The Ferryman approached, taller than Sevryn but not by much, but all the more impressive by the voluminous robes he wore, all of dark and shadow and magic. The Ferryman requested his toll and Sevryn paid it, wondering as many others before him where that coin actually went when it dropped into the Ferryman’s palm. He led his horse onto the raft as it bucked the strong current of the Nylara and shifted underfoot in violent rolls. Sevryn wished he were farther north, closer to the road’s end, crossing the wide and milder Greenbank River which bordered the ild Fallyn lands.
He would indeed have to toughen up, he thought, scratching his horse under the chin and calming him as the Ferryman pushed away to struggle with his will against that of the surging river. Tressandre regularly rode down from the north, driving her horses and goods for sales and fairs, to spy and to meddle, and to find new lovers. She never gave a care for the length of the road, nor had the journey ever seemed to drain her.
He could feel the power of the Ferryman and it made the hair on the back of his neck rise as the creature gained safe passage for them. The raft rose and fell, heaving back and forth, and his stomach lurched queasily. His horse put his head down, whickering uneasily, the whites of his eyes showing despite soft words from Sevryn. For a moment, it seemed as if the center of the river was a whirlpool and they swirled about wildly before coming about to safety.
They landed finally after long, inexorable moments in which the river fought to wash them off the raft, and spray drenched them, and the ropes which guided the raft across the river strained and came near to snapping but did not. Sevryn moved to lead his horse off the raft, more than a little unnerved. The horse jumped aside skittishly, and he took a firm hold on the reins.
The Ferryman stopped him from stepping onto the bank.
“Seek the Forges,” he said, deep voice rolling out of the cavernous opening of his hood.
Sevryn rocked back on his bootheels. “What?”
Had he even heard it? His horse took a bolting leap off the raft, dragging him alongside, and Sevryn turned him round, and curbed him to a halt.
“Wait.”
The Ferryman turned. “Crossing?” he asked.
“You just brought me here. What did you say to me? What Forges?”
The being did not elucidate. But he lifted his hand and pointed. “Go.” The Ferryman boarded the raft and left.
Sevryn watched the Dark Ferryman disappear into the spray and white-water caps of the Nylara, and then he stepped back, still trying to soothe his unsettled horse. As he turned to the horse, hand stroking the curved neck, he saw they had landed on the far side of the Greenbank River, and the flesh rose and danced on his arms.
He spun about. The wide, shallow, and tranquil waters of the streambed faced him; gone was the mad and furious Nylara, and the Ferryman, and the docks. Everything gone but the verdant shores for which the Greenbank had been named.
The Ferryman had taken him the Way he’d wished, and left him with two burning questions. How had the creature done so, and how had he known about the Forges?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HOSMER GOT TO HIS FEET and walked, slowly and gingerly, with Garner under his shoulder as a crutch, something that would never have been possible normally because Garner was taller, but with his own injury, he walked crouched over. So the two fit together like some odd puzzle. It worked well whenever their journey paused or stopped for the evening, with the exception of Garner’s spirited rendition of “Two Frogs,” a Dweller ditty that involved a good deal of hopping during the chorus, much to Hosmer’s muttering. He had no choice but to join in the hopping if his “crutch” did, and the two of them would curse and hop about the campfire while Lily, Nutmeg, and Rivergrace melted into pools of laughter. The return of the two to health brought smiles to everyone else’s faces despite the good-natured ribbing the two constantly aimed at each other.
Even Bumblebee would swish his thick tail and give pony snorts of humor and toss his head. The stiffness left his legs while in the Greathouse stable, and Rivergrace thought it was because one stable lad had taken a liking to the barrel-bellied pony and massaged and rubbed his legs down twice a day while they all rested and healed. Whatever it was the lad had done, Bumblebee hit the road with them looking like a new, or at least, much renewed equine and very proud of himself with ribbons woven in his thick mane. Tolby winked at Bumblebee. “Don’t let that old man fool you,” he commented to his sisters. “He can run a great deal faster than he lets on, particularly with a hungry Bolger or two on his tail!”
