“You think you know the history of the Valnirata, old man…”
“I have made the history of the Valnirata, exile! I have lived it. And you and your kin should hope and beseech whatever fallen gods still dwell in the Greatwood that my time for shaping history is done…”
“Enough!”
It was Chriani’s voice that cut the steel-sharp tone of Chanist’s anger and the reply Dargana had been set to make. He forced them both to silence, as much from surprise as anything. It was a surprise he shared, no idea what he was meant to say now.
He felt the change overwhelming him, as it so often did. Unseen pieces of the puzzle coming into view, but as they moved, they shifted all the other pieces into new positions. Set them to new shapes. New patterns.
“The Ilvani seek the dagger that once belonged to Caradar,” Chriani said, as much for his own ear as anyone else’s. Feeling the understanding falling into place. “They hunt me because they know I took it from the assassins who meant to use it against the Princess Lauresa.”
He was watching Chanist as he said it. He saw the prince high try and fail to mask his surprise. The dismissive gaze was shaken by uncertainty, only for a moment. It was enough, though.
Chriani had been wrong. Chanist wasn’t behind the attack in the forest, and he certainly wasn’t responsible for bringing the Valnirata into Rheran. That fact alone of the second attack should have given him something to think about. Too much else going on, though. Too many things he didn’t want to see.
“Sit. All of you.” When Chanist spoke this time, it was an order. Chriani stepped up slowly, taking a chair at the prince high’s left hand. Kathlan followed to sit next to him, her face a mask. Ashlund moved to the right, between Chanist and Dargana. He sat only after the Ilvani exile had slipped to a chair.
“Chriani. Where is the blade that was Caradar’s?”
The Prince High Chanist’s voice was pitched low to leave the question hanging. An evenness to its tone that Chriani understood the reasons for.
He remembered the morning he gave the dagger to Lauresa, the last time he saw it. Knowing that she would take it a principality away, protected behind all the stone and steel of a duke the Ilmari called the Lion of Aerach. A duke whose legendary campaigns against the Valnirata gave them every reason to avoid him. Its safety was thus assured by its being under the protection of one who had no business holding it. One who didn’t even know he held it, Chriani trusting Lauresa to keep it hidden. No one ever thinking to seek it there.
“It’s safe,” was all Chriani said. All he could say.
Ashlund was up from the table like a shot, his chair scraping stone as it pushed out behind him. “Your prince orders you…” he snarled, but Chanist raised a hand to stop him.
“Master Chriani has my leave to keep his own counsel in this matter if that is his wish. You do not need to know my reasons, captain.”
Ashlund nodded, but the fury in his eyes didn’t fade. Chriani felt himself scoured by it, set his gaze on Chanist to try to refocus.
“This intelligence is why you returned to Rheran,” the prince said to him. “To speak these things directly to me.”
“Yes, my lord prince.” An easy lie. Chriani nodded to Milyan’s satchel at the far end of the table. “The reports from Magus Milyan concern magic used by the Ilvani in their attack against me. However, Captain Rhuddry expressed skepticism as to the goals of the Valnirata. I thus decided to return to Rheran myself to report.”
“Do so now, and quickly.”
Chriani told the story, beginning with the attack in the forest that had begun it. Sergeant Thelaur’s death and the black arrow. The deep wood and the finding of the dark shrine. The events in the war-mages’ pavilion. The coins. Even as he was speaking, he sensed the holes in the story left by his now-unspoken assumptions about why the Ilvani had targeted him. Chief among those was why he had felt compelled to report to Chanist personally, Ashlund’s expression and Kathlan’s alike telling him they were wondering. Chriani hoped that Chanist not caring would cover it in the end.
The prince high turned his attention to Dargana when Chriani’s story was done. “You talked of Calalerean controlling magic of the exile lands,” he said. No sense given of whether the things Chriani said had meant anything to him. “What manner of spellcraft have they seized? And what power do they claim by it?”
“Not spellcraft. Rites older than spell magic. Lóech arnala irch niir. Three coins for confession. What Chriani talked of seeing in the Greatwood. In the city tonight. Your guards will find coins on some of the Valnirata dead. Your mages need to see them.”
