Three Coins for Confession (20 page)

“It’s safe,” was all Chriani said. All he could say.

Ashlund was up from the table like a shot, his chair scraping
stone as it pushed out behind him. “Your prince orders you…” he snarled, but
Chanist raised a hand to stop him.

“Master Chriani has my leave to keep his own counsel in this
matter if that is his wish. You do not need to know my reasons, captain.”

Ashlund nodded, but the fury in his eyes didn’t fade. Chriani
felt himself scoured by it, set his gaze on Chanist to try to refocus.

“This intelligence is why you returned to Rheran,” the prince
said to him. “To speak these things directly to me.”

“Yes, my lord prince.” An easy lie. Chriani nodded to Milyan’s
satchel at the far end of the table. “The reports from Magus Milyan concern
magic used by the Ilvani in their attack against me. However, Captain Rhuddry
expressed skepticism as to the goals of the Valnirata. I thus decided to return
to Rheran myself to report.”

“Do so now, and quickly.”

Chriani told the story, beginning with the attack in the forest
that had begun it. Sergeant Thelaur’s death and the black arrow. The deep wood
and the finding of the dark shrine. The events in the war-mages’ pavilion. The
coins. Even as he was speaking, he sensed the holes in the story left by his
now-unspoken assumptions about why the Ilvani had targeted him. Chief among
those was why he had felt compelled to report to Chanist personally, Ashlund’s
expression and Kathlan’s alike telling him they were wondering. Chriani hoped
that Chanist not caring would cover it in the end.

The prince high turned his attention to Dargana when Chriani’s
story was done. “You talked of Calalerean controlling magic of the exile
lands,” he said. No sense given of whether the things Chriani said had meant
anything to him. “What manner of spellcraft have they seized? And what power do
they claim by it?”

“Not spellcraft. Rites older than spell magic. Lóech arnala irch
niir. Three coins for confession. What Chriani talked of seeing in the
Greatwood. In the city tonight. Your guards will find coins on some of the
Valnirata dead. Your mages need to see them.”

The chill that had settled in Chriani pushed deep along his back,
digging in like his spine was being stitched up tight. He shivered, tried to
hide it.

“The rites of confession…” Dargana continued, but Chanist cut her
off with a wave of his hand.

“I know the Ilvani lore as well as anyone. The rites of
confession are superstition. Golden warriors bound by magic and dark oaths,
able to see and hear a half-world away. Children’s stories.”

“If you know Ilvani lore, you should know we have no stories,
prince. Only legends once true, and long memories. Longer than all the life and
history of the Ilmar. The warriors of confession were real. The
lóechari
.
The rites of confession were spoken before the first Ilmari crawled over the
peaks of Ursumma and out of the Black Fens, but were lost by the time the
Migration Wars were done. The Calala seek to rebuild that lost past, and
they’ll use the power of the rites to do it. The unity of the Migration Wars.
The bloodshed of the Incursions. And all the Ilmari dead that will come with
it.”

“You hold perhaps too high an opinion of your people’s prowess of
magic, exile.” Chanist showed no more than a mild thoughtfulness toward the
doom wrapped up in Dargana’s tale. He mixed wine and water in two goblets,
pushed them carefully across the table toward Chriani and Kathlan.

“You’ll change your story when you’ve seen that magic, prince. I
have. The Calala have rebirthed a cult that’s been less than a memory for a
hundred generations. They use ritual magic to bind warriors to the Ilvani cause
and specific missions. If those warriors fail in their missions, they die.”

“Making it sound rather like the Valnirata are doing our job for
us.”

“Except that the rites allow shared knowledge,” Dargana said, ignoring
Chanist’s thin smile. “Those bound by the power of the coins can share thought
and memory while their minds are at rest. No legend, prince. The Ilvani that
attacked in the city tonight had knowledge of Chriani but had never seen him
before. They knew where to find him, using magic attuned to his life and
blood.”

“Master Chriani is hardly a legend among the Valnirata,” Chanist
said, dismissive. “How much of his life and blood do you suspect the Ilvani
have access to?”

Dargana’s gazed shifted to Chriani. Her dark look softened, a
sense of misgiving there that seemed entirely out of place. A flicker of
something like guilt flashed in the exile’s dark eyes, Chriani finding it a
wholly unnatural look.

