The Kingdom of Gods

  22

  … and they all lived happily ever after.

  The end.

  The world remained surprisingly calm as the Maelstrom grew to dwarf the sun in the sky. This was not at all what I had expected. Mortal humans are only a few languages and eccentricities removed from mortal beasts, and it is the nature of beasts to panic at the approach of danger.

  There were some beastly acts. No looting — the Order-Keepers had always been quick to execute thieves — but many cases of arson and vandalism as mortals destroyed property to vent their despair. And there was violence, of course. In one of the patriarchal lands, so many men slaughtered their wives and children before killing themselves that one of my siblings got involved. She appeared in the capital wreathed in falling leaves and let it be known that she would personally carry the souls of such murderers to the worst of the infinite hells. Even then the killings did not stop entirely, but they did decrease.

  All this was nothing to what could have been. I had expected … I don’t know. Mass suicide, cannibalism, the total collapse of the Bright.

  Instead, Shahar married Datennay Canru of Tema. It was a small and private ceremony, as there had not been time to prepare for anything better. At my prompting, she asked Deka to administer the rites as First Scrivener, and at my prompting, Deka agreed. There were no apologies exchanged. They were both Arameri. But I saw that she was contrite, and I saw that Deka forgave her. Then Shahar had the Order of Itempas spread word of the event by crier and runner and news scroll. She hoped to send a message by her actions: I believe there will be a future.

  Canru agreed readily to the marriage, I think, because he was more than a bit in love with her. She … well, she had never stopped loving me, but she genuinely liked him. We all sought our own forms of comfort in those days.

  I spent my nights in Deka’s arms and was humbly grateful for my fortune.

  So the world went on.

  Until its end.

  We gathered at dawn on the final day: Arameri, notables from Tema and other lands, commonfolk from Shadow, Ahad and Glee, Nemmer and a few of the other godlings who had not fled the realm. The Whorl was not as high as Sky had been, but it was as good a vantage point as any. From there, the heavens were a terrible, awe-inspiring sight. More than half of the sky had been devoured by the swirling, wavering transparency. As the sun rose and passed into the space of change, its shape turned sickly and distorted, its light flickering on our skins like a campfire. This was not an illusion. What we saw was literal, despite the impossibility of the angles and distance. Even Tempa’s rules for physics and time had been distorted by the Maelstrom’s presence. Thus we beheld the slow and tortured end of our sun as it was torn apart and drawn into the great maw. There would be light for a while longer, and then darkness such as no mortal had ever seen. If we lasted that long.

  I held Deka’s hand as we stood gazing at it, unafraid.

  Alarmed gasps from the center of the Whorl meadow drew my attention: Nahadoth and Yeine had appeared there amid the bobbing sea grass. The gathered folk stumbled back from them, though some quickly knelt or began weeping or calling out to them. No one shushed them, for hope had never been a sin.

  I dragged Deka with me as I pushed through the crowd. Between Nahadoth and Yeine was Itempas; they had brought him. All three of them looked grim, but they would not have come without reason. Nahadoth might act without purpose, but Yeine tended not to, and Itempas had never done so.

  They turned to me as I reached them, and I was suddenly sure of it. “You have a plan,” I said, squeezing Deka’s hand hard.

  They looked at each other. Beyond the Three, Shahar stepped out of the crowd as well, Canru in her wake. He stopped, gazing at them in awe. Shahar came forward alone, her fists tight at her sides.

  Itempas inclined his head to me. “We do.”

  “What?”

  “Death.”

  If I had not spent countless eternities enduring his manner, I would have screamed at this. “Can you be more specific?”

  There was the faintest twitch of Itempas’s lips. “Kahl has called the Maelstrom to join with him,” he said. “He will have to appear in order to take It into himself and — he hopes — use Its power to become a god. We will kill him and offer It a new seat of power instead.” He spread his hands, indicating himself.

  I caught my breath, horrified as I understood. “No. Tempa, you were born from the Maelstrom. To return to It —”

  “I have chosen this, Sieh.” His voice cut across mine, soothing, definitive. “It is the fate my nature demands. I have felt the possibility since Kahl’s summoning. Yeine and Nahadoth have confirmed it.” Behind him, Yeine’s face was unreadable, serene. Nahadoth … he was almost the same. It was not his nature to contain himself, however. He could not hide his unease entirely, not from me.

  I scowled at Itempas. “What is this, some misguided attempt at atonement? I told you a century ago, you stubborn fool, nothing can make up for your crimes! And what good does it do for you to sacrifice yourself, if your death will cause everything to end anyway?”

