"Er," said Magpie, "Snoshti did it, neh, Snosh?"

But Snoshti seemed to have vanished. The crows set to clamoring about it. "Another sneaking imp vanishes!" groused Swig.

"Another?" asked Magpie.

"Aye, that scavenger was in the dungeon, but he disappeared from his locked cell."

"They left him alone?" Magpie cried. "Jacksmoke! I need to talk to him! I need to know what"a"she glanced furtively at Orchidspikea""what his master sent him down the well for really."

But Orchidspike wasn't listening to Magpie. The scent of the nightspink in her braid had caught the healer's notice, and as the crows complained of imps, she quietly removed a blossom and held it to her nose. A curious look came into her old eyes. She sniffed it again, then tucked it into her apron. She stood. "It's time we get on with the healing, lass. 'Twill be no quick job of work. I'll see how Talon's coming on with that food." She bustled out.

In the corridor she took the silver-white flower out of her pocket and held it to her nose again.

"What's that?" Talon asked, coming back with a tray.

"'Twas braided into the lass's hair," she said in a peculiar voice and held it out to him.

He sniffed it. "Sure I never smelled that before," he said.

"Nor I," Orchidspike replied, and Talon frowned. Orchidspike was the finest herbalist in Dreamdark. She knew everything that grew, and where, and what it could be used for. There simply wasn't a flower in the forest she hadn't smelled. "Wherever it was she went with that imp, it wasn't in Dreamdark, that I know. Nor anywhere near."

"Then wherea"?"

"I don't know, my lad, but I'd like to. Come. We'll begin soon."

As Magpie ate, Orchidspike and Talon made ready for the healing. A wheel was set up by the fire and loaded with a wide bobbin of spidersilk, while a balm of angelica, hyssop, and clove was set out to simmer in a copper basin.

"The silk is a binding for the spells," Orchidspike explained as she purified her knitting needles in the balm. "I vision a glyph into every stitch and the silk knits them together into a whole. It takes a few days for the glyphs to bond and transmute to living tissue, then the silk threads melt away, leaving behind only wings, real as they ever were."

"Does that mean I won't be able to fly for a few days?"

"Maybe longer, lass. This is quite severe."

Magpie frowned and grumbled. Then Orchidspike's knitting needles caught her eye. "Those must be djinncraft," she said.

"Aye, my foremother Grayling chose them long ago from among the Magruwen's treasures."

"Did your apprentice use them to make that skin of his?"

"My what?" asked Orchidspike, startled, for the word apprentice had been much on her mind. "Ah, Talon? Neh, lass, the prince isn't my apprentice."

"Prince?" Magpie repeated.

"Aye, Talon will be chief one day, after his father . . ." Her voice wavered. "Indeed, that day may be at hand."

"Would the Rathersting have a clan chief who's a scamperer?" she asked, and at that moment Talon came back into the room. He stiffened. Magpie had simply been curiousa"she'd scarcely ever known a scamperer; they were exceedingly rarea"but she saw his face color with shame and she cursed herself. He avoided meeting her eyes and she could think of nothing to say that wouldn't make it worse, so she just frowned and resolved to speak no more.

When Orchidspike was ready to begin, Calypso tried to talk Magpie into lying down to sleep through the healing. "Ye can't just go and go, *Pie, after what ye been through. Ye're pale as biscuit flour and yer folks would have my feathers for it. Ye need sleep."

But she resisted, seating herself on a low stool in front of Orchidspike's rocker. "My mind's buzzing too much. I wish I had my book to write in."

"Here, Mags," said Mingus, holding it out to her. "I got it from the caravan for ye."

"Ach, Mingus, thank you," Magpie said, taking it and giving him a kiss on his beak while he shuffled his feet and examined the floor.

She held her book in her lap and unspelled it so it fell open to the page she'd last written. She'd been en route to Dreamdark then and knew the devil only as "the hungry one." So much had happened since! She had found the Djinn King in the bottom of a well. She had fallen through the darkness of the Blackbringer and lost two dear friends in it. She had journeyed to the afterworld and had her hair braided by Bellatrix! She had fallen off a cliff and been caught in a dragon's fist. And she had learned of a gaping hole in the legends she had always cherished. An eighth ancient!

She wished she could talk to her parents. They were so far away, probably shape-shifting themselves into fish with the elders of Anang Paranga right this moment. She would tell her book instead, and maybe in the writing things would come clear. She tapped her quill against her lip and began to write.

Behind her, holding Magpie's right wing taut while Orchidspike worked on it, Talon could just see the page over her shoulder. The crows were all around, though, so he couldn't stare, and he caught only a word or two now and then when the birds nodded off for little naps. Magpie didn't nap. Head bent over her book, she wrote. Orchidspike's needles clicked steadily and the spidersilk reeled off the bobbin. Rows of spells danced off the knitting needles, rows of words filled Magpie's page, and time passed.

