The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “At once, Father. But…”

  Itempas looks at Dekarta, who trails off under that burning-desert gaze. I do not blame him. But Dekarta is Arameri; gods do not frighten him for long.

  “Viraine,” he says. “You were… part of him.”

  Itempas lets him flounder to silence, then says, “Since your daughter left Sky.”

  Dekarta looks over at Kurue. “You knew this?”

  She inclines her head, regal. “Not at first. But Viraine came to me one day and let me know I need not be damned to this earthly hell for all eternity. Our father could still forgive us, if we proved ourselves loyal.” She glances at Itempas then, and even her dignity cannot hide her anxiety. She knows how fickle his favor can be. “Even then I wasn’t certain, though I suspected. That was when I decided on my plan.”

  “But… that means…” Dekarta pauses then, realization-anger-resignation flickering across his face in quick succession. I can guess his thoughts: Bright Itempas orchestrated Kinneth’s death.

  My grandfather closes his eyes, perhaps mourning the death of his faith. “Why?”

  “Viraine’s heart was broken.” And does the Father of All realize that his eyes turn to Nahadoth when he says this? Is he aware of what this look reveals? “He wanted Kinneth back, and offered anything if I would help him achieve that goal. I accepted his flesh in payment.”

  “How predictable.” I shift to myself, lying in Nahadoth’s arms. Nahadoth speaks above me. “You used him.”

  “If I could have given him what he wanted, I would have,” Itempas replies with a very human shrug. “But Enefa gave these creatures the power to make their own choices. Even we cannot change their minds when they’re set on a given course. Viraine was foolish to ask.”

  The smile that curves Nahadoth’s lips is contemptuous. “No, Tempa, that isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

  And somehow, perhaps because I am no longer alive and no longer thinking with a fleshly brain, I understand. Enefa is dead. Never mind that some remnant of her flesh and soul lingers; both are mere shadows of who and what she truly was. Viraine, however, took into himself the essence of a living god. I shiver as I realize: the moment of Itempas’s manifestation was also the moment of Viraine’s death. Had he known it was coming? So much of his strangeness became clear, in retrospect.

  But before that, disguised by Viraine’s mind and soul, Itempas could watch Nahadoth like a voyeur. He could command Nahadoth and thrill in his obedience. He could pretend to be doing Dekarta’s will while manipulating events to exert subtle pressure on Nahadoth. All without Nahadoth’s knowledge.

  Itempas’s expression does not change, but there is something about him now that suggests anger. A more burnished shade to his golden eyes, perhaps. “Always so melodramatic, Naha.” He steps closer—close enough that the white glow which surrounds him clashes against Nahadoth’s smoldering shadow. Where the two powers brush against each other, both light and dark vanish, leaving nothing.

  “You clutch that piece of meat like it means something,” Itempas says.

  “She does.”

  “Yes, yes, a vessel, I know—but her purpose is served now. She has bought your freedom with her life. Will you not come take your reward?”

  Moving slowly, Nahadoth sets my body down. I feel his rage coming before, apparently, anyone else. Even Itempas looks surprised when Nahadoth clenches his fists and slams them into the floor. My blood flies up in twin sprays. The floor cracks ominously, and some of the cracks run up the glass walls—though, fortunately, these only spiderweb and do not shatter. As if in compensation, the plinth at the center of the room shatters instead, spilling the Stone ignominiously onto the floor and peppering everyone with glittering white flecks.

  “More,” Nahadoth breathes. His skin has cracked further; he is barely contained by the flesh that is his prison. When he rises and turns, his hands drip something too dark to be blood. The cloak that surrounds him lashes the air like miniature tornadoes.

  “She… was… more!” He is barely coherent. He lived countless ages before language. Perhaps his instinct is to forgo speech altogether in moments of extremity, and just roar out his fury. “More than a vessel. She was my last hope. And yours.”

  Kurue—my vision swings toward her against my will—steps forward, opening her mouth to protest. Zhakkarn catches her arm in warning. Wise, I think, or at least wiser than Kurue. Nahadoth looks utterly demented.

