Just before sunset, Morah comes bearing a gourd of water and perrins, a deep purple fruit Nirrim loves. They must grow wild here. Morah leaves me again, and I am not hungry but I eat, thinking of Nirrim. It is hard to love someone who is gone. It is a cruel twist of fate that I love the memory of someone whose power is memory. I wonder if what I am doing makes any sense, if I have come to this island, this clearing, only to witness my failure.
Go to the realm of the gods?
Negotiate with one of them?
Retrieve a woman’s heart?
Impossible.
Well, I did tell you to be a hero, Roshar says. I imagine his signature smirk, and exactly what he would say if he saw me now: Heroes are born to do the impossible. I do the impossible all the time! Lazy little lion. You are being asked to do only three impossible things.
The sun goes down into the trees. The tips of each pole light up like stars.
No, like candles.
The hundred poles burn like candles, like the kind we light for the gods on Ninarrith, each pole a taper with a flamelike light at its point. They burn, and I hold my breath, stunned by their beauty. I move to stand in the center of the clearing, surrounded by the candles, one for each god in the pantheon, and think, Now.
I feel like I have waited all my life for my moment: the hour when I stop being Kestrel and Arin’s child, and become myself.
But the moment, if it was one, is over quickly. The trees swallow the sun. Frogsong swells in happiness. The lights on the poles go out. The clearing is dark now, and will only get darker.
I sit heavily back on the ground, feeling foolish. I feel unchosen. I felt, for one minute, so sure that I was special, that I would be lifted from this earth not for anything that I did but for who I am, that all I had to do was wish for something, and ask, and wait, and it would be given. Isn’t that what gods do—give mortals undeserved gifts? Don’t all gods have their favorites?
It is embarrassing to hope to be a favorite. It is a good thing that no one, not even Morah, is around to witness it.
Except me, Roshar says. I saw everything.
But Roshar’s words are a figment of my imagination. He is just a part of me I have loaned his voice to.
I stretch out on the ground, weary from my journey—did I really anchor my ship in Ethin’s harbor this morning? Did I really gasp beneath the weight of Nirrim’s body, sure I could be loved, not seeing that she had changed, that the way she kissed me was different?
I am weary of myself. Maybe I can’t go to the realm of the gods, but at least I can sleep, so I do.
* * *
The silence of the frogs wakes me up. The cool air and gray sky tell me that it is near dawn. My clothes are surely muddy by now. The stains will never come out.
My ears ache from the silence. The frogs were so loud they woke me several times in the night, and I’d open my eyes in the blackness and hope that I had somehow found a way beyond this world, but no. I was in a jungle, tormented by noisy amphibians, questing after my villainous lover’s missing heart. Wonderful. I went back to sleep. Now it’s as if the frogs sang so hard they actually died. Maybe they went to the realm of the gods. I hate everyone.
My belly is pinched in hunger. Fruit and water is poor food for a hero. I could forage, I suppose, which is what Morah must have done, but stubbornness keeps me rooted to the ground. The poles are dark. But dawn is coming.
What kind of player does not see her game to the end? What coward steps away from the gaming table?
This is a new game, but I will learn it. Maybe the sun will show me how.
Dawn comes pink over the trees. The poles glow with rosy light. Maybe they are the color of the kind of cloud Nirrim was named after. The sun rises, and again the poles become candles, light dancing on their needle points. Frogs sing again, as though they were waiting just for this.
And as I listen, I wonder if they are waiting for me. But to do what? Again, like last night, I feel as though the world is holding its breath, as though I am a child and someone is waiting for me to figure out something obvious.
It occurs to me that this is a game not to play, but to understand.
What is my purpose here?
I have come here to disappear.
But how can I disappear? I can never escape myself. Even when I sleep, I dream—or wake up and hate frogs.
I stand, an idea growing at the back of my mind, one that I can’t even articulate to myself yet. All I know is a searching urge.
How can I lose myself?
