The Dark Ferryman (6 page)

One froze as he swung his katana, and his body crumpled over his sword. Sevryn pulled it free with a spray of blood. The last two let out harsh screeches, turned as one, and ran.

He dropped his sword and reached for a last throwing dagger. Daravan shook the dead off him and put his hand out. “Don’t.”

Sevryn didn’t. Air rattling in his lungs, he bent to pick up his knives and went to one knee in dizziness. He lifted his head to watch the two pelt through the shambles of the ruins and disappear toward the waters of the bay. “Letting them carry word back?”

“Most definitely.”

He’d get to his feet if he could, but it seemed beyond him for the moment. His blood thundered through his body. His mind sang, not with melody but with the cacophony of metal meeting metal and flesh meeting death. It was not a song he wished to remember, but it took him now at full flood.

Daravan gulped a mouthful of air himself. He took a hand and dagger off the closest attacker. “Take a breath,” he managed. Shading his forehead, he peered at the sun, now at noon height over them. “We came to spare someone this welcome.” He kicked bodies out of his way before kneeling himself and taking deep gulps of salted air.

“Antidote worked well.”

“Good, that. I wasn’t sure.”

Sevryn raised an eyebrow, turned his face toward Daravan.

“Messed about with it a bit, had some failures, seemed it should work this time.”

“Glad I could help clear that up.”

“Don’t mention it.” Daravan sucked down another deep breath, and then grinned hugely. Sevryn put his boot to his hip and knocked the man over into the sand.

Over the noise of his breathing, Sevryn could hear the sound of a carriage bouncing its way through the broken street lanes of weathered sea-port ruins. Still laughing, Daravan rolled to a stand and gave Sevryn a hand up. He got to his feet then and cleaned his sword quickly before sheathing it. Then he gathered up his daggers and throwing stars as he moved through the bodies. He opened up the hoods and cloaks to look at a thing he’d never seen before. Its mottled skin, eyes far out of place for eyes, its six-fingered hands with supple claws, high-ridged head pate brought a belligerent desert lizard to mind. The sight brought sourness up the back of his throat, and he spat to one side. “What are they?”

“I think, my lad, that you are looking at Raymy.” Daravan took a second hand for a trophy. “Not that any of us have ever faced them since our First Days, but their fighting prowess is legendary.”

The Vaelinar had appeared on Kerith, thrown onto the western coast by a catastrophe none could explain, from their world to this, and as they grew more settled, they’d come to realize that if the Mageborn had survived, if the Raymy had not annihilated much of the fighters before, they would not have gone unchallenged in their supremacy. But the Mageborn had incurred the wrath of Kerith’s Gods and lost their magic as they battled one another after the Raymy defeat, when it seemed that holding small domains was no longer enough and the Mageborn decided one or another had to reign supreme. In disgust, the Gods had turned their faces from the races of Kerith. The backlash of their punishment and the self-destruction of the Mageborn generated a maelstrom that swirled about the continent’s southern interior and created badlands no man would ever rule. Still, the Raymy were legend, one he’d never thought to meet. He toed a body at his feet.

“Then Lariel’s fears are true.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it only seems reasonable that they send a scouting party across the seas now and then to see what might face them if they return. If they had, and met with less resistance than ours, who would know today?” He tucked one of the hands into his belt and carried the other with him. “Let’s see who approaches.”

Despite the heat pouring off his soaked body, Sevryn pulled the hood of his cloak up to shade his face. His body stiffening, he forced himself into a trot after Daravan, and they rounded a fallen heap of building to accost the carriage driver.

Bregan Oxfort stood up in surprise, as he reined his horses down and he set the brake. His trader finery had been exchanged for field leathers, his gold filigree leg brace glinting in the sunlight over them, his hair tied back, his Kernan handsomeness settling into a mask of neutrality. “Lord Daravan! A surprise to see you here.”

Sevryn found no less a surprise in seeing Bregan. Son and partner to one of the foremost trading dynasties, and not known to be doing his own dirty work, his appearance in the hinterlands, in the salt marshes of a tsunami-destroyed bay, could only raise far more questions than he could answer.

