Oh, to fly through the sky on the back of a crownhead, to weave between golden trees, to dance over golden streams, to blast across a fractured land of the imagination, to feel the wind in your hair and for none of these things to be real.
What a strange life it is to be Udinny.
Syerfu, my loyal crownhead, moves at speeds unimaginable and has no foolish affection for sensible things such as ground and the rightful place of a crownhead upon it. She leaps, great and glorious leaps, goes faster than any message skipper could even dream. In my left hand I hold the walknut, in the right the needle grown into a great spear and I feel as strong and powerful as the warrior I have never been.
But one cannot simply bound about in glory for ever, no, I am on a mission for a god.
We land, coming to rest upon a hill of glowing green. Ever since Ranya showed me this world it is no longer dark, though it is not as real as actual land for living people. No, not at all. It feels as if the land coalesces around me, as if I travel through a landscape beyond my understanding in a bubble of my perception that makes the land change and become something I can understand. Even the distances, the huge distances I can see, they – and I appreciate how difficult this is to understand – only seem to exist when I am looking at them. I never remember them not being there, but I feel sure that, without my concentration, they do not exist.
A strange life and a strange world for Udinny Pathfinder.
This world is not solid, like the land of the living. Instead it is a world constructed of Ranya’s web, sketched in lines, with spaces between them and it is bizarre, but my mind fills in the spaces and I see the land for what it is. A tree, a hill, a building, a person and the lines I barely even notice now. What is bizarre quickly becomes normal when there is no normal to measure it against.
Ranya’s needle burns with golden light in my hand, the walknut pulls me forward with great energy and Syerfu leaps again. We arc through the air, we transition from one place to another and it is the most joyful feeling. If this is death then it is far greater than life. It is exhilarating.
But what is my purpose? A god brought me here and gifted me with three great gifts, and a phrase in my mind. “The pillars of Iftal.” Which sounded very important, though I was not quite sure what the pillars of Iftal were.
I did begin to think, or maybe one of the hundreds of thousands of other Udinnys that hangs around in the periphery of my vision thought, that bounding from hill to hill is all well and good and the most wondrous and exciting adventure, but it is not exactly useful. I let Syerfu rest, she bleats in a good natured manner. I holster my spear-needle and once more it shrinks to something tiny. I hold up the walknut.
Where should I go?
If I expected some great revelation, or some instruction I was to be disappointed. It did not arrive. But to be fair, even though the nut was a gift put into my hand by a god, it is still only a nut.
Syerfu bleats at me.
“You are right, perhaps I expected too much of it, Syerfu. We cannot all be as clever as you.” The crownhead nodded her whole head and neck enthusiastically. Then shook it, making the rings in her ears jingle. “Maybe I should ask it in more detail?” Syerfu had little to say about that. I wondered what the best way to address a nut was. “Left?” I said, and made ready to throw it but before I did I felt a pull, a definite pull towards the left and it became stronger until I turned my whole body. Then it stopped. I waited, wondered. “Right?” The same again. I did not need to throw this walknut for it to show me direction, it was far stronger than a normal one. Clearly, a nut given by a god is better than the one given by a forest outlaw, and this nut seemed to react to me. But what did I want from it? What did I really want?
A wave of sadness rolled over me.
What did I want?
“Walknut,” I say softly. “Take me to Cahan Du-Nahere.”
The pull was strong, fierce. Syerfu reacts to it, calling out, holding her head up, opening her mouth and shouting into the world. We moved. A great leap, a blur, landing in a wooded glade. A great leap, a blur. Landing in a spire city at market time, ghostly figures move around us. A great leap, a blur. Landing in the middle of a plain with grasses waving, the broken walls of a larger above us. A great leap, a blur. Landing in the forest.
Wyrdwood.
Deep in the forest.
Cloudtrees, vast pillars of gold, something flows down through them and into the below of the land. I had not thought about the below. Could I go there? Could I walk unseen among the Osere? Or would they see me?
Ranya had spoken of others.
Interesting.
Figures, moving through the brush, tore me from these thoughts. Two were strange, true ghosts. There and not there and yet it felt as though something hovered above them. Some thread that went into a world hidden from me, a realm beyond this?
The Reborn? It must be. Did that thread link them to the Star Path? Or the land of the Cowl Star at the end of it? I did not know, could not know.
The other figures. Something within them, a different brightness and as they moved it touched the lines of power around them, as if assisting their movement, pulling them, steadying them, checking for them. Cowls. I found Venn, recognised the hesitancy, and the curiosity. Their cowl reached for more, tested everything. The others, I did not know who they were, Forestals? I had seen them do things in Harn that spoke of cowls.
But the last figure, oh, I knew him. Larger than the others, walking with an unmistakeable gait, a weariness but also with a determination to continue that would not be denied. I slip off Syerfu’s saddle and leave her to graze on unreal grass so I can walk with Cahan. Nearer, I see he is different in other ways, his cowl brighter but within him, something else. Something the rest did not have. A blue glow, a faint web of it, sitting within and to see it is to shiver. The needle in its pouch dances and rattles, Syerfu cries out.
“Oh, Cahan, what is wrong?” I reach out to him, foolish, for I is not there and he is not here. My hand simply passes through him as he doggedly continues on his path. He stops. Pauses. Glances over his shoulder and I can imagine him shaking his shaggy great head and brushing off whatever he feels as a fancy, a side effect of walking in Wyrdwood where there is always danger.
Cahan continues on and I watch him go.
How could this be? I was the servant of a god, but if those I cared for, my friends, were in some sort of trouble, I could not help.
Though, Cahan, he had felt something, Maybe there was a—
Syerfu bleats and butts me gently.
“You are right, Syerfu, I have something important but also oddly nebulous to do. Maybe by doing that, I can help him.” I pointed at the ghostly figures as they pushed on, then mounted up. Held the walknut above me.
“Take me where I need to go.” An explosion in my palm. A beam of light streaking out before me. I felt warmth within and with a cry, Syerfu leaps once more into the air and we streaked across the un-sky of this un-place, about the business of gods.