Warlords of Wyrdwood

Book 2: The Forsaken Trilogy

by RJ Barker

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy; Sword & Sorcery

Synopsis

"You fear the forest.. It is not foolish." His words rang like bells in the clearing, each face reacting to their din. "But the forest does not hate you, it does not hunt you. It simply does not care about you." 

From British Fantasy Award-winning author RJ Barker comes the second installment in a new epic fantasy trilogy set in a forest straight out of darkest folklore with outlaws fighting an evil empire and warring deities.  

The Forester known as Cahan led the village of Harn in rebellion against the all-powerful, oppressive forces of the Rai. A great victory was won, but to avoid retaliation he must lead the people of Harn into the Wyrdwood.

Cahan never wanted this responsibility, but fate has its eye on him, and without him the people will be helpless against the terrors of the forest. 

But in the ground of Crua, a dark god is growing in power using the strength of decay. It is something new, something worse than the magics of the Rai, and it has its claws in Cahan. The people of Harn need him, and they will need new allies if they are to have any hope of surviving in the depths of the Wyrdwood.

Especially if the man they consider a hero, the Forester, Cahan Du-Nahere, is as lost to them as he believes.

Praise for Gods of the Wyrdwood
"An experienced novelist at the top of his game—this is Avatar meets Dune, on shrooms." —SFX 

"A sweeping story of destiny and redemption. Weighty, deliberate, tender and brutal, this is a big, wonderful book and an utterly involving read." —Daily Mail 

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: September 10, 2024

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

It is entirely true and real and to the point to say that I lived a life which involved many mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes hurt others, which I regret enormously, but mostly those mistakes only hurt me; and though I wish I could have avoided them, to some degree I deserved the pain that followed. It was earned. Nonetheless, each and every mistake I made was a step along a path in which I learnt: about myself, the world and the people within it. So I cannot truly say I would undo anything I have done. At least not without undoing myself in the process.

Life is complicated like that.

In fact, it is far, far more complicated than I ever imagined.

There is, however, one mistake that I do regret, and that is becoming dead. Given the chance and knowing what I know now, I would undo that entirely. Though, I would not have been able to, as I would not have known what I know. This must sound like a riddle. Well, I understand little enough of it myself. Suffice to say, before I died, I had thought death to be a very definite full stop. A movement from the land of Crua, cold and hard and unpleasant and full of people who were gruff and often unfair to me, to the land of the dead where my Lady Ranya would take my hand and guide me along the star path to a better place. There I would find a kinder land populated by those I had met in life and missed the most. We would eat and drink too much in the god’s city of Great Anjiin, once more rebuilt after the breaking of Iftal, and we would not even suffer the pain of the morning after.

And yet.

Here we are.

Me, talking to you, whoever you may be. I suspect that you may be me, a me I am yet to meet or one of me who I have left behind. Yes, I talk like a mad person, but I exist as one. I have woken in a room of a million mirrors, each one containing a reflection of a person I was and yet I have never known.

Of course, they are not actually mirrors.

It is too dark here for mirrors.

Which one should expect from being dead, I suppose.

Forgive me, I know this makes little sense. I am using our dialogue to make sense of it myself. We are involved in a process. You, who may be me, and I who is definitely me.

I gave my life to Ranya, our lady of the lost, whose web stretches throughout Crua and touches all things. But I died on the word of the Boughry, the cruel lords of the forest, who are the strength, the spirit and the bridge. I thought them separate, and they are, but I should also not be surprised to find out that, in some way I have yet to fathom, they are also the same creature. I felt it, though now I do not feel anything.

Riddles upon riddles upon riddles.

I live within a vast space (if I can still use the word live; I am not sure it is truly applicable) but it is also a small space. Like I sit in a box made of glass looking out at a plain that runs into an eternity before me. Though I do not actually see it, as I have no eyes. Or ears. Or mouth. Or sense of touch.

How strange, I did not know any of these things until I thought about them. How can I be aware of anything when I have no senses to be aware of them with? Really, it seems death is a mystery that is not even solved by dying; it only becomes more complex and more mysterious. If I were you, which I may or may not be as we have previously discussed, I would avoid dying. If that is at all possible.

