BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
Why? Sophia can talk to Molly telepathically for miles.
Well. Hope that Morgan and co feel the same as you do here I guess.
Edit: The first post on page 3333. Nice.
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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Well. Hope that Morgan and co feel the same as you do here I guess.
Edit: The first post on page 3333. Nice.
Like I pointed out earlier, the quickest way to get to Sophia is to have Tiffany call Lydia mind-to-mind by their Contract link to turn on her cellphone or hum a tune, and Molly does a jump to Sanctuary, and a jump out.
Pinpoint travel.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
@DragonParadox Errors.
These from before were never addressed.
Also, "Beyond temptation" and "Peeling away lies" are both marked as Post 44. The numbering should be changed before it gets too far.
New:
These from before were never addressed.
Also, "Beyond temptation" and "Peeling away lies" are both marked as Post 44. The numbering should be changed before it gets too far.
New:
Investigation on the Clock
Need a space after the quotation mark before you.
Need a period on "Ms".
Sorcerer's Snare
Can't tell if this is an error or not.
Question mark.
It seems to autocorrect to "Lucio" though her name is Luccio.
Quite a day?
Question mark.
Extra word.
It's a name of course but I've never seen it spelled with one c.
Looks like this was meant to be a period instead of a comma.
Thanks, numbering fixed, will get to the rest after I've had some breakfast
These are the numbers of the conspirators:
We have dealt with those in Australia, Hidden Halls, and will likely be dealing with those in Europe. Let's assume those in NeverNever remain unaware of what's going on, cannot be warned, and will not affect the immediate situation. This leaves a large contingent (the largest single concentration in the world, assuming they are together) in Africa, and a force in Central and South America, who will likely be allied with Red Court. Red Court already tried attacking a council strike force, and were fairly effective at that. Removing Morgan and other best combat wizards from Hidden Halls opens them up to attack. From there, it all depends on how Hollow Man can communicate with conspirators and what sort of long range communication they have in general.
To summarize, I fear possible attacks from:
1) A large force of True Magi from Africa, possibly with whatever ancient, possibly exalted-related horror they can unearth from there (so far, Egypt and Sumeria have been revealed to have had active exalts in relatively recent past)
2) A force of True Magi from Central and South Americas leading a strike force of Red Court in a decapitation strike
3) Some other denarian(s). Thorned Namshiel was close enough and opportunistic enough to take advantage of the situation. Assuming that the probability of individual denarian becoming aware of this situation and deciding to attack is only 5%, and there are only 20 denarians free and around, the probability of another denarian attack is 64%. Which is rather high.
4) Anyone else, like British government.
In this situation, leaving only Ancient Mai, who doesn't seem combat oriented in defense and command of the Hidden Halls feels like a mistake.
EDIT: There are also other members of Gorfel's brotherhood to consider:
There are at least two still unaccounted for - Dr. Hans Ulrich Speer and Theodosius Cristos, not mentioning the Hollow Seer himself.
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I'll have to look into that on the model front, as for the specifics of observer vs messenger that will be for the White Council's investigation. You guys just blasted through in half an hour, some stuff was missed, though nowhere near the scale of the carefully laid plans you set on fire.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
You realize that traveling using the Ways takes hours right? At any rate it'd be up to Morgan in the end, as pointed out. Maybe he'll agree, maybe not.
Edit: I'm not seeing why other Denarians would get involved either considering what almost happened to the last one and thinking that the British government would attack the Hidden Halls just seems like paranoia.
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I am usually the one who keeps reminding others that travel is not instantaneous, yes. It takes hours to days to cross the globe. But it has been more than an hour, likely more than two, if I recall correctly, since the whole thing started, and Africa is relatively close.
As to denarians - opportunism, not knowing that Thorned Namshiel barely got away, and/or knowledge that Molly is away. Because let's be honest, without Molly? Thorned Namshiel would have eaten the wizards for lunch.
Point is - I don't think risking leaving Hidden Halls largely unprotected for more than half an hour, likely more that an hour is worth it.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
No it hasn't. It's been an hour and some change at most.
Nobody is using the Ways to travel from one continent to another in such a short time frame.
The Denarians communicate with each other. If one had to flee It's not reasonable to think that he wouldn't tell his fellows. I don't see why the rest would risk it when the entire reason Namshiel got involved was due to opportunism to begin with. Denarians seem to plan then act to minimize risk.
You don't know how long we'd be leaving it. You've been saying that you believe the situation will have been resolved before we even show up to Paris.
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That's a strong assumption. At the very least Egypt, Iraq and Iran are relatively close geographically. I wouldn't bet on this.
Denarians don't all act together, and can act on their own, and wouldn't communicate their weakness to each other, as I understand it. At least not all of them. Assuming Namshiel is the only opportunistic denarian is not a risk I'd like to take.
Yes, exactly. We don't know how long it'll take. I hope that by the time we arrive the situation will be resolved. In this case we create a security gap for now reason. If we have to resolve the situation in Paris, then that creates an extended period of low security in the Halls. Both outcomes are bad.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
That's canon. Traveling across vast distances via he NN still takes awhile even if it's much faster than on foot in real space. I'm not assuming anything here.
