Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  They left him unbound so he could climb, but Chriani had four guards within striking distance the whole time as he led an Aerachi squad to the sheltered platform where Dargana’s body lay. The exile showed no sign of having been disturbed, her eyes still closed as if she might have been sleeping. The blood on her had dried to black against the grey of her lóechari armor. The guards stepped in front of Chriani to let him know he wasn’t to approach, but he could see the platform clearly around her.

  It was approaching dusk, the unnatural night imposed by the shadow long gone. In that light, and the glimmer of the torches the Aerachi guards needed to fill the shadows, Chriani could see clearly what he thought he’d seen when he left Dargana there. No blood pooling beneath her. No trail of red-black across the platform to mark where she’d been bleeding out as he carried her.

  He couldn’t think on it right now. It was over.

  Kathlan stepped past him, Chriani seeing the sadness in her as she helped search Dargana’s body, no weapons on her.

  Under Chriani’s quiet direction, Kathlan tore off the insignias and sash of the cult, left the exile armored in plain leather. Then she directed the guards who wrapped Dargana in an Aerachi cloak and bound it tight with rope. Using those ropes, they lowered her carefully to the ground, Chriani and his guards following.

  Kathlan tied his hands when they reached the forest floor. Another guard searched him, checking his belt quickly for hidden weapons but not finding the other treasures it concealed.

  Shara ordered two guards to carry Dargana’s body, neither of them looking much like they cared for that duty. Then Chriani fell into line with the others as they marched south through the trees.

  As they walked, Kathlan stayed by his side. The uneasy lightness of the healing magic was finally beginning to clear, his senses sharpening. He saw three Ilvani bodies scattered along the trails they passed, all of them with arrows in the back to indicate they’d been fleeing. He let his gaze slip across all the Aerachi guards, but saw no one he recognized from Venry’s squad.

  “Who are they?” he asked Kathlan quietly. “How did you get here?” Even as he said it, he understood how it should have been the first question he asked. His mind was still clouded, all the uncertainty that had dogged him since the Ilvani attack in the Greatwood swirling now like black sand. Kathlan was the only thing clear to him, like somehow her being there had become the only aspect of his life that was important. The how of it happening was just some minor detail.

  “They’re a troop of ranger scouts from Teillai. They know this frontier. They’ve been in the Ghostwood, most of them. Hand picked for skill and loyalty.”

  “Hand picked by who?”

  “Lauresa and Irdaign.”

  Chriani felt the names in his mind like a faint breath of summer air. The warmth that threaded through him made him realize how quickly the day was cooling as the sky darkened overhead.

  “We rode with Venry’s rangers back to Teillai after the attack,” Kathlan said. She spoke quietly, though Chriani’s guards were staying closer to Captain Shara ahead of them, unlikely to overhear. “The Ilvani didn’t come after us, but you know that. I kept the Brandishear squad together but there was nothing we could do but follow the Aerachi. We went straight to Castle Osthegn so Venry could report to his duke. I sent the squad back to Rheran to report after Irdaign found me there.”

  The forest around them showed movement in all directions, the Aerachi rangers converging on some rendezvous point that Shara led them toward.

  “Found you? How?” Chriani felt the words heavy in his mouth. Knowing he needed to say something, but fairly certain he already knew the answer.

  “Same way she found you, I reckon. Said she recognized me from the campsite when you met with her. I asked her how she knew you were coming that night, and she told me. So I asked if she could do it again.” Kathlan’s hand traced the moonsign, quickly. Chriani caught it from the corner of his eye. “She left a charm on you, she said. She could see you with it. Told us where you were.”

  Chriani remembered that night at the Leisanmira campsite, and the mark of magic that had seeped through his armor and into his skin when Irdaign sang. He felt the urge to make the moonsign himself. He set it aside. “And then what?”

  “Then someone convinced the duke it was important we find you,” Kathlan said.

  Chriani didn’t need to ask who that someone was. We would have you be safe in all things, Irdaign had said. Speaking for herself and Lauresa both. He hadn’t noticed it then.

