The spear drove into the earth beside my neck, and the rider hissed in an impatient female voice, "Hold still."
She swung down from the faerie steed, reached up, and took off the masked helm. Elaine's wheat-brown hair spilled down, escaping from the bun it had been tied in, and she jerked it all the way down irritably. "Hold still. I'll get that off you."
"Elaine," I said. I went through a bunch of heated emotions, and I didn't have time for any of them. "I'd say I was glad to see you, but I'm not sure."
"That's because you always were a little dense, Harry," she said, her voice tart. Then she smoothed her features over, her eyes falling half closed, and spread her gloved hands over my chest. She muttered something to herself and then said, "Here. Samanyana."
There was a surge of gentle power, and the wind pinning me to the ground abruptly vanished. I pushed myself back to my feet.
"All right," she said. "Let's get out of here."
"No," I said. "I'm not done." I recovered my valise and my staff. "I need to get through those thorns."
"You can't," Elaine said. "Harry, I know this spell. Those thorns aren't just pointy, they're poisonous. If one of them scratches you, you'll be paralyzed in a couple of minutes. Two or three will kill you."
I scowled at the barrier and settled my grip on my staff.
"And they won't burn, either," Elaine added.
"Oh." I ground my teeth. "I'll just force them aside, then."
"That'll be like holding open a screen door, Harry. They'll just fall back into place when your concentration wavers."
"Then it won't waver."
"You can't do it, Harry," Elaine said. "If you start pushing through, Aurora will sense it and she'll tear you apart. If you're holding the thorns off you, you won't be able to defend yourself."
I lowered my staff and looked from the thorns back to Elaine. "All right," I said. "Then you'll have to hold them off me."
Elaine's eyes widened. "What?"
"You hold the thorns back. I'll go through."
"You're going to go up against Aurora? Alone?"
"And you're going to help me," I said.
Elaine bit her lip, looking away from me.
"Come on, Elaine," I said. "You've already betrayed her. And I am going through those thorns, with your help or without it."
"I don't know."
"Yeah, you do," I said. "If you were going to kill me, you've already had your chance. And if Aurora finishes what she's doing, I'm dead anyway."
"You don't understand - "
"I know I don't," I snapped. "I don't understand why you're helping her. I don't understand how you can stand by and let her do the things she's done. I don't understand how you can stand here and let that girl die." I let that sink in for a second before I added, quietly, "And I don't understand how you could betray me like that. Again."
"For all you know," Elaine said, "it will happen a third time. I'll let those thorns close on you halfway through and kill you for her."
"Maybe so," I said. "But I don't want to believe that, Elaine. We loved each other once upon a time. I know you aren't a coward and you aren't a killer. I want to believe that what we had really meant something, even now. That I can trust you with my life the way you can trust me with yours."
She let out a bitter little laugh and said, "You don't know what I am anymore, Harry." She looked at me. "But I believe you. I know I can trust you."
"Then help me."
She nodded and said, "You'll have to run. I'm not as strong as you, and this is brute work. I won't be able to lift it for long."
I nodded at her. Doubt nagged at me as I did. What if she did it again? Elaine hadn't exactly been sterling in the up-front-honesty department. I watched as she focused, her lovely face going blank, and felt her draw in her power, folding her arms over her chest, palms over either shoulder like an Egyptian sarcophagus.
Hell, I had ten million ways to die all around me. What was one over another? At least this way, if I went out, I'd go out doing something worthwhile. I turned and crouched, bag and staff in hand.
Elaine murmured something, and a wind stirred around her, lifting her hair around her head. She opened her eyes, though they remained distant, unfocused, and spread both hands to her sides.
Wind lashed out in a column five feet around and drove into the wall of thorns. The thorns shuddered and then began to give, bending away from Elaine's spell.
"Go!" she gasped. "Go, hurry!"
I ran.
The wind almost blinded me, and I had to run crouched down, hoping that none of my exposed skin would brush against any thorns. I felt one sharp tug along my jacket, but it didn't pierce the leather. Elaine didn't let me down. After a few seconds, I burst through the wall and came out in the clear on top of the hill of the Stone Table.
The Table stood where it had been before, but the runes and sigils scrawled over its surface now blazed with golden light. Aurora stood at the Table, fingers flying over the Unraveling, its threads pressed against the head of the statue of the kneeling girl, still upon the table. I circled a bit to one side to stay out of her peripheral vision and ran toward her.
When I was only a few feet away, the Unraveling suddenly exploded in a wash of cold white light. The light washed over the statue in a wave, and as it passed, cold white marble warmed into flesh, her stone waves of hair becoming emerald-green tresses. Lily opened her eyes and let out a gasp, looking around dazedly.
Aurora took Lily by the throat, drove the changeling down to the surface of the Stone Table with her hand, and drew the knife from her belt.
It wasn't all that gentlemanly, but I slugged the Summer Lady in the back with a two-handed swing of my staff.
As I did, the stars evidently reached the right position, and we reached midnight, the end of the height of summer, and the glowing runes on the Table flared from golden light to cold, cold blue.
