Shades in Shadow

THE WILD BOY

“When I am free,” he said, “I will choose who shapes me.”

“But…” I frowned. “That isn’t freedom.”

“At the dawn of reality I was myself. There was nothing and no one else to influence me—only the Maelstrom that had given birth to me, and it did not care. I tore open my flesh and spilled out the substance of what became your realm: matter and energy and cold black blood. I devoured my own mind and reveled in the novelty of pain.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I swallowed hard and tried to will them away, but abruptly the hands returned, lifting my chin. Fingers stroked my eyes shut, brushing the tears away.

“When I am free, I will choose,” he said again, whispering, very close.

—The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, chapter 22: “Such Rage”

Nahadoth

wants.

Want is a thing. Nahadoth has never lost the habit of attempting to classify things, because things were once so difficult to understand. At the beginning. Time is a thing, too; Nahadoth knows this now, has accepted the conceptualization of beginningness and endingness and whereness and whoness because these are all things that make life more interesting, though it is also interesting to discard them. Whatness, however, is always hard. Nahadoth is everything, after all.

No. Nahadoth—he? He, per Itempas’s decree, how predictable—he is not everything. There was a beforetime in which Nahadoth encompassed all that could be perceived, except that which was Maelstrom. But that time is long past, and he does not miss it, because now there is another he and for a time there was a her and after that, many. Among and apart from them all, he has become the whatness that is called Nahadoth.

He savors his name again for the several quintillionth time, marveling again at its whole round syllables, its perfect appropriateness. He has loved this name, this thing, since Itempas first bestowed it upon him. His name is a good thing, and he likes it.

Itempas was a good thing, too, once.

Nahadoth wants and does not know what or why.

The boy is not lost the first time he comes. Many mortals stumble upon Nahadoth’s chamber and just as quickly flee. This one sought him out. That is a new thing, though not interesting in and of itself. Simply different.

Nahadoth’s chamber is a room in a place. The body into which Itempas has chained Nahadoth resides here, anchoring him in the mortal realm, so it is fitting that the room is at the bottom of a building. And within the room is a chamber—a pit, really, into which the mortals have thrown him. How poetic. Perhaps it is better called a well. It has a wall. And he wells at the bottom of it, a living spring gushing forth everything that they hate—even though if he did not do so, they would cease to exist. By keeping him here, they hope to contain the curling, liquid eddies of substance that appear on those occasions when the world spins into shadow, and the body leaks some fraction of his darkness. (The body sleeps at the bottom of the dark well by day. He has no power over it, other than that, but he is too jealous of what he has to give even that up.) He stays where they have put him because he does not care. One place in the mortal realm is as bad as another. But he is also out, about, roaming, because that is what he is, and all wheres are everywhere to him. He is Nahadoth, and that is everywhere and everything, except wherever and whatever the Maelstrom is and wherever and whatever his siblings are.

Sibling. Just one now. That is a thing, a familiar one, but not a good one.

He is contemplating this loss when the boy comes, and perhaps because of this Nahadoth does not notice at first. Another mortal, another day. This one says something, or maybe whispers, or maybe laughs. Nahadoth pays no attention until suddenly the boy thrusts his face into him.

A trivial distinction. The room is dim. The boy was already within him. But the boy breaches the surface of the well’s blackness, and that is different. Different is interesting, so Nahadoth does not remove the boy’s face. Yet.

“So it isn’t true.” The boy, who has bent to plunge his head into what resembles a pool of relentless black, laughs a little. (This tickles.) “They said…Well, they say a lot of things about you.” He straightens, wiping his face without thinking, then looks surprised to find his hand dry. Then he chuckles again.

There is something in the boy’s laugh that Nahadoth understands. That unsteadiness, with a core of emptiness. That little waver, as if the laugh teeters between humor and hysteria and utter falseness. There is a black hole in this one’s soul.

“Haangratsajim,” the boy says, bowing with a flourish. “That’s my name, if you’re wondering. No one here can pronounce it—it’s Ostei—so I’m just Haan now. It’s on the papers they gave me. Haan Arameri, bought and paid for, all proper.”

