The clash of energy was deafening. Like, literally, I went deaf for several seconds. The Gatekeeper threw up a shield over both of us and the Father. I didn't go blind, too, but both Queens suddenly seemed to be made of light, so it felt like I had.

Now, Mab is no slouch when it comes to defending herself or what is hers, but as the nearest scion of Summer, Lily had instantly inherited the Queen's mantle when Titania died. Combined with the power of the Lady, plus the Outsider that had obviously hitched a ride with the mantle, she was an embodiment of far more raw power than Mab.

And the Winter Queen still held her own.

Words largely fail me. Trying to tell you what happened would limit it, as words always do, and failed to do it justice. I can best describe it this way; fire can melt ice, but the ice then becomes water, which extinguishes the fire. In that way, the balance is maintained, between energy, life, opposing forces, everything. That's what happened between the Queens on that hillside. And it went on for a long time.

Blow for blow, dodge for dodge, each trick and scream and bit of magic, they were evenly matched. Every time they made contact, there was a small explosion; matter meeting antimatter, seelie meeting unseelie. I dragged the Father away from the confrontation as best I could, the Gatekeeper keeping a shield up behind us. We stopped behind two stone pillars, both cracked and worn down. A glance told me why Mab had not approached from this side; less than two feet away, there was a sheer drop into nothing. Literally, nothing.

I propped the Father up against one of the pillars. He was still weeping. "Now what?" I asked. I had to shout to be heard.

"We wait," Rashid said.

"For what?" I poked my head around the pillar. As I watched, Mab backhanded Lily into one of the broken pillars. It cracked, but the new Summer Queen hardly seemed to notice it. "Wow."

"Mab has not always been a friend of the Council, Wizard Dresden, but ever has she preserved the balance and protected the Fae and mortal realms from threats."

"You mean threats other than herself?"

He just smiled.

"There are an infinite number of threats about which you know nothing, my godson," a voice said over my shoulder. I managed not to jump, but that was mostly due to fatigue. I turned around to see Lea standing almost right at my shoulder, dressed in armour not unlike Mab's, though a touch less fancy.

And she still had that mad, manic look in her eye. She was literally standing on the edge – an inch to the side, and she would fall over the cliff. The metaphor was too obvious to mention.

"Case in point," I muttered. "Where's Maeve?"

"The Lady was injured. She will follow when she is able."

I thumbed at the clash of Queens. "Will you help her?"

"No, I am forbidden." She looked unhappy about it, too. "Her goal is not to kill the vessel which the Outsider possesses, but to weaken it, thence drive it Out."

"How is she going to do that?"

Lea shrugged. "My Queen spoke only of using mortal instruments to deal with the demon."

I shook my head. "The only mortals I know of that can really drive a demon this powerful out of its host would be - " I stopped and turned to The Gatekeeper.

The sly old bastard was smiling. "Just had to wait for the right moment," he said. Then, with a slash of his hand, he opened a Way. I couldn't quite see through the portal from where I was standing, but I saw him make a beckoning gesture. A second later, Elaine stepped through, limping. The right leg of her jeans was gone up to the knee, replaced with a thick bandage, covered in runic symbols that looked a bit like Gard's life rune.

When she looked around and saw me, we both smiled. "Good timing," she said to the Gatekeeper. "We were just about to leave the island."

Before I could ask what she meant, Fix poked his head into this world. "I was right!" he said, and stepped through. "You're here."

Then the old steel of a katana blade emerged from the hole in reality, and was quickly followed by Murphy. She looked relieved, no doubt a reflection of my own expression, and grabbed me in a one-armed hug. My heart caught in my chest. We still had a lot to talk about, but it would have to wait a little longer. Elaine pointedly looked at everything but us.

Then Sanya appeared with his ancient sabre and a big smile. "Hmm. Never been here, before," he said.

I smiled. "Alright! Now we can - "

A glint of light caught my eye; another Sword was emerging from the Gatekeeper's portal. Amoracchius. Watching it come through the hole in reality only took about two seconds, but it felt like forever; who the hell had been crazy enough to pick up that Sword?

I honestly shouldn't have been surprised when my brother stepped into the Nevernever. After all, he was related to me. "Thomas?"