The blow jarred the knife from Aurora's hand, and it fell to the surface of the table. Lily let out a scream and got out from under Aurora's hand, rolling across the table's surface and away from her.
Aurora turned to me, as fast as any of the other Sidhe, leaning back on the table and planting both feet against my chest. She kicked hard and drove me back, and before I was done rolling she had called a gout of fire and sent it roaring toward me. I got to my knees and lifted my staff, calling together my will in time to parry the strike, deflecting the flame into the misty sky.
The red light of it fell on a green faerie steed leaping in the air above the thorns. It didn't make it over the wall but fall twenty feet short, screaming horribly as it landed on the poisoned thorns. Its rider didn't go down with it, though. Talos, his face bloodied, leapt off the horse's back, did a neat flip in the air, and came down inside the circle of thorns unscathed.
Aurora let out a wild laugh and said, "Kill him, Lord Marshal!"
Talos drew his sword and came for me. I thought the first blow was a thrust for my belly, but he'd suckered me, and the sword darted to one side to send my staff spinning off into the thorns. As he stalked me, I gripped my valise and backed away, looking around me for a weapon, for something to buy me a few seconds, for options.
Then a basso bellow shook the hilltop and froze even Aurora for a second. The wall of thorns shook and quivered, and something massive bellowed again and tore through it, into the open. The troll was huge, and green, and hideous, and strong. It wielded an axe in one hand like a plastic picnic knife and was covered in swelling welts, poisoned wounds, and its own dark-green blood. It had a horrible wound in its side, ichor flowing openly from it. It was dragging itself along despite the wounds, but it was dying.
And it was Meryl. She'd Chosen.
I could only stare as I recognized her features, inside the insane fury of the troll's face. It reached for Talos, and the Lord Marshal of Summer whirled, his bright sword taking off one of the troll's hands. She got the other on his leg, though, and dragged him beneath her even as she fell, the weight of her pinning him down, crushing him to the ground with a choked, gurgling cry of rage and triumph.
I looked back, to see Aurora catch Lily by her green hair, and drag her back toward the Table. I ran to it, and beat her to the knife, a curved number of chipped stone, dragging it across the Table and to me.
"Fool," Aurora hissed. "I will tear out her throat with my bare hands."
I threw the knife away and said, "No, you won't."
Aurora laughed and asked, eyes mad and enticing, "And why not?"
I undid the clasp of the valise. "Because I know something you don't."
"What?" she laughed. "What could you possibly know that matters now?"
I gave her a cold smile and said, "The phone number to Pizza Spress." I opened the bag and snarled, "Get her, Toot!"
There was a shrill, piping blast from inside the valise and Toot-toot sailed up out of it, leaving a trail of crimson sparkles in his wake. The little faerie still wore his makeshift armor, but his weapons had been replaced with what I'd had Billy pick up from Wal-Mart - an orange plastic box knife, its slender blade extended from its handle.
Aurora let out another laugh, uglier, and said, "And what can this little thing do?"
Toot blew another little blast on his trumpet and shouted, voice shrill, "In the name of the Pizza Lord! Charge!"
And the valise exploded in a cloud of crimson sparkles as a swarm of pixies, all armed with cold steel blades sheathed in orange plastic, rose up and streaked toward Aurora in a cloud of red sparkles and glinting knives.
She met my eyes as the pixies came for her, and I saw the sudden fear, the recognition of what was coming for her. She lifted a hand, golden power gathering there, but one of the pixies reached her, box knife flashing, and ripped across her hand with its blade. She screamed, blood flowing, and the golden light dimmed.
"No!" she howled. "No! Not now!"
The pixies swarmed her, and it wasn't pretty. The bright faerie mail of her gown gave her no protection against the steel blades, and they sheared through it like cardboard. From all directions, in a whirling cloud around her, Toot-toot and his companions struck dozens of times in only a few seconds, the bright steel splashing scarlet blood into the air.
I saw her eyes open, burning brightly, even as zipping, darting death opened up more cuts, flaying her pale skin. She hauled herself toward the Table.
If she died there, bled to death on the table, she would accomplish her goal. She would hurl vast power to the Winter Courts and destroy the balance between the faerie Courts. I threw myself up onto the Table and into her, bearing her back down and to the ground.
She screamed in frustration and struggled against me - but she didn't have any strength. We rolled down the hill a few times, and then wound up on the ground, me pinning her down, holding her there.
Aurora looked up at me, green eyes faded of color, unfocused. "Wait," she said, her voice weak and somehow very young. She didn't look like a mad faerie sorceress now. She looked like a frightened girl. "Wait. You don't understand. I just wanted it to stop. Wanted the hurting to stop."
I smoothed a bloodied lock of hair from her eyes and felt very tired as I said, "The only people who never hurt are dead."
The light died out of her eyes, her breath slowing. She whispered, barely audible, "I don't understand."
I answered, "I don't either."
A tear slid from her eye and mixed with the blood.
Then she died.