“Chriani…” Farenna whispered, but he had already seen it. At the black-armored figure’s neck, an amulet hung. Three coins gleamed there with a golden brightness that transcended the mage-light, flaring to push away the darkness. Each was tied through the hole at its center by lengths of golden chain, matching the chain that hung them from the Ilvani’s neck.
The figure walked toward a stepped dais that jutted out into the center of the dark maelstrom. At its height, the edge of the dais met a rough pillar of fractured grey stone that thrust up from the darkness below. Its twisted lines seemed to catch at that darkness, gleaming like the storm of shadow was sunlight. Faint ripples suggested movement within its gnarled surface, reflecting the limbs of the black tree spreading out high above.
The naked Ilvani bowed their heads before the figure in black, whose golden light spun around her now to wrap each supplicant in a glowing nimbus. With one hand to the amulet at her neck, she thrust her other hand against the chest of each figure in turn, the golden light flaring each time with a brightness that made Chriani shield his eyes.
When he looked back, the eight figures were dropping one by one to their knees. Each had arms spread wide, head back and mouth open. In each hand, on each tongue, a light of molten gold was burning bright.
“We’ve seen enough, half-blood,” Dargana hissed, but Chriani simply stared, rapt. He wanted to stand but couldn’t. Telling himself this was for Chanist’s mages, for Laedda’s sorcerers. This was their mystery, not his.
The spellcaster in black screamed in what he recognized as an Ilvani tongue, though he understood only a single dark phrase. Lóech arnala irch niir. One by one, the naked figures closed their hands, snapped shut their mouths as a convulsion of pain twisted through them, dropping them to the terrace floor.
Chriani felt their screaming more than heard it. An animal sound, no voice to it except a pain that focused in and centered on his own heart, pounding furiously. He could feel the magic. Could sense the power from below forcing its way into him, scouring him from within. The fear coursing through him now like something alive as he scribed the moonsign against his heart again and again.
The screaming stopped. One by one, the figures rose, shaking. Their hands and mouths were empty.
He felt Farenna stand behind him. “Go,” Chriani whispered to the captain. “Go now.”
“Half-blood!”
Dargana shouted her warning as Chriani was pushing back to rise to his feet. He dropped again and shifted left by instinct, rolling for the open space behind him. He didn’t see what had alarmed her, listening for arrows from above, spell-fire from the platform below.
He felt Farenna’s backsword miss his neck by a finger’s breadth. Saw the blue glow within the steel flare as if hungering for his blood. The captain let the missed blow arc around, swinging down without breaking stride as he surged forward. Chriani was still down, rolling to dodge as he tried to find room to rise, the blade hammering down once, twice, three times.
As Farenna tried to kill him, Chriani saw the golden light blazing in the blood fury of his wide-open eyes.
A spray of red-black lanced out from the captain’s shoulder as Dargana tagged him, distracting him for the moment Chriani needed to roll up to his feet. He drew both long-knives, lashed out at Farenna as Dargana shifted into flanking position, but the Ilvani captain was moving at a speed that defied nature. He drew his own long knife, fending off Chriani along one side as his backsword struck off Dargana’s attacks, the blade flaring blue-white each time axe and bloodblade hammered uselessly against its dweomered steel.
“You should not have come…” the captain hissed, directing his attention to Chriani as Dargana shifted left to reposition herself. “You are doomed here, Ilmari.” He spun to switch blades, driving into Chriani with his sword now, pushing him back along the platform with the force of each blow.
Chriani remembered when Taelendar and the others had fallen. He remembered Farenna on his knees beside her, mourning with an anguish that had torn at him even to watch it. There had been no falseness in the captain’s pain for the loss of his warriors. No artifice in the anger that demanded vengeance, but the cult magic had been in him even then. Too deep to touch, too deep to see.
“They’re coming,” Dargana called. Chriani risked a glance downward, saw that their fight had been observed. The sentries on the terraces above the well of shadow were running.
“They come for you!” Farenna screamed. “You will be sacrificed like all nonbelievers!”
