Three Coins for Confession (50 page)

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 hard 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.