Changes df-12

by Jim Butcher

  “After I get the girl out.”

  “Do you even know where she is?” Ebenezar demanded.

  “Chichén Itzá,” I said. “She’s scheduled to be the centerpiece of one of the Red King’s shindigs in the next couple of hours.”

  Ebenezar took a sharp breath, as if I’d poked him in the stomach with the end of a quarterstaff. “Chichén Itzá . . . That’s a confluence. One of the biggest in the world. The Reds haven’t used it in . . . Not since Cortés was there.”

  “Confluence, yeah,” I said. “The Duchess Arianna is going to kill her and use the power to lay a curse on her bloodline—Susan and me.”

  Ebenezar began to speak and then blinked several times, as if the sun had just come out of a cloud and into his eyes. “Susan and . . .” He paused and asked, “Hoss?”

  “I meant to tell you the last time we spoke,” I said quietly. “But . . . the conversation wasn’t exactly . . .” I took a deep breath. “She’s my daughter by Susan Rodriguez.”

  “Oh,” he said very quietly. His face looked grey. “Oh, Hoss.”

  “Her name’s Maggie. She’s eight. They took her a few days ago.”

  He bowed his head and shook it several times, saying nothing. Then he said, “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “H-how long have you known?”

  “Since a day or so after she was taken,” I said. “Surprised the hell out of me.”

  Ebenezar nodded without looking up. Then he said, “You’re her father and she needs you. And you want to be there for her.”

  “Not want to be there,” I said quietly. “Going to be.”

  “Aye-aye,” he said. “Don’t go back to the Edinburgh facility. We think Arianna laced it with some kind of disease while she was there. So far there are sixty wizards down with it, and we’re expecting more. No deaths yet, but whatever this bug is, it’s putting them flat on their backs—including Injun Joe, so our best healer isn’t able to work on the problem.”

  “Hell’s bells,” I said. “They aren’t just starting back in on the war again. They’re going to try to decapitate the Council in one blow.”

  Ebenezar grunted. “Aye. And without the Way nexus around Edinburgh, we’re going to have a hell of a time with that counterstroke.” He sighed. “Hoss, you got a damned big talent. Not real refined, but you’ve matured a lot in the past few years. Handle yourself better in a fight than most with a couple of centuries behind them. Wish you could be with us.”

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Ebenezar was generally considered the heavyweight champion of the wizarding world when it came to direct, face-to-face mayhem. And I was one of the relatively few people who knew he was also the Blackstaff—the White Council’s officially nonexistent hit man, authorized to ignore the Laws of Magic when he deemed it necessary. The old man had fought pretty much everything that put up a fight at one point or another, and he didn’t make a habit of complimenting anyone’s skills.

  “I can’t go with you,” I said.

  “Aye,” he said with a firm nod. “You do whatever you have to do, boy. Whatever you have to do to keep your little girl safe. You hear?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Godspeed, son,” Ebenezar said. Then he cut the connection.

  I released my focus slowly until I was once more in my body in the back of the limo.

  “Who was it?” Molly asked. The others let her take the lead. She must have explained the whole speaking-stone concept to them. Which made me look less crazy, but I felt twitchy about her handing out information like that to the entire car. It wasn’t a big deadly secret or anything, but it was the principle of the thing that—

  I rubbed at my face with one hand. Ye gods. I was becoming my mentors. Next I’d be grumbling about those darned kids and their loud music.

  “Uh, the Council,” I said. “Big shock, they aren’t helping.”

  Murphy looked like she might be asleep, but she snorted. “So we’re on our own.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. It’s more familiar.”

  Lea let out a peal of merry laughter.

  Murphy opened an eye and gave Lea a decidedly frosty look. “What?”

  “You think that this is like what you have done before,” my godmother said. “So precious.”

  Murphy stared at her for a moment and then looked at me. “Harry?”

  I leaned my head back against the window, so that the hood fell over my eyes. Murphy was way too good at picking up on it when I lied. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we’ll see.”