Chriani pressed in hard, managed to catch the captain’s shoulder with one of his knives but felt it glance off the shirt of black chain. Farenna’s voice carried a pain he didn’t recognize. The antithesis of the deadly silence that all Ilvani carried into combat. As if something was breaking in him, he gave voice to each new strike, shouted out in rage when Dargana’s bloodblade caught him below his mail, tearing a bloody swath through leather and flesh.
Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!
From the forest, Chriani remembered the Ilvani breaking the silence of that first deadly chase. Driven to call his name.
Movement sounded out around them, the ropes that anchored the platform shivering.
“Half-blood, go!” Dargana was shifting, trying to catch Farenna again on his wounded side, but the captain spun to hold her off. “Use your ring. I’ll hold them here.”
Chriani felt the black ring at his finger, all but forgotten there. He focused its power with a thought, watched the shadow that cloaked them all shimmer beneath an additional layer of darkness as he vanished from sight. He didn’t run, though. Just dropped around and under a desperate sword strike as Farenna lashed out, swinging wide in a way that told Chriani the captain could still hear him. The momentary distraction was all he needed, though.
He drove into Farenna with both knives, feeling their steel punch through leather and bone. The Ilvani captain screamed as Chriani shifted back into view, the captain’s blazing eyes finding his. Dargana was behind him, hacking in at Farenna’s neck, but he got his shoulder up to take the brunt of her axe blow. Chriani was in too close, momentarily slowed as he tore his knives out to prepare for Farenna’s counterstrike.
The Ilvani captain turned instead, driving forward with all the strength left in him. The backsword lanced out, an extension of his arm. Its blue light burned brightly as it took Dargana through the stomach.
It happened slowly, as it always did.
Chriani saw the look of shock and pain on the exile’s face as she was lurched off her feet, lifted from the ground by the force of Farenna’s thrust as it pushed out through her back. Then he pulled free, the sword slipping from her on a trail of blood as she collapsed to the ground.
Chriani couldn’t move as Farenna wheeled on him, sensing himself open. Knowing there was nothing he could do in that moment to stop the strike that would kill him. But Farenna only screamed again, his golden eyes burning with a molten light.
“Do you understand now Ilmari? Do you feel now what it means to lose what you were? To watch them die?”
Chriani screamed. No words. He was moving again, flailing away at Farenna with a frenzied series of knife strikes. He couldn’t think, didn’t care that his voice would be bringing the sentries down on them even faster. He shifted as he attacked, lashing out at Farenna’s wounded right side, but the captain’s blade danced with the same lethal precision in his left hand.
“You should have been killed at the first sight of the temple! You will be fed to the shadow well and your spirit consumed, half-blood. My orders…”
Farenna faltered. Chriani saw it, drove in to sink one knife into his side. The captain screamed in response, hammered out with an elbow that drove Chriani back, tearing the knife from his hand.
“My orders…” Farenna stumbled back. He was shaking suddenly, Chriani pushing in again, but the backsword came up to block him. No counterstrike, though.
Chriani stumbled back, knowing he had time to use the ring
.
He didn’t. He felt the understanding shift into place in his mind.
In the forest, he had pulled Farenna down at the sight of Taelendar turning. He had heard the captain’s head hit the ground, had seen the blood at his temple as he rose, shaking.
He should have been triggered then. Farenna and Taelendar alike, overwhelmed by the unseen power that coursed through them when the cult’s tracking magic was exposed. The moment when they realized what they were, when they embraced the dark instruction the lóechari had placed within them.
In the second council. I have ridden to the Ghostwood more than once, Farenna said. The cult had gotten to him and then burned the memory of their corruption away, but the captain had held their power off. Had fought back against that dark magic with a strength of will that Chriani could barely comprehend.
“Farenna…” He fought to focus his thoughts, his voice. “This isn’t you. You have to fight it. You have to remember…”
Footsteps rang out loud from below them, sentries racing along adjacent platforms. Preparing to climb.
