Relief flooded Magpie and she found she could look at him now, if she squinted. He had made himself into a spindle of flame that still bore within it the impression of a figure rising to taper into tremendous curving horns. And there were eyes. Once Magpie found them she felt locked onto them and couldn’t look away. They were vertical, windows through fire into the infinite. They were dizzying.

“Why have you woken me?” he asked, and Magpie blinked and was able to break her gaze from his.

“T-there’s . . . ,” she stammered, “there’s a devil, escaped from its bottle. A devil you saw fit once, yourself, to imprison.”

“And how do you know this?”

“I found the bottle and your seal. I never knew you snared any devils yourself, so it . . . it flummoxed me.”

“There is but one bottle that bears my seal.”

“Not anymore, then, Lord; if there was just the one, then it’s sure. He’s got out.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” Magpie hesitated. “Did you also know, Lord, that he’s killed the Vritra?”

The fire wavered and a hiss issued from him. “Aye, I felt it,” he muttered to himself. “A rending such as this the Tapestry cannot withstand. The threads fall slack and will not sing true.”

“Tapestry?” Magpie asked.

At first the Magruwen didn’t answer. Magpie felt he was staring at her, weighing her worth and finding her lacking. “The Tapestry is unknown to you?” he asked.

Magpie nodded slowly. A dreamlike image floated in her mind, but like the traceries of light it flitted away when she tried to look at it.

“Get you gone, faerie.” The Magruwen’s voice snapped in mirthless laughter. “Gather up the folk that remain and go you all to the Moonlit Gardens. Feel blessed there’s such a place for you to go . . . for now. Even it won’t hold forever. When the last threads snap it too will sink into the darkness, a soft echo of greater doom.”

“What?” Magpie asked, bewildered. “Darkness? Doom? What do you mean, Lord, please! Sure you can’t be meaning the snag! What is he?”

“Who are you, that you should peer behind a veil of mysteries that has been in place for years beyond counting?”

“I’m a hunter. He’s come to Dreamdark! I just want to catch him, before he hurts any more faeries and before he hurts . . . you.”

Again the Magruwen laughed. It was a terrible sound. “Faerie, this foe won’t be caught, not by you or anyone. He is a contagion of darkness. There’s poetry in his return, though a faerie wouldn’t see it.”

“Poetry! He said there was poetry in the Vritra’s death. I don’t see poetry in any of it!”

“He said? How do you know what he said?”

“I touched the Vritra’s last memory. The devil called him a traitor!”