Three Coins for Confession (33 page)

“This is Sylonna.” Farenna’s voice from in front of him brought
Chriani’s thoughts back to sharp focus. “This is the nearest city of the Ilvani
to the Hunthad River. Nearest to the place where you were met.”

Though Farenna still spoke slowly, his Ilvalantar was shaped by
his accent, pushing the boundaries of familiarity. The word he spoke wasn’t
city.
Not exactly. The closest translation in Chriani’s mind was
forest-home,
but with a sense of connection like the two words were one. Not a paired
description, but a statement of a single concept, no boundary to break it.

He felt light-headed suddenly. Entranced by the vision before him
and unable to look away, even as he felt a weight in the Ilvani captain’s
words.
Knowing anything of one of the hidden cities of the Valnirata can get
a stranger to the Greatwood killed,
Dargana had said.

Chriani remembered the Ghostwood, where he and Lauresa had been
led by Dargana’s band. He remembered the rotting platforms clinging to the
limni there like some leprous shadow, anchored by fraying ropes and shot
through with uncounted years of decay. But even through that decay, he
remembered the ageless beauty that still clung to the ruins. The vague sense of
all the history that must once have stood there.

He remembered wondering what it all might have looked like once.
He knew now.

Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once,
his mother had told
him. But that had stopped mattering long ago to the generations raised on the
ancient history of the Migration Wars, and who had lived the more recent
history of the Incursions.

Chriani knew the Ilmar Ilvani who had turned away from their
forest kin. They were artisans and crafters, horse masters and foresters. Most
were skilled with bow and blade, though precious few of them ever took service
with the guard. Those who did were used as translators and loremasters,
mapmakers and scribes. Kept away from the patrols of the Greatwood, and from
the ranks of the war-mages for fear of the innate sorcery that all Valnirata
Ilvani possessed — at least so far as Ilmari superstition held.

The blood of his father flowed in Chriani’s veins. He had been
told the tales that all Ilmari children knew, and other tales from his mother
that his father had told her. He had met the exiles, had seen the ruins of the
Ghostwood. He had fought against the Ilvani of the forest, skirmishing with
their patrols for five months. He knew their ancient grace, respected their
deadly power, or so he thought.

He had told himself he understood this world.

He’d been wrong.

Along the curving road that marked the boundary of the
forest-home, other roads opened up at right angles, curving inward toward the
center of the circle like twisted spokes. Farenna turned the troop down one of
those roads, Chriani seeing other horses, other figures ahead. Ilvani moved and
ran along the white stones, even as they descended and climbed along rope
ladders twisting up into screens of overhanging branches.

As Farenna’s riders approached, the Ilvani of the city slowed.
Chriani saw them fall back against the edges of the road, then saw more of them
moving in from adjacent paths, a network of white stone trails crisscrossing
through the shadows. They stood without speaking, but he could hear unseen
voices calling out in an ethereal song that twisted around him and away on the
wind.

The Ilvani were waiting. They were watching him.

From out of the crowd, a dozen children slipped forward with no
command, running up as the horses stopped. Farenna slipped to the ground,
Chriani not waiting for an invitation to follow him. In his entire life, he had
never wanted a weapon in hand more, though he knew how utterly useless any
blade or bow would be against the crowd massing around him.

The Ilvani of the city wore a mix of fabric and leather, robes
and armor, tunics and leggings. The tones of their clothing were earth and
leaf, or dyed bright colors that seemed to pulse within the forest-home’s pale
light. They were dark or pale of complexion, hair braided or hanging free, eyes
of every color of gem and flower, faces clear or marked with pigments in
sweeping lines. No sense of sameness to them, except for the war-marks at all
their shoulders. All of those marks were visible, children and adults alike
either bare-chested, or wearing tunics or leather cut away to reveal the center
of those tight-spiraling knots of dark line.

Four of Farenna’s riders fell in to either side of Chriani,
staring coldly ahead. He glanced back, saw Dargana likewise flanked.

“Follow me,” Farenna said. He caught Chriani’s gaze, held it as
if he knew his thoughts. “You are the first Ilmari to set foot in Sylonna in
long generations. Do not be afraid.”

