by Butcher, Jim
Mother Winter lifted her tea to her hood. I still couldn’t see her face—but her hand looked withered, the fingers tinged with blue. She lowered her cup and said, “You ask a foolish question, boy. You are more clever than this.”
I folded my arms. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Mother Summer frowned at Winter, but said, “It means that who is not as important aswhy .”
“Andhow ,” Mother Winter added.
“Think, boy,” Summer said. “What has the theft of the mantle accomplished?”
I frowned. War between the Courts, for one. Odd activity in the magical and natural world alike. But mostly the coming war, Winter and Summer gathering to battle at the Stone Table.
“Exactly,” Winter whispered. The skin on the back of my neck rippled with a cold and unpleasant sensation. Hell’s bells, she’d heard methinking . “But think, wizard. How was it done? Theft is theft, whether the prize is food, or riches, or beauty or power.”
Since it didn’t seem to matter either way, I did my thinking out loud. “When something is stolen a couple of things can happen to it. It can be carried away where it cannot be reached.”
“Hoarded,” Summer put in. “Such as the dragons do.”
“Yeah, okay. Uh, it can be destroyed.”
“No, it can’t,” Mother Winter said. “Your own sage tells you that. The German fellow with the wild hair.”
“Einstein,” I muttered. “Okay, then, but it can be rendered valueless. Or it can be sold to someone else.”
Mother Summer nodded. “Both of which arechange .”
I held up a hand. “Hold it, hold it. Look, as I understand it, this power of the Summer Knight, his mantle, it can’t just exist on its own. It has to be inside a vessel.”
“Yes,” Winter murmured. “Within one of the Queens, or within the Knight.”
“And it isn’t with one of the Queens.”
“True,” Summer said. “We would sense it, were it so.”
“So it’s already in another Knight,” I said. “But if that was true, there’d be no imbalance.” I scratched at my head, and as I did it slowly dawned on me. “Unless it had been changed. Unless the new Knight had been changed. Transformed into something else. Something that left the power trapped, inert, useless.”
Both of them regarded me steadily, silently.
“All right,” I said. “I have my question.”
“Ask it,” they said together.
“How does the mantle pass on from one Knight to the next?”
Mother Summer smiled, but the expression was a grim one. “It returns to the nearest reflection of itself. To the nearest vessel of Summer. She, in turn, chooses the next Knight.”
That meant that only one of the Queens of Summer could be behind it. Titania was out already—she had begun the war against Mab because she didn’t know where the mantle was. Mother Summer would not have been telling me this information if she’d been the one to do it. That left only one person.
“Stars and stones,” I muttered. “Aurora.”
The two Mothers set down their teacups together. “Time presses,” Summer said.
“That which must not be may be,” Winter continued.
“You, we judge, are the one who may set things aright once more—”
“—if you are strong enough.”
“Brave enough.”
“Whoa, hold your horses,” I said. “Can’t I just bring this out to Mab and Titania?”
“Beyond talk now,” Mother Winter said. “They go to war.”
“Stop them,” I said. “You two have to be stronger than Mab and Titania. Make them shut up and listen to you.”
“Not that simple,” Winter said.
Summer nodded. “We have power, but bound within certain limits. We cannot interfere with the Queens or Ladies. Not even on a matter so dire as this.”
“Whatcan you do?”
“I?” Summer said. “Nothing.”
I frowned and looked from her to Mother Winter.
One aged, cracked hand lifted and beckoned me. “Come closer, boy.”
I started to say no. But my feet moved without asking the rest of me, and I knelt in front of Mother Winter’s rocking chair. I couldn’t see her, even from here. Even her feet were covered by layers of dark cloth. But on her lap rested a pair of knitting needles, and a simple square of cloth, trailing thick threads of grey, undyed wool. Mother Winter reached down with her withered hands, and took up a pair of rusted shears. She cut the trailing threads and passed me the cloth.
I took it, again without thinking. It felt soft, cold as if it had been in a refrigerator, and it tingled with a subtle, dangerous energy.