"Hey, Harry." He took a couple of deep breaths, resting the big blade on his shoulder. He looked tired. He looked nervous. He looked human.

"You picked it up?"

He shrugged. "It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time." He shook his head, and I noticed that his hair didn't bounce and flow as it normally did. Or should I say, as it used to. "This thing's a lot heavier than Michael made it look."

"Michael makes lots of difficult things look easy," I said, stepping close and clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Like driving out demons."

"What?"

"Take look at the lightshow!"

He looked, along with the other Knights. After a particularly loud impact, he asked, "We're supposed to fight that?"

"Don't panic on us now, pretty-boy," Murphy said.

"Da," Sanya said. "Is not so bad. Have seen worse before now."

"I've seen worse this month," Fix said.

"I think I lived this a couple years ago," Elaine said.

Thomas just looked at them all. "They're made of light," he said slowly, "just in case you missed that little fact."

"Technically, you only have to fight one of them," I said.

"I thought Knights were braver than this," Elaine said.

"Don't you start," my brother said, sticking a finger at her. "I'm still new to this mortality thing. And even newer to the Knight thing."

"You get used to it," I said.

"Wait, is that Lily?" Fix asked. He was slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

"Afraid so," I said. "She'll be okay, man. Nobody wants to kill her, not even Mab."

"Is that Titania?" he asked, his voice going up several octaves.

"Yes," came the hoarse reply. We all looked down at the Father. "You have to save Lily. You have to drive that thing Out! Don't let it win!" He paused for a breath. Fix knelt down beside him. "Don't let her pain have been for nothing."

Sanya and Murphy looked at Thomas. "Oh, empty night," he cursed. He sighed and closed his eyes. After a moment, he looked again at Murph and Sanya, took a breath and nodded at them. All three hefted their Swords, which all began to glow with a beautiful, soft light. Then they turned to the fight, and charged forward. Fix, Elaine and I moved to follow, but the Gatekeeper stepped in front of us, hands raised. "Wait," was all he said.

"Excuse me?"

"If you charge in, any of you three, at least two of you will not survive and at least one of the great Swords will be lost. You must leave them be!"

I'd never heard the Gatekeeper so emphatic before, not to mention direct. I looked at the fray, where Mab had stepped back, reverted to a relatively normal, corporeal state. The Sword bearers had surrounded Lily, who also looked solid again. She was making weak gestures of attack, but they kept driving her back, and kept her at the centre of their circle. She was fighting angry, and she was fighting stupid, but she was also fighting without magic.

That was one of the true advantages of the Swords; they evened the playing field, stripping away the supernatural advantages the other side had. They didn't make the mortal bearer invincible, but they gave the mortal a chance. And often, I've found, that's all we need.

As it was, every time one of the blades touched her skin, she recoiled in pain, hissing. Fix had to look away, fists clenched.

"I'm not much for letting others fight my battles for me," I said.

"Same," Elaine said.

"Your role is not yet at an end," the Gatekeeper assured us. "But let them do what they must."

As you might imagine, letting go has never been one of my strengths. My jaw clenched and I made a pair of fists. "That's not much for me to go on."

"Harry." The voice was weak.

I looked down. "Father?"

"Harry," he said again, even more quietly. I knelt down. He managed to lift a severely mangled hand, and I took it. I had to struggle to hear what he said next. "Have faith," he said.

Well, after my speech to Cowl, what could I say to that?

"Good advice, my Knight."

I managed not to convulse at the sound of Mab's voice in my ear. Barely. I looked at her. She was in a state similar to how Titania had looked, with obvious damage to her armour and cuts and bruises and burns on her exposed skin. One of her legs was made of ice from the knee down, and that ice was cracked. On the other hand, she still had her eyes. Lea was standing silently at her elbow, head bowed. "My Queen." I hated saying it, and she heard it in my voice. She enjoyed hearing, too.

She turned to the Gatekeeper, with a smile. "Rashid. It has been entirely too long."

"Queen of Air and Darkness." He said it with what sounded like genuine respect. Go figure.

Elaine edged away to stand behind the Gatekeeper. Fix didn't move a muscle. I let Edimon's hand go and stood, giving the Sword bearers a quick look. All three were still moving, but Lily was still quick, and they were slowing down. The new Queen was covered in cuts. The Swords were covered in blood. She kept flinching back, then attacking again. "So what happens now?" I asked.

