“My fate’s my own,” Chriani said darkly. “No one else calls it for me.” But he heard the tremor in his voice as he said it, saw the thin edge of a smile stray to Dargana’s lips.
“That night in Aerach,” she said. “When Kathlan and I followed you to that wagon camp. Who was the Ilmari who knew you were riding there before you did?”
Chriani felt a chill as the memory came back to him like something from another lifetime. He heard Irdaign’s words as a whisper in his mind. Small gifts that tell me of things that might come to pass. He felt them shift into place alongside the echo of Veassen’s words, lurking deep within his mind. Words Chriani had tried and failed to still.
I am one of fate’s chosen…
Dargana didn’t wait for his response as she continued her descent.
Chriani followed her down past two side platforms, watching her swing off the ladder at the third level below their quarters. It was a platform they had passed on the previous climb, higher than the first council chamber. Clambering off, he found her waiting. Two sentries in white lacquered ring mail stood three paces behind her, backswords at their hips. They stepped aside for the two of them, Dargana leading as they ascended a solid stair that arced out from the platform and into open air.
Chriani had to focus to find his balance, keep his footing as he stepped out into the empty night. He could see the half-full Clearmoon just rising through the screen of trees, the ground dark below. Their footfalls were all but silent as they went.
The platform wrapping around the limni that was their destination was split into three terraced sections, wrapped with vines and screens of silver cloth. A blue light filled the space, shining from a fountain that bubbled on the middle terrace — a central spire like a spiked lance, rising from a pool edged with smooth stone.
Dargana stepped aside as she reached the first terrace. Chriani moved past her, seeing the Ilvani waiting. Twenty of them in total. He recognized the speaker Laedda, who stood with Farenna a short distance behind him. The Ilvani captain had his grey-black hair tied back, a sash across his chest that left his war-mark visible. A backsword was at his belt, naked steel with no scabbard holding it. Within the blade, a faint blue gleam spoke of some dweomer in the steel.
At the farthest side of the third tier stood the tall warrior with the golden braids from the previous council. The same dark fury she had showed when arguing with Farenna was in her eyes. Other faces were vaguely familiar to Chriani from that earlier council, but the inscrutable expressions of the Ilvani were all but impossible to read where they watched him.
Even as he noted that the blind seer was nowhere to be seen, he heard footsteps behind him. Veassen was there, had appeared from nowhere. Chriani flexed his fingers in the pattern of the moonsign but kept his hand at his side.
The blind seer made no sign of sensing Chriani, who had to step out of his way as Veassen pressed forward. As he did, he tapped his staff to the platform’s wooden floor with a steady ticking sound, mixing with the chiming of the fountain in a strangely musical way.
The lack of any sort of table or meeting area across the three tiers of the platform gave Chriani a moment to wonder how a council worked among the Ilvani, and how it differed from the standing scrutiny of the previous day’s gathering. He got a sense of it quick enough, though.
“We are met,” Laedda called. “This council of masters begins.” He spoke the Ilvalantar this time, eschewing whatever Valnirata tongue he had used at the gathering of elders. He met Chriani’s gaze as he did, his expression suggesting the change was intentional. Not caring yesterday whether Chriani understood him or not, but knowing it made a difference now.
“This council is corrupted…” The tall Ilvani warrior called out from the third tier even as Laedda’s voice faded. Her grey-green leather was overlaid with silver scale today, shimmering as she stepped forward. She spoke one of the Valnirata tongues, so that Chriani lost the thread of it after those first few words.
“That’s Contáedar,” Dargana said at his ear where she’d shifted up beside him. “War master of Laneldenar.”
“We met yesterday, thanks,” Chriani whispered back.
“This’ll go easier the less you talk for now. Let them say what they have to say.”
“And when they’re finished talking?”
“Veassen knows.”
The blind seer was the length of the first tier away, having tapped his way to a place near the broad stairs that rose to the second tier. Dargana’s voice was barely a whisper, no way for him to have heard her. Chriani saw the seer’s head shift in seeming response all the same, the milk-white eyes finding his.
