Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  The spires and platforms of the city were ranked in endless rising tiers. Huge disks extended out from the edges of the limni, anchored by buttresses and rope cables that twisted past and through each other. A pattern of light and shadow was wrapped from tree to tree, connecting uncounted limni as a vast living loom. Chriani saw ladders and rope bridges, saw uncounted Ilvani passing along them like they might have been walking an Ilmari city’s main streets.

  He tried to grasp at the size of the settlement before him and couldn’t. No way to see through to its far side, the light fading, flaring, blurring out to an endless haze of green-white ahead. And even if he had seen the city’s far side, could have compared it to the spread of Rheran or Glaeddyn, Welbirk or Athegwyn or any of the other cities he had seen, the life and the light here expanded upward in way no Ilmari city could ever do.

  Even at the edge of the Greatwood, the limni rose easily to six times the height of a tall warrior. As high even as any tower of the Bastion. Here within the forest, pushing closer to the heart of that endless green, Chriani felt a sense of unsettling awe at the thought of how much taller still the great trees might be.

  Even before the apex of that height, great winged shapes flitted between the trees, slipping onto and off the tallest platforms with a screech that sent a chill up Chriani’s spine. Griffons. Hundreds of them, swirling like starlings across the shimmering sky.

  “This is Sylonna.” Farenna’s voice from in front of him brought Chriani’s thoughts back to sharp focus. “This is the nearest city of the Ilvani to the Hunthad River. Nearest to the place where you were met.”

  Though Farenna still spoke slowly, his Ilvalantar was shaped by his accent, pushing the boundaries of familiarity. The word he spoke wasn’t city. Not exactly. The closest translation in Chriani’s mind was forest-home, but with a sense of connection like the two words were one. Not a paired description, but a statement of a single concept, no boundary to break it.

  He felt light-headed suddenly. Entranced by the vision before him and unable to look away, even as he felt a weight in the Ilvani captain’s words. Knowing anything of one of the hidden cities of the Valnirata can get a stranger to the Greatwood killed, Dargana had said.

  Chriani remembered the Ghostwood, where he and Lauresa had been led by Dargana’s band. He remembered the rotting platforms clinging to the limni there like some leprous shadow, anchored by fraying ropes and shot through with uncounted years of decay. But even through that decay, he remembered the ageless beauty that still clung to the ruins. The vague sense of all the history that must once have stood there.

  He remembered wondering what it all might have looked like once. He knew now.

  Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once, his mother had told him. But that had stopped mattering long ago to the generations raised on the ancient history of the Migration Wars, and who had lived the more recent history of the Incursions.

  Chriani knew the Ilmar Ilvani who had turned away from their forest kin. They were artisans and crafters, horse masters and foresters. Most were skilled with bow and blade, though precious few of them ever took service with the guard. Those who did were used as translators and loremasters, mapmakers and scribes. Kept away from the patrols of the Greatwood, and from the ranks of the war-mages for fear of the innate sorcery that all Valnirata Ilvani possessed — at least so far as Ilmari superstition held.

  The blood of his father flowed in Chriani’s veins. He had been told the tales that all Ilmari children knew, and other tales from his mother that his father had told her. He had met the exiles, had seen the ruins of the Ghostwood. He had fought against the Ilvani of the forest, skirmishing with their patrols for five months. He knew their ancient grace, respected their deadly power, or so he thought.

  He had told himself he understood this world.

  He’d been wrong.

  Along the curving road that marked the boundary of the forest-home, other roads opened up at right angles, curving inward toward the center of the circle like twisted spokes. Farenna turned the troop down one of those roads, Chriani seeing other horses, other figures ahead. Ilvani moved and ran along the white stones, even as they descended and climbed along rope ladders twisting up into screens of overhanging branches.

  As Farenna’s riders approached, the Ilvani of the city slowed. Chriani saw them fall back against the edges of the road, then saw more of them moving in from adjacent paths, a network of white stone trails crisscrossing through the shadows. They stood without speaking, but he could hear unseen voices calling out in an ethereal song that twisted around him and away on the wind.

