Three Coins for Confession
Page 45
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. Please.”
He wouldn’t think on any of the reasons he had to return to Aerach. He wouldn’t. Not yet. It was something for the future he had always dreamed of seeing, but that future was in front of him now and turning to darkness before his eyes.
“Tell me what’s between you and the princess,” Kathlan said. “The duchess. Lauresa. The truth, Chriani.”
The words he’d spoken to Kathlan in Venry’s camp were in Chriani’s mind. The darkness of his confession that night, come back to him as if only a moment had passed. He felt every word that had gone unspoken since then, every lie he’d woven into his life in the years before.
“I told her I would die for her,” he said. The truth.
“And?”
“A part of me did. And a part of her died for me. And there’s nothing left after that.”
Kathlan said nothing for a long while, turning away toward the sea. Its salt scent was fresh on the wind, but the horizon was lost behind a veil of cloud.
“Kath…”
“Do you know what you want, Chriani?”
“No,” he said. The truth. “I’m sorry, Kath, but I can’t see it yet. But I’m looking, and I’m trying, and I know more than I know any other truth that whatever I want, it has to be with you.”
Kathlan nodded as if she understood. Then she turned her horse, began to walk away.
“I’m staying in Aerach,” she said as Chriani spurred up beside her. “I’ll seek a place in the guard here.”
“This isn’t the place for you, Kath.” Chriani tried to edge around her, reaching for her hand again, but she slipped past him easily. “You know how they think of women in Aerach, and in the guard most of all. You’ll work twice as hard to get half as far, even if you manage to find someone willing to take you for what you’re worth.”
“Good thing I already work twice as hard as anyone else. And I’ve got Shara, who more than knows what I’m worth. He already offered me a place in his troop, but I told him I wouldn’t be comfortable in Teillai. He thinks it’d be because of what happened with you. Not that he’s wrong.”
“Kath…”
“I’m riding for Aleran. You’re riding for Rheran. Shara’s given me some names, said he’ll send letters to speak for me. Other captains who don’t have their heads up their asses. I know my path, Chriani.”
A shadow was in his mind, twisting around the words he meant to say. Strangling them down to the darkness where his secrets hid. The other horses were gone, hoofbeats and the jingle of tack already fading behind him.
“Please, Kathlan. I’ll do anything you ask of me.”
“I’m asking you to go, Chriani. Find your way. Find your place, whatever it’s meant to be.”
“Kath, I can’t lose you…”
“Goodbye, Chriani.”
She turned her horse past him with the lightest flick of the reins, then spurred away to the east.
“Kathlan!”
Chriani shouted her name as she picked up speed. He didn’t follow, though. Already knowing she was gone.
The fog was lifting, breaking the cloud that shrouded the city and the broad farming steppes beyond. Kathlan was pushing her horse with precision, because she knew that if Chriani tried to follow her, he’d override his own mount before she had any need to slow. No way he’d ever catch her.
She had asked him what he wanted. His life back and in order was the easy answer. And he had that, granted in an unexpected instant by the prince high he had sworn to hate.
There was more to it, though. He felt an understanding settle in on him, his mind trying to make some sense of the pain twisting through him, centered on his heart.
He wanted to know he had made a difference.
The threat of the cult was done. Chriani had accomplished that, had made his decision to stand and fall if he must. He had expected to die, had been thinking of the others who would follow him to finish what he’d started. But in a twist of fate he had never expected, he was following himself now.
He had a report to make to the prince high, he knew. To Ashlund. He would tell them what he could of the Laneldenari, and of what Veassen and the others had said. A chance there for peace, maybe. A chance to build on what had come before.
In war, we find the strength of life, but our lives are more than war. Farenna had said it on the council floor.
War, which is the dream the Ilmari made. Chriani remembered Contáedar’s dark hatred, as he remembered Chanist speaking of the Greatwood burned to ash and spread across the Ehadne Sea. But he remembered the weariness in the throne room as well.
I will serve my people at any cost, the prince high had said. That same weariness in Farenna.
Between themselves, he and Lauresa had stopped a war. With Dargana’s strength guiding his hand and his heart, he had undone the dark magic that promised a second. But if war came anyway, it would all have been for nothing.
