He didn’t let go.
He thought of the surge of strength that had flowed through him as he coursed over Dreamdark on wings he had conjured with his own hands, and a bellow rose from his throat as he twisted his legs around in front of him to find some lip in the ragged ground to brace himself against, even for a moment. His heels met rock and, gritting his teeth, he took his throbbing, bleeding hand and pulled away from the darkness with all his might.
A scream choked from his throat. The bones of his hand constricted, and blood pulsed from his wound. He strained against the darkness, but it was no use. The pull was too strong. The Blackbringer contorted and spun, and Talon felt himself lifted into the air, tumbling toward it. He gritted his teeth and held on, thinking of the courage it had taken Magpie to dive into that nothingness. He wrenched open his eyes and stared into it. This was his last chance to save himself.
He tightened his grip.
He was drawn through the air in a kind of effortless flight, and the darkness was rushing to meet him. Then, suddenly, it cleaved open, and Magpie tumbled out, falling to her knees.
“Magpie!” Talon screamed as the inexorable pull released him. He fell back to the ground as, with infinite weariness, Magpie trembled and rose slowly to her feet.
Desperate with exhaustion, she turned to the Blackbringer, raised Skuldraig with a heavy arm, and brought it down against his skin of night. As the blade met the black, a pure chime rang out through the Spiderdowns, and the beast froze, his tongue dropping like a dead snake to the ground. And as Magpie held her enemy thus immobile, she saw lights begin to sparkle forth from within him like fireflies dancing out of a dark wood. The beauty of it gave her a small swell of strength, and she straightened her weary arm and held Skuldraig proud.
As the lights emerged, shadows seemed to peel away from the Blackbringer in long strips. The sparks leapt to fill them, each to each, and figures bloomed within. In every shadow burst a blinding dazzle. Pale forms moved and turned, stretched wings and arms, opened long-closed eyes, awakened. On unsteady legs they staggered forth, blinking like sleepwalkers who had awakened in a foreign land. There came faeries and imps, many, many, but Magpie kept her eyes fixed on the Blackbringer, afraid if she were to turn and watch the miracle she was working, her concentration might give way to wonder. It was a sight for others to marvel at, and they did. The Rathersting stared, panting, bleeding, broken, and awestruck, as souls emerged to reclaim their beautiful skins from shadow.
Of course, not all the skins were beautiful. The Blackbringer had feasted on his share of devils, and they, too, stepped out of the darkness. Ignoble things, wheezing, slope-shouldered, and foul, on tentacles, on cloven hooves, with suckers for mouths, with double and triple mouths. One dismal creature possessed a mouth like a wound, and as it dragged its limp wings throughthe throng, its mistress’s last command slowly rose to the surface of its muddled mind.
And there were humans! The first ever to stand so deep in Dreamdark, four hulking, barefoot mannies swayed among the rest of the creatures. There were so many souls. Hundreds! They were like a river of light pouring from the void. Magpie glimpsed a flash of copper hair and turned her head just long enough to see that it was Poppy. Relieved, she refocused her energy on her glyphs but kept watch out for one shape, one she knew well for she had seen it silhouetted in flight a thousand times at least: Maniac. But he was nowhere to be seen, so even as the flow of souls slowed and gradually stopped, she kept her trembling arm outstretched, and waited.
“Magpie.”
She heard Talon’s voice through the hypnotic ringing of the blade. She wanted to look at him, to focus on his clear, steady eyes as the world lurched around her, but she didn’t dare turn. She was certain Maniac had still not come forth, and it was all she could do to keep the glyphs burning in her mind, second after endless second. She was utterly depleted, hanging on to consciousness by the thinnest of threads, and when one last shadow finally peeled away from the blackness—a crow!—she let her arm fall with a bone-weary shudder, dropping Skuldraig and the veiled pomegranate seed both upon the ground.
Maniac wobbled and careened to earth as a trio of warriors rushed to steady his landing, and Magpie gasped, “Crows, now!” The other birds, circling in the sky, beat down to her through the branches, bearing the Blackbringer’s bottle with them.
