Kipepeo stepped up and placed a hand on his bride’s shoulder. “Blessings to you,” he said.
Magpie knew the traditional Ifrit greeting from her time excavating the temple of the Ithuriel, and she told him, “And to the fire that kindled you,” her voice hoarse after such long silence.
Pleased, Kipepeo knelt beside her and took her hand. “Thank you, little one,” he said, “for guiding me out of the darkness.”
“I should thank you,” she told him with a weak smile. “If Lady Bellatrix didn’t love you so awful much, she’d never have meddled with the Magruwen’s dreams, and I might not have been born.”
He raised an eyebrow and looked at his lady. “Meddled with the Magruwen’s dreams?” he repeated.
“I’ve much to tell you,” Bellatrix said, biting her lip and laughing. A look of mischief transformed her features so that she seemed very young, as indeed she had been when she’d died. Remembering the terrible despair she had seen so recently onthat same face, Magpie was nearly overcome with a wave of emotion to think that she had played a part in Bellatrix’s happiness and Kipepeo’s freedom. Joy was bright in their eyes, and Magpie smiled, feeling warm and calm.
“Dreamdark is eager for your return, Magpie,” said Bellatrix. “The new temple is begun, and many have come from afar who are eager to see you.”
Magpie knew of the temple from the luminous dreams the Magruwen sent her. She’d seen a tent camp and cook fires and faeries of every shade from golden to ebony to snow, gathered together to work. She’d glimpsed Poppy, laughing and alive, and Maniac, as grim and fierce as ever. Indeed, all her crows were mighty grim, and now that she was awake, Magpie felt a deep pang of yearning for her clan, both her feathered family and her parents and grandmother, and the West Wind, too. And, she realized when a tracery spinning in her vision turned out to be not a glyph but a tattoo, for Talon.
It was time to return to the world of light.
She parted fondly from Bellatrix and Kipepeo at the doorway to her dreaming place, and Fade carried her on the top of his head back across the canyon. Sitting in the same hollow at the ridge of his brow where once Bellatrix had knelt to tell Fade the stories that would bring Magpie into being, she had her first glimpse of the seraphim. Beings of the air, they seemed formed of fluid crystal, each with a brilliant spark at its core. They were singing, and it was the most glorious sound Magpie had ever heard.
“Mags!” gasped pup, choking on a smoke ring. “Mags!” he croaked and, still coughing, tackled her where she’d appeared. She hit the ground and rolled with him, completely enveloped in feathers. She couldn’t see and could scarcely hear or breathe, but she knew when the other crows came hooting and cawing and jumped on Pup. She felt like a sprout’s dearest doll, the one that ends up with its button eyes cuddled off by love.
“Crows!” she gasped. “Please!”
When at last they let her breathe again she staggered to her feet and flung her arms around Maniac’s neck and didn’t let go for minutes. “I love you, blackbird,” she said quietly into his feathers.
“Ach, Mags,” he grumbled, patting her with his feathertips. “’Tis awful fine to see ye, too.”
Then the same crows who had only minutes before been mauling her around on the moss commenced to fuss like biddies, clucking, examining the bandage on her shoulder, and arguing over who got to carry her across the woods to see the new temple. Calypso won, and the others griped about it all the way.
With her chin resting on Calypso’s head, flying betwixt treetops and low clouds and feeling an absolute absence of impending doom, Magpie sighed contentedly. When they arced around the edge of the Spine and the face of Issrin came into sight, she sat up straight and stared. It had been only two weeks, but new columns had already been erected to brace a new pediment. Carvers stood on scaffolds or hovered on their wings, tappingwith their chisels and hammers and etching an abstract pattern of wind and flames into the marble.
