The forester’s mind was clouded with anger as he approached his farm. He had stomped through the ferns of Woodedge with more force than necessary, Segur hanging back because, although he would never hurt the garaur, sometimes he would shout and the creature did not like it. He was soaked and in a worse mood than when he had set out, convinced that every branch had chosen to drip icy water on him and it was not his own temper causing them to shake as he pushed past.
A figure was sitting on the stone wall around his farm, utterly motionless. He could make out a shield and a spear in the dying of the light. Had the Leoric run out her patience and sent some warrior ahead in the hope of dealing with him? No. There was no one in Harn with the skill to overtake him in Woodedge without his notice.
Were they Rai? Come to correct the error they made in killing the family and not him? The figure was not dressed like Rai. And Rai did not wait, not alone. They came with soldiers.
He thought of vanishing back into the forest, or sneaking around the back and approaching in secret but he was overcome with annoyance. What was the point? If they were innocent, someone lost who had stopped in hope of help he would only scare them, and if they wanted something darker they would only come back. He stood. Best to face this head on.
The figure turned at the sound of his approach but made no attempt to stand. Up close he saw they wore a long cloak in dull grey that swathed their body, almost entirely covering them. But beneath the folds of the cloak he could see the shape of greaves, a chest piece and the wrist guards of a warrior. They watched him walking towards them and their cloak fell open, showing the wood of their armour, laminated with fanciful designs. In their lap lay a crested helmet laid over the haft of a long spear. Their shield they put on the wall. The only skin they showed was their face and on seeing it Cahan felt shock. The woman’s skin was as grey as her cloak and he wondered if he had made a mistake in approaching. There were few warriors he could not best, but the woman waiting on his wall may well be one of them.
She did not stand, nor go for her weapon as he approached, which he took to be a good sign. As good as it could be when a legend sat on your wall. Cahan pushed fear away, even as the cowl beneath his skin squirmed.
You need me.
“You own this farm?” she said. Her voice soft, like a breeze through trees. Segur let out a low growl and spiralled up around the forester’s body to sit around his neck where it felt safe enough to chatter and growl at the intruder.
“Who asks?” He scratched the garaur’s head to calm it.
“I am unnamed.” Closer he could see her grey skin was as soft and lifelike as his own, though entirely the wrong colour for the living.
“You are of the reborn,” he said. “What brings the reborn to my house? Where have you come from?” The moment he finished asking where she was from she stopped listening to him, started talking.
“I fell on the fields of Yarrat in service to the Foul-Rai. When I woke again I served Cahrasi Who Enslaves, and when the Foul Rai was vanquished and my soul was weighed, I was found unworthy of the Star Path and cursed. Rather than join the Osere below I chose to walk the land.” When she finished talking he saw panic pass across her face, like someone who had gone to sleep in their bed and woken in a strange place.
“Apologies, Reborn,” said Cahan. “I have only heard talk of your kind long ago, I forgot about the curse of your kind, and did not mean to ask of your genesis.”
“Well, my past is out for all to see now,” she said, her voice once more flat and emotionless. “It is best that way.” She glanced at the ground. “And that you triggered the curse tells me we are in the right place. You are Cahan Du-Nahere.” It was not a question.
“I know no one of that name.”
“I am not hunting you, Cowl-Rai.”
“Do not call me that,” he said, too quickly and he knew it. “I am not that. Have never been that and I do not know this Cahan Du-Nahere you speak of. The man who owned this farm was killed by the Rai, maybe it was him you seek.” He had heard it said the reborn could hear a lie from a thousand leagues away. If so, his words must have deafened her.
“Would the farmer have set off the curse?” she said. “I do not think so.” She stared at him. “They will come back for you, denying what you are will not help.”
“Who will come back?”
“Those who killed the family that took your farm.”
“You saw that?” She shook her head and the glass trinkets in her braided hair chimed.
“The dead whisper to me. The boy that lived here,” she said, her eyes no longer looking at him, “he is glad to have his crownhead back, he thanks you.”
He took in a breath and walked past her to the woodblock by the door and picked up his chopping axe, a rough and ready thing of old wood. He could not help thinking that, despite all he wished for, he had so often ended up with an axe in his hand.
“Why are you here and not fighting in the south for the new Cowl-Rai?” He placed a log, let the axe fall. Split the wood. Placed another log. “That is what reborn do, they fight.”
“The new Cowl-Rai,” she spat upon the floor, “I care that for the Cowl-Rai, both the one that is and the one that will be and all that have been before them.” Though he concentrated on the wood he could feel her stare as if it were the light above burning his skin. “Cowl-Rai made me this, reborn, who feels nothing, tastes nothing. I know neither heat nor cold and only feel when I kill. Only death lets me remember what it was to be alive.”
“Plenty of death to be found with those Cowl-Rai you scorn.”
“I would kill either given the chance.”
“And yet,” he let the axe fall again, “you say you are not here to kill this Cahan Du-Nahere you seek. And you call him Cowl-Rai, who you say you hate.”
“You are different,” she stared straight at him.
“I am a farmer and forester, that is all.” She did not move. Her stillness was wrong, something out of nature. It was almost as if she faded out of the world unless she was moving, making herself part of it.
