“Aye,” Poppy gasped, winded and drinking in great gulps of breath. “Devil . . . coming!”
Magpie swung around to see the thing melting back into the deep shadows below. “I know,” she said. “He’s down there—”
“Neh! Another—” Poppy cried, just as a winged thing came wheeling over Issrin and let out a piercing cry.
It was one of the ugliest snags Magpie had ever seen. Its mouth was a bloody tatter full of teeth, and its skin was drawn so tight over its sharp skeleton that its bones seemed ready to pierce right through. “Now that’s a devil,” she said.
“Vesper set him on you!” Poppy told her, backing away from the thing in horror.
“Eh? That priss has a snag slave?” Magpie asked, dumbfounded.
The hideous thing whirled in the air on its jagged wings and caught sight of Magpie. It hissed, “Feathered faerie . . . ,” and licked the bloody edges of its maw.
As it started forward, Poppy cried, “Magpie! What do we do?”
Magpie shoved Poppy aside as the snag came, and on her sleek wings she darted into its path. It hurtled at her, shrieking, and reached for her. In one fluid motion Magpie spun and grasped the hooked claw at the crook of its wing and whipped round, straining against it with all her weight. Tilting off balance, the devil went scudding into a tree trunk.
Magpie glanced at the darkness below as the snag spun and came at her again. This was a dance she knew well, this devil waltz. Many times had she danced it, coaxing the eejits to hurl themselves at her, maneuvering easily out of their way as they thudded again and again into ground or cliff or whatever solid surface was at hand, until they grew dizzy, or tired, or crazed, and then she captured them. She had no time for that now.
She saw the vultures shake open their wings and lurch from their perches. She still felt the hunger of the dark thing lurking in the courtyard below.
She had to get away from here. To get Poppy away.
The snag pulled itself from the tangle of tree branches and leapt for her. If she dodged, it would be headed straight at Poppy. She hovered and let it come. It reached out its clawed hands. It was on her, its breath on her face, hot and reeking, spraying blood with each earsplitting screech. As it reached out with its claws, Magpie’s own hands darted toward it, faster, one on each of its wrists. Then her wings swept in a powerful backbeat and she dropped, tugging the devil’s arms down so that in its momentum its bony legs spun wildly over its head. She let go and it somersaulted into a pillar with a thud.
Below, the darkness was moving.
Barely fazed by his collision, the snag sprang again.
Skuldraig, Magpie thought, drawing it from its scabbard. “Many devils has it subdued,” the Magruwen had said. He had also said, “It is cursed to slay any who wield it.” Her hand quavered a little and she glanced at the knife, but its weight felt right. The shine of it in the gloom gave her a bloom of strength, and she felt the pulse gather round her and urge her forward.
This time when the snag came at her she spun aside, grabbed its wing, and jumped on its back as if she were mounting a bird mid-flight. Then she whipped Skuldraig around and pressed the flat of the blade against its foul throat. The crystal keening of the knife’s song rang out through the ruins at once and the devil went limp and began to plummet from the sky. Magpie braced her feet against it, and as she jumped free, she kicked out as hard as she could, sending it spiraling toward the clot of shadow below. Wings twitching, it slid into the Blackbringer like a hand into a pocket, and disappeared.
Silence fell over Issrin. The darkness had swallowed the snag whole, and its caterwauling with it. Magpie looked frantically around for some sign of it but all she heard was her own breath and the wing beats of the vultures. Then the squawking of crows filled the air and the birds, alerted by the snag’s shrieks, came winging out of the trees, fast and loud. The vultures were there rising to meet them and there was a hideous screech of birds in the night.
What had the Blackbringer done to that devil?
“Magpie!” cried Poppy, and Magpie turned to her, torn, wanting to go help her crows but needing to get Poppy to safety.
She flew to her friend and grabbed her hand. “Poppy, get away from here, now!” she was saying when suddenly Poppy’s eyes widened in shock. Then her hands were wrenched from Magpie’s grasp and she was snatched away so fast Magpie went into a spin. In her surprise she dropped Skuldraig and heard it clatter to the ground far below.
Vultures and crows wheeled and clashed, and Magpie halted her spin to find herself alone in the sky. Poppy was gone.
Magpie looked wildly around but saw no sign of her friend. “Poppy!” she screamed.
The beast—the Blackbringer—was pooling in the courtyard below. Magpie saw a white arm reach out of the dark fume of him. A faerie’s arm. The fingers grasped and clawed at nothing, then the arm disappeared back into the darkness. “Poppy!” gasped Magpie. The devil had her. How? It took a split second for Magpie’s body to respond to the sight of that reaching arm and then she found herself in motion, streaking toward the beast. “Blackbringer!” she screamed.
It came at her then—the tongue—and she saw how the devil had plucked Poppy from the sky. Fury flared in her; the imp might have mentioned this! Huge and livid, the Blackbringer’s tongue came at her fast as a hurled harpoon. Even in her surprise she dodged it easily, and before she could really think what she was doing, she was diving into the void of the Blackbringer, arms outstretched, hoping to find Poppy within, hoping to come out on the other side.
Thinking about it later, over and over, Magpie would know she couldn’t have been inside that darkness more than a second. Her speed must have carried her through him in an instant. But that instant would always after live in her mind as a journey.
“The darkness will rush in like a tide and sweep everything back into the endless ocean,” the Magruwen had said.
Magpie saw the endless ocean. More than seeing it, she was plunged into it and felt it begin to devour her. There was no breathing here, and no seeing. In the darkness of the end there was no sensation except a desperate fading, the feeling of being a small shadow subsumed by the immensity of night.
Dimming and ebbing and melting.
More than death, and less.
Unmaking.
As the edges of her self began to blur, she saw—she thought she saw—lights throughout the darkness, dull as strewn embers, dim as stars in fog.
Then she was through it, tumbling to the ground. Her brow met rock and an explosion of pain left her limp.