Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

“As do you, war master, if you believe that your will supersedes the will of this council.”

  Contáedar’s eyes burned like bright coals. She shifted away with a grace that suggested she might have forgotten Farenna was there. No one was watching her, though. All eyes were on the captain.

  To Laedda, Farenna turned and saluted, right hand up to touch the war-mark at his shoulder. “I am captain of Sylonna. Chriani is the guest of Sylonna. It is my right, and my choice, for Chriani to ride with my carontir. I mean to discover the location of the lóechari in Nyndenu. This information will be shared with the Ilmari through this envoy, whose fate ties him to Laneldenar and all Valnirata. This fate we shape together to build the foundation of the lóechari’s fall, if the council wills it so.”

  There it was, Chriani thought. This was his way home.

  “The vote,” Laedda called out. No more preamble than that. No more discussion.

  One by one, starting with those closest to the speaker and shifting outward, the Ilvani raised their hands. Some made the full salute, hand up and held at the war-mark. Some pressed a cursory touch to the shoulder, their expressions unreadable.

  Only Contáedar and two of the Ilvani with her kept their hands at their sides, looking at Chriani as they did. The other two of her followers had broken with her in the end.

  “It is decided,” Laedda said. And with nothing else spoken, the Ilvani began to move for the first tier and the open stair beyond.

  Contáedar was among the first to go, stalking a curving path away from Chriani. She avoided the stairs, leaped down to the lower tiers, her footsteps sounding out in a way Chriani expected was meant to show her anger. He still had her sword at his belt.

  Farenna stepped up beside Chriani, nodded deeply. The newer talisman was still in his hand, still pulsing within its cocoon of blue-white light. “We ride at dawn.”

  Chriani nodded in return, glanced around to see Dargana watching him. The look in her eyes was something he couldn’t read. “Dargana rides with us,” he said. “If she wants. With your permission.”

  “It shall be.” Farenna and Dargana exchanged the salute. Then the captain joined the others walking for the edge of the platform, disappearing beyond shadowed walls and across the stairs.

  In the end, Chriani and Dargana were left alone in the council chamber. The sentries at the entrance stood impassive, not seeming to care whether they stayed.

  Veassen had vanished. Once more, Chriani hadn’t seen him go.

  “You did well,” Dargana said at last. She was eyeing the sword at his waist, Chriani not sure whether she was talking about it or more general events.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said quietly. “Veassen was in my head.”

  “I gathered that when you stopped needing me to translate. It wasn’t all him, though. You did well.”

  “If you say so.”

  Dargana gave him the thin smile. Then she paced across the tier, down the stairs, and away.

  Chriani walked to the second tier and toward the fountain as Dargana’s footsteps faded. He let its blue light wash across him as he paced around the platform, watching to make sure there was no movement at the sentry station before he opened his mind to the steel ring at his finger.

  I am here, Chriani. Veassen’s voice rang clear in his thoughts.

  Are you ready to tell me what in fate’s name is going on? Chriani thought.

  I can tell you that you have done a thing today few could do. I will help you in any way I can…

  You told me to say it. The heir of the exile’s blade. Chriani had to focus to interrupt the speaker’s voice in his head, feeling it falter. At the council yesterday, then today. Why?

  Because that is why they listened to you, Chriani. That is why they believe.

  That and that alone? It’s madness.

  It is faith, Veassen said. There are subtle differences.

  If he could have laughed within his mind, Chriani would have done so. They think the heir is me. You think that.

  I believe that the lóechari believe you are the heir, Chriani. And that I saw you here to speak the legend yourself.

  I said it because you told me to, Chriani said darkly.

  I bade you say it because I saw you say it, Chriani. I saw it before it happened.

  Chriani bit down on the frustration he wanted to voice. He was fairly certain the seer heard it anyway. Then what happens next? If you see it all before it happens?

  Fate and the future are not a fixed tableau. Events move and shape themselves according to our will, but there are fixed points toward which we move. The fate of Ilvani and Ilmari is mutable. It shifts and changes according to the hearts and passions of those within the Greatwood and without. I have lived with those passions for long years, Chriani. And at the end of my life, I understand the price that both Ilmari and Ilvani have paid for them.

