The Coming Storm by Valerie Douglas Read Free Book Online Page B

“Uncomfortable, those are.”
    Removing his pipe from between his teeth, the ferryman gave him a sharp look and then laughed sharply.
    “Well, they would be with them high collars and all that stiffening. They’re a stiff-necked breed anyways and that collar just puts their nose a little higher in the air is all.”
    Jareth gestured and the water around the little ferry became as still as a duck pond. Just around the ferry and across to the other side. In that narrow area not even a riffle of breeze marred the smooth surface. On the upstream side the river leaped and splashed all the more violently for not being able to pass and for a little ways downstream it flowed a little more calmly.
    The ferryman looked at the river and then at him for a moment. He slapped his knee and laughed again.
    “Well, ahn’t you a one? Welladay, the jest’s on me. I shoulda known better’n to judge by appearances alone. Welladay, milord, I guess I need to get you across the river. Although why you don’t just spell yourself across I don’t know.”
    As a matter of fact, Jareth couldn’t, no wizard could. You could spell the things around you but not yourself so well. It wasn’t that he couldn’t float, rather it was keeping himself upright and moving forward both at the same time that was difficult. Nothing to push away from. There was the weight of the horse as well. The energy it would take to get it over would’ve left him weary for hours.
    “The horse,” Jareth explained, “doesn’t like it much.”
    They didn’t either. Not having all four legs on the ground tended to make them unhappy. Especially elven-bred, although Zo had gotten somewhat used to it.
    It was still easier to take the ferry.
    “Well enough, milord, well enough.”
    The ferryman got up, caught the coin neatly and walked across to unhook the rope that barred access to the boards.
    A little push undocked them from the shore and two quick pulls on the rope sent them far enough out that the ferryman could make use of the oar. With steady strokes back and forth, the man drove them across the river.
    “Heard tell of anything odd hereabouts?” Jareth asked.
    With the pipe clenched between his teeth, the ferryman cocked his head.
    “Odd, you say?”
    He gave it due consideration.
    “Odd as in two fisherman going missing a few miles up the river, or odd as in sommat that what killed half a brace of old Stugarn’s geese?”
    Cocking his head, Jareth raised a brow. “Odd as either, I guess. Any idea what happened to the fishermen?”
    “Naw,” the man said, around the pipe. “Odd it was though. Both good people, not the layabouts who sometimes put lines in water to make it look like they is doing sommat. Naw. They found their poles, four or five of them and a string of et fish. Naught else. Now, old Stugarn’s geese? They was sommat else. What a mess that were. Heard tell there was parts of them geese – their feathers and feet and bills – all over the place. Old Stugarn was in a right fury.”
    “Where was this?”
    “The fishermen, they be upriver two three leagues or so. Mebbe more. Wilder country up thereabouts. Not too many folks up that way. More on this side of the river we’re goin’ to than what we left. Puts the river twixt them and the far side. Now that’s wilderness up that far above the big bend and a branch of the borderlands comes down that way between us ’n some of them Elves. Those ones that live way far up in the mountains, you see. Now, King Daran, he sent ‘round an edict some time ago telling people they shouldna go so far into the wildernesses, there were plenty of unsettled lands about the interior. Which is true enough. ‘Twasn’t fair to the Hunters, he said, who should be the only folks up that way, to have to watch for them while trying to do the duty what they was paid for. Nor would he send the Woodsmen. Nor should anyone look to the Elves for such, ‘twasn’t the duty of Elves to look after foolish men. But you