The Inheritance Trilogy

by N. K. Jemisin

  Itempas pulled away, his sorrow plain. But as he stood there, his hands hiding Nahadoth’s face from any view but his own, Naha showed him something. I couldn’t see what, but I could guess, because there were faces Naha wore for love, too. I had never seen the one he’d shaped for Itempas, because Itempas guarded that face jealously, as he had always done with Naha’s love. But Itempas inhaled at the sight of whatever Naha showed him now, closing his eyes as if Naha had stricken him one last, terrible blow.

  Then he stepped back, and as his hands fell away, Nahadoth’s face resumed its ordinary, shifting nature. With this, Naha turned his back on all of us, his cloak retracting sharply to form a tight, dark sheath around him. Itempas might as well not have been there anymore.

  But he did not look up at the sky again.

  When Itempas mastered himself, he glanced at Yeine and nodded. She regarded him for a long, weighted moment, then finally nodded in return. I let out a breath, and Deka did, too. I thought perhaps even the Maelstrom grew quieter for a moment, but that was probably my imagination.

  But before I could digest my own relief and sorrow, Nahadoth’s head jerked sharply upward—but not toward the Maelstrom, this time. The blackness of his aura blazed darker.

  “Kahl,” he breathed.

  High above—the same place from which he’d struck down the World Tree—a tiny figure appeared, wreathed in magic that trembled and wavered like the Maelstrom.

  Before I could think, however, I was nearly floored by the furnace blast of Yeine’s rage. She wasted no time in deciding to act; the air simply rippled with negation of life. I flinched, in spite of myself, as death struck Kahl, my son—

  —my unknown, unwanted, unlamented son, whom I would have mentored and protected if I had been able, whose love I would have welcomed if I’d been given the choice—

  —did not die. Nothing happened.

  Nahadoth hissed, his face twitching reptilian. “The mask protects him. He stands outside this reality.”

  “Death is reality everywhere,” Yeine said. I had never heard such murderousness in her voice.

  There was a shudder beneath us, around us. The townsfolk cried out in alarm, fearing another cataclysm. I thought I knew what was happening, though I could no longer sense it: the earth beneath us had shifted in response to Yeine’s hate, the whole planet turning like some massive, furious bodyguard to face her enemy. She spread her hands, crouching, the loose curls of her hair whipping in a gale that no one else felt, and her eyes were as cold as long-dead things as they fixed on Kahl.

  On my son. But—

  Nahadoth, his face alight, laughed as her power rose, even as the inimical nature of it forced him to step back. Even Itempas stared at her, pride warring with longing in his gaze.

  This was as it should be. It was what I had wanted all along, really, for the Three to reconcile. But—

  —to kill my son!

  No. That I hadn’t wanted.

  Deka glanced at me and caught my hand suddenly, alarmed. “Sieh!” I frowned, and he lifted a hank of my hair for me to see. It had been brown streaked thickly with white; now the white predominated. The few remaining brown strands faded to colorlessness as I watched. It was longer, too.

  I looked up at Deka and saw the fear in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said. And I truly was, but…“I never wanted to be a poor father, Deka. I—”

  “Stop it.” He gripped my arm. “Stop speaking, stop thinking about him. You’re killing yourself, Sieh.”

  So I was. But it would have happened anyway. Damn Enefa; I would think what I liked, mourn as I wished for the son I had never known. I remembered his fingers on the back of my neck. He would have forgiven me if he could have, I think, if forgiveness had not been counter to his nature. If my weakness had not left him to suffer so much. Everything he’d become was my fault.

  There was a crack of displaced air as Yeine vanished. I could not see what followed—my eyes were not what they had been, and I seemed to be developing cataracts. But there was another crack from high above, a thunder of echoes, and then Nahadoth tensed, his smile fading. Itempas stepped up beside him quickly, his fists clenched. “No,” he breathed.

  “No,” Nahadoth echoed, and then he, too, was gone, a flicker of shadow.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Deka squinted above us, shaking his head. “Kahl. It isn’t possible. Dear gods, how is he—” He caught his breath. “Yeine has fallen. Now Nahadoth—”

  “What?”

