Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  Where his hand rested on the hilt of Contáedar’s sword, Chriani felt it shaking. He squeezed his fingers to stillness, cautious of the bare blade pressing against his leg. An undercurrent of dark tension was twisting through the Ilvani where they paced around him. The mention of Chanist, of Caradar, of the Incursions.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Chriani said. There at last, a sliver of truth. But having said it, he realized he had no idea what came next.

  Contáedar laughed to set his mind at dark ease. “This fool was seized from his Ilmari captors in fetters. Arrested and bound by his own people. Rescued from them by Ilvanghlira riders, who took him stripped of weapons and armor.” Her back was still to Chriani as she spoke, her words for the assembled Ilvani. Dismissing him even as she spoke of him. “How does the heir of the exile’s blade allow it to be taken into laóith hands?”

  “The Ilmari didn’t take the blade because it was already hidden by my hand,” Chriani said. “As it had to be for one who serves in the Prince’s Guard of Brandishear. One who sits at the side of the prince high.” The words rang hollow even as he said them, but they were the best point of defiance he could think of. “I knew to protect the blade. I knew to keep it safe.”

  Contáedar spit in response, still not looking back.

  “The cult of the confessor is old even by the ages of the Ilvani.” Veassen spoke to break the tense silence. The seer’s voice carried the thinness of age across the chamber, even as Chriani felt it strong in his mind. “Two paths along which its power flows. Ilvani who take the rites of confession fall under its sway and control. They can be committed to any cause of their masters.”

  Across all three tiers, the Ilvani began to shift again, moving more quickly than before. No speech passed between them, though. All of them listening, but seemingly afraid to meet the seer’s gaze.

  “The coins are of Talaeria, the lost province. The lands that are now Crithnalerean, where the power of the lóechari rose and was abandoned millennia past for fear of the destruction it might reap. Two coins are placed in the hands to pay the price of service, one in the mouth to pay the price of confession that is the vow of service. Then the ritual of confession sees the coins bound into the body by arcane force. Magic fueled by the power of the memory that is the price of admission to the cult.”

  “These things are told,” Laedda said. Chriani heard the words pass through a third of the assembled Ilvani, rising as a whispered reflection while the master continued. “The act of confession during the rite burns away what has been confessed. The acceptance of the lóechari’s power is a corruption of oath to clan and Valnirata, even as the act of acceptance burns clan and oath away.”

  Chriani could hear the unease in Laedda’s voice. Could see it reflected in the faces around him.

  “The rites grow more powerful with each new lóechari claimed,” Veassen said. “The bond of the coins burns bright. It compels action, coopts the mind and spirit. And if that action fails, if the agent who commits life and strength to the rites of confession fails in the missions assigned by the cult, the coins exact the price for failure. A death of mind and spirit even if the body has already fallen. The faithful twisted and left broken from within. Two coins in the hands, one in the mouth. As this envoy has seen and described.”

  Whispers again from the other Ilvani. More of them this time. These things are told…

  As the seer’s words filled his ears and mind, Chriani felt the fear grow stronger. No sign that Veassen was anything but calm as he spoke, but his thoughts carried a revulsion sharp enough to turn Chriani’s stomach. He felt words that weren’t words. Not interfering with what the seer was saying, but working on a deeper level. Some kind of meditation. A whisper of thought expressed as the faintest hiss of voice, subconscious.

  It was the sensation of making the moonsign, he realized. The desperate hope that came from the familiarity of a gesture, from the connection of body and spirit and faith. Except this was a symbol not of the body but of the mind, the Ilvani with their own wards against the darkest magic.

  He felt something shift into place. He tried to focus his thoughts, distanced himself from Veassen, though he felt the Ilvalantar still come easily to his mind.

  “The act of confession during the rite burns away what has been confessed.” Chriani repeated Laedda’s words, heard them echo in his own mind and Veassen’s at once. The seer was listening to him now. That was something new.

