The Dark Ferryman (48 page)

Bregan Oxfort and he had much in common, as gambling men went.

He hoped so, as this would mean their lives and many others, for he feared Quendius and his army as he had never feared anything before.

LARA SAT QUIETLY, with Tranta’s hand in hers, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he slept or ... whatever it was his body did, to recover from what had befallen him. She could feel the chill in his fingers as he lay in what her healers diagnosed as profound shock. Something had struck at him through his soul, and his body still reeled from the blow. He would recover, she thought, if she had to find a gateway to his spirit. Even quiet like this, even after working with the horses, he still smelled faintly of the ocean. His hair lay across the sheets like waves of a warm and inviting seashore. Her other hand strayed to touch it gently. His strength had always been a quiet but steady force, unlike that of Bistane who had a temper which could flare like a battle’s rage. Two strong men, one who courted her openly and the other who stayed silent, waiting patiently. Osten Drebukar had extolled Tranta’s virtues for him as a proud uncle would brag of his nephew, and no wonder for their houses were inextricably tied together. Losses faced her. She knew that. But she would lose no one in this way, if she could help it. Especially not Tranta.

She pressed both of her hands about the one she held as if she could will warmth and her strength into him. No response answered her. Lara bowed her head over their hands. An emotion ran through her, one she scarcely recognized, the realization that she could not afford to lose him, not for any reason. She knew that her life was not her own, that she had been and would always be used for bargaining, for alliances, for diplomacy. Yet there was something here that she had just discovered and didn’t want to let go although she doubted she would ever be able to explore it. She wanted to. Her night with Daravan had given her two things: a temporary warmth and the knowledge that she no longer wanted to settle for temporary. Make that three: she also knew that Daravan did not hold a future for her. Did she resent what Sevryn and Rivergrace had? What Jeredon had held with Nutmeg and turned away from? Would it make her bitter to watch others moving toward a soulmate she knew she could never have? She would be forever wandering, one of the Suldarran, lost on Kerith. She had but one goal to accomplish in her lifetime and that was to bring her people back to Trevilara. Was it so close to her that she could see it truly in her visions with only Abayan Diort blocking her way? If she stepped past or over him, would she accomplish her goal and leave herself able to be fulfilled fully in all ways?

Hope and fear entwined themselves inseparably within her.

Tranta’s fingers fluttered in her grip. Lifting her chin, she removed one of her hands from her hold on his and watched him. Expressions raced across his face and disappeared, like tides rising and ebbing so quickly she almost could not catch them, and then his breathing altered. He fought to rouse. She leaned closer, urging him silently in his battle to stay alive.

“We can’t say what it is,” Bistane told Sevryn. He leaned against the stairway railing, his keen blue eyes unrevealing. He did not have to say much because it was enough that he had come down to talk to Sevryn rather than Lara. The queen had few words for him, it seemed.

“The head injury?”

“The healers don’t seem to think so, but whatever it was, it nearly killed him. He stays in shock. Fortunate for all of us you were there.”

“I wasn’t there for fortune’s sake. When you see the queen, tell her I have intelligence for her.” Sevryn turned abruptly and headed for the back stairs and the kitchen doors, to wash at the racks outside and fill his lungs with fresh air that did not have the stink of disapproval in it.

A yard lad from the mews came running as soon as Sevryn stepped outside to the bite of air growing ever colder and drier. He puffed to a stop. “Milord, milord, one of your birds came in from Hawthorne way.” A message pellet filled his hand and he dropped it into Sevryn’s palm. “Urgent, we thought.”

He flicked the lad a coin which the other caught as it flashed through the air. He twisted open the capsule and read, in cramped yet careful lettering signed with a G, “Shield & Kever destroyed by Q. Ships landing by Tomarq.”

He read it again and yet a third time as if he could have misread or misinterpreted the message. He threw his head back as the wind howled down with a frigid blast to his face.

Tranta had been right. Their world had exploded.

He ran for the stairs. The queen would see him whether she wished it or not.

