The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  “It is!” yelled one of the women behind us, and there were other murmurs in the room, some of them from the circle, others from beyond it. Kitke-ennu glanced around at them without moving her head; her jaw flexed.

  “I do not believe so,” she said—and there were murmurs in agreement with this, too, which made me happy. But then Kitke added, “Yet if men would be treated as women, then they must carry themselves as women, and exercise sound judgment, comport themselves with dignity. You cannot act the barbarian, Eino mau Tehno, and expect civilized folk to listen.”

  “The men of Darr have been civilized for two hundred years and more,” Eino said, his voice sharp and words quick. “It has gotten us nowhere. Perhaps barbarism will be more effective.”

  And he drew his hands into his sleeves for a moment, then slipped them out again; with his left hand he raised Lumyn’s mosaic knife.

  There were murmurs again, and gasps, and Fahno froze. “Eino—”

  He glanced at her, then set his jaw and drew his hands into his robes again. “I will not be bartered, Beba,” he said. “Not even for your sake.”

  “What are you doing?” Arolu, behind us, was trying to come forward; Mikna and Ia held him back. “No, no, he is my son, I cannot let him—”

  “There is no need for anything drastic,” Kitke-ennu said, holding up her hands in alarm; she’d half risen to her feet already. “To kill yourself—”

  “Kill myself?” Eino laughed again, so harshly that I jumped. “No. I do this with the Warriors’ Council itself as witness, in a house that belongs to all Darre. I am claiming myself.”

  We could not see what he did, there inside his robes, but we saw the sudden, sharp jerk of his movement. Saw how his face tightened, his lips drawing back from his teeth. He did not cry out, though I flinched, and so did Ia, at the white flare of his pain. I smelled his demon blood then, a lot of it! And a moment later, spots of darker color appeared on the cloth across his lap.

  There were SCREAMS! I was almost one of them! Fahno staggered back, staring at Eino; beyond her, Mikna and Arolu were just as shocked. Ia—he stared, too, but there was the tiniest of admiring smiles on his lips. Lumyn looked ill.

  Eino’s face had gone sallow. He swayed where he knelt, and I saw his eyes roll back. He was going to fall! So I ran over and caught him, and held him against me while everyone around us just kept on freaking out.

  “I don’t suppose… you can heal me,” he murmured, through the screams and chaos. “Sweet bright hells, this hurts.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said, anxiously. “I still haven’t learned that. Ia’s coming, though—”

  “No. He can only n-negate what I’ve done. I don’t want it negated.” Eino’s eyes fluttered shut; he’d begun shaking, his skin turning cool and clammy. “I will be… what I choose to be. If they cannot make a p-place for me, I will carve my own.”

  I blinked. Oh.

  Ia and Arolu reached us, Arolu’s eyes wide and white; at once he tore off one of his sleeves, twisted it, and then pushed Eino back so he could get his robes up. Someone was calling for a bonebender. Eino, however, had started to laugh through his shaking. He murmured something; I leaned close to hear it.

  “I am a warrior,” he said, through gritted teeth, “and I will not fight fair.”

  I sat up, staring down at him. Ia, standing at the edge of my vision, suddenly looked sharply at me.

  Oh. I understood a new thing, all of a sudden:

  Power is not a thing that can be given.

  The men of Darr had tried to give up theirs, to prove their loyalty after their fellows’ betrayal, but they were still Darre. The Darre as a whole kept trying to let go of their warrior selves, but they couldn’t; it was what had made them strong for so long, and they knew it. Even Ia—he had chosen to live among the mortals because they did not fear him, but that did not make him anything less than he was: the greatest and most terrifying of the Three’s remaining children.

  Everyone treated Eino like less than he was, but that did not make him so. Even when he tried to fit himself in with their thinking, when he let them use him, he was still not their thing. He was still himself: a great mortal temporarily folding himself small, choosing to bend and smile behind his sleeve and refrain from dancing in others’ presence. He might allow others to forget his worth, might have to remind them, might have to fight and bleed to make them recognize it—but as long as he remembered who and what he was, none of them could diminish him. He was, would forever be, glorious.

