Page 49 of The Guardians of Dreamdark (Windwitch #1)

Several times during the flight over Dreamdark, Talon switched crows midair, 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—as 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, and 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,” said Lady Bright, laughing, 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 council 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, Magpie, and Nettle.

“Lady 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, nay, 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.”

Magpie and Talon stared at each other, alarmed.

“Dark’s falling fast,” said a bearded older warrior, rising to his feet. “And more will vanish tonight, nay? It’s intolerable. We must end this devil now!”

“But you haven’t seen it, Hornet,” said Orion. “How do you stab a shadow? How can you kill a cloud?”

“You can’t,” said Magpie. All eyes turned to her when she spoke, three dozen fierce pairs of eyes, framed in tattoos and mirroring the firelight back at her in their stares. She continued, “You can only hope to capture it, and I’ve got its bottle.”

“And who are you ?” asked a younger warrior, his voice hostile.

Talon’s chair scraped back suddenly as he stood. “Hiss, well you know the name of our guest, so mind your manners. She’s Magpie Windwitch. She knows more about devils than any of us, and she’s our best hope for catching this foe.”

There was a stir among the gents, of surprise and, Magpie thought, derision.

Talon went on. “These two days’ past, we’ve been beyond.” The murmuring grew louder. “And we’ve had council with the Magruwen.” Gasps burst out. “And we’ll tell you what we’ve learned and what must be done.”

Talon and Magpie related all they knew of the Blackbringer, and a dark silence settled over the Rathersting with the revelation that there was an eighth ancient stalking their wood on a rampage of vengeance.

“But can he be captured?” someone asked.

“The Djinns’ champions did it once,” said Magpie, “and we’ll do it again.”

“Then we should do it tonight!” someone yelled, and a roar went round, and the stamping of feet. “To war!” they bellowed, and some rose up on their wings.

“Neh—” said Magpie, but her voice was overpowered by the roaring, so she called out in her loudest crow squawk, “Wait!”

They all swung to look at her. “Wait,” she said again. “The Magruwen’s making a new seal, and we’ll need that first. And there’s something else. The chief and all the others? Once the devil’s been caught there’ll be no hope for ’em. If we’re to bring ’em back, we got to do it first.”

They stared at her. “Bring ’em back?” said Orion. “Lass, what are you on about? Much may we mourn our fallen, but there’s no coming back from the Moonlit Gardens!”

“They’re not in the Moonlit Gardens,” she said.

“Now how could you know that?” demanded the one called Hiss with scorn thick in his voice.

“Indeed,” said Orchidspike, speaking for the first time. “Magpie, what is it that you know?” she asked.

Magpie glanced around at the ferocious faces and wondered how to answer.

Sure they wouldn’t believe what she had to say.

“They’re just not there,” she told them.

“I saw my friend Poppy turn into a shadow even as I held her. I was inside the Blackbringer for an instant myself, and I felt my skin begin to melt away. I reckon I’d’ve become a shadow, too.

So I think that’s where they are.” She paused. “ In him.”

There was silence, until Hiss broke it with a short laugh. “ In him? You think ?” He looked around at his fellows. “What is she even doing here? This is a warriors’ council! I say we go a-hunting, tonight!” he cried, and was joined by others.

Magpie gave Talon an anxious look, and he nodded and cried sharply, “Hiss! Viper! The lot of you, have a thought. This is no spider or marsh hag, cousins, but the king of all the devils! You’ll need a spell that’s equal to him or you’ll just be flying out to make yourselves his meal!

Has any of you got such a spell up his sleeve?

If you do, I’d very much like to hear it! ”

No one answered.

Hiss shifted uneasily on his feet and looked surly. “Then what, Prince?” he asked. “Has she got a spell like that?”

“Aye!” said Talon. “She has!”

This was a revelation to Magpie herself, and she cast Talon a sidelong glance.

“Let’s have it then, and go!” Hiss went on.

Talon looked at Magpie, and all the others did, too. She lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and said, “I won’t be doing any capturing until I’ve brought back my friends and your kin and all the others, and that must wait till tomorrow, with the Magruwen’s good grace.”

“That’s madness! Whilst you play at raising the dead, the devil will be making more dead all the night long, and none are ever coming back again! Best to stop him before he gets anyone else!”

Magpie’s mouth drew into its most stubborn straight line, and she said, “I know they’re not dead, not proper dead, and they’re nowhere in the Moonlit Gardens, and I’m going to get them back!”

“How?” asked Nettle simply.

