Chapter 33

33

Aiz

Even as Aiz realized where Mother Div's spirit was, and that it must be a Durani who was keeping the cleric captive, the wall of sand roaring toward her and Ruh finally hit. It ripped at the wagons, pulled stakes from the ground, sent lanterns flying.

But Aiz did not care, because she knew from the way her blood tingled that Mother Div was close.

"Where is Tregan?" she called to Ruh.

"In the pen! Oh—" Ruh's eyes went wide at the man striding purposefully through the dust toward them. Elias.

Aiz grabbed the wind and shoved it at him, a wall that knocked him off his feet.

"Thank you, Ruh!" She took his shoulders, drawing his gaze even as he tried to see what had happened to his father. "Go to your ama's wagon! Get safe!"

The livestock pen wasn't far. As Aiz approached, Tribespeople were pulling the frightened horses from the pen and picketing them between the wagons to protect them from the storm. Everyone had their heads down. Faces covered.

No one looked at her. The stars were blocked by the dust. Aiz could barely see her hand in front of her face. If she was willing to ride without a saddle, she could get out of here and no one would be the wiser. The pen was on the southern edge of the encampment.

But where would she go? Where was Holy Div being held in that maze of spires and ravines and canyons?

Mother Div , she called out. I know you are angry and weakened. Forgive me. But I am close. Guide me. Tell me where to go.

Silence. And then a suggestion of a whisper. North. Toward the tallest pinnacle.

Aiz searched the remaining beasts for Tregan's brown coat. Someone—Tas, she thought—gestured at her, but Aiz ignored him and grabbed Tregan's bridle, leading her out of the pen.

Aiz swept the wind away from them. A lamp flared—one of the sentries trying to get her attention.

But they had to contend with the storm, and Aiz did not. She called her power to her, and whether it was because Mother Div was near, or she had finally learned the discipline to control it, the wind came, bending to her will like her own body. She cleared the dust from her and Tregan's faces, and opened a path through the storm.

I have more to give , Mother Div said. Come, Aiz bet-Dafra. Find me.

Ilar! Ilar! The wind called the name she'd chosen, and she remembered months ago when she'd fallen from the Aerie, hearing it just like that, screaming: Aiz! Aiz!

A small hand slipped into hers. Aiz's wind failed.

"Ilar! Why didn't you wait for me?"

"Ruh, go back to your family's wagon. It's not safe." The wind clawed at them, and Ruh's little body shook from the cold, but he didn't budge.

"I put a pillow in my bed. Sufiyan won't even notice! He never does. You're going to find her, aren't you? Mother Div. I'm going with you. You trusted me to help you hunt this story, Ilar. Trust me now."

"The wind—"

"You speak to the wind. I've seen you!"

Damn the child, but he was too observant. Aiz was gripped by urgency. Something huge flew past them—a tent or part of a wagon. Aiz couldn't tell.

"If you send me away, I'll follow! I want to meet her, Ilar. Mother Div— I feel— I feel like I've been waiting for her for a long time."

He held on to her though she tried to shake him off. He was surprisingly strong.

Tears streamed down Aiz's face, the wind whipping them away. The storm would pass. When it did, Elias would find her, and she doubted he'd be merciful enough to leave her alive this time. She had to leave.

"Fine!" she shouted over the wind. "But you must promise to do exactly as I say. No questions. No stories. Keep quiet and follow my lead. We've no idea what's out here and we must move carefully."

"I promise!"

Follow the wind, daughter of Kegar. Holy Div spoke in Aiz's mind, eager. Hopeful. Let it bring you to me.

Aiz pulled Ruh onto Tregan in front of her. They wound their way down an embankment, across an empty streambed, and through a broad swath of empty desert. The wind shoved Aiz forward, working in her favor, and she used only a little of her smithing to keep the way ahead clear of sand.

Far in the distance, a huge spire that reminded Aiz of home jutted like a broken finger into the sky.

Yes , Div whispered. Come.

As they approached the spire, Tregan shied back, whinnying nervously.

"It's okay, girl," Aiz whispered, rubbing the beast's neck. "Be brave for me."

Tregan continued reluctantly, and almost as soon as they reached the base of the spire, Ruh pointed to what looked at first like a shadow in the rock. When they got closer, it glowed an eldritch blue, like the belly of a cloud lit by a storm.

A hole in the desert that leads to the sky…

"It's a gate," Ruh whispered, which was when Aiz realized that she could hear his whisper.

The wind had stopped.

Aiz approached the gate warily, the clip-clop of Tregan's hooves suddenly too loud. As they neared it, a sliver of moon broke through the clouds long enough that Aiz made out a rocky trail winding into the dark.

Tregan picked her way forward for a quarter mile, until the rocks overhead narrowed and joined, transforming the trail into a tunnel. They should have been left in pitch darkness. But the walls glimmered, veined with a luminescent blue ore. The ceiling was carved with intricate symbols that Aiz couldn't quite make out. They seemed to writhe, as if in pain.

