Gods of the Wyrdwood by RJ Barker

Author:RJ Barker [BARKER, RJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

35

They walked east and he let Udinny take the walknut. She took a childlike satisfaction in throwing it into the air and seeing it come down pointing north each time.

“This feels like I should have it in my hand,” she laughed, throwing it again.

The journey was far easier than the walk that had brought them to the boughry. It felt as if the forest breathed around them, opening up and letting them travel with as little disturbance as possible. The child slept, his breathing soft and regular as he lay on the floating travois. Udinny and Cahan passed across the soft carpet of cloudtree needles in comfortable silence. As they walked, Cahan became more and more certain that they were being followed and indeed, as time passed, their followers began to show themselves. Rootlings, peeking out from bushes then vanishing behind them. Cahan turned to reassure Udinny that he sensed no threat from them, only curiosity, but she had seen the rootlings and was smiling at them.

“They are gentle souls, are they not, Cahan?” she said. He nodded, and they continued onwards followed by a train of rootlings as the light moved across the sky and the forest dimmed. “I see light, ahead,” said the monk, pointing eastward. He looked and could see a faint glimmer, like the moment the light began to emerge but was still well below the horizon.

“A break in the canopy,” said Udinny as they moved through the gloom.

“Seems so,” said Cahan, though this was not the same as the one they had seen before. Where that had been painfully bright, this one was more diffused. Nearer to it, the light was cut and sliced into beams, shooting through the forest. Cahan began to understand what he was seeing. There was something massive and sharp, huge and black, and from a distance it almost appeared furred. Its true size only started to become apparent as they walked on and it barely got any bigger. “Treefall,” he said, more to himself than to Udinny, though she answered, and her voice held all the many colours of wonder.

“I thought, from the base of them I understood the size, but I did not.”

She was right, it was something that defied all logic. Cahan had seen a fallen centre spire, in the city of Storspire; so huge it had brought down two of the outer spires as it fell. When it had happened he did not know, and the spire was little more than a skeleton when he saw it. But still, it had a size that he found difficult to understand. The cloudtrees dwarfed it. Even the tallest spire did not vanish from sight. The true, immense, mind-breaking size was brought home when they were near enough that they could see the wall of darkwood blocking their path was as tall as ten or eleven people on each other’s shoulders. From it sprouted smaller, though still massive, branches.

“It is huge, Cahan,” shouted Udinny and she began to run towards it.

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