The chill that had settled in Chriani pushed deep along his back, digging in like his spine was being stitched up tight. He shivered, tried to hide it.
“The rites of confession…” Dargana continued, but Chanist cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“I know the Ilvani lore as well as anyone. The rites of confession are superstition. Golden warriors bound by magic and dark oaths, able to see and hear a half-world away. Children’s stories.”
“If you know Ilvani lore, you should know we have no stories, prince. Only legends once true, and long memories. Longer than all the life and history of the Ilmar. The warriors of confession were real. The lóechari. The rites of confession were spoken before the first Ilmari crawled over the peaks of Ursumma and out of the Black Fens, but were lost by the time the Migration Wars were done. The Calala seek to rebuild that lost past, and they’ll use the power of the rites to do it. The unity of the Migration Wars. The bloodshed of the Incursions. And all the Ilmari dead that will come with it.”
“You hold perhaps too high an opinion of your people’s prowess of magic, exile.” Chanist showed no more than a mild thoughtfulness toward the doom wrapped up in Dargana’s tale. He mixed wine and water in two goblets, pushed them carefully across the table toward Chriani and Kathlan.
“You’ll change your story when you’ve seen that magic, prince. I have. The Calala have rebirthed a cult that’s been less than a memory for a hundred generations. They use ritual magic to bind warriors to the Ilvani cause and specific missions. If those warriors fail in their missions, they die.”
“Making it sound rather like the Valnirata are doing our job for us.”
“Except that the rites allow shared knowledge,” Dargana said, ignoring Chanist’s thin smile. “Those bound by the power of the coins can share thought and memory while their minds are at rest. No legend, prince. The Ilvani that attacked in the city tonight had knowledge of Chriani but had never seen him before. They knew where to find him, using magic attuned to his life and blood.”
“Master Chriani is hardly a legend among the Valnirata,” Chanist said, dismissive. “How much of his life and blood do you suspect the Ilvani have access to?”
Dargana’s gazed shifted to Chriani. Her dark look softened, a sense of misgiving there that seemed entirely out of place. A flicker of something like guilt flashed in the exile’s dark eyes, Chriani finding it a wholly unnatural look.
“When Chriani escaped the Ghostwood,” she said to Chanist. “When I let him go. He left something behind.”
Her eyes shifted down to Chriani’s hand on the table, the full complement of fingers there. Chriani felt the familiar itch rise against the tremor of cold still pushing through him. He squeezed his hand shut, saw Chanist watching.
It was quite literally the last thing Chriani had ever expected to think about. “How did the Ilvani get hold of my finger?” he asked. “For that matter, how did they know whose it was?”
“Abrindra,” Dargana said, and Chriani felt a vague recollection of the name from the frantic flight he and Lauresa had made across the exile lands. He remembered riding behind Dargana’s second, then nearly dying at his hands before Valnirata griffon riders had encroached on the Ghostwood and attacked.
“He kept the finger,” Chriani said.
Dargana nodded. “As a token. To go along with a promise to kill you one day for bri
nging the gavaleria down on us. The Calala captured and tortured him, though. They killed him before he had the chance.”
“Why would he have any reason to tell them it was mine? And why would the Calala care?”
“Because Abrindra told them you were the Ilmari who carried Caradar’s bloodblade, stolen from Chanist, who stole it from the exile king before.”
“Which brings us here.” Prince Chanist’s voice carried a thoughtful tone, his blue eyes bright. He had taken in everything that had been said with no hint of a reaction, but Chriani felt the full weight of the prince’s focus and attention. “Or which brings Chriani here, at least. Your presence, exile, requires a bit more explanation still.”
Dargana smiled again. She drained her goblet, then slid it down the table to stop in front of the prince high. He poured for her, wine unwatered. Ashlund slid it back to Dargana, stiffly.
The exile sipped slowly. “Elalantari red. From the islands.”
