The Dark Ferryman (59 page)

Raver
.

Her heart leaped once before steadying. Would it scent her? It had come down a different passage, or so she thought, three of them spiking away from the pool. Did it nest nearby or did it come to collect her as part of the Ferryman’s offering or did it hunt her? She had nothing, nothing at hand with which to defend herself except that she could stuff gravel down its gullet as it tried to slice her to death. And she had her back to the small crevice, and it would have to work to dig her out. If it found her. She knew little of how the Ravers hunted, whether by sight or smell or some other means, only that she was in mortal danger if it discovered her.

Shadows merged into the being as it approached the poolside, crooking its head on its odd, stilted body, and it clicked. It raised a sticklike, pincered arm that bent at impossible angles with a grace belying its rigid form. It could leap, she knew, but the roof of the cavern wouldn’t allow much height, and it could run on all fours at a horse’s pace if it had something to chase after. Instead of the rags which usually wrapped a Raver from head to toe, hiding its true aspect, this one wore light armor over its hard-shelled body and weapons, pike and a short sword and a spiked chain, by the looks of them, strapped where it could easily reach them. The pike she feared most because the Raver could strike at her from a distance. She dug her hands quietly into the rock pile surrounding her.

The Raver cocked its head to give off a short, piercing whistle. Her ears throbbed at the noise. They both waited long moments. Did it call for others? She watched it as it turned slowly and then walked about the pool, pausing by her torch. It leaned to sniff at the object. It straightened with a low whistle, head swiveling about, and she swore it searched for her, could see her tucked in the crevice only a few body lengths away from it.

The orange-yellow glow about the pool began to deepen, taking on a crimson hue. It flared wider and stronger as if the torch had found a new source of fuel deep in its wrappings and its heat surged out, like a finger pointing toward her. The Raver turned to look. Had it seen her?

It leaped, pulling its pike free of its harness, and she no longer wondered.

It jabbed at her, but she had each hand full of as large a rock as she could hold and she batted at the pike head with one hand, and lobbed the other at the Raver as hard as she could. Part of its spiny ridge broke off and hung by its skin. The rock bounced off the carapace hide and rolled back at her feet. She grabbed up a handful of dirt and gravel and flung it in what passed for the thing’s face, even as it sliced the pike wickedly at her, catching her sleeve and ripping it from collar to cuff. But she had drawn first blood, and she wasn’t about to stop there.

A long shard met her search for another piece of stone. Obsidian, curved and naturally sharp, it cut her fingers as she gripped it, and she swapped hands long enough to tear off her ragged sleeve and wrap it about one end, a clumsy bandaging to hold it. She got it back up in time to parry a jab from the pike. Slice and another jab, and she fended them off. Then a downward cut that she barely met in time. The pike head slid off her obsidian blade with a keening noise as her weapon bit into the iron, notching it heavily. The Raver made a loud chitter as it pulled the pike back.

“That’s right,” Rivergrace told it. “I won’t be easy pickings!” She stood, bracing her feet, holding the obsidian shard as she’d been taught to hold a long sword. She only had the front vulnerable and she could hold that offensively and defensively for a bit, perhaps long enough to damage and discourage the Raver.

It withdrew.

“Think I have straw for brains? I’m not coming out to get you.” The crevice protected her like a shell did a mud turtle and she had no intention of leaving it.

It drove in again with the pike. They fought furiously till the sweat ran down her, soaking the rag wrapped about her blade, and she thought she might not be able to hold onto it. She parried the pike head and lunged past it, plunging the sharp end of the obsidian deep into the Raver’s torso. It sprang back with a hissing chitter as green goo flowed from the crack in its body. It flailed at its body as if putting out a fire, a series of loud spits spilling from it.

Rivergrace held her breath a moment to see if the thing toppled, but she seemed only to have enraged it. It threw the pike clattering upon the stone and then drew forth the spiked chain. Her momentary flush of victory went ice cold.

The creature slung its length at her. With a snap, the chain slid off her blade and the end snapped along her side, tearing cloth and piercing flesh in jagged, hot pain. She cried out and held onto the shard by sheer will as she fell back against the rock wall. The Raver made a noise of what could only be satisfaction as it coiled the chain and prepared to strike it again. Blood slid down her flank, hot and stinging, soaking her blouse and vest.

