Three Coins for Confession (44 page)

Footsteps rang out loud from below them, sentries racing along
adjacent platforms. Preparing to climb.

Farenna drove in with two sweeping blows, Chriani backpedaling
away from both of them. The captain was slowing, Chriani’s other knife still
buried to the hilt in his stomach. A swath of blood was trailing behind him
across the wood of the platform floor as he pressed in.

“Veassen is a fool hiding behind greater fools… the heir of the
exile’s blade, an Ilmari stripling…”

“Farenna, fight this. Remember who you are.”

“The blade belongs to Caradar… The exile king will carry it once
more…”

“They did this to you,” Chriani shouted. “They captured you on
patrol. They brought you here. When you led us in, you were leading us back,
but you kept us away from their patrols because you knew where to look for them…”

“You will be sacrificed to shadow!” Farenna screamed. “Like all
nonbelievers. We follow the Myllasir to the destiny of the Ilvanghlira.”

The Ilvani captain was injured. Dying, Chriani knew. But still
fast enough. He feinted left, Chriani not seeing it until he was already
driving in. The backsword came up and across, its razor edge catching Chriani’s
leg and cutting almost to the bone. The blade’s steel flashed blue, the pain
lancing white-hot from his leg to his back.

Chriani felt himself fall.

Dargana was still breathing. He noticed it in the slowness of the
moment as he hit the platform hard, felt his own breath leave him.

Farenna stood over him. Teeth set against the pain, the captain
drew Chriani’s long-knife from his stomach. A gout of blood followed as he
dropped it to the floor.

“Fight it, Farenna…” Another layer of shadow was shifting across
Chriani’s vision. He tried to focus, tried to will the power of the black ring
to life, but the pain at his leg made even that much thought impossible. He tried
to press down to stop the flow of blood, but his hands were numb.

“This is the destiny of the Ilvanghlira…” Farenna whispered the
words uncertainly, as if trying to make sense of them. “The beginnings of
forgotten fate…”

“The fate of the Ilvani is to live, Farenna. You said it
yourself.” Chriani fought desperately to clear his mind, to seek out the memory
of the council floor. “The war that starts with this cult ends everything, but
that isn’t what the Ilvani want. It isn’t what you need.”

Farenna blinked. For just an instant, through the haze of pain
that rose in time with his pounding heart, Chriani thought he saw the golden
light in the captain’s eyes flicker like a dying fire.

In war, we find the strength of life, but our lives are more
than war,
Farenna had said.
What we need is the wisdom after long
centuries to see this.”

“The war the cult starts will never end. The Ilmar first. Then
Calalerean against Laneldenar. Then the rest of Muiraìden. Then where does it
stop?”

The platform shuddered as three sentries pulled themselves up
along the trailing ropes at its shattered edge. Chriani heard still more
movement around him, a steady pulse of sound that he realized was countless
rope bridges vibrating under the weight of running footsteps.

The three Ilvani pressed in with long-knives drawn, the golden
light blazing in their eyes. Their faces were the grim masks of rage and
defiance Chriani had seen before, matching Farenna’s expression as he stepped
toward them, limping.

Then the captain’s blade came up. A blur of red and blue-white.
The three Ilvani died, no chance to show the surprise they must have felt as
Farenna cut them down.

The captain screamed. The sword shook in his hand as he collapsed
to the platform floor, convulsing. The light of gold was back in his eyes, and
Chriani’s realization came in a moment of horror. He was too distracted, too
unfocused to think of it. He had succeeded in turning Farenna, in digging deep
to find the spirit and strength in the warrior that could counter the magic that
had corrupted him. And in so doing, Chriani had killed the captain with the
surety of a knife in the heart.

Farenna had failed in his mission and the dark pledge he had
forgotten. It was over.

The magic of the coins was surging in the captain, choking off
the pulse of life in him. But with a shout whose strength Chriani could feel,
Farenna pushed himself up, staggered to his feet. He locked his arms against
the spasms that were forcing them to the side, sword shaking in his hands as if
his grip on it would keep the coins from appearing in his palms.

Three more Ilvani appeared, Chriani not seeing where they’d come
from. They pushed in toward him as if they were afraid he might run.

“Friend Chriani…” Farenna whispered. His dark eyes were wet,
blood at his lips. “Do not fail…”

He ran for the three Ilvani, surging past Chriani to angle
himself toward the platform’s edge. They stared for an instant too long, as if
they instinctively sensed the magic that bound Farenna to them, unable to
comprehend the reality of him turning against them.

