by Jim Butcher
"They call it forth?" I asked in a quiet voice. "They create it?"
"Even so," Lea said, her voice similarly low. "They prepare for war."
I turned slowly, taking it in. We stood on a rise of ground in a broad, shallow valley. I could make out what looked like a mist-shrouded lake shore not far away. A river cut through the cloudscape.
"Wait a minute," I said. "This is … familiar." Chicago-Over-Chicago, she had said. I started adding in mental images of buildings, streets, lights, cars, people. "This is Chicago. The land."
"A model of it," Lea agreed. "Crafted from clouds and mist."
I kept turning and found behind me a stone, grey and ominous and enormous, startlingly solid amid all the drifting white. I took a step back from it and saw the shape of it—a table, made of a massive slab of rock, the legs made of more stones as thick as the pillars at Stonehenge. Writing writhed across the surface of the stone, runes that looked a little familiar. Norse, maybe? Some of them looked more like Egyptian. They seemed to take something from several different sources, leaving them unreadable. Lightning flashed again through the ground, and a wave of blue-white light flooded over the table, through the runes, lighting them like Las Vegas neon for a moment.
"I’ve heard of this," I said after a moment. "A long time ago. Ebenezar called it the Stone Table."
"Yes," my godmother whispered. "Blood is power, child. Blood spilled upon that stone forever becomes a part of who holds it."
"Who holds it?"
She nodded, her green eyes luminous. "For half of the year, the Table lies within Winter. For half, within Summer."
"It changes hands," I said, understanding. "Midsummer and Midwinter."
"Yes. Summer holds the Table now. But not for much longer."
I stepped toward the Table and extended a hand. The air around it literally shook, pressing against my fingers, making my skin ripple visibly as though against a strong wind—but I felt nothing. I touched the surface of the Table itself, and could feel the power in it, buzzing through the flowing runes like electricity through high-voltage cables. The sensation engulfed my hand with sudden heat and violence, and I jerked my fingers back. They were numb, and the nails of the two that had touched the table were blackened at the edges. Wisps of smoke rose from them.
I shook my fingers and looked at my godmother. "Let me get this straight. Blood spilled onto the Table turns into power for whoever holds it. Summer now. But Winter, after tomorrow night."
Lea inclined her head, silent.
"I don’t understand what makes that so important."
She frowned at the Table, then began pacing around it, slowly, clockwise, her eyes never leaving me. "The Table is not merely a repository for energy, child. It is a conduit. Blood spilled upon its surface takes more than merely life with it."
"Power," I said. I frowned and folded my arms, watching her. "So if, for instance, a wizard’s blood spilled there …"
She smiled. "Great power would come of it. Mortal life, mortal magic, drawn into the hands of whichever Queen ruled the Table."
I swallowed and took a step back. "Oh."
Lea completed her circuit of the table and stopped beside me. She glanced furtively around her, then looked me in the eyes and said, her voice barely audible, "Child. Should you survive this conflict, do not let Mab bring you here. Never."
A chill crawled down my spine. "Yeah. Okay." I shook my head. "Godmother, I still don’t get what you’re trying to tell me. Why is the Table so important?"
She gestured, left and right, toward a pair of hilltops facing one another across the broad valley. I looked at one, squinting at a sudden blur in my vision. I tried looking at the other, and the same thing happened. "I can’t see," I said. "It’s a veil or something."
"You must see if you are to understand."
I drew in a slow breath. Wizards can see things most people can’t. It’s called the Sight, the Third Eye, a lot of other names. If a wizard uses his Sight, he can see the forces of magic themselves at work, spells like braids of neon lights, veils pierced like projections on a screen. A wizard’s Sight shows things as they truly are, and it’s always an unsettling experience, one way or the other. What you see with the Sight stays with you. Good or bad, it’s always just as fresh in your mind as if you’d just seen it. I’d looked on a little tree-spirit being with my Sight when I’d been about fourteen, the first time it had happened to me, and I still had a perfect picture of it in my head, as though I was still looking at it, a little cartoonish being that was part lawn gnome and part squirrel.
