by Sabaa Tahir
“Thousands across the Empire died not because of the Karkauns but because of the ghosts. Because the ghosts possessed whomever they could and made them do terrible things. Do you know how they escaped?”
“Did—did Mauth—”
“I failed to hold the borders. I failed to uphold my duty to the Waiting Place. I put everything else first—strangers, friends, family, you. Because of that, the borders fell.”
“You didn’t know. There was no one to teach you.” She takes a deep breath, her hands pressed together. “Do not do this, Elias. Do not leave me. I know you’re in there. Please—come back to me. I need you. The Blood Shrike needs you. The Tribes need you.”
I walk to her, take her hands, look down into her face. Whatever I want to feel is dulled now by the steady, soothing presence of Mauth, the thrum of ghosts in the Waiting Place.
“Your eyes.” She runs a finger across my brows. “They’re like hers.”
“Like Shaeva’s,” I say. As they should be.
“No,” Laia says. “Like the Commandant’s.”
The words trouble me. But that too will fade. In time.
“Elias is who I was,” I say. “The Soul Catcher—the Banu al-Mauth—the Chosen of Death—that is who I am. But do not despair. We are, all of us, just visitors in each other’s lives. You will forget my visit soon enough.” I reach down and kiss her on the forehead. “Be well, Laia of Serra.”
When I turn away, she sobs, a soul-deep cry of wounded betrayal.
“Take this.” Her voice is wretched, her face streaming tears. She tears a wooden armlet from her bicep and shoves it into my hands. “I don’t want it.” She turns away then, makes for the horse waiting nearby. Moments later, I am alone.
The wood is still warm from her body. When I touch it, some part of me calls out in rage from behind a shut door, demanding to be set free. But a second later, I shake my head, frowning. The feeling fades. I think to cast the armlet to the grass. I do not need it, and neither does the girl.
Something makes me put it in my pocket instead. I try to turn back to the ghosts, to my work. But I am perturbed, and eventually I find myself at the base of a tree near the spring not far from the ruins of Shaeva’s cabin, staring out at the water. A memory rises in my mind.
Soon you will learn the cost of your vow, my brother. I hope you do not think too ill of me.
Is that what this feeling is inside? Anger at Shaeva?
It is not anger, child, Mauth says gently. It is simply that you feel your mortality. But you have no mortality anymore. You will live as long as you can serve.
“It’s not mortality I feel,” I say, “though it is something uniquely mortal.”
Sadness?
“A type of sadness,” I say, “called loneliness.”
There is a long silence, so long that I think he has left me. Then I feel the earth shift around me. The tree’s roots rumble, curving, softening, until they fashion themselves around me, into a sort of seat. Vines grow, and flowers burst from them.
You are not alone, Banu al-Mauth. I am here with you.
A ghost drifts close to me, flitting about in agitation. Searching, always searching. I know her. The Wisp.
“Hello, young one.” Her hand drifts across my face. “Have you seen my lovey?”
“I have not,” I say, but this time I give her all of my attention. “Can you tell me her name?”
“Lovey.”
I nod, feeling none of the impatience I felt before. “Lovey,” I say. “What about you? What is your name?”
“My name,” she whispers. “My name? She called me Ama. But I had another name.” I sense her agitation and try to soothe her. I seek a way into her memories, but I cannot find one. She has built a wall around herself. When she tilts her head, her profile manifests briefly. The curves of her face strike a deep and visceral chord. I feel like I’m catching a glimpse of someone I’ve always known.
“Karinna.” She sits down next to me. “That was my name. Before I was Ama, I was Karinna.”
Karinna. I recognize the name, though it takes me a moment to realize why. Karinna was my grandmother’s name. Quin’s wife.
But it couldn’t be . . .
I open my mouth to ask her more, but her head whips around, as if she’s heard something. Immediately, she is back in the air, vanishing into the trees. Something has spooked her.
I run my mind along the borders of the Forest. The wall is strong. No ghosts lurk near it.
Then I feel it. For the second time this day, someone from the outside world enters the Waiting Place. But this time, it is not a trespasser.
This time, it is someone returning home.
LIX: The Nightbringer
In the deep shade of the Waiting Place, the ghosts sigh their song of regret instead of screaming it. The spirits are quelled; the Banu al-Mauth has finally learned what it means to be the Chosen of Death.
Shadows emerge from behind me, fourteen in number. I know them and I hate them, for they are the wellsprings of all my sorrows.
The Augurs.
Do they still hear the screams of the jinn children who were slaughtered with cold steel and summer rain? Do they recall how my people begged for mercy even as they were sealed into the jinn grove?
“You cannot stop me,” I say to the Augurs. “My vengeance is written.”
“We are here to witness.” Cain speaks. He is a far cry from the power-obsessed Scholar king of a millennium ago. Strange to think that this withered creature is the same man who betrayed the jinn, promising peace while plotting destruction. “Those who ignited the blaze must suffer its wrath,” he says.
