Gods of the Wyrdwood

Book 1: The Forsaken Trilogy

by RJ Barker

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

In a land of gods and wars, a brave forester encounters prophets, warrior monks, and mysterious magic in this exciting fantasy novel.

Cahan du Nahare is known as the forester—a man who can navigate the dangerous Deepforest like no one else. But once he was more. Once he belonged to the god of fire.

Udinny serves the goddess of the lost, a goddess of small things; when she ventures into the Deepforest to find a lost child, Cahan will be her guide. But in a land where territory is won and lost for uncaring gods, where temples of warrior monks pit one prophet against another—Cahan will need to choose the forest or the fire—and his choice will have consequences for his entire world.

For more from RJ Barker, check out:

The Wounded Kingdom
Age of Assassins
Blood of Assassins
King of Assassins

The Tide Child Trilogy
The Bone Ships
Call of the Bone Ships
The Bone Ship's Wake

Release date: June 27, 2023

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

The boy liked Ventday best. He had always liked Ventday because on Ventday the processionals happened and there was no work when the processionals passed the farm. The tools and staffs were put away and the mothers made them wear their best clothes and the fathers made sure they were clean. Then they all stood on the grass, cold whistling around them, trying not to shiver as they waited for the monks to make their way through Woodedge from Harn towards Harn-Larger.

The monks always came in the first part of the day, but they never stopped at the farm.

Monks had no time for clanless tenant farmers scratching a life from the frozen land. But it was exciting for the boy. Though all followed Chyi, the god of the Cowl-Rai, there were a thousand gods who paid Chyi service, and you never knew which god the monks would worship, or even what they would look like. Sometimes they looked kind and sometimes they looked rich and sometimes they looked fierce and sometimes they looked frightening and sometimes they were all of those things. He had seen the monks of war gods, with warriors who whirled and danced with blades, monks of the night who went naked and painted their bodies midnight blue. Some wore their hair long and some had no hair at all and the only way to know what they would look like was to be there when they came out of the forest path. To the boy that seemed like the most exciting part.

Who would they be?

“Can you hear the bells, Cahan?” said his sister. She was older, not by much, but enough to be in charge when they were in the fields. “They are coming.”

“I hear them, Nahac,” he said. “And I will be first to see them.”

“Quiet,” said firstfather and he did so because firstfather had a temper.

“Lorn,” said secondmother softly, “let the children be excited. Life is hard enough.”

“Harder if the monks think us disrespectful,” said firstfather, and secondmother said nothing, which meant she thought firstfather was right. So Cahan looked down as he had been taught to do. But he only tipped his head a little, not enough to show true obeisance. Otherwise he would not see them, and he so wanted to see them.

When the monks came, they were a disappointment. There were no musicians, no pristine robes, no dancers or warriors. Only a parade of tired people, their long hair filthy with mud, their clothes spattered with dirt from travel. The only one who was grand at all was a man who wore a mask carved into a fierce face with long teeth. Their Skua-Rai, the speaker of their god. He had a long white beard and they carried him in a chair which was wrapped with floatvine to lighten the load and swayed from side to side in time to their chiming bells. A Star of Iftal was held above him on a long pole, but the wood was old and the eight arms around the central circle wobbled as the procession moved. But still, they were monks, which meant they were important so the boy bowed his head and tried to hide his disappointment with them.

Then they stopped.

The monks never stopped. Not at their farm.

“These people were not at the gathering for Zorir-Who-Walks-in-Fire in the village,” said the man on the chair. His voice was very soft.

“They have no make-up, no clanpaint, they are clanless,” said a monk who was bald and fierce-looking, as if his words explained everything, and of course they did. Even the boy knew that to be clanless was to be less than every other. Worth less even than the crownheads on the farm, and crownheads were the most stupid animals alive. Without garaur to herd them they would be dead in a day.

“So,” said the old man, “no one stops here?”

“As I said, Skua-Rai, they are clanless.”

“Of no family. Of no loyalty, living on the edge of the forest,” said the old man. Then he turned back to them. “I think we will stop here.”

The boy found he was shaking and he did not know if it was with fear or excitement. He watched, while trying not to be seen to be watching, and the chair was anchored, a step set up and the old man stood. He was helped down by the bald monk.

