A faint silver net like a tracery of glowing spider webs lifted from his skin and healed the scrapes and cuts from his climb, and tingling at the edges of his heightened senses he knew he’d been spotted, felt the vibrations of approaching feet.
Smiling, Crys rose fluidly and faced the oncoming audience. They were backlit by torchlight but he identified the Seer-Mother and the Warlord among a bevy of guards.
‘Who do you think you are? My guards—’ Tanik began and they stepped forward, hands tight on their spears.
Crys gestured. ‘I am the Two-Eyed Man. I am the Trickster. I climbed the tor to my birthplace and I sat here and felt the world move through this place and I felt the rift in it, the jagged edges where the people here have lost their faith because they honour you instead of the gods. Because they have forgotten the Light. I have come to restore their belief, and I have come to prepare you for war.’
‘You have no idea what you say,’ the Seer-Mother tried, rattling her beads and strings of bird bones and teeth as she flailed a hand in dismissal. ‘The magic is strong here; we are strong. And war? You have no comprehension of our world.’
‘There is no magic,’ Crys contradicted her. ‘There used to be sacred spirit, there used to be faith and the joy of the shared dream, but those have been destroyed by your lies about magic, and about how only you can wield it. It isn’t magic these people need; it is the gods. Gods you have cut them off from by making of yourself a barrier. Absorbing their worship as though it is yours by right, instead of the gods’.’
The Seer-Mother broke into loud discord, shivering the night, and Crys slashed his hand through her words and stilled her. There were murmurs of consternation. ‘And I understand that if Rilpor is not saved, the Mireces will come for you next. I understand that they will break you, enslave you, kill your children. I understand that if we work together now, fight together now, we can prevent both our countries from falling under the sway of the Red Gods. I ask you to renounce your lies of magic and mystery and restore these people to their true and proper faith. With our help, Seer-Mother, Krike will be strong again, her people and warriors steady in their faith.’
‘I am the Seer-Mother,’ the woman said, thumping the butt of her ornate staff on to the stone, ‘and I see nothing of the sort! No coming war, and no god before me. It is you who lies.’
Her words were as the screeching of magpies in his ears. ‘Have your people climb the Cunning Way at first light, as many as can fit up here, faithful and dissenters alike. By noon tomorrow I will show them all both who I am and who they can be.’ He spread his arms. ‘I will see you in dream.’
Crys sat and watched the dawn, the slow birth of colour across Gilgoras’s sleeping hide, the joyful burst of birds into the pink and peach and golden sky. The sun kissed him and the stone on which he sat, warming his naked chest and back, and inside the Fox God stretched and slid in lazy contentment, as though oblivious of what was to come or the guards who’d stood in a ring around him all night. Or perhaps He was just enjoying the peace while it lasted.
It didn’t last long. A growing clamour heralded a crowd ascending the Cunning Way: either Cutta and Ash had convinced the people, or the Seer-Mother had sent out the proclamation as he’d asked, intent on as many as possible witnessing his humiliation. If the latter, she clearly had some plan in place, one he suspected he wouldn’t like much.
The stone was beginning to warm beneath him now and he stretched, shoulders popping, and then stood. The crowd was growing, spilling from the path and taking up position all around him, his guards shifting with unease at being so outnumbered. There was an excited buzz of voices as men and women jostled for a good vantage until a gap opened in their ranks and the Warlord and the Seer-Mother approached. Four guards carried a litter in which Dom lay, looking even worse than he had when Crys left him, and three more warriors escorted a grim-faced Ash. His expression didn’t lighten when he saw Crys. Cutta Frog-dream and her warriors were there, too; she gave him a tight nod, no doubt hoping her faith in him wasn’t misplaced.
Tanik Horse-dream pushed through the ring of guards around Crys and then gestured them away, despite their reluctance. She raised her arms, the staff gripped tight in her hand. ‘People of Krike, loyal sons and daughters of the gods, you are here because a challenge has been made to our very way of life. A lie has been spread about our faith, about the lives we lead here in Krike at the very birthplace of our Lord Trickster. This man’ – Tanik swept her staff behind her; Crys leant out of its path – ‘claims to be the Great Trickster Himself. And so you are gathered here to witness this man, Crys Tailorson of Rilpor, attempt to prove himself a god. Our god! He seeks to convince you of this claim to control you, to draw you into a war in a foreign land. A war we have already refused to enter. He will manipulate you – but he will fail.’
As introductions went, it could’ve been better, but Crys could see that most of the witnesses still seemed excited, and the Fox God thrummed with mocking amusement at the woman’s clumsy attempts to steer the crowd.
‘The man Crys Tailorson’s test will take place in the dream world,’ Tanik shouted. ‘I will take him through the soul-dream, and there he will be revealed as his true and irrefutable self.’
It was a nice touch, the repetition of ‘man’, a subtle reinforcement in the minds of the onlookers that he was a fraud. But Tanik’s plan placed all the power with her, and that was unacceptable.
‘No.’ The tor sang beneath his feet; his chest and thighs buzzed with energy. ‘No. We will all go. Every one of us gathered here will soul-dream together. Then all will know first-hand who I am and what I am. It will prevent … misinterpretation of events.’
He heard Ash snort.
‘The journey is taxing,’ Tanik said, her reluctance at the admission clear. ‘Only one can be guided at any time.’
Crys nodded. ‘By you, perhaps,’ he said, and though his words weren’t loud, they carried across the stillness of the tor. The Seer-Mother flushed. ‘I can take us all. I can show every man, woman and child here present the future, the past, and everything in between.’
‘This is not a Rilporian custom. Have you soul-dreamt before?’ the Warlord asked before Tanik could dismiss his words. ‘No? Then how will you perform such a feat with no training, no experience?’
‘I am the Fox God. I live in dreams. Sit.’ He settled himself back on the rock cross-legged, early sun gilding his shoulders and hair and sparkling in the silver scars, and he waited in silence. He could feel the Trickster laughing, bubbles bursting inside him. Hesitantly, looking to each other for support, for permission, the hundreds of people crammed on to the summit copied him until only the Seer-Mother was left standing.
‘Well?’ Crys asked her. ‘Do you wish to journey with me?’
She looked across the crowd, face impassive, and then she sat, rattling the necklace of bear teeth hanging to her navel. ‘We come now to the start of your journey,’ she began, her voice deep and sonorous, ‘and I will—’
‘Everyone close your eyes,’ Crys cut in, ‘and listen to my voice.’ Tanik’s stare burnt him but he returned it with equanimity and one by one the crowd closed their eyes. Ash’s shut last, suspicious.
‘I ask that you all take my path to the dream. The fox-path, through the undergrowth and across the fields and into the woods. See now before you a forest of oaks and chestnuts, birch and ash. Birdsong among bright branches, small glades of wildflowers and lush grass. A soft breeze dappling the forest floor with leaf-light, the laughter of the Dancer on the air, careless as butterflies. Listen to my voice …’
The forest was sunny and warm, bursting with life. Crys had never been here before, and yet it was home – bone-deep, soul-heavy home, a sense of rightness and contentment. A place of peace.
He looked around in awe; every animal around him was a man, woman or child of Krike. A tall roan mare – Tanik Horse-dream – and a white-furred fox – the Warlord, Brid Fox-dream – stood closest, while a multitude of a
nimals ranged behind them. A wave of wonder flowed from them as they saw each other, as they recognised kin and enemies and friends and lovers. As they saw each other’s soul animal for the first time.
Crys glanced down at dark paws tipped with sharp black claws, flicked new muscles and felt his thick, brushy tail sweep the leaf-litter behind. He laughed at Ash, an astonished-looking otter and certainly not the noble wolf he had imagined, and then swallowed his laughter when he found Dom. The calestar’s form wavered and writhed from eagle into adder and back again, as though his soul had been broken and re-formed in a new guise and didn’t know what it should be any more, its pieces jammed back together by a blind man who little cared for the outcome.
But he wasn’t here for Dom. Not yet.