  Through the trees ahead, a clearing was filled with Aerachi horses coming and going, rangers circling along the Ilvani patrol paths. Archers stood on point, watching cautiously as Captain Shara and the others approached. Chriani felt their eyes on him, didn’t care.

  He sat beside Dargana’s body, two guards watching him while Kathlan and three other sergeants spoke with Shara a short distance away. The troop was a full Aerachi scout force by the look of it, thirty strong or more. Rangers and war-mages, all with field experience that showed in the set of their weapons, the scars of their armor. Kathlan was one of only three females among that number, Chriani noted, and the only one among the sergeants. She stood among their experience as an equal of any of them, though, holding her own as they debriefed.

  More than once, Chriani saw the eyes of the sergeants turn in his direction, sensed an undertone of anger in their distant voices that he knew was for him. More than once, he heard Kathlan’s voice rise in response.

  A field promotion from guard to acting sergeant was a sign of expertise and trust. A promotion from noncommissioned squire to acting sergeant was unheard of. Eighteen months since she had joined the guard, and Chriani had known from the start that Kathlan would wear the sergeant’s badge some day. Him being on trial for his life at some point was a thing he probably should have guessed at just as easily.

  Even with the sharpness of his ears, he caught only fragments of the conversation between Shara and his sergeants, but it was enough to confirm what he had already guessed. The Ilvani had broken almost immediately, fighting only as long as it took to get them clear of combat, then vanishing into the woods. He heard Shara repeat what Chriani had told the captain, of how the death of Viranar had overwhelmed the Ilvani, shattering their morale. The overly excited ramblings of the one war-mage among the sergeants gave a hint of the larger story. Magic within the trees, he said, fading now but marking a site of incalculable power. That power broken somehow. Failing the Ilvani that had been bound to it.

  None of it was important anymore. Let the rangers craft their tales of the dread Ilvani horde fleeing at the mere sight of Aerachi steel. It was over, Chriani thought. That was all that mattered now.

  It would make a good story, as stories went.

  The order to ride out came as soon as the officers’ council broke. Chriani was given a horse, was surrounded by a full squad with Kathlan at its head. She had Dargana’s body behind her, slung over the horse of a wounded Aerachi forced to ride behind another ranger. She was leading the troop on Shara’s orders, taking directions from Chriani. He was conscious of the anger that spread through the other rangers as a result. He didn’t care.

  It had been two favors he asked Shara in the end. For the second, they carried Dargana’s body toward the grove where Farenna had set their horses loose, Chriani hoping beyond hope that the three steeds were still there. The Ilvani didn’t return their dead to home and family, he knew, but leaving Dargana behind in these dark woods was a thing he wouldn’t do.

  When he halted, he did his best impression of the whistling call the Ilvani used on their horses, not sure how close he came to the original. The horses heard him, though, appearing through a break in the trees ahead as if they’d been hiding there, just out of sight. They cantered forward toward him, showing no sign of worry or fear at the Aerachi arms and armor arrayed around them.

  “Tie the body onto that one,” he said, indicating Dargana’s horse. As he did, something hit him har
d in the back of the head, Chriani twisting around to see the Aerachi guard closest to him with a dagger in hand. He was tanned and scarred in equal measure, fair hair cut long and rough to shade eyes set small in his face as dark points of malice. His weapon was angled so that Chriani understood he’d lashed out to strike with the pommel.

  “Another word, you half-blood bastard, and I’ll see how you deal with the sharp end.”

  The surge of anger in Chriani died quickly as Kathlan pushed her horse between him and the wild-eyed guard. “Tie the body on,” she said. “And do it right or I’ll send you along with her as a peace offering.”

  The guard scowled as he grabbed the lead of the second horse, two more rangers following him. As they tied the body over the Ilvani horse’s back, Kathlan slipped close to the other two mounts, reached out to gently touch them. They accepted her hand easily, rubbed themselves against her in a way that made her own horse shuffle back. Her expression reflected the sheer awe and majesty of the Ilvani steeds, Chriani understanding how much they would mean to her.

