Summer Knight

"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.

Chapter Thirty-one

An angry buzzing sound arose from the musical din of battle ahead of us, and grew louder as we moved forward. I saw another group of goblin soldiers crouched in a ragged square formation. The goblins on the outside of the square tried to hold up shields against whistling arrows that came flickering through the mist over the water, while those within wielded spears against the source of the buzzing sound – about fifty bumblebees as big as park benches, hovering and darting. I could see a dozen goblins on the ground, wracked with the spasms of poison or simply dead, white- and green-feathered arrows protruding from throats and eyes.

A dozen of the jumbo bees peeled off from the goblins and came toward us, wings singing like a shop class of band saws.

"Holy moly!" Fix shouted.

Billy the Werewolf let out a shocked "Woof?"

"Get behind me!" I shouted and dropped everything but my staff and rod. The bees oriented on me and came zipping toward me, the wind stirred up by their wings tearing at the misty ground like the downblast of a helicopter.

I held my staff out in front of me, gathering my will and pushing it into the focus. I hardened my will into a shield, sending it through the staff, focusing on building a wall of naked force to repel the oncoming bees. I held the strike until they were close enough to see the facets of their eyes, swept my staff from right to left, and cried, "Forzare!"

A curtain of blazing scarlet energy whirled into place in front of me, and it slammed into the oncoming bees like a giant windshield. They went bouncing off of it with heavy thuds of impact. Several of the bees crash-landed and lay on the ground stunned, but two or three veered off at the last second, circling for another attack.

I lifted my blasting rod, tracking the nearest. I gathered up more of my will and snarled, "Fuego!" A lance of crimson energy, white at the core, leapt out from the tip of the blasting rod and scythed across the giant bee’s path. My fire caught it across the wings and burned them to vapor. The bee dropped, part of one wing making it spin in a fluttering spiral that slammed into the ground on the bank of the river. The other two retreated, and their fellows attacking the goblins followed suit. The green tones faded from the mist at the edge of the river, which deepened to blue. The goblins let out a rasping, snarling cheer.

I looked around me and found Fix and Meryl staring at me with wide eyes. Fix swallowed, and I saw his mouth form the word "Wow."