Read Online The Dark Ferryman by Jenna Rhodes - Free Book Online Page B

could catch fresh game.
    Aching a bit and tired, he let the horse carry him toward the verdant line while he scanned the area, trying to pick up threads of the trail that Daravan had forged bringing them here. As much a sign of their journey as broken branches and hoofprints, an aura lay over it. Sevryn stared across the landscape, sensing an aura he could pick up and gather, a gossamer-fine thread that he could braid into a stronger thread to guide him back. He caught a shimmering of gray mist and fine sable. Daravan had brought them to the Ferryman, a trail which carried them farther, faster, than physical abilities could otherwise. He should have sensed it. He could now. With a snap of will, he anchored his senses to it, separating it from the natural elements of the world, a passage of unnatural speed and effort, a Way that faded with every breathing moment as it had been meant to do, a thing created to be transient and unobtrusive on the structure of the world. He wondered that he could find it at all, knowing that Daravan must have expended more strength creating it than needed, rather than use too little and fail as his need to arrive in time had pressed him. He wondered that Daravan had been on his feet when they’d come to the bay. What effort had he expended, and of what stuff was he made? As far as Sevryn knew no one had created a Way in his lifetime. The methods for doing so were guarded by each House, if any even remembered. There were many who’d died trying to forge a Way, far more unsuccessful than succeeding, but even that had claimed its toll. Only the Ferryman could cut distance as he had. It was rather like two halves of the whole, this journey of theirs and the Ferryman and the Vaelinar had made the Ways.
    So it was that Sevryn urged his horse onward into the fading day by another riverside just before the setting of the sun.
    He spurred his tired mount across the river, feeling the water rise about them till it touched the bottom of his boot soles and breasted the horse. Weariness sucked at him as did the current, slowing their progress to a slogging walk and he chirped to encourage the horse, mist soaking them both. But the river grew no deeper, nor did it go higher than his boot shank. He pushed worry from his mind and fixed it on the Andredia, the sweet and sacred river that flowed into and through the valley kingdom of Larandaril, the river which would take him to Rivergrace.
    Sevryn’s horse gave a startled whuff as it staggered out of the water. He didn’t need to urge the animal away from the river, as it gratefully clambered onto dry land. He stared back at the water, the hair at the back of his neck prickling uncomfortably. He rubbed his hand across his nape as he took stock of where they stood, but didn’t know where he was. Hopefully, that condition would be temporary when he had a chance to scout in the early daylight on the morrow.
    In the thick of the forest cover, night pressed down as the sun lowered, leaving him shivering. Dry kindling and branches soon made a fire, and the two of them stood close to it while they warmed, and soon the horse dropped his head to crop at the grasses as Sevryn squatted by the flames. He listened to the calming noise of the animal searching out tender shoots left behind yet untouched by frost, and the crackle of the wood as it burned.
    He had grown up in towns—towns, villages, backwater slums of cities, with his hair long and shaggy over the pointed ears that would give him away as a by-blow of the Vaelinar, his clothes nondescript rags that would not give away his age or height or build, for he aged slower than the other wretched children of the streets. Another useless castoff of a feared and sometimes hated bloodline. He didn’t even have the Vaelinar eyes, the eyes that signaled the ability to manipulate magics of the world. No one had a use for him, no race of Kerith and certainly not the Vaelinars. His mother had brought him to a village and then