October 1070

Note to self: yes, phoenixes can fly. Yes, phoenixes can support a grown man by their tail feathers without either the phoenix or the man getting tired.

Yes, flying by dangling off the back of a phoenix is terrifying.

We left town before experimenting with that, which took a bit of work when it came to Guy; I ultimately finagled him into my coat so people didn't notice him. It ended up looking like I was smuggling a toddler, and I'm fairly certain that it was only my reputation for being "that weird wizard" that prevented anyone from trying to stop me. Before I left, I stuck a note to my door saying that I was out for an indeterminate period, probably a few days, and to look after Shadowfax while I was gone.

We made our way to the edge of the woods, to the clearing where Tim and I had practiced months ago, the one that was just out of sight of the walls, and then took off. Thus started the aforementioned phoenix dangling.

Now, here's the major difference between traveling on horseback and by phoenix-tail: on a good day, a good, fit horse can manage thirty miles, and it can manage this pace more or less indefinitely. You can push faster, up to forty or fifty or even sixty miles, but that involves the equivalent of sprinting for long periods of time and tires out the horse. The point is, compared to cars, horses were slow.

A phoenix flies much like a large, fit falcon. In other words, it averages a horizontal flight speed of somewhere between fifty and sixty miles an hour. It's almost like an airborne motorbike.

Rowena lived about a hundred miles north-west of Berkamsted. On Shadowfax it took me anywhere between three and five days to get there depending on weather, season, and resulting conditions. With Guy, it took less than two hours.

Oh yeah, and have I mentioned it was terrifying? Because it really, really was.

Other fun fact: phoenixes, like hunting birds, also seem to have great eyesight. Either that or they have some mystical danger sense, like Mouse did. Maybe both. Any way you slice it, shortly after Rowena's tower started looking less like a stick coming out of the ground and more like a proper tower, Guy's trilling and crooning changed from amused – likely at my terror – to concerned. And then it cut off entirely.

The Archive had made the comparison between him and Mouse when we met, so I took that as a cue to bring my staff around. And yes, I had a death-grip on it for the whole two hours.

As we got closer, I saw what the problems were. First, on the approach, I noticed that the door to Rowena's tower was open, and no one was there. Second, on the descent – a staggered series of dives to lose altitude fast without splattering me against the ground – her tower's wards weren't entirely up. Rowena hadn't bothered with "subtlety" or "disguise" when it came to her wards, so anyone with talent that got within a few hundred feet could feel the power coming off the tower. It was such an ever-present feature that I'd gotten used to it years ago. And right then, it was down.

I hit the ground at a light, stumbling run about twenty feet short of the entrance. As I righted myself and Guy came down to perch on my shoulder, I noticed that the door hadn't been forced and the wards didn't feel like they'd been torn, which suggested an ambush. She'd either come out to go somewhere or she'd opened the door for someone.

I didn't spot any drag marks by the door, which didn't actually tell me much, and a peek through the door showed no signs of damage or fighting. There were tracks by the door though, large and fresh boot prints, some leading away from the door.

"Shit," I cursed, glancing at the door. I wasn't much of a nature-tracker, and I didn't know if I had time to waste looking for some object of thaumaturgic value. Moreover, if I came inside I'd be entering uninvited, which would seriously hamper me if the attacker was still around, watching. Whoever had managed this had taken on a witch in or near her home; I'd be so much more limited if I entered a tower warded in unknown ways.

I pulled the door closed before heading to the "stable area", which was really more of a post to tie a horse to. I'd spotted a horse on the way down, and since Rowena didn't own a horse, that suggested the culprit was still close by, and I wanted to see if there were any hints carried on the horse. I didn't spot anything immediately useful – saddle, bags, stirrup, so on – but there was something familiar about the horse itself, almost like I recognized it. It took me a few seconds to realize that I did recognize it: specifically, as Cuthbert's horse.

I stood there dumbfounded for a few moments. What the hell was Cuthbert's horse doing outside Rowena's tower? He was supposed to be at his parents', probably talking about marriage prospects. That had been Eva's assumption, one she'd cheerfully informed me about. It had also been Elfleda's, though her reaction had been more muted; to her eyes, he'd seemed to have progressed beyond observation to pursuit.

I frowned and walked back to the entrance. My gut suggested this was Gauthier finally making a move, but I just didn't get how – how he knew about Rowena, how he'd gotten to her, why he'd gone after her, and how the hell Cuthbert was involved. No vampire could get into Berkhamsted without me knowing about it, I'd touched up the detection wards the moment I'd come back, and even if one did manage to slip by and get in, then Elfleda could've detected them, or their influence. And even if Elfleda somehow missed one, I doubt they could've avoided her and Lucille and Tim, who at this point were very committed to the whole "no other vampires in Berkhamsted" idea.

It just didn't make sense to me.

But I didn't have the time to worry about that right now. Eve's "suggestion" made a lot more sense in the current context. I didn't know much about the restrictions the Archive labored under, but I knew she had issues with sharing "confidential information." She probably couldn't have told me that Rowena was under attack or would be attacked soon, especially if Gauthier was somehow involved, but she could make the entirely sensible "suggestion" that I should see her as soon as possible. Which meant that Rowena must've still been close by.

