Page 85 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Fine time for vanity!” Magpie scoffed.
Vesper replied in her most lilting, musical tones, “Whatever your will, whatever your whim, look into my mirror...” Unthinking, Magpie flicked her eyes toward it in irritation, and the lady finished with a hiss, “...Your place is within.”
Magpie gasped. Vesper smiled. The mirror warped, and Magpie found herself staring at her own horrified reflection as she was drawn toward the mirror by some violent magic. Her body twisted with a thrill of pain. She was wrenched from her feet as her body stretched like a cast shadow, not like living flesh. Her vision blurred and she screamed, her eyes clenched shut in agony as she was sucked into Vesper’s mirror.
The lady reached out and caught Magpie’s wrist before it could disappear inside the glass. She twisted, and Skuldraig dropped to the moss. When she released Magpie’s hand, the strange, attenuated shape of the lass was sucked swiftly in, and the silver surface closed over her and calmed like a pond. Vesper gazed into it and smiled. Nothing peered back at her now but her own lovely face. Magpie had vanished.
Vesper knelt and picked the dagger up off the moss.
At Rathersting Castle, Talon and the crows took the steps to the dungeon three and four at a time, arrivingbreathless before Batch’s prison cell. “What is it, Prince?” asked the faerie on guard.
“You can go, Hesperus. I’ll see to this wretch.”
With a shrug, Hesperus left, and Talon turned to Batch, who was leering out at them with his beady black eyes, seeing their distress, already weighing it and calculating.
“Blessings of the morning, good-imp,” said Calypso.
“Suck lint,” said Batch.
Talon unlocked the cell and went over to the imp reclining in the straw. He knelt and said, “Now listen, imp, I won’t tell you what big things are happening in Dreamdark; sure you know already. But your master’s worse a thing than even you know, and if you don’t help us it could mean the end of everything.”
Batch carefully inserted his big toe into his nostril and rummaged.
Talon went on. “Not just the end of faeries, you ken, the end of everything!”
Batch yawned.
“Listen!” Talon cried. “We need you to find Magpie, do you hear? I know you find things. It’s got to be you. You’ve got to help!”
Batch withdrew his toe from his nose and commenced to gnaw on his thick toenail. In exasperation Talon cried, “Answer me!”
Calypso stepped forward. All too well he remembered the scavenger Lick and the events of Amitav Ev, and he knew themotives of imps better than Talon did. He said, “Look, ye blighted soul, what’s it going to take?”
And Batch released his toenail from between his teeth and looked at the crow with a gleam of interest.
“What’s it going to cost?” demanded Calypso. “What is it ye want?”
“Well,” said Batch with a wicked grin. “I always been keen to fly.”
Vesper had slid her mirror back into her pocket and was feasting her eyes upon the elegant designs engraved on Bellatrix’s blade. She laughed softly at her own good luck and wondered what that twig of a lass was doing with such a knife. Her mind turned to what Magpie had said about Gutsuck and she wondered, where was he? Well, she could only hope that whatever had happened to the cur, he’d at least dispatched that scavenger first. There was no place for Batch Hangnail in the world, not with what he knew.
She was just rising on her wings to return to Never Nigh when the crows plunged through the pines, caught sight of her, and began to caw. “It’s that wormy queen!” she heard one of them shout.
She turned with a sneer to retort but caught herself when she saw the Rathersting prince was with them, and carefully she rearranged her face into the look of lovely tranquility for which she was known. “Young Lord Rathersting,” she said sweetly when he drew nigh, riding astride a crow.
“Lady Vesper,” he returned, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
A small falcon flew at his side and Talon asked it, “Are you certain?” to which it nodded and spiraled down to land in the temple courtyard, seeming strangely clumsy for such a hunter of the skies.
“Lady,” said the crow with the cracked beak, “won’t you tarry with us a moment?”
“Though it would be a pleasure, I must be on my way, my fine birds—”
“Ha!” one of the crows interrupted. “More like ‘low creatures,’ en’t we, Lady?”
“Certainly not,” she said with a sweet, sweet smile.
“Then please, join us,” said another, and by the way they surrounded her and the hard looks in their eyes, she knew they weren’t asking. She took a good look at their scars and cracked beaks, their eye patches and peg legs, their scorched feathers and bandages, and thought better of trying to outrace them. With a quiver of anxiety, she tightened her grip on the handle of the dagger in her pocket and dropped back down into the rubble of broken statues. The crows landed noisily and perched all around her, and the Rathersting prince leapt from his mount and joined the peculiar falcon at the clearing’s edge. They spoke under their breath together. She heard the lad whisper “Her pocket? How can that be?” and she tensed.They can’t know!she thought as they turned and approached her.
