Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Read Online Free PDF

longing.
    And when I awaken without you,
    may I feel it is enough to know that I have lived,
    for a lifetime, for a night, for a dream.

    Adria could translate the words as she heard them, but could not yet fully understand them, though the emotions they stirred were real. So much is lost when translating, she sighed to herself. Some of the words no Aeman would easily understand.
    Understand … an understanding beauty .
    In Aesidhe, the word “understand” was itself beautiful in scope: Limiyate. It meant literally “to be enfolded.” It was used to describe something one has learned, but it also implied that something was truly shared, a blanket for children, or the warmth of the sun. It was a gift from a parent to a child, a teacher to a student, or even from the map of stars to the lone wanderer.
    It was not something which occurred only in the head or the heart, but in the innermost part of a person. It was something which connected each soul to the world — the points of light which filled the space between birth — mile , “unfolding” — and death — limipoe , “re-enfolding.”
    Understanding …she thought. The simple passages of life, as natural as breath.
    Zho wateli limiyati, Adria smiled. I understand.
    Adria folded into sleep and dreamed not of flight and of drowning, as she so often did.
    She dreamed of running.

    In the deep wild, a pale girl wandered among the oldest hills and tallest trees, searching for ghosts. She had long since left any trail or sign of civilization, had long since exhausted herself and her store of food and water. And even as she heard the voice from the darkness, Adria had nearly decided to lie down and rest in the lulling cold of the late-winter moonlight.
    Had she slept, she might not have awoken. Had she not heard the voice, she would have slept. But for a trick of coincidence, the Princess of Heiland, for the hope of ghosts, would likely have joined them.
    Coincidence, Adria would later learn, is not chance, but the marriage of design.
    She might have learned this before, had she taken the words of her father to heart. She had asked to be trained as one of his Knights of Darkfire, and he had refused, shaking his head, with words both gentle and reproachful.
    “It has been decided. It cannot be changed.”
    She had wandered beyond his protection now, beyond his reproach. Ebenhardt Idonea may have united all of Heiland in name, but not all in spirit. Here only the Wilding held court.
    Here I will find the ghosts of Heiland.
    Adria thought she had followed one, now and then, half glimpsed among the trunks of distant trees. Motion in white, a breath of wind and snow from pine branches, maybe. For so very long, all she could hear was the wind, the rustling of trees. Until the voice.
    Frightened, Adria turned about, seeking the one who had hailed her. There was nothing, no one.
    It is true, the girl whispered to herself. Ghosts.
    It was a woman’s voice first, but the words she could not understand — not Aeman, not Somanan, not even the older and stranger Kelmantian. And without being able to see them, or even to tell the direction of the voice, she could not think how to respond.
    When she did try to speak, her voice caught in her throat, her tongue swelled. She was hungry, thirsty — and now, desperate with fright and cold and exhaustion, she felt as if she might fall out of herself somehow. She trembled, and the voice came again, and still she could not tell from where.
    She turned about, and without thinking drew her dagger from its sheath. It had barely cleared the leather when three arrows struck the ground — one from the side, an inch from her right foot; one from ahead, an inch from the other; and one from behind, to split the earth between her feet.
    Her blade slipped from her hand, useless. She had bested young men a head taller, but she could not even hold her weapon now, could barely keep her legs.
    These are real arrows, she realized. Ghosts or no.
    Though