He remembered very little between killing the Hetton and entering the longhouse. He did not know which villagers took a man they had once despised and ensured that he lived, even while in fear of their own lives. He vaguely remembered speaking, of saying the same words, “I must fight” again and again and again. At some point, he thought someone, Udinny, or Furin maybe, told him he had fought enough, that he was done now. He could rest.
In the darkness of the longhouse, among the dead and the dying and lost in his own pain, the cowl clung onto life for him.
A brightness.
At first a hazy glow, like the light above through the forest canopy. Then brighter, and brighter, until he stood within a clearing of his mind, the pain ebbing the way the snow melts into the ground. He felt calm and warm and at peace.
“Cahan, wake up, Cahan.”
He did not want to.
“Cahan, wake up.”
The forest edge shivering and the voice, all crackling leaves and cold breezes, was one he could not disobey.
Eyes opening.
Venn, their face above him, deep lines marring their youth.
“Are you alive, Cahan?”
“Venn,” he said it loudly in his head, but it was barely a whisper.
“You have worn yourself away again,” said the trion. “I have lent you a little of my strength.” Now they said it he knew they had, and he felt how much the healing of those hurt had taken out of them. Their skin looked dry, as if it would flake away at a touch. Their cheekbones stark against their flesh.
“I must get to the fight…” Even saying it he knew it as foolish. He had barely the energy to speak.
“They are not attacking, Cahan,” said Udinny, appearing behind Venn.
“We do not know why,” this from Furin. “But the Forestal, Ania, she is readying the people for the next attack.”
“But I am…”
“We must move you,” said Venn. “I am sorry and I know it will hurt. But we must.” Before he could reply he was grabbed, hard hands taking the tops of his arms, dragging him across the floor of the longhouse. The smell of roasting flesh filled his nostrils, the sudden awareness of another’s pain flooding into his mind. He did not have the strength to block it. A body across from him. Dyon, Furin’s second. Curls of smoke drifting around his face as the ember of the Rai continued to eat away his flesh.
A voice from outside the longhouse. “You are finished, beaten!”
“Cahan,” said Dyon, his words heavy with his own pain. “Venn, says,” he took in a breath, pulling an agonising hiss through his teeth, “you take strength,” another hiss of pain, “from life.” His eyes, deep and brown, were bright with pain.
The voice from outside. Rai Galderin. “Give me the trion. Give me Cahan Du-Nahere. And I promise quick deaths for your village.”
“I will not…” his own words as hard to get out as Dyon’s plainly were. Dyon’s hand grasped Cahan’s arm. He was shocked the man could even move. His blackened skin cracked when he moved, a slow trickle of blood ran across the char until the heat of his body stilled it. The thrill of life coursed between them.
“Gift me the Star Path,” said Dyon softly. “Take my life for Harn.”
“Cannot,” said Cahan. “Promised not to take…” The hand, a lump of pain and misery tightened. The heat of Dyon burning his skin, connecting them. Making them strange kin in that moment.
“A gift,” he said, and his eyes begged Cahan to take from him, “not to you. To my people. I made a terrible mistake.”
Rai Galderin from outside: “I have over two hundred troops left. Give me what I want or I will burn the longhouse you hide in.”
“I do not want this—”
“I do not care,” vehemence, behind Dyon’s pain, “you and I brought this here. Do not deny me.”
Galderin from outside: “I will flay alive anyone who escapes.”
“Save my people,” said Dyon.
“I cannot steal the life from another. It…”
“Cannot… steal… a… gift, Cahan Du-Nahere. Take it.”
Galderin: “I will make your deaths last for whole seasons of pain!”
“Take it!” hissed Dyon. “Spare them my agony.” For a moment, through the link he felt Dyon’s pain. His desperation.
“It will hurt,” said Cahan.
“It cannot… be worse,” said Dyon, “end this.” Behind him Venn, intent, their stare boring into him. Behind them stood Udinny and Furin. He did not know what they expected. The life of one man would not be enough. It may get him on his feet, allow him to fight a little longer. Maybe he owed them that.
“Please,” said Dyon, raising a charred hand, “put out… the fire.”
We need this.
What could he do?