“It is forbidden, Skua-Rai,” he said softly to the old man.

“Well, Laha, many things are forbidden until they are not, eh?”

“But the teachings…” began the man.

“As Skua-Rai, Laha, I do not think you need to tell me of Zorir’s teachings, eh?”

“No,” said the man, and he went to his knees. “Forgive me, Skua-Rai.”

“Always,” he said and walked forward, standing in front of where they knelt in the mud. “I bring Iftal’s blessings to you, farmers,” he said. “I am Saradis of Zorir-Who-Walks-in-Fire and I bring greeting to you in my god’s name also. May the fire warm but never burn you. May your sacrifice ease great Iftal’s pain through his servant Chyi.”

No one spoke. No one knew what to say, as the clanless were never blessed. The boy glanced at firstfather and did not understand the look on his face. He looked scared, like when they saw swarden in Harnwood and had to run for their lives.

“Thank you,” the boy’s sister spoke. Cahan tensed all his muscles as he heard firstfather breathe in, a sudden and dangerous noise. The sort of noise he made just before his hand came out and delivered a stinging blow.

“You’re a brave one,” said the Skua-Rai and took a tentative step towards his sister, moving carefully on the wet, slimy, half-frozen ground. The boy’s heart began to beat so hard he thought it would escape as the man came to stand before Nahac. The air smelled sharper, the boy suddenly aware of the dirt on his clothes and body. He could smell the grass, bruised beneath the man’s feet. She is in trouble, he thought, my sister is in trouble and these people are important and they will cut her lips off for talking out of turn. “Look up, look at me,” said the monk. “You can all look at me.” He did. The old man was nearer and the boy was not at all sure he was a man now. His voice was softer, more like secondmother’s. His shape under the robes not as wide at the shoulder as firstfather’s, and more curved at the waist.

“Please forgive the girl,” said firstfather, words falling from his scarred mouth in a rush. “She does not know her place yet, neither of them do. Punish me for what she has done, not her.” The Skua-Rai blinked behind the mask. Stared at his scarred face, and where his bottom lip was missing.

“It appears you have already been punished,” said the Skua-Rai, adding softly, “but I am not here to punish.” They looked to Nahac, the girl stared back like a challenge and Cahan waited for the order, for monks to grab his sister and knives to come out for the punishment of clanless who spoke out of turn.

“Tell me, Firstfather,” their tone was soft, curious, “do you ever travel to Wyrdwood?”

“It is forbid—” She cut him off with a look.

“Do not worry about what is or is not forbidden. Tell me only the truth and none will suffer.” Firstfather bowed his head. The way he did before the Leoric of Harn when they requested to trade.

“Sometimes it is hard to make ends meet, with rent and what we are paid for our crops and crownheads and—”

“That is all I needed to know.”

The Skua-Rai turned from him and back to the two children, cocked their head and the polished wood of the helm caught the weak light of the afternoon. The boy saw the beard was attached to the mask and was sure now the Skua-Rai was a woman. They reached out a hand towards Nahac, paused halfway, shook her head. “It is not in you,” she said. Then turned, walked over to Cahan and studied him. She knelt, letting out a groan as her joints complained, her light blue robe becoming soaked by the wet grass. The world paused. She stared at him for a very long time. He could hear the breathing of his family around him. The low growl of the garaur tethered near the house. The lowing of crownheads down near Woodedge.

The Skua-Rai held out her hand.

“I am Saradis, Skua-Rai, the head of my order and the speaker for my god. Take my hand, boy,” she said. He swallowed. Did as she said. Her hand felt like crownhead skin after softening in the pits and hanging on the racks. Warm and dry.

Do not be afraid.

“I am not,” he said, the words coming unbidden to his mouth, more bravado than truth. He knelt straighter. The woman smiled. He looked across at Nahac, at firstfather and secondmother and thirdmother and secondfather behind them. At thirdfather who watched from within the hut. They stared back at him, as if they barely knew or understood him.

“Few would have heard the words I said, boy,” said the woman, and she nodded at his first and seconds and thirds, “they did not.” She looked towards the forest. “You have been in there. To the depths.”

“No,” he said, because they were not meant to go deep into the forest, and what the family did there was forbidden.

