by Jim Butcher
Susan went out first, to make sure there weren’t any problems with Lea, and everyone filed out after her, Sanya last.
“Sanya,” I said. “Who did I get cast as?”
“Sam,” Sanya said.
I blinked at him. “Not … Oh, for crying out loud, it was perfectly obvious who I should have been.”
Sanya shrugged. “It was no contest. They gave Gandalf to your godmother. You got Sam.” He started to leave and then paused. “Harry. You have read the books as well, yes?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,” Sanya said. “That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.”
I thought about that for a second. Then I said, “Oh.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and left.
He didn’t mention the other part of the book. That following the heroes when they set out was the tenth member of their party. A broken creature who went through all the same dangers and trials, who had made a single bad choice and taken up a power he didn’t understand— and who had become a demented, miserable, living nightmare because of it. In the end, he had been just as necessary to the overthrow of the darkness.
But he sure as hell didn’t enjoy his part.
I shook my head and berated myself sharply. Here I was wasting time talking about a damned book. About a world of blacks and whites with precious little in the way of grey, where you could tell the good guys from the bad guys with about two seconds of effort.
And right now, I didn’t give a damn about good and bad. I just wanted a little girl home safe.
It didn’t matter which of them I was. As long as I got Maggie home.
I picked up my bag, left St. Mary’s behind me, and stalked out to my wicked godmother’s limo, pulling the soft hood of my dark cape up over my head.
If I was on the road to Hell, at least I was going in style.
Chapter
Forty
There was room for everyone in the back of the limo. I was pretty sure that there hadn’t been the first time I’d ridden in it. But it had gotten several extra feet of seats along the walls, and everyone was sitting there being only a little bit crowded as Glenmael charged out to assault Chicago’s streets.
“I still think we should try a frontal assault,” Sanya argued.
“Suicidally stupid,” Martin said, his voice scornful.
“Surprise tactic!” Sanya countered. “They will not expect it after a thousand years of never being challenged. Harry, what do you think?”
“Uh,” I said.
And then Ebenezar’s voice said, quite clearly and from no apparent source, “Damn your stubborn eyes, boy! Where have you been?”
I went rigid with surprise for a second. I looked around the interior of the limo, but no one had reacted, with the exception of my godmother. Lea sighed and rolled her eyes.
Right. The speaking stones. I’d stuck mine in the bag, but since I was holding it on my lap now, it was close enough to be warmed by the heat of my body to function. It was possible to send terse messages through the stones without first establishing a clear connection, as my mentor and I had done back toward the beginning of this mess.
“Damnation and hellfire, Hoss!” growled Ebenezar’s voice. “Answer me!”
I looked from Sanya to my godmother. “Uh. I kind of have to take this call.”
Sanya blinked at me. Thomas and Murphy exchanged a significant glance.
“Oh, shut up,” I said crossly. “It’s magic, okay?”
I closed my eyes and fumbled through the bag until I found the stone. I didn’t really need to show up in my outlandish costume for this conversation, so I thought about my own physical body for a moment, concentrating on an image of my limbs and flesh and normal clothing forming around my thoughts.
“So help me, boy, if you don’t—”
Ebenezar appeared in my mind’s eye, wearing his usual clothing. He broke off suddenly as he looked at me and his face went pale. “Hoss? Are you all right?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here. What do you want?”
“Your absence from the conclave did not go over well,” he responded, his voice sharp. “There are people in the Grey Council who think you aren’t to be trusted. They’re very, very wary of you. By missing the meeting, you told them that either you don’t respect our work enough to bother showing up, or else that you don’t have the wisdom and the fortitude to commit to the cause.”
“I never saw the appeal of peer pressure,” I said. “Sir, I’m finding a little girl. I’ll come play Council politics after I get her home safe, if you want.”
“We need you here.”
“The kid needs me more. It’s not as noble as trying to save the whole White Council from its own stupidity, I know. But by God, I will bring that child out safe.”
Ebenezar’s mostly bald pate flushed red. “Despite my orders to the contrary.”
“We aren’t an army. You aren’t my superior officer. Sir.”
“You arrogant child,” he snapped. “Get your head out of your ass and get your eyes on the world around you or you’re going to get yourself killed.”
“With all due respect, sir, you can go to hell,” I snarled. “You think I don’t know how dangerous the world is? Me?”
“I think you’re doing everything in your power to isolate yourself from the only people who can support you,” he said. “You feel guilty about something. I get that, Hoss. You think you ain’t fit for company because of what you’ve done.” His scowl darkened still more. “In my time, I’ve done things that would curl your hair. Get over it. Think.”
“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 are
n’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.”
“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
Forty-one
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.”