Three Coins for Confession (31 page)

There was no saddle beneath them, Chriani’s legs struggling to
lock to the horse’s lean flanks. The figure in front of him grabbed his arm,
pulled it around to lock tight to a well-muscled chest, smooth skin flecked
with fine scar lines.

In the faint haze of starlight, Chriani saw the war-mark at the
bare shoulder of the Ilvani he rode behind.

Other horses shifted in the shadows around them, all running flat
out. He saw Dargana astride another horse, sitting behind an Ilvani warrior at
the far side of the troop, but he couldn’t count that troop’s total numbers as
they moved.

A shadow loomed. The stars flickered, then faded, then were gone.
Chriani felt the change in the air, a warmth and a closeness settling in around
him. The echo of the horses’ hooves was muffled, the droning of the river
rising to his right.

A burst of light came from before and behind him. He looked
forward, twisted back to see two of the riders with glowing disks in hand.
Magical light, something like the evenlamps of the Bastion, but these glowed a
pale green that set black ground and shadowed sky into sharp contrast.

They were in the Greatwood. The life Chriani had built was gone.

It was all he could think of, his mind shutting to all other
thought. Just like that. Kathlan and his commission, a place in the prince’s
guard. All of it vanished behind him as the thunder of hoofbeats carried him
into the night.

He held on tight. Nothing else he could do as the Ilvani plunged
into the darkness of the forest, leaving the world behind.

THEY RODE THROUGH the night, but Chriani remembered
little of the journey. The well of pale green hung around them like swirling
mist, making their frenzied flight seem even faster. He had no idea how the
Ilvani horses were holding to the twisting paths they shot along, maintaining a
running pace as they did so. In the darkness and the shifting pool of light
that passed within it, he had no way to even guess at the passage of time. But
he became conscious at some point that the speed of the horses would have to
flag eventually, the exhausted steeds needing to rest.

The horses didn’t flag, though. The troop raced on.

As on the Brandishear side of the Greatwood, the trails they
traversed were a complex series of half-seen paths. An uncountable number of
side trails split off from the main, Chriani knowing even from his minimal
exploration of the forest that fully a third of those would mark false starts
and dead ends. He couldn’t comprehend of the lifetime it would take to learn to
navigate the wood as well as these Ilvani were doing it.

He was riding with the carontir. The elite ranger patrols of the
Valnirata. No mistaking their skill as they raced their horses through the night.

The sound of the Hunthad came and went for what seemed a long
while. Then at some point, the troop forded the river at speed, plunging in
without slowing. Chriani nearly fell off, his rider needing to clasp his hand
hard. Freezing-cold water washed across his legs, the horse feeling to him like
it might be swimming in spots, even with two riders on its back. Then they were
on the far bank and running again.

More than once, Chriani found himself wondering how anyone would
ever hope to fight a war in this endless green darkness. More than once, he
remembered the Prince High Chanist’s promise to make a war against the Ilvani
that would burn the Greatwood to the ground.

When they stopped without warning, the forest was still dark. The
Ilvani reined to a halt in a sheltered clearing where a small stream twisted
through a tight mass of overgrowing vines, its water shimmering in the pale
green of the riders’ magical light. As they slowed, Chriani felt a dull ache in
the muscles of his back and shoulders, the steady rhythm of the horse’s back
beneath him driving a wedge of pain up his spine.

His Ilvani escort slipped off first, pushing up and swinging one
leg over his horse’s head. He silently offered a hand to help Chriani down.
Chriani needed to use it, his legs all but collapsing beneath him as he hit the
ground.

Beneath the arching roots of a great limni, the stream had etched
a pool out of loam and sandstone, the horses shifting forward to drink there.
They were eleven in number, the Ilvani riders and their mounts. The fleet
warhorses of the Greatwood, barely winded despite having run what seemed half
the night. A troop of war-marked Ilvani, half in green-grey armor, half naked
to the waist except where leather protected them at the shoulder or stomach.
Six female, four male, lean bodies ridged with muscle. A wide belt pack was the
only gear the carontir rangers wore except for bow and blade, and the
almost-empty quivers of arrows slung at their backs and hips.

