Three Coins for Confession (43 page)

While they rested, Farenna flashed a hand in warning. Dargana and
Chriani froze, Chriani taking longer than he liked to see the passing patrol
that Farenna had sensed. The lóechari paced along the bridge that had been
Farenna’s destination, but they were gone as quickly as they came. Not even
waiting to listen for silence in their wake, Farenna pushed on again, waving
for Chriani and Dargana to follow.

Crossing over to the black tree was like falling sideways into
dark water. The swirling shadow thickened around them as they slipped across
the empty bridge, the air drawing in to a stifling closeness as black leaves
surrounded them. The wind-tossed movement of the high branches rang out like
the creak of unoiled leather, a wall of faint sound that set an uncomfortable
chill up Chriani’s spine. The leaves themselves carried the oily sheen of the
air, but no one showed any interest in touching them.

Chriani was straining to see through the shadow as he followed
Farenna’s steady lead, even as he realized the scent of rot was gone. The rope
bridge ended on a shrouded half-platform, its far side cracked off and vanished
where a tangle of ropes and vines trailed over to the darkness below. The wet
footfalls of the platforms they had crossed before faded to soft steps and the
creak of wood. The planks of the floor beneath them were seemingly bone dry,
cracked with age. The same dead black as the tree’s branches and leaves, the
shadow seemingly leeching all other color away.

Dropping to hands and knees along the platform’s edge, the three
of them saw the source of that shadow below.

Chriani felt the blood pounding in his head and chest. His
stomach turned as he made the moonsign, kept his hand held tight to his heart
when he was done.

The terraced platform below them was no farther away than the
jump they had made to reach the first bridge. However, the shadow that pulsed
out from beneath and around that platform made the distance seem to shift and
shimmer, like trying to gauge the depth of water through its rippled surface.

The wood of the terraces was black like everything around them.
Globes of mage-light floated around their perimeter with nothing holding them
up, their glimmering light fighting against the shadow. Though the lowest
terrace seemed to stand close above the ground, that ground was lost to
darkness. They were looking down through a central web of branches that
spiraled like funnel lines to a broad pit surrounding the foot of the great
black tree. The terraces encircled the bole of that tree as linked rings, set
above the pit like balconies extending over a garden below. Except that garden
was a sea of oily shadow, out of which the dark storm rose.

Looking up, Chriani saw no other lights within the tree’s screen
of dark branches, the few platforms he could make out standing half-fallen like
the one they were on. Below them, he could see the black tree’s roots exposed
and twisting down into the pit of shadow, as if its endless darkness was soil
and stone.

He didn’t know how long they lingered there, just watching. The
wind could still be heard, hissing through the black leaves. Over it now, a
faint moaning rose and fell. Chriani whispered words that rang out unnaturally
loud in his own ear. “What creates something like this? What power?”

Dargana answered, a dark edge in her voice. “Places of this power
aren’t created, half-blood. They just are. This is what the Ilvani left behind
in Nyndenu.”

Farenna was staring down, his dark gaze unblinking. Chriani saw
the Ilvani captain’s anger rising again, heard the rasp of his breathing.

“We must go,” Farenna whispered.

“Wait…”

Chriani shifted forward, feeling the broken platform creak
beneath him. He’d seen movement on the terraces below, had to focus to pull it
from the swirling shadow. Figures were pacing beneath the mage-light, having
crossed from a narrow white stair rising in an arc to the tree next to theirs.
He counted a dozen all told. Eight sentries set in ranks of two, all wearing
the grey leather of the cult. Eight naked figures marched between them, all
Ilvani. Not prisoners, though. Their heads were held high, bodies strong. No
sign of wound or injury on them.

The figure leading them was in black lacquered mail, the
mage-light of the platform edging her with a gleam that showed her form against
the darkness. Her white hair was sheared almost to the scalp, the war-mark at
her shoulder showing as black and grey. In addition to the mage-light, Chriani
saw the pulse of magic at the figure’s fingertips, her hands weaving a mandala
of golden light that hung in the air as she passed.