“You have an excellent palate,” Chanist said. “Istilnean, in fact. The princess high’s family has vineyards there.”
“The vines stolen from the Ilvani, along with the islands’ names.”
“As you wish. Your story, please.”
The exile pushed her chair back to stand, stepping away from the prince. She looked down to the maps on the table. Ashlund responded by shifting in his own chair, but he stayed seated.
“When the Calala crossed north into Crithnalerean,” Dargana said, “we fought them. I fought them alone when none from my war-band were left. Then I fled to Laneldenar when the fight was lost. I fell in there with a faction that seeks peace with the Ilmari. They sent me here to talk to you, prince.”
The crackling of the fire was the only sound for a long while. Chanist’s face, a mask through all the talk of frontier attacks and cult magic, showed genuine surprise. Ashlund’s reaction was more direct.
“Speaking as a captain of the prince’s guard and responsible for the security of the Bastion and Rheran, allow me to invite you to fuck yourself, Ilvani.”
“Captain…” In Chanist’s voice, Chriani heard the weariness again. Ashlund seemed to hear it too, taking advantage of it to press.
“I beg forgiveness, my lord prince, but this tale is beyond insult. I don’t know what game this one plays…”
“My game is yours for the asking, warrior,” Dargana said sharply. “The Ilvani of Laneldenar recognize the danger in Calalerean’s quest for ancient magic. They want to avoid the total war across the Ilmar that too many others want. As do I.”
Ashlund laughed. “If war comes again to the Ilmar…”
“You’ll be the first one I kill, laóith, as a promise. Up till then, these games of war that you and the Valnirata play are fun enough. Even in the Crithnalerean, I’ve killed my share of Brandishear rangers. You’ve probably done your best to kill friends of mine. But I came to understand a while back that total war means the Greatwood destroyed. And even if the Calala turn Brandishear to one endless charnel field before the last of them fall, it’s not a price I’ll pay.”
Dargana didn’t need to look to him for Chriani to know who she was speaking of. He had made that plea to her in the Ghostwood. One last, desperate chance to save Lauresa. One chance to stop the war that Chanist had meant to start.
“The Ilvani in Laneldenar want to meet with representatives of the Ilmari,” Dargana said. “In secret. No word to get out to Calalerean. Too many things that might go wrong. They want envoys from Brandishear and Aerach, east and west. I’m to take the envoys to a meeting across the Hunthad in Aerach.”
Ashlund seemed dangerously close to the point where his blood would kill him before any Ilvani had the chance. His face was fire-red, his knuckles white where his hands were flat against the table. Dargana ignored him as she nodded deep to Chanist. The acknowledgement of station and respect. The gesture was awkwardly done, but Chriani felt how much effort it had taken her.
“I offer you my service, prince,” the exile said. “Now be smart enough to take it.”
To Chriani, it felt as though the room was shifting around him. He was a bystander, watching as others tilted through some complex game whose moves he had seen before but never truly learned. Like all his other times in the throne room, he watched while those with power conducted the rituals that power demands. It had never been his game, though. Never his fight.
But that was changing, it seemed.
Ashlund was the one to break the silence, speaking through clenched teeth. “If your mission is to Aerach, why not begin it there? Take your children’s tale to Prince Vishod and see how long an interrogation among his war-mages it takes to pull the truth from you.”
“Because I knew Chriani,” Dargana said. “And I knew that he gave me access and approach to the Prince High Chanist. As I knew that Chanist could bring Vishod to this undertaking, and because when Chanist does so, Chriani will lead the envoy of Brandishear. I came for him.”
Ashlund’s expression held a furious darkness as it was, but at Dargana’s words, that darkness pushed to a place Chriani had never seen before. Under other circumstances, he would have tried to enjoy it, but he was distracted now by too many things shifting past him like fast-moving targets. No way to focus in on them, no way to understand. Not without asking questions of Dargana that he couldn’t ask in front of the prince high. Saying things in front of Kathlan he couldn’t say.
“How did you get to Brandishear?” Chanist asked. His voice carried no real interest in the question, which made Chriani assume he might simply be trying to keep Ashlund silent for the sake of the captain’s health.