I’d seen worse since. Much worse. Demons. Mangled souls. Tormented spirits. All of that was still there too. But I’d also seen better. One or two glimpses of beings of such beauty and purity and light that it could make me weep. But each time it got a little harder to live with, a little harder to bear, a cumulative weight.
I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and with careful deliberation unlocked my Sight.
Opening my eyes again made me stagger as I was hit with a sudden rush of impressions. The cloudy landscape absolutely seethed with magical energies. From the southern hilltop, wild green and golden light spilled, falling over the landscape like a translucent garden, vines of green, golden flowers, flashes of other colors spread through them, clawing at the gentle ground, anchored here and there at points of light so vibrant and bright that I couldn’t look directly at them.
From the other side, cold blue and purple and greenish power spread like crystals of ice, with the slow and relentless power of a glacier, pressing ahead in some places, melted back in others, especially strong around the valley’s winding rivers.
The conflict of energies both wound back to the hilltops themselves, to points of light as bright as small suns. I could, just barely, see the shadow of solid beings within those lights, and even the shadow of each was an overwhelming presence upon my senses. One was a sense of warmth, choking heat, so much that I couldn’t breathe, that it pressed into me and set me aflame. The other was of cold, horrible and absolute, winding cold limbs around me, stealing away my strength. Those presences flooded through me, sudden beauty, power so terrifying and exhilarating and awesome that I fell to my knees and sobbed.
Those powers played against one another—I could sense that, though not the exact nature of their conflict. Energies wound about one another, subtle pressures of darkness and light, leaving the landscape vaguely lit in squares of cold and warm color. Fields of red and gold and bright green stood against empty, dead blocks of blue, purple, pale white. A pattern had formed in them, a structure to the conflict that was not wholly complete. Most of a chessboard. Only at the center, at the Table, was the pattern broken, a solid area of Summer’s power in green and gold around the Stone Table, while Winter’s dark, crystalline ice slowly pressed closer, somehow in time with the almost undetectable motion of the stars overhead.
So I saw it. I got a look at what I was up against, at the naked strength of the two Queens of Faerie, and it was bigger than me. Every ounce of strength I could have summoned would have been no more than a flickering spark beside either of those blazing fountains of light and magic. It was power that had existed since the dawn of life, and would until its end. It was power that had cowed mortals into abject worship and terror before—and I finally understood why. I wasn’t a pawn of that kind of strength. I was an insect beside giants, a blade of grass before towering trees.
And there was a dreadful attraction in seeing that power, something in it that called to the magic in me, like to like, made me want to hurl myself into those flames, into that endless, icy cold. Moths look at bug zappers like I looked at the Queens of Faerie.
I tore my eyes away by hiding my face in my arms. I fell to my side on the ground and curled up, trying to shut the Sight, to force those images to stop flooding over me. I shook and tried to say something. I’m not sure what. It came out as stuttering, gibbering sounds. After that, I don’t remember much until cold rain started slapping me on
the cheek.
I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the cold, wet ground on the shores of Lake Michigan, where I’d first called out to my godmother. My head was on something soft that turned out to be her lap. I sat up and away from her quickly. My head hurt, and the images the Sight had showed me made me feel particularly small and vulnerable. I sat shivering in the rain for a minute before I glanced back at my godmother.
"You should have warned me."
Her face showed no remorse, and little concern. "It would have changed nothing. You needed to see." She paused and then added, "I regret that it was the only way. Do you yet understand?"
"The war," I said. "They’ll fight for control of the area around the Table. If Summer holds the space, it won’t matter if it’s Winter’s time or not. Mab won’t be able to reach the table, spill blood on it, and add the power of the Summer Knight to Winter." I took a breath. "There was a sense to what they were doing. As though it was a ritual. Something they’d done before."