  Oh!

  And all he would ever have to do, to claim his true glorious self—

  OH! OH! OH!

  —was take his power back.

  I lifted my hands without quite knowing why. Just felt right. I made cups of my hands. Something filled them now, brimming gold and bright-hot and strange. Where had it come from? Mostly Eino—but there was some of me in there, too, just a little, just enough. A spark of myself. Why had I added that to Eino’s shining power?

  Because I had to. Because it was… it was why I was there! Why I was, at all.

  All around us the mortal realm seemed to swirl, as if something had set it spinning around an axis that was us. But here, here which had become the center of all things, everything was suddenly still.

  “Shill?” Ia’s voice was sharp.

  “This is yours,” I whispered to Eino, who squinted up at me, panting. “You took it back from them.”

  Eino looked utterly confused. “Mine? ”

  I grinned. “Here!”

  “Wha—” he began, before I plunged both hands up to the wrists into his body.

  Into him! Into the he-that-was-Eino, not the flesh, not just the soul! Oh, there are no words for it, not even in my sophisticated big-girl vocabulary, but it was beautiful and perfect, all the whatness and howness of existence pouring through me, finding all the whoness and whyness of him and filling it up, blowing it open, setting us both on fire like baby stars! And I was all swirly, WE were swirly together, there is nothing to describe it except

  YOU

  ARE

  And also, also:

  I

  AM

  Because I am! Because THAT IS WHAT I AM!

  Many things happened.

  There was light like morning all around me. In the light, my hair lifted and whipped. I rose—no, I grew, limbs and face getting longer, breasts and hips becoming more than thoughts, hair stretching into a whipping banner. As I grew I pulled the shining, screaming thing that was Eino with me, dragging him by his soul; I was laughing. We were laughing, him through his screams and me through my tears, as all around us gathered a ring of power so vicious and intense that the Raringa’s floor peeled apart in splinters and rubble and its roof shattered and flew outward and most of the mortals screamed and fled.

  And high above us the moon moved back into the place that it had held for eons, and the sun gasped and turned to see what was happening, and all the planets, everywhere, suddenly paid attention and got excited. All over existence I could feel all the incomprehensible members of my family perk up, or inhale, or sparkle, or ripple as they perceived the change.

  It is the best feeling I have ever had. I wanted to share it! So I sent the light forth in spreading-ring wavelets, seeking, feeling, knowing:

  An old woman in a place that does not revere old women the way the Darre do. She has nothing—no home, no family, no money, not even her full mind—but she has stood to scream at the cruel boys who’ve tried to take the little dog she loves, stood to fight them, because even she deserves to have something that loves her back—

  Yes.

  A young man who is smaller than he should be, visibly weaker; others have smelled his weakness. They hurt him, as they have done over and over, for no reason other than their own pleasure, but in this lone moment he is sick of it, he is done, and he balls his fists and launches himself at them even though he knows it is futile—

  Yes, this one, too.

  A child, a girl, the
least valued of her many siblings, the one who seems like nothing so her parents treat her like nothing, give her nothing that she does not take first, and she demands nothing except the one thing they owe her, which is that they look at her, look at her, LOOK AT ME RIGHT NOW—

  Oh, yes, yes, yes!

  And more, and more, new fires igniting as the wave of power circled the globe. Nothing special about any of them, nothing unique, just the right confluence of circumstance in the right moment of my maturation, and that was all it took. It hurt every time this happened, took that spark of me that seemed as necessary as their own strength—but I grew, too! Their power made me powerful even as I diminished. It was theirs! I was theirs! They took what they should always have had, and I made it real for them, made it right for me!

  “Shill!” Ia came through the light and grabbed me flesh and soul; I laughed wildly, wanting him to laugh with me. “Look at what you’re doing to yourself! Stop this!” But I did not care about his concern. I wanted more: to be more, to give more. This was me, and I had found myself at last, and I would revel in it ’til I no longer could!

