by Dante King
“Might be worth not mentioning anything about Zenidor or Istrea,” Janet said in a low voice, her eyes fixed on her father’s retreating back. “My dad doesn’t know that we know anything about any of that, and it’s probably best to keep it that way.”
“Way ahead of you there,” I whispered back. “I was going to mention something earlier but thought better of it.”
“Good. Let’s get going; my father is the type who’ll forget we’re here and keep going all by himself, and even I don’t know my way out of this labyrinthe.”
I nodded, and we followed Idman. I was glad Janet had mirrored my own thoughts on the subject of Idman and my parents. It was pretty solid advice from the petite brunette Storm Mage. After finding out what my parent’s motives had been in instigating the Void Wars, I’d become very careful in selecting who I talked to about them. Hypothetical genocide was an awkward subject after all.
The prison was a vast and labyrinthine construction of gleaming obsidian and glistening black granite. Myriad passages led off from the broad corridors Idman took us down. Torches flickered in sconces, which was weird because I couldn’t feel any breeze which might have stirred them. There was certainly no wind getting through the windows because there weren’t any of those.
The passages themselves were not the cramped, smoky, dingy corridors that one associates with ‘correctional facilities’ that carried the sort of bladder-weakening reputations as the Eldritch Prison. They were roomy, clean, well-lit, and cut neatly out of the rock by magic. It was clear that Idman was a pragmatic guy—if someone escaped he wasn’t going to give them any shadowy nooks and crannies in which they could hide and spring out from at passing guards. I pointed this out to Idman, hoping to gain some respect for my powers of observation—as well as the fact that I had watched all the Prison Break series.
“I don’t believe jumping out at guards is much of an option for my prisoners,” he said stonily. “Even if they had the opportunity to get free of their cells, attacking my guards would render any escape attempt moot.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Idman pointed off to the right as we passed through a soaring, echoing hall. I caught my first sight of his security team.
“Ah,” I said.
The prison guards were comprised of—
“Frost giants,” Janet said before I could complete the thought. “Unimaginative and basically impervious to wheedling. They make brilliant guards. They can stand and stare at a wall all day if they’re instructed to, then jump into action if anything goes down.”
The frost giants gleamed a dull white in the light of the torches, contrasting starkly against the black stone that the prison seemed to be exclusively made from. They had to be ten feet tall, which was really fucking tall. It was popular to call something ten feet tall and not have any idea as to exactly how big that was, but I’d seen the diagrams pitting a six-foot-tall human against a giant, and these guys were giants all right.
“My daughter is correct,” Idman said in his quiet but carrying voice. “The Jotunn have kept the prison safe for centuries. The last successful breakout was over four-hundred years ago, though the last attempt was during the Void Wars. It was quickly dealt with.”
By the cold way that he spoke those words, I assumed that whoever had tried to bust out of this joint had ended up as a very small smear on one of these glittering walls.
As we moved through the Eldritch Prison, my eyes became accustomed to the place, and I saw that it was not as pristine and polished as I had initially thought. The metal doors, behind which prisoners of all shapes, sexes, and races were held, were rusting. The wards over each one of these doors, which apparently stopped any sort of magic being used inside the cell in question, were flaking and wearing away. I wondered whether that had anything to do with the reports that the magic of Avalonia was dying that Alura had told me about.
It became clear, the further and further Idman led us into this sprawling, monotonous maze of a building, the less jovial and the colder he was becoming. He had made it sound like it was an act that he intentionally put on while he was at work, but it seemed that there was more to it than that. It niggled me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The tour disintegrated into a never-ending series of twisting passages and massive open halls. The guards said nothing. In fact, they did not even acknowledge us at all. This didn’t seem to bother the High Warden. On the contrary, I felt that if he had been greeted by one of the Jotunn, he would have seen it as the height of disrespect. It was obvious that Idman Thunderstone was the head honcho here, far above inane chatter or casual acknowledgment.
