Shades in Shadow

by N. K. Jemisin

  (breath, moist; air, vibrating through chords; the brush of warm lips)

  murmuring between hard pants, “We shall always be one.”

  The taste of her, and him, and Them.

  The musky taste fades. Clever Nsana. In itself the dream was nothing: just a taste. Nothing Itempas can complain of. All its power comes from Nahadoth’s imagination. And, too, from the power of flesh—which was Nsana’s purpose, Nahadoth understands. A way of reminding Nahadoth that the body need not be a prison, if he can learn to embrace its joys.

  But the dream, the memory, is wrong. Always has ended. The Three are no longer one. Itempas lied, and Nsana’s attempt to comfort him has been worse than a failure.

  Nahadoth is too weary to mourn.

  * * *

  “What are you?” asks the boy who is not a boy.

  More time has passed. The boy is halfway to death now, by the usual length of a mortal life. His voice is deeper, his face roughly handsome rather than pretty. Nahadoth doubts he is warming anyone’s bed anymore—but such things are not always about beauty, so he might be wrong on that account.

  And such a question! No one has asked him that since…since Itempas, a thousand, thousand eternities ago. Since existence, trying to define itself, transformed into a new shape to accommodate his presence and defined him by doing so. He feels oddly flattered to be asked again.

  “I…,” Nahadoth tries to say, and stops, distracted. Voice. Soft flapping moist tissues, hard bone and enamel, vibration, breath. Pure sensation. He has always liked mortal form. “Want.”

  “What?”

  “I want.” Emphasis. Intent. Desire. The words make him ache within, a dull niggling torment paralleling the ongoing crush and grind of mortal flesh upon his soul. “I am wanting. It is…all that I can be.” Now. And forevermore? Then Itempas truly has damned him.

  Silence. Then: “They say you’re like the others, but you can’t be. They aren’t like this. They don’t sit in some room, in a…a puddle, and speak only in mad rants. You’re something different, aren’t you?”

  He does not dignify this question with the obvious answer.

  A step. Closer to the well’s rim. “I’ve killed five of them now.” The rage and glee reverberates even as his voice softens, fine and precise as the crystals of a prism. When Haan laughs this time, it does not waver at all. “Accidents, they think…but when I’m alone with the ones I’ve killed, when the sweet lords and ladies realize they can’t stop the thing they’ve created and they have to tell me the truth or I’ll hurt them before I kill them…Only the fullbloods know for sure what you are, and I haven’t killed any of those.” Unspoken: yet. “But there are whispers.”

  There are always whispers. “Whisper in the dark and I shall answer,” Nahadoth says, and laughs his own wavering laugh into the night and the darkest recesses of mortal minds. Thus are legends born.

  “They say you’re one of the actual Three. The priests say you don’t exist, that you never existed, but no one believes those stories. They’re going to have to change them soon.” Haan shifts, gets closer, getting comfortable. “No one says your name. To speak it is to be damned to the Skyfather’s darkest hells.”

  Itempas has no dark hells, Nahadoth does not say. That this is no longer obvious to mortals is proof that at least some of the priests’ propaganda is working. But there is another pause. Curious, Nahadoth opens the eyes of his body. There are things mortal flesh sees that divine perception cannot. Haan leans over the well, almost close enough to touch his lips to the pooling blackness that is Nahadoth’s substance. He cannot see Nahadoth through the layers of dark. Nahadoth reaches up one blunt-nailed, crudely formed human hand, though the edge of the pit is ten feet above. The perspective makes Haan’s face tiny as he frames it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Nahadoth,” Haan breathes.

  Nahadoth smiles, though no one can see it. A curl of his substance flickers up, like a splash of water after something small has been dropped into it, and flicks at Haan’s lips. Haan flinches and jerks back, clapping a hand over his mouth as if something cold has burned him or as if he has spoken blasphemy. Then he laughs, and there is neither humor nor fear in it.

  “Flirt,” he says, his eyes glittering. Then he leaves, and within seconds Nahadoth forgets he was ever there.

