Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

I walked into the ancient forest with Mother Summer on my arm, following a wide, meandering footpath.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question while we walk?" Mother Summer asked.
"Not at all, ma'am," I said.
"What do you suppose will happen to you if you do not heed Mab's command?"
"Command?" I asked.
"Don't be coy, child," Mother Summer sniffed. "What my counterpart knows, I know. Mab commanded you to slay Maeve. What do you think will happen if you disobey her?"
I walked for a while before I answered, "It depends whether or not Mab's still around when the smoke clears, I guess," I said. "If she is . . . she'll be upset. I'll wind up like Lloyd Slate. If she isn't . . ."
"Yes?"
"Maeve assumes Mab's mantle and becomes the new Winter Queen."
"Exactly," Mother Summer said. "In time, the difference will hardly show. But in the immediate future . . . how do you think Maeve will treat you?"
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I could imagine that vividly enough—Maeve, high as a kite on her newfound power, giggling and tormenting and killing left and right just because she could do it. Maeve was the sort who lived to pull the wings off of flies.
And I was pretty sure whose wings would be the first to catch her eye.
"Well, crap," I said.
"Quite so," said Mother Summer. "And if you do heed Mab's command?"
"Maeve's mantle gets passed on to someone else," I said. "And if . . . the adversary? Can I say that safely?"
Mother Summer smiled. "That's why we use that word rather than a name, Sir Knight. Yes."
"If the adversary has taken Mab," I said, "then it gets to choose an agent to take the Winter Lady's mantle. Two-thirds of the Winter Court will be under its influence." I looked back toward the cottage. "And that seems like it might be bad for Mother Winter."
"Indeed," said Mother Summer. "We are all vulnerable to those who are close to us."
"I never figured Granny Cleaver was close to anyone, ma'am."
The lines at the corners of Mother Summer's eyes deepened. "Oh, she . . . What is the phrase? She talks a good game. But in her own way, she cares."
I may have arched a skeptical eyebrow. "Kind of like how, in her own way, she likes me?" I asked.
Mother Summer didn't answer that, as our steps carried us into a more deeply shadowed section of the forest. "It is at times very difficult to be so closely interwoven with mortals," she said.
"For you?"
"For all of Faerie," she replied.
"What do you mean?"
She gestured at herself. "We appear much as humans, do we not? Most of our folk do—or else they resemble another creature of the mortal world. Hounds, birds, stags, and so forth."
"Sure," I said.
"You are endlessly fascinating. We conceive our children with mortals. We move and sway in time to the mortal seasons. We dance to mortal music, make our homes like mortal dwellings, feast upon mortal foods. We find parts of ourselves becoming more like them, and yet we are not like them. Many of the things they think and feel, and a great many of their actions, are inexplicable to us."
"We don't really understand ourselves all that well yet," I said. "I think it would be very difficult for you to do it."
Mother Summer smiled at me, and it felt like the first warm day of spring. "That's true, isn't it?"
"But you've got a point to make, ma'am," I said. "Or you wouldn't have brought up the subject."
"I do," she said. "Winter is cold, Sir Knight, but never so cold that it freezes the heart altogether."
"You've got to have a heart before it can freeze, ma'am."
"You do."
I walked for a little while, considering that. "You're saying that I have a chance to stay me."
"I'm saying many things," Mother Summer said. "Do you have a chance to remain yourself despite the tendency of the mantle to mold your thoughts and desires? All Knights, Winter and Summer, have that chance. Most fail."
"But it's possible," I said.
She looked up at me and her eyes were deeper than time. "Anything is possible."
"Ah," I said, understanding. "We're not really talking about me."
"We are," she said serenely, turning her eyes away. "And we are not."
"Uh," I said. "I'm getting a little confused here. What are we talking about, exactly?"
Mother Summer smiled at me.
And then she just clammed up.
We are? We're not?
I kept a straight face while my inner Neanderthal spluttered and then went on a mental rampage through a hypothetical produce section, knocking over shelves and splattering fruit everywhere in sheer frustration, screaming, "JUST TELL ME WHOSE SKULL TO CRACK WITH MY CLUB, DAMMIT!"
Flippin' faeries. They will be the death of me.
"In the spirit of balanced scales," I said, "would it be all right if I asked you a question, ma'am?"
