by Jim Butcher
By the time I was far enough from town to start calling out to my godmother, the sun had set, though the cloud-veiled western sky still glowed the color of campfire embers. I pulled off onto a side road that was made of old gravel and stubborn weeds that kept trying to grow up in the road's smooth center. It led down to a little dead end where some kind of construction project never went through. It was a popular spot for local kids to hang out and imbibe illegal substances of one intensity or another, and there were empty beer cans and bottles scattered around in abundance.
Mouse and I left the car up on the road, and walked maybe fifty yards down through trees and heavy undergrowth to the shore of the lake. At one point on the shore, a little spit of land formed a promontory only ten or twelve inches higher than the surface of the water.
"Wait here," I told Mouse, and the dog sat down at the end of the spit of land, watching me with alert eyes, his ears flicking around at all the little sounds. Then I walked out onto the spit to its end, and a cold wind off the lake swept around me, blowing my coat and threatening my balance. I grimaced and leaned on my staff, out at that point of land where earth and water and sky met one another, and focused my thoughts, blocking out the pain of my leg, my fears, my questions. I gathered together my will, then lifted my face to the wind and called out, quietly, "Leanansidhe. An it please thee, come hither and hold discourse with me."
I sent my will, my magic coursing into the words, and they reverberated with power, echoing from the surface of the lake, repeating themselves in whispers in the swirling wind, vibrating the ground upon which I stood.
Then I waited. I could have repeated myself, but my godmother had certainly heard me. If she was going to come, she would. If she wasn't, no amount of repetition was likely to change her mind. The wind blew colder and stronger, throwing cold droplets up from the lake and into my face. One gust of wind brought me the sound of an airliner overhead, and another the lonely whistle of a freight train. Distantly, somewhere on the lake, a bell rang out several times, a solemn sound that made me think of a funeral dirge. Beyond that, nothing stirred.
I waited. In time, the fire faded from the overcast sky, and only the darkest tones of purple were left on the western horizon behind me. Dammit. She wasn't coming.
After I thought that but before I could actually turn around, there was a swirling in the waters near my feet, and a slow spiral of water spray spun up from the surface of the lake, a bizarre sight. The spray rolled up and away from a female form, beginning at the feet, bare and pale, and rolling up over a medieval-style gown of emerald green. The gown was belted with a woven silver rope, and a slightly curved, single-edged knife of some dark, glassy material hung at an angle through it.
When the spray rolled up over the woman's face, I expected my godmother's blazing wealth of copper and scarlet curls, her wide feline eyes of amber, her features that always made her seem smug and somewhat pleased with herself, in absence of the animation of any other emotion.
Instead I saw a long, pale throat, features of heart-stopping, cold beauty, canted eyes greener than any color to be found in the natural world, and long, silken hair of purest white, bound within a circlet of what looked like rose vines surrounded in gleaming ice, beautiful and brittle and cruel.
Behind me, a deep-throated snarl burst forth from Mouse, back on the shore.
"Greetings, mortal," said the faerie woman. Her voice shook water and earth and sky with subtle power. I felt it resonating through the elements around me as much as heard it.
My mouth went dry and my throat got tight. I leaned on my staff to help me balance as I cast a courtly bow in her direction. "Greetings, Queen Mab. I do beg your pardon. It was not my intention to disturb thee."
My head shifted into panicked, quick thought. Queen Mab had come to me, and that absolutely could not be good. Mab, monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, the Queen of Air and Darkness, was not a very nice person. In fact, she was one of the most feared beings of power you'd find short of archangels and ancient gods. I'd once used my wizard's Sight to look upon Mab as she unveiled her true self in a working of power, and it had come perilously close to driving me insane.
Mab was not some paltry mortal being like Grevane or Cowl or the Corpsetaker. She was far older, far cruder, far more deadly than they could ever be.
And I owed her a favor. Two, to be exact.
