Blackbringer (24 page)

“The Djinn couldn’t . . . let him out?” asked Bellatrix, as confounded as Magpie.

“Not without letting the nothingness
in
and obliterating everything. He had made his choice, but he couldn’t live with it. The confines of the world warped him. He tried to free himself, even at the expense of all else. He gathered his full force and tried to blast his way through the Tapestry to freedom, but it was strong—he’d helped make it so—and he couldn’t breach it. Again and again he tried, hurling himself against it, but all he succeeded in doing was mangling it, twisting its perfect threads. Making devils.”

“Ah . . . ,” Magpie whispered, understanding at last.

“Abominations,” continued the dragon. “What the Djinn dreamed pure, he turned monstrous. And when he saw what he had done he went to work at it even harder, believing he was at last creating something of his own. Hundreds upon hundreds of creatures were thus warped. The Djinn knew something had to be done. He’d been their ally, but they had to choose between the Astaroth and the world. . . .”

“What did they do?” the faeries both asked, breathless.

“They chose the world,” said Fade simply, and heaved a deep sulfurous sigh. “It was a terrible choice, and it diminished them. They erased all memory of him—”

“But for the eighth column in all the temples,” said Magpie.

He looked at her closely. “Aye, faerie. Those they left as symbols of their shame. They never again burned so bright as they had in the harmony of eight, with the Astaroth’s strength on their side. Faeries never knew the Djinns’ full glory. By the time you came to be, that was all memory.”

“This all happened before the days of faeries?” Bellatrix asked.

“Aye,” said Fade, with the grim ghost of a smile on his reptilian face. “Of course. The Djinn had to create a race to rid the world of devils. That race was faeries.”

Magpie stood very still. She felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. She saw the same feelings written on Bellatrix’s face. They just looked at each other and felt the force of the dragon’s words. Faeries had been dreamed into being to rid the world of devils. Faeries, who had always believed themselves to be the light and color and soul of the world, they were just the solution to a wretched problem, like vultures who had been dreamed to devour the dead.

“Now you know,” said Fade.

Magpie blinked, and the stunned look on her face was replaced slowly by ferocity. “Well, then,” she said, “if he dreamed us up as hunters he’d best let us do our job, neh? This Blackbringer. What the skive is he, dragon?”

“The Astaroth’s final plague,” said Fade. “And his worst.”

Again came a soft touch like the flutter of wings as Magpie visioned the glyphs Snoshti taught her, holding Rathersting Castle clear in her mind. When she opened her eyes she found herself in Nettle’s room and released her held breath with relief.

It was quiet under the drum of rain. Bertram was asleep in the rocking chair with his peg leg propped up on the bed. She thought at first he was the only one in the room, but then she saw the Rathersting lad in the window. He was sitting looking out and hadn’t heard her arrive. She remembered their last meeting, how she hadn’t had time to explain to him about Skuldraig, and a flush of shame rose on her cheeks. How ungrateful he must think her! She held still, knowing as soon as she was noticed the questions would begin, and she couldn’t begin to imagine how she would answer them.

Then Snoshti glimmered in beside her and silence was no longer an issue. “Well done, pet!” cried the imp. Instantly Bertram leapt awake and Talon swung round in the window. His eyes were full of suspicion.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Where did you go?”

Calypso hopped in. “My ‘Pie!” he cried, sweeping her up in his wings. “Heard ye had a bit of a vanish!” He held her face with his feathertips and looked into her eyes. “How are ye, pet?”

Though his voice was jovial, Magpie knew what he was asking. “I’m fine now, feather,” she said, meeting his searching stare.

“Does me good to see a gleam in yer eye. But ye look awful tired.”

“Aye, exhausted, since you mention it. Feel like I haven’t slept in ten years.”

“Bet ye’re hungry too, Mags,” said Pup from the doorway as the rest of the crows crowded in.

She put her hands over her belly and realized she was. “About to start gawping like a baby bird!”

“There’s biscuits and pumpkin soup left from lunch, full of ginger to bring your strength up,” offered Orchidspike, elbowing her way through the throng of black feathers. “Back in bed and rest, lass, from . . . wherever you’ve been. I’ll fetch you some.”

“Neh, Lady,” said Talon. “Let me.” As he passed Magpie, his hard eyes seemed to ask,
Who are you?

