Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  The three of them melted back into the trees, watching. Waiting. The forest was silent, no sign or sense of any movement around them.

  “What is it?” Dargana hissed, but Chriani simply shook his head. He remembered the lights of Sylonna as they had approached the hidden city. A shimmering brightness like white fire through the trees. This was the opposite of that. An undulating shadow that billowed like cloud but never spread, visible only by the fringe of faint illumination that vanished at its edges. Sunlight through the forest canopy, swallowed by a roiling darkness.

  “Chriani…”

  Dargana’s whisper carried an edge of urgency, Chriani turning with bow drawn. But through the underbrush where the exile was pointing, he saw no threat. Just a grove of dead limni, stunted and gnarled, and set around a five-sided stone dais crusted with black slime and moss.

  They approached the shrine carefully, the moss-thick ground muffling their footfalls. Chriani could feel the uneven spread of stone beneath them, guessing at the extents of the unseen courtyard that wrapped around this shrine like the one he’d seen along the Greatwood’s western edge.

  He saw crows again, drifting through the trees as the three of them approached. There was no sight or scent of death this time to draw them forth, so that Chriani understood it hadn’t been the dead Ilvani that had drawn them the first time. Just the shrine itself. Some unseen power there as there was power here, wrapped in shadow against the shimmer of the westering sun. Even in that shadow, the shrine was identical to the images of Chriani’s memory, and set with the same intricate inscriptions. The ground showed no sign of other footprints. No sign that anyone else had stood there in long years.

  “Can you read the glyphs?” Chriani asked Farenna.

  The Ilvani captain nodded as he traced his fingers along the lettering etched sharp into weathered stone. They came away black with mold. “The language is old, but close to the tongues of Muiraìden. The engravings speak of the fallen Myllasir and the power they still hold from beyond time. Power they will share with those who seek it here. Power that waits to return and rule once more.”

  The name wasn’t one Chriani had ever heard before, but the echoes of the tale were familiar enough. The Ilmar swore to fate, but it had been long generations since most folk believed that fate could be bent by prayer. The Ilmari had gods once, but had long since outgrown them — or at least that’s how Barien had described it.

  Under the long years of Empire, there’d been no formal purge of the old ways. You could still see the temples in Rheran and other cities, though they had turned to healing halls and libraries long ago. Testament to a slow decline and a turning away from the faiths of old. A new focus on magic and truth that gave folk something else to believe in.

  “Ilmari and Ilvani alike have their old gods,” Chriani said, thoughtful. Ilmari and Ilvani were one folk once.

  “No gods hold sway in Muiraìden, Ilmari.” Farenna rounded on Chriani as he spoke, a sudden edge of anger twisting his words. “Gods, kings, or emperors, no one rules the Valnirata.”

  From above, the crows shrieked as they took to the air, the fast beating of wings sounding out. Chriani saw the captain’s hand stray to his blade. He took a step back by instinct, but Dargana was there to move between them.

  “Enough of the history lesson,” she said curtly. But she was watching Farenna as Chriani was, the captain distracted. Glancing back to the dark sigils tracing their way across cold stone.

  “Forgive my outburst,” he said to Chriani. “The Ilvani say that the oldest legends incite the oldest passions. This is a shrine to lost leaders. The Myllasir, who are legends among the Ilvani, and who superstition claims will return once more when their people are in darkest need.”

  From when Dargana had brought him to the northern flank of the Ghostwood, Chriani remembered asking what the Valnirata Ilvani could possibly have to fear in the empty lands of Crithnalerean. He hadn’t understood her answer. The past, half-blood.

  “We need to get closer,” Farenna said. “We climb.”

  Like his ability to move unheard and unseen, Chriani’s skill at climbing was better than most. But it, too, was put to shame by the grace with which Farenna and Dargana fairly slithered upward along the gnarled trunk of the great limni the captain chose as their access point to the forest above.