His mind had drifted, he realized. He was alone. Kathlan was gone ahead of him. Behind him, the patrol and its civilian cohort had vanished into the mist.
In the council of masters and in his tent two nights before, Veassen had spoken of fate. I saw that you would do what you were meant to do. Chriani held onto that thought now. Felt it shimmer against the shadow within his mind, even as he felt that shadow breaking.
He turned his horse, spurred it to a jog toward the west. The patrol party wouldn’t be far ahead of him, but he didn’t want to risk surprising them at a gallop. Ilvani were on the Clearwater Way, the Brandishear couriers had said.
He rode toward where the last of the fields of Aerach would fall away to wild rose and scrub grass. He slipped within the mist, felt the sun at his back and shadow before him as he passed along the Clearwater Way and was gone.
SIDNYE (QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE)
THE EXILE’S BLADE TRILOGY
Clearwater Dawn
Three Coins for Confession
The Timeless King
(Coming 2016)
WE CAN BE HEROES
A PRAYER FOR DEAD KINGS and Other Tales
BLACKHEATH (with Quinn Hamilton)
THE VOICES OF THE DEAD — Dark Tales & Lost Souls
TALES OF THE ENDLANDS
The Twilight Child • Shadow to Shadow • The Moonsign Scar • Daeralf’s Rune • The Game of Heart and Light • The Voice • Black Run • A Space Between • Stories
ONE SIZE FITS ALL (as Gary Scott)
Scott Fitzgerald Gray (9th-level layabout, vindictive neutral) is a writer, fiction editor, story editor, RPG editor and designer, and man about town. He shares his life in the Canadian hinterland with a schoolteacher, two itinerant daughters, and a large number of animal companions.
More info on Scott and his work (some of it even occasionally truthful) can be found by reading between the lines at insaneangel.com.
Thanks and admiration to the following for taking up arms when the bell sounds.
The Council of Masters
Colleen, Shvaugn, and Caitlin
Seers of the Bastion
Gabriel Duclair, Colleen Craig, Jennifer Landels
War-Mages of the Prince’s Guard
François Bertrand, Shvaugn Craig
Artificers of the Myllasir
(studio)Effigy, Pawel Lyczkowski, Tokarev Anton, Margo Black, Peter Polak, Susanitah
The Odes of the Leisanmira
Alter Bridge, Collective Soul, Ramin Djawadi, Tom Holkenborg, Guy Gavriel Kay, George R.R. Martin, Porcupine Tree, Red, Scott Stapp, Mary Stewart, Barry Windsor-Smith, Hans Zimmer
Published by Insane Angel Studios
insaneangel.com
Copyright © 2014 Scott Fitzgerald Gray
All rights reserved
Cover, Design, and Typography
by (studio)Effigy
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, objects, and incidents herein are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblan
ce to actual things, events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. With thanks to the management and handlers of the Laneldenar tourist board.
ISBN 978-1-927348-37-6
v1.1
July 2015
We try to make sure that no errors creep into our work, but publishing is a chaotic enterprise at the best of times. If you spot a typo or a formatting glitch in an Insane Angel Studios book, email insaneangel@insaneangel.com with details (including which e-book version you’re reading, if applicable). If any errors you spot are ones we haven’t yet caught and are in the process of fixing, you’ll receive one of our e-books of your choice for free.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1 • Rangers Down
Chapter 2 • The Deep Wood
Chapter 3 • The Hunter’s Heart
Chapter 4 • Chriani’s Promise
Chapter 5 • Bells in the Night
Chapter 6 • Legends Once True
Chapter 7 • A Different Fear
Chapter 8 • Four Days South
Chapter 9 • All There Is
Chapter 10 • The Hidden City
Chapter 11 • The Lóechari
Chapter 12 • The Ghostwood
Chapter 13 • Markura
Chapter 14 • The Road Behind
Chapter 15 • The Black Well
Chapter 16 • Only Memory
Chapter 17 • The Future Unseen
Fiction by Scott Fitzgerald Gray
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Copyright