Blackbringer (32 page)

Talon laughed into his second custard, and the faeries sipped cider until Orion called the counsel to begin.

Brandy was served and pipes were lit. Everyone but the warriors left the Hall, though Orchidspike and Magpie stayed in their places and the crows hunched in a cluster smoking the chief’s tobacco. Chairs were scraped nearer the fire and elbows slung across knees as the warriors leaned forward to listen.

Orion stood. “Gents,” he declaimed, then gave a nod to Orchidspike, “Lady,” and to Magpie and Nettle, “and lasses. ‘Tis a terrible time! Never in memory have the Rathersting failed in our duty to protect Dreamdark, but now we fail every night. Since the battle at Issrin Ev we been chasing shadows whilst the fiend hunts free! Word’s come that last eve the whole Followtide clan down river way was took and only Codger Spindrift left behind, who’d fallen asleep in his canoe.”

A murmur went round.

“And that’s not all. This very morning, as well you know, our raiding party came back smaller than it left. We lost Spiro and Bruxis in the Spiderdowns, but not to spiders, neh, and so we know now where the devil lurks. He’s there in the worst of all places, and the spiders do his bidding like those vultures did, so it seems.”

Magpie and Talon stared at each other, alarmed.

“Dark’s falling fast,” said a bearded older warrior, rising to his feet. “And more will vanish tonight, neh? It’s intolerable. We must end this devil, now!”

“But you haven’t seen it, Hornet,” said Orion. “How do you stab a shadow? How can you kill a cloud?”

“You can’t,” said Magpie. All eyes turned to her when she spoke, three dozen fierce pairs of eyes, framed in tattoos and mirroring the firelight back at her in their stares. She continued, “You can only hope to capture it, and I’ve got its bottle.”

“And who are
you
?” asked a younger warrior, his voice hostile.

Talon’s chair scraped back suddenly as he stood. “Hiss, well you know the name of our guest, so mind your manners. She’s Magpie Windwitch and she knows more about devils than any of us, and she’s our best hope for catching this foe.”

There was a stir among the gents, of surprise and, Magpie thought, derision.

Talon went on. “These two days past we’ve been beyond—” The murmuring grew louder. “And we’ve had counsel with the Magruwen.” Gasps burst out. “And we’ll tell you what we’ve learned and what must be done.”

Talon and Magpie related all they knew of the Blackbringer, and a dark silence settled over the Rathersting with the revelation that there was an eighth ancient stalking their wood on a rampage of vengeance.

“But can he be captured?” someone asked.

“The Djinns’ champions did it once,” said Magpie, “and we’ll do it again.”

“Then we should do it tonight!” someone yelled, and a roar went round, and stamping of feet. “To war!” they bellowed, and some rose up on their wings.

“Neh—” said Magpie, but her voice was overpowered by the roaring so she called out in her loudest crow squawk, “Wait!”

They all swung to look at her. “Wait,” she said again. “The Magruwen’s making a new seal, and we’ll need that first. And there’s something else. The chief and all the others? Once the devil’s been caught there’ll be no hope for ’em. If we’re to bring ’em back, we got to do it first.”

They stared at her. “Bring ’em back?” said Orion. “Lass, what are you on about? Much may we mourn our fallen, but there’s no coming back from the Moonlit Gardens!”

“They’re not in the Moonlit Gardens,” she said.

“Now how could you know that?” demanded the one called Hiss with scorn thick in his voice.

“Indeed,” said Orchidspike, speaking for the first time. “Magpie, what is it that you know?” she asked.

Magpie glanced around at the ferocious faces and wondered how to answer. Sure they wouldn’t believe what she had to say. “They’re just not there,” she told them. “I saw my friend Poppy turn into a shadow even as I held her. I was inside the Blackbringer for an instant myself and I felt my skin begin to melt away. I reckon I’d’ve become a shadow, too. So I think that’s where they are.” She paused. “
In
him.”

There was silence until Hiss broke it with a short laugh. “
In
him? You
think
?” He looked around at his fellows. “What is she even doing here? This is a warriors’ counsel! I say we go a-hunting, tonight!” he cried, and was joined by others.

Magpie gave Talon an anxious look and he nodded and cried sharply, “Hiss! Viper! The lot of you, have a thought. This is no spider or marsh hag, cousins, but the king of all the devils! You’ll need a spell that’s equal to him or you’ll just be flying out to make yourselves his meal! Has any of you got such a spell up his sleeve? If you do, I’d very much like to hear it!”