  So Ia did the only thing possible: he surrounded me with the quintessence of himself so that the nothing of him clashed against the everything of me.

  And then, only then, did I stop doing what I was doing—whatever that was—and settle back into myself.

  I sagged to the floor, confused, because… because… what? I felt glorious. I also felt almost dead. This was a very strange combination of feelings.

  “No, Shill.” Ia held me still, stroking my hair back from my face. “No. Make them earn what you can give them. Make sure they’re worthy, little Sibling.”

  “Wh-what?” I couldn’t think. Why was Ia being so nice, all of a sudden? What had happened, exactly? I tried to sit up and could not. Ia helped me. I would think about that later, though, because suddenly there were more important mysteries to ponder.

  Like: what had wrecked the Raringa? There was rubble everywhere around me, a burst pipe at the back of the room spraying a flood, fallen lanterns smoldering and and torn scrolls fluttering and broken record-spheres rolling about. Most of the people in the chamber were not hurt, for which I was relieved. But—suddenly I remembered what I had done, what I had been compelled to do to Eino, and I gasped, looking around for him. “Where—” Then I saw him, and my mouth fell open.

  Because Eino floated unconscious at the center of the room in a slow-curling funnel of hair and robe. He glowed, blacklit and shivery—and all around him, swirling too in a delighted dance, were dozens of small colored balls. Some of them had clouds. As I watched, down through the hole in the Raringa’s ceiling came a tiny sun, which circled Eino once and then passed into Eino’s flesh, vanishing. I could feel other suns out there, queuing up to do the same thing: at least ten of them, happily giving themselves over to remake him into what they’d yearned for: a new god of mischief and troublemaking and stirring things up just for shits and giggles—or maybe because tradition had held sway for too long.

  A new… trickster. The Trickster.

  And elsewhere, everywhere around the mortal realm, all over this planet—there were others. One… two… six… a dozen… more. Newborn gods: mortals suddenly and shockingly turned immortal, all of them still forging the selves they would become, solidifying in power… but all of them made by me.

  “Oh,” I said, blinking. “Whoops.”

  It was Yeine, later when we had all gone back to Fahno’s house, who explained what had happened.

  “It’s something I thought might take place eventually,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table; everyone in the house had gathered round in awe. Juem, with shaking hands, had offered her a roasted gran banana, and to everyone’s surprise she had grinned and enthusiastically accepted. It had been her favorite, apparently, when she was mortal.

  She looked at me, where I sat across from her. My mortal shape was taller than hers now, all grown up, with nice strong arms and long fast legs and nice white teeth, which I used to grin back at her.

  “I turn my back on you for three days, Shill.” She shook her head, amused and wry. “Well, that will teach me to assume I know what the universe needs. I thought it lacked… something. I thought that something might be what it had lost—and that was indeed the case.” She turned now to Eino.

  Eino, who floated in the middle of the room, because he could not figure out how to make himself stand on the ground. Everyone was giving him a wide berth, and he looked distinctly worried, himself. Poor baby god! At least he’d finally figured out how to make the planets stop bothering him.

  “Welcome to the family,” she said gently, and Eino flinched.

  “Please,” he said, fidgeting; his robes kept swirling around him in an unfelt wind, and his hair kept getting into his face. “Please, great Lady of Twilight—”

  “Yeine will do.”

  He looked distinctly uncomfortable. I leaned over to whisper to Yeine, “Boys aren’t supposed to get familiar with strange women.” Then I winked at Arolu, so he would know I had listened to him. He groaned from where he sat, looking faint as he had all afternoon.

  Yeine coughed, though I could tell she was really laughing. “Ah. Things have changed a bit since my day, I see; back then we couldn’t shut men up around strange women. But I think you’ll find, Eino mau Tehno, that the rules of mortality no longer apply to you now. Speak to whomever you like.”

