The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(459)

“What you felt, just now, was your antithesis,” Ia said. He stood next to me, watching the grass wave in the wind. “That’s what mortals call it, and the word serves well enough. Something in that room was the opposite of what you are—not just its negation, but its active obliteration. They wounded you and didn’t even realize it. That will always be the danger, Sibling. They think of us as powerful, and we are, but… they can damage us so easily, in ways they barely understand. If we let them.”

That was what an antithesis felt like? “It hurt,” I said, rubbing my tummy. My head hurt, too, and bits of my soul were all achy and tender. “I tried not to hurt them back, though.”

“Commendable, given your youth. Many older gods would not have been able to resist lashing out in reaction.” I perked up a little, and felt better, at hearing I was commendable. He’d never said anything nice about me before. But then he sighed. “Shill, I’m going to ask you again to return to our realm.”

I gasped, hurt again but in a different way. “Why? Why, Ia, I’ve been really good—”

“Yes. You have been.” That stopped me. If he thought I was good, then why? “But Shill, you’ve been in this realm barely more than a day, and look at what’s happened.”

“I—” I frowned, more confused. “What’s happened?”

“You care about them.” I looked up at him finally, and he looked at me, and his face was heavy and sad in a way I had never seen before. “It’s impossible not to, if you stay here long enough, but for you it took only one day. And in that day they’ve damaged you. That means you’re vulnerable to them, Sibling—more so than most of us. Something in your nature must make you that way, or maybe it’s simply that you’re a child. But we can die, Shill, of the things they do to us. You do not understand yet what that means, but… I’ve seen too many of us die, lately.”

It was nice that Ia did not want me to die. But I did not like that he wanted me to leave the mortal realm.

“Maybe,” I said, trying to understand even as I spoke, “if I understand what happened, I might understand what my antithesis is, and then I won’t get hurt by it again.”

Ia shook his head. “This entire realm is inimical to us in so many ways, Shill. Everything is so… concentrated. There’s no way to escape the threat completely while you remain here.”

“I don’t care! I knew it was dangerous before I came. Even Naha told me not to come, and she’s not scared of anything.”

“Untrue, Shill. She fears the loss of those she loves.” Ia sobered. “I thought he would never stop mourning Sieh. In the end, he went beyond the edges of our realm, into the nothingness. I followed him for a time, because I can, and because I worried he would… well.” He shrugged a little, but he did not have to say it. Everybody can see that one day, Naha might become a Maelstrom. It is a maybe and not a probably, or worse an eventually, but that it is even a maybe is a scary thing. That’s Naha, though: a scary, changeable thing.

“But he just mourned,” Ia continued. He gazed into the distance without really seeing it; there was nothingness in his eyes. “Mourned and wandered, as if he was… searching for something. I don’t know what. Eventually he went farther than even I could follow, and there’s no telling how long he was gone. There’s no time in the nothing, you see. When he returned… she was different, in many ways. Perhaps that’s what she needed to heal.” He looked at me. “Nahadoth has had time enough to love you, too, Shill. Will you make her mourn again for a lost child, so soon?”

I bit my lip and squirmed and looked at my knees. I had learned from the mortals, though, and instead of answering this really hard question, I changed the subject. “Um, Ia? Who is your enulai?”

He said nothing for a moment. I was scared he would make me answer the Naha question. But he said, “I don’t have one.”

I frowned. “Fahno said all godlings—”

“I know.” He seemed to hesitate. “I’m not like other godlings, Shill. Haven’t you noticed?”

The question confused me because no two godlings were alike. “No?”

I felt him look at me, like he didn’t quite believe me. But then he shook his head, almost to himself. “It has been so long since a new godling walked among us. I’d forgotten that you don’t see it. Not at first.”

Then there was a new voice behind us, and I jumped, but Ia only went very still and narrowed his eyes at the sound of it.