After a while, when the sound of our own footsteps was becoming oppressive, I blurted out, “You specialize in incarcerating poltergeists, don’t you?”
“That’s correct,” Idman replied, his pace slowing a little.
“I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting two since I’ve been a part of this world,” I said casually, as if it had only just occurred to me. “One of them was Barry Chillgrave.”
Idman walked on for a minute more before he slowed and turned to face me. He was standing with his back to a torch and, for the moment at least, his face was lost in shadow.
Very fucking atmospheric, the cinephile inside of me thought.
“Barry Chillgrave could be said to be our star attraction,” the tall man said. “He was brought here at the special request of Archmage Chillgrave himself.” Idman sniffed, as if he didn’t think much of Cecilia’s father. “While all poltergeists are technically illegal entities in Avalonia, the kingdom tends to turn a blind eye toward those who don’t cause trouble,” he continued in a voice as cold as a cast iron toilet seat. “Those who inhabit the dungeons in the Academy for instance are part of the scenery to many folk. Barry Chillgrave however…”
“Can I meet him?” I put in. I’d only shared a brief interaction with the Pirates of the Carribean reject, but I liked him all the same. And, if I needed a poltergeist for my frat dungeon, I figured one I’d already met would be a suitable choice.
Idman leaned forward, and his face came back into the light. An amused glint shone in his eyes. “By all means,” he said. He pulled a key from the depths of his cloak and stepped to the door right behind me. He unlocked it and said, in a voice that was as hard and unyielding as the obsidian surrounding us, “Barry, you have a visitor.”
I was wondering if Barry’s cell was actually located in this very corridor, or if the key Idman had used was kinda like a portal stone, where it could make any cell appear after inserting it into a locked cell, twisting, and speaking the desired prisoner’s name. I might have asked Idman about this, but I was too intent on greeting my old acquaintance.
I stepped into the cell, and Barry Chillgrave materialized out of the gloom. Despite the grim surroundings, the spectral ghost brought a small smile to my dial. Dressed in his pirate attire, he looked as if he had taken a Treasure Island dress-up to the next level.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t me old pal, Justin, eh! Well met, lad. Well met indeed.” The little poltergeist seemed pleased to see me, which I didn’t find too surprising. I figured it was nice to see any face that wasn’t the dour countenance of Idman Thunderstone after a while.
“Barry,” I said in greeting, “how’s it hanging?”
“Well, there’s a reason I have to float this far off the ground, boyo, let me tell you!” the poltergeist cackled at his own wit and grabbed at the front of his trousers.
“You’ve still got it I see, Barry,” I said.
Barry glanced over my shoulder at Idman lurking in the passageway. He must have caught sight of Janet too, because the next thing I knew he had slapped his knee and said, “Hah, I knew it! You’ve been taking that damned staff of yours in hand and slipping it into all sorts of unlikely places, just as I knew ye would! The High Warden’s daughter too no less. By jingo, you’ve some bollocks on you, boy!”
“Yeah,” I muttered, casting a wary eye
over my shoulder at Idman, “so I keep being told.”
“And I bet she ain’t even the tip of the iceberg, eh?” Barry plowed on relentlessly. “That staff of yours must be worn to a pencil already, eh?”
“Well, I had to upgrade actually, Barry.” I held up the black crystal staff for the poltergeist to run his one unpatched eye over.
Barry looked up at me sharply when he saw the staff. “My, my, my” he said. “Well, well, well, ain’t that something now. Yes, when you’re conquering as many lasses as ye are, Justin, it makes sense to use protection, but even old Barry did not think you’d ever get your hands on this.”
A sharp cough from behind me told me that it was time to go. That was too bad. I liked Barry. I wished there was a way I could get him out of that shithole. And there might just be. I’d need to catch Idman Thunderstone when he was in a good mood and ask him about letting Barry become the poltergeist of my frat house dungeon.