  Shifting from hold to hold, branch to branch, Chriani managed to keep the pace set by the two Ilvani, but he needed both hands to do so. The bow across his back hindered his movement, the scabbards for his sword and the long-knives he had claimed from a fallen scout hammering at his legs as he went. Dargana and Farenna climbed one-handed, each with a long-knife drawn and ready as they hauled themselves up.

  The height of the forest was a network of natural bridges twisting forward into the gloom. They advanced carefully, moving across shifting planes of branches and rope-thick vines high above the ground. Farenna led them, picking out a single path between multiple courses that reflected the network of paths along the ground below, but rising and falling even as they moved forward. Chriani saw the Ilvani captain slow to assess different routes more than once, but he made no sign of testing the strength of the branches and vines they clambered along. Just trusting to some innate sense of the strength of the forest that Chriani was forced to share.

  As the shadow they had seen ahead of them loomed larger, Chriani could make out details set within it. The shapes of broad platforms were lines of smoother darkness cutting across the gnarled lines of trees thrust up from the ground below, the shadow seeming to wash across them. But as the three of them drew closer, that shadow resolved itself more clearly as individual strands, all flowing along shifting courses that brought them across and over each other to weave a delicate web of darkness.

  Like the forest-home of Sylonna and the ruined terraces of the northern Ghostwood, the site that the assassin had named Markura and called a temple rose as wooden tiers connected by arcing lines of rope bridges and ladders. The site was smaller than the forest-home by far, only a dozen huge limni anchoring its border. As Chriani had seen in the northern Ghostwood, most of its terraces appeared long abandoned, their edges a frozen fall of vines. Even at a distance, Chriani could see where pieces of individual platforms had broken free but were still hanging, anchored at steep angles by moss-crusted ropes.

  At the center of the site’s erratic rise of bridges and terraces, one great dark tree towered over the rest. Not dead, Chriani saw, its leaves rippling in the wind. It was black, though. Dark as the shadow that pooled around it and flowed on the air.

  “What magic is that?” Chriani whispered to Farenna as they stopped to orient themselves along a broad, sheltered branch. “Have you ever seen it before?” He felt his hand at his chest, making the moonsign as if his fingers were under someone else’s control.

  The captain shook his head, a dark tension in his eyes. “This site is old. Abandoned by the Ilvani long before your Ilmar nations rose. Whatever power it held would have been closed off. Should have been.”

  Something shifted at the edge of Chriani’s gaze. He froze.

  Though the three of them were safely ensconced within a screen of leaves, he dropped down, Farenna and Dargana following. Watching where he pointed. There, along the closest of the rope bridges ahead, movement. Three Ilvani stepped out to pace along the bridge’s narrow span, its long arc resonating with their steps.

  “How many are we going to find in there?” Chriani asked.

  “No way to tell,” Farenna said. “Are you ready?”

  The question was for him and Dargana both. Not an order, not this time.

  Chriani nodded. “Go.”

  Stepping into the storm of shadow was like being wrapped by a sudden fall of darkness. Though Chriani knew the sun was still bright to the west, it vanished to sight and mind as they worked their way forward, leaving them in the deep gloom of a moonless night.

  Even so, the approach was far easier than he thought it would be. Far easier than it ha
d any right to be. The worst part of their entrance to the temple was the careful climb across a network of open branches that brought them to within jumping distance of a rope bridge along the edge of the site. It was more of a leap than Chriani would normally have risked making, the ground lost to shadow below. He knew he had no choice, though.

  Farenna dropped first, leaping into empty air and snagging the edge of the bridge with apparent ease. He hauled himself on and waited while its ropes slowed their swaying, Chriani above him with bow drawn. No sentries appeared, though. No sound was heard.

  Dargana made the jump with even less trouble than Farenna. Chriani was breathing deeply as he leaped off the branch and into empty air, arms out as the bridge twisted toward him. He grabbed on well enough but needed Farenna and Dargana to help haul him up.