Chriani was still wearing the steel ring at his finger. No one
had searched him in the chaotic aftermath of Jeradien’s attack. A sense of
relief twisted through him as he turned it absently, not sure why it was
important anymore. He checked his belt, felt the black ring in its pocket, the
golden badge, the two talismans, his lock picks. The only things he had carried
with him. The only things left to him now.

Dargana was across the clearing, Chriani catching her gaze as she
paced away from the horse she’d been carried on. Until he did, he realized that
he had assumed her to be complicit in whatever had happened at the camp. Some
kind of plan that she and the Laneldenari had hatched in case of trouble. But
seeing her expression now, he understood that she was as shaken as he was.

As their horses drank, the Ilvani stretched and paced but were
silent. All of them were watching Chriani as he made his way to the water,
crouched down to drink. He was still shirtless and barefoot, blood-crusted and
in leggings as Jeradien had found him.

He washed his shoulder carefully, the pain and the gash of the
cut healed over by the salve but the black crust of blood remaining. Kathlan’s
stitches were looped tight and useless now across smooth flesh. He broke them
with his fingers, pulled them painfully. He washed away a trace of new blood
when he was done.

“Are you all right?”

Dargana’s voice came soft from beside him as she knelt at the
water’s edge. She spoke low and in the Imperial tongue, no trace of an accent.

Chriani responded in kind, noting dark looks from a few of the
Ilvani close by. “I’ll live.”

Dargana’s knowledge of that common trade tongue caught him by
surprise, though he thought he understood her purpose. The Valnirata Ilvani had
been bitter blood enemies of the Empire of the Lothelecan. As such, even as
relatively few of the Valnirata spoke Ilmari, even fewer had any proficiency in
the language that had been the Imperial standard across the Ilmar for more than
a thousand years.

“I’m hoping you know what’s going on,” Chriani said evenly.
“Because I don’t.”

“I know some of it,” Dargana said. Then, as if predicting his
question, she added, “Though I don’t know what happened last night. I was told
to bring you to the Greatwood by following the Hunthad. I wasn’t expecting
this.”

Chriani nodded. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“If it’s the place I think, a city. They’ll hear the name if I
say it to you.”

“And why is that a problem?”

“Because knowing anything of one of the hidden cities of the
Valnirata can get a stranger to the Greatwood killed.”

A ghostly whistling rose from across the clearing, the horses
reacting to it with excited snorting, shaking out their manes. The signal had
come from the warrior Chriani rode with, who was watching him.

“We ride,” the warrior said. He seemed to be using the Ilvalantar
that Chriani knew, or the words were the same in whatever forest tongue he was
speaking. He spoke slowly either way, as if concerned for Chriani’s ability to
understand him.

“I’m sorry about Kathlan,” Dargana said as she stood, turning for
the other side of the clearing. “She’ll be all right, though. She’s got
strength the Ilmari will never understand.”

Chriani nodded, even as he felt himself trying to force thoughts
of Kathlan from his mind. Too much fear there. A thing he couldn’t think on
yet.

She would be fine. She had to be. He didn’t know what story she’d
tell, but he knew there’d be one. She’d called out when she told him to flee,
had set up the idea that he was the one who struck down Jeradien. It would look
like Kathlan had saved the Aerachi warrior’s life.

Kathlan would lie as much as she needed to, Chriani thought
darkly. He had showed her how.

His reflection was pale in the pool as he rose, showing him his
shoulder, clear to see. The war-mark there echoing the marks the other Ilvani
wore.

The Ilmari,
Dargana had said, as if excluding Chriani from
their number. As he reached the horse, he felt the expression ring empty in his
mind, feeling a distance from it that told him she was right. The threat of
being killed for who you were would do that.

The white horse that had borne him was a stallion, strong but
compact. Still, Chriani needed an arm from its rider to boost himself to its
bare back. He felt as much as heard a flicker of dark laughter drift through
the troop. Across the way, Dargana clambered up to her rider’s horse without
difficulty. With disbelief, Chriani noted how that horse was among a few in the
troop that carried no reins in addition to no saddle. Its rider had her legs
high up on the horse’s flanks, her knees and bare feet alone guiding the creature
as it shot ahead.