  But there was no time to consider this, because suddenly the space where Nahadoth and Yeine had been was filled again, and we all fell to our knees.

  Kahl wore the God Mask, and the power that it radiated was the worst thing I had ever felt in my life. Worse, even, than the day Itempas forced me into mortal flesh, and that had been like having all my limbs broken so that I could be stuffed into a pipe. Worse than seeing my mother’s body, or Yeine’s when she died her mortal death. My skin crawled; my bones ached. All around me I heard others falling, crying out. The mask was wrong—the emulation of a god, extraneous and offensive to existence itself. In its incomplete form, only godlings had been able to feel the wrongness, but now the God Mask radiated its hideousness to all children of the Maelstrom, mortal and immortal alike.

  Deka moaned beside me, trying to speak magic, but he kept stuttering. I struggled to stay on my knees. It would have been easier to just lie down and die. But I forced my head up, trembling with the effort, as Kahl took a step toward Itempas.

  “You’re not the one I would have chosen,” he said, his voice shivering. “Enefa was the original target of my vengeance. I would thank you for killing her, in fact, but here and now, you are the easiest of the Three to kill.” He stepped closer, raising a hand toward Itempas’s face. “I’m sorry.”

  Itempas did not back up or drop to the ground, though I saw how the ripple of power around Kahl pressed at him. It likely took everything he had to stay upright, but that was my bright father. If pride alone had been his nature, no force in the universe could ever have stopped him.

  “Stop,” I whispered, but no one heard me.

  “Stop,” said another voice, loud and sharp and furious.

  Glee.

  Even with my failing eyesight, I could see her. She was on her feet as well, and it was not a trick of the light: a pale, faint nimbus surrounded her. It was easier to see this because the sky had grown overcast, stormclouds boiling up from the south as a brisk wind began to blow. We could no longer see the Maelstrom, except in snatches when the clouds parted, but we could hear It: a hollow, faint roar that would only grow louder. We could feel It, too, a vibration deeper than the earth that Yeine had shaken. A few hours, a few minutes; no telling when It would arrive. We would know when It killed us.

  Itempas, who had not stepped away from Kahl, stumbled now as he turned to stare at his daughter. There were many things in Glee’s eyes in that moment, but I did not notice them for staring at her eyes themselves, which had gone the deep, baleful ember of a lowering sun.

  Kahl paused, the God Mask turning slightly as he peered at her. “What is it that you want, mortal?”

  “To kill you,” she replied. Then she burst into white-hot flame.

  All the mortals nearby screamed, some of them fleeing for the stairs. Itempas threw up an arm as he was flung farther back. Ahad, beside her, cried out and vanished, reappearing near me. Even Kahl staggered, the blur around him bending away from the sheer blazing force of her. I could feel the heat of her fire tightening my skin from where I was, ten feet away. Anyone closer was probably risking burns. And Glee herself…

  When the flames died, I marveled, for she stood clad all in white. Her skirt, her jacket—dear gods, even her hair. The light that surrounded her was almost too bright to look at. I had to squint through watering eyes and the shield of my hand. For an instant I thought I saw rings, words marching in the air, and in her hands… no. It could not be.

  In her hands was the white-
bladed sword that Itempas had used to cleave apart Nahadoth’s chaos and bring design and structure to the earliest iteration of the universe. It had a name, but only he knew it. No one could wield it but him; hells, no one else had ever been able to get near the damned thing, not in all the aeons since he’d created time. But Itempas’s daughter held it before her in a two-handed grip, and there was no doubt in my mind that she knew how to use it.

  Kahl saw this, too, his eyes widening within the mask’s slits. But of course he feared it; he had disrupted the order of all things, bringing the Maelstrom where it did not belong and claiming power he had no right to possess. In a contest of strength, he could endure, even against Nahadoth and Yeine—but there is more to being a god than strength.

  “Control,” said Itempas. He had drawn as close as he could, anxious to advise his daughter. “Remember, Glee, or the power will destroy you.”

  “I will remember,” she said.