  It took Glenmael less than twenty minutes to get to Aurora. We got out at a park there, a pretty little community place. It was empty this time of night, and all the lights were out.

  “Pitcher’s mound, folks,” I said, piling out and taking the lead.

  I was walking with long, long strides, staying ahead of everyone. Murphy caught up to me, moving at a slow jog.

  “Harry,” she said, her voice low. “Your godmother?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we trust her?”

  I scowled. She wouldn’t be able to see the expression, with the hood and all. “Do you trust me?”

  “Why do you think I’m asking you?”

  I thought about it for a moment and then slowed down, so that everyone else was nearer. That included my godmother.

  “Okay, folks. Let’s clear the air about the scary Sidhe lady. She’s under orders to go with me and to help. She will. She’s got a vested interest in making sure I come out of this all right, and if she doesn’t do it, she’s in trouble with the queen. As long as you all are helpful to her mission, getting me in and out in one piece, she’ll support you. The second she thinks you’re a liability or counterproductive to her mission, she’s going to let bad things happen to you. Maybe even do them herself.” I looked at Lea. “Is that about right?”

  “That is precisely right,” she said, smiling.

  Susan arched an eyebrow and looked from me to my godmother. “You have no shame about it at all, do you?”

  “Shame, child, is for those who fail to live up to the ideal of what they believe they should be.” She waved her hand. “It was shame that drove me to my queen, to beseech her aid.” Her long, delicate fingers idly moved to the streaks of white in her otherwise flawless red tresses. “But she showed me the way back to myself, through exquisite pain, and now I am here to watch over my dear godson—and the rest of you, as long as it is quite convenient.”

  “Spooky death Sidhe lady,” Molly said. “Now upgraded to spooky, crazy death Sidhe lady.”

  The Leanansidhe bared her canine teeth in a foxlike smile. “Bless you, child. You have such potential. We should talk when this is over.”

  I glowered openly at Lea, who looked unrepentant. “Okay, folks. The plan is going to be for me to stand where the fire is hottest. And if one of you gets cut off or goes down, I’m going to go back for you.” I kept glaring at my godmother. “Everyone who goes in with me is coming out again, dead or alive. I’m bringing you all home.”

  Lea paused for a few steps and arched an eyebrow at me. Then she narrowed her eyes.

  “If they can all carry themselves out,” I said, “I believe that would be more ‘quite convenient’ than if they couldn’t. Wouldn’t it, Godmother?”

  She rolled her eyes and said, “Impossible child.” But there was a hint of a smile on her mouth. She bowed her head to me slightly, like a fencer acknowledging a touch, and I returned it.

  Then I figured I’d best not threaten her ego any more than I had to. “Be careful when you speak to her,” I told the others. “Don’t make her any offers. Don’t accept any, not even in passing, not even things that seem harmless or that could only be construed through context. Words are binding around the Sidhe, and she is one of the most dangerous creatures in all of Faerie.” I bowed my head to her. “Fortunately for us. Before the night’s over, we’ll all be glad she’s with us.”

&nbs
p; “Oh,” the Leanansidhe purred, all but literally preening. “A trifle obvious, but . . . how the child has grown.”

  “Da,” said Sanya cheerfully. “I am glad that she is here. For the first time, I got to ride in a limousine. Already it is a good night. And if spooky crazy death Sidhe lady can help serve a good cause, then we who bear the Swords”—he paused for a smiling second—“all three of them”—he paused for another second, still smiling—“will welcome her aid.”

  “Such charm, O Knight of the Sword,” Lea replied, smiling even more endearingly than Sanya. “We are all being so pleasant tonight. Please be assured that should one of the Swords be dropped or somehow misemployed, I will do everything in my power to recover it.”

  “Sanya,” I said. “Please shut up now.”

  He let out a booming laugh, settled the strap of the shotgun a little more firmly over his shoulder, and said nothing more.

  I checked my mother’s memories and nodded as I reached the pitcher’s mound. “Okay, folks. First leg here. Should be a simple walk down a trail next to a river. Don’t get freaked when you notice the water is flowing uphill.” I stared at the air over the pitcher’s mound and began to draw in my will.