  Why didn’t the council just ask me if I was the heir so I could tell them ‘no’? Put an end to it?

  They would hardly trust one who made open claim to such a destiny. Fate must be lived and proved, Chriani. Not merely spoken.

  Again, Chriani felt a gentle mocking in the seer’s tone that reminded him of Barien.

  I sense all possible futures, Veassen said. I see the fixed points that might lead to those futures. You are one such point, Chriani. You have touched something beyond your own life, whether you willed it or…

  Chriani pulled the steel ring from his finger. As he did, he realized the leather-strung talisman taken in Rheran was still in his hand, squeezed tight to leave an impression of its dark bloodstone shard in his palm. He slipped both it and the ring to the gold-lined pockets of his belt as he turned away.

  CHRIANI DIDN’T SLEEP any more through the end of that night than he did through its start, though he felt himself slip in and out of the same state of fitful dozing. Dargana hadn’t returned to the shared platform by the time Chriani made his way back, the sentries at the council platform the only Ilvani he saw along the way.

  When he awoke to the faint glimmerings of first light through the leaves above, Dargana was with him. She was sitting cross-legged, the slowness of her breathing telling Chriani she was resting. He worked the knots from his muscles as he stretched across the platform floor, his body finally feeling rested even as his mind was racing, his heart beating fast with a sense of agitation he didn’t understand.

  Then he remembered that he’d been dreaming of Kathlan before he woke. He felt something twist in his chest, forced his mind to push the memory down. But in the shadow of its disappearance, a kind of clarity came to his thought. A focus and purpose that resonated in his mind.

  In the heat of the moment on the floor of the council chamber, it had been Kathlan who forced his hand. He had understood it then, but hadn’t let the thought loose in his mind. Aware that Veassen was listening. All his talk of common threat, all his repeating of what the seer told him to say. It was what it was, but none of it mattered anymore.

  He would go back to the Ilmar. Back to Kathlan. That was his mission, his goal. The only thing that mattered.

  He could find the cult. Find the common threat that might undo even the smallest amount of the generations-long animosity between Ilmari and Ilvani. Find a foe that both could hate, that both could fear. Chriani could do this. He would bring the information back to Chanist, would convince him of the urgency of the cult’s threat.

  He would win a place for himself again in Brandishear when it was done. He had to go back.

  Dargana stirred as he stood, Chriani not sure whether he had disturbed the exile or whether she had simply been waiting for him. She blinked awake, quickly took in the shadowed platform around her.

  “It’s almost time,” she said. “You’ll want to use the baths again before we go. The waters will strengthen you. Help you compensate if you don’t sleep again for a while.”

  Chriani said nothing as another memory unfolded. Something lurking beneath the memory of dreaming Kathlan, he realized.

&nb
sp; He had been dreaming of the cult as well.

  He had dreamed the rites. Some vague version of the lore Veassen had fed to his mind, coins in each palm, one in his mouth. He could taste the metallic tang of bright gold in memory, could feel it burning his hands as magic coursed through him.

  The act of confession during the rite burns away what has been confessed…

  In the dream, Chriani had felt his memories torn from him. He felt the coins flaring molten-hot, searing his flesh as they became part of him. And as they did, he had made the confession he made to Kathlan that night. Felt it burned from his mind and forgotten — a chance to truly forget, to wipe away everything that had happened with Lauresa from his mind. Undo all the pain he’d ever caused, feeling it scoured away as if it had never been.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dargana’s voice brought him back from the shadow. Chriani was staring down to his hands, the black ring and the steel ring clutched tight there. One in each palm, as the coins of the dream had been. He couldn’t remember having retrieved them from his belt. He nodded to the exile as he turned for the ladder, slipping both rings back to their hidden pockets as he went.

