They walked for four days; Tall Sera, his Forestals, Venn, the Reborn sisters, chosen villagers and him. The forest around them never anything less than vast. He had thought of Wyrdwood as a whole, as one thing: a never-changing landscape of brown dead needles with occasional stands of bushes or shade trees and the great punctuation of cloudtree trunks, like cliffs: immovable and eternal, exclamations of the forest’s power.
But it was not true, he had simply not spent enough time in Wyrdwood to really know it. The forest was its own land, with all the things a land needed. It had its own ecosystems and plants: eruptions of rocks, grey and angular and many times taller than a person, leafy bushes and trees he did not know the names of, fungi, in all forms, wide caps, teetering towers and branching colourful forms. Some so small he barely noticed them, some towering above him. Beneath it all he felt the second system of the forest, Ranya’s web, that touched upon everything, a massive net of fungal cilia that linked everything in Crua. It would have been easy, once, for him to reach out and touch it but since he had touched the bluevein he could only feel the web, not touch it. Beneath Ranya’s web he could feel the other, the net of dead things, of slow decay, part of nature, he knew that. Ranya’s web ran through it but in many places it was wrong, twisted by outcroppings of bluevein that called to him.
He was distracted by thoughts of Furin, her softness in the night. Her fearlessness of what he was.
They stopped to fill their gourds at wetvines and sometimes at streams where Cahan marvelled at the clarity of the water. It was a long time since he had seen water that had come from anything but a wetvine. Tiny creatures darted backwards and forwards in the liquid and Cahan was transfixed; he closed his eyes and felt for the tiny dots of life. Abruptly, they winked out of existence. When he opened his eyes they were dead, being carried away on the current and he looked around, glad to find no one was watching. His guts as icy cold as the stream but this feeling did not flow away, it stayed within.
The Forestals rarely spoke. They communicated with hand gestures: stop, go forward, go left, go right. The rest was simply walking and staying alert. Stop for gasmaws, go around a littercrawler nest. At one point they picked up a trail but it turned out to be rootlings and the Forestals quickly lost interest. The carpet of cloudtree needles changed to a thick, dark grass. Cahan knelt and touched it: soft, slightly fuzzy like fur. He wondered if Segur had followed them. Probably not, the garaur had taken to the villagers and seemed to prefer having people around.
The grass became thicker and they skirted a swarden tower. A huge one, rickety and strewn with the skeletal grass people. The Forestals told them to stay low as they went around it and Cahan’s back ached by the time they were finally walking upright again. He stayed at the back of the line, rubbing his lower back.
“Are you all right, Cahan?” asked Venn.
“My back aches.” That gruff voice, the same one he had used so long ago when he felt like an invader every time he went into Harn.
“It does?” He tried not to look at Venn, the ruff of hair around their face, the light dusting of powder on their skin. Easier to pretend he didn’t hear the surprise in their voice.
“I do not think the Forestals want us to talk, Venn.” The trion stared at him, then nodded, falling back so they walked behind but Cahan knew why he heard surprise in their voice. Aches and pains were not part of him. The cowl fixed him; the only time he was aware of how much weaker he would be without it was when the duller, Sorha, had been near him. What he felt now was not as bad. Not as complete as her presence.
But he ached. He told himself that thoughts of Furin made him careless, but it was not. It was thoughts of what dwelt within him.
They stopped that night with the same ritual as every night. The Forestals had some way of knowing darkness was coming. A clever trick, as there was no twilight here, only the sudden curtain of night falling, as complete and irrevocable as death. Tall Sera would raise his hand and the Forestals would stop, then they would collect rocks, make a small pyramid of them. After that they would stand behind Tall Sera, all touching, and Tall Sera would place his hand against the rocks. Cahan would feel a discomfort as some power passed between them and the rocks began to glow with heat. Venn was transfixed by it.
Then night would fall and they would sit quietly around the heated rocks and eat while the lights of the night creatures threw a wash of colour over them.
Usually Venn would try and talk to the Forestals then, ask about what they did: how they made the rocks hot? Why did they not need to steal life? Where did the power come from? But the Forestals did not answer and Venn would eventually quieten, or Tall Sera would tell Venn that now was not the time and he was not a teacher. It annoyed Cahan, that they were so transparent in trying to tempt the trion away from him with promises of knowledge.