“Do not worry,” said Saradis. “I want you to be brave while I try another thing.”

He felt something then. The monk kept hold of his hand and the boy felt something strange, so strange he had no words for it. It was as if the flesh under his skin rippled. It made him want to laugh and it made him want to be sick at the same time. His immediate feeling was one of revulsion, of wrongness and then it was gone. But, though it had only been there for a moment, and though it had felt terrible, he found he wanted it back.

He stared at the eyes behind the mask. They stared back at him. He felt the warmth leave his skin as she took her hand away and, like the strange feeling, when it was gone he wanted it back. She reached up with both hands and, with a click, removed the polished wooden mask and the false beard from her helmet so that he could see the face beneath. She was not as old as he thought, though her hair was white like someone over thirty harvests. But her face was young beneath the caked make-up and red lines. A long gap in the make-up revealed intricate clanpaint running around her eye and down her cheekbone. “This,” she held up the mask and smiled at him, “is a very strange thing. It scares some people. It makes some people do as I say without even thinking to question me.” She reached out, touched his cheek. “It gives me power,” she said, “how would you like to come away with me, to learn about power, forest child? To a place where it is always warm. I will teach you to read the symbols you are forbidden.” She smiled. “And I will teach you so much more.”

“On my own?” he said. The woman looked around, her gaze resting on Nahac.

“This is your sister?” He nodded. “You are close?” He nodded again. “Then she may come also.”

“No!” that was secondmother, crying out. Her hand came up to her mouth. Fear on her face. “I mean only that we barely pay our rent on this farm as it is. Without the children to help us work it we will be thrown off. We will die.”

The woman looked at secondmother, then she took off a necklace, beads of shiny, multi-hued bladewood.

“You are aware of the price of speaking to one such as me out of turn?” said the Skua-Rai. Secondmother nodded. A tear ran down her face.

“I birthed him,” she said. “I birthed him”, and she fell forward, weeping into the dirt.

The Skua-Rai stared at secondmother as she wept. Firstmother and secondfather stood, terrified, unable to move or help.

“Laha,” the monk said to the man behind her. He sported different, less intricate, clanpaint and fewer lines of red drawn across his face. “Take these beads back to the village. Speak to the Leoric and use them to buy this farm for our temple.” She turned back to secondmother. “Run this farm for me in the name of Zorir,” she said, “keep whatever coin you can make and know your children will have a better life with us than any you could ever provide.”

“Why?” said firstfather. “Why do this? We are clanless.” She stood, but her attention remained on the boy as if firstfather’s words were barely of any interest to her.

“Do you know what a Cowl-Rai is, boy?” He nodded. “Tell me,” she said.

“They rule for Chyi. And do magic. Big magic,” he said. “Like Rai but even more powerful.”

“You are very clever, boy,” she smiled. “The Cowl-Rai can wave a hand and whole armies vanish. They can change the fortune of our world with a thought. Like Rai they are gifted power by a god, and use that power in their name.” He could not take his eyes from her. But she looked away from him now, to his firstfather and secondmother. To his firstmother and secondfather. “Do you know the prophecy of the true Cowl-Rai?” said the woman.

Firstfather nodded.

“They will rise, and overthrow the Old Cowl-Rai. Then tip the world so it is warm in the north once more.”

“A simple version of it,” she said. “But there is more. The true Cowl-Rai will serve the true god, they will restore the link between the gods and the lands broken in the war with the foul Osere. The gods will no longer need to work through the people so we will be free.” She looked around the gathered family. “There will be no more Rai or Leorics or even Skua-Rai.” To the boy, it felt as if she grew taller as she spoke. “It will not matter that your ancestors did not fight the Osere. There will be no shame, all will be free and we will walk the Star Path to paradise.”

Firstfather stared at her.

“I have never heard the village monks say this.”

“Because they would have to admit Chyi is not the true god,” she said. “Zorir is the true god, and their voice tells me your son is to be the true Cowl-Rai.” His firstfather only stared. Then he looked to Cahan but the boy could not think or move or say a word. The world was closing in on him, strange and huge and terrifying.

“Pack your things, boy,” said firstfather. “And remember us.”