"Of course," Lea said. "They exist in opposition. Each wields vast power, wizard—power to rival the archangels and lesser gods. But they cancel one another flawlessly. And in the end, the board will be evenly divided. The lesser pieces will emerge and do battle to decide the balance."
"The Ladies," I said. "The Knights."
"And," Lea added, lifting a finger, "the Emissaries."
"Like hell. I’m not fighting in some kind of fucked-up faerie battle in the clouds."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
I snorted. "But you didn’t help me. I needed to speak to them. Find out if one of them was responsible."
"And so you did. More truly than if you’d exchanged words."
I frowned at her and thought through what I knew, and what I’d learned on my trip to the Stone Table. "Mab shouldn’t be in any hurry. If Summer is missing her Knight, Winter has the edge if they wait. There’s no need to take the Table."
"Yes."
"But Summer is moving to protect the Table. That means Titania thinks someone in Winter did it. But if Mab is responding instead of waiting, it means …" I frowned. "It means she isn’t sure why Summer is moving. She’s just checking Titania’s advance. And that means that she isn’t sure whodunit, either."
"Simplistic," Lea said. "But accurate enough reasoning, poppet. Such are the thoughts of the Queens of the Sidhe." She looked out across the lake. "Your sun will rise in some little time. When once again it sets, the war will begin. In a balanced Court, it would mean, perhaps, little of great consequence to the mortal world. But that balance is gone. If it is not restored, child, imagine what might happen."
I did. I mean, I’d had an idea what might go wrong before, but now I knew the scale of the forces involved. The powers of Winter and Summer weren’t simply a bunch of electricity in a battery. They were like vast coiled springs, pressing against one another. As long as that pressure was equal, the energies were held in control. But an imbalance in one side or the other could cause them to slip, and the release of energies from either side would be vast and violent, and sure to inflict horrible consequences on anything nearby—in this case, Chicago, North America, and probably a good chunk of the rest of the world with it.
"I need to see the Mothers. Get me to them."
Lea rose, all grace and opaque expression, impossible to read. "That, too, is beyond me, child."
"I need to speak to the Mothers."
"I agree," Lea said. "But I cannot take you to them. The power is not mine. Perhaps Mab or Titania could, but they are otherwise occupied now. Committed."
"Great," I muttered. "How do I get to them?"
"One does not get to the Mothers, child. One can only answer an invitation." She frowned faintly. "I can do no more to help you. The lesser powers must take their places with the Queens, and I am needed shortly."
"You’re going?"
She nodded, stepped forward, and kissed my brow. It was just a kiss, a press of soft lips against my skin. Then she stepped back, one hand on the hilt of the knife at her belt. "Be careful, child. And be swift. Remember—sundown." She paused and looked at me askance. "And consider a haircut. You look like a dandelion."
And with that, she stepped out onto the lake, and her form melted into water that fell back into the storm-tossed waters with a splash.
"Great," I muttered. I kicked a rock into the water. "Just great. Sundown. I know nothing. And the people I need to talk to screen all of their calls." I picked up another rock and threw it as hard as I could over the lake. The sound of rain swallowed up the splash.
I turned and trudged back toward the Beetle through the thunder and the rain. I could see the shapes of the trees a bit better now. Dawn must be coming on, somewhere behind the clouds.
I sat down behind the wheel of the trusty Beetle, put the key in, and started the car.
The battered old Volkswagen wheezed once, lurched without being put into gear, and then started to fill with smoke. I choked and scrambled out of the car. I hit the release on the engine cover and opened it. Black smoke billowed out, and I could dimly see fire behind it, chewing up some part of the engine. I went back to the front storage compartment, got out the fire extinguisher, and put out the fire. Then I stood there in the rain, tired and aching and staring at my burnt engine.
Dawn. At Midsummer, that meant I had maybe fifteen hours to figure out how to get to the Mothers. Somehow, I doubted that their number was listed. Even if it had been, my visit to the battleground around the Stone Table had shown me that the Queens possessed far more power than I could have believed. Their sheer presence had nearly blown the top off my head from a mile away—and the Mothers were an order of magnitude above even Mab and Titania.