“Chriani…” Farenna whispered, but he had already seen it. At the
black-armored figure’s neck, an amulet hung. Three coins gleamed there with a
golden brightness that transcended the mage-light, flaring to push away the
darkness. Each was tied through the hole at its center by lengths of golden
chain, matching the chain that hung them from the Ilvani’s neck.

The figure walked toward a stepped dais that jutted out into the
center of the dark maelstrom. At its height, the edge of the dais met a rough
pillar of fractured grey stone that thrust up from the darkness below. Its
twisted lines seemed to catch at that darkness, gleaming like the storm of
shadow was sunlight. Faint ripples suggested movement within its gnarled
surface, reflecting the limbs of the black tree spreading out high above.

The naked Ilvani bowed their heads before the figure in black,
whose golden light spun around her now to wrap each supplicant in a glowing
nimbus. With one hand to the amulet at her neck, she thrust her other hand
against the chest of each figure in turn, the golden light flaring each time
with a brightness that made Chriani shield his eyes.

When he looked back, the eight figures were dropping one by one
to their knees. Each had arms spread wide, head back and mouth open. In each
hand, on each tongue, a light of molten gold was burning bright.

“We’ve seen enough, half-blood,” Dargana hissed, but Chriani
simply stared, rapt. He wanted to stand but couldn’t. Telling himself this was
for Chanist’s mages, for Laedda’s sorcerers. This was their mystery, not his.

The spellcaster in black screamed in what he recognized as an
Ilvani tongue, though he understood only a single dark phrase.
Lóech arnala
irch niir.
One by one, the naked figures closed their hands, snapped shut
their mouths as a convulsion of pain twisted through them, dropping them to the
terrace floor.

Chriani felt their screaming more than heard it. An animal sound,
no voice to it except a pain that focused in and centered on his own heart,
pounding furiously. He could feel the magic. Could sense the power from below
forcing its way into him, scouring him from within. The fear coursing through
him now like something alive as he scribed the moonsign against his heart again
and again.

The screaming stopped. One by one, the figures rose, shaking.
Their hands and mouths were empty.

He felt Farenna stand behind him. “Go,” Chriani whispered to the
captain. “Go now.”

“Half-blood!”

Dargana shouted her warning as Chriani was pushing back to rise
to his feet. He dropped again and shifted left by instinct, rolling for the
open space behind him. He didn’t see what had alarmed her, listening for arrows
from above, spell-fire from the platform below.

He felt Farenna’s backsword miss his neck by a finger’s breadth.
Saw the blue glow within the steel flare as if hungering for his blood. The
captain let the missed blow arc around, swinging down without breaking stride
as he surged forward. Chriani was still down, rolling to dodge as he tried to
find room to rise, the blade hammering down once, twice, three times.

As Farenna tried to kill him, Chriani saw the golden light
blazing in the blood fury of his wide-open eyes.

A spray of red-black lanced out from the captain’s shoulder as
Dargana tagged him, distracting him for the moment Chriani needed to roll up to
his feet. He drew both long-knives, lashed out at Farenna as Dargana shifted
into flanking position, but the Ilvani captain was moving at a speed that
defied nature. He drew his own long knife, fending off Chriani along one side
as his backsword struck off Dargana’s attacks, the blade flaring blue-white
each time axe and bloodblade hammered uselessly against its dweomered steel.

“You should not have come…” the captain hissed, directing his
attention to Chriani as Dargana shifted left to reposition herself. “You are
doomed here, Ilmari.” He spun to switch blades, driving into Chriani with his
sword now, pushing him back along the platform with the force of each blow.

Chriani remembered when Taelendar and the others had fallen. He
remembered Farenna on his knees beside her, mourning with an anguish that had
torn at him even to watch it. There had been no falseness in the captain’s pain
for the loss of his warriors. No artifice in the anger that demanded vengeance,
but the cult magic had been in him even then. Too deep to touch, too deep to
see.

“They’re coming,” Dargana called. Chriani risked a glance
downward, saw that their fight had been observed. The sentries on the terraces
above the well of shadow were running.