It was said that the silvery streaks in her blue-and-gold eyes had come from lightning. He believed it when he saw true fury flooding them as he faced her. It was the smoke and steel from her grandfather, the anger which could be wielded like a weapon if it could be honed, and her eyes narrowed as if she did that very thing. The main window of her apartments framed her, a stormy blue-and-green vista at her back. She had insisted on speaking with him there, rather than in Tranta’s rooms. For that, he couldn’t blame her. They would have raised voices and they did so now. Or spoken in tight words so that any warrior would hear the steel they held. Bistane had followed on his heels and the room seemed crowded with just the three of them.

“Give me leave to go after Quendius now.”

One eyebrow rose. “This time you ask permission?”

Warmth flooded Sevryn. From the pit of his gut where Cerat resided to the hollow of his throat upward to dash upon his cheeks. For all he knew, the red heat settled at last in his eyes, glowing and demonic. He would hide it from her if he could, but he didn’t need to. She turned away from him. Her maimed hand clenched and unclenched in the folds of her skirt. “If I have to kill every last standing Galdarkan, I will
not
leave our flanks and backs open for Quendius to savage. He will not feast on the leavings of our battlefield!”

“As for your offer,” Bistane murmured, “how close do you think you can get if he heads an army of his own?”

“I received information from inside those same forces. I think I can get as close as I need.” He closed his teeth on his own anger and felt it recede inside, a tide ebbing. “Before he closes on us, I should move.”

“Gilgarran had reasons for leaving him in place. So, too, did Daravan. I argued with them. I saw . . .” She rubbed her forehead as if clearing away a cobweb. “No, Sevryn. I do not give you leave. We have a plan in place.”

From that, he had deduced a trap whose springing depended on absolute surprise and so no one else had been privy to its formulation. He opened his mouth to protest when an alarm sounded, the border trumpets winding yet again and he went to the window to look out upon Larandaril as if he could see the trouble from there.

Perhaps he could. Or perhaps it was only meant for Lariel. He saw a shimmer upon the glass of this broad window, a view that seemed impossibly detailed and clear, the rolling hills of the far boundaries as close as the nearby groves. The view rippled and distorted even as he looked out and Lara brushed him aside, blocking him as she leaned upon the windowsill. The long-range view blurred for him. He had no idea such a thing had existed for Lara, for anyone.

But he’d already seen the trespassers as she viewed them now, and they both uttered in one voice, “Rivergrace.”

Lara added flatly, “Get a detail.”

“You’d think,” Nutmeg said wearily, her brandy-colored eyes frowning, “that all this wind would bring clouds.”

“And rain.” Rivergrace shrugged into the hood of her cloak, tied snugly under her chin and yet it would be torn away every handful of minutes until she could tug it back into place.

“Definitely rain. If not snow ’n’ ice.” Her hat long ago eaten by river waters, she had only a small scarf wrapped about her hair and down over her ears for warmth. Her nose matched her cheeks in redness and Grace doubted the color came from her cheerfulness and bouncy attitude. “Something good out of this bitter blow.” She wrinkled her nose at the sky as if she could intimidate it. Her pony broke into a stiff-legged trot as they crested a hill. “We have to be near,” she added, her voice rising up and down with her pony’s gait.

“We passed the border, that much I know. Didn’t you feel it? Like a window drape that didn’t want to be opened but finally gave way. And a prickling at the back of your neck as though something unfriendly is watching.”

“I’ve had
that
since we left,” declared Nutmeg. “If we’re that close, we should be in time for early supper.” She bounced to a sudden halt as Grace pulled up her mount and her pony instinctively did the same.

“I don’t think I want to ride in.”

“What?” Nutmeg’s head snapped around.

“I went to the library for help. What I found was . . . entirely different. ” She could not meet her sister’s eyes. “I found more questions than answers.”

“Da would say that life never grows us a tree so tall we can’t climb it, but I’ve decided he’s likely wrong on that one.” Nutmeg brushed a finger against one eye that had grown a bit misty. “You can’t save someone from themselves, Grace. You can only be there to help them if they ask. You can help who you love if you want to, only I don’t want to. I figured that out, sometime after I found myself buried up to my chin in scrolls and books.”

