The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (42 page)

I say this not to slander her memory, but to illuminate: that was the kind of light Shahar valued. Harsh, glaring, hiding nothing. I make no wonder Our Lord treasured her so, because she was much like Him—quick to decide who merited her love, and who did not (HR).

I think this is why He appeared to her again on that terrible day when everything began to weaken and die. He simply showed up in the middle of the Sunrise Greeting and gave her something sealed in a white crystal sphere. We did not know at the time that this was the last flesh of Lady Enefa (HR), now gone to twilight Herself. We knew only that the power of that crystal kept the weakening at bay, though only within the walls of our temple. Beyond it, the streets were littered with gasping people; the fields with sagging crops; the pastures with downed livestock.

We saved as many as we could. Sun’s Flame, I wish it could have been more.

And we prayed. That was Shahar’s command, and we were frightened enough that we obeyed even though it meant three days on our knees, weeping, begging, hoping against all hope that Our Lord prevailed in the conflict tearing apart the world. We took it in shifts, all of us, full ordinates and acolytes and Order-Keepers and common folk. We pushed aside the exhausted bodies of our comrades when they sagged from weariness, so that we could pray in their place. In between, when we dared look outside, we saw nightmares. Giggling black things, like cats but also monstrous children, flowed through the streets a-hunting. Red columns of fire, wide as mountains, fell in the distance; we saw the entire city of Dix immolated. We saw the shining bodies of the gods’ children falling from the sky, screaming and vanishing into aether before they hit the ground.

Through this all, my mother remained in her tower room, gazing unflinchingly at the nightmare sky. When I went to check on her—many of our number had begun killing themselves in despair—I found her sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, the white sphere in her lap. She was growing old; that position must have hurt her. But she was waiting, she said, and when I asked her what for, she gave me her cold, white smile.

“For the right moment to strike,” she said.

I knew then that she meant to die. But what could I do? I am only a priestess, and she was my superior. Family meant nothing to her. It is the way of our order to marry and raise children in the ways of light, but my mother declared that Our Lord was the only husband she would accept. She got herself with child by some priest or another just to satisfy the elders. I and my twin brother were the result, and she never loved us. I say that without rancor; I have had thirty years to come to terms with it. But because of this, I knew my words would fall on deaf ears if I tried to talk her out of her chosen course.

So instead I closed the door and went back to my prayers. The next morning there was an awful thunderclap of sound and force that seemed likely to blow apart the very stones of the Temple of Daylight Sky. When we picked ourselves up from this, amazed to find that we were still alive, my mother was dead.

I was the one that found her. I, and the Dayfather (HR), who was there beside her body when I opened the door.

I fell to my knees, of course, and mumbled something about being honored by His presence. But in truth? My eyes were only for my mother, who lay sprawled on the floor where I had last seen her. The white sphere was shattered beside her, and in her hands was something gray and glimmering. There was sorrow in Lord Itempas’s eyes when He touched my mother’s face to shut her eyes. I was glad to see that sorrow, because it meant my mother had achieved her fondest wish: pleasing her lord.

“My true one,” He said. “All the others have betrayed me, save you.”

Only later did I learn what He meant—that Lady Enefa (HR) and Lord Nahadoth (HR) had turned on Him, along with hundreds of their immortal children. Only later did Lord Itempas bring me His war prisoners, fallen gods in invisible chains, and tell me to use them to put the world to rights. It was too much for Bentr, my brother; we found him that night in the cistern chamber, his wrists slit in a barrel of wash water. There was only me to bear witness, and later to bear the burden, and right then to weep, because even if a god did honor my mother, what good did that do? She was still dead.

And that is how the High Priestess of the Bright, Shahar Arameri, passed on.

For you, Mother. I will live on, I will do as Our Lord commands, I will remake the world. I will find some husband strong enough to help me shoulder the burden, and I will raise my children to be hard and cold and ruthless, like you. That is the legacy you wanted, isn’t it? In Our Lord’s name, it shall be yours.

Gods help us all.

So many people to thank, so little space.

Foremost thanks go to my father, who was my first editor and writing coach. I’m really sorry I made you read all that crap I wrote when I was fifteen, Dad. Hopefully this book will make up for it.

Also equal thanks to the writing incubators that have nurtured me over the years: the Viable Paradise workshop, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Carl Brandon Society, [http://www.Critters.org] Critters.org, the BRAWLers of Boston, Black Beans, The Secret Cabal, and Altered Fluid. Never thought I’d get this far, and I wouldn’t have done it without all of you to kick me into action. (The bruises are fading nicely, thanks.)

Then to Lucienne Diver, the hardest-working agent in all the land. You believed in me; thanks. Also to Devi Pillai, my editor, who totally floored me with the realization that editors could be fun, funny people, eviscerating manuscripts with a wink and a smile. Thanks for that, and for picking such a great title.

And last but by no means least: thanks to my mother (hi, Mom!), my BFFs Deirdre and Katchan, and all the members of the old TU crew. To the staff and students of the universities I’ve worked at over the years; day jobs really shouldn’t be so much fun. Posthumous thanks to Octavia Butler, for going first and showing the rest of us how it’s done. And I always give thanks to God, for instilling the love of creation in me.

I suppose I should also thank my roommate NukuNuku, who encouraged me with headbutts, swats to the face, fur in my keyboard, incessant distracting yowls, and… um… wait, why am I thanking her again? Never mind.

N. K. Jemisin

N. K. JEMISIN is a career counselor, political blogger, and would-be gourmand living in New York City. She’s been writing since the age of ten, although her early works will never see the light of day. Visit [http://www.nkjemisin.com] nkjemisin.com.