“Well, Barry, I’ve got to run,” I said, banking the thought for a more appropriate occasion.
Suddenly, with the speed of the supernatural, Barry grabbed me by the collar and drew me close. Bearing in mind that he was a specter and his body was as substantial as a fart, he must have been using some pretty powerful magic to actually get hold of my clothing.
“Do not leave me here,” he whispered. “They’re coming for me. And when they do, I’ll be powerless to stop them, laddie.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked as I peeled Barry’s fingers from my collar.
He wore a sad expression, strange considering that he’d only ever appeared jovial, even though his head was basically just a skinless skull.
I backed out of the cell, my stomach coiling with apprehension. Barry stood, hanging unsupported in mid-air, watching me go. He was still watching me when Idman closed the door firmly behind me and locked it.
Idman checked the seal above the door, then summoned a frost giant from a recess where it looked to have been sleeping with its eyes open.
“Sir?” it said in a foreign-sounding accent. The giant cast a long shadow over us, along with the rest of the corridor.
Evidently, Idman had overheard Barry’s parting remark because he said to the guard, “There have been strange stirrings of late. I suspect that prisoner thirteen thirty-one is insane—as many poltergeists are—but there’s always a possibility that he’s speaking the truth. Whoever he keeps raving about could prove a danger to the prison, so I want increased security, especially in this sector. It’s probably nothing, but it never hurts to be cautious.”
The frost giant nodded and stomped away.
Once the guard was out of sight, Idman took me by the shoulder and steered me back the way we had come. His face was grave and thoughtful, his grip as irresistible as iron. Janet followed behind.
After a few moments, Idman said, “Justin, Janet told me about the Death Mage and the key that he stole from you. Tell me, what do you know of this Skeleton Key?”
“Only that it’s a key that likely comes from a skeleton, maybe even one belonging to a Chaos Mage who never found a lock he couldn’t pick,” I said, recalling what Enwyn had told me while also wishing Idman would take his hand off my shoulder. “There are probably all kinds of crazy things in my parent’s place that I have no clue about.” I swallowed and threw caution to the winds. “It’s all the more reason as to why our fraternity needs a poltergeist. I was wondering, Idman, can you provide me with one? Barry would be a good choice. I figure you’re not a big fan of the Chillgraves, and what better way to piss them off than to free their much-despised ancestor?”
He sighed softly through his nose. “Unfortunately, despite being High Warden, I can’t just release an inmate to you, Mr. Mauler.”
I nodded. I’d feared he’d say as much. “Look, I’ll take any poltergeist you feel like you can release, just so that me and my frat brothers can enter the dungeon without worrying about getting killed. We’ve been lucky on two occasions so far but that luck could run out at any point.”
Idman shook his head curtly. “Can’t be done. However, if you can gain the favor of a particular sponsor, you may not need a poltergeist, at least not right away.”
“That’s a start,” I said, feeling hopeful. “What’s this guy’s deal?”
“He’s a Rune Mystic, a particular kind of inscriber—the one who creates the recreational regeneration runes for academy arenas. Impress him, and he may grant you a personal rune circle for your fraternity house’s dungeon. It’s a crude workaround, but it might be sufficient until such a time as you can find a poltergeist.”
I looked at Janet. She shrugged. I looked back at Idman. The guy was a trip; one moment a creepy character straight out of The Tomb of Dracula comic, the next giving me dungeon decoration advice.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll give that a shot. But if you have a poltergeist who’s getting released on good behavior, you know who to call.” I gave him a broad grin, which he returned with a dour nod.
I liked you better when you weren’t inside your foreboding castle, Chief Warden Killjoy.
Idman pulled the portal stone from his jacket and pressed it.
“The tour is over,” he said briskly. Glancing at Janet, he said, “Back to school.”
After the portal had sucked shut behind us, Janet turned to me. We were standing by the pool of the Academy, which was fortuitous because I found myself in need of a little something to float my tonsils in.
