Blackbringer Read online

  He came to perch in a pine above Pickle’s Gander, the smallest of the three hamlets on the Sills. Inside his skin he was winded and grinning. No other faerie had to work this hard to fly, sure. They didn’t have to learn to knit and they didn’t have to operate false wings with their arms. But no faerie had ever done what he’d done. Not ever. Skin-making was the work of elementals and none other. Until now.

  It was washing day in Pickle’s Gander. In the creek below his perch the sprouts were splashing their feet while the biddies taught the lasses glyphs for cleaning linens. He knew everyone. These were the Rathersting’s nearest neighbors and several of his cousins were courting here. He spotted Shrike’s lass, Lyric, laughing and tossing her long yellow hair, and his grin subsided. She hadn’t yet heard the news. He remembered the sight of the fourteen knives at Issrin Ev and his joy turned cold. Just because East Mirth and Pickle’s Gander were carrying on as usual didn’t mean the trouble wasn’t real. He would just go check on West Mirth before he flew the skin back to Orchidspike for safekeeping, then he’d return to the castle.

  He was prince of the Rathersting. On a day such as this, with the chief missing and a dark presence abroad in the realm, his place was with his folk. He was ashamed of himself, of his grin, his joy, his pride. He lifted his arms, shaking open the wings of his skin, and leapt into a long tilting glide that would carry him all the way over the Deeps to the Western Sill and West Mirth.

  On the way, the joy returned unbidden. There was nothing he could do about it.

  While the other crows foraged for cake ingredients, Magpie and Calypso followed the raven Algorab across the vastness of Dreamdark toward the rocky rises in the west. The Dream-dark Deeps were sunk between two ridges, the Crag and the Spine. Where these faced each other across the sunken forest, long horizontal ledges of igneous rock extruded on both sides, looking quite like windowsills. Calypso pointed down with his wing as they passed above the devastation of Issrin Ev, and soon they were circling the cleft boulder into which West Mirth was tucked.

  Long ago the boulder had split clean and fallen open, and inside it the hamlet was founded, a row of sweet cottages on either side of a white lane. Their rear gardens backed up to the rock face, billowing with fragrant herbs, and Magpie came in to land on the brink of the cliff above. Looking down, she thought this was the kind of place that belonged in a painting, a place that should never know of devils.

  It was far too quiet.

  Magpie walked off the cliff as if it were a mere step and fell fast, flicking open her wings just in time to move lightly forward in an animal prowl. The birds dropped down beside her. Cautiously she went in the back door of a cottage. All was neat as a pin within and there was nothing amiss but the beds. She prowled around them, looking, smelling. Of scent there was nothing that didn’t belong. Honeysuckle, rosemary, and soap. But the puzzling way the covers were arranged, as if tucked around sleepers who’d simply melted into the night; it shivered her. It brought to mind the fishermen’s shoes left so suddenly behind in the world when the mannies themselves were whisked, somehow, out of it.

  She visioned the glyphs for memory touch, gritted her teeth, and laid her hand upon a pillow, but there was no jolt of darkness. She saw only fragments of dreams. Whatever had happened here, the faeries had slept through it, up until the very last.

  All the cottages were the same.

  It was only the rocking chair in the sentry tower that gave her what she still hoped not to find. A blast of darkness, hunger, and hatred. Going outside again, Magpie nodded once to Calypso, her eyes hard.

  “Jacksmoke!” he croaked.

  Passing the stables, Magpie heard sounds within, beetles lowing to be milked and the bleat of hungry dray pigeons. The prowl went out of her step and her faerie self returned to her with the recognition of this simple task to be performed, the care and feeding of livestock. Saddened and shaken, she walked into the stable.

  She froze in the doorway.

  There was never any reason to find a bird of prey in a pigeon stable. Especially when traceries of light shimmied and wove round it, tracing its falcon shape and glinting off its feathers before sliding into the dim outskirts of Magpie’s vision; when it wasn’t a falcon at all, but a disguise. Magpie saw it all in an instant, and that instant slammed into the next instant, in which she found herself hurtling at the imposter with her dagger drawn, knocking the bird to the ground and kneeling over it, the edge of the blade against its false throat.