“When Chriani escaped the Ghostwood,” she said to Chanist. “When
I let him go. He left something behind.”

Her eyes shifted down to Chriani’s hand on the table, the full
complement of fingers there. Chriani felt the familiar itch rise against the
tremor of cold still pushing through him. He squeezed his hand shut, saw
Chanist watching.

It was quite literally the last thing Chriani had ever expected
to think about. “How did the Ilvani get hold of my finger?” he asked. “For that
matter, how did they know whose it was?”

“Abrindra,” Dargana said, and Chriani felt a vague recollection
of the name from the frantic flight he and Lauresa had made across the exile
lands. He remembered riding behind Dargana’s second, then nearly dying at his
hands before Valnirata griffon riders had encroached on the Ghostwood and attacked.

“He kept the finger,” Chriani said.

Dargana nodded. “As a token. To go along with a promise to kill
you one day for bringing the gavaleria down on us. The Calala captured and
tortured him, though. They killed him before he had the chance.”

“Why would he have any reason to tell them it was mine? And why
would the Calala care?”

“Because Abrindra told them you were the Ilmari who carried
Caradar’s bloodblade, stolen from Chanist, who stole it from the exile king
before.”

“Which brings us here.” Prince Chanist’s voice carried a
thoughtful tone, his blue eyes bright. He had taken in everything that had been
said with no hint of a reaction, but Chriani felt the full weight of the
prince’s focus and attention. “Or which brings Chriani here, at least. Your presence,
exile, requires a bit more explanation still.”

Dargana smiled again. She drained her goblet, then slid it down
the table to stop in front of the prince high. He poured for her, wine
unwatered. Ashlund slid it back to Dargana, stiffly.

The exile sipped slowly. “Elalantari red. From the islands.”

“You have an excellent palate,” Chanist said. “Istilnean, in
fact. The princess high’s family has vineyards there.”

“The vines stolen from the Ilvani, along with the islands’
names.”

“As you wish. Your story, please.”

The exile pushed her chair back to stand, stepping away from the
prince. She looked down to the maps on the table. Ashlund responded by shifting
in his own chair, but he stayed seated.

“When the Calala crossed north into Crithnalerean,” Dargana said,
“we fought them. I fought them alone when none from my war-band were left. Then
I fled to Laneldenar when the fight was lost. I fell in there with a faction
that seeks peace with the Ilmari. They sent me here to talk to you, prince.”

The crackling of the fire was the only sound for a long while.
Chanist’s face, a mask through all the talk of frontier attacks and cult magic,
showed genuine surprise. Ashlund’s reaction was more direct.

“Speaking as a captain of the prince’s guard and responsible for
the security of the Bastion and Rheran, allow me to invite you to fuck
yourself, Ilvani.”

“Captain…” In Chanist’s voice, Chriani heard the weariness again.
Ashlund seemed to hear it too, taking advantage of it to press.

“I beg forgiveness, my lord prince, but this tale is beyond
insult. I don’t know what game this one plays…”

“My game is yours for the asking, warrior,” Dargana said sharply.
“The Ilvani of Laneldenar recognize the danger in Calalerean’s quest for
ancient magic. They want to avoid the total war across the Ilmar that too many
others want. As do I.”

Ashlund laughed. “If war comes again to the Ilmar…”

“You’ll be the first one I kill, laóith, as a promise. Up till
then, these games of war that you and the Valnirata play are fun enough. Even
in the Crithnalerean, I’ve killed my share of Brandishear rangers. You’ve
probably done your best to kill friends of mine. But I came to understand a
while back that total war means the Greatwood destroyed. And even if the Calala
turn Brandishear to one endless charnel field before the last of them fall,
it’s not a price I’ll pay.”

Dargana didn’t need to look to him for Chriani to know who she
was speaking of. He had made that plea to her in the Ghostwood. One last,
desperate chance to save Lauresa. One chance to stop the war that Chanist had
meant to start.

“The Ilvani in Laneldenar want to meet with representatives of
the Ilmari,” Dargana said. “In secret. No word to get out to Calalerean. Too
many things that might go wrong. They want envoys from Brandishear and Aerach,
east and west. I’m to take the envoys to a meeting across the Hunthad in
Aerach.”

