Orchidspike’s knitting needles were ancient, djinncraft, passed down through generations of Dreamdark healers. They sang to the fingers and were capable of mysterious things. And using them, Talon had found himself capable of mysterious things too. In the privacy of the healer’s cottage he had stumbled upon an art form he believed no faerie had ever undertaken before, a secret art, and it had become a fascination for him. No instructions existed in any book, not even the slightest hint. He had to invent it for himself as he went along, stitch by stitch, but he didn’t feel himself alone in it. There was something that guided him, a sense he could not put into words. It was like being swept into a current of magic and carried along, even as he sat still and knitted. His heart pulsed with the pulse of some unseen force, glyphs came together in his mind, and his hands knew just what to do. It was almost like a trance. He had tried explaining it to Orchidspike and her eyes grew bright and sharp but she said little. And because it involved knitting needles he could never mention it to anyone else. Who ever knew a warrior prince to knit?

Talon

Orchidspike put on a kettle and gathered leaves from a half-dozen little jars, mixing a tea for Talon. Then she sank back into her rocker and said, “Tell me.”

“Yestermorn on the watch I spotted six vultures,” he told her. “Monstrous big beasts. My father and cousins went out to see to them. They never came back. I found their knives at Issrin Ev.”

“Issrin?” she asked, and nodded to herself. “Aye, near the mouth of the Deeps. Lad, I was in the Deeps this night and I felt a dark presence and it wasn’t vultures, I can tell you.”

“But what was it?”

“It grieves me to say I’ve no idea. Some dark power has come to Dreamdark and we need to learn what it is.”

“I’ll go search the Deeps,” he said, rising to his feet.

“Neh, you will not,” she said, her eyes ablaze. “There’s something out there, lad, and it might only be luck you made it through the Deeps once tonight. Come. You’ve some hours till dawn and work to do. You can finish in that time, I think.”

“Finish? But—”

“It’s time, lad,” she said. She opened a workbox that sat near the hearth and lifted from it her knitting needles and a long streamer of shimmering threads.

Talon took them from her very gently. Light skittered across the fabric and couldn’t seem to fix a color to it. It looked frail as a cobweb adrift on a breeze, insubstantial as a veil knit of moonbeams. Holding the needles in his hands he felt the familiar pulse catch him up like a current, glyphs filled his mind, and the work began to flow from his fingers.

Just before dawn he looked up from it and his eyes were shadowed with sleeplessness but bright with excitement.