This doesn't make any sense.
We know that Namshiel is associated with Peabody based on what Peabody said earlier about how he should've listened to the "Fallen one" and used weapons of mass death. Which means he was made aware of this ahead of time. This is all related.
You're saying that Namshiel wouldn't make anyone else aware and Peabody told him.
So now you'd need to explain how the other Denarians are to be made aware when they probably have other things going on if Namshiel isn't telling them as you say and he was made aware of the current events by Peabody.
If the situation is already resolved and Molly has water travel, we shouldn't be gone for as long as your saying.
The attack vectors your concerned Mai and co won't be able to deal with here do not seem reasonable.
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Maggie La Fey "could be in Beijing at breakfast, Rome at lunch, Seattle for supper and stop for coffee in Sydney". That's a canon quote (Turn Coat, ch. 28). Yes, she was (one of) the most skilled mortal practitioners in using the Ways, but sponsored magi are dangerous through being sponsored.
I'm saying Namshiel wouldn't warn anyone of his defeat, not that he wouldn't have told anyone else of the opportunity.
The odds of at least holding against a secondary attack are higher if a contingent of combat-oriented wizards remains behind.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
Your saying that because they're "sponsored" we should expect them to have means akin to one of the best Way users in setting...
If being "sponsored" is your explanation for why more are expected to show up way ahead of any reasonable schedule you need to explain why they aren't already here.
This is starting to look like fear mongering if I'm being honest. Kind of like when Uju said that Sandra should have a teleportation ability because she was sponsored by Outsiders but in the end she didn't and got taken out by Tiffany.
So.. Namshiel simultaneously communicates enough with his centuries long team to tell them of an "opportunity" known through his affiliation with Peabody but he does not care enough about his centuries long team to inform them of the Exalted encounter he had while pursuing said opportunity.
I'm not buying what your selling. That doesn't make any sense.
They already have that in Mai and the Wardens. What your arguing for is more.
And again this is going to end up coming down to Morgan anyway. It's counter productive if he chooses to take a contingent of Wardens into the Ways to go help Merlin without Molly.
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I am saying that there's enough uncertainty, and enough potential threats involved, that caution is warranted. The council hasn't exactly had a good showing so far.
Not simultaneously. Sequentially. He would have had time to communicate the opportunity to other denarians. He wouldn't have had time or opportunity to communicate the danger, especially since he got teleported somewhere at random, and has to worry about being pursued. Because Molly is a credible threat of unknown capabilities, and he has to account for the possibility of her pursuing him.
- Location
- washington
dresdens mother probably could have.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
I did address the ones you brought up but yes in vague sense there always is.
Still what you were arguing for is that more caution is warranted on our part than deciding to leave Mai here with her hounds and wardens not that we should be cautious. Everyone thinks caution is warranted, the point of contention is the degree compared to Paris.
The sum two thousand year old sorcerer/wizard backed by a Fallen undoubtedly has the means to establish long range communications in a timely manner.
Dresden was able to manage it with McCoy using magic. Namshiel was seen utilizing multiple phones in Quest so even someone as old as him makes use of modern tech for such things. He's not the only Denarian that does either.
Please keep in mind the context that statements are given in. When I said "nobody" I meant anyone relevant to the current events.
Mab, Odin, the Leanansidhe could all manage that too but they along with Harry's deceased mother aren't relevant here.
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- Location
- washington
yeah thats fair.
[X] Go to Paris as you are the others need the help, your present form might cause some exposure, but it is night there as well. There can't be that many poeple out
-[X]Bring the war party: 2m
Yeah I just remembered that the Masquerade is only as strong as Humanity itself wants it to be and maybe Europeans are a bit less tolerant of massive masquerade breeches but we can't really destroy it by being ourselves.
-[X]Bring the war party: 2m
Yeah I just remembered that the Masquerade is only as strong as Humanity itself wants it to be and maybe Europeans are a bit less tolerant of massive masquerade breeches but we can't really destroy it by being ourselves.
I agree, but as others noted, the Council hasn't really shown themselves to be combat capable on the required level so far.
Depends.
Distance through the NeverNever depends on the paths, where you have permission to pass through, and sometimes even how powerful you are, to deter potential dangers along the way.
It takes Harry roughly half an hour to go from Chicago to Edinburgh, and thats because he has permission to shortcut through Winter. When he went to Mexico, it took him three hours.
Edinburgh to Paris? No idea. But I would be surprised if it took less than twenty minutes or more than three hours.
=====
Dresden's mother was one of the best Way users in the business. Bettter than a lot of the Fae.
In Turn Coat, it takes Harry half an hour to go from Chicago to Edinburgh, crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
It requires permission and access to paths through Winter, and he gets ambushed by spider-fae things that appear to be allied to the bad guys once along the way.
Wizards and technology don't get on so well, and that makes travel sort of complicated. Some wizards seemed to be more of a bad influence on technology than others, and if any of them were harder on machinery than me, I hadn't met them yet. I'd been on a jet a couple of times and had one bad experience—just one. After the plane's computers and guidance system went bad, and we had to make an emergency landing on a tiny commercial airfield, I wasn't eager to repeat the experience.