"I welcome the question. I make no promises as to the answer."
I nodded. "Who are you, really?"
Mother Summer stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me. Her eyebrows slowly lifted. "That is a very significant question."
"I know," I said. "Blame it on Halloween."
"Why should I do that?"
I shrugged, and we began walking again. "It's just got me thinking: masks. I know of one figure from ancient tales who is alive and well and incognito. Why shouldn't there be more?"
Mother Summer inclined her head, more a gesture of acknowledgment or admission than agreement. "Things change," she said. "Immortals deal poorly with change. But it comes to everyone."
"I called Mother Winter by the names Athropos and Skuld because they seemed to fit her," I said. "I mean, she likes her sharp implements, apparently."
Mother Summer's smile appeared for a moment, dazzling me, and then was gone again. "It was not an imbecilic guess," she said. "And, yes, she has been known by such names before. But you've only guessed the name of one of her masks—not our most powerful name."
"Our?" I said. "Wait. I'm confused."
"I know," she said. "Here we are."
We stopped in the middle of a forest path that didn't look any different from anything around it. Mother Summer stopped and frowned at me. "You really aren't dressed for the climate."
"Don't worry about it," I said. "I can handle cold."
She let go of my arm, looked me up and down, then put a hand on the handle of the basket she carried over one arm and said, "Something a little less . . . informal would be appropriate, I think."
I've played Ken doll to a faerie fashion adviser before, so I wasn't entirely shocked when my clothing began to writhe and simply change. When the Leanansidhe had done it, I'd sat in the car for half an hour suffering through one fanciful and undignified outfit after another. Not this time.
My clothes transformed from cloth into custom-fitted steel. Well, probably not steel, but whatever the equivalent was that the Sidhe used in their armor. The armor was plain and functional with no ornaments on it—a breastplate, vambraces, and large pauldrons for my shoulders. Heavy tassets hung from the bottom of the breastplate, protecting my thighs. My lower legs were covered with greaves, front and back. The armor was black and gleaming, and where light fell directly on it, you could see shades of deep purple and dark blue.
I realized that I was holding a helmet under my left arm, and I took it in both hands to look at it. It was a Corinthian helm, like they wore in that movie about the Spartans, only without the fancy tail. It was padded on the inside. I slipped it on, and it fit perfectly.
"Much better," said Mother Summer. "Stay near me at all times."
I looked around the perfectly serene forest. It was a bit of an effort, since the helmet kept me from turning my head very smoothly. I looked up, too. I'm sure the armor made me look goofy. "Uh, okay."
Mother Summer smiled, took my arm again, and stretched out one foot. She used it to brush a layer of dirt and fallen leaves from the pitted surface of a flat stone, like a paving stone, maybe three feet square. She tapped it three times with her foot, whispered a word, and drew me along with her as she stepped onto it.
No drama ensued. The landscape simply changed, as swiftly and drastically as when you turn on a light while in a darkened room. One second we stood in an autumnal megaforest. The next . . .
I've seen movies and newsreels about World War I. They didn't cover it as thoroughly in my schools, because America didn't have a leading role in it, and because the entire stupid, avoidable mess was a Continental clusterfuck that killed millions and settled nothing but the teams for the next world war. But what they did show me I remembered. Miles and miles of trenches. A smoke-haunted no-man's-land strung with muddy, rusty barbed wire and lined with machine guns and marksmen. There was a pall of smoke that turned the sun into a dully glowing orb.
But the movies couldn't cover all the senses. There was a constant rumble in the sky, thunder born of violence, and there was everywhere the smell of feces and death

We stood atop a small, barren mountain, looking down. Near us, only a few hundred yards away, was an immense wall, the kind you'd use to hold out the Mongols if they were the size of King Kong. It was built entirely from ice or some kind of translucent crystal. Even from here, I could see that there were chambers and rooms in the wall, rooms containing barracks, hospitals, kitchens, you name it. There were dim and indistinct forms moving around in them.
The walls were lined with what had to be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers. I peered, trying to get a better look, and then realized that they were armored Sidhe.
All of them.
They all wore armor similar to mine, its highlights throwing back the cool, muted shades of Winter.