  He had ridden among the Valnirata. A thing that perhaps no other living Ilmari could say. He didn’t know what would happen when the horses made their way back to Sylonna. Dargana would be taken to her rest, given rites. The Ilvani would come to the temple site, he knew. They would find the remains of Farenna’s riders who had fallen, but they would never find the captain. Would never find Chriani, never know what had happened to him.

  The three guards returned when Dargana’s body had been tied carefully to the horse, the ropes padded with cloth against its breast and belly. Chriani spurred forward beside Kathlan, brought himself up close to the white stallion Farenna had ridden. He spoke clearly in Ilvalantar. “Home,” he said.

  Like they heard and understood him, all three horses twisted away and shot off south into the woods, Dargana’s mount in the lead. Their hoofbeats were muffled, falling quickly to silence as they found the trail back to Sylonna and disappeared from sight.

  Captain Shara called out from behind them. “We ride out the light and beyond. No rest till we’ve cleared the Ghostwood.” Then with a surge of sound and motion, the Aerachi troop turned for the east, thundering away through the trees.

  They rode hard along the course that Shara’s rangers had marked out from Teillai. Through the forest, they ran east breaking slowly north, emerging just past the Clearmoon’s rise into a wedge of scrubland around which two arms of the Ghostwood spread like horns. They were still well within Ilvani territory but free of the trees and the risk of ambush attack. They set a rough camp late that night, bedrolls only and horses staked. The rangers made no fires but set out full torchlight and patrols on the perimeter. They were on a low rise that gave a wide view of the land around them, but there was no sign of any pursuit or patrol.

  They were riding again before dawn, a grey-gold light ahead of them marking their course. The sun was still climbing when the horns of the forest thinned to patchy scrub and open ground ahead, showing that they had left the Ghostwood behind. Their course changed to due northeast then, setting the shortest route for the unseen border ahead. It was three day’s ride to Teillai, Chriani heard someone say.

  The journey was made with a profound lack of conversation. The Aerachi had seemed unwilling to speak while within the Ghostwood and the Crithnalerean scrubland, as if obeying some rangers’ superstition and the fear of unseen Ilvani patrols. Not that any such patrols would have had problems hearing the Aerachi horses from a league away, Chriani had thought more than once. Against the memory of the Ilvani horses running in near silence, the endless din of the troop’s passage was like thunder in his ears.

  They made a second rough camp that night atop a rise set with fir and grape vines. While the horses grazed in thick stands of wild grass, the guards gathered deadfall for watch fires. The mood was dark among them, conversations undertaken in hushed tones. However, from the glances sent his way at regular intervals while the guards worked and he sat, Chriani was fairly certain what the topic of conversation was. He was too distracted to think on it, though, Kathlan keeping a distance from him that left him mostly alone with his thoughts.

  More than once, those thoughts had turned back to Dargana, and a chill uncertainty that was becoming familiar to Chriani as he thought about the events of that dark day. Hearing her speaking, even though all the evidence of the platform told him she was already dead before he set her down there. All the evidence of logic, and his understanding of how badly injured she was before he had first set out with her, climbing with her body over his shoulder.

  Her memories were tied to the dagger. Perhaps that was what he was hearing on the platform. The magic of the coins around him, the shadow of the black well flowing through him. That darkness across his eyes, scouring his lungs, filling his mind.

  As he sat at one of the watch fires, Chriani thought of Barien. He was eating alone, the four guards charged with watching him all sitting a few paces away. Though his hands were still bound, he was able to deal with bread and jerky, flasks of water and weak ale that were apparently Aerach’s standard field rations. He had started with the ale, was feeling light-headed when the thought of Barien came from nowhere, then shifted within the lingering sense of that moment when Dargana’s memories had opened up within his mind. He remembered the power of the coins flowing through him, leaving him empty so that he could take the strength her memory offered him. Remembered touching the exile’s life as though he had lived it.