Then all was action and business, all fuss and running though he barely saw it. The boy stood in a numb, in a cold daze as his few things were packed and he was told to walk behind the seat of the Skua-Rai. At first he did not move, only watched as she placed the mask back on and sat in her chair. He was frightened, not excited. This was all he had known, his only warmth found with those who loved him. He did not want to go.

He felt a warm hand in his and looked round to see Nahac smiling at him.

“Come, Cahan,” his sister said. “We will always have one another.” She pulled on his hand and he began to walk, thinking only about placing one foot in front of the other.

As they approached Woodedge on the other side of the clearing the Skua-Rai turned to him. “Take a good look at your farm, boy, for this will be the last time you will ever see it.”

Like many things she said, this would turn out to be untrue.

The forester watched himself die. Not many can say that.

He did not die well.

The farm in Woodedge was the one rock in his life, the thing he had come to believe would always be there. Life had taken him from it, then returned him to it many years later – though all those he had once loved were corpses by then. The farm was mostly a ruin when he returned. He had built it back up. Earned himself scars and cuts, broken a couple of fingers but in an honest way. They were wounds and pains worth having, earned doing something worthwhile and true. He liked it here in the farthest reaches of Northern Crua, far from the city of Harnspire where the Rai rule without thought for those who served them, where the people lived among refuse, blaming it on the war and not those who caused it.

His farm was not large, three triangular fields of good black earth kissed with frost and free of bluevein that ruined crops and poisoned those foolish enough to eat them. It was surrounded by the wall of trees that marked Woodedge, the start of the great slow forest. If he looked to the south past the forest he knew the plains of Crua stretched out brown, cold and featureless to the horizon. To the west, hidden by a great finger of trees that reached out as if to cradle his farm, was the village of Harn, where he did not go unless pressed and was never welcome.

When he was young he remembered how, on Ventday, his family would gather to watch the colourful processions of the Skua-Rai and their servants, each one serving a different god. There had been no processions since he had reclaimed the farm. The new Cowl-Rai had risen and brought with them a new god, Tarl-an-Gig. Tarl-an-Gig was a jealous god who saw only threat in the hundreds of old gods that had once littered the land with lonely monasteries or slept in secret, wooded groves. Now only a fool advertised they held onto the older ways. Even he had painted the balancing man of Tarl-an-Gig on the building, though there was another, more private and personal shrine hidden away in Woodedge. More to a memory of someone he had cared about than to any belief in gods. In his experience they had little power but that given to them by the people.

The villagers of Harn were wont to say trouble came from the trees, but he would have disagreed; the forest would not harm you if you did not harm the forest.

He did not believe the same could be said of the village.

Trouble came to him as the light of the first eight rose. A brightness reaching through Woodedge, broken up into spears by the black boughs of leafless trees. A family; a man, his wife, his daughter and young son who was only just walking. They were not a big family, no secondmothers or fathers, and no trion who stood between. Trion marriages were a rare thing to see nowadays, as were the multi-part families Cahan was once part of. The war of the Cowl-Rai took many lives, and the new Cowl-Rai had trion taken to the spire cities. None knew why and the forester did not care. The business of the powerful was of no interest to him; the further he was from it the better.

He was not big, this man who brought trouble along with his family, to the farm on the forest edge. He stood before the forester in many ways his opposite. Small and ill-fed, skin pockmarked beneath the make-up and clanpaint. He clasped thin arms about himself as he shivered in ragged and holed clothes. To him the forester must have seemed a giant, well fed during childhood, worked hard in his youth. His muscles built up in training to bear arms and fight battles, and for many years he had fought against the land of his farm which gave up its treasures even more grudgingly than warriors gave up their lives. The forester was bearded, his clothes of good-quality crownhead wool. He could have been handsome, maybe he was, but he did not think about it as he was clanless, and none but another clanless would look at him. Even those who sold their companionship would balk at selling it to him.

Few clanless remained in Crua. Another legacy of Tarl-an-Gig and those that followed the new god.

The man before Cahan wore a powder of off-white make-up, black lines painted around his mouth. They had spears, the weapon the people of Crua were most familiar with. The woman stood back with the children, and she hefted her weapon, ready to throw, while her husband approached. He held a spear of gleaming bladewood in his hand like a threat.

