Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

depends upon your good behaviour.”
    “Kill them all,” said Mab. “Let them all die, for failing me. I am Mab; and I will do what I will do.”
    I decided to press on, while she was still in what passed for a good mood. I raised my gift again and sent it searching; and this time I found King Oberon and Queen Titania in their Unseelie Court, in Shadows Fall. I found another connection and opened up another gateway; and more light fell into the Nightside as I connected one hidden place with another.
    Oberon and Titania sat side by side on two great Thrones made of bones. Strange shapes and sigils and glyphs had been cut deep into the hundreds of interlinked bones that made up the two Thrones, detail upon detail, in a design complex beyond hope of human understanding. Oberon was easily ten feet tall and bulging thickly with muscles, wrapped in a long blood-red cloak to better show off his milk-white skin. His hair was a colourless blond, hanging loosely down around a long, angular face dominated by piercing blue eyes. He looked effortlessly noble, regal, and perversely intelligent. Oberon had come to his Throne through intrigue and violence, and it showed.
    Titania wore a long black dress with silver trimmings, and wore it with a careless, heart-breaking elegance. She was lovelier than any mere mortal would ever be, and she knew it, and didn’t give a damn. She was a few inches taller than Oberon, with a skin so pale that blue veins showed clearly at her temples. Her hair was blonde, cropped short and severe, and her night-dark eyes were calm and cold.
    Nobility hung about them both, like a cape grown frayed through long use.
    “We know you, John Taylor,” said Oberon, in calm, bored voice. “Why do you trouble us?”
    “King Arthur’s back,” I said briskly. “That’s him, right there. Isn’t he marvellous? He and his knights have kicked the crap out of the elves Queen Mab sent to devastate the Nightside. He has asked her to parley, to find a way to avoid the forthcoming elf civil war, and she has agreed. He now asks you to parley, in the same cause, and swears he has another, viable option to propose.”
    “There still exist ancient pacts, of honour and blood, between the Unseelie Court and Camelot,” said Arthur. “Tell me the elves have not forgotten honour.”
    “No,” said Oberon. “The elves still remember honour.”
    “But what if we do not want peace?” said Titania. She did not move at all, her rich and sultry voice seeming to hang on the air.
    “Would you rather face extinction?” I said. “You know that once the war has started, you’d all fight to the end, to the very last of your forces, rather than admit defeat. You’d use any tactic, any weapon, die to the very last elf and take all Humanity and the Earth with you, before you’d let your hated rival win. Arthur is offering you a way out—a way for the elves to survive as a race, with honour. And if you can’t trust King Arthur of Camelot, whom can you trust?”
    Oberon smiled slightly. “Why not? If nothing else, this process should prove ... illuminating. I see you, Mab. What say you, to this offer of parley, and a possible solution to our dispute?”
    “No-one summons me anywhere,” said Mab. She turned her unblinking gaze on Arthur. “You don’t have Merlin any more. And without him, your forces failed at Logres.”
    “Who needs Merlin?” I said. “We have Arthur and the London Knights, and I can call upon the Lord of Thorns, Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, and Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor. I could even give the Droods a call ... Do you really want to fight one more useless battle; or shall we try something different for a change?”
    “If a suitable neutral ground can be found and agreed on,” said Mab, “I will attend. But only because it has been such a long time since I have seen you, Arthur. One does miss ... old friends.”
    I turned back to Oberon and Titania, in their Court at Shadows Fall. But before either of them could speak, another figure appeared suddenly from behind the two Thrones of bone, a face I already knew. A short, stocky figure, almost human-sized, though the sheer scale of the King and Queen made him appear smaller. His body was as smooth and supple as a dancer’s, but the hump on his back pushed one shoulder down and forward, and the hand on that arm was withered into a claw. His hair was grey, his skin the yellow of old bone, and he had two raised nubs on his forehead