Chriani had driven himself even from Barien when the darkness that shrouded his mind became too much sometimes to hold back, and even as Barien had known the reasons why. Only Kathlan had ever been truly absolute in his mind, his heart. Three short years, during which Chriani understood only now how much he had hoped that his mind and heart had changed.
Only Kathlan had ever been set above his instinct to push everyone and everything away, given enough time. And now he had managed even that, and his life was done.
“…feed into the Ilvalachna’s plots to dominate all the Ilmar…”
He still heard Dargana’s whisper, but Chriani didn’t need her translation anymore. The seer in his mind had sharpened his ear for the tongues of the Ilvani somehow, granting him insight even into the fast-spoken words passing back and forth across the chamber floor. The green-armored warrior was shouting down Farenna now. She was taller even than the rider was, lean like a wolf, her golden hair beneath its circlet woven as a screen of braids. She slapped the hilt of a backsword at her belt to punctuate her words, other Ilvani scattered through the crowd striking right hand to left shoulder in time with her. Some kind of show of support.
If all this was your plan, then your plans were finished before they began, Chriani said darkly. Now get out of my head.
He was already pulling the steel ring from his finger when the seer spoke.
Chriani, I know what happened on the Clearwater Way.
He let the ring stay where it was. Something in the voice, in the way it slipped through his mind, created a sense of calm that spoke to the truth of the statement. Chriani wondered suddenly if it would even be possible to lie through the link the rings created.
Not a tough claim to make for things Dargana could have told you, he said in his mind.
The exile spoke no word of these matters, the Seer said. Nor would she, as you who know her true character would understand.
Then you read it through my thoughts…
No, Chriani. I saw it before it happened. Your pursuit of your princess. The assassin of Uissa slain as you flew in the Ghostwood, the narneth móir in your hand. I saw you claim that blade from beneath stone where it was hidden. My magic might read the thoughts of your mind in the moment, but memory is hidden even beyond the reach of spellcraft. Tell me the last time you thought directly of these things?
A silence fell. The brown-robed Ilvani who had spoken first, Laedda, had command of the chamber again.
“This council renders its judgement,” he called out. A sense of endings, of lost opportunity and anger, was in his voice. “Chriani of the Ilmar will be returned to his homeland, and will carry with him this doom of the Valnirata. That having seen this one of the hidden cities, his life is owed to us. Should he ever again set foot in the Muiraìden, that life shall be forfeit…”
Tell them of what Dargana told you, Chriani. There is little time.
“I would speak,” Chriani called.
Laedda’s voice and Dargana’s echo cut off in abrupt astonishment. From the speaker’s indignation, Chriani might have guessed that he’d never been interrupted before.
“I am Chriani of the Ilmar and House Halobrelia,” he said again. He spoke the Ilvalantar carefully, but felt it come easily to his mind. The ring was warm upon his finger. “I am the envoy chosen by Chanist, who you name the Ilvalachna, but who has trusted me…” Though his voice remained clear, Chriani’s thoughts of Chanist distracted him. He felt his tongue seize up. “I will carry your intent back to him.”
And try to avoid getting shot on sight or hanged for treason while I’m at it, he thought. He could sense the words made real in the seer’s mind.
You must call yourself one of fate’s chosen, Veassen said in response, and bonded to the Ilvani and Ilmari realms.
Are you mad or simply drunk?
Quickly, Chriani. Tell them of what you did on the Clearwater Way. The story as it is known. The war that would have begun if not for you.
“The trust of your prince carries no weight here,” Laedda said evenly. Chriani waited for Dargana to translate, not sure what might happen if the sudden upturn in his fluency was noticed.
“Then trust me for what I’ve done,” he said finally. “I am one of fate’s chosen, and bonded to the realms of Ilvani and Ilmari alike.” Chriani felt himself flush as he said the words, but the Ilvani were strangely rapt as they watched him. “I fought the assassins of Uissa and rescued the princess of Brandishear on the Clearwater Way.”
