The Dark Ferryman (11 page)

He could see the edges of the gardener’s dying body blurring, the flesh growing translucent. He put a hand on the back of Verdayne’s neck, the gardener’s apprentice, and the young man looked up at him, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “Look away,” he said.

“I can’t.” Verdayne swallowed tightly. Despite his Dweller heritage, he came nearly to Bistel’s shoulder, his thick, curling black hair hiding ears that, just barely, tipped slightly. His eyes of dark, nearly purple blue sparkled with his grief. Vaelinar blood ran in him. Bistel did not guess that. He knew it well. He nodded to Verdayne before reaching down to grasp Magdan’s rough hand tightly. “I cannot save you.”

“I know.” Magdan coughed. Blood bubbled from his cracked lips. “Home calls for me.”

Bistel tightened his grip. “It should be a blessing.”

“Perhaps it is, on the other side.” Magdan ceased to speak, fighting for a moment. His flesh grew more transparent, the blood running through his veins showing visibly.

“You go where we all yearn to go. You will chase the memories taken from us, greet the loved ones left behind by us, know the mystery of our lives.” Bistel leaned into the cart. He kissed the rough forehead of his old friend.

“I must tell you.” Magdan shuddered heavily. “I was digging up saplings.”

“By the fullness of the moon, no doubt.”

“Aye, Lord. I caught an intruder.”

Or, rather, the intruder caught him, Bistel thought. And did his best to murder him. “Do you know him?”

“No, Lord, but he gave me his name.” His voice was as wispy thin as the snow white hair tousled about his head, barely audible to Bistel’s hearing. “Quendius,” he said.

Bistel’s hands clenched about Magdan’s, causing pain where he did not intend. “Are you sure?”

“He could have lied. But I know a smithy’s hands when I see them, and he held a forge-hot hatred.” The gardener fought for a deep breath, and Bistel could feel the sudden tension in the hand he cradled. Magdan hissed sharply, his back arching, his whole body going stiff.

“Don’t talk.”

“One last.” Magdan’s mouth gaped like a fish brought out of the water. “Take care of Verdayne.”

“You know I will.” He rubbed his hands over Magdan’s rough ones. War had toughened his hands, but centuries of farming and gardening had knobbed this old man’s hands like a cobbled pathway. Magdan clung to Bistel.

He drummed one heel in protest as his form began to disintegrate, skin from flesh, flesh from bone, his soul burning like a fire from the inside out, escaping.

Returning.

The stable and farm boys around him cried out, and Ninuon fell limply to the ground, caught by the wash of agony emanating from Magdan. The healer curled in empathic agony. Bistel braced himself. Magdan’s face contorted. His skull yawned in horror and his throat uttered one last word. “M’lord,” he gasped.

Then his form shredded to nothingness as his soul flared through it, a starburst of colors Bistel would never be able to describe or forget. The gardener’s substance in his hand flared, and then, with a sudden whoosh, the apparition disappeared, leaving him holding nothing. Bistel staggered against the side of the cart. The bloodstains splashed about the boards began to smoke and then burn, and Verdayne dragged him away just before the entire cart exploded into flames taller than all of them, bright red orange against the day, and burned until nothing was left but ash.

Bistel coughed and rubbed his eyes against the smarting of the smoke. He had never before seen a pyre like this although it seemed a blessing. Usually the flesh remained, rended savagely by the struggle. He placed a hand on Verdayne’s shoulder and gripped him tightly. Magdan had fostered Verdayne for decades and the lad would miss him almost as sorely as Bistel and Bistane would. “An uncommon death,” Bistel said quietly. “Magdan did not wish to be uprooted and fought it, just like one of the grand old aryn.”

Verdayne breathed then. “Aye,” he answered as though he understood, a little. He brushed his face with the back of his hand.

Some Vaelinar did not just die. Some Returned, their souls grabbed back by the place where all Vaelinar had once originated, and the phenomenon was not kind or beautiful to watch. Bistel had seen it before, rarely, and he hoped to never see it again. He rubbed his hands against his riding leathers, an uneasiness settling deep within him that his own death would be just as difficult.

He turned his head as two of the lads helped reed-thin Ninuon to her feet.

