Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Kathlan.

  The thought came to him unbidden. The question and the answer, the same. Kathlan was what was left to him, because Kathlan had been all there ever was.

  He wished he’d known it sooner.

  Kathlan was all that was left to him, but all he could do now was make sure she was safe. Make sure that the worst of all the Ilmar’s futures never came to pass.

  The silver sphere drifted through a dense screen of branches again, Chriani feeling the same sense of unease as they turned to shadows and passed through him. He shuddered with the sensation, felt himself slip down, half-stumbling as he tried to hold on. He was next to Tician, his healed leg touching hers. Blood came away from his leather, darkening the stains on her leggings as he tried to shift away.

  Her fingers were long and smooth, Chriani not noticing them before. Not so much as a tremor in them, though she’d had her hands held out before her all this time. He remembered the Ilvani sentry dying so quickly that he hadn’t had time to realize it. He knew how fast those hands could move.

  He would have to be faster.

  “The mercenary who came for the princess,” Chriani said quietly. “The events in Rheran, and along the Clearwater Way. What was his name?” It was something he had wanted to know for so long now, but had never thought to have a chance to ask.

  Tician hesitated. “Valoch.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  Chriani was silent a moment, his eyes on Tician’s. Closer to her now.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. Fate works its way through all of us. We don’t wait for it to find us, for it waits for us in the end.”

  When Chriani had gone after Lauresa, there had been no hesitation in him. No sense of waiting for fate to find him. He had chosen his path with a clarity he had never known before, had put his life on the line and nearly paid with it. Telling himself along the full length of that winter road from Rheran and back again that Lauresa was worth that price.

  He hadn’t been wrong about that. Not exactly. But he remembered something now, felt the emotion as raw as it had been in those first days of his return to the Bastion. He remembered understanding that if he had died on that path, he would have lost something whose worth he’d never truly known. The value of his own life. Something that had come to him only after the darkness of those days had overwhelmed him. Left him broken and made whole once more.

  Kathlan. He felt her in his mind now. Felt her touch, tasted her scent as if she might be standing behind him.

  Lauresa was a past that had been taken from him. A thing that might have been but wasn’t. Chriani had waited for that fate to find him, had chosen to close his eyes rather than watch it pass him by. On the winter road from Rheran, he had reached back for that lost thread, tried to touch it one last time, because it had been the easiest thing in the world. But in his heart, he had always known he was looking backward. Had always known he’d need to look forward, to turn for home before that journey was done, because Lauresa was a past already lost.

  Kathlan was a future he had never expected to see. That was something else.

  He looked down to see movement below and around them, sentries passing each other along what appeared to be one of the lower platform tiers. The black tree was somewhere behind them. There was no sound except Tician’s breathing, close to his ear.

  She couldn’t see the movement below them. Just shadow to her Ilmari eyes.

  As fast as Chriani moved, she almost stopped him. Would have stopped him if she hadn’t had her hands locked together, but he understood how that gave him the advantage he needed.

  She had forced her hands together when she sealed the silver sphere against the space outside. She had kept them together all the time since, as she controlled the sphere’s movement. Chriani brought his arms up between her arms now, driving them hard to the side to knock her hands apart and free.

  He felt the lurch as the sphere tumbled. Silver light rippled before him as the portal cracked open. Then he pitched himself forward to fall through it and into open air beyond.

  CHRIANI HALF-EXPECTED the assassin to follow him. He expected to feel a knife in his back or hear her scream some oath of vengeance, but there was only silence in his wake as he fell. He hit the platform hard, rolled with it as best he could. He felt the air knocked from his lungs regardless, felt a sharp point of pain at his ankle as it twisted beneath him.

  He slid to a stop along wet wood, the scent of mold sharp in his senses. He slipped the black ring off his finger, fumbled within his belt and hid it there beside the plain steel band. At the same time, he pulled the hunter’s heart from its pocket and plucked the golden badge from its space. He felt the warmth of the disk as he threw it off the platform, watched it disappear into shadow below. The talisman flared bright for a moment in his hand before he hurled it away. The hiss of alarm sounded out around him as he rose to his knees.