  He had never really known Dargana. He had felt the rawness of those memories, and the dark emotion that fueled them. There were connections between her and Chriani, but he understood that those connections were things outside the scope of his life. Things he would have liked to know, and that she might have helped him with if the two of them had ever known the chance. Questions about the world his father came from. But those were things Chriani had never thought of as important before his life took its turn along the path that led him to the Clearwater Way. And so he was left with little sense of what he might have truly asked Dargana if he’d had the chance.

  Barien had stood at the center of Chriani’s life for ten years. Had been the focal point around which that life turned. And with everything that had happened to him, with all the changes that had overtaken him in the past eighteen months, Chriani understood only too well how many questions he would ask Barien now if he could. He understood how much he would give to embrace the warrior’s memories, to feel that contact of thought and mind in the same way he had touched Dargana. To feel Barien alive and in his life once more, even as memory. Even for a moment.

  He felt the heat of the fire, felt the chill that came in from the edges of the cloak Kathlan had found for him, his bound hands unable to seal it properly. The night was bright and cloudless, the waning Clearmoon still waiting to rise. He had relics of Barien’s, he remembered. The wooden dagger. Other things locked tight in the trunk he’d left behind at the Bastion when he took to the field.

  Chriani tossed the last of his bread to the fire, catching a dark look from one of his guards in response. And as he stared to the flames, he wondered whether the magic of the coins would have opened up all the memories tied to those pieces of Barien’s lost life. Wondered what it would have felt like to touch the warrior’s mind that way. Feeling the strength that had driven him, the sense of honor and accomplishment behind the blue eyes and the wide smile. The grim dedication to service that had cost him his life.

  He had no idea whether the bloodblade held magic. No idea whether it was that magic alone that had interacted with the dweomer of the coins and the black well. No idea whether the Ilmari had access to magic that might recreate the effect of the coins. Mind magic powerful enough to tear the impressions of a life out of the objects that life had touched would be secret if it existed at all. Milyan or Varyn or another of Chanist’s mages would know of it. But even as the thought came to him, Chriani knew that enduring a lengthy questioning under magical compulsion was the only e
ncounter he was likely to have with Chanist’s mages again.

  “…kill the half-blood bastard now.”

  He heard the voice rise from where his guards sat, starkly shadowed by the light of the fire. Figures were moving around them, other rangers heading for sentry duty or settling down into bedrolls to catch some sleep before their own turn along the camp’s fire-bright perimeter.

  The speaker was the guard who had struck him when they retrieved Dargana. Madoc, under Kathlan’s command. Chriani had heard his name on the ride but ignored him as best he could, even as he knew that effort wasn’t likely to last the length of their journey together.

  “Waste of a trial if you ask me,” the scarred warrior said, louder now. “We cross the border tomorrow, we can mete out military justice by law. What’s the penalty for treason again?”

  “Execution,” one of the others said with a smile. “They’ll hang him in Teillai. Seems too quick a way for a treason-bastard to go, though.”

  “We can deliver justice to traitors as well as Andreg. A sight more painfully, too.”

  “You can try,” Chriani said quietly.

  Madoc shot to his feet without a word, Chriani following. He felt a dangerous anger hanging, spreading out around him. A few eyes were watching, but only his guards were moving.

  “Too bad your hands are tied, half-blood.” Madoc’s tone was mocking as he pushed in, Chriani shifting back to keep himself from being surrounded.

  “Best to keep it fair, I thought.” With his bound fists, he hurled his borrowed cloak at the two guards trying to circle around behind him. Beneath it, he was still in his lóechari leathers. He saw the dark rage in Madoc’s eyes flare bright in the firelight.

  “Stand!”

  Kathlan’s voice rang out like steel on steel, Chriani seeing her from the corner of his eye as she strode up from the far side of the fire. He sensed the guards behind him go still. He and Madoc both took another step before they stopped, an arm’s length away from each other.