N. Jemisin: The Obelisk Gate

He panics.

Guardians must never panic. He knows this; there are good reasons why. He does it anyway, flailing and screaming as he is dragged into the cold dark. He wants to live. This is the first and worst sin, for one of his kind.

His terror suddenly vanishes. A bad sign. It is replaced a moment later by an anger so powerful that it blots out everything else. He stops screaming and trembles with it, but even as he does so, he knows: This anger is not his own. In his panic, he has opened himself to danger, and the danger that he fears above all others has come striding through the door as if it owns the place already.

It says to him: If you wish to live, that can be arranged.

Oh, Evil Earth.

More offers, promises, suggestions and their rewards. Schaffa can have more power—power enough to fight the current, and the pain, and the lack of oxygen. He can live… for a price.

No. No. He knows the price. Better to die than pay it. But it is one thing to resolve to die, quite another to actually carry out that resolve in the midst of dying.

Something burns at the back of Schaffa’s skull. This is a cold burn, not like the fire in his nose and throat and chest. Something there is waking up, warming up, gathering itself. Ready for the collapse of his resistance.

We all do what we have to do , comes the seducer’s whisper, and this is the same reasoning Schaffa has used on himself too many times, over the centuries. Justifying too many atrocities. One does what one must, for duty. For life.

It’s enough. The cold presence takes him.

Power suffuses his limbs. In just a few suddenly restarted heartbeats, the broken bones have knitted and the organs have resumed their traditional function, albeit with a few work-arounds for the lack of oxygen. He twists in the water and begins to swim, sensing the direction he must go. Not up, not anymore; suddenly he finds oxygen in the water that he is breathing. He has no gills, yet his alveoli suddenly absorb more than they should be able to. It’s only a little oxygen, though—not even enough to feed his body properly. Cells die, especially in a very particular part of his brain. He is aware of this, horribly. He is aware of the slow death of all that makes him Schaffa . But the price must be paid.

He fights it, of course. The anger tries to drive him forward, keep him underwater, but he knows that everything of him will die if he does. So he swims forward, but also upward, squinting through the murk at the light. It takes a long, dying time. But at least some of the rage within him is his own, fury that he has been forced into this position, rage at himself for succumbing, and that keeps him at it even as the tingling sets into his hands, his feet. But—

He reaches the surface. Breaches it. Concentrates hard on not panicking while he vomits up water, coughs out more, and finally sucks in air. It hurts so much. Still, with the first inhalation, the dying stops. His brain and limbs get what they need. There are still spots in his vision, still that awful coldness at the back of his head, but he is Schaffa. Schaffa . He holds on to this, digs in claws and snarls away the encroaching cold. Fire-under-Earth, he’s still Schaffa, and he will not let himself forget this.

(He loses so much else, though. Understand: The Schaffa that we have known thus far, the Schaffa whom Damaya learned to fear and Syenite learned to defy, is now dead. What remains is a man with a habit of smiling, a warped paternal instinct, and a rage that is not wholly his own driving everything he does from this point on.

Perhaps you will mourn the Schaffa who is lost. It’s all right if you do. He was part of you, once.)

He resumes swimming. After about seven hours—this is the strength his memories have bought him—he sees the still-smoking cone of Allia against the horizon. It’s a longer distance than straight to shore, but he adjusts his direction to swim toward it. There will be help there, he knows somehow.

It is well past sunset now, fully dark. The water is cold, and he’s thirsty, and he hurts. Thankfully none of the monsters of the deep attack him. The only real threat he faces is his own will, and the question of whether it will falter in the battle against the sea, or against the cold rage eating his mind. It does not help that he is alone save for the indifferent stars… and the obelisk. He sees it once, when he glances back: a wavering now-colorless shape against the sparkling night sky. It looks no farther away than when he first noticed it from the deck of the ship, and ignored it in favor of focusing on his quarry. He should have paid closer attention, studied it to see if it was approaching, remembered that even a four-ringer can be a threat under the right circumstances, and—

He frowns, pausing for a moment to float on his back. (This is dangerous. Fatigue immediately begins to set in. The power that sustains him can do only so much.) He stares at the obelisk. A four-ringer. Who? He tries to remember. There was someone… important.

No. He is Schaffa. That is all that is important. He resumes swimming.

Near dawn, he feels gritty black sand under his feet. He stumbles up out of the water, alien to himself and the movement of limbs on land, half crawling. The surf recedes behind him; there’s a tree ahead. He collapses upon its roots and does something that resembles sleep. It’s closer to a coma.

When he wakes, the sun’s up and he is afire with pain of every kind: sore lungs, aching limbs, throbbing unhealed fractures in his nonessential bones, a dry throat, cracking skin. (And another, deeper ache.) He groans and something shadows his face. “You all right?” asks a voice that sounds like he feels. Rough, dry, low.

He peels his eyes open to see an old man crouching before him. The man’s an Eastcoaster, thin and weathered, most of his curly white hair gone except a fringe round the back of his head. When Schaffa looks around, he sees that they are in a small, tree-shadowed cove. The old man’s rowboat has been pulled onto the shore, not far away. A fishing rod pokes out of it. The trees of the cove are all dead and the sand beneath Schaffa blows with ash; they’re still very close to the volcano that was Allia.

How did he get here? He remembers swimming. Why was he in the water? That part is gone.

“I—” Schaffa begins, and chokes on his own dry, swollen tongue. The old man helps him sit up, then offers him an open canteen. Brackish, leather-flavored water never tasted so sweet. The old man pulls it away after a few swallows, which Schaffa knows is wise, but he still groans and reaches after the canteen once. Only once, though. He is strong enough not to beg.

(The emptiness inside him is not just thirst.)

He tries to focus. “I’m.” This time speaking is easier. “I… don’t know if I’m all right.”

“Shipwreck?” The old man cranes his neck to look around. In the near distance, very visible, is the ridge of knifelike stones that Syenite raised, from the pirates’ island all the way to the mainland. “Were you out there? What was that, some sort of shake?”

It seems impossible that the old man does not know—but Schaffa has always been amazed at how little ordinary people understand about the world. (Always? Has he always been so amazed? Really?) “Rogga,” he says, too tired to manage the three syllables of the non-vulgar word for their kind. It’s enough. The old man’s face hardens.

“Filthy Earth-spawned beasts. That’s why they have to be drowned as babes.” He shakes his head and focuses on Schaffa. “You’re too big for me to lift, and dragging will hurt. Think you can get up?”

With help, Schaffa does manage to rise and stagger to the old man’s rowboat. He sits shivering in the prow while the old man rows them away from the cove, heading south along the coast. Some of why he’s shivering is cold—his clothes are still wet where he was lying down—and some of it is lingering shock. Some of it, however, is something entirely else.