He pushed fire upon Cahan.
Cahan knew fire.
If it had been water he knew water. Such things were simple and base, flashy, impressive to the onlooker. Unsubtle. The recourse of those with little but brute strength and anger within them. Rai Vanhu tried to pull his hand away. Tried to stop the fire pouring from him into Cahan. He could not.
The forester would not let him.
Close your eyes, take a breath.
The forest came to life around him.
Feeling each and every tendril of life: gasmaws floating in the canopy, the bladderweeds and floatvine plants climbing through the branches, histi and burrowers beneath the ground, the sheer and almost unbearable weight of the life around him. Behind that the massive, slow and heavy life force of the trees, and underpinning it the vast and delicate web of the fungal mats that touched upon everything on Crua. For a brief moment Cahan knew the terrifying, undeniable interconnectedness of it all. He saw it not as material, not as flesh or wood or anything solid. He saw it as light. Streamers of it, light of every colour, some light blinding some light dark, existing in ways he had no words for, and all of it a flow. He only needed to reach into this man to become a part of it.
Breathe in.
He had sworn it was over, done with, never to be part of his life again but he had underestimated his will to live. The cowl beneath his skin was awake once more.
You need me.
Fire being pumped into his body by Vanhu, desiccating his flesh, driving out the moisture. His blood boiling. Agony coursing through him as the fire bound the flesh he was created from with the air in a slowly growing, dark and agonising crust around the Rai’s hand.
He wanted it to stop.
The pain stopped.
The burning stopped.
The power, instead of hurting him, fed him.
The ropes that tied him to the post were in his way. He felt their existence, felt the space between the tough sinews of plant fibre, he pierced their apparent solidity.
Break.
He released a million chained worlds within the bindings and the ropes fell away.
There should have been panic on the Rai’s face, but Cahan saw only fury. He was shouting.
“Kill him! Sorha! Kyik! Cut him down!” Vanhu barking out the words, making them orders. It was remarkable, testament to the Rai’s powerful wish to survive that he had the presence of mind to recognise a cowl was no use against the man before him.
A spear. A blade of heartwood finely wrought, a twisted shaft with a wirereed basket to protect the hand. Aimed at his head. The Rai Kyik bringing it down in a fine, well-aimed killing blow.
No.
The spear like the rope, an illusion of solidity, a thousand million links hidden from the naked eye. Use the energy pouring into him. Dissipate. Uncreate. The wielder, Kyik, stumbling, denied the balance of the spear’s weight. The material, the unlinked, the unneeded now nothing but energy.
Reform.
A handful of darts, sharp and pointed as a garaur’s tooth. Sending them back through the air as the spear wielder trips. Piercing their flesh, the heart, the eye, the neck, the groin. Blood, so much blood as he falls. The woman with the spear. Withdrawing it from the other prisoner. She misunderstood Vanhu’s order. Killed the wrong one. Too far gone in the service of her cowl to be anything but furious. Cahan can feel her anger like he feels heat from a fire. She looses water at him, heedless of what she was told. It surrounds him, searching for a way into his body. Through mouth, nose, ears, eager to fill and block, to drown, to choke.
No.
Return.
A wave of his hand. A step forward. Pushing Vanhu back a pace. Sending the water back to the woman. It surrounds her head. Panic, her fear bulbous and magnified by the water around her. Trying to rip the globe away but water will not be denied. It slips around her hands. She is drowning by moments. Her cowl fights, pulling air from the water, trying to save its host while knowing her life is over.
In the ground, the web of fungus, hyphae that links everything.
Mine.
Pain. His cowl sending out tendrils, breaking the skin of his feet, shattering the soles of his shoes to find the earth.
Connection.
The web of the forest. From cowl to floor to cowl to woman. Growing around her feet, almost invisible, little more than a haze of waving tendrils as she staggers and struggles to breathe. She lifts a foot, staggers to the left snapping hyphae. More come, forming and reforming, beginning and ending.
Connection.
A sudden strengthening, cracking flesh, a soundless scream within the bubble of water.
Corruption.
He feels her cowl die the same way he feels Vanhu’s fire feeding his own cowl. Then it is a moment’s work. Her cowl recognises strength, it recognises seniority and it crumbles away. Cahan sees the betrayal on the woman’s face, that this thing, this companion that has been with her all her adult life, the font of her power, of who she is, could be gone so quickly and so easily. For a moment she is the same as everyone else. She understands the terror each of her victims felt before they died. Then she is no longer thinking, only drowning. Falling to her knees and dying in increments.
Take.
No.
He does not allow it. He will not be that. Will not suck another’s life, feed on it. If he must kill again then at least let him keep that one part of his vow.
Leaves her scrabbling in the earth as she struggles to breathe.
The Rai, Vanhu, staring at him. He cannot accept his death. Even though he must know. He must feel how his strength has come up against something more powerful, so much stronger. Still, he is fighting, pushing fire towards Cahan’s heart. Struggling to end him even though the fire is being drawn off, absorbed as quickly as he can create it. The strain on his face. His skin flushing beneath the make-up. This is like nothing he has come across before.
“What are you?” he says, and even those words, they are not said in curiosity. They are said in anger.
“I am Cowl-Rai.”
Vanhu’s eyes open wide. Now Cahan sees fear. And any hope the Rai had of standing against him is gone. Cahan is no trickster who conjures with elements. At this distance, so near, Cowl-Rai can control energy, the fundamental tools of creation. For a moment Vanhu is puzzled. Cahan sees it on his face, feels it through the link to him.
“But you are not,” he says. “I have seen the Cowl-Rai. It is not you.”
Cahan makes his point in fire. Burning Vanhu from the inside out. The power flooding into him stops and he must use his own life force now. Vanhu’s final scream is volcanic fury, blistering heat.
Then all is quiet. Cahan’s burns fixing themselves. Pain, ripping through him. He is a starving man, it is not food he needs. It is life.
Without the flood of power the cowl will take what it needs to survive, will take it from whatever it can. Take it from him if there is nothing else.
The forest silent as if shocked by the deaths. One sound cutting through it. The sobbing of the trion the Rai had brought with them, as arrhythmic as water falling from trees. They must be frightened of what they had seen here. Cahan knows, because he is frightened of what he did here.
You needed me.
It seems right to tell the trion not to fear him. That he will not hurt those that do not hurt him, that he has denied the cowl for more than half of his life. That he does not feed it. Did not feed it. Only used what the Rai Vanhu fed into him.
But it hungers.
And the trion is full of life.
He is weak, he needs to be strong.
Weak, you need to be strong.
A step towards them.
Be strong.
His hand reaching out.
So much life.
And a darkness descends upon him.