Revolted by himself. Mind screaming. Nausea. Almost overwhelming. Flowing over and through him in waves as he stepped through the wood. He felt as though a hundred thousand tiny orits crawled between his skin and his armour. As if a million tiny legs marched over his skin.
This was wrong.
He was no longer connected to the armour, it was not part of him. He was not complete. With the waves of nausea came waves of disconnection. Stabs of pain that made him grit his teeth which felt brittle, like chalk, as if they would break under the pressure of his jaw muscles.
A constant high ringing in his ears, barely audible, almost painful.
… ou… ee… m…
He was a pariah to the forest. He felt that as keenly as the nausea and the pain. The life, animals and tiny flyers, moving away from him. Even the plants were affected, beginning to change as if his passing brought the falling of the Light Above, flowers shutting, leaves drooping.
He could feel the Hetton clearly. He did not need to reach into Ranya’s web for them, and was not going to. He was sure he would not be able to. He was apart from nature now, no longer within the web. What he had done with the rotten log and the bluevein had put him outside of it. Made him outcast.
He coughed and tasted rot, but it did not revolt him as it once would have.
“We told you not to,” said Nahac. “Death is not for the living.” The Reborn looked different, not grey, they were striped with pulsing energy.
“I am like you,” he said, felt a sibilance in his words, a fur upon his tongue. The creeping of his flesh. The lines running along Nahac’s armour twisted and shifted.
“No,” she said, “for you it is temporary, a lesson in what is forbidden. And why.” Her sister joined her, they seemed brighter and more real than the trees and plants around them, more alive. He reached out a hand to touch her. “No,” she said. Not a request. A command. “Do not.” He let his hand fall, a wave of nausea and self-revulsion passed across him.
“You feel this way.”
“It is our eternity.” He could not speak. Could not imagine it. “The Cowl-Rai of Cahrasi-Who-Enslaves, they sought the power of the Osere, raised one hundred Reborn from the dead of the battlefield. On the day we were born so was the bluevein. We are born of what you feel.”
“A hundred.” The words felt like they oozed from his mouth. “Where are the others? Are they the Hetton?” Nahac stared at him, unnaturally still. Then she shook her head, a slow deliberate movement.
“No. They are weak compared to us. My sisters were strong. They lasted hundreds of years before the silence fell upon them.”
“The silence? Then your sister?” He looked at the other Reborn. “That is why she does not speak?”
“She is a sister of violent blooms, my lover in a life ended long ago,” said Nahac. “And yes, that is one reason why she does not speak. The horror has become too much. If she opens her mouth she will scream, and the screaming will never stop.”
Even in his mire of self-loathing he felt the awful truth of what she said, and now he understood the Reborn’s wish for death.
“I will find you a way to die,” he said. He wanted to wash his hands. “I promise.”
“But not today,” and if she felt some resentment or emotion she did not show it. “Today others must die.” He nodded. Pointed.
“That way.” He picked up the bow, it felt strange in his hand, the wood slimy and hard to grip.
“It rejects you,” she said.
“I will make it work for me.” He felt anger at the bow.
“It will never be the same again if you do.”
“But…”
She took a sword from her hip. “This is inert, it does not care if you are alive, dead, or somewhere in between.” He took the sword, felt a difference.
“I had hoped to use arrows.”
“We have throwing spears if you can use them.” He nodded and she turned to her sister who took spears from a pack on her back, smaller, lighter and fletched like large arrows. The ends were barbed. “Four each,” she said. He picked them up, smooth and dry in his hands. The silent Reborn stepped forward and took his bow, put it into her weapons pack. The sword he held in his hand; he did not reach for his axes. “How many, Cahan?” said Nahac.
“Four Hetton, three Rai.” The Hetton pulsed in his mind like lights, the Rai similar but different.
“How many soldiers?”
He put a hand in the dirt, felt the worms, the rot, the slow breakdown of vegetable matter. Dead flesh liquifying, one creature digesting another. It was a song, a strange and discordant song and through it ran the high notes of bluevein which both disgusted and attracted him. There was a scream in his veins that interfered with any chance he had of touching Ranya’s web. For a moment he felt himself comfortable among the death. He pulled his hand away as if the ground burned him.
“I do not know,” he said. “I cannot find the soldiers.” The Reborn nodded, as if this was expected.
“We do not need to fear the soldiers,” she said then stood, waiting. “You said we must obey your orders, so give them.”
He concentrated, trying to push away the crawling of his skin, the miasma in his mind.
“The Rai will push the Hetton out before them, any soldiers will follow. We head that way,” he pointed, “come in behind them.”
“And then?”
“We kill the Rai with thrown spears, close with the soldiers and the Hetton.” He looked from one Reborn to the other. “We kill them all; any who walk away may report back on the survivors of Harn.”
“No prisoners,” said Nahac.
“None,” he said. He was aware, in the back of his mind, that giving such an order, even if necessary, would have filled him with a sense of guilt once. Not now. Instead he felt a dark elation, pleasure at feeding the land with blood and death.
You… ne… me.
The voice of the cowl, but as if from very far away. He did not think he needed it. The revulsion he had felt at first was ebbing, the itching of his skin leaving. Now he felt there were other ways to strength and power and they did not involve killing. The urge to vomit flooded through him, doubling him over. His mouth filling with foul-tasting saliva, bringing back the sense of revulsion. He felt the flickering of fire somewhere far away.
“Cahan Du-Nahere?”
“I am all right.”