“Close your eyes. I will put you on the Star Path, Dyon,” His eyes closed. Cahan took a breath, and then took the gift he offered.
Behind Dyon a trick.
A trap.
A gift that, though unwanted, was generous beyond price. A well so deep he could do nothing but fall, even as he tried so desperately not to.
Another life, waiting, linked to Dyon by touch. Behind that another and another. Cahan tried to pull away. He could not. There was a powerful force of will behind Dyon. Every man and woman in the village whose wound had put them on the road to the Star Path had made a decision. They had chosen to give their lives for those who still lived, and the weight of that commitment was something that could not be refused.
He tried, but his was not the only will at work, the cowl also had a will of its own and the cowl wanted to survive, to carry on, and for that it needed him. For him to live, it needed power, and when that power was offered, it took.
He stood in a whirlwind of life, flowing around him and pouring into him. More power than he had ever known, there were ten, twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, thirty, lives giving all they had to him. And something of their gift, of their willingness, magnified what was given. As they stepped out of this life and out of his reach, he felt no pain from them, no hate or anger or fear.
This was not the way it had been before.
The world blurred.
Cahan found himself.
Deep in the Forest.
“Your sister is dead, Cahan Du-Nahere.” The Skua-Rai’s expression is impenetrable, as she looks down on you from her raised throne. “She was murdered by an outlaw. Killed for the bread she held in her hand. Bread she brought for you.” The pain within like nothing you have ever known. Like you are on fire. Like you are being eaten from the outside in. “You are angry, and righteously so.” She does not look at you, only looks over him while her acolytes, hidden behind masks and cloaks, swing burners full of herbs that make your head swim. It is so hot. Your joints burn and yet you shiver as if freezing. Behind the Skua-Rai is her firsthusband, secondwife and trion. They watch you.
Your anger rises. All the pain, all the unfairness and loss of your life is concentrated here.
A man is brought before you.
“This is her murderer, Cahan.”
The murderer is unable to speak as they have cut his tongue out. You feel a pure and white-hot hatred for him, for taking Nahac, your sister. And for so much more that you barely even know. You do not understand that you have been manoeuvred, forced and engineered to exactly this point. Of course you do not understand, because you are a child and you think as a child. You stare into eyes that beg you not to do what you are about to do.
I beg you, not to do what you are about to do.
Do not do this thing.
But you are young, and hurting and angry. And my voice was quieter then.
Do you remember now, Cahan, how I whispered into your ear? Begged you not to?
Do not do this thing. Do not choose to destroy. To corrupt.
You did not listen.
You became the fire then.
You are the fire, Cahan.
You always were.
He wept.
He screamed.
He cried.
He burned.
He grew.
Fire flowed into him, but not the fire he knew. Maybe because they went willingly, he did not know. He felt himself becoming more, not some huge and powerful thing, but an avatar of these people, their lives. He was the mechanism through which they would be avenged, the whole village avenged, all the unfairness of it. Avenged.
He had little time, very little control. There was too much.
Outside Galderin was finishing his speech.
“Bring me those I want! Or die slowly.”
Rai and their troops massing. Moving around them. Ania’s voice?
“We’ve beaten you twice. We’ll beat you again.”
The drums beating as powerfully as his racing heart. The villagers standing together in a tight group, ready to fight and die. The last of the Forestals readying their bows and gathering together their final few arrows. The soldiers of the Rai excited, sure in the coming victory. The Hetton feeling nothing but a terrible hunger. The other Rai, eager to be there at the end and to claim the victory for themselves. Sorha lived, but she was moving away from the village, a small pool of nothing within Ranya’s web. A horde of rootlings, hidden in the forest.
He had knowledge: Udinny shot the arrow that wounded Sorha, he felt a quiet pride that her aim was true. Venn had suggested the chain of people that filled him with power. Furin had been the one to convince her people to do it. They had been glad when he fell in battle, because Venn knew they would never have convinced him to take the gift otherwise. That desperation was the trigger.
He should have been angry. Maybe he would be.
But in that moment he cared nothing for morals and why and wherefores. He knew only that there was a fight and they had been losing it.
They would lose it no longer.
We are more than fire.