  But then, so does Itempas, as he stares down Nahadoth’s rage. There is open lust in his eyes, unmistakable beneath the warrior’s tension. But of course: how many aeons did they spend battling, raw violence giving way to stranger longings? Or perhaps Itempas has simply been so long without Nahadoth’s love that he will take anything, even hate, in its place.

  “Naha,” he says gently. “Look at you. All this over a mortal?” He sighs, shaking his head. “I’d hoped that putting you here, amid the vermin that are our sister’s legacy, would show you the error of your ways. Now I see that you are merely growing accustomed to captivity.”

  He steps forward then, and does what every other person in the room would have considered suicide: he touches Nahadoth. It is a brief gesture, just a light brush of his fingers against the cracked porcelain of Nahadoth’s face. There is such yearning in that touch that my heart aches.

  But does it matter anymore? Itempas has killed Enefa; he has killed his own children; he has killed me. He has killed something in Nahadoth as well. Can he not see that?

  Perhaps he does, because his soft look fades, and after a moment he takes his hand away.

  “So be it,” he says, going cold. “I tire of this. Enefa was a plague, Nahadoth. She took the pure, perfect universe that you and I created and fouled it. I kept the Stone because I did care for her, whatever you might think… and because I thought it might help to sway you.”

  He pauses then, looking down at my corpse. The Stone has fallen into my blood, less than a handbreadth from my shoulder. Despite Nahadoth’s care in setting me down, my head has flopped to one side. One arm is curled upward as if to try and cup the Stone closer. The image is ironic—a mortal woman, killed in the act of trying to lay claim to a goddess’s power. And a god’s lover.

  I imagine Itempas will send me to an especially awful hell.

  “But I think it’s time our sister dies completely,” Itempas says. I cannot tell if he is looking at the Stone or at me. “Let her infestation die with her, and then our lives can be as they were. Have you not missed those days?”

  (I notice Dekarta, who stiffens at this. Only he, of the three mortals, seems to realize what Itempas means.)

  “I will hate you no less, Tempa,” Nahadoth breathes, “when you and I are the last living things in this universe.”

  Then he is a roaring black tempest, streaking forward in attack, and Itempas is a crackle of white fire bracing to meet him. They collide in a concussion that shatters the glass in the ritual chamber. Mortals scream, their voices almost lost as cold, thin air howls in to fill the void. They fall to the floor as Nahadoth and Itempas streak away, upward—but my perception is drawn to Scimina for an instant. Her eyes fix on the knife that killed me, Viraine’s knife, lying not far from her. Relad sprawls dazed amid glass shards and chunks of the broken plinth. Scimina’s eyes narrow.

  Sieh roars, his voice an echo of Nahadoth’s battle cry. Zhakkarn turns to face Kurue, and her pike appears in one hand.

  And at the center of it all, unnoticed, untouched, my body and the Stone lie still.

  And here we are.

  Yes.

  You understand what has happened?

  I’m dead.

  Yes. In the presence of the Stone, which houses the last of my power.

  Is that why I’m still here, able to see these things?

  Yes. The Stone kills the living. You’re dead.

  You mean… I can come back to life? Amazing. How convenient that Viraine turned on me.

  I prefer to think of it as fate.
r />   So what now?

  Your body must change. It will no longer be able to bear two souls within itself; that is an ability only mortals possess. I made your kind that way, gifted in ways that we are not, but I never dreamt it would make you so strong. Strong enough to defeat me, in spite of all my efforts. Strong enough to take my place.

  What? No. I don’t want your place. You are you. I am me. I have fought for this.

  And fought well. But my essence, all that I am, is necessary for this world to continue. If I am not to be the one who restores that essence, then it must be you.

  But—

  I do not regret, Daughter, Little Sister, worthy heir. Neither should you. I only wish…

  I know your wish.

  Do you really?

  Yes. They are blinded by pride, but underneath there is still love. The Three are meant to be together. I will see it done.

  Thank you.

  Thank you. And farewell.

