I shouted in dismay as a large, bleating form charged out of the forest.

  This sheep had transformed from its former, peaceful form. Blood and shadows matted the swirls of its gray wool, markers of the corruption of its spirit. Most disturbingly, the sheep-mournling had abandoned its previous habit of walking on all fours.

  As it pelted out of the forest, it did so atop its back legs, wobbling in its balance and waving its forelegs in front of itself like clubs.

  “Gah!” It was the most frightening mournling I’d ever seen or heard of, and it had already killed two, the boy and the wolf.

  “What’s it doing with its legs?” Alfonse cried.

  The creature sprinted toward us, its mouth gaping impossibly wide. Its forelegs twirled about in front of its puffy body, blunt instruments that it would use to strike at those still in possession of living spirits.

  Those like me and Alfonse.

  I yanked my bow from off my shoulders and tugged an arrow free from the quiver at my back. I took aim beneath the head-sized opening of its jaw and the blurred circles of its legs.

  My arrow just managed to slip past its hooves and sank with a whispered sliiiccc-thunk into the sheep-mournling’s neck.

  It baa-ed in rage and tilted its head to the side, clacking its blunted teeth together like a revived skeleton in a necromancer romance.

  “By the light!” Alfonse cried, swingling wildly with his staff and forcing me to duck out of the way, right into the path of the mournling.

  I screamed as the creature lunged forward, throwing its forelegs back behind itself to stretch the length of its neck and flat teeth. Just in time, I threw my arm up to shield my face.

  It bit down upon my arm.

  “Aaahh!” I screamed.

  It ground its jaw back and forth on my arm, its sticky, acidic gums gnawing their way forward.

  I raised my free hand to hover just over the mournling’s face and cast the shadow spell that I’d used to strike the Hume earlier.

  The mournling-sheep shrieked, flailing its arms up and nearly striking me in the side as it released my arm and reared back.

  It fell onto the ground, writhing, and the shadows of my spell caught as twisting vines around the mournling’s shadow-corruption before pulling them into the earth.

  With a deep, heavy sigh, the animating spirits left the sheep’s body, and it laid still.

  I bent at the waist, propping my uninjured arm on my knee and tried to catch my breath. I paid no heed to Bansaerin’s voice in my head about contracting my lungs. If I looked up at the formerly possessed sheep or at my own bruised arm, I would be sick.

  “Easy there,” Alfonse urged, seeing me sway. He tugged in my shoulder, forcing me upright and angled me against one of the trees, facing away from the mournling’s corpse. Orvald’s blue, glowing form had begun to investigate it, tilting his head first one way and then the other.

  I closed my eyes until my breath slowed, trying to set aside for the moment the ever-pressing threat of truenight and the other creatures that dwelled within the forest.

  I tightened my jaw and raised my bruised arm. I winced, turning it to stretch the muscles. The acidity of the mournling’s venom had eaten away at my sleeve and the bark bracer I’d fashioned.

  I removed its leather strap and tossed the bracer toward the sheep’s corpse without looking closely at it. It was no use to me now, and I’d need to cleanse its energy so it could pass back into the earth and not linger here.

  With the bracer removed, I found a crescent-moon-shaped pattern of bruises along my arm from the sheep’s teeth.

  Thinking back on the attack, the pattern of bruises on the wolf’s body made sense now—the sheep-mournling had smacked it with its horrid hooves, breaking ribs and bones, and then had devoured the corpse with its flattened teeth.

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  Orvald’s wounds aligned as well—The silhouette of twin crescent moons pressed unnaturally together shone out of the boy’s spirit form. The mournling had bitten him in the neck, causing the fount of blood that covered his shoulder and chest. Whatever other injuries he’d sustained, the bite had been strong enough to sink through his neck and sever his arteries.

  “I know we need to get back,” I said to Alfonse. “Let me take care of this first.” I glanced back toward the two corpses in time to see Orvald’s spirit poke the mournling-sheep with his foot. He gasped and reared back as his foot slipped into the body. The spirit shivered, hugging its arms against itself.

  “Stay away from there,” I called. The mournling energy would remain a danger until I could salt the body.

  The boy nodded and withdrew to hover by his own corpse.

  I withdrew two sachets of enchanted salts from the pouch at my waist and held them out to Alfonse. “Spread these over the corpse, liberally. A pinch or two on my bracer as well. I’ll tend to Orvald and then help you finish with the sheep.”

