Three Coins for Confession (35 page)

Even as he noted that the blind seer was nowhere to be seen, he
heard footsteps behind him. Veassen was there, had appeared from nowhere.
Chriani flexed his fingers in the pattern of the moonsign but kept his hand at
his side.

The blind seer made no sign of sensing Chriani, who had to step
out of his way as Veassen pressed forward. As he did, he tapped his staff to
the platform’s wooden floor with a steady ticking sound, mixing with the
chiming of the fountain in a strangely musical way.

The lack of any sort of table or meeting area across the three
tiers of the platform gave Chriani a moment to wonder how a council worked
among the Ilvani, and how it differed from the standing scrutiny of the previous
day’s gathering. He got a sense of it quick enough, though.

“We are met,” Laedda called. “This council of masters begins.” He
spoke the Ilvalantar this time, eschewing whatever Valnirata tongue he had used
at the gathering of elders. He met Chriani’s gaze as he did, his expression
suggesting the change was intentional. Not caring yesterday whether Chriani
understood him or not, but knowing it made a difference now.

“This council is corrupted…” The tall Ilvani warrior called out
from the third tier even as Laedda’s voice faded. Her grey-green leather was
overlaid with silver scale today, shimmering as she stepped forward. She spoke
one of the Valnirata tongues, so that Chriani lost the thread of it after those
first few words.

“That’s Contáedar,” Dargana said at his ear where she’d shifted
up beside him. “War master of Laneldenar.”

“We met yesterday, thanks,” Chriani whispered back.

“This’ll go easier the less you talk for now. Let them say what
they have to say.”

“And when they’re finished talking?”

“Veassen knows.”

The blind seer was the length of the first tier away, having
tapped his way to a place near the broad stairs that rose to the second tier.
Dargana’s voice was barely a whisper, no way for him to have heard her. Chriani
saw the seer’s head shift in seeming response all the same, the milk-white eyes
finding his.

“…all Valnirata’s purpose is known…”

Contáedar was still speaking. Chriani tried to focus as he looked
away.

With no seating, no fixed positions or even any sense of rank or
order, the Ilvani paced as they spoke and listened. Contáedar fielded responses
from two others, Dargana once more translating at Chriani’s ear. It was
questions about troop movements in the Ilmar, and the strength of the treaty
forged in the aftermath of the Incursions. ‘The feint,’ the Ilvani were calling
the events of a year and a half before, talking as though both Brandishear and
Aerach had been too quick to take advantage of the rumors of Valnirata
involvement in those events. Chriani was one of the few who knew how
dangerously close to the truth that was.

The war master had two backswords slung across her shoulders
today, and a bloodblade in a scabbard set across her stomach. She slipped her
hand to that blade as she shouted out something that sounded like a warning.
Chriani saw her dark gaze fix on him.

“She says that the Valnirata are destined to march on the Ilmar,”
Dargana said, “reclaiming it for the sake of past and future. That war against
the Ilmari is the only way.”

“…Brona Coebann…” Chriani heard. Contáedar was calling the
Clearwater Sea by its Ilvani name, still used by the mariners who traversed its
coastal cities.

“She says it is the Ilmari’s destiny to be driven like rats to
the sea.”

As at the larger council of the previous day, the Ilvani never interrupted
each other, employing an instinct for response and a patience that would have
seemed like weakness in any Ilmari dispute. In the range of anger and animosity
they expressed, though, the Ilvani and their cold and methodical concentration
would have put any diplomat or merchant lord in Rheran to shame.

Away from whoever was speaking, the Ilvani drifted together
individually to whisper unheard words. Commenting or criticizing in secret as
the dialogue shifted from place to place, voice to voice. An Ilvani in black
robes flicked his fingers to create a pulsing sphere of light before him, as if
to accentuate his words. “In Calalerean,” Dargana translated, “they embrace the
power of the past and the old faiths. We acknowledge the strength of that past,
but fear it for the strength it grants the Calala. We ignore that by the act of
embracing that past ourselves, the strength of Laneldenar would be greater
still.”