“What do you think will happen to you when all the magic you stole from my people is restored to them?” I ask. “The magic that has sustained you in your pitiful forms for all these years?”
“We will die.”
“You wish to die. Immortality was a more painful burden than you anticipated, was it not, snake?” I fashion my magic into a thick, iridescent chain and lash the Augurs to me. They do not fight it. They cannot, for I am home, and here amid the trees of my birth, my magic is at its most powerful. “Fear no more, Your Majesty. You will die. Your pain will end. But first, you will watch as I destroy everything you hoped to save, so that you may know what your greed and violence have wrought.”
Cain only smiles, a vestige of his old conceit.
“The jinn will be freed,” he says. “The balance between worlds restored. But the humans are ready for you, Nightbringer. They will prevail.”
“You poor fool.” I seize him, and when he unleashes his power to throw me off, the air shimmers briefly before I shake the attack away like a human would a mosquito.
“Look into my eyes, you wretch of a man,” I whisper. “See the darkest moments of your future. Witness the devastation I will unleash.”
Cain stiffens as he looks, as he sees in my gaze field upon field of the dead. Villages, towns, cities aflame. His people, his precious Scholars obliterated at the hands of my brethren, ground down until even their name is no longer remembered. The Mariners, the Tribes, the Martials all under the bloody, iron-fisted rule of Keris Veturia.
And his champions, those three flames in which he placed all his hopes—Laia of Serra, Helene Aquilla, and Elias Veturius—I smother those flames. For I have taken the Blood Shrike’s soul. The Waiting Place has taken the Soul Catcher’s humanity. And I will crush Laia of Serra’s heart.
The Augur tries to turn away from the nightmare images. I do not let him.
“Still so arrogant,” I say. “So assured that you knew what was best. Your foretellings showed you a way to free yourselves and release the jinn while protecting humanity. But you never understood the magic. Above all else, it is changeable. Your dreams of the future only bloom if they have a firm hand to nurture them to life. Otherwise, they w
ither before they ever take root.”
I turn to the jinn grove, dragging the struggling Augurs with me. They push at me with their stolen magic, desperate to escape now that they know what is to come. I wrap them tighter. They will be free soon enough.
When I arrive among the haunted trees, the suffering of my brethren washes over me. I want to scream.
I drive the Star into the ground. Now complete, it bears no sign of its splintering and stands as tall as I do, the four-pointed diamond harkening to the symbol of Blackcliff. The Augurs adopted the shape to remind themselves of their sins. A pathetic, human notion—that by drowning in guilt and regret, one can atone for any crime, no matter how despicable.
When I place my hands on the Star, the earth stills. I close my eyes. A thousand years of loneliness. A thousand years of deceit. A thousand years of plotting and planning and atonement. All for this moment.
Dozens of faces flood my mind, all those who possessed the Star. All those I loved. Father-mother-brother-daughter-friend-lover.
Release the jinn. The Star groans in response to my command, the magic within its metal twisting, warping, pouring into me and drawing from me, both at once. It is alive, its consciousness simple but thrumming with power. I seize that power, and make it mine.
The Augurs shudder, and I bind them tighter—all but Cain. I weave a shield from my magic, protecting him from what is to come.
Though he will not thank me for it.
Release the jinn. The trees moan awake, and the Star fights me, its ancient sorcery sluggish and unwilling to bend. You have held them long enough. Release them.
A crack echoes through the grove, loud as summer thunder. Deep in the Waiting Place, the soughs of the spirits transform into screams as one of the trees splits, then another. Flames pour from those great gouges, bursting forth as if the gates to all of the hells have been breached. My flames. My family. My jinn.
The trees explode into cinders, their glow painting the firmament an infernal red. Moss and shrubs curdle to soot, leaving an acres-wide black ring. The earth shudders, a tremor that will shatter glass from Marinn to Navium.
I taste fear on the air: from the Augurs and the ghosts, from the humans that infest this world. Visions flash across my mind: a scarred soldier cries out, reaching for daggers that will not help her. A newborn babe awakes, howling. A girl I once loved gasps, wheeling her horse about to gaze with gold eyes at the crimson sky over the Forest of Dusk.
For an instant, every human within a thousand leagues is united in a moment of ineffable dread. They know. Their hopes, their loves, their joy—all will soon be naught but ash.
My people stagger toward me, their flames coalescing into arms, legs, faces. First a dozen, then two score, then hundreds. One by one, they tumble from their prisons and gather near me.
At the edge of the clearing, thirteen of the fourteen Augurs silently collapse into heaps of ash. The power that they siphoned from the jinn flows back to its rightful owners. The Star crumbles, dusty remnants swirling restlessly before disappearing on a swift wind.
I turn to my family. “Bisham,” I say. My children.
I gather the flames close, hundreds and hundreds of them. Their heat is a balm on the soul I thought I had long since lost. “Forgive me,” I beg them. “Forgive me for failing you.”