  They made their way quickly to the nearest platform, the darkness spreading more deeply around them. Hanging like an oily sheen on the air, and shrouding a deeper sense of ruin and decay. The wooden slats of the platform were slick with black mold, the scent of it heavy around them. The bridge they had descended had the same appearance as three more leading off the platform — a web of ropes blackened with rot and age, strengthened and supported by newer construction. The platform was anchored by vine-shrouded rope cables that creaked ominously as they moved.

  “The black tree…”

  Farenna was the one to say it, but all three of them were already looking beyond the platform and to the center of the shroud of darkness that drifted around them. The black tree rose like a skeleton cast of shadow, its branches tearing at air that bled darkness like a gathering storm. Beneath that storm, the platform they stood on was unlit, but they could see lights set along distant bridges and terrace edges at intervals. These were muted, though, each a shimmering glow that faded after a few paces.

  “Can you find the way there?” Chriani asked.

  “I will do my best, Ilmari. Stay close to me.”

  “And if we’re stopped?” Dargana asked.

  “We kill them if we can. We run if we cannot. The horses are due south. They know the way to Sylonna if you make it to them without me.”

  “No one’s leaving anyone behind,” Chriani said. “We do this together…”

  “Sylonna must be warned.” Farenna cut Chriani off in uncharacteristic fashion, an edge of urgency in his voice. A trace of the anger rising there. “Laedda and Contáedar must know what we know. The fate of all depends on this.”

  Before Chriani could respond, a tremor threaded through Farenna, as if he was trying to hold the anger in check. “I do not order this,” the captain said, more focused. “I ask it. In the name of my people, friend Chriani, one of us must return to Sylonna or all we do here is for naught.”

  Chriani nodded, even as Dargana shrugged. He suspected that the expectation of dying was never a central part of any of the exile’s plans.

  “Stay close,” Farenna said again as they set out.

  Whether strictly as a result of Farenna’s instincts, or because the cult trusted in the secrecy of the temple site so much that their patrols were lax along its exterior, the three of them made their way across the middle tiers of platforms and terraces unchallenged. They spotted sentries standing at irregular intervals but passed no guards on patrol. Farenna carefully shifted the group’s course away along different bridges, up and down ladders to avoid contact. Giving no one any opportunity to see their eyes.

  Chriani could see the lóechari’s eyes, or so it seemed. Even at a distance, he thought he could make out the pale gleam of gold, but he had no intention of getting close enough to confirm it.

  As they drew closer to the black tree, they saw patrols at last. Groups of warriors walking in threes and fours, or lone Ilvani racing along bridges and ladders like messengers. Chriani felt a uniform sense of efficiency in the cultists’ movement. A sense of focus he recognized from the golden-eyed Ilvani they had fought in the forest and in Rheran. Something pushing them. Orders followed without question, the Valnirata discipline taken to its worst extreme.

  Among all the lóechari, there was a uniform silence. Not a sound could be heard throughout the citadel grove except faint footsteps, rising and falling on the shifting breeze. That breeze washed the scent of rot across them more than once, but when they passed within range of the scattered mage-lights for the first time, Chriani saw that the wind had no effect on the spreading haze of shadow. That darkness flowed and ebbed in no discernable pattern, seemingly of its own accord.

  “There.”

  They had fallen back against the trunk of a limni adjacent to the great black tree at the center of the citadel, Farenna pointing to a narrow bridge arcing high overhead. Chriani had to focus to see it, dark lines almost invisible where they passed over and disappeared within the central tree’s black shroud of branches.

  It was the lone access point they could see from the terraced platform they sheltered on, its outside edges crumbling in a tangle of supporting rope-cables and vines. There was no sign of anyone traversing the bridge while they watched, but also no sign of any easy access to it. So they climbed again, all of them needing to use their long-knives this time to pull themselves across smooth sections of the limni’s trunk where the bark had been torn away.

  Though the sound was muted by the wind and the softness of rotting wood, Chriani felt a trace of panic each time one of them hacked into the tree. With no footholds to speak of, each knife had to hold its climber’s weight for a tense moment, each of them pulling up carefully to drive the next knife in, then free the first. The vertical stretch was perhaps twice as tall as Chriani was, but by the time they had traversed it and were able to rest within a cluster of broad branches, his arms and shoulders were aching.

