Memory 16

[wildnight]

Taking Yeine to Darr. (ref: HTK 187-205) significant neutral

Description: Yeine's POV.

In exchange for helping the Enefadeh with their plan, Yeine asks to be taken to speak with her grandmother in Darr. There's some dialogue. Naha says some things trying to be hurtful, seems amused by Yeine's determination and attitude; at this point, they don't trust one another. Naha takes her.

The Darre are unsettled by Nahadoth's appearance, but welcome him back, which surprises Yeine; presumably it wouldn't surprise Naha.

Yeine talks to her grandmother a bit, about her mother Kinneth, and eventually discovers that Naha visited once before Yeine was born, while her father was sick with a plague engineered by the Enefadeh for the Arameri. Blah blah. Eventually Naha comes back to the conversation and throws a minor temper tantrum.

"No one wondered."


I jumped and whirled. Nahadoth stood fifty feet away at the entrance of Sar-enna-nem, framed by its triangle design. With the moonlight behind him he was a stark silhouette, but as always, I could see his eyes.


"I killed anyone who saw me with Kinneth that night," he said. We both heard him as clearly as if he stood right beside us. "I killed her maid, and the child who came to serve us wine, and the man who sat with your father while he recovered from the sickness. I killed the three guards who tried to eavesdrop on this old womans orders." He nodded toward Beba, who stiffened. "After that, no one dared to wonder about you."

So youve decided to talk? I would have asked him, but then my grandmother did something so unexpected, so incredible, so stupid, that the words stopped in my throat. She leapt to her feet and moved in front of me, drawing her knife.

"What did you do to Yeine?" she cried. I had never in my life seen her so angry. "What foulness did the Arameri put you up to? She is mine, she belongs to us, you had no right!"

Nahadoth laughed then, and the whiplashing rage in that sound sent a chill down my spine. Had I thought him merely an embittered slave, a pitiable creature burdened by grief? I was a fool.

"You think this temple protects you?" he hissed. Only then did I realize he had not actually stepped over the threshold. "Have you forgotten that your people once worshipped me here, too?"


He stepped into Sar-enna-nem.


The rugs beneath my knees vanished. The floor, which had been planks of wood, disintegrated; underneath was a mosaic of polished semiprecious tiles, stones of every color interspersed with squares of gold. I gasped as the columns shuddered and the bricks exploded into nothingness and suddenly I could see the Three Windows, not just Sun but Moon and Twilight, too. I had never realized they were meant to be viewed together. We had lost so much. And all around us stood the statues of beings so perfect, so alien, so familiar, that I wanted to weep for all of Siehs lost brothers and sisters, Enefas loyal children, slaughtered like dogs for trying to avenge their mothers murder. I understand. All of you, I understand so much&mdash

And then the torchlight went out and the air creaked and I turned to see that Nahadoth had changed as well. Nights darkness now filled that end of Sar-enna-nem, but it was not like my first night in Sky. Here, fueled by the residue of ancient devotion, he showed me all he had once been: first among gods, sweet dream and nightmare incarnate, all things beautiful and terrible. Through a hurricane swirl of blue-black unlight I caught a glimpse of moon-white skin and eyes like distant stars; then they warped into something so unexpected that my brain refused to interpret it for an instant. But the library embossing had warned me, hadn't it? A woman's face shone at me from the darkness, proud and powerful and so breathtaking that I yearned for her as much as I had for him, and it did not seem strange at all that I did so. And then the face shifted again into something that in no way resembled human, something tentacled and toothed and hideous, and I screamed. Then there was only darkness where his face should have been, and that was most frightening of all.

He stepped forward again. I felt it: an impossible, invisible vastness moved with him. I heard the walls of Sar-enna-nem groan, too flimsy to contain such power. The whole world could not contain this. I heard the sky above Darr rumble with thunder; the ground beneath my feet trembled. White teeth gleamed amid the darkness, sharp like wolves. That was when I knew I had to act, or the Nightlord would kill my grandmother right before my eyes.

Right before my—

Theeeeen something redacted happens, but it is powerful and snaps Naha out of his killing intent, and Yeine is the source of it.

The conversation continues:

I covered my eyes with one hand. "I can't take much more of this."

"Y-Yeine?" My grandmother. She put a hand on my shoulder. I barely noticed.

"Its happening, isn't it?" I looked up at Nahadoth. "What you expected. Her soul is devouring my own."

"No," said Nahadoth very softly. "I don't know what this is."

I stared at him and could not help myself. All the shock and fear and anger of the past few days bubbled up, and I burst out laughing. I laughed so loudly that it echoed from Sar-enna-nems distant ceiling; so long that my grandmother peered at me in concern, no doubt wondering if I had gone mad. I probably had, because suddenly my laughter turned to screaming and my mirth ignited as white-hot rage.

"How can you not know?" I shrieked at Nahadoth. I had lapsed into Senmite again. "You're a god! How can you not know?"

His calm stoked my fury higher. "I built uncertainty into this universe, and Enefa wove that into every living being. There will always be mysteries beyond even we gods understanding—"

I launched myself at him. In the interminable second that my mad rage lasted, I saw that his eyes flicked to my approaching fist and widened in something very like amazement. He had plenty of time to block or evade the blow. That he did not was a complete surprise.

The smack of it echoed as loud as my grandmother's gasp.

In the ensuing silence, I felt empty. The rage was gone. Horror had not yet arrived. I lowered my hand to my side. My knuckles stung.

Nahadoth's head had turned with the blow. He lifted a hand to his lip, which was bleeding, and sighed.

"I must work harder to keep my temper around you," he said. "You have a memorable way of chastising me."

He lifted his eyes, and suddenly I knew he was remembering the time I had stabbed him. I have waited so long for you, he had said then. This time, instead of kissing me, he reached out and touched my lips with his fingers. I felt warm wetness and reflexively licked, tasting cool skin and the metallic salt of his blood.

He smiled, his expression almost fond. "Do you like the taste?"


Not of your blood, no.

But your finger was another matter.


"Yeine," said my grandmother again, breaking the tableau. I took a deep breath, marshaled my wits, and turned back to her.

Then Yeine remembers why she's there and starts asking her grandmother questions again, this time trying to find out if Darr's enemies are readying for war. The conversation doesn't go much further though because the sun is going to rise and Naha must return them to Sky before the night is over.

He's nicer on the return trip than he was on the initial one.



Notes:
-This memory is pretty cool because it fits together with a couple of other memories Naha has already recovered. This one, in particular. But also this one, speaking of when she stabbed him.
-Yeine herself is still a mystery, and a sort of frustrating, delightful one.
-Flashing some of his old power (and his other forms) is sort of a bittersweet thing, in context of Aather. This is the first time in Naha's memories of presenting (if only briefly) as female in her later, more damaged Sky state. At the same time, it's a reflection of that older power... Still, I think this will put a crack in the way Naha has compartmentalized him and her in Aather. We'll have to see how that develops.


Form: Vial? Bottle?
Uses Left: 1 of 2