Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  “No.”

  “Fuck you with your own sword…” At Chriani’s feet, Grus snarled like a cornered dog. The veteran’s hands were locked to fists, waiting for any chance to strike. “Horse-bastard Ilvani kill your sergeant and this is the stones you show.”

  Chriani felt the tip of his sword twitch. The veteran’s voice cut to seething silence.

  It hadn’t been intentional. A tremor had threaded his hand as Grus’s blind rage washed through him. The hatred that had driven a raw wedge between Ilmari and Ilvani for generations.

  Chriani understood anger. He had lived with it, had felt it shadow him his whole life. In that moment in the forest, seeing Kathlan lurch in the saddle as the Ilvani arrow took her through the shoulder, he understood only too well how easily he would have killed the one who shot her if he’d had the chance. And that understanding warned him now of all the wrong reasons he might find to do what he did. All the reasons he might have stood back once and done nothing while the Ilvani were beaten senseless for their silence.

  He had pledged to turn the anger aside, to not let it rule him. He had made that promise to Kathlan. He had made other promises in his life, to be sure. But the promise to Kathlan was the one he would keep.

  Riding with the rangers, his anger had been given a new outlet in combat. But as he felt Grus’s seething tension, saw from the corner of his eye as the wounded Ilvani pushed himself back up to a sitting position, Chriani didn’t know what he had gained from that. Ilmari and Ilvani, always too ready to kill each other. And him caught in the middle of it.

  After what seemed a long while, Makaysa nodded to the others, whose daggers slid away. They took a step back but kept their blades high, close enough that the Ilvani would have no room to run. Carefully, Chriani stepped away from Grus, who shot to his feet in a fury.

  “No.” It was Makaysa this time. An order given and heard. Eyes blazing, the veteran turned his back on Chriani, strode quickly away toward the horses.

  Chriani paced around the Ilvani. He felt the eyes of all the rangers on him, even as he felt the inherent futility of the task at hand.

  “Where do you ride from?” He spoke in Ilvalantar again, but slowly. Trying his best to mask his skill with the tongue, which was far from perfect but better than Makaysa’s by far. It was a thing he had learned from his mother, but which he had relatively few chances to practice. Another thing he didn’t want known. Not here and now at any rate.

  Silence was the only response.

  “You set an ambush. You’re carontir, but you acted as raiders on the Brandishear side of the frontier to lure our patrols into the forest. Then you waited for us. Why?”

  “You done wasting time?” Grus asked in a low growl as the silence continued.

  Where they stared sullenly forward, all the Ilvani had eyes of gold, bright and burning in the torchlight. It wasn’t an unusual color among their kind, but in tone and brightness, it was strangely consistent. Chriani would have taken them for siblings at first glance because of it. Members of a family clan, perhaps, though their hair and coloring showed no other similarity he could see.

  “You killed the sergeant, then held back. What were you waiting for?” He said it quickly, letting the Ilvani accent carry the words. Not sure if he wanted Makaysa to be able to follow this particular thread too closely.

  One of the Ilvani made a sound then. Not words, not speech, but a sharp hiss as if her breathing had brought her sudden pain. Chriani saw a flash of gold as her gaze found his, a bright hatred burning in the narrowed eyes.

  A memory slipped into place in his mind. Hidden beneath his thoughts before, then revealing itself to anchor those thoughts. Assemble them into clear focus. As he so often did, Chriani welcomed the memory with a spike of anger, cursing himself for not thinking it sooner, for all the endless distractions of his mind.

  Instinct and anger. His mother’s patience was something he had tried to learn, a virtue he told himself was the last part of her in him. But too often when the instinct came, it seemed to come too late.

  “Lóech arnala irch niir…” Chriani said it clearly, quietly.

  As one, all the Ilvani turned to face him.

  The rage that twisted through their features sent a chill up his spine. The rangers’ blades slipped closer, Chriani glad of it. All four of the Valnirata began to whisper, their voices faint but hanging steel-sharp on the bright silence of the torchlight.

