Chapter 36

36

Aiz

It was the sound Aiz hated the most. The savage snapping of a human body, followed by growls of Div's gluttonous feasting.

They'd left the cavern of horrors, Div holding Aiz like one would a sleeping child, flying as if she had a Sail. But there was no canvas above, no seat below, no Loha.

"How is this possible?" Aiz had gasped at the bite of wind in her face, shuddering so badly she feared Div would drop her.

"I am the spirit of Holy Div reborn, child. The greatest windsmither to live. I do not need a Sail to fly. Neither do you."

The Tribal Desert stretched beneath them, the brown earth gleaming like the furred back of an animal, the Jack trees glowing gold and pink as the sun rose.

"What do you mean," Aiz asked, "that I don't need a Sail?"

"You have my power at your disposal." Mother Div's dark hair streamed behind her like a flag. She offered Aiz a beatific smile.

Then she dropped her.

Aiz screamed as she fell, scrambling for the wind. She was going to die, and as Ruh's terrified face flashed through her memory, she realized she deserved to die—

A burst of power surged through her, like sunlight flushing her veins. She gasped, arresting her fall with such ease that she shot into the air a few feet before leveling. Mother Div drifted down beside her with the grace of a falling petal.

"That is just a taste," she said.

Over the next week, Mother Div healed her broken leg and taught her how to harness the wind, not just to fly, but to use as a weapon. Within days, Aiz's rudimentary control was magnified. She leveled trees. Tore a roof off a barn. Cracked the neck of a steer. She'd left everything in the cavern—her book, her pack, even her aaj. She needed none of it.

They moved quickly across the countryside at night, finding shelter during the day. The few times they ran into other travelers, Aiz interacted with them while Mother Div watched.

"My curse is not only that I must feed on the young and innocent," Div explained. "I am also unseen to all but you."

Aiz looked askance at Mother Div when she said this. She'd seen her feed, and it was clear Mother Div's prey saw something before they died.

But Aiz didn't ask for an explanation, for who knew what horrors Mother Div might speak of? Aiz's sleep was already plagued by nightmares. Mostly of Quil staggering through a sandstorm. Ilar! he called. Ilo! In the dream, he discovered her trail and followed her through the blue-veined canyon, past the strange runes and carvings and into the Durani's chamber.

Stop , she tried to scream. Do not look.

His steps quickened and he drew his scim. It fell from nerveless fingers as he entered the chamber. As he gasped in horror at the blood splattering the walls, Aiz's scim abandoned, her pack sticky with viscera.

She watched as he found Ruh.

Oh, Idaka, if you knew the still horror of a child dying from starvation , she thought, or the terrible silence of a slum where every adult has been conscripted, you might understand why I allowed such a sacrifice.

As he held Ruh's body, as he convulsed in grief, she longed to reach out to him. Hold him. She had used him, but she cared for him too. His grief rekindled her own, and she would always awaken with her face wet.

"Was it real?" she asked Mother Div the first night she had the dream.

The cleric nodded. "The last vestiges of the First Durani's magic," she said. "Haunting us still. Let me ease the dreams away, child. For I am a mindsmither and such a task is simple for me."

But Aiz shook her head. The dream reminded her of her sacrifice. It hurt. And she deserved the pain.

A week after leaving the chamber, Aiz waited at the beach on the southern edge of the Empire as, thankfully, Mother Div found sustenance far away.

Aiz felt a tug in her chest—Div's tether to her. It grew thinner the farther the cleric went, yet never wholly disappeared. When Aiz willed it, Mother Div would return. But she could offer Aiz no power unless she had fed.

It was a relief to have her gone. They couldn't read each other's thoughts, but each knew the other's will, the tenor of her feelings. It was suffocating.

Right now, for instance. A piercing hunger consumed Aiz, the kind that stank of death, the kind that she had grown up fearing. It was followed by a sudden fullness, as if she'd consumed a marvelous, nourishing meal. The feeling faded quickly, but it happened again and again. Until finally, Div was satiated and returned to Aiz. As she approached, Aiz looked away from the blood on her hem.

"I brought you a gift, daughter."

Something glimmered in Div's hand, and she opened it to reveal a block of Loha as big as a goose egg. It was more than Aiz had ever seen at once, even in the Aerie forges where the metal was alloyed. Enough to innervate a hundred Sails.

"You took this from an Empire soldier? A Mask?"

"From two." Div's face glowed with pride.

Aiz reached for her patience, finding what little remained to her. Div, she'd noticed, had a propensity for doing things by force. The product of being imprisoned for so long, perhaps.

"We will not steal the Loha," Aiz said. "We must still treat with the Empress of the Martials. If all her Masks are dead, and we come requesting the metal on their faces, she will not be inclined to hear our offer. Come. You have fed enough. We make for Kegar."

Div bowed her head, and though Aiz watched for resentment, she felt none.

"You must eat too, my daughter," the cleric said with a motherly attentiveness. "Let me bring you food, and then let us rest so you have the strength for the next leg of our journey."

They made their way south, Div traveling far for her sustenance. Aiz felt every death. Over time, the deaths grew more plentiful. Though not more necessary.

Div, Aiz realized quickly through their bond, was taking more than she needed.