Buses were better, especially if you sat toward the back, but even they had problems. I hadn't been on a bus trip longer than three or four hundred miles without winding up broken down next to the highway in the middle of nowhere. Cars could work out, especially if they were fairly old models—the fewer electronics involved, the better. Even those machines, though, tended to provide you with chronic problems. I'd never owned a car that ran more than maybe nine days in ten—and most of them were worse than that.
Trains and ships were the ideal, especially if you could keep yourself a good way from the engines. Most wizards, when they traveled, stuck with ships and trains. Either that or they cheated—like I was about to do.
Back at the beginning of the war with the Vampire Courts, the White Council, with the help of a certain wizard private investigator from Chicago who shall remain nameless, negotiated the use of Ways through the near reaches of the Nevernever controlled by the Unseelie Court. The Nevernever, the world of ghosts and spirits and fantastic beings of every description, exists alongside our own mortal reality—but it isn't the same shape. That meant that in places, the mortal world touched upon the Nevernever at two points that could be very close together, while in the mortal realm, they were very far apart. In short, use of the Ways meant that anyone who could open a path between worlds could use a major shortcut.
In this case, it meant I could make the trip from Chicago, Illinois, to Edinburgh, Scotland, in about half an hour.
The closest entry point to where I wanted to go in the Nevernever was a dark alley behind a building that had once been used for meat packing. A lot of things had died in that building, not all of them cleanly and not all of them cows. There's a dark sense of finality to the place, a sort of ephemeral quality of dread that hangs so lightly on the air that the unobservant might not notice it at all. In the middle of the alley, a concrete staircase led down to a door that was held shut with both boards and chains—talk about overkill.
I walked down the steps to the bottom of the stairs, closed my eyes for a moment, and extended my otherworldly senses, not toward the door, but toward the section of concrete beside it. I could feel the thinness of the world there, where energy pulsed and hummed just beneath the seemingly rigid surface of reality.
It was a hot night in Chicago, but it wouldn't be on the Ways. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and a couple of pairs of socks beneath my hiking shoes. My heavy leather duster had me sweating. I gathered up my will, reached out my hand, and with a whisper of "Aparturum," I opened a Way between worlds.
Honestly, it sounds quite a bit more dramatic than it looks. The surface of the concrete wall rippled with a quick flickering of color and began to put out a soft glow. I took a deep breath, gripped my staff in both hands, and stepped directly forward into the concrete.
My flesh passed through what should have been stone, and I emerged in a dark wood that lay covered in frost and a thin layer of snow. At least this time the ground in Chicago had been more or less level with the ground in the Nevernever. Last time, I'd had a three-inch drop I hadn't expected, and I'd fallen on my ass into the snow. No harm done, I suppose, but this part of the Nevernever was just chock-full of things you did not want to think you were clumsy or vulnerable.
I took my bearings with a quick look around. The woods were the same, all three times I'd been through them. A hillside sank down ahead of me, and climbed steadily into the night behind me. At the top of the small mountain I stood upon, I was told, was a narrow and bitterly cold pass that led into the interior of the Unseelie Mountains, to Mab's stronghold of Arctis Tor. Below me, the land sank into foothills and then into plains, where Mab's authority ended and that of Titania the Summer Queen began.
I stood at a crossroads—which was only sensible, since I'd arrived from Chicago, one of the great crossroads of the world. One trail led upslope and down. The other crossed it at almost perfect right angles, and ran along the face of the hillside. I took a left, following the face of the hillside in a counterclockwise direction, also known as widdershins, in the parlance of the locals. The trail ran between frozen trees, their branches bowed beneath their burden of frost and snow.
I moved quickly, but not quickly enough to slip and blow out an ankle or brain myself on a low-hanging branch. The White Council had Mab's permission to move through the woods, but they were by no means safe.
I found that out for myself about fifteen minutes into my walk, when snow suddenly fell softly from the trees all around, and silent black shapes descended to encircle me. It happened quickly, and in perfect silence—maybe a dozen spiders the size of ponies alit upon the frozen ground or clung to the trunks and branches of the surrounding trees. They were smooth-surfaced, sharp-edged creatures, like orbweavers, long-limbed and graceful and deadly-looking. They moved with an almost delicate precision, their bodies of a color of grey and blue and white that blended flawlessly with the snowy night.
The spider who had come down onto the trail directly in front of me raised its two forelegs in warning, and revealed fangs longer than my forearm, dripping with milky-white venom.
"Halt, man-thing," said the creature.
That was actually scarier than the mere appearance of economy-sized arachnids. Between its fangs, I could see a mouth moving—a mouth that looked disturbingly human. Its multiple eyes gleamed like beads of obsidian. Its voice was a chirping, buzzing thing. "Halt, he whose blood will warm us. Halt, intruder upon the Wood of the Winter Queen."
I stopped and looked around the circle of spiders. None of them seemed to be particularly larger or smaller than the others. If I had to fight my way clear, there wasn't any obvious weak link to exploit. "Greetings," I said, as I did. "I am no intruder, honored hunters. I am a Wizard of the White Council, and I and my folk have the Queen's permission to tread these paths."
The air around me shivered with chitters and hisses and clicks.