Ostei no longer exists. The gods’ warring destroyed it and its inhabitants, save for a handful of survivors. Nahadoth remembers seducing a princess there once, before Itempas’s madness. That princess had been a wild creature, irresponsible and full of joy, who had drawn Nahadoth’s attention by standing on a cliff and shouting at the moon. For no particular reason, she’d said, when Nahadoth manifested and drew her close and kissed more shouts out of her. Because life. Ostei had been full of wild ones like her.

This one is different, Nahadoth senses—a cold wildness, rather than hot.

“Bought and paid for,” the boy whispers, and then his face changes. He turns as this happens, so that his back is to the well and his face is out of sight. Or he would be, if the room’s shadows were not also Nahadoth, and if Nahadoth actually needed eyes to see. So Nahadoth sees the sudden bloom of teeth in the shadows and understands that the boy is smiling a hunter’s smile.

“I am a thing,” the boy says softly. “That’s what they’ve decided I am, and so that is what I will be. A thing need not bother with human niceties, yes? So now they will see.”

This is more interesting than Nahadoth had assumed. He settles in to watch, glad of a respite from the boredom.

The boy goes away eventually. Nahadoth chooses not to think for a time.

But he roams, because he cannot help himself. Everywhere there is darkness, Nahadoth exists. (In the language that Itempas has created, Nahadoth is the word for things that cannot be perceived, cannot be comprehended, can only be unleashed.) He does not pay attention to most of what he detects via the dark that is his ears and skin and teeth and guts. Most of it is routine, and supremely boring. Stars—sparkle flare sparkle. Planets—spin shatter spin. Life—chatter chitter chatter. The unutterable tedium of a breathing, beating universe.

(But it is more interesting than the universe before Itempas, so he does not complain.)

Nahadoth supposes he should pay attention to the locality that encompasses his flesh more often, since most of him will be confined here for the foreseeable future. He is aware of this whereness, peripherally, because the body occasionally demands his attention. It hungers; it itches; someone has poked it. It sleeps and tries to dream, though his presence within it sucks the dreams away into a dark place. Remarkably irritating, these interruptions, as much by their constancy as their banality. Perhaps Itempas means to annoy him into submission.

Anger. That is a thing, too.

He reverberates with anger, then snarls and makes himself stop when he inadvertently harmonizes with the vibration of the universe. The universe is an angry place these days, but he does not want harmony of any kind. Itempas can force him into a kind of union, into the shape of this flesh, but Nahadoth will not join with Itempas again willingly, which is what Itempas wants. (Nahadoth also means “that which cannot be controlled.”)

Yet as the resonance of anger fades, he becomes aware of an echo nearby, so close that he almost failed to notice it. For a moment, it felt like part of himself. Pounding anger, hand-shaking anger, anger that fires the blood and embitters the mouth and screams and screams and screams…

Someone commands him to stop screaming, and the chains drag him into silence.

The boy again.

“I did it,” he murmurs in the darkness of the well chamber. His voice is deeper now; time has passed and he is older. “It’s done.”

Nahadoth has no idea what he means and does not care, though the boy’s satisfaction is like a small star radiant within the darkened chamber. A lovely addition to this private universe. Then the boy says:

“How do you stand it? Knowing that no one wants you?”

The words cause Nahadoth unexpected pain. Also, he’s not sure how to answer because he can’t stand it.

The boy—Haan, a name too small to encompass the whole of him—shakes his head, long sleek hair shimmering like a curtain. The tips of that hair brush the surface of Nahadoth’s substance, gold vanishing into blackness. “My father sent me here, you know. Because he was afraid of me. I never did anything to earn that fear, not there. Propriety, and all. Never shit where you sleep. But I think he knew what I was capable of, and I think that’s why he sold me to our illustrious cousins when they came around and ‘suggested’ that all Arameri should live here. He would not give up his life to come, but he offered his only begotten son.”

Haan puts a hand to his face beneath the curtain of gold hair and utters another of those soft, wavering, empty laughs. “Such a sacrifice! How noble it made him seem, and how it raised him in the esteem of the Central Family. He’s a wealthy man now. All his prestige has been bought and paid for with the flesh of his heir.”

Not all parents love their children, Nahadoth thinks. And this child, plainly, loves no one.

“Now I am heir to nothing. A menial servant. I am assigned to Lady Sessara’s chambers. I clean up her messes and I pour her drinks and I fetch her documents when she has visitors. And when the visitors are done, she tells me to go make sure the bed is warm.” Another laugh. “That’s fun, at least. She makes the sweetest little sounds. Then when she’s done, her husband comes. I like his sounds, too. But both of them command me to be silent. I may give pleasure, but I am permitted none of my own.”

