Page 82 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
There was silence, until Hiss broke it with a short laugh. “Inhim? Youthink?” He looked around at his fellows. “What is she even doing here? This is a warriors’ council! I say we go a-hunting, tonight!” he cried, and was joined by others.
Magpie gave Talon an anxious look, and he nodded and cried sharply, “Hiss! Viper! The lot of you, have a thought. This is no spider or marsh hag, cousins, but the king of all the devils! You’ll need a spell that’s equal to him or you’ll just be flying out to make yourselves his meal! Has any of you got such a spell up his sleeve? If you do, I’d very much like to hear it!”
No one answered.
Hiss shifted uneasily on his feet and looked surly. “Then what, Prince?” he asked. “Hasshegot a spell like that?”
“Aye!” said Talon. “She has!”
This was a revelation to Magpie herself, and she cast Talon a sidelong glance.
“Let’s have it then, and go!” Hiss went on.
Talon looked at Magpie, and all the others did, too. She lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and said, “I won’t be doing any capturing until I’ve brought back my friends and your kin and all the others, and that must wait till tomorrow, with the Magruwen’s good grace.”
“That’s madness! Whilst you play at raising the dead, the devil will be making more dead all the night long, and none are ever coming back again! Best to stop him before he gets anyone else!”
Magpie’s mouth drew into its most stubborn straight line, and she said, “I know they’re not dead, not proper dead, and they’re nowhere in the Moonlit Gardens, and I’m going to get them back!”
“How?” asked Nettle simply.
Magpie turned to her and said, “I know what to do. I dreamt it—”
“Dreamtit?” interrupted a grizzled older faerie with a scoff that was met with laughter from the others. “Lass, dreams are stuff and air, not battle plans!”
“You’re wrong,” she said fiercely, meeting his eyes. “Dreams are everything! I can’t stop you trying to capture the Blackbringer yourselves, but nor will I help till I’ve brought out all those folk and creatures he made to shadows. I won’t see them go in the bottle with him for the rest of forever. I won’t!”Her voice had been steadily rising and with it the color in her cheeks, so that when she finished speaking her face was flushed and her eyes were flashing. She felt a tingling in her fingertips and clasped her hands together, but a soft shimmer had already flowed from them, though no one seemed to see it. They did, however, feel the air suddenly shift and sharpen round them and squeeze. It was so subtle they weren’t certain what was happening, if anything at all, but the feeling silenced them. Talon looked sharply at Magpie, and the hairs on his arms stood up. The warriors weren’t laughing now, but were eyeing Magpie warily.
Orchidspike broke the silence. “My lads,” she said. “I know ’tis a sore and hollow thing for a warrior to sit idle, but there’s magic in this lass that makes me hope. We don’t know that she’s not right. This Blackbringer, maybe he’s wrapped his terrible cloak round our kinsmen and kept them. And maybe we can yet do something great. Aye, there’s great risk, too, that more will be lost and none saved. But then, mayhapallwill be saved.”
“But Lady, to balance lives on a sprout’s dream...”
“You’ll decide what you must, Orion, but I’ve felt a tide of mystery wash over us such as I’ve never felt in all my life, and it’s my belief these are no ordinary dreams and this is no ordinary sprout.”
Orion frowned and looked at Magpie, small and ornery, and at his nephew by her side. He sighed, then told his men, “No hunting tonight, then. I don’t know about dreams and that, but Talon’s right. We’re just not ready for this foe. There’s naught I know to do against him.”
Not all the warriors were happy about this. Grumbles ofanother nightandstrange lassandPrince Scuttlecould be heard in deep, muttering voices.
“We’ve warned all the hamlets and clans. We’ve done what we can. Tomorrow we’ll hunt the Blackbringer in the Spiderdowns and be ready when he comes out again. But he’ll hunt tonight, of that we can be sure, and I want to double the watch,” Orion continued. “Hiss, Viper, Howl, Lash, Prowl, Thorn, Hornet, and Mars, with me. The rest of you, sleep.”
And so ended the council. Magpie felt some tension go out of her as the fierce tattooed faces found other things to scowl at besides herself. She left the hall with Talon and the crows. “Tough crowd,” she told Talon with a shiver.
“They’re feeling feeble and not much liking it.”
“Aye, bless their scowls. Sure I never met a warrior yet who didn’t sneer at me as a wee useless lass...except you, anyway.”
“Well, I’m no warrior.”
“What? Course you are! Prince of ’em!”
“Nay,” he told her, flushing. “I’ve never even been on a raid, because of...” He fluttered his wings.
“Well, maybe you haven’t. But do you think you’d have ever made a skin if you could fly?”
He shrugged.
“I bet not,” she went on. “You’d be just one of them in there, sayingnehand never dreaming up a single new thing.”
They had come to a fork in the corridor, where Talon would turn toward the chief’s tower and Magpie and the crows to thecastle’s guest cells. He asked her, “Lass, do you really mean to go inside the Blackbringer again?”
