The Obelisk Gate

by N. K. Jemisin

  So it is while they are like this, Daddy holding Nassun tight, Nassun shaking with relief and lingering shock, that the rippling shockwave of the continent being ripped in half up north reaches them.

  They are nearly a whole day’s travel down the Imperial Road. Back in Tirimo, a few moments previous, Essun has just shunted the force of the wave so that it splits and goes around the town—which means that what comes at Nassun is incrementally more powerful. And Nassun has been knocked half-insensible, and she is less skilled, less experienced. When she sesses the onrush of the shake, and the sheer power of it, she reacts in exactly the wrong way: She locks up again.

  Her father lifts his head, surprised by her gasp and sudden stiffness, and that is when the hammer lands. Even he sesses the loom of it, though it comes too fast and too powerfully to be anything but a jangle of run run RUN RUN at the back of his mind. Running is pointless. The shake is basically what happens when a person doing laundry flaps the wrinkles out of a sheet, writ on a continental scale and moving with the speed and force of a casual asteroid strike. On the scale of small, stationary, crushable people, the strata heave beneath them and the trees shake and then splinter. The water in the pond beside them actually leaps into the air for a moment, suspended and still. Daddy stares at it, apparently riveted to this single static point amid the relentless unpeeling of the world everywhere else.

  But Nassun is still a skilled orogene even if she is a half-addled one. Though she did not muster herself in time to do what Essun did and break the force of the wave before it hits, she does the next best thing. She drives invisible pylons of force into the strata, as deep as she can, grabbing for the very lithosphere itself. When the kinetic force of the wave hits, incremental instants before the planetary crust above it flexes in reaction, she snatches the heat and pressure and friction from it and uses this to fuel her pylons, pinning the strata and soil in place as solidly as if glued.

  There’s plenty of strength to draw from the earth, but she spins an ambient torus anyway. She keeps it at a wide remove, because her father is within it and she cannot cannot cannot hurt him, and she spins it hard and vicious even though she doesn’t need to. Instinct tells her to, and instinct is right. The freezing eye-wall of her torus, which disintegrates anything coming into the stable zone at its center, is what keeps a few dozen projectiles from puncturing them to death.

  All of this means that when the world comes apart, it happens everywhere else. For an instant there is nothing to see of reality save a floating globule of pond, a hurricane of pulverized everything else, and an oasis of stillness at the hurricane’s core.

  Then the concussion passes. The pond slaps back into place, spraying them with muddy snow. The trees that haven’t shattered snap back upright, some of them nearly bending all the way in the other direction in reactive momentum and breaking there. In the distance—beyond Nassun’s torus—people and animals and boulders and trees that have been flung into the air come crashing down. There are screams, human and inhuman. Cracking wood, crumbling stone, the distant screech of something man-made and metallic rending apart. Behind them, at the far end of the valley they have just left, a rock face shatters and comes down in an avalanche roar, releasing a large steaming chalcedony geode.

  Then there is silence. In it, finally, Nassun pulls her face up from her father’s shoulder to look around. She does not know what to think. Her father’s arms ease around her—shock—and she wriggles until he lets her go so that she can get to her feet. He does, too. For long moments they simply stare around at the wreckage of the world they once knew.

  Then Daddy turns to look at her, slowly, and she sees in his face what Uche must have seen in those last moments. “Did you do this?” he asks.

  The orogeny has cleared Nassun’s head, of necessity. It is a survival mechanism; intense stimulation of the sessapinae is usually accompanied by a surge of adrenaline and other physical changes that prepare the body for flight—or sustained orogeny, if that is needed. In this case it brings an increased clarity of thought, which is how Nassun finally realizes that her father was not hysterical over her fall purely for her sake. And that what she sees in his eyes right now is something entirely different from love.

  Her heart breaks in this moment. Another small, quiet tragedy, amid so many others. But she speaks, because in the end she is her mother’s daughter, and if Essun has done nothing else, she has trained her little girl to survive.