"I do not know," The Gatekeeper said.

"Nor do I," said Mab.

Elaine's surprise pushed her fear of Mab aside. "Seriously?" she asked.

"No idea at all?" I added.

"The future is clouded," Rashid said.

"That's not very helpful," Elaine said.

"It is in the hands of an Outsider and mortals," Mab said. "Little about Outsiders is known, and little about mortals is predictable." Her voice still had that rough edge to it. "Yourself being the rare and pleasant exception, my Knight." She took entirely too much pleasure in saying 'my Knight.'

Suppressing a shudder, I turned back to the fight. Thomas took a swing, missed, and would have been ripped to shreds if Sanya and Murph hadn't both pushed forward. I almost jumped in myself, but the Gatekeeper again restrained me. "Soon," he said, and his voice was tight.

"Try to relax, Harry," a new voice said. I turned again, and found myself looking at Iceman. The body was completely made of ice, same as Mab's leg, about a foot shorter than I was, and covered in a cloak. The head was slightly transparent, with an articulated jaw and eyes made of flickering orange fire. I could see the skull within.

"Bob?"

"In the flesh. Sort of."

"You know him?" Elaine asked, looking at me but pointing at my former lab assistant.

Ice Bob looked at her. "We've met before," he said. "But it's best not to dwell on that."

"Huh?"

He turned back to me. "One of the nice things about belonging to the Winter Queen now, Harry, is that I've learned patience."

"Surely that's not all you've learned?" Mab asked him.

"Not at all, My Queen!"

I was suddenly really, really uncomfortable. In a squicky way. I turned back to fight. Each of the Knights was slowing their attacks, now. And Lily… well, damned if Lily wasn't starting to slow, too. My stomach was still full of fear, but now a little speck of hope was mixed in with it.

Beside me, the Gatekeeper leaned forward, staring intently.

Lily cried out as Thomas got a quick cut across her arm, followed by Murph getting a slice on the back of her leg. Fix tensed beside me and it was my turn to put a hand on his arm.

Lily went down on one knee.

"Now!" Rashid said, and he all but pushed the three of us into the old stone circle. We needed little encouragement, and charged forward.

"Let her go!" Sanya was saying. "Release her!"

The thing inside Lily growled.

"Get out of her!" Thomas shouted.

"Give her back!" Fix yelled. He hadn't drawn his sword, but one of his hands was brushing its pommel. I had the athame in hand; it was the only weapon that might kill the Outsider and spare the girl it was hiding inside of. Under other circumstances I might have given it to Fix to use, but I couldn't make a gift of the old knife to a member of the Summer Court. Instead, I relied on my longer legs to get me there ahead of him.

And those very legs betrayed me. I don't know whether it was fatigue, some unevenness in the land, or a contrivance of Mab herself, but I tripped.

So I was the only one who didn't get knocked flat when the Walker left.

It saw us coming, Elaine and Fix and I, and it knew it was beaten. From my location on the ground, I saw between Fix and Elaine's legs as a partially transparent image of He Who Walks Behind - long arms, short legs and a distorted torso, a huge mouth and tiny eyes, all wrapped in ugly, scaly skin - jumped out of Lily's body, looking like a ghost. She collapsed instantly. With a great hiss-growl noise, the Walker threw out its arms.

And the Stone Table cracked, right down the middle.

There was a flash of light, and everyone else collapsed as it faded away to nothing. I felt a wave of fatigue wash over me, felt my breath pulled from me, and I blacked out.

I awoke to a feeling of uneasy dread, which got me slowly to my feet, slightly dizzy. A quick look around reminded me why I felt that way. "No," I heard myself say. I fell on my knees again beside Karrin, and quick, sharp pain ran through both my legs. A finger to her throat let me breathe again; she was alive. I checked Elaine and Thomas next. Everyone was breathing, if shallowly, but they were all down for the count. "Where did it go? And what did it do to them?" I looked up. "To the Table?"

"It is gone," Rashid said from behind me. "It created a form of psychic backlash. I have seen it before. They will be fine, but for now they will be treated to nightmares. As for the Table… well, it is not the first Table, in any case. The seasons this year may be… unpredictable."