“The dead follow us in a grand procession, Cahan Du-Nahere, and they never cease to speak, to beg, to hate. In our life, before we were reborn, we served the Lady of Violent Blooms and few warriors were our equal. Few still are. We offer our services to you, as guard, as assassin, as whatever you need us to be. You are Cahan Du-Nahere. Unwilling Cowl-Rai. The Fire of Crua.” The axe fell again. This time he let it embed itself in the softer wood of the chopping block and turned to the reborn.
“If I truly was this man you think I am, I would have little need of a guard, would I?” She nodded.
“You think that, but you underestimate what they set against you. Cowl-Rai rise, they brook no pretenders or rivals. Monasteries and forest shrines burn. Crops become poisonous. Land creaks and breaks. The darkness brought by Cowl-Rai varies in its intensity, but I have known nothing like this.”
“I am no Cowl-Rai.”
“I sense death, Cahan Du-Nahere,” she said, “and it is coming to you. Deny who you are all you wish, it is still coming. Death cannot be stopped.”
“I say again, I am not what you think I am, a mistake has been made is all.” He looked at her, the skin of his hands red and tingling from swinging the axe. “I am no bringer of death.” She shrugged and slid off the wall, placing her helmet on. She pulled down the visor and he stared into a blank face of polished wood. Beautiful, probably hundreds of years old.
“No man or woman brings death, Cahan Du-Nahere, death is a contrary companion, it comes unwelcome and uninvited.” Her spear had fallen when she stood, and she used her foot to flip it up into her hand. “Many of my fellows are dead, yet we still live,” she said. “When death is all we wish for.”
“We?” Cahan said. He picked up the axe again and looked about him. Only then seeing a second figure in the treeline to the west, dressed identically to the woman before him, the carved face on her visor serene. The reborn saw him find her compatriot and nodded. “Anyone can die, reborn,” he said, nodding at his wood block, “put your head on there and I will cut it off. Then I will throw your remains in a fire and char them to ash if release is really what you want.” The visor stayed fixed on him. When she spoke her words were a little muffled. She had told him she did not feel, but he was sure he heard a sadness there. Behind it something more, a terrible longing.
“Do you think we have not tried such things?” She pointed at the other reborn with her spear. “She and I, we have tried every way you can imagine to die. And each time we awake, sometimes in a day. Sometimes in a season. Sometimes in a year. Our bodies are remade just as they were when we died.”
“What do you think I can do?” he said softly. She had conveyed such horror to him in her voice that he had forgotten to lie about who, and what, he had once been.
“Cowl-Rai raised us, Cahan Du-Nahere. So we hope, that if we make ourselves useful enough, if we can create a debt so great that even a Cowl-Rai cannot deny it, then you will find a way to put us down.” For a moment he had no words. He cleared his throat, laid the axe on the block. A shiver ran through him. The air felt colder than usual.
“I am not what you seek. I am only a forester. A farmer.”
She gave him a small bow of her head. “For now,” she said. “But know this, when you need us. When you have accepted what must be, then call and we will come.”
“You will wait a long time,” he said.
“Time, Cahan Du-Nahere, is a currency we are rich in. You will call.”
“I do not even know your name.”
“I was named for my god, when Our Lady of Violent Blooms passed from the memory of the people, so did my name.”
“Then I cannot call you.”
“What would you name me, Cowl-Rai?”
“Nahac,” he said, and it came unbidden. Unwanted, as if her question were more than that. As if it compelled him to speak a name from the past, the name of one long dead and much missed.
“A good name, Cahan Du-Nahere, one from your past?” He nodded. “Fitting, for we both know that is what will bring death to your feet.” She turned and walked away without looking back, the figure from the edge of the forest coming to join her. He watched until they had vanished into Woodedge then went back into the house and sat at the table. Lit a saplamp and stared into the flame.
How could he be so foolish to think he could continue here.
If these reborn knew who he was then others must also. The soldiers had not been sent by Harn. His past was coming and he would have to leave or face it. He would miss this place, it was the nearest he had known to a home since being abandoned by the monks of Zorir-Who-Walks-in-Fire.
He packed a bag, the bare minimum needed to survive, and called Segur. With the garaur curled around his neck he walked to his grove in the wood. There he moved the shrine, being careful not to break it, and used his hands to burrow in the ground below it like a histi, digging up the coin he had buried in case he needed it. “Well,” he said to Segur, “the day has finally come.” He hid the money in a purse he wore against his skin then stood, looking around. Thinking about other secrets buried beneath the earth. Then he let out a long breath and turned away, heading towards Harn. The Leoric would finally have his farm and though he did not want to admit it, leaving this place was hard. It was the only place he had any happy memories attached to. He had lived there until he was six. What he remembered of that time was hazy, but he was sure his parents had been good. That they cared for him. He thought they laughed a lot. They had taken him even as far as Wyrdwood and taught him skills he still used.
But he did not laugh much after he was taken away, for Zorir was a stern judge and looked poorly upon frivolity. Everything was serious, hard. His childhood subsumed by what he was to be. Maybe only children are ever happy, he thought, maybe people are cursed to become more serious and sad the older they get. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Nahac died when she did.
In the morning he made his way back to Harn, striding up to the Tiltgate only to be stopped by the guards.
“You are not welcome here any more, Forester,” said Gussen, barring his way with a spear, “by order of Leoric Furin.”
“Tell her I will do what she wants,” he said. “I will guard her traders and help the village.” Surprise washed across Gussen’s face.
“Very well,” she said. “Wait here.”