I imagine that were I the type to go mad, this is exactly the sort of thing that would send me so. It may be that I am already mad, or that this is some strange and powerful new torture dreamed up by the Rai of Crua and I did not die in a little village where a forest grew from nothing to vanquish our enemies. Though that is unlikely as I feel no pain, and the Rai – the rulers of Crua – enjoy inflicting pain and are too lacking in imagination to believe being stuck within a darkness that poses nothing but questions and offers no answers could be a torture all of its own.

I imagine if my friend Cahan found himself in this place he would not enjoy it at all. He would rage and scream and fight, and of course that would all be useless. You cannot fight a prison without bars, especially when you have no hands. Or feet. Or body.

I did not know I had no hands or feet or body until I thought about it.

Being dead really is a constant journey of both discovery and frustration.

Oh, and wonder, though if I were Cahan I would feel only frustration; he is man who is very good at being frustrated, and surly. He truly has a talent for being surly that is beyond that of any other human I have ever met, and I have met a lot. And a fair few of them were quite surly. Maybe it is an effect I have on people?

I cannot see or hear or speak or touch, and yet I am aware. I have no hands or legs and yet I move. I cannot see anything but darkness and yet I know there is a beyond that I am currently denied. It is strange, and new, and that is a wonder.

I am in a prison.

I am lost.

But I serve Ranya, the lady of the lost, and she has been the one to guide my steps throughout my life, and never has she led me wrong. Even though she led me to my death. Now I consider it, she has also led me to prison, more than once. Many times in fact.

But I have always escaped.

There are stars here. But not the single star of Crua. There are many.

How strange.

How fascinating.

Thirty-seven of the villagers of Harn died in the fight with the Rai, including four children. The village burned, orange light painting the trees in flickering shadows, distorting the faces of those around him. They were all changed, no longer the same people who had woken in a Woodedge village in the days before the forces of Rai Galderin turned up.

Had he changed? Or had he reverted to what he had once been? He did not know.

Cahan could barely walk after the release of power. Furin and Venn supported him as they passed through the new forest around Harn, the one he had grown, his power passing through the conduit of Venn, targeted by Udinny at the life in the ground. At the thought of the little monk, a pain in his heart. He stumbled. Heard Furin and Venn gasp as they took his weight, kept him upright. Grief as vicious as any blade cut him, a gasp escaped. Worse than the gnawing pain of his cowl, hungering for life and making it a fight to stop it taking from Furin.

“Cahan,” said Furin, her face hidden in shadow, her hair a halo, orange with firelight. “Are you hurt?”

“Just weak, is all,” he said. “Weak.”

He had been weak all his life, running from the truth of what he was: something dark, monstrous. If he doubted it the truth hung from the trees that had grown up around them on his command. An eightday ago, eight hours ago, this had been a village surrounded by fields. Now it was dense forest studded with burning houses, and from the trees hung the army that had come to kill everyone who had lived in Harn. These new trees were twisted, strange, and some more than others; the most misshapen had streaks of blue running up them, infected with bluevein which had made them grow into tortuous shapes.

In the time it had taken the people of Harn to make ready to leave the corpses on the trees had become skeletons; what little flesh remained was dry and tight as old leather. On the blueveined trees the skeletons had strange accretions, like glowing rocks. Sightless skulls stared out from branches, each one finding him. Accusing him.

“Cahan,” said Venn, “if you are weak can you take from the trees?” The trion and Furin steered him towards a trunk, two corpses hanging from it. He lifted his hand to place against the bark, ready to make the entreaty to the forest, to ask for its kindness.

Stop.

The hiss of the cowl in his mind. At the same time he felt its gnawing hunger, its huge desire for life, vanish. Not quickly enough to stop him, and neither did he trust it enough to obey its desperate whisper. Maybe he was simply not strong enough to react quickly, maybe he still resented the thing for what it made him into: Cahan Du-Nahere, Cowl-Rai, ruler of rulers, unwilling saviour.

Cahan touched the tree.

Hunger.

Pure and powerful and red. An unbearable need, stronger than the cowl within him.

He had felt the power of trees before, the slow aggregation of life that gave them their might and their strength. The tenacity of forests was built up over generations, and in the case of the Cloudtrees of Wyrdwood, over time beyond knowing.

These trees, his trees, they were not made that way. They were forced. Forced by him. The many lifetimes of power, taken gently and naturally, were denied to them. The connection to Crua through the invisible net that Udinny had called Ranya’s web, it was not there for them.

They hungered.

Lances of red reaching into him. Pain, immediate and excruciating. Life drawn from him. His hand held against the bark by an alien will. He must have screamed. Must have given some sign as the Reborn were there. The undying sisters sworn to his service. Pulling him from the tree, laying him on the ground.