  And then she was gone, and Kahl was, too, both of them leaving a melted, glowing trough across the Whorl’s grassy plain.

  Then two more streaks shot across the horizon in that direction, moving to join the battle: Nahadoth and Yeine.

  Without Kahl’s power to crush me, I struggled to my feet. Damned knees hurt like someone had lined the joints with broken glass. I ignored the pain and grabbed for Deka, then dragged him over to Ahad. “Come on,” I said to both of them.

  Ahad tore his eyes from the dwindling, shining mote that his lover had become. In the distance, plates of spinning darkness swirled out of nowhere, converging on a point. A massive, jagged finger of stone shot up from the earth, hundreds of feet into the sky in seconds. The second Gods’ War had begun, and it was an awesome sight—even if, this time, it would leave far more than just the mortal realm in ruins.

  “What?” Ahad looked dazed when I gripped his arm.

  “Help me get Itempas,” I said. When he simply stared at me, I jabbed him in the ribs with my gnarled fist. He glared; I stepped closer to shout into his face. “Pay attention! We have to go. With that kind of power in play, Glee won’t last long. Nahadoth and Yeine might be able to stop him, I hope, we can pray, but if not, he’s going to come back here.” I pointed at Itempas, who was also staring after Glee, his fists clenched.

  Finally understanding, Ahad caught my arm. I was holding Deka. There was a flicker as we moved through space, and then Ahad had Itempas by the arm as well. Itempas looked startled, but cottoned on faster than Ahad had; he did not fight. But then Ahad frowned. “Where can we go that he won’t find us?”

  I almost wailed the words. “Anywhere, anywhere, you fool!” The planet was going to die. All reality was beginning to falter, bleeding out through the mortal wound that the Maelstrom had punched into its substance. All we could do was start running, anywhere we could, and hope that Kahl did not catch up. Though if he did…“Dear gods, I hope you’ve found your nature by now.”

  Ahad’s face went too impassive. “No.”

  “Demonshitting brak’skafra—” There was a hollow whoosh behind me, louder even than the Maelstrom’s growing roar, and Deka turned quickly, barking a command to counter whatever I’d stupidly unleashed. The sound went silent; Deka glared at me. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Anywhere,” Ahad said, but he was looking away from us. Something bloomed against the horizon like a round, white sun. I wanted to cheer for magnificent demon girls, but the light died too quickly for me to feel comfortable, and then Ahad took us away from the palace.

  With his attention so thoroughly divided, I should have realized where we would end up. When the world resolved around us, we stood on tumbled white stones littered with the debris of everyday life: torn bedsheets, broken perfume bottles, an overturned toilet. Looming high overhead: broken, wilting limbs as thick as buildings.

  “Sky?” I rounded on Ahad, wishing for once that I had a cane. I had to shout to be heard over the rising cacophony, but that was fine, because I was furious. “You brought us to Sky, you stupid son of a demon? What were you thinking?”

  “I—”

  But whatever Ahad might have retorted died in his mouth as his eyes widened. He whirled, looking north, and we all saw it. A great amorphous blotch of blackness was fading from view, but against its contrast we could see a tiny, blazing white star.

  Falling, and winking out of sight as it fell.

  Ahad took a great, shuddering breath, and the air around him turned the color of a bruise. The sound that he made was less a word than an animal, maddened shriek. For an instant he became something else, shapeless and impossible, and then we were all flung sprawling as daystone and Tree wood and the air itself whipped into an instant tornado around him. He was a god, and his will forged reality. All the matter nearby hastened to do his bidding.

  Then he was gone, and all the debris that had been blasted away in his wake pelted onto whatever body parts we’d been foolish enough to turn upright.

  I pushed myself up slowly, trying to get a broken Tree branch off my back and daystone dust out of my mouth. My hands hurt. Why did my hands hurt? I’d never had arthritis on any of the previous occasions I’d become old. Then again, that had been old age as I’d imagined it; perhaps the reality was simply more unpleasant than I’d thought.

  Hands grabbed me, helping me up: Deka. He pushed the branch away, then pushed my hair out of my face; it was waist-long now, though thin and stringy white. No matter how old I got, the stuff kept growing. Why couldn’t I go bald, damn it?