"Man-things speak often with false tongues," said the lead spider, its forelimbs thrashing the air in agitation.
I held up my staff. "I guess they always have one of these, too, huh?"
The spider hissed, and venom bubbled from the tips of its fangs. "Many a man-thing bears such a long stick, mortal."
"Careful, legs," I said. "I'm on speaking terms with Queen Mab herself. I don't think you want to play it like this."
The spider's legs shifted in an undulating motion, and the spider rippled two or three feet closer to me. The other spiders all shifted, too, moving a bit nearer. I didn't like that, not even a little. If one of them jumped, they'd be all over me—and there were just too many of the damn big things to defend myself against them effectively.
The spider laughed, the sound hollow and mocking. "Mortals do not speak to the Queen and live to tell the tale."
"It lies," hissed the other spiders, the phrase a low buzzing around me. "And its blood is warm."
I eyed all those enormous fangs and had an acutely uncomfortable flashback to Morgan driving his straw through the top of that damn juice box.
The spider in front of me flowed a little to the left and a little to the right, the graceful motion intended to distract me from the fact that it had gotten about a foot closer to me. "Man-thing, how are we to know what you truly are?"
In my professional opinion, you rarely get handed a straight line that good.
I thrust the tip of my staff forward, along with my gathered will, focusing it into an area the size of my own clenched fist as I shouted, "Forzare!"
An invisible force hammered into the lead spider, right in its disturbing mouth. It lifted the huge beast off all eight of its feet, drove it fifteen feet backward through the air, and ended at the trunk of an enormous old oak. The spider smacked into it like an enormous water bottle, making a hideous splattering sound upon impact. It bounced off the tree and landed on the frozen ground, its legs all quivering and jerking spasmodically. Maybe three hundred pounds of snow shaken loose by the impact came plummeting down from the oak tree's branches and half buried the body.
Everything went still and silent.
I narrowed my eyes and swept my gaze around the circle of monstrous arachnids. I said nothing.
The spider nearest its dead companion shifted its weight warily from leg to leg. Then, in a much quieter voice, it trilled, "Let the wizard pass."
"Damn right let him pass," I muttered under my breath. Then I strode forward as though I intended to smash anything else that got in my way.
The spiders scattered. I kept walking without slowing, breaking stride, or looking back. They didn't know how fast my heart was beating or how my legs were trembling with fear. And as long as they didn't, I would be just fine.
After a hundred yards or so, I did look back—only to see the spiders gathered over the body of their dead companion. They were wrapping it up in silk, their fangs twitching and jerking hungrily. I shuddered and my stomach twisted onto itself.
One thing you can count on when visiting the Nevernever: you don't ever get bored.
I turned off the forest path onto a foot trail at a tree whose trunk had been carved with a pentacle. The trees turned into evergreens and crowded close to the trail. Things moved out of sight among the trees making small scuttling noises, and I could barely hear high-pitched whispers and sibilant voices coming from the forest around me. Creepy, but par for the course.
The path led up to a clearing in the woods. Centered in the clearing was a mound of earth about a dozen yards across and almost as high, thick with stones and vines. Massive slabs of rock formed the posts and lintel of a black doorway. A lone figure in a grey cloak stood beside the doorway, a lean and fit-looking young man with cheekbones sharp enough to slice bread and eyes of cobalt blue. Beneath the grey cloak, he wore an expensive dark blue cashmere suit, with a cream-colored shirt and a metallic copper-colored tie. A black bowler topped off the ensemble, and instead of a staff or a blasting rod, he bore a silver-headed walking cane in his right hand.
He was also holding the cane at full extension, pointed directly at me with narrowed, serious eyes as I came down the trail.
I stopped and waved a hand. "Easy there, Steed."
The young man lowered the cane, and his face blossomed into a smile that made him look maybe ten years younger. "Ah," he said. "Not too obvious a look, one hopes?"
"It's a classic," I said. "How you doing, Chandler?"
"I am freezing off my well-tailored ass," Chandler said cheerily, in an elegant accent straight from Oxford. "But I endure thanks to excellent breeding, a background in preparatory academies, and metric tons of British fortitude." Those intense blue eyes took a second look at me, and though his expression never changed, his voice gained a touch of concern. "How are you, Harry?"
"Been a long night," I said, walking forward. "Aren't there supposed to be five of you watching the door?"
"Five of me guarding the door? Are you mad? The sheer power of the concentrated fashion sense would obliterate visitors on sight."
I burst out in a short laugh. "You must use your powers only for good?"
"Precisely, and I shall." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I can't remember the last time I saw you here."
"I only visited once," I said. "And that was a few years ago, right after they drafted me."
Chandler nodded soberly. "What brings you out of Chicago?"
"I heard about Morgan."
The young Warden's expression darkened. "Yes," he said quietly. "It's . . . hard to believe. You're here to help find him?"
"I've found murderers before," I said. "I figure I can do it again." I paused. For whatever reason, Chandler was almost always to be found working near the Senior Council. If anyone would know the scuttlebutt, he would. "Who do you think I should talk to about it?"
"Wizard Liberty is coordinating the search," he replied. "Wizard Listens-to-Wind is investigating the scene of the murder. Ancient Mai is getting the word out to the rest of the Council to convene an emergency session."
