“What?” Magpie asked with a sharp intake of breath. She remembered the name. The old faerie who had guarded the Vritra had said it. Skuldraig had killed all those faeries. “Who’s Skuldraig?” she asked.

“Let me see that dagger.”

Puzzled, Magpie unsheathed it and held it out, remembering now the runes she’d noticed on its blade while holding it to the falcon’s—the lad’s—throat. She hadn’t had a moment to look more closely at them since.

The Magruwen studied the knife for a long moment before saying, “This blade was lost, and well lost. Where did you find it?”

“In the Vritra’s dreaming place,” she said. “It was planted in a skeleton’s—”

“Spine,” he finished for her.

“Aye. How did you know?”

“Skuldraig means ‘backbiter.’ That is its way.”

“But who is he?” Magpie asked. “Sure it can’t be the devil—those skeletons were long dead, and besides, this devil, he leaves nothing behind!”

“Devil? Foolish faerie, Skuldraig is the blade itself! It is cursed to slay any who wield it but the one for whom it was forged.”

“B-but . . . ,” Magpie stammered, “I have wielded it!”

The Djinn’s flame eyelids drew together in a vertical blink. “Have you indeed?” he breathed. Magpie nodded. He asked, “And pray, what happened when you did?”

“It . . . it sang.”

The Magruwen guttered like a wind-licked candle. “It sang for you?” Again he demanded, “Who are you, faerie?”

“Magpie Wind—”

“Nay, but who are you? Who made you?”

“What do you mean, Lord?” Magpie asked, pushing away from him on her wings as he flared bright and hot once more.

“You weave the Tapestry, and you wield the champion’s blade and it sings for you when it should slay you? Faerie, you too should be a skeleton with a knife in its back. Why do you live?”

Magpie heard all he said, Tapestry and skeleton and all, but one word caused her to gasp. “Champion?”

“I forged this blade for Bellatrix and no other!” His voice seethed and gusts of heat crackled around him.

Awestruck and shaking, Magpie carefully set the blade on the cavern floor and backed away, Calypso at her side. “I’m sorry, Lord Magruwen,” she said. “I should never have taken it—”

“You mistake me, little bird,” he said. “Pick it up. Skuldraig has suffered you to live. It’s yours, should you risk the use of it again. Many devils has it subdued in its day.”

Magpie picked the knife back up and looked at it, in awe of it and afraid. Bellatrix had held it, aye, but how many spines had known it since? She slid it warily into its sheath. “Lord Magruwen,” she said. “Will it subdue this devil?”

“I told you. He is beyond you!”

“The trees are calling him the Blackbringer—”

“Blackbringer! Call him what you choose, he will devour you just the same. Go now, faerie.”