He was injured, close to dying, but the captain moved with all
the grace that had led Chriani and Dargana through the forest and into the
trees. He let his arms go wide, the sword gripped tight in his left hand, as he
struck with all the power that had dropped three cultists in a heartbeat. He
took knives in the shoulder and stomach as he drove forward. It didn’t slow
him.

The sentries made a hiss of alarm as they stumbled back beneath
the force and fury of Farenna’s attack. Then they were gone.

Chriani was at the edge of the platform, couldn’t remember
moving. He reached out as if he was trying to grab for Farenna, hoping that the
captain had managed to hang on somehow. Hoping he’d see him clinging to the
edge with a grim smile, waiting for Chriani’s hand.

Instead, he saw all the Ilvani hit the well of shadow below.
Their bodies dissolved within a pulse of black flame, Farenna claimed last. He
saw the blue light of the captain’s sword flare and die, then saw its steel
shatter as it was consumed. A pulse of thunder shook the platform like it might
be a sailboat in a storm wind, a wave of sound and force and shadow that rose
and swirled around Chriani and wouldn’t stop.

Dargana was breathing.

Chriani was on his feet, couldn’t remember standing.

It was pitch black around him, his sight extending barely two
paces to all sides. The storm of shadow was a shrieking gale as he dropped to
Dargana’s side, saw her eyes open. The wound at her stomach was barely
bleeding, but the tremor of blood-shock was pushing through her, a red-black
stain at her lips.

“Go…” she whispered.

Chriani lifted her carefully. He slung her across his shoulder,
wrapped his arm around her tight. He had no awareness of how much she weighed,
his body moving of its own accord, fed by a strength he couldn’t name.

If he’d had healing, he could have saved her. The taste of a
simple draught at her lips and he would watch the blood slow where it spilled
from her, watch her wounds knit closed. But that magic was a world away now.

He used the only magic he did have, forcing his will into the
black ring. Feeling the shadow cloak him, watching it cloak Dargana where he
held her tight.

This wasn’t about saving her. It was about keeping her safe,
keeping her from the cult and its madness until the end.

He could feel the movement of the platform as he hit a rotting
ladder, sensing it lurch beneath his weight and Dargana’s but hold fast. He
could feel the sentries around him but couldn’t see them. Knew that meant they
couldn’t see him.

He didn’t look back as he climbed.

CHRIANI HAD NO MEMORY of the route he took. Couldn’t see
how far up he’d come when he fell to his knees finally on the wet planks of a
narrow platform edged by a low wall, hemmed in by close-growing branches and a
screen of leaves.

He was thinking of Barien, confusion twisting through his mind as
he wondered why he was carrying the hulking sergeant on his back. He wondered
why his body felt so light. He thought of the road to Elalantar, Barien
bleeding out, fighting the blood-shock as he waited for his guards to be
healed. Then Chriani was there on that road and it was Barien dying, bleeding
out on grey grass that was the stone floor of the archives quarter in the
Bastion, where the sergeant had fallen.

He felt the pain of that night, slipping out from the shadow
where it hid. Felt the anguish of knowing Barien was dying, and that there was
nothing he could do to stop it.

He fought through the shadow in his mind. He reminded himself
where he was, told himself that this was the blood-shock coming for him. He was
on the rotting platform again. Dargana was at his shoulder as he forced himself
forward, the pain in his leg flaring to a white light behind his eyes,
threatening to send him down. He fought it, pushed into the shelter of the wall
and the screen of leaves before he carefully, gently, let Dargana down to the
ground.

The shadow cloaked them still. The trunk of the tree around which
the platform wrapped couldn’t have been more than four paces away, but Chriani
saw nothing but darkness in all directions. Dargana looked up at him, her eyes
clearer than they had been. He was trying to speak, trying to find the words to
tell her he was sorry, but he heard her voice instead.

“Chriani… where is the blade of Caradar?”

He shook his head. “Don’t speak,” he managed to say. The taste of
metal was in his mouth, the scent of rot filling him. “You’re safe.”

She laughed then. No sense of pain in her, which Chriani knew as
a sign that she was close to the end. “I’m already gone and you know it,” she
said. “And I need to know this. Please.”

He would tell her the truth. He knew it even before he spoke,
felt the decision set itself in his mind with a strange clarity. A test of
sorts, he thought. Seeing if the truth was even something he was capable of
anymore.

“I gave the blade to Lauresa. She knows to keep it hidden, to let
Andreg guard it without realizing it. It’s safe with her.”