Even if she could bear to grab the chain, she knew she didn’t have the strength or leverage to wrest it from the Raver’s hold. All she could do was parry it as long as she could and hope that its wound was worse than hers, and it would fall back. Rivergrace didn’t think she had those odds in her favor.

Torchlight danced and grew ever more crimson as it threw darker and darker shadows upon the rock. She wiped her forehead, certain that blood must be veiling her eyes. She pulled her vest off and wrapped it around her left hand and wrist. The chain came slinging at her before she was ready, but she caught it. As the Raver thought she might. As she had to, to keep it from wrapping about her body and slicing her to ribbons.

It did not think she would come charging out of her hole, obsidian blade in her hand, and skewer it between the eyes.

It fell back with a squawl, its momentum and the chain drawing Rivergrace with it. Green ichor spurted from its helmet-thick head with a smell that made her choke. It thrashed at her as she pushed away, the vest tearing loose from her wrist as spikes shredded it to ribbons.

She made it to her knees. She scrambled for her obsidian blade which lay shattered in front of her, under the Raver’s flailing body. She pulled back, one hand bracing her as she got to her feet, watching it, spent, having done all she could do.

Then it got to its feet
.

A sound of dismay escaped her. Rivergrace hugged her arm to her bleeding side and squeezed as far back into her crevice as she could. Heat flooded the small cavern, heat that made the crimson glow dance and bloom upon the walls. The Raver came after her.

She threw rocks at it. Pea-sized gravel to a boulder she could barely heft. The boulder jolted the creature, nearly knocking it off its stiltlike legs, but it still came. Green slicked its black carapace and what was left of her blade stuck out from the middle of its cranium. It walked with its head tilted grotesquely to one side as though half blind, notched pike in hand. It would jab and peck at her like long-billed birds pecked at snail shells to get the delicacy inside. She found another rock just behind her, a huge one. With a scream of defiance, she lifted it.

The Raver jolted backward.

In a spate of chitters and clacks, it lumbered around, razorlike arms stabbing at the air. She thought it had gone mad, damaged from the splinter in its skull, and then she saw the figure, sword and dagger in hand, cutting the Raver to pieces. Oh, she knew well that tall and graceful figure, muscled and yet lean, face not as slender and chiseled as a true Vaelinar, but a face that smiled only for her. Bathed in crimson light, Sevryn danced on the balls of his feet, his hands in constant motion, the Raver unknowing of what hit it, of what took it down. It toppled, and he stepped aside smoothly, his eyes like lanterns. He sucked in a breath before turning to her.

“Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

He bent over, wiping his sword and dagger clean on rags wrapped about the Raver. He took the spiked chain, examined it gravely, and then hooked it to his weapons harness. Finally, he came to her, putting his hand out, fingers under her chin, and drew her to him. The light in his eyes had dimmed by then, and the heat washing over her passed, leaving her chilled, but his flesh warmed her as he held her close. His heart pounded under her cheek and then steadied. She did not wonder how he found her. Demon-touched and Goddess-ridden, it would have surprised her if they had not found each other eventually, though it might not have been with life still in their mortal bodies. He held her tightly and she leaned to him, her curves pressed to his lean, hard body, and neither spoke.

After very long moments, he commented, “I think you could have taken it.”

“Only if it choked on the gravel. I hadn’t much left for the fight.”

He smoothed her hair from her brow. “You had enough. That’s all it takes.”

She looked up, and the Demon light in his eyes had faded to the merest flicker, like that of a candlewick just taking the flame. His jaw was bruised and scraped, fatigue crinkled his eyelids, and he looked, on the whole, like she felt. Beaten and weary yet glad to be alive. She kissed the cheek under her fingertips as she stroked him.

He found her mouth and kissed her gently, then with more heat and need as he resettled her in his arms. She broke away long enough to take a breath and ask, “Do you know the way out?”

Sevryn shook his head. “I came in behind you.”

“There has to be a way.”

A voice spoke dryly from the long, purple shadows across the small pool of water. “There are several and one must be careful choosing them.”

