The Dark Ferryman (35 page)

The oracle came soon enough, crawling on her knees. She had claimed, when the mantle of prophecy had been passed to her, that the weight of the world was too great for her to bear standing, and so regressed to creeping about on hands and knees. It was an affectation that gave her credence among shallow Galdarkans and kept her from being hauled about here and there by minor lords who wished to use her gifts, but despite her show, she actually held a gift that Diort could perceive and admire. So he tolerated her histrionics much as he tolerated Tiforan’s minor rebellions. Hefort, however, had proved far more valuable to him.

She looked up at him, yellow-green eyes shrewd, her young face lined about her mouth as though she held bad opinions in her teeth and chewed on them all the long days. As well she might, knowing what she did. “You sent for me.”

“I did, Hefort. I would like the sands cast, if you are able.”

She snorted. “I’m able. It is yourself that must be ready and willing to accept my read.”

Diort shifted in his chair to lean down toward her. “I do not ask for that which I do not want.”

“Good that it is you know that. Very well, then.” She reached inside her cloak lined with pockets, each filled with a small glass vial of brightly colored sand. The vials alone were worth a small fortune, each shaped and cut brilliantly, small decanters of the sand of prophecy, their mouths gilt in gold and their handles set with gems. There were times when Hefort physically cast the sands and others when she merely spread the vials before her in a pattern and mused upon their meaning before intoning her message. He had no idea what she would do today.

She plucked a single vial out, filled with a gray-white powder. She uncorked it and shook a bit out on the back of her hand, then inhaled it deeply. Hefort recorked the bottle as her eyes rolled back in her head a moment and her body quaked. She sat back on her haunches like an animal, her hands moving independently of her reaction to the inhalant, stowing the vial back from whence it had come and pulling a second out and spilling its crimson sand upon the floor before his feet. Then she began to draw in it with one finger, symbols and movements that he could scarce grasp in his own vision before she wiped it out and drew another, over and over, a parade of symbols and pictographs springing from her artistry only to be wiped out as she spoke to herself, trying to grasp what she saw. Hand trembling, she capped the vial of crimson sand and put it also in her cloak. She looked up, and her eyes were both seeing him and half blind at the same time. The war hammer at his back vibrated in agitation as if the minor Demon inside it had been awakened.

“Your spies are slow. There should be word arriving that the great warlord of the queen is dead, assassinated, and Osten Drebukar will not face you in battle.” She held her hand palm up as Diort let out a word in surprise, stopping him. “The outcome of the battle is not foretold to me, nor is that your question. His death does not assure your victory.” The oracle did not wait for him to answer her or to ask his question. She licked dry lips and continued, “That which the Gods themselves have said would never happen again, is already stirring and coming about. Old masters will return, and you must choose. I cannot tell you which is the right, only you can know what you must do. The fate of many, however, will rest upon your decision. Bow your knee only after great thought, Warlord, for you are the Guardian of these lands.”

Hefort stopped. She took a deep breath as if fighting for it. Abayan half rose to help her, but she shook her head. “Listen! There is one who would use Kerith as a stepping stone to the Heavens, and his heel will grind us to dust if we allow that. You are one of those few who can stay his madness. Not the only one, but your allies have not yet become aware. Enemies today may be the brothers you need at your back tomorrow.” Hefort gulped down another breath. Shiny sweat covered her brow in a slick sheen. Her hand trembled as she held it in the air between them, her fingers stained with crimson powder. “Look to the pathways for the answer to your question.”

With that last, Hefort dropped her hand and her body prone in front of him. She began to weep quietly as if overcome, and he did not move, afraid of disturbing her and her vision if there were more to be said.

So they remained until the sun lowered and the sands became as ice in the night and her sobbing finally ceased. Only then did he put out his hand to cup her head and thank her, and send for blankets to comfort her, and warm stew to nourish her. But first, as he stood, he scrubbed out the last marking of the crimson dust in front of his feet, not liking the symbol he saw there.

It was the marking the nomad clans of Galdarkans used to warn all who might trespass that chaos and death lay in the countryside ahead.

Diort slept in another tent, leaving the exhausted woman to rest and rise on her own. Tiforan met him in the morning with his horse, cloak, and pack as instructed, his face tilted in curiosity. He held back for only a moment as Abayan filled his hands.

