“Lady, my lady!” cried Kex Winterkill, falling upon Vesper. “My petal, my blossom, you’re bleeding! How came you here? Who did this to you?”
With a wild look, Vesper lifted a trembling hand and pointed it in turn at Batch and Magpie. “Seize them!”
The gents who leapt at Vesper’s command had never experienced anything like the squall of crows spitting fury around the lass who lay on the moss. None could get near her. They weren’t warriors, these Never Nigh gents. Most were Manygreens or Winterkills or Shineleafs, faeries more accustomed to ferns and wheelbarrows than weapons.
“Wait!” cried one gent who had hung back from the start. “Stop! Fellows, cousins! Stop this!” The faeries drew back and the crows hunched in a tight knot around Magpie and Talon. The gent went on, “As we’re not barbarians, we’ll hear what this is about first, nay?”
Vesper’s lips pinched white. “Lord Manygreen, that’s noble of you, but I assure you this lass tried to kill me. And as I hear, she was the last soul seen with your daughter before she went missing!”
Magpie rose to her knees and peered out between Mingus and Bertram. The gent who had spoken had copper hair and brown eyes, just like Poppy’s. Magpie rose unsteadily to her feet. “Lord Manygreen,” she said. “It’s true I was last with Poppy. I know what happened to her. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to tell you before.”
The cluster of faeries murmured and Poppy’s father drew nearer, his face wretched with anxiety. “Little Magpie, isn’t it?” he asked. “Please, where is she?”
“You’ve heard . . . ,” began Magpie. “You know what hunts Dreamdark?”
“The Blackbringer,” he whispered.
Magpie nodded slowly and swallowed. “Aye, and it’s true, and he took Poppy right here in Issrin Ev though I fought to save her—”
Lord Manygreen’s face contorted with sadness and the murmur of the faeries rose to a clamor.
“And I’m still trying to save her! But the reason Poppy was even here,” Magpie went on, turning to Vesper with a look of cold rage in her eyes, “is because your fake queen set a devil on me, and Poppy flew all the way to warn me—”
“Lies!” Vesper cut her off, flicking open her wings and rising into the air between Magpie and the faeries. “This guttersnipe gypsy sneak is wild with lies!”
Lord Manygreen gave her a penetrating look and said, “I’ve a potion of Poppy’s that turns liars’ noses blue. Perhaps we should all have a sip.”
Vesper blinked at him and hesitated.
“I’ll gladly have a sip,” said Batch, shaking off the gents who gripped his arms. “And I’ll tell you more about my old friend Vesper Siftdust.”
“Siftdust?” repeated Kex Winterkill.
“Hear me, citizens of Dreamdark—” Vesper hurriedly declaimed, but she was silenced by a sudden trembling in Issrin Ev. Everyone looked urgently around.
The slope quaked and rocks began to loosen and tumble, and those ruined pillars that remained standing began to sway. Magpie watched as the column from which Talon had leapt to save her life leaned and came tumbling toward them, and they all scattered as it crashed to the ground. They took to their wings. Bertram bumped Talon onto his back and Mingus seized Batch by the tail and lifted him into the fork of a tree. They all watched transfixed as the pocked, mossy face of the temple burst from within and rumbled down the steep slope, crushing the long stair and leaving behind a ragged hole in the rock.
And there, in the hole, stood the Magruwen.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A terrified silence hung over the faeries. Few now alive in the world had dreamed a day when the Djinn might again walk the earth, and no faerie present, save Magpie and Talon, knew him for what he was.
Even knowing him, Magpie and Talon were as awestruck as the rest. This was not the Magruwen as they had seen him in the bottom of the well. Here was the Djinn King in splendor in a new golden skin, and he was magnificent. His gleaming mask bore full lips and broad cheekbones engraved with a filigree not unlike the design of the Rathersting tattoos. A rim of ebony lined his almond-shaped vertical eyes, and many rings of gold looped from the lobes of his golden ears. His horns curved like molten scimitars, fire-bright, sparking, and alive, and from his shoulders flared immense bat wings of the thinnest burnished gold.
The last ruins of his old temple fell away at his feet and he looked out at the faeries in the sky, spread his great wings, and rose into their midst.
It was Calypso who first lowered his head in a mid-air bow and cried, “Hail, Lord Magruwen!” and Magpie, Talon, and the crows quickly followed suit.
Suppressed gasps and cries could be heard among the Never Nigh faeries, who only now realized who and what they were seeing. With shaky voices they echoed the cry. “Hail, Lord Magruwen!”
“Faeries,” said the Magruwen in his smoldering crackle of a voice. “The last stones of Issrin Ev have fallen, and tomorrow the first stone of a new temple will be quarried and cut. Hai Issrin—new Issrin—Ev shall rise on this site. But that is the work of tomorrow, and tomorrow is a luxury you have too long believed your birthright. You have lived blind and dumb at the edge of darkness and if not for the restless schemes of the dead you would already have subsided into it. You little know how close you’ve come, and how even now you teeter at the brink!” His voice rose to a roar, and all trembled to hear it.
Among the encircling pine trees Rathersting faeries were arriving from across the Deeps, and with them came the hamlet clans of East Mirth and Pickle’s Gander, drawn by the great noise. They faltered onto branches and gaped at the scene before them.
“Like these stones, so much from the Dawn Days has fallen away. And like this temple, the world may be rebuilt or left to crumble. One of your kind had pled for you that you might prove what you can still become. If there is to be a new age born on the morrow, it can have but one beginning. . . .” He paused and peered closely at all the faeries, his ebony-edged eyes lingering on Vesper a little longer than the others. “The only beginning is a new champion, one who might this night vanquish the king of devils who hunts your wood!”
Murmurs of “new champion” and “Blackbringer” stirred among the faeries. Stalwart warriors puffed out their tattooed chests and envisioned themselves as champion. Among the Never Nigh folk, eyes turned to Vesper. Her own eyes widened in fear. She heard Kex Winterkill clear his throat and before she could stop him, he cried, “Hail, Lady Vesper, Queen of Dreamdark, descended of Bellatrix, champion!”