Cahan carried no weapon, only the long staff he used to herd his crownheads. As the man approached he slowed in response to the growling of the garaur at the forester’s feet.

“Segur,” said Cahan, “go into the house.” Then he pointed and let out a sharp whistle and the long, thin, furred creature turned and fled inside, where it continued to growl from the darkness.

“This is your farm?” said the man. The clanpaint marked him of a lineage Cahan did not recognise. The scars that ran in tracks beneath the paint meant he had most likely been a warrior once. He probably thought himself strong. But the warriors who served the Rai of Crua were used to fighting grouped together, shields locked and spears out. One-on-one fighting took a different kind of skill and Cahan doubted he had it. Such things, like cowls and good food, belonged to the Rai, the special.

“It is my farm, yes,” said Cahan. If you had asked the people of Harn to describe the forester they would have said “gruff”, “rude” or “monosyllabic” and it was not unfair. Though the forester would have told you he did not waste words on those with no wish to hear them, and that was not unfair either.

“A big farm for one clanless man,” said the soldier. “I have a family and you have nothing, you are nothing.”

“What makes you think I do not have a family?” The man licked his lips. He was frightened. No doubt he had heard stories from the people of Harn of the forester who lived on a Woodedge farm and was not afraid to travel even as far as Wyrdwood. But, like those villagers, he thought himself better than the forester. Cahan had met many like this man.

“The Leoric of Harn says you are clanless and she gifts me this land with a deed.” He held up a sheet of parchment that Cahan doubted he could read. “You do not pay taxes to Harn, you do not support Tarl-an-Gig or the war against the red so your farm is forfeit. It is countersigned by Tussnig, monk of Harn, and as such is the will of the Cowl-Rai.” He looked uncomfortable; the wind lifted the coloured flags on the farm and made the porcelain chains chime against the darker stone of the building’s walls. “They have provided you with some recompense,” said the man, and he held out his hand showing an amount of coin that was more insult than farm price.

“That is not enough to buy this farm and I care nothing for gods,” said Cahan. The man looked shocked at such casual blasphemy. “Tell me, are you friends with the Leoric?”

“I am honoured by her…”

“I thought not.” The forester took a step around the man, casually putting him between Cahan and the woman’s spear. The man stood poised somewhere between violence and fear. The forester knew it would not be hard to end this. The woman had not noticed her line of attack was blocked by her husband. Even if she had, Cahan doubted she could have moved quickly enough to help with her children hanging onto her legs in fear. A single knuckle strike to the man’s throat would end him. Use the body as a shield to get to the woman before she threw her spear.

But there were children, and the forester was no Rai to kill children without thought. They would carry back the news of their parents’ death to Harn, no doubt to the great pleasure of Leoric Furin as she could offer these new orphans up to be trained as soldiers instead of the village’s children.

If he did those things, killed this man and this woman, then tomorrow Cahan knew he would face a mob from the village. They only tolerated him as it was; to kill someone above his station would be too much. Then the Leoric would have what she wanted anyway, his farm. Maybe that was her hope.

The man watched the forester, his body full of twitches. Uncertainty on his face.

“So, will you take the money?” he said. “Give up your farm?”

“It is that or kill you, right?” said Cahan, and the truth was he pitied this frightened man. Caught up in a grim game Cahan had been playing with the Leoric of Harn ever since he had made the farm viable.

“Yes, that or we kill you,” he replied, a little confidence returning. “I have fought in the blue armies of the Cowl-Rai, to bring back the warmth. I have faced the southern Rai. I do not fear clanless such as you.” Such unearned confidence could end a man swiftly in Crua.

But not today.

“Keep the money, you will need it,” said the forester and he let out a long breath, making a plume in the air. “Farming is a skill that must be learned, like anything else, and it is hard here when it is cold. You will struggle before you prosper.” Cahan let out a whistle and Segur, the garaur, came from the house. Its coat blue-white and its body long, sinuous and vicious as it sped across the hard ground and spiralled up his leg and chest to sit around his neck. Bright eyes considered the forester, sharp teeth gleamed in its half-open mouth as it panted. Cahan scratched beneath the garaur’s chin to calm it. “The far field,” he told the man, pointing towards the field between the rear of the house and Woodedge. “The ground there is infested with rootworm, so grow something like cholk. If you grow root vegetables they will die before they are born and that attracts bluevein to the fields. The other two fields, well, grow what you like. They have been well dug over with manure. There are nine crownheads, they stay mostly at the edges of the forest. They will give you milk, shed their skin for fur once a year, and allow you to shear them once a year also.”