  “Lóech arnala irch niir…”

  He had no idea what it meant, no idea what was passing between them. Snatches of other words came and went, but the single phrase was a refrain that each sibilant voice came back to.

  “Where is he?” Chriani whispered back.

  Three bodies by the dead horse. Four Ilvani kneeling before him.

  He was sure there’d been eight survivors when he counted the fallen in his mind. He’d held the number hopefully, at least until the first distraction had driven it from him with no effort.

  Hair of grey and gold, black armor cut away at the shoulder. The one who had shot Kathlan, the one who had shouted the words. “Where is he?” Chriani said again, but he was already moving, not waiting for a response.

  “Who?” Makaysa called to him as he reached the horses, grabbing his borrowed mount and swinging on.

  “One escaped,” he called back. “Rode off with the horses.” He spurred forward to the nearest torch, snatched it up as he passed it, held it high above his head so its light would reveal the ground, not occlude it. The tracks were easy enough to find, the Ilvani horses scattering, circling, then regrouping.

  “We don’t need him,” Makaysa said from two steps behind. “The war-mages and their magic will get the truth of these ones.” Beyond her, the Ilvani were face down and in the process of being bound by the rangers.

  “Wait here.” Where the horses’ path twisted off into the woods, Chriani could just see a last glimmer of twilight sky above the trees. He handed Makaysa the torch.

  “You’re riding out alone and without light, soldier?”

  “I’ve got good eyes for the dark,” he said. “I’ll ride quieter alone.”

  “I could order you to stay.”

  “Wait here,” Chriani said again. Then with a flick of the reins, he passed beyond the light and was gone.

  He was riding through water. That was the feel of it, the dark gloom of the forest spreading and flowing around him. Like the currents of an unlit sea, that dark surrounded him, playing tricks on his eyes in ways he didn’t like. The horse’s pace stayed steady, though, its own eyes equally sharp in the darkness as he rode slowly, bow drawn and arrow nocked, letting all his senses slip out around him. All was shadow and silence, and the scent of leaf rot and unmoving air.

  The trail was easy to follow, but that only made Chriani warier. The stillness of the deep wood seemed wholly unnatural to him. No wind to set the lower branches of the limni moving, or to ripple the vines that twisted into nets along the edges of the path. He heard distant bird sound, the buzz of insects, but it all seemed to fall back and away from his approach.

  He spotted blood ivy twice, saw where the Ilvani horses had skirted it. He saw black pools of water set around an ancient stump, had to lead the horse around them to test the firmness of the ground, not willing to trust the confluence of tracks there. He counted multiple trails, all of them old, all of them running roughly east, deeper into the forest. Across them all, the newest set of tracks traced their slow way into shadow.

  Three times, he stopped when he sensed the heaviness of the air punctuated by a faint but familiar tang. He knelt to scan the shadows, scenting close to the ground to discover blood soaking into black soil. Signs that the Ilvani or one of the fleeing horses had been badly wounded, the patches appearing at irregular intervals. Places they’d been forced to stop and rest, needing to push to go on.

  What with Chriani’s show of defiance and the time he’d wasted remembering the things he should have remembered, the Ilvani had a solid head start.
Chriani had been moving steadily, though, while his quarry had tarried. It meant he was close.

  A sudden wash of light from the forest ahead coincided with the clack of stone, startlingly loud beneath his horse’s shoes. Chriani pulled the horse to a stop, froze and flattened himself along its neck. Only when he had taken a careful measure of the silence around him did he swing off carefully, crouch low to the ground.

  The light was the sun, filtering somehow through shadow above him. Low stone walls marked the edge of the path ahead, loose rubble strewn along it. The trees were smaller here. Stunted. The ground was bare earth and thin patches of glistening mold, none of the leaves there that normally covered the floor of the Greatwood. The reason for that became clear as Chriani’s eyes adjusted to the sharp contrast of brightness and shadow, seeing the signs of gnarled branches draped in darkness. Leaves hanging not dead, but covered in some kind of mold. Silent trunks rising around and ahead of him in a bleak grove of black.

