A hand on his shoulder, a gentle shake that brought him to the surface of reality, rising from the depths where dots of light impaled the darkness, and the only sound was the screaming of a man he had loved like his own parents.
“They are here.” The dream gone, sleep sloughed away like water falling from the leaves of a tree. The face of the Leoric above him. “We cannot tell how many, but Sark reports torches in among the trees.” She leaned in close to him, an urgent whisper. “Maybe you should leave, Cahan. Now, in the night. Take the trion, your garaur and run. Take Udinny, too,” then she took a deep breath. “And Issofur. Please.”
“You want me to go?” Of them all, he had thought, maybe hoped, the Leoric would be the last to want him gone.
“Ont has been whispering in the ears of the villagers, he is a fool but he has enough of them believing they can buy their lives with yours that I will struggle to contain them if they turn against you.” Her words were soft, it was easy to believe in the darkness that no one but he and the Leoric existed. For a moment he wished it was so. “It is not me being kind, Cahan. If you stay our village is likely to end up fighting itself and the Rai will simply walk in.”
He had heard others say, it is always darkest in the deep of the night and in that moment he understood it. He knew the Leoric felt it too. A sense of hopelessness washed over him. Udinny’s, and now Venn’s, talk of Ranya’s web, of everything being guided, that this moment was meant to be. The idea that the trion, the monk, the village and he were all destined to be in this place. That there was a reason for it. Seemed laughable.
But Venn’s ability to heal, something unheard of, it would be invaluable in a battle. They could save lives that would otherwise be lost. And Ania’s warning, of the guilt he would carry, he knew she was right about that. “You should go,” said Furin again. “Save yourselves, save my boy.”
“Will you come with us?” he said, “you know the truth, Furin. You know what will happen here if the Rai are allowed in.” She made a noise, a brief expulsion of breath, almost a laugh, but it was one shorn of all amusement.
“This is my village, Cahan, what comes for them comes for me. I cannot leave.” She sat back, there were still smears of the white clay she wore during the day on her skin, it made her face look strange, oddly shaped. “Besides, I am hoping the Rai will execute Ont first, so I can see the look on his face when he realises what he has brought on himself.”
“I am not leaving.” He turned at the voice. Venn. The trion sat up in their bed, rubbing their shorn hair with one hand while the other lay gently on a sleeping Segur.
“You heard the Leoric,” Cahan said. “They will hand us over.”
“Go, Cahan, you have done enough.” There was a calmness in Venn’s voice he had not heard before. “But I will not leave Harn.”
“Just because the monk says all things are linked, Venn,” he hissed, “does not mean it is true.”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” Udinny stepped out from behind the curtain that divided up the longhouse. Then she grinned. “But Cahan is right, Venn, much as I know Our Lady always has a plan. It will be difficult for you to carry it out if the villagers bind you and hand you over to the Rai.” Udinny stepped forward, yawning. “I am not saying you must abandon this place, but maybe from the forest you can—”
“We are meant to be here,” said Venn, and the trion sounded so sure. So much older in that moment. “You know that, Udinny. Listen and you will know it. Ranya wants us here.”
“It is hard for me to hear Our Lady,” said the monk. She sounded sad, unsure of herself; a rare thing. “I worry I have fallen from her favour. I share my mind with other voices now and they are loud.” Venn looked up.
“Then listen to those other voices. The forest knows.” A shiver ran down Cahan, he knew that these two must have spoken, and of things he did not understand. Things he did not like the sound of. Venn turned back to him.
“When I was lost, Cahan, near death, I saw much I did not understand. Spires, greater than of any spire city, glittering in a darkness like no other, speared with light. I heard the Osere begging for release, and I heard the voices of the gods, but not Ranya. Different voices, and they were many.” Venn took a shaking breath. “They dream in the darkness.” It felt, to Cahan, as though the temperature in the longhouse was falling.
“What do they dream of?” His words were breathless, half spoken. The atmosphere in the longhouse, cold yet feverish, strange in the way it had been before the taffistone when the boughry had taken allegiance from Udinny.
“They dream of fire.”
A sharp inward breath.
“Udinny hears these voices?”
“No,” said the monk. “I think I only hear the boughry now, the forest, it drowns out all else.” When he looked at her, her eyes shone like a rootlings.
“I did not understand it, Cahan,” said Venn. “But I think I heard the forest, too. And it wants us here because the dreams of fire frighten it. And if I must be here so the Rai can take me back, then,” their words tailed off, they looked away and they were a child again, fighting back sobs. “If that is what must be it is what must be.”
“And you, Udinny?” he said. “Would you leave? Does Ranya, or the boughry, allow that?” The monk’s almost ever-present smile was gone. They looked small and lost.
“The forest wants me here, Cahan,” she said. “That is all I know.”
Cahan heard no gods, no forest, speaking to him. He had been brought up to burn the world. He had experienced the fire. And though all good sense told him to leave, and his own anger said these people did not deserve him, surely it could not be coincidence, the three of them? The fire?
“What of your grey warriors,” said Furin. “What do they say?” He turned and as if they could sense when they were talked of Nahac had appeared in the door.
“Stay or go,” she said. “Death will follow you, Cahan Du-Nahere.”
“I wish I had not asked,” said Furin. The reborn shrugged.
Cahan let out a laugh, short and humourless. Furin smiled at him. “It will be hard for any they take alive.” Ania’s stark truth. One he could not run from. One he did not want for this woman. Or those villagers he had enjoyed the company of. He had always thought his fate was to die alone but maybe, if he was to die, it was best to do it among those few people he had found he liked.
“I do not know of gods, fire, speaking forests, or death that follows people,” said Furin, looking round. “Truthfully, it all frightens me and I wish I had not heard talk of it.” She wrapped her arms around herself and Cahan wondered if she also felt the unnatural cold. “But if you stay, when the Rai ask for you, Cahan, I will do everything I can to stop us giving you up.”
“I will stay.” It did not feel like he chose to speak the words, but once he had spoken them he knew they were right.
Furin nodded, stood, looked around. “The Forestals say they will warn us if the enemy look likely to come at the walls.” She glanced down at Segur. “Maybe you should try and sleep, tomorrow will be a hard day.” With that she left them alone in the longhouse.
He did not sleep, and neither did anyone else. They did not speak either, only lay with their own thoughts. It was a poor way to spend what he expected to be his last night alive in Crua. In the darkness he felt Segur creep up to sit by his head.
“Old friend,” he told it. “You must leave this place. There is no reason for you to die here.”
The garaur did nothing but nestle into his neck. It was ever a stubborn and foolish creature.