Three Coins for Confession (32 page)

Chriani was on his feet before he realized he was moving, Dargana
up just as fast, trying to step in front of him. She was whispering words in
the forest tongue, talking too fast for Chriani to catch her meaning. A flash
of blue steel erupted as a bloodblade appeared in the warrior’s hand.

“Taelendar!”

The Ilvani who was Chriani’s escort called out from across the
glade, his voice shutting the whispered conversations of the other Ilvani to silence.
Even the faint wind tracing through the trees above them seemed to slow.
Chriani didn’t know the word the Ilvani had spoken, but from the way the
warrior snapped to attention and spun around, he guessed it was her name.

Chriani’s rider said nothing else. Just held the angry warrior’s
gaze for what seemed like a timeless moment. Chriani’s hands were locked to
fists, but he realized it only when he felt Dargana’s hands against his,
pushing them down.

The warrior Taelendar swung her bloodblade behind her to sheathe
it in its back scabbard. The way she held her hand meant that Chriani got to
see the dagger for a long moment before it disappeared within well-worn
leather. He was fairly certain that was as she’d intended it.

She stalked back toward the horses, making a wide arc around the
clearing as Chriani’s rider stepped forward. He was tall and dark, hair and
eyes the grey-black of charcoal ash. Though Chriani had seen the war-mark on
the Ilvani’s shoulder for most of their ride, its full effect was visible only
from the front. It was in black and grey, a stark shadow where it plunged down
and across his chest, encircling breast and navel as a cascade of razor-sharp
lines.

“I am Farenna,” the Ilvani said. He spoke the common Ilvalantar,
though his accent was sharp, enunciating clearly as if he had guessed at
Chriani’s lack of practice with the complex tongue. “I am captain among this troop.
You are Chriani, and friend to us. Taelendar is young. She is angry, but you
are in no danger. Please, eat and rest.”

“Our thanks,” Dargana said. She made the same gesture as before,
but Chriani didn’t follow her lead this time.

“For our security,” Farenna said, “I must search you, friend
Chriani.” His tone was even. Almost apologetic.

Chriani felt the absurdity of the statement, standing before the
Ilvani half naked and weaponless. “Search me for what…?” he started to say.
Then he saw the flare of a blue-white light in Farenna’s hand.

Against the shimmering of that light, the steel ring at Chriani’s
finger pulsed with an unnatural warmth. Before he had any chance to react,
Farenna was nodding as if he could read something in the ring’s dweomer, the
light dancing as he traced his fingers along Chriani’s belt.

Chriani’s hands were locked to fists at his side. Dargana caught
his eye, shook her head ever so slightly.

“You have gold within your belt, Ilmari.” Farenna’s hand shifted
along the leather as if he was testing it. “I sense the shadow my spell casts
against it. Please. Show me.”

The eyes of all the Ilvani were on him, Taelendar standing with
arms crossed upon her chest. Carefully, Chriani slipped his fingers to the
belt’s hidden pockets. He pulled forth the black ring, his lockpicks. The
golden badge, the two talismans. The Ilvani captain touched them all, one by one.
But at the sight of the talismans, his hand slowed.

“The hunter’s heart,” he said quietly.
Gavalirnon.
He plucked one of the talismans from Chriani’s hand. “How do
you come by these?”

Chriani made no move to stop him. “I took them off the Ilvani
hunting me.” He had no energy in him to even try to lie. No reason to anymore.
“The gold disk is Ilmari magic. It masks me to the tracking power of the
talismans. That’s why they’re dark.”

He expected more questions but Farenna simply nodded, thoughtful.
He returned the hunter’s heart to Chriani’s hand. “My thanks.”

“Where are you taking us?” Chriani asked as the captain turned
away toward the horses.

Farenna glanced back. “You must wait for your questions, friend
Chriani. As we have waited for you.”

Chriani watched the captain darkly as he paced away. “What does
he mean by that?” he asked Dargana.

“Eat,” was all she said. She slipped to the ground and opened the
paper-wrapped package, some sort of flatbread revealed within. “You need to
rest, and badly. The Ilvani don’t need the sleep you do. They won’t wait for
you.”