  “Let me confess!”

  Footsteps pressed in, six Ilvani there. He heard more moving behind them, heard the creak of the adjacent bridges as they closed. A blaze of gold filled the shadows around him, the lóechari’s eyes flashing bright.

  “I was a soldier for the Ilmari!” Chriani shouted it in Ilvalantar, kept his empty hands out to his side. “I rode with the Crithnalerean and the Laneldenari.” The closest cultist lashed out at him, forcing him to roll back to evade his knife. “I came to the temple to join you. I know intelligence of Brandishear and Aerach, of the Laneldenari and the Order of Uissa. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Hold!”

  A voice from the edge of the platform rang out with a tone of absolute authority. A tall Ilvani warrior stepped forward, his appearance and armor uniformly pale, the color of spoiled milk. All but the golden eyes, blazing unnaturally bright.

  He stepped in close, set the backsword in his hand to Chriani’s throat. Chriani met his gaze, wouldn’t look away.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” he said again. “Let me confess.”

  The warrior stepped back to lash out with his foot, catching Chriani in the stomach. He took the full force of the blow, felt ribs crack as it laid him out. Then hands were on him, lifting him roughly to his feet.

  He looked up but saw no sign of the silver sphere, as he knew he wouldn’t. He thought he could feel Tician’s presence, though. Could feel her cold gaze on him as the lóechari dragged him off into the darkness.

  He was beaten as they half-pulled, half-carried him down through a labyrinth of terraces and bridges. Chriani fought to stay on his feet as he ran. They had lashed his wrists tightly together with silk ropes, one of the Ilvani pulling on the trailing lead as if it was a leash. Someone had seized Dargana’s bloodblade from his belt, the pale Ilvani holding it now where he sprinted at the head of the company.

  Through the haze of pain that filled his head, flaring each time he felt a fist across his shoulders, the flat of a blade against the back of his legs, Chriani saw the pale Ilvani studying the bloodblade. Reading the marks that etched its steel. More than once, he turned back to Chriani to assess the war-mark at his shoulder, a dark look in his golden eyes.

  Chriani remembered how Dargana had reacted when she first saw a narneth móir in his hands. Tell me where and how you obtained it that I might slay every laóith and half-blood hand to have touched it since, and I may let you die quickly. He tried to meet the Ilvani’s gaze, defiant. Conscious of wanting to push the anger as much as he could. Conscious of the fact that pushing it too far might get him killed.

  They hadn’t found the rings in their hidden pockets within his belt. They had searched him too quickly, had used spellcraft to seek for magic on him, but they had missed the gold foil and what was hidden within it. It was the first of the many turns of fortune Chriani would need if he was to survive long enough to do what he needed to do.

  He felt the black well before he saw it. The same stomach-turning sensation he’d felt when they watched the rite.
It was the premonition of decay, like the instant of knowing that wine had soured even before its taste had settled on the tongue. Except it wasn’t an instant, but an ongoing churning revulsion that rooted in his stomach and spread through every limb.

  He nearly retched as the Ilvani dragged him over the white stair to the black terraces beyond. The storm of shadow could be felt here as well as seen, pouring across him like a scalding rain. It was in his eyes, in his lungs as he fought to breathe. He had to focus to see through it, catching sight of Ilvani standing in short rows between the floating globes of mage-light. More lóechari were shifting in from behind them. Sentries called in from across Markura, seemingly. Coming to witness Chriani’s capture and whatever would follow it.

  He was dragged to a halt, the pale Ilvani turning back to stop beside him. A kick to the back of Chriani’s leg sent him to his knees. He took it in silence, looked up to the Ilvani’s molten gaze.

  “Let me…”

  A steel-hard blow took him across the back of the head. Chriani felt himself slip down into shadow, felt the warmth of the platform beneath him. He thought he remembered trying to call out again, and another storm of pain descending.

  No words, half-blood. Words only get in the way.

  The voice in his mind spoke one of the old Ilvani tongues. But as with Veassen, the words were clear to him, their understanding defined by the mental link across which they moved. Chriani blinked his eyes open but still saw only shadow. He had to force himself upright for the haze to lift.

