Blackbringer (23 page)

Dragon.

Her first instinct was to take to her wings.

Her wings hung crushed from her shoulders.

A single heartbeat passed between her sense’s warning scream and the shuddering of the cliff as a dragon caromed into it, hooking hold with his great claws. If Magpie’s wings had been whole, that heartbeat would have been enough time to leap clear. As it was, her instinct to leap into the air simply plunged her right over the edge of the cliff, and she fell.

Again the Magruwen wondered, Who is she? Since the faerie left, he’d been going over the Tapestry, thread by thread and glyph by glyph, finding every moment more of her handiwork. Who was this lass who’d made such tangles in the Tapestry?

He focused on a new glyph and turned it around in his mind. He winced. Graceless! Fused threads, clumsy stitches, no symmetry, no pattern! When he had first become aware of Magpie’s inexplicable ability to alter the Tapestry, he kept expecting to find devils born of her twisted threads. For so it was in ancient days that the monsters had first been brought into being, by another creature’s artless meddling. Instead, in the faerie’s glyphs, again and again he found new magic.
Strange
new magic.

Between the great warp threads of the Tapestry stretched the sheen of countless weft threads, and each one, each fire-bright fiber, represented a dream made real on earth. One for granite and one for salt, one for the tiny biting bugs in the swamp, one for mildew, one for pollen, one for the bees that carried it flower to flower. One for everything, some long, some short, and all connected into a living, shimmering whole. And all across that whole the threads intermingled in patterns. It was in the patterns—the glyphs—that dwelled such of the Djinns’ dreams as love, flight, memory, laughter, invisibility, luck, music, and many, many more. These were the mysteries and complexities of the world and the magicks too, and the faerie, without even knowing it, had been making her own.

The Magruwen traced the threads of one of her glyphs to their origins and saw what she had done this time. He scowled, and then from deep within him welled up . . . laughter. It was absurd. Henceforth, because of this unlikely clump of threads, a cake with the footprints of a gecko in its frosting would enable any who ate it to walk on the ceiling!

Surely she had no idea what she had done. What she had was an unconscious intuition about the unweaving, a sensitivity to weakness in the Tapestry. These whimsical glyphs, they didn’t exist for their own sake; they were simply the by-product of something much more profound. Once a thread or glyph failed in the Tapestry, the dream failed too, and the world was changed. And each messy, tangled glyph the lass wove caught the end of some unraveling thread before it could dissolve forever and take a Djinn’s dream out of the world with it. Here: she had tied a jumbled knot in the glyph for invisibility as it unraveled. She had tethered it hastily to other threads, those for the crocus flower and the cinnamon tree, and all were bound tight to the massive warp thread for fire. Now one had only to drop powdered crocus petals into the ashes of a cinnamon wood fire and a new dust spell for invisibility would be born. Just like that.

The dust spell was new magic in and of itself, but more important, the knot had stopped an ancient art from slipping out of the world, and even more important, it had kept the Tapestry from weakening further. Most of Magpie’s knots were like that. She had saved such glyphs as footprint magic, scrying, fire husbandry, and hypnosis, to name but a handful. She had even rescued the sixth glyph for flight from oblivion, which had resulted in a funny little spell involving eggshells and rain.

Most of the spells born of the knots relied upon confluences so unlikely they would never be discovered by accident, such as this one: playing a harpsichord while wearing emerald rings on every finger would make plants grow at twice their natural speed. What harpsichordist had emeralds enough to stumble innocently upon this spell?

But the important fact remained: the knots were strong. They would hold. Indeed, they were holding the world together.

The Magruwen could wish them to be less unlovely, though.

And so, while he muttered much and sighed long and shook and reshook his great blazing head, he found himself consumed with something he had long forgotten the flavor of: curiosity. He had thought the world empty of surprises and himself past caring. Things had been done that could never be undone, that could never be forgiven, and what had changed? Not much. It was the same world he had turned away from, filled with pettiness and wasted gifts. One intriguing sprout and a few new glyphs didn’t heal all that had passed.

The Magruwen roared, and a trembling was felt in the fields and dwellings near his well. He paced. He sought the peace of sleep, but it had been stripped from him in that cunning explosion. He was not only curious now; he was alert. He was confounded. And he was impatient. Impatient for the faerie to return. She needed to learn what the clever fingers of her mind were up to.

In the bottom of the well, his flame undimmed by the cover of a skin, the Djinn King paced and waited, and his cave seemed to grow smaller around him with every turn.

Jacksmoke!
Magpie thought to herself as she fell, wings fluttering after her as useless as scarves.

One moment she was plummeting through empty air and the next she was caught in the grip of a massive paw, and she saw the knife edge of a claw twice as long as her entire body arcing toward her from above. She froze as its tip hooked the back of her shift.

The dragon lifted her with one claw out of the paw it had caught her in and flicked her—ungently—back onto the ledge. She skidded into a billow of nightspink in Bellatrix’s garden and, head spinning, looked up into a tremendous face. Broad charred nostrils emitting a slow fume of sulfur. Orange eyes with vertical pupils drawn tight. A hide like beaten copper, with a dull patina of verdigris and bronze muting its metallic sheen.

He stared at Magpie and she stared back, speechless.

“I know you . . . ,” he hissed at her in Old Tongue.

Bellatrix interposed herself between them, a tiny bold figure before his huge head, but his eyes never wavered from Magpie. As a thin lick of flame issued from his nostrils, Magpie had no illusions that the lady could protect her from him.

“Good even’ to you, Fade,” Bellatrix said mildly.

“You never told me she was born,” breathed the dragon. It sounded to Magpie like an accusation.

“She’s still very young. I wasn’t certain.”

“And now?”

