It was Dargana’s bloodblade, but it was a match for the blade of Caradar. The engraving on it the same, to Chriani’s eyes at least. Dargana had been able to read the dagger he’d taken from Rheran. Had known it was Caradar’s from its engraving. She was Crithnala, though, and of Caradar’s own house. He had to hope the Calala wouldn’t be able to read Dargana’s dagger with the same skill.
He had to hope both of the Ilvani were seeing what they needed to see. What they so desperately wanted to see, even as Chriani had no sense of where that hunger came from.
It would keep him alive, though. Long enough to end it.
He felt the pieces falling into place around him. Almost ready.
The sorcerer’s hunger for the weapon was a fire in his mind. For an instant, he was seeing through her eyes across the link they shared, the blade limned in the golden light that flowed from her hands.
The coins and the blade. The blade and me. Chriani forced the words out through a tightly woven defiance, summoning up every bit he could still touch of the anger at the center of his life. You need to let me be part of this. You need to let me forget.
You would embrace this willingly. As Viranar’s voice filled his mind, Chriani understood that it wasn’t a question. She was reading the blade in some way, but his thoughts were leading her. Pulling her in the direction he needed her to go.
“I’ll do it willingly so long as you give me what I need. Just let me take the rites. Let me touch the power of the coins. Let me forget.”
He spoke the words aloud to distract the sorcerer, feeling her thoughts divided in her mind as she stepped close to him. Her hands were raised before her, the bloodblade clutched tight in one, the amulet in the other. The three coins on their golden chain were burning so brightly that Chriani had to squint to look at them.
“What would you give up in taking confession, heir of the exile’s blade?” As Viranar spoke for the first time, her voice carried an edge of excitement. A hunger and expectation that Chriani could feel. A sense of having already claimed the thing she wanted more than anything else. But at the same time, he understood how that want wasn’t coming from her at all.
The golden light was in his mind. A separate consciousness. A tangled skein of dark thought that set his blood boiling.
“I want to forget the pain I’ve caused,” he whispered. His mind was battered by the shadow around him, but he fought back against it using the memories. Barien’s body in his arms, the slow spread of blood across a pale stone floor. Lauresa weeping in a winter grove, the sun bright, the warmth of her magic wrapping them against the freezing air. Kathlan sleeping while he watched her, the day bright and blue-white at the window of the loft.
“Let me forget the people I’ve hurt. Let me forget what I’ve lost.” Chriani felt the shadow like uncounted insects crawling across him, tasting his skin with sharp tongues.
Viranar laughed as she stepped up to touch his face. The hand that held the amulet traced its way along his cheek. “No true Ilvanghlira would ever ask such a thing.”
“You’re right,” Chriani said.
A burning cold struck him as he grabbed the amulet with his bound hands. The shadow around him flared with a molten light, the world turned to gold suddenly. He pulled down with all his strength, feeling the soft gold of the chain snap around Viranar’s neck as the coins came away in his grasp.
Then he disappeared.
This was a good way to die.
When he was younger, in the days before he had taken the winter path to Aerach and back to Rheran, Chriani had thought often about the matter of his own death. He was a soldier, had been made a tyro of the prince’s guard at ten summers, even if he’d spent most of the years since then ensuring that he would never make rank or take the field. He was a warrior, whether a soldier or not. Skilled enough with bow and blade that he made a routine habit of showing up guards with far more experience. He’d won his share of fights as a result, had lost a few besides.
He had ridden the roads of Brandishear at Barien’s side. He remembered the feeling as he watched fell wolves appear on a sunset road in Elalantar, Barien riding them down without hesitation, his seconds close behind. He remembered being herded back to the train with the royal heirs, flanked by four more guards. Just another one of the children to be protected. Lauresa was there. Barien was her warden, was there first and foremost as her escort, but Chriani hadn’t known the princess then.
The guards had been focused on getting Princess Gwannyn and the royal heirs ready to ride, so that when Chriani stole a knife, the young squire whose belt it was claimed from never felt a thing. He slipped it to his own belt, let his jacket cover it. He was ten years old and a new-made tyro, and he decided in that moment that if the wolves got past Barien, if they advanced against the princess high and the royal heirs, he would fall defending them.
It would have been a stupid way to die. He realized that only years later, thinking on how his efforts to play the hero would have distracted the guards who were there to do the job for real. But the thought had stayed with him through each barracks fight, through each patrol at Barien’s side. Always thinking on how it might end for him, and what good or ill might come from that, and what would be said when his life was done.
It was a stray thought, fixing in his mind now as he watched the world fade around him, saw the startled look in Viranar’s golden eyes. He’d been moving his stiffened fingers, no one seeing them slip within his belt as he had tried to make the moonsign, the magic of the well overwhelming him. No one seeing him slip the black ring to his finger, conceal it with the shaking of his hands.
He had thought about his own death when he upheld Barien’s last orders to defend Lauresa, following her on that winter path to help her do what she needed to do to protect her homeland. To protect all the Ilmar. But then when he came back to Kathlan, he had stopped thinking it. Had stopped wondering about what battle or accident would eventually take him. Even riding the frontier for five months, Chriani had been keenly aware of the risks, had measured the threat of the Ilvani. But he’d never let him himself imagine what it might lead to in the end.