Farenna drove in with two sweeping blows, Chriani backpedaling away from both of them. The captain was slowing, Chriani’s other knife still buried to the hilt in his stomach. A swath of blood was trailing behind him across the wood of the platform floor as he pressed in.
“Veassen is a fool hiding behind greater fools… the heir of the exile’s blade, an Ilmari stripling…”
“Farenna, fight this. Remember who you are.”
“The blade belongs to Caradar… The exile king will carry it once more…”
“They did this to you,” Chriani shouted. “They captured you on patrol. They brought you here. When you led us in, you were leading us back, but you kept us away from their patrols because you knew where to look for them…”
“You will be sacrificed to shadow!” Farenna screamed. “Like all nonbelievers. We follow the Myllasir to the destiny of the Ilvanghlira.”
The Ilvani captain was injured. Dying, Chriani knew. But still fast enough. He feinted left, Chriani not seeing it until he was already driving in. The backsword came up and across, its razor edge catching Chriani’s leg and cutting almost to the bone. The blade’s steel flashed blue, the pain lancing white-hot from his leg to his back.
Chriani felt himself fall.
Dargana was still breathing. He noticed it in the slowness of the moment as he hit the platform hard, felt his own breath leave him.
Farenna stood over him. Teeth set against the pain, the captain drew Chriani’s long-knife from his stomach. A gout of blood followed as he dropped it to the floor.
“Fight it, Farenna…” Another layer of shadow was shifting across Chriani’s vision. He tried to focus, tried to will the power of the black ring to life, but the pain at his leg made even that much thought impossible. He tried to press down to stop the flow of blood, but his hands were numb.
“This is the destiny of the Ilvanghlira…” Farenna whispered the words uncertainly, as if trying to make sense of them. “The beginnings of forgotten fate…”
“The fate of the Ilvani is to live, Farenna. You said it yourself.” Chriani fought desperately to clear his mind, to seek out the memory of the council floor. “The war that starts with this cult ends everything, but that isn’t what the Ilvani want. It isn’t what you need.”
Farenna blinked. For just an instant, through the haze of pain that rose in time with his pounding heart, Chriani thought he saw the golden light in the captain’s eyes flicker like a dying fire.
In war, we find the strength of life, but our lives are more than war, Farenna had said. What we need is the wisdom after long centuries to see this.”
“The war the cult starts will never end. The Ilmar first. Then Calalerean against Laneldenar. Then the rest of Muiraìden. Then where does it stop?”
The platform shuddered as three sentries pulled themselves up along the trailing ropes at its shattered edge. Chriani heard still more movement around him, a steady pulse of sound that he realized was countless rope bridges vibrating under the weight of running footsteps.
The three Ilvani pressed in with long-knives drawn, the golden light blazing in their eyes. Their faces were the grim masks of rage and defiance Chriani had seen before, matching Farenna’s expression as he stepped toward them, limping.
Then the captain’s blade came up. A blur of red and blue-white. The three Ilvani died, no chance to show the surprise they must have felt as Farenna cut them down.
The captain screamed. The sword shook in his hand as he collapsed to the platform floor, convulsing. The light of gold was back in his eyes, and Chriani’s realization came in a moment of horror. He was too distracted, too unfocused to think of it. He had succeeded in turning Farenna, in digging deep to find the spirit and strength in the warrior that could counter the magic that had corrupted him. And in so doing, Chriani had killed the captain with the surety of a knife in the heart.
Farenna had failed in his mission and the dark pledge he had forgotten. It was over.
The magic of the coins was surging in the captain, choking off the pulse of life in him. But with a shout whose strength Chriani could feel, Farenna pushed himself up, staggered to his feet. He locked his arms against the spasms that were forcing them to the side, sword shaking in his hands as if his grip on it would keep the coins from appearing in his palms.
Three more Ilvani appeared, Chriani not seeing where they’d come from. They pushed in toward him as if they were afraid he might run.