  “Shed it,” she growled.

  It didn’t speak or move, and she said, “The skin. Shed it now!”

  The bird lay silent as a dead thing, without even a rise and fall of ribs to give a hint of the creature hidden inside. But there was a sound. Magpie shifted uneasily in her crouch and glanced around the stable. The pigeons were bleating louder in their agitation, but that wasn’t it. She could hear a sound like the pure ring of crystal against crystal, a fluid and melodious chime that seemed to surround her. It was only when she shifted the knife slightly away from the falcon’s throat that the sound began to ebb and she felt the figure shift beneath her.

  “Wait,” it said in no birdlike voice.

  She thrust the knife edge again to its throat, and again the falcon fell still and the strange chime grew louder. Magpie looked at the blade and saw runes agleam on it. She realized with a jolt that it was the knife that was singing. Her eyes widened and her gaze shifted rapidly back and forth between the blade and the falcon. A magic blade! There was many a story in legend of strange weapons that mastered their masters, having wickedness and will forged into them by their makers.

  In a fluid movement she drew it off the falcon’s throat and backed quickly away, staying crouched and ready to spring. The blade fell silent, and the falcon moved.

  A ripple went through it, a rift appeared in its belly, and it sort of split apart and fell away, its feathers transforming as it did into a strange membranous sheath that looked like little more than a stocking. Inside it was a faerie like no faerie Magpie had ever seen. She’d seen tattoos on witch doctors, savage jungle faeries, but not like these. The black patterns on his face had grace and reminded her of only one thing: the mysterious whirls of light that had of late been spinning across her vision. She stared at him. Looking closer, she saw the features of a lad and eyes like crystals with the sky dancing through them.

  “What did you do to me?” Talon gasped, falling on his side and clutching his throat.

  Magpie looked at the blade in her hand, confused. It was silent. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice wary.

  “Okay?” Still clutching his throat he rose to his knees and said, “Now that I’m not paralyzed and suffocating, aye, I’m right as rain.”

  “Paralyzed and suffocating? How—?”

  With narrowed eyes he looked at her and at the knife. “Djinncraft,” he said. “That explains things. Who’d you steal it from?”

  “Steal it? I found it in a skeleton’s spine!”

  “Ah, so you stole it from the dead. How fine.”

  “Call me a thief?” Magpie blazed. “Sure you didn’t find that skin in your granny’s attic!”

  “Right, I didn’t. I—” He bit off his words and glared at her, then asked with a tinge of bitterness, “How did you know?”

  “I know a skin when I see one,” Magpie said. “My grandfather wears one.”

  “Faeries don’t wear skins!”

  “Neh, they don’t indeed,” she replied, looking pointedly at the shimmering sheath gathered around his shoulders. “I never said he was a faerie.”

  Talon looked at her hard. A lass, just a lass she was, wind-mussed and wearing feathers and gripping a blade such as that. For a moment there he’d thought he might suffocate and wake to find himself in the Moonlit Gardens! When she’d held that knife to his throat he’d been unable to move a muscle, even to breathe. “Who are you?” he asked her in an acid voice.

  “All right in there, ’Pie?” Calypso called from outside, an
d both faeries started and looked to the door.

  “Pie?” Talon repeated.

  “Never you mind!” she said to him, then called out to the birds, “In here, I found someone!”

  Calypso and Algorab appeared like shadows in the doorway, and seeing them, Talon gave the lass another hard look. He’d seen crows arrive yestermorn, shortly before the vultures.

  “You from this place?” Magpie asked the lad, seeing feed sacks leaning against the pen near him, as if he’d been feeding the pigeons.

  “Well, I know you’re not, if you have to ask about me,” he said. One thing about being Rathersting—folk tended to know you on sight.

  “That’s a Rathersting, lass,” said the raven.

  Magpie looked steadily at the lad. “I know the name,” she said. “The guardians. Fine, ancient clan. So what are you doing flying around in a stolen skin?”

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said fiercely. “I made it!”

  “Aye, sure.”