“…all Valnirata’s purpose is known…”
Contáedar was still speaking. Chriani tried to focus as he looked away.
With no seating, no fixed positions or even any sense of rank or order, the Ilvani paced as they spoke and listened. Contáedar fielded responses from two others, Dargana once more translating at Chriani’s ear. It was questions about troop movements in the Ilmar, and the strength of the treaty forged in the aftermath of the Incursions. ‘The feint,’ the Ilvani were calling the events of a year and a half before, talking as though both Brandishear and Aerach had been too quick to take advantage of the rumors of Valnirata involvement in those events. Chriani was one of the few who knew how dangerously close to the truth that was.
The war master had two backswords slung across her shoulders today, and a bloodblade in a scabbard set across her stomach. She slipped her hand to that blade as she shouted out something that sounded like a warning. Chriani saw her dark gaze fix on him.
“She says that the Valnirata are destined to march on the Ilmar,” Dargana said, “reclaiming it for the sake of past and future. That war against the Ilmari is the only way.”
“…Brona Coebann…” Chriani heard. Contáedar was calling the Clearwater Sea by its Ilvani name, still used by the mariners who traversed its coastal cities.
“She says it is the Ilmari’s destiny to be driven like rats to the sea.”
As at the larger council of the previous day, the Ilvani never interrupted each other, employing an instinct for response and a patience that would have seemed like weakness in any Ilmari dispute. In the range of anger and animosity they expressed, though, the Ilvani and their cold and methodical concentration would have put any diplomat or merchant lord in Rheran to shame.
Away from whoever was speaking, the Ilvani drifted together individually to whisper unheard words. Commenting or criticizing in secret as the dialogue shifted from place to place, voice to voice. An Ilvani in black robes flicked his fingers to create a pulsing sphere of light before him, as if to accentuate his words. “In Calalerean,” Dargana translated, “they embrace the power of the past and the old faiths. We acknowledge the strength of that past, but fear it for the strength it grants the Calala. We ignore that by the act of embracing that past ourselves, the strength of Laneldenar would be greater still.”
For long years, one of the things that had kept war between Ilmari and Ilvani a distant threat was the schism and conflict within the Ilvani themselves. The Valnirata were perpetually divided by the war-clan structure at the heart of their culture. Never openly skirmishing against each other, but distrustful. Content to build four individual powers in their own lands, and to hone their blades when they needed to against Ilmari to east and west, humanoid tribes to the south, Crithnala exiles to the north.
Chriani remembered it all as a vague blur of memory. More of the field training for his assignment to the rangers. Kathlan had been the one with the head for history and lore. She would have understood it all far better than he.
“We dream of the Ilvanghlira unified,” Contáedar was saying through Dargana at Chriani’s ear, using the name the Ilvani employed to refer to themselves. “We dream of the divided Ilmar splintered beneath the single wedge of our might…”
“Lóech arnala irch niir!”
Veassen’s voice rang out like the echo of an
iron bell, cutting off Contáedar and Dargana at once. A musical tone twisted through his words, Chriani feeling an echo of the voice he’d heard in his mind at the previous council.
It was the first time any of the Ilvani speakers had interrupted to shut down another’s voice. By the way all movement stopped across the stepped platforms, Chriani could guess at the weight of such an action.
“Three coins for confession,” Dargana whispered, but it had become the one phrase of the Valnirata tongue Chriani knew best.
The blind seer spoke the Ilvalantar, and slowly. Contáedar’s expression darkened as if she knew it was for Chriani’s benefit, though he continued to focus on Dargana’s whispered translation at his ear.
“We speak of the old faiths rising in Calala, but the wise among us know that Calala seeks not the faith of the past but power. Power that means destruction to all Muiraìden, no matter the hand that wields it. The wise among us know the reasons why the Ghostwood of Nyndenu was left to shadow. The cult of the confessor are the lóechari. Their power is an ancient poison, and the Ilvani’s dark dreams of war against the Ilmari are the honey that masks its taste.”
