Page 132 of Heir

“How will we beat back your enemies? How will you defeat the false Tel Ilessi, Tiral?” Mother Div entreated.

“We’ll find a way,” Aiz said. “As you found a way to save our people once before. But not with you feasting on the blood of innocents. If you must take the young, take those who are near death or hungry.”

Aiz shuddered, remembering her own bouts of starvation. She would have welcomed death, if only it would put an end to the gnawing in her belly. Maybe for some, Div would be a welcome release.

A few nights later, the lights of Kegar twinkled ahead of them. Aiz wept at the sight. The air smelled of Spire roses and fire pines. In the north, it was deep winter, but here in Kegar, summer crowned the mountains with the green and pink iceberry shrubs that awoke for only a few months.

“Why cry, child?” Mother Div said as they set down near a mountain creek north of the city. “Did you think you wouldn’t see your home again? When I so diligently guided you?”

“Our home.” Aiz wiped away her tears. Her desire to go to the cloister, to see if Noa and Olnas and Cero still lived, overwhelmed her.

“You miss your friends.” Mother Div gathered wood for a fire.

Sometimes, it was like this between them. Aiz had but to think something and Mother Div would pick up on it. Aiz wondered if mothers and daughters were similar. Mother Div had three children herself, long ago. Perhaps she would see them in the faces of their descendants, the Triarchs.

“I tried to reach out to Cero before we reached Nur, when I still had the aaj,” Aiz said. “But he’s forgotten me, perhaps.”

“Is he the kind to ignore you if you need him?”

Aiz didn’t used to think so. But after weeks of silence, she wasn’t sure.

“He didn’t want me to return to Kegar,” Aiz said as Mother Div lit a fire with a snap of her fingers. “But—but perhaps I could see him before I face Tiral. Talk over the plan with him.”

“It was not Cero who survived the Tribal Lands,” Mother Div reminded her. “Nor Cero who freed me. You do not need him, Aiz. Whatever you require, we will do together.”

But Div’s efforts cost her energy. And there was only one way to fill that deep well.

“You do not wish for me to take sacrifices from among the people.” Div paced around the clearing. “But they should be glad to lay down their lives for their Holy Cleric, their Mother, for the Vessel of the Fount.”

“It is one thing to take from among foreign populations, Div,” Aiz said. “I mourn the innocent, but they are not my people. Their leaders have long known the Kegari are starving and done nothing to aid us. Idoknow our people. They have suffered enough.”

Mother Div nodded, but Aiz caught a flash of a feral hunger in her eyes. It was gone in an instant, but Aiz marked it. She could not have Mother Div losing control amid the coming battle.

Aiz tightened her mental fist on Mother Div’s leash. The cleric resisted, ever so briefly, before capitulating.

“It is for the best, Mother Div,” she said. “Trust me. Now come. Sit. You can mindsmith, yes? Enter dreams? Let us see how far your skill reaches.”

Four days later, Aiz was ready.

It was a bright, clear day. Still cold, for Kegar was never truly warm, not even on the first day of summer. But beautiful. A day of promise. A day of death.

Mother Div had brought Aiz much information since they’d arrived in Kegar. Dafra cloister was burned to cinders, its clergy scattered. But Olnas, Noa, and many of the other clerics and orphans had taken shelter in Dafra slum’s abandoned houses.

Tiral’s reign as Tel Ilessi was troubled. The late spring raids had gone badly. The villages of Bula banded against the Kegari, burning their own fields and choking the skies with smoke. Most of the Snipes were starving and even the Sparrows, generally better-off than their slum-dwelling peers, were going hungry. Tiral had purged Dafra slum, killing entire streets of people for defying his rule.

“The people are ready to cast out their false Tel Ilessi,” Mother Div said as the day of the Summer Rites dawned. “More so now for the dreams I gave them of better days ahead.”

Aiz smiled. It had been her idea for Mother Div to use her mindsmithing to scatter hope among the Snipes. Visions of the Return—and of Aiz leading them.

Aiz rose into the sky, Mother Div at her side, and surveyed the Kegari capital. Thousands would gather in the Aerie’s airfield to hear High Cleric Dovan recite the Nine Sacred Tales, and to entreat Mother Div to bless her people in the warm months.

Aiz buzzed with anticipation—and resolve. Today, her people would be free from the false Tel Ilessi and the lies of the Triarchy. Today, they wouldn’t just receive the blessing of Mother Div. They would behold Mother Div’s power through Aiz herself.

She had chosen her clothing carefully—casting aside the embroidered linens and leathers of the Tribes for the ragged gray dress of a Snipe. She wanted the people to know she was one of them. That she had not forgotten them.

Aiz heard the crowd before she saw them, the hum of tens of thousands of voices coming from the sprawling fields around the Aerie. A wide, high dais draped in blue silk rose a dozen feet above the people. TheTriarchs—pale-faced Oona, curly-haired Ghaz, and gimlet-eyed Hiwa—listened from their thrones, faces impassive as High Cleric Dovan completed the Eighth Sacred Tale.

On a throne positioned above them, Tiral watched, the sun shining on his blond hair. His blue-clad pilots stood in neat rows to one side of the dais. Aiz tried and failed to spot Cero among them.

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