Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  He forced himself to move, rising to stumble to the magus’s chair. Not asking permission to sit, but determined not to slip to unconsciousness on the rough wooden floor. Milyan was at the dark table, two leather-bound books open before him. He arched a gnarled eyebrow at Chriani but said nothing.

  Where the larger of the two tomes half-faced him, Chriani saw not just words but illustration. An intricate sketch of black trees washed with green. A gleaming light broke like lines of fractured glass through shadows that masked the forms of swirling crows. He tried to focus on it, but his vision blurred, his stomach churning.

  The Ilvani had called his name. Chriani irnash…

  An offering of blood.

  “The arrow,” Chriani said at last. “What is it?”

  “Broken, you half-wit. And its magic all but dispersed, thanks to you.” Milyan slammed one of the books shut and threw it at Derrach. The acolyte caught it awkwardly, passed another to the magus. “You make my work difficult. I do not forget…”

  “…a dweomer of seeking,” Milyan was saying. He had moved again, Chriani losing the thread of his senses. He squeezed his hand tight to dig his fingers into his palm. A point of pain there to concentrate on.

  “Say that again.” Chriani focused on the pain, focused on the edge of anger threading his voice. Not an ideal reckoning, but he’d take it.

  Milyan sighed, waving Derrach in as he returned to his books. The acolyte stepped close to Chriani, thrust a flask of water into his hand.

  “The Ilvani enchanted a dweomer of seeking,” she said quietly. “Attuned to a singular living essence. Your essence. The magic is shaped with some aspect of the creature to be targeted. An offering of blood made.”

  The chill that rose up Chriani’s spine was like a cold blade caressing his back. Slowly, he stood, holding onto the chair back for the moment it took his head to clear.

  “Sergeant Thelaur,” Chriani said. “She was shot. They hunted her too.”

  “No.” The timbre of Derrach’s voice spoke to a level of anxiety in her that eclipsed even her day-to-day fear. “The arrow taken from her was magic, to be sure, but of the simplest kind. It was a lucky shot, no more.”

  “How did they pick me? In the middle of combat like that? Why was I marked?”

  Derrach made to answer but Milyan beat her to it, giving a bark of laughter as if he might be correcting a child’s grammar lesson. “You were marked before the battle started, master Chriani. Such weapons are crafted over long days, prepared with rituals that would finance my retirement could I recreate them.”

  “But why?” Chriani said. The memory of the raid was twisting through his mind as fragmentary images, each one frozen into place. “He shot at me from a dozen strides away. Why magic an arrow to seek me for a shot any good archer could have pulled off?”

  Milyan laughed again. He whipped his spectacles off, polished them absently on his filthy robe. “Did you listen to none of what’s been said here tonight? Or are you simply as obtuse as every captain and most of your fellow rangers report you to be? The talisman’s magic was to seek you, soldier, and would have done so from across the Ilmar if need be. The Valnirata call the relic gavalirnon. The hunter’s heart.”

  Chriani felt the mage’s words slip into place in his mind, the weight of the day’s events assembling around it. All the images locking in tight.

  “The arrow’s magic,” the magus continued. “That was to bind you once the hunter’s heart had found you. Its magic is a dweomer of domination that has no breaking, making you little more than a puppet. Your will and spirit, consumed and controlled by another.”

  The expression on the face of the Ilvani who had shot at him was sharp in Chriani’s mind suddenly. Hair of grey and gold torn on the wind, a wild light in his golden eyes.

  “When you fell,” Derrach added. “When I gave you the unguent because I thought you’d been poisoned.” Her look told Chriani this was a story she had already told Milyan, for whatever it was worth. “The pain you felt. Even at a distance, the arrow’s magic was tearing at your mind and essence.”

  Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!

  Chriani made the moonsign. Didn’t realize he’d started until his shaking fingers were already tracing the crescent above his heart.

  For a moment, he tried to remember whether he had paid Derrach for the healing. It was strangely important suddenly, though he wasn’t sure why. He absently felt his coin purse, found it lighter. Understood that she had taken care of it while he was insensible.