  The Ilvani were waiting. They were watching him.

  From out of the crowd, a dozen children slipped forward with no command, running up as the horses stopped. Farenna slipped to the ground, Chriani not waiting for an invitation to follow him. In his entire life, he had never wanted a weapon in hand more, though he knew how utterly useless any blade or bow would be against the crowd massing around him.

  The Ilvani of the city wore a mix of fabric and leather, robes and armor, tunics and leggings. The tones of their clothing were earth and leaf, or dyed bright colors that seemed to pulse within the forest-home’s pale light. They were dark or pale of complexion, hair braided or hanging free, eyes of every color of gem and flower, faces clear or marked with pigments in sweeping lines. No sense of sameness to them, except for the war-marks at all their shoulders. All of those marks were visible, children and adults alike either bare-chested, or wearing tunics or leather cut away to reveal the center of those tight-spiraling knots of dark line.

  Four of Farenna’s riders fell in to either side of Chriani, staring coldly ahead. He glanced back, saw Dargana likewise flanked.

  “Follow me,” Farenna said. He caught Chriani’s gaze, held it as if he knew his thoughts. “You are the first Ilmari to set foot in Sylonna in long generations. Do not be afraid.”

  Chriani felt a dozen different responses he wanted to make, but his mind couldn’t focus enough to shape any of them. He asked a question instead. “Are we guests or prisoners?”

  Farenna smiled, catching him by surprise. No malice in it, though. “As long as you do not refuse our hospitality, friend Chriani, you will have no need to find out.”

  The area around the path Farenna led them on could have passed for any Ilmari settlement overgrown by nature. Chriani saw stables where the horses were led, heard more singing at the stalls of a leatherworkers’ adjacent to it. He saw what looked like an apothecary’s shop, next to a wide bazaar at which cloaks were on display in all the colors of nature. He saw what could only have been a tavern on the platform above them, its edge crowded with Ilvani looking down at him.

  A broad stair loomed ahead, Farenna making for it. It shifted as the Ilvani leader climbed, Chriani realizing its rungs were tightly woven rope that looked barely able to hold a child’s weight. It carried all of them, though, Chriani moving carefully as he climbed. The limni that the stairs ascended was the largest tree he had ever seen, its bole as broad across as the Bastion courtyard.

  On the platforms hanging around that tree, the Ilvani had gathered to watch Chriani’s approach, as below. Staring at him with a specific intensity that seemed to go beyond the sheer novelty of his presence. There was more uniformity to the dress of these figures, with most of them in gleaming armor or robes, gold and silver at their necks and fingers. Nobility by their look, if the Ilvani had such things. Military leaders perhaps, though they bore no more sign of insignia or rank than Farenna or his riders had.

  Chriani let his gaze pass across the Ilvani as he climbed. Challenging them, not looking away. But at the feeling of the rope stairs shivering like a boat twisting into the wind, he risked a look behind him. The Ilvani that had watched him were stepping out behind the last sentries and Dargana. Following them.

  When he shifted his gaze back to the crowd, Chriani saw white eyes staring sightlessly back at him.

  A seer of the Laneldenari, Dargana had said. Blind
since birth, they say.

  The Ilvani was silver in the tone of his shadowed skin, in his robes, in the hair swept off his head and braided down his back. His hands were laced together around a thin staff of gnarled wood, his milky eyes staring without blinking. No sign of any pupil in them.

  Veassen. That’s a name you need to remember.

  As he met those white eyes, Chriani saw the seer nod to him. Then he blinked and the face was lost within the crowd.

  The stairs ended at a broad platform spreading into darkness. Farenna continued straight on, Chriani following even as his escort shifted to either side of him. Losing the tight formation that had brought him there. He felt a closeness to the air, saw the familiar tone of the green mage-light through the screen of leaves above him. They were inside an arched dome of dark canvas, stretched over wooden ribs. The platform was encircled by it. Closed off to the world outside.

