Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy

by Shawn Speakman

  We talk of war through the long afternoon and into the dark hours of the night. Servants move amongst us, carrying charcoal and charred meat. We gulp it down without tasting, keeping our bellies full and our minds sharp. We speak of strategies and tactics, of all the ways that flesh can tear and bones can break, and how we can use those ways to our advantage. We speak of the weapons of the enemy, what we know of them and their foul, thieving ways. And all the time that we spend speaking, my brother sleeps in his fine princess’s bed of embers, dreaming what is yet to be, what cannot be turned aside, no matter how deeply we breathe of the mountain’s fire, no matter how fiercely we will fight.

  We knew always that we would go to battle, because we are as we are, as the mountain made us: we had no choice.

  We never had a choice, not since the very beginnings of the world.

  V. Waking

  I find my sister in her chambers, sleeping fitfully, the great bulk of her consort beside her. For a moment, I pause, the air in my lungs becoming ashes in the face of envy’s blazing flame. I will never have a consort—would not have, even if this were not the night we died. My hatchlings could have been challengers to my sister’s place, could have confused the lines of succession. How I hate him for lying beside her, bathing his scales in the warmth of her flame! How I hate her, for leaving me behind.

  How I love her, for being my sister, and for loving me. It is love that leads me to lower my already heavy head and nudge her, gently, with my snout.

  Her eyes are open in an instant. There is no malice there. She is Prince Below the Mountain. She knows that there are only two in all the world that her guards would allow to pass unchallenged, and her consort already lies curled beside her. She lifts her head, and looks on me with love, only love, only ever love.

  How I have missed her, since our destinies bent us apart. Is it wrong to be joyful that here, at the end, they are bending back together? “It is time,” I say.

  She blinks slowly, shaking away the last traces of her own untroubled sleep. Whatever nightmares she may have suffered, she knows they are not as deep as mine, or as heavy, or as cruel. “What do you mean?” she asks.

  Already her wings are unfurling. Already her consort wakes, the armored plates of his back bristling as he calls himself fully into the moment. She believes in me. She trusts that I will not mislead her—and oh, how I wish that I could. How I wish I were here to spin her a terrible lie, to send her out into the world ready for a battle that will never come.

  But I am not. I could not. I am her princess, and she is my prince, and I could never lie to her. “They marched by day, and they prepare to strike by night. They are here, my sister. They are at our door. Rally your generals. Call your army. Tell them that the darkness is alive with the shouts and cruel hands of men, and that it is too late to turn this dream aside.”

  “Will we win?” My sister’s voice is rough with char. The fire is gathering inside her.

  I do not answer. I turn my head away, and say nothing. My sister must fight; there is nothing else that she can do. I have seen her, in my dreams. I will not lie to her, but I will not speak her death into the open air. To do so would be to betray her in the deepest way I know, and so I am silent, and remain silent as she rises from her bed and stalks past me, wings half-mantled, into the long, cold night of her destruction.

  I am sorry, my sister. I am sorry, my prince. I could not save you, or myself, or anyone at all.

  All I ever did was dream.

  VI. War

  I leave my brother behind me as I make my way toward the nearest cave connecting to the surface. My consort brushes my tail with his and heads deeper into the mountain, where he will light the signal fires and sound the alarms of the ancients. I roar with every step, sending my voice up into the honeycomb caverns we have chewed and carved through the living stone, waking and rallying my people.

  Here am I, your prince.

  Here am I, your defender.

  Here am I; now come to me, join me, and die fighting by my side.

  And they come—how they come! My generals and their armies, my fighting worms and wide-winged soldiers. My people flock out of the mountain as the old and the weak burrow deeper, and we cover the cliff faces and the long slopes with our bodies, roaring domination into the night. Our flame lights up the darkness, and for the first time in my life, I see what my brother has seen every time he closed his eyes since the beginning of forever. I see them.

  They are so soft. So small. Their shells are artificial, forged from the bodies of the dragons they have slain. There is nothing to them that I should fear, and that is the most terrible thing of all. They will destroy us. They should not have that power. They should not have that potential. But they do, and there is nothing I can do to take it from them.

  “What are your orders?” growls the nearest of my generals.

  I close my eyes. For a moment—just a moment—I can tell myself that my brother is wrong: that our parents were wrong. I should have been the princess from the first, and my calm, everyday dreams of dragons, and flying, and feasting under a bright harvest moon, those are the true dreams. Not my brother’s dreaming, no, not at all.

  “We fight,” I say. “Show no mercy.”

  The screams of the men are terrible to hear.

  The screams of the dragons are worse.

  VII. Princess

  This is my final dream, as I coil in the depths of my bed and wait for the men to come and slay me. It is not a true dream, for I do not sleep; will never sleep again, not before my dying.

  I dream myself a hatchling again, strong and lithe and unburdened by the duties of a princess. I dream my sister beside me, full of motion, never still. I dream us safe. I dream us happy. I dream us together for all of time.

  The screams reach me even in my chambers. My sister is gone to be King In Ashes, and I will see her soon. We will be together always, even as we are in my dream that is not a dream, and men will mine the mountain for our souls.