They surround me, touch my face, pull away my cloak, and release me into my true form, the form of flame, which I have repressed for ten centuries.
“You freed us,” they murmur. “Our king. Our father. Our Meherya. You did not forget us.”
The humans were wrong. I had a name, once. A beautiful name. A name spoken by the great dark that came before all else. A name whose meaning brought me into existence and defined all I would ever be.
My queen spoke my name long ago. Now my people whisper it.
“Meherya.”
Their long-banked flames blaze brighter. From red to incandescent white, too bright for human eyes, but glorious to mine. I see their power and magic, their pain and rage.
I see their soul-deep need for vengeance. I see the bloody reaping to come.
“Meherya.” My children say my name again, and the sound of it drops me to my knees. “Meherya.”
Beloved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my incredible readers all over the world: Thank you for laughing at my talking vegetables and hooting owls, and for all the love. I am lucky to have you.
Ben Schrank and Marissa Grossman: You helped me transform this strange fever dream into an actual book. I’ve run out of words to say thanks, so I’ll keep sending you weaponry and socks, and hope that suffices.
Kashi, thank you for teaching me how to vanish into the attack, for cheering the loudest when I did so. Your patience with my flinty-eyed, gunslinger ways is saintly. God only knows what I’d do without you.
Thank you to my boys, my falcon and my sword, for knowing I need coffee in the morning. I hope you read this book one day, and I hope you are proud.
My family is my scim and my shield, my own little fellowship. Mama, thank you for your love and grace. Daddy, bless you for assuming that I am more awesome than I actually am. Boon, you are one tough brother and I am proud of you. Also, you owe me dinner. Mer, next time I won’t call you quite as much, ha-ha, lying, I’ll probably call you more. Heelah, Auntie Mahboob, Maani, and Armo—thank you for the hugs and duas. Aftab and Sahib Tahir, I am so blessed to have you.
Alexandra Machinist—here’s to bullet journals, philosophizing on the phone, and flailing over the things we cannot control. I adore you and I am forever grateful for you.
Cathy Yardley—I would not have survived writing this book without your calm wisdom. You’re a badass.
Renée Ahdieh—your friendship means more to me than all the croissants in the galaxy. Nicola Yoon, bless you for being the sane one. Our calls are the highlight of my week. Abigail Wen, Thursdays at 10 are my happy place—I am lucky to know you. Adam Silvera—I am so damn proud to be one of your tattoo lines. Marie Lu, all the hugs for your friendship, and for the most diabolical pedicure ever. Leigh Bardugo, you lovely, wise goth owl, long may we eat s’mores whilst laughing evilly. Victoria Aveyard—no one better to be in the writing trenches with; we survived! Lauren DeStefano, DRiC forever.
A big, sock-filled thank-you to: Jen Loja for your leadership and support; Felicia Frazier and the sales team; Emily Romero, Erin Berger, Felicity Vallence, and the marketing team; Shanta Newlin and Lindsay Boggs, who deserve all the chocolate; Kim Wiley for putting up with the lateness; Shane Rebenschied, Kristin Boyle, Theresa Evangelista, and Maggie Edkins for all their work on the covers; Krista Ahlberg and Shari Beck for saving me from some genuinely horrifying mistakes; Carmela Iaria, Venessa Carson, and the school and library team; and Casey McIntyre, Alex Sanchez, and all the folks at Razorbill. Great thanks to mapmaker Jonathan Roberts, whose talent is gobsmacking.
My foreign rights agents, Roxane Edouard and Stephanie Koven, have made my books world travelers—thank you. To all of the foreign publishers, cover artists, and translators, your dedication to this series is a gift.
Hugs and great thanks to Lilly Tahir, Christine Oakes, Tala Abbasi, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Stephanie Garber, Stacey Lee, Kathleen Miller, Dhonielle Clayton, and Liz Ward. Much appreciation to Farrah Khan for all your support and for letting me use the line about being a visitor.
Music is my home, and this book wouldn’t exist without it. Thank you to: Austra for “Beat and the Pulse,” Matt Maeson for “Cringe,” Missio for “Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea,” Nas for “War,” Daughter for “Numbers,” Kings of Leon for “Waste a Moment,” Anthony Green for “You’ll Be Fine,” and Linkin Park for “Krwlng.” Chester Bennington, thank you for singing your pain, so I didn’t have to be alone with mine.
As ever, my final thanks to the One who witnesses the seen and unseen, and who walks with me, even on the
darkest roads.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sabaa Tahir is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes and its sequel, A Torch Against the Night. She grew up in California’s Mojave Desert at her family’s eighteen-room motel. There, she spent her time devouring fantasy novels, raiding her brother’s comic book stash, and playing guitar badly. She began writing An Ember in the Ashes while working nights as a newspaper editor. She likes thunderous indie rock, garish socks, and all things nerd. Sabaa currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
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