The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(270)

She threw me an annoyed look, then sliced once across the palm, swift and hard. I ignored the flash of pain. Refreshing. The wound tried to close immediately, but a little concentration kept the blood welling.

“You do me, I do you,” Shahar said, giving the knife to Dekarta.

He took the knife and her hands and was not at all hesitant or shy about cutting his sister. Her jaw flexed, but she did not cry out. Nor did he when she made the cuts for him.

I inhaled the scent of their blood, familiar despite three generations removed from the last Arameri I had known. “Friends,” I said.

Shahar looked at her brother, and he gazed back at her, and then they both looked at me. “Friends,” they said together. They took each other’s hands first, then mine.

Then—


Wait. What?


They held my hands, tight. It hurt. And why were both children crying out, their hair whipping in the wind? Where had the wind—


I didn’t hear you. Speak louder.


This made no sense, our hands were sealed, sealed together, I could not let them go—


Yes, I am the Trickster. Who calls…?


They were screaming, the children were screaming, both of them had risen off the floor, only I held them down and why was there a grin on my face? Why—


Silence.





3



I SLEPT, and while I did, I dreamt. I did not remember some of these dreams for a long time. I was aware of very little, in fact, aside from

something

being

wrong

and perhaps a little bit of

wait

I

thought

what.

Vague awareness, in other words. A most unpleasant state for any god. None of us is all knowing, all seeing—that is mortal nonsense—but we know a lot and see quite a bit. We are used to a near-constant infusion of information by means of senses no mortal possesses, but for a time there was nothing. Instead, I slept.

Suddenly, though, in the depths of the silence and vagueness, I heard a voice. It called my name, my soul, with a fullness and strength that I had not heard in several mortal lifetimes. Familiar pulling sensation. Unpleasant. I was comfortable, so I rolled over and tried to ignore it at first, but it pricked me awake, slapped me in the back to prod me forward, then shoved. I slid through an aperture in a wall of matter, like being born—or like entering the mortal realm, which was pretty much the same thing. I emerged naked and slippery with magic, my form reflexively solidifying itself for protection against the soul-devouring ethers that had once been Nahadoth’s digestive fluids, in the time before time. My mind dragged itself out of stupor at last.

Someone had called my name.

“What do you want?” I said—or tried to say, though the words emerged from my lips as an unintelligible growl. Long before mortals had achieved a form worthy of imitation, I had taken the likeness of a creature that loved mischief and cruelty in equal measure, as quintessential an encapsulation of my nature as my child shape. I still tended to default to it, though I preferred the child shape these days. More fine control and nuance. But I had not been fully conscious when I took form in the mortal realm, and so I had become the cat.

Yet that shape was clumsy when I tried to rise, and something about it… felt wrong. I wasted no time trying to understand it, simply became the boy instead—or tried to. The change did not go as it should have. It took real effort, and my flesh remolded itself with molasses-slow reluctance. By the time I had clothed myself in human skin, I was exhausted. I flopped where I had materialized, panting and shaking and wondering what in the infinite hells was wrong with me.

“Sieh?”

The voice that had summoned me from the vague place. Female. Familiar and yet not. Puzzled, I tried to lift my head and turn to face the voice’s owner, and found to my amazement that I could not. I had no strength.

“It is you. My gods, I never imagined…” Soft hands touched my shoulders, pulled at me. I groaned softly as she rolled me onto my side. Something pulled at my head, painful. Why the hells was I cold? I was never cold.

“By the endless Bright! This is…”

She touched my face. I turned toward her hand instinctively, nuzzling, and she gasped, jerking away. Then she stroked me again and did not pull away when I pressed against her this time.

“Sh-Shahar,” I said. My voice was too loud and sounded wrong. I opened my eyes as wide as I could and stared at her, buglike. “Shahar?”

She was Shahar. I was certain of it. But something had happened to her. Her face was longer, the bones finer, the nose bridge higher. Her hair, which had been shoulder length when I’d last seen her—a moment ago? The day before?—now tumbled around her body, disheveled as if she’d just woken from sleep. Waist length at least, maybe longer.