“It isn’t tied off,” I said quietly.
“Nor should it be,” Winter said. “It is an Unraveling.”
“A what?”
“An unmaking, boy. I am the unmaker, the destroyer. It is what I am. Bound within those threads is the power to undo any enchantment done. Touch the cloth to that which must be undone. Unravel the threads. It will be so.”
I stared at the square cloth for a moment, Then asked quietly, “Anyenchantment? Any transformation?”
“Any.”
My hands started shaking. “You mean . . . I could use this to undo what the vampires did to Susan. Just wipe it away. Make her mortal again.”
“You could, Emissary.” Mother Winter’s tone held a bone-dry amusement.
I swallowed and rose, folding up the cloth. I slipped it into my pocket, careful not to let any threads trail out. “Is this a gift?”
“No,” Winter rasped. “But a necessity.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
Mother Summer shook her head. “It is yours now, and yours to employ. We have reached the limits of how we may act. The rest is yours.”
“Make haste,” Winter whispered.
Mother Summer nodded. “No time remains. Be swift and wise, mortal child. Go with our blessings.”
Winter withdrew her frail hands into the sleeves of her robe. “Do not fail, boy.”
“Hell’s bells, no pressure,” I muttered. I gave each of them a short bow and turned for the door. I stepped over the threshold of the cottage and said, “Oh, by the way. I apologize if we did any harm to your unicorn on the way in.”
I looked back to see Mother Summer arch a brow. Winter’s head shifted, and I could see the gleam of light on yellow teeth. Her voice rasped, “What unicorn?”
The door shut, again of its own accord. I glowered at the wood for a moment and then muttered, “Freaking weirdo faerie biddies.” I turned and started back the way I had come. The Unraveling was a cool weight in my pocket, and promised to get uncomfortably chilly if I left it there too long.
The thought of the Unraveling made me walk faster, excitement skipping through me. If what the Mothers said was true, I’d be able to use the cloth to help Susan, which was something just this side of divine intervention. All I had to do was to finish up this case, and then I could go find her.
Of course, I thought sourly, finishing up this case was likely to kill me. The Mothers may have given me some insight, and a magic doily, but they sure as hell hadn’t given me a freaking clue as to how to resolve this—and, I realized, they hadn’t reallysaid, “Aurora did it.” I knew they had to speak the truth to me, and their statements had led me to that conclusion—but how much of it was this mysterious prohibition from direct involvement and how much of it had been another fistful of faerie trickery?
“Make haste,” I rasped, trying to impersonate Winter’s voice. “We have reached the limits,” I said, mimicking Summer. I quickened my pace, and frowned over that last little comment Winter had made. She had taken an almost palpable glee in making it, as though it had given her an opening she wouldn’t otherwise have had.
What unicorn?
I gnawed over the question. If it was indeed a statement of importance, not just a passing mutter, then it had to mean something.
I fr
owned. It meant that there hadn’tbeen a guardian around the little cottage. Or at least not one Mother Winter had put there.
So who had?
The answer hit me low in the gut, a sensation of physical sickness coming along with the realization. I stopped and clawed for my Sight.
I didn’t get to it before Grum came out from under a veil, Elaine standing close behind him. He caught me flat-footed. The ogre drove a sledgehammer fist toward my face. There was a flash of impact, a sensation of falling, and cool earth beneath my cheek.
Then the scent of Elaine’s subtle perfume.
Then blackness.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I came to on the ground of that dark Nevernever wood. Spirit realm or not, I felt cold and started shivering uncontrollably. That made playing possum pretty much impossible, so I sat up and tried to take stock.
I didn’t feel any new bruises or breaks, so I hadn’t been pounded while I was out. It probably hadn’t been long. Mother Winter’s Unraveling was no longer in my pocket. My bag was gone, as was my ring and my bracelet. My staff and rod, needless to say, had been taken as well. I could still feel my mother’s pentacle amulet against my chest, though, which came as something of a surprise. My hand throbbed, where Mab had driven the freaking letter opener through it.
