Page 30 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Wait,” it said in no birdlike voice.
She thrust the knife edge again to its throat and again the falcon fell still and the strange chime grew louder. Magpie looked at the blade and saw runes agleam on it. She realized with a joltthat it was the knife that was singing. Her eyes widened, and her gaze shifted rapidly back and forth between the blade and the falcon. A magic blade! There was many a story in legend of strange weapons that mastered their masters, having wickedness and will forged into them by their makers.
In a fluid movement she drew it off the falcon’s throat and backed quickly away, staying crouched and ready to spring. The blade fell silent, and the falcon moved.
A ripple went through it, a rift appeared in its belly, and it sort of split apart and fell away, its feathers transforming as it did into a strange membranous sheath that looked like little more than a stocking. Inside it was a faerie like no faerie Magpie had ever seen. She’d seen tattoos on witch doctors, savage jungle faeries, but not like these. The black patterns on his face had grace and reminded her of only one thing: the mysterious whirls of light that had of late been spinning across her vision. She stared at him. Looking closer, she saw the features of a lad and eyes like crystals with the sky dancing through them.
“What did you do to me?” Talon gasped, falling on his side and clutching his throat.
Magpie looked at the blade in her hand, confused. It was silent. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice wary.
“Okay?” Still clutching his throat, he rose to his knees and said, “Now that I’m not paralyzed and suffocating, aye, I’m right as rain.”
“Paralyzed and suffocating? How—?”
With narrowed eyes he looked at her and at the knife. “Djinncraft,” he said. “That explains things. Who’d you steal it from?”
“Steal it? I found it in a skeleton’s spine!”
“Ah, so you stole it from the dead. How fine.”
“Call me a thief?” Magpie blazed. “Sure you didn’t find that skin in your granny’s attic!”
“Right. I didn’t. I—” He bit off his words and glared at her, then asked with a tinge of bitterness, “How did you know?”
“I know a skin when I see one,” Magpie said. “My grandfather wears one.”
“Faeries don’t wear skins!”
“Neh, they don’t indeed,” she replied, looking pointedly at the shimmering sheath gathered around his shoulders. “I never saidhewas a faerie.”
Talon looked at her hard. A lass, just a lass she was, wind-mussed and wearing feathers and gripping a blade such as that. For a moment there he’d thought he might suffocate and wake to find himself in the Moonlit Gardens! When she’d held that knife to his throat, he’d been unable to move a muscle, even to breathe. “Who are you?” he asked her in an acid voice.
“All right in there, ’Pie?” Calypso called from outside, and both faeries started and looked to the door.
“’Pie?” Talon repeated.
“Never you mind!” she said to him, then called out to the birds, “In here, I found someone!”
Calypso and Algorab appeared like shadows in the doorway, and seeing them, Talon gave the lass another hard look. He’d seen crows arrive yestermorn, shortly before the vultures.
“You from this place?” Magpie asked the lad, seeing feed sacks leaning against the pen near him, as if he’d been feeding the pigeons.
“Well, I know you’re not, if you have to ask about me,” he said. One thing about being Rathersting—folk tended to know you on sight.
“That’s a Rathersting, lass,” said the raven.
Magpie looked steadily at the lad. “I know the name,” she said. “The guardians. Fine, ancient clan. So what are you doing flying around in a stolen skin?”
“I didn’t steal it,” he said fiercely. “I made it!”
“Aye, sure.”
Talon gritted his teeth. Reminding himself he was a prince of the realm and not one to cower before some strange lass, he rose to his feet and held himself tall, a full head taller than she. They faced each other, tense. “Never mind the skin,” he said. “I want to know what you’re doing in West Mirth. You’re a stranger here; don’t try to deny it. So what’s a strange lass doing waving a djinncraft blade round an abandoned hamlet?”
“It wasn’t abandoned.”
“What?”