  The sorcerer in black was pacing around him, all the Ilvani sentries except the pale captain having shifted back. They all stared in silence, Chriani feeling the weight of their gaze like an itch that rose even above the pain of the blows he had endured.

  He tasted blood at his lips, did his best to not make any sign that he was trying to speak again. He focused.

  Let me confess…

  The sorcerer’s thoughts cut through his, punching into his mind like an attack. I already know your plea, half-blood. I heard it on the terrace above, as I saw you struck down when you spoke it. I am master of this place, and keeper of the coins of the confessor.

  Viranar, he thought. Focusing on the name Tician had given him while he pushed all thought of the assassin from his mind. He could only hope she hadn’t been lying.

  The dark sorcerer nodded. You know far too many things that an Ilmari should not. Are you a mystery meant to be solved? A puzzle to be broken apart in the hope of understanding how it fits together?

  I’m an heir of the Valnirata from my father, and wanted for treason in Aerach and Brandishear alike. Chriani let the truth of his words resonate in his mind, drawing on all the power and pain of what had happened. He let the memory of Kathlan push through him, let the sorrow of her in his heart frame each word. I lost everything once dear to me. I joined the Laneldenari, but they’re dead. But through them, I know what this place is, and now I’ve seen its power. I want to be one of you. Please.

  Chriani felt a ripple of reaction shift through the sentries around him. He understood that whatever link of memory the lóechari shared through their rites, his thoughts in the mind of the sorcerer Viranar were filtering through to everyone. He fought to feed them his anger, had to dig deep beneath the fear to find it.

  Viranar whispered an incantation, her voice at Chriani’s ear strangely hollow compared to her thoughts in his mind. A tingling rose at the back of his neck, the pulse of dweomer twisting through him. Truth magic, he guessed.

  The sorcerer’s thoughts shifted at a level below words. Waiting for him. Curious.

  I know things, Chriani said. I was a ranger of Brandishear. I had contact with guards under the duke in Teillai, and I know the useless games that the princes play for power, Chanist and Vishod. I was in a war-council in Sylonna. I know Laedda and Contáedar, and what they know of the lóechari, and what they don’t yet know. I’ll tell it all to you.

  Viranar didn’t move, but Chriani felt a command slip out from her to the pale Ilvani at his side. A name hung unspoken there. Raecla. He felt a nod from the captain to two sentries on either side of him.

  Chriani was pulled to his feet, a wave of nausea flowing through him to follow the pain at his neck and back. His hands were still tied, aching where the circulation had been cut off. He fought to move his stiff fingers as the dark sorcerer paced away, feeling himself pushed roughly forward to follow her.

  Her destination was the pillar of grey stone. She stepped onto the dais where the eight Ilvani had taken the rite, Chriani three steps behind her. He heard footsteps following that he was sure marked the pale captain, Raecla. He didn’t turn back to confirm it. He stumbled as he reached the pillar, saw its fractured lines gleaming with an oily light. He saw the movement shifting within it. Realized up close that it wasn’t a reflection as he’d first thought.

  Looking beyond the platform’s edge, it was as though he could see down beneath the surface of the world itself. The well of shadow was a surging whirlpool of dark magic, crusted to solid form like the skim of ice that would form over even fast-flowing water if the cold was sharp enough. As from the platform above, he saw the great roots of the black tree twist and plunge downward into darkness. But seen up close, he could make out the white rot that shot through those roots, and which sent pale veins coursing up the tree’s black bark and twisted branches.

  So tell me. Viranar’s voice shivered with a seductive quality that made Chriani tremble. Not with any desire of the body, but of the mind. He felt her pressing against his thoughts to dull their frantic thrashing, like another’s hand soothing the sting of a burn with a cool salve.

  Promise me first. Let me take the confession. Let me forget.

  He let the pain of his mind take him again. He remembered Kathlan’s face in the tent when he’d told her the truth, remembered the pain of her voice driving into him like a dull blade. The memory of her face as she’d turned away from him, the ache at his chest as he’d ridden away into the Greatwood. Away from everything his life had been.