  He nodded thanks to her, but she had already looked away. Then he headed for the door.

  “Master Chriani!” Milyan barked from behind him. “You will attend. I have questions…”

  Chriani stepped outside, letting the tent’s door flap close behind him as he went. A part of him hoped that Milyan would call guards on him, the night air filling his lungs, clearing his mind. He felt the anger rising, felt it push his hands to his belt, the dagger and longsword there, steel cold against his fingers. But he heard only silence behind him as he paced away.

  THE NIGHT WAS BRIGHT with stars as Chriani walked the perimeter of the camp. He followed the well-worn access trails but stayed within the sentries’ patrol lines, not feeling up to facing a challenge or having to lie about why he was there. The pathways he walked were bright to his eyes, the passing sentries loud against the quiet of the night, giving him ample opportunity to avoid them.

  He heard griffons more than once, heard the cries go up along the patrol lines in response. From his own nights on perimeter watch, he remembered hearing those warnings, and the long bouts of holding his bow drawn and nocked that followed. He had no chance of ever hitting a griffon, he knew, the gavaleria flying well above the range of bow and spell alike. But some captain had embraced the false show of force long before, and so it was standard procedure in the camps. A hundred archers aiming at faint shadows soaring across the dark sky.

  He didn’t know how long he’d walked, but the slender Clearmoon was high by the time he finally stopped. He was atop a low rise, the bright-lit tents of the barracks behind him. He stood staring at the darkness of the distant Greatwood for a long while. Not actually seeing it, the wall of the forest a league away. But sensing its shadow as a dark stain along the horizon, swallowing the light of the stars beyond the shimmering that marked the pale reflection of the grasslands.

  He felt that distant darkness as much as saw it. Felt the threat of that shadow this night in a way he hadn’t since he came to the frontier. He’d done countless patrols and sorties over five months, remembered isolated exchanges of bowshot across the great expanse of the Locanwater as it wound its way close to the forest’s edge. But even as he stared into the night, Chriani understood that the fear he felt now wasn’t coming from the forest.

  This was the fear that came from within.

  He’d been the target of an attack that had no precedent he’d ever heard of. The Ilvani tracking him. Marking him with magic that had made a ranking war-mage’s eyes go wide with wonder.

  Kathlan had stopped that attack. Had saved his life, he was sure. A dweomer of domination that has no breaking, making you little more than a puppet. The pain he’d felt when he drew close to the arrow, tearing at his mind and essence, Derrach had said.

  For a long time, Chriani had told himself there was nothing he feared. If a thing threatened him, he would fight it. If it had no value to him, he would ignore it. Eight years a tyro he’d won for that ambivalence.

  Things were different now. More complicated. If the mark at his shoulder was ever seen, it would be understood that Kathlan had known the truth of Chriani’s life and said nothing. He could die fighting all he liked. Not caring about anything except who he took with him, making a timeless reminder of how good he had been before he finally fell.

  A year and a half before, he hadn’t known what his life was worth. Hadn’t cared about how long it was set to last. Today, he knew that leaving that life meant leaving Kathlan
behind, and that thought struck a cold dread in him like nothing Chriani had ever known before.

  Too many secrets. Too many truths he carried within him now that were greater than he was, but Kathlan was more important than all of them in turn. A bond between them that he had pledged at the end of the path leading from Rheran to Aerach and back again. The storms that had remade his life. No secrets from her. Not anymore.

  No.

  Because he was lying to himself, as always. Too many truths buried inside him. Too many lies that wrapped those truths up tight.

  The secret of what the Prince High Chanist truly was. Of what he had done. Chriani had never told Kathlan. Could never tell her, could never share the bitter sting of that truth and the madness that lay beneath it. But that was for her sake, he could tell himself. A lie told to protect, to guard against an ache he would carry for her sake.

  No.