I nodded. "What about Wizard McCoy?"
"Standing by with a strike team, when last I heard," Chandler replied. "He's one of the few who can reasonably expect to overpower Morgan."
"Yeah," I said. "Morgan's a pain in the ass, all right." I shivered and stamped my feet against the cold. "I've got some information they're going to want. Where do I find them?"
Chandler considered. "Ancient Mai should be in the Crystalline Hall, Wizard Liberty is in the Offices, Wizard McCoy should be somewhere near the War Room and Wizard Listens-to-Wind and the Merlin are in LaFortier's chambers."
"How about the Gatekeeper?" I asked.
Chandler shrugged. "Gatekeeping, I daresay. The only wizard I see less frequently than he is you."
I nodded. "Thanks, Chandler." I faced him soberly and put a formal solemnity in my voice as I adhered to security protocols more than five centuries old. "I seek entry to the Hidden Halls, O Warden. May I pass?"
He eyed me for a moment and gave me a slow, regal nod, his eyes twinkling. "Be welcome to the seat of the White Council. Enter in peace and depart in peace."
I nodded to him and walked forward through the archway.
I'd come in peace, sure. But if the killer was around and caught onto what I was doing, I wouldn't depart in peace.
Just in pieces.
Buses were better, especially if you sat toward the back, but even they had problems. I hadn't been on a bus trip longer than three or four hundred miles without winding up broken down next to the highway in the middle of nowhere. Cars could work out, especially if they were fairly old models—the fewer electronics involved, the better. Even those machines, though, tended to provide you with chronic problems. I'd never owned a car that ran more than maybe nine days in ten—and most of them were worse than that.
Trains and ships were the ideal, especially if you could keep yourself a good way from the engines. Most wizards, when they traveled, stuck with ships and trains. Either that or they cheated—like I was about to do.
Back at the beginning of the war with the Vampire Courts, the White Council, with the help of a certain wizard private investigator from Chicago who shall remain nameless, negotiated the use of Ways through the near reaches of the Nevernever controlled by the Unseelie Court. The Nevernever, the world of ghosts and spirits and fantastic beings of every description, exists alongside our own mortal reality—but it isn't the same shape. That meant that in places, the mortal world touched upon the Nevernever at two points that could be very close together, while in the mortal realm, they were very far apart. In short, use of the Ways meant that anyone who could open a path between worlds could use a major shortcut.
In this case, it meant I could make the trip from Chicago, Illinois, to Edinburgh, Scotland, in about half an hour.
The closest entry point to where I wanted to go in the Nevernever was a dark alley behind a building that had once been used for meat packing. A lot of things had died in that building, not all of them cleanly and not all of them cows. There's a dark sense of finality to the place, a sort of ephemeral quality of dread that hangs so lightly on the air that the unobservant might not notice it at all. In the middle of the alley, a concrete staircase led down to a door that was held shut with both boards and chains—talk about overkill.
I walked down the steps to the bottom of the stairs, closed my eyes for a moment, and extended my otherworldly senses, not toward the door, but toward the section of concrete beside it. I could feel the thinness of the world there, where energy pulsed and hummed just beneath the seemingly rigid surface of reality.
It was a hot night in Chicago, but it wouldn't be on the Ways. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and a couple of pairs of socks beneath my hiking shoes. My heavy leather duster had me sweating. I gathered up my will, reached out my hand, and with a whisper of "Aparturum," I opened a Way between worlds.
Honestly, it sounds quite a bit more dramatic than it looks. The surface of the concrete wall rippled with a quick flickering of color and began to put out a soft glow. I took a deep breath, gripped my staff in both hands, and stepped directly forward into the concrete.
My flesh passed through what should have been stone, and I emerged in a dark wood that lay covered in frost and a thin layer of snow. At least this time the ground in Chicago had been more or less level with the ground in the Nevernever. Last time, I'd had a three-inch drop I hadn't expected, and I'd fallen on my ass into the snow. No harm done, I suppose, but this part of the Nevernever was just chock-full of things you did not want to think you were clumsy or vulnerable.
I took my bearings with a quick look around. The woods were the same, all three times I'd been through them. A hillside sank down ahead of me, and climbed steadily into the night behind me. At the top of the small mountain I stood upon, I was told, was a narrow and bitterly cold pass that led into the interior of the Unseelie Mountains, to Mab's stronghold of Arctis Tor. Below me, the land sank into foothills and then into plains, where Mab's authority ended and that of Titania the Summer Queen began.
I stood at a crossroads—which was only sensible, since I'd arrived from Chicago, one of the great crossroads of the world. One trail led upslope and down. The other crossed it at almost perfect right angles, and ran along the face of the hillside. I took a left, following the face of the hillside in a counterclockwise direction, also known as widdershins, in the parlance of the locals. The trail ran between frozen trees, their branches bowed beneath their burden of frost and snow.
I moved quickly, but not quickly enough to slip and blow out an ankle or brain myself on a low-hanging branch. The White Council had Mab's permission to move through the woods, but they were by no means safe.