"Is that Sadhese, Ruh?"

The child looked up, the blue light reflecting off the silver of his irises. "I've never seen that language before. Ilar— This place doesn't feel right."

"I think— Ruh, I think a Durani has trapped Mother Div's spirit here," Aiz whispered. "We must free her. Like the heroes in your stories would."

The tunnel widened into a carved gate. It was decorated with images instead of runes, and Aiz flinched. Carved fire licked up the sides of the red stone columns, and screaming faces—of animals and humans—emerged from the flames, so real that she covered Ruh's eyes lest those tortured visages haunt his nightmares.

When they were safely past, Aiz began to shiver, a deep shuddering that had Ruh—apparently unaffected—turning in alarm.

Aiz felt as if they'd entered another world with less air, less life, less hope. A void that sank into her bones, hostile. She'd felt this way before: when she was fourteen and first learning to control her windsmithing. She'd lost control of a Sail and spiraled to the earth, the wind an enemy. Her ears popped from the pressure, her stomach was in her throat, and as the ground approached, she'd blacked out.

It was Cero who found her, his face stark white, tears streaming down his cheeks as he called her name, his throat raw.

"Onward, Ilar," Ruh whispered, bringing her back to the cave. "Look. Light."

Aiz dismounted, Tregan's lead in one hand and Ruh's fingers in the other. The child guided her forward, and Aiz became aware of her heartbeat, louder and louder with each step.

But it was not her heartbeat. As she entered a perfectly round chamber, its ceiling and far wall lost in shadow, the air completely still, Aiz realized the sound—the feeling—was coming from a hole in the center of the room.

The void.

Its pulsing felt oppressive. All-consuming. The stench hit Aiz next, the dust of crushed skulls, the seep of old blood. The floor was covered in the bones of animals and humans, some with scraps of flesh still attached.

"Ruh—" Aiz breathed. "Go. Back the way we came. Take Tregan." Whatever was in here, Aiz would battle it alone.

"Il-Ilar—" The child cowered behind her. "Look."

Deep in the shadows, something stirred.

A skeletal figure emerged out of the darkness, and Aiz was certain it was a specter of some sort. But no. She was flesh and bone—mostly bone—and she wasn't much older than Aiz.

"Hail, sister of shadow," the woman rasped, as if she was trying to remember how to speak. "Do you come to relieve me? I have waited long years, serving our master."

Sister of shadow? This, then, must be a Durani. A chaos storyteller. She thought Aiz was another of her order. When Aiz didn't answer, the girl took a step closer. "Why do you not speak?"

Ruh wept now, terrified. "Ilar, we're not safe—"

"Ah, sacrifices," the girl said. "Bring them closer, sister."

Aiz shook her head. "No." She drew her scim with a shaking hand. "Where is Mother Div? What is this place?"

The Durani looked around at the bone-strewn floor, the blood-brown walls. Her regard settled on the hole in the center of the room, and when she looked back at Aiz, her eyes were pure white.

"This is the home of the first story," she spoke, her voice deeper, guttural. "Elsewhere lives the story of joy and wisdom. But here lies desolation and misery, the only universal tongue, for pain needs no translation."

"Ilar." Ruh pulled at her desperately. "We need to leave!"

"Do you not wish to hear the story?" The girl smiled, a leering rictus. Ruh whimpered. "I thought children loved stories, and you"—she sniffed—"you are steeped with them." The girl lifted her hands to Aiz and stumbled forward as if to embrace her.

"Ah, sister, you have brought our master a great prize. A child of ancient magic."

Aiz grabbed Ruh then, throwing him onto Tregan's back, and slapped the mare hard on the rump, hoping to the Spires that the child would hang on.

Then she whirled to face the Durani. "You will release Mother Div." She lifted her scim. "Or I will destroy you."

The Durani curled her lip. "Who are—"

Aiz attacked, and though the Durani was nimble enough to skitter out of reach, she stumbled, and Aiz nicked her over her heart. It was a tiny wound—no more than a trickle of blood. But the Durani gasped as if Aiz had shoved a scim into her gut.

"No—" she whispered. "You fool!"

Aiz's blood quivered. A wave approached—no, it was here. The void pulled and yanked, compressing into a single point before exploding outward, knocking Aiz to her knees. Pain shot up her thigh, her bones snapping from the force of the blast.

The round chamber, lit before by the strange blue walls, fell dark. Aiz grasped her shattered leg, moaning, and tried to crawl away. The darkness seethed like a churning ocean, the shapes within it terrifying in their immensity.

Death closed in. Then it was upon her; pain burned through flesh, bone, and blood, and her vision went dark.

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 the Triarchs, 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 the Durani'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.

"Ilar, help!"

Not Ruh. Not like this. Mother Div was consumed by bloodlust. Gobbling hearts, tearing that Durani apart. She was locked away too long. Corrupted, somehow.

