Jim Butcher - Changes

“Oh, my, yes,” the Leanansidhe said, looking skyward dreamily.

“So do something !” I howled at her.

“I already am,” she assured me.

She removed a small emerald from a pocket of her gown and flung it skyward. It sparkled and flashed, and flew up out of the light of torches and swords, and vanished into the night. A few seconds later, it exploded in a cloud of merry green sparks.

“There. That place will do,” she said, clapping her hands and bouncing up and down on her toes. “Now we shall see a real dance.”

Green lightning split the sky, erupting with such a burst of thunder that the ground shook. Instead of fading, though, the thunder grew louder as more and more strokes of lightning flared out from the area of sky where Lea’s gem had exploded into light.

Then a sheet of a dozen separate green bolts of lightning fell all at the same time onto the ground of the ball court twenty yards away, blowing smoking craters in the ground.

It took my dazzled eyes a few seconds to recover from that, and when they did, my heart almost stopped.

Standing on the ball court were twelve figures.

Twelve people in shapeless grey robes. Grey cloaks. Grey hoods.

And every single one of them held a wizard’s staff in one hand.

The Grey Council.

The Grey Council!

The nearest figure was considerably shorter than me and stout, but he stood with his feet planted as if he intended to move the world. He lifted his staff, smote it on the ground, then boomed, “Remember Archangel!” He spoke a single, resonating word as he thrust the tip of the implement at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.

The second floor of the stadium-temple where they stood . . . simply exploded. A force hit the ancient structure like an enormous bulldozer blade rushing forward at Mach 2. It smashed into the temple. Stone screamed. The Red King, the Lords of Outer Night, and several thousand tons of the temple’s structure went flying back through the air with enough violent energy to send a shock wave rebounding from the point of impact.

The massive display of force brought a second of stunned silence to the field—and I was just as slack-jawed as anyone.

Then I threw back my head and let out a primal scream of triumph and glee. The Grey Council had come.

We were not alone.

The echo of my scream seemed to be a signal, sending the rest of us back to fighting for our lives. I blew a few more vampires away from my friends, and then sensed a rush of supernatural energy coming at me. I turned and caught a tide of ruinous Red power upon my shield, and hurled a blast of flame back at a Red Court noble in massive amounts of jewelry. Others in their ranks began to open up on the newly arrived Grey Council, who responded in kind, and the air was filled with a savage crisscross of exchanged energies.

The stocky figure in grey stumped up to me and said casually, “How you doing, Hoss?”

I felt my face stretch into a fierce grin, but I answered him just as casually. “Sort of wish I’d brought a staff with me. Other than that . . . can’t complain.”

From within his hood, Ebenezar grunted. “Nice outfit.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I liked your ride. Good mileage?”

“As long as there’s some carpet to scuff your feet on,” he said, and tossed me his staff. “Here.”

I felt the energies moving through the implement at once. It was a better-made staff than mine, but Ebenezar had been the one to teach me how they were made, and both staves I had used over the years had been carved from branches of the lightning-struck oak in the front yard of his little farm in the Ozarks. I could make use of this staff almost as well as if it were my own.

“What about you?” I asked him. “Don’t you want it?”

He batted a precisely aimed thrown ax from the air with a flick of his hand and a word of power, and drawled, “I got another one.”

Ebenezar McCoy extended his left hand and spoke another word, and darkness swirled from the shadows and condensed into a staff of dark, twisted wood, unmarked by any kind of carving whatsoever.

The Blackstaff.

“Fuego!” shouted someone on the walls—and for a second I was hit with a little sting of insult. Someone was shouting “ fuego ” and it wasn’t me.

While I was feeling irrational pique, guns started barking, and they aimed at me first. Bullets rang sharply as they hit my armor, rebounding from it and barely leaving a mark. It was like getting hit with small hailstones: uncomfortable but not really dangerous—unless one of them managed a head shot.

Ebenezar turned toward the walls from which the soldiers were firing. Hits thumped into his robes, but seemed to do little but stir the fabric and then fall at his feet. The old man said, mostly to himself, “You took the wrong contract, boys.”

Then he swept the Blackstaff from left to right, murmured a word, and ripped the life from a hundred men.

They just . . . died.

There was absolutely nothing to mark their deaths. No sign of pain. No struggle. No convulsion of muscles. No reaction at all. One moment they were firing wildly down at us—and the next, they simply—

Dropped.

Dead.

The old man turned to the other wall, and I saw two or three of the brighter soldiers throw their guns down and run. I don’t know if they made it, but the old man swept the Blackstaff through the air again, and the gunmen on that side of the field dropped dead where they stood.

My godmother watched it happen, and bounced and clapped her hands some more, as delighted as a child at the circus.

I stared for a second, shocked. Ebenezar had just shattered the First Law of Magic: Thou shalt not kill. He had used magic to directly end the life of another human being—nearly two hundred times. I mean, yes, I had known what his office allowed him to do. . . . But there was a big difference between appreciating a fact and seeing that terrible truth in motion.

The Blackstaff itself pulsed and shimmered with shadowy power, and I got the sudden sense that the thing was alive , that it knew its purpose and wanted nothing more than to be used, as often and as spectacularly as possible.

I also saw veins of venomous black begin to ooze their way over the old man’s hand, reaching up slowly, spreading to his wrist. He grimaced and held his left forearm with his right hand for a moment, then looked over his shoulder and said, “All right!”

The farthest grey figure, tall and lean, lifted his staff. I saw light gleam off of metal at one end of the staff, and then green lightning enfolded the length of wood as he thrust the metal end into the ground. He took the staff back—but the twisting length of green lightning stayed. He drove the staff down again about six feet away, and again lightning sheathed it. Then he removed the staff, reversed his grip on it, and with a sweep of his arm drew another shaft of lightning between the two upright columns of electricity, bridging the gap.

He was opening a Way.

There was a flash of light, and the space between the bolts of lightning warped and went dark—then exploded with black figures bearing swords. For the first moment, I thought that they were wearing odd costumes, or maybe weird armor. Their faces were shaped something like a crow’s, complete with a long yellow beak. They were wearing clothes that seemed to be made from feathers—and then I got it.

They actually were beak-faced creatures, covered in soft black feathers and carrying swords, each and every one of them a Japanese-style katana. They poured out of the gate by the score, by the hundreds , and began to bound forward with unnaturally long leaps that seemed only technically different from flying. They looked deadly and beautiful, all grace, speed, and perfection of motion. The wild light of the One-woman Rave glittered off of their blades and glassy black eyes.