‘You see me,’ he said clearly despite his fox-muzzle. ‘You see what I am. Not a fox; the Fox. You see my eyes are the same: one blue and one brown. You know what that means. You see yourselves, here in the shapes your souls take, here where I have brought you. You see there can be no doubt. I am the Fox God. I am the Trickster.’
‘We see no such thing,’ Tanik said, her ears pinned back. ‘So you are a fox. Our Warlord is a winter fox. Many of our people are foxes. This is not proof.’
‘I brought each of you here as effortlessly as lighting a candle. Those who had not soul-dreamt are here with us, without thought, without struggle. I—’
‘This is not proof,’ Tanik repeated, her tail flicking and her front hoof gouging at the earth; sparks flared up when she struck the ground. Fire in the dreamworld. Crys looked at Dom and saw him, as the adder, uncoil and move towards Tanik. Ash’s otter pounced on him and held him still but that, more than anything, told Crys who he was facing.
His ears pinned back in unconscious response; he forced them upright again.
‘You bring us to a place we know intimately, that we learn of in our legends and histories, that we visit in ritual, and you say it is some great thing. This is home to us; of course we can visit it with ease.’
There was no more time for talking. Tanik the horse leapt, lashing out with hooves that sparked red fire, her teeth bared. Crys twisted up and left and he bit Tanik’s haunch as he skidded past. And then the Fox God blazed into life like a lightning-struck oak and Crys’s consciousness was thrust backwards in his own mind so that he was as much observer as any of the souls gathered there.
The Fox God changed shape, becoming a horse to match Tanik but several hands taller. She reared and kicked; he pranced sideways and with a single raking blow of a front hoof cut her shoulder to the bone. She screamed and submitted.
And then He was a fox again, fox-sized. And then an eagle, flitting up into the canopy; a hawk; a swallow; a stag; a hedgehog. Blazing with silver light, the Fox God became the shape of every spirit animal there gathered, appearing next to another of that kind, not to dominate this time, but to touch, fur to fur and claw to claw. Drawing them to Him. Binding with love, not fear.
It took only seconds before He was back in His fox-shape once more and slinking to the front of the group. He leapt lightly into the clearing, and an instant later Tanik’s hooves slammed down on to His ribs and back and her teeth tore at His neck. No pause, no breath to think, just impact and red blood and pain.
Deep inside, Crys cried out, fury mingled with terror, and shoved forward, lending the Fox God his strength, his will. And the Fox God retreated a little and Crys surged into the space and now they moved as one, one breath, one being, one will, changing shape swifter than thought – a wren to slip below a slashing hoof, an adder to strike at a muzzle, an eel to slip from between yellow teeth and finally, with a shout loud enough to cow every animal there, He was Crys again, the shape of a man in this place where animals ruled. Not a hunter or trapper, not one who came to tame and pillage the land but a man attuned to the rhythms and seasons of life, who took only what was needed to live.
The Two-Eyed Man, one foot in the wild, one in the city.
With a sweep of one arm he haltered Tanik, the rope in his hands glowing silver as spun moonlight. She fell still, flanks heaving and eyes rolling, but quiet.
‘I am the Fox God, the Great Trickster, shifter of shapes and teacher of the cunning ways. I am Crys Tailorson, soldier, heart-bound to Ash Bowman. I have never lied about who I am, about what I am, not since my awakening and never again. Do you accept me?’
All of the animals gathered in the clearing of that sunlit glade, deep inside their own souls and joined for this one perfect moment with the souls of their kin and their god, cried out their faith and lay down, pressing beaks and muzzles to the soft earth.
All except one. Tanik did not – would not – submit.
The sun was poised overhead when Crys blinked and found himself on the tor again, his legs numb from sitting so long, his mouth dry and foul-tasting. Weariness weighed on his shoulders like a pair of anvils, and whatever strength he’d expended in the soul-dream, not even the Fox God could replenish it.
Stiffly, he stretched out his legs and sat through the fire of pins and needles, watching the faces of the gathered as one by one they returned to themselves. Some wept, many laughed and talked excitedly, and those who had met a kindred spirit animal sought each other out, the sense of family acute in the bright morning.