  He remembered the Ilvani at the camp, their eyes clear as they fought, as they surrendered. The eyes clear in those who had died at once. Then the terrible transformation, the power tearing through them with no warning.

  “If the rites take the confession from mind and memory, then can the confession itself be forced and then forgotten?”

  All the Ilvani were whispering now, Contáedar and her four followers the only ones who stayed silent. These things are told. Chriani heard Dargana’s voice join in from behind him. No fear in her, though. Just a razor-sharp hatred for what she had come to understand even as he did. He fought the urge to make the moonsign himself.

  “The rites grow more powerful with each cultist claimed.” As he said the words, Chriani felt the thoughts shifting in from somewhere unseen. Felt the pieces fall into place, even as he realized the puzzle was one whose full scope he hadn’t seen before. “And with that rise of power, what if the confession burns deeper? What if knowledge of the cult itself is taken by the rite, leaving those afflicted with no sense of what they’ve done. No knowledge of who they serve until their orders are triggered. I’ve seen it.”

  The faint hiss of whispering faded, silence hanging for a time. Chriani wasn’t surprised when Contáedar was the one to break it for a second time.

  “This is laóith trickery.” The war master’s voice was ice. “We patrol the Crithnalerean frontier as we always have. Where is this cult? Where are these golden warriors of legend, building an army for Calala?”

  “Hiding,” Chriani said. More pieces falling into place. “Because they know that to reveal themselves would bring the Laneldenari down on them. They’re setting things in motion, testing their power first against the Ilmar.”

  Contáedar sneered. “So if the cult fights against the Ilmari, both sides do our work for us. Let them kill each other…”

  “And what’s your plan for after, then?” Chriani saw the war master’s expression darken, noted how his interrupting her was raising her ire. Good. “War against both sides of the forest? Or are you waiting for Calalerean to use its cult magic against Brandishear, then planning on striking after both are weakened?”

  “No.” A firm voice rose from the third tier before Contáedar’s anger could force a response. Chriani looked away from the war master’s cold gaze to see Farenna there. The Ilvani captain had his hand at the hilt of his backsword. “No,” he said again. “I speak for myself only, but I speak with the voices of veteran warriors. The Valnirata do not need war, friend Chriani. We do not seek it. Our truth is more complicated than that.”

  “Captain.” Contáedar took three steps toward Farenna, the backsword in her hand edging up. A hiss of alarm spread around the two of them as the Ilvani closest to them both edged away. “You usurp the authority of your war master at this council.”

  “I show all deference to your rank and will in the field, war master. But I am at this council as captain of Sylonna, and am your equal here.”

  “I will not…”

  “The captain of Sylonna will speak.” Laedda’s voice cut across Contáedar’s with the force of a blow. Chriani saw the war master shudder with the effort of silence. She lowered her blade, but slowly.

  Farenna nodded to Laedda. He began to pace, turning to face the others by turns. Even so, it was Chriani his gaze returned to, time and again.

  “I have fought for Valnirata and Laneldenar for long years. I have trained three generations of carontir since the wars before. I killed Ilmari soldiers in those wars. I have killed Ilmari rangers in the t
ime of so-called peace, for crossing too far into Laneldenar. For pursuing us where only Ilvani may tread. I have killed exile bandits pressing in from Crithnalerean. I do these things for duty and order. But also because the love of combat flows in me, and has since I came of age in battle against the Ilvalachna in the wars before.”

  Chriani saw Dargana tense from the corner of his eye at Farenna’s mention of hunting the exiles, but his own attention was taken by the rider’s mention of the wars before. From Barien and the ranger loremasters alike, he knew that this was how the Ilvani referred to the Incursions. No formal name given to them, because doing so would force the Valnirata to admit a resolution to that dark conflict. To remember that they had lost.

  “In battle,” Farenna said, “all Ilvani crave the strength that comes with victory. We crave that sense of majesty for our people. In war, we find the strength of life, but our lives are more than war. And we have grown too used to the strength of war giving meaning to our lives. What we need is the wisdom after long centuries to see this.”

