The Kingdom of Gods

by N. K. Jemisin

  “Among other things, yes.”

  She nodded. “Come, then. I’ll show you.”

  Sar-enna-nem is a pyramid; only the topmost hall of it held prayer space and statues. The next levels down held much more interesting things.

  Like masks.

  We stood in a gallery of sorts. Our escort had left us at Usein’s unseen signal, though her glowering husband had brought an oddly shaped stool so that she could sit. She watched while I strolled about, looking at each mask in turn. The masks lined every shelf; they were set into the walls between the shelves; they were artfully positioned on display tables in front of the shelves. I even glimpsed a few attached to the ceiling. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, every size and color and configuration, though they had some commonalities. All of them were oval shaped, as a base. All had open eyeholes and sealed mouths. All of them were beautiful, and powerful in ways that had nothing to do with magic.

  I stopped at one of the tables, gazing down at a mask that made something inside me sing in response. There, on the table, was Childhood: smooth, fat cheeks; a mischievously grinning mouth; great wide eyes; broad forehead waiting to be filled with knowledge. Subtle inlays and painting around the mouth had been applied, some of it realistic and some pure abstraction. Geometric designs and laugh lines. Somehow, it hinted that the mask’s grin could have been simple joy or sadistic cruelty, or joy in cruelty. The eyes could have been alight with the pleasure of learning or aghast at all the evils mortals inflict on their young. I touched its stiff lips. Just wood and paint. And yet.

  “Your artist is a master,” I said.

  “Artists. The art of making these masks isn’t purely a Darre thing. The Mencheyev make them, too, and the Tok — and all of our lands got the seed of it from a race called the Ginij. You may remember them.”

  I did. It had been a standard Arameri extermination. Zhakkarn, via her many selves, had hunted down every last mortal of the race. Kurue erased all mention of them from books, scrolls, stories, and songs, attributing their accomplishments to others. And I? I had set the whole thing in motion by tricking the Ginij king into offending the Arameri so that they had a pretext to attack.

  She nodded. “They called this art dimyi. I don’t know what the word means in their tongue. We call it dimming.” She shifted to Senmite to make the pun. The word was meaningless in itself, though its root suggested the mask’s purpose: to diminish its wearer, reduce them to nothing more than the archetype that the mask represented.

  And if that archetype was Death … I thought of Nevra and Criscina Arameri, and understood.

  “It started as a joke,” she continued, “but over time the word has stuck. We lost many of the Ginij techniques when they were destroyed, but I think our dimmers — the artists who make the masks — have done a good job of making up the difference.”

  I nodded, still staring at Childhood. “There are many of these artists?”

  “Enough.” She shrugged. Not wholly forthcoming, then.

  “Perhaps you should call these artists assassins instead.” I turned to look at Usein as I said this.

  Usein regarded me steadily. “If I wanted to kill Arameri,” she said, slowly and precisely, “I wouldn’t kill just one, or even a few. And I wouldn’t take my time about it.”

  She wasn’t lying. I lowered my hands and frowned, trying to understand. How could she not be lying? “But you can do magic with these things.” I nodded toward Childhood. “Somehow.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t know these people you work for, Lord Sieh. I don’t know your aims. Why should I share my secrets with you?”

  “We can make it worth your while.”

  The look she threw me was scornful. I had to admit, it had been a bit clichéd.

  “There is nothing you can offer me,” she said, getting to her feet with pregnant-woman awkwardness. “Nothing I want or need from anyone, god or mortal —”

  “Usein.”

  A man’s voice. I turned, startled. The gallery’s open doorway framed a man, standing between the flickering torch sconces. How long had he been there? My sense of the world was fading already. I thought at first it was a trick of the light that he seemed to waver; then I realized what I was seeing: a godling, in the last stages of configuring his form for the mortal realm. But when his face had taken its final shape —

  I blinked. Frowned.