Crys pushed himself to his feet and breathed deep, toes gripping the stone beneath him. He heard Ash gasp and looked over, saw the archer’s mouth hanging open in shock. Ash patted his own shoulders and Crys glanced down, away, and back again in surprise.
Curled and looped and swirled over his shoulders and down as far as his elbows was a vine-like tracery of red lines amid his silver scars, a plaiting of silver and red-gold, a pattern that was both perfectly comprehensible and a ravelled mystery depending on whose eyes he examined it through. The patterns curled across his collarbones and chest, and he knew instinctively that they slid down his back between his shoulder blades, a mane of russet and silver. Scar and divinity, inextricable.
He looked back at Ash, saw the archer lick his lips and nod his appreciation, felt a grin tug at the corner of his mouth. We still pretty, Foxy?
Amusement bubbled up. Prettier.
Crys laughed and spread his arms wide as Tanik and Brid made it to their feet. ‘Children of Light, followers of the Fox God and kin of Krike, welcome. There is much to be done in the coming days and months. Find your priests, relearn the rituals and the stories from your old folk, remember your ways. Tanik Horse-dream is no seer. She is not beloved of the gods’ – he met her hateful gaze – ‘or, at least, not of your gods. Put your faith in the land and each other, in your priests and the Dancer and the Great Trickster. Be Krikite again, dream again, as your hearts dictate.’
The Seer-Mother leapt forward, hand going into her robes and coming out with a long black knife with a serrated blade.
‘Liar!’ she screeched. ‘Traitor!’ She shoved past the hesitating guards and rammed her blade into Crys’s gut up to the hilt. ‘Liar!’ she spat again as the crowd stilled, silent and stunned at the ferocity of the violence, its unexpectedness where the rest of them were so filled with elation.
‘God, not liar,’ Crys replied over the sudden beat of blood in his ears and its hot liquid rush down into his waistband. The pain was exquisite, flooding every part of him, bright and beautiful and agonising. Dark with threat. Red with promise. His knees buckled and he locked them before he could fall. His hand brushed Tanik aside, gently, and then he dragged the knife from his belly and gave it back to her.
Light flared and the wound healed, the blood ceased to flow and the pierced organs knitted themselves back together. The woman stumbled back, dumbstruck.
‘No!’ she screamed and slashed him from throat to navel.
He had a second to wonder what exactly the guards were being paid for, and then scorching, nauseating hurt washed his body and his insides were threatening to become his outsides. He ground his teeth against the scream, hands pressing the mouth of the wound together, muscles tigh
t against agony that demanded he break. He didn’t.
‘I speak the truth,’ he gasped over Ash’s shouted threats and there was more silver light. His ribs vanished; his intestines retreated. He healed. Didn’t matter that he was whole; shock threatened to dump him on the stone anyway and his blood was hot and sticky as it soaked into the wool of his trousers and slid all the way down to his boots. The wound was gone but the pain, and its bright, searing memory, loomed large in his shuddering body.
‘I am sorry that you have been brought to this,’ he said, to everyone’s surprise including his own. ‘You reap what you sow.’ Sweat sheeted his body and stung his eyes.
Tanik readied her knife again but then the Warlord was wrestling the blade from her and Crys clearly heard the snap of a finger as he wrenched it away. Could’ve done that a while back, you know. Would’ve really made my day, not seeing my own bladder outlined by the sun.
He swallowed a manic giggle.
The Seer-Mother shrieked, spitting like a cat. There were other acolytes, there were Tanik’s personal guards and her brother Pesh, who Crys couldn’t see but who rarely left her side, but none of them moved except to kneel. Like a wave on a shore, from the front ranks to the rear, the people of Krike knelt as they had in the forest, though this time in their mortal skins. Ash hesitated a second, wanting to be ready to dash to Crys’s aid, but then he too dropped to one knee.
‘I am the Fox God,’ Crys said, his voice only a little stronger than his wobbling knees, but his will stronger than both. ‘I do not ask you to worship power, as Tanik did. I do not ask you to worship me. I ask you to think for yourselves, to question what you know and what I am showing you. The Light waits for you; turn your faces to it. Remember who you are and the things you are capable of.’
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