“What is wrong?” said Venn. They tried to step nearer but one of the Reborn, the silent one, stood in their way, spear raised.

“The trees,” Cahan said, forcing words out through a mouth that did not want to move, “don’t touch the trees.”

“Let me help,” said Venn.

“We will protect him,” said Nahac, the speaker for the two Reborn, who he had named for his murdered sister. Never really understanding why.

“Venn can heal, you know that.” Furin speaking.

“They did not heal us,” the Reborn’s words dull, dead.

“You are not part of life, not any more,” said Venn. The two Reborn froze. Cahan wondered for a moment if they would kill the trion; something of their attitude was of the mortally insulted. The silent one raised her spear but Venn showed no fear of her. “You will kill me, because I tell the truth?”

“Stop.” The word was all Cahan could manage. The Reborn looked to him. Then Nahac, the one who spoke, who carried the name of his long dead sister, nodded. The silent one moved aside and Venn stepped closer to him.

“Venn.” It was all he could manage, he wanted to tell them it was not safe. That his cowl hungered after what he had expended here, even more so now the tree had also taken from him.

“I know, Cahan, why you are frightened,” said the trion. “But I can control it.” From the look on their face he knew they were not sure, but they were going to try and he, weak as a new-born raniri, could do little to stop them. The trion reached out for him. His cowl howled within, its hunger was every bit as empty and desperate as the trees’. Too strong for him to fight.

Too weak to stop anything.

He had lost Udinny, he did not want to lose Venn as well.

Trying to scream out, “No!”

Venn touched his forehead with the flat of one hand.

A cool, green, wave washing over him.

Connection.

The pain within, not gone, but dulled, like a roaring fire being banked, the flames covered, smothered. Still there, still burning, but now it would burn longer and slower. Venn controlled it, passed him some of what they were, sharing themselves with him and they gave selflessly. As they did, Cahan’s world grew, his vision cleared. A change of perspective. He saw the trion bent over him. He saw the Reborn behind them; he saw Furin, and Ont and the rest of the villagers watching. Behind them the Forestals, those thieves and outlaws whose bows had been so useful in the battle, were watching thoughtfully.

“Enough,” he said, words coming more easily. He managed to stand unaided, a moment of dizziness and then the Reborn were there, holding him up. He held a hand to his forehead. Fought for clarity.

“What do we do, Cowl-Rai?” The butcher, Ont, spoke from behind him, the man who had stood against him and resented him once. A man who now looked at him entirely differently. It made Cahan uncomfortable.

“My name is Cahan, call me that.” Cahan turned and Ont nodded, kept his head bowed. All the villagers did. “Look at me.” Some did as he asked, some did not. “I am just a man, just a clanless man.”

The villagers were frightened.

Of what this place had become.

Of him.

Who could blame them?

“The plan has not changed,” said Furin, their Leoric, their leader. With her stood Ania and one of her Forestals; had only they survived the fight? “Has it, Cahan?” He shook his head.

“No, it has not. We leave here, make for the forest and safety.” Cahan looked around. No one argued with him, he wished they would. He would feel more like one of the people then. “It is not safe here.” But where was? Sooner expect to stumble across Anjiin, the fabled ruined city of the ancients, than safety in Crua.

“They will come back?” This from the crowd.

“Yes,” he said, “and these trees they are…” He let his voice tail off. Took a breath. “They are not safe, do not touch them.”

“They are just trees,” came another voice. “What can trees do?” How could he explain it so they understood?

“These trees were raised to kill.” He looked around. “And trees think slowly, they have not realised yet they have done what is needed. So take no chances.”

Silence. Utter silence, like none they had ever heard before. No animals called, no gasmaws hissed and chirped, no foliage moved as histi pushed through it. The forest was quiet as the dead that decorated it. It hungered, and nothing which walked carelessly here would live. Nothing had. “We must go, take nothing. Head for Wyrdwood. Safety is there if it is anywhere.”

“What makes you think Wyrdwood will take you?” said Ania.

“It will,” he said.

“Not for free,” said the Forestal, “the forest always wants its price.” Cahan looked around, at the bedraggled, tired, bloodied and grief-stricken, and wondered what these people had left to give.

“If it is where the Cowl-R—” Ont broke off. “If it is where Cahan says we go, then it is where we will go.” Cahan looked at him, gave him a nod.