  He felt the fear cut through him, felt himself shaking. A wave of nausea hit his gut like the arrow’s magic burning in him, driving through him like a slow knife.

  No…

  Eighteen months ago. It had been the first real cold Brandishear had seen that year, High Winter a month and a half gone. Chriani had taken that path that had changed everything, and had left the Princess Lauresa on the path she’d chosen for herself.

  Nine months later, there were birth celebrations in Aerach, and every courier and merchant across the Clearwater had shared the tale.

  He remembered that the Prince High Chanist had been in the field then. The ranger camps were moving along the frontier, marking Ilvani skirmishes outside the Greatwood, near Addrimyr. Echoes of the events of the winter before.

  Not all of it…

  He shook his head to clear it. He buried that shard of truth, those broken threads unraveled from his life, drawn to a net of tight knots that held the past trapped beneath them.

  An offering of blood, Derrach had said.

  The Ilvani had called his name.

  The secret of what the Prince High Chanist had done was worth more than Chriani’s life.

  There it was.

  The thought circling unseen, shifting through the darkness of his mind as the truth so often did. His mother’s patience, waiting for the light to break, for the pieces to fall into place.

  He felt the chill air, saw that the lights within the barracks tents had dimmed. He focused on the emptiness he carried at the deep center of his thought and memory. His father, his mother. Barien now. Lauresa. The things gone from his life and never coming back.

  He placed the secrets there, felt them vanish back into the shadow that he’d shaped for them. He would hold them there, keep them close. Protect Kathlan from the steel edges of the truths she had no need to bear.

  If the Prince High Chanist was making a challenge to what Chriani knew, he understood what he had to do, where he had to go. He heard the call of griffons to the east, the gavaleria winging their way back across the forest as he turned toward the camp.

  When Chriani returned to his tent, Kathlan was sleeping. Not surprising considering the lateness of the night, but it felt like an unexpected boon all the same. Along the paths from the perimeter, he had tried to think of what he was going to tell her, coming up with nothing but silence each time.

  At her neck, he saw a pulse of green that warmed him with the memory of its color. It was a silk ribbon that had been her mother’s, one of many that had tied Kathlan’s hair all the time Chriani had known her. She hadn’t been able to use those ribbons since taking her tyro’s writ, the uniform regulations going on for half a page on the acceptable styles and colors of hair ties. So she’d woven one through a knotted silver brooch, wore it always now as a pendant on a leather cord, where its green reminded Chriani of the late-summer fields outside Rheran when they’d met. Of rain in the green spring that followed the winter of his coming back to her. Of Kathlan’s eyes, and the peace of waking with her watching him.

  He found paper and inkpen in his footlocker, lit a candle and took the time to write a detailed account of the events of the previous day. His hand was cramped by the end as it always was. When he received his commission, the interminable amount of report writing required of the rangers of the prince’s guard was a thing that had taken him by surprise. He folded the report when he was done, would file it in the morning.

  As he stripped down to smallclothes and slipped onto the cot behind Kathlan, he realized how chilled the walk had left him, feeling how warm she was even through tunic and loose leggings. She didn’t wake as she pressed herself to him. Didn’t wake as she shivered, gave him the heat of her body that quickly lulled him to sleep.

  He didn’t stay that way long, starting awake again with just the first edge of dawn shimmering through the tent. It was still dark to anyone else’s eyes, but Chriani had enough light to see by as he slipped from the blankets, crawled silently across the floor to the footlocker. He found a field pack, stuffed it with clothing as he dressed.

  At the bottom of the trunk, he found a wooden dagger. He’d packed it carefully away before the journey south from Rheran, then had all but forgotten it. He felt it shift back now into the space of memory where all the things he’d forgotten would eventually be claimed.

  It was a child’s practice blade, carved by Barien when he took the eight-year-old Chriani in off the street and under his wing. It was the first blade Chriani had ever practiced with, working day and night with it until he made tyro under Barien’s guidance, gaining the right to train with steel that came with that. If anyone had asked him why he kept it, Chriani was quite certain he wouldn’t have been able to answer. So he kept it hidden, hoping the question would never be raised.