Chriani felt a dozen different responses he wanted to make, but
his mind couldn’t focus enough to shape any of them. He asked a question
instead. “Are we guests or prisoners?”

Farenna smiled, catching him by surprise. No malice in it,
though. “As long as you do not refuse our hospitality, friend Chriani, you will
have no need to find out.”

The area around the path Farenna led them on could have passed
for any Ilmari settlement overgrown by nature. Chriani saw stables where the
horses were led, heard more singing at the stalls of a leatherworkers’ adjacent
to it. He saw what looked like an apothecary’s shop, next to a wide bazaar at
which cloaks were on display in all the colors of nature. He saw what could
only have been a tavern on the platform above them, its edge crowded with
Ilvani looking down at him.

A broad stair loomed ahead, Farenna making for it. It shifted as
the Ilvani leader climbed, Chriani realizing its rungs were tightly woven rope
that looked barely able to hold a child’s weight. It carried all of them,
though, Chriani moving carefully as he climbed. The limni that the stairs
ascended was the largest tree he had ever seen, its bole as broad across as the
Bastion courtyard.

On the platforms hanging around that tree, the Ilvani had
gathered to watch Chriani’s approach, as below. Staring at him with a specific
intensity that seemed to go beyond the sheer novelty of his presence. There was
more uniformity to the dress of these figures, with most of them in gleaming
armor or robes, gold and silver at their necks and fingers. Nobility by their
look, if the Ilvani had such things. Military leaders perhaps, though they bore
no more sign of insignia or rank than Farenna or his riders had.

Chriani let his gaze pass across the Ilvani as he climbed.
Challenging them, not looking away. But at the feeling of the rope stairs
shivering like a boat twisting into the wind, he risked a look behind him. The
Ilvani that had watched him were stepping out behind the last sentries and
Dargana. Following them.

When he shifted his gaze back to the crowd, Chriani saw white
eyes staring sightlessly back at him.

A seer of the Laneldenari,
Dargana had said.
Blind
since birth, they say.

The Ilvani was silver in the tone of his shadowed skin, in his
robes, in the hair swept off his head and braided down his back. His hands were
laced together around a thin staff of gnarled wood, his milky eyes staring
without blinking. No sign of any pupil in them.

Veassen. That’s a name you need to remember.

As he met those white eyes, Chriani saw the seer nod to him. Then
he blinked and the face was lost within the crowd.

The stairs ended at a broad platform spreading into darkness.
Farenna continued straight on, Chriani following even as his escort shifted to
either side of him. Losing the tight formation that had brought him there. He
felt a closeness to the air, saw the familiar tone of the green mage-light
through the screen of leaves above him. They were inside an arched dome of dark
canvas, stretched over wooden ribs. The platform was encircled by it. Closed
off to the world outside.

A single tolling of a deep bell sounded out from somewhere.
Farenna stopped, Chriani a step behind him. A pulse of light washed out of the
shadow to either side, revealing a raised dais of dark wooden steps spreading
around a central platform a dozen strides across. Along the edges of that dais,
the Ilvani who had followed Chriani were moving in from the stairs, his escort
shifting past him now as Dargana stepped up beside him.

He stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. At his side,
Farenna turned and nodded.

“I will be here,” the captain said. “I will help you if I can.”

Too many questions were running through Chriani’s mind, but he
knew he would waste his time in asking them. He only nodded in return as
Farenna walked over to slip into the crowd, make his way up to the dais with
the others.

Standing still, alone with Dargana at the center of the
platform’s emptiness as the tiers filled, Chriani felt the exhaustion settle
across him again. He had never ridden so far, so fast, in his life. Pushed to
the limits of waking and endurance, even as the Ilvani rangers had barely shown
any sign of fatigue. He needed to move, he realized, worried that his legs
would seize up if he stood too long. He began to pace around the open space,
looking back to see Dargana following him.

In the crowd along the first tier of the dais, the blind seer was
watching him.

The Ilvani’s white eyes stared straight ahead, his staff held out
before him. Chriani hadn’t seen him walking in, didn’t know whether he’d needed
to be escorted. The other Ilvani were shifting around him as if the seer had
picked that spot and stopped, oblivious to the movement to all sides.