For long years, one of the things that had kept war between
Ilmari and Ilvani a distant threat was the schism and conflict within the
Ilvani themselves. The Valnirata were perpetually divided by the war-clan
structure at the heart of their culture. Never openly skirmishing against each
other, but distrustful. Content to build four individual powers in their own
lands, and to hone their blades when they needed to against Ilmari to east and
west, humanoid tribes to the south, Crithnala exiles to the north.

Chriani remembered it all as a vague blur of memory. More of the
field training for his assignment to the rangers. Kathlan had been the one with
the head for history and lore. She would have understood it all far better than
he.

“We dream of the Ilvanghlira unified,” Contáedar was saying
through Dargana at Chriani’s ear, using the name the Ilvani employed to refer
to themselves. “We dream of the divided Ilmar splintered beneath the single
wedge of our might…”

“Lóech arnala irch niir!”

Veassen’s voice rang out like the echo of an iron bell, cutting
off Contáedar and Dargana at once. A musical tone twisted through his words,
Chriani feeling an echo of the voice he’d heard in his mind at the previous
council.

It was the first time any of the Ilvani speakers had interrupted
to shut down another’s voice. By the way all movement stopped across the
stepped platforms, Chriani could guess at the weight of such an action.

“Three coins for confession,” Dargana whispered, but it had
become the one phrase of the Valnirata tongue Chriani knew best.

The blind seer spoke the Ilvalantar, and slowly. Contáedar’s
expression darkened as if she knew it was for Chriani’s benefit, though he
continued to focus on Dargana’s whispered translation at his ear.

“We speak of the old faiths rising in Calala, but the wise among
us know that Calala seeks not the faith of the past but power. Power that means
destruction to all Muiraìden, no matter the hand that wields it. The wise among
us know the reasons why the Ghostwood of Nyndenu was left to shadow. The cult
of the confessor are the lóechari. Their power is an ancient poison, and the
Ilvani’s dark dreams of war against the Ilmari are the honey that masks its
taste.”

“You should speak of whatever poison has taken your mind, seer.”
Contáedar’s response came as a sneering hiss, but Dargana’s translation at
Chriani’s ear was even. “The only histories of concern to me are the records of
war, which is the dream the Ilmari made. The Ilmari who breach our borders,
slay our scouts. The Ilmari who slew our forebears, claiming the lands they
walked. Staining the woods our people settled in the dawn of the world.”

Four Ilvani circled close behind Contáedar as she spoke, striding
across the platform while they followed like some kind of support train. The
war master’s anger was razor sharp in the strength of her voice. The knuckles
of her hand were white where she gripped her sword. “The Ilmari scar our lands
with the filth of their cities, the roughness of their stone, the lumber of
forests cut and burned with every new generation. As long as we hold Muiraìden,
the terms of the Ilmari and their envoy will ever be demands of surrender.”

It was a familiar anger, Chriani realized. A rage he had seen
before. In Prince Chanist. In Ashlund, in Grus, in too many others. All
consuming, never ending. Something carried for long years, like a wound that
would never fully heal. Festering, feeding itself.

“Do you think to stop me, master Chriani…?”

Veassen spoke up, his voice clear. “You speak of what terms this
envoy brings without hearing his words, war master.”

A chill twisted through Chriani as the seer’s voice rang across
the chamber, a silence following. The Ilvani that had been moving were still.
Veassen’s were the only eyes that didn’t shift toward Chriani where he stood.

They were waiting for him to speak, and he had no idea what he
was meant to say.

Be calm, Chriani. Tell them why you are here.

Veassen’s voice rang clear in Chriani’s mind again, a subtle
presence that made him wonder how long the seer might have been listening. He
took a few steps forward, pacing parallel to the edge of the first tier. Playing
for time.

I’ll need to know why I’m here first.

You know who you are, what you have done. Speak it here, so
that all may know.

Is there truth magic on me?

Such spellcraft can be easily unwrought. These are the masters
of Sylonna. Their judgement of your words will be based on instincts far more
difficult to deceive.