Daravan cut the air with a bloodied hand. “A fortunate one for you, Trader Oxfort. We chanced upon an ambush.”

Bregan paled. He sat down on the carriage seat, the vehicle squeaking slightly under his weight. A robe hid whatever the small vehicle bed behind him might carry, nor did he give the slightest sign of body language that he worried about a cargo. But he most certainly knew it was there, even though his light blue eyes rested firmly on the two of them. Bregan Oxfort was not the type of man who did not know. Kernan eyes, holding only one distinct color, plain eyes signaling no power such as rested in a Vaelinar, gazed solidly on them. “A friend sent me down this route, asking me to assess the site, see if it might be suitable to invest in. The tides along this bay have been harsh, but it was once a good fishing port. We hoped time had healed it. We’d like to rebuild here.”

“Your friend has some questions to answer, then.” Daravan tossed the clawed hand next to Bregan’s leg. “Take that to your guild library and see if you and your associates can identify it, and what was waiting for you. I’ll be contacting you to see what you can discover from it.”

The Kernan stared down at the grisly remain. “The two of you are bloodied.” He kicked the severed hand down into the wagon well.

“We had some opposition. They set a goodly number against you.”

He nodded. Rings upon his fingers shot colored gleams into the air as he let the brake off and regathered the reins to turn his carriage about. “Consider me in your debt, Lord Daravan.”

Daravan gave a half bow. “It cannot be ill fortune to have a family such as the Oxforts indebted to me,” he returned. Bregan gave a wave in answer and clucked to his horses, and they set off in a high-stepping trot.

Daravan waited until the sight and sound of the carriage had disappeared from their senses, hidden by the leaning ruins until the lane took him into dunes etched by wind and where scrub brush had all but swallowed the old road. “I’d heard he was still a good horseman, for all the stiffness of that leg. When did he give up riding?”

“He hasn’t. And he’s a decent off-handed swordsman now, although not as good as he was before. He had it beat into him that he could train the other hand.” Sevryn dropped his hood, relieved that Bregan had neither recognized him nor even tried to, a faceless shadow at Daravan’s elbow.

“Then he should have been riding here. Faster and easier than a carriage. ” Daravan rubbed his chin. “Saved him, did we?” he said softly, as if mulling it over. “Or had he come to a meeting, with trade goods in the wagon behind him?”

ON THE BARE-BONED side of a hill, overlooking golden-brown fields where autumn harvest had reduced the crop to row after row of broken stalks which cows and goats now grazed slowly, a fortress sat watch. As weather-beaten and dun as the land about it, it hardly rated more than a glance or two, first for its sheer size and second for the broken tower at its corner, a tower not for defense or offense but for imprisonment. If not for those, it might be dismissed altogether. The sharp peaks and cuts of a hard-spined mountain range leaned heavily upon it, imposing and dangerous, an implacable wall of stone. Winter would bring snow and ice and carry the shards of it on every breeze to the tower. A wind from the twilight-colored skies caught on it now, howling and whistling as though tearing loose or perhaps tearing down the impediment to its path. An answering howl came from within before fading to a thin hoarseness and then bleeding away altogether. Hoarse, rasping words followed, piercing the veil. “I am done. Now the bright and beautiful shall fall, one by one, into ruin.” Then, nothingness.

In the silence that fell briefly over the barracks and outbuildings, no one looked up although a few shrugged their shoulders in relief before putting their muscles back to the chores awaiting them. Of little imagination, they did not hold superstitions about what they heard. They knew whose tortured throat had uttered the ululations. Their master’s hound, as they called him, had been locked up for many days now. Or perhaps, as it was rumored about the rough fortress, he had locked the others out. Their ears had not the wit to hear more, nor their eyes the sagacity to see more, though many of them held a trace of Vaelinar in their bloodline. They were the chaff of the fields, and they knew it. They would work till the last ray of sun glinted across the landscape, or their master would exact a terrible discipline from them. Soldiers made into farmhands and blacksmiths, they toiled at what they must to survive. When the wars came, then would come their glory and their prosperity. They had been told that, and they believed it. That was a soldier’s lot and they had been chosen for it. The wind picked up again after a moment, unsubstantial and wavering. The tower remained silent.

