Saradis visited the Cowl-Rai; safely caged, she sat at her desk, staring at a piece of bark. The room full of the familiar smells of gall-ink and histi.
“Your pain is gone?” said Saradis. Wishing her own was, Fighting not to show it.
“It went some time after you went to the Slowlands. Have you brought the trion?” she asked this calmly and softly as Saradis came to stand before the cage. Saradis shook her head, wondering what this could mean, this change in the woman before her.
“No,” she said. “They are being hidden by the Forestals.”
“Then we must destroy them.”
“Yes,” said Saradis and she moved closer to the cage. “But many have tried, they move through the trees like the Osere themselves.”
“We will find a way,” said the Cowl-Rai. “My brother, did he come? Is he dead? Or is he here?” Saradis took a breath, stole herself for the inevitable explosion of anger.
“No, not dead, but not here either.” Saradis waited, watching the Cowl-Rai for the signs of her fury: the liquid darkness, the dark shimmering of her rage.
Nothing.
“I knew,” she said. “I knew he lived, I can feel him.”
“Zorir commanded me send Cahan into the depths.” Inside the cage Nahac nodded, then began to sort through the barks and parchments on her desk.
“I felt it happen.” She neither sounded annoyed at not having him, or pleased with his death. Nahac picked up a parchment. “My armies,” she said, “they move too quickly. We will rule all of Crua soon and we do not have the trion. How will I tilt the world? How will I bring back the warmth without a trion?” Was there misery there, was there loss?
“I will have the troops in the north widen their search for the Forestal’s base. And slow the armies in the south by sending more troops to assist in the north.” Nahac nodded at this, putting her papers down. “We had one of their warriors but she died on the way here, we also took the Reborn who served your brother.” At this Nahac looked up, interested. “But they are inert, insensible and dead as far as any can tell. I will have to capture some Forestals, I think.” These words were said only to placate the woman before her. Zorir was coming. The war no longer mattered. Saradis wondered if the Cowl-Rai knew it. Something had clearly changed in the sending of Cahan into the depths. Nahac stood, turned to Saradis and walked to the bars.
“The pain is gone but I am losing myself,” she said. “These lucid moments, they are more fleeting. The time I spend in the darkness is longer. I walk as if in sleep, I see a great glowing web of life and yet I cannot touch it.”
“It is all part of Zorir’s plan,” said Saradis. “He sent me to you, and your battle is nearly won.” Nahac turned, looked at the desk full of charts and plans.
“When it is won,” she said, “what use will you have for me if the god has Cahan?” For a moment Saradis had no reply, so she fell back on platitudes.
“We cannot know the minds of gods, Nahac, you will have your place.”
“I should have protected him,” she said. “It was what I was meant to do. I was his sister, stronger, faster. I should have protected him and I did not.”
“Because you realised you were more than him,” said Saradis.
“Do not patronise me, monk, it was you that turned me against him. Do not think I don’t know. Your honeyed words, your insistence I was meant for better things than servant.”
Saradis shrugged, smiled to herself. “Well, you believed that then. Maybe you only care now because it has turned out he has power?”
Then the fury came. The violent magic raging and beating against the bars. Trying to reach her, to rend and tear her but unable to pass the twisted wood. Saradis backed away, left the room and the Cowl-Rai to her rage. She enjoyed it, she had put up with much from Nahac at the beginning, been forced to beg for her life. To kneel and agree to serve. It was hard for Saradis not to enjoy how total her victory was now. She needed that joy, and she knew part of her cruelty was because of what Nahac had said.
“What use will you have for me if the god has Cahan?”
She worried it may also apply to her.
Usually she would never have considered such a thought, but Saradis had been before the stone where Laha remained spreadeagled across it. She had stripped and waited and worshipped for hours and hours and heard nothing. There was only silence. She was used to that from Zorir. Silence was normal but, and maybe it was her own worries, but it felt as though this silence had a different property. The silence was usually like being in a room with someone who listened but felt no need to reply. This silence, it was as though the listener had turned away, she felt they were still there, but no longer paying her any attention.
Was it because of Cahan? She had seen his transformation, known that he was fulfilling his purpose, becoming Zorir’s creature.
Until the woman, Sorha, intervened. The Rai called her abomination and now Saradis had taken up that name for her. She was glad that the abomination was dead, fallen into the depths to be smashed upon the floor where the Osere walk, though it was little consolation.
Saradis believed in vengeance, and she liked to take it herself. Liked those who had slighted her to know she was avenged upon them in their last moments, but now there was no one to avenge herself on but the Cowl-Rai, and Nahac’s madness made it curiously unsatisfying to bait her.
So she returned to her room and sat before the stone, the body of Laha bent across it, arms spread, filling the room with the scent of sickness. The wound where the arrow had pierced his shoulder was black with rot, and threaded through with blue. His skin was cold to the touch but he did not corrupt like a corpse should. In places, where his flesh touched the stone it was fused with it by a strange blue substance she had never seen before. There was something of the Hetton about him she thought, but also he was most assuredly not of them. He was different; they were alive and she did not think Laha was.
Not any more.
Though she also felt that he was there. Existing, but in a way she did not understand. Was this it? Were events spiralling out of her control? Was she losing Zorir, the one thing that had ever really mattered to her? She had delivered Cahan du-Nahere and now was she to be thrown away?
She felt a tear track down her face.
No. It could not be. It would not be.
She would not allow it or believe it. Zorir had chosen her, and despite everything, despite all the setbacks she had succeeded. She was the power in Crua now. She ruled.
But ruling was hollow without a purpose. She was nothing without her god and if Zorir had forsaken her she felt she would crumble away to dust and be carried into the ether by the circle winds.
She heard a creak, a sound like leather armour rubbing as soldiers walked. The scent of sickness in the room increased and she looked up. Laha moved, not much, only turning his head a fraction towards her. Opened his eyes, they were blue, deep, deep blue.
“Prepare,” he said, in a voice that sounded as though it had travelled across all of the time that Crua had existed. “The fire is coming, beloved of your god.”