“I will hate you no less, Tempa,” Nahadoth breathes, “when you and I are the last living things in this universe.”
Then he is a roaring black tempest, streaking forward in attack, and Itempas is a crackle of white fire bracing to meet him. They collide in a concussion that shatters the glass in the ritual chamber. Mortals scream, their voices almost lost as cold, thin air howls in to fill the void. They fall to the floor as Nahadoth and Itempas streak away, upward—but my perception is drawn to Scimina for an instant. Her eyes fix on the knife that killed me, Viraine’s knife, lying not far from her. Relad sprawls dazed amid glass shards and chunks of the broken plinth. Scimina’s eyes narrow.
Sieh roars, his voice an echo of Nahadoth’s battle cry. Zhakkarn turns to face Kurue, and her pike appears in one hand.
And at the center of it all, unnoticed, untouched, my body and the Stone lie still.
And here we are.
Yes.
You understand what has happened?
I’m dead.
Yes. In the presence of the Stone, which houses the last of my power.
Is that why I’m still here, able to see these things?
Yes. The Stone kills the living. You’re dead.
You mean… I can come back to life? Amazing. How convenient that Viraine turned on me.
I prefer to think of it as fate.
So what now?
Your body must change. It will no longer be able to bear two souls within itself; that is an ability only mortals possess. I made your kind that way, gifted in ways that we are not, but I never dreamt it would make you so strong. Strong enough to defeat me, in spite of all my efforts. Strong enough to take my place.
What? No. I don’t want your place. You are you. I am me. I have fought for this.
And fought well. But my essence, all that I am, is necessary for this world to continue. If I am not to be the one who restores that essence, then it must be you.
But—
I do not regret, Daughter, Little Sister, worthy heir. Neither should you. I only wish…
I know your wish.
Do you really?
Yes. They are blinded by pride, but underneath there is still love. The Three are meant to be together. I will see it done.
Thank you.
Thank you. And farewell.
I can ponder for an eternity. I am dead. I have all the time I want.
But I was never very patient.
In and around the glass room, which no longer has glass and probably no longer qualifies as a room, battle rages.
Itempas and Nahadoth have taken their fight to the skies they once shared. Above the motes they have become, dark streaks break the gradient of dawn, like strips of night layered over the morning. A blazing white beam, like the sun but a thousand times brighter, sears across these to shatter them. There is no point to this. It is daytime. Nahadoth would already be asleep within his human prison if not for Itempas’s parole. Itempas can revoke that parole whenever he wishes. He must be enjoying himself.
Scimina has gotten Viraine’s knife. She has flung herself on Relad, trying to gut him. He’s stronger, but she has leverage and the strength of ambition on her side. Relad’s eyes are wide with terror; perhaps he has always feared something like this.
Sieh, Zhakkarn, and Kurue feint and circle in a deadly metal-and-claw dance. Kurue has conjured a pair of gleaming bronze swords to defend herself. This contest, too, is foregone; Zhakkarn is battle incarnate, and Sieh has all the power of childhood’s cruelty. But Kurue is wily, and she has the taste of freedom in her mouth. She will not die easily.
Amid all this, Dekarta moves toward my body. He stops and struggles to his knees; in the end he slips in my blood and half-falls on me, grimacing in pain. Then his expression hardens. He looks up into the sky, where his god fights, then down. At the Stone. It is the source of the Arameri clan’s power; it is also the physical representation of their duty. Perhaps he hopes that by doing that duty, he will remind Itempas of the value of life. Perhaps he retains some smidgeon of faith. Perhaps it is simply that forty years ago, Dekarta killed his wife to prove his commitment. To do otherwise now would mock her death.
He reaches for the Stone.
It is gone.
But it was there, lying in my blood, a moment before. Dekarta frowns, looks around. His eyes are attracted by movement. The hole in my chest, which he can see through the torn cloth of my bodice: the raw lips of the wound are drawing together, pressing themselves closed. As the line of the wound shrinks, Dekarta catches a glimmer of thin gray light. Within me.
Then I am drawn forward, down—
Yes. Enough of this disembodied soul business. Time to be alive again.
I opened my eyes and sat up.
Dekarta, behind me, made a sound somewhere between choking and a gasp. No one else noticed as I got to my feet, so I turned to face him.
“Wh—what in every god’s name—” His mouth worked. He stared.
“Not every god,” I said. And because I was still me after all, I leaned down to smile in his face. “Just me.”
Then I closed my eyes and touched my chest. Nothing beat beneath my fingers; my heart had been destroyed. Yet something was there, giving life to my flesh. I could feel it. The Stone. A thing of life, born of death, filled with incalculable potential. A seed.
“Grow,” I whispered.
29. The Three
As with any birth, there was pain.
I believe I screamed. I think that in that instant many things occurred. I have a vague sense of the sky wheeling overhead, cycling day through day and night and back to morning in the span of a breath. (If this happened, then what moved was not the sky.) I have a feeling that somewhere in the universe an uncountable number of new species burst into existence, on millions of planets. I am fairly certain that tears fell from my eyes. Where they landed, lichens and moss began to cover the floor.
I cannot be certain of any of this. Somewhere, in dimensions for which there are no mortal words, I was changing, too. This occupied a great deal of my awareness.
But when the changes were done, I opened my eyes and saw new colors.
The room practically glowed with them. The iridescence of the floor’s Skystuff. Glints of gold from glass shards lying about the room. The blue of the sky—it had been a watery blue-white, but now it was such a vivid teal that I stared at it in wonder. It had never, at least in my lifetime, been so blue.
Next I noticed scent. My body had become something else, less a body than an embodiment, but its shape for the moment was still human, as were my senses. And something was different here, too. When I inhaled, I could taste the crisp, acrid thinness of the air, underlaid by the metallic scent of the blood that covered my clothing. I touched my fingers to this and tasted it. Salt, more metal, hints of bitter and sour. Of course; I had been unhappy for days before I died.
New colors. New scents in the air. I had never realized, before now, what it meant to live in a universe that had lost one-third of itself. The Gods’ War had cost us so much more than mere lives.
No more, I vowed.