Snoshti appeared on a small avenue leading into Never Nigh with a twinkle in her eye and a beetle in her arms. It was blue as lapis and mild as a milk cow. She set it down and looked around. Seeing no faeries, she went away again directly. That is, she faded from sight and no sooner had her afterimage glimmered out than she was glimmering in again, this time with a garnet-red beetle in her arms. She set this one down too and repeated the process.

The third time she appeared, she carried an emerald-green beetle under one arm and a shepherd’s crook in her paw and she was whistling. She set off down the avenue, driving her small herd before her. About waist-high to a grown faerie, she was a stout bandy-legged creature with a shiny black nose and whiskers set in a broad, furred face. Her coarse fur was mottled grey and honey, with a touch of white the only hint of her age, and it tufted from the neck and cuffs of her flowered frock. She was sturdy and wide, with a pleasant gentleness in her face and a sparkle of intelligence in her pure black eyes that could turn fierce in an instant.

Poppy

She whistled her way into the throng of creatures headed toward the Ring. A steady stream of faeries, butterflies, and birds flitted overhead, and the avenue was bustling with toads and crickets, ladybugs and newts, hedgehogs and snakes and badgers and imps, all heading to see the show. Turtles had even come out of the river, some of them with creek maidens riding on their shells, and progress toward the Ring slowed behind their lurching gait.

But Snoshti went on whistling, and why not? Her lass was back. She’d been saving this song for over eighty years.

Talon Rathersting spotted the vultures from the north tower of the castle where he was daydreaming his way through guard duty. Rathersting Castle, peering out from a great hollow yew on the stony east slope of Dreamdark Crag, commanded a view of nearly the entire forest. Every winged thing that swept its way across could be seen from here by those with the eyes for it, and today there were more wings on the wind than usual. The crows had drawn Talon’s notice only an hour ago, but they’d made right up the Wendling for distant Never Nigh. Talon had been there only twice in his life; his folk seldom mingled with those Never Nigh flibbertigibbets with their fancy hair and ribbons and baubles, but well he knew that no unwelcome creatures could slip through the spells that twined round the city. It was the safest place in the world. So after the crows disappeared into the trees, he’d returned to his daydreams, unconcerned.

The vultures were different. Talon leapt atop the tower’s crenellations and trained his eyes on them. There were a half dozen, moving with grim purpose just above the treetops, their wings vast, too vast. There were no vultures in Dreamdark. These birds were a long way from home. His daydreams forgotten, he visioned the glyph for the deep chime that would summon his cousins and he watched to see where the vultures’ path would lead.