“Now I
am
certain. Here she is, Fade.” Bellatrix stepped aside and swept her hand toward Magpie. “Hope.”

“Hope,” spat the dragon. “This is what all your scheming has wrought, Bellatrix, wearing your voice away year after year with your fancies, for one small sprout?”

“Aye, one sprout who can do what the Djinn will not. The Tapestry is failing, Fade, and he does nothing!”

“It is not for you to decide,” said the dragon in a dangerous tone.

“Nay? Why not? It was his will that made the world so it’s his whim to let it die?”

Magpie was keenly aware of how helpless she was at this moment, flightless and in the path of dragon nostrils larger than her entire body. And as he stared at where she lay tumbled in the nightspink, she had a feeling that even the intensity of those orange eyes could set her on fire.

“You meddle in the mysteries of the Djinn!” His voice rose from a rumble to a low roar.

“Mysteries?” Bellatrix roared back. Like the champion of legend she was, she stood fearless before the dragon. “Aye. Perhaps you’ll shed some light on those mysteries, dragon. I know you know! Why did he forsake us?”

Fade said nothing.

“Nay. Faithful Fade. I know you’ll never tell. Secrets! All the years I’ve been in this place, I’ve watched the faeries come, each generation weaker than the last. What’s happened to them? I’ve guided screaming dragons over the bridge! How did that come to pass? How did humans creep into being to slaughter all your kind? Who was watching the affairs of the Djinn then? And now? Devils are roaming free with but this one small sprout against them, and if it weren’t for her, and for your part in this and mine, there would be no hope at all!”

Magpie watched wide-eyed as the two legends argued about her.

“Fade,” Bellatrix went on, her eyes flashing in the moonlight, “the Blackbringer is free.”

A burst of flame shot from Fade’s nostrils, sending twin fireballs straight at Magpie. She had to fling herself aside and roll to a crouch as the flowers sizzled and blackened where she had been. He turned his great head to the canyon and snorted great jets of fire out into it, seeming to cleanse his head of it before risking turning back to the two faeries.

“The Blackbringer, free?” he hissed.

“Aye.”

“Then it’s already too late. What can one sprout hope to do against such a foe?”

“Without the Magruwen’s help? Perhaps nothing. Fade, he must be persuaded. You could—”

“I will not defy him.”

“Not even to save faeries? Imps? Dryads, hobs, finfolk, and every other creature?”

“Nay, not if it’s his will.”

Magpie rose from her crouch. “How about to save
him,
then?” she asked.

Fade turned back to her. “What did you say?”

“The Blackbringer already killed one Djinn.”

Fade stared at Magpie, and she thought his eyes grew brighter, like a stoked fire. “Killed a Djinn?” he repeated.

“The Vritra,” said Magpie. “And now he’s killing in Dream-dark and sending his spies down the Magruwen’s well!”

Fade’s head moved closer to Magpie, and the smell of brimstone grew strong. “Spies?” he asked.

“Aye, he sent a scavenger imp down hunting for something.”

“Did he get it?” he demanded sharply, his eyes blazing.

“Get what?” asked Magpie, squinting up at him. Seeing the intensity in Fade’s eyes, she was filled with curiosity as to what Batch had been after. What had he said, a turnip? She thought not.

But the dragon just blinked his huge, inscrutable eyes and said, “It is not for me to say.”

“More secrets!” exclaimed Bellatrix. “Fade, something must be done! The devils were his own mistake, and he must unmake them!”

Fade turned to her with a snarl. “He never made such mistakes! He
never
made a devil.”

Bellatrix and Magpie fell silent and looked at each other. Everyone knew the devils were the Djinns’ mistakes. Where else could they have come from? Where else would
anything
have come from?

Still snarling, Fade went on, “Creatures with no dreams of their own can do naught but destroy the dreams of others. So it has been since the beginning. So were the devil armies forged, by one who did not dream.”

Bellatrix said irritably, “Dragon! This is no time for riddles. Please speak plain. If the Djinn didn’t make the devils, where did they come from?”

Indeed. If not from the Djinn, then where? Magpie was silent. A thought was skimming the surface of her mind, and she felt as if she were looking up at it from underwater. Then, suddenly, she realized what it was: eight. The eight sacred columns of the temples. Why eight and not seven? Traceries of light spun in Magpie’s sight and she saw painted there the symbol for infinity that graced all the temples. It twisted then and she saw it, too, suddenly, as an eight. Why eight . . . ?

“Fade,” she said in a rush. “Was there another once? An eighth Djinn?”

He snorted. “There have only ever been seven Djinn!”

Magpie chewed her lip, ashamed to have voiced such blither. The idea had seemed to simply spin into her mind on a curl of light.

Fade spoke again, more quietly. He said, “The eighth was not a Djinn.”

And Magpie and Bellatrix stared at him, dumbstruck.

“In the time before time there were seven sparks . . . and one wind.”

“A wind . . . ,” breathed Magpie.

“The Astaroth, the world-shaping wind. He was the bellows to the Djinns’ fire, tirelessly feeding their flames so they could burn bright as suns and pour their dreams forth in unbroken threads. He was their ally and equal. Pure power, an unfathomable force, and without him the Tapestry could not have been woven.

“He had no dreams of his own, but he shared theirs. When the time came to shape the Tapestry into a sphere and bind closed its seams, he chose to remain and witness the burgeoning of the world he had helped forge. This was the mistake that has shaped everything.”

“How?” Magpie asked, her head spinning.

“He was a creature of infinite space. He had never yet known boundary. The Tapestry had seemed vast laid open in the emptiness, but once sewn closed, it was . . . small. The work of world-making went on, the Djinn gathered dreaming, the Astaroth fed them, and the world bloomed, but a time came when he was no longer needed, and it became a cage to him.”