“First an imp and now a faerie,” came a harsh whisper, sending ripples through the smoke and chills down Magpie’s spine. “Get you gone. I don’t deal in treasure anymore.”
“My lord? I . . . I’ve come for wisdom, not treasure,” she said, her eyes searching wildly for her first glimpse of the Djinn.
“Wisdom? For whom?”
“For all my kind. We need your help.”
“You are past helping . . . ,” the whisper said, growing louder. Magpie watched breathlessly as the glow from the deep of the cave moved closer, flickering in the rough form of legs striding. “Past deserving,” the voice continued. “Faeries have become a second race of butterflies, mere ornaments for the air.”
The Djinn grew brighter and Magpie had to cast down her eyes, feeling his heat pulsing at her in waves as he drew nearer. Her mind raced. The Djinn wore skins, didn’t they? In the stories they appeared clad in wondrous forms. She had expected some majestic ancient, crowned perhaps, with a beard of fire and sparks for eyes, sitting in state on a hematite throne. Not this wild open flame. She tried to look at him but he was so white-bright she had to snap her eyes closed. Behind her shut lids an afterimage burned of a beast with curved horns of flame. She began to back blindly away.
“We are more than butterflies, Lord,” she whispered.
“Aye, you are right. You are more treacherous. More false.”
“Neh!” Magpie said. “Not that! Careless maybe, not treacherous. Faeries aren’t traitors.”
“You think you know. Faeries! You are your own undoing. Old treachery comes back to haunt you, but even now you won’t learn, even when the last of you flickers out.”
“What old treachery?” Magpie cried. “What do you mean, flicker out?”
“Don’t you like surprises?” he asked. He rushed up close then and Magpie stumbled backward against the door, feeling the intense weight of heat upon her face and smelling scorched hair. For an instant she could find no air to breathe and sank to the floor, realizing for the first time with what simplicity the end could come.
Then, just as suddenly, the Magruwen drew away.
“What is that?” he asked in a quick sharp hiss.
Magpie remembered the cake. “My lord,” she gasped, holding it out. “An offering. Your favorite . . . I hope.”
“That recipe has long been gone from this world!” But even as he said it, the Magruwen’s voice faltered. Into his sulfurous cavern this small faerie had carried the scent of honey, tears, and lightning, of thirsty roots in future soil, of wind through wings, a fragrance long absent, but well remembered.
“I found it,” Magpie said in a small voice. “I hope I made it okay.” She continued to hold it out to him, her arms shaking. After a moment she felt the heavy heat again and the weight of the cake was lifted from her arms. The twigs of the starling’s nest crackled like kindling, and she waited.
The sound he made was something like a sigh. A little of the tension that held Magpie rigid eased from her limbs and she rose again to her feet. “My lord . . . is it . . . all right?”
“Imperfect,” he said, spitting. The acorn shot from his mouth and pinged into the smoke, setting off a loud cascade of hidden treasures, and Magpie tensed, ready to spring aside should he come at her again. “There’s no thousand years in that nut,” the Magruwen said, flaring high. Then he diminished, thinned, and said quietly, “But it was not . . . badly done.”
Relief flooded Magpie and she found she could look at him now, if she squinted. He had made himself into a spindle of flame that still bore within it the impression of a figure rising to taper into tremendous curving horns. And there were eyes. Once Magpie found them she felt locked onto them and couldn’t look away. They were vertical, windows through fire into the infinite. They were dizzying.
“Why have you woken me?” he asked, and Magpie blinked and was able to break her gaze from his.
“T-there’s . . . ,” she stammered, “there’s a devil, escaped from its bottle. A devil you saw fit once, yourself, to imprison.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I found the bottle and your seal. I never knew you snared any devils yourself, so it . . . it flummoxed me.”
“There is but one bottle that bears my seal.”
“Not anymore, then, Lord; if there was just the one, then it’s sure. He’s got out.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” Magpie hesitated. “Did you also know, Lord, that he’s killed the Vritra?”
The fire wavered and a hiss issued from him. “Aye, I felt it,” he muttered to himself. “A rending such as this the Tapestry cannot withstand. The threads fall slack and will not sing true.”
“Tapestry?” Magpie asked.
At first the Magruwen didn’t answer. Magpie felt he was staring at her, weighing her worth and finding her lacking. “The Tapestry is unknown to you?” he asked.
Magpie nodded slowly. A dreamlike image floated in her mind, but like the traceries of light it flitted away when she tried to look at it.
“Get you gone, faerie.” The Magruwen’s voice snapped in mirthless laughter. “Gather up the folk that remain and go you all to the Moonlit Gardens. Feel blessed there’s such a place for you to go . . . for now. Even it won’t hold forever. When the last threads snap it too will sink into the darkness, a soft echo of greater doom.”
“What?” Magpie asked, bewildered. “Darkness? Doom? What do you mean, Lord, please! Sure you can’t be meaning the snag! What is he?”
“Who are you, that you should peer behind a veil of mysteries that has been in place for years beyond counting?”
“I’m a hunter. He’s come to Dreamdark! I just want to catch him, before he hurts any more faeries and before he hurts . . . you.”
Again the Magruwen laughed. It was a terrible sound. “Faerie, this foe won’t be caught, not by you or anyone. He is a contagion of darkness. There’s poetry in his return, though a faerie wouldn’t see it.”
“Poetry! He said there was poetry in the Vritra’s death. I don’t see poetry in any of it!”
“He said? How do you know what he said?”
“I touched the Vritra’s last memory. The devil called him a traitor!”
“A traitor . . . ,” the Djinn hissed. “Aye. We are all traitors. For what is living but a chain of impossible choices? Every choice casts a shadow, and sometimes those shadows stalk your dreams. But what do faeries know of shame? You’ll be blind to your own until the end!”