December 1069
I dug some food out for Larissa, called her up, and negotiated a quick exchange of a message for food. Then I sat down to think.
Could I go it alone, without Lucille, without Mab? Probably not. I had no idea where William was, where Robert was, where Tim was, where anyone was. Without Uriel coming down and holding my hand every step of the way, I had no way to quickly cut through the Nevernever. Without Lucille, I couldn't easily find Tim. And wandering around the Nevernever for an extended period of time trying to find him was a nonstarter with the threat of Mab and her servants hanging over me. A short trip with a defined destination? Sure. A ranging? No.
I had two options, at this point. Give up, go back to John, and say that I'd done all that I could. Or, I could call up Mab. And as much as I didn't want to do that, I simply didn't have the connections, in Faerie or elsewhere, to get around her.
I snorted as a stupid thought came to me. I could always call up Titania and massively complicate my life. It wasn't like the current one hated me for killing her daughter.
I sighed and got up to go to my laboratory to call... someone. Maybe a guide's name would come to me in the minute it took to get there and set up.
Well, actually, one did just come to me at that moment. I could do the differently stupid thing and call up Chaunzaggoroth, sell one of my Names for the knowledge of where to go and how to get there. But somehow, I doubt that would go over well Upstairs.
"Uriel, sometimes I really hate you," I muttered.
As I said that, I felt something tiny slip through my wards. I turned around in surprise, and found that Larissa was back to devour the second half of the crude sandwich I'd prepared. It hadn't even been a minute.
"That was fast," I noted.
"She was, very close, almost, at your door," Larissa said in between giant bites.
I frowned and furrowed my brow. "You told her no, right?"
Larissa stopped eating and flew right up to my face, flashing indignantly. "I did what you said and told her NO!"
I winced and leaned back at the yell, then watched in bemusement as the little faerie flew back to her meal. Someone knocked on my door a second later.
Tentatively, I grabbed my staff from where it was resting, held it in my left hand, and made my way towards the front door. I lowered the wards that were tied to go off if someone tried to open or force the front door, or any aperture really, and after some right-handed fumbling managed to unlock and open it.
A feminine derivative of Tim was waiting for me on the other side.
"Lucille?" I asked hesitantly.
She nodded. She was dressed, well, like a man. Thick hose, large boots, tunic, woolen gloves, flat chest, large cloak. She had the hood up to obscure her face and hide her hair, though she hadn't done anything further to disguise her features. A small arming sword was strapped to her waist, and she held some kind of knitted woolen monstrosity in one hand that looked vaguely like an oven mitt.
I looked her in the eyes. "You know I said no, right?" I asked carefully.
She let out a soft breath and nodded. "I am aware. I… reconsidered."
"Reconsidered how?"
"My desires have not changed," she said slowly. "But in this instance, I will not set it as my price. I will help you and, maybe, later, you will help me."
Saying that seemed to take an effort of will on her part, and I carefully looked her over. "That's a very hesitant maybe from me. But if you're here to help, we'll shelve the topic of your father until after we're done. Agreed?"
Slowly, she nodded.
"Swear it."
"I am here to help, nothing more. I swear," she said.
"Alright." I took down the rest of the anti-intrusion wards and then stepped back. "I'm not formally inviting you in."
She stepped inside, and then closed the door once I nodded to it.
"What's this?" I asked, gesturing to the thing in her hand.
"An attempt at a knitted glove," she said. "It belongs to my brother. Is it enough?"
"You're asking if I still need your blood?" I waited for her nod before continuing. "That depends on what this glove is. I'm guessing you made it?" Another nod, sharp and short and curt this time. "And your brother's kept it all this time?"
"So it seems," she said.
I looked down at the glove-thing. "Blood would make it better, but this should work enough on its own."
She went to hold it out to me, and I shook my head. "Not now. I just got home, and still need to pack. Wait here, I'll be back in five minutes."
She took a deep breath and took the glove in both hands. After making sure she wasn't about to do anything, I went back into my house proper and headed for the laboratory.
Bringing Shadowfax wasn't an option. While he would be faster, I couldn't guarantee that all of the Ways we needed to take could fit a horse, and leaving him behind halfway was cruel. What that meant though was that I would have to pack light, just what could fit in a rucksack and my pockets. I couldn't bring my full complement of potions or doodads.
