Page 89 of Beyond the Shadowed Earth

Before her was a patch of grassy earth mounded with stones, a throne in the midst of them, a man sitting on it.

It was then that she remembered everything.

The man’s hair and beard were white as wool, pooling about his shoulders and all down his lap onto the grass. His clothes were the barest bits of rags, but there was a crown on his head. His startlingly blue eyes stared into nothing.

Her gaze dropped to his knees. A knife rested there in a tooled leather scabbard, the edges seeming to glow with a faint light. The handle was made of a twisted white wood, roughly hewn.

Lumen’s knife. The godkiller.

Eda knelt beside the throne, hesitant fingers curling around the scabbard. The man on the throne didn’t stir. He hardly breathed. He didn’t seem to know or care that Eda was there, claiming the knife forged to kill a god. Perhaps he’d never known Lumen had laid it there in the first place.

Her pity twisted sharp. “Oh Erris. You poor fool. I’m going to stop Tuer, and heal the world and free us both from the deals we never should have made. Thank you, for keeping this safe for me all these years.” And then she bowed very low, as to the king he’d wanted so badly to be, and stepped back.

She was once more alone in a whirling void.

Shadows spun about her feet, leapt at her, sank their teeth into her arms.

She shook them off and broke into a run, drawing Erris’s knife from its scabbard, holding it out in front of her. It buzzed and grew warm, bright, the godkiller’s light piercing through the void, illuminating her way.

Hands reached out for her in the darkness, snatching at her sleeves and her heels. She shook them off again and again, but one hand grabbed her jaw, forcibly turned her head.

And Eda found herself staring into her own eyes.

She screamed and scrabbled backward, but the other her followed, grabbing her arm. “You have not seen it all,” the other her hissed. “You have not seen all the seconds of your life, every drop of memory, every breath, every tear, each creating one of us. And now you are here with us forever, and we will lead you through your memories for all of Time. Come, come!”

From the shadows of the void stepped thousands of figures that were all Eda, every one wearing a white gown trimmed with silver, every one reaching out for her.

“Get away!” Eda cried, raising the godkiller.

But her other selves didn’t fear the knife. They surrounded her, swept her up like a shell in the tide, and hurtled her forward.

“Come see, come see!” they shrieked all together, laughing as they ran.

Eda struggled and screamed, but she couldn’t get free.

Her other selves brought her through the void to a dark field thick with shimmering pools, and as they came close, Eda saw that the pools brimmed not with water, but memory.Hermemory.

Gleefully, her thousand selves plunged her into one.

She was being born, her mother screaming, the goddess Raiva watching the birth. The goddess brushed her fingers across Eda’s forehead as the midwife laid her into her mother’s arms. And Eda cried and cried, because heat seared through her, her whole body burning.

She was thrust up and out of the pool, gasping for breath, and her thousand selves plunged her into another.

Her father was telling her stories as the wind blew up from the sea. “Eda, are you listening?”

A desperate gulp of air, another pool.

She poisoned the Emperor.

Another.

She sent Talia away.

Another.

She ordered the guards to cut off Rescarin’s fingers.

Another.