“The trees are calling him the Blackbringer—”
“Blackbringer! Call him what you choose, he will devour you just the same. Go now, faerie.”
Magpie hung her head unhappily. She wanted to ask him more questions, but he was withdrawing deeper into his cave, and she sensed she was dismissed. “Thank you, Lord,” she said, bowing deeply before turning to Calypso to go.
She had reached the door when the Djinn said, “Wait.”
Magpie turned back, hopeful.
“You may choose a treasure,” he said.
“Oh.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment. She looked at the glittering trove scattered across the cavern floor. Maybe there was some magical thing among the jewels that could help her, but if she had days she wouldn’t know how to choose! “Thank you, Lord,” she said, taking a halting step toward the treasure. A spiral of light caught her eye then, and as she turned, it seemed to sink and disappear into the sparkling piles. Magpie felt the air pulse and urge her forward. She went where it took her and knelt over a spilled coffer of gold pieces. She dredged through them and came up with a familiar thing grasped in her hands.
She smiled, well pleased. “My Lord?” she asked, holding it up for his approval. It was the acorn he had spit from the cake. “You said there was no thousand years in this nut. There surely won’t be unless I get it in some good ground.”
Those vertical eyes drew together like a serpent’s as the Magruwen blinked. He nodded.
Magpie and Calypso backed out the door and bowed again, calling “Thank you!” as they left.
Long did the Magruwen stare after her, watching with his inner eyes as radiant traceries unfurled in her wake, rampant as vines. The treasure had been a final test. It had always been a test, even in the long-gone days of visitors. Those through whom the Tapestry sang true chose well, much as long ago the healer Grayling had chosen her knitting needles from among the gems and flashier things. Those corrupt of spirit called down false notes from the Tapestry, and they chose ill. The sword Duplicity, for instance, doubled everything it cut, even enemies, so that where one devil stood, once slashed with Duplicity, there stood two. And sorrow to the swordsman who multiplied his foes even as he smote them!
The lass, Magpie, had chosen true. He hadn’t doubted she would. But he hadn’t guessed...She had made his test look like a sprout’s game! What she had shown him, drawing that common acorn out of a spill of gold, would vibrate through the Tapestry for ages to come—if the Tapestry survived that long. Even as he watched, her traceries wove and pleached their way through the ancient threads like something living, sending out many roots, curving and coiling inextricably through the warp and weft.
He saw it plain as a picture.
There wasnota thousand years in the acorn, because in three hundred the massive oak that was to spring from it would be struck by lightning and charged through with mystery. The Djinn squeezed shut his inner eyes, thinking sure he read wrong the new magic the faerie was even now weaving, unaware of it though she might be.
But there it was. Flutes carved of the oak’s heartwood would sing directly to the Tapestry. They would sing like many pure, interlacing voices, working upon the threads in a way no faerie could when visioning glyphs. They would draw down from it such complex magicks as the Magruwen himself had never gifted to faeries, that would humble the power of those of the Dawn Days as greatly as a single sprout’s voice is humbled beside a choir of seraphim.
Such power for faeries...The Djinn had an impulse to stop her from planting the nut, to unweave the threads before it was too late, but something stilled his fingers, some hint of familiarity, like a forgotten dream.
In all the dreams of his long slumber, coming one upon the next like waves upon a shore, had he dreamed a new golden age for faeries? Had he dreamed to life this one who would bring it? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t believe it. How could he have forgiven in his dreams the faerie betrayal he had never ceased mourning in his heart?
Watching the mesmerizing dance of new threads in the Tapestry, the Magruwen was sure of only one thing: He wasn’t tired. For the first time in a long, long time, he wasn’t tired at all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“If she hollers, let her sing...” whispered Batch, eyes agleam as he peered out of the shadows. “The lovely song of a faerie scream...” A thick rope of yellowish drool dangled from his lip. Slowly he sucked it back up into his mouth and savored it, his eyes never shifting from the wings that fanned gently before him in the late golden light. He felt like an impkin at a sweet shop window with a pocketful of gold.
He’d never seen finer wings.
He wanted to taste them. He wanted to wear them.
He crept closer. The faerie was a lass, kneeling in her garden murmuring to the flowers. He didn’t care a twitch for her. In the grip of his obsession, she was truly no more to him than a bit of stuff attached to his new wings, something to be rid of.
He launched himself at her and saw her start to turn just before his weight slammed her to the ground, facedown. She screamed, and Batch did nothing to stop her. There was no one near to hear. He’d made sure of it. He wound his tail round her ankles, braced his long pink feet against her back, and reached for the solid joints where her wings met her shoulders.
She screamed and screamed. Many voices joined hers, earthy voices and wispy, rough as bark and soft as moss, and their screams radiated into Dreamdark as more flowers joined in, and more trees. But it little mattered. Batch didn’t hear it, and nordid anything else not rooted to the earth. The only faerie alive in the world who could hear those voices was pinned facedown with an imp on her back. His fingers curled lovingly around her wing joints, and he began to pull.
“I think he liked ye, ’Pie,” Calypso told Magpie as they flew above the forest.
Magpie snorted. “Sure, he just adored me. Remember that part when he said I should be a skeleton? That was sweet.”
“Ach, well, count yer blessings. Ye’re alive.”
“Aye, for true.” She spoke of it lightly, but Magpie was shaken and shivered by her ordeal in the Djinn’s cave. She wished she had time to write a letter to her parents, but time was something she didn’t have.
“What next?” asked Calypso.
