N. Jemisin - The Broken Kingdoms

“J-join you?” I asked.

Dateh’s form shivered, then resolved again into the ordinary, mortal shape that I had known in the House of the Risen Sun. It was an illusion. I could feel the warped reality still present, even if it had found a way to fool my eyes. Dateh was like Lil, safe on the surface, horror underneath.

“Yes,” it said, and this time it spoke in a single voice. It gestured behind itself, toward the corpses I knew were there. “I could train you. Make you st-st-strong.” The Dateh-creature paused then, eyes unfocusing for a moment, and there was that curious blurring again, the outward mask cracking for an instant. The effort needed to hold that mask in place was a taut, palpable thing. No wonder the Dateh-creature hesitated to devour me; one more heart, one more stolen soul, might be too much to contain.

Shiny groaned, and the creature’s face hardened. “But you must do something for me.” Its voice had changed. I choked back a sob. It spoke with Madding’s voice, gentle and persuasive. Its hands flexed from fists to claws and back. “That creature in your lap. I thought he had no true magic, but now I see I underestimated him.”

My vision blurred with tears as I shook my head, and I reached across Shiny’s body as if I could somehow protect him. “No,” I blurted. “I won’t let you kill him, too. No.”

“I want you to kill him, Oree. Kill him, and take his heart.”

I froze, staring at Dateh, my mouth falling open.

It smiled again, its teeth flickering from Dateh’s to Dump’s back to Dateh’s. “You love too many of these gods,” it said. “I need proof of your commitment. So kill him, Oree. Kill him and take that shining power for your own. When you’ve done it, you’ll understand how much more you were meant to be.”

“I can’t.” I was trembling all over. I barely heard myself. “I can’t.”

The Dateh-creature smiled, and this time its teeth were sharp, like a dog’s. “You can. Your blood will work, if you use enough of it.” He gestured, and a knife appeared on Shiny’s chest. It was black, shimmering like solid mist—a piece of the Empty given form. “I will have your power one way or another, Lady Oree. Eat him and join me, or I eat you. Choose.”

You may think me a coward.

You’ll remember that I fled when Shiny told me to, instead of staying to fight at his side. You will remember that throughout this final horror, I was useless, helpless, too terrified to be any good to anyone, including myself. It may be that by telling you this, I have earned your contempt.

I won’t try to change your mind. I’m not proud of myself or the things I did in that hell. I can’t explain it, anyhow—no words can capture the terror that I felt in those moments, faced with the starkest, ugliest choice that any creature on this earth must face: kill, or die. Eat, or be eaten.

I will say this, though: I think I made the choice that any woman would when confronted by the monster that murdered her beloved.

I set the knife aside. Didn’t need it. Shiny’s chest heaved like a bellows. Whatever Dateh had done had hurt him badly, despite the magic that still wavered around him. Unnecessarily, I smoothed the cloth across his chest, then rested my hands there, one on either side of his heart.

My tears fell onto my hands in a patter of threes: one two three , one two three , one two three. Like the weeper-bird’s cry. Oree, oree, oree.

I chose to live.

The paint was the door, my father had taught me, and belief was the key that unlocked it. Beneath my hands, Shiny’s heart beat steady, strong.

“I paint a picture,” I whispered.

I chose to fight.

Dateh let out a rattling sigh of pleasure as the shimmering bubble formed again between my hands, hovering just above Shiny’s heart. I knew what it was at last—the visible manifestation of my will. My power, inherited from my god ancestors and distilled through generations of humanity, given shape and energy and potential . That was all magic was, really, in the end. Possibility. With it I could create anything, provided I believed. A painted world. A memory of home. A bloody hole.

I willed it into Shiny’s body. It passed through his flesh harmlessly, settling amid the steady, strong pulses of his heart.

I looked up at Dateh. Something changed in me then; I don’t know what. All at once, Dateh hissed in alarm and stepped back, staring at my eyes as if they had turned to stars.

Perhaps they had.

I chose to believe.

“ Itempas ,” I said.

Lightning blazed out of nothingness.

The concussion of it stunned both Dateh and me. I was flung backward, slamming against Dateh’s barrier with enough force to knock the breath from my body. I fell to the ground, dazed but laughing, because this was so familiar to me and because I was no longer afraid. I believed , after all. I knew it was over, even if Dateh had yet to learn that lesson.

A new sun blazed in the middle of Dateh’s Empty, too bright to look upon directly. The heat of it was terrible even from where I lay, enough to tighten my skin and take my breath away. Around this sun glimmered an aura of pure white light—but it did not merely glow in every direction, this aura. Lines and curves seared my sight before I looked away, forming rings within rings, lines connecting, circles overlapping, godwords forming and marching and fading out of thin air. The sheer complexity of the design would have stunned me in itself, but each of the rings turned in dizzying, graceful gyroscopic patterns around a human form.

I stole a series of sweeping glances through the brilliance and made out a corona of glowing hair, a warrior’s garments done in shades of pale, and a slender, white-metaled straightsword held in one perfect black hand. I could not see his face—too bright—but it was impossible not to see his eyes. They opened as I watched, piercing the unrelenting white with colors I had only heard of in poetry: fire opal. Sunset’s cloak. Velvet and desire.

I could not help remembering a day, so long ago, when I’d found a man in a muckbin. They had been the same eyes then, but so much more beautiful now, incandescent, assured, that there was no sense in comparing.

“Itempas,” I said again, reverent.

Those eyes turned to me, and it did not bother me that I saw no recognition in them. He saw me and knew me for one of His children, but no more than that. An entity so far beyond humanity had no need of human ties. It was enough for me that He saw, and His gaze was warm.

Before Him huddled the Dateh-creature, thrown by the same blast of power that had flattened me. As I watched, it clambered unsteadily to its many feet, the mask of its humanity shattered.

“What the hells are you?” the Dateh-creature demanded.

“A shaper,” said the Lord of Light. He raised his sword of white steel. I saw hundreds of godwords in filigreed patterns along the blade’s length. “I am all knowledge and purpose defined. I strengthen what exists and cull that which should not.”

His voice made the darkness of the Empty tremble. I laughed again, filled with inexpressable joy. Pain suddenly blossomed in my eyes, grinding, terrible. I clung to my joy and fought back against it, unwilling to look away. My god stood before me. No Maroneh had seen Him since the earliest days of the world. I would not let a simple thing like physical weakness interfere.

The Dateh-creature shouted with its many voices and let loose a wave of magic so tainted that the air turned brown and foul. Itempas batted this aside with all the effort of an afterthought. I heard a clear ringing note in the wake of His movement.

“Enough,” He said, His eyes turning dark and red like a cold day’s sunset. “Release my children.”