Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
“Ugly things, but without which a wound would never heal. They were a dream of the Vritra’s, in fact, back in the time of the devil wars when wounds were many. Healers know the glyph for them and use it in their magic. It was one of those you saved when the Vritra was killed.”
“I saved . . .”
“Aye. Your knots have healed the Tapestry, little bird. Without them, the nothingness would have bled through its wounds and overtaken the world.”
Magpie was too stunned to respond.
“And we would not be here now,” the Magruwen’s voice continued. “I don’t know where you came from or whether the world deserved to be spared, but it seems that choices were made whilst I slept and I will accept them, for I had forsaken my place. But I am awake now, and I can’t allow the fabric of creation to become an eyesore.”
Magpie braced herself. He was going to tell her not to meddle in the affairs of the Djinn. To close these new mystical eyes he’d just opened for her. Was he also going to tell her to let the Tapestry fall apart?
“You must control your wild magicks, child. If you knew the things you’d done! Gecko footprints in frosting! Is this the stuff of magic? You must learn to see and to weave. We must begin at once!”
“What? Lord, do you mean you’ll teach me?”
“It’s that or spell you into a bottle for safekeeping. The choice is yours.”
“But—teach, of course, Lord. Thank you!” Magpie cried. She could scarcely believe it. He didn’t want to stop her! The Djinn King was going to teach her! “I know just where to start,” she said eagerly. “Stopping the Blackbringer—I haven’t figured out how to go about that yet, you can help me with that, but there’s something else—”
The Magruwen interrupted her. “We will begin at the beginning. Hush.”
She closed her mouth.
The Tapestry began to roll before her then and she had the sensation she was flying over a luminous landscape. The rolling slowed and stopped, and before her gleamed a thread, straight and true and much brighter than the smaller ones that anchored onto it. “A warp thread,” the Magruwen told her. “These are the bones of the Tapestry and all other threads hang on them. The greatest are earth, air, water, and fire, and the lesser are the component elements of everything in this world, carbon, gold, manganese, and on. . . .”