N. Jemisin: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“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 forego 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.