  He stepped farther into the light. The features he’d chosen certainly hadn’t been meant to help him blend in. He was short, about my height. Brown skin, brown eyes, deep brown lips — these were the only things about him that fit any mortal mold. The rest was a jumble. Teman sharpfolds with orangey red islander hair and high, angular High Northern cheekbones. Was he an idiot? None of those things fit together. Just because we could look like anything didn’t mean we should.

  But that was not the biggest problem.

  “Hail, Brother,” I said uncertainly.

  “Do you know me?” He stopped, slipping his hands into his pockets.

  “No …” I licked my lips, confused by the niggling sense that I did know him, somehow. His face was unfamiliar, but that meant nothing; none of us took our true shape in the mortal realm. His stance, though, and his voice …

  Then I remembered. The dream I’d had a few nights before. I’d forgotten it thanks to Shahar’s betrayal. Are you afraid? he’d asked me.

  “Yes,” I amended, and he inclined his head.

  Usein folded her arms. “Why are you here, Kahl?”

  Kahl. The name wasn’t familiar, either.

  “I won’t be staying long, Usein. I came only to suggest that you show Sieh the most interesting of your masks, since he’s so curious.” His eyes never left mine as he spoke to her.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a muscle in Usein’s jaw flex. “That mask isn’t complete.”

  “He asked you how far you were willing to go. Let him see.”

  She shook her head sharply. “How far you are willing to go, Kahl. We have nothing to do with your schemes.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call it nothing, Usein. Your people were eager enough for my help when I offered it, and some of you likely guessed what that help would cost. I never deceived you. You were the one who chose to renege on our agreement.”

  There was a curious shiver to the air, and something about Kahl wavered again, not quite visibly. Some aspect of his nature? Ah, but of course; if Usein had indeed reneged on some deal with him, he would consider her a target for vengeance, too. I looked at her, wondering if she knew just how dangerous it was to cultivate a godly enemy. Her lips were tight and her face sheened lightly with sweat as she watched him, her knife hand twitching. Yes. She knew.

  “You used us,” she said.

  “As you used me.” He lifted his chin, still watching me. “But that’s beside the point. Don’t you want your gods to see how powerful you’ve become, Usein? Show him.”

  Usein made a frustrated sound, part fear and part annoyance. But she went to one of the wall shelves and pushed aside a book, exposing a previously hidden hole. She reached into it and pulled something. There was a low clack from somewhere behind the shelves, as of an unseen latch opening, and then the whole wall swung outward.

  The power that flooded forth staggered me. I gasped and tried to stumble back from it, but I had forgotten the new size of my feet. I tripped and fell against a nearby table, which was the only thing that kept me upright. The radiating waves felt like … like Nahadoth at his worst. No, worse. Like all the weight of every realm pressing down, not on my flesh but on my mind.

  And as I panted there, sweat dropping onto my forearms where they trembled on the table, I realized: I had felt this horror before.

  There is a resonance, Nahadoth had said.

  I managed to force my head upright. My flesh wanted to let go of itself. I fought to remain corporeal, since I wasn’t sure I’d be able to re-form if I didn’t. Across the room I saw that Kahl had stepped back, too, bracing his hand against the door
frame; his expression was unsurprised, grimly enduring. But elated, too.

  “What …?” I tried to focus on Usein, but my sight blurred. “What is …”

  She stepped into the hidden alcove that had been revealed by the opened wall. There, on a darkwood plinth, sat another mask — one that was nothing like the others. It seemed to be made of frosted glass. Its shape was more elaborate than an oval, the edges fluted and geometric. I thought it might hurt the face of whoever donned it. It was larger than a standard mask, too, bearing flanges and extensions at jawline and forehead that reminded me, somehow, of wings. Of flight. Of falling, down, down, through a vortex whose walls churned with a roar that could shatter the mortal realm —

  Usein picked it up, apparently heedless of its power. Couldn’t she feel it? How could she bring her child near something so terrible? There were no torches in the alcove; the thing glowed with its own soft, shifting light. Where Usein’s fingers touched it, I saw a hint of movement, just for an instant. The glass turned to smooth brown flesh like the hand that held it, then faded back to glass.

  “This mask — or so Kahl tells me — has a special power,” she said, glancing at me. Then she narrowed her eyes at Kahl, who nodded in return, though he was looking decidedly uncomfortable, too. Hard to tell anything, looking at that stoic face of his. “When it’s complete, if it works as predicted, it will confer godhood upon its wearer.”

  I stiffened. Looked at Kahl, who merely smiled at me. “That’s not possible.”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “Yeine is the proof of that.”

  I shook my head. “She was special. Unique. Her soul —”

  “Yes, I know.” His gaze was glacially cold, and I remembered the moment he’d committed himself to being my enemy. Had the same expression been on his face then? If so, I would have tried harder to earn his forgiveness. “The conjunction of many elements, all in just the right proportion and strength, all at just the right time. Of such a recipe is divinity made.” He gestured toward the mask; his hand shook and grew blurry before he lowered it. “Godsblood and mortal life, magic and art and the vagaries of chance. And more, all bound into that mask, all to impress upon those who view it, an idea.”

  Usein set the thing down on the carved wooden face that served as its stand. “Yes. And the first mortal who put it on burned to death from the inside out. It took three days; she screamed the whole time. The fire was so hot that we couldn’t get near enough to end her misery.” She turned a hard look on Kahl. “That thing is evil.”

  “Merely incomplete. The raw energy of creation is neither good nor evil. But when that mask is ready, it will churn forth something new … and wondrous.” He paused, his expression turning inward for a moment; he spoke softer, as if to himself, but I realized that his words were actually aimed at me. “I will not be a slave to fate. I will embrace it, control it. I will be what I wish to be.”

  “You’re mad.” Usein shook her head. “You expect us to put this kind of power into your hands, for demons know what purpose? No. Leave this place, Kahl. We’ve had enough of your kind of help.”

  I hurt. The incomplete mask. It was like the Maelstrom: potential gone mad, creation feeding upon itself. I was not mortal enough to be immune to it. Yet that was not the sole source of my discomfort; something else beat against me like an oncoming tide, trying to drive me to my knees. The mask had heightened my god-senses, allowing me to feel it, but my flesh was only mortal, too weak to endure so much power in one place.

  “What are you?” I asked Kahl in our words, between gasps. “Elontid? Imbalance …” That was the only explanation for the seesaw flux I felt from him. Resolve and sorrow, hatred and longing, ambition and loneliness. But how could there be another elontid in the world? He could not have been born during the time of my incarceration, not with Enefa dead and all gods rendered sterile for that time. And who were his parents? Itempas was the only one of the Three who could have made him, but Itempas did not mate with godlings.

  Kahl smiled. To my surprise, there was no hint of cruelty in it — only that curious, resolute sorrow I’d heard in my dream.

  “Enefa is dead, Sieh.” His voice was soft now. “Not all her works vanished with her, but some did. I remembered. You will, too, eventually.”

  Remember what?

  forget

  Forget what?

  Kahl staggered suddenly, bracing himself against the door and sighing. “Enough. We’ll finish this later. In the meantime, a word of advice, Sieh: find Itempas. Only his power can save you; you know this. Find him, and live for as long as you can.” When he pushed himself upright, his teeth were a carnivore’s, needle-sharp. “Then if you must die, die like a god. At my hands, in battle.”

  Then he vanished. And I was alone, helpless, being churned to pieces by the mask’s power. My flesh tried, again, to fragment; it hurt, the way disintegration should. I screamed, reaching out for someone, anyone, to save me. Nahadoth — No, I didn’t want him or Yeine anywhere near that mask, no telling what it would do to them. But I was so afraid. I did not want to die, not yet.

  The world twisted around me. I slid through it, gasping —

  Rough hands grasped me, hauled me over onto my back. Above me, Ahad’s face. Not Nahadoth but close enough. He was frowning, examining me with hands and other senses, actually looking concerned.

  “You care,” I said dizzily, and stopped thinking for a while.