She had been writing, pausing, frowning, remembering, and writing again for several hours when she finally gave voice to what was frustrating her. "Is he a snag, or isn't he?" she blurted suddenly.

"Eh?" muttered Calypso sleepily.

"It's just not right somehow. I can't get past it. He leaves no rooster tracks, he's got no smell, he's not stupid like a snag. . . . That snag the so-called queen set on me, now that was a devil, horrid and sure. To compare thema""

"What snag, *Pie?" asked the crow.

"Ach! I never told you!" she cried. "Aye, it was why Poppy came to Issrin Ev, to warn me that Vesper had a snag slave she'd set after us, and it came, sure, and it was some nasty meat, I tell you."

Talon cut in incredulously, "Lady Vesper set a devil after you?"

Magpie glanced over her shoulder at him. "Aye," she said defensively. "Your fine queen's got some dark dabblings."

"She's not our queen!" he returned hotly. "Lady Orchidspike and my father were the only elders in Dreamdark who wouldn't recognize her claim and the others ignored them. Only time those Never Nigh fops care what Rathersting think is when they nick their wings dancing or spot Black Annis too near their hamlets!"

"Ach, well . . . Lady Orchidspike, you were right. Vesper's a fake and worse. That snag was grim, and it's because of him Poppy's . . ." She choked on the word dead and finished instead with a bleak ". . . gone."

"Is it still out there?" asked Mingus, puffing himself up.

"Neh. The Blackbringer got it, just like that. Like it just vanished or melted. That's the thing, feathers, I can't get past it. That was a devil, and we seen plenty and that's what they're like, stringing drool and snaggle teeth and suckers and stink? But the Blackbringer, he's not like them at all. . . ." She paused. "The Magruwen called him a contagion of darknessa""

At the mention of the Magruwen Orchidspike's fingers fumbled but she caught her stitch and kept knitting, eyes alert, and Talon's jaw dropped open. "The Magruwen?" He gaped. "You've seen the Magruwen?"

"Aye."

Talon stammered, "B-but how . . . ? Where? What . . . what was he like?"

"Mean! Sure he couldn't care a twitch what happens to faeries or anything else. Calypso was right: he's through with the world."

Silence fell, broken only by the clicking of knitting needles.

After a moment, Magpie said with a sigh, "Well, he might be through with it, but I'm not. I'm going to catch the Blackbringer with or without his help."

"That's right, Mags!" chirped Pup. "Ye can do anything!"

"How . . . ?" asked Talon. "How do you catch a shadow? It sounds impossiblea""

"So ready to cry impossible?" Magpie snapped. "And leave that beast to eat the rest of your kin?" As soon as she said the words she wanted to bite them back. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Talon's face grew hot.

"Lass, lad . . . ," said Orchidspike in a soothing voice.

"Neh, she's right, what do I know of impossible?" Talon said in a wretched voice.

Magpie slouched and said miserably, "Neh, I'm sorry. I'm a brute. I just can't seem to hold it all in my head, what I know of him, what I don't know . . . what he is, and how to catch him. . . ."

"Now *Pie," Calypso encouraged, "ye'll catch him, sure. Come now, what do we know of the beast?"

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself. "He's the Blackbringer," she said slowly, "and sure faeries only remember him as a nursery story but that's our own doom, to forget. He was the worst devil there ever was. He was the dark come to life. A contagion of darkness, the hungry one . . . beast of night with flesh of smoke, wearing darkness like a cloak . . ."

Talon had a sudden clear and piercing thought. His eyes flew open.

"He called himself . . ." Magpie thought back. "The heavens with the stars ripped out . . . but ach, that's just poetry, neh?"

Talon spoke up. "What if he's wearing a skin?"

Magpie looked skeptical. "A skin?" she repeated.

"What you said about wearing darkness like a cloak, it made me think of a skin," he said.

"Usually I can spot a skin."

"Don't I know!"

"And made of what? The dark?"

Talon shrugged. "The legends say the Djinn wove light, neh? Why not dark?"

"A skin . . . I don't know. When I was inside it," Magpie said, "it wasn't just a little patch of shadow. It was . . . I don't know, endless, empty . . . infinite." The word leapt like a spark in her mind, and she felt the rush of an idea forming. It danced just out of reach.

Calypso asked, "But why would the Djinn make something so nasty?"

"Could something else have made it?" Talon asked. "If it's a skin, anything could be inside it."

Magpie stared. Anything, she thought. Infinite. And she was reminded of the glyph for infinity, that eight laid on its side, and her pulse quickened.

"Lad . . . ," Orchidspike said in a frightened whisper, and Talon turned to her. He saw a look of puzzlement on the healer's face and followed her gaze to Magpie's wings. At first he didn't know what was amiss. The knitting needles fairly flew along, unfurling neat rows of silk and spells behind them. He looked back at Orchidspike, then hastily back at the knitting needles.

