The High Council

by Victor Kloss

  “What is this place?” Natalie asked in a hush, her words echoing slightly in that vast space. Charlie could see her, though dimly, thanks to the torches that burned in sconces along the wall.

  “I think it’s for servants,” he replied just as quietly. “Think about it — why have people carrying food and drink, and blankets and whatever on the main floor when you can have a whole other floor for that right below it? They can enter from the kitchen, cut through here, and pop up again right near the dining room or wherever else they need to be. It’d be faster to go this way, since you can just go straight from one door to another, and that leaves the upstairs clear for soldiers and diplomats, and so on.” He gestured at something like a chute cut into the wall between two doors, with a rope tied to a sturdy iron bar at the top. “That looks like a well,” he said. “I bet there’s an underground lake or something below this hill. The servants can draw water here to fill up pitchers and tubs, and whatever else, all without having to get in the way of the business upstairs.”

  Natalie was nodding. “That makes sense,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t help us get to the dungeons.”

  “No, but I bet that will.” Charlie gestured towards the hole. “I reckon that’s got stairs going down.”

  Sure enough, as they approached the hole they saw wide steps cut into one side and descending to a lower level. It was even darker down there, but Charlie ran back to the nearest wall and took one of the torches.

  “I’ll go first this time,” he offered, and Natalie smiled but didn’t argue.

  It was eerie walking through this place. They had not seen a single dark elf since they’d left the fighting behind, and down here they couldn’t even hear the conflict that must still be taking place upstairs.

  “I hope the others are okay,” Natalie whispered as they walked — these stairs were wide enough for a half-dozen men to take side by side, so she was beside Charlie instead of staying behind him.

  “Yeah, me too,” he agreed. In his mind he warred with the logic that shouted at him that there was almost no hope, that in all probability none of them were getting out of here alive.

  The stairs continued down a way, but finally ended on another floor. This one was not wide open, however. It was high-ceilinged and the stairs let them out onto a wide hall, with barred doors spaced out on either side. The dampness was almost a physical thing, warring with other unpleasant smells. Various old weapons lined the walls, as well as other devices that Charlie didn’t want to think of. This had to be the dungeon.

  Charlie put the torch down so as not to give themselves away and let Natalie go ahead in the now near total darkness. They crept in, spellshooters at the ready. The door opened with an alarming creak that caused Charlie to almost jump out of his skin. However, instead of giving them away, the sound just made something more and more apparent.

  “Where is everybody?” Charlie asked aloud, looking around. Surely a dungeon would have guards.

  “Maybe they were all pulled away for the fight?” Natalie suggested. She didn’t sound convinced, though. What kind of castle didn’t leave at least a few jailers guarding their prisoners?

  Charlie approached the nearest door, and held the torch up to study it. The flickering light of the flames caught and reflected from several strange marks spaced around the tiny barred window, and more of the same around the heavy iron ring that took the place of a doorknob.

  “They’re warded,” Charlie reported. “Looks like touching the door will set them off.” He frowned as he studied the markings. “These look familiar somehow.”

  Natalie joined him. “I don’t recognise them,” she replied. “Though you’re right: they do look a little like something else, something I’ve seen somewhere.” She studied them closely, careful not to touch, then straightened and snapped her fingers. “I know! They’re sort of like goblin!”

  That made Charlie gasp. “Of course!” He pointed at the nearest marks. “I have seen marks like these — but not here. They’re from the Void!”

  The Void! Charlie still shuddered at the thought of that place. It was another dimension, a whole other plane of existence parallel to their own, and he and Ben had gone there in search of Ben’s parents and an ancient dwarf they thought might be one of the Guardians. It had been one of the freakiest experiences of Charlie’s life. In the Void, you were only as strong as you believed you were. For Charlie it had been quite a challenge at first, but in the end he and Ben had managed to fight their way through and get back just in time.

  Now that he knew their origins, Charlie was able to roughly decipher the markings, or at least figure out their intent. “It’s a trap,” he explained. “If you touch them, or the door itself, you’ll wind up being thrown into the Void, and I’d be willing to bet that Suktar’s set up something like a big cage there so that you pop out already captured.”

  “That explains why there aren’t any guards here,” Natalie pointed out. “They don’t need any. Nobody can get the door open because nobody can even touch it.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie sighed. “You know what this means, right?” He shook his head. “Ben’s parents are in the Void — which we knew already. But we’re going to have to go in there and get them.”

  “Okay,” Natalie replied slowly. “But how? Touch the doors? You said that’d probably just pull us into a cage or something.”

  “It would,” he confirmed. “I’m sure of it. But that’s the doors.” He studied the runes again. “If we enter the Void from here in the hall instead, we should be outside whatever trap Suktar set up there.” He gave a dark chuckle. “I hope.”

  Natalie studied him a second, but finally nodded. “This sounds more like a plan Ben would come up with. To be clear, you want us to go into the Void, a place inhabited by demons and creatures of all sorts, in the hope that we don’t end up imprisoned ourselves?”

  She let out a long sigh.

  “Okay. I trust you, Charlie,” she told him with absolute sincerity. “And I really can’t think of any other way. How do we get to the Void?”