Not the biggest lie he had ever told. Certainly not the worst. As a matter of instinct, though, Chriani understood that the stakes of his lying had never been higher.
“I stopped Uissa’s plot to blame the Valnirata for the murder of an Ilmari royal heir, and to incite war to east and west that would have seen the Greatwood burn.”
You have done well, Chriani. Now tell them the last.
“I know the Calalerean Ilvani seek the heir of the exile’s blade.”
He shouted the words, hadn’t meant to. No idea where the defiance that filled him had come from. He heard the silence that hung in the aftermath, turning to take in the assembled crowd. His gaze passed over the seer as he went. Veassen was standing expressionless, no sign that he had even heard what was said.
Among the other Ilvani, something had changed.
“This gathering of elders ends,” Laedda said. “A council of masters meets the rising of the pale moon.”
No one argued. No one spoke in response. Chriani saw a restless anger in the gaze of the tall warrior with golden braids as she turned from him, but the seething emotion that had filled all the platform space just moments before was gone as quickly as it had come. The Ilvani turned to file out along the tiers of the dais again. Chriani stood where he was because he had no idea what else to do.
He glanced to the side once to see Dargana watching him. She looked relieved as she nodded. It was an unfamiliar expression on the exile.
The blind seer was gone. Chriani hadn’t seen him leave. His mind was clear, no sense of any voice there but his own.
Farenna lingered to the end, approaching Chriani and Dargana as the last Ilvani filed out.
“You will follow me, friend Chriani,” he said. “Accommodations will be made for your rest. As a guest.” He smiled, but Chriani was too weary to return it. A chill twisted through him as he and Dargana followed Farenna to the stairs. Pieces of the puzzle slotting into place.
The seer had sought him out and bade him speak to whatever council this was. He had told them things Veassen already knew, but which the other Ilvani clearly didn’t. Chriani’s thoughts were scattered, fighting their way through two levels of shadow.
The games princes play, he thought. The Ilvani had very different ideas of power and leadership, he knew, but some things stayed the same.
He had no idea what he had gotten caught up in. No idea how he was meant to get out.
He remembered the seer’s voice in his mind. Remembered how his own voice had shouted out in the end.
The Calalerean Ilvani seek the heir of the exile’s blade…
He had said it, but even now, Chriani had no idea where it came from. Veassen’s voice had been in his head, but he couldn’t remember those words spoken by the blind seer. Only in his own mind.
It must have been an echo. The seer thinking, Chriani speaking, as one. It had happened that way sometimes with Lauresa in his mind.
Why couldn’t he remember it, then?
Outside the council hall, Farenna led Chriani and Dargana to a wide bridge that arced away and up from the great platform, twisting through a screen of branches into unknown heights above.
“Follow,” the warrior said, stepping onto what looked like a path of thin wooden dowels suspended in empty air. The corded ropes they were strung along were so thin they could barely be seen, the bridge shifting with Farenna’s movement as he stepped on. There was no railing, Chriani saw as he followed carefully.
The nobles and captains who had fi
lled the hall had already scattered, but the platforms around the bridge were thronged even more thickly now with the other Ilvani of the forest-home. All of them were watching Chriani as he and Dargana followed Farenna up and into shadow.
THE LOFT WAS SCREENED by curving walls of white cloth, wrapping a broad platform whose ceiling was successive layers of the endless canopy of the Greatwood above. It had the look of guest quarters, with water and mead, flatbread and some sort of cheese set on a low table. Blankets and cloth cushions were scattered about, no other furnishings to be seen. Chriani had no idea how high above the ground they were, but as he lay back now on a rough bed of cushions, grass-stuffed by their feel and their scent of meadow hay, he could feel the platform shifting gently with the wind, could see the haze of sunlight bright through the leaves.