  Orvald hovered in front of his body, wringing his hands and glancing between Alfonse, the sheep, and me. “There’s something I should like to give you. It’s a trinket, really. But as my thanks.” The spirit indicated his body where a thin corded necklace held a spiral made of bone.

  “There is magic to it, though nothing like you can cast.” He averted his gaze, suddenly bashful. “But maybe it’ll help.”

  I bent down and, very carefully, untied the back of the necklace from Orvald’s body, careful not to touch the corpse. The mournling’s stench hung so heavily over the area that it covered over any smell drifting off the boy.

  The swirl had been carved from sheep’s horn. It quivered in my hand and I closed my eyes, sensing the magic within.

  “It’s a voicethrow,” the Hume’s spirit explained. Whisper into it, and then toss the words in a different direction. Your voice will then emerge from the designated location as though you were speaking there at a normal volume.”

  I marveled at the simplicity of the necklace and horn, with such a peculiar magic embedded within. “It’s incredible, Orvald, thank you.”

  “My family’s gone. Someone might as well get some use out of it.”

  I lowered my gaze out of respect for his relatives. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “If you run into Gerry, tell him to go fuck himself.”

  My eyes widened. Aveela had told me about spirits with revenge quests, but for the ancient Lifkin, those against whom they’d held grudges had passed on by the time they were speaking with Aveela which made the matter simpler. “I-I will,” I agreed while secretly vowing to myself to avoid Hume named Gerry from that point forward.

  “Great.” The spirit sighed, glancing back at his body. The edges of his form began to fade. “I just can’t believe I died for a sheep,” he murmured.

  “Go in peace, Orvald.” I waited until his spirit had fully passed before removing my last sachet of salt and sprinkling it over his body before joining Alfonse with the final pinch in my hand.

  “A terrible waste,” Alfonse said, shaking his head.

  I nodded silently, losing myself to the task of spreading the last of the salt over the mournling’s corpse. The swell in my throat faded as Alfonse and I completed our task.

  “Are you ready to return home, Draeza?” Alfonse asked after I had said the prayer of passing over the mournling and the boy. He would take a cart back with him from our clan so he could properly inter Orvald in the cemetery in Shakerton.

  “More than I thought I would be when I set out this morning, yes.”

  Alfonse asked me thoughtful questions on our way back to the Twisted River Clan. He was particularly interested in the prayer of passing.

  “Ho, there,” a low, scratchy voice called out into the gathering dark.

  I sighed, settling back against Gwinny’s saddle as Bansaerin and his stallion rode out of the twilight fog.

  “What’re you—” he began, glaring at Alfonse but stopped short, noticing me behind the older Hume. “Draeza.” His brow furrowed and he urged his horse forward. “Are you hurt?”

  I nodded and tried to swallow around the sudden lump in my throat. Being back so near to safety, the composure I’d kept a death-grip upon was beginning to slip.

  Bansaerin swung off his horse and hurried to my side. He took hold of Gwinny’s reins and looked between me and the Hume.

  “Two men attacked her in Shakerton,” Alfonse explained. “And we ran into a mournling on the way back here. A sheep.”

  “Two men—” Bansaerin’s jaw clamped shut and he exhaled through his nostrils, eyes blazing gold against the twilight. “I warned you it was dangerous. And now—”

  “Bansaerin, please.”

  He sighed heavily. “You’re right, Draeza. Here.” He clucked his tongue to Gwinny and guided her forward. Alfonse and Bansaerin’s horse fell into line behind us. “We’ll get you to Mirdal and the healers. They’ll ensure that you’re alright.” His voice was soft as he spoke to me, his gaze darting between my face and my hand pressed against my side.

  “Thank you, Alfonse,” Bansaerin said, turning back over his shoulder. I smiled. It was the first kind word I’d ever heard him share with a Hume, and he did it for me.

  “Of course,” Alfonse answered. “I am only sorry my intervention was necessary in the first place. Shakerton has fallen upon dark times in this last year after the mournling attack.”

  The relative prosperity and independence of the Second Circle Clan by comparison went unspoken between us. Alfonse knew something was going on, but he was also a good enough friend to us that he knew better than to ask.

  “There is something I would like to speak to your chief about,” Alfonse added to Bansaerin. “I should like for you to be there too. And Draeza, after the healers.”

  Bansaerin nodded, his expression grave. He kept checking on me as we returned to the clan, rubbing his hand against my low back or along my thigh, promising me we would arrive safely and soon.