Page 58 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
Fade turned to her with a snarl. “He never made such mistakes! Henevermade a devil.”
Bellatrix and Magpie fell silent and looked at each other. Everyone knew the devils were the Djinns’ mistakes. Where else could they have come from? Where else wouldanythinghave come from?
Still snarling, Fade went on. “Creatures with no dreams of their own can do naught but destroy the dreams of others. So ithas been since the beginning. So were the devil armies forged, by one who did not dream.”
Bellatrix said irritably, “Dragon! This is no time for riddles. Please speak plain. If the Djinn didn’t make the devils, where did they come from?”
Indeed. If not from the Djinn, then where? Magpie was silent. A thought was skimming the surface of her mind, and she felt as if she were looking up at it from underwater. Then, suddenly, she realized what it was: eight. The eight sacred columns of the temples. Why eight and not seven? Traceries of light spun in Magpie’s sight, and she saw painted there the symbol for infinity that graced all the temples. It twisted then and she saw it, too, suddenly, as an eight. Why eight...?
“Fade,” she said in a rush. “Was there another once? An eighth Djinn?”
He snorted. “There have only ever been seven Djinn!”
Magpie chewed her lip, ashamed to have voiced such blither. The idea had seemed to simply spin into her mind on a curl of light.
Fade spoke again, more quietly. He said, “The eighth was not a Djinn.”
And Magpie and Bellatrix stared at him, dumbstruck.
“In the time before time there were seven sparks...and one wind.”
“A wind...” breathed Magpie.
“The Astaroth, the world-shaping wind. He was the bellows to the Djinns’ fire, tirelessly feeding their flames so they couldburn bright as suns and pour their dreams forth in unbroken threads. He was their ally and equal. Pure power, an unfathomable force, and without him the Tapestry could not have been woven.
“He had no dreams of his own, but he shared theirs. When the time came to shape the Tapestry into a sphere and bind closed its seams, he chose to remain and witness the burgeoning of the world he had helped forge. This was the mistake that has shaped everything.”
“How?” Magpie asked, her head spinning.
“He was a creature of infinite space. He had never yet known boundary. The Tapestry had seemed vast, laid open in the emptiness, but once sewn closed, it was...small. The work of world-making went on, the Djinn gathered dreaming, the Astaroth fed them, and the world bloomed, but a time came when he was no longer needed, and it became a cage to him.”
“The Djinn couldn’t...let him out?” asked Bellatrix, as confounded as Magpie.
“Not without letting the nothingnessinand obliterating everything. He had made his choice, but he couldn’t live with it. The confines of the world warped him. He tried to free himself, even at the expense of all else. He gathered his full force and tried to blast his way through the Tapestry to freedom, but it was strong—he’d helped make it so—and he couldn’t breach it. Again and again he tried, hurling himself against it, but all he succeeded in doing was mangling it, twisting its perfect threads. Making devils.”
“Ah...” Magpie whispered, understanding at last.
“Abominations,” continued the dragon. “What the Djinn dreamed pure, he turned monstrous. And when he saw what he had done he went to work at it even harder, believing he was at last creating something of his own. Hundreds upon hundreds of creatures were thus warped. The Djinn knew something had to be done. He’d been their ally, but they had to choose between the Astaroth and the world...”
“What did they do?” the faeries both asked, breathless.
“They chose the world,” said Fade simply, and heaved a deep, sulfurous sigh. “It was a terrible choice, and it diminished them. They erased all memory of him—”
“But for the eighth column in all the temples,” said Magpie.
He looked at her closely. “Aye, faerie. Those they left as symbols of their shame. They never again burned so bright as they had in the harmony of eight, with the Astaroth’s strength on their side. Faeries never knew the Djinns’ full glory. By the time you came to be, that was all memory.”
“This all happened before the days of faeries?” Bellatrix asked.
“Aye,” said Fade, with the grim ghost of a smile on his reptilian face. “Of course. The Djinn had to create a race to rid the world of devils. That race was faeries.”
Magpie stood very still. She felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. She saw the same feelings written on Bellatrix’s face. They just looked at each other and felt the force of the dragon’s words. Faeries had been dreamed into being to rid the world of devils. Faeries, who had always believed themselves to be the light and color and soul of the world, they were just the solutionto a wretched problem, like vultures who had been dreamed to devour the dead.
“Now you know,” said Fade.
Magpie blinked, and the stunned look on her face was replaced slowly by ferocity. “Well, then,” she said. “If he dreamed us up as hunters, he’d best let us do our job, neh? This Blackbringer. What the skive is he, dragon?”
“The Astaroth’s final plague,” said Fade. “And his worst.”
