by Jim Butcher
I recognized him. “Lloyd Slate,” I murmured. “The Winter Knight.”
The last time I’d seen Slate had been after the battle on the hill of the Stone Table, a place that served as the OK Corral for the Faerie Courts when they decided to engage in diplomacy by means of murdering anyone on the other team. Slate had been a first-rank menace to society. A drug addict, a rapist, a man with no compunctions about indulging himself at the expense of others. By the end of the battle he had killed a young woman who might have become a friend.
He stirred and let out a small whimper. “Who is there?”
“Dresden,” I replied.
Slate’s mouth dropped open, and a maniacal little giggle bubbled under his reply. “You’re here. Thank God, you’re here. I’ve been here so long.” He tilted his head to one side, exposing his carotid artery. “Free me. Do it, quickly.”
“Free you?” I asked.
“From this,” Slate sobbed, voice breaking. “From this nightmare. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. Thank God, Dresden, kill me.”
The seedier neighborhoods of my soul would have been happy to oblige him. But some dark, hard part of me wanted to see what else I could think of to make him suffer more. I just stared at him for a while, considering options. After perhaps ten minutes, he dropped unconscious again.
From somewhere to my right, a delicious voice, at once rough and silky, purred, “You do not understand his true torment.”
I turned to face the frozen fountain. Well. The remains of it, anyway. Maybe a third of the ice mound remained, but it had partially uncovered the statue within-no statue at all, but a member of the Sidhe, a tall, inhumanly lovely woman, her appearance one of nigh perfection. Or it would have been so in other circumstances. Now, partially free from the encasing ice, her scarlet hair clung lumpily to her skull. Her eyes were deeply sunken and burned too bright, as though she had a fever. She stood calmly, one leg, her head, one shoulder, and one arm now emerging from the ice, which was otherwise her only garment. There was an eerie serenity to her, as though she felt no discomfort, physical or otherwise, at her imprisonment. She seemed to regard the entire matter with amused tolerance, as though such trivial conditions were hardly worthy of her attention. She was one of the oldest and most powerful Sidhe in the Winter Court- the Leanansidhe.
And she was also my godmother.
“Lea,” I breathed quietly. “Hell’s bells. What happened to you?”
“Mab,” she said.
“Last Halloween,” I murmured. “She said that you had been imprisoned. She’s kept you here? In that?”
“Obviously.” Something extremely unsettling glittered in her eyes. “You do not understand his true torment.”
I glanced from her to the Winter Knight. “Uh. What?”
“Slate,” she purred, and flicked her eyes in his direction. She was unable to move her head for the ice about it. “There is pain, of course. But anyone can inflict pain. Accidents inflict pain. Pain is the natural order of the universe, and so it is hardly a tool mete for the Queen of Air and Darkness. She tortures him with kindness.”
I frowned at Slate for a moment, and then grimaced, imagining it. “She leaves him hung up like that. And then she comes and saves him from it.”
My godmother smiled, a purring sound accompanying the expression. “She heals his wounds and takes his pain. She restores his sight, and the first thing his eyes see is the face of she who delivers him from agony. She cares for him with her own hands, warms him, feeds him, cleans away the filth. And then she takes him to her bower. Poor man. He knows that when he wakes, he will hang blind upon the tree again-and can do naught else but long for her return.”
I shook my head. “You think he’s going to fall for that?” I said. “Fall in love with her?”
Lea smiled. “Love,” she murmured. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. But need. Oh, yes. You underestimate the simple things, my godchild.” Her eyes glittered. “Being given food and warmth. Being touched. Being cleaned and cared for-and desired. Over and over, spinning him through agony and ecstasy. The mortal mind breaks down. Not all at once. But slowly. The way water will wear down stone.” Her madly glittering eyes focused on me, and her tone took on a note of warning. “It is a slow seduction. A conversion by the smallest steps.”
The skin on my left palm itched intensely for a moment, in the living skin of the Lasciel sigil.