  I wonder if the princesses of men sleep any easier than those of dragons. I hope so. I would not wish my life on anyone, not even on those who would destroy us. When dragons are but memory and legend, the princesses of men will slumber on, dreaming their cruel dreams.

  There was never any end but this.

  My handmaids die all around me, and at last, my dream is done.

  Jim Butcher

  * * *

  Waldo Butters has been a pain in my rear from his very first appearance in the Dresden Files.

  Initially he was just a throwaway character. I was writing a somewhat gruesome morgue scene, with a badly mutilated body, and I needed someone with a sense of humor to leaven the scene a little bit. So I basically kidnapped the medical examiner from The Prophecy, dyed his hair, made him shorter and skinnier, gave him some glasses and a new name, and wrote him into the story. I figured he’d be there for a chapter, then we’d move on and never see again.

  But he was so much fun, I decided to use him again. It makes the world a more consistent place if you see familiar faces in familiar places, and he had stuck firmly in my mind for someone who had only been on stage for a little while. This meant that I didn’t have to go digging into my previous material to remember his details as a character, and I am always in favor of constructive laziness whenever I can employ it as a storyteller.

  But then came Dead Beat. Dead Beat had originally been slated to be the eighth book in the series, but when my editor heard that my plan for book seven involved a quieter, more personal story centered on Molly, she dropped me a hint that, since the series was going to go hardback, maybe I needed a more exciting and dramatic story. Well, I had some necromancers just waiting down the road a bit for Harry, and throwing them at him when he was even less experienced just made his life worse, and I’m also always in favor of that. So I brought them into town early and decided, moreover, that the medical examiner would be the perfect thematic sidekick for the story: Harry was fighting necromancers, after al
l, so an ME was a natural fit—while at the same time being almost completely useless to Harry on a tactical level. Better and better.

  And it was during this story that I realized that Butters wasn’t going away, because he had a destiny, and I started setting him up for it right away.

  It’s been a long time coming.

  Jim Butcher

  Day One

  Jim Butcher

  My name is Waldo Butters, and I am a Jedi Knight, like my father before me.

  Okay, so that isn’t exactly, technically, in a completely legal sense true. I mean, my dad was actually a podiatrist. But I’m as close to the real deal as anyone is likely to ever see in this world. I’m an actual knight anyway. Or at least, I was training to be one, when on a Thursday morning I first heard the Call.

  Only I didn’t hear it, exactly, technically, in a completely legal sense . . . look, maybe I should just tell the story.

  Of all the training Michael Carpenter had me doing, the cardio part was what I liked best. Then again, my main Pandora station only plays polka music, so what the heck do I know?

  I ran along through the early dawn light in Bucktown while the city began to wake up. The training belt around my waist tugged at my balance constantly and unpredictably. It was hooked to a bungee cord attaching me to Michael’s bicycle, being pulled along behind me as I ran. Michael would swerve and brake randomly. Sometimes he’d hold the brake for several strides, and I’d have to shift to much more powerful strides to keep moving. It was demanding work. Constantly being forced to alter my balance meant that I could never fall into a nice, efficient rhythm and I had to pay attention to every single step.

  The first several weeks, that had been a problem, but I was getting used to it now. Or rather, I was getting used to it until I saw something impossible, forgot to pay attention, got pulled off balance by my bungee cord, and crashed into a plastic recycling bin waiting by the side of the street.

  Michael immediately came to a stop, swinging his stiff leg out like an improvised kickstand. He was action-hero sized, moving toward his late fifties, and had his walking cane strapped to the backpack he wore. “Waldo?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  I stumbled upright again, panting. “I, uh.” I peered down the street. “I’m not really sure.”

  Michael looked in the same direction I was, frowning. He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  “You don’t see that, do you?” I asked.

  “See what?”

  I squinted. Took off my glasses. Cleaned them on a corner of my shirt that wasn’t covered in sweat. Put them back on and checked again. It was still there. “If you could see it, you wouldn’t have to ask that.”

  He nodded seriously. “Tell me what you see.”

  “That homeless guy on the bench?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I took a breath and said, “There’s a big yellow exclamation point floating over his head.” After a brief pause I added, “I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested.”

  Michael sat back a little on the bike’s seat and rubbed at his beard pensively. He missed the reference. “Hmmm. Odd. Does that bring anything to mind for you, personally?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, it’s what every NPC in every MMORPG ever looks like when they have a quest to give you.”

  “There were a great many letters in that, and not much that I understood,” he said soberly.

  “Video games,” I clarified. “When a game character has a quest for you, that’s how the game shows you where the quest begins. A big floaty exclamation point over their heads. You go talk to them and that’s how the quest starts.”

  Michael barked out a laugh and gave the sky a small smile and a shake of his head. “Well, then, Sir Waldo. You’ve just had your first Call.”

  “My what now?”

  “Your first Call to a quest, I suppose.”

  I blinked. “Uriel talks to the Knights through video game symbolism?”

  “As far as I know, Uriel talks in person. The Call comes from higher up.”

  “What?” I asked. “You mean like . . . God? God speaks video game?”

