The Dark Ferryman (7 page)

His legs gave way, folding under him, and Narskap collapsed into a heap on the floor, chest heaving, his clothes sodden, his hair lank and sweat-slicked to his head. He reached for another jug of water, hand shaking wildly.

He stayed his hand as a cloud coalesced from the jugs in front of him. His arm shook wildly. A mist of fine drops ranged upward, becoming a spray, then a dense fog and then . . . a being. She hovered in front of him, silver and blue and gray, with wings of dark marine blue spread about her form, or perhaps it was a massive cloak unfurled. Power radiated from her, and the room chilled with her presence. The lumber bones of the tower creaked heavily as if they fought to contain her, dry wood hit with a burst of sudden moisture. She brought with her the smell of summer rain on heat-baked stone and the burning odor of fresh struck lightning. Dampness surrounded her, made the air heavy to breathe almost as if he were underwater. Her eyes held the deep blue of a bottomless mountain tarn and they were fixed on him. Her hair cascaded about her, colored like many waters. She did not smile as she beheld him.

Nor did he express awe or fear as he looked upon her. He merely reached for a clay jug that her presence did not affect, drawing it close and draining it. He cradled the empty jug with one hand. “Goddess,” he acknowledged. “Although not of me and mine.”

“Man who dreams of being a sword and sword who dreams of being a man,” she answered. Her presence spread until it flooded the room save where it reached him, and then it was as though his body dammed her from reaching farther. The cloak curled like whitecaps cresting on a wind-blown lake but stayed a finger’s breadth from touching him. Dewdrops as bright as jewels dappled over his sweat-stained skin and clothes. Behind him, the wood stayed as dry and dusty as it had been although he had the sense it would have gulped her down if it could have, wood that had once lived and ached to do so again. She beckoned. The mists about her rippled. Her face stayed smooth and her godly beauty did not change its mask, but Narskap thought a mortal disappointment might have lanced through her eyes for a moment. “Which are you?”

“One might as well be the other. Both are tools.”

“Does a tool live? Does it feel, inhale, stretch its soul toward the unknown? Does it talk with a God? Does it know worry and fear?”

“I exist. As for the rest determining what a man is, even the smallest animal in the field goes to sleep at night, worrying that it will hunger when it awakens in the morning.”

She looked down on him. “You hunger.”

“In a way that no Goddess can fulfill.” His fingers tightened momentarily on the empty jug he held.

“There is nothing I can offer you.” Neither a statement nor a question, bordering on both.

“Nothing that I would want from you, no. You do not exist to me.”

“It is not wise to disbelieve in the Gods. Or to argue with them.”

He cut the air between them with the side of his hand. “You can always leave.”

“I came to look at the being which caused me distress.”

“Both your observance and revenge could have come from on high if you are as you believe yourself. The omnipotent do not need to visit their targets.” He seemed unperturbed.

“But not as satisfying.”

Narskap grunted softly. “Nothing gets satisfaction from me.”

“I will.”

“To do that, you would have to exist.”

“Do you think existence depends upon you and your recognition?” The Goddess made a scoffing sound. “You don’t have to will it, for it to be so.” Her image gathered a bit, becoming more solid, her eyes growing icy and her face sharper. She almost looked as if she were a Vaelinar herself with her expression so planed. “You wait for your partner, but I tell you the Souldrinker is blocked from leaving the nether planes again. You wait fruitlessly for Cerat. Even your years will not extend long enough for such a thing to happen.”

He blinked. “A concerted effort. The world must be ending if the Gods align.”

“We often agree on the important things,” she said in a cold fury. The winged cloak about her unfurled and rippled as if in a distressed wind, a wind that howled both inside and outside the tower. The clapboards rattled around him, although the floor he sat upon seemed solid enough. Dewdrops and condensation ran off him in chilled rivulets.

“You will wander the earth as lifeless and soulless as you profess to be. That of you and yours will not be satisfied until quenched by the blood of destiny.” The voice of the River Goddess rose strongly as she spoke, and when she ceased, the room fell into an absolute quiet broken only by the sound of droplets hitting the floor.

The wind began to howl again. “You have cursed me,” Narskap observed mildly. “Even worse, with nonsense.”