  In silence, he pulled the horse from the trail, pushing into an open space behind a tumbled wall. He tied it to a thin stump, then ducked down behind the wall, shifting a dozen strides away before he stopped. He waited there a long moment, scanning the shadows to all sides for movement. Then from within a double-seamed pocket set within the inside of his belt, he slipped on a ring of black iron and vanished from sight.

  Outside the haze of light that marked the sun descending below the forest wall, the ever-present gloom of the Greatwood was fading to the real dark of approaching night. But the ring draped all the world with its own haze of shadow when it was worn, so that even as Chriani disappeared within the unseen aura of its magic, he was as good as blinded where his eyes scanned the deeper shadow around him. He had expected it, though, a torch already in his hand, broken and thrown in a single motion.

  A star rose bright from the gloom of the ground to arc and blaze across the open space before him. He stayed low for another long moment, needing to make sure the ring still concealed him. He knew its magic had a fickleness to it, but as long as the ring was another of the secrets Chriani was bound to keep, he’d had no real chance to fully test it. On the finger of the assassin he’d taken it from, he had seen its power fade beneath the speed and fury of a weapon attack, or of too-sudden movement. He didn’t know whether hurling the torch would likewise disrupt the magic’s flow around him, but he was willing to wait to be sure.

  When he finally rose to look into the light, he saw the shrine.

  The pulsating glow of the torch held back a gloom that was absolute, the air seeming to blaze white against a rising globe of darkness and the far-spread, twisting branches of a score of black trees. These were limni by their look, but stunted, and more gnarled than even the most ancient of those great trees. Their mold-black branches clawed at empty air like splintered fingers, their trunks marking out a broad circle around a shattered stone courtyard edged with crumbling pillars. A five-sided dais — an altar, perhaps — rose at the center of trees and courtyard alike as smooth walls of stone.

  The beating of wings caught his ear. Movement in the shadows, dark shapes on the air. From out of the deeper darkness, a half-dozen crows were circling within the trees, sweeping down to settle on stiff branches. Their movement reminded Chriani of insects drawn to the light, but the space of that light was unnaturally empty. No haze of movement, no swarms of fly or moth that Chriani would have expected to see. The black grove showing no signs of life.

  The crows were silent. Just shifting along their branches, taking flight again to drift over to the next trees. All of them circling around the clearing and the shrine at its heart. That shrine was Ilvani work. No mistaking it. Centuries old to judge by its weathering, but the intricate lines and inscriptions that twisted up every pillar, marked off each side of the altar, were razor sharp. A magic of the Ilvani artificers who had scribed them, going beyond spellcraft and into an understanding of form and material that no Ilmari could match. Where the markings unspooled to glyphs, Chriani recognized the lettering but not the words. The old Ilvani of the Valnirata, which he’d heard spoken but had no tongue for himself.

  The torch had fallen a half-dozen strides from the near side of the altar, which cast a long shadow behind it like the gnomon of a sundial. Sprawled half-in, half-out of that shadow, Chriani saw what had drawn the crows on through the darkness.

  He moved cautiously to the place where the dead Ilvani had fallen. He was watching the black birds above him, though they showed no sense that they noticed his movement with the ring’s power shrouding him. The warrior was staring up open-eyed at the darkness, arms outstretched. Chriani read the signs of the dark ground, seeing where the Ilvani had dragged himself toward the stone. Then the frantic signs of him convulsing as he fell, twisting around to his back before he died. Chriani watched the body for a long while, made sure no trace of breath disturbed its stillness before he approached.

  The broken stub of an arrow jutted out from the Ilvani’s armor, just below the ribcage. The blood that soaked green leather and the cloth beneath was already drying. A gut shot, deep and sharp, tearing as it went. A slow death, and painful.

  The arrow hadn’t been his, but even if it had, Chriani would have felt no sense of victory in the scene before him. Just a faint wondering of what would have driven the Ilvani this far, this deep into the forest. What was here in this place of black trees and grey stone that would have made a difference in the end?

  He circled the shrine twice, still watching the birds. Still watching the shadow beyond the haze of the torch’s alchemical light. There was no sign of the missing horses, but Chriani picked up the trail on the far side of the shrine, their tracks leading off at speed into the darkness. He checked those tracks, found the mark of the half-moon with its three circles. Not important anymore.