“It is life fighting death and sickness,” she said. “You must use this power quickly, remove it from you. Both cannot exist in a living body for long. Something must give.” He nodded, spat a foul black liquid into the ferns.
“Let us go,” his voice sounded different, deeper, hoarser. He saw the world through a haze. He felt the bluevein in the ground reaching for him.
They pushed through the undergrowth. Leaves dripped a liquid that felt like some foul ichor burning his skin. When he checked it was only water, the gentle normal drip of the forest.
What had happened to him? How could the Reborn bear this? He took a breath and the air was black in his lungs. Nahac was right, he had to get it out of him. Kill. Kill with it. Kill and kill and kill.
He felt himself smiling.
A hand on his arm.
“We must keep moving.” He blinked; he had stopped walking, was standing there. “Concentrate,” she said. He nodded, they moved on and rather than think about himself he locked on to the feeling of the Hetton, made them lodestones in his mind, shining stars in the darkness.
They closed and he ducked down, hiding in the undergrowth at the side of a forest path and waiting for the enemy to pass. The Reborn positioned themselves further down on either side of the path. He did not feel the same loathing when the Hetton approached. He did not hear their voices as barely understandable sibilance. He heard their speech as song, high and sweet. It spoke to him.
“Follow, follow them. Find them. Follow them find them. Kill them.” The words bouncing backwards and forward between the four creatures. Then the soldiers came, he could feel their fear of the Hetton and how much they disliked being around them. Six soldiers. Next came the Rai, three of them. Not speaking, arrogant despite their recent defeat. Not checking the wood around them. Foolish. They did not learn.
They deserved to die.
He looked across, found Nahac among the trees. Exchanged a nod.
Felt a thrill run through him. A pleasure purer and bluer than any other.
He stood, drew his arm back and let strength flow through him. The Reborn stood, launched their own spears.
Two spears.
Two deaths.
Each Reborn spear hitting a Rai in the head, piercing through wood, bone and flesh. The last of the three Rai had time to turn. Hands coming up, fire blossoming, and Cahan threw his spear. The hardened wood smashing through the Rai’s visor, through their head. He wanted to howl, to caper and gibber with glee, he felt the floor of the forest – no not the floor, something else, something deeper and darker – fill with joy at being fed. A mirror of his own feelings. There was more power there, power for him and—
“Cahan!”
The voice shook him. He had been lost again, lost in the reverie of death. Soldiers running towards him. Angry and frightened. So weak. They ran and he moved. Faster, stronger, more powerful. The Reborn spinning around him like ghosts, the sword in his hand an extension of his body. Cutting off a limb here, opening a throat there. Reborn spears punctured flesh in explosions of glorious red. Then the soldiers were dead and he felt the power in their corpses. He was unstoppable. This was him. This was what it was to be Cowl-Rai, to wield the power of Zorir.
You… ed… me.
The voice of the cowl, so quiet and distant. So easy to ignore.
“Cahan, the Hetton!”
They came, glorious glowing powerful creatures. In their fury they were almost too bright for him to look at. Blue lines over their bodies, like the Reborn but brighter, the lines thicker. He could not move.
“Cahan!” Shaken loose by his name. Images flowed away. The Hetton no longer bright but monsters once more. Four of them, armour splintered and dry. Faces stretched and wasted, eyes white and dead. Two with swords, two with spears. The Reborn threw their remaining spears. Concentrating on the first Hetton. The creature pierced multiple times. Falling to its knees and the light of it, the blue haze and lines, winked out. The other three came on. Nahac engaged first. She was swift, fighting in that beautiful spinning style of the devotees of the Lady of Violent Blooms. The Hetton matched her blow for blow but its fighting was ugly, jerky. Her sister engaged, not quite as fast or balletic. Then he was fighting. No time to watch. The Hetton were fast, fluid, vicious. He met each blow with the borrowed sword. Felt the power within him. He did not have to fight.
He brought fire. It leapt from his hand, dark and hungry, splashing against the armour of the Hetton. The creature screamed. This fire did not act like fire, the flames deep blue and purple, flickering over the creature’s armour as if alive, searching for a way in. Then the Hetton was trying to rip off its own armour, screeching in a high, painful voice as smoke rose from it. Cahan turned. Saw the silent sister being forced back and reached out with the fire again. His strength ebbing, knowing the silent sister was struggling, not as strong or fast as Nahac. His fire, squirming, stretching, covered the Hetton. Oozed along its armour, looking for a way in, sending it running and screaming. At the same time Nahac ran the last Hetton through with her spear. It screeched and she drove a knife into its eye, cutting off its noise with one hard thrust and stepping back. Watching it fall to the forest floor. Cahan felt the death, felt a small rejoicing at it. The shimmer of bluevein in the ground.
He fell to his knees, weak once more.
“Come, Cowl-Rai,” said Nahac and she helped him stand. Looked him in the face. “Your eyes are clear, let us return to your people.” He did not move, not at first. He was empty. The power was there, below him. In the corpses. The patches of bluevein were ways to reach out and take the energy of death. He wanted it. “Cahan!” said Nahac. He grunted. Nodded, and the two Reborn helped him limp back into the forest, towards Wyrdwood where the people of Harn waited.
Behind them, unseen, a woman they could not sense, could not feel, and who did not exist within Ranya’s web watched. When they had vanished into the undergrowth, she stood and made to follow them, carrying thoughts of vengeance on the man who had destroyed her cowl with her.