I found that out for myself about fifteen minutes into my walk, when snow suddenly fell softly from the trees all around, and silent black shapes descended to encircle me. It happened quickly, and in perfect silence—maybe a dozen spiders the size of ponies alit upon the frozen ground or clung to the trunks and branches of the surrounding trees. They were smooth-surfaced, sharp-edged creatures, like orbweavers, long-limbed and graceful and deadly-looking. They moved with an almost delicate precision, their bodies of a color of grey and blue and white that blended flawlessly with the snowy night.
The spider who had come down onto the trail directly in front of me raised its two forelegs in warning, and revealed fangs longer than my forearm, dripping with milky-white venom.
"Halt, man-thing," said the creature.
That was actually scarier than the mere appearance of economy-sized arachnids. Between its fangs, I could see a mouth moving—a mouth that looked disturbingly human. Its multiple eyes gleamed like beads of obsidian. Its voice was a chirping, buzzing thing. "Halt, he whose blood will warm us. Halt, intruder upon the Wood of the Winter Queen."
I stopped and looked around the circle of spiders. None of them seemed to be particularly larger or smaller than the others. If I had to fight my way clear, there wasn't any obvious weak link to exploit. "Greetings," I said, as I did. "I am no intruder, honored hunters. I am a Wizard of the White Council, and I and my folk have the Queen's permission to tread these paths."
The air around me shivered with chitters and hisses and clicks.
"Man-things speak often with false tongues," said the lead spider, its forelimbs thrashing the air in agitation.
I held up my staff. "I guess they always have one of these, too, huh?"
The spider hissed, and venom bubbled from the tips of its fangs. "Many a man-thing bears such a long stick, mortal."
"Careful, legs," I said. "I'm on speaking terms with Queen Mab herself. I don't think you want to play it like this."
The spider's legs shifted in an undulating motion, and the spider rippled two or three feet closer to me. The other spiders all shifted, too, moving a bit nearer. I didn't like that, not even a little. If one of them jumped, they'd be all over me—and there were just too many of the damn big things to defend myself against them effectively.
The spider laughed, the sound hollow and mocking. "Mortals do not speak to the Queen and live to tell the tale."
"It lies," hissed the other spiders, the phrase a low buzzing around me. "And its blood is warm."
I eyed all those enormous fangs and had an acutely uncomfortable flashback to Morgan driving his straw through the top of that damn juice box.
The spider in front of me flowed a little to the left and a little to the right, the graceful motion intended to distract me from the fact that it had gotten about a foot closer to me. "Man-thing, how are we to know what you truly are?"
In my professional opinion, you rarely get handed a straight line that good.
I thrust the tip of my staff forward, along with my gathered will, focusing it into an area the size of my own clenched fist as I shouted, "Forzare!"
An invisible force hammered into the lead spider, right in its disturbing mouth. It lifted the huge beast off all eight of its feet, drove it fifteen feet backward through the air, and ended at the trunk of an enormous old oak. The spider smacked into it like an enormous water bottle, making a hideous splattering sound upon impact. It bounced off the tree and landed on the frozen ground, its legs all quivering and jerking spasmodically. Maybe three hundred pounds of snow shaken loose by the impact came plummeting down from the oak tree's branches and half buried the body.
Everything went still and silent.
I narrowed my eyes and swept my gaze around the circle of monstrous arachnids. I said nothing.
The spider nearest its dead companion shifted its weight warily from leg to leg. Then, in a much quieter voice, it trilled, "Let the wizard pass."
"Damn right let him pass," I muttered under my breath. Then I strode forward as though I intended to smash anything else that got in my way.
The spiders scattered. I kept walking without slowing, breaking stride, or looking back. They didn't know how fast my heart was beating or how my legs were trembling with fear. And as long as they didn't, I would be just fine.
After a hundred yards or so, I did look back—only to see the spiders gathered over the body of their dead companion. They were wrapping it up in silk, their fangs twitching and jerking hungrily. I shuddered and my stomach twisted onto itself.
One thing you can count on when visiting the Nevernever: you don't ever get bored.
I turned off the forest path onto a foot trail at a tree whose trunk had been carved with a pentacle. The trees turned into evergreens and crowded close to the trail. Things moved out of sight among the trees making small scuttling noises, and I could barely hear high-pitched whispers and sibilant voices coming from the forest around me. Creepy, but par for the course.
The path led up to a clearing in the woods. Centered in the clearing was a mound of earth about a dozen yards across and almost as high, thick with stones and vines. Massive slabs of rock formed the posts and lintel of a black doorway. A lone figure in a grey cloak stood beside the doorway, a lean and fit-looking young man with cheekbones sharp enough to slice bread and eyes of cobalt blue. Beneath the grey cloak, he wore an expensive dark blue cashmere suit, with a cream-colored shirt and a metallic copper-colored tie. A black bowler topped off the ensemble, and instead of a staff or a blasting rod, he bore a silver-headed walking cane in his right hand.
He was also holding the cane at full extension, pointed directly at me with narrowed, serious eyes as I came down the trail.
I stopped and waved a hand. "Easy there, Steed."
The young man lowered the cane, and his face blossomed into a smile that made him look maybe ten years younger. "Ah," he said. "Not too obvious a look, one hopes?"
