Summer Knight

Suspicion grew in his gaze, but Aurora laid a hand on his shoulder. Slate’s eyes grew a little cloudy at her touch, and he closed them. "Peace, my Knight," the Summer Lady murmured. "The wizard is a trickster, and desperate. He would say anything he thought might save him. Nothing has changed between us."

I ground my teeth at the meaningless words, but Aurora had Slate’s number, whatever it was. Maybe all that time in Maeve’s company had softened him, the drugs and pleasures she fed him making him more open to suggestion. Maybe Aurora had just found a hole in his psychology. Either way, he wasn’t going to listen to me.

I looked around, but Korrick and Talos ignored me. Aurora kept on whispering to Slate. That left only one person to talk to, and the thought of it felt like someone driving nails into my chest. "Elaine," I said. "This is crazy. Why are you doing this?"

She didn’t look up at me. "Survival, Harry. I promised to help Aurora or to give up my own life as forfeit in payment for all the years she protected me. I didn’t know when I made the promise that you were going to be involved." She fell quiet for a moment, then swallowed before she said, her voice forced a little louder, "I didn’t know."

"If Aurora isn’t stopped, someone is going to get hurt."

"Someone gets hurt every day," Elaine answered. "When you get right down to it, does it matter who? How? Or why?"

"People are going to die, Elaine."

That stung her, and she looked up at me, sharp anger warring with a sheen of tears in her grey eyes. "Better them than me."

I faced her, without looking away. "Better me than you, too, huh?"

She broke first, turning to regard Aurora and Slate. "Looks that way."

I folded my arms and leaned against the back of my toadstool cell. I went over my options, but they were awfully limited. If Aurora wanted me dead, she would be able to see to it quite handily, and unless the cavalry came riding over the hill, there wasn’t diddly I could do about it.

Call me a pessimist, but my life has been marked with a notable lack of cavalry. Checkmate.

Which left me with one last spell to throw. I closed my eyes for a moment, reaching inside, gathering up the magic, the life force within me. Any wizard has a reservoir of power inherent in him, power drawn from the core of his self rather than from his surroundings. Aurora’s circle could cut me off from drawing upon ambient magic to fuel a spell – but it couldn’t stop me from using the energy within me.

Granted, once used, there wouldn’t be anything left to keep me breathing, my heart pumping, and electricity going through my brain. But then, that’s why they call it a death curse, isn’t it?

It was only a moment later that I opened my eyes, to see Aurora draw back from Lloyd Slate. The Winter Knight focused his eyes on me, scary eyes empty of anything like reason, and drew the sword from his belt.

"A grim business," Aurora said. "Good-bye, Mister Dresden."

Chapter Twenty-eight

I faced Slate head-on. I figured as long as I was going to take one of those swords, it might as well have a shot of killing me pretty quick. No sense in dragging it out. But I left my eyes on Aurora and held whatever power I had gathered up and ready.

"I am sorry, wizard," Aurora said.

"You’re about to be," I muttered.

Slate drew back his blade, an Oriental job without enough class to be an actual katana, and tensed, preparing to strike. The blade glittered and looked really, really sharp.

Elaine caught Slate’s wrist and said, "Wait."

Aurora gave Elaine a sharp and angry look. "What are you doing?"

"Protecting you," Elaine said. "If you let Slate kill him, he’ll break the circle around Dresden."

Aurora looked from Elaine to me and back. "And?"

"Elaine!" I snarled.

She regarded me with flat eyes. "And you’ll leave yourself open to his death curse. He’ll take you with him. Or make you wish he had."

Aurora lifted her chin. "He isn’t that strong."

"Don’t be so sure," Elaine said. "He’s the strongest wizard I’ve ever met. Strong enough to make the White Council nervous. Why take a pointless risk so close to the end?"

"You treacherous bitch," I said. "God damn you, Elaine."

Aurora frowned at me and then gestured to Slate. He lowered the sword and put it away. "Yet he is too dangerous to leave alive."

"Yes," Elaine agreed.

"What would you suggest?"

"We’re in the Nevernever," Elaine said. "Arrange his death and leave. Once you are back in mortal lands, he won’t be able to reach you. Let him spend his curse on Mab if he wishes, or on his godmother. But it won’t be on you."

"But when I leave, my power will go with me. He won’t be held by the circle. What do you suggest?"

Elaine regarded me passionlessly. "Drown him," she said finally. "Call water and let the earth drink him. I’ll lock him into place with a binding of my own. Mortal magic will last, even after I’ve left."

Aurora nodded. "Are you capable of holding him?"

"I know his defenses," Elaine responded. "I’ll hold him as long as necessary."

Aurora regarded me in silence for a moment. "So much rage," she said. "Very well, Elaine. Hold him."

It didn’t take her long. Elaine had always been smoother at magic than me, more graceful. She murmured something in the language she’d chosen for her magic, some variant on Old Egyptian, adding a roll of her wrist, a graceful ripple of her fingers, and I felt her spell lock around me like a full-body straitjacket, paralyzing me from chin to toes, wrapping me in silent, unseen force. It pressed against my clothes, flattening them, and made it hard to take a deep breath.

At the same time, Aurora closed her eyes, her hands spread at her side. Then she leveled her palms and slowly raised them. From within the circle, I couldn’t sense what she was doing, but there wasn’t anything wrong with my eyes and ears. The ground gurgled, and there was a sudden scent of rotten eggs. I felt the earth beneath me shift and sag, and then a slow "bloop bloop" of earth settling as water began rising up beneath me. It took maybe five seconds for the ground to become so soft that my feet sank into the warm mud, up to my ankles. Hell’s bells.

"Mortal time is racing," Aurora said, and opened her eyes. "The day grows short. Come."

Without so much as glancing at me, she swept away into the mist. Slate fell into place at her heels, and Talos followed several paces behind, slim and dangerous in his dark armor. Korrick the centaur spared me a sneer and a satisfied snort before he gripped a short, heavy spear in his broad fist and turned to follow the Summer Lady, hooves striking down in decisive clops.