  Dargana appeared at the baths as Chriani was finishing, slipping behind the screens as he dried himself. He had soaked quickly in the steaming water, but even that was enough time for someone to once more steal onto the platform to leave new clothing behind for him and Dargana both. Armor this time. Supple grey leather overlaid with a sash of steel links, both cut away to leave the war-mark at his shoulder exposed.

  “When this is done,” Dargana called out, unseen in the tub beside him, “you should come with me.” She spoke the common Imperial tongue once more.

  Chriani didn’t understand the statement at first. “To where?”

  “Crithnalerean. Ride with me. You’re an exile twice over now. You’ll be a good fit.”

  Chriani felt a chill pass through him as he slipped the armor on over tunic and leggings. He didn’t answer directly. “Considering that none of us actually knows what we’re doing beyond Farenna saying he can follow the talisman’s magic back to the cult, it’s hard to talk about it being done. Never mind what happens after.”

  A rush of water came from behind him as Dargana slipped from her bath. Chriani heard her footsteps, glanced back to see her wiping water from herself as she inspected the armor laid out for her. He caught sight of the exile’s war-mark for the first time since she’d covered it in Rheran, saw its more complex reflection of his own mark. The same core of tight lines was set at the center of both, the sigil of Halobrelia. But then both expanded out to their own pattern. Different stories told. Different names to be read there.

  “And I’ll be going back to Brandishear,” Chriani said quietly. He heard the words hang, not sure why he’d felt it necessary to say them.

  Dargana glanced over as she pulled on smallclothes, slipped her tunic and leggings on. “Indeed? I don’t know your soldiers’ code in Brandishear, but I’d be surprised if desertion and accusations of treason didn’t carry some kind of penalty.”

  “I’ll be going back.”

  “You were last seen escaping an Ilmari camp beneath a hail of Ilvani arrow fire.”

  “Anyone with eyes and half a mind will understand the Ilvani weren’t shooting to kill that night.”

  “I’ve ridden the Clearwater Way my whole life. Half a mind is as good as most of your captains get.”

  Chriani’s armor was an unexpectedly good fit, the leather moving with him as if he’d worn it all his life. An empty scabbard stood against the rack where the armor had hung, Chriani hitching it to his belt. The backsword he’d taken from Contáedar slid into it easily.

  “What do you believe?” he said. “From what was said yesterday.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because you don’t seem the sort for superstition, yet you came for me. You’ve stood by me.”

  “Maybe it was fate.”

  Chriani glanced over to see Dargana tightening the buckles of her leather. A thin smile underlay the exile’s words as she checked the fit of her scabbards, making an adjustment where her bloodblade hung at her hip.

  “I want my homeland back, half-blood,” she said. “I believe in the need to kill Calala by the score for what they’ve done to Crithnalerean. I believe Veassen when he talked of seeing you as the key to defeating the cult. But why that might be, and what you and your prince and the Laneldenari do with the rest of the Ilmar after that, is no concern of mine. Just as it’s no concern of yours anymore. You should ride with me.”

  Dargana headed for the ladder, Chriani lingering behind her. But as she slipped down it, she slowed. “However this ends, you need to watch me, Chriani. You need to make sure I’m not lóechari.”

  Chriani’s mind was silent suddenly, all his other thoughts gone. The wind through the trees overhead was a voiceless whisper. The exile’s smile had faded.

  “What are you…?”

  “I was a month in Calalerean.” Dargana’s voice was even, Chriani feeling her choose her words carefully. “Getting close to the cult so I could watch them, then waiting for them to move against you. Seeing the blind agents since then, with their memories of the rites taken from them, if you’re right about that… The Calala might have turned me, and I’ve got no way to know…”

  “That’s enough on that.” Chriani heard a fear thread through the words as he said them. From the ladder below him, Dargana’s dark gaze was locked to his.

  “I’m not asking you to kill me here and now. I’m just saying watch me. Stay close. If you see it happen, you’ll know what to do.”

  The degree of calm in the exile’s voice was as unnerving to Chriani as the task she was setting for him.

  “It won’t come to that.”

  Dargana shrugged. “You’ll know what to do,” she said again as she descended the ladder once more.

