Page 112 of A ?Sky Beyond the Storm

“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—Ineedto 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 smellthe 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 hasdragged 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.

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