“They come for you!” Farenna screamed. “You will be sacrificed
like all nonbelievers!”

Chriani pressed in hard, managed to catch the captain’s shoulder
with one of his knives but felt it glance off the shirt of black chain.
Farenna’s voice carried a pain he didn’t recognize. The antithesis of the
deadly silence that all Ilvani carried into combat. As if something was
breaking in him, he gave voice to each new strike, shouted out in rage when
Dargana’s bloodblade caught him below his mail, tearing a bloody swath through
leather and flesh.

Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!

From the forest, Chriani remembered the Ilvani breaking the
silence of that first deadly chase. Driven to call his name.

Movement sounded out around them, the ropes that anchored the
platform shivering.

“Half-blood, go!” Dargana was shifting, trying to catch Farenna
again on his wounded side, but the captain spun to hold her off. “Use your
ring. I’ll hold them here.”

Chriani felt the black ring at his finger, all but forgotten
there. He focused its power with a thought, watched the shadow that cloaked
them all shimmer beneath an additional layer of darkness as he vanished from
sight. He didn’t run, though. Just dropped around and under a desperate sword
strike as Farenna lashed out, swinging wide in a way that told Chriani the
captain could still hear him. The momentary distraction was all he needed,
though.

He drove into Farenna with both knives, feeling their steel punch
through leather and bone. The Ilvani captain screamed as Chriani shifted back
into view, the captain’s blazing eyes finding his. Dargana was behind him,
hacking in at Farenna’s neck, but he got his shoulder up to take the brunt of
her axe blow. Chriani was in too close, momentarily slowed as he tore his
knives out to prepare for Farenna’s counterstrike.

The Ilvani captain turned instead, driving forward with all the
strength left in him. The backsword lanced out, an extension of his arm. Its
blue light burned brightly as it took Dargana through the stomach.

It happened slowly, as it always did.

Chriani saw the look of shock and pain on the exile’s face as she
was lurched off her feet, lifted from the ground by the force of Farenna’s
thrust as it pushed out through her back. Then he pulled free, the sword
slipping from her on a trail of blood as she collapsed to the ground.

Chriani couldn’t move as Farenna wheeled on him, sensing himself
open. Knowing there was nothing he could do in that moment to stop the strike
that would kill him. But Farenna only screamed again, his golden eyes burning
with a molten light.

“Do you understand now Ilmari? Do you feel now what it means to
lose what you were? To watch them die?”

Chriani screamed. No words. He was moving again, flailing away at
Farenna with a frenzied series of knife strikes. He couldn’t think, didn’t care
that his voice would be bringing the sentries down on them even faster. He
shifted as he attacked, lashing out at Farenna’s wounded right side, but the
captain’s blade danced with the same lethal precision in his left hand.

“You should have been killed at the first sight of the temple!
You will be fed to the shadow well and your spirit consumed, half-blood. My
orders…”

Farenna faltered. Chriani saw it, drove in to sink one knife into
his side. The captain screamed in response, hammered out with an elbow that
drove Chriani back, tearing the knife from his hand.

“My orders…” Farenna stumbled back. He was shaking suddenly,
Chriani pushing in again, but the backsword came up to block him. No
counterstrike, though.

Chriani stumbled back, knowing he had time to use the ring.

He didn’t. He felt the understanding shift into place in his
mind.

In the forest, he had pulled Farenna down at the sight of
Taelendar turning. He had heard the captain’s head hit the ground, had seen the
blood at his temple as he rose, shaking.

He should have been triggered then. Farenna and Taelendar alike,
overwhelmed by the unseen power that coursed through them when the cult’s
tracking magic was exposed. The moment when they realized what they were, when
they embraced the dark instruction the lóechari had placed within them.

In the second council.
I have ridden to the Ghostwood more
than once,
Farenna said. The cult had gotten to him and then burned the
memory of their corruption away, but the captain had held their power off. Had
fought back against that dark magic with a strength of will that Chriani could
barely comprehend.

“Farenna…” He fought to focus his thoughts, his voice. “This
isn’t you. You have to fight it. You have to remember…”