“The Astaroth, the world-shaping wind. He was the bellows to the Djinns’ fire, tirelessly feeding their flames so they could burn 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 nothingness in and 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.