They were moving very, very fast.

Spidersilk was flying off the bobbin.

"Every choice casts a shadow," Magpie said low to herself, repeating the Magruwen's words, "and sometimes those shadows stalk your dreams. . . ."

Orchidspike's old fingers couldn't keep up with the furious pace of the spells. She lost her hold on the needles and they clattered to the floor at her feet. Magpie didn't notice and neither, apparently, did the spells. Needles or not, the silk kept right on, zipping off the bobbin into the weave of Magpie's wings. Orchidspike drew back, astonished.

"He meant the choice between the world and the Astaroth," Magpie said, speaking faster now, trying to keep pace with her thoughts. "But what does that mean? Fade said the Djinn chose the world, but he never said what they did to the Astaroth. He never said they killed him."

"Fade?" Talon repeated weakly. He glanced at the bobbin and saw it had almost run out. That would put an end to it, he thought, but when the tail end of the thread disappeared into the weave . . . with no spidersilk binding them, no physical substance at all . . . the spells kept right on going. Magpie's wings were knitting themselves, and perfectly. As fast as her thoughts moved, the spells moved, caught in the flow of some strong magic like leaves in a river, pulled inexorably along.

And that wasn't all.

Talon suddenly felt himself lose contact with the floor. He was lifted gently so his feet hung just above it, and he grabbed at the mantel in surprise. He saw Orchidspike clutching the arms of her rocker and the crows treading air with their wing tips as they all floated, helpless and wide-eyed. Magpie too was hovering above her chair but she didn't seem to notice.

"And its eyes," she said excitedly. "No snag has eyes like that, like the Djinns' eyes!"

All around the castle, from the biddies to the stable sprouts to the ink-faced warriors on the ramparts, feet floated off the floor and a collective gasp went up every corridor and down every winding stair.

Magpie had forgotten the healing entirely now, and even as the last spells shimmied along the crisp new edge of her dragonfly wings, she rose into the air on them. "The fire that burns its bellows can only turn to ash, he said to the Vritra . . . and . . . he was the bellows! The Blackbringer's no snag! He might be the Astaroth's final plague, but the Astaroth didn't make the Blackbringer . . . the Astaroth is the Blackbringer!"

Still hanging in the air bewildered, Talon asked, "What's the Astaroth?"

Magpie whirled to face him. Her eyes were alight with revelation. "He's the worst thing that ever was." So enthralled had she been in her thoughts, Magpie didn't feel the impact of them until she heard herself speak those words. Suddenly she paled. Talon's feet dropped back onto the floor and Orchidspike's rocker settled with a thud. "The Astaroth . . . ," Magpie whispered. A look of slow horror spread over her face. "Jacksmoke, the skiving Astaroth . . ."

It all made so much sense now, so much dreadful sense. The Djinn hadn't killed him. They had translated him, somehow, into that thing of darkness. They had robbed him of his element. And he had returned for vengeance. He was the shadow that stalked the Magruwen's dreams. "I got to go see the Magruwen again . . . ," she whispered.

She turned to Orchidspike and said a distracted, "Thank you, Lady," but the healer was too flabbergasted to respond. "And Talon . . . thank you for the idea." Even in her daze their eyes caught for a moment, and both felt the air pulse faster around them. Magpie turned to the window, stepped up onto the ledge, and launched herself out. Talon saw her begin to fall in a graceful arc, and he felt his heart catch in his throat, thinking sure her wings weren't ready, weren't healed yeta"they couldn't be, after all, it was impossiblea"but then she flicked them sharply and was propelled forward like a loosed arrow, and he remembered, What do I know of impossible?

"Come on, feathers!" she called back, and the crows roused themselves from their own stunned stupor and squeezed one by one out the window after her.

Talon and Orchidspike turned to each other. Their looks said, How? What? but before they could speak, Nettle and Orion charged through the doorway.

"Talon!" Nettle cried. "Did you feel that magic? The devila""

"Neh," Talon said hastily. "It wasn't. It was the lass."

"What? How?" Nettle looked around the room. "Where've they all gone?"

"To the Magruwen . . ."

"The Magruwen?" Orion gaped.

Talon went to the window. He had a strange look on his face when he turned to them and said, "And I'm going to follow them."

Nettle and Orion looked at him like he was crazy. "Talon . . . ," his sister began, "how? Sure they're flying. . . ."

He reached deep into his pocket, pulled out a wadded bit of stuff, and shook it. It fell open shining and much larger than it had seemed at first glance, and Nettle and Orion watched perplexed as Talon stepped into it, one foot at a time. "Prince, is that a . . . stocking?" Orion asked with a look of dismay.

Talon didn't answer. He pulled the gauzy stuff over his head and was Talon no more.

Nettle gasped. Orion stared.

A falcon hopped onto the window ledge and glided off into the forest.