  12

  WHEN I WOKE, I TOLD AHAD WHAT I had seen in Darr, and he got a very odd look on his face. “That was not at all what we suspected,” he muttered to himself. He looked over at Glee, who stood by the window, her hands clasped behind her back, as she gazed out over the quiet streets. It was nearly dawn in this part of the world. The end of the working day for the Arms of Night.

  “Call the others,” she said. “We’ll meet tomorrow night.”

  So Ahad dismissed me for the day, ordering the servants to give me food and money and new clothing, because the old set no longer fit well. I had aged again, you see — perhaps five years this time, passing through my final growth spurt in the process. I was two inches taller and even thinner than before, unpleasantly close to skeletal. My body had reconfigured its existing substance to forge my new shape, and I hadn’t had much substance to go around. I was well into my twenties now, with no hint of childhood remaining. Nothing but human left.

  I went back to Hymn’s house. Her family ran an inn, after all, and I had money now, so it made sense. Hymn was relieved to see me, though she puzzled over my changed appearance and pretended to be annoyed. Her parents were not at all pleased, but I promised to perform no impossible feats on their premises, which was easy because I couldn’t. They put me in the attic room.

  There, I ate the entire basket of food Ahad’s servants had packed for me. I was still hungry when the food was gone — though the basket had been generously packed — but had sated myself enough that I could attend to other needs. So I curled up on the bed, which was hard but clean, and watched the sun rise beyond my lone window. Eventually I considered the topic of death.

  I could kill myself now, probably. This was not normally an easy thing for any god to do, as we are remarkably resilient beings. Even willing ourselves into nonexistence did not work for long; eventually we would forget that we were supposed to be dead and start thinking again. Yeine could kill me, but I would never ask it of her. Some of my siblings, and Naha, could and would do it, because they understood that sometimes life is too much to bear. But I did not need them anymore. The past two nights’ events had verified what I’d already suspected: those things that had once merely weakened me before could kill me now. So if I could steel myself to the pain of it, I could die whenever I wished simply by continuing to contemplate antithetical thoughts until I became an old man, and then a corpse.

  And perhaps it was even simpler than that. I needed to eat and drink and pass waste now. That meant I could starve and thirst, and that my intestines and other organs were actuall
y necessary. If I damaged them, they might not grow back.

  What would be the most exciting way to commit suicide?

  Because I did not want to die an old man. Kahl had gotten that much right. If I had to die, I would die as myself — as Sieh, the Trickster, if not the child. I had blazed bright in my life. What was wrong with blazing in death, too?

  Before I reached middle age, I decided. Surely I could think of something interesting by then.

  On that heartening note, I finally slept.

  I stood on a cliff outside the city, gazing upon the wonder that was Sky-in-Shadow and the looming, spreading green of the World Tree.

  “Hello, Brother.”

  I turned, blinking, though I was not really surprised. When the first mortal creatures grew the first brains that did more than pump hearts and think of meat, my brother Nsana had found fulfillment in the random, spitting interstices of their sleeping thoughts. He had been a wanderer before that, my closest playmate, wild and free like me. But sad, somehow. Empty. Until the dreams of mortals filled his soul.

  I smiled at him, understanding at last the sorrow he must have felt in those long empty years before the settling of his nature.

  “So this is the proof of it,” I said. I had pockets for the moment, so I slipped my hands into them. My voice was higher pitched; I was a boy again. In dreams, at least, I was still myself.

  Nsana smiled, strolling toward me along a path of flowers that stirred without wind. For a moment his truest shape flickered before me: faceless, the color of glass, reflecting our surroundings through the distorting lenses of limbs and belly and the gentle featureless curve of his face. Then he filled in with detail and colors, though not those of a mortal. He did nothing like mortals if he could help it. So he had chosen skin like fine fabric, unbleached damask in swirling raised patterns, with hair like the darkest of red wine frozen in midsplash. His irises were the banded amber of polished, petrified wood — beautiful, but unnerving, like the eyes of a serpent.