Maniac wobbled and careened to earth as a trio of warriors rushed to steady his landing and Magpie gasped, “Crows, now!” The other birds, circling in the sky, beat down to her through the branches, bearing the Blackbringer’s bottle with them.
She didn’t know how she could possibly find within herself the strength to cast one last spell. She would have to let the champion’s glyph go and the Djinn’s protection with it. No sooner did she realize this than the glyph was snuffed from her mind, leaving a ghost image where it had so long burned. As that too faded, she breathed deep, dug into her mind for her last reserve of power, and visioned a new glyph in its place.
At once a vortex whirled to life in the neck of the silver bottle, and the Blackbringer, weakened and shrunken, was powerless against it. The whipping air grasped the edge of his skin and the king of devils lost his hold on the world. With a roaring of wind he was seized and sucked back toward his ancient prison. As if the skin of night were truly a fabric, its edges flapped and swirled and he whirled slowly out of sight, his terrible rasp of a voice filling everyone’s minds with his fury.
Magpie collapsed to her knees and frantically fumbled the seal out of her pocket. She held it out to the vortex and it began to spiral through the air toward the bottle’s narrow throat.
So transfixed were the crows and warriors by this remarkable sight that none noticed the devil with the bloody fang-filled maw fix its black slit eyes on Magpie. None saw it slowly gather itself into a predator’s crouch and flare its membranous wings. Gutsuck pounced like a wolf, and its hideous mouth closed over Magpie’s shoulder with a gnashing sound.
She cried out and fell forward, her concentration broken.
Talon rushed to wrench the devil away but in that instant, with impossible speed, the Blackbringer’s tongue lashed out from within the silver bottle, whipped around Magpie and Gutsuck together, and sucked them both back into his prison. They disappeared just before the Djinn’s seal settled firmly, irreversibly, in place. The vortex abruptly ceased, and all fell still.
Everyone stared. For long seconds they couldn’t even gasp. Then Calypso shrieked and flew at the seal, desperately trying to gouge it off. Stunned, Talon reeled in the tether with his good hand. It had been severed clean by the Magruwen’s sealing spell. His mind screamed and resisted believing what he’d just seen.
And then, in the dense mass of dazed faeries and creatures who’d stumbled back into the world after so long adrift, the spiders, released from Magpie’s spell, reawakened.
FORTY
If any soul that night was pulled down into the dark cracks in the earth and devoured by spiders, none ever knew of it after. When the foul creatures revived, the Rathersting shook off their shock and sprang to life, relishing enemies their blades could bite, thrilling in rescue on so grand a scale. If anyone could have counted in the chaos, they would have discovered some thousand souls newly returned to the world. But it was a time for action, not counting, and by the time the Rathersting had coaxed and dragged every imp and faerie free of the Spiderdowns, most of the snags had slipped away into the forest and the mannies were wandering lost and afraid.
Those who’d been bitten by spiders were Orchidspike’s first patients when she conducted a hasty triage later in the Great Hall at Rathersting Castle. She administered a potion to subdue the poison that was burning in their veins and turned to see to other injuries.
There were many. Dozens of torn wings—those could wait—and wounds of such variety the healer knew they could not have happened this night. Bite wounds with jagged snag teeth embedded in them, clean slashes from sharp weapons, contusions, lashes, burns. Kneeling over a Sayash faerie with long spines from a devil’s barbed tail protruding from her leg, Orchidspike realized these wounds were casualties of the devil wars and were tens of thousands of years old, as were the faeries who suffered them.
As flummoxed as she’d ever been in her life, she had to press her hand to her heart to steady herself. However much she’d hoped Magpie would succeed in her bold plan, it had never occurred to her there might be souls from the Dawn Days still alive within the Blackbringer! Orchidspike could have used Talon at such a time, but she wouldn’t call for him. Not now. She’d had but a moment with him when she bandaged his hand, before the needs of the injured claimed her attention, and now her thoughts kept returning to his shocked face, and to Magpie.
“Lady, might I be of help to you?” asked a red-haired lass the healer didn’t know. About to ask her if she could manage a spell to boil water, Orchidspike paused and took a closer look at her. Her beautiful face wore the same pale, haunted look as all these others, as if she’d just awakened from a nightmare. She too had come out of the darkness.
“Lass, what’s your name?” Orchidspike asked her.
“Poppy Manygreen, Lady.”
Orchidspike, old eyes glistening, said a silent blessing and set Poppy to work mixing purifying balm for the many wounds that surrounded them.
Calypso and Mingus dragged the Blackbringer’s bottle into the ragged hole in the mountain that had once been the face of Issrin Ev. The other crows followed, with Talon astride Bertram. All dread the Djinn King had once inspired in them was forgotten as they cried out for him.
“Lord Magruwen!” they cawed, their voices muffled by the dust of four thousand years that blanketed the ancient corridors.
They emerged into a great chamber, where Talon’s light spell glittered over a trove of treasure. They swooped around the room, distraught and shrieking for the Djinn.
“Is it done?” he demanded, emerging from a doorway.
“Where is the lass?”
Calypso and Mingus beat down to him, lowering the bottle. “Lord!” cried Calypso. “Ye got to unseal it!”
“What?” he hissed.
Talon leapt off Bertram’s back to the ground. He held Skuldraig in one hand and the shrouded star in the other. He laid them both before the Magruwen and said, “Just before the seal settled on, a devil attacked Magpie, and the Blackbringer reached out and sucked them both in with him! You got to get her out!”
The Magruwen looked at the bottle, and the blade, and the bundle of old skin pulsing with starlight. No expression played over the sculpted planes of his mask, but flames spewed from his eyes and horns. “Nay!” he choked, and seized the bottle, his golden gloves clashing against its silver. But he didn’t pry off the seal that bore his sigil. He only said, “The seal is fixed. The faerie is lost.”