I had fifteen hours to find the killer and restore the Summer Knight’s mantle to the Summer Court. And then to stop a war happening in some wild nether-place between here and the spirit world that I had no idea how to reach.
And my car had died. Again.
"Over your head," I muttered. "Harry, this is too big for you to handle alone."
The Council. I should contact Ebenezar, tell him what was happening. The situation was too big, too volatile, to risk screwing it up over a matter of Council protocol. Maybe I’d get lucky and the Council would A, believe me, and B, decide to help.
Yeah. And maybe if I glued enough feathers to my arms, I’d be able to fly.
Chapter Twenty-four
I examined my car for a few minutes more, took a couple of things off it, and walked to the nearest gas station. I called a wrecker, then got a cab back to my apartment, paying for everything with Meryl’s advance.
Once there, I got a Coke out of the icebox, put out fresh food and water for Mister, and changed his kitty litter. It wasn’t until I had dug around under the kitchen sink, gotten out the bottle of dishwashing soap, and blown the dust off of it that I realized I was stalling.
I glowered at the phone and told myself, "Pride goeth before a fall, Harry. Pride can be bad. It can make you do stupid things."
I took a deep breath and shotgunned the Coke. Then I picked up the phone and dialed the number Morgan had left me.
It barely rang once before someone picked up and a male voice said, "Who is calling, please?"
"Dresden. I need to speak to Ebenezar McCoy."
"One moment." Sound cut off, and I figured whoever answered must have put their hand over the mouthpiece. Then there was a rustle as the phone changed hands.
"You’ve failed, then, Dresden," Morgan stated. His tone gave me a good mental picture of the smile on his smug face. "Stay where you are until the Wardens arrive to escort you to the Senior Council for judgement."
I bit down on a creative expletive. "I haven’t failed, Morgan. But I’ve turned up some information that the Senior Council should have." Pride goeth, Harry. "And I need help. This is getting too hot for one person to handle. I need some information and some backup if I’m going to sort this out."
"It’s always all about you, isn’t it?" M
organ said, his voice bitter. "You’re the exception to every rule. You can break the Laws and mock the Council, you can ignore the trial set for you because you are too important to abide by their authority."
"It’s got nothing to do with that," I said. "Hell’s bells, Morgan, pull your head out of your ass. The faeries’ power structure has become unstable, and it looks like it might hit critical mass if something isn’t done. That’s bigger than me, and a hell of a lot more important than Council protocol."
Morgan screamed at me, his voice so vicious that it made me flinch. "Who are you to judge that? You are no one, Dresden! You are nothing!" He took a seething breath. "For too long you have flouted the Council’s rule. No more. No more exceptions, no more delays, no more second chances."
"Morgan," I began, "I just need to speak to Ebenezar. Let him decide if—"
"No," Morgan said.
"What?"
"No. You won’t evade justice this time, snake. This is your Trial. You will see it through without attempting to influence the Senior Council’s judgement."
"Morgan, this is insane—"
"No. The insanity was in letting you live when you were a boy. DuMorne’s murderous apprentice. Insanity was pulling you from that burning house two years ago." His voice dropped to an even more quiet register, the contrast to his previous tone unsettling. "Someone I dearly cared for was at Archangel, Dresden. And this time your lies aren’t going to get you out of what’s coming to you."
Then he hung up the phone.
I stared at the receiver for a second before snarling with rage and slamming it down on the end table, over and over, until the plastic broke in my hands. It hurt. I picked up the phone and threw it against the stone of the fireplace. It shattered, its bell chiming drunkenly. I kicked at the heaped mess of my living room, scattering old boxes, empty cans of Coke, books, papers, and startled cockroaches. After a few minutes of that, I was panting, and some of the blind, frustrated anger had begun to recede.
