Page 121 of Heir

Aiz had spent her entire life avoiding death, and now she knew why. Death was pain. Death was blood. Death was as violent and vicious as living. Not a relief but an unending extension of the suffering during life.

How unjust, she thought,that the unfairness of life should carry over. She’d always thought that the veil between worlds meant that the worlds shifted. That the rules changed.

But death didn’t claim her, not yet. A great hand reached out to draw her into a forever night, but an explosion of white blew the darkness away. Aiz awoke to a flicker of light, growing stronger. From the dome of shadow at the center of the cavern, a figure limned in blue approached Aiz.

A soft touch on Aiz’s face. The tenderest voice.

Daughter. You found me.

The figure was hauntingly familiar, the likeness so similar to the contours of stone Aiz had stared at her whole life that it was as if Mother Div had stepped directly from a frozen, broken courtyard in Kegar into this desolate cave. Her skin was moon-pale, her hair brown, her eyes light. Like Aiz had always imagined.

“M-Mother Div?”

She nodded, and Aiz wept, because even though she’d told herself this day would come, she’d not really believed, deep down, that it would.

Aiz. Where is the book?

“Here—” Aiz scrabbled for her pack and pulled out the tome.

Read the first page.

The end of the Ninth Sacred Tale. Aiz knew it in her marrow. She opened the book reverently. She had done it. Aiz bet-Dafra had freed the savior of the Kegari. Not some highborn Hawk. Not one of theTriarchs, who were Mother Div’s own bloodline. A lowly Snipe. A forgotten orphan.

A daughter of the evening star.

She could see nothing of the chamber. Nothing of the Durani who had done this to Mother Div. Only darkness and Mother Div’s glowing blue light.

Aiz turned to the first page. There was one paragraph. She read it by the light of Mother Div’s luminescence.

“Gather, gather and listen well,” Aiz read, “for my voice must not be forgotten. A storyteller came upon a shred of darkness so heavy it tore a void into the fabric of the earth. And instead—instead of turning her back to it, she listened to its tale.”

The story ended. Aiz turned the page, frantic, but the book was now blank.

“Mother Div,” Aiz said. “I swear, your story was here—”

The cleric eased the book from Aiz’s hands.

“Fear not, daughter.” Holy Div’s voice took on a strange resonance, an echo that reverberated off the tight walls of the chamber until it was unbearable. “It lives in me now.”

“Mother Div, please help me understand,” Aiz begged, for whatever was happening was beyond her. “Was that the Ninth Sacred Tale? Was—was the Durani the storyteller?”

Mother Div merely smiled, her skin growing brighter and brighter until her features were no longer discernable.

Then, suddenly, many things happened at once.

The light in the chamber faded, transforming Mother Div into a gray shadow—one that shot toward the crumpled figure of the Durani, who rocked back and forth behind Aiz. The shadow tore the woman to bloody shreds, her body parts scattering across the chamber, a hellish harvest. Aiz gasped and tried to skitter backward. The pain in her leg was so bad she could barely crawl. Behind her, Mother Div held theDurani’s heart in her hand, throbbing and lit with an unholy glow.

“Ahhhh,” Holy Div sighed, as if consuming a delectable meal. She dropped the heart, now an empty husk of a thing, and turned her burning gaze to Tregan, bucking in terror at the entrance to the chamber.

Tregan!The mare should have been long gone by now, with Ruh on her back. She scanned the chamber for the child. She couldn’t tell if he’d escaped or been caught in the blast. She crawled toward her horse. But Mother Div was faster.

Tregan’s eyes rolled back in her head in terror. Then Aiz’s steadfast companion these many months became nothing but a bloody pulp, her great glistening heart clutched in Mother Div’s glowing hand. Again, that sigh, obscene and consuming, and the heart’s husk was cast to the floor.

“Human,” Mother Div moaned. “Not animal. I need more.”

She turned from Aiz, sniffing, her white eyes glowing brighter as they fixated on something—someone—beyond Tregan’s scattered viscera.

Ruh. Covered in Tregan’s blood. Frozen by dread as the shadow of Mother Div shot toward him.

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