She stared at me for a long and silent moment, and I didn't look at her face. Then she let out a quiet laugh and said, "Disturb me? Hardly. I am here only to fulfill the duties I have been obliged to take upon myself. It is no fault of thine that this summons reached mine ears."
I straightened up slowly and avoided her eyes. "I had expected my godmother to come."
Mab smiled. Her teeth were small and white and perfect, her canines delicately sharp. "Alas. The Leanansidhe is tied up at the moment."
I drew in a breath. My godmother was a powerful member of the Winter Court, but she couldn't hold a candle to Mab. If Mab wanted to take Lea down, she certainly could do it-and for some reason the thought spurred on a protective instinct, something that made me irrationally angry. Yes, Lea was hardly a benevolent being in her own right. Yes, she'd tried to enslave me several times in the past several years. But for all of that, she was still my godmother, and the thought of something happening to her angered me. "For what reason have you detained her?"
"Because I do not tolerate challenges to my authority," she said. One pale hand drifted to the hilt of the knife at her belt. "Certain events had convinced your godmother that she was no longer bound by my word and will. She is now learning otherwise."
"What have you done to her?" I asked. Well. It didn't sound like a question so much as a demand.
Mab laughed, and the sound of it came out silvery and smoother than honey. The laugh bounded around the waves and the earth and the winds, clashing against itself in a manner that made the hairs on my neck stand up and my heart race with a sudden apprehension as I felt an odd kind of pressure settle over me, as if I were closed into a small room. I gritted my teeth and waited the laugh out, trying not to show how harshly it had affected me. "She is bound," Mab said. "She is in some discomfort. But she is in no danger from my hand. Once she acknowledges who rules Winter, she will be restored to her station. I can ill afford the loss of so potent a vassal."
"I need to speak to her now," I said.
"Of course," Mab said. "Yet she languishes in the process of enlightenment. Thus am I here to fulfill her obligation to teach and guide you."
I frowned. "You locked her away somewhere, but you're keeping her promises?"
Something cold and haughty flickered through Mab's eyes. "Promises must be kept," she murmured, and the words made wave, wind, and stone tremble. "My vassal's oaths and bargains are binding upon me, so long as I restrain her from fulfilling them."
"Does that mean that you will help me?" I asked.
"It means that I will give you what she might give you," Mab said, "and speak what knowledge she might have spoken to you were she here in flesh, rather than in proxy." She tilted her head slowly to one side. "You know, wizard, that I may speak no word that is untrue. Thus is my word given to you."
I eyed her warily. It was true that the high Sidhe could not speak words that were untrue-but that wasn't the same thing as telling the truth. Most of the Sidhe I had met were past masters of the art of deception, speaking in allusions and riddles and inferences that would undermine the necessary honesty of their words so thoroughly that they might be much stronger lies than if they had simply spoken a direct falsehood. Trusting the word of one of the Sidhe was an enterprise best undertaken with extraordinary caution and exacting care. If I had any choice in the matter, I would avoid it.
But there was nothing I could do but forge ahead. I still had to find out more about what Sergeant Kemmler's Lonely Hearts Club Band was doing in Chicago, and that meant taking the risk of speaking with my godmother. Mab was simply more of the same risk.
; A lot more of it.
"I seek knowledge," I said, "about the one known as the Erlking."
Mab arched an eyebrow. "Him," she said. "Yes. Your godmother knows some little of him. What would you know of him?"
"I want to know why all of Kemmler's disciples are grabbing up all the copies of the White Council's book about him."
Nothing that I could imagine would truly rattle Mab's composure, but that sentence apparently came close. Her expression froze, and with it the wind came to a sudden, dead halt. The waves of the shore abruptly stilled to a sheet of glass beneath her feet, dimly reflecting the glow of the city skyline in the distance and the last shreds of purple light in the leaden sky.
"Kemmler's disciples," she said. Her eyes were deeper than the lake she stood upon. "Could it be?"
"Could what be?" I asked.
"The Word," she said. "The Word of Kemmler. Has it been found?"