Aiz dragged herself toward his voice, frantic to reach him. "No, no—" Aiz babbled, incoherent. "Run, Ruh—"

Div was faster. A clatter of bones. A shriek. Mother Div held something small and incandescent. Aiz knew then that sweet Ruh, who only knew villainy from his stories, was gone.

Because of Aiz. Because Aiz had involved him in the hunt for Mother Div's story, her spirit. Because Aiz hadn't had the strength to turn him away. Because Aiz was a damned fool.

The Kegari girl screamed. And screamed. She wanted to die herself. She wanted to be consumed, to not feel this grief, this horror at her own actions. She'd sought out Mother Div. And she'd released her, not understanding that Mother Div was no longer a cleric, but something else entirely.

She crawled through Tregan's remains to Ruh, still whole and perfect but for his heart, shriveled and smoking in his chest.

"Oh—oh no—" Aiz clasped the body to her, voice rising in a shriek. "Ruh—"

Mother Div's voice surrounded Aiz. "Thank you, daughter of Kegar. For freeing me."

Aiz sobbed as she held Ruh's small body. "This isn't freedom," she screamed. "This is murder! You killed him. You—"

"I told you this would not be easy, child. I told you there would be sacrifices."

"But not Ruh," Aiz said. "You never said it would be him! And—and Tregan—"

"All things have a cost, Aiz bet-Dafra." Mother Div's voice hardened. "You agreed to pay it. My imprisonment was the work of the First Durani, a vicious, vengeful woman who used ill sorcery to trap me. She made it a condition of my freedom that to live, to survive in a body, to work magic, I require aid."

"Aid…?" Aiz felt bile clawing up her throat again as she thought of Tregan and Ruh. "The—the hearts."

"It is a foul and ancient magic," Mother Div said, her voice dripping in malice. "But those I take are at peace. They are one with me in the moment that I take them. This child—he did not die in vain. He died that you might succeed."

"You will need more," Aiz said. "More hearts. What of—of animals, could you—"

"Animals are not enough," Mother Div said. "For power—true power—the sacrifices must be human, and pure of heart. You and I are linked. Chained to each other, as surely as Loha links you to a Sail when you fly. I have some freedom, but I am largely bound to your will. I cannot feed unless you allow me to."

Now, finally, Aiz understood what Div meant by sacrifice and her heart quailed at the horror of it. Everything about this was antithetical to what Div stood for. Yet it made a twisted sort of sense that this was what a Durani would do to Div's spirit.

"You ask me to trade lives."

"I ask you to think of the many instead of the few. Let me show you what you will receive in return. Perhaps you do not understand."

Mother Div knelt, and when Aiz cringed back, terrified, the cleric sighed and forced her hands to Aiz's face. Aiz was four again, helpless as her mother was dragged away by soldiers, somehow knowing she'd never see her again; she was six and freezing, the very idea of warmth forgotten; she was seven, and her stomach seemed to devour itself with hunger; she was eight, and Dafra cloister burned, and Tiral laughed, and all was aflame, and then—

—rain. Sun. Light illuminating the graves of Tiral and the Triarchs. A cloister rebuilt with pale yellow stone. The orphans unrecognizable with clean clothes and plump cheeks, like the children of the Tribal Lands. Fields of wheat and corn and rows of trees stretching to a horizon of blue hills. A distant waterfall feeding into a wide green river that wound through a breathtaking city. Aiz, beloved of her people, walking toward a glowing triangle of light—the Fount.

"Your homeland," Mother Div said. "Your future. If you choose it."

"I—I—" Aiz looked down at the body in her arms. She'd thought Ruh might one day meet Hani or Cero. She had thought her people and Ruh's could be allies.

"What future do you choose for your people, Aiz? Death? Or life?"

For a moment, Aiz's vision flashed black and yellow. She heard the gnash of teeth and the groan of beasts, a surging sea that hungered. But it was gone so quickly that she questioned whether she'd seen it at all.

She looked down at poor, broken Ruh. This isn't fair , she thought. Why did he have to die? Why not Elias or Laia, or one of the useless others?

But then Aiz heard Cero's hard voice in her head. You were born knowing the world isn't fair. You work around it like always.

With Mother Div's question echoing in her ears, Aiz laid Ruh down. She wiped her tears away. For months, she had plotted and planned for this moment. She'd known there would be sacrifices. To step into the abyss and know Mother Div will catch you—this is faith. Sister Noa had spoken those words months ago, quoting the Seventh Sacred Tale.

Aiz didn't have the luxury of mourning Ruh or wailing about the obliteration of her humanity. As before, this was a test. Aiz must plan and plot again. Kill Tiral and the Triarchs. Take over rulership of her people. Send emissaries to the Empress of the Martials and trade for Loha.

And then take her people home.

Aiz turned away from the carnage of the chamber, fixed the image of the Kegari homeland in her mind, and met Mother Div's waiting gaze.

"Life," Aiz said. "I want life. For myself. For the Kegari."

"Good." Mother Div nodded. "Then let us begin."