“Yes,” Lea hissed. “Mab, you see, is patient. She has time. And when the last walls of his mind have fallen, and he looks forward with joy to his return to the tree, she will have destroyed him. And he will be discarded. He only lives so long as he resists.” She closed her eyes for a moment and said, “This is wisdom you should retain, my child.”
“Lea,” I said. “What has happened to you? How long have you been a Sidhe-sicle?”
Some of the strength seemed to ebb from her, and she suddenly seemed exhausted. “I grew too arrogant with the power I held. I thought I could overcome what stalks us all. Foolish. Milady Queen Mab taught me the error of my ways.”
“She’s had you locked up in your own private iceberg for more than a year?” I shook my head. “Godmother, you look like you fell out of a crazy tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Her eyes opened again, glittering and unsettling as hell. And she laughed. It was a quiet, low sound-and it sounded nothing like the laugh of the deadly Sidhe sorceress I’d known since before I could drive.
“Crazy tree,” she murmured, and her eyes closed again. “Yes.”
I heard heavy, thumping steps on the staircase, and Thomas came sprinting onto the parapet, fae-bloodied sword still in hand. “Harry!”
“Here,” I said, and waved an arm at him. He glanced at Charity and Molly, and hurried over to me.
A little lump of fear knotted itself in my guts. “Where’s Murphy?”
“Relax,” he said. “She’s downstairs guarding the door. Is the girl all right?”
I pitched my voice low. “She’s breathing, but I’m more worried about damage to her mind. She’s crying at least. That’s actually a good sign. What’s up?”
“We need to go,” Thomas said. “Now.”
“Why?”
“Something’s coming.”
“Something usually is,” I said. “What do you mean?”
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Since last year… since the Erlking… I’ve had… intuitions, maybe? Maybe just instincts. I can feel things in the air better now than before. I think the Wild Hunt is coming toward us. I think a lot of things are coming toward us.”
No sooner had he said it than I heard, blended with the distant cry of the wind, a long, mournful, somehow hungry horn call.
I stepped up onto the edge of the fountain and peered out into the moonlit night. I couldn’t make out anything very clearly, but for an instant, far in the distance, I saw the gleam of moonlight on one of the odd metals that faeries used to make their weapons and armor.
Another horn rang out, this one more a droning, enormous basso- only the second horn came from the opposite side from the first. Over the next few seconds, more horns joined in, and drums, and then a rising tide of monstrous shrieks and bellows, all around us now. In the mountains east of Arctis Tor, one of the snowcapped peaks was abruptly devoured by a rising black cloud that hid everything beneath it. A quick check around showed me several other peaks being blanketed in shadow. Horn calls and cries grew louder and continuously more numerous.
“Stars and stones,” I breathed. I shot a glance at my godmother and said, “The power I used here. That is what caused this, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” Lea said.
“Holy crap!” Thomas blurted, jumping like a startled cat when what he must have thought was another statue moved and spoke.
“Thomas, this is my godmother, Lea,” I said. “Lea, Th-”
“I know who he is,” my godmother murmured. “I know what he is. I know whose he is.” Her eyes moved back to me. “You summoned forth th
e power of Summer here in Arctis Tor, in the heart of all Winter. When you did so, those of Winter felt the agony of it. And now they come to slay you or drive you forth.”
I swallowed. “Uh. How many of them?”
The mad gleam returned to her eyes. “Why, all of Winter, child. All of us.”
Crap.
“Charity!” I called. “We’re leaving!”
Charity nodded and rose, supporting Molly, though the girl was at least mobile. If she’d remained unaware and walled away from the world, it would have been a real pain to get her all the way back down the tower. Molly and her mom hit the stairs.
“Thomas,” I said. “See if you can chop off some of this ice without hurting her.”
Thomas licked his lips. “Is that a good idea? Isn’t this the one who tried to turn you into a dog?”
“A hound,” Lea murmured, glittering eyes flicking back and forth at random. “Quite different.”
“She was a friend of Mom’s,” I told Thomas quietly.
“So was my Dad,” Thomas said. “And look how that turned out.”
“Then give me the sword and I’ll do it myself. I’m not leaving her.”
Lea made a sudden choking sound.
