Riverkeep by Martin Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

gloves. He spat the taste of it over the side.
    â€œDisgustin’,” he muttered. “Look, you wouldn’t like it much better if I used all the matches an’ it still didn’t take, so I need to just stick on an’ see if the next one does. Right?”
    The bäta bobbed into the current as he turned the oars. After working the knife, his fingers had lost all feeling, and the pain from the grips on his hands ached through his wrists and into his elbows.
    â€œI’m glad you thinks so too,” muttered Wull. He shot another look into the unmoving forest, felt its energy looking back, and sculled more quickly into the middle of the Danék.
    Lantern two, tucked into a pocket of current beside a grove of trees that had grown in a low sweep over the river’s surface, was also iced solid. The trees around it were uncommonly white, accustomed as they were to the heat of the lantern, and the scabs of moss and lichen were crusted with blown snow. Across the grove hung, like strings of pearls, the frozen ropes of weed and parasitic roots that clung to thetrunks and branches of all the riverside trees. Wull wondered how long the lantern had been out—the whole space had an air of unmoving timelessness, and the ice around the rod was far thicker than on lantern one.
    He guided the bäta alongside, took up his knife, started to chip away at the prison of ice, the blade bouncing back at him from its unbreaking face. The cold in his hands began to burn, first with a curious warmth, then with a growing and painful fire that ripped at his skin.
    He continued to stab until the wick was freed, the closeness of the reaching tree boughs bringing the forest’s grasp near to him even as he stood in the wobbling bäta.
    â€œOh, there you are,” he whispered, brushing the black lump with a thumb that was a wedge of sharp pain. He allowed himself a smile, felt the freezing air grip his teeth, then filled the reservoir with the same fragile care as before, spilling nothing of the precious oil.
    By the time he’d thrown the twelfth unsuccessful match into the Danék, he was already sitting in his seat in the back of the boat with his eyes closed.
    â€œWhat would Pappa have done?” he said to the bäta. “If the fire won’t take, then the fire won’t take! There’s no magic to it. I can’t spell flames onto the damn thing! I’m just as well going back in ’cause I’m gettin’ nowhere here.”
    He glanced at the boat’s eyes, and it was then he noticedit had turned gently to point toward lantern three.
    Wull dropped his scarf for a second to spit over the side.
    â€œOne more,” he muttered. “Though I don’t see the bloody point—I might as well stand by the fire at home an’ throw matches out the window for all the good I’m doin’.”
    A few minutes of sore rowing took Wull to lantern three, positioned on a straight bank that ran for a few hundred yards. Although burned-out and frozen, its empty reservoir and wick were more clearly visible through the ice.
    That looks better,
thought Wull, easing the bäta alongside.
    He chipped at the ice, gratified by how rapidly it yielded, coiling lengths of it peeling from the rod like bark shavings. Then he lifted the whale oil. Even with two reservoirs’ worth gone it seemed far heavier to hands that were sapped of strength by the knife and the oars. The porcelain slipped against his glove.
    â€œSo. This is the keep’s role,” he said, “heavin’ this bottle of fish slime around forever. I shouldn’t even be here. . . .”
    He stood, hefted the bottle, and went to lean toward the empty, frosted reservoir.
    His feet slipped, the slick wood of the bottom boards taking his balance, sending him flying forward and throwing the whale oil from him—over the side.
    â€œNo!” shouted Wull, stretching for it in midair, his hands