In the seer’s tone in his mind, Chriani heard a strange and
sudden reflection of Barien. A kind of gentle condescension, breaking through
the sullenness that seemed to cling to Chriani sometimes like a protective
shell.

“The Ilmari do not seek war,” he called out. He tried to find
Barien’s voice and its gift for diplomacy, but the need to speak the Ilvalantar
pushed the warrior from his mind somehow. He spoke slowly, but felt the same
ease with the tongue that he had felt at the previous council. Veassen’s
understanding in his own mind. “We have our soldiers, and we have our history.
But the people of the Ilmar crave peace. They need and want peace, despite what
your war master tells you here today.”

With a hiss, Contáedar turned her back and paced away from him.
The four Ilvani closest to her did the same.

Well done, Chriani. Speak now of Calala. Of what you have
seen.

“But we will stand against destruction if it is promised. And if
destruction is promised from the Calala Ilvani, it must be put down. I have
seen the magic that the seer spoke of. The three coins for confession. I’ve
seen what it does, and I fear it as you should.”

Silence hung across the chamber, Chriani conscious of his heart
beating fast. Too many of the Ilvani were smiling, even as the expressions of
others settled in beneath a grim uncertainty.

They don’t know.
A realization coming to him, spoken to
Veassen in his mind.
They don’t think any of this is real.

No,
the seer replied.
Many of them do not. To the
Valnirata, the history of the cult of the confessor is known and forgotten. One
legend among thousands, lost in the days of wild magic when all the Ilmar lands
were ours. We must convince them otherwise. Calalerean’s theft of that ancient
power must be shown. We must convince them of the truth.

And how does that become my task?

Because they will believe you are a part of that truth,
Chriani. Whether you believe it or not.

Chriani realized he’d been standing in silence longer than he
wanted to. Some of the Ilvani were whispering as Laedda called to him.

“Speak, envoy, of what you know.”

Dargana had stepped back, Chriani catching sight of her watching
him.

He told them. Spoke of that first encounter with the war-band
that had tracked him, and of the Ilvani prisoners. He told them of the shrine
and the dead warrior. He told them of the coins. At Veassen’s prompting, he
described the shrine in as much detail as he could remember. And as he did, he
saw the same dark look flash through the expressions of the Ilvani closest to
him. The ones who had been smiling before, each of them watching intently as he
met their eyes in turn.

He told them of the war-band that had pushed into Rheran in
pursuit of him.
Now tell them why,
Veassen said in his head. The seer’s
tone was even, but Chriani felt a sense of expectation in the words that he
didn’t like. He ignored it as he continued.

“I was pursued by the Calala of the cult, both in Muiraìden and
in the Brandishear capital. The Calala knew me. They heard of what happened
when I pursued the Princess Lauresa on the Clearwater Way, and their agents
shared that knowledge through the rites of the cult. They work as one.”

He pulled what Dargana had told him in the throne room of Rheran
from memory, tried to assemble it into something that would make it sound as if
he knew what he was talking about. He told of being pursued along the Hunthad,
and of the strangeness of the cultists they had seen there. “The Calala Ilvani
who pursued me in Aerach, who we killed the night that Farenna came for us.
Their eyes were clear at first. The cult rites showed in them only when they
attacked us in the end. Or after they had died.”

He stopped then because there was nothing else to say. Veassen
was lingering silent in his mind, even as Chriani saw the dark look that had
spread now across nearly all the Ilvani listening to him.

It wasn’t anger, though. That had been his first expectation, the
anger of the Ilvani a thing he’d grown all too familiar with over five months
of border skirmishes.

They were afraid, he realized. And that scared him more than he
could ever have expected.

Tell them, Chriani. The heir of the exile’s blade. It is time.

Chriani felt the words resonate in his mind, Veassen’s voice
shifting his own thoughts away. He pushed back against it, fought to find the
will to simply dismiss it all.

In days of war,
Veassen said,
one will arise to stand
between Ilvanghlira and Ilmari in struggle. One who will forge the final fate
of both peoples.

You know the story,
Chriani thought coldly.
Tell it
yourself.