The people of Harn left most of their possessions, their houses, their professions and all that they had been behind them. They were no longer villagers. All they carried away were the clothes they wore, what few things they could drag on a travois and the weapons they had trained to use; and maybe Cahan lied to himself, but he felt they carried their bowstaffs with a sense of pride he had not noticed before. These people were villagers no longer, but neither were they warriors. They were something else, a people changed by the truth of their land. Like him, they were in the process of becoming, and they were yet to find out what it was they would become.

He thought that, of them all, Ania the Forestal was the only one not frightened by the future. They moved into her world now.

Furin and Venn helped him walk, he was still weak.

“We shall take him, we are strong,” said Nahac of the Reborn, her sister standing by her. Furin and the trion looked at the two warriors. “We do not tire,” said Nahac. “You do.” Furin nodded and pulled Venn back. Cahan noticed his garaur, Segur, flee as the Reborn approached, the lithe furred body of the herding animal vanishing into the trees. The Reborn put his arms around their shoulders, and he hoped the garaur had the sense to keep away from this hungry forest.

“Where do we go?” asked Ont.

“North,” said Ania. “It is always North for you now.” Ont looked to Cahan who nodded.

Their journey began.

The first death was before the Light Above had passed out of the early eight. A woman, Jader, stumbled and put her hand out to catch herself on the trunk of a tree. Such a normal and natural reaction. Her body stiffened, she screamed once. A short echo through the hungry trees. It contained so much pain. She fell against the trunk that had taken her life and if they had stayed they would see her body reduced to bones, like the warriors who had attacked Harn. Cahan thought no good could come of such a sight.

Thankfully, he was not the only one who saw the danger.

“Keep going,” said Furin, “and be careful, Cahan has warned us of the danger in these trees. They saved us, but they do not love us.” There was no argument, no outcry; the villagers of Harn walked on. Too tired to do anything else, too worn by battle and death and the horror that had been brought into their lives.

“You told me this was coming,” He said it softly, and the Reborn Nahac turned to him, an eyebrow raised in question. “‘I can sense death, Cahan Du-Nahere and it is drawn to you.’ That is what you told me. You warned me and I did not listen.”

“You cannot run from the dead, Cowl-Rai,” she said.

“Do not call me that.”

“It is what you are.” She nodded at the villagers. “In yourself and in their eyes.”

“You are not to call me it.” She shrugged, as if it made little difference to her what he was called. “So many dead because of me.”

“Put your self-pity aside,” she said, “they would all have died without you. There has been Treefall. With the death of the great cloudtree, so would come death to this village; the Rai would never let some Woodedge villagers enjoy such riches.” What she said was true, but it did not make him feel any better. “Think on how you will pay your debt to us. You promised us death, we expect it.”

The journey through the silent, hungering wood was one of misery, and it followed them into Woodedge, where once more the forest sprang into life and noise.

Tiny flying creatures gathered in clouds, biting at any exposed skin. The bites were painful, the itching afterwards worse and Cahan’s instruction not to slap at the creatures was poorly received. He felt his anger and frustration rise, even as his strength began to return. How could these people have lived so near Harnwood and Wyrdwood and not know the most basic rules of the forest? Harm not and remain unharmed. Their lives depended on the forest accepting them. Even away from the hungry wood it felt as though the forest still thirsted for their lives. Every vine and bush they passed thorned, and the littercrawlers, always an annoyance, were more aggressive than he had ever known them. Only the Reborn remained untouched, even the simplest of creatures knew to stay away from them.

Every step they took increased the misery of the villagers. When they stopped at a clearing, infested with the small biting creatures, he took Furin to one side.

“Are they all as miserable as I am?” he said. Furin nodded, put her hand on the top of his arm, the warmth of her contact a shock.

“They are, and frightened. It is turning to anger in some of them; they blame Ont for convincing them to stay in the village and not leaving when you told them they should.” She looked over his shoulder, at the villagers. “They are not wrong to.”

“He only told them what they all wanted to hear.”

“It could lead to violence, Cahan.” He closed his eyes at her words, tried to find clarity in his tired mind.

“We should kill those who will not serve the Cowl-Rai,” said Nahac. Cahan pretended not to hear.

“Is there anything else?” he asked. The Leoric pushed hair from her face, the white make-up on her skin beginning to flake away.

“Some talk of going back.”

“Fools,” said Nahac.