“You should speak of whatever poison has taken your mind, seer.” Contáedar’s response came as a sneering hiss, but Dargana’s translation at Chriani’s ear was even. “The only histories of concern to me are the records of war, which is the dream the Ilmari made. The Ilmari who breach our borders, slay our scouts. The Ilmari who slew our forebears, claiming the lands they walked. Staining the woods our people settled in the dawn of the world.”
Four Ilvani circled close behind Contáedar as she spoke, striding across the platform while they followed like some kind of support train. The war master’s anger was razor sharp in the strength of her voice. The knuckles of her hand were white where she gripped her sword. “The Ilmari scar our lands with the filth of their cities, the roughness of their stone, the lumber of forests cut and burned with every new generation. As long as we hold Muiraìden, the terms of the Ilmari and their envoy will ever be demands of surrender.”
It was a familiar anger, Chriani realized. A rage he had seen before. In Prince Chanist. In Ashlund, in Grus, in too many others. All consuming, never ending. Something carried for long years, like a wound that would never fully heal. Festering, feeding itself.
“Do you think to stop me, master Chriani…?”
Veassen spoke up, his voice clear. “You speak of what terms this envoy brings without hearing his words, war master.”
A chill twisted through Chriani as the seer’s voice rang across the chamber, a silence following. The Ilvani that had been moving were still. Veassen’s were the only eyes that didn’t shift toward Chriani where he stood.
They were waiting for him to speak, and he had no idea what he was meant to say.
Be calm, Chriani. Tell them why you are here.
Veassen’s voice rang clear in Chriani’s mind again, a subtle presence that made him wonder how long the seer might have been listening. He took a few steps forward, pacing parallel to the edge of the first tier. Playing for time.
I’ll need to know why I’m here first.
You know who you are, what you have done. Speak it here, so that all may know.
Is there truth magic on me?
Such spellcraft can be easily unwrought. These are the masters of Sylonna. Their judgement of your words will be based on instincts far more difficult to deceive.
In the seer’s tone in his mind, Chriani heard a strange and sudden reflection of Barien. A kind of gentle condescension, breaking through the sullenness that seemed to cling to Chriani sometimes like a protective shell.
“The Ilmari do not seek war,” he called out. He tried to find Barien’s voice and its gift for diplomacy, but the need to speak the Ilvalantar pushed the warrior from his mind somehow. He spoke slowly, but felt the same ease with the tongue that he had felt at the previous council. Veassen’s understanding in his own mind. “We have our soldiers, and we have our history. But the people of the Ilmar crave peace. They need and want peace, despite what your war master tells you here today.”
With a hiss, Contáedar turned her back and paced away from him. The four Ilvani closest to her did the same.
Well done, Chriani. Speak now of Calala. Of what you have seen.
“But we will stand against destruction if it is promised. And if destruction is promised from the Calala Ilvani, it must be put down. I have seen the magic that the seer spoke of. The three coins for confession. I’ve seen what it does, and I fear it as you should.”
Silence hung across the chamber, Chriani conscious of his heart beating fast. Too many of the Ilvani were smiling, even as the expressions of others settled in beneath a grim uncertainty.
They don’t know. A realization coming to him, spoken to Veassen in his mind. They don’t think any of this is real.
No, the seer replied. Many of them do not. To the Valnirata, the history of the cult of the confessor is known and forgotten. One legend among thousands, lost in the days of wild magic when all the Ilmar lands were ours. We must convince them otherwise. Calalerean’s theft of that ancient power must be shown. We must convince them of the truth.
And how does that become my task?
Because they will believe you are a part of that truth, Chriani. Whether you believe it or not.
Chriani realized he’d been standing in silence longer than he wanted to. Some of the Ilvani were whispering as Laedda called to him.
“Speak, envoy, of what you know.”
Dargana had stepped back, Chriani catching sight of her watching him.