I remember reaching to touch one of the poles and seeing my shadow reflected thinly there, until my hand closed around the metal, eating its own shadow. I approach a pole, and there, skinnily reflected, is the long shadow I throw. I look like a pole. I look like a black version of one of these silver poles. I get closer, ignoring the sky, the trees, the sun, the dammed frogs, focusing only on myself, growing longer and thicker until the blackness I cast seems to fill the pole entirely.
I can disappear, I think, if I become the shadow.
I focus entirely on my shadow, continually stepping ever closer, thinking that surely I will touch the silver surface.
But I don’t.
I step into the blackness I have become, and then the blackness becomes all I can see.
THE GOD
NIRRIM’S ELYSIUM FLEW OVER THE sea, its wings the color of sunrise. When it grew tired, it rested on the rocky beaches of what the Herrani call the Empty Islands. It daintily ate shellfish, and tucked its beak under its wing, against its green breast, to sleep. The weather grew cold but it did not snow, and the bird, whose ancestor drank the god of discovery’s blood, followed its mistress’s command north through clear skies.
* * *
As I watched it fly, a tremor echoed along the edges of the immortal realm. Even those of the pantheon who paid little attention to human affairs noticed that someone was trying to blunder into our home … that someone, indeed, had succeeded. The footsteps were blatantly human: a weighted stride, a balance of uncertainty and purpose.
No one has entered our realm for eons. What was left of the hundred—save the pariah god of thieves and his dead brother, the god of discovery—gathered to watch Sid of the Herrani come.
* * *
In Ethin, my daughter confronted the obvious culprit. Tell me where Sid went, Nirrim demanded.
I don’t know, Annin said.
I don’t believe you! The guards said Sid showed them an Elysium feather. If you did not help her escape, show me the red feather that I gave to you. Show it to me now.
But Annin could not.
Traitor, Nirrim said, and grabbed Annin’s arm hard. I treated you like a princess. I gave you a palace for a home. This is how you repay me?
Though Annin was short, she made herself stand as tall as she could. She tipped up her chin, her soft cheeks flaming with courage. What will you do to me? Annin asked. Will you punish me? Hurt me?
And Nirrim, who remembered how much she had once loved Annin, slackened her grip. Tell me, Nirrim said, power gathering thick in her throat, all that you remember about Sid’s escape.
I don’t know where she is, Annin said, which was true. But since Nirrim’s question had been broad enough, Annin was forced to share her memory of Morah’s secret map—which was, of course, no longer in the tavern for Nirrim to find. All Annin could tell her was that Morah had gone into the jungle beyond the city wall, and that Sid had left to find her.
* * *
The tremor rippled more strongly. The surface of our realm shivered like a soap bubble does, right before it bursts.
I was the first to see Sid of the Herrani enter, and her eyes widened with terror as she beheld me. Few humans can look upon the gods and not shrink, especially when they are met, as I met her, with anger at her audacity. What gave her such boldness? Who was she, to think she might enter our world and live?
I admit a begrudging admiration. I acknowledge a sense of my misdeeds returning to haunt me, an
d an awareness that my anger at her was also at myself, for breaking my vow to the pantheon, for costing Irenah her life by giving her a child. Sid was the shape of my guilt. My grief. I can lie to others, but never to myself. I knew that Sid’s presence here was the result of many human years—of generations—and that she was here in part because of me.
And I was curious, too, about Sid’s purpose here—even how she saw me, and our world. My brethren appeared before her. A human cannot see us as we are. It would shatter her mind. Instead, she absorbed her knowledge of us and our world in the only way her mind could: by translating our infinity, our wholly alien natures, into something that looked almost human.
Sid said, I am here to speak with the god of thieves.
Death peered at her and said, I know you. Death noticed the dagger at her hip and how its hilt bore his sigil, the sign of the Herrani royal family. He was pleased to be remembered—mortals do not usually honor the god of death—and to the boiling cauldron of emotions in me was added something new: fear. I cursed this troublemaking human. No good could come of this, certainly not for me, and my secret sin.
