November 1070
Tim walked out with a sword on either side of his hip, both concealed under his cloak. Guy wasn't as easy to hide, and so I left him perched on my shoulder. We made for quite the sight as we passed through town and set off for the edge of Berkhamsted Forest, where Helga lingered in owl form, sitting up on a high branch. I told her we were still waiting for Lucille, and we ended up waiting another half hour before Lucille arrived, dressed much the same way as when she'd come to York with me - man's tunic, pants, heavy cloak, hood up, sword on her hip.
"Alright, Helga, let's go," I said.
Helga led us through the woods, on a straight shot towards its depths. I got the feeling we were being watched at one point, and tried to spot the centaurs that were probably responsible for it, but all I saw were trees and leaves and dirt.
After a bit of walking Helga swooped down to the ground and transformed back into her small, regular self, a minute before we came across Rowena and Salazar standing in a small clearing. Salazar greeted us first with a welcoming tine.
"So the vampires are joining us after all," he drawled.
"Timothy, Lucille, this is my buddy Sal," I said. "As you can see he's not a very nice guy."
Salazar eadriced in my direction, then spun away and took a few steps forwards. "Close your eyes," he said firmly.
"Better do what he says," I said to the twins, then closed my eyes myself.
I felt more than heard Salazar opening a rift into the Nevernever, followed by him hissing in some inhuman language. Once he was done hissing, he switched back to English and said, "Open your eyes now, and come. We should be on our way."
The rift Salazar had opened on the other side of the clearing was man-sized, but there was a suggestion of something huge and scaled on the other side. Helga and Rowena went in first, followed by me, and then the twins. Incidentally, that meant that when I stopped upon crossing over, the twins bumped into me and pushed me a step forward, before stopping themselves.
And staring, slackjawed.
"When you said a giant snake," Lucille said slowly, "I expected something less... this."
"To be honest, so did I," I said.
The Nevernever here wasn't remarkable beyond two things: being a seemingly endless plain, and being occupied by something far more interesting - a basilisk. And I have to admit, my mental image of Salazar's basilisk had been rather wrong up until that point. I knew it was large enough to kill and eat Ursiel, but I thought it had bitten and dragged the demonic bear back into the Nevernever, where it had then eaten it piecemeal. That wasn't the case.
See, Salazar's basilisk wasn't giant or huge. Ursiel was giant. A T-Rex was huge. This thing made Sue look like a child by comparison. He started with a head large enough to swallow Ursiel in a single go, crowned by a ridge of spikes and horns, and just kept going from there. His scaled, leathery skin was a vivid, poisonous green and just stretched and stretched and stretched, and I estimated his full length, from teeth to tail, to be something like a quarter of a football field, at least. His eyes, thankfully, were closed, but he was emitting this deep, bizarre growling sound as Salazar stood under its head and scratched his chin like the deathsnake was a cat. An enormous, venomous, murderous cat.
Salazar looked my way, and for once, I let the unbearably smug expression on his face slide. Guy, though, decided to warble challengingly, which made the snake shift his head slightly.
"Okay, Guy, that's enough," I said, patting him on the side. "Don't antagonize Blinky the Deathsnake."
Salazar narrowed his eyes poisonously. "Blinky?" he demanded.
"I mean, if the shoe fits..." I said.
He sighed with disgust and gestured towards the snake. "Just get on."
I nodded and headed in that direction, finding that about twenty feet down Blinky's length, a wooden platform made of stout, dark oak had been strapped to his back, barely large enough for the five of us. Helga and Rowena were already waiting there, pressed up against one side.
"The centaurs didn't give you any trouble about coming and going?" I yelled as I climbed up.
"They tried," Salazar replied as he climbed atop his basilisk's head. "I told them to repeat themselves to my basilisk. Curiously, none of them cared to."
"Yeah, that's mighty curious," I said.
"Quite. Where are we going?" he asked, taking a seat in the middle of the ridged crown atop his basilisk's head.
I glanced over at Tim and Lucille, who were occupying the opposite side of the platform, across from Helga and Rowena. "Can you get us to the general vicinity of mainland France?" I called. "You know, broadly speaking."
"I believe so."
"Then let's go there first, and start looking from there."
Salazar hissed something to his snake in response, and we all tightly grasped the edge of the platform as the basilisk jolted into motion, slithering and winding its way along the plain with surprising speed. It wasn't long before the plain transitioned into a sea of ice that somehow held firm despite the literal tons of weight that must have been pressing down on it.
Rowena was the first to notice something new about Tim, and she remarked on it plainly and simply - by asking, "Harry, why did you give the vampire Excalibur?"
Everyone on the platform, besides me and Rowena, blinked and looked at her, then at Tim's waist. Even Salazar turned around in shock, first looking at me with bewilderment before following everyone else's gaze.
My response was to sigh. "Because he can hold it," I said. "And as Salazar put it, we need every edge we can get. I doubt he's going to stop being a vampire any time soon, or that he's Knight material. But I figure he'll be fine for this one trip." I looked over at Tim then. "Don't go getting any funny ideas though, this doesn't make you King of England or anything."
