A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes #4) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,121

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