  The last time, Charlie and Ben had used amulets they’d bought off an old goblin shaman — at horrendous prices. But Charlie had learned a lot since then, and he had something better at hand.

  “Those runes will transport anyone who touches them. From what I can make out, the end of the runes is the part that locks you in. In theory, if we copy it all except for that part we should have a ready-made door.” He smiled. “And I’m pretty sure I understand them well enough to craft a door back, too. Though Suktar probably has one over there already, otherwise anyone he sends through to check on the cages wouldn’t be able to get back.”

  He stared at the wards and then finally pulled out his sketchbook.

  “Can you help me get all this down? Your drawing is a lot clearer than mine and the last thing I want to do is make a dumb mistake.”

  Now that she had something to help with, Natalie immediately got set up on the floor and started sketching it all out. About half an hour later the full diagram was drawn on one large scroll.

  They then circled around behind the stairs. That was the least likely spot for there to be any sort of trap waiting, they reasoned, because even reaching it required hunkering down in a low crouch. Why would anyone else bother?

  Reaching into his pocket, Charlie pulled out a thick piece of chalk. He had taken to carrying his own to class back at the Institute so that he could jot things on the board without having to wait for another student to finish. Now he used the chalk to scribe the wards onto the floor, careful to recreate each symbol perfectly. As he worked, he concentrated. Charlie had never shaped runes before, but he knew that they worked the same way as spellshooters, with will and intent. So he forced his will into each mark, urging them to take on magical power and complete the spell. When he was finished he sat back, wiped sweat from his brow, and smiled. The runes were not only complete, they were glowing slightly. He had done it!

  “Will this work?” Natalie a
sked again, crouching down beside him and staring at the marks on the floor.

  “It will,” Charlie promised, hoping he was right. “But we should hold hands, just in case.” When she’d squeezed once to show that she was ready, he brought their joined hands together and touched the space he’d left at the centre of the warded circle.

  A wave of dizziness struck him, and his stomach roiled with sudden nausea. His whole body shivered from instant cold, and although that quickly faded, the dizziness only increased. It felt as if the whole world were spinning around him. Only two things stayed solid and clear — Natalie’s hand in his and the runes in front of them. Even those began to blur, however, as black spots invaded his vision, growing larger and larger and quickly darkening everything in sight. Then Charlie gasped in pain and slumped over, losing consciousness. The last thing he thought before everything faded away was, Now I remember why I hate the Void so much.

  — Chapter Thirty-Three —

  Charlie, the Hero

  “Charlie! Charlie, wake up!”

  A hand shook his shoulder, and Charlie groaned. Then he twitched, opened his eyes, and found himself staring up at a very pretty, very concerned-looking girl — and, beyond her, a blood-red sky streaked with black like a negative image of a cloudy day. For a second he just lay there, blinking, trying to make sense of it all. But the shaking continued.

  “Okay, okay, I’m awake!” he complained, and sat up, the girl falling back a step to keep them from smacking their foreheads together. Even doing that Natalie managed to look graceful.

  Natalie! Charlie remembered her, and himself, and the rest all in a rush.

  “Whoa,” he muttered, rubbing at his forehead. “Guess it worked, huh?”

  That got a relieved smile out of her. “I guess so.” She gestured around them. “And you were absolutely right, too. Take a look.”

  Charlie twisted to peer about, and saw at once what she meant. They were sitting in what was essentially an open-air hallway about the same width as the hall back in Suktar’s dungeon.

  And running on either side was a row of long, narrow cages exactly where the cell doors had been. Just as Charlie had guessed, if they’d touched one of the doors, they’d be trapped in those cages right now, like flies in a spider’s web. Talk about a close call!

  “Okay,” he said slowly, climbing to his feet. “We need to figure out where Ben’s parents are, first.” He looked around more fully, trying to memorise the area they were in. “I don’t know if there is any such thing as a landmark in this place, but somehow I need to find something familiar.

  “Ben’s parents have been here for months now, and they’ve taken control of an entire tribe somewhere. The Sparkstorms.” He grinned. “If we can get to them and bring them back here with us, we’ll have a real advantage. That way they’ll be right near their bodies, so they can pop out when we cross back.”

  Natalie considered that for a moment before nodding. “Okay, how do we find them?” she asked.

  Charlie realised she was looking to him for answers, which in fact made sense. He was the one who had been in the Void before. Nevertheless, he felt weighed down by the responsibility suddenly on his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We heard about the Sparkstorm clan from Elander, Krobeg’s father.” He winced, thinking about the powerful old dwarf mage, and how he would react when he found out that his only son was dead, but pushed that thought away. It was a concern for another time. “He was going to look for them himself. I have no idea if he found them or not, though, or which way they might be from here.” He sighed. “Or even where here is, exactly. Time in the Void doesn’t work like it does back home, and nor does space.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s just great,” Natalie replied. “So what do we do now? It’s not like we can use a tracking spell or anything!” And she gestured at her hip, where her empty spellshooter holster sat.