  * * *

  The next time Nahadoth deigns to notice reality, Kurue is there.

  “Come back to us,” she says. “We need you.”

  Kurue wants. She is not a child of his essence, but a bit of him is in all of their children because he raised them and loved them. This is the proof of it, perhaps—that here in this world, incarnate in flesh, the first thing that both of them feel is not regret, but wanting.

  Kurue stirs, having sensed his attention, and stands from where she had been sitting against the wall. “Look, Father. Look at what they’ve done to me.” She moves closer, leaning over the wall of the well, and he does grimace at the sight. She has been…trimmed. They all have had parts removed; it was the only way Itempas could fit them into the chains. But Kurue’s body has been trimmed further still. She is a tiny thing, bizarrely shriveled and re-proportioned, and her wings are gone. He stares at this, realizing at once that the mortals do not understand what they have done. Kurue’s wings are her store of accumulated knowledge. Every barbule of every shaft is the lore of an entire world. Each vane spins galaxies; the pinions contain the sagas of all the iterations of existence that have ever been. They have left her arms and legs, but without wings she might as well be limbless and tongueless and eyeless. Without her knowledge, she is not Kurue, not anymore.

  He closes his eyes, unable to bear her pain in addition to his own.

  “We need you,” she says again, her voice a weary drone. “We need your strength. It’s so hard, Father. Sieh says that together we can survive this incarceration; that is how mortals endure. But how can we, when we are only three?”

  We were only Three, and we did well enough, he thinks. But this is uncharitable, because at least he had the totality of himself when he was free. And he understands that for these lesser ones of his kind, these children, three is not enough. It wasn’t for the Three, either, in the end. That was why Enefa came, and why she made them into a multitude, because Three is strong but family is stronger and without her Nahadoth is lost, lost, lost as he never wanted to be again.

  “Enefa,” he whispers for the umpteenth time. Above him, seen through the tendrils of his substance, Kurue flinches. Lost in grief, he realizes only belatedly what this means. It is something Itempas often chided him for: he thinks only of himself at times when he should consider the needs of others. Now he’s hurt her. But Kurue is wise; she knows of the aeons that he spent alone, screaming his loneliness into the empty nothing. Surely she understands that it is not his nature to be considerate? Though he tries. And fails, often.

  He opens his mouth to speak to her again, to try and be a better father, but it’s too late. Time has passed. She’s long gone.

  * * *

  “A mistake,” says the boy, who is now an old man. “Inevitable, really. I’m careful, but not perfect. Now it’s only a matter of time.” He’s sitting on the lip of the well, his back to the contained puddle of Nahadoth. He speaks quietly, without inflection, but the room reverberates with his tension.

  “Twelve,” Haan says when Nahadoth says nothing. “Twelve of those so-high are dead at my hands, and the last—my prize—was Lord Arameri’s heir. Lord Arameri thinks it was the girl’s rival that did her in, but it was me. Me.” Haan strokes a hand over his hair, a habit of preening left over from his beautiful boyhood. It’s still beautiful because he has the pride to do it well. “They’ll never find some of the bodies. They don’t even realize some of the deaths are murders yet. But the clues are out there now, and eventually someone will put them together.”

  As such things go. Nahadoth yawns, disinterested, but Haan does not hear.

  “But I’ve left them my grandso
n.” Nahadoth sees Haan’s smile from a shadowed corner. “He’s beautiful like I was, and such clever coldness! Ah, he’s a fullblood and he knows how to use it. He’s everything I could have wanted, though he doesn’t know who I am, of course. My big boy. I wish I could watch him destroy them all from within.”

  Nahadoth touches his belly, thinking of the children he’s borne. All were difficult. He is creation, generation, but there is something unpleasantly ordered about the production of new life. It must proceed in certain ways, or things go wrong. Enefa was the most skilled at it, and even she made mistakes sometimes; Nahadoth never came close to mastering the art. The only children that survived his bearing were those as disordered as himself. All beautiful in their varied twists and misshapes and misthoughts.

