The Dresden Files Collection 1-6 Read online

  I’m in the book.

  Author’s Note

  When I was seven years old, I got a bad case of strep throat and was out of school for a whole week. During that time, my sisters bought me my first fantasy and sci-fi novels: the boxed set of Lord of the Rings and the boxed set of the Han Solo adventure novels by Brian Daley. I devoured them all during that week.

  From that point on, I was pretty much doomed to join SF&F fandom. From there, it was only one more step to decide I wanted to be a writer of my favorite fiction material, and here we are.

  I blame my sisters.

  My first love as a fan is swords-and-horses fantasy. After Tolkien I went after C. S. Lewis. After Lewis, it was Lloyd Alexander. After them came Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Robert Howard, John Norman, Poul Anderson, David Eddings, Weis and Hickman, Terry Brooks, Elizabeth Moon, Glen Cook, and before I knew it I was a dual citizen of the United States and Lankhmar, Narnia, Gor, Cimmeria, Krynn, Amber—you get the picture.

  When I set out to become a writer, I spent years writing swords-and-horses fantasy novels—and seemed to have little innate talent for it. But I worked at my writing, branching out into other areas as experiments, including SF, mystery, and contemporary fantasy. That’s how the Dresden Files initially came about—as a happy accident while trying to accomplish something else. Sort of like penicillin.

  But I never forgot my first love, and to my immense delight and excitement, one day I got a call from my agent and found out that I was going to get to share my newest swords-and-horses fantasy novel with other fans.

  The Codex Alera is a fantasy series set within the savage world of Carna, where spirits of the elements, known as furies, lurk in every facet of life, and where many intelligent races vie for security and survival. The realm of Alera is the monolithic civilization of humanity, and its unique ability to harness and command the furies is all that enables its survival in the face of the enormous, sometimes hostile elemental powers of Carna, and against savage creatures who would lay Alera in waste and ruin.

  Yet even a realm as powerful as Alera is not immune to destruction from within, and the death of the heir apparent to the Crown has triggered a frenzy of ambitious political maneuvering and in-fighting amongst the High Lords, those who wield the most powerful furies known to man. Plots are afoot, traitors and spies abound, and a civil war seems inevitable—all while the enemies of the realm watch, ready to strike at the first sign of weakness.

  Tavi is a young man living on the frontier of Aleran civilization—because let’s face it, swords-and-horses fantasies start there. Born a freak, unable to utilize any powers of furycrafting whatsoever, Tavi has grown up relying upon his own wits, speed, and courage to survive. When an ambitious plot to discredit the Crown lays Tavi’s home, the Calderon Valley, naked and defenseless before a horde of the barbarian Marat, the boy and his family find themselves directly in harm’s way.

  There are no titanic High Lords to protect them, no Legions, no Knights with their mighty furies to take the field. Tavi and the free frontiersmen of the Calderon Valley must find some way to uncover the plot and to defend their homes against a merciless horde of Marat and their beasts.

  It is a desperate hour, when the fate of all Alera hangs in the balance, when a handful of ordinary steadholders must find the courage and strength to defy an overwhelming foe, and when the courage and intelligence of one young man will save the Realm—or destroy it.

  Thank you, readers and fellow fans, for all of your support and kindness. I hope that you enjoy reading the books of the Codex Alera as much as I enjoyed creating them for you.

  —Jim

  * * *

  Furies of Calderon, Academ’s Fury, and Cursor’s Fury are available in paperback from Ace Books.

  * * *

  ALSO BY JIM BUTCHER

  THE DRESDEN FILES

  STORM FRONT

  GRAVE PERIL

  SUMMER KNIGHT

  DEATH MASKS

  BLOOD RITES

  DEAD BEAT

  PROVEN GUILTY

  WHITE NIGHT

  SMALL FAVOR

  THE CODEX ALERA

  FURIES OF CALDERON

  ACADEM’S FURY

  CURSOR’S FURY

  CAPTAIN’S FURY

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thrity-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  ROC

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  Copyright © Jim Butcher, 2001

  All rights reserved

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  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  Chapter One

  I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon. So I didn’t know that it was one night shy of being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally’s pub and asked me to tell her all about something that could get her killed.