  “The Maelstrom may cease Its approach if It fulfills Kahl’s purpose,” Itempas replied. “In this case, creating a new god. We believe the form that this new god takes will depend on the nature and will of the vessel.” He shrugged. “I will see that what is created is a fitting replacement for myself.”

  I stumbled back, and Deka put a hand on my shoulder in concern. It was the same conjunction of power and will that had forged Yeine into a new Enefa, and where that had been wild, a series of not-quite-accidental coincidences, now Itempas hoped to control a similar event. But whatever god was created in his place, however stick-in-the-mud that new one might turn out to be, Itempas would die.

  “No,” I said. I was trembling. “You can’t.”

  “It’s the only solution, Sieh,” said Yeine.

  I stared at the two of them, so set in their resolve, and did not know what I felt in that moment. Not so long before, I would have rejoiced at the idea of a new Itempas. Even now it was a temptation, because I might have forgiven him and I might still love him, but I would never forget what he had done to our family. Nothing would ever be the same for any of us. Would it not be easier, somehow — cleaner — to start over with someone new? Knowing Itempas, the idea had some appeal for him, too. He did like things neat.

  I turned to Nahadoth, hoping for — something. I didn’t know what. But Nahadoth, damn him, wasn’t paying attention to any of us. He had turned away to gaze at the swirling sky. Around him, the dark wreathing tendrils of his presence wheeled in a slow, matching dance. Inching higher, in random increments, as I watched. Toward the Maelstrom.

  Wait —

  Itempas spoke his name sharply, before my thoughts could crystallize into fear. Yeine, surprised by this, frowned at both her brothers. For a moment, I saw incomprehension in her face, and then her eyes widened. But Naha only smiled, as if it amused him to frighten us. And he kept looking up at the Maelstrom, as if it was the most beautiful sight in the mortal realm.

  “Perhaps we should do nothing,” Nahadoth said. “Worlds die. Gods die. Perhaps we should let all of it go, and start anew.”

  Start anew. My eyes met Yeine’s across the drift of Naha’s blackness. Deka’s hand tightened on my shoulder; he understood, too. The unsteady tremor of sorrow that edged Nahadoth’s voice. The way his shape kept blurring in time with the Maelstrom’s perturbations, resonating with its terrible, churning song.

  But there was no fear in Itempas’s face as he took a step toward Nahadoth. He was smiling, in fact — and I marveled, because even though he was trapped in mortal flesh, his smile somehow had all the old power. Nahadoth, too, reacted to this. He lowered his gaze to focus on Itempas, his own smile fading.

  “Perhaps we should,” Itempas said. “That would be easier than repairing what’s broken.”

  The drifting curls of Nahadoth’s substance grew still. They shifted aside as Itempas approached Nahado
th, allowing him near — but also curving inward, and sharpening into jagged, irregular scythes. Fanged jaws ready to close on Itempas’s so-powerless flesh. Itempas ignored this blatant threat, continuing forward and, finally, stopping before him.

  Behind him, Glee stood stiff and wide-eyed. I held my breath.

  “Will you die with me, Nahadoth?” he asked. His voice was low, but it carried; we all heard it, even over the twisting, growing shriek of the Maelstrom. “Is that what you want?”

  Beyond them, perhaps only I saw Yeine’s expression tighten, though she said nothing. Anyone could see the delicacy of the spell Tempa had woven, more fragile still because it was nothing but words. He had no magic. No weapons at all for this battle, save the history between them, good and ill.

  Nahadoth did not answer, but then he didn’t need to. There were faces he wore only when he meant to kill. They are beautiful faces — destruction is not his nature, just an art he indulges — but in my mortal shape I could not look upon them without wanting to die, so I fixed my eyes on Itempas’s back. Somehow, despite his mortal shape, Tempa could still bear Naha’s worst.

  “The new one,” Tempa said, very softly. “I’ll make certain he’s worthy of both of you.”

  Then he lifted his hands — I clamped down on my tongue to keep from blurting a warning — and cupped Nahadoth’s face. I expected his fingers to fall off, for the black depths around Naha had grown lethal, freezing flecks of snow from the air and etching cracks into the ground beneath their feet. It probably did hurt Itempas; they always hurt each other. This did not stop him from leaning close and touching his lips to Nahadoth’s.

  Nahadoth did not return the kiss. Itempas might as well have pressed his mouth to stone. Yet the fact that it had occurred at all — that Nahadoth permitted it, that it was Itempas’s farewell — made it something holy.

  (I clenched my fists and fought back tears. I was too old for sentimentality, damn it.)

  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.