Prior to becoming a writer, what other professions did you have?

I’m a counseling psychologist and educator, specializing in career counseling of late adolescents and young adults (though I’ve worked with other demographics). I’ve worked at a number of universities as an administrator and a faculty member, and I’ve also done some volunteering with community service organizations and some private career coaching. It’s been weird lately—a lot of my students didn’t realize I was a writer, so when I ran off to write books, they were a little unhappy with me! But many of them say they’re looking forward to reading the books.

When you aren’t writing, what do you like to do in your spare time?

Watch cheesy movies, including anime and badly dubbed foreign films; play video games (I would give a body part to write for Squeenix or Atlus); bike and hike, though I haven’t done much of the latter since moving to New York City, unless you count subway stairs; and rant against social injustice all over the blogosphere.

Who/what would you consider to be your influences?

Hmm, that’s a complex question. I get ideas from a lot of sources, not all of them literary. Artistically speaking I most admire Storm Constantine, Tanith Lee, Stephen King, Fumi Yoshinaga (a Japanese manga author/artist), John Coltrane (jazz musician), and the Impressionists (visual art). Spiritually—in terms of motivating me to pursue writing as a career and to improve my craft—Octavia Butler, my own personal grandmaster. Intellectually—Sigmund Freud. Yeah, he was way off about a lot of stuff. But I think he got the tripartate nature of human consciousness spot-on, and I like his thoughts on dreams, too.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is an amazingly original tale. How did you derive the idea for this novel?

Wow, thanks! I honestly can’t say—I came up with the idea over ten years ago, probably during one of my “think about something, anything, to avoid thinking about my unfinished graduate thesis” fugues. It started as just a combination of images in my head: a child playing with planets as toys, a man with stars in his hair and the void of space in his eyes, a palace balanced atop an impossibly thin column of stone. Most of my ideas start that way, as random images that make no sense. So I start thinking up narratives that will fit them together. I was probably a comic book artist in a past life.

The creation myth of the Nightlord and Bright Itempas hearkens back to classical mythology, but depicts something wholly unique. Did you conduct a great deal of research in this area?

I did look to existing religions for guidance, since the only religion I was intimately familiar with was Christianity and I wanted to construct something with a very different—but still plausible—feel. The core of the “Earth and Sky” universe is inspired by Hinduism, some schools of which posit the existence of a Creator, a Destroyer, and a Preserver (sometimes combined into a single being, sometimes split among two or three). From there I added psychodynamic concepts, like Jung’s collective unconscious; this was a concept that had fascinated me for years. What would happen if omnipotent gods were shaped and limited by this powerful, quintessentially human force? Well, first and foremost, humans would try to fit them into their understanding of the everyday world, which is divided into the day and night, with a transitional time at dawn and dusk. Of course, this made the gods inherently more complex, because there are so many other concepts that humans associate with day and night and transition—light, darkness, shades of gray; heat, cold, change; order, chaos, life. But then I considered the Christian concept of human beings having been created in God’s image. Taken literally and inverted, that implies (to me) that these gods would end up being pretty darn human, once you get past the cosmic-scale power and whatnot. They love, they hate, they form relationships, they have misunderstandings. But what happens when you do pair cosmic power with the typical emotions—and dysfunctions—of a human family? Things just snowballed from there.

Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

I have favorite characters of the moment. Originally Nahadoth was my favorite, just because he contained so many contradictions. He was powerful but vulnerable; incomprehensible yet very human; dark but not evil; and so on. Yeah, you can probably guess—all that stuff is pretty much catnip to me. But as I wrote the story, I fell utterly in love with Yeine, who’s sort of “me” taken to an extreme—angrier, colder, more vulnerable, more impulsive. I’m nicer than she is, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t. Also, Sieh ended up being a stealth favorite. I really wasn’t expecting him to charm me as much as he did Yeine, but there you have it. I love that he’s so ancient yet determined to attack life the way children do. I love that he slips into being an old man sometimes, and then has to get back on the wagon. Of all the characters, he’s the only one I’d actually like to meet (if he were, you know, real).

Now that two of the three gods have been restored, what can we expect in your next novel?

In book two, you’ll learn what becomes of Itempas after his fall from power—and what caused him to turn on his fellow gods at the start of the Gods’ War. You can also expect a fuller exploration of the world of the Earth and the Sky. In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I dealt exclusively with the elite of society, and so necessarily confined the settings to places of power and privilege. In book two, I want to focus on the ordinary people of this world and show how they cope when giant trees obscure the sky and the corner grocer might be a godling in disguise. The story will focus on a young blind woman who finds a homeless man in her trash heap one morning—glowing like the rising sun. She takes him in, and this simple act of kindness lands her in the middle of a conspiracy to destroy the gods. Many of the characters from the first book will put in an appearance, but it’s going to be a very different kind of story in some ways. I think it will be equally satisfying.

Finally, as a first-time author, what has been your favorite part of the publishing process?

The day my agent called to tell me the book had sold! But that’s not exactly part of the publishing process, is it? Okay, the first time I met with my editor, Devi, and she gushed to me about how much she loved the book. My book! I kept trying not to erupt into embarrassing squeals and failing utterly.

But I’m not done with the publishing process yet, so I can only guess at what might end up being the absolute best part of it for me: after publication, seeing readers’ reactions to my work. I’m a little nervous about it, actually, but underneath the nerves? I can’t wait. Speaking of which—if you’re reading this, and you’d like to let me know what you think about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, go to my website at [http://www.nkjemisin.com] nkjemisin.com. Praise, protests, it’s all grist for the mill, baby. Bring it on.