Blackbringer (34 page)

“Lady,” said the crow with the cracked beak, “won’t you tarry with us a moment?”

“Though it would be a pleasure, I must be on my way, my fine birds—”

“Ha!” one of the crows interrupted. “More like ‘low creatures, ’ en’t we, Lady?”

“Certainly not,” she said with a sweet, sweet smile.

“Then please, join us,” said another, and by the way they surrounded her and the hard looks in their eyes, she knew they weren’t asking. She took a good look at their scars and cracked beaks, their eye patches and peg legs, their scorched feathers and bandages, and thought better of trying to out-race them. With a quiver of anxiety she tightened her grip on the handle of the dagger in her pocket and dropped back down into the rubble of broken statues. The crows landed noisily and perched all around her, and the Rathersting prince leapt from his mount and joined the peculiar falcon at the clearing’s edge. They spoke under their breath together. She heard the lad whisper, “Her pocket? How can that be?” and she tensed. They couldn’t know! she thought as they turned and approached her.

“Lady Vesper,” said the lad. “We’re looking for our friend, and good gossip tells us she’s here with you.”

“Here with me?” Vesper asked, spinning and surveying the wastes of Issrin. “As you see, there is no one else here.”

“Aye, ‘tis mysterious strange,” said the crow with the cracked beak. “But who among us hasn’t seen stranger things in the wide world, eh?”

“I must ask you to empty your pockets,” said Talon.

Vesper laughed. “You think I’ve your friend stuffed in my pocket?”

Talon didn’t laugh. The crows drew tighter around Vesper. The falcon just watched. When the lad moved toward her as if he would empty her pocket himself, she hastily withdrew the mirror and held it up. “’Tis only a mirror,” she said, struggling to hide her fury beneath her mask of sweetness.

The falcon scurried forward—it didn’t move like any bird—and she heard it chuckle. Her eyes narrowed. That chuckle . . . “More pretties in the pocket than that,” it said, and she knew. She knew the voice. She stared.

The falcon shimmered before her eyes, and it was like a veil parting to reveal the leering face that haunted her dreams, the one who knew, the only one. The scavenger, Batch Hangnail, from whom she’d stolen the priceless tunic and crown in the alley behind a junk dealer’s shop in Auld Reekie. He, who Gutsuck had sworn was dead, was here, alive and leering! Choking on her rage, she dropped the mirror onto the moss and delved deep in her pocket, coming up with the knife and raising it high. Screaming a stream of profanities that made even the crows’ eyeballs bulge, she plunged it toward the imp.

Batch squealed and cowered.

Vesper’s voice choked off. A strange thing happened. The knife swerved and swung wild, veering through the air even as she clung to it and plunging in a powerful arc into her own back. Her mouth made an O of surprise as she dropped to her knees.

The noise of the crows was deafening. Talon stared, knowing the knife at once. Cursed, Magpie had said it was. Cursed, indeed! Vesper wobbled on her knees, her face draining of color. The knife had bit between her shoulder blades, but it was no mere gown or cloak she wore. Bellatrix’s knife had met Bellatrix’s own firedrake tunic, and the knife had not sunk deep enough to stick. It fell to the moss and a thin spray of blood arced from her shallow wound.

Several droplets fell upon the surface of the lady’s mirror.

Talon and the crows saw the glass suddenly warp. A hand broke through its surface and they cried out in surprise. A whole arm reached forth, then a head emerged. “Magpie!” cried Talon as she wrenched herself free of the enchanted mirror, emerging whole from the impossibly small space to lay curled on her side, gasping. Talon leapt to her. The crows squawked and screamed. Vesper sat stunned, staring at the bloodied knife on the moss.

“What happened?” Talon asked, helping Magpie to sit up. “How did you get here?”

Magpie was pale. She carefully flexed her shoulders and looked around as if waking from a dream. She spotted Skuldraig lying on the ground and reached for it, wiping Vesper’s blood from its tip and sliding it back into her sheath. Then she looked at Talon and around at the crows’ anxious faces. “I went back to the well . . . ,” she began.

“Without us? ‘Pie, why would ye go off without us?”

“It was . . . I . . .” She shook her head. “The Blackbringer had been there,” she said. “The Magruwen is gone.”

They stared at her, speechless. “Ye mean . . . ,” began Pup, but he couldn’t find the words.

“I don’t know,” said Magpie quietly.

Nearby, Batch had folded the falcon skin neatly and tucked it into his satchel. He prowled slowly toward Vesper, a look of malicious delight on his face.