  “That was too big to be me,” Nassun says. Her voice is calm, detached. “What I did is this—” She gestures around them, at the circle of safe ground that surrounds them, distinct from the chaos just beyond. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop all of it, Daddy. I tried.”

  The Daddy is what works, just as her tears saved her before. The murder in his expression flickers, fades, twists. “I can’t kill you,” he whispers, to himself.

  Nassun sees the waver of him. It is also instinct that she steps forward and takes his hand. He flinches, perhaps thinking of knocking her away again, but this time she holds on. “Daddy,” she says again, this time putting more of a needy whine into her voice. It is the thing that has swayed him, these times when he has come near to turning on her: remembering that she is his little girl. Reminding him that he has been, up to today, a good father.

  It is a manipulation. Something of her is warped out of true by this moment, and from now on all her acts of affection toward her father will be calculated, performative. Her childhood dies, for all intents and purposes. But that is better than all of her dying, she knows.

  And it works. Jija blinks rapidly, then murmurs something unintelligible to himself. His hand tightens on hers. “Let’s get back up to the road,” he says.

  (He is “Jija,” now, in her head. He will be Jija hereafter, forever, and never Daddy again except out loud, when Nassun needs reins to steer him.)

  So they go back up, Nassun limping a little because her backside is sore where she landed too hard on the asphalt and rocks. The road has been cracked all down its length, though it is not so bad in the immediate vicinity of their wagon. The horses are still hitched, though one of them has fallen to her knees and half entangled herself in the tack. Hopefully she hasn’t broken a leg. The other is still with shock. Nassun starts working on calming the horses, coaxing the downed one back up and talking the other out of near-catatonia, while her father goes to the other travelers whom they can see sprawled around the road. The ones who were within the wide circumference of Nassun’s torus are okay. The ones who were not… well.

  Once the horses are shaky but functional, Nassun goes after Jija and finds him trying to lift a man who has been flung into a tree. It’s broken the man’s back; he’s conscious and cursing, but Nassun can see the flop of his now-useless legs. It’s bad to move him, but obviously Jija thinks it’s worse to leave him here like this. “Nassun,” Jija says, panting as he tries for a better grip on the man, “clear the wagon bed. There’s a real hospital at Pleasant Water, a day away. I think we can make it if we—”

  “Daddy,” she says softly. “Pleasant Water isn’t there anymore.”

  He stops. (The injured man groans.) Turns to her, frowning. “What?”

  “Sume is gone, too,” she says. She does not add, but Tirimo is fine because Mama was there. She doesn’t want to go back, not even for the end of the world. Jija darts a glance back down the road they have walked, but of course all they can see are shattered trees and a few overturned chunks of asphalt along the road… and bodies. Lots of bodies. All the way to Tirimo, or so the eye suggests.

  “What the rust,” he breathes.

  “There’s a big hole in the ground up north,” Nassun continues. “Really big. That’s what caused this. It’s going to cause more shakes and things, too. I can sess ash and gas coming this way. Daddy… I think it’s a Season.”

  The injured man gasps, not entirely from pain. Jija’s eyes go wide and horrified. But he asks, and this is important: “Are you sure?”

  It’s
important because it means he’s listening to her. It is a measure of trust. Nassun feels a surge of triumph at this, though she does not really know why.

  “Yes.” She bites her lip. “It’s going to be really bad, Daddy.”

  Jija’s eyes drift toward Tirimo again. That is conditioned response: During a Season, comm members know that the only place they can be sure of welcome is there. Anything else is a risk.

  But Nassun will not go back, now that she is away. Not when Jija loves her—however strangely—and has taken her away and is listening to her, understanding her, even though he knows she is an orogene. Mama was wrong about that part. She’d said Jija wouldn’t understand.

  He didn’t understand Uche.

  Nassun sets her teeth against this thought. Uche was too little. Nassun will be smarter. And Mama was still only half-right. Nassun will be smarter than her, too.

  So she says softly, “Mama knows, Daddy.”