  “When the Almighty speaks to men, He always does it in voices they can understand,” Michael said. “When I felt the Call, it was always a still, small voice that would come to me when I was in prayer, or otherwise quiet. Sometimes I’d have a very strong impression of a name, or a face, and a direction that I needed to go.” He nodded toward the transient. “Apparently, you have been Called to help that man.”

  “Put like that, it does seem to be fairly obvious.” I swallowed. “Um. I know we’ve been training pretty hard but . . . am I really ready for this?”

  He reached into the backpack, withdrew an old leather messenger bag from it, and offered it to me. “Let’s find out.”

  I swallowed. Then I nodded and slung the bag over one shoulder. I reached into it and patted the worn old wooden handle inside, and then walked over to the sleeping man. He wore an army surplus field jacket, old Desert Storm–style khaki BDUs, and he had a beard that birds could have nested in. There wasn’t much grey in it, but his skin was weathered enough to make it difficult to guess his age. Forty?

  By the time I got within five feet of him, I could see that something was wrong. There was a lot of vomit on the slatted bench by the man’s head, and the ground beneath. One of his eyes was half open, dilated, and his breath rasped in and out.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey, buddy. Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  I knelt down and took his wrist, feeling for his pulse. It was hard, because it was thready and irregular. “Hey,” I said, gently. “Hey, man, can you hear me?”

  He let out a little groan. I checked his other eye. The pupil was normal in that one.

  I didn’t enjoy the work of being an actual physician, professionally. I liked examining corpses for the state of Illinois. Corpses never lie to you, never give you opaque answers, never ask stupid questions, or ignore what you tell them they need to do. Corpses are simple.

  And this guy, who wasn’t nearly as old as I had thought when I walked up to him, was going to be one if he didn’t get attention fast.

  “Call 911,” I said to Michael. “I think he’s had a stroke, maybe an overdose. Either way, he’s lucky he slept on his side or he’d have choked on his own vomit by now. He needs an ER.”

  Michael nodded once, hobbled a few feet away, and produced a cell phone from a leather case on his belt. He called and began speaking quietly.

  “Okay, buddy,” I said to the guy. “Hang in there. We’re calling the good guys and they’re going to help y—”

  I don’t even know what happened. One second he was lying there, a wheezy vegetable, and the next he was coming at me hard, his ragged-nailed hands grasping for my throat while he gurgled, “No hospital!”

  A few months ago, I’d have gotten strangled right there.

  But a few months ago, I hadn’t been training in hand to hand with Michael’s wife, Charity.

  It takes several thousand repetitions of a motion to develop motor memory pathways in the brain to the point where you can consider the motion a reflex. To that end, Charity, who was into ju jitsu, had made me practice several different defenses a hundred times each, every day, for the past two months. She didn’t practice by just going through a motion slowly and gradually speeding up, either. She just came at me like she meant to disassemble me, and if I didn’t defend successfully it freaking hurt.

  You learn fast in those circumstances—and one of the basic defenses she’d drilled into me had been against a simple front choke.

  Both of my forearms snapped up, knocking the grasping hands away, even as I ducked my head and rolled my body to one side. He kept coming, and got a hold of his right arm as he went through the space where I’d been. His arm hit my face, and sent my glasses spinning off me.

  I fought down a decades-old panic as the world shifted from its usual shapes into sudden streaks and blurs of color.

&n
bsp; Look. I wear some big thick glasses. I’m not quite legally blind without them. I know, because after I gave my optometrist a very expensive bottle of whiskey, he told me so. But without them . . .

  Without them, it’s pretty tough to get anything done. Or see anything more than an arm’s length away. Seriously. I’d once mistaken a dressmaker’s mannequin for my girlfriend. Reading was all but impossible without them. Reading.

  My great nightmare is to be stuck somewhere without them, trapped, peering at the sea of fuzzy things that couldn’t possibly be identified. When I’d been a kid, the first thing the bullies did, always, was knock my glasses off. Always. It was like they’d all had a sixth sense or something.

  Then they would start having fun with me. That wasn’t a delight either, but it was the not knowing what was coming that made it all worse.

  Inside, that kid started screaming and wailing, but there was no time to indulge him. I had a problem to solve—and the Carpenters had given me the tools I needed to solve it.

  For instance, they’d taught me that once things are this close, you don’t really get a lot done with your eyes when it came to fighting. It was all speed and reflex and knowing where the enemy was and what he was doing by feel. I was sloppy and it took me a second, but I managed to lock the bum’s arm out straight. I kept it moving, got my body to twist at the right angle to put pressure on the shoulder joint, and brought him flat onto his face on the sidewalk with enough force to send stars flying into his vision and stun him.

  It didn’t stun him much. “No hospital!” he screamed, thrashing. I fought to control the fear that was running through me. He was operating with more strength than he should have been, but it didn’t matter. Physics is physics and his arm was one long lever that I had control of. He might have been bigger and stronger than me, and the way we were positioned that didn’t matter in the least. He fought for a few more seconds and then the burst of frenzy began to peter out. “No hospital! No hospital.” He shuddered and began to weep. His voice became a plea, rendered flat with despair. “No hospital. Please, please. No hospital.”