Blackbringer by Laini Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

wait . . . that one! Neh . . .”
    “Ach, blitherhead,” grunted Maniac. “What’s it matter?”
    Magpie dropped an exaggerated curtsy and drawled,
    “Thennnk you sooo much! What a lot of chaaarming birds you are!” in a dead-on impersonation of an Ismoroth clan queen for whom they had recently recovered an amulet from a monkey.
    “And ye claim ye’re no actress!” said Calypso.
    “Actress, piff! Queeens do not act!”
    “Ach, drop it, Queen ’Pie, and toss me some brecky.”
    “Brecky” this evening was cheese. Again. Rubbery-edged from being left out all day and without the benefit of toasting. Maniac griped for coffee but they’d haul out soon—no time for a fire. Mingus brought clear water from a stream and Magpie perched on a stone between Pup and Pigeon, tipped up her tin cup, and drank so the water splashed down her chin. She saved the last gulp to wash her face with, and dried it on her sleeve.
     
    They flew all night in the arms of the wind and reached Dreamdark with the dawn. By the light of earliest morning Magpie had her first glimpse in more than eighty years of the forest of her birth. A world of oak and yew, pine and thorn, it seemed to go on forever. Long fog-blurred lakes twisted past knuckles of rock, and creeks meandered out of the dense woods and back in again. There were meadows hither and thither, and rising crags, and an island-dotted river, but mostly Dreamdark from the sky was a tapestry of treetops, as inscrutable as an ocean. Some white owls broke its surface like fish leaping in a sea. All else was still.
    No longer fearing human eyes, the crows dipped down from their cloud-high path and skimmed above the crests of the trees. Calypso flew ahead to find the way to the city of Never Nigh, while Magpie zigzagged behind and dropped playbills into the shadowed world below. Thoughts and memories were whirling in her mind. The crows had called Dreamdark home and she had piffed at the notion. In truth, she barely remembered it. She’d been such a wee babe when they’d left that she hadn’t even been flying with her own wings yet. She did have vague fond memories of the house where she was born, a cozy maze of rooms tucked high inside an ancient linden tree by the river. It was the last home she’d had with roots.
    And she remembered Snoshti, of course, the bright-eyed imp marm with tickling whiskers who’d rocked her and sung to her in that growly little voice. The only other face that came easily to mind from her time here was Poppy Manygreen’s. Her first friend. Magpie had made many friends since. Mountain faeries, jungle faeries, selkies, hobgoblins, owls. The world was scattered with friendships she’d begun and left behind when the time came to move on, and the time always came.
    Once, it seemed, her family’s gypsying life had been filled with golden seasons. They would find a ruined temple or a remote faerie clan and they’d set down their caravans and stay awhile, collecting glyphs, digging for relics, settling into the rhythm of the native ways. But nowadays Magpie lived a different kind of life, a hunter’s life, and there was little time for lingering. The devils gave her no rest. It seemed an age since she’d seen her family or made a new friend. In all of it, the crows were her one constant, her kindred. She’d said they were her home, and she’d meant it. This might be Dreamdark, the navel of the world and her own birthplace, but what of that? Magpie pushed all thoughts of friends and treehouses from her mind. She was looking for a devil and Djinn, not a home.
    She and the crows followed the river like a road of poured silver. Each curve they rounded on tilting wings brought them nearer to the hidden city of Never Nigh, until finally Calypso led them toward the trees. The branches reached out to gather them in, and just like that, they passed into another world, one as ancient as the Djinns’ first dreams of trees.
    Dreamdark.
    Here on this very spot in the