“We meet again, my lady,” he said, whisker stubs twitching.

“Hoy!” boomed a voice from the sky, and they all looked up. A flurry of wings swept over Issrin Ev. Faeries. “What’s happening there . . . Lady Queen!” Gasps and shouts went round in the sky, and the Never Nigh search party—for such it was, still hunting for Poppy—descended upon the scene, two dozen strong at least.

“Lady, my lady!” cried Kex Winterkill, falling upon Vesper. “My petal, my blossom, you’re bleeding! How came you here? Who did this to you?”

With a wild look, Vesper lifted a trembling hand and pointed it in turn at Batch and Magpie. “Seize them!”

The gents who leapt at Vesper’s command had never experienced anything like the squall of crows spitting fury around the lass who lay on the moss. None could get near her. They weren’t warriors, these Never Nigh gents. Most were Manygreens or Winterkills or Shineleafs, faeries more accustomed to ferns and wheelbarrows than weapons.

“Wait!” cried one gent who had hung back from the start. “Stop! Fellows, cousins! Stop this!” The faeries drew back and the crows hunched in a tight knot around Magpie and Talon. The gent went on, “As we’re not barbarians, we’ll hear what this is about first, nay?”

Vesper’s lips pinched white. “Lord Manygreen, that’s noble of you, but I assure you this lass tried to kill me. And as I hear, she was the last soul seen with your daughter before she went missing!”

Magpie rose to her knees and peered out between Mingus and Bertram. The gent who had spoken had copper hair and brown eyes, just like Poppy’s. Magpie rose unsteadily to her feet. “Lord Manygreen,” she said. “It’s true I was last with Poppy. I know what happened to her. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to tell you before.”

The cluster of faeries murmured and Poppy’s father drew nearer, his face wretched with anxiety. “Little Magpie, isn’t it?” he asked. “Please, where is she?”

“You’ve heard . . . ,” began Magpie. “You know what hunts Dreamdark?”

“The Blackbringer,” he whispered.

Magpie nodded slowly and swallowed. “Aye, and it’s true, and he took Poppy right here in Issrin Ev though I fought to save her—”

Lord Manygreen’s face contorted with sadness and the murmur of the faeries rose to a clamor.

“And I’m still trying to save her! But the reason Poppy was even here,” Magpie went on, turning to Vesper with a look of cold rage in her eyes, “is because your fake queen set a devil on me, and Poppy flew all the way to warn me—”

“Lies!” Vesper cut her off, flicking open her wings and rising into the air between Magpie and the faeries. “This guttersnipe gypsy sneak is wild with lies!”

Lord Manygreen gave her a penetrating look and said, “I’ve a potion of Poppy’s that turns liars’ noses blue. Perhaps we should all have a sip.”

Vesper blinked at him and hesitated.

“I’ll gladly have a sip,” said Batch, shaking off the gents who gripped his arms. “And I’ll tell you more about my old friend Vesper Siftdust.”

“Siftdust?” repeated Kex Winterkill.

“Hear me, citizens of Dreamdark—” Vesper hurriedly declaimed, but she was silenced by a sudden trembling in Issrin Ev. Everyone looked urgently around.

The slope quaked and rocks began to loosen and tumble, and those ruined pillars that remained standing began to sway. Magpie watched as the column from which Talon had leapt to save her life leaned and came tumbling toward them, and they all scattered as it crashed to the ground. They took to their wings. Bertram bumped Talon onto his back and Mingus seized Batch by the tail and lifted him into the fork of a tree. They all watched transfixed as the pocked, mossy face of the temple burst from within and rumbled down the steep slope, crushing the long stair and leaving behind a ragged hole in the rock.

And there, in the hole, stood the Magruwen.

A terrified silence hung over the faeries. Few now alive in the world had dreamed a day when the Djinn might again walk the earth, and no faerie present, save Magpie and Talon, knew him for what he was.

Even knowing him, Magpie and Talon were as awestruck as the rest. This was not the Magruwen as they had seen him in the bottom of the well. Here was the Djinn King in splendor in a new golden skin, and he was magnificent. His gleaming mask bore full lips and broad cheekbones engraved with a filigree not unlike the design of the Rathersting tattoos. A rim of ebony lined his almond-shaped vertical eyes, and many rings of gold looped from the lobes of his golden ears. His horns curved like molten scimitars, fire-bright, sparking, and alive, and from his shoulders flared immense bat wings of the thinnest burnished gold.