In the aftermath of the gathering of elders, Farenna had led him and Dargana along two more gently swaying rope bridges to a twisting ladder lashed to a tall limni’s split trunk. “To the top,” he said, indicating that they should climb. Chriani felt a dizziness take him as he swung onto the loose-hanging ladder, forced himself to focus as he clambered up carefully, rung by rung. At the top of a high series of platforms stacked like so many shelves, he and Dargana emerged through the hole in the center of the loft’s floor. Farenna didn’t follow them.
Dargana had prowled the platform for a short while, staring into the leaves above as if to make sure they weren’t being watched or guarded. Chriani was too weary to do anything but sit, pulling a cushion under him as he felt along the edges of the cloth walls. Though they were tied tightly, he wasn’t sure he trusted their strength, shifting away so there was no chance of leaning back against them. A raised dais set off behind screens revealed a washbasin and a low commode, but the loft had no place specifically to sleep. The Ilvani had no such need.
“Are you all right?” Dargana brought bread and two flasks of mead from the table, then sat across from Chriani. When he simply ate in silence, the exile shrugged and drained one flask on her own. Then she moved to the far side of the platform to sit cross-legged, closing her eyes.
Chriani was more tired than he thought possible. His mind was a storm of shadow, his back and legs and shoulders aching in previously unimagined ways. He gathered cushions in an attempt to make some sort of makeshift pallet, but succeeded only in scattering them when he lay down. He settled in the end for laying two blankets folded on the smooth wood of the floor, then wrapping another around him. He set cushions beneath his head and legs, trying to quell the ache in his back. Fatigue washed over him like warm water, his vision blurring as he closed his eyes.
Against all logic and reason, though, he couldn’t sleep. Not all at once, at any rate. He felt the light above him shift from time to time, felt a new stiffness in his back or legs that told him he had drifted off, but only for a short while. He wasn’t sure how long he’d lain there, listening to Dargana’s slow breathing and feeling the exhaustion of almost three days hard riding course through him, until suddenly both Dargana and the light were gone.
Chriani shot upright, wincing as he did. The platform was empty, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the green glow that filled it. The canopy of leaves above was dark, a pale light coming instead from glyph lines scribed along the outside edge of the floor. Though he had no idea how long he’d slept, his head was strangely clear, the ache in his legs and back subsiding. And he was ravenous. He ate the rest of the bread, distrusted the taste of the cheese but ate that as well. He was working on his second flask of mead when he heard movement at the ladder, looked over to see Dargana scramble up and over onto the floor.
“You’re awake,” she said, and Chriani saw that she had changed. The black armor she had refitted from her Brandishear-issue gear was gone, replaced with a loose-fitting robe of dark blue. Her hair was shining and tied back to a thick tail, the peak of her eyebrows and ears even more noticeable. If she hadn’t spoken, Chriani might not have recognized her at first.
“It’s close to the time of the council,” she said. “Take the ladder to the first platform below. There are baths there. Be quick, though.”
Chriani responded by drinking more slowly. Dargana noted it but made no response as she sat down to eat. Chriani’s mind was clear enough to sort through every question he wanted to ask her, everything he needed answered. He kept his silence by instinct, though. Knowing somehow that it wasn’t time for the questions yet.
When he was ready, he slipped down the ladder, swinging off it at the first of the platforms below, vaguely remembered in passing from when they had ascended earlier. A landing of dark wood dropped down along four steps that turned around a tall screen of lacquered paper. Beyond the screen, the platform was broader than the loft and open to the air around it, a gentle wind blowing. Other screens surrounded a pair of commodes and two low pallets covered with folded blankets, like some kind of healer’s table.
At the center of the space stood three oblong wooden tubs, each filled with steaming-hot water that poured out from a brass globe set at its head. Chriani saw no pipes to carry the water, no source of heat, no drain in the tub. Just whatever magic was set into the globes, or perhaps the water itself. Flowing endlessly, high above the ground.
A similar lack of plumbing was in evidence at the commode, speaking to some magical function within it, and inspiring Chriani to make the moonsign as he used it. He was fairly certain he’d never done that before.