  “Should’ve seen that coming,” I muttered as he helped me to my feet.

  “Seen what?”

  Then Itempas was there, also helping me. Between the two of them, I was able to scramble over the jagged, unstable stones of the fallen Sky. “That one.” Itempas nodded in the direction Ahad had gone. In another life I would have laughed at his refusal to use Ahad’s borrowed name. “Apparently, his nature has something to do with love.”

  No wonder it had taken Ahad so long to find himself. He had lived the past century in the antithetical prison of his own apathy—and his centuries of suffering in Sky had probably not predisposed him to attempt love, even when the opportunity came along. But Glee… I bit my lip. In spite of everything, I prayed that she would be all right. I did not want to lose my newest sister, and I did not want this other, surrogate son of mine to discover himself through grief.

  It is not an easy thing to climb a pile of rubble the size of a small city. It is harder when one is a half-blind old man of eighty or so. I kept having to stop and catch my breath, and my coordination was so poor that after a few close calls and nearly broken ankles, Itempas stepped in front of me and told me to climb onto his back. I would have refused, out of pride, but then Deka, damn him, picked me up bodily and forced me to do it. So I locked my arms and legs round Itempas, humiliated, and they ignored my complaints and resumed climbing.

  We did not speak as the Maelstrom’s roar grew louder. This was not merely because of the noise but also because we were waiting, and hoping, but as we kept climbing and the moments passed, that hope faded. If Yeine and the others had been able to defeat Kahl, they would have done it by now. The universe still existed; that meant the two gods were alive at least. Beyond that, no news was not good news.

  “Where can we go?” Deka had to shout to be heard. All around us was a charging, churning monstrosity of sound. I made out bird whistles and men shouting as if in agony, ocean surf and rock grating against metal. It did not hurt our ears—not yet—but it was not pleasant either.

  “I can take us away once, maybe twice,” he said, and then looked ashamed. “I don’t have a god’s strength, or even…” He looked toward where Glee had fallen. I hoped Ahad had managed to catch her. “But anywhere in the mortal realm, Kahl will find us. Even if he doesn’t—”

  We all paused to look up. High above, the clouds had begun to boil and twist in a way that had nothing to do with weather patterns. Would the great storm stop there in the sky, once It reached the place from wh
ich It had been summoned? Or would It simply plow through and leave a void where the earth had been?

  Back to Echo, then. Deka and I could join with Shahar again, attempt to control what we had done only by instinct before… but even as I thought this, I dismissed it. Too much discord between Shahar and Deka now; we might just make things worse. I leaned my head on Itempas’s broad shoulder, sighing. I was tired. It would be easier, so much easier, if I could just lie down now and rest.

  But as I thought this, suddenly I knew what could be done.

  I lifted my head. “Tempa.” He had already stopped, probably to catch his breath, though he would never admit such a thing. He turned his ear toward me to indicate that he was listening. “How long does it take you to return to life when you die?”

  “The time varies between ten and fifty minutes.” He did not ask why I wanted to know. “Longer if the circumstances that caused me to die remain present—I revive, then die again immediately.”

  “Where do you go?” He frowned. It was hard to make my voice work at this volume. “While you’re dead. Where do you go?”

  He shook his head. “Oblivion.”

  “Not the heavens? Not the hells?”

  “No. I am not dead. But I am not alive, either. I hover between.”

  I wriggled to get down, and he set me on my feet. I nearly fell at once; the circulation in my legs had been cut off by his arms, and I hadn’t even felt it. Deka helped me to sit on a rough piece of what—I think—had once been a part of the Garden of the Hundred Thousand. Groaning, I massaged one of my legs, nodding irritably for Deka to take the other, which he did.

  “I need you to die,” I said to Tempa, who lifted an eyebrow. “Just for a while.” And then, using as few words as I could to save my voice, I told them my plan.

  Deka’s hands tightened on my calf. He made no protest, however, for which I was painfully grateful. He trusted me. And if he helped me, I would be able to pull my biggest trick ever.

  My last trick.