Magpie allowed herself to be fussed back into bed. Orchidspike bent to examine her wings and Magpie’s elaborate braid caught her eye. “Whose handiwork is this, now?” she asked.

“Er,” said Magpie, “Snoshti did it, neh, Snosh?”

But Snoshti seemed to have vanished. The crows set to clamoring about it. “Another sneaking imp vanishes!” groused Swig.

“Another?” asked Magpie.

“Aye, that scavenger was in the dungeon, but he disappeared from his locked cell.”

“They left him
alone
?” Magpie cried. “Jacksmoke! I need to talk to him! I need to know what”—she glanced furtively at Orchidspike—“what his master sent him down the well for
really.
”

But Orchidspike wasn’t listening to Magpie. The scent of the nightspink in her braid had caught the healer’s notice, and as the crows complained of imps, she quietly removed a blossom and held it to her nose. A curious look came into her old eyes. She sniffed it again, then tucked it into her apron. She stood. “It’s time we get on with the healing, lass. ’Twill be no quick job of work. I’ll see how Talon’s coming on with that food.” She bustled out.

In the corridor she took the silver-white flower out of her pocket and held it to her nose again.

“What’s that?” Talon asked, coming back with a tray.

“’Twas braided into the lass’s hair,” she said in a peculiar voice and held it out to him.

He sniffed it. “Sure I never smelled that before,” he said.

“Nor I,” Orchidspike replied, and Talon frowned. Orchidspike was the finest herbalist in Dreamdark. She knew everything that grew, and where, and what it could be used for. There simply wasn’t a flower in the forest she hadn’t smelled. “Wherever it was she went with that imp, it wasn’t in Dreamdark, that I know. Nor anywhere near.”

“Then where—?”

“I don’t know, my lad, but I’d like to. Come. We’ll begin soon.”

 

As Magpie ate, Orchidspike and Talon made ready for the healing. A wheel was set up by the fire and loaded with a wide bobbin of spidersilk, while a balm of angelica, hyssop, and clove was set out to simmer in a copper basin.

“The silk is a binding for the spells,” Orchidspike explained as she purified her knitting needles in the balm. “I vision a glyph into every stitch and the silk knits them together into a whole. It takes a few days for the glyphs to bond and transmute to living tissue, then the silk threads melt away, leaving behind only wings, real as they ever were.”

“Does that mean I won’t be able to fly for a few days?”

“Maybe longer, lass. This is quite severe.”

Magpie frowned and grumbled. Then Orchidspike’s knitting needles caught her eye. “Those must be djinncraft,” she said.

“Aye, my foremother Grayling chose them long ago from among the Magruwen’s treasures.”

“Did your apprentice use them to make that skin of his?”

“My what?” asked Orchidspike, startled, for the word
apprentice
had been much on her mind. “Ah, Talon? Neh, lass, the prince isn’t my apprentice.”

“Prince?” Magpie repeated.

“Aye, Talon will be chief one day, after his father . . .” Her voice wavered. “Indeed, that day may be at hand.”

“Would the Rathersting have a clan chief who’s a scamperer?” she asked, and at that moment Talon came back into the room. He stiffened. Magpie had simply been curious—she’d scarcely ever known a scamperer; they were exceedingly rare—but she saw his face color with shame and she cursed herself. He avoided meeting her eyes and she could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make it worse, so she just frowned and resolved to speak no more.

When Orchidspike was ready to begin, Calypso tried to talk Magpie into lying down to sleep through the healing. “Ye can’t just go and go, ‘Pie, after what ye been through. Ye’re pale as biscuit flour and yer folks would have my feathers for it. Ye need sleep.”

But she resisted, seating herself on a low stool in front of Orchidspike’s rocker. “My mind’s buzzing too much. I wish I had my book to write in.”

“Here, Mags,” said Mingus, holding it out to her. “I got it from the caravan for ye.”

“Ach, Mingus, thank you,” Magpie said, taking it and giving him a kiss on his beak while he shuffled his feet and examined the floor.

She held her book in her lap and unspelled it so it fell open to the page she’d last written. She’d been en route to Dreamdark then and knew the devil only as “the hungry one.” So much had happened since! She had found the Djinn King in the bottom of a well. She had fallen through the darkness of the Blackbringer and lost two dear friends in it. She had journeyed to the afterworld and had her hair braided by Bellatrix! She had fallen off a cliff and been caught in a dragon’s fist. And she had learned of a gaping hole in the legends she had always cherished. An eighth ancient!

