Three Coins for Confession (42 page)

“What is it?” Dargana hissed, but Chriani simply shook his head.
He remembered the lights of Sylonna as they had approached the hidden city. A
shimmering brightness like white fire through the trees. This was the opposite
of that. An undulating shadow that billowed like cloud but never spread,
visible only by the fringe of faint illumination that vanished at its edges.
Sunlight through the forest canopy, swallowed by a roiling darkness.

“Chriani…”

Dargana’s whisper carried an edge of urgency, Chriani turning
with bow drawn. But through the underbrush where the exile was pointing, he saw
no threat. Just a grove of dead limni, stunted and gnarled, and set around a
five-sided stone dais crusted with black slime and moss.

They approached the shrine carefully, the moss-thick ground
muffling their footfalls. Chriani could feel the uneven spread of stone beneath
them, guessing at the extents of the unseen courtyard that wrapped around this
shrine like the one he’d seen along the Greatwood’s western edge.

He saw crows again, drifting through the trees as the three of
them approached. There was no sight or scent of death this time to draw them
forth, so that Chriani understood it hadn’t been the dead Ilvani that had drawn
them the first time. Just the shrine itself. Some unseen power there as there was
power here, wrapped in shadow against the shimmer of the westering sun. Even in
that shadow, the shrine was identical to the images of Chriani’s memory, and
set with the same intricate inscriptions. The ground showed no sign of other
footprints. No sign that anyone else had stood there in long years.

“Can you read the glyphs?” Chriani asked Farenna.

The Ilvani captain nodded as he traced his fingers along the
lettering etched sharp into weathered stone. They came away black with mold.
“The language is old, but close to the tongues of Muiraìden. The engravings
speak of the fallen
Myllasir
and the power they still hold from beyond
time. Power they will share with those who seek it here. Power that waits to
return and rule once more.”

The name wasn’t one Chriani had ever heard before, but the echoes
of the tale were familiar enough. The Ilmar swore to fate, but it had been long
generations since most folk believed that fate could be bent by prayer. The
Ilmari had gods once, but had long since outgrown them — or at least
that’s how Barien had described it.

Under the long years of Empire, there’d been no formal purge of
the old ways. You could still see the temples in Rheran and other cities,
though they had turned to healing halls and libraries long ago. Testament to a
slow decline and a turning away from the faiths of old. A new focus on magic
and truth that gave folk something else to believe in.

“Ilmari and Ilvani alike have their old gods,” Chriani said,
thoughtful.
Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once.

“No gods hold sway in Muiraìden, Ilmari.” Farenna rounded on
Chriani as he spoke, a sudden edge of anger twisting his words. “Gods, kings,
or emperors, no one rules the Valnirata.”

From above, the crows shrieked as they took to the air, the fast
beating of wings sounding out. Chriani saw the captain’s hand stray to his
blade. He took a step back by instinct, but Dargana was there to move between
them.

“Enough of the history lesson,” she said curtly. But she was
watching Farenna as Chriani was, the captain distracted. Glancing back to the
dark sigils tracing their way across cold stone.

“Forgive my outburst,” he said to Chriani. “The Ilvani say that
the oldest legends incite the oldest passions. This is a shrine to lost
leaders. The Myllasir, who are legends among the Ilvani, and who superstition
claims will return once more when their people are in darkest need.”

From when Dargana had brought him to the northern flank of the
Ghostwood, Chriani remembered asking what the Valnirata Ilvani could possibly
have to fear in the empty lands of Crithnalerean. He hadn’t understood her
answer.
The past, half-blood.

“We need to get closer,” Farenna said. “We climb.”

Like his ability to move unheard and unseen, Chriani’s skill at
climbing was better than most. But it, too, was put to shame by the grace with
which Farenna and Dargana fairly slithered upward along the gnarled trunk of
the great limni the captain chose as their access point to the forest above.

Shifting from hold to hold, branch to branch, Chriani managed to keep
the pace set by the two Ilvani, but he needed both hands to do so. The bow
across his back hindered his movement, the scabbards for his sword and the
long-knives he had claimed from a fallen scout hammering at his legs as he
went. Dargana and Farenna climbed one-handed, each with a long-knife drawn and
ready as they hauled themselves up.

