Page 134 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

“You see?” I said angrily. “Uncle indeed. I’m no mere scrabbling human deluding herself with heroic ideas. Your sister’s blood runs in our veins.”

The words were like an incantation. Above, the sky cracked open like thunder. The air shifted violently, cold and angry, and without even turning around I knew that Kilraith was flying toward us. I heard Ankaret’s distant scream. A shock wave of heat rushed past us, nearly knocking me off my feet.

Jaetris was staring at me. Awareness flashed in his gold eyes.

Behind me, Talan growled a warning.

“Whatever you’re doing to do, Ashbourne, do it fast,” Nesset barked.

“We canhelpyou,” I insisted desperately, fighting not to look back over my shoulder. “If you only tell us where it is, we can destroy it.” I bit back my many teeming doubts.Maybewe could destroy it. But it would do no good to admit to him, or to myself, how desperate a hope that was.

A shell of air pulled tight around Jaetris and me. He closed his eyes, his mouth twisting, and then there was a popping snap, deep in my ears. I tottered as if punched, dizzy, but his wizened old hands held me firm. There was a new steadiness in his golden eyes.

“You will have to kill me to get it, child,” he said, his voice thin but firm. “This body must be destroyed. Do not fear. I am more than this form and will come back, though I cannot say when or how. Do you understand?”

No, I wanted to tell him.No, I understand none of this.I was operating on instinct alone, and I felt lightheaded from the loss of blood, but I lied and gasped out, “Yes. I understand.”

“Good. Now, this will hurt. You will live, but you will need much rest afterward. With this body gone, someone needs to know what I know, or else the knowledge will be lost, and I may not rememberit all when I return.” He pulled me close. “You must live, daughter of Kerezen. Live, and leave this place. Destroy the anchor. Take my knowledge and run.”

Then he pressed his bleeding arm to mine and grabbed the back of my head, holding me steady. A searing pain rushed into me where our wounds met, and his fingers were like scorching needles piercing my skull. But as soon as I opened my mouth to scream, the pain was gone, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself standing on a vast northern plain.

Images rushed at me too quickly to decipher. I saw five great stars joining together as one over the snowy landscape. A white explosion, too loud and impossible to be heard by anyone but the gods. It bloomed in silence and tore across the world, and when it cleared, the stars were gone, and the snowy plain was a charred ruin of ice and ash.

My heart thundered wildly. I knew in my bones what I had just seen—the Unmaking, the day on which the gods had died and separated the world of Edyn from the Old Country. The destroyed landscape stretching to the horizon in front of me was part of the brutal Unmade Lands in the farthest north, an unpredictable glacial country where no one dared live.

More images came, flying at me like arrows. Each one stole my breath. From the ruin of the unmade gods careened two gleaming silver comets. They arced over the Unmade Lands in opposite directions and disappeared over the horizon. Somehow I was able to follow them with my mind, both at once. One crashed into the sea south of Aidurra, carving a great canyon into the ocean floor before coming to rest far inside the earth. The crash extinguished its light; it was now a mere shadow, indistinguishable from the cold darkness, seething miserably inside the deepest rock the god Caiathos had ever created. It would take some time for the creature to claw its way back to the living world. For now, it raged unheard in the frigid depths of theocean, where there was no other life. And there it stayed for an age, buried and alone.

The other comet had a softer time of things. It tumbled into the Bay of the Gods on the southwestern coast of Gallinor, and when it hit the water, it didn’t sink or float. It skimmed across the surface like a skipped stone, like glimmering sunlight, and when it came to rest on the shore, it was a twisting, pale thing, a mere wisp of cloud. It pulled itself weakly into a seaside cave, where it became a white flame, shivering in the dark. As it rested in the cavern, the bruised power of all five gods churning in its deepest heart, it discovered it could grow wings, that it could shift and snap like fire, that it could grow monstrously huge if it wanted. It crawled deeper into the cave and discovered a vast network of caverns. Alone, content, it soared over underground lakes, dropping cinders into the black water.

Ankaret.

Her name burned in my mouth, an ember I couldn’t swallow.

And I watched her, Ankaret, as she discovered how to take other forms too—a sleek speckled seal, a cool breeze with no body that whistled through the caves. Her favorite form was that of a young woman, for in the reflection of a dark underground lake, illuminated by her inner light, she could admire the woman’s long hair of sea foam, her delicate bones, the pink starburst scar on her forehead.

And then, on a summer morning bright as diamonds, Ankaret awoke as the woman she had come to adore, remembering nothing else. She was alone in a cave; she was frightened, desperate for sunlight. She walked on shaky legs into the city of Fairhaven. The people who lived there knew at once who she was,whatshe was. Before she even opened her mouth, they fell prostrate at her feet, weeping with thanks and praise, for the gods were dead and they were afraid.

She knelt before them and gently raised each of their anguished faces to the sky.

“You need be afraid no longer,” she told them, her voice spilling across the land like the dawn. And they named her high queen, and when they asked for her name, she told them what it was, though she couldn’t remember who had named her or what her life had been before she crawled out of the seaside caverns. She had forgotten the name Ankaret, had forgotten falling to the ground as a comet, a remnant of the gods’ Unmaking. And she had no memory of the other comet—the other god relic, her other half—who stewed in deep darkness on the other side of the world.

“I am Yvaine Ballantere,” she told them simply, a name she pulled from her newborn heart and knew to be true. “And the gods have chosen me to protect you.”

I would have crashed to my knees then if Jaetris had let me, but he didn’t. He stood beside me, bearded and old but hale, his eyes glinting.

“We’re running out of time,” he said. The burning pressure on my head and arm heightened.

The images that came at me were like illustrations on the pages of a book being flipped too fast for any human mind to absorb. Shadows and storms, lightning and fire. The Crescent of Storms in Vauzanne. The Knotwood in Aidurra.

The Middlemist, and the glittering streets of Mhorghast.

“You understand now, I trust,” said Jaetris tightly. His face was calm but his eyes were desperate.

Impossibly, I did. The information now crammed into my mind was a mess of colors and feelings, but somewhere in that jumble gleamed a polished stone of truth.

“Hide it,” Jaetris breathed, a note of pity in his voice. “Protect it.”

His body was fading, flickering. I grabbed for his arm. “Wait, please! How do I do that?”

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