No one answered.

Hiss shifted uneasily on his feet and looked surly. “Then what, Prince?” he asked. “Has
she
got a spell like that?”

“Aye!” said Talon. “She has!”

This was a revelation to Magpie herself, and she cast Talon a sidelong glance.

“Let’s have it then and go!” Hiss went on.

Talon looked at Magpie and all the others did too. She lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and said, “I won’t be doing any capturing until I’ve brought back my friends and your kin and all the others, and that must wait till tomorrow, with the Magruwen’s good grace.”

“That’s madness! Whilst you play at raising the dead, the devil will be making more dead all the night long, and none are ever coming back again! Best to stop him before he gets anyone else!”

Magpie’s mouth drew into its most stubborn straight line and she said, “I know they’re not dead, not proper dead, and they’re nowhere in the Moonlit Gardens and I’m going to get them back!”

“How?” asked Nettle simply.

Magpie turned to her and said, “I know what to do; I dreamt it—”

“
Dreamt
it?” interrupted a grizzled older faerie with a scoff that was met with laughter from the others. “Lass, dreams are stuff and air, not battle plans!”

“You’re wrong,” she said fiercely, meeting his eyes. “Dreams are everything! I can’t stop you trying to capture the Blackbringer yourselves, but nor will I help till I’ve brought out all those folk and creatures he made to shadows. I won’t see them go in the bottle with him for the rest of forever. I won’t!” Her voice had been steadily rising and with it the color in her cheeks, so that when she finished speaking her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing. She felt a tingling in her fingertips and clasped her hands together, but a soft shimmer had already flowed from them, though no one seemed to see it. They did, however, feel the air suddenly shift and sharpen round them and squeeze. It was so subtle they weren’t certain what was happening, if anything at all, but the feeling silenced them. Talon looked sharply at Magpie. The hairs on his arms stood up and the warriors weren’t laughing now, but were eyeing Magpie warily.

Orchidspike broke the silence. “My lads,” she said. “I know ’tis a sore and hollow thing for a warrior to sit idle, but there’s magic in this lass that makes me hope. We don’t know that she’s not right. This Blackbringer, maybe he’s wrapped his terrible cloak round our kinsmen and kept them. And maybe we can yet do something great. Aye, there’s great risk, too, that more will be lost and none saved. But then, mayhap
all
will be saved.”

“But Lady, to balance lives on a sprout’s dream . . .”

“You’ll decide what you must, Orion, but I’ve felt a tide of mystery wash over us such as I’ve never felt in all my life, and it’s my belief these are no ordinary dreams and this is no ordinary sprout.”

Orion frowned and looked at Magpie, small and ornery, and at his nephew by her side. He sighed, then told his men, “No hunting tonight, then. I don’t know about dreams and that, but Talon’s right. We’re just not ready for this foe. There’s naught I know to do against him.”

Not all the warriors were happy about this. Grumbles of “another night” and “strange lass” and “Prince Scuttle” could be heard in deep muttering voices.

“We’ve warned all the hamlets and clans. We’ve done what we can. Tomorrow we’ll hunt the Blackbringer in the Spiderdowns and be ready when he comes out again. But he’ll hunt tonight, of that we can be sure, and I want to double the watch,” Orion continued. “Hiss, Viper, Howl, Lash, Prowl, Thorn, Hornet, and Mars, with me. The rest of you, sleep.”

And so ended the counsel. Magpie felt some tension go out of her as the fierce tattooed faces found other things to scowl at besides herself. She left the hall with Talon and the crows. “Tough crowd,” she told Talon with a shiver.

“They’re feeling feeble and not much liking it.”

“Aye, bless their scowls. Sure I never met a warrior yet who didn’t sneer at me as a wee useless lass . . . except you, anyway.”

“Well, I’m no warrior.”

“What? Course you are! Prince of ’em!”

“Neh,” he told her, flushing. “I’ve never even been on a raid, because of . . .” He fluttered his wings.

“Well, maybe you haven’t. But do you think you’d have ever made a skin if you could fly?”

He shrugged.

“I bet not,” she went on. “You’d be just one of them in there, saying ‘neh’ and never dreaming up a single new thing.”

