground.

“This Way, this gem, has protected Hawthorne and the bay for centuries. The entire coast for all of that time. And you wish me to topple it from its cradle?”

“Yes, milord, you have the right of it.”

Istlanthir shook his head slowly. “Turn back on the trail and ride down the way you came. Your faces will be forgotten as soon as you leave.”

Garner wondered if his face could be seen through the shadow of the hood pulled around it. Surely not. The guard riding next to him shifted in his saddle slightly, as if he pondered the same.

The priest sucked in a great breath. “It is you who should leave. All of you who exploded into our lands and never left, and take the bounty of it by force, and have no right to rule it or us. You who should worry if I will remember your face when I count those misdeeds done against me and my people and my followers. You who should fear to be standing here on this cliff at this time!”

“Old man.” Istlanthir had his hands on his cross-strapped sword hilts but had not drawn them. “I commend your loyalty to your worship and worshipers. If you worry about the Shield, petition the next Council two years hence, and gather your evidence to present then. There is no truth to your fears, but I invite you to investigate them until the hair falls from your head and the teeth from your mouth. In the meantime, the Jewel will stand and do what it was created to do, and that is to protect both of us and thousands more.”