“Do you ride because of the oracle?”

“No. Did I not tell you I would leave this morning?”

“Yes, Warlord, but I thought . . . she seemed distraught. She filled the night with her weeping. It’s being said about the camp that she inhaled the dust of graves. All know that brings the most powerful visions.”

“Really. What else is said in the camps?”

“That you are driven by her words.”

Abayan let himself laugh softly. It seemed only to knot up Tiforan even more. “She gave you a dire quest.”

“She did not. Puzzling, yes, and informative, yes, but not dire.”

“Still you ride.”

“I’ve things to do before I join my army. I didn’t ask her to predict a victory, but she gave a good accounting on that. You can repeat those words and those words only in the camp.” He shouldered his packs as he took up the reins to his horse. “You have nothing to fear, Tiforan—but me.” With that, he swung up and kicked the horse into movement, leaving his third-in-command behind, jaw hanging. He did not mention that Hefort was weeping again in the morning when he went to reward her and say good-bye, nor that she remembered not a word she’d uttered. It was the crimson stain upon her fingers that set her off again, her hands shaking and inconsolable, and so he left the oracle alone in his tent to recover, not convinced one way or another of the truthfulness of the night. He thought omens fragile things, broken by one wrong step of the men who tried to follow them and could not. So, they might be like a lantern hung in a tent on a dark night, a hazy beacon homeward or a wisp of moonlight off a glass-light patch of sand. Reality or mirage, and he could only count on his own wits and sense of direction in the end.

Look to the pathways, she’d said to him. He knew she had not spoken of the Elven Ways, those damned but necessary nets that tied Kerith together, but rather those roads taken by the guardians when all haste had been needed to defend their Mageborn. He knew the secret passages, they’d been ingrained in him, but no one he knew had trod them in centuries. It was said some were haunted by the angry specters of Mageborn who’d perished at the hands of their rivals and the Gods despite the efforts of their Galdarkans to save them. It was said that foul things ran the tunnels of others. That stone and water had twisted and destroyed some of them. That nothing remained as it had been intended centuries past. It would fall upon him to see what was true. But did he not have a war hammer which could break stone? Turn earth? Could shake the very foundations of the pillars of the world if he struck it at the base of them? Who better to see what the pathways still held?

Diort turned his horse’s head toward the base of the melted hills on his southern hand. When he reached his destination, he murmured the passwords given unto his guardianship and horse and rider vanished into the tunnels where time and distance seemed not to exist under the earth.

Bregan Oxfort loosened his brace a little as he settled down by his campfire. Recruiting in Calcort had been profitable and enthusiastic, creating a fervor which he felt certain would sweep through the other cities. He’d left that in charge of one of his father’s apprentices, a dour, wizened old Kernan by the name of Garfin, returning to Hawthorne to supervise the new relic industry. His body protested the hard ride. He preferred not to travel by elaborate trader carriage when he could help it, though in the last few years, he could feel the pain of riding astride. That damned Ferryman. He would take him on again, if he thought he’d survive the encounter, and this time bring the being down, annihilate him, rend him forever from the daylight of Kerith. Boatmen on the Nylara had survived before, they would again, just as they did on any river which swelled with rain and melting snows. Barges and ferries were better built, rudders stronger, cables and pulleys better anchored. It would be no loss to anyone but the purses of the Vaelinars. That might be a good exercise for his new regiment of caravan guards, a coordinated attack on the blight of the river. There ought to be some underlying, compelling excuse he could arrange. . . .

Pain lanced through his thigh. Bregan glanced down in surprise to find his hand knotted into his trouser, darkened fingers gouging into half-numb flesh. The clever brace curled about his leg carried a glow as if newly forged and yet uncooled from the fires, its heat burning its way through his clothing even as its warmth subsided. He uncurled his hand slowly, catching his lip in his teeth in concentration as he fought the shooting agony and the effort necessary to unclench his stiff hand. Each tiny movement wrought havoc that echoed through his entire frame, aches he had not had in years as though the very thought of attacking the Ferryman again brought punishment. He watched as each digit straightened with a spasm of more pain, the base of his nails pale, blood welling from his mouth. Decorative runes upon his brace flared once and then went out, darkened.