Not long after leaving the Empire, they reached the border between Diyane and Kegar, marked by the snowy blue pinnacles of a massive mountain range. Dawn approached and they spiraled down to a forested clearing before the first rays of light broke the horizon. Mother Div brought Aiz bread and fruit she'd pilfered from somewhere, then waited eagerly for Aiz to set her free to feed.

After Div disappeared, Aiz set the food aside and focused on the cord between them. She waited for hunger, then the satiation. The third time it happened, she yanked on the cord with all her might.

Div appeared almost out of the air, crashing to the earth, kicking up a cloud of dust and pine needles. Her face and hands were covered in blood, and a ravenous frenzy appeared to have consumed her.

"That's enough." Aiz tried to steady the tremor in her voice. "No more. I know your strength. Three hearts are more than enough to get us across the mountains."

"I will not be strong enough for you!" Div warned as the bloodlust in her face faded. She wrung her hands. "What if you fall because I cannot keep you aloft?"

Aiz sensed no lie in the cleric's concern, and she softened her tone. "I think you don't realize how much you take, Mother Div. I blame the First Durani and what she did to you. She was truly a creature of spite, for these sacrifices are unnatural and counter to who you were in your first life. That's why you have me. I'll decide how much you need. And I say that you cannot feed in Kegar. The mother of our people cannot harm her children."

"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. I do know 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. The Triarchs—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.

Tiral rose from the Tel Ilessi's throne to the speaker's lectern.

Aiz could kill him now. Knock him off the dais and use the wind to dash his brains against the earth below. Her body yearned to do it, so much that she'd half lifted her hands before remembering she must first accuse him of his crimes. She could not have him become a martyr.

"Are you with me, Mother Div?"

The cleric seemed to swell beside her. "Always, Aiz."

Aiz took careful aim and blasted the lectern to pieces. Tiral screamed and scrambled back, cowering, and Aiz landed on the dais, bringing a vicious wind with her, pinning him to the throne he'd stolen.

In the crowds, some cried out, some gasped. Clerics cloaked in gray knelt, praying to Mother Div. She was at Aiz's side, looking at the Triarchs with interest that bordered on hunger.

"They are powerful," Div breathed. "Such magic! But their minds are too cruel. They would not make good sacrifices."

"No," Aiz murmured, looking from Triarch to Triarch, remembering the last time she was here. Remembering how they treated her like offal.

Aiz raised her voice and called on the wind to carry it to her people.

"I am Aiz bet-Dafra, of Dafra slum," she said. "I am a child of Kegar and daughter of the evening star. You, Tiral bet-Hiwa, are a traitor to your people and your faith."

Tiral bared his teeth like a feral dog and tried to rise from the throne where he was so ungracefully pinned. But Aiz held him down, Div's power pouring into her.

"You have sacrificed countless children and clerics and Snipes to further your warmongering." Aiz's voice boomed across the silent crowd. "You have imprisoned innocents in the Tohr and killed them with your own hands. Most foully, you have claimed the mantle of the Holy Tel Ilessi. You have blasphemed against Mother Div and thus do I declare you apostate and transgressor. For this, you deserve death."

The Triarchs appeared stunned into silence. But Tiral?

Tiral laughed.

"Haven't you eaten enough dirt, Snipe?" He called up his own wind now and shoved against Aiz, grinning when she held firm. "Are you hungry for more?"

Aiz siphoned more power from Div, pushing against Tiral. But she'd forgotten his strength, and he anticipated her force, spinning to the side so Aiz staggered forward on the dais. He struck her from the back, knocking her to her knees, wrapping a tight noose of wind around her neck.

Aiz gritted her teeth and sent a missile of air straight into his forehead. Tiral's hold loosened and she lurched to her feet.

"Fight harder, Aiz!" Div's sweetness had soured to impatience so swiftly that she sounded like someone else entirely. "You cannot die, else I will be left with no anchor to this world, a lost spirit."

"More power!" Aiz screamed, for Tiral had compressed the air around Aiz into hot needles, and Aiz struggled to hold them back. Div complied, and Aiz repelled the attack with a shield like the one she'd used to save Quil weeks ago.

She struck out at Tiral with knives of air, hoping to end him quickly. He threw his own shield up, and Aiz fell back, her will flagging, her windsmithing sputtering. How was he able to resist Aiz, even with Div's power?

"I told you we needed more!" Div said, her implication clear. More children. Kegari children.

"The Triarchs!" Aiz gasped as Tiral flung his own throne at her. "Take them!"

"Their impurity will weaken me! Let me feed and I shall funnel such power into you that you can shred the skin from Tiral's bones."

"Not Kegari!" Aiz whimpered. "Not our children."

"We have no time, girl! Would you rather that they suffer under this tyrant?"

Aiz screamed her defiance and used the last of her strength to roll away from Tiral's attack, a blast of wind that nearly spun her off the dais. Her nails scraped against the wood as she scrabbled desperately to hold on.

"You cannot withstand another strike," Div said. "If you wish to win, Aiz, you must let me help you!"

Death was inches away. Seconds. If Aiz offered up the children of Kegar to Holy Div, she would be sacrificing her own people. And if she didn't, Tiral would remain Tel Ilessi, and Spires only knew what hells he would wreak upon them.

"He's coming, Aiz," Mother Div said. "Decide!"