Tim's mouth was in the process of relearning how words worked. Eventually, he managed to remember. "You had Excalibur?" he asked.
"Had being the operative word," I replied.
Helga was sputtering wordlessly and gesturing helplessly at the scabbard Tim was wearing on his left. She kept sputtering throughout the entire initial exchange, and when she finally was able to string a few words together, she blurted out, "But he's French!"
I looked her way. "And?"
"It's a British relic!"
"Actually it's a Sword of the Cross, which makes it pan-national," I replied. "Or maybe omni-national. Pan-cultural? Not sure how to put it. Also, aren't you a Saxon?"
"It's King Arthur!" Helga cried. "What does it matter?"
"Just saying," I said with a shrug.
"Sword of the Cross?" Tim asked, brushing his fingers along its pommel.
"One of the Nails that pinned Christ to his cross is welded to that blade," I explained. "That's part of what makes it so powerful."
"Huh," Tim said. His expression then grew curious, and he started glancing between Helga and the Sword.
"Keep it in your pants, Lancelot," I said dryly. "You can't use the Sword in the Stone as a conversation starter with women. It'll make you a eunuch faster than you could say 'uncle.'"
Tim took his hand off the pommel. "Really?" he asked.
"Just might," I replied.
"Excalibur isn't the Sword in the Stone," Rowena commented. "The Sword in the Stone was a mundane blade enchanted by Merlin to see who would be worthy of wielding Excalibur. Otherwise it wasn't a very remarkable sword."
"Can we focus on planning, please?" Salazar called from his position atop the basilisk's head.
I took a deep breath and nodded. "Planning. Right. Okay, so here's what we've got..."
It took us hours of traveling through the Ways to reach the approximate juncture for "mainland France." We spent much of that time hashing out our resources, our objectives, and how to use our resources to achieve those objectives. This discussion trailed off after we started following the Renouths' guessed directions, winding our way across rivers and valleys, plains and forests, before finally ending up in a hilly region covered with snow and dotted with trees.
During this time I started to brush my finger back and forth across my mother's ruby. I wanted to hear her voice again, as we went to do this, and since I wasn't responsible for leading anyone I had it on GPS mode just because. That turned out to be a stranger choice than I anticipated, because for once, as we got closer, I got a relevant real-time response from it, not that I realized it at first.
It went like this: "I knew the connection existed, but to actually experience it is remarkable. I haven't ever been to this section of the Nevernever before, or of France, and yet I'm traversing it as if I'd spent my life living here. I can feel him in my mind, his position burning like a lighthouse. Why had I never thought of coupling with a vampire before?"
I frowned as she said that, my hands tightening around the ruby. There was a moment of silence, and my mother's voice continued.
"Notation: I expected something more impressive and picturesque as the spiritual backdrop to Raith's retreat, not this wasteland. Still, it does have a certain frozen charm to it, and it is the winter retreat of the White King. That may be enough to shape this side."
My frown deepened.
"Notation secundus: there's a small circle of trees in the middle of these woods, the only grouping worthy of being called such. The exact location of the circle seems to shift, but the actual 'forest' itself is always atop a high hill. There is a large, jagged stone in the center of this circle. I've found that opening a rift upon this stone leads directly to the main hall, or throne room to be more dramatic. I am uncertain how to use this, but I think I can work it into something amusing."
I looked over the area we were moving through, panning my head. Tim and Lucille hesitantly called out directions, leading the snake this way and that, but I ignored them. I looked and looked until I found a small copse of trees ringing a hill larger than the one we were currently sliding over.
"Stop," I called out. Salazar hissed something to his basilisk, and the snake wound his head around the hill.
"It's somewhere close," Lucille said. "I can't be sure exactly."
"I know that," I said. "That's not why I said stop. I know this place."
Everyone looked my way at that, and Salazar asked, "How?"
"My mother," I said slowly. "She visited this place. Charted it."
"And you're only mentioning this now?" he asked.
"I didn't know until just now," I said.
Salazar's eyes narrowed, and he looked at the ruby I was palming. "Is that a Waystone?" he asked.
A Waystone, as I've learned, refers to what is essentially a map of the Ways. For stylistic, traditional reasons, these "maps" were recordings stored within a precious gemstone, though that wasn't strictly necessary.
"Yeah. My mother's," I said. Previously, I hadn't wanted to reveal the truth about my necklace, about my mother's ruby. But since there was a good chance I could have died in that meeting, I figured that it was a good idea to point it out. "She was here, at one point." I looked over at Tim and Lucille. "How long has your father had this castle? Or your family?"
Tim and Lucille looked at each other, frowning. "I am not certain," Tim replied. "But I know it wasn't ours originally. Father said as much."
I nodded and looked over at the woods on the other hill, then pointed. "We need to go there."
After a little more staring, Salazar turned around and hissed some more, the basilisk stirring into motion once again. We made our way over to the next hill, the basilisk's head crashing through the trees. A few seconds later he started turning and winding, and the platform we were on was pulled into a small clearing, the basilisk's body surrounding a small, jagged stone that looked vaguely like a throne.
I swallowed, suddenly very, very tense. "There. That stone. If we open a Way above it, it should spit us right out into the main hall, where all the vampires should be."
