Blackbringer

The Magruwen’s vertical eyes looked hard at her. After a moment he said, “Put the hair there, crow, and leave me. All of you.” He turned away. “I’ll have the seal for you tomorrow.”

Magpie waited, holding her breath. At length the Djinn muttered, almost inaudibly, “And one star. One. Only one.”

The faeries had rejoined the crows and were well into Dreamdark when, behind them at the school grounds, the earth began to tremble.

The quaking was rhythmic as the approaching footsteps of some slow giant. In the manor, windowpanes rattled and fell still, rattled and fell still, again and again. White-faced, the humans listen in silence until the headmistress looked out the window to see smoke roiling out from the old well. Its plumes were braiding themselves in patterns as they rose to disperse on the wind. She gasped, and her gasp unlocked the moment. Schoolgirls shrieked. White frocks fluttered.

“To the chapel!” cried the headmistress, grabbing lasses and shoving them in the right direction.

In the dooryard the chickens ate on, merely jumping a little with each tremor. Strag the shindy perked up and looked around. With unchickenlike agility he hopped up onto a fence post and gazed at the column of smoke. He had not yet been hatched the last time the world shook from the force of a Djinn’s hammer on anvil, but he knew the sound for what it was, and his heartbeat quickened. Long had he dreamed that he would live to see the Djinn reclaim the world, and if the old scorch was back at work under the earth, that meant that times, well, they were most certainly going to change.

He threw back his bald head and crowed.

THIRTY-FIVE

Several times during the flight over Dreamdark, Talon switched crows mid-air, perfecting a daredevil leap between Bertram and Mingus whenever one or the other began to flag from his extra weight. As they swooped in toward the castle he spotted his sister on the ramparts and dove off Bertram, flipping once to land in a crouch at Nettle’s feet.

“Talon Rathersting!” she breathed in a deadly voice, grabbing his tunic with both fists and drawing his face close to hers. “Where you been? Flying off like that—”

He answered, “Beyond. I’ve been beyond,” and watched her mouth fall open. Magpie dropped down abruptly beside him and the crows began to land noisily on the ramparts. “You won’t believe it, Nettle,” said Talon. “We saw the Magruwen!”

“Stubborn old scorch,” added Magpie.

“Him stubborn? I thought I was watching a stubborn-match and I’m still not sure who won!” Talon teased her. “Oh, and by the way,” he added, reaching out to smack her neck, “slap the slowpoke.”

“Skive!” She twisted away, smiling, and said, “I thought you didn’t play eejit sports, eh?”

Nettle, looking back and forth between them with her mouth still hanging open, managed to say, “What?”

“Oh!” Magpie reached into her pocket and produced her last bit of chocolate.

Talon gave it to Nettle. “It’s manny food, Nettle. Try it!”

“Manny food?” she repeated, but before they could attempt an answer Pup and Pigeon barged forward, tugging at Batch’s tail while the imp still floated above their heads like a balloon.

He had a look of glee on his face and was crying, “Wheeee!!!” and flapping his little arms until Magpie unspelled him and he plopped back down onto the stones with a howl.

“Back to the dungeon with him,” Magpie said. “But he’s got to have a guard full time.”

“Neh, not the dungeon!” protested Batch. “Mudsucking munchmeats!”

“All right, come on,” Talon said, leading the way down a flight of stone steps. He glanced back at Nettle and said sternly, “Eat that!”

Nettle watched the whole procession go by, faeries, crows, and one cursing imp, her eyes narrow with suspicion. But when they were gone she unwrapped the little paper and hesitantly put the sweet in her mouth, and she felt considerably more forgiving after that.

After a quick encounter with some hot water and soap and a misguided attempt to drag a comb through her hair, Magpie straightened her tunic and headed down the labyrinthine corridors and stairs toward the Great Hall. There she found Talon in front of the massive fireplace with Orchidspike, Nettle, and two older faeries whom he introduced as his mother, Lady Bright, and his uncle Orion, the chief’s brother. Like most of the ladies Magpie had seen about the castle, Talon’s mother—Rathersting by marriage, not birth—had no tattoos. Orion was gruff and grizzled, with a broad scar marring half the black designs on his face.

Magpie curtsied to the lady. Orion nodded to her and she nodded back, but her attention was claimed by the food on the long tables, platters and platters of food. As she greeted the others, her eyes kept returning to it. Chestnut pudding, corn bread, ripe red tomatoes, custard in fig syrup, soft blue beetlemilk cheeses wrapped in leaves, steaming stew, crispy fried squash blossoms . . . Her stomach rumbled loudly and a mere instant later Talon’s stomach cut in even louder.

“Eat, then.” Lady Bright laughed as a biddy set down an enormous tray of hot loaves.

They grabbed plates and heaped them high, then hauled them to a table where they began to eat as if it were a competition. If it was a competition, Magpie lost, for she slumped back in her chair and groaned while there was yet food on her plate. She said, “If I had food like that waiting for me at the end of each day, I’d be fat as a tick on a manny’s fanny!”

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.”