Dargana had no need to hold onto her rider, Chriani saw. He kept
his own hands back this time, locked his legs to the horse’s sides. He set his
arms to either side of him for balance as they set out again at a run.

The troop stopped once more past dawn for an equally short rest,
the horses and their riders all taking water again. The light through the trees
was a shadowy haze by now, bright enough to see by. The light disks winked out,
disappearing into belt packs before the Ilvani set out again.

Riding on by daylight, Chriani found that his balance improved.
So too did his ability to take the measure of the warriors they rode with.
Their riding style at least was familiar to him, even in the short time that he
had patrolled the frontier. The Ilvani rode as if they were born on horseback,
mount and rider sharing one set of senses, a singular focus. No fear in them.
Nothing existing outside the space of the vine-swept trails, the towering limni
growing in tight ranks, raining down pale sunlight and a drift of green-gold
leaves as the horses passed.

Chriani had never seen the Valnirata of the Greatwood outside
combat, he realized. Never had the chance to watch them riding except across
the long spaces that separated Ilvani and Ilmari as their riders shadowed each
other along the frontier. Never seeing them except through the haze of frantic
expectation and the hiss of arrows back and forth through the trees.

In their unbridled ease as they rode, in their instinctive sense
of control, the Ilvani reminded him of Kathlan. An unwitting observation. A
single moment of stray thought, but Chriani felt a pain hammering at his chest,
a darkness to his vision. He had to hang on to his rider escort momentarily,
fighting to regain his balance as they raced on.

One more stop saw the horses take water and engage in standing
rest, but the halt was so brief that Chriani had no time to do anything but
stretch his legs. Then just as he was getting to the point when he feared he
might fall off the horse from exhaustion, the troop slowed its pace, slipping
along a narrow trail that entered a broad glade tufted with pale green grass.
The great trees rose up to frame a narrow circle of sky above, the forest
around them a shimmering aura of gold and green.

Though the sky was too bright to scan, Chriani guessed that the
sun was high in the world above and around them. He was steadier this time as
he dismounted, watching as the horses were led to an area of flattened grass
near a spring-fed pool. The glade had the look of some kind of tended way
station. Thin silver ropes marked the edges of nets strung within a framework
of low branches, the Ilvani unfurling them to reveal sacks of feed and forage.
This they scattered to the grass, the horses eating as the Ilvani looked them
over, rubbed them down with their hands.

With nothing else to do, Chriani sat, feeling the weight of
exhaustion push him down as if the ground might be swallowing him. Dargana
approached with a silver flask in hand, its sides etched in a bewilderingly
complex pattern of leaf-curved lines.

“Mead,” she said as she knelt. By her movements, she was nearly
as stiff as Chriani, though she didn’t look as tired.

“From where?” he said.

Dargana nodded toward her own rider where she was gently
massaging her horse’s left hock, working it with long fingers. “It’ll give you
strength.”

Chriani sipped at the flask and felt an unexpected rush of warmth
twist through him. He caught the familiar meadow scent of Ilmari mead in the
liquor, but mixed with unfamiliar flavors and fragrances. He drank deeper,
feeling the pain in his back lessened, the light around him burning brighter as
his fatigue was seemingly drawn away.

One by one, the horses lay down, collapsing to the ground and
settling into position for a deep slumber. As they sat down beside and between
their mounts, the Ilvani were talking to each other. Whispering in the
shimmering silence. More than once, Chriani saw them glance in his and
Dargana’s direction.

“Are we prisoners?” he asked quietly.

“We don’t need to be. You want to run, you know as well as they
do, there’s nowhere you’ll get to in the wood where they won’t catch you.”

Across from them, Dargana’s escort rose to her feet with a
paper-wrapped package in hand. She shared Dargana’s darkness, her eyes black
beneath a shroud of tangled hair set with streaks of night-blue. The same color
as the edges of her war-mark, wrapping her shoulder and sweeping down to
encircle one breast.

She stopped before them, tossing the package to Dargana. The
exile nodded as she touched right hand to left shoulder like some gesture of
thanks. Chriani wasn’t sure what underlay the exchange, noting only that the
Ilvani warrior seemed to be doing her best to ignore him, but he mimicked
Dargana’s gesture as best he could.

The Valnirata warrior responded by spitting, catching him on the
cheek.