  The incursions were the wars before, the loremasters had said, because that phrase brought with it a sense that war was a continuous thing. In the wars before, the Ilvani had pushed out from the Greatwood seeking blood and triumph, then fallen back under the threat of a unified Ilmar standing against them. A threat wrought by Chanist, the young prince whose rise none of the Ilvani could have foreseen. And just as there were wars before, there would be wars still to come, inevitably.

  Chriani wouldn’t have judged Farenna old enough to have fought against Chanist. Most Ilmari veterans of those campaigns were long retired to quiet duty, the fireside, or the grave. The Ilvani aged more slowly than the Ilmari, he knew. A hundred years and more was a good life for them. Something easy to forget when the similarities between the two peoples were so sharp.

  “Ilmari and Ilvanghlira were a single people once.”

  Veassen’s voice rose to embrace the brief silence that hung as Farenna’s words faded. Chriani felt a chill trace along his spine, the words echoing his mother’s from so long ago. He couldn’t remember thinking them, wasn’t sure when the seer would have pulled them from his mind. But then he watched as a half-dozen of the scattered Ilvani whispered the same words in echo to Veassen’s voice. Some kind of reluctant benediction. A thing the Ilvani knew, that some of them believed, he realized.

  He had never suspected it, would never have dreamed it. His mother repeating words that his father must have told her.

  Contáedar wasn’t one of those whispering Veassen’s words. “The captain of Sylonna and the seer of Laneldenar speak treason,” the war master shouted. “This council’s purpose is lost. I call its end.”

  “Your call is denied,” Laedda said evenly.

  “I speak no treason, war master.” Farenna stepped up to within two paces of Contáedar, his voice grim. “I speak of the future. And your fear of that future is your affair, not mine.” He turned away, leaving the war master ignored behind him. Chriani half-expected her to draw against the captain, but she simply stalked away.

  “If a dark power does rise in Nyndenu,” Farenna called out to the assembled Ilvani, “then entering Crithnalerean in force alerts the lóechari and the Calala to our purpose and our fear. But our patrols are known along the frontier, and push often across the forest wall when the Crithnalerean threaten. I have ridden to the Ghostwood more than once since Calalerean’s movement north, though the forest and its spirits sing their same silence as ever to my ears.”

  “Then how is the cult to be found?” An Ilvani in blue robes spoke up, circling close to Farenna.

  “With the assistance of this envoy and the fate that weighs on him.”

  Chriani felt a faint chill at the captain’s words. A surge of whispering rose around him, the Ilvani watching intently. The flash of fear was bright in their eyes again, their minds open to him somehow through Veassen’s thoughts. He could feel the ward against dark magic. The words that weren’t words.

  “Friend Chriani,” Farenna said with a deep nod. “You spoke of the Calala hunting you. Show this council their weapons.”

  Chriani stood in silence a moment. Then he slipped two fingers within his belt and found the larger pocket there. Carefully, he pulled the two talismans from it, their bloodstone shards still dark.

  He heard the whispers around him shift and echo. Gavalirnon… Farenna stepped forward, his hand extended. Waiting.

  Chriani passed the captain the newer talisman, claimed along the Hunthad. Farenna examined it carefully, stepping away from Chriani as blue-white light flowed within his hand. As he whispered an incantation, that light flared to a brilliant pulse of ice-white. Farenna turned slowly, eyes half-closed. Listening for something, Chriani thought, but the silence that had descended upon the council chamber was absolute.

  Farenna opened his eyes, holding the talisman straight out before him. He stood that way for a long while, staring at the stone on its thin steel chain before he spoke.

  “I focus this magic and feel for its source, and it calls me north to Nyndenu.”

  A new chorus of whispers broke across the council chamber. Even Contáedar’s entourage had joined in now, the war master the only Ilvani who was silent.

  “I can trace the lines of dweomer in this hunter’s heart, back to the source it reports to. I turn the power of the lóechari against them. Where they dwell in the Ghostwood, the hunter’s heart will lead us, and the riders of Laneldenari will find and destroy them.”