Out beyond the wall was a land made of dust and mud and loose shale. It was covered in hillocks and steep gullies, and the only plants that grew there looked like they were certain to poke, scratch, or sting you. Though the land was somehow lit, the sky was as black as Cat Sith's conscience, without a single star or speck of light to be seen—and it was an overwhelming sky, enormous, like in the open, rolling lands of Montana and Wyoming.
There were more bodies of troops moving out there. Some of them looked like they might have been giants, or maybe trolls. Larger groups containing smaller individuals were likely Winter's gnomes. Things flew in the air. Bands of what appeared to be mounted cavalry rode back and forth. Some of the soldiers looked suspiciously like animated snowmen.
From this vantage point, I could see two major engagements happening, each containing maybe forty thousand Winter troops. And they were fighting. . . .
I couldn't make out the enemy. There didn't seem to be any unity of form. They were creatures—creatures whose physiologies made no sense, were utterly without order. I saw what appeared to be tentacles, enormous mandibles, claws, fangs, clublike limbs and tails. They weren't bipedal. They weren't quadrupeds. In fact, they seemed to have no regard for bilateral symmetry at all.
I peered a little closer and felt a sudden, horrible pressure inside my head. I felt dizzy for a second, nauseated, and at the same time part of me was screaming that I needed to ditch my escort and go look at these things for myself, that there was something there, something I wanted to see, something I wanted to stare at for a while. A cold, somehow greasy tendril of energy slithered around inside my head, something I had felt before when . . .
I jerked my eyes away with a short grunt of effort, closed them, and left them closed. "Holy . . . Outsiders? Mab's fighting Outsiders?"
Mother Summer said nothing.
"I don't . . . I don't understand," I said finally. "White Council intelligence always estimated Mab's troop count at around fifty thousand. There are freaking formations out there with more troops in them than that."
Mother Summer said nothing. But she did lift a finger and point off to the left. I looked, and saw a pair of towers the size of the Chrysler Building rising up over the wall. Between them was a pair of gates.
The gates were something amazing to look at. They were huge, bigger than most Chicago apartment buildings. They were made of a darker shade of the same ice or crystal, and there were designs and sigils carved into them, layer after layer after layer. I recognized a couple of the ones I could see clearly. They were wards, protective enchantments.
There was a sudden sound, a rising moan, like the wind shaking trees or surf striking a cliff wall—and the horizon outside the walls was suddenly lined with dark, grotesque figures, all of them charging forward, toward the Winter troops.
Faint horn calls sounded, clear and valiant. Winter's troops began to retreat back toward the gates, gathering into a great arch on the ground outside them, locking their formation into place while cavalry harassed the oncoming Outsiders, slowing their advance. Then the cavalry streaked from their engagement, passing safely through the lines of infantry to come riding back through the gates.
The Outsiders came on and crashed against the Winter lines. Battle ensued. From this far away, it just looked like a big, confusing mess, with everyone jostling for a better position, but I could see a few things. I saw an ogre go down when an Outsider spit acid that started eating through his eyes into his skull. I saw the Winter lines falter, and the Outsiders began pouring reinforcements into the weakness.


Then a small crew of goblins exploded out of a pile of shale at precisely the right moment, when the Outsiders were pressed almost into the Winter lines, but before reinforcements arrived. The surprise attack drove the Outsiders forward, when I could see that the "weak" regiment had been playing the Outsiders for suckers, falling back, but doing so in good order. The Outsiders had overreached themselves, and were now surrounded on all four sides by the savage troops of Winter.
The would-be invaders didn't make it.
And that was only a tiny fraction of the battle. My senses and mind alike simply could not process everything I was seeing. But my heart was beating very swiftly, and frozen fear had touched my spine like Mab's fingers.
The Outsiders wanted in.
"When?" I asked. "When did this start?"
"Oh, Harry," Mother Summer said gently.
"What?" I asked. But I had noticed something. Those layers and mounds of shale? They weren't shale.
They were bones.
Millions and millions and millions of fucktons of bones.
"What the hell is going on here?" I breathed. "Where are we?"
"The edge of Faerie," she said. "Our outer borders. It would have taken you a decade to learn to travel out this far."
"Oh," I said. "And . . . and it's like this?"
"In essence," Mother Summer said. She stared sadly out over the plain. "Did you think Mab spent all her days sitting in her chair and dealing with her backstabbing courtiers? No, Sir Knight. Power has purpose."
