Three Coins for Confession (39 page)

He remembered the oily touch as that first talisman had reacted
to him, stumbled back from this one like he was afraid he might brush against
it accidentally. As he did, he pulled the talisman he carried from his belt,
checked for the golden disk meant to ward him from the Ilvani’s detection.
Panic rose in him at the thought that he had lost it.

The badge of Chanist’s mages was still set in its place, though.
The talisman he had carried from Rheran was dark, not so much as a glimmer of
light seen within the stone held in his shaking hand.

Hoofbeats behind him heralded the arrival of Farenna and two of
his riders. Chriani understood that meant one missing, saw the grim look on the
captain’s face.

“Eladen has fallen,” Farenna whispered, “as have the lóechari. We
hid his body and theirs, let the light take them…”

He stopped short to see the talisman’s pulsing light, hissed a
warning to the others. They dropped to the ground as one, taking cover behind
their horses with bows drawn. Dargana kept axe and dagger in hand, shifting
back into the shadows. Her gaze was tight to Chriani’s, some kind of warning
there, but he looked away. Farenna knelt beside the body, whispered an
incantation as he plucked the glowing talisman from the dead figure’s wrist.

“It’s not me that led them to us,” Chriani said. He showed the
lifeless stone in his hand as Farenna stood, saw the talisman the captain
carried at his own wrist just as dark. “They were tracking someone else…”

The faint creak of a bow drawn behind him was the barest sliver
of sound. Obeying an instinct he couldn’t name, Chriani threw himself to the
ground, pushing Farenna down. He heard three arrows pass overhead, heard the
crack of skull on stone as the captain hit the ground hard beneath him. Farenna
convulsed as his body went limp, Chriani rolling away.

He looked up to see Taelendar toss her bow aside, drawing her
sword. A light of molten gold was burning in her eyes.

If the rites take the confession from mind and memory, then
can the confession itself be forced and then forgotten?

As Chriani rose, Dargana shouted a warning and fell back. Not
fast enough. Taelendar twisted, shifting to cut through the rider next to her.
The arrow that rider had nocked shot wild into the trees as his bow dropped,
arms flailing as Taelendar severed his spine. He had ridden beside her since Sylonna,
Chriani remembered. The two of them had rested at each other’s side on the long
ride from the Hunthad. His mind was fractured images, memories playing out like
slow-flowing water.

Our patrols are known along the frontier, and push often
across the forest wall,
Farenna had said.

The other rider saw Taelendar’s attack, saw her spin toward her
with blade held high. No time to process the scene before her, the first rider
still falling, but she understood the gleam of gold in Taelendar’s eyes. The
rider shouted out in anguish as she shot Taelendar twice at point-blank range,
Chriani feeling something break in her voice. The sense of betrayal there. The
Ilvani normally fought in silence, showed no sign of pain.

The rider’s arrows took Taelendar in the side but didn’t slow
her. She died as she was drawing her sword, Taelendar’s blade punching through
leather and bone at her chest, out through her back again.

The moment it took Taelendar to kick the body away, pull her
sword free, was enough for Chriani to grab his bow and loose an arrow. He
wasn’t fast enough to drop her, though, his shot arcing across to score a
glancing cut to her shoulder as she shifted. Dargana appeared at Taelendar’s
back, slashing in with dagger and axe, but Taelendar rolled beneath the attack,
drove the exile back with a slashing strike across her mailed shoulder. Then
the Ilvani warrior was running for Chriani.

His next shot took her in the stomach even as he backed away,
barely dodging a backhand blow that would have taken his arm off if it had hit.
In the Ilvani’s expression, Chriani saw the single-minded focus of the cultists
they had faced in the forest, on the rooftop in Rheran. No sign or sense of the
animosity she had shown him before, replaced now with a deeper malice. A thing
beyond anger, beyond any hatred of the heart or mind. As Taelendar swung in
against him, forcing him back again, her golden eyes were the blank gaze of a
scrubsnake, of the fell wolves of the southern mountains. The rare creatures
that kill not for want or need, but because killing is all they know.