Nahadoth is beginning to lose interest. He was the one who gave suffering to mortalkind, after all, and this boy is just another suffering creature. The mortals amaze him sometimes with the creativity of their cruelty. Yet…it is interesting, how little the suffering seems to affect Haan. This boy does not feel pain, or humiliation, or regret—just anger. And glee? Something like.

Still boring. Nahadoth drifts awhile, spinning within a magma bubble somewhere far below while the boy keeps talking. Something about Lady Sessara’s new heir, who of course looks like the boy, because the boy is pretty and breeding is important. That is probably why they brought him here. It’s only been a hundred years since Tempa gave the power of gods to mortals for safekeeping, and Shahar’s descendants number only in the dozens. Not safe, should there ever be a need for them to wield the Stone of Earth; they’d burn through all the unimportant family members in moments and be forced too quickly to kill people who matter. There is no reason for them to need Enefa’s power, no possible reason, but they have it and the possibility intrigues them. They want to be ready—just in case. Eventually they’ll find excuses to attempt it, and they’ll need experimental fodder when the time comes.

“But this thing that I am, it is not harmless,” the boy says, whispering now. The whites of his eyes almost have a glow in the dimness. “That’s all I am to them, a thing. And when they do not need me, I am free to wander as I please. I wandered into the library one day and researched the herbs I needed. So easy, while they were each using me, to push a little needle in here and there. So sad, when they were later found on top of each other, both dead, that they expired in such a humiliating way.”

Oh. This is interesting suddenly. Do the Arameri have any idea what sort of wolf they’ve let into their fold? Probably not.

The boy has fallen silent now. Nahadoth waits, hoping he will say something else interesting. But then the boy says, soft and a bit desperate, “Will you ever speak to me?”

“What shall I say?” Nahadoth replies.

The boy gasps and stumbles back, his expression sick with horror. Because no one—not even the boy—ever expects a thing to talk back.

He flees, and Nahadoth drifts again.

Eventually something pulls him back to this where and when. The boy, the boy, always the boy. How irritating. Why does he interest Nahadoth at all? He’s just another mortal, only marginally more vicious than the rest. His murderousness isn’t even novel, because all mortals kill in one way or another. It is their nature, as Enefa bade them.

The boy stands on the parapet of a tower, which is the last remaining mortal-built structure in the body of the whereness called palace. He is holding by the wrist another mortal, who cries and pisses and kicks feebly, above a drop of several hundred feet. The imperiled mortal is as pretty as Haan is, younger and also a servant to judge by his plain garb, and with only that glance it is easy for Nahadoth to intuit what’s happening. Haan is older now, not a boy at all anymore, and the power he once held by being beautiful and desirable is fading. He must compete harder for the favor of his masters, and he has taken that competition very seriously. More seriously than his younger rival, in any case. So easy to weave the illusion of suicide. And because the person who has died is only a servant, it’s unlikely anyone will look closer to find the truth.

The rival drops, screaming. The boy watches until a red crumple is all that remains of his erstwhile competition. Nahadoth feels his vague dissatisfaction and is unsurprised. Killing Lady Sessara and her noble husband was much more challenging. His boy is nothing if not a craftsman.

His boy? Oh, yes. Nahadoth smiles to himself, deep in the shadowed well. Even though he is supposed to have no worshippers, is permitted to answer no prayers, he still knows his own.

Nahadoth relaxes and lets himself drift again—but not far this time. He keeps his consciousness relatively near this realm, because it is only a matter of time before his boy does something else fun.

They use him again, or try to. One of them speaks, the chains tighten and grind, and Nahadoth is dragged from the well to do a mortal’s bidding. They grimace at the sight of him because his form is only rudimentary; Itempas laid the rules that his flesh must follow, but Itempas can no longer shape him beyond that. (Nahadoth retains that much power over himself.) But for what they want, a rudimentary god will do. Make darkness, they tell him, and they point at a place. He does what they command and then they are upset. Apparently they simply wanted him to blot out the sunlight so a nation’s crops would die. But they did not say that; they said darkness, and he is darkness, so naturally Nahadoth put part of himself in the place, which devoured all the light. It ate even the light mortals cannot see, all the pretty wavelengths of the world, like those that are generated by sound and heat and moving things. Now that whole nation is still and silent, every living thing frozen into dust, the soil dead; a new wasteland has been born. Now the world decries the Arameri as monsters. Oh, well. They should have been more specific.

