The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

by N. K. Jemisin

  But what did it mean that he made love to me first?

  * * *

  I stumbled back against the opposite wall, struggling to breathe and think around blazing terror and inexplicable nausea and the yawning urge to clutch my head and scream.

  * * *

  The final warning, yes. I am not usually so dense, but you must understand. It was a bit much to deal with.

  * * *

  Do you need help?

  My mind latched on to the voice of the old librarian with the ferocity of a drowning victim. I must have looked a sight as I whipped around to face her; I was swaying on my feet, my mouth hanging open and dumb, my hands outstretched and forming claws in front of me.

  The old woman, who stood bracketed by one of the bookcase gaps, gazed in at me impassively.

  With an effort, I closed my mouth, lowered my hands, and straightened from the bizarre half crouch into which Id sunk. I was still shaking inside, but some semblance of dignity was returning to me.

  I I, no, I managed after a moment. No. Im all right.

  She said nothing, just kept watching me. I wanted to tell her to go away, but my eyes were drawn back to the thing that had shocked me so.

  Across the back of a bookcase, the Bright Lord of Order gazed at me. It was just artworkan Amn-style embossing, gold leaf layered onto an outline chiseled in a white marble slab. Still, the artist had captured Itempas in astounding, life-size detail. He stood in an elegant warriors stance, His form broad and powerfully muscled, His hands resting on the hilt of a huge, straight sword. Eyes like lanterns pinned me from the solemn perfection of His face. I had seen renderings of Him in the priests books, but not like this. They made Him slimmer, thin-featured, like an Amn. They always drew Him smiling, and they never made His expression so cold.

  I put my hands behind me to push myself uprightand felt more marble under my fingers. When I turned, the shock was not so great this time. I half-expected what I saw: inlaid obsidian and a riot of tiny, starlike diamonds, all of it forming a lithe, sensual figure. His hands were flung outstretched from his sides, nearly lost amid the flaring cloak of hair and power. I could not see the exulting? screaming? figures face, for it was tilted upward, dominated by that open, howling mouth. But I knew him anyhow.

  Except I frowned in confusion, reaching up to touch what might have been a swirl of cloth, or a rounded breast.

  Itempas forced him into a single shape, said the old woman, her voice very soft. When he was free, he was all things beautiful and terrible. I had never heard a more fitting description.

  But there was a third slab to my right. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Had seen it from the moment Id slipped between the shelves. Had avoided looking at it, for reasons that had nothing to do with my rational self and everything to do with what I now, deep down in the unreasoning core of my instincts, suspected.

  I made myself turn to face the third slab, while the old woman watched me.

  Compared to her brothers, Enefas image was demure. Undramatic. In gray marble profile she sat, clad in a simple shift, her face downcast. Only on closer observation did one notice the subtleties. Her hand held a small spherean object immediately recognizable to anyone who had ever seen Siehs orrery. (And I understood, now, why he treasured his collection so much.) Her posture, taut with ready energy, more crouch than sit. Her eyes, which despite her downturned face glanced up, sidelong, at the viewer. There was something about her gaze that was not seductive. It was too frank for that. Nor wary. But evaluative. Yes. She looked at me and through me, measuring all that she saw.

  With a shaking hand, I reached up to touch her face. More rounded than mine, prettier, but the lines were the same as what I saw in mirrors. The hair was longer, but the curl was right. The artist had set her irises with pale green jade. If the skin had been brown instead of marble I swallowed, trembling harder still.

  We hadnt intended to tell you yet, said the old woman. Right behind me now, though she shouldve been too fat to fit through the gap. Wouldve been, if she had been human. Pure chance that you decided to come to the library now. I suppose I couldve found a way to steer you elsewhere, but I heard rather than saw her shrug. You would have found out eventually.

  I sank to the floor, huddling against the Itempas wall as if He would protect me. I was cold all over, my thoughts screaming and skittering every which way. Making that first, crucial connection had broken my ability to make others.

  This is how madness feels, I understood.

  Will you kill me? I whispered to the old woman. There was no mark on her forehead. I had missed that, still used to the absence of a mark, not its presence. I should have noticed. Shed had a different shape in my dream, but I knew her now: Kurue the Wise, leader of the Enefadeh.

  Why would I do that? Weve invested far too much in creating you. A hand fell on my shoulder; I twitched. But youre no good to us insane.

  So I was not surprised to feel darkness close over me. I relaxed and, grateful, let it come.

  12

  Sanity

  Once upon a time there was a

  Once upon a time there was a

  Once upon a time there was a

  Stop this. Its undignified.

  * * *

  ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A little girl who had two older siblings. The oldest was dark and wild and glorious, if somewhat uncouth. The other was filled with all the brightness of all the suns that ever were, and he was very stern and upright. They were much older than her, and very close to one another even though in the past they had fought viciously. We were young and foolish then, said Second Sibling, whenever the little girl asked him about it.

  Sex was more fun, said First Sibling.

