Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.
But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks.
The drinks, people.
That was me on the staircase to Chicago-Over-Chicago. Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.
But all I could think to say, between panting breaths, was, "Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator."
Long story short: we climbed about a mile of stairs and came out in the land my godmother had shown me before, standing on the storm clouds over Chicago.
But it didn't look like it had before the opening curtain.
What had once been rolling and silent terrain sculpted of cloud, smooth and naked as a dressing dummy, had now been filled with sound, color, and violence. The storm below that battlefield was a pale reflection of the one raging upon it.
We emerged on one of the hills looking down into the valley of the Stone Table, and the hillside around us, lit with flashes of lightning in the clouds beneath, was covered in faeries of all sizes and descriptions. Sounds rang through the air - the crackling snap of lightning and the roar of thunder following. Trumpets, high and sweet, deep and brassy. Drums beat to a dozen different cadences that both clashed and rumbled in time with one another. Shouts and cries rang out in time with those drums, shrieks that might have come from human throats, together with bellows and roars that couldn't have. Taken as a whole, it was its own wild storm of music, huge, teeth-rattling, overwhelming, and charged with adrenaline. Wagner wished he could have had it so good.
Not twenty feet away stood a crowd of short, brown-skinned, white-haired little guys, their hands and feet twice as large as they should have been, bulbous noses the size of lightbulbs behind helmets made out of what looked like some kind of bone. They wore bone armor, and bore shields and weaponry, and stood in rank and file. Their eyes widened as I came up out of the clouds in my billowing black duster, leather slick with rain. Billy and the werewolves surrounded me in a loose ring as they emerged, and Fix and Meryl pressed up close behind me.
On the other side of us stood a troll a good eight feet tall, its skin upholstered in knobby, hairy warts, lank hair hanging greasily past its massive shoulders, tiny red eyes glaring from beneath its single craggy brow. Its nostrils flared out and it turned toward me, drool dribbling from its lips, but the wolves crouched down around me, snarling. The troll blinked at them for a long moment while it processed a thought, and then turned away as though disinterested. More creatures stood within a long stone's throw, including a group of Sidhe knights, completely encased in faerie armor and mounted on long-legged warhorses of deep blue, violet, and black. A wounded sylph crouched nearby and would have looked like a lovely, winged girl from fifty yards away - but from there I could see her bloodied claws and the glittering razor edge of her wings.
I couldn't see the whole of the valley below. Some kind of mist or haze lay over it, and only gave me the occasional glimpse of whirling masses of troops and beings, ranks of somewhat human things massed together against one another, while other beings, some of which could only be called "monsters," rose up above the rest, slamming together in titanic conflicts that crushed those around them as mere circumstantial casualties.
More important, I couldn't see the Stone Table, and I couldn't even make a decent guess as to where I was standing in relation to where it should have been. The stone the Gatekeeper had given me leaned steadily in one direction, but that led straight down into the madness below us.
"What next?" Meryl yelled at me. She had to shout, though she was only a few feet away - and we were standing above the real fury of the battle below.
I shook my head and started to answer, but Fix tugged on my sleeve and piped something that got swallowed by the sounds of battle. I looked to where he was pointing, and saw one of the mounted Sidhe knights leave the others and come riding toward us.
He raised the visor of his helmet, an oddly decorated piece that somehow seemed insectoid. Pale faerie skin and golden cat-eyes regarded us from atop the steed for a moment, before he inclined his head to me and lifted a hand. The sounds of battle immediately cut off, boom, like someone had turned off a radio, and the silence threatened to put me off balance.
"Emissary," the Sidhe knight said. "I greet thee and thy companions."
"Greetings, warrior," I said in response. "I needs must speak with Queen Mab posthaste."
He nodded and said, "I will guide thee. Follow. And bid thy companions put away their weapons ere we approach her Majesty."
I nodded and said to those with me, "Put the teeth and cutlery away, folks. We need to play nice a while longer."
We followed the knight up the slope of the hill to its top, where the air grew cold enough to sting. I gathered my coat a little closer around me and could almost see the crystals of ice forming on my eyelashes. I just had to hope that my hair wouldn't freeze and break off.
Mab sat upon a white horse at the top of the hill, her hair down, rolling in silken waves to blend in with the mane and tail of her horse. She was clothed in a gown of white silk, the sleeves and trains falling in gentle sweeps to brush the cloudy ground at her steed's feet. Her lips and eyelashes were blue, her eyes as white as moonlight clouds. The sheer, cold, cruel beauty of her made my heart falter and my stomach flutter nervously. The air around her vibrated with power and shone with cold white and blue light.
"Oh, my God," Fix whispered.
