The Kingdom of Gods (69 page)

And we will all create such wonderful new things, you and we, out here beyond the many skies.

Maroland, the:
Smallest continent, which once existed to
the east of the islands; site of the first Arameri palace. Destroyed by Nahadoth.

Mnasat:
The third ranking of godlings; godlings born of godlings. Generally weaker than godlings born of the Three.

Mortal realm:
The universe, created by the Three.

Nahadoth:
One of the Three. The Nightlord.

Nemmer:
A niwwah godling who lives in Shadow. The Lady of Secrets.

Nimaro Reservation:
A protectorate of the Arameri, established after the Maroland’s destruction.

Niwwah:
The first ranking of godlings, born of the Three; the Balancers. More stable but sometimes less powerful than the elontid.

Nobles’ Consortium:
Ruling political body of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Nsana:
A niwwah godling; the Dreammaster.

Order of Itempas:
The priesthood dedicated to Bright Itempas. In addition to spiritual guidance, also responsible for law and order, education, public health, and welfare. Also known as the Itempan Order.

Order-Keepers:
Acolytes (priests-in-training) of the Order of Itempas, responsible for maintenance of public order.

Pilgrim:
Worshippers of the Gray Lady who journey to Shadow to pray at the World Tree.

Previt:
One of the higher rankings for priests in the Order of Itempas.

Promenade, the:
Northernmost edge of Gateway Park in East Shadow.

Pymexe:
(masculine; feminine is
pymoxe
) Heir to one of the three ruling positions in the Teman Triadice. Not hereditary;
Triadic heirs are chosen at an early age, after a rigorous selection process involving official examinations and interviews.

Ramina Arameri:
A fullblood; half brother of Remath Arameri.

Remath Arameri:
Current head of the Arameri family; mother of Shahar and Dekarta.

Salon:
Headquarters for the Nobles’ Consortium.

Script:
A series of sigils, used by scriveners to produce complex or sequential magical effects.

Scrivener:
A scholar of the gods’ written language.

Semisigil:
A modern version of the Arameri blood sigil, modified to remove anachronistic scripts.

Senm:
Southernmost and largest continent of the world.

Senmite:
The Amn language, used as a common tongue for all the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Shadow:
The city beneath Sky.

Shahar Arameri:
Current heir of the Arameri Family. Also high priestess of Itempas at the time of the Gods’ War. Matriarch of the Arameri family.

Sieh:
A godling, also called the Trickster. Eldest of all the godlings.

Sigil:
An ideograph of the gods’ language, used by scriveners to imitate the magic of the gods.

Sky:
The palace of the Arameri family.

Sky-in-Shadow:
Official name for the palace of the Arameri and the city beneath it.

Teman Protectorate, the:
A Senmite kingdom.

Time of the Three:
Before the Gods’ War.

True sigil:
An Arameri blood sigil in the traditional style.

T’vril Arameri:
A former head of the Arameri family.

Usein Darr:
A Darren warrior; heir to the Baron Darr.

Wesha:
West Shadow.

White Hall:
The Order of Itempas’s houses of worship, education, and justice.

World Tree, the:
An evergreen tree estimated to be 125,000 feet in height, created by the Gray Lady. Sacred to worshippers of the Lady.

Wrath Arameri:
Captain of the White Guard in Sky.

Yeine:
One of the Three. The current Goddess of Earth, Mistress of Twilight and Dawn.

Going to keep it short this time. This is the longest novel I’ve ever written, after all, and I’m plum tuckered out.

I need to thank you.

Seriously. That’s not just pretentious “I’d like to thank all the little people” bullshit. A writer is a writer whether she’s read or not, but no writer can have a career in this business unless she satisfies her readers. And really, even that’s not enough, not in these days of the long tail and a quarter-million new titles published per year in the United States alone. A writer needs readers who will find other readers, and grab them by the arm, and say to them,
Read this book right now
. She needs readers who will post reviews on retailer sites and argue with other readers over their ratings; readers who will select her work for their monthly book club meetings and discuss it over tea and cake; readers who will Tweet about the book’s surprises; readers who’ll put the book on a literature syllabus. She even needs people who’ll rant that they hate the book — because those kinds of strong reactions make people curious.

The opposite of liking is not disliking, after all. The opposite of liking is apathy.

All new writers have Something to Prove — me more than most, maybe. But because so many of you have been anything but apathetic, I know I’ve done a good job. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

extras

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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 nkjemisin.com

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www.orbitbooks.net

Not the End

By N. K. Jemisin

The fire had gone out again, I noticed as I came upstairs from my basement art studio. The whole first floor was already cold. It was the damned chimney damper, I was sure. The thing had been dodgy since that time Cingo had tried to repair it himself. Must’ve jammed entirely; we were lucky the whole house wasn’t full of smoke.

I stopped at the top of the stairs, catching my breath and feeling annoyed. Not at the snuffed fire. My daughter, and the man who passed for my son-in-law, did not get cold; their room was on the first floor, but I doubted they would even notice. I wasn’t even annoyed at Cingo, because he was fifty years dead and it was a testament even to his inept repairs that they’d lasted this long. Nor was I annoyed at myself, given that sentimentality had kept me from getting Cingo’s folly fixed in all this time. My irritation had no
focus, other than perhaps the cold, which made my hands ache more than usual, or the climb up the basement stairs, which had left me breathless. Back when I’d lived in Shadow, I could’ve climbed a dozen flights of steps in a day and barely felt them. But that had been a long, long, long time ago. Lifetimes.

Maybe that was the problem: I was just too damned old.

I didn’t feel like going to bed. Silence from the room down the hall. I was the only one awake in the house. Impossible not to feel lonely at such an hour, with even the air gone quiet and still. It was right and proper to sleep; my restlessness profaned the cycles that Lady Yeine had woven throughout the mortal realm. But I didn’t much care if I profaned anything of hers, all things considered.

Finally I wandered toward the back porch and stepped outside, though it was even colder on the porch and I wore nothing but a tatty old nightgown and housecoat. A few minutes wouldn’t kill me, and Glee wasn’t around to glower disapprovingly. I folded my arms and tucked in my hands, and tilted my face up to the moonlight that I could feel as the most delicate of pressures against my skin. Even after all these years, I still wasn’t used to seeing nothing when I looked up.

And even after all these years, I still always glanced toward the muckbins, eventually. Habit. But this time I froze as I felt something contrast the ambient predawn stillness. Something more still, and heavy, and solid as a boulder that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my backyard. No, not a boulder; a mountain. Bigger. Incomprehensibly immense — yet contained, perfectly so,
within the comparatively tiny space between my porch and the muckbin gate.