He stumbled, dropping to his side and forced to roll back, his
bow useless beneath him. Taelendar swung high. Then she died before her blade
could fall, Dargana’s axe spinning in to strike the back of her head with a
sickening crunch.

The warrior collapsed to the ground, her sword falling beside
her. The grove was quiet again. The wind was rising, the horses moving to their
fallen riders. Farenna groaned as he fought his way back to consciousness,
shakily stood.

“By grace and fate, no…” Blood was running freely from the
captain’s temple where it struck rock when Chriani pushed him down.

The horses were nuzzling the bodies, their expressions showing
something uncomfortably close to grief. That same grief was seething in Farenna
as he dropped to his knees at Taelendar’s side. He cried out as her dead body
began to writhe, twisting as on a puppeteer’s strings. Watching her convulse as
the dark magic that had infected the warrior tore her apart.

With a snort, her horse stepped back, turned and ran from the
grove, heading south. The two others followed quickly behind. They would race
back to Sylonna, Chriani knew. A warning of what had happened.

He found the new talisman where Farenna had fallen, scooped it
up. Its bloodstone was dark. As the captain moved to the other bodies, Dargana
carefully retrieved her axe where Taelendar lay. Chriani could see the tension
twisting through the exile, her dark gaze locked to the dead warrior’s
sightless eyes.

“Did she ride alone on patrol here?” As Chriani called to
Farenna, his voice seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness. He picked up his
bow, retrieved his arrows where they’d spilled. He nocked as he paced around
the clearing, looking for something but not knowing what. “They found her.
Turned her with the rites, then burned the memory of that from her mind. Like
the ones Dargana and I saw. Something triggering her…”

“Be silent, Ilmari.”

The edge of anger in Farenna’s voice caught Chriani by surprise.
It was something he hadn’t heard in the captain before, not even in the heated
debate of the council of masters. He recognized that anger all the same,
though. Had seen it in Barien years before.

In the spring that he had taken the tyro’s writ, Chriani had
ridden with Barien to Elalantar, part of a twenty-strong troop escorting the
Princess High Gwannyn and her children to her mother’s funeral rites at Ysorka.
They’d met fell wolves along the road, down from Eberedar Pass and prowling the
farmlands late in the season. Barien and two others of the guard had nearly
been killed in the effort that slew three of the great beasts and drove the
rest away.

Chriani had seen healing magic up close for the first time that
day, huddled back and under guard with the other children. He had seen also the
fury in Barien — not at the attack, but at the injury that had been
done to the guards who followed him into the fray. He was bleeding badly
himself, one arm bitten almost to the bone, but the warrior made sure the
others were healed first. Made sure the princess high was safe before he sat
for the healers.

Chriani had never seen anyone die under Barien’s command. He saw
Farenna now, though, the captain’s eyes closed as he knelt by each of his
fallen warriors in turn. Whispering words lost to the shifting of leaves in the
wind.

It didn’t seem like a reaction an Ilvani would make. Chriani felt
the realization settle uncomfortably in his mind, hating himself for it even as
the thought formed. The coolness of the Ilvani in combat, their stoic silence
as they fought, their lack of emotion when captured. That was the Ilvani
character he saw, the bearing he knew. It was too easy to assume that what was
seen was all there was.

For all he should have known better, he played the same games
that all Ilmari played. Looking for the differences that might mark them as
separate from the Ilvani. Keeping those differences close to heart and never
looking for the rest.

Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once.
Veassen’s words, and
his mother’s.

From the corner of his eye, the corner of his mind that worked
against all his anger and uncertainty, Chriani saw blood. It was pooling
beneath the dead horse of the Ilvani warrior he and the others had pursued. He
knelt to see the jagged wound that had slain the animal, understood now why it
had dropped. He understood as well that it was falling beneath the horse that
had killed its rider, the magic of the coins claiming her only after.

He focused, tried to push past the sound of Farenna’s voice. He
let his senses push out, caught the scent of bowel rising against the stronger
sense of blood, iron-sharp and all around him. Something not right with the
wound. Made by a short blade, not by one of the Ilvani long-knives. A jagged
edge to it where it had caught the unfortunate horse low in the belly, slashed
through its organs even as it pulled up toward the ribs.

