Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

Upon the branch of a tree perched a cardinal, its bloodred feathers brilliant, though the bird itself was utterly still. I peered a bit closer, and saw that it was covered in a layer of transparent ice, frozen into a sculpture every bit as much as the rest of the place. Not far from it, a spider’s web spread between some tree branches, the spider at its center also transformed into ice sculpture. A swift look around showed me more beings entombed in ice, and I realized that this place was not a garden.

It was a prison.

Next to the fountain sat a lovely young girl in a Byzantine gown, hand entwined with that of a young man in similar historic costume. Not far from them, three females of the Sidhe, Mab’s kindred, the nobility of faerie kind, stood back-to-back, their shoulders touching in a triangle. The three looked so much alike that they might have been sisters, and they each held hands with the others, expressions of determination and fear frozen onto their faces.

The ice sculpture of a thick, dead-looking tree held a dead, naked man upon it, crucified on its branches as a grotesque work of art. Bonds of ice held him there, transparent enough to let me see the blackened flesh of his hands and feet, the gangrenous darkness spreading upward through the veins of his arms and legs. His hair was long, unwashed, and fell over his face as he hung limp within his bonds, his body coated with layers of crystalline frost.

Molly sat at the base of the same tree. Her artfully shredded clothes had been shredded in truth, and they hung from her as loose rags. Her cotton-candy hair hung in a limp mass, uncombed and tangled. She shuddered with cold, and her eyes stared at nothing. Her expression was twisted as if in effort, her mouth open. It took me a minute to realize that she had never stopped screaming. She’d damaged her throat, and no sound would emerge. But that didn’t stop her from trying.

Charity shifted her weight to hurry forward, but I cautioned her, “Wait. We’ll do her no good if we’re dead.”

She clenched her jaw, but heeded me, and we paused for a moment while I swept my gaze over the rest of the parapet. Some movement in the shadows behind the crucifixion tree drew my eye, and I reached back for the handle of my blasting rod, sticking out of my nylon backpack. I drew the magical tool and primed it with an effort of will. Red-white fire suddenly glowed at its tip. “There. Behind the tree,” I said.

A deep voice let out a rasping chuckle.

Then, from the darkness I couldn’t quite see into, the Scarecrow appeared.

This thing was no fetch, no changer of form and image and illusion. There was no shadowy mask over an amorphous form, no glamour altering its appearance, which my salve would have enabled me to see through. This thing was a whole, independent creature. Unless maybe it was a fetch so old and strong that it could transform itself into the Scarecrow in truth and not simply in seeming.

Red flame glittered in the carved-pumpkin head. Its limbs, all long, tough vines as thick as my wrists, were clothed in ragged tatters of black that looked more like a funeral robe than a farmer’s castoffs. Its long arms trailed almost to the ground, and one of them was stretched over to Molly. At the end of the arm, the vines tapered into dozens of slender, flexible tendrils, and die Scarecrow had them wrapped around Molly’s throat and sliding up into her hair.

We stood in silence, facing one another for a while. Wind moaned somewhere overhead, not far above the parapet. The sounds of hissing and screaming fetches drifted up as if from a great distance. Thomas and Murphy still held the door.

I took several steps to one side and gave the Scarecrow a little smile. “Hi,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

“One who has served the Queen of Air and Darkness since before your kind can remember,” he replied. “One who has destroyed hundreds like you.”

“You know what, Captain Kudzu?” I asked. “I’m not here to play guessing games with you. Give me the girl.”

The bizarre creature’s face twisted in what might been amusement. “Or what follows?”

I wasn’t absolutely certain the thing was quoting Shakespeare, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do it. “Bloody constraint,” I told him. “For should you try to hide the girl from me, even in your heart, there shall I rake for her.”

Maybe the Scarecrow wasn’t a Shakespeare fan. Its eyes flared with angry scarlet light. “Little man. Move an inch closer and I will crush her soft little neck.”

“Inadvisable,” I said, and raised my blasting rod to level it at the Scarecrow. “Because she’s the only thing keeping you alive right now.”

“I fear you not, wizard,” the Scarecrow said. The creature narrowed its eyes, focusing upon me intently-perhaps preparing the same defense that had shed my spells in our first encounter. “Bring your fire, if you think it may survive the heart of Winter. It will avail you against me this time no more than last.”

“You think I’d show up for round two without being prepared to finish what I started?” I asked him. I sidled a couple of more steps to one side. “The Council is already on the way here,” I said. “I’m here to make you an offer before things fall apart. Give me the girl and your word not to go near her again, and I let you live.”

The Scarecrow let out a laugh of pure scorn. “I shall enjoy killing you, mortal.”

I prowled a few steps more and planted my feet, then brandished my staff and rod. The Scarecrow crouched in response, eyes burning even brighter.

I had to be careful. If I spooked him too much, he’d kill Molly as a prelude to closing with me. “You know what your problem is?” I asked him.

He stared at me for a blank second of incomprehension. “What?”

I showed my teeth in a wolfish smile. “You underestimate people.”

While I’d drawn the Scarecrow’s attention and eye, Charity had slipped around behind it, silent as a puff of smoke. As I spoke, she lifted her sword and swept it down at the appendage holding her daughter. The steel blade hissed and flashed and seared its way through the limb holding Molly.

The Scarecrow reared its head back in a sudden howl of rage. Molly’s body bucked in panic as the severed limbs contracted on her throat. I lifted my staff and snarled, “ Forzare !” Unseen force lashed out, caught up Molly as gently as I could manage it, and flipped her tail over teakettle away from the creature. No sooner had I moved her than its stumpy arm swung down to smash into the ground where the girl had been sitting.

The Scarecrow turned to grab at Molly, but Charity stepped into its path, cold steel gleaming, her eyes harder and colder than the black ice of Arctis Tor. She faced the thing squarely and snarled, “You will never touch my daughter again.”

The creature roared in fury and rushed Charity. I whipped up my blasting rod and snarled, “ Fuego !” A lance of flame as thick as my wrist lashed out from the tip of the rod-and died two feet away from it, the burning energy of the magical strike swallowed by an unfathomable ocean of cold, cold power. I had hoped that I could get in a shot while the Scarecrow was distracted, but I had already decided on what to try next if I couldn’t.

I stuck the blasting rod through my belt, whipped my staff up to point the tip at the ground beneath the Scarecrow’s feet, and shouted, “ Forzare !”

Invisible force lashed out and struck the black ice under the Scarecrow like a mortar round. It threw the creature ten feet into the air, spinning end over end. Deadly chips of black ice flew. As the spell’s energy roared out of me, I staggered and almost lost my balance. My vision tunneled for a second or two out of pure exhaustion. I’d been pushing too hard, for too long, with no rest. The magic I’d been using had drained my reserves entirely. The human body has limits that cannot be circumvented, and I had reached mine.