by Sabaa Tahir
All I want is to remain in Mamie Rila’s wagon, nursing my aching head. Unfortunately for me, Rehmat is not one for brooding. A week after I face off with the Nightbringer, when Mamie leaves the wagon to prepare dinner, the jinn queen appears.
“You think you can simply cut the Nightbringer’s throat.” Rehmat hovers on the opposite end of the wagon, keeping her distance from the scythe—which has not left my side. “But he will be ready for that. You must surprise him. Outwit him. And for that, you need his story.”
“I believe you.” I curl into the knit blanket Mamie gave me. “I’m the one who wanted his story in the first place. But we have to fight a war, Rehmat. Can you at least tell me how his story will help us win?”
“War is like the sun. It burns away all the softness and leaves only the cracks. The Nightbringer has been at war for a long time. Learning his story will teach us his weaknesses. It will help us exploit the cracks.”
I hoped for something more specific. “You know his weaknesses,” I say, frustration taking hold. “But you won’t tell me what they are.”
“The magic will not allow—”
“But have you tried?” I ask. “Tell me something small about your life with him. Anything.”
“He and I—we—” Rehmat’s gold form flickers. “We were—” Her voice chokes off and she screams—a bloodcurdling sound. Her color fades so rapidly that I think she will disappear entirely.
“Stop!” I stand. “Forget it—”
The jinn queen is a pale shadow now, her vitality leached away by the magic that binds her. “I told you,” she whispers. “The blood magic will not allow me to speak of my life with him. You must ask the Kehanni.”
A few minutes later, Mamie Rila spots me emerging from her wagon. She glares at me from where she is stirring a pot of squash stew and brandishes her spoon.
“Get back into bed, child. You’re still recovering—”
The fire makes her shadow massive on the canyon wall behind her. Shan looks up from the stone where he’s rolling out flatbread and grins.
“Says the woman who was driving our wagon the day after leaving a Martial interrogation.”
I wince as I sit on the earth beside Mamie, head throbbing, body shivering from the sound of Rehmat’s scream. The scythe is slung in a sheath across my back, unwieldy, but too precious to leave unattended.
All along the canyon, fires have sprung up. Their glow is cleverly hidden beneath overhangs and vented tarps. The scent of roasting leeks and buttered flatbread has my mouth watering.
“I thought you might want company,” I tell Mamie. “And I’m—a bit lonely.”
The Kehanni’s face softens, and she hands me the spoon so I can stir the stew as she sprinkles a pinch of cinnamon into it, followed by a handful of dried cilantro. The omnipresent desert wind whistles down the canyon, muting the quiet talk of thousands of people, and the fires spark and dance. Efrits walk beside Tribespeople. High above on the canyon’s rim, guards patrol.
“Mamie,” I begin. “I was wondering—”
Horses’ hooves sound behind me, and I turn to see Afya and her little brother, Gibran, dismounting near their own caravan.
“Anything?” I call out to the Zaldara, but she shakes her head.
“Not so much as a forgotten shoe,” she says. “Rowan was with us for most of the trip.” She nods to the sand efrit, drifting to a group of his kin who have gathered on one side of the canyon. “He sensed no magic. They’re gone.”
Mamie ladles out a bowl of squash stew for me and another for Afya. When the latter protests, the Kehanni gives her a dark look, and she sits.
Gibran drops beside his sister, lured by the scent of stew as well as the fluffy stack of flatbread Shan has produced. “They might be headed for Taib,” he says. “Though by now, they should know it’s empty.”
“At least we have time to recover,” I say. “And to plan our next move.”
“A bit hard to do that when our general is missing,” Afya mutters. Mamie gives her a sharp look, but I do not blame the Zaldara for her irritation. Elias’s disappearance sent ripples of unease through the Tribes, even when Afya told them of his assurances that he’d return.
“He’ll be back,” I say. “Nur was a small victory in a greater war, and he has a stake in it. Mamie”—I turn to her now—“how goes the story-hunting?”
