Harry reflects on how, in the face of the miraculous, people often focus on mundane inconveniences. You get on an airplane, someone's gonna complain about the drinks. You get on a magical staircase made of moonlight leading up through empty air into another dimension, someone, in this case Harry, is gonna complain that it's not an escalator. We're told that it's "about a mile" of stairs, but since Harry was just complaining about it, I don't know if that's a sincere approximation or if Harry's exaggerating for effect. Chicago over Chicago, when they reach it, is complete, with real terrain, rather than featureless cloudscape, and a real battle. We're told that the storm below, in the physical sky of Chicago, is a "pale reflection" of the battle up above, but I don't know how literally to take that - obviously the storm is, meteorologically, the
result of clashing warm and cold fronts brought in by the gathering of Winter and Summer power in this spot, but it's not entirely clear to me whether the state of the storm literally reflects the state of the battle, or if "pale reflection" here is just about relative severity. This is a proper battle, or perhaps more accurately several battles - almost everyone whose person-sized is in units, in formation, although some of the bigger things, like trolls, which I suppose are less vulnerable to being surrounded than human infantry, appear to effectively be formations unto themselves. However, different... legions, maybe? Probably small armies in some cases, appear to be spread out, fighting on different fronts simultaneously. Harry and co. are looking over the valley, which seems to be where the fighting is thickest. There's it's divided into two distinct, but not entirely separate, levels. Things that would probably be described in Pathfinder as small and medium humanoids, maybe also large, are having a pretty normal battle with each other, while in the same space, much bigger, and maybe less people-shaped things, are engaged in their own conflict, of which the regular-sized guys are occasional mass casualties when someone steps in the wrong place. We find out later that there's a third level to the battle, up in the sky, but that either isn't happening right over the valley, or is too far up for Harry to readily see it from where he's standing. Unfortunately, his tracking spell is pointing them straight down into all that.
Meryl asks what their next move is, but before Harry can answer, they're approached by a Sidhe knight, presumably of Winter. This isn't necessarily relevant at the moment, but I don't think we ever learn any of these guys' names. Not here, not in Cold Days, not anywhere. This one certainly doesn't introduce himself, but he recognizes Harry as Winter's Emissary, and brings with him a bubble of quiet that makes conversation possible without having to shout over the din of battle. Harry explains that they need to see Mab, and the unnamed knight leads them to her. She's sitting on a white horse, which we aren't given any particular reason to assume is the one Tam Lin rode, but I mean, c'mon, and is presumably wearing armor under her dress, since she hasn't opted for the dress made of armor like Aurora did. Everyone takes a second to be startled by her beauty, but it hits the changelings especially hard. Fix and Meryl are both children of Winter, and on some level they're meant to belong to her. Mab asks Harry if he caught the thief, and seems to understand everything when he says it was Aurora. She asks if he can bring proof, and he says he can do it if he can get to the Stone Table before midnight. This is sort of simultaneously true and not true. He probably can bring proof, if he stops Aurora, but if he fails, the situation is likely to pretty well prove itself - I don't imagine Aurora's plan can be executed so stealthily that no one will know she was involved, although it might take Titania a while to calm down enough to realize that. But from Harry's perspective, stopping Aurora is sort of more important than proving her culpability.
Part of the battlefield suddenly lights up gold, and Mab cancels it out with a flash of her own power, which is the entirely separate level of the battle that
she's fighting, just, y'know, while carrying on a conversation. She also recognizes Harry's fragment of the Stone Table as belonging to Rashid, and the faerie ointment as his recipe, which makes a lot of sense, given the context we get in
Cold Days. Those two actually work pretty closely together, but on a first read this is just a tantalizing hint of an already mysterious character's background and connections. She asks what his interest in this is, but Harry doesn't give her a real answer, and she doesn't really seem to expect one.
Mab confirms that following the tracking spell directly would be a really bad idea, and starts just kind of talking out loud about how else they might get there. I don't know if this is for Harry's benefit, to reassure him and his allies that she's not holding back a usable option, or if it's just a consequence of the number of different ways she's splitting her concentration right now. She can't fly him there, and Slate isn't available. (Harry confirms he's with Aurora, and Mab says this is the last time she lets Aurora hire the help, which may mean there
isn't a strict pattern to who chooses each Knight, or may mean that Mab expects the situation with the Outer Gates to resolve one way or the other before it's Maeve's turn again, thereby stripping Winter of its purpose and presumably removing the necessity to have a Knight at all). Winter still holds the River, and Maeve and Lea are both focusing their efforts there, so Harry's best shot at getting to the Stone Table in one piece is to follow it. As long as they don't start shit, Winter forces, at least, will let them pass.
They head downhill, although presumably not into the valley since the whole point was to avoid that. They're on ground held by Winter, far enough back from the front lines that they're mostly looking at those injured in the initial charge. A group of goblins feed their dead, and some of their non-ambulatory wounded, to a flock of predatory sylphs, which raises a couple of questions for me. First, while goblins are Wildfae, they also work pretty directly for the Erlking, and I wouldn't have expected them to be Called the way, say, a pixie would be. Maybe they're here as the result of a treaty or something? Also, I'd love to know how the corpse-eating sylphs fit into the...I don't even know if the word I want here is "tactics" or "ecology" of battles like this. What does anyone gain from feeding their dead to the sylphs? Why is having them here, eating, a better use of their time than having them fight? I'm pretty sure this could be explained, but like, it isn't. In any case it's pretty gross, and it's gonna be worse for the werewolves, so Harry tries to say encouraging things to them, and to keep himself between Fix and the worse of the carnage. As they get closer to the river, they're also getting closer to the fighting, and the mist turns from Winter blue to murky, undecided green. Harry suggests they make a run for it.
That's what I've got for this chapter. It feels a little sparse, and I can't tell if there just wasn't a lot here to analyze, or if my brain didn't catch on things properly. Realistically, expect one, maybe two more posts before the end of the month. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!
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