"What happens if they get in?" I asked.
Mother Summer's lips thinned. "Everything stops. Everything."
"Holy crap," I muttered. "Does Summer have a place like this, too, then?"
Mother Summer shook her head. "That was never its task. Your Council's estimate was fairly close, counting only those troops protecting the hearts of Winter and Summer. Mab has more than that. She needs them—for this."
I felt like I'd been hit repeatedly in the head with a rubber hammer. "So . . . Mab's troops outnumber yours by a jillion."
"Indeed."
"So she could run you over at any time."
"She could," Mother Summer said, "if she were willing to forfeit reality."
I scanned the length of the wall nervously. It looked like it went on forever—and there was fighting all along its length.
"You're telling me that this is why Mab has her power? To . . . to protect the borders?"
"To protect all of you from the Outsiders, mortal."
"Then why does Titania have hers?" I asked.
"To protect all of you from Mab."
I swallowed.
"Titania cannot match Mab's forces, but she can drag Mab personally into oblivion with her—and Mab knows it. Titania is the check to her power, the balance."
"If Mab dies . . ." I began.
She swept a hand along the length of the wall. "A spoiled, sadistic, murderous, and inexperienced child will have control of all of that."
Hell's bells. I rubbed at my eyes, and as I did, I connected some dots and realized something else.
"This is a siege," I said. "Those guys out there are attacking the walls. But there are others trying to dig their way in so that they can open the gates for their buddies. That's what the adversary is. Right? A sapper, an infiltrator."
Mother Summer said, "There, you see? You possess the potential to be quite intelligent. Do stay beside me, dear." And she started walking firmly toward the massive gates.
It didn't take us long to get there, but as we came up to the base of the wall and walked along it, we started drawing the eyes of the wall's defenders. I felt myself growing tenser as a marching column of armored Sidhe soldiers came stepping lightly along the ground behind us, catching up quickly.
Mother Summer guided me slightly aside so that we weren't in the column's way, and they started going by us. I didn't think much of it until someone at the front of the column called out in a clear voice, and as one the Sidhe came to a halt with a solid, simultaneous stomp of a couple of hundred boots. The voice barked another command, and the Sidhe all turned to face us.
"Uh-oh," I said.
Mother Summer touched my hand with hers, and reassurance bathed me like June sunshine. "Shhh."
The voice barked another command, and as one the Sidhe lowered themselves to one knee and bowed their heads.
"Good morrow, cousins," Mother Summer said, her voice solemn. She took her hand off my arm and passed it in a broad, sweeping arch over the kneeling soldiers. Subtle, subtle power thrummed delicately in the air. "Go forth with my blessing."
One of the soldiers in the lead of the column rose and bowed to her, somehow conveying gratitude. Then he snapped out another loud command, and the column rose, turned, and continued its quickstep march.
"Huh," I said.
"Yes?" asked Mother Summer.
"I was sort of expecting . . . something else."
"Winter and Summer are two opposing forces of our world," she said. "But we are of our world. Here, that is all that matters. And showing respect to one's elders is never unwise."
"Yes, ma'am," I said.
Mother Summer gave me a small, shrewd smile.
We continued our walk in their wake, and soon reached the gates. There I saw a smaller set of gates—sally ports—built into the main gates. They were the size of the garage doors on a fire station. As I watched, someone shouted a command and a pair of heavily armored ogres each grabbed one of the sally ports and drew it open. The column that had passed us stood waiting to march out, but they did not immediately proceed. Instead, a column of carts and litters entered, bearing the groaning wounded of the fighting outside, being watched over by several dozen Sidhe dressed in pure white armor, marked with bold green and scarlet trim—Sidhe knights of Summer. Medics. Despite the massive numbers of troops I'd seen moving around, there were fewer than a hundred casualties brought back to the gates. Evidently the Outsiders were not in the business of leaving enemies alive behind them.
A lean figure came down a stairway built within the walls framing the gates, at first a shadowy blur through the layers and layers of crystal. He was a couple of inches taller than me, which put him at the next-best thing to seven feet, but he moved with a brisk, bustling sense of energy and purpose. He wore a dark robe that looked black at first, but as he emerged into the light, highlights showed it to be a deep purple. He carried a long pale wizard's staff in one weathered hand, and his hood covered up most of his face, except for part of an aquiline nose and a long chin covered in a grizzled beard.