"It's a classic," I said. "How you doing, Chandler?"
"I am freezing off my well-tailored ass," Chandler said cheerily, in an elegant accent straight from Oxford. "But I endure thanks to excellent breeding, a background in preparatory academies, and metric tons of British fortitude." Those intense blue eyes took a second look at me, and though his expression never changed, his voice gained a touch of concern. "How are you, Harry?"
"Been a long night," I said, walking forward. "Aren't there supposed to be five of you watching the door?"
"Five of me guarding the door? Are you mad? The sheer power of the concentrated fashion sense would obliterate visitors on sight."
I burst out in a short laugh. "You must use your powers only for good?"
"Precisely, and I shall." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I can't remember the last time I saw you here."
"I only visited once," I said. "And that was a few years ago, right after they drafted me."
Chandler nodded soberly. "What brings you out of Chicago?"
"I heard about Morgan."
The young Warden's expression darkened. "Yes," he said quietly. "It's . . . hard to believe. You're here to help find him?"
"I've found murderers before," I said. "I figure I can do it again." I paused. For whatever reason, Chandler was almost always to be found working near the Senior Council. If anyone would know the scuttlebutt, he would. "Who do you think I should talk to about it?"
"Wizard Liberty is coordinating the search," he replied. "Wizard Listens-to-Wind is investigating the scene of the murder. Ancient Mai is getting the word out to the rest of the Council to convene an emergency session."
I nodded. "What about Wizard McCoy?"
"Standing by with a strike team, when last I heard," Chandler replied. "He's one of the few who can reasonably expect to overpower Morgan."
"Yeah," I said. "Morgan's a pain in the ass, all right." I shivered and stamped my feet against the cold. "I've got some information they're going to want. Where do I find them?"
Chandler considered. "Ancient Mai should be in the Crystalline Hall, Wizard Liberty is in the Offices, Wizard McCoy should be somewhere near the War Room and Wizard Listens-to-Wind and the Merlin are in LaFortier's chambers."
"How about the Gatekeeper?" I asked.
Chandler shrugged. "Gatekeeping, I daresay. The only wizard I see less frequently than he is you."
I nodded. "Thanks, Chandler." I faced him soberly and put a formal solemnity in my voice as I adhered to security protocols more than five centuries old. "I seek entry to the Hidden Halls, O Warden. May I pass?"
He eyed me for a moment and gave me a slow, regal nod, his eyes twinkling. "Be welcome to the seat of the White Council. Enter in peace and depart in peace."
I nodded to him and walked forward through the archway.
I'd come in peace, sure. But if the killer was around and caught onto what I was doing, I wouldn't depart in peace.
Just in pieces.
However, in Changes, it takes him an estimated three hours to go from Chicago to Chitchen Itza, Mexico, a considerably shorter distance
I followed her gaze to a large clock on the far wall of the big store.
It said that the time was currently nine thirty p.m.
Thirty minutes after our departure time.
"How can that be?" Susan demanded. "We were there for half an hour at the most. Look. My watch says it's two."
My heart began to beat faster. "Hell's bells, I didn't even think of it."
"Of what?"
I started walking. Susan ditched her club behind a shelf and followed me. We must have made a charming sight, both of us all scuffed up, torn, ragged, and wounded. A few late shoppers stared, but no one seemed willing to approach us.
"Time can pass at a different rate in the Nevernever than it does here," I said. "All those stories about people partying with the fae overnight and waking up in a new century? That's why it happens." The next link in the logic chain got forged, and I said, "Oh. Oh, dammit."
"What?" Susan said.
"It's a three-hour trip to Chichén Itzá," I said quietly. "We can't get there by midnight." Lead ingots began to pile up in my belly and on my shoulders and the back of my neck. I bowed my head, my mouth twisting bitterly. "We're too late."
It said that the time was currently nine thirty p.m.
Thirty minutes after our departure time.
"How can that be?" Susan demanded. "We were there for half an hour at the most. Look. My watch says it's two."
My heart began to beat faster. "Hell's bells, I didn't even think of it."
"Of what?"
I started walking. Susan ditched her club behind a shelf and followed me. We must have made a charming sight, both of us all scuffed up, torn, ragged, and wounded. A few late shoppers stared, but no one seemed willing to approach us.
"Time can pass at a different rate in the Nevernever than it does here," I said. "All those stories about people partying with the fae overnight and waking up in a new century? That's why it happens." The next link in the logic chain got forged, and I said, "Oh. Oh, dammit."
"What?" Susan said.
"It's a three-hour trip to Chichén Itzá," I said quietly. "We can't get there by midnight." Lead ingots began to pile up in my belly and on my shoulders and the back of my neck. I bowed my head, my mouth twisting bitterly. "We're too late."
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?"
Or tried to say that. What came out was something more like, "Grrrrrrbrrrr awwf arrrr grrrrr."
My faerie godmother looked at me and began laughing. Genuine, delighted belly laughter. She clapped her hands and bounced up and down, spinning in a circle, and laughed even more.
I realized then what had happened.
She had turned us—all of us, except for Mouse—into great, gaunt, long-legged hounds.