“He’s never like that with guys I introduce him to!” Janet said.
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure whether she meant that he was nicer or more of an asshole to me than the other guys. Academy Idman seemed like a solid dude, but Warden Idman was like the love-child of Professor Snape and Judge Dredd—the Stallone version, not the Karl Urban one.
Janet continued, “One time, a guy I was dating had some outstanding warrants—for flying a broomstick intoxicated, I think it was—and my dad just went ahead and threw him in a cell before he could say a peep to him!” She squeezed my arm, went up on tiptoes, and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I think he’s a real fan of yours.”
I murmured incoherently and gave a little chuckle. There was a dark side to her father, I was sure about that. The mood change that had come over him was more than just a “workplace disposition”. The prison had changed him. It had been almost like it had brought out another side of himself. One that he had hidden away.
A little Jekyll and Hyde syndrome? I pondered.
I suppressed a shiver and took Janet’s hand. “You fancy a drink?” I asked.
“A drink? It’s not even lunchtime,” she said, giving me a wry smile.
“Janet,” I said, putting my arm around her, “gods know that I’m extremely fond of you, but don’t ask me to choose between you and a drink right now, because I’ll miss you when I’m drunk.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The intervening weeks between my first look at the Eldritch Prison and the Exhibition Match Day passed in a monotonous blur. It was rather strange, in a mundane sort of way, to go three weeks without being involved in a fight for my life. Instead, I knuckled down and engaged fully with all my classes—with most of my classes at any rate. Avalonian history was still giving me trouble when it came to retaining, well, anything, but you can’t have everything in life, can you? It was lucky that I had Nigel’s big old brain to make use of when it came to the odd presentation, and I wasn’t the only person in my flat who did that.
A week out from the Exhibition Match, the whole frat—Rick, Nigel, Damien, Bradley, and I—were sitting around the enormous scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen. It was a moody Saturday morning. Rain came streaming down the tall Gothic windows. Every now and again, a dull rumble of thunder would spread out across the sky, as if the gods were moving the furniture around upstairs. The clouds were streaks of black and gray.
“Is it just me,” I asked the room at large, “or are classes getting a little trickier?”
“Nah, it’s not just you, bro,” he said. “Things are ramping up for sure.”
Rick rumbled his agreement from behind us. He had his enormous bare feet up on the table and was staring pensively out into the rain while he drank his morning mug of green tea. He got the stuff from a little joint down the road called the Little Gnome Cafe, with a barista who was—you guessed it—a gnome.
“Getting harder, friends,” he said. “And the rest of our cohort are becoming stronger by the day. Everyone is taking things more seriously now the match is coming up, eh?”
I was inclined to agree with him. The students as a whole did seem to be putting their noses to the grindstone a little more vigorously. It looked like anyone taking place in the Exhibition Match Day wasn’t going to go out there half-cocked.
Bradley was whipping up a batch of scrambled eggs in the kitchen and umming and ahhing about whether to put a pinch or two of swamp sumac in. He paused briefly to call out from within his little sanctuary.
“I’m telling you, lads,” he said, “we need a poltergeist. We might be able to glean a little learning from Nigel’s rather large brain, but the practical classes will only get harder and harder.”
The halfling Air Mage looked up from a small volume entitled, Flying Without Fear, that he had been perusing. It never ceased to amaze me that Nigel Windmaker had the ability to fly—something I now knew to be fucking sweet—and yet was scared of heights.
“I have to say my theoretical knowledge does have limits,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
That might have made most people sound like they were in desperate need of pulling their heads out of their own asses, but it was commonly accepted that Nigel was a goddamn genius.
“A poltergeist would surely make things easier for us. Not only could it provide us with upgraded facilities—which would help boost our mana and get us better at casting spells and what not—but it’d also help when it comes to being approved for new spells by the inscribers. Suffice to say—and I apologize for my indelicacy—none of us can really pass muster when we head to the inscribers.”