They send Nahadoth back to his well.

A dream.

A gift. Nsana sends it quietly, from afar. Not all of the children who love Nahadoth are imprisoned with him, because not all of them offended Itempas enough to merit punishment. Tempa is nothing if not fair in his cruelty. Nsana is the first to reach out to Nahadoth, and the instant he feels it, he knows Nsana has endangered himself, because Itempas watches. (No, Itempas does not watch their children. He watches Nahadoth, always, with a close and jealous eye.) But even Tempa cannot punish a dream, can he? Tempa cannot want Naha to go mad again. He cannot. He cannot. Not even if Tempa has gone mad himself.

This dream is a memory, because Nsana knows better than to let Nahadoth’s mind roam where it will. (Memory of a face in ivory damask, eyes shut and lashes dewed, openmouthed in pleasure and abandon. Nahadoth was careful, careful, because dreams are fragile, but Nsana was stronger than he seemed.) Nsana understands him better than even Sieh does. This dream consists of a single sense: taste. Nahadoth closes his eyes and opens his body’s mouth and for a moment there is musk on his tongue, slightly bitter, not entirely pleasant. Aromatic. The taste of it radiates up through the body’s sinus cavity, offering an impression of itself to other senses: the redolence of old leather and dried leaves, the warmth of an afternoon sun. The last time he tasted this was long ago, but he remembers it because it was a beautiful day on a beautiful world, which he spent entirely absorbed in the sensations and pleasurable constrictions of mortal flesh. His own and that of two others. Smooth muscled arms clothed in black skin, holding him close from behind. A narrow burnished torso leaning close so that he can nuzzle tiny breasts; long strong fingers threading into his hair with no fear of being swallowed into the dark place that it contains. Hardness and heat, liquid and friction, bone and softness, teeth and tongue. A soft male voice in his ear

(breath, moist; air, vibrating through chords; the brush of warm lips)

murmuring between hard pants, “We shall always be one.”

The taste of her, and him, and Them.

The musky taste fades. Clever Nsana. In itself the dream was nothing: just a taste. Nothing Itempas can complain of. All its power comes from Nahadoth’s imagination. And, too, from the power of flesh—which was Nsana’s purpose, Nahadoth understands. A way of reminding Nahadoth that the body need not be a prison, if he can learn to embrace its joys.

But the dream, the memory, is wrong. Always has ended. The Three are no longer one. Itempas lied, and Nsana’s attempt to comfort him has been worse than a failure.

Nahadoth is too weary to mourn.

“What are you?” asks the boy who is not a boy.

More time has passed. The boy is halfway to death now, by the usual length of a mortal life. His voice is deeper, his face roughly handsome rather than pretty. Nahadoth doubts he is warming anyone’s bed anymore—but such things are not always about beauty, so he might be wrong on that account.

And such a question! No one has asked him that since…since Itempas, a thousand, thousand eternities ago. Since existence, trying to define itself, transformed into a new shape to accommodate his presence and defined him by doing so. He feels oddly flattered to be asked again.

“I…,” Nahadoth tries to say, and stops, distracted. Voice. Soft flapping moist tissues, hard bone and enamel, vibration, breath. Pure sensation. He has always liked mortal form. “Want.”

“What?”

“I want.” Emphasis. Intent. Desire. The words make him ache within, a dull niggling torment paralleling the ongoing crush and grind of mortal flesh upon his soul. “I am wanting. It is…all that I can be.” Now. And forevermore? Then Itempas truly has damned him.

Silence. Then: “They say you’re like the others, but you can’t be. They aren’t like this. They don’t sit in some room, in a…a puddle, and speak only in mad rants. You’re something different, aren’t you?”

He does not dignify this question with the obvious answer.

A step. Closer to the well’s rim. “I’ve killed five of them now.” The rage and glee reverberates even as his voice softens, fine and precise as the crystals of a prism. When Haan laughs this time, it does not waver at all. “Accidents, they think…but when I’m alone with the ones I’ve killed, when the sweet lords and ladies realize they can’t stop the thing they’ve created and they have to tell me the truth or I’ll hurt them before I kill them…Only the fullbloods know for sure what you are, and I haven’t killed any of those.” Unspoken: yet. “But there are whispers.”