“Or blessed you. As for the nonsense, time will give you proof.” A ripple like that which moved across water ran through her. The wind growled louder, a storm moving across the land. The apparition spoke again. “I know that which can destroy you.” She shrank yet again, growing more solid, more mortal-sized, and ever more threatening. She loomed in front of his face, her cloak-wings wrapping about him, and she leaned down to whisper a word or two in his ear. His pale skin grayed further. Then she drew back and flung her arms out, her presence once again billowing forth and claiming all of the tower that she could. “You will never touch one of us again,” she told him.

“I should never have been able to touch one of you before,” he said dryly, reminding her of his ability.

Lightning struck once, very close, followed on the heels of the blinding flash by thunder which shook the entire fortress with an ear-shattering rumble.

And then she was gone.

Narskap sat very still for a moment or two, counting his heartbeats. It might have been raining outside, he was not certain, for his ears still rang with the boom of the thunder, and the heated smell of lightning filled his nostrils. When he recovered, he reached forward, sweeping over four of the clay jugs, revealing four very sharp arrowheads chiseled and struck from a jewel of red-gold.

“Interesting. She did not sense me.” Quendius stepped forth from the tower shadows at Narskap’s back.

“Indeed, Master.” He picked up an arrowhead, cradling it carefully. “An important bit of knowledge. As for the omnipotence of godliness, she is wrong on several counts.”

Quendius reached his side. He wore his long ivory fleece vest over dark leather pants, as supple as the well-muscled legs they covered, his ash-gray skin looking as though he had been dusted lightly by the fires of the forge he commanded. His dark eyes narrowed as his gaze examined the object Narskap held up for him. “Well shaped.”

“Cerat cannot leave the planes whole. But his essence, quartered, can. We have achieved what he wished, even under the nose of the River Goddess. She came to advise us of triumph, already too late to know she had been defeated.” Narskap tapped each of the four arrowheads. “He has already imbued that which I have shaped for him.” A loud hum began from the arrowheads as if awakened to his thump. Quendius knew that hum, knew the impatient song of a Demon whining for obedience.

“And what now to finish them?”

“Aryn wood for the shaft.” Narskap looked into his master’s face. “If you would procure that for me, you will have an arrow that armor cannot turn aside. Even flesh and bone will not stop it, until it has taken the blood and soul it wishes, and then it will return to the archer’s hand. Your quiver will never be empty as long as Cerat is thirsty, and he is never sated.”

Quendius smiled briefly. He shifted his weight to bow over the arrowheads. “Aryn wood.”

“Bistel Vantane guards his aryns as a Kernan guards his daughters. But I have faith that you can secure wood for the shafts and a matching longbow. Once I’ve strung the longbow, all you need is to be bonded to it.”

“And yet you call me master.” Quendius put a fingertip to the arrowhead held by Narskap. He could feel the heat within it, hear the buzz like that of an angry hornet. He trusted that all was as Narskap told him, and that Cerat had divided himself to enter the plane of mortals which fed him so well before. “It will return to the archer,” he repeated.

“Once the bow is made and strung and initiated, yes. It will drill through flesh like a hot dagger through freshly churned butter.”

He grunted in satisfaction before remarking. “I will presume the ritual involves blood.”

“With Cerat, there can be no other way.”

Quendius removed his finger from the arrowhead. “I’ll see to it.” He withdrew to the door, unlocking the four locks which secured it, each a thick and heavy dead bolt. As ramshackle as the tower looked, it was not. The timber shaping it was thick and solid. Its cracks might let the elements in, but it would never allow its occupants out.

Narskap heard him leave. He did not for a moment wonder how his master had gotten into a tower locked from the inside nor why the Goddess had not sensed him. Had Quendius even been there? Perhaps not; his master had left days ago on another mission. He knew, better than Quendius even, that the weaponsmith could step through dark spots in the otherwise bright firmament of Kerith. He’d been at Quendius’ side when it happened. A day or more might have been lost or gained, but shadow swallowed Quendius even as madness swallowed Narskap. Or perhaps it was only his madness that made him think Quendius could travel through shadow. It was not a Talent or a magic that the Vaelinar held. It was more like a blight on the world and Quendius a worm who could wiggle through the corruption. Narskap shivered. His thoughts turned to the problem at hand: getting past Bistel to harvest the wood from the famed Vaelinar trees known as aryns. Nothing less would suit his purpose.