  The council chamber was a storm of voices suddenly. As Veassen listened, Chriani felt them filter through his mind without really trying. Support for Farenna’s plan, and arguments against. Alongside the call for action against the Ghostwood, cries for movement against Calalerean itself. Calls for restraint and second thought before action was taken.

  Chriani heard it. Understood it. From a starting point of disbelief — in him, in the story he had to tell — the Ilvani had swung around full in the name of the fear of whatever power had been found in Crithnalerean. In the name of a legend Chriani heard circling around him now, caught from the cacophony of voices like a child snatching fireflies from the night air.

  “The half-blood…” they were saying. “Heir of the exile’s blade…”

  They believed him because of whatever connection they imagined he had to prophecy and power. The connection the Calala Ilvani believed in, and in whose name they had hunted him. And it didn’t matter that none of it was true.

  All that mattered was that in that moment, in the fanciful terms of Veassen’s children’s tale, Chriani understood with sudden clarity that he had been granted a single desperate chance to undo the damage that fate and his own failures had done to him.

  “No,” he shouted.

  The voices faded to abrupt silence. Farenna’s expression showed the surprise present on all the Ilvani except Contáedar, whose eyes showed only contempt.

  He wasn’t sure where the notion had come from. It was sharp in his mind like it had always been with him, but it carried no sense of Veassen’s voice.

  “You need alliance with the Ilmari to do this,” Chriani said. He ignored the war master’s gaze to focus on Laedda and Farenna, and the Ilvani standing close by them. Trying again for Barien’s voice. The even tone, the sense of careful thought behind every word. “You need to bring the four principalities into alliance with the Ilvani of Laneldenar against the cult, as I came here to do.”

  “The Valnirata take no orders from laóith.” Contáedar’s voice rang out ice cold as she paced forward. Her four followers were with her but had pushed away. Just out of sword range, Chriani noted.

  “This is no order,” he said carefully. “This is an offer of assistance. Of the truce the Ilvani want and need. The reason I came here from Brandishear. If you move against the lóechari in force, if you push a Laneldenari army into Crithnalerean and the Ghostwood, signal fires will light the length of the Aerach frontier. The assault from the east will come before the next
dawn. The invasion of western Crithnalerean from Brandishear comes before dusk that same day. They won’t wait for the Calala Ilvani to push north to meet your assault. Because they won’t know that the Ilvani are fighting the Ilvani, and they won’t care.”

  “You are disgraced,” Contáedar sneered. “By the testimony of this captain, you have no authority…”

  “I make my own way among the Ilmari, and it’s no concern of yours. I have the confidence of the Prince High Chanist who sent me here. The first strike needs to come from the Ilmar. Brandishear and Aerach have their forces already set across Crithnalerean and the Clearwater Way. The north of the Ghostwood is their range, as the south is yours. You set a pact between Ilvani and Ilmari. Destroy the cult together to end the threat against both realms. Prove that Ilmari and Ilvani can have common cause and purpose.”

  The words rang in his own ears as if someone else was speaking them. Barien’s voice, carrying the warrior’s conviction even in the Ilvani’s complex tongue.

  It was a good story, as stories went. And it didn’t matter to Chriani that it was the greatest lie he had ever told.

  “I will see it done,” Farenna said. “Chriani rides with me.”

  The energy in the chamber shifted. Chriani had to fight to slow his breathing.

  Contáedar stepped toward him but it was Farenna she shouted to, anger twisting her voice to a steel-sharp edge. “The lóechari seek the half-blood, and you would deliver him to them!”

  “You have claimed the Ilmari’s story as fabrication, war master.” Farenna’s tone was deferential, his grey-black eyes steel hard. “Have your thoughts changed?”

  “No Ilmari rides with the carontir!” Contáedar snarled in response. “No Ilmari army breaches Valnirata on this half-blood traitor’s word. Captain of Sylonna or no, you presume too much.”