Today felt like a good day.
So much of the time since she had lost Cahan in the Slowlands had felt bad. The Rai had been moving around her, jostling to unseat her. She could not prove it, could not find anything that said they were about to move against her but she felt it in the air of Tiltspire.
Sideways looks, whispers that stopped when she entered a briefing, questions that challenged her when she proposed a strategy. Mounting losses around Treefall in the north had set them off, the annoying ability of the Forestals to melt in and out of the trees. The way the outlaws always targeted Rai, always took the most valuable goods from the cloudtree rafts.
That and the feeling Wyrdwood itself was working against them.
Few Rai were true believers and she had always known that. For generations the gods had only been a way for them to get what they wanted, the Cowl-Rai was less a leader and more a way of keeping them under control.
Setbacks, and the fact the Cowl-Rai had not been seen for so long, meant the Rai were beginning to whisper, to plot. It would only be a matter of time until they decided someone more malleable would be better in her place.
The Cowl-Rai had been at once worse and better since Cahan had fallen. Her lucid times were longer, but spaced further apart and when she was not lucid she flickered between fury, self pity and believing she should not have betrayed her brother, raging or begging to die. Saradis had been waiting for the latest episode to pass in the hope she could somehow be convinced to help her.
Now she stood before Nahac’s cage, watching the woman as she thought about what she had been told by the man, Vir, newly arrived, who had betrayed the Forestals that had taken him in.
“They move through the taffistones?” said Nahac again. She studied the map before her.
“Yes,” said Saradis. “It explains everything, why they can never be found, how they appear to have such great numbers that they can be everywhere.” Nahac nodded. Touching the locations of the stones on the map.
“And they have a whole city up in the trees of the Southern Wyrdwood?”
“Yes.”
“And you are sure this is true?”
“I had the common soldiers that came with him questioned, they never wavered in their story, right up to death.” Nahac stood from her desk and walked over to the bars, the stones in her skin glowing.
“And the branch leader, what about him?”
“There is an anger in him I thought may be useful. He considers himself betrayed by the trunk commander he followed all his life, she is now with the Forestals.”
“He is not annoyed that you tortured his soldiers to death?” A half smile on Nahac’s face, as if an amusing thought had landed in her mind. “He may decide to avenge them.” Saradis shook her head, the sticks of her formal dress hissing against the material. She liked this Nahac, the cold one, the planner.
“He is a pragmatist, he gave them to me as proof of what he said. He knew what would happen. In his words, ‘soldiers die’.” She smiled; the man Vir was bitter, it made him easy to manipulate. “He thinks the Forestals are savages.” She straightened up, letting out a hiss of pain as something in her back pulled, some wound left over from the wreck of the platform in the Slowlands. “A man who wishes for vengeance is a useful tool.” Nahac nodded. “I will find a use for him.”
“And how will you find this city in the trees? Will you use our skyraft?”
“That did not work out,” said Saradis. “It turns out, they are hard to pilot and it crashed.” Nahac nodded again. “Without rafters to pilot the thing we cannot use a skyraft, and they are too precious with their great rafts to take them into Wyrdwood.”
“Then send me,” she said, standing and walking over. Putting her hands on the bars. “Send me after the Forestals. Let me go after them.” Saradis heard the desperation the woman was trying to control, to keep in check. “I have learned to hold the power in. I have had nothing else to do in this cage. You must have noticed how much longer my lucid periods are.” Such misery, and Saradis almost felt a stab of pity. Nahac and her had been through so much, done so much. She was clever. This woman had convinced the Rai she was Cowl-Rai, even though what power she had then was nothing but illusion. She had made herself powerful. She had done it by using her mind, her strength. Raised an army. It was sad that Nahac had ended up in a cage, that Zorir’s power was too much for her. She had been useful but she could never be trusted.
“No,” said Saradis. “Not yet.”
“You,” spat Nahac, “are no better than those Wyrdwood savages. You are a betrayer. You betrayed me, you betrayed my brother. You care only for you.” With her words came the anger, and the outpouring of power, liquid, black and poisonous. The screams of pain and agony and Saradis was glad of it. She could leave now. She had important things to be about and she was glad she no longer had to look into Nahac’s eyes.
From the cage room she walked through the great hall, past Rai guards who watched her in a way she found little comfort in. Under waving flags of the counties of Crua, past wicker statues of the Balancing Man. She walked through corridors where more Rai watched, stopping what they were doing to silently study her as she passed. She did not look at them. She never as much acknowledged their existence.
But they watched her, and she did not like it.
The pressure in Tiltspire was growing, she felt violence lurked around every corner and it would be violence aimed at her. She went up, to her shrine room; one of the Rai stood before the door. Dashan Ir-Vota, a Rai who had stood by her many times on the battlefield. He did not say anything, only waited. Did not move as she approached.
“I must offer sacrifice to my god,” she said. Dashan stared down at her, the skin of his face had that odd texture that only the really old Rai had.
“There have been more losses in the north. Sacrifice is definitely needed,” he said. “Maybe we could visit your shrine together.”
Well, she thought. Here it is. The time has come. She let herself smile, more because she wondered what he would think of the room – the blue-veined stone, the body of Laha stretched across it – than because she had any plan, any way out.
Maybe, in the moment of confusion when he saw the stone she would be able to strike. To kill the Rai. If she killed one of them it would buy her time, though she knew it was unlikely she would succeed. Saradis wore a knife at her belt but it was purely ceremonial and always had been. She was a planner, not a fighter. But maybe desperation and surprise would work for her?
Well, she would see.
“Shall we go in?” said Dashan. She nodded, did not trust herself to speak. Opened the door and walked in. Did not even see what was before, not at first. Too caught up in the moment, angry about her weakness, at her eyes filling with tears and blurring the world before her.