  While they rested, Farenna flashed a hand in warning. Dargana and Chriani froze, Chriani taking longer than he liked to see the passing patrol that Farenna had sensed. The lóechari paced along the bridge that had been Farenna’s destination, but they were gone as quickly as they came. Not even waiting to listen for silence in their wake, Farenna pushed on again, waving for Chriani and Dargana to follow.

  Crossing over to the black tree was like falling sideways into dark water. The swirling shadow thickened around them as they slipped across the empty bridge, the air drawing in to a stifling closeness as black leaves surrounded them. The wind-tossed movement of the high branches rang out like the creak of unoiled leather, a wall of faint sound that set an uncomfortable chill up Chriani’s spine. The leaves themselves carried the oily sheen of the air, but no one showed any interest in touching them.

  Chriani was straining to see through the shadow as he followed Farenna’s steady lead, even as he realized the scent of rot was gone. The rope bridge ended on a shrouded half-platform, its far side cracked off and vanished where a tangle of ropes and vines trailed over to the darkness below. The wet footfalls of the platforms they had crossed before faded to soft steps and the creak of wood. The planks of the floor beneath them were seemingly bone dry, cracked with age. The same dead black as the tree’s branches and leaves, the shadow seemingly leeching all other color away.

  Dropping to hands and knees along the platform’s edge, the three of them saw the source of that shadow below.

  Chriani felt the blood pounding in his head and chest. His stomach turned as he made the moonsign, kept his hand held tight to his heart when he was done.

  The terraced platform below them was no farther away than the jump they had made to reach the first bridge. However, the shadow that pulsed out from beneath and around that platform made the distance seem to shift and shimmer, like trying to gauge the depth of water through its rippled surface.

  The wood of the terraces was black like everything around them. Globes of mage-light floated around their perimeter with nothing holding them up, their glimmering light fighting against the shadow. Though the lowest terrace seemed to stand close above the ground, that ground was lost to darkness. They were looking down through a central web of br
anches that spiraled like funnel lines to a broad pit surrounding the foot of the great black tree. The terraces encircled the bole of that tree as linked rings, set above the pit like balconies extending over a garden below. Except that garden was a sea of oily shadow, out of which the dark storm rose.

  Looking up, Chriani saw no other lights within the tree’s screen of dark branches, the few platforms he could make out standing half-fallen like the one they were on. Below them, he could see the black tree’s roots exposed and twisting down into the pit of shadow, as if its endless darkness was soil and stone.

  He didn’t know how long they lingered there, just watching. The wind could still be heard, hissing through the black leaves. Over it now, a faint moaning rose and fell. Chriani whispered words that rang out unnaturally loud in his own ear. “What creates something like this? What power?”

  Dargana answered, a dark edge in her voice. “Places of this power aren’t created, half-blood. They just are. This is what the Ilvani left behind in Nyndenu.”

  Farenna was staring down, his dark gaze unblinking. Chriani saw the Ilvani captain’s anger rising again, heard the rasp of his breathing.

  “We must go,” Farenna whispered.

  “Wait…”

  Chriani shifted forward, feeling the broken platform creak beneath him. He’d seen movement on the terraces below, had to focus to pull it from the swirling shadow. Figures were pacing beneath the mage-light, having crossed from a narrow white stair rising in an arc to the tree next to theirs. He counted a dozen all told. Eight sentries set in ranks of two, all wearing the grey leather of the cult. Eight naked figures marched between them, all Ilvani. Not prisoners, though. Their heads were held high, bodies strong. No sign of wound or injury on them.

  The figure leading them was in black lacquered mail, the mage-light of the platform edging her with a gleam that showed her form against the darkness. Her white hair was sheared almost to the scalp, the war-mark at her shoulder showing as black and grey. In addition to the mage-light, Chriani saw the pulse of magic at the figure’s fingertips, her hands weaving a mandala of golden light that hung in the air as she passed.