“It is slow,” the Kehanni says between bites of stew. “Our stories have two qualities. Sechei and Diladhardha.”
“Truth . . . and—” My Sadhese is limited, and I shake my head.
“Diladhardha means ‘to know the heart of pain,’” Mamie says. “We seek truth, Laia. And when we find it, we must approach it with empathy. We must understand the creatures, fey or human, who populate our tales. Respect them. Love them, despite the villainous things they do. We must see them. Else how will our stories echo in the hearts of those who hear them? How will the stories survive beyond one telling?”
The Zaldara and Gibran listen, rapt, and even Shan, who has lived with the Kehanni his whole life, stares at her with his spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.
“Sechei and Diladhardha are the first steps to hunting a story. When you have attained them, then a story might be coaxed from the shadows. I have heard many tales of the Nightbringer. But none that will allow me to understand him or love him or respect him. I know him only as a creature of great evil. I fear loving him. I fear respecting him. I fear if I do, I will lose myself.”
“Such stories are dragons drawn from a deep well in a dark place,” I murmur.
“Where did you hear that?” Mamie asks.
“The Kehanni of Tribe Sulud,” I say. “She knew the Nightbringer’s story. But wraiths killed her before she could tell me.”
Mamie’s food is forgotten, and she looks at me intently. “Do you remember anything else of what she told you? Any hint at all as to what the story could be about?”
“She didn’t really—” I stop then and consider. “She spoke of his name. She said the story she told would be about his name. About how—how important it is.”
“His name,” Mamie considers. “The Meherya, you said. And it means . . .”
“Beloved.” Even thinking the word makes me sad. But Mamie shakes her head.
“It is not enough,” she says.
“You couldn’t help, could you?” I mutter to Rehmat. But she doesn’t respond.
A sharp call sounds from the northern end of the canyon, followed by the chilling rasp of dozens of scims being drawn at once.
Mamie is already kicking sand over the fire and shooing me toward her wagon. Afya sprints for her horse, Gibran following. Then Afya calls out.
“Laia,” she says. “Wait, look!”
She peers down the canyon, and I can see the glimmer of Martial armor now, and what appear to be about two dozen soldiers.
But it is not the soldiers who have my attention. It is the brown-skinned, lanky figure who rides with them, sandy hair blowing in the desert wind.
“Darin?”
I’m too far away for him to see, but I limp through the camp toward him now, until I can make out his face. He spots me and dismounts, a giant smile on his face.
“Laia!”
“Lower your weapons,” I call out to the Tribesmen, many of whom have never met him. “Skies, he’s the one who made them!”
My brother weaves through them and envelops me in a bear hug. I do not let him go, even when he tries to put me down. My brother. My blood. The only blood I have left in this world. I find that I am sobbing, and when I finally break away, his face is wet too.
“Thank the skies you’re all right,” he says. “I tried to tell you I was coming, but you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise when we spoke. The Shrike sent half a legion with me, to help the Tribes fight Keris. Most of them are a few miles away. The last we hear
d, Aish had fallen.”
“So much has happened since then.” I do not know where to begin. “What matters is that I have the scythe. I can kill him, Darin. But we cannot find him or his bleeding army. We think they’re here in the Tribal lands. Probably using fey magic to hide. We just need to get to them.”
Darin glances at the Martial commander with him—Jans, the Blood Shrike’s uncle. Something passes between them.
“That will be harder than you think, Laia,” Darin finally says. “Keris sent a massive force east. Three hundred ships. They left Navium when the rest of her forces were marching on Nur.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Keris was here—I saw her—”
“Not anymore. She and the Nightbringer are laying siege to Marinn. Laia—they’re a thousand miles away.”
XLVI: The Soul Catcher
For long days and nights, I am at peace as I haven’t been since I first merged with Mauth. Spring eludes the Waiting Place, but the vicious bite of winter has finally eased, and I spend my time passing the ghosts.