The initial tracks looked clear at least, like the person hadn't taken any care to hide them. I drew up a rough veil around me, pushing out the radius a bit as I did so. I wasn't great with veils; even after years of teaching Molly, the best I could manage was a kind of blurring effect, one that made it look and feel like I was seeing through dark, thin fabric. As a result, I needed the wider area to properly see the tracks at my feet.

The tracks led into a small grove of trees just south of the tower. I strained my ears and Listened as I approached, and heard the faint sound of struggling.

"Right, screw this," I snarled.

I picked up the pace and ran in the direction of the sounds, still maintaining my veil. Years of practice had made me a good skulker, but right now I needed speed over stealth. And coincidentally, years of practice combined with my height made me a hell of a sprinter.

I burst through the trees like a raging bull, swerving my way around trees as I had to. It took me about thirty seconds to reach the source of the sounds and spot a trio of figures: one standing, one struggling on the ground, hands bound by something I couldn't quite make out, and a third in the process of getting up off the second.

I dropped the veil, quickly identified the first as Cuthbert, the second as Rowena, and the third as a way-too-beautiful woman, and punched the air with my left hand.

The windfall from saving the ungrateful king's ass combined with the continued generosity from Robert had allowed me to get back most of my old, pre-death tools. Of particular interest in this case were the seven extra force rings I'd acquired.

Now unfortunately, I hadn't managed to find a silverworker willing to make the banded set of rings I used to possess, not without charging a rather significant premium, so I had to settle for just getting eight rings while I continued to search for someone that would perform that work at an acceptable price. But all that really meant was I had to get a little more clever with the enchantments and the application of force.

Rather than having twenty-four separate bands that steadily built up a charge strong enough to send a man flying, I just had eight rings that could be a little more… targeted.

I shot off two of the rings on my left hand, one at the chest of the probable-vampire, and one at the legs. The force lanced out faster than the woman could react and hit her with a loud, tearing crack, accompanied with a flash of light. When it faded she was still standing, so I repeated the process with the other two rings. This time they connected and sent her flying back into a tree.

At the same time, Cuthbert physically stuttered, his expression somewhat blank, and brought around his sword to face me. He tried to swing at me, but I'd been practicing against Tim and Cuthbert's comparatively slower attack just couldn't cut it. I grabbed my staff in my left hand, swiped my right hand around while bringing up a quick shield, and jerked Cuthbert to the side through his sword. Then I swung my staff around and tripped him.

"Laqueus!" I yelled as I ran by, wrapping the silver-white cord around Cuthbert and binding his arms to his sides. I leapt over Rowena, in the direction of the recovering vampire, took my staff in two hands, and swung it down on her head, pouring some magic into the staff to give it that extra oomph. The succubus' skull cracked in a satisfying manner, and she dropped to the ground, dazed.

I'd like to see someone do that with a wand.

Still, I was keenly aware of the degree and speed of healing vampires possessed, so I knew that would only put her down for a couple of moments if she was well fed. Killing her would be easy, and felt like a very attractive option in that moment, but I needed information, which meant I needed to immobilize her somehow.

I glanced between her and Cuthbert and Rowena, did some mental calculations and then shot out another "Laqueus!" to bind the succubus with, this time going the extra mile to slip the cord around her in such a way as to contort her into the shape of a gift-basket, arms and legs bound together behind her back.

"Harry?" Rowena panted, her eyes too wide and her breathing too fast.

"Just a second," I said. It took a bit of improvisation to attach and tightly bind the two cords to my staff and have them stay that way, but after I managed it, I drove my staff into the ground, out of the succubus' possible range of movement, and moved over to inspect Rowena. She looked mostly fine, if a bit manic and dirty, but her hands were tightly bound together with something that looked like fine silk but felt cold to the touch.

"I can't… I can't…"

"Yeah, I figured," I said. "Thorn manacles of some sort." I ground my teeth together and thought.

Okay, evidently these restraints were White Court styled, hence the silk. But the actual restraints, the thorn manacles, would be something else. Probably faerie-made, if I remembered what Lash had told me correctly, as the faeries had been the first to make them, and recently at that. Roughly. Probably. Which meant that under the styling they were troll-made. In which case, I just had to take off the covering and expose them to a good, heavy dose of iron and sunlight.

I tore at the silk coating, peeling it away and revealing a glimmering, icy, ugly, and barbed kind of bracelet. Then I leaned back to expose it to the sunlight filtering through the tree line, and pulled out a little iron ball bearing from one of my pockets. Then I angled Rowena's hand until sunlight was shining on one of the exposed parts, and I smashed down on it with the ball bearing. The bracelet shattered and Rowena whimpered. I grimaced, then repeated the process with the other manacle. Then I helped her up partway, and sat her down against a tree, Guy hopping off my shoulder and into her lap, crooning softly all the way.

"Rest, alright?" I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'll sort this out."

Rowena looked up at me, the unnatural mania fading into a kind of horror, and it looked like she wanted to argue. But between whatever Cuthbert and the succubus had done, my arrival, and now whatever Guy was doing, she was overwhelmed. She opened her mouth, breathed heavily for a few moments, and then nodded and looked down, tentatively reaching out to stroke Guy. I glanced at the phoenix and nodded.

Then I got back up, turned around to face the two bound individuals, and patted my hands together.

"Now, what the hell happened here?" I muttered.

Author's Note: And now, the beginning of the end.