“I was ordered from Laneldenar to work my way into Calalerean. Find the forces seeking Chriani and follow them.”
“And the Calala Ilvani accepted you?”
“As they accept hundreds of the Crithnala. Calalerean prepares for war. They’ll take any blades they can, though they limit entrance to their cult to their own warriors for now. I pursued the lóechari force that entered Rheran tonight, all of us passing over the dockside gates. Your patrols pass at intervals far too regular.”
“At long last,” Ashlund snarled, “a part of this tale I believe. You did enter the city with the Valnirata tonight, because you’re one of them. And so, caught and cornered, you throw yourself on the weakness of this one…” — the captain jerked a massive fist at Chriani — “…to walk you past the noose. Have him stand for you when you ask for a Brandishear honor guard to escort you back to your war-band, laughing every step of the way!”
As if she knew it would make Ashlund’s anger worse, Dargana stayed cool by contrast. “The leaders of the war-band that struck tonight knew of the failed attack against Chriani in the forest the moment he turned it back. They knew he was riding north. They knew this because of the magic they track him with. The magic of the coins, linking every Ilvani bound by the rites of confession.”
“Why not attack him on the road, then?” Ashlund said, a note of triumph in his voice as if he’d caught Dargana in a lie.
“Because a dozen riders moving fast along the trade road will be noticed, even by dark. A dozen entering the city among your merchant wains are all but invisible.”
“But you followed him along that trade road, or you never would have found him here!”
“No. They didn’t.”
Dargana reached into her pocket, Ashlund tensing, two steps away. She moved slowly, kept her other hand on the table. Carefully, she set out the Ilvani coins she’d claimed on the rooftop, the talisman beside them. Its stone pulsed blood-red in a steady rhythm.
At Chriani’s side, Kathlan made the moonsign, Ashlund following her. The prince high and Chriani sat silent, but Chriani alone could feel the steady pulse of the hunter’s heart in his head. Recognizing it as the beating of his own heart.
“You’ll want your mages to look at these,” Dargana said to Chanist. “The magic of the cult connects the minds of those who take the rites. Binds their memories, allows intelligence to be
spread and shared between them. As the cult’s power spreads throughout Calalerean, Laneldenar and Brandishear and Aerach alike will be exposed…”
“To Ilvani deception and nothing more.” Ashlund spat to his hand, wiped it to his leather in a gesture of dismissal. “Brandishear fears no seer’s magic. Will you tell us that the shades of the Incursions rise against us next?”
In the defiance of the captain’s tone, Chriani understood something. Though his anger was his own, Ashlund was speaking for Chanist now. It was a subtle shift in his language, in his posturing. But a well-practiced one. Taking that role because he was used to doing so, the prince high’s weariness pushing him to silent reflection in a way Chriani wasn’t used to seeing.
He sensed the age in Chanist again. Saw the once-straight back bent as the prince high stared at the coins and the talisman across the table.
“You Ilmari have your seers,” Dargana snapped. “Your spells of sending. This is different. The moment the Ilvani of the cult in Crithnalerean knew Chriani through the blood magic they used on his finger, every cultist of the lóechari knew Chriani as well, like they might have known him his whole life. For every sortie you fight, for every scout party that engages the cult, every cult commander in the Greatwood will know your troop movements at once. You’ll set your companies along the forest wall and the Valnirata will slip between them, because a single lóechari scout making contact tells every cult commander where you are.”
She leveled her gaze at Chanist, cold. “Imagine the battle at Welbirk, prince. The day Caradar slew your father, with your brother and sister already gone. Imagine that every Ilvani of the Greatwood had known that day that the prince high of Brandishear and both his heirs had fallen, his company lost, Rheran in chaos. Imagine all the Valnirata mobilizing at once to take advantage of…”
“Enough,” Chanist said. His voice was quiet against the exile’s, but the strength in it was enough to stop her.
A long silence held, Ashlund breaking it. “My lord prince, I ask your permission to arrest this agent of the Valnirata…”
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