After some quick deliberations, I packed all the aids I might need for setting up an impromptu thaumaturgic ritual, just general things that I could maybe use to find Ursiel. On top of that I transferred two potions into water-skins, a painkiller potion and the blending potion. Lastly I loaded up my pockets with all the iron I could comfortably carry and access, including the baseball, and then headed back to the foyer. Larissa was gone by this point, having devoured the rest of the sandwich.
"That's a steel sword, right?" I asked when I came back to the foyer.
Lucille nodded.
"Good. It'll be extra effective against the faeries we run into. If any get close, cut them. Doesn't precisely matter where, just touching anything with iron is agonizing to them."
She nodded again. "Do you need the glove now?"
"No, we need to go somewhere else before we enter the Nevernever," I said, opening the door and ushering her out before putting the wards back up and turning off the heating system. "The very rough summary of the Nevernever is that it's connected in a symbolic sense rather than a strict geographical sense. Similar places and concepts link together. Lacking the prior trial-and-wisdom directions of a crazy trailblazer, we're going to have to travel by concepts. In this case, along concepts related to long-distance travel. And the older and more historied a place and concept, the better." I started leading her through the town. "Inns, particularly overnight inns, fit my criteria. So, we're heading to the oldest inn in town, that was here when Berkhamsted was first formed as a small and not especially relevant village."
It took us about five minutes of trudging through heavy snow to reach an inn at the center of town that didn't have any formal name but was colloquially known as The Inn. Fortunately, because The Inn predated things like walls and competitors, it had an attached, if rarely used stables. I led us in there, past the one horse that was hiding from the cold in a stall, and checked to make sure no one was looking in on us.
"Alright, we're here." I turned around to face Lucille. "Can you fit your hand in that glove you made?"
"With difficulty and discomfort, and it won't fit entirely," she said, eyeing it carefully.
"Good enough. Take off one of your current gloves and put it on."
Lucille took off her left glove. She looked around for a moment for somewhere to put it, then turned to look at me.
"Okay, I guess I'll hold onto it," I said, taking the glove from her and shoving it in one of my pockets.
With her hands free, Lucille bunched her fingers together into a trapezoidal shape and slipped the glove over them, bending and twisting fingers and glove until it enveloped everything under her wrist. I didn't comment on how the result looked.
I walked around in as large a circle I could manage given the space, using the butt of my staff to physically draw in the dirt, and willed it closed once the circle was done. A crackling tension seemed to fill the air a second later, the circle encasing, compressing, and stirring the local magical energies.
I turned to look at Lucille. "I want you to think of a happy memory related to this glove, one that involves you and your brother. If you remember the moment you gave it to him, and his reaction, then that's the best one. Close your eyes, fix it in your mind. Bring yourself back to that moment."
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"Focus on the little details. The smells, the lighting, the small folds in his clothes, in yours. The expression he made. The way his eyes looked."
As I spoke, I focused my own mind and thoughts on Tim, sketching out his form. First his general shape, then the contours. His clothes, his expression, his eyes, his habitual smirk. I also watched Lucille's expression, the way she seemed to relax, even smile faintly.
Slowly, I reached out and hovered my right hand over the knitted glove-thing. "Interessari, interressarium," I murmured, and lightly touched the glove.
My hand spasmed in pain as energy rushed out of me, atrophied and damaged channels screaming with the effort. I grit my teeth and forced the magic to come out properly, in the shape I wanted, adding in a little soulfire to help the efficacy and duration. For a moment, I was afraid I'd fail. Then the energy seeped and settled into the glove, and the pain stopped. Mostly.
A moment later, I broke the circle. "Now, without opening your eyes, without thinking, turn and point in the direction you believe your brother is."
She did so, pivoting on the spot and holding out her hand, then opened her eyes. I did some mental geography, going from where we started and counting the paths and turns, and determined she was pointing roughly north. She'd been looking south-west when I closed the circle.
"Looks like it's working," I said. "I'm going to open the Way now. Once we're on the other side, we'll have to move fast. Don't think about where we're going, just let it come to you. I'll tell you if we need to make a detour to avoid someplace dangerous."
She nodded and hefted my sword.
"Great. Well." I turned to face the north. "Here goes nothing. Aparturum."