"Um," I said. "Sort of."
Her delicate white brows rose. "Meaning what, pray tell?"
"Meaning that the book was found," I said. "By a local thief. He tried to sell it to a man named Grevane."
"Kemmler's first student," Mab said. "Did he acquire the book?"
"No," I said. "The thief used mortal technology to conceal the book, in order to prevent Grevane from taking it from him without paying."
"Grevane killed him," Mab guessed.
"And how."
"This mortal ferromancy-technology, you called it. Does it yet conceal the book?"
"Yeah."
"Grevane yet seeks it?"
"Yeah. Him and at least two more. Cowl and the Corpsetaker."
Mab lifted a pale hand and tapped a finger to rich, lovely lips the color of frozen mulberries. Her nails were colored with shining opalescence gorgeous to the eye and distracting as hell. I felt a little dizzy until I forced myself not to look at them. "Dangerous," she mused. "You have fallen among deadly company, mortal. Even the Council fears them."
"You don't say."
Mab narrowed her eyes, and a little smile graced her lips. "Impudent," she said. "It's sweet on you."
"Gosh, that's flattering," I said. "But you haven't told me a thing about why they might be interested in the Erlking."
Mab pursed her lips. "The being you ask me about is to goblins as I am to the Sidhe. A ruler. A master of their kind. Devious, cunning, strong, and swift. He wields dominion over the spirits of fallen hunters."
I frowned. "What kind of spirits?"
"The spirits of those who hunt," Mab said. "The energy of the hunt. Of excitement, hunger, bloodlust. Betimes, the Erlking will call those spirits into the form of the great black hounds, and ride the winds and forests as the Wild Hunt. He carries great power with him as he does. Power that calls to the remnants of hunters now passed on from mortal life."
"You're talking about ghosts," I said. "The spirit of hunters."
"Indeed," Mab said. "Shades that lay in quiet rest, beyond the beck of the mortal pale, will rise up to the night and the stars at the sound of his horn, and join the Hunt."
"Powerful shades," I said quietly.
"Specters most potent," Mab said, nodding, her eyes bright and almost merry as they watched me.
I leaned on my staff, trying to get as much weight as I could off of my injured leg, so that it would stop pounding enough to make me think. "So a gaggle of wizards whose stock in trade is enslaving the dead to their will is interested in a being whose presence calls up powerful spirits they couldn't otherwise reach." I followed the chain of logic from there. "There's something in the book that tells them how to get his attention."
"Darling child," Mab said. "So clever for one so young."
"So what is it?" I asked. "Which part of the book?"
"Your godmother," she said, her smile growing wider, "has no idea."
I ground my teeth together. "But you do?"
"I am the Queen of Air and Darkness, wizard. There is little I do not."
"Will you tell me?"
She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, as if savoring the taste of the words. "You should know us better than that by now, wizard. Nothing given by one of the Sidhe comes without a price."
My foot hurt. I had to hop a little bit on my good leg when my balance wavered. "Great," I muttered. "What is it you want?"
"You," Mab said, folding her hands primly in front of her. "My offer of Knighthood yet stands open to you."
"What's wrong with the new guy?" I asked, "that you'd dump him for me?"
Mab showed me her teeth again. "I have not yet replaced my current Knight, treacher though he is," she purred.
"He's still alive?" I asked.
"I suppose," Mab said. "Though he very much wishes that he were not. I have taken the time to explain to him at length the error of his ways."
Torture. She'd been torturing him in vengeance for his treachery for more than three years.
I felt a little sick to my stomach.
"If you like, you might consider it an act of mercy," she said. "Accept my offer, and I will forgive your debt to me and answer all your questions freely."
I shuddered. Mab's last Knight had been an abusive, psychotic, drug-addicted, murdering rapist. I was never clear on whether he got the job because of those qualities or whether they had been instilled in him on the job. Either way, the title of Winter Knight was a permanent gig. If I accepted Mab's offer, I'd be doing it for life-though there would, of course, be no promises as to how long that life would be.