On the edge of sleep, thoughts of her. Of Furin.
In the morning they walked again and each day was the same as the last one, until the day they heard the screaming. A woman’s voice, ringing out in the wood. Cahan’s first thought was to help but the Forestals did not move. Instead they crouched in the litter. Venn did not. They started to run but Cahan reached out and caught them by the arm.
“Someone needs help!” hissed Venn.
“This is the Forestals’ place,” said Cahan, “and we follow their lead.” Tall Sera moved forward in a crouch and his archers slowly spread out around him. Cahan and Venn followed. A sign was made by Tall Sera, bows were taken from backs, strung in quick and practised motions. Step by step they moved on, moving into a meadow of black grass that was high enough Cahan could barely see over it when crouched. They stopped at the edge of the grass, in a clearing; before them there were trees with wide spreading mushroom-shaped canopies of red leaves, their green and mossy trunks covered in gnarled bracket fungus.
In the middle of the clearing lay a Forestal, moaning in pain. A hand to their stomach to staunch the blood flowing into a pool below them.
“Help me, please.”
Venn stood, Cahan grabbed them.
“They need healing. I can—”
“No, Trion,” said Tall Sera quietly. “They do not need healing. These are hareft trees, often the habitat of skinfetch. It is trying to lure us in.”
“Why?”
“To eat you. Now be quiet. Our best hope is to stay together and go around it. They are Osere-cursed hard to kill but not a threat if we stay together.”
“Why come so close then?” said Cahan.
“Because it may have been one of our people, we had to check.”
“How do you know it isn’t?” said Venn.
“We do not travel alone through Wyrdwood,” said Tall Sera, “and if you take your time, concentrate, you will feel it.” Venn blinked, then closed their eyes. Their breathing slowed. They opened their eyes, nodded.
”The skinfetch is dangerous but hunts by surprise and stealth,” said Tall Sera. “It takes on the skin of others, to let it get near. In the light, and as long as we can always see each other, we should be safe.” He looked from Venn to Cahan, made sure they understood. “Now, let us move on and stay close.”
They did, and the creature did not follow though they heard the screaming for long hours.
They carried on, moving by day, sleeping at night until Tall Sera stopped them one early morning and gathered them around.
“We are near, and this evening,” he said, “we will scout. Tomorrow we will strike. I have steered us for the centre of the fallen cloudtree, away from the branches.”
“Why?” said Venn. The Forestals looked at them. Tall Sera smiled.
“The roots will be tangled and must be cleaned of soil. The trunk gets thinner as it nears the top, and the branches must be cleared away and sorted. At the centre of the tree the trunk is not as massive as lower down and branches do not need to be cleared, the mining can start straight away.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“I know many things, Trion.” He turned away from Venn. “Now, come, we must scout, we must see how far on they are in the mining and plan our attack.”
“What do you do with it?” said Venn.
“With what?” Tall Sera turned back to them.
“The cloudtree, what use is it? You cannot sell it to the Blue. They will know you stole it.” Tall Sera smiled at them, his face a mass of creases.
“We sell in the Largers and the Spiretowns. In the north and the south. There is always someone willing to buy things they should not have.”
“Oh,” said Venn.
“You look disappointed,” said Tall Sera.
“I thought that…” Their words tailed off.
“That we were more than thieves? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Well,” Venn looked away and Cahan could almost feel the disappointment burning in the trion.
“Treefall, Venn,” said Tall Sera, “is a gift to those of the forest, to us. Part of the cycle of life and death. We lose one of our great gods, that is true. But its body is there to bring about new life. Riches and plenty. There is more than enough for everyone. It is the Rai who are the thieves, they who wish to keep it for themselves. They live in fear of what others may do if they are not held underfoot.” The trion blinked. “We only reclaim a part of what should belong to everyone.” Venn nodded, stepped back. “Now,” said Tall Sera, “let us continue, I would approach the tree at night.”
Cahan could not imagine what it would be, to see one of the great cloudtrees of the forest, immovable and eternal, a vast exclamation of its power, fallen. But of course, nothing was truly eternal, and even gods may die.