The Darkest Lord by Jack Heckel

Author:Jack Heckel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Dark Times at the Dark Tower

Eldrin and Dawn and someone else that I couldn’t quite lay my eyes on, dragged us away from the door and laid us side by side across the floor of the tiny living room. Harold had been placed on my chest and was snoring quite comfortably there. If you are worried about the effects of a paralysis spell on a young imp, don’t be. I wasn’t fully convinced that he wasn’t just napping (imps being immune to all sorts of spells). Anyway, there was a great deal of coming and going and moving of this piece of furniture or that, and arguing about this spell or that, but it was hard to follow, because from my vantage point, all I could see was the underside of the couch. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of dies, miniature figures, assorted bags of chips, soda cans, and unidentifiable bits and scraps that were strewn beneath it. I was relieved when the activity died down enough for me to follow along with what was being said.

“How long would you say we have?” Dawn was asking.

“Five, ten minutes tops,” Eldrin replied.

“So, Avery really does live!” said a woman whose voice seemed vaguely familiar.

“Yes,” replied Eldrin. “Although I’m afraid he’s going to have a nasty headache when he comes out of this.”

“How long will it take for them to recover?” she asked.

“Too long,” Eldrin answered with an irritated huff.

“Can’t we do anything for them?” she asked.

I heard something heavy being dragged across the floor and he grunted, “No, we can’t.”

“But surely paralysis spells are reversible,” the woman argued. “I think I can even remember the spell framework from my basic Rowling course. Wasn’t it petrificus notal—”

“Susan, stop!” Eldrin shouted.

Susan? The only Susan I knew was the green-skinned Susan from the Resistance who had helped me break into Student Records. If it was her, how had she gotten here? Would everyone I’d ever known show up in New York? Why was I so bad at sneaking away? In other stories people manage to sneak away quite successfully all the time. Okay, Frodo couldn’t, nor could Harry. Come to think of it, maybe sneaking away isn’t that easy after all.

When I came out of my latest thought detour, Eldrin was apologizing to Susan. “Sorry about that, but had you finished your incantation, we would all have been paralyzed in the backlash. I designed this trap myself, and it’s pretty good. The paralysis is temporarily permanent. Basically, you can’t dispel it for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Enough time for me to pop in and check on who is mucking about in the place. That’s why it’s activated when you try to leave, not when you try to enter. Once you are paralyzed, any attempt to deparalyze you will backfire on the person making the attempt. Also, and this is particularly clever, the paralysis is chained to a proximal immovability field, which means the paralyzed person can’t be removed from the apartment until the paralysis wears off.

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