She did not know how old she was.
She had never even thought about it, or if she had she could not remember. Maybe age had been important when she was very young, counting down the days until they let her into the blooming rooms and she took on the mantle of her family, became Rai. That had been all she wanted, all she dreamed of as a child. No longer treated as less than her father and the others in the bottom of Storspire. No longer a child running round. A real person, someone who mattered. Let the trainers try and beat her then.
Had the blooming rooms been hard?
She didn’t remember it being hard, only the rush of power like a cold sweet drink on a hot day. With power had come a new life; mortality had ceased to be something she thought about. She was Rai, she was eternal. She was strong and feared nothing but other Rai, and even then fear was the wrong word. Wariness was better, knowledge that there were some she could not go up against, not yet. She learned that sometimes it was better to scheme than confront head-on, though she had been glad to do that too. Enjoyed the rush of the fight.
She lived, those around her died. Those not blessed with cowls shrivelled up and passed on in what felt like the blink of an eye. One day they were there and the next another servant had taken their place and name – it was easier if all the servants had the same name, a waste learning new ones. Rai had no time for niceties, let others bend to their will, change for them. They were what mattered.
She thought that must have been how it was for the gods, before Iftal broke and Anjiin fell. Before they lost their power and had to use the people of Crua. She hadn’t even been sure gods existed, even Cowl-Rai felt like stories told to scare and force obedience. None of it had felt real to her – gods, Ancient Anjiin, the stories of her childhood.
Then she met Cahan Du-Nahere.
She remained undecided about gods, but Cowl-Rai, they were real at least.
Because of him she was no longer Rai, but she knew Rai in a way no outsider could. She knew what they thought of her. She knew how they hated her and how they feared her for what she had become. A null spot that blocked their power.
But they did not hate, not really. They only thought they did.
They did not feel at all.
When Cahan Du-Nahere had burned out her cowl, robbed her of everything she was, she had wanted to die. She had seen no use for her existence, no point in her life. Then she had become consumed with the idea of regaining her cowl and the belief the man who took it away could give it back to her. He could not, and again she had grieved and she blamed that grief on her defeat at Harn. It had clouded her judgement. She should have killed him there and then, not waited, not kept alive a faint of hope returning to what she had been. Pining for what had been was weak, she knew that now.
She had become something else.
Something new.
With that realisation had come another. She may have been long-lived as Rai, but she had never really been alive. With the loss of her cowl had come emotions – grief, hope, the deep-seated need for revenge and she had experienced them all so intensely that she had interpreted them as pain. But they were not pain, they were something to be savoured. A pure and sparkling precious gem, each emotion a different facet of it. Oh, they could be scarifying, overwhelming; when Cahan Du-Nahere had raised the forest where Harn had been she had never felt anything like it. Something in her that was old and powerful, taking control of her. Forcing her to run over heaving land, shaking and shuddering in a way entirely unlike the usual tremors of Crua. Every step expecting to die, to feel the hard, piercing, branches erupt into her. Spearing her from below, thrusting her up to hang above the land. The life coming up was violent and vengeful. It was not random, it was targeted, the plants and trees waiting for someone to pass over them before they exploded from the soil, thrusting screaming bodies into the air.
She saw a man split apart by a tree. Saw a woman dragged down, entangled in viciously thorned briars that whipped and clawed at her as she begged for help.
But they did not touch her.
As Sorha had run, she had become more and more sure the forest did not see her. Amid the noise, the pain and the stink of ruptured bodies, she slowed to a walk. Strolling through death and destruction and all that touched her was dirt flying through the air as it was forced out from below.
That defeat she could not be blamed for, it sat firmly at the feet of Rai Galderin, though no doubt those feet were now high in the air and rotting. She could have stopped all the death at Harn. She understood Cahan Du-Nahere, you did not fight him as Rai. He knew how to fight Rai, how to use their own arrogance against them. But none would listen to her, the pariah. They banished her to the rear of the column to stand with the Hetton. Not even the High Leoric of Harnspire, Kirven, had bothered to ask her opinion.
Their arrogance had cost them all their lives.
Afterwards, she had found a few Rai and a small force who had been scouts, far away enough to escape the fury of the forest. She hid from them, sat and waited and watched. One of them looked like they were reaching out, feeling for life, for lost soldiers but they did not feel her. That was when things first began to make a little sense. When she first escaped Harn she had thought it odd that Cahan’s Reborn did not bring her down with spears. Thought it even stranger when the forest did not attack her. But as the Rai before her counted off their assets and found a very few soldiers and Hetton to bring in, what she had been suspecting for a while became a truth, a reality. She found herself smiling.
“You cannot see me,” she said to herself.
She had continued with her plan. It was not such a different one to the plan the Rai she was following had. Trail the survivors of Harn, find out where they went and report back to Harnspire on where they were. But Sorha had an advantage those Rai did not, she was invisible. She had no doubt Cahan and his Reborn would come for the Rai, but they would not know she was there. So the Rai followed the villagers, and Sorha followed the Rai and she listened to them and allowed herself to feel in a way she knew they never would. They were motivated only by one thing, self-preservation. She was motivated by something far more powerful.
Hate.
Of all the emotions she felt this was the easiest of them, the simplest and least confusing: the purest. She hated Cahan Du-Nahere, hated him for what he had done to her, for taking her cowl and for defeating her at Harn. She would end him.
She hated the Rai too, and especially the Rai she followed. They talked about her, about their plans to blame their loss here on “the Pariah”. How they would enjoy her death when it came, if she was not dead already. More than once she was tempted to slip into their camp and cut a few throats. Once she would have; as Rai she would have burnt them alive. Not now. She could not do it of course, the power was gone from her. It forced her to think longer term. They thought only of surviving the now, how events here would impact on their power. She thought of surviving the now as well, but she thought of far more than that. Because she knew she had value, a walking, living and able to fight duller.
What a weapon she was for someone. The High Leoric of Harn had seen it – unfortunate that she died, though Sorha had never liked the woman, and who cared for a High Leoric of some forgotten county when there were far more powerful people in Crua: the generals of the Cowl-Rai, or the Skua-Rai of Tiltspire, or even the Cowl-Rai themselves. She would become invaluable.
Then, like a poorly trained garaur, she would turn on those that fed her and take their place.
So she followed, and she watched, and she hated.
When Du-Nahere and his Reborn came, she watched them destroy the small force. She did not feel pleasure in their deaths, not exactly – at some point screams of pain had started to bother her, and the strange fire Du-Nahere used set her on edge. But it was good to know she was right, that he would come back and deal with those who pursued him. Good to know she knew how he thought.
Once the Rai and their soldiers were dead he and his Reborn left, sure that they had eliminated the threat to them and their people. Wrong, of course. They had not, she was the real threat, the thorn that would cut and bleed him dry. When she finally had him at her mercy she would glory in his death, bathe in her hate. She would not kill him slowly, would not prolong his pain. She would just end him.
She would enjoy that. No chance for him to escape.
Then she would deal with the Rai.
So she followed Cahan Du-Nahere and the people of Harn towards Wyrdwood.
And she hated.