Inwardly, the words of the Goddess echoed in his head, particularly those which she had whispered to him. Like an arrow of Cerat, he mused. Straight to the heart and through it. She had intended to hurt him, and she had indeed pierced him. If he’d had a heart.

He watched Daravan ride off, north and to the east around the looping bay after a last admonishment to tell Lariel their suspicions but to couch them with uncertainty. And to make sure his audience had no listeners but the queen, not even Osten. As for the trader they’d saved, Daravan wanted nothing said. He would handle that, he’d told Sevryn, and Sevryn had little doubt he would. The Oxfort dynasty held more power on the First Home continent than any bloodline or warlord, and it would be crossed, if at all, with great diplomacy. Sevryn took a hand off a carcass for himself after kicking and shooing away the kites who’d come down to claim the spoils.

Blood soaked his clothes, drying stiffly in the slanting sunlight. Some of it belonged to him and some to Daravan, but the vast majority was the red-black blood of the foe and it stank. The whites of his horse’s eyes showed as he watched Sevryn as warily as he would a stranger while Sevryn wrapped and tucked away his grisly souvenir. Sevryn pulled firmly on the bridle with a word or two, testing the tie-up to a driftwood stump and sat down to pull his boots off so he could bathe. He would not ruin his boots in the sea, not even for a recalcitrant mount. He waded into the surf, the salt water stinging the cuts and scratches peppering his body, even as the chill made him clench his teeth. The foam drew back with the tide stained red by his bathing, and he stepped out of the water as soon as he could, wind off the bay cutting through him.

Sevryn pulled a saddlebag open and ate while the cold breeze dried him, cutting jerky into strips and chewing it down as best he could. He had a cheese in there, too, but decided to save it and warm it by a fire in the evening. After he finished, he drew out all his weapons, the ones he had recovered, and began to oil and clean them. He honed the ones with the harshest usage, but there were nicks and notches that a smithy would have to finish off for him. Shivers came and went over him as his clothes dried in the chill wind, and he finally put his blades away. He cleaned his boots in the same way, but they would have to be redyed and treated. The bloodsong in him bled away with the sea wind.

The kites came back with their shrill cries, a dark cloud of them, swooping low to the marsh, and he knew they had come to feast on the carrion left for them. With that thought, he pulled his boots back on, mounted with an encouraging word to his horse, and put his heels to the animal’s flanks. The blood on the water, the cry of birds squabbling over the dead, the winter chill of the wind, all filled him with the sense that he had a need to get back to Rivergrace as soon as he could. It spurred him harder than the urgency to take his grisly trophy to the Warrior Queen with word of a possible new foe. He rode back the way they’d come, the wind off the sea already whipping the sand and dirt over their tracks, obscuring them. When he came to the freshwater river cutting across the marshes, he paused at its bank holding little hope that he could call on the Ferryman to aid his return. He kicked the horse into the water with a jump and a leap and they were through, heading south and to the east, to the line of forested hills where the horse could graze when they halted for the day and he could catch fresh game.

Aching a bit and tired, he let the horse carry him toward the verdant line while he scanned the area, trying to pick up threads of the trail that Daravan had forged bringing them here. As much a sign of their journey as broken branches and hoofprints, an aura lay over it. Sevryn stared across the landscape, sensing an aura he could pick up and gather, a gossamer-fine thread that he could braid into a stronger thread to guide him back. He caught a shimmering of gray mist and fine sable. Daravan had brought them to the Ferryman, a trail which carried them farther, faster, than physical abilities could otherwise. He should have sensed it. He could now. With a snap of will, he anchored his senses to it, separating it from the natural elements of the world, a passage of unnatural speed and effort, a Way that faded with every breathing moment as it had been meant to do, a thing created to be transient and unobtrusive on the structure of the world. He wondered that he could find it at all, knowing that Daravan must have expended more strength creating it than needed, rather than use too little and fail as his need to arrive in time had pressed him. He wondered that Daravan had been on his feet when they’d come to the bay. What effort had he expended, and of what stuff was he made? As far as Sevryn knew no one had created a Way in his lifetime. The methods for doing so were guarded by each House, if any even remembered. There were many who’d died trying to forge a Way, far more unsuccessful than succeeding, but even that had claimed its toll. Only the Ferryman could cut distance as he had. It was rather like two halves of the whole, this journey of theirs and the Ferryman and the Vaelinar had made the Ways.