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” I folded the piece of paper, with its drawings of three concentric rings of spidery symbols, and slid it back over the polished oak-wood table.

  Kim Delaney frowned at me, and brushed some of her dark, shining hair back from her forehead. She was a tall woman, buxom and lovely in an old-world way, with pale, pretty skin and round cheeks well used to smiling. She wasn’t smiling now.

  “Oh, come on, Harry,” she told me. “You’re Chicago’s only practicing professional wizard, and you’re the only one who can help me.” She leaned across the table toward me, her eyes intent. “I can’t find the references for all of these symbols. No one in local circles recognizes them either. You’re the only real wizard I’ve ever even heard of, much less know. I just want to know what these others are.”

  “No,” I told her. “You don’t want to know. You’re better off forgetting this circle and concentrating on something else.”

  “But—”

  Mac caught my attention from behind the bar by waving a hand at me, and slid a couple of plates of steaming food onto the polished surface of the crooked oak bar. He added a couple of bottles of his homemade brown ale, and my mouth started watering.

  My stomach made an unhappy noise. It was almost as empty as my wallet. I would never have been able to afford dinner tonight, except that Kim had offered to buy, if I’d talk to her about something during the meal. A steak dinner was less than my usual rate, but she was pleasant company, and a sometime apprentice of mine. I knew she didn’t have much money, and I had even less.

  Despite my rumbling stomach, I didn’t rise immediately to pick up the food. (In McAnally’s pub and grill, there aren’t any service people. According to Mac, if you can’t get up and walk over to pick up your own order, you don’t need to be there at all.) I looked around the room for a moment, with its annoying combination of low ceilings and lazily spinning fans, its thirteen carved wooden columns and its thirteen windows, plus thirteen tables arranged haphazardly to defray and scatter the residual magical effects that sometimes surrounded hungry (in other words, angry) wizards. McAnally’s was a haven in a town where no one believed in magic. A lot of the crowd ate there.

  “Look, Harry,” Kim said. “I’m not using this for anything serious, I promise. I’m not trying any summoning or binding. It’s an academic interest only. Something that’s been bothering me for a while.” She leaned forward and put her hand over mine, looking me in the face without looking me in the eyes, a trick that few nonpractitioners of the Art could master. She grinned and showed me the deep dimples in her cheeks.

  My stomach growled again, and I glanced over at the food on the bar, waiting for me. “You’re sure?” I asked her. “This is just you trying to scratch an itch? You’re not using it for anything?”

  “Cross my heart,” she said, doing so.

  I frowned. “I don’t know . . .”

  She laughed at me. “Oh, come on, Harry. It’s no big deal. Look, if you don’t want to tell me, never mind. I’ll buy you dinner anyway. I know you’re tight for money lately. Since that thing last spring, I mean.”

  I glowered, but not at Kim. It wasn’t her fault that my main employer, Karrin Murphy, the director of Special Investigations at the Chicago Police Department, hadn’t called me in for consulting work in more than a month. Most of my living for the past few years had come from serving as a special consultant to SI, but after a fracas last spring involving a dark wizard fighting a gang war for control of Chicago’s drug trade, work with SI had slowly tapered off—and with it, my income.

  I didn’t know why Murphy hadn’t been calling me in as often. I had my suspicions, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to confront her about them yet. Maybe it wasn’t anything I’d done. Maybe the monsters had gone on strike. Yeah, right.

  The bottom line was I was strapped for cash. I’d been eating ramen noodles and soup for too many weeks. The steaks Mac had prepared smelled like heaven, even from across the room. My belly protested again, growling its neolithic craving for charred meat.

  But I couldn’t just go and eat the dinner without giving Kim the information she wanted. It’s not that I’ve never welshed on a deal, but I’ve never done it with anyone human—and definitely not with someone who looked up to me.

  Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

  “All right, all right,” I sighed. “Let me get the dinner and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Kim’s round cheeks dimpled again. “Thanks, Harry. This means a lot to me.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I told her, and got up to weave my way toward the bar, through columns and tables and so on. McAnally’s had more people than usual tonight, and though Mac rarely smiled, there was a contentment to his manner that indicated that he was happy with the crowd. I snatched up the plates and bottles with a somewhat petulant attitude. It’s hard to take much joy in a friend’s prosperity when your own business is about to go under.