Other than that, I felt more or less whole. Huzzah.
I squinted at my surroundings next and found a ring of toadstools grown up around me. They weren’t huge, tentacular, horribly fanged toadstools or anything, but it put a little chill in me all the same. I lifted my hand and reached out for them tentatively, extending my wizard’s senses along with the gesture. I hit a wall. I couldn’t think of another way to describe it. Where the ring began, my ability to reach, move, and perceive with my supernatural senses simply ended.
Trapped. Double huzzah.
Only after I’d gotten an idea of my predicament did I stand up and face my captors.
There were five of them, which seemed less than fair. I recognized the nearest right away—Aurora, the Summer Lady, now dressed in what I could only describe as a battle gown, made out of some kind of silver mail as fine and light as cloth. It clung closely to her, from the top of her throat down to her wrists and ankles, and shone with its own dim radiance in the forest’s gloom. She wore a sword at her hip, and upon her pale hair rested a garland of living leaves. She turned green eyes to me, heartbreakingly lovely, and regarded me with an expression both sad and resolved.
“Wizard,” Aurora said, “I regret that it has come to this. But you have come too close to interfering. Once you had served your purpose, I could not allow you to continue your involvement.”
I grimaced and looked past her, at the ogre Grum, huge and scarlet-skinned and silent, and the horrific unicorn that had apparently been guarding the way to Mother Winter’s cottage.
“What do you intend to do with me?”
“Kill you,” Aurora said, her voice gentle. “I regret the necessity. But you’re too dangerous to be allowed to live.”
I squinted at her. “Then why haven’t you?”
“Good question,” said the fourth person present—Lloyd Slate, the Winter Knight. He still wore his biker leathers, but he’d added bits of mail and a few metal plates to the ensemble. He wore a sword at his hip, another on his back, and bore a heavy pistol on his belt. The gaunt, tense hunger of his expression hadn’t changed. He looked nervous and angry. “If it had been up to me, I’d have cut your throat when Grum first dropped you.”
“Why call him Grum?” I said, scowling at the ogre. “You might as well drop the glamour, Lord Marshal. There’s not much point to it now.”
The ogre’s face twisted with surprise.
I glared spitefully at the dark unicorn and spat, “You too, Korrick.”
Both ogre and unicorn glanced at Aurora. The Faerie Queen never took her eyes off me, but nodded. The ogre’s form blurred and twisted, and resolved itself into the form of Talos, the Sidhe lord from Aurora’s penthouse at the Rothchild. His pale hair had been drawn back into a fighting braid, and he wore close-fit mail of some glittering black metal that made him look rail-thin and deadly.
At the same time the unicorn shook itself and rose up into the hulking form of Korrick, the centaur, also dressed in mail and bearing weapons of faerie make. He stamped one huge hoof and said nothing.
Aurora walked in a circle around me, frowning. “How long have you known, wizard?”
I shrugged. “Not long. I started getting it on the way out of Mother Winter’s cottage. Once I knew where to start, it wasn’t hard to start adding up the numbers.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Slate said and spat on the ground to one side.
“If he puzzled it out, others may have as well,” Aurora said, her voice patient. “We should know if any other opposition is coming. Tell me, wizard. How did you piece it together?”
“Go to hell,” I snapped.
Aurora turned to the last person there and asked, “Can he be reasoned with?”
Elaine stood a little apart from the others, her back to them. My bag rested on the ground near her feet, and my rod and staff lay there too. She’d added a cloak of emerald green to her outfit, somehow making it look natural. She glanced at Aurora and then at me. She averted her eyes quickly, “You’ve already told him you’re going to kill him. He won’t cooperate.”
Aurora shook her head. “More sacrifices. I am sorry you pushed me to this, wizard.”
Her hand moved. Some unseen force jerked my chin up, my eyes to hers. They flashed, a ripple of colors, and I felt the force of her mind, her will, glide past my defenses and into me. I lost my balance and staggered, leaning helplessly against the invisible solidity of the circle she’d imprisoned me in. I tried to fight it, but it was like trying to push water up a hill—nothing for me to strain against, nothing for me to focus upon. I was on her turf, trapped in a circle of her power. She flowed into me, down through my eyes, and all I could do was watch the pretty colors.