  Nassun’s not even sure what she means by this. Knows that Uche is dead? Knows who has beaten him to death? Would Mama even believe that Jija could do such a thing to his own child? Nassun can hardly believe it herself. But Jija flinches as if the words are an accusation. He stares at her for a long moment, his expression shifting from fear through horror through despair… and slowly, to resignation.

  He looks down at the injured man. He’s no one Nassun knows—not from Tirimo, wearing the practical clothes and good shoes of a message runner. He won’t be running again, certainly not back to his home comm, wherever that is.

  “I’m sorry,” Jija says. He bends and snaps the man’s neck even as he’s drawing breath to ask, For what?

  Then Jija rises. His hands are shaking again, but he turns and extends one of them. Nassun takes it. They walk back to the wagon then, and resume their journey south.

  The Season will always return.

  —Tablet Two, “The Incomplete Truth,” verse one

  6

  you commit to the cause

  A WHAT?” ASKS TONKEE, SQUINTING AT you through a curtain of hair. You’ve just come into the apartment after spending part of the day helping one of the work shifts fletch and repair crossbow bolts for the Hunters’ use. Since you’re not part of any particular use-caste, you’ve been helping out with each of them in turn, a little every day. This was on Ykka’s advice, though Ykka’s skeptical about your newfound determination to try to fit into the comm. She likes that you’re trying, at least.

  Another suggestion was for you to encourage Tonkee to do the same, since thus far Tonkee’s done nothing but eat and sleep and bathe on the comm’s generosity. Granted, a certain amount of the lattermost has been necessary for the sake of comm socialization. At the moment Tonkee is kneeling over a basin of water in her room, hacking at her hair with a knife to chop out the matted bits. You’re keeping well back because the room smells of mildew and body odor and because you think you see something moving in the water along with her shed hair. Tonkee may have needed to wear filth as part of her commless disguise, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t actual filth.

  “A moon,” you say. It’s a strange word, brief and round; you’re not sure how much to stretch out the oo sound in the middle. What else had Alabaster said? “A… satellite. He said a geomest would know.”

  She frowns more while sawing at a particularly stubborn hank. “Well, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Never heard of a ‘moon.’ The obelisks are my area of expertise, remember?” Then she blinks and pauses, letting the half-hacked hank dangle. “Although, technically, the obelisks themselves are satellites.”

  “What?”

  “Well, ‘satellite’ just means an object whose motion and position are dependent on another. The object that controls everything is called a primary, the dependent object is its satellite. See?” She shrugs. “It’s something astronomests talk about when you can get any sense out of them. Orbital mechanics.” She rolls her eyes.

  “What?”

  “Gibberish. Plate tectonics for the sky.” You stare, disbelieving, and she waves a hand. “Anyway, I told you how the obelisks followed you to Tirimo. Where you go, they go. That makes them satellites to your primary.”

  You shudder, not liking the thought that comes into your head—of thin, invisible tethers anchoring you to the amethyst, the nearer topaz, and now the distant onyx whose dark presence is growing in your mind. And oddly, you also think of the Fulcrum. Of the tethers that bound you to it, even when you had the apparent freedom to leave it and travel. You always came back, though, or the Fulcrum would’ve come after you—in the form of the Guardians.

  “Chains,” you say softly.

  “No, no,” Tonkee says distractedly. She’s working on the hank again, and having real trouble with it. Her knife has gone blunt. You leave for a moment and go into the room that you share with Hoa, fetching the whetstone from your pack. She blinks when you offer it to her, then nods thanks and starts sharpening the knife. “If there was a chain between you and an obelisk, it would be following you because you’re making it follow you. Force, not gravity. I mean, if you could make an obelisk do what you wanted.” You let out a little breath of amusement at this. “But a satellite reacts to you regardless of whether you try to make it react. It’s drawn to your presence, and the weight you exert upon the universe. It lingers around you because it can’t help itself.” She waves a wet hand distractedly, while you stare again. “Not to ascribe motivations and intentions to the obelisks, of course; that would be silly.”