  No Ilmari has ever taken the rites of confession.

  I’m Halobrelia. In his mind, Chriani was defiant. I belong here. I’m meant to be here.

  The dark touch of the well’s magic flared as if in response to Chriani’s thoughts, almost overwhelming him as Viranar paced before the pillar. In the new wave of nausea that coursed through him, he could feel all the Ilvani draw strength from the magic as it flared. The power coursed through Viranar even more strongly, Chriani seeing the fire at her hands, the light of her golden eyes pulsing beneath her skin now. At her neck, the three coins were blazing bright.

  With his hands bound, Chriani couldn’t raise them to make the moonsign, but his frantic fingers clawed the crescent shape across his stomach as he fought to stay standing. He let the fear flow through him, not caring that Viranar would feel it. His mind was memories of Barien suddenly, and how the warrior had always been dismissive of the Ilmari suspicion of spellcraft. He let himself remember learning with shock that Barien had channeled magic himself as Irdaign did, as one of the spell-singers of the Leisanmira.

  He told himself that if it had been Barien standing here instead of him, he would have been doing the same thing Chriani was doing. Making the same choice. The pain that came with those thoughts was raw still, the loss of the warrior’s presence like a butcher’s blade had cut part of Chriani’s life away. A wound that wouldn’t heal, wouldn’t ever close.

  “My name is Chriani. I’m the heir of the exile’s blade.”

  He needed to say it out loud to focus the words. He expected to be struck down, but there was only silence in response. The touch of Viranar’s mind to his quickened somehow. An intensity to her thought. A sudden storm of fear and hope, but wary.

  A command slipped out to Raecla behind him. As the pale captain stepped forward, his golden gaze burned into Chriani, malice and bloodlust shining even brighter in his eyes. But from his belt, the Ilvani pulled a familiar talisman. Chriani
saw the furious surprise in the pale face as the talisman’s bloodstone chip flared to a blood-red glow like the Darkmoon in a clear winter sky.

  Chriani noted the frantic pulse of that glow. Felt it echoed in the hammering of his heart.

  The shadow that wrapped the platform shifted. A shudder passed through the storm of darkness that swirled and rose around them, like the web of thought and mind that connected him to the lóechari was connected in turn to the shadow well itself. That shadow’s breath of decay wrapped tighter around him, the mage-light of the platform shimmering, but Chriani kept his gaze fixed tight to Viranar.

  They knew him now. Every single one of the lóechari felt and remembered the fatal pursuit in the forest, the failed attack in Rheran. The deadly storm of magic that had consumed them on the Hunthad. All of them had been there, all of them had fought and died and knew Chriani’s name through the power of the coins.

  We sought to claim you, and you came to us. The sorcerer’s voice shifted within the framework of her spell, its magic still reading him. You are a mystery within a mystery, half-blood.

  I came here because you can’t claim me. You tried and failed. I join you willingly, or not at all. But I need to understand my part in this.

  He let all the raw emotion of his heart and mind free, anchored by the understanding that everything he had been was gone. He was nothing to the Ilvani, nothing to the Ilmari. He felt that knowledge push past the shadow where the secrets were held, leaving no room for those secrets to seek the light.

  I don’t know what I am, he said. He felt Viranar recognize and accept his fear. I never knew what I was meant to be. But the Laneldenari told me. The heir of the exile’s blade. The one who’ll break the stalemate between Ilmari and Ilvani and change the balance of power in the Ilmar.

  Chriani waited, his heart still racing. The blood-red pulse of light shone out in the pale Ilvani’s hand.

  I brought you the exile’s blade. Chriani tried to force the thought toward Raecla. But that’s not enough.

  He felt the pale captain’s uncertainty. Felt the anger that masked it as he drew the bloodblade Chriani had carried. He felt Raecla’s reaction through the link that made his dark thoughts part of Chriani now, focusing on all the names and history he read in the symbols on the blade. Then those thoughts become Viranar’s as the captain reverently stepped toward her, bowing as he handed the dagger to her.