Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) - Jim Butcher Page 0,121

relaxed as I could and counted the heartbeats.

Somewhere between seventy-four and seventy-five, Auroras circle vanished. I reached out for power, gathering it in, shaping it in my mind. I didnt want to rush it, but it was hard not to. I took all the time I could without panicking, before I reached out again for the fabric of Elaines spell.

Id been right. It was the same binding shed used when we were kids, when shed been holding me down while my old master, Justin DuMorne, prepared to enthrall me. Id found the way out as a kid, because Elaine and I had shared a certain impatience for our magical studies. Besides schoolwork, wed been forced to pursue an entirely different regimen of spells and mental disciplines as well. Some nights, we would have homework until dinner, then head right for the magical stuff until well after midnight, working out spells and formulae until our eyes ached.

Toward the end, that got to be rough when all we really wanted was to be in bed, doing things much less scholarly and much more hormonal, until other parts ached. Ahem. To that end, wed split the work. One of us would work out the spell while the other did the homework, then a quick round of copying and straight to bed.

Id been the one who worked out that binding. And it sucked.

It sucked because it had no flexibility to it, no subtlety, no class. It dropped a cocoon of hardened air around the target and locked it there, period. End of story. As teenagers, we had thought it impressively effective and simple. As a desperate man about to die, I realized that it was a brittle spell, like a diamond that was simultaneously the hardest substance on earth and easily fractured if struck at the correct angle.

Now that I knew what I was doing, I found the clumsy center of the spell, where Id located it all those years ago, tying all the strands of energy together at the small of the back like a Christmas bow. There in the mud and darkness, I focused on the weak spot of the spell, gathered my will, and muttered, with my mouth clenched closed, "Tappitytaptap." It came out, "Mmphitymmphmph," but that didnt make any difference on the practical side. The spell was clear in my head. A spike of energy lashed into the binding, and I felt it loosen.

My heart pounded with excitement and I reached out with the spell again. The third time I tried it, the binding slipped, and I flexed my arms and legs, pulling them slowly free.

Id done it. Id escaped the binding.

Now I was merely drowning in what amounted to quicksand.

The clock was running against me as I started to feel dizzy, as my lungs struggled against my will, trying to force out what little air remained and suck in a deep breath of nice, cleansing muck. I reached for more power, gathered it in, and hoped I hadnt spun around without noticing. I pushed my palms toward my feet, just as my lungs forced me to exhale, and shouted with it, " Forzare! "

Naked force lashed out toward my feet, bruising one leg as it swept past. Even in magic, you cant totally ignore physics, and my action of exerting force down against the earth had the predictable equal and opposite reaction. The earth exerted force up toward me, and I flew out of the mud, muck and water flying up with me in a cloud of spray. I had a wild impression of mist and dreary ground and then a tree, and then it was replaced with a teeth-rattling impact.

By the time Id coughed out a mouthful of mud and choked air back into my lungs, I had the presence of mind to wipe mud out of my eyes. I found myself twenty feet off the ground, dangling from the branches of one of the skeletal trees. My arms and legs hung loosely beneath me, and my jeans felt tight at the waist. I tried to see how Id gotten hung up that way, but I couldnt. I could possibly get a hand and a foot on different branches, but I could barely wiggle, and I couldnt get loose.

"You foil a Faerie Queen," I panted to myself. "Survive your own execution. Get away from certain death. And get stuck up a freaking tree." I struggled some more, just as uselessly. One mud-covered boot fell off and hit the