The Magruwen came to meet her in the marble dust of the courtyard and guided her through the scaffolding to the ancient halls and corridors within. He had left them largely undamaged when he destroyed the facade and blocked all entry, and faeries were everywhere busy cleaning and polishing. He showed her the reception hall with its obsidian throne and then, down several flights of sweeping stairs and through a massive locked door, his archives. On towering shelves down labyrinthine aisles, every book and scroll his scribes had penned since the Dawn Days was in its place, unplundered and untouched by time. And in the far reaches, in a dark niche beyond the scribes’ carrels, stood the Blackbringer’s bottle.
Just looking at it, every memory of Magpie’s journey seemed to surge through her. The fishing boat, the Vritra’s ashes, her first sight of Dreamdark in the mists of dawn, the terrifying descent down the old well with a cake in her hands, all churning faster and faster. Poppy’s white face vanishing before her eyes, Bellatrix, Fade...until the moment she felt the Blackbringer’s tongue wrap around her. She shuddered. Here he was, sealed away, this elegant silverwork giving no hint of the turmoil within.
She had done it.
The Magruwen said, “Much lies ahead if a new age is to be built...on forgiveness.”
Magpie blinked. Those had been her own words. Somehow she had persuaded the Djinn King to come back to the world.He wasn’t looking at her but past her, lost in his memories, and Magpie wondered again what terrible secret lay buried in the history of her folk. Of what great treachery were faeries guilty? She almost hoped she would never know, but something told her that one day the dusts of the past would be sifted and secrets long buried would be laid bare. It shivered her.
“My brethren must be awakened if the Tapestry is to be healed,” the Magruwen continued. “And faeries must awaken, too, and learn what world they live in, or soon every forest will tumble under axe, every river will run black, and every devil will squirm free. No longer can you be alone against them. There must be other champions. This is no golden age of peace upon us, child, but itisa reawakening, and we will let neither devil nor dragon killer steal the world we made.”
Standing there, a bandaged twig of a sprout, Magpie clung to the hope that she would be equal to the life that lay ahead of her. “I’ll do my best, Lord,” she said.
He reached out one golden gauntlet, and Magpie saw the familiar gleam of Skuldraig in his grip. She took the knife back, and the Djinn said, “Blessings fly with you, child.”
From Issrin, Magpie and the crows flew above the Deeps toward the healer’s cottage. Poppy, of course, attuned to the web of green whisperers that made up the forest, heard she was coming and raced to meet her. They collided in a midair hug and spun laughing among the trees. They settled back down to Orchidspike’s garden, and the lady and her apprentice checked Magpie’s shoulder and assured themselves Bellatrix haddone a fine job of it, though not so fine as the healer might have. There would be scars.
Orchidspike told Poppy to go off and enjoy her friend’s company. “I’ve waited hundreds of years for you, lass. I can wait a few more days. Go play.”
The lasses flew to Rathersting Castle, and every warrior on the ramparts whooped and clamored as soon as they hove into view. “Hail, the Magruwen’s champion!” they cried, and the chief came outside, eager to meet the lass who’d saved his life. When he dropped to one knee before her and bowed, Magpie blushed deep red. “A feast!” he cried. “We must have a feast! Come to the hall, lasses...Talon!” he bellowed. “Where is that lad?”
But Talon couldn’t be found, and the celebration began without him. Magpie was offered the tremendous honor of a clan tattoo. She gritted her teeth while old Caelum, one of the warriors who’d followed her out of the dark, drew it onto the back of her neck with a wasp stinger. The table was laid, whisker fiddles were tuned, and mugs overflowed with mead. Magpie’s eyes kept straying to the door, but still Talon didn’t come. She was dancing a whirling jig with Poppy and Nettle when she sensed a hurtling shape coming at her fast. She leapt aside just in time to see Talon land one of his wild scamperer’s leaps right before her. His arms were outstretched, and too late Magpie realized he had meant to hug her. There was an awkward moment as she stumbled away, and he dropped his arms to his sides, and his hug turned into a wave. “Blessings, Magpie,” Talon said with a blush.
“Jacksmoke, Talon! Where you been?”
“Me? I might ask you! Lazing about in the afterlife with dragons feeding you grapes, I ken? That what being champion does to a lass?”