She wiped the tears away. Almost tripped in her confusion.
Where was Laha?
Where was the stone?
Terror. Fear. A moment when she felt her faith drain away. All was lost.
The stone was broken.
Shattered.
“No,” the word oozing from her, the way sap oozed from a cut in tree bark. A thousand shards of blue-tinged rock lay on the floor, each no bigger than a finger. Laughter behind her.
“Your god seems to have abandoned you, Saradis.” She turned, fury rising in her. Self-pity burning away. If she was to die then she would die cursing this Rai, and cursing Zorir for abandoning her. “It seems we are alone in here.”
Fear. True and pure and complete.
Then it fled. Because they were not alone.
Laha was behind the Rai, neither dead nor alive, his lips tinged with blue, thick veins of it running over his body like tree roots over rock, writhing, moving. In one hand he held a small shard of the shattered stone. He stepped forward, one arm going around the head of the Rai, the other driving the stone into their unprotected neck. Dashan never had time to cry out. His eyes rolled up, showing the whites, he began to shake, to fit, to froth at the mouth and all the time it was happening Laha was speaking: a mantra. Words repeated over and over and over again.
“It is coming. It is coming. It is coming.”
And the ground shook.
The shards of stone on the floor rattled against each other. Her body betrayed her, a sudden weakness came with the relief of still being alive. She fell among the shivering stones. They cut her skin, each cut a shock, as if they touched something deep within her. The Rai fell at the same time as her, muscles jerking and spasming. Blood seeping out around the stone in his neck. Where it was embedded in their skin blue lines grew from it. Laha looked at her.
“It is coming,” said Laha again, and the world shook. Laha raised a hand and pointed towards the great square, where the taffistones were, and the huge plaza with the market.
She pushed herself up, stumbling over to the huge window. Was this it? What she had lived for? Planned for? Sacrificed for? Shards of stone rolled beneath her feet. It was not enough to watch from above. She had to be there. Turning, running through the strangely shaped corridors, down through the great hall and out the huge doors. Fighting to stay upright, her path swerving crazily as the ground shook beneath her. Part of her fearing the whole spire would come down. A particularly strong tremor and she fell, right at the edge of the great plaza. Beneath her the market was set out. Colourful stalls everywhere, people kneeling, sheltering in fear beneath their stalls for all the good it would do if the spire fell.
The shaking stopped.
In the stillness she heard screams from the city beyond the spires. Smelled fire, there were always fires after the big quakes. She could see thick smoke, flickering flames where the city was alight.
But there was something else, something in the air. An expectance. A difference. It was not simply that Laha promised Zorir was coming. She could feel it.
Another rumble. This one familiar. The way the land moaned before the geysers went up, but it was not the right time for the geysers. She looked at the Light Above, to make sure.
No. Not time for the geysers. Not the day for the geysers.
With a roar they went up. She could see the nearest. A vast plume of water that shot up so high the water was taken by the circle winds to fall as rain in the north and south. There were seven, the others she could not see, too far away, or on the wrong side of the city but she knew they were spouting too. She knew it. Saradis counted, waiting until she reached fifty when the geysers would stop. Then spout again.
But they did not stop.
How?
They always stopped. There was a pattern to them. First spout, never for long. Then another and another, each longer than the last until they had done it eight times and then they stopped, but this was different. A huge, continuous stream of water arcing above the city. Falling as rain.
The land was celebrating Zorir’s coming.
A new noise. A vast sigh. Like an outpouring of breath, like the last gasp of a corpse. The air filled with a foetid smell, mixing with the petrichor of rain and the woodsmoke from the city burning. She heard cries of disgust. Fools. They did not understand. The earth shaking again. Not as fiercely this time, more constant.
The centre of the market plaza cracked, not a crevasse or a rupture. It cracked along clean tracks, outlining eight curved leaves. With a slow grinding sound they began to pull back. People ran, falling over each other, getting in each other’s way trying to escape the opening crevasse beneath them. Stalls fell into the widening, gaping hole, people followed them screaming and crying as they vanished into the darkness. The maze of wooden huts and stalls trapped people as it was forced against the edge of the plaza, crushing any who were caught between the stalls before they fell into the darkness below.
“They sacrifice to you!” shouted Saradis, pushing herself up despite the continuous shaking of the earth. “The god is coming!” She was screaming it, her voice lost amid all the noise. “The True God is coming!”
From the hole, rising up from the darkness below came Zorir, huge, thick tentacles writhing in the air. It sat, perched atop an eight-sided pyramid that was wrapped with glowing blue roots. On the side facing her, the side facing the spire, was him. Cahan Du-Nahere, physically plugged in to the rock by his armour and a spike through his chest, blue fire spitting and twisting around him, and she felt nothing but triumph. Nothing but a desperate desire to rejoice as the black pyramid locked in place with a sound like a vast tomb door closing.
Silence fell. The god on the throne at the apex of the pyramid cried out in triumph. In their triumph. In her triumph.
“Zorir is come!” she said. “The fire is kindled!” She watched those few who had escaped the opening of the market floor and smiled as they ran into the city in panic. “There is no escape from the fire.” She screamed it after them, though no one heard her. She felt someone behind her, turned. Laha, and by him stood Dashan, eyes blank, the blue lines radiating from the stone in his neck had twisted around it, like a collar.
“It is come,” said Laha and Dashan together. She looked at Dashan, how he stood and waited to be commanded before the god, at the stone buried in his neck, and smiled.
The breaking of the stone made sense now. A collar to control her Rai with, to control Zorir’s Rai. They would have an army, an army that would never question or plot. One of utter loyalty. Saradis smiled.
She had won.
Despite all the setbacks, all the mistakes, she had won. She would stand at the front of Zorir’s army, and she would burn the world.
She walked forward to meet her god.