  “Right,” I said, mostly to myself. “Annnnnd here we go. Aparturum.”

  Chapter 41

  The first leg of the trip was simple, a walk down a forest trail next to a backward-flowing river until we reached a menhir—that’s a large, upright standing stone, to those of you without a pressing need to find out what a menhir is. I found where a pentangle had been inscribed on the stone, a five-pointed star within a circle, like the one around my neck. It had been done with a small chisel of some kind, and was a little lopsided. My mother had put it there to mark which side of the stone to open the Way on.

  I ran my fingers over it for a moment. As much as my necklace or the gem that now adorned it, it was tangible proof of her presence. She had been real, even if I had no personal memories of her, and that innocuous little marking was further proof.

  “My mother made this mark,” I said quietly.

  I didn’t look back at Thomas, but I could all but feel the sudden intensity of his interest.

  He had a few more memories than I did, but not many. And it was possible that he had me outclassed in the parental-figure issues department, too.

  I opened another Way, and we came through into a dry gulch with a stone wall, next to a deep channel in the stone that might once have held a river—now it was full of sand. It was dark and chilly, and the sky was full of stars.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now we walk.”

  I summoned a light and took the lead. Martin scanned the skies above us. “Uh. The constellations . . . Where are we?”

  I clambered up a stiff little slope that was all hard stone and loose sand, and looked out over a vast expanse of silver-white beneath the moon. Great shapes loomed up from the sand, their sides almost serrated in the clear moonlight, lines and right angles that clashed sharply with the ocean of sand and flatland around them.

  “Giza,” I said. “You can’t see the Sphinx from this side, but I never claimed to be a tour guide. Come on.”

  It was a stiff two or three miles from the hidden gully to the pyramids, and sand all the way. I took the lead, moving in a shambling, loosekneed jog. There wasn’t any worry about heat—dawn was under way, and in an hour the place would be like one giant cookie pan in an oven, but we’d be gone by then. My mother’s amulet led me directly to the base of the smallest and most crumbly pyramid, and I had to climb up three levels to reach the next Waypoint. I stopped to caution the party that we were about to move into someplace hot, and to shield their eyes. Then I opened the Way and we continued through.

  We emerged onto a plain beside enormous pyramids—but instead of being made of stone, these were all formed of crystal, smooth and perfect. A sun that was impossibly huge hung in the sky directly overhead, and the light was painfully bright, rebounding up from the crystal plain to be focused through the pyramids and refracted over and over and over again.

  “Stay out of those sunbeams,” I said, waving in the direction of several beams of light so brilliant that they made the Death Star lasers look like they needed to hit the gym. “They’re hot enough to melt metal.”

  I led the group forward, around the base of one pyramid, into a slim corridor of . . . Well, it wasn’t shade, but there wasn’t quite so much light there, until we reached the next Waypoint—where a chunk the size of a large man’s fist was missing from one of the perfectly smooth edges of the pyramid. Then I turned ninety degrees to the right and started walking.

  I counted five hundred paces. I felt the light—not heat, just the sheer, overwhelming amount of light—beginning to tan my skin.

  Then we came to an aberration—a single lump of rock upon the crystalline plain. There were broad, ugly facial features on the rock, primitive and simple.

  “Here,” I said, and my voice echoed weirdly, though there was seemingly nothing from which it could echo.

  I opened another Way, and we stepped from the plain of light and into chilly mist and thin mountain air. A cold wind pushed at us. We stood in an ancient stone courtyard of some kind. Walls stood around us, broken in many places, and there was no roof overhead.

  Murphy stared up at the sky, where stars were very faintly visible through the mist, and shook her head. “Where now?”

  “Machu Picchu,” I said. “Anyone bring water?”

  “I did,” Murphy said, at the same time as Martin, Sanya, Molly, and Thomas.

  “Well,” Thomas said, while I felt stupid. “I’m not sharing.”