It is not easy. For the rot near the river has spread, and the ghosts do not wish to pass. But when I worry, the gentle sweep of Mauth’s magic eases it away. There is a rightness to this work. A clarity.
But that changes one night when I enter my cabin and knock something off a small table by the door. It hits the ground hard and bounces toward the fireplace. I stare at it, perplexed. It is a half-carved armlet—but where is it from? I should remember—I need to remember.
Laia.
Her name bursts in my head like a firework. The memories that Cain returned to me come back all at once—along with everything that happened since then. Laia was injured in Nur. Is she all right now? Afya and Mamie would have taken care of her, but—
A slow tide of magic sweeps through my mind. My worry fades. My memories fade.
No! a voice screams in my head. Remember!
I stumble back out the door of the cabin, the armlet clutched in my hand. From the trees, a ghost watches me.
“You’re back,” Karinna whispers. “You were gone a long time, little one.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I was . . .” Remember, the voice in me screams. But what does it want me to remember?
“You’ve seen what’s coming,” Karinna says. “The maelstrom. I smell the knowledge on you. And yet you do nothing. What if it hurts my lovey? You told me she was out there, still alive. What if the maelstrom destroys her?”
Maelstrom. Hunger. Darkness. Suffering.
The Nightbringer. I drag the name out of the molasses that Mauth has made of my brain. The Nightbringer is waking something up. Something he cannot control. He is using ghosts to strengthen it so it can break through Mauth’s protections and destroy the human world.
“What you see cannot come to pass,” Karinna says. “It will hurt my lovey. I can feel it. You must stop it.”
“How?” That tide of forgetting is upon me, Mauth manipulating my mind, but this time, I resist it.
“Yes.” Karinna nods. “Fight him. Fight for my lovey. Fight for those who live.”
“Mauth!” I call out. He ignores me, yet again.
Or perhaps, I realize with a sudden flash of intuition, he cannot hear me. I keep expecting Mauth to respond to my call. But he battles the Nightbringer endlessly. In the midst of a fight, I might not hear my own name called from beside me, let alone from another dimension.
I drop to my haunches beside my cabin. For long minutes, I keep my eyes closed and do not move. Instead, I feel out the magic, imagining it as Cain showed it to me, thick gold ropes that bind this place together. The image falls apart in my mind over and over. Each time, I rebuild it, rope by rope, until I feel as if I have the whole of the Waiting Place in my mind.
Then, like I did with the Nightbringer, I throw myself at it. At first, the image shudders and flickers, as if about to come apart. No, damn you—
Then the oddest sensation grips me, like some enormous hand has dragged me into the bowels of the earth itself. I see my body, kneeling in the world of the living.
But my consciousness is not there. Instead I am pulled down through the web of magic, and I emerge onto a rocky promontory beneath a pale yellow sky. The promontory stretches behind me, lost in fog. A savage ocean tosses below, the waves so massive that they defy understanding. I have a body—or a semblance of one, but it is more a suggestion than anything solid.
When I attacked the Nightbringer’s mind, I was seeing this very place, this dimension, from his perspective. The jinn lord sees Mauth as the wall between himself and vengeance. Now I see Mauth’s dimension from my own perspective.
Along the horizon, a familiar, man-like form approaches.
Soul Catcher, Mauth says. You do not belong here. Return.
“There’s something wrong with the Waiting Place,” I tell him. “I’ve tried to tell you—”
I fight wars you have no concept of, child. Return.
“The Nightbringer siphons souls from the living.”
I know the sins of my son. They are no concern of yours. I have given you enough of my magic to uphold the wall. To aid the ghosts. Go then, and pass them on. You have spent too much time away.
I must break through to him. But how? I speak to Death itself. I am an ant, waving my feelers, attempting to get the attention of the universe.