“All are not as you,” said the Leoric, words sharp, and she turned back to Cahan. “You would do well to have your warriors remember that. And they are not like you either, Cahan. These people do not know the forest, they are not used to this sort of hardship.” She spoke more gently. “Leading is not simply about fighting. It is about bringing people together, helping them find strength.”

“I am not their leader, you are,” he told her.

“I was Leoric of Harn but Harn is gone. Give me a village to run and I will run it. But here,” she grimaced as one of the flying things bit her cheek, managed not to slap at it, “well, here I am as miserable as anyone else. This is your domain.” And my doing, he thought, though she was kind enough not to say it.

“I do not know people.” He looked around. “I know wood, and forests, and crownheads.”

“Then you will need to get to know people,” said the Leoric, she squeezed his arm. Their eyes met and he looked away, then Furin left to go to where the hunter, Sark, was sharing out dried meats.

“Make them part of this.” Cahan turned to find it was Ont speaking to him, the big man somehow shrunken by his experience of war even though the butcher loomed over him, gesturing towards the trees and thick underbrush. “I saw you when you came to Harn, you always looked lost.” Cahan studied Ont. Taking in how violence, and learning the truth about the Rai, had changed him, though Cahan still did not feel like he could trust the butcher. “That is how these people feel now, lost.”

“I wish Udinny were here.” He did not know why he said that, least of all to Ont. Udinny would no doubt have told him it was Ranya showing him the path. Udinny said that about everything. Then she would say something that both amused him and made him feel foolish, but that was gone now. She was gone.

“Udinny gave her life, to save us, Cahan.” The forester nodded at the butcher’s words; pain stole his voice. “Her god, your god,” Ont spoke hesitantly, “they asked that of her and she obeyed.” He looked as though this was a puzzle he was struggling to make sense of. “I heard her say, more than once, that Ranya was a kind god but taking her life does not seem…” Cahan tried not to be frustrated with the man, to think about how pleased Udinny would be to hear the butcher’s interest in her god, him of all people. And how impish the monk would have been about it.

“Ranya is kind,” said Cahan but he could not look at Ont as he spoke. “Udinny would tell you that she puts the pieces she needs in the right place, she guides them along the path. What they do when they arrive is up to them.”

“She did not command her to die?” said Ont. Cahan shook his head, almost spoke, almost mentioned the Boughry, the darker, older gods of the wood, but knew it would not help anyone. Not him, Udinny or Ont. But why lie? Would Udinny want that?

“Another made that request of her.” Cahan looked Ont in the face. “Udinny offered herself to the Boughry, the Woodhewn Nobles of the forest.”

“Why?” he said.

“For the Leoric’s boy, Issofur.”

“Her god made her do it?” The look of horror on his face, that someone would walk willingly to creatures that were the nightmares of every villager. The monstrous old gods of Wyrdwood.

“No,” said Cahan. “Ranya asks nothing of anyone. Udinny did it purely to save the boy. And me, I think.” Ont stared at Cahan. “She believed it was right.” The butcher took a breath, nodded and scratched his nose.

“Asks nothing,” he said, “but puts you in a place to do something?”

“Aye, that’s it.” Cahan stood, sighing. It was still an effort, “Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Udinny would have said.” The butcher was about to say more but Venn interrupted.

“Cahan,” said the young trion softly. He turned; they were clothed in the shadows of the trees. “Rai are coming.”

He went to the trion, his steps careful, slow, and took their arm, leading them away from the villagers. “They are all dead, Venn,” he said. The trion shook their head.

“There are more, further out.” Venn knelt, put their hand in the leaf litter. “I could not feel them until they entered the forest you raised.” They looked up. “I can feel nothing else there, it frightens me.”

“How many?” The trion shrugged.

“Not a lot, no more than ten.” They looked away, holding something back.

“And?”

“They have Hetton with them.” Fear in the trion’s voice, and rightly so. Only the Reborn were in a state to face the shock troops of Tarl-an-Gig, devolved into something obscene and almost unstoppable.

“Hetton?” Venn nodded and Cahan looked around, caught Furin’s eye. As she approached he found Nahac of the Reborn and beckoned her over to join them.

“What is it?” said Furin.

“We must move, and we must make all speed.”

“The people are tired, Cahan,” said Furin. “To push them now is to—”

“We did not kill all the Rai, Furin,” he said quietly. “A small force remains. Scouts, probably.” She stared at him.