He spoke to the Summer and Winter Sidhe alike in a language I didn't understand but they evidently did, giving instructions to Summer's medics. They took his orders with a kind of rigid, formal deference. He leaned over to scan each of the fallen closely, nodding at the medics after each, and they would immediately carry the wounded Sidhe in question back behind the wall, into what looked like a neat triage area.
"Rashid," I murmured, recognizing the man. "What is he doing here—"
I froze and stared up at the massive gates rising above us.
Rashid, a member of the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizards, had another title, the name he went by most often.
The Gatekeeper.
He finished with the last of the wounded, then turned and approached us with long, purposeful strides. He paused a few steps away and bowed to Mother Summer, who returned the gesture with a deep, formal nod of her head. Then he came the rest of the way to me, and I could see the gleam of a dark eye inside his hood. His smile was wide and warm, and he extended his hand to me. I took it and shook it, feeling a little overwhelmed.
"Well, well," he said. His voice was a deep, warm thing, marked with an accent that sounded vaguely British seasoned with plenty of more exotic spices. "I had hoped we would see your face again, Warden."
"Rashid," I replied. "Uh . . . we're . . . they're . . ."
The Gatekeeper's smile turned a bit rueful. "Ah, yes," he said. "They're impressive the first time, I suppose. Welcome, Warden Dresden, to the Outer Gates."

The Gatekeeper lowered his hood.
He had short hair that was still thick and gleamed silver, but his features were weathered, as if from long years under harsh sunlight. His skin was paler now, but there was still something of the desert on his skin. His face was long, his brows still dark and full. He had a double scar on his left eyebrow and cheek, two long lines that went straight down, a lot like mine, only deeper and thicker and all the way to his jawline, and they were much softer with long years of healing. Maybe he hadn't been as good at flinching as I was, because he'd lost the eye beneath the scar. One of his eyes was nearly black, it was so dark. The other had been replaced with . . .
I looked around me. Yes, definitely. The other eye had been replaced with the crystalline material that was identical to that which had been used to create the gates and the walls around them.
"Steel," I said.
"Pardon?" he asked.
"Your, uh, other eye. It was steel before."
"I'm sure it looked like steel," he said. "The disguise is necessary when I'm not here."
"Your job is so secret, your false eye gets a disguise?" I asked. "Guess I see why you miss Council meetings."
He inclined his head and ruffled his fingers through mussed, tousled hood-hair. "It can be quiet for years here, sometimes. And others . . ." He spread his hands. "But they need a good eye here to be sure that the things that must remain outside do not slip in unnoticed."
"Inside the wounded," I guessed. "Or returning troops. Or medics."
"You've become aware of the adversary," he said, his tone one of firm approval. "Excellent. I was certain your particular pursuits would get you killed long before you got a chance to learn."
"How can I help?" I asked him.
He leaned his head back and then a slow smile reasserted itself on his face. "I know something of the responsibilities you've chosen to take up," he said, "to say nothing of the problems you've created for yourself that you haven't found out about yet. And still, in the face of learning that our world spins out its days under siege, you offer to help me? I think you and I could be friends."
"Wait," I said. "What problems? I haven't been trying to create problems."
"Oh," he said, waving a hand. "You've danced about in the shadows at the edge of life now, young man. That's no small thing, to go into those shadows and come back again—you've no idea the kind of attention you've attracted."
"Oh," I said. "Good. Because the pace was starting to slow down so much that I was getting bored."
At that, Rashid tilted his head back and laughed. "Would you be offended if I called you Harry?"
"No. Because it's my name."
"Exactly," he said. "Harry, I know you have questions. I can field a very few before I go."
I nodded, thinking. "Okay," I said. "First, how do you know if the adversary has . . . infested someone?"
"Experience," he said. "Decades of it. The Sight can help, but . . ." Rashid hesitated. I recognized it instantly, the hiccup in one's thoughts when one stumbled over a truly hideous memory gained with the Sight, like I'd had with—
Ugh.
—the naagloshii.
"I don't recommend making a regular practice of it," he continued. "It's an art, not a skill, and it takes time. Time, or a bit of questionable attention from the Fates and a ridiculously enormous tool." He tapped a finger against his false eye.