  He stared at her, and gradually began to sag toward the ground. “It’s true, then. I’m… this is…” He lifted his hands, stared at them. “I’m a godling.”

  She regarded him for a long moment, thoughtful. I stared at him. “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t believe he actually seemed upset about it. “You’re a godling, and now you’ll live forever, and you’ve got all kinds of magic! Now nobody can make you get married, or keep you from dancing. Now, if you wanted, you could make every man in Darr free, just like that!”

  I snapped my fingers—or tried to. But as I lifted my hand, there was a terrible, vertiginous moment in which my stomach dropped and the room spun and I felt myself diminish. I shuddered and closed my eyes. Yeine, however, touched my hand, and a moment later I felt better. Not good. Just not awful anymore.

  “No, he can’t,” she said, sternly. “Or rather, he can, but if he does so in your presence, he will harm you. Power cannot be given, Shill; isn’t that what you finally understood? People can only take it—and then only what is already theirs by right. Only what they can claim, and hold, with their own hands. Anything more is dangerous to them and others. Anything less, however…” She squeezed my hand, and I looked up to see her smile. “Well, that’s where you come in, my big girl. Nahadoth and Itempas will be so proud.”

  I grinned back, dizzyingly happy. I was myself at last, which was all the Three had ever really wanted me to be.

  “Every man in Darr has the right to be free,” Eino said. He was on his feet now. A persistent little moon orbited his head; he couldn’t seem to get rid of it. This in no way diminished the grave determination in his face.

  “Not at the expense of Darr’s women,” said Mikna. He rounded on her, and she lifted her chin, even though he was a god now and she was just a mortal. I felt that this was very brave of her.

  “… No,” he agreed after a moment, to her obvious surprise. “But our strength should not diminish yours. It makes us all powerful, together.” He inclined his head to her.

  Mikna seemed to consider this, and then after a moment she nodded back in silent acknowledgement.

  “Then tell everybody this,” I said. It seemed so obvious all of a sudden. “You see it now, Eino; help all of the Darre see it, too. Show them who they were, and who they could become!” Then I would grow as they grew, and everything would be better!

  “And yet,” Ia said, dampening my glee, because Ia, “Shill has done precisely what she claims should not be done; she has given power beyond imagining to mortals who cannot possibly be ready for it.” He stood on the
edge of the room with his arms folded, beyond the clustering of folk around Yeine. For the first time I realized how lonely he seemed, over there by himself.

  “Yes.” Yeine grew grave as well. “A plethora of new gods who haven’t a clue of what they are, or why this has happened; there will be trouble from it, I am certain. From many quarters, since our family was not ready for so many new additions, so soon.” She sighed. “And yet it is something I expected, as I said. Just… not now.”

  “Mortals becoming gods.” Fahno, at the table with us, rubbed her eyes. “You expected this, Lady? Before you, no one had ever done it. And the confluence of circumstances required to make it happen—”

  “Established a precedent,” Yeine said. “Made a path. Opened a door. It is the nature of this universe that once a thing becomes possible, it will happen somewhere, for however brief a time. Life spawns from lifelessness, gods from godlings; why should there not be a bridge in between, from the mortal to the immortal?” She abruptly looked pleased. “A new cycle of life. Fascinating.”

  Ia grimaced. Maybe he was not fascinated. “It almost killed her, though.” He was looking at me.

  “True.” Yeine watched me as well. “And what that means is that you cannot just empower any mortal, Shill, nor can you do it frequently. Certain conditions and circumstances must obviously be met, first, to facilitate the change; what those are, you will have to discover. So from here on, do try to exercise some discretion, why don’t you?”

  I inhaled, delighted, because this was part of me, too. “I’m going to get really good at it.” And as I got better—“Oh, wow. I’ll be strong, one day.”

  “One day, yes.” Yeine looked thoughtful. “Mortal life has always been, well, mortal. This universe that Nahadoth and Itempas and I have built is not eternal. There may be others, but when this one ends, mortalkind ends with it. But perhaps it need not end with death.”