A whisper of movement sounded in the trees beside him. Chriani
turned, had an arrow set to his bow without thinking. Dargana was directly in
front of him as he pulled back hard, drawing on her. Then she twisted away even
as the arrow hissed toward her, dropped to the ground as Chriani knew she
would. Understanding that he was aiming at whoever was shifting carefully
through the shadows behind her.

The arrow struck something, unseen. Chriani heard a voice cry out
but Dargana was already moving, pushing in to where a figure was stumbling
back, trying to get clear of the underbrush.

Chriani had another arrow nocked, Farenna on his feet and beside
him. Along a broad side path, Dargana was locked tight to a figure in grey.
Steel flashed, Chriani trying to take aim, but the fight was moving too
quickly. Then Dargana slipped around and behind, managed to get her assailant
in a chokehold.

A jagged knife came up in the figure’s hand, the horse’s blood
still streaking it. Chriani put an arrow into that arm to match the one already
in the figure’s leg, the knife tumbling as another cry was swallowed by the
trees. Dargana twisted the wounded warrior over and face down, breaking off
both arrows in the process. She grabbed the hood and the hair beneath it to
pull back, set her bloodblade to an exposed throat.

Chriani knew who it was before he saw her, recognizing the knife
where it had fallen. He had pulled that same blade from his own shoulder less than
a week before.

“Let her up,” he said.

“I don’t think I heard that right,” Dargana hissed. Her blade
marked a razor-thin line of blood where it was pressed to the Uissa assassin’s
throat.

“What is this?” Farenna whispered. He sheathed his sword and drew
his bow, circling to scan the trees for movement.

“She’s an Ilmari assassin working with the Laneldenari,” Chriani
said to the Ilvani captain. “She was a prisoner in the camp the night you came
for me. Dargana, let her up. She’s got two arrows in her. She won’t be moving
fast or far.”

The exile’s expression showed how much she trusted Chriani’s
judgement in the matter, but she did as he asked. The assassin set her teeth
against the pain as her arms were pulled behind her, Dargana whipping a leather
cord from a jacket pocket to bind them. Then she stood, stepping back quickly
as if she still expected a counterattack. The assassin simply rose to a
kneeling position, though, arms pinned behind her and trembling with the
effort. Where the stumps of arrows punched through her tunic and leggings, the
grey was marred by a spreading stain.

“Check the perimeter,” Chriani said to the exile. “Make sure no
one else heard the fighting. But I’m guessing she came alone.”

As Dargana slipped away into the trees, the assassin’s face was
an emotionless mask, her pale eyes watching him. Chriani saw sweat beading on
her brow, though, knew she was heading for blood-shock despite her look of
defiance. It was the same look he’d seen when she was first captured, and as
she was slung to Venry’s horse during the Ilvani attack at the camp. She wasn’t
smiling this time, though.

Farenna was still pacing, circling through the trees like a
wounded wolf. The cut at his head was still bleeding, along with a deep gash to
his shoulder Chriani hadn’t seen before.

“You’re hurt,” he said. “I can bind…”

“I need no help from you, Ilmari. I need answers.” The anger was
still heavy in the captain’s voice, but directed now at the prisoner. Farenna
spoke the Ilvalantar still, but the assassin’s expression told Chriani she
understood. “The lóechari know our movements, turn our strongest warriors. You
said this one works with them.”

“She was with a group of Calala, but their cult ties were hidden
until they changed. They didn’t know what they were. Blind agents. Like
Taelendar.” Chriani heard Farenna hiss in anger, realized it was the wrong
thing to say. He remembered the assassin watching the death throes of the
cultist in the Ilvani camp. The look of fascination she’d worn. “I don’t know
how much she knows.”

“Then she’s of no use to me.”

The long-knife flashed from Farenna’s belt to his hand faster
than Chriani could follow. He was barely fast enough himself to get between
Farenna and the prisoner, seeing a darkness flash in the captain’s eyes that
told him he was on dangerous ground.

It was a thing no Ilvani would have done, he knew. The quick
obedience, the rigid discipline. Farenna pressed forward as if expecting him to
step aside, stopped short when Chriani drew his sword instead. Standing frozen,
eye to eye.