Freeing his sword hand, Sevryn broke away from Rivergrace and they both faced the dark as Narskap stepped into the torchlight.

“Do not worry,” he said, closing the distance between them in three strides. “I merely came for this.” And he plunged his hand into Sevryn’s chest.

RIVERGRACE SCREAMED. Sevryn uttered a wet gurgle. He raised his hand toward her and sank to his knees. She thrust out at Narskap, her fingers flaring with fire, blue fire that engulfed her arm as she swung at him. He spat a word, and the flames went out, icy cold, and he knocked her blow aside. She picked up a rock, clutching it tightly. This was not her father, not Fyrvae, and yet she hesitated to club him. Before she could strike, Narskap withdrew his hand slowly and painstakingly from the gore of Sevryn’s chest. He uncurled his fist and she saw nothing but a small, fiery crescent. No blood, no shreds of flesh or organs. No pulsing, throbbing bit of human life torn free. No mark left on Sevryn as he struggled for breath, his eyes wide in pain. His chest closed.

“Did you not wonder,” Narskap remarked, “why the arrow you took for Queen Lariel did not consume you the way it consumed Osten? Did you never think how it was you took only an irritating flesh wound instead of your death from it?” He slapped his open hand to his chest and shuddered as if something forced its way into him. His deathly white skin paled even more, taking on a faint greenish cast, and his eyes looked as if they would be lost inside the depths of his skull. He swallowed tightly. The moment passed, and he dropped his hand to his side. The pallor of his skin and the sunken hollows of his eyes returned to their normal wasted state. “You lived because Cerat never eats his own. He cannot devour himself. Demon calls to Demon . . .” Narskap glanced from Sevryn to Rivergrace and back, “and I am the one who calls Demons and binds them. Just as I am the hunter who tracks other hunters.” He gave a desultory wave at the carcass of the Raver.

He grabbed Sevryn by the shoulder and hoisted him to his feet. “You haven’t long. An army marches under this mountain. Go this way, and quickly, or you will be devoured by something much less immortal and just as unsavory as the Souldrinker.” He stroked Rivergrace’s cheek. “Run, Daughter.”

He turned away and as he passed, his shadow sucked the last of the light from the torch and all went dark.

Bistel reined in. The drums had stopped again, and there was no veiling by fog this time; the winter wind had sucked every drop of moisture out of the sere land, and even the river could not give them a curtain. He’d had two more days than he thought he would after their initial skirmish, no doubt because Diort had sent climbers around the peaks to avoid the ild Fallyn archers, to stake out the high ground Bistel had been determined not to let him have. That is what Bistel would have done. So now their waiting was done, and the Vaelinars had a warlord but no Warrior Queen. No word or sign of Lariel, no trap to spring, just a war to fight. His mouth stretched in a thin smile. He had prepared for this. This was why he had been raised as a warlord, to make war, to know the contingencies, to plan for victory and defeat and, even more importantly, afterward. Too often the aftermath went unnoticed. The victor had to be as careful with the people he defeated as he had been in defeating them. This was why he had peace in the northern lands he called home, this was why he planted and harvested when he was not making war, because it lay within him to replenish and nurture that which had been cut down. He offered hope, a plan, and a future after conquering.

He held his aryn staff across his legs. It served as a shield as well as a bludgeon in his off-hand. Made following the tradition in his immediate family, the staff was greenwood, cut from the finest aryn tree on his lands. He did not know if it would take root when planted in the ground of his grave by his son when he fell, but he thought it would. He would be truly surprised if it did not. Then again, he wouldn’t really know. Bistel’s mouth quirked further in an ironic smile.

An aide loped frantically toward him and brought his horse to a pawing stop. “My lord! Diort has men on the upper peak, trying to approach the dam of the Revela.”

“Of course he is.” Bistel did not doubt that, despite ild Fallyn archers and fog, that the Galdarkans would have discovered the Revela all but bone dry, its source held and cut off by his forces. “Harry them. Let them get close, but keep them contained. The dam will be destroyed when I wish it destroyed, but let the Galdarkan think that he is thwarting our objective. Pick them off sparingly. Is that clear?”