Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

My companions had been taken by surprise-just a second or two, but as far as Charity was concerned it might as well have been forever. There was no time for thought. Before I realized what I was doing, I took a pair of long steps, shifting my grip on my staff as I went, and swung it like a golf club at the fetch’s head. It impacted with a meaty thunk.

Its head flew off, bounced off of a pillar, and rolled to a stop not far from the rest of the thing. I had only a second to regard the doll’s features before it began dissolving into ectoplasm.

Thomas blinked at it and said, “That was Bucky the Murder Doll.”

“Kind of a wimp,” I said.

Thomas nodded. “Must have been the runt of the litter.”

I traded a glance with Murphy. “Personally,” I said, “I never understood how anyone could have found that thing frightening to begin with.” Then I went to Charity’s side and offered her a hand up. She grimaced and took it. “Are you all right?”

“Nothing broken,” she replied. She winced and put her hand to her back. “I should have stretched out.”

“Next time we’ll know better,” I said. “Lily? Is that it?”

The Summer Lady’s eyes went distant for a moment and then she murmured, “Yes. There are no longer agents of Winter in this place. Come.”

She stepped forward and the doors to the theater proper opened of their own accord. We followed. It was your typical movie theater. Not one of the new stadium-seating fancy theaters, but one of the old models with only a slight incline in the floor. Light played over the screen, though the projector was not running. Spectral colors shifted, faded, changed, and melded like the aurora borealis, and I was struck with the sudden intuition that the color and light were somehow being projected from the opposite side of the screen. The air grew even colder as we followed Lily down the aisle.

She stopped in front of the screen, staring blankly at it for a moment, then shuddered. “Dresden,” she said quietly. “This crossing leads to Arctis Tor.”

My stomach fluttered again. “Oh, crap.”

I saw Thomas arch an eyebrow at me out of the corner of my eye.

“Crap?” Murphy asked. “Why? What is that place?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s the heart of Winter. It’s like…” I shook my head. “Think the Tower of London, the Fortress of Solitude, Fort Knox, and Alcatraz all rolled up into one giant ball of fun. It’s Mab’s capital. Her stronghold.” I glanced at Lily. “If what I’ve read about it is correct, that is. I’ve never actually seen the place.”

“Your sources were accurate enough, Harry,” Lily said. Her manner remained remote, strained. “This is going to severely limit what help I can give you.”

“Why?” I asked.

Lily stared intently at me for a second, then said, “My power will react violently to that of Mab. I can open the way to the Arctis Tor, but holding the way open for your return will occupy the whole of my strength. Furthermore, so long as I hold the way open I run the risk of letting creatures from deep Winter run free in Chicago. Which means that Fix must remain here to guard the passage against them. I cannot in good conscience send him with you.”

I scowled at the shifting colors on the screen. “So once we go in, we’re on our own.”

“Yes.”

Super. Without Lily and Fix’s power to counter that of the Winter fae within Arctis Tor, our odds of success would undergo a steep reduction- and I had hoped we would be attacking an independent trio of faeries lairing in a cave or under a bridge or something. I hadn’t figured on storming the Bastille.

I looked up and met Charity’s eyes for a second.

I turned back to the dancing lights on the movie screen and told the others, “Things just got a lot worse. I’m still going. None of you have to come with me. I don’t expect you to-”

Before I finished speaking, Charily, Murphy, and Thomas stepped up to stand beside me.

A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching-they are your family.

And they were my heroes.

I nodded at Lily. She closed her eyes, and the shimmering colors on the screen grew brighter, more vibrant. The air grew colder.

“All right,” I said quietly. “Each of you get a hand on my shoulder.” I resettled my grip on my wizard’s staff and murmured, “Round two.”

Every time I opened a way to the Nevernever, it always looked pretty much the same-an uneven vertical rip in the air that let in the sights and sounds and scents of the world on the other side. The longer I wanted the rift to stay open, the bigger I’d rip the hole. More experienced wizards had made a comment or two over the years to suggest that I still had a lot to learn on the subject.

When Lily opened the way to Arctis Tor, I understood why. Light and color shifted over the screen, their flow quickening, deepening. At first nothing else happened. The movie screen was simply a surface. Then the hairs on the back of my neck rose, and a cold wind wafted into my face, bringing with it the dry, sterile scent of winter in high, barren mountains and the high, lonely cry of some kind of wild beast like nothing in the real world.

Deep blue came to dominate the colors on the screen, and a moment later resolved itself into the shapes of mountains towering beneath the light of an impossibly enormous silver moon. They were bleak and hateful stone peaks, wreathed in mist and wrapped in ice and snow. The wind moaned and blew frozen crystals into our faces, then sank into a temporary lull.

The blowing snow cleared just enough to get me my first look at Arctis Tor.

Mab’s stronghold was a fortress of black ice, an enormous, shadowy cube sitting high up the slope of the highest mountain in sight. A single, elegant spire rose above the rest of the structure. Flickers of green and amethyst energy played within the ice of the walls. I couldn’t make a good guess at how big the thing was. The walls and battlements were lined with inverted icicles.

They made me think of the fanged jaws of a hungry predator. A single gate, small in comparison to the rest of the fortress, stood open.

Hell’s bells. How the hell was I supposed to get in there? It was almost a relief when the wind rose again, and blowing snow once more obscured the fortress from view.

It was only then that I realized that the way was open. Lily had brought it forth so smoothly that I hadn’t been able to tell when image gave way to reality. By comparison, my own ability to open a way to the Nevernever was about as advanced as the paintings of a particularly gifted gorilla.

I glanced back at Lily. She gave me a small smile and then gestured with one hand. One of the fiery butterflies fluttering around her altered course and soared over to me. “This much I can do for you all,” she murmured. “It will lead you through the storm, and ward away the cold until you can return here. Do not tarry, wizard. I do not know how long I will be able to hold the way open for your return.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Lily.”

This time her smile was warmer, more like that of the girl she had been before becoming the Summer Lady. “Good luck, Harry.”

Fix took a deep breath and then hopped up onto the stage floor at the base of the movie screen. He turned to offer me a hand up. I took it, stared at the frozen wasteland for a second, and then stepped directly forward, into what had been the screen.

I found myself standing in knee-deep snow, and the howling winds forced my eyes almost shut. I should have been freezing, but whatever enchantment Lily’s blazing butterfly used seemed effective. The air felt almost as warm as that of a ski slope seeing its last day of the season. Thomas, Murphy, and Charity stepped out of a shimmer in the air, and Fix followed them a second later.