  This sort of statement made Second Sibling very cross, which of course was why First Sibling said it. In this way did the little girl come to know and love them both.

  * * *

  This is an approximation, you realize. This is what your mortal mind can comprehend.

  * * *

  Thus went the little girls childhood. They had no parents, the three of them, and so the little girl raised herself. She drank glimmering stuff when she was thirsty and lay down in soft places when she got tired. When she was hungry, First Sibling showed her how to draw sustenance from energies that suited her, and when she was bored Second Sibling taught her all the lore that had come into being. This was how she came to know names. The place in which they lived was called EXISTENCEas opposed to the place from which they had come, which was a great shrieking mass of nothingness called MAELSTROM. The toys and foods she conjured were POSSIBILITY, and what a delightful substance that was! With it she could build anything she needed, even change the nature of EXISTENCEthough she quickly learned to ask before doing this, because Second Sibling got upset when she altered his carefully ordered rules and processes. First Sibling did not care.

  Over time it came to be that the little girl spent more time with First Sibling than with Second, because Second did not seem to like her as much. This is difficult for him, First Sibling said, when she complained. We have been alone, he and I, for so very long. Now you are here, and that changes everything. He does not like change.

  This the little girl had already come to understand. And this was why her siblings so often fought with each other, because First Sibling loved change. Often First Sibling would grow bored with EXISTENCE and transform it, or turn it inside out just to see the other side. Second Sibling would rage at First Sibling whenever this happened, and First Sibling would laugh at his fury, and before the little girl could blink they would be on each other, tearing and blasting, until something changed and then they would be clutching and gasping, and whenever this happened the little girl would patiently wait for them to finish so they could play with her again.

  In time the little girl became a woman. She had learned to live with her two siblings, each in their own waydancing wild with First Sibling and growing adept at discipline alongside Second. Now she made her own way beyond their
peculiarities. She had stepped in between her siblings during their battles, fighting them to measure her strength and loving them when the fighting turned to joy. She had, though they did not know it, gone off to create her own separate EXISTENCES, where sometimes she pretended that she had no siblings. There she could arrange POSSIBILITY into stunning new shapes and meanings that she was sure neither of her siblings could have created themselves. In time she grew adept at this, and her creations so pleased her that she began to bring them into the realm where her siblings lived. She did this subtly at first, taking great care to fit them into Second Siblings orderly spaces and arrangements in a way that might not offend him.

  First Sibling, as usual delighted by anything new, urged her to do far more. However, the woman found that she had developed a taste for some of Second Siblings order. She incorporated First Siblings suggestions, but gradually, purposefully, observing how each minute change triggered others, sometimes causing growth in unexpected and wonderful ways. Sometimes the changes destroyed everything, forcing her to start over. She mourned the loss of her toys, her treasures, but she always began the process again. Like First Siblings darkness and Second Siblings light, this particular gift was something only she could master. The compulsion to do it was as essential to her as breathing, as much a part of her as her own soul.

  Second Sibling, once he got over his annoyance at her tinkering, asked her about it. It is called life, she said, liking the sound of the word. He smiled, pleased, for to name a thing is to give it order and purpose, and he understood then that she had done so to offer him respect.

  But it was to First Sibling that she went for help with her most ambitious experiment. First Sibling was, as she had expected, eager to assistbut to her surprise, there was a sober warning as well. If this works, it will change many things. You realize that, dont you? Nothing in our lives will ever be the same. First Sibling paused, waiting to see that she understood, and abruptly she did. Second Sibling did not like change.

  Nothing can stay the same forever, she said. We were not made to be still. Even he must realize that.

  First Sibling only sighed and said no more.

  The experiment worked. The new life, mewling and shaking and uttering vehement protests, was beautiful in its unfinished way, and the woman knew that what she had begun was good and right. She named the creature Sieh, because that was the sound of the wind. And she called his type of being a child, meaning that it had the potential to grow into something like themselves, and meaning, too, that they could create more of them.

  And as always with life, this minute change triggered many, many others. The most profound of them was something even she had not anticipated: they became a family. For a time, they were all happy with thateven Second Sibling.

  But not all families last.

  * * *

  So there was love, once.

  More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things.

  But love like that doesnt just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath.

  Yes. Horrible, isnt it?

  * * *

  When the body suffers an assault, it often reacts with a fever. Assaults to the mind can have the same effect. Thus I lay shivering and insensible for the better part of three days.

  A few moments from this time appear in my memory as still-life portraits, some in color and some in shades of gray. A solitary figure standing near my bedroom window, huge and alert with inhuman vigilance. Zhakkarn. Blink and the same image returns in negative: the same figure, framed by glowing white walls and a black rectangle of night beyond the window. Blink and there is another image: the old woman from the library standing over me, peering carefully into my eyes. Zhakkarn stands in the background, watching. A thread of conversation, disconnected from any image.

  If she dies

  Then we start over. Whats a few more decades?

