The Dark Ferryman Read Online Free PDF Page B

got no answer until they’d reached the other side, and he’d almost forgotten the question. “You were snoring loudest when I came through. I said to myself, that’s the one I need, he’ll be well-rested.” Daravan stopped his horse, twisted the stirrup to put boot to it, and swung up to settle lightly.
    “My luck, indeed,” Sevryn said dryly. “To what do we ride?”
    Daravan grinned. “Cutthroats, assassins, and Vaelinar honor. I have hopes that you’ll stand at my back, and prove of some use there.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “That goes without saying.”
    They reached a wide, rolling river much later in the evening, and Daravan reined to a halt. He sat his horse calmly on the riverbank as if waiting for some divine sign before crossing, and perhaps he did.
    Sevryn dismounted to let his horse get a breather and eyed the sky. No lightening yet on the horizon, no sign that dawn might be near, although the night predators seemed quiet and those who rested and hid in the darkness stayed silent naturally. After very long moments, when he feared the calm would put him to sleep on his feet, he asked, “Are we waiting for a third?”
    “No, the Ferryman.”
    Sevryn’s eyes widened. He knew he had not slept in the saddle nor could they have traveled far enough in half an evening to bring them to the banks of the swift and angry Nylara River where the phantom Ferryman docked his Way, his Vaelinar-created ability to negotiate a ferry across a treacherous river no ordinary being could tame. No one could safely cross the Nylara without him, and all paid the Ferryman’s toll although the traders had always chafed under the paying. From one side of the deep and wide-cut river to the other, the Ferryman went back and forth as though chained to those waters, but Sevryn knew better. He’d discovered quite by accident that, if he’d a mind to, the Ferryman could bring you from the bank of the Nylara across to the bank of an altogether different river if one had the strength of will to ask. He’d paid a toll in coins and wondered then if the Ferryman would ever request or collect another sort of payment altogether.
    Although the Ferryman had come to the Nylara River when the Vaelinar created the Way for the boat, no House claimed the creation of him, and no House or Hold or Fortress knew where the tolls he collected went. Had the Vaelinar-created Way chained a God, one of the Gods of Kerith who had abandoned their peoples in anger, to mortal waters? They did not know. They only knew when they’d needed a boatman, one came, and they dared not turn him away, or so whispered Vaelinar tales said. The making of Ways was an art forbidden centuries ago, yet there were those bloodlines who still attempted it although the knowledge of how to do so had been secreted away by those jealous of their power. The thought of the phantom being traveling from his anchor on the Nylara stopped words in his throat.
    “I promised a price,” Daravan said flatly, “a long time ago. The Ferryman answers to me.”
    The tone of his voice said that he would not be explaining further. Sevryn swung back into his saddle and waited for the impossible. They had ridden into the depth of the night, into its darkest tide, when souls floated out in their sleep never to be drawn back to the flesh again, when unspeakable Gods demanded even more unspeakable deeds of those who sought them out, and when mortal men plotted to gain immortality. He stared across the wide river and thought again of Rivergrace whose mere touch changed the water she approached, who could not tame the tides or currents but rode them. The river ahead, little more than a steep-sided brook, looked still enough he thought they might be able to ford it easily, but Daravan had other needs than just to cross this one span. He needed to cross country and quickly. It could be their escort might not show till dawn or later. The Ferryman had been known to keep certain personages waiting, as if