Chriani felt the weight of his exhaustion hit him again as she
said it, but he shrugged. “The horses will be resting a while. I’ll manage what
I can.” He broke off a bit of the bread and tasted it, sensing a sweetness like
the draught Dargana had shared.

“The horses of the Valnirata rest no longer than their riders do.
We’ll be up and gone again before the sun has moved halfway to dusk. Rest every
time you can, or they’ll be carrying you in.”

“Carrying me in to where?”

Chriani saw an answer in the exile’s dark eyes, but she said
nothing in response.

He ate half the bread in short order, washing it down with more
mead and finding his hunger strangely satiated. Dargana shifted away from him
when she was done, settling back against the upthrust root of a limni nearly as
broad as she was. Chriani heard her breathing deeply, settling into the strange
posture of sitting half-sleep that the Ilvani favored.

The trancelike manner of Ilvani rest was no secret among the
Ilmari, but Chriani had never actually seen it. He had no idea what specific
gifts of their Ilvani parents others of his mixed blood inherited, but the
secret of waking sleep wasn’t a thing he had ever known. Not sure why that
aspect of his father’s lineage hadn’t been passed down to him. Across the
clearing, the riders had gone silent, most of them likewise sitting
cross-legged with eyes closed. Farenna and two others were doing a sentry’s
walk along the perimeter of the glade.

“You didn’t kill him,” Chriani said to Dargana. “Venry. Last
night.” He remembered the lieutenant trying to run the exile down, her hauling
him off his horse in the chaos of the Ilvani attack. He hadn’t expected to see
the Ilmari get up again.

“I guessed right that he’d claimed my blade. Getting it back was
more important.”

“You threatened to kill me once for even having touched a
bloodblade. I would have thought him stealing yours would be worth something.”

“The Laneldenari weren’t shooting to kill,” she said. “I assumed
they had a reason for that, so I accepted it.”

“I remember you saying you don’t wait on other people’s
decisions.”

Dargana’s black eyes held Chriani’s gaze for a long moment before
she closed them again.

He found a relatively soft patch of ground, but he also felt a
knot of tension in his gut that told him sleep would be impossible. He had no
tunic or cover, felt the chill of the breeze and the pain in his back. He was
thus surprised to find Dargana calling his name what seemed only moments later.
He sat up to see the light had shifted, the haze of the sun slanting in from
ahead of him now. The horses were on their feet, the Ilvani rubbing them down
again, a few already mounted.

Though Chriani’s head was clearer, the weariness of his body felt
as though it had settled in to turn his bones to brittle glass. He stretched as
he followed Dargana, excising the trembling from his limbs.

He swung up behind Farenna without assistance this time. The
horses set out slow to start as they left the glade and the haze of sunlight
behind. Then they plunged into shadow and picked up speed, Chriani sitting
straight, staring ahead like all the rest as they pushed deeper into the
forest.

Along the narrow tracks of the Greatwood, the Ilvani horses made
speed as if they might be riding along the smoothest Brandishear farm road,
alternating between a gallop and a jog without ever becoming winded. Over two
days of riding, the carontir kept the same schedule of short rests at intervals
to drink and stretch, with two longer rests in clearings stocked with food and
sweet mead.

That draught seemed like the only thing keeping Chriani on his
feet. He would collapse to a dead sleep during those longer rests, once more by
light, once by dark, but his exhaustion never truly broke.

By night, they rode within the shimmering veil of the Ilvani’s
mage-light. By day, the grey-green light shone dim through the towering screen
of branches above them. Birds and insects were the only sounds, obliterated
beneath the drumming of the horses’ hooves over trails of moss and loam, but
rising each time they stopped. Chriani heard wolves howl more than once, and a
single time, a screech something like an owl, but louder than any bird should
ever have been able to make.

The call was thin and distant, but even then, the Ilvani showed
almost as much alarm as Chriani felt. For a time, they slipped into an outrider
formation, four rangers flanking the main body of the troop with bows drawn.
Eventually, though, the forest returned to its familiar stillness.

They saw no settlements as they rode, and this lack of signs of
life began to weigh on Chriani. No cleared farmsteads, no villages. No
woodcutters’ shacks, no tree fort watchtowers. Just the endless expanse of
forest, and an emptiness that pressed down on him like all the world might well
have disappeared beyond the Ilvani rangers and the endless wall of green.