  He closed the footlocker, latched it with a click. When he looked over to the cot, Kathlan was watching him.

  “You know I wasn’t serious last night about finding you a horse.”

  Chriani tried to find the words he needed to say, but the silence still filled him. He forced it aside to say instead, “I need to ride for Rheran. Business at the Bastion. I can’t talk about it. Not yet.”

  Kathlan swung herself from the cot, the languor of sleep still on her but her eyes bright, focused. “I’ll pack, then.”

  “No,” Chriani said. He shifted across the floor to stroke her shoulder. “You can stay.”

  “I’m your adjutant, Chriani. I serve under you. If you’re ordered to the Bastion, that’s what it is.”

  “I don’t want you making the trip, Kath. I’ll be…”

  She struck him on the same cheek she’d hit the night before.

  “Listen, don’t…”

  She struck him on the other cheek, harder. Chriani felt a sharp spike of pain in his jaw as he wrapped his hands around both her wrists.

  “Unless you’ve got a third hand to get in front of my knee, your next words will get you in more trouble than you know,” she said sweetly.

  Chriani was silent a moment. Slowly, he let her hands go.

  Kathlan kissed him on both his flame-bright cheeks. Then she pulled her uniform and leather from beneath the cot, dressed quickly. “What do we need?”

  “I need you to stay…”

  “This is not a debate, lord.”

  In her tone, all the jest was gone. This was the seriousness that stopped his own voice when he heard it in her. Not anger. A conviction that he loved, even as he felt himself breaking against it like the waves of winter against Rheran’s steep stone shores.

  Whatever was going to happen in the Bastion, whatever Chriani meant to discover there, he didn’t want it to become part of Kathlan’s life. He would save her from the truth if he could, but doing so meant feeling himself bend beneath the weight of yet another lie.

  “Prepare the horses,” he said finally. “Be ready to ride after mess. I need to talk to Rhuddry.”

  Kathlan kissed him, held him for a long while before she left.

  The camp was just coming to life as Chriani made his way toward the captains’ pavilions, their b
anners tight in a chill breeze from off the mountains. He had donned his spare uniform jacket, washed himself before he set out. He saw Umeni in the distance at one point, arguing with a sergeant Chriani didn’t know. He slipped along a side track to avoid him, quite certain that his overdue audience with Captain Rhuddry would involve as much of Umeni as he could take.

  He caught the captain at her breakfast, as he’d expected. The look she gave him as her door guard ushered him in carried a dark lethality, as he’d expected. She was dressed casually in sleeveless tunic and leggings, but no one who met with Rhuddry would ever ignore her military bearing, in or out of uniform.

  “Captain Rhuddry.” Chriani nodded gravely to her, tall and sharp-edged where she sat alone behind the pavilion’s map table, dressed now with more food than maps. Boiled eggs and cold beef, brown bread, honey, and fruit were set out before her, a cup of steaming wine at hand.

  “Your absence in my pavilion last night was noted, master Chriani. And reported.” She made no move to ask Chriani to join her as she crunched her way through an egg, shell and all. He tried to feel slighted but failed.

  “Forgive me, lord. I was ordered by Guard Second Rank Makaysa to report first to the war-mages, where I was struck down by Ilvani magic. A side effect of the ambush and assault incurred by second squad yesterday, during which Sergeant Thelaur was killed.” As he’d walked that morning, Chriani had spent time thinking on how best to get all the pertinent points of yesterday’s events across to the captain as efficiently as possible. His delivery hadn’t been perfect, but it would do.

  Rhuddry split a blood orange with care. Her fingers were long, her complexion pale in the manner of Holc and the mountain folk of Aerach and Brandishear. “I have heard from Milyan, though his volume makes his conclusions a challenge to follow. Moreover, he has little to say on events in the field, given his presence three leagues away from the field. Ranking Guard Umeni has also made his report…”