  How terrible, though, to continue only through one’s offspring. Mortals must exist in a constant state of frustration with their own fragility and ephemerality, even within the heavens and hells that they occupy after death.

  (Is Enefa there now? Is she anywhere?)

  And despite the banality of it all, despite the fact that this boy is a petty mortal with petty mortal motivations, Nahadoth thinks, I understand. Perhaps he says it aloud. The boy—Nahadoth’s boy, this man with a wild princess’s soul—seems to hear it. He straightens and abruptly hops off the lip of the well, turning to gaze into it.

  “Nahadoth, I want,” Haan says.

  Nahadoth shivers. It is not a prayer, he reminds himself, so the chains will not tighten. The mortal has simply expressed a desire. He is Arameri. Should Nahadoth not obey? The chains remain quiescent.

  “Do you?” Nahadoth asks conversationally. Oh, but he is very interested.

  Haan smiles with his hunter teeth. “Oh, yes. And I know what you want, Nahadoth Nightlord, Skyfather and Shadowmother, lifeblood of the universe, flesh of chaos and change. You crave purpose. Direction. A reason to do more than lie here in a seething, grieving puddle. Well, I have that.” He presses his hands to his chest, makes an exaggerated pantomime then of holding out his hands. “I offer my purpose to you, if you will have it.”

  Dangerous, dangerous. Haan skirts forbidden words. He knows it, Nahadoth sees, and Nahadoth wants to laugh with the thrill of it. And the mortal’s offer (offer, not an offering), ah! The shape of a strategy is laid out in the twisted convolutions of this mortal’s monstrous soul. Haan is cruel, yes, but his cruelty has little power. Nahadoth has power, even in this crude form—power enough to protect his children, if he uses it right. Power enough for many things.

  “Come to me,” Nahadoth says.

  Haan closes his eyes for a moment, as if savoring the words. “I have waited so long for you.”

  He climbs onto the lip of the well again. He doesn’t come face-first this time, as Nahadoth expected. He swings his legs over, pausing as this sets off ripples across the black pool of Nahadoth’s substance. Hesitation? No, fascination. Then Haan drops down, into the dark.

  At the bottom of the well, Nahadoth lies still, waiting, as Haan gropes toward him. Faint warmth and light, like a tiny dim sun. Nahadoth reaches out; after a moment, the mortal’s fingers tangle with his. A gentle tug and Haan falls against him, into his arms. Yes. Nahadoth feels Haan’s fingers brush his lips. There is no taste of fear. They are both above such paltry things.

  “Itempas and Enefa are gone,” he says, stroking Haan’s long, loose hair. It is a possessive caress. “I must choose now, from among my jailors, who shapes me.”

  “Make them pay,” Haan says, grinning.

  “I shall.” As an afterthought: “Thank you.” He feels Haan nod graciously.

  Then Nahadoth opens his mouth and swallows Haan whole.

  Time passes.

  Now the darkness stirs. Around the well, three appear: Kurue again, this time accompanied by an enormous blue-haired woman and a small boy with feral, ancient eyes—his other imprisoned children, Zhakkarn and Sieh. The boy sits atop a floating toy ball, staring hard at the rippling black pool. The larger woman inhales and steps forward, her form blurring as glittering mail appears on her limbs, her torso, her head. A pike manifests in one hand.

  “So you’ve chosen to fight,” she says. Her normally placid face has gone fierce. She raises the pike horizontally; it glows bloodred, smoking faintly. “Come forth, then, Father.”

  At this summons, the blackness coalesces. Thickens. Condenses into shape.

  A moment later Nahadoth manifests before them, standing on the well wall. The foot that extends to step down is bare, long-toed, and graceful; the leg that follows it is lean and smooth. In limbs and joints the body—no longer rudimentary—emerges like the moon from behind a cloud. A torso, smooth and lightly muscled. A face that blurs but is already far more defined, refined, than the lumpen thing it was. Last comes the hair: thick and soft and Ostei-loose, but blacker than the dark behind closed eyes. It curls around him, half real and half something else, cloak and dagger all in one.