“Friend Chriani…” Farenna whispered. His dark eyes were wet, blood at his lips. “Do not fail…”
He ran for the three Ilvani, surging past Chriani to angle himself toward the platform’s edge. They stared for an instant too long, as if they instinctively sensed the magic that bound Farenna to them, unable to comprehend the reality of him turning against them.
He was injured, close to dying, but the captain moved with all the grace that had led Chriani and Dargana through the forest and into the trees. He let his arms go wide, the sword gripped tight in his left hand, as he struck with all the power that had dropped three cultists in a heartbeat. He took knives in the shoulder and stomach as he drove forward. It didn’t slow him.
The sentries made a hiss of alarm as they stumbled back beneath the force and fury of Farenna’s attack. Then they were gone.
Chriani was at the edge of the platform, couldn’t remember moving. He reached out as if he was trying to grab for Farenna, hoping that the captain had managed to hang on somehow. Hoping he’d see him clinging to the edge with a grim smile, waiting for Chriani’s hand.
Instead, he saw all the Ilvani hit the well of shadow below. Their bodies dissolved within a pulse of black flame, Farenna claimed last. He saw the blue light of the captain’s sword flare and die, then saw its steel shatter as it was consumed. A pulse of thunder shook the platform like it might be a sailboat in a storm wind, a wave of sound and force and shadow that rose and swirled around Chriani and wouldn’t stop.
Dargana was breathing.
Chriani was on his feet, couldn’t remember standing.
It was pitch black around him, his sight extending barely two paces to all sides. The storm of shadow was a shrieking gale as he dropped to Dargana’s side, saw her eyes open. The wound at her stomach was barely bleeding, but the tremor of blood-shock was pushing through her, a red-black stain at her lips.
“Go…” she whispered.
Chriani lifted her carefully. He slung her across his shoulder, wrapped his arm around her tight. He had no awareness of how much she weighed, his body moving of its own accord, fed by a strength he couldn’t name.
If he’d had healing, he could have saved her. The taste of a simple draught at her lips and he would watch the blood slow where it spilled from her, watch her wounds knit closed. But that magic was a world away now.
He used the only magic he did have, forcing his will into the black ring. Feeling the shadow cloak him, watching it cloak Dar
gana where he held her tight.
This wasn’t about saving her. It was about keeping her safe, keeping her from the cult and its madness until the end.
He could feel the movement of the platform as he hit a rotting ladder, sensing it lurch beneath his weight and Dargana’s but hold fast. He could feel the sentries around him but couldn’t see them. Knew that meant they couldn’t see him.
He didn’t look back as he climbed.
CHRIANI HAD NO MEMORY of the route he took. Couldn’t see how far up he’d come when he fell to his knees finally on the wet planks of a narrow platform edged by a low wall, hemmed in by close-growing branches and a screen of leaves.
He was thinking of Barien, confusion twisting through his mind as he wondered why he was carrying the hulking sergeant on his back. He wondered why his body felt so light. He thought of the road to Elalantar, Barien bleeding out, fighting the blood-shock as he waited for his guards to be healed. Then Chriani was there on that road and it was Barien dying, bleeding out on grey grass that was the stone floor of the archives quarter in the Bastion, where the sergeant had fallen.
He felt the pain of that night, slipping out from the shadow where it hid. Felt the anguish of knowing Barien was dying, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He fought through the shadow in his mind. He reminded himself where he was, told himself that this was the blood-shock coming for him. He was on the rotting platform again. Dargana was at his shoulder as he forced himself forward, the pain in his leg flaring to a white light behind his eyes, threatening to send him down. He fought it, pushed into the shelter of the wall and the screen of leaves before he carefully, gently, let Dargana down to the ground.
The shadow cloaked them still. The trunk of the tree around which the platform wrapped couldn’t have been more than four paces away, but Chriani saw nothing but darkness in all directions. Dargana looked up at him, her eyes clearer than they had been. He was trying to speak, trying to find the words to tell her he was sorry, but he heard her voice instead.
Three Coins for Confession Page 36