"Are you certain?" Salazar asked.
"Not entirely," I replied. "It could have changed. But I think so."
"Hmm." Salazar's basilisk slumped his head against the ground, and Salazar dismounted. We did the same, gingerly making our way off the platform. I exchanged a few words with Guy, and he grudgingly took off from my shoulder and went to perch on one of the basilisk's ridges. Meanwhile, the six of us moved to surround the stone.
I looked over at Tim and Lucille. "Last chance to back out," I said.
Lucille smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "My last chance was in Maine. This is just seeing it through." Beside her, Tim nodded.
"Okay." I slung my pack off my shoulder and took out the potions I'd put inside, handing them out. Salazar, Helga, and I took the potions meant for treating injuries, I downed the horse-strength potion, and the emotion deadening one went to Rowena. I'd explained everything about it to her, how I thought it worked, that it was untested, but she still popped the waterskin open, pulled it back, and drank.
Once it was done she gave the waterskin back to me with a grimace. "It tastes horrible," she said calmly. As I watched her face grew still, composed. Deadening one's emotions was a wizard was a risky proposition; magic required belief, and cold logic was rarely a good way to make it work. That was I wasn't taking it, or offering it to Helga. But Rowena seemed to think she wouldn't be as affected, and in a way she really needed it. She'd only been in danger twice before in her life, and only once had she been directly threatened. Considering the amount of power she was bringing to this fight, we couldn't afford for her to lose her cool, or for the vampires to subvert her. Otherwise I'd imagine we'd all have pretty quickly died to her athame.
We made one final check, prepared our foci, or drew our swords in the twins' case - Tim drew his regular sword, keeping Amoracchius in reserve. Then I took a deep breath and nodded to Rowena. "Alright," I said. "Bring us in."
Rowena slashed diagonally with her athame, splitting the air above the stone and forming a dark, murky rift that swiftly grew large enough to fit Blinky's head, and then some. The rift cut through the rock and touched the ground, and we gathered on one side of it. Rowena had freely admitted to never having cared to refine her creation of Ways, which in this case played to our advantage. The opaque nature of the rift would leave people guessing about what else we might have hiding, and we wanted the basilisk and phoenix to be in reserve. Unpleasant surprises, as it were.
Though I had one of my own waiting inside.
Once we were all lined up side by side, my friends to my right, the twins to my left, I slammed my staff down on the ground, forcing an effort of will through it to focus the energy of the blow into a far smaller area than the end of the staff. It hit the frozen dirt, shattering a chunk the size of a big dinner platter with a detonation like thunder. We strode forward in that moment, passing from frozen forest into a cold, lavish, darkly lit hall, long and lined with ornate columns. Vampires milled about in groups throughout the chamber, though the ones closest to our rift were hurrying away. Servants in finely embroidered yet scant clothes lined the walls of the chamber, shirking back at our entrance. Directly before us, in the center of the room, stood one Gauthier Renouth.
He looked like he'd seen better days. His skin alternated between a ruddy pink and a puffy, angry red pockmarked with burn scars. He'd whirled to face us, eyes wide, and from his posture, he'd just been gesticulating and speaking.
Salazar gestured grandly with his wand, and six ethereal snakes glowing with a sick, green light slithered out around us, forming a dimly glowing, writhing, semicircular cordon.
"Gauthier Renouth!" Salazar bellowed in Latin, his voice taking on a sibilant, serpentine tone. "I am Salazar. For your actions against Harry Dresden, Rowena Ravenclaw, and those under their protection, for your foolishness in starting a blood-feud with the Council over a paltry manner, and for rank incompetence in pursuing it, we have come to deliver judgment." I slammed my staff down with a smaller boom, for emphasis, and as the clap of thunder faded, it left behind an absolute silence.
One that was, a few moments later, broken by a soft clap. I frowned and looked up at the sound, only to freeze as I saw its source.
On the other side of the hall, atop the raised dais that would normally hold a lord's throne, sat something far grander, an enormous chair of bone-white ivory. Its back flared out like the hood of a cobra, spreading out into an enormous crest decorated with all manner of eye-twisting carvings, all of them far too familiar. And upon that throne sat a man I never thought I would see again.
He was about six feet tall, dark of hair and pale of flesh, broad of shoulders and with eyes like a drowsy jaguar's. He was dressed in a senator's toga made out of fine white silk, a golden stole winding its way around his left shoulder. A ruby earring hung from one ear, sapphires flickered over the whole of his outfit, and a circlet of glittering silver stood out starkly against his raven hair. He was alone atop the dais, his posture relaxed and amused.
I recognized him. I knew him. This was the man that had murdered my mother, that had tried to kill me and my brother. I thought he hadn't even been born yet.
I was wrong.
"What excellent timing," the Lord Raith said in fine, cultured Latin, drawing out every word as if to savor it. "Please, do go on."
Author's Note: You know, of all the things to forget, the basilisk's gender was not something I expected to come up. But apparently Salazar's basilisk is canonically female. And yet I've had Salazar call it a male. So, uh, let's just ignore that slight inconsistency and say Salazar somehow misidentified his basilisk.