She wished she could talk to her parents. They were so far away, probably shape-shifting themselves into fish with the elders of Anang Paranga right this moment. She would tell her book instead, and maybe in the writing things would come clear. She tapped her quill against her lip and began to write.

Behind her, holding Magpie’s right wing taut while Orchidspike worked on it, Talon could just see the page over her shoulder. The crows were all around, though, so he couldn’t stare, and he caught only a word or two now and then when the birds nodded off for little naps. Magpie didn’t nap. Head bent over her book, she wrote. Orchidspike’s needles clicked steadily and the spidersilk reeled off the bobbin. Rows of spells danced off the knitting needles, rows of words filled Magpie’s page, and time passed.

She had been writing, pausing, frowning, remembering, and writing again for several hours when she finally gave voice to what was frustrating her. “Is he a snag, or isn’t he?” she blurted suddenly.

“Eh?” muttered Calypso sleepily.

“It’s just not right somehow. I can’t get past it. He leaves no rooster tracks, he’s got no smell, he’s not stupid like a snag. . . . That snag the so-called queen set on me, now that was a devil, horrid and sure. To compare them—”

“What snag, ‘Pie?” asked the crow.

“Ach! I never told you!” she cried. “Aye, it was why Poppy came to Issrin Ev, to warn me that Vesper had a snag slave she’d set after us, and it came, sure, and it was some nasty meat, I tell you.”

Talon cut in incredulously, “Lady Vesper set a devil after you?”

Magpie glanced over her shoulder at him. “Aye,” she said defensively. “Your fine queen’s got some dark dabblings.”

“She’s not
our
queen!” he returned hotly. “Lady Orchidspike and my father were the only elders in Dreamdark who wouldn’t recognize her claim and the others ignored them. Only time those Never Nigh fops care what Rathersting think is when they nick their wings dancing or spot Black Annis too near their hamlets!”

“Ach, well . . . Lady Orchidspike, you were right. Vesper’s a fake and worse. That snag was grim, and it’s because of him Poppy’s . . .” She choked on the word
dead
and finished instead with a bleak
“. . . gone.”

“Is it still out there?” asked Mingus, puffing himself up.

“Neh. The Blackbringer got it, just like that. Like it just vanished or melted. That’s the thing, feathers, I can’t get past it. That was a devil, and we seen plenty and that’s what they’re like, stringing drool and snaggle teeth and suckers and stink? But the Blackbringer, he’s not like them at all. . . .” She paused. “The Magruwen called him a contagion of darkness—”

At the mention of the Magruwen Orchidspike’s fingers fumbled but she caught her stitch and kept knitting, eyes alert, and Talon’s jaw dropped open. “The Magruwen?” He gaped. “You’ve seen the Magruwen?”

“Aye.”

Talon stammered, “B-but how . . . ? Where? What . . . what was he like?”

“Mean! Sure he couldn’t care a twitch what happens to faeries or anything else. Calypso was right: he’s through with the world.”

Silence fell, broken only by the clicking of knitting needles.

After a moment, Magpie said with a sigh, “Well, he might be through with it, but I’m not. I’m going to catch the Blackbringer with or without his help.”

“That’s right, Mags!” chirped Pup. “Ye can do anything!”

“How . . . ?” asked Talon. “How do you catch a shadow? It sounds impossible—”

“So ready to cry impossible?” Magpie snapped. “And leave that beast to eat the rest of your kin?” As soon as she said the words she wanted to bite them back. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Talon’s face grew hot.

“Lass, lad . . . ,” said Orchidspike in a soothing voice.

“Neh, she’s right, what do I know of impossible?” Talon said in a wretched voice.

Magpie slouched and said miserably, “Neh, I’m sorry. I’m a brute. I just can’t seem to hold it all in my head, what I know of him, what I don’t know . . . what he is, and how to catch him. . . .”

“Now ‘Pie,” Calypso encouraged, “ye’ll catch him, sure. Come now, what do we know of the beast?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself. “He’s the Blackbringer,” she said slowly, “and sure faeries only remember him as a nursery story but that’s our own doom, to forget. He was the worst devil there ever was. He was the dark come to life. A contagion of darkness, the hungry one . . . beast of night with flesh of smoke, wearing darkness like a cloak . . .”