You’ll remember that I fled when Shiny told me to, instead of staying to fight at his side. You will remember that throughout this final horror, I was useless, helpless, too terrified to be any good to anyone, including myself. It may be that by telling you this, I have earned your contempt.
I won’t try to change your mind. I’m not proud of myself or the things I did in that hell. I can’t explain it, anyhow—no words can capture the terror that I felt in those moments, faced with the starkest, ugliest choice that any creature on this earth must face: kill, or die. Eat, or be eaten.
I will say this, though: I think I made the choice that any woman would when confronted by the monster that murdered her beloved.
I set the knife aside. Didn’t need it. Shiny’s chest heaved like a bellows. Whatever Dateh had done had hurt him badly, despite the magic that still wavered around him. Unnecessarily, I smoothed the cloth across his chest, then rested my hands there, one on either side of his heart.
My tears fell onto my hands in a patter of threes: one two three, one two three, one two three. Like the weeper-bird’s cry. Oree, oree, oree.
I chose to live.
The paint was the door, my father had taught me, and belief was the key that unlocked it. Beneath my hands, Shiny’s heart beat steady, strong.
“I paint a picture,” I whispered.
I chose to fight.
Dateh let out a rattling sigh of pleasure as the shimmering bubble formed again between my hands, hovering just above Shiny’s heart. I knew what it was at last—the visible manifestation of my will. My power, inherited from my god ancestors and distilled through generations of humanity, given shape and energy and potential. That was all magic was, really, in the end. Possibility. With it I could create anything, provided I believed. A painted world. A memory of home. A bloody hole.
I willed it into Shiny’s body. It passed through his flesh harmlessly, settling amid the steady, strong pulses of his heart.
I looked up at Dateh. Something changed in me then; I don’t know what. All at once, Dateh hissed in alarm and stepped back, staring at my eyes as if they had turned to stars.
Perhaps they had.
I chose to believe.
“Itempas,” I said.
Lightning blazed out of nothingness.
The concussion of it stunned both Dateh and me. I was flung backward, slamming against Dateh’s barrier with enough force to knock the breath from my body. I fell to the ground, dazed but laughing, because this was so familiar to me and because I was no longer afraid. I believed, after all. I knew it was over, even if Dateh had yet to learn that lesson.
A new sun blazed in the middle of Dateh’s Empty, too bright to look upon directly. The heat of it was terrible even from where I lay, enough to tighten my skin and take my breath away. Around this sun glimmered an aura of pure white light—but it did not merely glow in every direction, this aura. Lines and curves seared my sight before I looked away, forming rings within rings, lines connecting, circles overlapping, godwords forming and marching and fading out of thin air. The sheer complexity of the design would have stunned me in itself, but each of the rings turned in dizzying, graceful gyroscopic patterns around a human form.
I stole a series of sweeping glances through the brilliance and made out a corona of glowing hair, a warrior’s garments done in shades of pale, and a slender, white-metaled straightsword held in one perfect black hand. I could not see his face—too bright—but it was impossible not to see his eyes. They opened as I watched, piercing the unrelenting white with colors I had only heard of in poetry: fire opal. Sunset’s cloak. Velvet and desire.
I could not help remembering a day, so long ago, when I’d found a man in a muckbin. They had been the same eyes then, but so much more beautiful now, incandescent, assured, that there was no sense in comparing.
“Itempas,” I said again, reverent.
Those eyes turned to me, and it did not bother me that I saw no recognition in them. He saw me and knew me for one of His children, but no more than that. An entity so far beyond humanity had no need of human ties. It was enough for me that He saw, and His gaze was warm.
Before Him huddled the Dateh-creature, thrown by the same blast of power that had flattened me. As I watched, it clambered unsteadily to its many feet, the mask of its humanity shattered.
“What the hells are you?” the Dateh-creature demanded.
“A shaper,” said the Lord of Light. He raised his sword of white steel. I saw hundreds of godwords in filigreed patterns along the blade’s length. “I am all knowledge and purpose defined. I strengthen what exists and cull that which should not.”