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Her first memories were of the Sanctuary. She couldn’t say how old she was when the first glimmers of awakening self-awareness began to form, but the walls she saw then were the same walls she saw now.
She had moved around more, at first, than she did these days. She had explored the Sanctuary as if it were a world laid out before her. She had learned all she could about what she saw, though she had no words to express what she found. She had nowhere to compare it with, but she knew that it was beautiful.
What interested her most, though, were the people.
Always they came, twice a day, bringing food and water. Every now and then, a new dress, when the old one was getting too small, laid out reverently by servants who never spoke a word.
But still, they were alive.
They were alive in a different way from the birds she often heard through the high windows. A different way from the insects that occasionally found their way inside. That life was fascinating, but the humans had a—a something—that she could sense. Something like-and-not-like herself.
She could not say when it was that she first began to meditate. At least, that was the word most like what she did, the word she later found among the minds of the people. She found that if she closed her eyes, and sat very still, she could stretch her consciousness out. She could feel the life around her. Tiny sparks, like the insects. Larger ones, like the birds.
And great shining ones, like the humans.
At first, she could only sense them when they were nearby. There were always two nearby, just on the other side of the thing-humans-entered-through. Not always the same two. A few times a day, new ones would come to replace them. But always two.
She began to recognize some of the lights, the humans. This one was bright and cheerful, like a Berry. This one was tired, like the time she had been too caught up in her meditations and hadn’t noticed the food for a long time, and it had been—no longer quite right.
Slowly, she began to reach further. Not far away, there were many humans, always coming and going. There was something—softer—about most of these humans compared to the ones outside. They were more like the humans who brought her food. But those humans’ lights were gentle, calm, moving sedately from point to point. These humans’ lights sparked and crackled, whirled and leapt, even when the position of the lights stayed the same.
She wondered why they were so different.
She remembered the first time she stepped into a human’s mind. She had hovered on the edges for a long time, feeling the cracklings, not quite able to capture the thoughts as they floated past. She was growing more curious about what these cracklings might be, so finally, one day, she slipped inside.
She understood little of what was going on. The thoughts that swirled about in the anxious Akademiya student’s mind were structured in words, not images, and she had not heard words in all her memory. But she realized that here was a world more fascinating even than the one she was in now. Fascinating because things happened here that she did not understand.
But she would learn.
She touched their minds often, now, eagerly drinking in the new experiences. Some of the minds were cold and angry, and these she avoided. Others were joyful, and in these she delighted.
Sometimes, as her range expanded, she found little children. She loved to enter their minds, for they were like her. Thinking in images instead of words, still in wonder at the vast incomprehensibility of the world around them. With them, she began to learn more quickly.
As words began to make their meanings clear, one thing confused her. The humans seemed each to have a word for themselves, a word others used to speak to them. A name.
Did she have a name? Who was she?
The thought forced her out of her meditation. Was she a human? Was there a word out there that meant her? Or was she like one of the birds or the insects, whose lights held little understanding, who had no words for one another?
The thought troubled her for a long time. But eventually, she said to herself (in her mind, of course, for she had never yet spoken), “I can understand the humans. Maybe I am not one of them, but neither am I a bird or an insect. I can choose. I will choose to be like the humans. I will find a word for myself, and that word will mean me.”
She tried many words, but none of them felt right. Eventually, she decided on Nahida.
She began to learn other things, as well. One day, she realized that the human bringing in her food was new. At first, she contented herself by learning the new human’s light. Then, she began to wonder where the old one had gone.
She could sense most of Sumeru City by now, if she tried. It wasn’t easy to find a single light in all of the glowing array that was the city, but this human had been coming for a long time, and she knew him well. Eventually, she found the familiar light.
And yet it was not the light. Not the same as it had been. It was smaller—no, dimmer, the same size and shape and colour as it had been but growing fainter. When she touched the man’s mind, she felt coldness and pain. She had felt small pains before; headaches and paper cuts and small scrapes were not uncommon among scholars. But this was different, a chill, deep aching that went right to the core.
She didn’t understand, and so she lingered, trying to learn why the thoughts were so few, so weak.
Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming agony—and then nothingness.
It was three days before she dared reach out, after that. The nothingness had been so all-encompassing, so terrifying, that she never wanted to experience it again.
In the minds of those near where the servant had been, she found the word Death.