And the cowl. It was not something separate to him. It was him, and he was it. The destruction, the coldness, the harshness was not in the taking of power, it was in how it was taken. In what was done with it.
So long he had damped down the fire inside, and now it burned hot and pure and fierce and different. Not a fire of destruction. Not something to consume. A fire of life. All around him life was burning. He felt it. He saw it. Everything overlaid with the white on black lines of Ranya’s web. A hundred dots of life showed him villagers and soldiers and they burned alike, with a white-yellow flame. He felt the Hetton as a distortion of the web, a wrongness within it. The Rai as something similar but not as overt in their corruption, though they were corrupted. He felt all this, and he knew that even with the power flowing through him it would not be enough. He had the fire, the power, but it was a furious thing. Like being given a hammer and expected to make delicate jewellery.
He stood.
He walked.
He moved.
The journey from inside the longhouse to the outside was the longest he had ever taken. With every step he held in the fire.
You have had years of practice.
He saw the villagers but he did not. He saw Rai Galderin and their troops but he did not. He existed in and out of this world. The Rai were coming, and now was the time for him to end this. But despite this power being different, all he knew was fire. He would be an explosion. A vast inescapable burning wave.
Fire through the alleyways, through the doors and windows, over the roofs. Nothing escapes. An expending conflagration that sweeps and scours the village until, when it ends, all that is left is you. Standing in a smoking black circle where once those you had known and passed the time of day with had been.
Not again. It could not happen again.
The last push. They were coming, they were coming, but the defenders were not doing anything. They were looking to him. He saw himself as they saw him. A shimmering figure of white, almost too bright to look at, his eyes twin fires from which rose a haze of heat.
It was time. It was time. It was time.
He is the fire.
And there was no other choice but to be the fire.
No.
“Cahan,” a voice.
Udinny, a strange smile on her face. Venn by her. They were holding hands. “The boughry asked for my service, and here is where I give it,” said the monk. Something in her voice, wistful and sad. “Take my hand.”
“I am fire.” The words hung in the air, they reverberated around them. “I am fire and destruction. I will burn you.”
“Fire is part of nature, it is part of the path,” said the monk. “It is death and it is rebirth.” Words made of crackling leaves and waving branches. Venn held out their hand, but unlike Udinny their expression was blank, catatonic, almost. Through the awareness of Ranya’s web he saw the two were tied together. Vines and leaves reached out from the monk to Venn. As the vines reached the trion they changed into rope and knots of stone and earth. Venn’s hand held out to him. He did not want to take it.
He was fire. He was burning. He was death.
Venn took his hand. The ropes around them wrapped around him and as they did became lines of glowing energy. The three of them tied together.
Leaf, to rope, to fire.
The web opened. He saw so much more. No longer only lines of black on white. Venn linked him to Udinny. He saw through Udinny’s eyes. He saw through Venn’s eyes. They saw through his. They felt what was around them. Life everywhere. The land that gave it. The plants that grew on it. The fire that burned and returned the life to the land.
They saw the village clearing. They saw the trees around it. They saw the burning village. They saw the forces of the Rai. They felt the bluevein in the ground, the slow corruption that poisoned crops. They saw the forest that had been, is and was yet to be. The life of the land, hidden in the ground. The pulsing energy of Crua, the place that kept them alive and fed into each and every one of them. In the trees, in the animals and the plants, the same energy that filled him, given in gift by dying villagers. All linked flowing back and forth in an endless exchange.
And he saw them, from outside. And stood behind each of them one of the boughry, but huge, tall as cloudtrees, arms outstretched. Behind the boughry massed ranks of rootlings, and behind them, legion after legion of swarden. Behind the swarden the Forestmen, those huge wooden statues found at the boles of trees. Ranya’s web lay over them all.
Upon Cahan fell a terrible weight, the gaze of the boughry upon him, upon them all. As if something was expected of him. As if the time was now. He heard the voices of those gathered creatures, a song bright and loud: but incomplete. Cahan wanted to weep. They all wanted to weep.
The focus changed.
Through Venn, he saw what Udinny saw. The life which lay dormant all around. A million seeds and plants all ready to grow. The sleepers in the bones of the land. The bluevein, stretching out putrid tendrils as if searching for them.