Magpie turned to her and said, “I know what to do. I dreamt it—”

“ Dreamt it?” interrupted a grizzled older faerie with a scoff that was met with laughter from the others. “Lass, dreams are stuff and air, not battle plans!”

“You’re wrong,” she said fiercely, meeting his eyes.

“Dreams are everything! I can’t stop you trying to capture the Blackbringer yourselves, but nor will I help till I’ve brought out all those folk and creatures he made to shadows.

I won’t see them go in the bottle with him for the rest of forever.

I won’t!” Her voice had been steadily rising and with it the color in her cheeks, so that when she finished speaking her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing.

She felt a tingling in her fingertips and clasped her hands together, but a soft shimmer had already flowed from them, though no one seemed to see it.

They did, however, feel the air suddenly shift and sharpen round them and squeeze.

It was so subtle they weren’t certain what was happening, if anything at all, but the feeling silenced them.

Talon looked sharply at Magpie, and the hairs on his arms stood up.

The warriors weren’t laughing now, but were eyeing Magpie warily.

Orchidspike broke the silence. “My lads,” she said.

“I know ’tis a sore and hollow thing for a warrior to sit idle, but there’s magic in this lass that makes me hope.

We don’t know that she’s not right. This Blackbringer, maybe he’s wrapped his terrible cloak round our kinsmen and kept them.

And maybe we can yet do something great.

Aye, there’s great risk, too, that more will be lost and none saved. But then, mayhap all will be saved.”

“But Lady, to balance lives on a sprout’s dream...”

“You’ll decide what you must, Orion, but I’ve felt a tide of mystery wash over us such as I’ve never felt in all my life, and it’s my belief these are no ordinary dreams and this is no ordinary sprout.”

Orion frowned and looked at Magpie, small and ornery, and at his nephew by her side. He sighed, then told his men, “No hunting tonight, then. I don’t know about dreams and that, but Talon’s right. We’re just not ready for this foe. There’s naught I know to do against him.”

Not all the warriors were happy about this. Grumbles of another night and strange lass and Prince Scuttle could be heard in deep, muttering voices.

“We’ve warned all the hamlets and clans.

We’ve done what we can. Tomorrow we’ll hunt the Blackbringer in the Spiderdowns and be ready when he comes out again.

But he’ll hunt tonight, of that we can be sure, and I want to double the watch,” Orion continued.

“Hiss, Viper, Howl, Lash, Prowl, Thorn, Hornet, and Mars, with me. The rest of you, sleep.”

And so ended the council. Magpie felt some tension go out of her as the fierce tattooed faces found other things to scowl at besides herself. She left the hall with Talon and the crows. “Tough crowd,” she told Talon with a shiver.

“They’re feeling feeble and not much liking it.”

“Aye, bless their scowls. Sure I never met a warrior yet who didn’t sneer at me as a wee useless lass...except you, anyway.”

“Well, I’m no warrior.”

“What? Course you are! Prince of ’em!”

“Nay,” he told her, flushing. “I’ve never even been on a raid, because of...” He fluttered his wings.

“Well, maybe you haven’t. But do you think you’d have ever made a skin if you could fly?”

He shrugged.

“I bet not,” she went on. “You’d be just one of them in there, saying neh and never dreaming up a single new thing.”

They had come to a fork in the corridor, where Talon would turn toward the chief’s tower and Magpie and the crows to the castle’s guest cells. He asked her, “Lass, do you really mean to go inside the Blackbringer again?”

“Aye.”

From behind them, Bertram cut in. “I don’t like it, Mags. Sure I want Maniac back, but not if ye got to risk yerself.”

“He’s right, ’Pie,” said Calypso. “I en’t spent this life raising ye up ever so careful, and Lady Bellatrix didn’t talk Fade’s ear off all them years just so ye can go like that.”

“And if he gets ye,” added Pigeon, “who’ll get him? Sure nobody could, and that would mean the end of everything, forever!”

“And wouldn’t yer mum skin us then!” squawked Pup. “ And good-imp Snoshti! She shivers me fierce.”

“Ach, birds! You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“We are,” answered Bertram. “On the side of yer skin, love. How can ye keep from turning shadow like the others?”

“There’s got to be a way.”

“Maybe you’ll dream it tonight,” Talon suggested.

“I hope,” she said. She hugged all the crows good night and went her way, calling back, “Good night, Talon.”

“Good night, Magpie. Dream of magic,” he called back.

“You too.”

But the kind of dreams they meant, the ones that come tumbling like springs from unmapped deeps, full of hints and secrets, wouldn’t visit them this night, because both faeries were too anxious to sleep.