There are always whispers. “Whisper in the dark and I shall answer,” Nahadoth says, and laughs his own wavering laugh into the night and the darkest recesses of mortal minds. Thus are legends born.

“They say you’re one of the actual Three. The priests say you don’t exist, that you never existed, but no one believes those stories. They’re going to have to change them soon.” Haan shifts, gets closer, getting comfortable. “No one says your name. To speak it is to be damned to the Skyfather’s darkest hells.”

Itempas has no dark hells, Nahadoth does not say. That this is no longer obvious to mortals is proof that at least some of the priests’ propaganda is working. But there is another pause. Curious, Nahadoth opens the eyes of his body. There are things mortal flesh sees that divine perception cannot. Haan leans over the well, almost close enough to touch his lips to the pooling blackness that is Nahadoth’s substance. He cannot see Nahadoth through the layers of dark. Nahadoth reaches up one blunt-nailed, crudely formed human hand, though the edge of the pit is ten feet above. The perspective makes Haan’s face tiny as he frames it between his thumb and forefinger.

“Nahadoth,” Haan breathes.

Nahadoth smiles, though no one can see it. A curl of his substance flickers up, like a splash of water after something small has been dropped into it, and flicks at Haan’s lips. Haan flinches and jerks back, clapping a hand over his mouth as if something cold has burned him or as if he has spoken blasphemy. Then he laughs, and there is neither humor nor fear in it.

“Flirt,” he says, his eyes glittering. Then he leaves, and within seconds Nahadoth forgets he was ever there.

The next time Nahadoth deigns to notice reality, Kurue is there.

“Come back to us,” she says. “We need you.”

Kurue wants. She is not a child of his essence, but a bit of him is in all of their children because he raised them and loved them. This is the proof of it, perhaps—that here in this world, incarnate in flesh, the first thing that both of them feel is not regret, but wanting.

Kurue stirs, having sensed his attention, and stands from where she had been sitting against the wall. “Look, Father. Look at what they’ve done to me.” She moves closer, leaning over the wall of the well, and he does grimace at the sight. She has been…trimmed. They all have had parts removed; it was the only way Itempas could fit them into the chains. But Kurue’s body has been trimmed further still. She is a tiny thing, bizarrely shriveled and re-proportioned, and her wings are gone. He stares at this, realizing at once that the mortals do not understand what they have done. Kurue’s wings are her store of accumulated knowledge. Every barbule of every shaft is the lore of an entire world. Each vane spins galaxies; the pinions contain the sagas of all the iterations of existence that have ever been. They have left her arms and legs, but without wings she might as well be limbless and tongueless and eyeless. Without her knowledge, she is not Kurue, not anymore.

He closes his eyes, unable to bear her pain in addition to his own.

“We need you,” she says again, her voice a weary drone. “We need your strength. It’s so hard, Father. Sieh says that together we can survive this incarceration; that is how mortals endure. But how can we, when we are only three?”

We were only Three, and we did well enough, he thinks. But this is uncharitable, because at least he had the totality of himself when he was free. And he understands that for these lesser ones of his kind, these children, three is not enough. It wasn’t for the Three, either, in the end. That was why Enefa came, and why she made them into a multitude, because Three is strong but family is stronger and without her Nahadoth is lost, lost, lost as he never wanted to be again.

“Enefa,” he whispers for the umpteenth time. Above him, seen through the tendrils of his substance, Kurue flinches. Lost in grief, he realizes only belatedly what this means. It is something Itempas often chided him for: he thinks only of himself at times when he should consider the needs of others. Now he’s hurt her. But Kurue is wise; she knows of the aeons that he spent alone, screaming his loneliness into the empty nothing. Surely she understands that it is not his nature to be considerate? Though he tries. And fails, often.

He opens his mouth to speak to her again, to try and be a better father, but it’s too late. Time has passed. She’s long gone.

“A mistake,” says the boy, who is now an old man. “Inevitable, really. I’m careful, but not perfect. Now it’s only a matter of time.” He’s sitting on the lip of the well, his back to the contained puddle of Nahadoth. He speaks quietly, without inflection, but the room reverberates with his tension.