I glanced back. The werewolves were simply staring at Mab, much as Fix was. Meryl regarded her from behind a forced mask of neutrality, but her eyes were alight with something wild and eager. "Steady, folks," I said, and stepped forward.
The Faerie Queen turned her regard to me and murmured, "My Emissary. You have found the thief?"
I inclined my head to her. "Yes, Queen Mab. The Summer Lady, Aurora."
Mab's eyes widened, enough that I got the impression that she understood the whole of the matter from that one fact. "Indeed. And can you bring proof of this to us?"
"If I move swiftly," I said. "I must reach the Stone Table before midnight."
Mab's empty eyes flickered to the stars above, and I thought I saw a hint of worry in them. "They move swiftly this night, wizard." She paused and then breathed out, almost to herself, "Time himself runs against thee."
"What can be done to get me there?"
Mab shook her head and regarded the field below us again. One entire swath of the battlefield flooded with a sudden golden radiance. Mab lifted her hand, and the aura around her flashed with a cerulean fire, the air thickening. That flame lashed out against the gold, and the two clashed in a shower of emerald energy, canceling one another out. Mab lowered her hand and turned to look at me again. Her eyes fell on the chip of stone on its pale thread and widened again. "Rashid. What is his interest in this matter?"
"Uh," I said. "Certainly he isn't, uh, you know, it isn't like he's representing the Council and they're interfering."
Mab took her eyes from the battle long enough to give me a look that said, quite clearly, that I was an idiot. "I know that. And your ointment. It's his recipe. I recognize the smell."
"He helped me find this place, yes."
Mab's lips twitched at the corners. "So. What does the old desert fox have in mind this time?" She shook her head and said, "No matter. The stone cannot lead you to the table. The direct route would place you in the path of battle enough to destroy any mortal. You must go another way."
"I'm listening."
She looked up and said, "Queen of the Air I may be, but these skies are still contested. Titania is at the height of her powers and I at the ebb of mine. Not that way." She pointed to the field, all weirdly lighted mist in gold and blue, green mist swirling with violence where they met. "And Summer gains ground despite all. Our Knight has not taken the field with us. He has been seduced, I presume."
"Yes," I said. "He's with Aurora."
Mab murmured, "That's the last time I let Maeve hire the help. I indulge her too much." She lifted her hand, evidently a signal, and scores of bats the size of hang gliders swarmed up from somewhere behind her, launching themselves in a web-winged cloud into the skies above. "We yet hold the river, wizard, though we lose ground on both sides now. Thy godmother and my daughter have concentrated upon it. But reach the river, and it will take thee through the battle to the hill of the Stone Table."
"Get to the river," I said. "Right. I can do that."
"Those who are mine know of thee, wizard," Mab said. "Give them no cause and they will not hamper thee." She turned away from me, her attention back upon the battle, and the sound of it came crashing back in like a pent-up tide.
I turned from her and went back to the werewolves and the changelings. "We get to the river," I shouted to them. "Try to stay in the blue mist, and don't start a fight with anything."
I started downhill, which as far as I know is the easiest way to find water. We passed through hundreds more troops, most of them units evidently recovering from the first shock of battle: scarlet- and blue-skinned ogres in faerie mail towered over me, their blood almost dull compared to their skin and armor. Another unit of brown-skinned gnomes tended to their wounded with bandages of some kind of moss. A group of sylphs crouched over a mound of bloody, stinking carrion, squabbling like vultures, blood all over their faces, breasts, and dragonfly wings. Another troop of battered, lantern-jawed, burly humanoids with wide, batlike ears, goblins, dragged their dead and some of their wounded over to the sylphs, tossing them onto the carrion pile with businesslike efficiency despite their fellows' feeble screeches and yowls.
My stomach heaved. I fought down both fear and revulsion, and struggled to block out the images of nightmarish carnage around me.
I kept moving ahead, driving my steps with a sense of purpose I didn't wholly feel, and kept the werewolves moving. I could only imagine that it all was worse for Billy and Georgia and the rest - whatever I saw and heard and smelled, they were getting it a lot worse, through their enhanced senses. I called encouragement to them, though I had no idea if they could hear me through the din, and no idea if it did them any good, but it seemed like something I should do, since I'd dragged them here with me. I tried to walk on one side of Fix, screen out some of the worst sights around me. Meryl gave me a grateful nod.
Ahead of us, the bluish mists began to give way to murky shades of green, faerie steel chimed and rasped on faerie steel, and the shrieks and cries of battle grew even louder. More important, amid the screams and shouts I could hear water splashing. We were near the river.
"Okay, folks!" I shotted. "We run forward and get to the river! Don't stop to slug it out with anyone! Don't stop until you're standing in the water!"
Or, I thought, until some faerie soldier rips your legs off.
And I ran forward into the proverbial fray.
