Blackbringer

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.

TWENTY-EIGHT

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.

Bellatrix

“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 . . . ?