"I told you once before," I said, "that I'm not interested."
"Things have changed, wizard," Mab said. "You know the kind of power you face in Kemmler's heirs. As the Winter Knight, you would have strength far outweighing even your own considerable gifts. You would have the wherewithal to face your foes, rather than slinking through the night gathering up whispers to use against them."
"No." I paused and then said, "And no means no."
Mab shrugged one shoulder, a liquid motion that drew my eyes toward the curves of her breasts within the silken gown. "You disappoint me, child. But I can wait. I can wait until the sun burns cold."
Thunder rumbled over the lake. Off in the southwest, lightning leapt from cloud to cloud.
Mab turned her head to watch. "Interesting."
"Uh. What's interesting?"
"Powers at work, preparing the way."
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"That you have little time," Mab said. She turned to face me again. "I must do what I might to preserve your life. Know this, mortal: Should Kemmler's heirs acquire the knowledge bound within the Word, they will be in a position to gather up such power as the world has not seen in many thousands of years."
"What? How?"
"Kemmler was"-Mab's eyes grew distant, as if in memory- "a madman. A monster. But brilliant. He learned how to bind to his will not only dead flesh, but shades-to rend them asunder and devour them to feed his own power. It was the secret of the strength that allowed him to defy all the White Council together."
I added two and two and got four. "The heirs want to call up the ancient spirits," I breathed. "And then devour them for power."
Mab's deep-green eyes almost seemed to glow with intensity. "Kemmler himself attempted it, but the Council struck him down before he could finish."
I swallowed. "What happens if one of his heirs is able to do it?"
"The heir would gain power such as has not been wielded by mortal hands in the memory of your race," Mab said.
"The Darkhallow," I said. I rubbed at my eyes. "That's what it is. A ritual, tomorrow night. Halloween. They all want to be the one to make themselves into a junior-league god."
"Power is ever sweet, is it not?"
I thought about it some more. I had to worry about more than just Kemmler's cronies. Mavra wanted the Word, too. Hell's bells. If Mavra succeeded in making herself into some kind of dark goddess, there wasn't a chance in hell that she wouldn't obliterate me at the first opportuni
ty. "Can they do it without the Word?"
Mab's mouth curled up in a slow smile. "If they could, why would they seek it so desperately?" The wind began to stir again, and the lake began to resume its ebb and flow. "Beware, wizard. You are engaged in a most deadly game. I should be disappointed were I deprived of your service."
"Then get used to it," I said. "I'm never going to be your knight."
Mab tilted back her head and let out that nerve-searing laughter again. "I have time," she said. "And you mortals find life to be very sweet. Two favors you yet owe me, and make no mistake, I will collect. One day you will kneel at my feet."
The lake suddenly surged, dark waters whirling up in a snake-quick spiral, forming a waterspout that stretched from the lake's surface up out of sight into the darkness above me. The wind howled, driving my balance to one side, so that my wounded leg buckled and I fell to one knee.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the gale was gone. The lake was calm again. The wind sighed mournfully through tree branches sparsely covered in dead leaves. There was no sign of Mab.
I grimaced and struggled to my feet. I glanced back at Mouse, who was sitting on the shore, watching me with worried doggy eyes.
"She always has to have the last word," I told him.
Mouse padded over to me, and I scratched his ears a couple of times while he snuffled at me. He looked warily out at the lake.
"One problem at a time," I told him. "We'll handle Mab later. Somehow."
I walked back to the Beetle more slowly than ever, and Mouse stayed within a step or two the entire time. The adrenaline faded and left me wearier than ever. I had to fight to stay awake all the way back to my place. A thin, cold, drizzling rain began to fall.
I had just gotten home and out of the car when Mouse let out a warning snarl. I spun and wavered, then planted my staff hard on the ground to keep from falling over.
Out of the darkness and rain, a dozen or more people suddenly loomed into view. All of them walked toward me, steady and unhurried.