The Seamstress, Death’s consort, said to Sid gently, The god of thieves is not here. He has been banished from this realm.
You have no business here, mortal, warned the god of vengeance.
She might, drawled the god of games. Anyway, I am bored. Are you not bored? I think the god of hospitality would agree that we should help the little human. Come, it will be fun.
Indeed, Hospitality said, it is already too late to turn her away.
Child, said Death to Sid of the Herrani. You have come here for nothing.
I disagree, said the god of thieves, and we all turned, and saw that he had been among us all along. He must have entered our realm some time ago, and stolen our knowledge of his presence.
You see! the god of games crowed. I told you this would be amusing.
The rest of us swelled in rage, ignoring the mortal in our shock that the god of thieves would dare return. His expression forbidding, Death said to the god of thieves, You have not served your punishment.
The punishment was unfair, Thievery said. You blamed me for Discovery’s death, yet who among you is pure of guilt? You, too, have toyed with the mortal world. You have made favorites. You gave them children. The god-blooded of Herrath are your doing as much as mine.
Sid diminished in our consideration. We nearly forgot her.
* * *
But in Herrath, Nirrim’s people searched far and wide for Sid. They sent Rinah, with her gift of manipulating plants, into the jungle to examine the trees, the leaves, the roots, the vines. She listened to them, wandering until she found a swathe of destruction, a way cut through the vegetation. It was fresh. It had wounded the jungle, and the jungle was eager for Rinah to find out who had done this.
Sid’s body was discovered in the clearing—alive, yet trapped in a kind of sleep that could not be broken. Her muddied skin was warm to the touch. Her chest rose and fell with her breath. Nothing, however, could rouse her.
Morah was taken from the temple. Guards came to place Sid’s body on a bier, and bring her to the queen.
* * *
Death, said the god of thieves, if I can prove the unfairness of your punishment, will I be welcomed home?
Death inclined his smoky head.
I dared not disagree. I did not want Death’s attention to fall upon me.
Go ahead, mortal, the god of thieves said to Sid. A smile grew across his face. Dread grew within me. Thievery said, What would you have of me?
Nirrim’s heart, said Sid.
Oh, this? Thievery lifted his palm. We could all see the rosy beauty of compassion glowing upon it.
What do you want in exchange? Sid said. Ask, and I will give it to you.
The pantheon went terribly silent. Even the god of thieves, I think, was stunned. Desperate mortals always offer too much. They never see the trap that has been set for them. You do not bargain with the gods, let alone in their realm, let alone with all of us looking on, our attention focused upon you. There is no game you can play with us and hope to win.
Sid of the Herrani, although she did not know it yet, had already lost.
SID
IT IS HARD TO SEE. My eyes water as though in direct sunlight, but the realm of the gods is not necessarily bright, only too much: prismatic, shifting in colors I have never seen and could not name, the air so intense on my skin that it reminds me of how water can sometimes be so cold that it burns. There is no ground beneath me. I have no sense of direction, only of dizziness, but when the god of thieves reveals himself, I wrestle down my nausea and think grass.
Grass unfurls beneath my feet. I had, I think, forgotten I even had feet, forgotten how to stand, but now I see my boots and the grass beneath them, though it is so thick and soft it feels pillowy, and the green is iridescent.
The gods surround me. Many have human features, even if their bodies trail surprisingly into ribbons, or wings, or smoke, or water. One looks made entirely of ivory, pink eyes unblinking, legs changing into tree roots that plunge into the grass. A god whose body is as sheer as blue glass bares icicle teeth at me in a cruel smile.
The god of thieves, however, looks like an ordinary man—so ordinary, in fact, that my mind slides away from him, and I cannot hold on to a single image of any one of his features. It is as if the moment I see him, I also unsee him. He lifts his palm to show me Nirrim’s heart, and I see nothing, but hear several of the gods sigh, as though surprised by the sudden presence of beauty.
“What do you want in exchange?” I say to him. “Ask, and I will give it to you.”