He hadn’t realized that had changed in him, not until the endless moment of thinking it right now. He hadn’t let himself understand why.
He had come back to Kathlan. He had made his choice for her then, as he made it for her now.
It was over for him. This was a good way to die.
Viranar was trying to snatch the amulet back even before Chriani vanished, but he was faster. Every muscle in him, every facet of his senses had been focused on the golden coins as the sorcerer moved closer to him, step by slow step. He had done his best to focus her thoughts on the coins to ensure they’d be in hand, offering himself to her so that she would take him as bait. The only thing he had left to give, the only ruse still open to him.
Chriani had marked the distance to the platform’s edge as six paces, knowing it would be the longest run of his life. He heard Viranar scream, felt her voice tearing at him like a bright blade. The sentries were moving for him, faltering as he vanished. He ducked down to roll between the closest two, then was up and running.
Break the magic, he had said to Farenna. Then break the cult. He couldn’t finish it anymore, but he could start it. Shatter the dark power that was channeled here for the others who would follow him. They would pick up the fight.
The well of shadow would destroy whatever touched it, Tician had said. Chriani had watched it consume Farenna. Had seen it destroy him, body and armor alike. Had seen it consume the magic of the captain’s sword.
He had no way back to the Ilvani. And even if he could make it back, what would he tell them? Farenna was gone. Corrupted. Captain of Sylonna and one of their best warriors, Chriani had no doubt. And if he could be broken, there was no telling who else among the rangers patrolling the Ghostwood might have already been captured by the cult and had the memory stolen from them. How many might have taken the rites of confession without kno
wing it. No way to tell how many others would turn on the Laneldenari in the heat of battle, setting Ilvani against Ilvani in a storm of red steel and golden eyes.
He had no way back to the Ilmari. Not anymore. He could break for Aerach, find his horse and hope it would let him cross the Hunthad into Ilmari territory. It might not, though. The Ilvani horses were trained to return home if their riders were lost, and Chriani knew he was the grey’s temporary master at best. Even if he made it out, he’d have to find the Aerachi. Would have to hope they didn’t execute him on the spot, hope they believed his story.
Even if they did, it would be war again, Chriani knew. An Aerachi force marching on the Ghostwood, Brandishear holding back the Calala Ilvani as they surged north into Crithnalerean to defend the secrets of this place. It would be a brutal assault. Probably futile. The only chance for the Ilmari would be to try to catch the lóechari by surprise, try to cripple the power here before breaking it.
Or Chriani could do that for them. Even with no way out when it was done.
Someone else would pick up the fight. That was the thought that drove him the six steps marking out the rest of his life. The Duke Andreg in Teillai. The prince’s guard in Brandishear. Kathlan, leading a squad of her own before long.
Chriani would give them all that chance if he could.
He heard spells being cast, felt a tingling at the back of his neck as he ran. Detection magic, he guessed, trying to pinpoint his location. Some charm to undo the invisibility that cloaked him, perhaps. He had a moment to worry about whether they might unleash spell-fire at him, taking out him and the closest lóechari at once. A necessary sacrifice.
From the corner of his eye, he saw sentries shifting to block access to the bridge, guessing he was trying to flee that way. Not suspecting that he had chosen a different way out.
He was two steps from the edge, looking down to the darkness below him. He put Kathlan’s name in his mind and held it there. No time to speak it.
He was one step from the edge when a pulse of crippling pain drove him to his knees.
He was ready for that last step. Ready to slip over into the shadow, taking the coins with him. But in the light of molten gold that filled all his senses, Chriani understood that the coins of the confessor had other ideas.
This close to the well, its shadow was like black oil filling his lungs. Chriani had felt it getting stronger with each step he took toward it, fighting to push through it, but the full extent of its force hadn’t become clear until it pounded down on him like a crumbling wall. He was drowning now. Freezing, burning, a cold scouring him from the inside even as fire spread from the coins white-hot in his hands.
He wasn’t dying. He knew that somehow, instinctively. He felt the magic of the shadow well licking at his life, tasting it hungrily but waiting to consume it. But the pain that coursed through him with each pulse of darkness made him wish with real honesty and for the very first time that he were dead.
Chriani’s body twisted in a convulsion of pain that locked his muscles tight, no way to let go of the amulet even if he’d wanted to. The black ring at his finger went cold as its power waned, the closest sentries turning toward him as he became visible again. Bows were raised against him. A dozen archers drew a bead on him as a convulsion knocked him backward, sending him even farther away from the edge. Raecla was moving toward him with backsword drawn, but Viranar’s voice was in all their ears and all their minds at once.
“All hold! The infidel is mine!”
She was next to him suddenly. Chriani didn’t see her move, but whether because he’d blacked out or the sorcerer had used magic to cross the space between them, he didn’t know. She grabbed at the coins clutched tight in his still-bound hands, used them to lift Chriani as if he weighed nothing. She had Dargana’s bloodblade in her other hand, knuckles white where she gripped it.