I struggled to my feet and turned to him.

"Gone? Just like that?" I snapped my fingers.

"Gone," another voice said. Bob was at my elbow. "The unbalanced thing is gone, Harry." He tilted his head in uncertainty. "That's a good thing! I think?"

I didn't have the time or inclination to spar with Bob on morality. "After everything it did? It's just gone?" I looked around at the devastation, at my friends – at my family! – and rejected the idea of the Walker simply escaping. My head started shaking itself. "No. No! It does not end like this! It can't!" I was stomping around like a two year old in a tantrum, and I didn't even know why. It was gone. The Walker was gone, the thing that wanted to end us all, the damnable monster that had haunted me for almost my entire life, had gone. We were out of danger.

But that was not good enough.

"It can't hurt anyone anymore," Rashid said.

"It planned this for centuries. It'll do it again." I got a hand on the sleeve of his robe. "It's weak. It's on the run. We have a chance to end it, forever. We have to!"

He gently removed my fingers. "You were lucky to survive this fight, Wizard Dresden," he said.

"This fight," I said, stabbing a finger at him, "isn't over yet. It can't end like this. This cannot be it. That could not have been my role - to chase it off like a rabbit? After everyone else wore it down? And then fall flat on my face?"

He nodded, with a little smile, like he had expected nothing less. "There is one last path you can follow."

"Where?"

"The only place left," the Winter Queen said. I hadn't seen her approach, but now she was spitting distance beside me. I recoiled a little.

I took a deep breath, and turned to her. "Outside." It wasn't a question.

She nodded, a smile just like Rashid's on her lips.

I glanced at my unconscious friends. "How do I get there?"

Harry, this is... not wise.

No longer matters. It's gone beyond wisdom and foolishness; this is fundamental Good versus Evil. Capital letters, Lash. I know what I have to do. That power over Outsiders I have? It's time to use it, whatever it is.

The Gatekeeper reached up with one hand... and scooped out his artificial eye.

I refuse to describe that action in any greater detail.

The eye itself was an orb, covered in odd engravings I couldn't quite place and Lash couldn't translate for me. He looked down at it, sighed, then crushed it in his hand. A flashy of light erupted from his fist, like a poorly tuned shield. The light quickly coalesced into a person-sized oval. Through the oval, I could see most of the Gatekeeper and the scenery behind him fade to darkness. Then he walked around it.

It was a portal. It was a portal to the Outside, hidden for who knew how long inside his skull.

Gross.

"Only one may enter," he said, and did so with a bit of pity.

A hand - small, but very strong - gripped my wrist. "Harry, think about this!"

I turned to the owner of that hand. "It has to end, Lash. I have thought about it. And I have to do this. For me, for Karrin, for Elaine, Molly, even Justin. For everyone. Every moment of my life has led me here. I know I'm not giving you a choice, and I'm sorry. If there were a way to let you out of my head before I went charging in, I would give it to you."

She stared at me for a three-count, then sighed and stroked my cheek. "I would not take it if you did."

I blinked, and she was gone from my sight. I am honoured to accompany you.

What else can you say to that? It's an honour - and a comfort - to have you along.

The Gatekeeper did not seem the least bit put out that I had just been talking to myself. I gave him a nod. "You'll take care of them?"

"I will," he said. His remaining eye focussed over my shoulder, and I turned.

Mab was walking among my prone friends, Lea and Bob at her heels and her gaze fixed on Lily.

"What's going on?"

While she looked at the broken Table with dissatisfaction, the gatekeeper said, "The loss of the Table disrupts the bond of the Queen to all of her… possessions. It does not end it, but it changes things. Every time the Table has been sundered in the past, it has been the portent of tidal changes to both the Nevernever and our world."

I watched as she poked Fix with her frozen foot. "Fear not, my Knight," she said to me. "You are still mine." She was obviously happy, and her voice was much less... wrong than it had been. She was getting stronger.

The Gatekeeper said, "Time is short, Wizard Dresden."

I turned back to Rashid. "Right. One crisis and enemy at a time." I hesitated a second, then knelt down and planted a quick kiss on Murphy's forehead. "Sorry I was so stubborn," I whispered. Then I turned back to the portal, exchanged nods with the Gatekeeper, and jumped right out of the universe.