We’d been at this for four hours.
“Release. Take and hold. Release. You’re doing better, but you need to think less. The magic of the land is a shield. You’re raising it. It should be instinctive, or you won’t react in time.”
Take and hold. Release.
Take and hold. Release.
“Commit!” my aunt snarled. Magic walloped me upside the head. My vision swam.
“Ow.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“That I’ll take too much.”
“Too much what?”
“Too much magic. Once I fought a djinn and used a power word against him . . .”
Erra rolled her eyes to the sky. “Mother, give me strength. Why would you do an idiotic thing like that?”
“Because I didn’t know that we have djinn blood.” That was when I learned that a long time ago one of my ancestors was an ifrit, and the presence of her blood in our bloodline made djinn immune to our power words. Which raised the question of what would happen if I ever used a power word against my father. It probably wouldn’t work. Hugh and Adora seemed to have no problem using power words against me and their brains didn’t blow up, but their blood wasn’t exactly as potent as my father’s.
Erra’s nostrils fluttered. Come to think of it, she breathed. I could see her chest rising and falling. She had no reason to breathe; she was dead. Maybe it was force of habit.
My head rang. “Ow.”
“Concentrate! What happened with the djinn?”
“My brain tried to explode. I was dying, not physically, but mentally. The magic was down and there was very little they could do for me. So I lay in bed, feeling myself die, and I reached out and took some magic to keep myself alive. It hurt the land.”
Suddenly my aunt’s face was half an inch from mine. “Listen to me very carefully. Do not do that again. If you keep doing this, it will make you akillu, the devourer, an abomination. You are a queen. Your responsibility is to defend the land, not to feed on it.”
“I wasn’t planning on a repeat performance.”
“Good, because I’ll kill you myself if you do that again. It is a sacred rule. Even at my worst, I never resorted to that. When your father’s beloved towers fell, he did not feed on the land to hold them up.”
“Got it,” I growled.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I blame Im. One doesn’t simply hand a child a piece of land and let her stumble around in the dark with it. Has he taught you anything?”
“He’s offered, but only if I pledged to obey him.”
“I don’t understand that. He loves nothing more than to teach. He taught all of his children, even the ones he disliked. Even those who had neither brains nor power to do any real damage to themselves or others. You’re intelligent, disciplined, and you have power. You’re one of the strongest of his children I’ve seen. Why?”
“I thought about that,” I said. “I think it’s because I don’t matter.”
She stared at me. “Explain.”
“It’s not important for me to know anything about ruling the land. In his mind, I’m your replacement.”
She recoiled.
“He sees me as a sword, not a ruler. No matter what he says, I will never get the keys to his kingdom. I’m meant to kill for him and lead his armies at best, and die at worst. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too old or too stubborn, but there it is. If I blight the land accidentally, all the better. It would make me desperate enough to beg him for his wisdom and he can move me into the place he has chosen for me. If all else fails, from his point of view, I would make a decent vessel for bringing his grandson into this world. I know the prophecy says he will kill my son, but given a chance, I think he would take him. He likes new and shiny things, and my son will be shiny.”
Erra stared at me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was shocked.
“You are not a hireling,” she said finally. “You are a child of royal blood. His blood. My blood. It is your right to know these things. It is his duty as your parent to pass them on to you.”
I spread my arms.
She squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her face. “You, our mother . . . It’s like I don’t know him anymore. There’s nothing left of the golden child he was. Is it because I slept while he stayed awake for another thousand years, or was I just that blind during my life?”
“He isn’t wrong,” I said. “I do make a better killer than a ruler.”
Magic exploded on my chest. I landed on my ass.
“Never put yourself down,” Erra snarled. “You are my niece. If he won’t teach you, I will! I may have never claimed a kingdom, but not because I don’t know how to do it or what to do once the claim is made. Get up. You have to practice.”
I rolled to my feet. “It wants to change me.”
“What does?”
“The land. The Shar. When I use the magic, I feel urges.”
Erra’s eyes narrowed. “Desire for more power?”
“No, desire to not be accountable for anything. I stop caring about things that are important, like family, friends . . .”
“Listen to me carefully. The Shar pushes you to acquire land and defend it. It fuels your feud with your father. It does not do anything else. What you’re experiencing is a different thing entirely. When you sense the land, what does it feel like to you?”
“An ocean.”
“Right now, you are a barren rock within this ocean. A part of you feels the great power that lies there and wants to become one with it. There is so much magic there and you are only human. But because you are human, you impose limitations on yourself, things you won’t do no matter what. These limitations are good. They keep your ego intact. Without them you would melt into the waters.”
“What would happen then?”
“You would become everything you fear. A tyrant, a demon, eventually a god. Hang whatever label you wish upon it. You must find a way to draw the ocean into yourself without losing who you are. You absorb it, not the other way around. That is fundamentally harder than letting yourself become one with it.”
I stared at her.