Lily cleaned her last pot and put it away carefully, nestling the lid next to it. She wiped her hands on her apron as she sat down by the fireside. “If we must talk of fooling, then we must decide on our story for Grace. It’s time to deal with what Mistress Greathouse, and we have known all along we must come to dealing with this.”
“Me,” responded Rivergrace faintly.
“The story of you, aye.”
“Best to stay as close to the truth as possible, when telling a lie.” Tolby put his pipe away. “Less to get tripped up on, later, and, Tree knows, we all have our share of stubbed toes in life.”
“You have to lie about me?”
“Perhaps. There are hard questions we’ve no answer to, and you could suffer because of that. We didn’t take you in and love you to lose you.
“A truthful lie will be our best defense,” concluded Tolby.
“That shall be our plan then,” Lily responded softly, and she looked at Rivergrace. They all turned considering expressions on her at once, and Rivergrace shrank back a little to have her entire family staring at her. She knew, or thought she knew, herself, but she found herself waiting with her breath held.
Nutmeg said firmly, with a toss of her head that was like Bumblebee’s. “I found her.”
“And we kept her, for it was obvious she’d come from poor circumstances, thin and bruised and very quiet.” Lily folded her hands on her lap.
“We cannot mention or let the scars on her wrists show.” Hosmer’s jaw tightened.
“The slavery quit long ago.”
“Or so we were told, and then—” he gestured at Rivergrace. “We find her with shackles.”
She rubbed the faint scars, grown up her wrists with age and barely visible if she wore long sleeves or bracelets. “Someone could . . . claim me?”
“Maybe. It would take a lot of nerve and power, but the Vaelinars have never been shy that way.”
She sat back from the glow of the campfire, hoping the night would hide the shadows she felt across her face.
“We hope that the risk of claiming you is, in their minds, not worth it.” Lily put a hand out, brushing the back of Rivergrace’s head in apology for her words. “And, after all these years, they may have forgotten a child who escaped on the Silverwing River. Someone built that raft, meager as it was, and sent it on its way. That someone would be the person the slavers looked for, not you.”
“You never found them.”
Tolby shook his head. “Not a scrap of them. We looked for days, upstream and down, but you were the only one washed to our doorstep, and you barely made it, as it was. So . . . we tell the truthful lie that you were found, but not that you were a slave. A wasting child, left behind, and we took you in. Then there is the matter of your lineage, and that might weight the matter—why they didn’t scour the countryside looking for you? Mixed blood.”
“Though she has Vaelinar blood, she’s never shown a scrap of their magic.” Garner poked a stick into the campfire, stirring up ash and spark.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Keldan frowned. “She has a way with animals and the like.”
Tolby grunted. “That’s the Dweller upbringing. There’s not a one of you who can’t charm a seedling from the ground or a rabbit from the bush if you needed to. No magic in that.”
Keldan rocked back. His thick, curly hair fell over his brow as he nodded. “Truth in that.”
“What’s the lie, then?” Garner crossed his arms about his chest, a protective movement over his rib cage that he’d begun doing, a habit that he scarcely noticed, since the attacks.
“We didn’t find her on the river,” Tolby told him. “We found her asleep in the barn, as if she’d been left there or crawled in for shelter.”
“Why didn’t we try to find her family?”
“Because,” Tolby said, firmly. “She’s half blood and no one accepts Vaelinar half bloods, and we could not leave her to that fate.”
Rivergrace found her throat almost too dry to ask, but she managed it. “Is that true?”
“Half-blooded? We’ve no way of knowing, lass, and it couldn’t matter less to those who love you. But in the city, you’ll see and hear a different tale. Vaelinar true-blooded and blood-tainted, invaders like all the others, none of it liked by the Kerith-born. There are some who will say the only good Vaelinar is a dead one because of the strife and slavery they brought to our lands. Others will say that we never could have turned back the Raymy or survived after the wars of the Magi if they hadn’t come. As for the Vaelinars, they hate any thinning of their heritage. There’s no love from them for those with mixed blood, and that’s what Mistress Greathouse worried about. She knows the towns and great cities. It may be hard for you, Rivergrace.” Tolby watched her face.
