Page 79 of The Inheritance
“How did you come to be here?”
“Sadrin fled. We pursued.”
“What makes sadrin valuable?”
“Knowledge. Knowledge accumulated, knowledge passed from parent to chosen offspring, again and again.”
“Why didn’t the Rakalan order you to bring the knowledge back?” They could’ve just carved that stone out of my mother’s head.
“Cannot be taken. Only gifted. If not gifted, knowledge dies with sadrin.”
I always wondered why the last Kael’gress had switched targets back in the cave. He was fighting my sadrin mother, and then he abruptly tried to kill me. It was because he knew he would lose the fight, and I was the only other creature in the cave capable of becoming a sadrin. Bear wasn’t sapient enough.
The gress trembled.
“What does it mean to be sadrin?” I asked.
His voice was barely audible. His eyes were desperate. “Everything.”
I placed the amulet on his chest.
“You can let go now. I will make sure the shroud of the holy power cleanses your passing.”
Relief shone in his eyes. He took one last shuddering breath and went still.
I flexed. The gress no longer glowed red. In the moment I had scanned him on that stone breach, I wanted to go home, and I wanted answers. My talent tagged him as key to either one or possibly both. Now the way home was clear. I had my answers, too, but they just led to more questions.
Somewhere out there a civilization named Tsuun waged interdimensional war. They invaded world after world. They probably had it down to routine now. Earth was just the latest of their targets. Some worlds must’ve been conquered immediately. Others, like the Rakalan, fought back for centuries.
When I sank into the gem, looking for the information on the gress, moving through their world didn’t feel like accessing a specific memory of a single being. It felt like a compilation of memories from different individuals, woven into a semi-cohesive whole. Like an encyclopedia article come to life, a summary of collected information from many sources presented in a concise format.
The assassin said that the Rakalan resisted for almost thirteen hundred years, which was why my mother was “of value.” This and the memories in the gem suggested that my mother wasn’t the original sadrin. She inherited her knowledge just like I inherited mine. If my guess was right, each sadrin added to the gem and passed that gift to the next, on and on, through generations. The longer their world resisted, the more knowledge the gem accumulated, and the more value it had.
When the Rakalan surrendered, my mother must’ve fled into a Tsuun breach linked to Earth. I had no idea how she ended up here, but she did, and the gress chased her into it. It had to be more than just an attempt to escape. What I saw of the gress was just a tiny sample of the information hidden in the gem. My mother had access to so much, she could’ve gone anywhere, and yet she decided to enter this breach. She didn’t just choose me, she chose humanity. My mother picked Earth and gave us this priceless gift. Her world’s war against the invaders was done, but ours was just beginning.
She let herself die. Had she kept the gem, she would’ve survived, I was sure of it. She didn’t want to continue. The invasion of the Rakalan began with a breach, and my mother had chosen to die in one, closing the whole tragic saga full circle. She passed, betrayed by her people and never knowing if I and the knowledge she gifted me would survive.
I felt strangely hollow.
The gress didn’t say “sadrin.” He said “their sadrin.” That meant other worlds had them as well. Was that something that occurred naturally or just in response to the invasion? Whatever the answer was, the Tsuun wanted sadrins. Perhaps they had a way to harvest our knowledge.
The Rakalan resisted for almost thirteen centuries. Thirteen hundred years of war. The enormity of it slammed into me. I sat down on the ground by the gress’s body. My legs refused to hold my weight.
How many gates was that? How many deaths? Generations and generations, born with the war already burning and dying while it still raged. Thirteen hundred years. We’ve been fighting for only ten, and it already completely changed our lives. Over a thousand years of this?
And in the end, the Rakalan still lost and gave up their sadrin. If the Tsuun found out I existed and carried all of that generational knowledge in my head, they could pressure the Earth to turn me over.
Would my planet give me up? Was there even a point to going on?
Something nudged me. Bear brought me a bloody feline femur with shreds of flesh on it. The claw marks on her back weren’t bleeding anymore.
I flexed on autopilot. Well, the meat wasn’t poisonous, and she had already eaten some of it, so it was probably too late to make a fuss about it.
Bear nudged me again.
“Hey, Bear.”
She dropped the femur at my feet. I crouched. I’d read somewhere that dogs didn’t like being hugged. I had hugged her before because I was too far gone, but I was calm now, so I leaned against her, stroking her side. She leaned back against me and licked my cheek.