I blinked, even though he didn't, and looked up at the massive gates stretching overhead. "Hell's bells. The gates . . . they're . . . some kind of spiritual CAT scanner?"
"Among many other things," he said. "But it's one of their functions, yes. Mostly it means that the adversary cannot use such tactics effectively here. As long as the Gatekeeper is vigilant, it rarely tries." The horns sounded again, and the muscles in his jaw tensed. "Next question."
I hate trying to be smart under time pressure. "This," I said, pointing up at the gates. "What the hell? How long has this attack been going on?"
"Always," he said. "There are always Outsiders trying to tear their way in. There are always forces in place to stop them. In our age, it is the task of Winter to defend these boundaries, with the help of certain others to support them. Think of them as . . . an immune system for the mortal world."
I felt my eyes get wide. "An immune system . . . What happens if it . . . you know, if it breaks down for a bit?"
"Pardon?" the Gatekeeper asked.
"Uh, it gets a glitch. Like, if somebody new took over or something and things had to reorganize around here . . ."
"Most years, it would pose no major difficulty," he said.
"What about this year?"
"This year," he said, "it could be problematic."
"Problematic."
"Rather severely so." Rashid studied my face and then started to nod. "I see. There are things happening back in Winter. That's why Mother Summer brought you here. To show you what was at stake."
I swallowed and nodded. "No pressure or anything."
Rashid's face reacted at that. I couldn't say what the exact mix of emotion on it was, though one of them was a peculiar kind of empathy. He set his staff aside and gripped my upper arms with his hands. "Listen to me, because this is important."
"Okay," I said.
"You get used to it," he said.
I blinked. "What? That's it?"
He tilted his head to look at me obliquely with his good eye.
"I'll get used to it? That's the important pep talk? I'll get used to it?"
His mouth quivered. He gave my arms a last, maybe affectionate squeeze and released them. "Pep? What is needed in the Warden is far more than pep, Harry."
"What, then?" I asked.
He took up his staff and poked my chest with it gently. "You, it would seem."
"What?"
"You," he repeated firmly. "What we need is you. You have what you have for a reason. Unwitting or not, virtually your every action in the past few years has resulted in a series of well-placed thumbs in the adversary's eye. You want to know how you can help me, Harry?"
"Engh," I said, frustrated. "Yeah."
"Go back to Chicago," he said, turning away, "and keep being yourself."
"Wait," I said. "I need help."
At that, he paused. He looked back at me and gave me a quiet smile. "I know precisely how it feels to be where you are." He gestured back toward the battleground. "Precisely." He seemed to think about it for a moment, and then nodded. "I will do what I can. If we both survive the next several hours, I will settle matters between you and the Council, which knows only as much about our roles as it needs to—and that isn't much. I will verify your return and that you are indeed yourself, and will see to it that your back pay as one of the Wardens is forwarded to you. There's some paperwork to fill out to get the Council's office to reestablish your official identity with the government, but I'll see to it that it happens. I think I remember all the necessary forms."
I stared at him for a second and said, "You'll . . . you'll help me with White Council paperwork."
He held up a finger. "Do not underestimate the depth of this favor," he said soberly, but his eye was twinkling. "And on a similar note, do not underestimate yourself. You haven't been given the power and the knowledge and allies and the resources you possess for no reason, Harry. Nothing I have to say can possibly make this task any easier for you. The only way to do it is to do it." He lifted his chin. "You don't need help, Warden. You are the help."
"We're in trouble," I said.
He winked at me, restored his hood to its usual position, and said, "We always are. The only difference is, now you know it. God be with you, my friend. I will cover this end. You see to yours."
He took several rapid paces out from under the towering gates and gestured. A second later, I kid you not, a freaking woven carpet, maybe ten feet by twenty, came sailing neatly down out of the sky, coming to hover about six inches off the ground beside him. Rashid stepped onto the carpet, slipped his boots into some kind of securing straps on it, and then lifted his staff. The carpet and the Gatekeeper rose serenely up out of sight, and a second later went streaking out over the storm-lit battlefield in a howl of whirling winds.