He told them. Spoke of that first encounter with the war-band that had tracked him, and of the Ilvani prisoners. He told them of the shrine and the dead warrior. He told them of the coins. At Veassen’s prompting, he described the shrine in as much detail as he could remember. And as he did, he saw the same dark look flash through the expressions of the Ilvani closest to him. The ones who had been smiling before, each of them watching intently as he met their eyes in turn.
He told them of the war-band that had pushed into Rheran in pursuit of him. Now tell them why, Veassen said in his head. The seer’s tone was even, but Chriani felt a sense of expectation in the words that he didn’t like. He ignored it as he continued.
“I was pursued by the Calala of the cult, both in Muiraìden and in the Brandishear capital. The Calala knew me. They heard of what happened when I pursued the Princess Lauresa on the Clearwater Way, and their agents shared that knowledge through the rites of the cult. They work as one.”
He pulled what Dargana had told him in the throne room of Rheran from memory, tried to assemble it into something that would make it sound as if he knew what he was talking about. He told of being pursued along the Hunthad, and of the strangeness of the cultists they had seen there. “The Calala Ilvani who pursued me in Aerach, who we killed the night that Farenna came for us. Their eyes were clear at first. The cult rites showed in them only when they attacked us in the end. Or after they had died.”
He stopped then because there was nothing else to say. Veassen was lingering silent in his mind, even as Chriani saw the dark look that had spread now across nearly all the Ilvani listening to him.
It wasn’t anger, though. That had been his first expectation, the anger of the Ilvani a thing he’d grown all too familiar with over five months of border skirmishes.
They were afraid, he realized. And that scared him more than he could ever have expected.
Tell them, Chriani. The heir of the exile’s blade. It is time.
Chriani felt the words resonate in his mind, Veassen’s voice shifting his own thoughts away. He pushed back against it, fought to find the will to simply dismiss it all.
In days of war, Veassen said, one will arise to stand between Ilvanghlira and Ilmari in struggle. One who will forge the final fate of both peoples.
You know the story, Chriani thought coldly. Tell it yourself.
Contáedar spoke up as
Veassen went silent in Chriani’s mind. Though her back had stayed toward him as she paced to the farthest platform, the warrior turned now with a sneer. “And what makes you special in the Calala’s eyes, Ilmari? What draws their interest to a mongrel half-blood?”
“If the hospitality of Sylonna had armed as well as garbed me, calling me that would be the last thing you’d ever say.” Quick words, spoken in the moment. Chriani was too scattered to truly feel anger, but the instinct to anger had a life of its own, it seemed.
With a fluid motion, Contáedar whipped one of her backswords from its scabbard, tossing it in a smooth arc across two terraces and the fountain between them. Chriani didn’t move as it stuck blade first into the wooden floor, one pace away from where he stood.
He stepped up to wrench the sword out, hold it fast in both hands. He felt himself assessing the blade’s weight and balance, feeling his senses shift forward as he slid away from Dargana. Contáedar was moving for him, drawing her bloodblade and her other sword with mirrored motions across her stomach and back.
“This action is forbidden,” Laedda called. And with a speed that spoke to the rigid code of discipline among the Ilvani and managed to surprise Chriani all at once, Contáedar slid to a stop. She sheathed her weapons with a dark look, her breath coming sharp, mouth set in a narrow line.
She looked to Chriani as if waiting for the other sword to be returned. He carefully slipped it to his own belt, mindful of the edge that would have cut through its double-thick leather as if slicing paper. He was certain that if he had to draw the weapon, he would leave the belt and his leggings on the floor at his feet.
Contáedar slowly turned away. As she advanced to the edge of the central tier, her hand stayed at the hilt of her bloodblade.
“The Calala seek the heir of the exile’s blade,” Chriani called to her back. His voice carried across the chamber, the anger still in it. He felt the same subtle shift in the attitude of the Ilvani as he’d felt at the first council. “They believe that your legends speak of the narneth móir of the exile warlord Caradar. It was claimed by Chanist when he struck Caradar down in the dying days of the Incursions. I claimed it when it was stolen from Chanist. The cult wants it. Now they hunt me for it.”
Three Coins for Confession Page 29