  You crouch against the far wall of the room to consider this while she resumes work. As the remainder of her hair begins to loosen, you recognize it at last, because it’s curly and dark like your own, instead of ashblow and gray. A little looser in the curl, maybe. Midlatter hair; another mark against her in the eyes of her family, probably. And given the bog-standard Sanzed look of her otherwise—she’s a bit on the short and pear-shaped side, but that’s what comes of the Yumenescene families not using Breeders to improve themselves—it’s something you would’ve remembered about her from that long-ago visit she made to the Fulcrum.

  You don’t think Alabaster was talking about the obelisks when he mentioned this moon thing. Still—“You said that thing we found in the Fulcrum, that socket, was where they built the obelisks.”

  It’s immediately clear you’re back on ground that Tonkee is actually interested in. She sets the knife down and leans forward, her face excited through the dangling uneven remainder of her hair. “Mmm-hmm. Maybe not all of them. The dimensions of every obelisk recorded have been slightly different, so only some—or maybe even just one—would have fit in that socket. Or maybe the socket changed every time they put one in there, adapting itself to the obelisk!”

  “How do you know they put them in there? Maybe they first… grew there, then were faceted or mined and taken away later.” This makes Tonkee look thoughtful; you feel obliquely proud to have considered something she hasn’t. “And ‘they’ who?”

  She blinks, then sits back, her excitement visibly fading. Finally she says, “Supposedly, the Yumenescene Leadership is descended from the people who saved the world after the Shattering Season. We have texts passed down from that time, secrets that each family is charged with keeping, and which we’re supposed to be shown upon earning our use and comm names.” She scowls. “My family didn’t, because they were already thinking about disowning me. So I broke into the vault and took my birthright.”

  You nod, because that sounds like the Binof you remember. You’re skeptical about the family secret, though. Yumenes didn’t exist before Sanze, and Sanze is only the latest of the countless civilizations that must have come and gone over the Seasons. The Leadership legends have the air of a myth concocted to justify their place in society.

  Tonkee continues, “In the vault I found all sorts of things: maps, strange writing in a language like none I’ve ever seen, objects that didn’t make sense—like one tiny, perfectly round yellow stone, about an inch in circumference. Someone ha
d put it in a glass case, sealed and plastered with warnings not to touch. Apparently the thing had a reputation for punching holes in people.” You wince. “So either there’s some truth to the family stories, or amazingly, being rich and powerful makes it easy to assemble quite the collection of valuable ancient objects. Or both.” She notices your expression and looks amused. “Yeah, probably not both. It’s not stonelore, anyway, just… words. Soft knowledge. I needed to harden it.”

  That sounds like Tonkee. “So you snuck into the Fulcrum to try to find the socket, because somehow this proves some rusty old story your family passed down?”

  “It was on one of the maps I found.” Tonkee shrugs. “If there was truth to part of the story—about there being a socket in Yumenes, deliberately hidden away by the city’s founders—then that did suggest there might be truth to the rest, yes.” Setting the knife aside, Tonkee shifts to get comfortable, idly brushing the shed hairs into a pile with one hand. Her hair is painfully short and uneven now, and you really want to take the scissors from her and shape it. You’ll wait till she’s given it another wash first, though.

  “There’s truth to other parts of the stories, too,” Tonkee says. “I mean, a lot of the stories are rust and mellow-smoke; I don’t want to pretend otherwise. But I learned at Seventh that the obelisks go as far back as history goes, and then some. We have evidence of Seasons from ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand years ago—and the obelisks are older. It’s possible that they even predate the Shattering.”

  The first Season, and the one that nearly killed the world. Only lorists speak of it, and the Seventh University has disavowed most of their tales. Out of contrariness, you say, “Maybe there wasn’t a Shattering. Maybe there have always been Fifth Seasons.”

  “Maybe.” Tonkee shrugs, either not noticing your attempt to be obnoxious, or not caring. Probably the latter. “Mentioning the Shattering was a great way to set off a five-hour argument in the colloquium. Stupid old farts.” She smiles to herself, remembering, and then abruptly sobers. You understand at once. Dibars, the city that housed Seventh, is in the Equatorials, only a little west of Yumenes.