“So brave,” says the god. “What shall I take from you? Your ability to sleep? You shall go mad, you know, without it. Your sense of taste, so that everything you eat is ash in your mouth? Perhaps I should demand your firstborn.”
“My ways do not lead to children.”
“I was joking,” he says. “It is too late for you anyway, no matter what your ways may be.”
I don’t understand that, but an energy ripples through the gods: a resonant rumble like the growl of a piano’s lowest notes. They get the joke, even if I do not. “Wait,” I say. “Do you swear that what you hold and what you will give to me is truly Nirrim’s heart? Do you swear upon the pantheon?”
He smiles approvingly. “Cautious mortal. Yes, I swear upon the pantheon that I hold Nirrim’s gift for compassion.”
The sky above the gods is a livid pink streaked with black, as though the dawn was ripped with claws to show the starry night behind it. The stars chime.
“I do not want this anymore.” The god seems to toss the emptiness on his palm up and down, as though he holds a ball. I still see nothing, but for an instant I think something rose-colored twists above his palm. “Are you aware, Sid of the Herrani, that your lover possesses more power than a Half Kith should, for one born so late after the pantheon left your world? We gods left Herrath hundreds of human years ago. What gift of ours that runs in the blood of mortals should have diminished by now. Do you know why Nirrim is different?”
“No,” I say, but the hazy god of death seems to know or guess. His cloudy form sharpens into bladelike lines and his underfed face whitens to the color of bone. His eyes burn blue with fury, and all the gods save the human-looking woman at his side cringe away from him. I cannot move from where I stand. Vines as thin and gray as spider legs have crept up my boots and sting against my ankles. I have been afraid ever since I saw the first god, who looked ready to scoop the brain from my skull, but now I am terrified.
The god of thieves continues, “Your Nirrim has so much power because she is not the distant descendant of a god, her lineage mixed with mortality for generations. Oh no. She is pure demigod. One of us broke the pantheon’s oath. One of us visited the mortal realm twenty years ago and loved a human. That human bore a child exactly like the ones who murdered Discovery. I declare that one of us is a hypocrite. I shall prove it, an
d the pantheon shall welcome me home. The god of luck must love you, Sid of the Herrani, for I am feeling generous. I shall give Nirrim’s heart to you freely, with no price exacted from you, so long as someone steps forward to claim responsibility for Nirrim.”
Now I see what is on his palm: a rose-colored mist, dense at its center, like a peony. The metallic spider-leg vines creep farther up. They wrap around my waist.
“But if that god does not come forward now,” says Thievery, “I shall destroy this demigod’s heart. I shall swallow it whole. It is mine to do with as I will, given in fair trade by Nirrim. Well?” His coy voice ripples like water. “Who is it? Or would you like to see the most precious part of your mortal child destroyed?”
A red-haired god who looks almost human, save that one hand has far too many fingers, says, in a chiding tone, “Thievery, that will hardly flush out the guilty party, given Sid of the Herrani’s predicament.”
The cold vines are at my throat. I can barely speak. “You promised you would give it to me.”
“I will,” Thievery says soothingly. “And if for some reason you are not able to keep it, you may bequeath it to someone else.”
I struggle against the vines.
“Poor earnest mortal,” says the red-haired woman. “It is a fine thing to enter the realm of the gods, but how do you propose to return? There is no way home for you, not anymore. You left behind your body by our Herrath temple, but that body has been taken. Were you to return the same way you came, your spirit would last for mere seconds in the mortal realm, like a fish in air, desperate to rejoin your body. In the space of a few human breaths, your spirit would vanish. Child, you asked merely for Nirrim’s heart, when you should have asked as well for the ability to return home with it.”
“She made her choice.” The god of thieves lifts his hand to his mouth. He touches his tongue to the pink mist. I see it shudder, and the shudder echoes through me. I try to cry out, to protest that this is unjust, but the vines have knitted into a metal gag in my mouth. “Well?” says the god of thieves. “Who is it? Make yourself known, oath-breaker. Claim your mortal child.”
The Hollow Heart Page 23