I draw my scims, prepared to attack, when Mauth yanks at me.

Of course, Elias, you idiot, I chide myself. I can’t single-handedly beat up everyone inhabited by a ghost. Shaeva tapped my heart, my head. Mauth’s true power is here and here. The magic nudges me toward the closest group of possessed villagers. My throat grows warm, and I can sense, somehow, that Mauth wants me to speak.

“Stop,” I say, but not as Elias. I speak as the Banu al-Mauth. I pinion the possessed with my gaze, one by one. I wait for an attack, but all they do is stare balefully, wary of the magic they can sense roiling within me.

“Come,” I order them. My voice booms with a supernatural note of command. They must listen. “Come.”

They snarl and yip, and I cast Mauth’s magic out like a thin line, wrapping it around each of them, tugging them close. Some come in the bodies they have stolen. Others are still spirits, and they drift toward me with hostile moans. Soon, a small group of a few dozen spirits forms a half circle around me.

Should I rope them together with magic? Send them streaming back to the Waiting Place, as I did with the ghosts that plagued the Tribes?

No. For as I look at these tortured faces, I realize the spirits don’t wish to be here. They want to move on, to leave this world. Sending them back to the Forest will only prolong their suffering.

The magic fills my sight, and I see the ghosts for what they are: hurting, alone, confused, regretful. Some are desperate for forgiveness. Others for kindness. Others for understanding. Others for an explanation.

But a few require judgment, and those spirits take longer to deal with, for they must suffer the hurt they inflicted on others before they are free. Each time I recognize what a spirit needs, I find myself willing it forth from the magic and giving it to them.

It takes time. Long minutes pass, and I get through a dozen ghosts, then two dozen. Soon, all the ghosts in the vicinity flock to me, desperate to speak, desperate for me to see them. The villagers cry out for help, perhaps hoping my magic will offer them respite from their pain. I glance at them and see not humans but lesser creatures who are dying slowly. The humans are mortal, unimportant. The ghosts are all that matter.

The thought feels unfamiliar. Strange. As if it doesn’t belong to me. But I have no time to dwell on it, for more ghosts await. I fix my gaze on them, barely twitching until the last of them has moved on, even those who found human bodies to squat in.

When I finish, I observe the devastation they’ve left behind. There are a dozen dead bodies that I can see and probably dozens more that I can’t.

Distantly, I feel something. Sadness? I push it aside quickly. The villagers look at me with terror now—they’re simple creatures, after all. In any case, it’s only a matter of time before fear transforms into torches and scims and pitchforks. I’m still mortal, and I’ve no wish to fight them.

A young man steps forward, a hesitant look on his face. He opens his mouth, his lips forming the words thank you.

Before he can finish, I turn away. There is much work ahead of me. And in any case, I don’t deserve his thanks.

* * *

Days pass in a blur of villages and towns. I find the ghosts, call to them, gather them close, and send them on. In some villages, doing so takes only an hour. In others, it takes nearly an entire day.

My connection to Mauth grows stronger, but it’s not complete. I know it in my bones. The magic holds back, and I will not be a true Soul Catcher until I find a way to merge with it fully.

Soon, the magic is powerful enough that I can hone in quickly on where the ghosts are. I send hundreds on. Thousands remain. And hundreds more ghosts have been created, for the spirits wreak havoc wherever they go. One evening, I reach a town where nearly everyone is already dead, and the ghosts have already moved on to another town.

Nearly three weeks after the ghosts’ escape, when night has fallen and a storm has broken over the land, I take shelter on a grassy knoll free of boulders and scrum, just a few miles from a Martial garrison. The drums of the garrison thunder—unusual this late at night, but I pay them no mind, not even bothering to translate.

Shivering in my soaked leather armor, I gather a bundle of sticks. But the rain doesn’t let up, and after a half hour of trying to light the damn fire, I abandon it and hunch miserably beneath my hood.

“What’s the use,” I mutter to myself, “of having magic if I can’t use it to make a fire?”

I expect no response, so when the magic rises, I am surprised. More so when it hovers over me, creating an invisible, cocoon-like shelter.

“Ah . . . thank you?” I poke at the magic with a finger. It has no substance, just a sense of warmth. I didn’t know it could do this.

There is so much you do not yet know. Did Shaeva know Mauth well? She was always so deeply respectful of the magic—fearful, even. And like a child who watches his parents’ faces for cues, I picked up on that wariness.

Did the magic feel anything when Shaeva died, I wonder? She was bound to that place for a thousand years. Did Mauth care? Did he feel angry at the Nightbringer’s foul crime?

I shudder when I think of the jinn lord. When I think of who he was—a Soul Catcher who passed the spirits of humans on with such love—versus what he has become: a monster who wants nothing more than to annihilate us. In the stories Mamie told, he was only ever called the King of No Name or the Nightbringer. But I wonder if he had a true name, one us humans never deserved to know.