“Quendius,” he said flatly. “No one here forget that Magdan named his murderer. If I should die before he does, tell it to Bistane.”

SUNLIGHT DAPPLED THE treetops fitfully and the morning breeze had stilled when Sevryn caught sight of a landmark which he knew, a broken spike of a granite peak behind the trees. The structure of black and gravelly gray poked out of tree branches as though someone thrust out a hand. Raptors liked to sit upon it, and so it had garnered the simple name of The Perch. There was no mistaking it. He turned his horse’s head toward it, for it stood sentinel at the edge of a small Way known as Hunter’s Cut, a pass through an otherwise impassable and implacable ridge of stone. Hunter’s Cut stayed open through wind, rain, sleet, snow, and ice, although it was only the width of a horse and man walking abreast. Traders couldn’t use it unless they led beasts of burden on foot through it, and some traders were canny enough to make that sacrifice. Mostly, it guided hunters and trappers home through the harshest of winters, and that alone was enough to ask of it. It would provide a Way home that cut days off the journey through the worst of weather. It would get him where he needed to be.

A hawk sat on the farthest tip of the Perch as they approached, head cocked to take note of his passage through the forest. Keen eyes fixed on Sevryn as they traded looks, then the hawk ruffled his wings slightly to turn his attention elsewhere. Sevryn closed his knees tight, hurrying his mount to the edge of Hunter’s Cut. The forest parted reluctantly as the rocky spire pushed out of the soft dirt of the forest floor, the foot of the mountains which backed it, all sharp, sheer flints of stones that even the surefooted would hesitate to cross. Now and then an evergreen sapling determinedly broke through crevices, growing wherever sun and rain and stone would give enough for one to root. The sheer determination of growth had always been something Sevryn admired. He’d seen it in the cities where he’d run in the shadows. Give the land a week or a season without human hand on it, and growth would spurt. It might be weedy and useless to the eye, but it would then give shelter to other creatures, all banned and unwanted by humans but still a part of their world. There was life that refused to be denied.

The Perch itself only pointed the way to the cut. He rode back and forth a bit before finding it, the overlapping rock front fiendishly hard to spot. He’d been through it once or twice in the dead of winter riding at Gilgarran’s back. He could not describe the eerie feeling of riding on the Way with impassable snow and icy peaks surrounding them, yet the floor of the cut itself had held green shoots of tender spring grass and soft shrub branches catching at the horses’ hooves. No wind had piped through the rocks, but snow droplets would melt and cascade wetly down the stone walls, leaving ice-cold puddles for the horses to splash through. Winter might be held at bay in Hunter’s Cut, but nothing could keep it from sending small reminders that it existed and held sway over the outside world. Gilgarran had once warned him of that, saying nature could only be held at arm’s length at great cost.

He found the crevasse and urged his mount forward. The beast trotted a few steps into the cut and then came to a stiff-legged halt, head down, and snorted. He shook his head, reins rattling when Sevryn urged him onward. Sevryn stretched in the stirrups, casting a look along the stony ground to see if prints or broken greenery might tell the tale of another taking the Way and saw little fresh sign of any consequence. Clouds in the skies above drew closer and grayer, the weather growing heavy with threatening rain. He put a heel to the recalcitrant beast’s flank. The horse flicked his ears back and stayed his ground.

“Now then,” Sevryn told him. “We’re on the queen’s business. You were bred for that. Serve her well and you’ll have green pastures to retire to, with sun on your body and warm oat mash in the dead of winter. Do any less than the best you were bred for, my tashya, and you’ll be working the land for a Dweller or Kernan family, putting your shoulder to the harness and knowing the lash even when you’re tired. Not that it isn’t a noble occupation for a horse to work the land, but not for one of your hot blood, eh?” He pulled his water skin up and took a short swig, giving the horse a breather and a chance to relax against the bit. When he’d done so, Sevryn nudged the horse forward again.

The horse took a few steps with an uneasy swing of his head. The snap of the rein ends against his neck did nothing but make him halt in his tracks again, four legs braced, and his ears down.

