The bite of Haisar’s axe against what should never have been touched.
She circled slowly around the pillar, squinting in the flickering light from her candle.
A sliver fell free, a splinter forgotten by the gods.
The only piece left in Endahr.
Here entombed.
She chewed on her lip, the candle burning low.
The shard shall lie here in glory forever, and may whoever touch or remove it from this place be accursed, unless in greatest need.
Her fingers traced the words in the marble, and she felt intensely uneasy.
You shall know it by its light and its music.
You shall know it when you hold it.
That here lies the shard of the Immortal Tree.
May the gods remember us.
May the gods be with us.
May our sins be forgotten.
And then she was around at the front again, staring at the glass-and-iron casket.
You shall know it when you hold it, the shrine promised. That here lies the shard of the Immortal Tree.
She slid her fingers into the hollow and tugged the casket free.
Her hands shook as she knelt on the dusty stone floor and examined the casket. It had obviously once been sealed, but now the lock was broken. The lid opened easily.
The air seemed to tremble around her, like a host of invisible onlookers had all sucked in a breath.
A splinter of wood lay in the casket, no longer or wider than her own hand. It was white as bone and dry as dust but somehow it was beautiful. It smelled like honey and wine and blooming lilies in the sunlight.
You shall know it when you hold it, sang the shrine’s promise in her head. The shard of the Immortal Tree.
Could it really be true? She reached out her hand, slowly, reverently. She had to know.
“Talia, don’t!”
Chapter Twenty-One
SOMEONE GRABBED HER ARM AND PULLED HER away from the shrine, up the stairs and through the door and out onto the hill, rain spitting cold from the still-darkening sky. The sea rose black and wild beyond the shoreline.
It was Wen, his face white with terror. He grasped her shoulders, nearly shaking her. “Did you touch it? Did you touch it?”
She jerked away from him, breathing hard.
Gods above, it was real. The Star-light, the Tree. She’d felt it, they were real.
Gods above, her mother.
“Did you touch it?”
She took a breath, trying to reassemble her shattered nerves. “No,” she managed. She was shaking violently. She couldn’t seem to stop.
Wen caught hold of her shoulders, gently this time. “Talia. Talia, it’s all right. It’s all right.”
She lifted one hand to her mouth, trying to focus on him. But her vision was fuzzy, the world spinning. She collapsed and he caught her, easing her to the ground. Rain dripped cold on her face.
He didn’t let go and she didn’t shake him off; his hands felt warm through the thin fabric of her dress; his presence tethered her to the earth. He looked at her intently. “Talia. Tell me what happened. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She stared at him, still shuddering. The rain fell harder but they didn’t move, locked in that one unending moment. “My mother’s dead,” she whispered. “My mother’s dead.” Her voice cracked. “She drowned at sea. She drowned and Rahn caught her in a net and dragged her into the Hall—”
“Talia,” he repeated, steady and serious. “You can’t help your mother. She’s gone. Rahn and the Hall of the Dead is just a story.”
“I thought the Tree and the Stars were just stories.” Her words were as shaky as the rest of her. “But—but down there—down there—” The sudden rush of tears choked her, and then she was sobbing on the hill, the rain churning the ground into mud beneath her dirty dress. She’d needed them to be just stories. But they weren’t.
Wen wrapped his arm around her, then eased her to her feet. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of the cold.”
She allowed him to lead her, stumbling, up through the garden and into the house. The tears wouldn’t stop. All she could think about was her mother, leaping into the sea. Being dragged down into the shadowy Hall. Forced to dance before a goddess on a cold throne, always in pain. Forever dead, but not at rest, never allowed to find peace.
Wen brought her into the parlor, settled her into a chair by the fire, sat down across from her. The rain drummed against the window, running in rivulets down the glass. “Are you sure you didn’t touch it?” he asked her softly.
Talia gnawed on her lip, desperately trying to get a hold of herself. “I’m sure,” she choked out.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“The Tree is real.” She wanted him to deny it.
But he nodded, lines pressing into his forehead.
“Then why not Rahn’s Hall?”
The question hung between them for a moment, Wen studying her, clearly trying to decide what to tell her. How much to tell her. “No one can ever know if the Hall is real,” he said. “Not for sure. Because that would mean someone would have to go there, and live to come back and tell about it. And no one has.”
She wanted to agree with him, but she couldn’t. “How can some of the stories be real and not all of them?”
“No one knows what happens after death. So we tell stories about it.”
Another shudder passed through her. “But—”
“The dead don’t move,” said Wen softly. “The dead don’t feel. She’s gone, Talia. You can’t help her now.”
An errant tear slid down her cheek. “I miss her so much.”
Wen’s eyes glimmered with moisture. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You miss your mother, too.”
He nodded. “Every day.”
She drew a breath, blinking back the imagined horrors that still crept through her brain. Wen was right. She could no more help her mother than he could help his. She met his gaze. “What—what would have happened if I touched it?”
“Caiden’s mother touched it before she died. She contracted a mysterious illness, and we think—I think—it came from that sliver of wood. It isn’t—it isn’t supposed to be touched, or taken out of the temple.”
The inscription from the obelisk flashed through her mind: May whoever touch or remove it from this place be accursed.
“That’s why your father locked it up, instead of trying to get rid of it.”
Wen nodded.
Talia stared into the flickering fire. “But why—why did she go down there in the first place? Why didn’t someone stop her?”
“No one knew the temple was there. She found it one day, dug away at the hill until she uncovered the door. And by the time anyone else read the inscription, it was too late.”
“It could have been something else that made her ill. It wasn’t necessarily that—that thing in the temple.”
“Maybe,” said Wen, uneasily. “I did some research a few years back, and the oldest records indicate that the temple predates the village by several centuries. I found a few stories that swear it was built by Haisar’s brother, after the earth swallowed him for dishonoring the Tree. That would line up with the inscription’s claim that the sliver was made by Haisar’s axe.”