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Chapters (45)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. EIGHT
  13. NINE
  14. TEN
  15. ELEVEN
  16. TWELVE
  17. THIRTEEN
  18. FOURTEEN
  19. FIFTEEN
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN
  22. EIGHTEEN
  23. NINETEEN
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. THIRTY-TWO
  37. THIRTY-THREE
  38. THIRTY-FOUR
  39. THIRTY-FIVE
  40. THIRTY-SIX
  41. THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. THIRTY-EIGHT
  43. THIRTY-NINE
  44. FORTY
  45. FORTY-ONE

The Vritra had always been the weakest of the Djinn, but it was still a shock seeing him fallen to such a state. How simple it had been to command a wind to extinguish him for good! The wind had tried valiantly to resist, but in the end it was a slave to its secret name, and the hungry one knew all the secret names. And now he knew more secrets. For the delirious Vritra had babbled in his dreams and told him what he needed to know to unlock the world.

How wonderful.

A pomegranate! How long had he searched before the faeries had at last caught him in their bottle? He would have gone on searching too and would never have guessed that what he sought was a pomegranate. A fruit! Truly, without the fire and color of dreams of his own he was ill-equipped to imagine the whims of Djinn. But now he didn’t have to imagine. He knew.

The world hinged upon a single pomegranate.

The world, such as it was. The Tapestry was threadbare, the Djinn were guttering out, Fade and the other dragons were dead, the champions were long gone, and the faeries that remained, while not as flavorless as that pest species, humans, were a far cry from the faeries of the Dawn Days. Once, a single faerie would have sated him for days, but now he couldn’t fill his bottomless hunger no matter how many of them he had.

It riled him. The gnawing hunger distracted him from vengeance. It was primal, inconvenient, an unexpected consequence of his . . . evolution. He had been a very different sort of creature once. The Magruwen might have imprisoned him, but this thing he had become, it was his own creation. Through sheer force of will, through vengeance, bitterness, and rage, he had warped himself into what he was now.

He was the Blackbringer.

TWENTY

TWENTY

Magpie lay outstretched on her belly on a pine bough above Issrin Ev. It chilled her to see the temple in such a state, its eight great columns leaning like old bones, its entrance obliterated. For the first time she considered the possibility that it might just be her own dark luck to live to witness the end of things. The bitter scorch in the bottom of the well was never coming out again. The old legends were gone, and there would be no new ones.

This was what remained: headless statues, their long shadows, and vultures.