“What will you do?” said the man, and if Cahan had not been giving up his livelihood such sudden interest would have been comical.

“That does not concern you,” he told him, and began to walk away.

“Wait,” he shouted and Cahan stopped. Took a deep breath and turned. “The garaur around your neck, it is mine. I will need it to herd the crownheads.” The forester smiled; at least he could take one small victory away from this place. Well, until this new tenant ran into the reality of farming and left, as others had before. The man took a step back when he saw the expression on Cahan’s face, perhaps aware he had pushed his luck a little further than was good for him. Wary of the forester’s size, of his confidence even though he was walking away from his home.

“Garaur bond with their owners. Call Segur by all means. If you can make it come it is yours, but if you knew anything about farming you would know it is wasted breath.” With that he turned and walked away. The man did not call out for Segur, only watched. Cahan found himself tensing his shoulders, half expecting a thrown spear.

They were not bad people, not really, the forester thought. They were not ruthless enough for this land either. Crua was not the sort of place where you leave an enemy at your back. Maybe the man and his family did not know that, or maybe they were shocked by how easy it had been to steal the farm.

“And stay away,” shouted the man after him, “or I’ll send you to the Osere down below!”

Nothing easy turns out well was a favoured saying of the monks who trained Cahan in his youth. In that there was a truth these people would eventually discover.

He made camp in the forest. In Harnwood, where it was dangerous, and definitely not in Wyrdwood among the cloudtrees that touched the sky, where strange things lived, but also not so shallow in Woodedge that the new owner of the farm would notice him.

Further in than most would go, but not far enough to be foolish. Good words to live by. There he sat to watch. He thought a sixth of a season would be enough, maybe less, before the family realised it was not an easy thing to scratch a living from ground that had been cold for generations. No one had stayed yet. War had taken so many lives that little expertise was left in the land and Cahan, barely halfway through his third decade, was considered an old man. The farmers would not last, and in the end the fact that Cahan could reliably bring spare crops to market, and knew how to traverse the forest safely, would be more important than the small amount of sacrifice he refused to give.

Though it was a lesson the Leoric struggled to learn. But the people of Harn had never liked outsiders, and they liked clanless outsiders even less. He pitied them, in a way. The war had been hard on them. The village was smaller than it had ever been and was still expected to pay its way to Harnspire. Lately, more hardship had been visited on Harn as the outlaws of the forest, the Forestals, were preying upon their trade caravans. As it became poorer the village had become increasingly suspicious. Cahan had become their outsider, an easy target for a frightened people.

No doubt the monks of Tarl-an-Gig believed the struggle was good for Harn; they were ever hungry for those who would give of themselves and feed their armies or their Rai.

Cahan had no time for Tarl-an-Gig. Crua used to be a land of many gods, its people had an unerring ability to pick the worst of them.

It was cold in the forest. The season of Least, when the plants gave up their meagre prizes to the hungry, had passed and Harsh’s bite was beginning to pinch the skin and turn the ground to stone. Soon the circle winds would slow and the ice air would come. In the south they called the season of Least, Bud, and the season the north called Harsh they called Plenty. It had not always been so, but for generations the southerners had enjoyed prosperity while the north withered. And the southern people wondered why war came from the north.

Each day throughout Harsh, Cahan woke beneath skeletal trees, feeling as if the silver rime that crunched and snapped beneath his feet had worked its way into his bones. He ate better than he had on the farm, and did less. Segur delighted in catching burrowers and histi and bringing them to him; brought him more than he could eat, so he set up a smoker. Sitting by the large dome of earth and wood as it gently leaked smoke. Letting its warmth seep into him while he watched the family on the farm struggle and go hungry and shout at each other in frustration. They were colder than he was despite the shelter of the earth-house. Their fire had run out of wood and they were too frightened to go into the forest to collect more. Cahan watched them break down a small shrine he had made to a forgotten god named Ranya for firewood. They did not recognise it as a shrine − few would − or get much wood fro