We need not be fire.
The voice within him.
We can be life.
His voice. Udinny’s voice. Venn’s voice. The boughry, too.
hearfeelsee
Udinny speaks. Her face before him. Her gentleness, her truth. What she gave was a way. A different path. Between them Venn. A trion, the one between, the balance and the conduit. Energy flowing. Venn taking it up until they became the glowing figure, the avatar of the power Cahan held. Through Venn Udinny provided the focus he lacked. He was the arm that pulled the bow. Venn the string that held the energy ready. Udinny the eye that aimed him.
“It was all worth it,” said Udinny, or did not, maybe she thought it. Her mind full of wonder and joy. “It was all worth it for this.”
The power flowed from Venn to Udinny, changed by the trion into something new, something life-giving. He heard the scratching sigh of the boughry. And together Venn, Udinny and Cahan touched every seed and every bulb that hid in the ground. The bluevein, scoured away in a wave of pure energy. He felt the reborn, alive and yet not, and his power knitted together damaged flesh, smoothed out burns. The walking wounded in the longhouse found themselves healed.
For the beat of a heart, the quick intake of a breath, the song was complete. The sound of a million small parts suddenly joined in union. A sound that had been once, and should be again.
Then they were back. In the clearing. Before the longhouse.
In every handful of dirt and earth. In every place around them, seeds sprang to life. Trees sprang into being. Everything grew. Udinny showed him where the life was and he gave it energy. He directed the flow and direction.
Saplings grew as spears.
Galderin drew his sword. Called fire to his hand. Before he could act, speak, scream in pain, he was lifted from his feet. Shot up into the air on the impaling spike of a new tree. More trees erupted, ripping soldiers and Hetton and Rai apart in their eagerness to grow. The dead sprang from the earth wrapped in plants, marching like swarden to fall upon their attackers. The enemy had no time to scream or run or even to feel fear.
The victory was absolute and total and sudden.
Together, Cahan, Venn and Udinny awoke the ancient anger of a sleeping forest. They awoke what had been subdued by the hands of the people who had lived here for so long. Gave it a target. One moment they were about to die. The next they stood in the midst of a new forest, and around them hung the gruesome corpses of its first fruiting. The dead of an attacking army, pierced by tree and branch.
Cahan heard a sound, as if a great sigh, as if something ancient, old and angry had been appeased.
And it was done.
The power gone. He was a man once more. A man standing in a wood. Venn before him, blinking, confused. Udinny, too. She turned to him, smiled. Reached out a hand.
“It was worth it,” she said again, “and now, Cahan, the forest calls for me.”
He was going to ask what she meant, but he did not need to. In her eyes, her look, he knew.
“Udinny,” he said, reaching out a hand for her. “No…”
“It’s all right,” she said softly, “did you feel it? Did you hear it? I am of the forest now, Cahan Du-Nahere. Nothing of the forest ever truly dies. It is a cycle.” And as he tried to touch her a breeze blew up, and Udinny became dust, lost upon it, taken by a zephyr and whirled up among the trees. Pain shot through him, as shocking and hard as if a spear had been thrust through his gut. The monk had done this knowing what would happen, that contact with such power as he held was more than she could ever hope to live through.
She had paid the price the boughry asked of her.
“Ranya’s path,” he said, “she walked it to the end.” He felt Venn by him.
“Cahan,” said the trion, and there was something new and stronger in their voice than he had heard before. “Ranya’s web is complex, and her path stranger, and longer than we can understand.” He looked to the trion, and was surprised not to see grief there, as if they were privy to some secret he was not. Before he could ask any more the trion stepped away.
Behind them the people of Harn, staring up in wonder at the new forest.
“We did not go into the forest, so the forest came to us,” said Furin. Villagers turning to stare at Cahan. Then Ont spoke. Going down on one knee before him.
“Cowl-Rai,” he said. Each villager followed his action, and the small clearing in the bloody forest rang out with the name he had been raised for, run from, and never wanted to hear again.
“Cowl-Rai.”
He wanted to speak. But he could not.
He had run but never fast enough.
Been running all his life, when there was never anywhere to run to.
This place. These people. They were home.