“Now,” she said, and her voice was the gentlest, sweetest thing I’d ever heard. “What did you learn of the Summer Knight’s death?”
“You were behind it,” I heard myself saying, my voice slow and heavy. “You had him killed.”
“How?”
“Lloyd Slate. He hates Maeve. You recruited him to help you. Elaine took him inside Reuel’s building, through the Nevernever. He fought Reuel. That’s why there was ooze on the stairs. The water on Reuel’s arms and legs was where Summer fire met Winter ice. Slate threw him down the stairs and broke his neck.”
“And his mantle of power?”
“Redirected,” I mumbled. “You gathered it in and placed it into another person.”
“Who?”
“The changeling girl,” I said. “Lily. You gave her the mantle and then you turned her to stone. That statue in your garden. It was right in front of me.”
“Very good,” Aurora said, and the gentle praise rippled through me. I fought to regain my senses, to escape the glittering green prison of her eyes. “What else?”
“You hired the ghoul. The Tigress. You sent her after me before Mab even spoke to me.”
“I do not know this ghoul. You are incorrect, wizard. I do not hire killers. Continue.”
“You set me up before I came to interview you.”
“In what way?” Aurora pressed.
“Maeve must have ordered Slate to take Elaine out. He made it look like he tried and missed, but Elaine played it for more. You helped her fake the injury.”
“Why did I do that?”
“To keep me upset, worried, so that when I spoke to you I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to corner you with a question. That’s why you attacked me, too. Telling me what a monster I’d become. To keep me off balance, keep me from asking the right questions.”
“Yes,” Aurora said. “And after that?”
“You decided to take me out. You sent Talos, Elaine, and Slate to kill me. And you creat
ed that construct in the garden center.”
Slate stepped closer. “Spooky,” he said. “He doesn’tlook all that smart.”
“Yet he used only reason. Plus knowledge doubtless gained from the Queens and Mothers. He put it together for himself, rather than being told.” At that, her gaze slanted past me, to Elaine. I tried to pull away and couldn’t.
“Great,” Slate said. “No one squealed. Can we kill the great Kreskin now?”
Aurora held up a hand to Slate, and asked me, “Do you know my next objective?”
“You knew that if you bound up the Summer Knight’s mantle, Mother Winter would provide an Unraveling to free it and restore the balance. You waited for her to give it to me. Now you’re going to take it and the statue of Lily. You’re going to take her to the Stone Table during the battle. You’ll use the Unraveling, free Lily from being stone, and kill her on the table after midnight. The Summer Knight’s power will go to Winter permanently. You want to destroy the balance of power in Faerie. I don’t know why.”
Aurora’s eyes flashed dangerously. She removed her gaze from mine, and it was like suddenly falling backup a flight of stairs. I staggered back, tearing my eyes from her and focusing on the ground.
“Why?It should be obvious to you why, wizard. You of all people.” She spun in a glitter of silvery mail, pacing restlessly back and forth. “The cycle must be broken. Summer and Winter, constantly chasing each other, wounding what the other heals and healing what the other wounds. Our war, our senseless contest, waged for no reason other than that it has always been so—and mortals trapped between us, crushed by the struggle, made pawns and toys.” She took a shuddering, angry breath. “It must end. And I will end it.”
I ground my teeth, shivering. “You’ll end it by sending the natural world into chaos?”
“I did not set the price,” Aurora hissed. I caught sight of her eyes out of the corner of my vision and started tracking up to her face. I forced my gaze down again, barely in time. She continued speaking, in a low, impassioned voice. “I hate it. I hate every moment of the things I’ve had to do to accomplish this—but it should have been done long since, wizard. Delay is just as deadly. How many have died or been tormented to madness by Maeve, and those like her? You yourself have been tortured, abused, nearly enslaved by them. I do whatmust be done.”