The height of the forest was a network of natural bridges
twisting forward into the gloom. They advanced carefully, moving across
shifting planes of branches and rope-thick vines high above the ground. Farenna
led them, picking out a single path between multiple courses that reflected the
network of paths along the ground below, but rising and falling even as they
moved forward. Chriani saw the Ilvani captain slow to assess different routes
more than once, but he made no sign of testing the strength of the branches and
vines they clambered along. Just trusting to some innate sense of the strength
of the forest that Chriani was forced to share.

As the shadow they had seen ahead of them loomed larger, Chriani
could make out details set within it. The shapes of broad platforms were lines
of smoother darkness cutting across the gnarled lines of trees thrust up from
the ground below, the shadow seeming to wash across them. But as the three of
them drew closer, that shadow resolved itself more clearly as individual
strands, all flowing along shifting courses that brought them across and over
each other to weave a delicate web of darkness.

Like the forest-home of Sylonna and the ruined terraces of the
northern Ghostwood, the site that the assassin had named Markura and called a
temple rose as wooden tiers connected by arcing lines of rope bridges and
ladders. The site was smaller than the forest-home by far, only a dozen huge limni
anchoring its border. As Chriani had seen in the northern Ghostwood, most of
its terraces appeared long abandoned, their edges a frozen fall of vines. Even
at a distance, Chriani could see where pieces of individual platforms had
broken free but were still hanging, anchored at steep angles by moss-crusted
ropes.

At the center of the site’s erratic rise of bridges and terraces,
one great dark tree towered over the rest. Not dead, Chriani saw, its leaves
rippling in the wind. It was black, though. Dark as the shadow that pooled
around it and flowed on the air.

“What magic is that?” Chriani whispered to Farenna as they
stopped to orient themselves along a broad, sheltered branch. “Have you ever
seen it before?” He felt his hand at his chest, making the moonsign as if his
fingers were under someone else’s control.

The captain shook his head, a dark tension in his eyes. “This
site is old. Abandoned by the Ilvani long before your Ilmar nations rose.
Whatever power it held would have been closed off. Should have been.”

Something shifted at the edge of Chriani’s gaze. He froze.

Though the three of them were safely ensconced within a screen of
leaves, he dropped down, Farenna and Dargana following. Watching where he
pointed. There, along the closest of the rope bridges ahead, movement. Three
Ilvani stepped out to pace along the bridge’s narrow span, its long arc
resonating with their steps.

“How many are we going to find in there?” Chriani asked.

“No way to tell,” Farenna said. “Are you ready?”

The question was for him and Dargana both. Not an order, not this
time.

Chriani nodded. “Go.”

Stepping into the storm of shadow was like being wrapped by a
sudden fall of darkness. Though Chriani knew the sun was still bright to the
west, it vanished to sight and mind as they worked their way forward, leaving
them in the deep gloom of a moonless night.

Even so, the approach was far easier than he thought it would be.
Far easier than it had any right to be. The worst part of their entrance to the
temple was the careful climb across a network of open branches that brought
them to within jumping distance of a rope bridge along the edge of the site. It
was more of a leap than Chriani would normally have risked making, the ground
lost to shadow below. He knew he had no choice, though.

Farenna dropped first, leaping into empty air and snagging the
edge of the bridge with apparent ease. He hauled himself on and waited while
its ropes slowed their swaying, Chriani above him with bow drawn. No sentries
appeared, though. No sound was heard.

Dargana made the jump with even less trouble than Farenna.
Chriani was breathing deeply as he leaped off the branch and into empty air,
arms out as the bridge twisted toward him. He grabbed on well enough but needed
Farenna and Dargana to help haul him up.

They made their way quickly to the nearest platform, the darkness
spreading more deeply around them. Hanging like an oily sheen on the air, and
shrouding a deeper sense of ruin and decay. The wooden slats of the platform
were slick with black mold, the scent of it heavy around them. The bridge they
had descended had the same appearance as three more leading off the
platform — a web of ropes blackened with rot and age, strengthened
and supported by newer construction. The platform was anchored by vine-shrouded
rope cables that creaked ominously as they moved.