I frowned at her. Her eyes bugged out and her face contorted with apparent pain. Her mouth moved, lush lips writhing, twisting. A bestial grunt jerked out of her throat every second or two. The fingers of her freed hand arched into a claw. Then she suddenly sagged, and when she turned her eyes back to me, they were my godmother’s again; one part lust, one part cool, feline indifference, one part merciless predator.
“Child,” she said. Her voice was weak. “You must not free me.”
I stared at her, feeling confused. “Why?”
She gritted her teeth and said, “I cannot yet be trusted. It is not time. I would not be able to fulfill my promise to your mother, should you free me now. You must leave.”
“Trusted?” I asked.
“No time,” she said, voice strained again. “I cannot long keep it from taking hold of…” She shuddered and lowered her head. She lifted her face to me a few seconds later, and the madness had returned to her eyes. “Wait,” she rasped. “I have reconsidered. Free me.”
I traded a look with Thomas, and we both took a cautious step backward.
Lea’s face twisted up with rage and she let out a howl that shook icicles from their positions. “Release me!”
“What the hell is going on here?” Thomas asked me.
“Uh,” I told him. “I’ll get back to you after we get out of Dodge.”
Thomas nodded and we both hurried toward the stairs. I glanced back over my shoulder, once. The fountain was already building itself up again, freezing water to ice. A thin sheet of it already covered my godmother. I shuddered and looked away, directly at the delirious Lloyd Slate. My footsteps quickened even more.
And then, just as I was leaving, only for an instant, I thought I saw one more thing. The triangle of statues of Sidhe noblewomen caught a stray beam of moonlight, while thin clouds made it jump and shift. In that uncertain light, I saw one of the statues move. It turned its head toward me as I left, and the white marble of its eyes was suddenly suffused with emerald green the same color as Mab’s eyes.
Not just the same color.
Mab’s eyes.
The statue winked at me.
The sounds of the approaching fae grew even louder, reminding me that I had no time to investigate. So I shivered and hurried down the stairs beside Thomas, leaving the parapet and its prisoners and-perhaps-its mistress behind me. I had to focus on getting us back to Lily’s rift in one piece, so I forced all such questions from my mind for the time being.
The four of us were slogging through snow up to my knees a few moments later, while I spent the last reserves of power I’d taken from Lily’s butterfly to keep us from going into hypothermia.
I took the lead and ran for the rift as a nightmarish symphony of wails and horns and howls closed in all around us.
Chapter Forty
Shielded by the good graces of Summer, we fled Arctis Tor. The winds outside howled louder, kicking up increasingly intense clouds of mist, snow, and ice. Beyond the wind, still vague but growing slowly more clear and immediate, I could hear the cries of things that thrived in the dark and the cold. I heard drums and horns, wild and savage and inspiring the kind of terror that has nothing to do with thought, and everything to do with instinct.
I heard the cry of the Erlking’s personal horn, unmistakable for any other such instrument.
I traded a quick glance with Thomas, who grimaced at me. “Keep moving!” he called.
“Duh,” I grunted.
Immediately behind me, Murphy panted, “What was that about?”
“Erlking,” I told her. “Big-time bad guy. Wants to eat me.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Well. I met him,” I said.
“Ag,” Murph said. Even with her labored breathing, the nonword managed to be dry. “Last October?”
“Yeah. He thinks I insulted him.”
“You’re never mouthy, Harry. Must have been someone who looks like you.” She grimaced and clutched at her belt, her balance wavering. There was a long, open slice in the tough leather, where a claw or blade had nearly struck home. The belt gave way, and the oversized mail she wore flopped down, binding her legs, almost tripping her. “Dammit.”
“Hold up,” I called before Murphy could fall down, and we all staggered to a halt. Molly all but dropped into the snow.
“We can’t stand around like this!” Thomas called.
“Charity, Murph, we’ve got to travel as light as we can. Ditch the armor.” I ripped off my duster and wriggled like an eel to get out of my own mail. Then I tossed it at Thomas.
“Hey!” he said, and scowled.
“Don’t leave it on the ground,” I said. “Thomas, carry it.”