  I can ponder for an eternity. I am dead. I have all the time I want.

  But I was never very patient.

  In and around the glass room, which no longer has glass and probably no longer qualifies as a room, battle rages.

  Itempas and Nahadoth have taken their fight to the skies they once shared. Above the motes they have become, dark streaks break the gradient of dawn, like strips of night layered over the morning. A blazing white beam, like the sun but a thousand times brighter, sears across these to shatter them. There is no point to this. It is daytime. Nahadoth would already be asleep within his human prison if not for Itempas’s parole. Itempas can revoke that parole whenever he wishes. He must be enjoying himself.

  Scimina has gotten Viraine’s knife. She has flung herself on Relad, trying to gut him. He’s stronger, but she has leverage and the strength of ambition on her side. Relad’s eyes are wide with terror; perhaps he has always feared something like this.

  Sieh, Zhakkarn, and Kurue feint and circle in a deadly metal-and-claw dance. Kurue has conjured a pair of gleaming bronze swords to defend herself. This contest, too, is foregone; Zhakkarn is battle incarnate, and Sieh has all the power of childhood’s cruelty. But Kurue is wily, and she has the taste of freedom in her mouth. She will not die easily.

  Amid all this, Dekarta moves toward my body. He stops and struggles to his knees; in the end he slips in my blood and half-falls on me, grimacing in pain. Then his expression hardens. He looks up into the sky, where his god fights, then down. At the Stone. It is the source of the Arameri clan’s power; it is also the physical representation of their duty. Perhaps he hopes that by doing that duty, he will remind Itempas of the value of life. Perhaps he retains some smidgeon of faith. Perhaps it is simply that forty years ago, Dekarta killed his wife to prove his commitment. To do otherwise now would mock her death.

  He reaches for the Stone.

  It is gone.

  But it was there, lying in my blood, a moment before. Dekarta frowns, looks around. His eyes are attracted by movement. The hole in my chest, which he can see through the torn cloth of my bodice: the raw lips of the wound are drawing together, pressing themselves closed. As the line of the wound shrinks, Dekarta catches a glimmer of thin gray light. Within me.

  Then I am drawn forward, down—

  Yes. Enough of this disembodied soul business. Time to be alive again.

  I opened my eyes and sat up.

  Dekarta, behind me, made a sound somewhere between choking and a gasp. No one else noticed as I got to my feet, so I turned to face him.

  “Wh—what in every god’s name—” His mouth worked. He stared.

  “Not every god,” I said. And because I was still me after all, I leaned down to smile in his face. “Just me.”

  Then I closed my eyes and touched my chest. Nothing beat beneath my fingers; my heart had been destroyed. Yet something was there, giving life to my flesh. I could feel it. The Stone. A thing of life, born of death, filled with incalculable potential. A seed.

  “Grow,” I whispered.

  29

  The Three

  AS WITH ANY BIRTH, there was pain.

  I believe I screamed. I think that in that instant many things occurred. I have a vague sense of the sky wheeling overhead, cycling day through day and night and back to morning in the span of a breath. (If this happened, then what moved was not the sky.) I have a feeling that somewhere in the universe an uncountable number of new species burst into existence, on millions of planets. I am fairly certain that tears fell from my eyes. Where they landed, lichens and moss began to cover the floor.

  I cannot be certain of any of this. Somewhere, in dimensions for which there are no mortal words, I was changing, too. This occupied a great deal of my awareness.

  But when the changes were done, I opened my eyes and saw new colors.

  The room practically glowed with them. The iridescence of the floor’s Skystuff. Glints of gold from glass shards lying about the room. The blue of the sky—it had been a watery blue-white, but now it was such a vivid teal that I stared at it in wonder. It had never, at least in my lifetime, been so blue.

  Next I noticed scent. My body had become something else, less a body than an embodiment, but its shape for the moment was still human, as were my senses. And something was different here, too. When I inhaled, I could taste the crisp, acrid thinness of the air, underlaid by the metallic scent of the blood that covered my clothing. I touched my fingers to this and tasted it. Salt, more metal, hints of bitter and sour. Of course; I had been unhappy for days before I died.