Ashlund seemed dangerously close to the point where his blood
would kill him before any Ilvani had the chance. His face was fire-red, his
knuckles white where his hands were flat against the table. Dargana ignored him
as she nodded deep to Chanist. The acknowledgement of station and respect. The
gesture was awkwardly done, but Chriani felt how much effort it had taken her.

“I offer you my service, prince,” the exile said. “Now be smart
enough to take it.”

To Chriani, it felt as though the room was shifting around him.
He was a bystander, watching as others tilted through some complex game whose
moves he had seen before but never truly learned. Like all his other times in
the throne room, he watched while those with power conducted the rituals that
power demands. It had never been his game, though. Never his fight.

But that was changing, it seemed.

Ashlund was the one to break the silence, speaking through
clenched teeth. “If your mission is to Aerach, why not begin it there? Take
your children’s tale to Prince Vishod and see how long an interrogation among
his war-mages it takes to pull the truth from you.”

“Because I knew Chriani,” Dargana said. “And I knew that he gave
me access and approach to the Prince High Chanist. As I knew that Chanist could
bring Vishod to this undertaking, and because when Chanist does so, Chriani
will lead the envoy of Brandishear. I came for him.”

Ashlund’s expression held a furious darkness as it was, but at
Dargana’s words, that darkness pushed to a place Chriani had never seen before.
Under other circumstances, he would have tried to enjoy it, but he was
distracted now by too many things shifting past him like fast-moving targets.
No way to focus in on them, no way to understand. Not without asking questions
of Dargana that he couldn’t ask in front of the prince high. Saying things in
front of Kathlan he couldn’t say.

“How did you get to Brandishear?” Chanist asked. His voice
carried no real interest in the question, which made Chriani assume he might
simply be trying to keep Ashlund silent for the sake of the captain’s health.

“I was ordered from Laneldenar to work my way into Calalerean.
Find the forces seeking Chriani and follow them.”

“And the Calala Ilvani accepted you?”

“As they accept hundreds of the Crithnala. Calalerean prepares
for war. They’ll take any blades they can, though they limit entrance to their
cult to their own warriors for now. I pursued the lóechari force that entered
Rheran tonight, all of us passing over the dockside gates. Your patrols pass at
intervals far too regular.”

“At long last,” Ashlund snarled, “a part of this tale I believe.
You did enter the city with the Valnirata tonight, because you’re one of them.
And so, caught and cornered, you throw yourself on the weakness of this
one…” — the captain jerked a massive fist at Chriani —
“…to walk you past the noose. Have him stand for you when you ask for a
Brandishear honor guard to escort you back to your war-band, laughing every
step of the way!”

As if she knew it would make Ashlund’s anger worse, Dargana
stayed cool by contrast. “The leaders of the war-band that struck tonight knew
of the failed attack against Chriani in the forest the moment he turned it
back. They knew he was riding north. They knew this because of the magic they
track him with. The magic of the coins, linking every Ilvani bound by the rites
of confession.”

“Why not attack him on the road, then?” Ashlund said, a note of
triumph in his voice as if he’d caught Dargana in a lie.

“Because a dozen riders moving fast along the trade road will be
noticed, even by dark. A dozen entering the city among your merchant wains are
all but invisible.”

“But you followed him along that trade road, or you never would
have found him here!”

“No. They didn’t.”

Dargana reached into her pocket, Ashlund tensing, two steps away.
She moved slowly, kept her other hand on the table. Carefully, she set out the
Ilvani coins she’d claimed on the rooftop, the talisman beside them. Its stone
pulsed blood-red in a steady rhythm.

At Chriani’s side, Kathlan made the moonsign, Ashlund following
her. The prince high and Chriani sat silent, but Chriani alone could feel the
steady pulse of the hunter’s heart in his head. Recognizing it as the beating
of his own heart.

“You’ll want your mages to look at these,” Dargana said to
Chanist. “The magic of the cult connects the minds of those who take the rites.
Binds their memories, allows intelligence to be spread and shared between them.
As the cult’s power spreads throughout Calalerean, Laneldenar and Brandishear
and Aerach alike will be exposed…”