It wasn’t the blade she thought it was, Chriani reading the sorcerer’s knowledge of his deceit in her frenzied eyes. He could see himself through those eyes suddenly, flashes of the pain that lined his face, his twisted body. The link that connected Viranar to all the other Ilvani was in him now as the power of the shadow well coursed through him. He felt her rage, felt the hunger for his death that drove her. Whatever power Chriani’s lies had seemingly promised her was already forgotten.
As she raised the blade, readying a killing stroke, another convulsion took him. But Chriani was ready for it this time. He let it drive him forward, angled himself with the last of his strength to smash his head into Viranar’s. He heard her nose break beneath the force of the magic coursing through him.
The sorcerer screamed as she staggered back, dragging Chriani with her. Her knife hand spasmed, swinging wide as she tried to keep her balance. Her grip on the amulet was still iron-tight, even as Chriani’s hands began to slip. A haze of her blood clouded his eyes, but he saw her gain control of her other hand, striking with the bloodblade for his throat. He was screaming as he forced one hand open, managed to lock it around hers to send the dagger wide.
A bright pain across his cheek and ear told Chriani he’d been struck, but he managed to hold on. One hand was at the amulet, the other at the bloodblade as Viranar’s fingers cracked beneath the convulsive strength of his grip. But with his wrists still bound, his body bent, he couldn’t find any leverage to force the blade back toward her.
His hand slipped, just a little. A bright flash of pain seared him as the dagger scored his palm, set a new line of blood there.
Then a bright blue light was in his mind, turning the haze of molten gold across his eyes to the gentle color of a winter sky.
Something had changed.
Chriani felt the link to Viranar and the other Ilvani fade away like quickly shuttered windows. One by one, they closed to darkness where a golden light had shone a moment before. In its place, he felt the white light resolve to the sharp lines of a war-mark he recognized. The sigil of Halobrelia that marked his shoulder, that had marked Dargana’s shoulder. The lines acid-etched across her dagger, his blood spreading out along those lines now to mark the name of his father’s kin as a red-black stain.
You have fate behind you, whether you like it or not.
Dargana’s voice was around him, as if the exile might have been standing at his side. He felt her strength fill his mind, felt his tight-locked muscles surge with an energy he didn’t understand. He twisted his hands around to tighten his grip on the dagger, locking himself to the amulet where Viranar was desperately trying to tear it from him. The coins still burned brightly, but their heat was gone.
You’ll know what it means.
His wrists were bleeding beneath the ropes but he ignored the pain. He heard a scream that he realized was his own voice as he held Viranar fast.
He felt Dargana in his mind. He felt her strength and resolve, her bitter anger driving the pounding of his heart. He felt her memories as the flickering light of a shadow play, flashing across his sight. Voice and image, impression and sensation, all of it moving faster than his thought and sense could process. Chriani understood it all the same.
The power of the coins was in his mind like a living thing. He felt that mind opened up and laid bare, his memories set down like charcoal lines on blank parchment. Single images frozen fast, words and voices plucked out of mind and time. A connection between magic and memory. His eyes burned with a white light that he could see through Viranar’s frenzied gaze.
Chriani felt the blood and passion of the fallen Dargana erupt from the blade the exile had carried her whole life. He felt the lives of all the exile tribes reflected in her — and through her blade, all those lives burned now in him.
He understood a lifetime spent seeking a path between the extremes that defined the exiles, as clear as if he had lived that life himself from the day he was born. Trying to cleave between the two bright points of hatred that defined the Crithnala. Hatred of the Ilvani who had driven them north into exile, out of the Greatwood that had been home to their pe
ople for all time. Hatred of the Ilmari who haunted Crithnalerean along its borders and across the Clearwater Way, and who hunted the exiles even in the only lands they could call their own.
A hundred generations of hatred became a seething passion in his pounding heart. He felt an ageless indifference, saw with his own eyes the act of turning away from the Greatwood. Felt the need to push even farther north to avoid the Ghostwood and its dark pasts, the Clearwater Way and the battles that would always be found there.
He knew Dargana’s father in the blink of an eye. Felt her child’s reverence at the tall figure who had carried her before him on horseback, dark hair flowing behind him in the wind. He knew her mother an instant after that, seeing her laid to rest on a brush bier, draped in white cloth that hid the marks of the Ilmari arrows that had slain her. He knew her brothers. One who rode the Sandhorn in scorpion mail. One who had left Crithnalerean for the forests of Elalantar long years before, disappearing into what passed for life among those Ilvani who called the Ilmari nations home. Chriani knew the Ilvani who had followed Dargana as leader, who had ridden skirmishes against Ilmari patrols for long years. He knew their names, watched them live. He felt her love some of them for a time, felt them drift away or die, one by one.
He remembered his own father. The images of his childhood were refocused and reframed by the magic that scoured his thought and mind, all his memories twisting through Dargana’s like the magic that filled Chriani might be trying to weave a single life between them. But where the slow-frozen panes of loss and ache intersected, a dissonant clash of color and form erupted, driving into Chriani’s heart like a fist. He felt the loss of Dargana’s father, understood how it had driven her. Forced her to find her own strength, forced her to fight.
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