  New colors. New scents in the air. I had never realized, before now, what it meant to live in a universe that had lost one-third of itself. The Gods’ War had cost us so much more than mere lives.

  No more, I vowed.

  Around me the chaos had stopped. I did not want to talk, to think, but a sense of responsibility pushed insistently against my reverie. At last I sighed and focused on my surroundings.

  To my left stood three shining creatures, stronger than the rest, more malleable in form. I recognized in them an essence of myself. They stared at me, weapons frozen in hand or on claw, mouths agape. Then one of them moulded himself into a different shape—a child—and came forward. His eyes were wide. “M-Mother?”

  That was not my name. I would have turned away in disinterest had it not occurred to me that this would hurt him. Why did that matter? I didn’t know, but it bothered me.

  So instead I said, “No.” On impulse, I reached out to stroke his hair. His eyes got even wider, then spilled over with tears. He pulled away from me then, covering his face. I did not know what to make of this behavior, so I turned to the others.

  Three more to my right—or rather, two, and one dying. Also shining creatures, though their light was hidden within them, and their bodies were weaker and crude. And finite. The dying one expired as I watched, too many of his organs having been damaged to sustain life. I felt the rightness of their mortality even as I mourned it.

  “What is this?” demanded one of them. The younger one, the female. Her gown and hands were splattered with her brother’s blood.

  The other mortal, old and close to death himself, only shook his head, staring at me.

  Then suddenly two more creatures stood before me, and I caught my breath at the sight. I could not help myself. They were so beautiful, even beyond the shells they wore to interact with this plane. They were part of me, kin, and yet so very different. I had been born to be with them, to bridge the gap between them and complete their purpose. To stand with them now—I wanted to throw back my head and sing with joy.

  But something was wrong. The one who felt like light and stillness and stability—he was whole, and glorious. Yet there was something unwholesome at his core. I looked closer and perceived a great and terrible loneliness within him, eating at his heart like a worm in an apple. That sobered me, softened me, because I knew what that kind of loneliness felt like.

  The same blight was in the other being, the one whose nature call
ed to everything dark and wild. But something more had been done to him; something terrible. His soul had been battered and crushed, bound with sharp-edged chains, then forced into a too-small vessel. Constant agony. He had gone down on one knee, staring at me through dull eyes and lank, sweat-soaked hair. Even his own panting caused him pain.

  It was an obscenity. But a greater obscenity was the fact that the chains, when I followed them to their source, were part of me. So were three other leashes, one of which led to the neck of the creature who had called me Mother.

  Revolted, I tore the chains away from my chest and willed them to shatter.

  The three creatures to my left all gasped, folding in on themselves as power returned to them. Their reaction was nothing, however, compared to that of the dark being. For an instant he did not move, only widening his eyes as the chains loosened and fell away.

  Then he flung his head back and screamed, and all existence shifted. On this plane, this manifested as a single, titanic concussion of sound and vibration. All sight vanished from the world, replaced by a darkness profound enough to drive weaker souls mad if it lasted for more than a heartbeat. It passed even more quickly than that, replaced by something new.

  Balance: I felt its return like the setting of a dislocated joint. Out of Three had the universe been formed. For the first time in an age, Three walked again.

  When all was still, I saw that my dark one was whole. Where once restless shadows had flickered in his wake, now he shone with an impossible negative radiance, black as the Maelstrom. Had I thought him merely beautiful before? Ah, but now there was no human flesh to filter his cool majesty. His eyes glowed blue-black with a million mysteries, terrifying and exquisite. When he smiled, all the world shivered, and I was not immune.

  Yet this shook me on an entirely different level, because suddenly memory surged through me. They were pallid, these memories, as of something half-forgotten—but they pushed at me, demanding acknowledgment, until I made a sound and shook my head and batted at the air in protest. They were part of me, and though I understood now that names were as ephemeral as form for my kind, those memories insisted upon giving the dark creature a name: Nahadoth.