She didn’t know how she could possibly find within herself the strength to cast one last spell. She would have to let the champion’s glyph go and the Djinn’s protection with it. No sooner did she realize this than the glyph was snuffed from her mind, leaving a ghost image where it had so long burned. As that too faded, she breathed deeply, dug into her mind for her last reserve of power, and visioned a new glyph in its place.
At once a vortex whirled to life in the neck of the silver bottle, and the Blackbringer, weakened and shrunken, was powerless against it. The whipping air grasped the edge of his skin, and the king of devils lost his hold on the world. With a roaring of wind, he was seized and sucked back toward his ancient prison. As if the skin of night were truly a fabric, its edges flapped and swirled and he whirled slowly out of sight, his terrible rasp of a voice filling everyone’s minds with his fury.
Magpie collapsed to her knees and frantically fumbled the seal out of her pocket. She held it out to the vortex, and it began to spiral through the air toward the bottle’s narrow throat.
So transfixed were the crows and warriors by this remarkable sight that none noticed the devil with the bloody fang-filled maw fix its black slit eyes on Magpie. None saw it slowly gather itself into a predator’s crouch and flare its membranous wings. Gutsuck pounced like a wolf, and its hideous mouth closed over Magpie’s shoulder with a gnashing sound.
She cried out and fell forward, her concentration broken.
Talon rushed to wrench the devil away, but in that instant, with impossible speed, the Blackbringer’s tongue lashed out from within the silver bottle, whipped around Magpie andGutsuck together, and sucked them both back into his prison. They disappeared just before the Djinn’s seal settled firmly, irreversibly, in place. The vortex abruptly ceased, and all fell still.
Everyone stared. For long seconds they couldn’t even gasp. Then Calypso shrieked and flew at the seal, desperately trying to gouge it off. Stunned, Talon reeled in the tether with his good hand. It had been severed clean by the Magruwen’s sealing spell. His mind screamed and resisted believing what he’d just seen.
And then, in the dense mass of dazed faeries and creatures who’d stumbled back into the world after so long adrift, the spiders, released from Magpie’s spell, reawakened.
CHAPTER FORTY
If any soul that night was pulled down into the dark cracks in the earth and devoured by spiders, none ever knew of it after. When the foul creatures revived, the Rathersting shook off their shock and sprang to life, relishing enemies their blades could bite, thrilling in rescue on so grand a scale. If anyone could have counted in the chaos, they would have discovered some thousand souls newly returned to the world. But it was a time for action, not counting, and by the time the Rathersting had coaxed and dragged every imp and faerie free of the Spiderdowns, most of the snags had slipped away into the forest, and the mannies were wandering lost and afraid.
Those who’d been bitten by spiders were Orchidspike’s first patients when she conducted a hasty triage later in the great hall at Rathersting Castle. She administered a potion to subdue the poison that was burning in their veins and turned to see to other injuries.
There were many. Dozens of torn wings—those could wait—and wounds of such variety the healer knew they could not have happened this night. Bite wounds with jagged snag teeth embedded in them, clean slashes from sharp weapons, contusions, lashes, burns. Kneeling over a Sayash faerie with long spines from a devil’s barbed tail protruding from her leg, Orchidspike realized these wounds were casualties of the devilwars and were tens of thousands of years old, as were the faeries who suffered them.
As flummoxed as she’d ever been in her life, she had to press her hand to her heart to steady herself. However much she’d hoped Magpie would succeed in her bold plan, it had never occurred to her there might be souls from the Dawn Days still alive within the Blackbringer! Orchidspike could have used Talon at such a time, but she wouldn’t call for him. Not now. She’d had but a moment with him when she bandaged his hand, before the needs of the injured claimed her attention, and now her thoughts kept returning to his shocked face, and to Magpie.
“Lady, might I be of help to you?” asked a red-haired lass the healer didn’t know. About to ask her if she could manage a spell to boil water, Orchidspike paused and took a closer look at her. Her beautiful face wore the same pale, haunted look as all these others, as if she’d just awakened from a nightmare. She too had come out of the darkness.
“Lass, what’s your name?” Orchidspike asked her.
“Poppy Manygreen, Lady.”
Orchidspike, old eyes glistening, said a silent blessing and set Poppy to work mixing purifying balm for the many wounds that surrounded them.