“Twelve,” Haan says when Nahadoth says nothing. “Twelve of those so-high are dead at my hands, and the last—my prize—was Lord Arameri’s heir. Lord Arameri thinks it was the girl’s rival that did her in, but it was me. Me.” Haan strokes a hand over his hair, a habit of preening left over from his beautiful boyhood. It’s still beautiful because he has the pride to do it well. “They’ll never find some of the bodies. They don’t even realize some of the deaths are murders yet. But the clues are out there now, and eventually someone will put them together.”

As such things go. Nahadoth yawns, disinterested, but Haan does not hear.

“But I’ve left them my grandson.” Nahadoth sees Haan’s smile from a shadowed corner. “He’s beautiful like I was, and such clever coldness! Ah, he’s a fullblood and he knows how to use it. He’s everything I could have wanted, though he doesn’t know who I am, of course. My big boy. I wish I could watch him destroy them all from within.”

Nahadoth touches his belly, thinking of the children he’s borne. All were difficult. He is creation, generation, but there is something unpleasantly ordered about the production of new life. It must proceed in certain ways, or things go wrong. Enefa was the most skilled at it, and even she made mistakes sometimes; Nahadoth never came close to mastering the art. The only children that survived his bearing were those as disordered as himself. All beautiful in their varied twists and misshapes and misthoughts.

How terrible, though, to continue only through one’s offspring. Mortals must exist in a constant state of frustration with their own fragility and ephemerality, even within the heavens and hells that they occupy after death.

(Is Enefa there now? Is she anywhere?)

And despite the banality of it all, despite the fact that this boy is a petty mortal with petty mortal motivations, Nahadoth thinks, I understand. Perhaps he says it aloud. The boy—Nahadoth’s boy, this man with a wild princess’s soul—seems to hear it. He straightens and abruptly hops off the lip of the well, turning to gaze into it.

“Nahadoth, I want,” Haan says.

Nahadoth shivers. It is not a prayer, he reminds himself, so the chains will not tighten. The mortal has simply expressed a desire. He is Arameri. Should Nahadoth not obey? The chains remain quiescent.

“Do you?” Nahadoth asks conversationally. Oh, but he is very interested.

Haan smiles with his hunter teeth. “Oh, yes. And I know what you want, Nahadoth Nightlord, Skyfather and Shadowmother, lifeblood of the universe, flesh of chaos and change. You crave purpose. Direction. A reason to do more than lie here in a seething, grieving puddle. Well, I have that.” He presses his hands to his chest, makes an exaggerated pantomime then of holding out his hands. “I offer my purpose to you, if you will have it.”

Dangerous, dangerous. Haan skirts forbidden words. He knows it, Nahadoth sees, and Nahadoth wants to laugh with the thrill of it. And the mortal’s offer (offer, not an offering), ah! The shape of a strategy is laid out in the twisted convolutions of this mortal’s monstrous soul. Haan is cruel, yes, but his cruelty has little power. Nahadoth has power, even in this crude form—power enough to protect his children, if he uses it right. Power enough for many things.

“Come to me,” Nahadoth says.

Haan closes his eyes for a moment, as if savoring the words. “I have waited so long for you.”

He climbs onto the lip of the well again. He doesn’t come face-first this time, as Nahadoth expected. He swings his legs over, pausing as this sets off ripples across the black pool of Nahadoth’s substance. Hesitation? No, fascination. Then Haan drops down, into the dark.

At the bottom of the well, Nahadoth lies still, waiting, as Haan gropes toward him. Faint warmth and light, like a tiny dim sun. Nahadoth reaches out; after a moment, the mortal’s fingers tangle with his. A gentle tug and Haan falls against him, into his arms. Yes. Nahadoth feels Haan’s fingers brush his lips. There is no taste of fear. They are both above such paltry things.

“Itempas and Enefa are gone,” he says, stroking Haan’s long, loose hair. It is a possessive caress. “I must choose now, from among my jailors, who shapes me.”

“Make them pay,” Haan says, grinning.

“I shall.” As an afterthought: “Thank you.” He feels Haan nod graciously.

Then Nahadoth opens his mouth and swallows Haan whole.

Time passes.