As he kept the seer at the corner of his eye, Chriani assessed
the faces of those others. They were watching him intently, meeting his gaze
openly as they filled the dais from edge to edge. The same anger was showing in
too many of their eyes.

He tried to assess this place he was in, tried to assess how the
unseen pieces of his own future were pressing down around him. But there was no
understanding here.

You must wait for your questions, friend Chriani,
Farenna
had said.
As we have waited for you.

A silence fell across the platform hall. Chriani paced back to
something like the center of the open space, Dargana stepping up to his side.
He was conscious of his bare feet slapping loudly on the wooden floor as a
voice sounded out from the crowd. The speaker was a tall Ilvani of autumn
brown, hair and skin a match to the robes he wore. He spoke one of the
Valnirata tongues — the distant source of the common Ilvalantar that
was different enough that Chriani couldn’t follow it. He felt certain that was
as intended. He was only a spectator here, meant to remain ignorant of what was
said. Dargana was at his ear, though, whispering a translation into Ilmari.

“That’s Laedda, master of Sylonna and speaker of this gathering
of elders. He names you as the Ilmari they call Chriani, of Brandishear and
Rheran. You should acknowledge it.”

Chriani nodded as he called out in Ilvalantar. “My mother was the
Ilmari. My father was of the Crithnalerean and House Halobrelia.”

The words came by instinct, and from a sense of defiance against
the wall of unseen animosity shifting around him. It wouldn’t have been news to
any of them, of course. The Valnirata could read the central glyphs of the
war-mark at his bare shoulder better than he could.

One of those Valnirata stepped closer. She was a tall and pale
warrior in gleaming green leather, a golden circlet set atop her head. Her
emerald eyes flashed with a dark indifference as she spoke.

“A child,” Dargana translated. “Even by the standards of the
Ilmari mongrels.” But before Chriani could respond, she broke off her whisper
to speak for herself. “This warrior you call a child has the ear of the
Brandishear prince. A personal relationship. He is hand-picked for this mission
of peace.”

From across the chamber, a whispered chorus rose to send a chill
up Chriani’s spine.

Ilvalachna…

It was the name the Ilvani had for Prince Chanist, inherited from
his father Goffree, fallen in the Incursions. The Ilvani Scourge, who had
destroyed Caradar the exile king and driven the Valnirata back to the forest.

Chriani resisted the urge to look at Dargana, to try to get some
sense from her eyes and expression of what was going on. Her mention of the
diplomatic mission to Laneldenar caught him by surprise, in that he had all but
forgotten about that mission in the chaos and exhaustion of the past three
days. He had assumed that original purpose had been burned to the ground by the
events at the camp and the Ilvani attack.

Some of the Ilvani had apparently assumed that as well.

“Reports of the Ilmari’s conduct among his own riders dismiss any
claims of rank and privilege.” A pale Ilmari warrior in leather and chain mail
spoke the words that echoed in Dargana’s voice. Her black hair was oiled and
tied back tightly, gleaming like her armor. “He is disgraced and distrusted.
Likely to be subject to incarceration or execution if he returns. What use is
the laóith to us now?”

“He must be returned to Aerach at once. We waste time on this
folly.”

“He has seen Sylonna!” someone shouted, rage sharpening each
word. “He cannot be allowed to take even that name back to his murderous kin.”

Chriani quickly began to lose the thread of what was said as
other voices rang out in succession. Not overlapping each other, so that
Dargana’s voice at his ear still sounded out clearly. But creating a continuous
stream of argument and antagonism that went by too fast for him to follow her
translation.

“…take advantage of this prospect…”

“…another feint from the west. The prince’s power fails…”

“…other envoys, other chances…”

“…distractions and false hope. Slay the laóith now…”

If the encounter had been intended as some form of debate, the
Ilvani executed it with the same ruthless efficiency as their skirmish tactics.
No speaker was ever interrupted, no one was shouted down. Even so, Chriani
heard the anger in their voices, heard the disappointment. He understood as he
hadn’t before how Dargana had spoken truth, in saying that at least some of the
Ilvani wanted this peace. They had wanted and expected an envoy who could
deliver it.