  Sanya snorted and tossed me his canteen. I sneered at Thomas and drank, then tossed it back. Martin passed Susan his canteen, then took it back when she was finished. I started trudging. It isn’t far from one side of Machu Picchu to the other, but the walk is all uphill, and that means a hell of a lot more in the Andes than it does in Chicago.

  “All right,” I said, stopping beside a large mound built of many rising tiers that, if you squinted up your eyes enough, looked a lot like a ziggurat-style pyramid. Or maybe an absurdly large and complicated wedding cake. “When I open the next Way, we’ll be underwater. We have to swim ten feet, in the dark. Then I open the next Way and we’re in Mexico.” I was doubly cursing the time we’d lost in the Erlking’s realm. “Did anyone bring any climbing rope?”

  Sanya, Murphy, Martin—Look, you get the picture. There were a lot of people standing around who were more prepared than me. They didn’t have super-duper faerie godmother presents, but they had brains, and it was a sobering reminder to me of which was more important.

  We got finished running a line from the front of the group to the back (except for my godmother, who sniffed disdainfully at the notion of being tied to a bunch of mortals), and I took several deep breaths and opened the next Way.

  Mom’s notes on this Waypoint hadn’t mentioned that the water was cold. And I don’t mean cold like your roommate used most of the hot water. I mean cold like I suddenly had to wonder if I was going to trip over a seal or a penguin or a narwhal or something.

  The cold hit me like a sledgehammer, and it was suddenly all I could do just to keep from shrieking in surprise and discomfort—and, some part of my brain marveled, I was the freaking Winter Knight.

  Though my limbs screamed their desire to contract around my chest and my heart, I fought them and made them paddle. One stroke. Two. Three. Four. Fi—Ow. My nose hit a shelf of rock. I found my will and exhaled, speaking the word Aparturum through a cloud of blobby bubbles that rolled up over my cheeks and eyelashes. I tore open the next Way a little desperately—and water rushed out through it as if thrilled to escape.

  I crashed into the Yucatán jungle on a tide of ectoplasmic slime, and the line we’d strung dragged everyone else through in a rush. Poor Sanya, the last in line, was pulled from his feet, hauled hard through the icy water as if he’d been flushed down a Jotun’s toilet, and then crashed
down amidst the slimed forest. Peru to Mexico in three and a half seconds.

  I fumbled back to the Way to close it and stopped the tide of ectoplasm from coming through, but not before the vegetation for ten feet in every direction had been smashed flat by the flood of slime, and every jungle creature for fifty or sixty yards started raising holy hell on the what-the-fuck-was-that party line. Murphy had her gun out, and Molly had a wand in each hand, gripped with white knuckles.

  Martin let out a sudden, coughing bellow that sounded like it must have torn something in his chest—and it was loud, too. And the jungle around us abruptly went silent.

  I blinked and looked at Martin. So did everyone else.

  “Jaguar,” he said in a calm, quiet voice. “They’re extinct here, but the animals don’t know that.”

  “Oooh,” said my godmother, a touch of a child’s glee in her voice. “I like that.”

  It took us a minute to get everyone sorted out. Mouse looked like a scrawny shadow of himself with his fur all plastered down. He was sneezing uncontrollably, having apparently gotten a bunch of water up his nose during the swim. Ectoplasm splattered out with every sneeze. Thomas was in similar straits, having been hauled through much as Sanya was, but he managed to look a great deal more annoyed than Mouse.

  I turned to Lea. “Godmother. I hope you have some way to get us to the temple a little more swiftly.”

  “Absolutely,” Lea purred, calm and regal despite the fact that her hair and her slime-soaked silken dress were now plastered to her body. “And I’ve always wanted to do it, too.” She let out a mocking laugh and waved her hand, and my belly cramped up as if every stomach bug I’d ever had met up in a bar and decided to come get me all at once.

  It. Hurt.

  I knew I’d fallen, and was vaguely aware that I was lying on my side on the ground. I was there for, I don’t know, maybe a minute or so before the pain began to fade. I gasped several times, shook my head, and then slowly pushed myself up onto all fours. Then I fixed the Leanansidhe with a glare and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”