They had come to a fork in the corridor where Talon would turn toward the chief’s tower and Magpie and the crows to the castle’s guest cells. He asked her, “Lass, do you really mean to go inside the Blackbringer again?”

“Aye.”

From behind them, Bertram cut in. “I don’t like it, Mags. Sure I want Maniac back, but not if ye got to risk yerself.”

“He’s right, ‘Pie,” said Calypso. “I en’t spent this life raising ye up ever so careful, and Lady Bellatrix didn’t talk Fade’s ear off all them years just so ye can go like that.”

“And if he gets ye,” added Pigeon, “who’ll get him? Sure nobody could, and that would mean the end of everything, forever!”

“And wouldn’t yer mum skin us then!” squawked Pup. “And Good-imp Snoshti! She shivers me fierce!”

“Ach, birds! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“We are,” answered Bertram. “On the side of yer skin, love. How can ye keep from turning shadow like the others?”

“There’s got to be a way.”

“Maybe you’ll dream it tonight,” Talon suggested.

“I hope,” she said. She hugged all the crows good night and went her way, calling back, “Good night, Talon.”

“Good night, Magpie. Dream of magic,” he called back.

“You too.”

But the kind of dreams they meant, the ones that come tumbling like springs from unmapped deeps, full of hints and secrets, wouldn’t visit them this night, because both faeries were too anxious to sleep.

Magpie closed herself into her windowless chamber deep within the castle and slouched on the edge of the cot, chewing her lip. Magic didn’t come to you only in your sleep, sure. The Djinns’ dreams—the luminous threads—those were open-eyed dreams, things of intention and will. But they were art, and hadn’t the Djinn shown her just how artless she was? The magic she’d made—turning Vesper’s hair to worms, sparking the Magruwen awake—had she ever done a bit of it on purpose? It just blurted from her like curse words when she was in temper and made chaos in the Tapestry. That was no way to take on the greatest foe her folk had ever known!

She opened her book and leafed through it. So the Magruwen would give her a star to light her way. That was something. But did she know any protection spells strong enough to withstand that sucking dark? Unlikely. Nothing in these pages would help her. She slammed the book closed. Things were different now. Bigger. And the same went with capturing him when that time came. Her usual tricks would be useless.

She stared at her hands, remembering the tingling that had come into them when the warriors in the hall had laughed at her. She’d had to bite her lip to quell the magic she’d felt surging up in her. How could she summon it when she needed it? How could she bend it to her will? The Magruwen had said the Tapestry would be no use to her unless she understood it. Well, she didn’t, but there sure wasn’t time just now to learn!

She sighed, wondering how the champions had captured the Blackbringer before. Suddenly she sat up straight with a grin. Why not ask? she thought. She closed her eyes and did as Snoshti had taught her, imagining herself fading while she visioned three glyphs in her mind, for threshold, for moonlight, and for garden, linked in just the right way. She held her breath, waiting to feel the winged touch, and when she did she sighed with relief, opening her eyes to the moon-washed riverscape.

Crossing the bridge to the Moonlit Gardens, Magpie caught the startled looks of faeries who’d witnessed her first crossing and who were stunned to see her come again. They whispered among each other and pointed, and she gave them a shy wave before taking to her wings and setting off toward the cottage carved into the cliff. Flying beside the whispering river, she felt a pang of loneliness. To be here, the only living soul in this quiet land, it made her wish for the stuffiness and dust of that trunk in the mannies’ attic, for the crows gathered round on all sides, the stolen picnic, the farting imp, and Talon.

Talon. She realized she’d memorized his tattoos as if they were a glyph and wondered what would happen if she visioned them like one. Would it summon him? She smiled at the thought. That would be sharp. He wasn’t so bad to have around.

She reached the cliff’s edge and descended on her wings down the rock-cut stairs, but as they curved and Bellatrix’s garden came into view, she slowed and stopped. The lady was sitting there on the same stone bench where she’d braided Magpie’s hair. She seemed to be looking out into the canyon, but one glance at her face made it clear that whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t the familiar landscape.

Her beautiful face was a portrait of longing, of loneliness, and need. And her eyes were the eyes of one who knows exactly where the border lies between hope and despair and who has stood before it many times and looked across. Magpie had never seen such a look and a wave of sympathetic misery washed over her to see Bellatrix in such a state. She who was so brave . . . But it was more than bravery that bound Bellatrix here and kept her from joining the seraphim in the high planes.