Inside the tower, in a room locked from the inside, a spare, ragged man sat, his hollowed gaze upon a row of water jugs, most full and untouched. No crust or rind of bread could be found, nor any sign of meat or fruit. As lithe as any Vaelinar could be, he bordered more on skeletal, his strength wiry at best, whatever handsomeness his features had held long ago given way to gauntness and madness. Hair that might have been a lustrous brown in his youth was now lank and gray and corded back at the nape of his neck, his eyes flat and barely showing the jeweled multicolors of his people. Yet, as emaciated as he was, the very bones of his body shouted out his breeding. No one would mistake him as any other than Vaelinar.

He put a hand up and stroked his throat. His voice, if he had one left, would be raw and ragged, but his throat felt empty, as though there were no screams left to issue forth. Narskap nodded to himself and dragged one of the water vessels to him before drinking deeply, water cascading down his chin and over his chest. He dropped the jug wearily when he’d finished with it and it rolled about on its clay side, droplets running into a meager puddle. He looked into the wetness thinking to see himself there, scarcely more than skin and bones, hair pulled back into a severe queue at the back of his neck, his forehead peaked and high, the tips of his ears elegantly pointed, the only mark upon him that could be called one of Vaelinar quality. The rest of him could hardly be said to be so. He dressed in rags, he sat in sweat and dust, the tower confining him little more than wood and a bit of mortar here and there in the more severe cracks where the elements drove themselves in. Boards in the roof overhead rattled without cause. It was shelter but only just.

He gave a shrug. Dust drifted off him, a shroud of madness and delusion, and softly swirled to the floor around him, lesser motes floating on the air to be caught and studded by rays of sunlight managing to find their way inside. With a heave he found his feet, his body wavering back and forth with effort as though incapable of staying erect. He lifted trembling hands until he curved them into a position, holding an imaginary sword, a great sword, before him. In that pose, his body steadied. He found a gravity as he molded himself into a sword warrior’s stance. His hands tightened about that which he dreamed.

It had been his burden. He knew the heft and swing of it, the runes which had engraved it, the channels carved in it for the blood to run off, the elaborate hilt, the shining length of it. Narskap knew it as well as the smithy who’d fashioned and imbued it. He knew the Demon which had sung in it. Shoulders tense and sinews straining, he went through a series of movements with it. Guard, parry, thrust, balance, slice, he glided through them all. Cerat the Souldrinker, the Demon-ridden sword which only he could wield, filled his hands. He had become one with it then and moved with it now as if it were a part of him, imaginary blade stroking the air. His exertion increased, movements quickening, until he had stepped from exercise into battle, meeting a foe. Parry, gather, lunge, block. A spray of crimson washed the air in front of him, blinding him from the last of the sun filtering in through the cracks of the weather-beaten tower. He did it all, the sword in his mind forged to thrust as well as slice, doing all while the Demon cried in a thin, high, eerie song for blood and the mortality of the flesh it carved.

At some point, he became not the man imagining the sword but the sword imagining the man. He knew the bite of each hit, the wetness of the blood splashing down it, the thrill of the death and the taking of the soul inside himself, the eating of the mortality and the fear of the opponent. He was cold metal which became warmed by the fluids of the dying and by the hands gripping it firmly, giving it freedom to attack and the strength to move. He felt the nock of each slice to the bone once armor gave way. He felt the jolt of meeting a shield or parry and finessing beyond to drink again. He bathed in the blood of his enemies, and everything which lived was his enemy. He sliced the air until his wielder began to shake with effort and then . . . then . . . he faced that which he had never encountered before. Entities which imbued the sword along with Cerat, powerful entities and souls, and a girl who bore the blade as a charge threatened his being. She carried him heedless of his bloodsong and power, she carried him to do a thing which only she could do, and he unable to resist her. She a stripling yet . . . a cord, a wire . . . he could not break. She lifted him a last time and struck him across a bond of magic and stone. He let out a demonic yowl.

And shattered. His existence ended in broken shards and splinters of steel. His voice fled shrieking to the nether realms, freed and yet exiled. Dream collapsed, and the man fell in exhaustion.