“That’s not an excuse,” Emily says.
“What would you have me do?” Void cocks his head. “Look for clues that might not even exist? Randomly stake out possible targets and hope for the best? What would you have done?”
“I would have used myself as bait,” Emily says. “I would have fitted the profile, too.”
“Perhaps that would have worked,” Void agrees. “But could you have done as well as I did? Could you have made sure no innocent got harmed?”
Emily says nothing. She can see his point, but she recoils at the thought of intruding into someone’s life ... using magic to pose as a relative, as someone they could trust. She thinks she would have come up with something better, given time. And yet ...
She leaned back, unwilling to confront her feelings. “What happened to you? I mean ... you kept working for the council, didn’t you?”
“They needed me.” Void smiled, rather sourly. “Lord Ashworth was a feckless weakling. I may have mentioned it a few ... dozen ... times. He didn’t have the nerve to tell me to leave, not when I was essential. I played along, dealing with threats that couldn’t be addressed through the official channels while gathering intelligence and magical knowledge and putting the pieces in place for my own coup.”
“You stole the prince’s super-soldier formula,” Emily accuses. Her voice hardens. “How are you any better than him?”
“I improved upon the formula,” Void says, flatly. “He didn’t need to murder countless innocents to make the brew. It can be done without murdering anyone. He could have worked it out for himself ... