Blackbringer

“And there you are, at last,” said a voice behind her. She turned.

The faerie who stood there wasn’t dressed in firedrake scales but a simple white tunic, and she wore no knives at her thighs and no gold circlet. Her dark hair hung in a single plait, and though there was a dreaminess around her edges, it was clear that however long she’d been here, life was yet bright in her.

“Lady,” said Magpie, tears coming to her eyes. “I hoped it would be you.”

And Bellatrix took Magpie’s hands and helped her to her feet.

Magpie followed Bellatrix down a narrow stair in the cliff to a cottage carved right into the rock face. From its billowing garden on a ledge of marbled rock she could see the whole canyon spread before her, and she was torn between her fascination with Bellatrix and with the tumult of dragons in the air. Her eyes darted back and forth between them.

Snoshti bustled out the cottage door with a tray and laid tea things on a bench. She poured three cups and stirred sugar into them, and Magpie thought one was for her, but the imp set them on the ground and whistled for her beetles, who scurried over and began to lap at them like tiny dogs.

“Do you know when the first dragon came here?” Bellatrix asked her. “It was only five thousand years ago.” She stood looking up at them, her hands clasped behind her, then turned back to Magpie. “I’d been here already twenty thousand years and never thought to see a dragon again. The Magruwen had dreamed them immortal. They were never to come here, but there she was.

“She was screaming on the far side of the river and wouldn’t cross. It was no wonder she was crazed. She’d been murdered by a human horde and arrived here with her throat full of her own blood. All the faeries, even the seraphim, gathered on the bank, keening. We didn’t know what to do. There was no precedent.

“When finally I coaxed her across the bridge it gave way under her weight and she was plunged into the water. In panic she spat fire and set the river boiling. It was terrible. . . .” Bellatrix’s voice was ragged with sadness. “Eventually she accepted what could not be changed. She was the only one of her race in all this world.”

“How lonely she must have been,” said Magpie.

Bellatrix answered bitterly, “She wasn’t alone long. Once the humans had a taste for it the others came fast. Within a hundred years there was only one dragon left in the living world.”

“Fade?” Magpie guessed.

“Aye. Fade . . . He lasted much longer than the others, another thousand years! The Magruwen kept him at his side in Dreamdark, and he was safe. There was little in the forest to subdue a dragon’s appetites, but as long as he lay dormant he had scarce need to feed. Imagine. He was the sire of his race and the last. He must have ached to join his kindred here, to fly again—for in Dreamdark he could do naught but sleep—but he wouldn’t leave his master alone . . . as others had done before him. . . .” Her face clouded with a look of shame and she went on, “And so for the Magruwen’s sake he hid there like some hunted thing and not the king of creatures he was. And he would have gone on with that living death. . . .”

She gave Magpie a keen, searching look and said, “They share dreams, the dragon and the Djinn King. They had always done and do still. Did you know that?”

Magpie shook her head.

“Nay, well, so it is. And the Magruwen saw in Fade’s dreams that the dragon was withering . . . dying the death that grows from within and kills the spirit as well as the skin, and he knew . . . he knew that was worse even than murder. So he let Fade go. He sent him to fly and to feed, knowing he would never come back . . . and he never did. He was murdered like all the others.”

Magpie thought of the stories she’d heard of the dragon massacres and she had to close her eyes. Humans had a genius for devising instruments of death. Their lives were so short and they seemed to value them so little, sending waves of men to clash in battlefields, then weighing victory by the piled corpses. And if they held their own lives so worthless, the lives of everything else were as fruit to pluck from trees.

It had been possible for faeries and imps to hide their existence, but for dragons there was no hiding, and humans had gloried in the slaying, written ballads, epics, as if they were doing great deeds! And sure the eejits believed they were. They thought dragons were predators! The dragons were the first life the Magruwen dreamed—how could they be predators, when they had existed before prey? In fact, they fed on something quite different than meat, though mannies would never guess what golden goose they’d slaughtered.

Dragons ate ore. They smelted it in their fiery bellies and excreted luminous molten metals, gold, silver, copper, that would harden into veins in the earth. This they had done since the beginning, but it was over now. There would be no new gold made, ever again. Countless humans would lose their lives clawing what was left from the ground, and they would never understand what they had done.

Magpie knew it wasn’t the last thing they would erase from the earth without thought or understanding. A terrible bitterness swelled in her. “They’re worse than devils!” she said passionately. “If there were bottles enough in the world to capture them all, I would do it!”

Bellatrix smiled sadly. “In truth I’m glad I didn’t live to see them. But Magpie, there’s a strange twist to this story, and it’s why I’m telling it to you. You see, the day the living world lost Fade, something was born, too. A hope.”

“Hope for what?” Magpie asked.

“For a new age. It came down to dreams. That’s how everything begins. If you don’t know it yet, you will. Magpie, if humans hadn’t massacred the dragons, there would have been no way to reach the Magruwen, and we would all have suffered the unweaving until the very end.”

“The unweaving?” Magpie asked, puzzled. “Lady, what is it? It seems I’m hearing that at every turn.”

Bellatrix gave her a quizzical smile and said softly, “I am sorry. How strange it must be for you, not knowing. Come, child, sit with me. You look so tired. Drink some tea.”

Magpie went and sat beside her on the bench. Her eyes were huge and solemn in the moonlight, looking up at her hero. Bellatrix handed her a cup and reached out to trail her fingertips tentatively over Magpie’s hair.

“I’m some mess, I fear, Lady,” said Magpie, blushing.

“Life can do that to you,” said Bellatrix. She asked hesitantly, “May I brush your hair?”