“My people are in no state to fight.”

“I know.”

You need me.

Cahan took a deep breath. Looked around the clearing, the villagers had gathered in small groups, huddling together for warmth because he had forbidden them fire, the forest hated fire. Breath hung in clouds around them.

“Where are the Forestals?”

“Gone,” said Venn.

“Where?” They shrugged.

“Just gone. They walked away and then they were gone.”

Cahan hissed through his teeth. He thought that maybe fighting alongside Ania had given them some bond, but it was clearly not so. She had been forced back to Harn, fought because she had to and now she had left them, was that his fault. Cahan had asked about how her people made shields that saved Harn from rai fire, but she had quickly changed the subject. He could not blame her for keeping secrets, but it annoyed him nonetheless. He reached into his pocket and took out the walknut, the direction finder given to him by Tall Sera, the leader of the Forestals. He took Venn’s hand and put the walknut in it.

“You know how this works. You and Furin, take the people North. If I have not caught up with you by the time you reach the edge of Wyrdwood, then wait. The Forestals will find you I am sure. Ask them for help.” Venn looked at the shiny nut. Furin nodded.

“What will you do?” said Venn.

“Take the Reborn, stop the Rai following us.”

“Why?” they said.

“Because they will tell others where we go.” He looked up. “And then they will come after us.”

”Even to Wyrdwood?”

”Even there.”

“But Cahan,” said Venn. “You are still weak.”

“I will ask the trees to lend me power,” he said.

He knew it was a lie, but he also had an idea though it was not one he wished to share.

You need me.

There was a creature native to Tilt called a nettile, a type of very small gasmaw that hung in the air, and from within its body it spun a single string of the very finest silk. The nettile used it to catch the small flying creatures that buzzed around rooms, looking for food or sweat to feed upon. Such creatures brought disease, and nuisance, and sometimes bit, leaving great welts upon the skin that lasted for days. So nettiles were encouraged throughout Tilt, from the smallest hovel in the reaches of the spires to the grandest halls in the low levels. And if sometimes a person was to walk into a nettile thread, and feel a shiver as if a hand reached out for them from beyond death, well, that was a small price to pay to keep away the flyers.

For over a week, a flyer had buzzed around the rooms of Saradis, Skua-Rai of Tarl-an-Gig. Despite there being numerous nettiles floating around near the ceiling the creature remained annoyingly uncaught. It zipped and flew and twisted through the air. And though it annoyed her, and bit her on the cheek leaving a welt she had to cover with an even thicker layer of make-up than was usual, in some ways she found herself feeling admiration for it, a certain sense of kinship. The flyer was only kept alive through its own senses and speed, while all around it waited traps and certain death.

Very like her position. A woman without a cowl surrounded by those with them. Each and every interaction with those in power here was fraught with danger; they could burn her with a thought, drown her for their own amusement or, more likely, out of spite.

Like the flyer, she twisted and turned and span and survived.

And just like the flyer, she also bit.

Saradis. Skua-Rai, high priest of all Crua, or most of it, fought her wars with documents and in meeting rooms, armed with knowledge that made the Rai fear her despite her lack of a cowl. The Cowl-Rai listened when she advised who to send to war, and through her Saradis controlled the shrines of Tarl-an-Gig where the people came to give of themselves to the god, and through that, to give power to the Rai. Each citizen sacrificing a little of their lives to power the cowls of the rai.

So if you did not respect the power of Saradis, high priest of the god Tarl-an-Gig, you did not feed the thing within you.

Or maybe some other fate would befall you.

The kind of fate that can only befall the Rai, those things known by them but never spoken about. Saradis was not the sort of woman who was slow to use her weapons; fear was a tool and she believed it was good to use your tools, to keep in practice. The dullers, that blocked the power of the Rai, and the Hetton, who killed with a single-minded obsession, answered only to her.

Then there was her god, the true god, Zorir, the coming fire. Worshipped in secret and always growing in power, and with their growth came her own. She would burn this world with cleansing flame for Zorir. Once she had thought it might not happen in her lifetime, that she would need to recruit others, but now she was more confident.

Something had changed, her communions with her god had been stronger and all this had happened since they had lost Harn. Something had happened there when the weakling Cahan Du-Nahere had surprised them all by becoming. It infuriated her, but maybe it had been meant to be? Maybe this was planned all along.

She did not know. All she knew was that she was closer, closer than ever.

The flyer