  Nahadoth will be displeased.

  A rough, rueful laugh. You have a great gift for understatement, sister.

  Sieh, too.

  That is Siehs own fault. I warned him not to get attached, the little fool.

  Silence for a moment, full of reproach. There is nothing foolish about hope.

  Silence in reply, though this silence feels faintly of shame.

  One of the images in my head is different from the others. This one is dark again, but the walls, too, have gone dark, and there is a feeling to the image, a sense of ominous weight and pressure and low, gathering rage. Zhakkarn stands away from the window this time, near a wall.

  Her head is bowed in respect. In the foreground stands Nahadoth, gazing down at me in silence. Once again his face has transformed, and I understand now that this is because Itempas can only control him so much. He must change; he is Change. He could allow me to see his fury, for it weighs the very air, making my skin itch. Instead he is expressionless. His skin has turned warm brown and his eyes are layered shades of black, and his lips make me crave soft, ripe fruit. The perfect face for seducing lonely Darre girlsthough it would work better if his eyes held any warmth.

  He says nothing that I recall. When my fever breaks at last and I awaken, he is gone and the weight of rage has liftedthough it never goes away entirely. That, too, Bright Itempas cannot control.

  * * *

  Dawn.

  I sat up, feeling heavy and thick-headed. Zhakkarn, still near the window, glanced back at me over her shoulder.

  Youre awake. I turned to see Sieh curled in a chair beside the bed. Bonelessly he unfolded himself and came to me, touching my forehead. The fevers broken. How do you feel?

  I responded with the first coherent thought my mind could muster. What am I?

  He lowered his eyes. Im not supposed to tell you.

  I pushed away the covers and got up. For a moment I was dizzy as blood rushed to my head and away, but then it passed and I stumbled toward the bathroom.

  I want you both out of here by the time Im done, I said over my shoulder.

  Neither Sieh nor Zhakkarn responded. In the bathroom I stood over the sink for several painful moments, debating whether to vomit, though the emptiness of my stomach eventually settled the matter. My hands shook while I bathed and dried myself, and drank some water straight from the tap. I came out of the bathroom naked and was not at all surprised to find both Enefadeh still there. Sieh had drawn up his knees to sit on the edge of my bed, looking young and troubled. Zhakkarn had not moved from the window.

  The words must be phrased as a command, she said, if you truly want us to leave.

  I dont care what you do. I found underthings and put them on. In the closet I took the first outfit I saw, an elegant Amn sheath-dress with patterns meant to disguise my minimal curves. I picked boots that didnt match it and sat down to work them onto my feet.

  Where are you going? Sieh asked. He touched my arm, anxious. I shook my arm as I would to get rid of an insect, and he drew back. You dont even know, do you? Yeine

  Back to the library, I said, though I picked that at random because hed been right; I hadnt had a destination in mind other than away.

  Yeine, I know youre upset

  What am I? I stood with one boot on and rounded on him. He flinched, possibly because Id bent to scream the words into his face. What? What? What am I, gods damn you? What

  Your body is human, interrupted Zhakkarn. Now it was my turn to flinch. She stood near the bed, gazing at me with the same impassivity shed always shown, though there was something subtly protective in the way she stood behind Sieh. Your mind is human. The soul is the only change.

  What does that mean?

  It means youre the same person you always were. Sieh looked both subdued and sullen. An ordinary mortal woman.

  I look like her.

  Zhakkarn nodded. She might have been reporting on the weather. The presence of Enefas soul in your body has had some influence.

 
; I shivered, feeling ill again. Something inside me that was not me. I rubbed at my arms, resisting the urge to use my nails. Can you take it out?

  Zhakkarn blinked, and I sensed that for the first time Id surprised her. Yes. But your body has grown accustomed to two souls. It might not survive having only one again.

  Two souls. Somehow that was better. I was not an empty thing animated solely by some alien force. Something in me, at least, was me. Can you try?

  Yeine Sieh reached for my hand, though he seemed to think better of it when I stepped back. Even we dont know what would happen if we take the soul out. We thought at first that her soul would simply consume yours, but that clearly hasnt happened.

  I must have looked confused.

  Youre still sane, said Zhakkarn.

  Something inside me, eating me. I half-fell onto the bed, dry-heaving unproductively for several moments. The instant this passed, I pushed myself up and paced, limping with my one boot. I could not be still. I rubbed at my temples, tugged at my hair, wondering how much longer I would stay sane with such thoughts in my mind.

  And youre still you, Sieh said urgently, half-following me as I paced. Youre the daughter Kinneth would have had. You dont have Enefas memories or personality. You dont think like her. That means youre strong, Yeine. That comes from you, not her.

  I laughed wildly; it sounded like a sob. How would you know?

  He stopped walking, his eyes soft and mournful. If you were her, he said, you would love me.

  I stopped, too, pacing and breathing.

  And me, said Zhakkarn. And Kurue. Enefa loved all her children, even the ones who eventually betrayed her.