He expected the exile to be angry. He expected to see her
contempt one last time, her mouth set in the familiar sneer. Dargana’s face was
a mask, though, the dark eyes showing only curiosity.

“The blade that killed her grandfather. That nearly killed her.
That’s a strange gift to give, half-blood. Why?”

It was a question Chriani had asked himself, almost from the
moment he handed the bloodblade to Lauresa in a shadowed glade of the Ghostwood
eighteen months before. He had pushed it aside then. Too many other things to
think about. Had pushed it aside each time the thought came back to him, each
time word of the new duchess came from Teillai to Rheran across the Clearwater.

There were birth celebrations in Aerach, almost a year ago now.
He had felt the question come back to him then, but he understood the answer
only now. Holding Dargana’s freezing hand in the dark, waiting for the end.

“Because Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once. And they need to be
again. The hate has to stop. Some good has to come of all the blood of the
past. Or the Ilmar has no future.”

“And you think she’s the one to do it? Living ensconced as some
duke’s pet in Aerach?”

“She’s strong enough,” Chriani said, and he felt a sense of other
lives splitting off from his own. Splitting off from those long days of the
deep winter eighteen months before. Another life Lauresa might have lived if
she’d been left to choose the terms of her life. “If she’s not able to do it
herself, she’ll show others the way.”

The hand that was squeezing Dargana’s was warm. Chriani looked
down to see her bloodblade clutched in his shaking fingers. He hadn’t seen her
press it to him, hadn’t thought she could still move.

“Carry it from here,” she whispered. “Don’t let the lóechari
claim it.”

“I’m sorry…” Chriani said at last, but Dargana hissed him to
silence.

“Keep both blades safe. Find your path, half-blood. And know that
Veassen was right.”

A chill twisted through Chriani. But whether in response to
Dargana’s words or the faint trace of footfalls rising through the shroud of
leaves around them, he didn’t know.

“Veassen’s a fool,” he said. “And this was a fool’s errand. We
shouldn’t have…”

“The heir of the exile’s blade,” Dargana whispered. “You have
fate behind you, Chriani, whether you like it or not. You’ll know what it
means…”

She was silent after that.

Chriani crouched beside her for a long while. Silence hung around
him again, but he could see the great trunk of the limni at the platform’s
inside edge now. The shadow was lifting.

Dargana was ice cold to his touch suddenly. Something had
changed. Chriani tried to focus, wondering whether he’d blacked out. Still no
sound of sentries, but the hissing alarm-call of the Ilvani was rising in the
distance, faint on the wind.

As he reached down to close Dargana’s eyes, he saw the platform
clearly around her. White wood mottled black and grey, shot through with mold.
And no sign of blood anywhere except where faint traces had come off her armor
and the soaked tunic beneath it.

She hadn’t bled here. Not a drop of her life spilled out, because
she hadn’t died here. Which meant she’d been dead already. Had probably slipped
away even as Chriani climbed.

That made no sense, though. He felt for the shadow deep in his
mind. He pushed the thought away.

With Dargana’s bloodblade, he cut strips from her tunic, used
them to bind his leg where Farenna had cut him. The razor sharpness of the
Ilvani backsword had probably saved his life so far, the cut perfectly straight
and all but sealed. Nothing torn, none of the fast blood hit that would have
pumped his life away.

You have fate behind you, whether you like it or not,
Dargana had said. She’d been lying before, in the council chamber. It was more
than revenge she was out for. She’d believed in something. She’d believed in
some at least of Veassen’s children’s tales.

She’d believed in Chriani and was dead for it now.

You’ll know what it means.

But he didn’t know. Couldn’t think on it. It was too late.

He stood up carefully, felt the pain at his leg surge against the
shadow in his mind, skipping through thoughts as if he might be flipping pages
in an atlas. What they’d seen coming in, the route to the temple that had left
so many dead behind him. Horse patrols on the perimeter, sentries in the trees.
Cult agents among the Ilvani of Laneldenar, their minds in shadow, their
movements tracked. No way to risk action from the Greatwood as long as the
magic of the cult was maintained.

He had done what he set out to do. What they had all set out to
do.

Farenna had accepted Chriani among his riders. Obligation and
trust.

He was the last one left. He needed to get back with what he
knew. To Sylonna, to Aerach, it didn’t matter. His horse would know the way
back to the hidden city. A faster ride, no chance of getting lost. But if he
rode for Aerach, made it to the frontier fast enough, it might stop the Ilvani
from following. He could return to Kathlan, take the rites with her. He would
ride into Teillai a hero.