  A single tolling of a deep bell sounded out from somewhere. Farenna stopped, Chriani a step behind him. A pulse of light washed out of the shadow to either side, revealing a raised dais of dark wooden steps spreading around a central platform a dozen strides across. Along the edges of that dais, the Ilvani who had followed Chriani were moving in from the stairs, his escort shifting past him now as Dargana stepped up beside him.

  He stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. At his side, Farenna turned and nodded.

  “I will be here,” the captain said. “I will help you if I can.”

  Too many questions were running through Chriani’s mind, but he knew he would waste his time in asking them. He only nodded in return as Farenna walked over to slip into the crowd, make his way up to the dais with the others.

  Standing still, alone with Dargana at the center of the platform’s emptiness as the tiers filled, Chriani felt the exhaustion settle across him again. He had never ridden so far, so fast, in his life. Pushed to the limits of waking and endurance, even as the Ilvani rangers had barely shown any sign of fatigue. He needed to move, he realized, worried that his legs would seize up if he stood too long. He began to pace around the open space, looking back to see Dargana following him.

  In the crowd along the first tier of the dais, the blind seer was watching him.

  The Ilvani’s white eyes stared straight ahead, his staff held out before him. Chriani hadn’t seen him walking in, didn’t know whether he’d needed to be escorted. The other Ilvani were shifting around him as if the seer had picked that spot and stopped, oblivious to the movement to all sides.

  As he kept the seer at the corner of his eye, Chriani assessed the faces of those others. They were watching him intently, meeting his gaze openly as they filled the dais from edge to edge. The same anger was showing in too many of their eyes.

  He tried to assess this place he was in, tried to assess how the unseen pieces of his own future were pressing down around him. But there was no understanding here.

  You must wait for your questions, friend Chriani, Farenna had said. As we have waited for you.

  A silence fell across the platform hall. Chriani paced back to something like the center of the open space, Dargana stepping up to his side. He was conscious of his bare feet slapping loudly on the wooden floor as a voice sounded out from the crowd. The speaker was a tall Ilvani of autumn brown, hair and skin a match to the robes he wore. He spoke one of the Valnirata tongues — the distant source of the common Ilvalantar that was different enough that Chriani couldn’t follow it. He felt certain that was as intended. He was only a spectator here, meant to remain ignorant of what was said. Dargana was at his ear, though, whispering a translation into Ilmari.

  “That’s Laedda, master of Sylonna and speaker of this gathering of elders. He names you as the Ilmari they call Chriani, of Brandishear and Rheran. You should acknowledge it.”

  Chriani nodded as he called out in Ilvalantar. “My mother was the Ilmari. My father was of the Crithnalerean and House Halobrelia.”

  The words came by instinct, and from a sense of defiance against the wall of unseen animosity shifting around him. It wouldn’t have been news to any of them, of course. The Valnirata could read the central glyphs of the war-mark at his bare shoulder better than he could.

  One of those Valnirata stepped closer. She was a tall and pale warrior in gleaming green leather, a golden circlet set atop her head. Her emerald eyes flashed with a dark indifference as she spoke.

  “A child,” Dargana translated. “Even by the standards of the Ilmari mongrels.” But before Chriani could respond, she broke off her whisper to speak for herself. “This warrior you call a child has the ear of the Brandishear prince. A personal relationship. He is hand-picked for this mission of peace.”

  From across the chamber, a whispered chorus rose to send a chill up Chriani’s spine.

  Ilvalachna…

  It was the name the Ilvani had for Prince Chanist, inherited from his father Goffree, fallen in the Incursions. The Ilvani Scourge, who had destroyed Caradar the exile king and driven the Valnirata back to the forest.

  Chriani resisted the urge to look at Dargana, to try to get some sense from her eyes and expression of what was going on. Her mention of the diplomatic mission to Laneldenar caught him by surprise, in that he had all but forgotten about that mission in the chaos and exhaustion of the past three days. He had assumed that original purpose had been burned to the ground by the events at the camp and the Ilvani attack.