“There are no ghosts,” I say. “The Nightbringer has taken them all. Only a few remain, and those will not pass, for they sense only a great evil awaiting them on the other side.”
A long silence.
Speak.
I tell him of the rot along the River Dusk and the ghosts’ fear. I tell him of the Nightbringer’s war, how he has used Maro to steal souls. I tell Mauth what I saw when I entered the Nightbringer’s mind.
“How can you not know this?” I say. “How—how can you not see?”
I am not of fire or clay, Banu al-Mauth, he says. The minutiae of your human lives is beneath me. It must be, else I would be mired in it.
A sigh gusts out of him, and his magic weakens.
To my folly. The Nightbringer’s wrath is unending. I did not know. As you see my dimension in one way, I see yours in another.
A universe, I realize, trying to understand the world of the ant.
I believed the jinn needed to be freed and returned to their duty. That is the purpose for which I created them. I did not understand the depth of their pain. Nor did I understand the Nightbringer’s fury. Thus I battle him, and I fear I am losing.
“How can you lose against him?” I ask. “You are Death.”
If you underestimate the spider, Banu al-Mauth, it can bite. And if its bite is poison, it can kill. So it is with the Nightbringer. He knows where to bite. And he is riven with poison.
“Why can you not take the magic from him as you took it from me?” I say.
The magic you use to pass the ghosts and hold the wall is an extension of my own. You borrow it. Nothing more. Your windwalking, however, was a gift. I cannot take it away. When I created the Meherya, I gifted him all of my magic. What I have given I cannot take back. Even Death has rules.
“He wants to release the Sea of Suffering. Destroy all life,” I say. “I could stop him. And I think I can remind the jinn of their duty. Bring them back into the fold. But I have to be able to leave the Waiting Place. I cannot be trapped there.”
Mauth appears to stare down at the roiling ocean. Tell me your vow.
“To light the way for the weak, the weary, the fallen, and the forgotten in the darkness that follows death.”
Then that is what you must do. The balance must be restored. If this means leaving the Waiting Place, so be it. But hold to your duty, Banu al-Mauth. Memory will make you weak. And emotion will not serve you well.
Even as he says it, numbness steals over me. But this time, som
ething in me bucks wildly against it.
“If Cain hadn’t put memories of Laia and Helene and Keris back inside me,” I say, “I never would have left the Waiting Place. I never would have realized what the Nightbringer is doing. I need my memories. I need my emotion.” I think of Laia and what she’s been trying to tell me for weeks. “I cannot inspire humans to fight if I’m not one myself.”
The Sea slams itself against the promontory, and enormous, repugnant shapes move beneath the water. Teeth flash. More, the Sea growls at me.
I will not interfere, Mauth says. But do not forget your vow, lest you be destroyed by the magic I used to bind you. You are sworn to me until another human—not jinn—is seen fit to replace you. Your duty is not to the living. Your duty is not to yourself. Your duty is to the dead, even to the breaking of the world.
His words are as final as the first fistful of dirt in the grave.
“The jinn have escaped,” I say. “The ghosts are imprisoned. The Nightbringer has leveled entire cities and stolen countless souls. The world is broken, Mauth.”
No, Soul Catcher, Mauth says softly. The power of the Sea of Suffering cannot be controlled. Not even by the king of the jinn. If he unleashes it, it will not just destroy humanity. The Sea will destroy everything. All life. Even the jinn themselves. I fear, Banu al-Mauth, that the world has yet to break.
* * *
«««
The bulk of the Tribal fighting force has hunkered down in the Bhuth badlands north of Nur. Near the center of the camp, a large knot of elders and Zaldars, Fakirs and Fakiras, and Kehannis have gathered around a fire half the size of a wagon. I slow as I approach, for an argument rages.
“—we are not going to bleeding Marinn—” The Zaldar of Tribe Nasur speaks, shouting down a dozen other voices. “If you wish to help the Mariners, that is your choice—”