  Talon gritted his teeth. Reminding himself he was a prince of the realm and not one to be held hostage by a strange lass, he rose to his feet and held himself tall, a full head taller than her. They faced each another, tense. “Never mind the skin,” he said. “I want to know what you’re doing in West Mirth. You’re a stranger here; don’t try to deny it. So what’s a strange lass doing waving a djinncraft blade round an abandoned hamlet?”

  “It wasn’t abandoned.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you see the beds? They never got out of their beds.”

  Talon felt sick. He’d known something wasn’t right in the cottages, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on just what. The lass was right. The blankets hadn’t been thrown back. There’d been no struggle and no sign they’d risen from their beds. It was as if they’d vanished in them. “What do you know?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” she cried, frustrated. “Still nothing! Except he’s come here to Dreamdark, of all places! What mad devil would come to Dreamdark?”

  “Devil?” Talon repeated, incredulous.

  Magpie saw the disbelief in his eyes. “Aye, devil,” she said. “But tell me, lad, what do you know?”

  They faced off like a couple of cats that might start hissing and spitting at any moment. “Lad, lass,” Calypso said soothingly, coming forward. “It’s plain ye’ve two hard skulls between ye, but there’s no need for this. Sure we’re together against it, neh?”

  “Against what, exactly?” Talon asked. “And don’t say devil. Every eejit knows they’re long dead and gone from this world!”

  “Long gone? Aye. Long dead? Neh. They were never killed. They couldn’t be,” Magpie told him.

  “Why? Sure Bellatrix could—”

  “Ach, sure she could. That’s not the thing. The thing is, the blighters got sparks, same as faeries. They die, they pass to the Moonlit Gardens, just like us.”

  Talon looked at her, and some of the anger went out of his face, to be replaced with a dawning understanding. “Oh,” he said softly. “Couldn’t have the Gardens swarming with devils. So then . . . what became of ’em?”

  “The champions caught ’em in bottles and threw ’em in the sea, sealed with magic nothing was ever supposed to undo. Everything was fine for thousands of years, while faeries made an art of forgetting.”

  “And now one’s got out?”

  Magpie grimaced. “One or two.”

  “And it’s come here?” Talon asked. “That’s what it is? What’s it done to . . . ?” His voice trailed off and he and Magpie listened to the silence of West Mirth. “What’s it done to them?” he almost whispered.

  “I don’t know,” she said, softening, and finally sheathing her knife. “I’ve never seen a devil like this.”

  “And how many have you seen?”

  “A fair few,” she answered gruffly, turning and walking out between Calypso and Algorab.

  Talon followed. “Who are you? You’ve got to tell me what you know. It’s taken my kinsmen—”

  Magpie turned to him. “What? When?”

  “Late yestermorn. At Issrin Ev. They tracked some great vultures there, and only their knives were left to find. You don’t think they’re . . .”

  “I don’t know. If it’s any comfort, I’ve never seen a devil eat but that it left a dread mess behind. Blood everywhere, and sometimes they spit out the skeletons like owl pellets.”

  “That’s a great comfort, lass, sure,” he said with sarcasm. “Thanks for your heartfelt words.”

  “Ach,” Magpie muttered, realizing how crude she must sound. Her cheeks colored a little. It was long since she’d been much in the company of faeries. Snoshti was right—she was a barbarian. “Come on, birds, we got to go.”

  “Lass, wait!” Talon said sharply.

  She turned to him, her face guarded, but when her blue eyes locked on his, she saw only anxiety and fatigue. He held his hands out to her in the manner of greeting, and after a brief hesitation she reached out and pressed her palms against his. Both faeries’ eyes widened in surprise as they felt a sudden surge in the pulse of invisible force around them at the very moment of their touch. It tingled in their fingertips so that after they pulled their hands apart both clutched their fingers surreptitiously into fists. Neither had any reason to think the other felt it, and they drew warily apart.

  “You’ll warn the folks hereabouts?” Magpie asked Talon.

  “Aye. I’ll bring them to the castle.”

  “Good. That’s good. And . . . be careful, neh?” She rose to her wings but hesitated a moment in the air with a thought on the tip of her mind. She said, “Lad, that skin . . .” She gestured to the gossamer fabric that still clothed him from neck to toes. “You really made it, neh?”