Now the darkness stirs. Around the well, three appear: Kurue again, this time accompanied by an enormous blue-haired woman and a small boy with feral, ancient eyes—his other imprisoned children, Zhakkarn and Sieh. The boy sits atop a floating toy ball, staring hard at the rippling black pool. The larger woman inhales and steps forward, her form blurring as glittering mail appears on her limbs, her torso, her head. A pike manifests in one hand.

“So you’ve chosen to fight,” she says. Her normally placid face has gone fierce. She raises the pike horizontally; it glows bloodred, smoking faintly. “Come forth, then, Father.”

At this summons, the blackness coalesces. Thickens. Condenses into shape.

A moment later Nahadoth manifests before them, standing on the well wall. The foot that extends to step down is bare, long-toed, and graceful; the leg that follows it is lean and smooth. In limbs and joints the body—no longer rudimentary—emerges like the moon from behind a cloud. A torso, smooth and lightly muscled. A face that blurs but is already far more defined, refined, than the lumpen thing it was. Last comes the hair: thick and soft and Ostei-loose, but blacker than the dark behind closed eyes. It curls around him, half real and half something else, cloak and dagger all in one.

“I have chosen to fight,” agrees Nahadoth, opening the eyes of his body. They are beautiful eyes now—eyes that will make mortals hungry even as they advertise the dangers of tasting. And if these eyes do not allure, they will change until they do. He can be whatever they want him to be, really. Satisfy all their hungers, stoke new ones, feed those, too. Until they choke on him.

Sieh cocks his head, one predator assessing another. “What have you done to yourself now, Naha?”

“Just a small change.” Nahadoth looks down at the hand he has shaped. Long, strong fingers, with blunt, harmless nails. He curls them slowly.

Sieh grins, flashing most of his sharp little teeth. “Oh, a game.” He hops off his flying ball and trots over to Nahadoth, his eyes alight. Nahadoth touches his hair, stroking it as some newer part of him has always yearned to do to a stolen, secret son.

Kurue folds her arms. “You’ve contaminated yourself with that mortal, Naha. Are you certain that was safe to do?”

“Nothing I have ever done is safe.”

“True enough. Still.” She jerks her chin at Nahadoth’s new shape. “Not your usual way of doing things, is it? This use of…camouflage.” Her expression is guarded, carefully blank.

Zhakkarn glances at Kurue, the faintest of frowns crossing her face. “Guerilla tactics can be effective, Sister, if used properly. Itempas has put us at a disadvantage against the mortals. This strategy is appropriate in response.”

“They won’t know what hit them,” Sieh says, his slitted pupils grown huge with enthusiasm for the killing to come.

“They will,” says Nahadoth, and Sieh blinks. “That must be part of it—their fear.” There are memories in his mind, the taste of them still salty and heavy on his tongue. Faces with mouths open, eyes wide. Haan always made certain they knew their killer, in the moment of death. That must be part of it: the knowledge of who is destroying them, and why. If the slavemaster lies sleepless and despairing in the dark hours, then the slave holds some power even by daylight.

Then he looks at Kurue. “I won’t abandon you again.”

She blinks, and her face twists. A smile? Tears? He’s not sure. Still, he reaches out and cups her cheek and is relieved when she sighs and leans into his hand. She was right. It will be easier now that they’re fighting together.

“Where do you mean to begin?” Zhakkarn stands closer to him than usual. It is not her nature to express affection, but she shows it in the ways she can. And she is right to ask this, to aim him. Always so quick to see the use in any weapon.

He wants. “Enefa’s remains are the key to our freedom.”

Sieh shakes his head, sorrow making him look older. “The Stone of Earth, the mortals call it. Hidden, and the soul that could control it is lost. Finding both will take an age of the world.”

Nahadoth smiles. They all shiver just a little in response, in desire, in fear. Does his new form affect even them? They have already suffered too much; he will take care not to harm them further. “An age is nothing,” he says. “Pain is nothing. Blood is nothing. To us.” To the mortals, though, it is the price they must pay for daring to imprison their gods. Oh, the Arameri will learn and rally and strike back in their paltry way when they can. It will be war…but the mortals are the ones who started this war. Nahadoth will not fight fair.

So they leave the well chamber, four gods united in purpose and hatred, and as he walks, Nahadoth wipes his mouth with the back of one hand. Such a perfect, dear, sweet boy.

Then he laughs to himself, softly and waveringly, and chooses the first targets who will suffer his wrath.