  I took the food, steaks and potatoes and green beans, back to the table and sat down again, placing Kim’s plate in front of her. We ate for a while, myself in sullen silence and she in hearty hunger.

  “So,” Kim said, finally. “What can you tell me about that?” She gestured toward the piece of paper with her fork.

  I swallowed my food, took a sip of the rich ale, and picked up the paper again. “All right. This is a figure of High magic. Three of them, really, one inside the other, like layered walls. Remember what I told you about magical circles?”

  Kim nodded. “They either hold something out or keep it in. Most work on magic energies or creatures of the Nevernever, but mortal creatures can cross the circles and break them.”

  “Right,” I said. “That’s what this outermost circle of symbols is. It’s a barrier against creatures of spirit and magical forces. These symbols here, here, here, are the key ones.” I pointed out the squiggles in question.

  Kim nodded eagerly. “I got the outer one. What’s the next?”

  “The second circle is more of a spell barrier to mortal flesh. It wouldn’t work if all you used was a ring of symbols. You’d need something else, stones or gems or something, spaced between the drawings.” I took another bite of steak.

  Kim frowned at the paper, and then at me. “And then what would that do?”

  “Invisible wall,” I told her. “Like bricks. Spirits, magic, could go right through it, but mortal flesh couldn’t. Neither could a thrown rock, bullets, anything purely physical.”

  “I see,” she said, excited. “Sort of a force field.”

  I nodded. “Something like that.”

  Her cheeks glowed with excitement, and her eyes shone. “I knew it. And what’s this last one?”

  I squinted at the innermost ring of symbols, frowning. “A mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that it’s just gobbledygook. It doesn’t mean anything useful. Are you sure you copied this correctly?”

  Kim’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I’m sure, I’m sure. I was careful.”

  I studied her face for a moment. “If I read the symbols correctly, it’s a third wall. Built to withhold creatures of flesh and spirit. Neither mortal nor spirit but somewhere in between.”

  She frowned. “What kind of creatures are like that?”

  I shrugged. “None,” I said, and officially, it was true. The White Council of wizards did not allow the discussion of demons that could be called to earth, beings of spirit that could gather flesh to themselves. Usually, a spirit-circle was enough to stop all but the most powerful demons or Elder Things of the outer reaches of the Nevernever. But this third circle was built to st
op things that could transcend those kinds of boundaries. It was a cage for demonic demigods and archangels.

  Kim wasn’t buying my answer. “I don’t see why anyone would make a circle like this to contain nothing, Harry.”

  I shrugged. “People don’t always do reasonable, sensible things. They’re like that.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Come on, Harry. I’m not a baby. You don’t have to shelter me.”

  “And you,” I told her, “don’t need to know what kind of thing that third circle was built to contain. You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

  She glowered at me for a long moment, then sipped at her ale and shrugged. “All right. Circles have to be empowered, right? You have to know how to switch them on, like lights?”

  “Something like that. Sure.”

  “How would a person turn this one on?”

  I stared at her for a long time.

  “Harry?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to know that, either. Not for an academic interest. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, Kim, but leave it alone. Forget it. Walk away, before you get hurt.”

  “Harry, I am not—”

  “Save it,” I told her. “You’re sitting on a tiger cage, Kim.” I thumped a finger on the paper for emphasis. “And you wouldn’t need it if you weren’t planning on trying to stick a tiger in there.”

  Her eyes glittered, and she lifted her chin. “You don’t think I’m strong enough.”

  “Your strength’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “You don’t have the training. You don’t have the knowledge. I wouldn’t expect a kid in grade school to be able to sit down and figure out college calculus. And I don’t expect it of you, either.” I leaned forward. “You don’t know enough yet to be toying with this sort of thing, Kim. And even if you did, even if you did manage to become a full-fledged wizard, I’d still tell you not to do it. You mess this up and you could get a lot of people hurt.”

  “If I was planning to do that, it’s my business, Harry.” Her eyes were bright with anger. “You don’t have the right to choose for me.”