Bregan pushed his leg out in front of him, hating it, cursing his flesh for living only enough to bring him pain every day. His breath hissed from between his teeth as everything subsided except for the slow trickle of blood from his bitten lip, and that he finally wiped away with the back of his hand. As the tide of pain ebbed, he became aware that his heart had been pounding, beating in his ears, and it, too, began to slow into a measured drumming, pulse by pulse. The brace felt cool to his hand when he brushed his left hand across it, as though it had never held a heat threatening to scorch through the fabric of his trousers and neither had it left a mark upon him. Dare he trust his senses? Was he losing not only his body but the threads of his mind, and all of it to the machinations of the Vaelinars? How long could he endure it? How long must any of them endure what the wretched invaders wrung from them day by day? He sat and stared into the fire, unseeing, until the flames guttered into low, glowing embers. Then a twig cracked loudly as something or someone trod upon it carelessly. Oxfort reached for his sword and stood up with effort. Once on his feet, he was no cripple, and the sword fit his left hand admirably. Beyond the sparse illumination of the fire as he stirred it, a shadow solidified in the darkness.

Bregan tightened his hold on his sword as the shadow separated itself from the night and stepped into the firelight. It loomed larger and larger until the tattoos on his face and the headpiece which held back his hair flashed in the illumination, and Bregan knew without doubt who accosted him. He did not lower his blade.

“Lord Diort. Either you are far afield, or I am.”

Abayan spread his hands to show they were empty. The fire glazed his skin like fresh-forged bronze, and his jade eyes glinted in the shadows with a catlike sheen. The great war hammer he always carried stayed at his back. Dust glinted on his clothing, a rusty tear or two in his sleeves showed the tinge of dried blood, and his boots carried heavy gouges and scuff marks as though, for all his composure, he had been in a scuffle. “In all fairness,” the Galdarkan said, in his slightly stilted way, “I think we are both off our normal paths. It is welcome to see you, however.”

“Me?”

Abayan ignored the distrust in Bregan’s voice. “May I sit?” He gestured at the fireside.

“I think it best if both of us stay on our feet. My pardon, Lord Diort, but things are not always as they seem, and I wonder if it’s even you I talk with.”

“As you command.” Diort’s face twisted slightly, and then he rolled his shoulders as if to flex a stiffness and soreness out of them. “I am in hopes we can share some information.”

“I thought Quendius kept you on a leash and as well-informed as he wished.”

“The same thought could be said of you.”

Bregan lowered his sword point a bit, so that Diort could not see it shake in his hand, not out of weakness, but a spate of anger. “No one leashes me.”

“Good to know. I have sprung mine, but not without a great deal of effort. Taxing. Quendius is a man who knows the weaknesses of others, and exploits them.”

“So do many other men.”

“True.” Diort turned his face briefly, revealing the sharp outline of his profile, his hooked nose and proud brow, as he listened for something outside the firelight of the small camp. When he turned back, he said quietly, “I did not expect to find you here, but having found you, I think we should speak. If you cannot or will not talk with me, give me the courtesy of that acknowledgment and I will leave.”

“I would never be so discourteous to a former business partner.” Bregan sat down, and indicated the stump across from him. He opened his pack and took out several cloth-wrapped parcels, the aroma of which filled the air with goodness: fresh bread, cheese, a delicately spiced and salted meat, and some good red apples. “Share my dinner?”

And they ate quietly before they began to speak earnestly of many things.

IF BREGAN OXFORT HAD BEEN THE ANSWER the oracle spoke of, Diort could not begin to fathom the question posed. He left the trader at his campfire, curled in sleep in a still night-dark morning, and made his way back to the pathway where he’d left his horse on a grazing tie. A feeling of discomfort crawled down his back as he did so, strangely not wanting to leave the Kernan alone although he knew Bregan’s prowess with the sword and his ability to take care of himself despite appearances. It felt as though an obligation had been laid on his shoulders, a beholding he could not shrug off though Abayan knew he neither held nor could fulfill it. No rhyme or reason lay behind this sense of obligation, and he gritted his teeth as he walked away from it. It seemed that the farther he got from it, however, the more it compelled him to return to Bregan’s side, until he took up his horse’s reins and led him back on a pathway. Then it disappeared with a
snap!
as if a taut line had broken.