With a sigh, Sevryn swung off and pulled the reins forward to lead his mount after him. It would do him good to stretch his legs a bit and perhaps his horse was more leg-weary than he’d gauged. Riding in Daravan’s wake had perhaps taken more of a toll on the horses than on the riders. He could feel the dampness in the sky. Did Hunter’s Cut hold off rain as well as snow and ice? He rather doubted it, and hunched his shoulders against the inevitable. The horse let the reins grow taut before giving a chuff and reluctantly trailing after. Sevryn broke into a slow jog.

The horse threw his head back in a violent start, whipping the leather reins through his hand in a red-hot motion that left his palm and fingers stinging. His mount reared up, twisting his body about, and bolted back the way he had come.

“Halt!”
Sevryn’s Voice lashed the air.

He could hear the grunt as his horse plowed to a stop, somewhere beyond the Way’s opening. He slogged after it, his hand afire, and found the mount, head down, shuddering, panting, lather foaming his neck.

The horse rolled a white-ringed eye at him. Sevryn grunted back at the beast. He knelt by the side of a small stream running along the gravelly crevice and dipped his hand into the water to cool the fiery welt.

His thoughts whirled into an icy river washing up to his knees. He could see Rivergrace afoot coaxing her mare across, one hand wrapped in the coarse black mane and the other in bridle reins. It was not the scene the Ferryman had showed him, but it sent a tremor of need through him. Shouts rang through the forest and across the river, and from upstream, riders bore down on her, her and the queen’s troops with her. Bolgers leaned over their small, scruffy mountain ponies, their faces stretched in war yelps, bows and swords in their hands. He could feel the fear lance through her body as she urged her mare across the river, the water dragging at them both as the raiders bore down on them. He could hear orders shouted from Lariel and Osten and see arrows slicing the air. This was far, far worse than anything the Dark Ferryman had given him in vision. This was what Quendius had goaded him about.

He tore his hand from the freshet. With a muffled curse, he grabbed up his mount’s reins. No time to waste, no time to coax a stubborn beast. Rage surged through him, rage and the need to be in the battle. He put a hand to the creature’s ear, twisting it as he mounted and righted before letting go. Then he slammed his heels into the horse’s sides. “Now
move,
” he Voiced, and sent them plunging headlong into the Hunter’s Cut.

Her skirts dragging wetly at the hems, Rivergrace paused in the riverbed, her hands full of horse and leather, but her senses filled with Sevryn. She could smell his odor, tinged with seawater and salt and horse and woodsmoke. She could feel his heat and hear his frustration in his breathing, so close to her, so close that she turned in the water, but no one stood behind her. She had just turned back to her mare, pushing against her, hurrying her against the current when a horse screamed. It thrashed and died, an arrow piercing its neck as it fell into the river, throwing its rider free. Whoops split the air as Bolgers yelped and growled, raiders riding down on Rivergrace and her companions through the river, spray flying from the pounding hooves of their rugged little ponies.

“Stand back and hold!” Lara yelled as did Osten, and the trooper whose horse had gone down managed to drag himself aside, choking and sputtering as he did so. The archers spurred their mounts onto the far bank and unslung their bows, nocking arrows as fast as they could pull them from their quivers.

Rivergrace froze for a thumping heartbeat or two. Then she slapped her mare on the rump, sending her bolting out of the river and splashing after the horse. An arrow hissed past her, slapping into the river ineffectively. The Bolgers pulled up, circling their tough little ponies in the churning waters. She looked for the age-toughened face of her old friend Rufus but did not see it among the others. She hoped for a moment they might be clan Bolgers of the area, just defending their lands, but they looked nothing like farmers and hunters and craftsmen. They wore boiled leather, with the insignia of a red hand on it, nothing she’d ever seen before. And they screamed for Vaelinar blood.

Lara wheeled her horse about as an arrow whistled past her and thunked into Osten who bellowed in pain and anger. His horse reared up and crumpled on his hindquarters, legs giving way in the deep and fast-moving stream. The mount rolled and came up with Osten unhorsed and still cursing, holding onto the stirrup as he pulled the arrow from his breastplate. He tossed it away in disdain, pulling his one-handed sword and slapping the flat of it across his horse’s rump. The animal threw its head up with a squeal, bucking out of the river, dragging Osten’s bulk alongside. He heaved into position on the muddied bank as two of the Bolgers lunged at him in a spray of water. He braced his hefty legs and swung backhanded across the assault.