  Chriani said nothing as he followed.

  He didn’t know the route they were taking, but Dargana made no sign of uncertainty. Countless Ilvani were out along the ladders and bridges and platforms of Sylonna, walking or lingering in the rising light. Watching Chriani as he passed.

  The lights of the forest-home were bright in the trees above them, spreading to a shimmering haze as the wind set boughs and branches, bridges and platforms to a gentle swaying. The two of them reached the ground in a broad paddock. Stables of green cloth stretched over ridged wooden frames surrounded them, pushing back into the shadows beneath the trees. The morning was mist and grey light, a wind blowing through the branches high overhead and the ground crawling with a fast-moving fog.

  Chriani saw seven horses waiting, five Ilvani preparing to ride. Farenna was there, as was Taelendar, he noted darkly. He recognized the other three from the troop that had ridden to the Hunthad, but Farenna was the only one to acknowledge him as he approached.

  All the riders were dressed as he and Dargana were, in leather and chain. They wore green-grey cloaks over it, like the ones slung across the backs of the two horses not yet bearing riders. Dargana approached a lithe black mare, the other horse a grey gelding that watched Chriani, assessing him with a too-intelligent eye.

  Farenna called to him, speaking the Ilvalantar once more. “The grey is yours, friend Chriani.”

  The horses of the Ilvani took no other riders, Chriani knew. He stood there in a moment’s uncertainty, then reached out tentatively to stroke the neck of the grey. He felt it shift into him in greeting.

  Next to the horse, he found a bow and two well-stocked quivers, a wide belt pack filled with the paper-wrapped bread and flasks of mead. He strapped both quivers across his back, hefted the bow carefully. It was a light recurve horsebow, its feel familiar enough. But even through a first quick sense of its balance and pull, Chriani understood that it was the best weapon he had ever held.

  The Ilmar had modeled their own bows on those captured from the Ilvani for generations, but whatever knowledge the weapon masters of th
e Ilmar had stolen from the folk of the Greatwood, there were subtleties they’d missed. Or was it Ilvani magic imbued into the bow’s tightly wrapped wood and horn? Chriani felt a wave of unease, then felt an even stronger sense of irritation at himself. He couldn’t make the moonsign, but he touched his fingers lightly to his heart as he drew the bowstring back to his chest.

  Farenna swung on and astride his white stallion, pacing to the front of the squad. “We ride,” he said.

  As always, the steeds of the Valnirata bore no saddle. Chriani was acutely conscious of how his experience at bareback riding amounted entirely to a half-dozen short sessions training for retreat tactics, plus the frenzied flight that had taken him to Sylonna. From his first meeting with Dargana, he remembered that her Ilvani exile band had ridden with saddles, but she showed no hesitation or uncertainty as she jumped up to her mare’s back now.

  Chriani managed to pull himself onto the grey without alarming it, which he took as an achievement. Farenna set out at a walking pace, the others falling into line behind. Chriani took the second spot from last, Dargana behind him. He was glad of that, assuming that if he fell off on the journey, she’d be the least likely to succumb to the temptation to run him down.

  As they picked up speed, the grey’s pace stayed smooth beneath him, the horse responding to rein and knee with equal ease. By the time they crossed the broad stone road that marked the boundary of Sylonna, Chriani felt an unexpected familiarity. Steadier on the horse’s back than he would have expected as the troop surged out along a twisting trail at a run.

  He looked back once to Sylonna as they passed beneath the first of the sentry platforms, but the hidden city had already vanished into the wall of green behind them.

  If the ride from the Hunthad had seemed chaotic to Chriani’s mind, the path they cut now through the twilight forest was a maddening pattern of switchbacks and sudden turns. A maze unfolding around them as they rode. Farenna led them at speed along the deep wood’s twisting network of intersecting trails, his hand up to flash signals behind him. Warning of quick changes in direction, their course shifting onto side trails. Chriani couldn’t remember any signals on their ride from the Hunthad to Sylonna, which made him understand that every Ilvani in Farenna’s troop had known that route by heart. This course was new to them, though.