Midway through the third day since the attack on the Ilmari camp,
that changed.

Chriani had heard the tales of the Ilvani cities. It was part of
the training that had taken over his life when he unexpectedly made rank and
was offered commission in the same day. History and warfare. Battle tactics and
best practices in the field. An endless discussion of the mysteries of the
Greatwood and the bloodthirsty Valnirata war-clans that dwelled there.
Eschewing smaller permanent settlements that couldn’t be defended, the Ilvani
were said to center themselves in vast cities impossible to attack or siege.
Even if you guessed correctly as to where they were, it would be three days
hard riding to reach the nearest of those forest cities from the edge of the
Greatwood. And you’d make that journey with the Ilvani fighting you every
league of the way.

All of what Chriani had learned of the interior of the Greatwood
in the past year had the feel of legend to it, for the simple reason that no
Ilmari had ever seen it. Exiles’ reports alone told the story, along with
sparse accounts from seers and scryers among the war-mages of Brandishear and
Aerach. Even during the Incursions, the forces of both principalities had
avoided pushing into the deep wood. Fearful of what they would find there.

Chriani saw the change first as a light. The forest canopy was
still bright above them, his eyes having long grown accustomed to the
Greatwood’s ever-present daylight gloom. This was something else, though.
Something dead ahead, shimmering like a distant signal fire as the horses
surged through the shifting screen of the trees.

He saw the archers next. Darker shadows within those trees,
clinging to broad platforms. Those were set against the great trunks of the
limni, suspended from thick branches by twisted rope-cables crawling with pale
green vines. Bows were nocked and following them as they rode, each rank of
sentries they passed replaced by another rank ahead.

The riders crested a rise where the trail broadened, then
abruptly ended in a road paved with white stones. These glowed with a pale
light, the horses slowing as they came near. Farenna was in the lead, Chriani
leaning past him to see as their horse turned sharp into the light, the road
ten strides broad and curving away to both sides ahead and behind them. A vast
paved circle cut through the forest, the great limni looming to either side.

Within that circle, the city of the Ilvani rose.

From ten paces farther away, it hadn’t been there. Following the
trail that should have given him direct line of sight, all Chriani had seen was
trees and vines, the shifting shadows that played out across the forest floor
as the distant wind shifted through the canopy above. Some manner of magic. An
incredibly elaborate illusion. He fought the urge to make the moonsign.

A sea of light played out before him, spreading from the tangled
undergrowth up to the first tier of branches standing high over his head. Then
it rose even higher, climbing upward in long, swirling strokes like frost
against winter glass. It clung and clustered like spiderwebs, radiating out
from central points. It hung like drooping nets, parallel lines of green-white
radiance that glimmered gently as the horses drew near.

The spires and platforms of the city were ranked in endless
rising tiers. Huge disks extended out from the edges of the limni, anchored by
buttresses and rope cables that twisted past and through each other. A pattern
of light and shadow was wrapped from tree to tree, connecting uncounted limni
as a vast living loom. Chriani saw ladders and rope bridges, saw uncounted
Ilvani passing along them like they might have been walking an Ilmari city’s
main streets.

He tried to grasp at the size of the settlement before him and
couldn’t. No way to see through to its far side, the light fading, flaring,
blurring out to an endless haze of green-white ahead. And even if he had seen
the city’s far side, could have compared it to the spread of Rheran or
Glaeddyn, Welbirk or Athegwyn or any of the other cities he had seen, the life
and the light here expanded upward in way no Ilmari city could ever do.

Even at the edge of the Greatwood, the limni rose easily to six
times the height of a tall warrior. As high even as any tower of the Bastion.
Here within the forest, pushing closer to the heart of that endless green,
Chriani felt a sense of unsettling awe at the thought of how much taller still
the great trees might be.

Even before the apex of that height, great winged shapes flitted
between the trees, slipping onto and off the tallest platforms with a screech
that sent a chill up Chriani’s spine. Griffons. Hundreds of them, swirling like
starlings across the shimmering sky.