Chriani heard a laughter that he realized was his own voice. He
forced himself to silence, shook his head to clear a wave of darkness settling
there. His focus was drifting, his thoughts slipping away from him.

He needed to run. That was all.

He slipped Dargana’s bloodblade to his belt, clenched his fist to
feel the warm touch of the black ring there. A rope bridge was visible at the
far end of the platform, the storm of shadow all but faded back to its original
web of dark lines. Chriani was already running as he vanished from sight.

The shadow that surrounded him as a sign of the ring’s power
forced him to move slowly, needing to focus on the path ahead and the sounds of
movement around him. The sentries and warriors of the cult were racing across
the dark network of bridges and platforms that surrounded the black tree,
spreading out from that center even as Chriani tried to find his way down to
the ground.

The dead shrine they had passed through was his goal, but the
path was elusive. He needed that landmark to find the horses again, he knew.
Too much of a chance to get himself lost in the forest if he set out at random.
He needed to retrace the route Farenna had followed to bring them in, but he
felt himself trapped in a maze of three dimensions. Picking out course after
course, only to have each one vanish into dead ends, fallen platforms, and
sentries standing watch at key bridge points.

He learned quickly to check for signs of traffic, avoiding
bridges and ladders that showed no use. He had missed those signs the first
time and nearly been lost, moving onto a bridge whose ropes had rotted through
and torn away to nothing beneath his first step. He had caught the platform’s
edge, just barely. Had seen sentries below him, pointing up to mark his
position where they heard him hit, then racing back into the shadows.

Those sentries were in constant motion around him now, a presence
felt in the distance even as their exact positions went unseen. Chriani’s
senses couldn’t follow them, couldn’t track through the chill that twisted
through him, turned all his thoughts to points of brightness and shadow in his
mind. It was the blood-shock, still trying to settle in on him but fought with
all the strength he had left.

Though the power of the ring protected him from the sight of the
lóechari, he caught them reacting to his passage more than once. He was moving
as quietly as he could, shrouded by equally faint footfalls and hissing shouts
to all sides. It wasn’t enough, though. They could hear him, could sense him
somehow. He thought of the keenness of his own senses, the gift of his father’s
blood. But it was nothing compared to the hunters’ sight and hearing of the
Ilvani as they closed in around him.

His leg had been agony at the start, but he had forced himself
beyond the pain. Pushed past it to find a steady, shuffling pace. His foot and
lower leg had long since gone numb, though, the pain replaced by a dull ache
that rose higher with each step. He was slowing as a result, fearful of a
stumble sending his leg out beneath him. The power of the ring, the shroud of
shadow it spread over the darker storm from the well, made it that much harder
to judge distance as he moved.

If he fell, if he twisted or broke his ankle with a misstep, it
was over.

He was descending along a platform’s anchor rope, forced over the
edge when three sentries had appeared along the bridge he’d been hoping to
take. He hung by his arms and legs, shifting carefully. Timing his movement
with theirs so the tremor in the rope wouldn’t be seen. He heard them pass by,
was nearly down to an empty platform below when he felt the numbness of his leg
flare to an unfamiliar warmth.

Where both legs wrapped around it, the fraying rope had torn at
Chriani’s makeshift bandage. The wound was bleeding again, and badly. He saw it
dripping freely, watched as a spill of blood shimmered to become visible as it
left his body. Coalescing out of thin air to a red rain as it fell.

He dropped to the platform quicker than he’d wanted to, putting
the weight of the landing onto his good leg. Even through shadow, he saw the
red-black gleam trailing behind him, saw it flowing down to trace his footsteps
as he moved.

Onto the next ladder, climbing to reach a terrace that he thought
might lead him to the ground, Chriani heard a hissing from behind him. He
glanced back to see an Ilvani scout low to the platform he had just fled. She
was running a hand along the planks, was sniffing the blood she’d found there.

“Laóith!” Against the silence in which the Ilvani were hunting,
her voice rang out like an alarm bell. Hissing rose in the darkness all around,
calls of response. Chriani hauled himself off the ladder, hit the terrace
running. He felt movement behind him but didn’t look back.

He didn’t know how much time he had, but he knew this was the
end.

He pushed himself along a short bridge, dropped at the end of it
to lower himself to another platform below. He could see the ground, the dark
spread of rotting leaves. Footsteps above him, hissing voices from below. If he
took the time to stop and rebind the wound, they would likely find him. And
even if they didn’t, he wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to move again if he
stopped, the numbness in his leg turned to a grating sensation now with each
step.