The Magruwen turned to Vesper, flames licking out from his eyes, his horns flaring high and bright, and he growled, “Bellatrix has no descendant but the child that dreams made real!”
Emitting a squeak, Vesper spun to flee.
With one swift wing beat the Djinn surged through the air and swung around her to cut off her retreat. She flinched from him and seemed to shrink. “My lord,” she whispered, “I beg you let me go!”
“How came you by Bellatrix’s ornaments?” the Magruwen demanded.
Whimpering, Vesper couldn’t answer, and the only other who could have told had scuttled down from the fork in the tree at the first sight of the Magruwen and made his whistling way into the obscurity of the forest, his new falcon skin safe in his satchel.
The Djinn snatched the golden circlet from its perch on Vesper’s headdress and the scarves fell away too, revealing to all the clumps and masses of writhing worms that grew from her scalp. Her hands flew to her head. As faeries gasped and some of the Rathersting warriors jeered, Magpie felt her cheeks flush with shame for the lady, even in spite of her hatred. She almost wished to unwork the spell, but then she thought of Gutsuck’s gaping gore-streaked mouth and hardened her heart.
“You are banished from Dreamdark, never to return,” the Magruwen pronounced, and Vesper, sniveling, wheeled in the air to flee. “But wait,” said the Djinn, and she found herself frozen in place. “Such a garment as that can never be remade, now that firedrakes are extinct. I’ll have it, faerie.”
Vesper made no move to take it off, but the Magruwen flicked his hand and it was wrenched from her, its lacing loosening just enough to pull it over her head and off. Beneath it she wore a fine plain gown, and bereft of Bellatrix’s treasures, with her wild living hair, she was nearly unrecognizable. She turned and fled Issrin Ev, leaving her Never Nigh subjects with their mouths agape.
“Fools,” the Magruwen hissed at them, clutching Bellatrix’s tunic in one great gold-sheathed hand and her crown in the other. “A crown does not a queen make, as a sword does not a warrior make . . . but for one. One blade there is, cursed to slay any who wield it but the champion. With it Bellatrix turned the tide of the devil wars and since then it has traveled through blood and dust, the ornament of skeletons, releasing all who claim it to the Moonlit Gardens. Skuldraig, it is called. Backbiter. You faeries believed you would know a new champion by the relics of the old one, and you were right. But you looked to the wrong relic.”
He paused and held up the circlet, and as they watched, its gleaming gold shone brighter still until it burned white-hot. It warped and melted and trickled down the Djinn’s gauntlet, raining a patter of molten gold onto the tumbled stones below. “This circlet was naught but ornament. But Skuldraig is power, and it has found a new mistress. And I, a new champion.”
Talon turned to stare at Magpie, and Magpie stared at the Magruwen, eyes wide, her lip clamped between her teeth. The Djinn said, “Magpie Windwitch,” and all eyes swung to her. She flushed. “Come here, little bird,” he said, and she flew to him, feeling tiny before him.
“Lord,” she whispered, “I thought the Blackbringer . . .” She hesitated, suddenly seeing what folly it had been to think that this great being could fall so easily. “He went down the well,” she said.
“He hears the whispers of the roots and springs. He knew I had gone and went to see what he could scavenge.”
Up close Magpie could see the new skin was wrought of many fine scales of gold interlinked in a sinuous mesh not unlike the firedrake tunic. She drank in the sight of him, recalling the wild flame that had swirled in the depths of the well, scorching and blinding her. He reached out his great golden hand. His fingertip, when it touched her forehead, was cool. No sooner did she feel it than a complex glyph sprang whole into her mind.
“This is the champion’s glyph,” he said. “It was once fused of seven sigils but with the passing of the Vritra, now only six. When you hold it bright in your mind only a Djinn can break through its protection. It will keep you whole in the darkness, but you must not let it slip or you will be lost.”
As with any new glyph, Magpie set to work memorizing it. The whorls, angles, and patterns were more intricate than any glyph she had ever learned, and it was three-dimensional, an object in space. A glyph like this could never be recorded in a book but only pass from mind to mind. She concentrated fiercely, tracing its glowing lines until she was certain she knew it by heart. With a tremor of anxiety she nodded, and the Magruwen drew away his hand. The glyph faded. Magpie hoped her memory would serve her to call forth so fierce a spell when the time came. “Thank you, Lord,” she said.
“Give me the dagger,” he commanded her, and she unsheathed Skuldraig and handed it to him. She bowed her head as he touched the blade to her shoulders, saying, “I dub you, Magpie Windwitch, Magruwen’s champion.” Then he took her hand and turned her to face the silent crowd.
Such a ceremony was a thing of legend, and the faeries gawked, unnerved, until Calypso once again broke the silence with a joyous squawk. “Hail, Magpie Windwitch, Magruwen’s champion!” he cried. The words were taken up by the faeries, but their voices were weak and their faces stunned. Talon’s voice rang out above the rest, and his face was alight with joy. Magpie’s eyes fastened on it in the crowd and their eyes held, shining.
Turning to the Magruwen, she said solemnly, “It’s my great pride and honor to serve you, Lord.”
“And you know what your first service must be.”
“Aye, I know.”
He held out the firedrake tunic. “Put this on,” he instructed, and with reverence she took it. The scales felt cool, like enamel, and light, and she knew no better protection could be forged on any anvil. She slipped it over her head, easing her wings out through the apertures designed for them. The tunic was large on her, but she cinched her belt around it and looked back up at the Magruwen.
With a soft sparkle he conjured something in each hand. He presented first a seal bearing his sigil and glinting with dense magicks, and then a bundle wrapped in a familiar tatter. It was a scrap of the Djinn’s burst skin Talon had seen abandoned beneath the smoke of the Magruwen’s cave. Fireproof, as any Djinn’s skin must be, it was rolled tight to contain the precious thing Magpie knew must burn within it, a seed from the mystical pomegranate. A star to light her way through the darkness and, she hoped, to spark the other lights to life.