"Wonderful!" Lea said, pirouetting upon one toe, laughing. "Come, children!" And she leapt off into the jungle, nimble and swift as a doe.
A bunch of us dogs stood around for a moment, just sort of staring at one another.
And Mouse said, in what sounded to me like perfectly understandable English, "That bitch."
We all stared at him.
Mouse huffed out a breath, shook his beslimed coat, and said, "Follow me." Then he took off after the Leanansidhe, and, driven by reflex-level instinct, the rest of us raced to catch up.
I'd been shapeshifted one other time—by the dark magic of a cursed belt, and one that I suspected had been deliberately designed to provide an addictive high with its use. It had taken me a long time to shake off the memory of that experience, the absolute clarity of my senses, the feeling of ready power in my whole body, of absolute certainty in every movement.
Now I had it back—and this time, without the reality-blurring euphoria. I was intensely aware of the scents around me, of a hundred thousand new smells that begged to be explored, of the rush of sheer physical pleasure in racing across the ground after a friend. I could hear the breath and the bodies of the others around me, running through the night, bounding over stones and fallen trees, slashing through bits of brush and heavy ground cover.
We could hear small prey animals scattering before us and to either side, and I knew, not just suspected but knew, that I was faster, by far, than any of the merely mortal animals, even the young buck deer who went soaring away from us, leaping a good twenty feet over a waterway. I felt an overwhelming urge to turn in pursuit—but the lead runner in the pack was already on another trail, and I wasn't sure I could have turned aside if I had tried to do so.
And the best part? We probably made less noise, as a whole, than any one of us would have made moving in a clumsy mortal body.
We didn't cover five miles in half the time, an hour instead of two.
It took us—maybe, at the most—ten minutes.
When we stopped, we could all hear the drums. Steady, throbbing drums, keeping a quick, monotonous, trance-inducing beat. The sky to the northwest was bright with the light of reflected fires, and the air seethed with the scents of humans and not-quite humans and creatures that made me growl and want to bite something. Occasionally, a vampire's cry would run its shrill claws down my spine.
Lea stood upon a fallen log ahead of us, staring ahead. Mouse walked up to her.
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?"
Or tried to say that. What came out was something more like, "Grrrrrrbrrrr awwf arrrr grrrrr."
My faerie godmother looked at me and began laughing. Genuine, delighted belly laughter. She clapped her hands and bounced up and down, spinning in a circle, and laughed even more.
I realized then what had happened.
She had turned us—all of us, except for Mouse—into great, gaunt, long-legged hounds.
"Wonderful!" Lea said, pirouetting upon one toe, laughing. "Come, children!" And she leapt off into the jungle, nimble and swift as a doe.
A bunch of us dogs stood around for a moment, just sort of staring at one another.
And Mouse said, in what sounded to me like perfectly understandable English, "That bitch."
We all stared at him.
Mouse huffed out a breath, shook his beslimed coat, and said, "Follow me." Then he took off after the Leanansidhe, and, driven by reflex-level instinct, the rest of us raced to catch up.
I'd been shapeshifted one other time—by the dark magic of a cursed belt, and one that I suspected had been deliberately designed to provide an addictive high with its use. It had taken me a long time to shake off the memory of that experience, the absolute clarity of my senses, the feeling of ready power in my whole body, of absolute certainty in every movement.
Now I had it back—and this time, without the reality-blurring euphoria. I was intensely aware of the scents around me, of a hundred thousand new smells that begged to be explored, of the rush of sheer physical pleasure in racing across the ground after a friend. I could hear the breath and the bodies of the others around me, running through the night, bounding over stones and fallen trees, slashing through bits of brush and heavy ground cover.
We could hear small prey animals scattering before us and to either side, and I knew, not just suspected but knew, that I was faster, by far, than any of the merely mortal animals, even the young buck deer who went soaring away from us, leaping a good twenty feet over a waterway. I felt an overwhelming urge to turn in pursuit—but the lead runner in the pack was already on another trail, and I wasn't sure I could have turned aside if I had tried to do so.
And the best part? We probably made less noise, as a whole, than any one of us would have made moving in a clumsy mortal body.
We didn't cover five miles in half the time, an hour instead of two.
It took us—maybe, at the most—ten minutes.
When we stopped, we could all hear the drums. Steady, throbbing drums, keeping a quick, monotonous, trance-inducing beat. The sky to the northwest was bright with the light of reflected fires, and the air seethed with the scents of humans and not-quite humans and creatures that made me growl and want to bite something. Occasionally, a vampire's cry would run its shrill claws down my spine.
Lea stood upon a fallen log ahead of us, staring ahead. Mouse walked up to her.
Chicago to Chitchen Itza is ~2400km
Chicago to Edinburgh is ~6000km
The paths of the NeverNever are not in straight lines.
Yeah. Making comparisons on distance in mundane reality seems almost totally useless as a measure of Way walking to a place.
You don't even need to get into comparing how quickly Harry got to one place or another to see that. The path from Changes took a shortcut through Giza to speed up a trip from Chicago to Chitchen Itza. Clearly the proximity of the end points isn't really that important.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
That isn't what me and Yog were talking about. Harry has his mother's amulet/locket to assist in Way travel as well IIRC. We weren't talking about him though.
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