  As he approached the body at last, a faint pulse of color flared at its wrist. A stone talisman there, shining out its blood-red light against the shadow. Chriani remembered that light from when the Ilvani had attacked him. He made the moonsign this time, his hand marking out the crescent at his heart that was the sign of the night. Warding against the darkness of this unknown sorcery by appeasing it, but out of habit more than anything else. He was still invisible, the magic of his ring more dweomer than most folk of the Ilmar saw in a lifetime. The Ilvani were different, though. Arcana was in their blood, part of their nature, it was said.

  Chriani slipped the talisman from the figure’s wrist, saw the light flare within its dark chunk of bloodstone. It spread out like liquid across the gold claw that held it, tied tight with a black leather cord. The stone was oily to the touch, Chriani stuffing it quickly to an inside pocket of his armor. Something for the war-mages to look at later. He had no urge to bring the body back.

  What he could see of the Ilvani’s tattooed war-mark showed him as Calala. A warrior of Calalerean, the northwest of the four provinces of Valnirata, whose southern reaches Chriani had been patrolling for five months. He recognized some of the mark’s lines on the carved stone altar, but the runes there shaped words he didn’t know. He didn’t feel like cutting the armor to read the rest of the mark, though he knew it might have told him more. The Ilvani’s clan, at the least. But something about the shrine, the stillness of the black grove, set a sense of unease in him. A feeling that if this was the place the Ilvani had come to die, it would be best to leave him to it.

  He did a last check of the body for weapons and magic, though. Secret pockets, other markings on the flesh that he might read. As he did, he saw the gleam of gold within the figure’s tight-clenched hand.

  Chriani squeezed the fingers open, watched as a coin spilled to the ground. He lifted the stiffening figure’s other hand, saw a second coin fall.

  The coins were clearly Ilvani by the intricate knotwork that etched their faces, by the angular sweep of their lettering. They were scribed, not stamped. An artisan’s touch to each of them, though Chriani didn’t recognize them. Couldn’t read the writing even though he r
ecognized the script, as with the glyphs that adorned the altar stone.

  The Valnirata didn’t trade with the Ilmari, but their Ilvani gold bought its worth in Ilmari coin easily enough when taken from prisoners or the dead. Most rangers with enough field experience set aside a comfortable pot for retirement using the small coins, which were milled with a hole at their center for stringing. The Ilvani carried their wealth that way, sheaves of coins knotted tight and looped around the neck or upper arm like jewelry.

  The gold of the Valnirata coins was tinted with a reddish tone compared to Ilmari crowns. Blood gold they were called, for that and other reasons. The coins that had fallen from the Ilvani’s hands were a pure molten hue, though. Brightly polished, unscratched.

  They were warm, too, when Chriani picked them up. Magic in them. He made the moonsign as he realized he should probably have thought of that before touching them. Acting without thinking, like always.

  He was about to slip the coins into another of his many hidden pockets when he caught a gleam of gold within the body’s mouth.

  He stared at it for a long while. Had to steel himself to pry the corpse’s jaw open, watching as a third coin slipped off the blackened tongue and fell to the ground. He made the moonsign again as he picked it up, all three coins in his hand now and getting even warmer, it seemed. A weave of shadow seemed to pass across his eyes, and in that shadow, he saw that the coins gleamed not just in reflection of the torch but with their own light. A bright pulsing of gold, the same angry molten hue that filled the Ilvani’s eyes.

  Chriani glanced down. The Ilvani’s eyes that had been gold were a deep emerald green now, their gleam all but faded where their moisture had dried and congealed to tears that tracked across dead skin.

  With a shriek above and around him, the crows took to the air. Chriani’s arm whipped out and away from him as he shot to his feet, stumbling back from the body. He had hurled the coins out and into the darkness almost before the thought to do so had gelled in his mind, a stark reflex of muscle and fear. He felt a spasm of pain as he did so, the wound in his arm, ignored up to now, flaring with his sudden and frantic movement.