  “I have chosen to fight,” agrees Nahadoth, opening the eyes of his body. They are beautiful eyes now—eyes that will make mortals hungry even as they advertise the dangers of tasting. And if these eyes do not allure, they will change until they do. He can be whatever they want him to be, really. Satisfy all their hungers, stoke new ones, feed those, too. Until they choke on him.

  Sieh cocks his head, one predator assessing another. “What have you done to yourself now, Naha?”

  “Just a small change.” Nahadoth looks down at the hand he has shaped. Long, strong fingers, with blunt, harmless nails. He curls them slowly.

  Sieh grins, flashing most of his sharp little teeth. “Oh, a game.” He hops off his flying ball and trots over to Nahadoth, his eyes alight. Nahadoth touches his hair, stroking it as some newer part of him has always yearned to do to a stolen, secret son.

  Kurue folds her arms. “You’ve contaminated yourself with that mortal, Naha. Are you certain that was safe to do?”

  “Nothing I have ever done is safe.”

  “True enough. Still.” She jerks her chin at Nahadoth’s new shape. “Not your usual way of doing things, is it? This use of…camouflage.” Her expression is guarded, carefully blank.

  Zhakkarn glances at Kurue, the faintest of frowns crossing her face. “Guerilla tactics can be effective, Sister, if used properly. Itempas has put us at a disadvantage against the mortals. This strategy is appropriate in response.”

  “They won’t know what hit them,” Sieh says, his slitted pupils grown huge with enthusiasm for the killing to come.

  “They will,” says Nahadoth, and Sieh blinks. “That must be part of it—their fear.” There are memories in his mind, the taste of them still salty and heavy on his tongue. Faces with mouths open, eyes wide. Haan always made certain they knew their killer, in the moment of death. That must be part of it: the knowledge of who is destroying them, and why. If the slavemaster lies sleepless and despairing in the dark hours, then the slave holds some power even by daylight.

  Then he looks at Kurue. “I won’t abandon you again.”

  She blinks, and her face twists. A smile? Tears? He’s not sure. Still, he reaches out and cups her cheek and is relieved when she sighs and leans into his hand. She was right. It will be easier now that they’re fighting together.

  “Where do you mean to begin?” Zhakkarn stands closer to him than usual. It is not her nature to express affection, but she shows it in the ways she can. And she is right to ask this, to aim him. Always so quick to see the use in any weapon.

  He wants. “Enefa’s remains are the key to our freedom.”

  Sieh shakes his head, sorrow making him look older. “The Stone of Earth, the mortals call it. Hidden, and the soul that could control it is lost. Finding both will take an age of the world.”

  Nahadoth smiles. They all shiver just a little in response, in desire, in fear. Does his new form affect even them? They have already suffered too much; he will take care not to harm them further. “An age is nothing,” he says. “Pain is nothing. Blood is no
thing. To us.” To the mortals, though, it is the price they must pay for daring to imprison their gods. Oh, the Arameri will learn and rally and strike back in their paltry way when they can. It will be war…but the mortals are the ones who started this war. Nahadoth will not fight fair.

  So they leave the well chamber, four gods united in purpose and hatred, and as he walks, Nahadoth wipes his mouth with the back of one hand. Such a perfect, dear, sweet boy.

  Then he laughs to himself, softly and waveringly, and chooses the first targets who will suffer his wrath.

  THE GOD WITHOUT A NAME

  “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a god imprisoned here. He was a terrible, beautiful, angry god, and by night when he roamed these white halls, everyone feared him. But by day, the god slept. And the body, the living mortal flesh that was his ball and chain, got to have a life of its own.”

  I inhaled, understanding, just not believing. He was speaking of the Nightlord, of course—but the body that lived by day was…?

  Near the window, Hado folded his arms. I saw this easily, despite the window’s darkness, because he was darker still.

  “It wasn’t much of a life, mind you,” he said. “All the people who feared the god did not fear the man. They quickly learned they could do things to the man that the god would not tolerate. So the man lived his life in increments, born with every dawn, dying with every sunset. Hating every moment of it. For two. Thousand. Years.”