“It sounds like you have the right of it. Still, I don’t think I belong down there. Not now.”

Nutmeg said quietly, “I need you. And Sevryn does, even if he won’t tell you so. You give him the spine he needs to fight for you!”

Rivergrace shook her head slowly. It wasn’t spine Sevryn needed. He was not afraid to fight for her. He was afraid that once he began to fight, he would not be able to stop himself until Cerat’s bloodlust had been slaked, and who knew what bloodletting and souldrinking that would take? She knew that now. He was afraid of himself. She knew what that felt like. She took a breath chilled with indecision and then a sight met her eyes. “The choice has been made for me, it seems.”

“What?”

“They’re coming for us.” Grace pointed downslope, where a body of horsemen rode toward them, and angling alongside, a single horseman charged, his chestnut mount moving like a flame licking up the hillside.

“Sevryn, that one’ll be,” Nutmeg observed. “Not on Aymaran, but I can tell by the way he sits a horse.”

“Yes.” Her heart did a funny little beat in her chest, and she put her hand up, over the cloak, as if she could hold it steady by placing her palm over it. Would he be furious that she had left without telling him? And when she told him that she carried the blood of the enemy, what would he think? Was it possible he had known, deep inside himself, since those days when Cerat had swallowed his soul into the great sword? Buried inside the metal, had he known who had forged it and caged the Souldrinker into it, and how only one of his blood could even think to master and wield the blade? Had he known it and kept that from her, or perhaps sensed it deep within the threads of his soul so that when he was rewoven into life again, if she told him, it would be like plucking a cord and he would remember it? Would he hate her for it? Or had he, possibly, shielded her from the truth he’d learned?

And how would that affect the Demon he wrestled? Did Fyrvae tame Demons or only give them license to come into this world and wreak their havoc? Did she have it in her to help, or would she undermine what little control Sevryn had?

She could not even guess. She watched the riders stream out of the valley pasture, surging uphill toward them.

“Nutmeg—”

“No, by the blood of the trees and the stones of the stars, I will not be ridin’ off and leaving you.”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Wasn’t intending to let you,” Nutmeg said sternly. “We’re family. If that’s trouble, we’re both in it. Only thing is, how can books cause this much fuss?”

“It all depends upon what’s written in them.” Rivergrace straightened her back and watched the horsemen draw clear.

Nutmeg muttered lowly, “This one must’ve been on how t’ avoid taxes. They look awfully keen to greet us.” She shoved her booted feet firmly into her stirrups.

Fresh air flowed over Tiforan’s face. He inhaled deeply despite the cold biting into his lungs when he did. He did not like dark, closed-in places, but he had taken the pathways as he had been told to do, and now he was here beyond the borders of Larandaril. The leathery Bolger riding next to him flexed his shoulders, and jumped off his mount, checking the ground around them. “Tracks,” he said. “Heat still in them.”

How the beastman could feel anything through those heavily callused and scarred hands, Tiforan had no idea, but he nodded. He flicked his fingers at Lyat, his junior. “I want a note made. The borders of Larandaril are warded, that much is true. But the wards cannot tell one intrusion from another. We’ve crossed on the heels of another, and so we are through. An interesting flaw to remember.”

Hastily, Lyat pulled instruments from his pack and made notes in his odd scribe notehand, to be more fully detailed later. Tiforan sat as the Bolger coursed about on foot, rather like a hound, taking in those who’d ridden before them. He went to one knee for a long time, then, silent except for a slight grunt every once in a while as if debating with himself, although what deep thoughts such a being could hold Tiforan could not imagine.

Other than the icy wind, winter seemed to have little grip on this lush valley as a dwindling sun gleamed over it fitfully as useless clouds veiled it now and again. Trees still held coppery and yellow leaves, though thinning, and the evergreens were almost blue in their vivid greenery. Grass blades still peppered the landscape everywhere, untouched by nighttime frost. A paradise, he thought, held by those who deserved nothing of it. Soon, it would be stripped from them, and he would aid in the doing of it. That gave him great satisfaction. Finally, the Bolger put his hand flat to the ground, and said, “Horses. Coming fast and hard. After othersss, I think.”