“What?” he demanded. “Why?”
“You’re strong enough that it won’t slow you down,” I said, and got my coat back on. “And we don’t dare leave this much iron lying on the ground here.”
“Why not?”
I saw Murphy get out of her gear, and turn to support Molly so Charity could, too. “Would you want visitors leaving radioactive waste around behind them when they left your place?”
“Oh,” he said. “Good point. Because we wouldn’t want to get them mad at us.” He started rolling the mail into a bundle, which he tied into a rough lump with a belt, and slung it over his shoulder.
Howls and wails and horn cries grew louder, though now all to our flanks and the rear. Somehow, in the gale of snow and wind, we had slipped out of the noose the encircling forces had formed around us. If we kept moving, we stood a real chance of getting away clean.
“This entire field trip isn’t what we were meant to think it was,” I told him. “We’ve been used.”
“What? How?”
“Later. Now carry the damn armor, and don’t leave anything lying behind. Move.” The little flutter of Summer fire left in me began to waver, and for a second the wind gained frozen teeth sharp enough to sink all the way into my vitals. “Move!”
I started slogging through the snow again, doing my best to break a path for those coming behind me. Time went by. Wind howled. The snow slashed at my face, and the Summer fire sank to low embers that would not last much longer. They fluttered and faded at almost the precise moment I sensed a rippling of magical energy nearby, and got a whiff of stale popcorn.
The rift shone in the air thirty yards up the slope.
Things, big shaggy things with white fur and long claws, emerged from the snows behind us, running as lightly over the snow and ice as if it had been a concrete sidewalk.
“Thomas!” I pointed at the oncoming threat. “Murph, Charity! You get the girl out of here. Move!”
Murphy looked back and her eyes widened. She immediately ducked under Molly’s other arm and began to help Charity. Charity staggered
for a step, then drew the sword from her belt and thrust it into the snow at my feet, before redoubling her efforts to get Molly over those last few yards.
I transferred my staff to my left hand and took the deadly iron in my right. The last bit of the power Lily loaned me played out, and I didn’t have enough magic left in me to light a candle, much less throw around fire or even use my shield. This was going to be about steel and speed and skill, now, purely physical. Which meant that I probably would have gotten myself quickly killed if Charity hadn’t thought fast and armed me with iron.
As things stood, my brother and I only needed to hold the oncoming yeti-looking things off until the ladies escaped. We didn’t have to actually beat them.
“What are those things?” Thomas asked me.
“Some kind of ogre,” I told him. “Hit them hard and fast. Scare them with iron as much as we can, as fast as we can. If we can get them to come at us cautiously, we might be able to pull off a fighting retreat back up the slope.”
“Got it,” Thomas said. And then, when the first of the snow ogres was maybe thirty feet away, my brother took two steps and bounded into the air. The top of his jump was about ten feet off the snow, and when he came down he held the saber in both hands. The iron weapon sliced cleanly through the ogre’s breastbone and filleted the monster, splitting him open like a steaming baked potato. Its faerie blood took flame, purple and deep blue, and gouted in a blaze of streaming energy.
But Thomas wasn’t done there. The next ogre threw a rock the size of a volleyball at him. Thomas whirled, dodged it, faked to one side, and then cut across the second ogre’s thighs, sending it howling to the ground.
The third ogre hit him with a small tree trunk, baseball style, and turned my brother into a line drive that missed slamming into me by six inches. The ogres howled in fresh aggression and charged.
I’m not a terribly skilled swordsman. I mean, sure, more so than ninety-nine percent of the people on the planet, but among those who know anything about it, I don’t rate well. To make matters worse, my experience was largely in fencing-fighting with a style that uses long, thin blades; a lot of thrusting, a lot of lunging. Charity’s sword would have been at home on the set of Conan the Barbarian, and I had only a basic under-standing of using the heavier slashing weapon. I have two advantages as fencer. First, I’m quick, especially for a guy my size. As long as something isn’t superhumanly fast, I don’t get massively outclassed. Second, I have really long arms and legs, and my lunge could hit a target from a county away.