  “I finished it this dawn.”

  “Well, it’s . . .” She groped for a word and settled on “Uncommon,” then turned and flickered away into the sky, flanked by birds and wickedly quick.

  Uncommon. It wasn’t much of a compliment, not by itself. It was the way her mouth curled up at its corners into a kind of marveling smile when she said it that made it one. Talon found he was blushing. She was gone by the time he realized he still had no idea who she was. “Pie?” he murmured. “What kind of a name is that?”

  FIFTEEN

  In the sky above the Manygreen lands Magpie unfastened the pins Snoshti had put in her hair and let it tumble down around her shoulders. Like an arrow off a bowstring she shot through the air with mad speed, zinging back and forth once over Poppy’s workshop with her hair streaming behind her. Then she froze, folded her wings, and dropped like a stone out of the sky for one of her frightful sharp landings. A flick of her wings and she caught herself at the moment the earth loomed to meet her. She ran inside the workshop.

  Poppy looked up, startled. “Magpie!” she exclaimed. “Where—?”

  “That the batter?” Magpie asked, cutting her off.

  “Aye.”

  With three long sweeps of her fingers Magpie combed the wind from her hair. It cascaded invisibly into the bowl of cake batter and settled there. “Calypso’s waiting outside with his shadow,” she said.

  Poppy followed and watched as Magpie held the bowl in outstretched arms in the brightest spot in the garden. Overhead, Calypso flew in spirals, slow as he could, and Magpie chased his shadow round and round. Several times she nearly captured it but it always seemed to slip over the lip of the bowl to freedom. At last, though, she trapped it, and after just the briefest shadowless moment another sprouted in its place, growing larger as Calypso dropped in to land. Behind him came Swig, carrying a small bird’s nest in one foot, with an acorn and a blackened twig nestled inside it, and holding a porcupine quill in his beak.

  Once Magpie took the quill, he said, “Ye’ve Maniac to thank for that, Mags. The porcupine weren’t keen to part with it.”

  “Maniac?” Magpie groaned. “It had to be him? He’s already mad at me! Didn’t hurt him bad, did it?”

  “Neh, but he d
oes make a fuss.”

  “For true.”

  “Magpie . . . ,” Poppy cut in hesitantly. “Did you find out anything . . . about the devil?”

  Magpie dropped the porcupine quill in her shock and turned to her friend. “How do you know about that?”

  “All the forest knows of it,” she said. “Well, except the faeries. All they’re worrying about is why Queen Vesper keeps to her chamber!”

  “But what have you heard?”

  “The trees say the age of unweaving has begun.”

  “Unweaving? Unweaving what?” asked Magpie.

  “I don’t know. They’re saying it’s the faeries’ doom to forget what ought never be forgotten and that this devil hunted in Dreamdark once before.”

  “What? I never heard of a snag who . . . but that’s the point, neh? That’s our doom.” She said it bitterly, then asked, “Did they at least have a name for it, Poppy?”

  Poppy looked flustered as she nodded. “Aye, they called it something, but you might not believe it. . . .”

  “Poppy, what?”

  She let out a nervous laugh. “It sounds so silly. It’s the bogeyman, Magpie. They’re saying it’s the Blackbringer!”

  Magpie let out a short laugh too. The Blackbringer? The name inspired no shiver. It had been dragged through too many nurseries, worn thin by the empty threats of countless faerie mothers and grannies. The Blackbringer was the thing that would get you if you were naughty, that was waiting to grab up sprouts who stayed out past dark. The Blackbringer was the dark come to life. . . .

  Magpie’s laugh fell hollow. Perhaps it didn’t sound quite so silly. “Well, whatever it is, let’s make this cake. I’ve got to get to the Magruwen.”

  With the cake tucked into the starling’s nest as the recipe directed, Magpie carried it across the whole of Dreamdark in her arms. Calypso flew at her side, wings flashing in the sun. Mile after mile they surged over the wide, wild forest, until at last they were cresting the hedge and sailing over the grounds of the human school that Father Linden had described to Poppy.