guys. )

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2009 WoJ forum post:
5. cowl with darkhallow – really? just a bunch of spirits…
If he'd succeeded, he'd have had the collective power of all of those supernatural beings and then some. He'd have been clearly stronger than the Ladies, and a full-on equal to Mab. I mean, why do you think the Erlking was summoned as part of that ritual? Because that's how the big E got so boss in the first place.
For that matter, how do you think the Mothers and Queens and Ladies established their original base of power? That big old sacrificial, power-sucking stone table in Tir na noth isn't there for its primitive decorative aesthetic.

y doesn't cowl do the darkhallow thing on a remote island or in the middle of the sahara desert or something…same with hag. just a question that's been bothering me…
Cause you need people around to fuel the fire. Had Cowl been successful, his ascension would have exterminated every source of life for several miles–and the more who died, the more elevated he would have become. Think of them as a big old batch of human sacrifices.
The hag's ritual was a far more primitive version of Kemmler's rite, and wouldn't have done nearly as much for her as the Darkhallow would have for Cowl–but it still would have sparked off massive violence, plague, ill-fortune and general chaos for miles all around.

2009 WoJ forum post:
1. the mothers – how does a queen become a mother? like after a thousand yrs, old winter dies and mab becomes the new mother?
Essentially abdication. The previous mother wearies of her duty and moves along. There's been one new Mother Summer during recorded human history. Mother Winter has never retired.
2013 KC signing Q&A
How often do the Ladies', Queens' and Mothers' mantles change?
Uh, the Ladies, Queens and Mothers, their mantles change very, very, very rarely in general. I mean, Mab's been there for better than 1,000 years. And Maeve's been there….there was a Winter Lady before Maeve, uh, in Mab's time. And she didn't fare so well the last time a Starborn was running around.

More on Fae mantle changes
if the Ladies become the Queen, what happens to the Mothers at that point? The thing is that the Mothers are kind of the foundation. So, it's not so much what happens to them because the little mantles changed. It's what happens to the little mantles if the big mantles change. So, if someone whacks the being that is, for all intents and purposes, Baba Yaga, and then Mab succeeds, then Mab becomes the new Baba Yaga, and Molly gets drawn up to Mab, and they have to find someone else to become the new Lady. But on the other hand, the Mothers are extremely powerful beings (continued in the cosmology/mantle sub-section)

I was wondering if Mab was the first Winter Queen?
No. Mab was not the first Mab. Mab was originally Winter Lady, and Lea was her Jenny Greenteeth. She was her sidekick and handmaiden. And so when Mab got promoted Lea did too. So she got to be much more powerful and awesome. But that was a while back. When that happened. And the same thing with Titania. The Winter Queens actually died. The last time things got awful in the wizard world. So things are about to get awful in the wizard world again and they're a bit nervous. They're a bit nervous about Dresden. Well, Titania is very nervous about Dresden. Mab is keeping her enemies close.

You've previously said that the Sidhe and Mab came from origins like Toot Toot and kind of took on responsibility and grew. You've also said that every single Fae have come from mortal origins like changelings and Scions and stuff. Could you reconcile these two apparently contradictory origins?
I could but I won't *sing song* I'm not gonna tell you.* The Sidhe were created for a reason though. They were created specifically by certain agents who no longer had as much influence on the world as they once did. I've hinted at that in some previous books and I'll leave it at that and I'll leave the rest to you. That's perfectly enough material to come up with fan crack theory. And fan crack theory is awesome. I love reading fan crack theory. I will go through occasionally and look at the crack theory boards, and it's like excellent. And occasionally its like 'ooh that's actually better than what I had planned…" (Editor's note: This question is especially dear to me)

At a Con you attended recently, you mentioned that the reason Mab owes favors to some unsavory characters is due to debts she accrued when the Winter Fey first assumed the duty of manning the Wall.
Regarding that favor, it was a situation where Mab needed to be in two places at once and couldn't. So Anduriel loaned her Nicodemus to step into one of the places she couldn't be. Man has since learned better than that and now she has somebody that will step in for her when she needs to be in two places at once. Which is why the Leanansidhe has got so much power and generally shows up whenever Mab isn't there. If you'll notice in the books, the Leanansidhe and Mab very rarely show up in the same place at the same time. That's because Leanansidhe is covering things that Mab should be doing, while Mab is wasting her time on Harry Dresden. And vice versa.