  Some of the Ilvani had apparently assumed that as well.

  “Reports of the Ilmari’s conduct among his own riders dismiss any claims of rank and privilege.” A pale Ilmari warrior in leather and chain mail spoke the words that echoed in Dargana’s voice. Her black hair was oiled and tied back tightly, gleaming like her armor. “He is disgraced and distrusted. Likely to be subject to incarceration or execution if he returns. What use is the laóith to us now?”

  “He must be returned to Aerach at once. We waste time on this folly.”

  “He has seen Sylonna!” someone shouted, rage sharpening each word. “He cannot be allowed to take even that name back to his murderous kin.”

  Chriani quickly began to lose the thread of what was said as other voices rang out in succession. Not overlapping each other, so that Dargana’s voice at his ear still sounded out clearly. But creating a continuous stream of argument and antagonism that went by too fast for him to follow her translation.

  “…take advantage of this prospect…”

  “…another feint from the west. The prince’s power fails…”

  “…other envoys, other chances…”

  “…distractions and false hope. Slay the laóith now…”

  If the encounter had been intended as some form of debate, the Ilvani executed it with the same ruthless efficiency as their skirmish tactics. No speaker was ever interrupted, no one was shouted down. Even so, Chriani heard the anger in their voices, heard the disappointment. He understood as he hadn’t before how Dargana had spoken truth, in saying that at least some of the Ilvani wanted this peace. They had wanted and expected an envoy who could deliver it.

  Tell them who you are…

  The words came like a whisper in Chriani’s mind, pressed in close and echoing. A male voice speaking the Ilvalantar, each complex syllable ringing out clearly. He forced his hand down where it shot up by instinct to scribe the moonsign over his heart.

  You know what this is, Chriani of Ilmar and Halobrelia. You know where to see me, but be wary. Others are watching.

  Chriani turned slowly as if assessing the crowd, voices rising and falling around him. Their words faded for him, though, his perception shutting down. Closed in and focused on the sensation of having another mind in his. A sensation he had felt before.

  His gaze passed over Veassen but didn’t linger. He saw the blind seer nod.

  Someone was shouting. Dargana’s voice at his ear repeated it, but Chriani heard it only as fragments of sound. The tall warrior in grey-green leather again. “…folly to even attempt…”


  He clenched his fist to stop it trembling. The steel ring at his finger was tingling, but whether the sensation was real or just the panic of his mind, the seer understood.

  Yes, he said. The ring. The voice was strong in Chriani’s head, even as it carried a weight of age and understanding that gave it a hollow quality. I have no relic to match it, but I can make use of your ring’s magic. In my lifetime, I have learned and forgotten more spells than are known among all the Ilmari. Trust me, Chriani.

  I have problems with being asked to trust people I don’t know, Chriani thought. He was speaking the Ilvalantar in his mind, but it came easier to him somehow than it did as speech. Some power in the link between them that let him focus his thoughts.

  There is no time for the explanation you deserve, Chriani. But know this. I am the one who sought out Dargana and bade her seek you. I am the one who saw you pursued by the Ilvani of Calalerean, as I saw you standing here today. We are connected in your being here. And in what must happen here today.

  Even over the scant few times he had used the steel ring with Lauresa, Chriani had quickly learned how difficult it was to focus his thoughts, keep them from turning to words that could be heard at the other end of the link. He found that focus now, though, because the seer’s words in his mind had summoned up a single thought in reaction, and it wasn’t one Chriani would share.

  Kathlan was gone.

  His whole life, he had willfully — often gleefully — distanced himself from everyone around him. The street children he had lived among after his mother and grandfather died, before chance and Barien’s kindness had taken him to the Bastion and a new life. His peers among the tyros from the day he’d been granted his insignia. His superiors among the squires and guards, the captains and lieutenants of the prince’s guard. Lauresa, the two of them drawn together and driven apart, not once but twice.