  Of course! Charlie grinned at her and held out his open, empty hand. “Who says we can’t?” Closing his eyes, he pictured his spellshooter sitting there, just as it had been before they left. He knew every inch of the weapon by now, and exactly how it felt, how it smelled even. And he knew he was holding it right now.

  Natalie’s gasp told him the same thing his fingers did, the same as his eyes when he opened them again and looked down at the spellshooter once more snugly in his grip.

  “How did you do that?” she demanded, her eyes wide. Charlie wished he had a photo of her awed expression so he could show it to her the next time she was teasing him about something.

  “It’s all a matter of belief here,” he explained instead. “If you know something is real, that’s the way it is. I knew I had my spellshooter, so I did.” He grinned. “When Ben and I came here before, we knew we could do gymnastics, and once we’d convinced ourselves, we were able to do somersaults and flips like world-class acrobats.”

  “Hmm.” She frowned but not at him, tugging at a stray curl as she processed this information. “Okay. So I just have to know something is real to make it so?” She gave a defiant little flip of her head and thrust out her hand, and Charlie saw the faint outlines of her spellshooter there.

  “That’s it!” he encouraged. “You’ve got it - it’s right there!”

  As he’d hoped, his words helped convince her that last little bit and suddenly the spellshooter snapped into existence. “Yes!” Natalie cried, and lunged forwards to hug him. “That’s amazing!”

  “I’ll say,” a gruff voice declared from right behind them. “We usually get you lot in the cages, not between them.”

  Charlie and Natalie both whirled about and found themselves facing a pair of big, ugly goblins. Each one had long arms, oversized hands, scaly green hides, and big, heavy heads with bulging eyes, flat noses, and wide mouths. One held a coiled whip in its hand and the other had a heavy wooden club. They could have just been natives of the Void, but then Charlie noticed that under the grime they wore dirty tabards with Suktar’s sigil on them.

  Of course, the dark elf king would leave guards here to capture whoever got caught in his trap.

  Unfortunately for the goblins, this time they weren’t facing a pair of confused Institute members who didn’t even understand the most basic thing about the Void or how it worked.

  Charlie fired first, freezing one goblin in a block of ice. Natalie’s shot out an instant later, taking the second goblin clean in the chest.

  “That was close,” she said after a tense second, once they were sure there weren’t more guards.

  “Definitely,” Charlie agreed. “We should probably get moving, in case they have reinforcements or the next shift or whatever.” They turned and started off towards the far end of the cage-lined corridor, but as they passed the two downed goblins Charlie paused long enough to snatch a thick ring of heavy black keys off the one with the whip. He figured those might come in handy upon their return.

  They walked for a while, just to make sure they were well clear of Suktar’s dungeon and anyone guarding it. After some time they paused and Charlie explained his plan.

  “I know Ben’s parents,” he told Natalie. “I can definitely use a spell to find them. When Ben and I were here last we had hardly had any training, but since then I’ve focused a lot on tracking spells. It’s amazing how many uses they have. Once we get to them, we just head back here, get back to the palace, collect Josh’s dad, and then go home. Easy-peasy.”

  She snorted at that. “I’m glad you think so,” she retorted. “I have a feeling it’s going to be anything but.” Still, she smiled at him and added, “But I don’t have any better ideas, so go for it.”

  Charlie raised his spellshooter. “Yeah, please excuse the over-the-top optimism. Ben’s not here so I’m trying to make up for the lack of his really bad plans with a few of my own.”

  They smiled at each other, but it was a bit forced. Despite their effort at humour they both knew how much trouble they were all in.

  Here in the Void he could u
se any spell he could remember, or even any one he could imagine as long as he could see it clearly enough and believe it strongly enough. No running out of spell pellets here! He summoned the spell he wanted, a fairly advanced level-three tracking spell, and felt the small white pellet slide from the main chamber into the barrel. Next he fixed Ben’s parents in his mind: how they looked, how they acted, the many times he’d been over to their house for dinner or a sleepover.

  Holding his spellshooter aloft, he fired the spell.

  It rose high overhead — and then suddenly took a sharp left and shot off, quickly disappearing from sight. Charlie glanced down at his spellshooter, which still had what looked like a thick, glowing white rope sprouting from it. Carefully he yanked on the rope, pulling its end free from his weapon, and wound it around his wrist. It tugged gently, and he let it pull him in the right direction.

  “Come on,” he told Natalie, and took off at a trot. She followed, catching up easily, and together they ran across the strange, twisted landscape, their minds giving their bodies the strength and stamina to keep going.

  *

  Hours later, Charlie was starting to feel winded despite every attempt to convince his mind that he wasn’t. He slowed to a fast walk, then a regular walk, then a stumbling halt, and Natalie realised what was happening in time to slow herself and stop only a few paces beyond him.

  “Sorry, I need to catch my breath for a minute,” Charlie told her. He bent over, hands on his knees, and just stayed that way a moment. He was gasping for air and dripping with sweat.

  Natalie didn’t seem any more affected than if they’d been out for a brisk stroll. “How much farther, do you think?” she asked, scanning their surroundings, her spellshooter at the ready. “I don’t like the look of this place.”