“The black tree…”

Farenna was the one to say it, but all three of them were already
looking beyond the platform and to the center of the shroud of darkness that
drifted around them. The black tree rose like a skeleton cast of shadow, its
branches tearing at air that bled darkness like a gathering storm. Beneath that
storm, the platform they stood on was unlit, but they could see lights set
along distant bridges and terrace edges at intervals. These were muted, though,
each a shimmering glow that faded after a few paces.

“Can you find the way there?” Chriani asked.

“I will do my best, Ilmari. Stay close to me.”

“And if we’re stopped?” Dargana asked.

“We kill them if we can. We run if we cannot. The horses are due
south. They know the way to Sylonna if you make it to them without me.”

“No one’s leaving anyone behind,” Chriani said. “We do this
together…”

“Sylonna must be warned.” Farenna cut Chriani off in
uncharacteristic fashion, an edge of urgency in his voice. A trace of the anger
rising there. “Laedda and Contáedar must know what we know. The fate of all
depends on this.”

Before Chriani could respond, a tremor threaded through Farenna,
as if he was trying to hold the anger in check. “I do not order this,” the
captain said, more focused. “I ask it. In the name of my people, friend
Chriani, one of us must return to Sylonna or all we do here is for naught.”

Chriani nodded, even as Dargana shrugged. He suspected that the
expectation of dying was never a central part of any of the exile’s plans.

“Stay close,” Farenna said again as they set out.

Whether strictly as a result of Farenna’s instincts, or because
the cult trusted in the secrecy of the temple site so much that their patrols
were lax along its exterior, the three of them made their way across the middle
tiers of platforms and terraces unchallenged. They spotted sentries standing at
irregular intervals but passed no guards on patrol. Farenna carefully shifted
the group’s course away along different bridges, up and down ladders to avoid
contact. Giving no one any opportunity to see their eyes.

Chriani could see the lóechari’s eyes, or so it seemed. Even at a
distance, he thought he could make out the pale gleam of gold, but he had no
intention of getting close enough to confirm it.

As they drew closer to the black tree, they saw patrols at last.
Groups of warriors walking in threes and fours, or lone Ilvani racing along
bridges and ladders like messengers. Chriani felt a uniform sense of efficiency
in the cultists’ movement. A sense of focus he recognized from the golden-eyed
Ilvani they had fought in the forest and in Rheran. Something pushing them.
Orders followed without question, the Valnirata discipline taken to its worst
extreme.

Among all the lóechari, there was a uniform silence. Not a sound
could be heard throughout the citadel grove except faint footsteps, rising and
falling on the shifting breeze. That breeze washed the scent of rot across them
more than once, but when they passed within range of the scattered mage-lights
for the first time, Chriani saw that the wind had no effect on the spreading
haze of shadow. That darkness flowed and ebbed in no discernable pattern,
seemingly of its own accord.

“There.”

They had fallen back against the trunk of a limni adjacent to the
great black tree at the center of the citadel, Farenna pointing to a narrow
bridge arcing high overhead. Chriani had to focus to see it, dark lines almost
invisible where they passed over and disappeared within the central tree’s
black shroud of branches.

It was the lone access point they could see from the terraced
platform they sheltered on, its outside edges crumbling in a tangle of
supporting rope-cables and vines. There was no sign of anyone traversing the
bridge while they watched, but also no sign of any easy access to it. So they
climbed again, all of them needing to use their long-knives this time to pull
themselves across smooth sections of the limni’s trunk where the bark had been
torn away.

Though the sound was muted by the wind and the softness of
rotting wood, Chriani felt a trace of panic each time one of them hacked into
the tree. With no footholds to speak of, each knife had to hold its climber’s
weight for a tense moment, each of them pulling up carefully to drive the next
knife in, then free the first. The vertical stretch was perhaps twice as tall
as Chriani was, but by the time they had traversed it and were able to rest
within a cluster of broad branches, his arms and shoulders were aching.