It wasn’t all bad. As she continued to grow and stretch, she reached outside of the city. There, she found the Aranara, and discovered to her astonishment that they could sense her as well. They became her friends, her companions, though they never met face to face. She also found a world teeming with life, with good and bad, with joy and sadness.
She began to wonder, eventually, why she could not go to see it.
The humans were all free to move around. Why should she not be? There had been a man, one time, who had hurt his fellow scholar. He had been placed in a—prison, it was called. Was she in prison as well?
If so, what had she done?
One day, she gathered up the courage to speak. When the servant came to bring her food, she asked, “May I leave the room? I would like to go outside.”
The servant’s mouth flew open. The tray clattered to the ground. The servant turned and fled from the room.
A little while later, more humans came, two servants and a—someone else.
She had met his light before, in meetings in the little room above the House of Daena. He was the youngest of the Sages, Azar. There was something not-right in his light. Oily, slimy, like the time they had brought her something called prawns to eat.
“Lesser Lord Kusanali, you are able to speak,” Azar said.
It took her a minute to understand. Was that her name? She had heard people speaking that name before, speaking of an archon who ruled over Sumeru. Was that suppose to be her?
“May I leave this room?” she asked. “I would like to go outside, to see the city.”
“Who has taught you to speak?” He didn’t sound very happy that someone had.
“All the people of Sumeru,” she answered. “I have learned it from their thoughts.”
“That is incredible!” he answered. “Truly you are the god of wisdom.”
“You haven’t answered my question. May I go outside?”
“Ah—no, archon, it is not wise for you to leave this room. There are many dangers outside. We can protect you here. But if there is anything you wish, we can provide it to you. Food, clothing, toys, whatever you desire.”
He did have a point. She could not have spent years exploring Sumeru with her mind not to be aware of dangers. Fungi, Withering, Rishboland Tigers—and the more worrying threats of bandits or rogue Eremites. Even in the city, she knew, it was possible for a person to meet with injury. And yet…
“I have everything I need, physically,” she answered. “But shouldn’t the archon go among her people?”
“Oh, no, no, not at all,” he answered. “It is our responsibility to keep you safe. Please, let us do our job. It is our honour to protect you.”
She wanted to keep pressing, but there was something not-right about him, something he was hiding, and she knew it would be foolish to act before she realized what it was. So she backed down, but did not give up.
She tried to learn more about Azar, but she was distracted by the information he had given her. Lesser Lord Kusanali was her. She searched people’s minds, looking for information about herself.
She didn’t like what she found.
The people spoke fondly of a Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, now long gone. She was the Lesser Lord. No one disliked her, but the people heard stories of other archons, and felt disappointment when they thought about her.
She wasn’t doing a good job of looking after Sumeru.
So she began to learn, began to study what a nation needed. What a ruler needed.
That meant a lot of focus on the Sages.
She learned many things from them, about administration and organization. She learned that she could never hope to run Sumeru alone.
But she learned other things that were more unsettling.
Something was not right among the Sages. There were conversations that happened without everyone knowing. Concerns about power and how to keep it, rather than how to use it for the benefit of the country.
Thoughts of overthrowing the archon.
It wasn’t just Azar, though he was the most vocal in speaking against her. Several of the Sages were concerned about her, concerned that she would try to take power from them.
Should she take power from them? She had abandoned the people of Sumeru for a long time. She had left the Sages to run the country. Was it her right to supplant them?
But there was much that was wrong in the country. So many things that could be prevented, if someone cared. Some things that the Sages were making worse. There was corruption and suffering and hardship. The Sages were not doing what needed to be done. She had to do it herself.
There began to be whispers of a new idea, one that even now, she couldn’t fully understand. The harvesting of dreams and information. The creation of a new archon. The whispers were never spoken loudly, never discussed officially. But some of the Sages spoke of little else, when they were alone together.
Whatever was happening, she had to stop it.
But how could she do that when she had never left this room?
She would need help. But where to find it? The Aranara were loyal friends, but she could not ask them to get involved, not in something like this. There were a few humans she’d been able to speak to, in their dreams, but most of them were children. The few that were adults were weighed down by illness. None of them could act. Perhaps one of them could find help for her, but how likely was it that a sick person would be believed? No, she needed a different kind of help. Someone strong, who could act and fight, but who could hear her voice.
It wasn’t long after that realization that a certain blond traveller entered the city…