Low shelves around the edge of the platform were stacked with blankets and towels. Chriani took one of each as he warily stripped, leaving leggings and smallclothes in a filthy heap on the floor behind him. He took his belt with him. Not wearing it, but simply wanting to keep the things held in its secret pockets close by as he slipped to the water.
He felt a delicious heat thread its way into tight muscles, let his fingers work into the stress points on his legs, the knots in his shoulders. There was no sign of soap or oil at the tub, but its water washed the sweat and grime of the long road from him all the same. It had the scent of spring rain and lilac. Chriani made the moonsign again, more than once.
Even as his body relaxed, though, he felt his mind drawn down tight beneath the uncertainty that was the aftermath of the council of elders. No idea what he had gotten caught up in. No idea how he was meant to get out. His thoughts were clearer than they had been in long days, but that clarity only let him see how hopelessly tangled those thoughts were. At his core now was an emptiness he’d never felt before. As if everything he’d ever been — everything he might ever be — had been drained from him. He had disappeared from the world that once held him, like the power of the black ring had somehow consumed him. All history, all possibility, gone.
When he stepped from the tub, his leggings and smallclothes had disappeared from the floor where he’d left them. Chriani felt a spike of tension as he let his senses slip out around him. No one there, no one watching. Someone had come, though, and he hadn’t heard a thing. Just the wind in the trees, blowing colder now with the heat of the bath still in him.
Hanging on a wooden rack where the clothes had been, he found Ilvani garb. Undertunic and smallclothes in some manner of white linen, soft. Leggings and tunic of a light, tight-knit wool, warm but airy as he pulled them on. Boots of felt and leather, stitched in gold. A robe of green and black, tied at the neck. Another tie for his hair, white cord, woven as tight Ilvani knots. Both the robe and the tunic had the shoulder cut away, the war-mark standing out like blood and shadow on Chriani’s skin.
A curved finger-knife and a steel mirror had been left with the clothing. The water of the tub had left his beard unnaturally soft, the knife’s razor edge cutting effortlessly as he trimmed and shaved. When he was done, he slung his belt on, even though the Ilvani leggings had no need for it. Then he tied his hair high, as he had never done before. Pulling it up and back, trailing down his neck and exposing the slight peak of his ears. Not as sharp or pronounced as the ears of the full Ilvani, but still something h
e had been taught from the time he was a child to never show to the Ilmari world in which he lived.
In the space of a single night, that world had become a thing he had no reason to think of anymore.
When he slipped around the screen, Dargana was perched on the landing and waiting for him. She stood as he approached. “It’s time.”
“Not quite,” Chriani said.
With her hair back, Dargana’s eyes seemed even darker than they did when that hair framed her face. Her gaze tracked to Chriani’s own hair, his ears revealed. She smiled. “I’m not the one to answer your questions, half-blood.”
“You brought me here. You know why I was brought.”
“Yes,” Dargana said. “And no, I don’t. I was told to bring you here and I brought you. That’s all.”
She swung onto the ladder, sliding down it in a way that made Chriani’s stomach lurch. He thought of how far down the ground was if she slipped.
“What did you tell him?” he called, too loudly. Dargana pulled herself to a stop below him, looked around quickly as if watching for anyone else who might have heard. It was silent around them, though. Just the whisper of the wind through leaves and veiled walls.
“I told him nothing.” The exile said it in the Imperial tongue, as if fearful of being overheard. Chriani’s thoughts had to shift to make sense of her.
“Veassen knew…” Chriani started, but Dargana cut him off.
“Veassen told me. You following the princess. The Clearwater Way. He told me how we found you near the scorpion sands, how the pale assassins were following you. The bloodblade given to Uissa by Chanist’s hand before you claimed it. He knew it all.”
Chriani was silent a moment. He heard the truth in the exile’s tone, and something else. An unfamiliar fear. A sense that the blind seer was as much an unknown to her as he was to Chriani.
“And what did he say it meant?”
“It meant that you were meant to be here.”
Three Coins for Confession Page 28