How could it be harder for her than for the Farbranches who’d lost everything they’d built? Walked away from years of their past? She’d been found, and saved, and loved. The ache to know what she might have been if they hadn’t found her gnawed at her. Wretched and alone and despised. How could she be worthy of what they’d done, what they were doing, for her? “You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have brought me.”
“It was time to move on,” Tolby answered firmly. “Nutmeg and the boys have prospects to find that don’t lie at the bottom of an apple barrel. As for you, perhaps more than anyone, you need to be out in the world. It’s a knife’s edge, my lass, and I know it, but you’ve got to begin walking it sooner or later, and now seems to be a good time, while you’ve still got us for family. We can help you keep your balance, keep you safe.” His voice lost some of its country lilt as though even the city had its own way of talking, stern and solid, and she inhaled after a long moment.
“I understand. I’ll be careful for all of us,” she murmured as they all waited for an answer, of some sort.
It seemed to be the right answer, for they sighed almost together in a kind of relief.
The day dawned when the city towers of Calcort could be seen from the road, even as it wound through crofts and holdings, smaller warehouses and factories, and the very air smelled of its industry rather than the ripening shoots of the fields. Rivergrace and Nutmeg put their shoulders together, staring.
“It’s immense,” Grace breathed, faintly.
“It’s huge.” Nutmeg ran her hand through her thick, amber hair, flipping it back over her shoulder. “We’ll get lost.”
“A Farbranch? Lost? Never. We were born with the northern moon in our night eyes, and a map of the First Home in our hands,” said Tolby.
“That does not explain our courting days when you came by late at night, exclaiming the new roadways turned you around and kept you from the right time,” replied Lily.
“Well, um.” Tolby cleared his throat gruffly. “I might have been delayed by a game or two of knuckles, trying to win you an engagement ring and such.”
“That explains it.” Lily shot him a glance of such sheer adoration that her husband turned red in the glow of it, and she chuckled.
“What happened to the ring, then, if he won one for you?”
“The ring? Oh,” and Lily put up her unadorned hand, turning it back and forth. “We sold it to help buy the cider press. A future for a future. It seemed a fit bargain then, and still does.” With a smile at Rivergrace, she tucked her hand back into her apron as the cart jostled her slender figure about.
“I’m old enough to remember that,” added Garner. “A great hubbub when it was delivered, on a huge wagon barge pulled by eight great horses. Everyone turned out to help unload it and look it over, and we had dancing and building for days. I kept walking under the table and people would sneak me cookies.” His voice grew silent, and a shadow crossed his face, as they all remembered that the press was nothing more than a charred ruin now, for all its greatness then.
Traffic on the road grew crowded, and Tolby guided the cart to the side, so that faster traffic could pass their slower-moving little carriage and greater wagon. Hoofs clomped loudly on the tightly-packed dirt, and riders wanting to get by quicker clucked their tongues and popped their riding whips in the air and occasionally on a hide. There were great, shaggy long-horned beasts that looked incredibly menacing, for all the yokes and harnesses upon them, as traders and their long caravans drew close, then went by them. There were many strolling on foot, or with hand barrels, carrying backpacks of tools and goods. Some were couriers, with overcoats embroided in the bright threads of important crests, and some riding were soldiers and guards, their mounts in fine fettle, and Hosmer’s eyes gleamed in spite of himself.
Rooftops gleamed in the bright summer day. The canopy of blue sky was streaked by mere wisps of clouds here and there, moving like ghostly banners over the city of red clay roofs, and bright blue-glazed tiles on domes and eaves, and painted wood wherever the eyes could see. The city looked like a fallow field given over to wildflowers which bloomed all at once in a cacophony of color, a field that would last more than a day or even a season, in all its glory.
It did not, however, smell like a field of flowers. It smelled strongly of dung, and burning charcoal, and hot metal forges, and other scents that Grace could not name, and made even Bumblebee put his head up and whicker back in challenge as they approached huge gates through which everyone drove. Keldan wrinkled his nose, but Hosmer clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re smelling the brewery,” he said, with a wide grin. “It smells much better in a mug!”