The last ruins of his old temple fell away at his feet and he looked out at the faeries in the sky, spread his great wings, and rose into their midst.

It was Calypso who first lowered his head in a mid-air bow and cried, “Hail, Lord Magruwen!” and Magpie, Talon, and the crows quickly followed suit.

Suppressed gasps and cries could be heard among the Never Nigh faeries, who only now realized who and what they were seeing. With shaky voices they echoed the cry. “Hail, Lord Magruwen!”

“Faeries,” said the Magruwen in his smoldering crackle of a voice. “The last stones of Issrin Ev have fallen, and tomorrow the first stone of a new temple will be quarried and cut. Hai Issrin—
new
Issrin—Ev shall rise on this site. But that is the work of tomorrow, and tomorrow is a luxury you have too long believed your birthright. You have lived blind and dumb at the edge of darkness and if not for the restless schemes of the dead you would already have subsided into it. You little know how close you’ve come, and how even now you teeter at the brink!” His voice rose to a roar, and all trembled to hear it.

Among the encircling pine trees Rathersting faeries were arriving from across the Deeps, and with them came the hamlet clans of East Mirth and Pickle’s Gander, drawn by the great noise. They faltered onto branches and gaped at the scene before them.

“Like these stones, so much from the Dawn Days has fallen away. And like this temple, the world may be rebuilt or left to crumble. One of your kind had pled for you that you might prove what you can still become. If there
is
to be a new age born on the morrow, it can have but one beginning. . . .” He paused and peered closely at all the faeries, his ebony-edged eyes lingering on Vesper a little longer than the others. “The only beginning is a new champion, one who might this night vanquish the king of devils who hunts your wood!”

Murmurs of “new champion” and “Blackbringer” stirred among the faeries. Stalwart warriors puffed out their tattooed chests and envisioned themselves as champion. Among the Never Nigh folk, eyes turned to Vesper. Her own eyes widened in fear. She heard Kex Winterkill clear his throat and before she could stop him, he cried, “Hail, Lady Vesper, Queen of Dreamdark, descended of Bellatrix, champion!”

The Magruwen turned to Vesper, flames licking out from his eyes, his horns flaring high and bright, and he growled, “Bellatrix has no descendant but the child that dreams made real!”

Emitting a squeak, Vesper spun to flee.

With one swift wing beat the Djinn surged through the air and swung around her to cut off her retreat. She flinched from him and seemed to shrink. “My lord,” she whispered, “I beg you let me go!”

“How came you by Bellatrix’s ornaments?” the Magruwen demanded.

Whimpering, Vesper couldn’t answer, and the only other who could have told had scuttled down from the fork in the tree at the first sight of the Magruwen and made his whistling way into the obscurity of the forest, his new falcon skin safe in his satchel.

The Djinn snatched the golden circlet from its perch on Vesper’s headdress and the scarves fell away too, revealing to all the clumps and masses of writhing worms that grew from her scalp. Her hands flew to her head. As faeries gasped and some of the Rathersting warriors jeered, Magpie felt her cheeks flush with shame for the lady, even in spite of her hatred. She almost wished to unwork the spell, but then she thought of Gutsuck’s gaping gore-streaked mouth and hardened her heart.

“You are banished from Dreamdark, never to return,” the Magruwen pronounced, and Vesper, sniveling, wheeled in the air to flee. “But wait,” said the Djinn, and she found herself frozen in place. “Such a garment as that can never be remade, now that firedrakes are extinct. I’ll have it, faerie.”

Vesper made no move to take it off, but the Magruwen flicked his hand and it was wrenched from her, its lacing loosening just enough to pull it over her head and off. Beneath it she wore a fine plain gown, and bereft of Bellatrix’s treasures, with her wild living hair, she was nearly unrecognizable. She turned and fled Issrin Ev, leaving her Never Nigh subjects with their mouths agape.

“Fools,” the Magruwen hissed at them, clutching Bellatrix’s tunic in one great gold-sheathed hand and her crown in the other. “A crown does not a queen make, as a sword does not a warrior make . . . but for one. One blade there is, cursed to slay any who wield it but the champion. With it Bellatrix turned the tide of the devil wars and since then it has traveled through blood and dust, the ornament of skeletons, releasing all who claim it to the Moonlit Gardens. Skuldraig, it is called. Backbiter. You faeries believed you would know a new champion by the relics of the old one, and you were right. But you looked to the wrong relic.”