Jim Butcher: Summer Knight

"You paid for it," I said. "Stay here. Stay down. You've done enough."

She shook her head and said, "One thing more." But she settled down on the ground, hand pressed to her wounded side, panting.

Aurora said something sharp to Korrick. The centaur bowed his head to her and, spear gripped in his hand, came down the hill toward us.

"Crap," I said. "Billy, this guy is a heavy hitter. Don't close with him. See if you can keep him distracted."

Billy barked in acknowledgment, and the werewolves shot forward as the centaur descended, fanning out around him and harrying his flanks and rear while their companions dodged his hooves and spear.

"Stay with Meryl," I told Fix, and scooted around the werewolves' flanks, heading up the hill toward the Stone Table.

I got close enough to the top to see Aurora standing over the statue of Lily. She held Mother Winter's Unraveling in her fingers, pressed against the statue, and she was tugging sharply at the strands, beginning to pull it to pieces. I felt something as she did, a kind of dark gravity that jerked at my wizard's senses with sharp, raking fingers. The Unraveling began to come apart, strand by strand and line by line, under Aurora's slender hands.

I stretched out my hand, adrenaline and pain giving me plenty of fuel for the magic, and called, " Ventas servitas! " Wind leapt out in a sudden spurt, seizing the Unraveling and tearing it from Aurora's fingers, sending it spinning through the air toward me. I caught it, stuck my tongue out at Aurora, yelled, "Meep, meep!" and ran like hell.

"Damn thee, wizard!" screamed Aurora, and the sound raked at me with jagged talons. She lifted her hands and shouted something else, and the ground itself shook, throwing me off my feet. I landed and rolled as best I could down the hill until I reached the bottom. It took me a second to drag in a breath, then I rolled to my back to sit up.

Sudden wind slashed at me, slamming me back down to the earth, and tore the Unraveling from my hands. I looked up to see Aurora take the bit of cloth from the air with casual contempt, and start back up the hill. I struggled to sit up and follow, but the wind kept me pinned there, unable to rise from the ground.

"No more interruptions," Aurora spat, and gestured with one hand.

The ground screamed. From it, writhing up with whipping, ferocious motion, came a thick hedge of thorns as long as my hand. It rose into place in a ring around the waist of the hill, so dense that I couldn't see Aurora behind it.

I fought against Aurora's spell, but couldn't overcome it physically, and I didn't even bother to try to rip it to shreds with sheer main magical strength. I stopped struggling and closed my eyes to begin to feel my way through it, to take it apart from the inside. But even as I did, Fix started screaming, "Harry? Harry! Help!"

One of the werewolves let loose a high-pitched scream of agony, and then another. My concentration wavered, and I struggled to regain it. Those people were here because of me, and I would be damned if I would let anything more happen to them. I tried to hang on to the focus, the detachment I would need to concentrate, to unravel Aurora's spell, but my fear and my anger and my worry made it all but impossible. They would have lent strength to a spell, but this was delicate work, and now my emotions, so often a source of strength, only got in the way.

Then hooves galloped up, striking the ground near me. I looked up to see the warrior in green armor, the only rider of those original Sidhe cavalry to stay mounted, standing over me, horse stamping, spear leveled at my head.

"Don't!" I said. "Wait!"

But the rider ignored me, lifted the spear, its tip gleaming in the silver light, and drove it down at my unprotected throat.

The spear drove into the earth beside my neck, and the rider hissed in an impatient female voice, "Hold still."

She swung down from the faerie steed, reached up, and took off the masked helm. Elaine's wheat-brown hair spilled down, escaping from the bun it had been tied in, and she jerked it all the way down irritably. "Hold still. I'll get that off you."

"Elaine," I said. I went through a bunch of heated emotions, and I didn't have time for any of them. "I'd say I was glad to see you, but I'm not sure."

"That's because you always were a little dense, Harry," she said, her voice tart. Then she smoothed her features over, her eyes falling half closed, and spread her gloved hands over my chest. She muttered something to herself and then said, "Here. Samanyana. "

There was a surge of gentle power, and the wind pinning me to the ground abruptly vanished. I pushed myself back to my feet.

"All right," she said. "Let's get out of here."

"No," I said. "I'm not done." I recovered my valise and my staff. "I need to get through those thorns."

"You can't," Elaine said. "Harry, I know this spell. Those thorns aren't just pointy, they're poisonous. If one of them scratches you, you'll be paralyzed in a couple of minutes. Two or three will kill you."

I scowled at the barrier and settled my grip on my staff.

"And they won't burn, either," Elaine added.

"Oh." I ground my teeth. "I'll just force them aside, then."

"That'll be like holding open a screen door, Harry. They'll just fall back into place when your concentration wavers."

"Then it won't waver."

"You can't do it, Harry," Elaine said. "If you start pushing through, Aurora will sense it and she'll tear you apart. If you're holding the thorns off you, you won't be able to defend yourself."

I lowered my staff and looked from the thorns back to Elaine. "All right," I said. "Then you'll have to hold them off me."

Elaine's eyes widened. "What?"

"You hold the thorns back. I'll go through."

"You're going to go up against Aurora? Alone? "

"And you're going to help me," I said.

Elaine bit her lip, looking away from me.

"Come on, Elaine," I said. "You've already betrayed her. And I am going through those thorns, with your help or without it."

"I don't know."

"Yeah, you do," I said. "If you were going to kill me, you've already had your chance. And if Aurora finishes what she's doing, I'm dead anyway."

"You don't understand—"

"I know I don't," I snapped. "I don't understand why you're helping her. I don't understand how you can stand by and let her do the things she's done. I don't understand how you can stand here and let that girl die." I let that sink in for a second before I added, quietly, "And I don't understand how you could betray me like that. Again."

"For all you know," Elaine said, "it will happen a third time. I'll let those thorns close on you halfway through and kill you for her."

"Maybe so," I said. "But I don't want to believe that, Elaine. We loved each other once upon a time. I know you aren't a coward and you aren't a killer. I want to believe that what we had really meant something, even now. That I can trust you with my life the way you can trust me with yours."

She let out a bitter little laugh and said, "You don't know what I am anymore, Harry." She looked at me. "But I believe you. I know I can trust you."

"Then help me."

She nodded and said, "You'll have to run. I'm not as strong as you, and this is brute work. I won't be able to lift it for long."

I nodded at her. Doubt nagged at me as I did. What if she did it again? Elaine hadn't exactly been sterling in the up-front-honesty department. I watched as she focused, her lovely face going blank, and felt her draw in her power, folding her arms over her chest, palms over either shoulder like an Egyptian sarcophagus.

Hell, I had ten million ways to die all around me. What was one over another? At least this way, if I went out, I'd go out doing something worthwhile. I turned and crouched, bag and staff in hand.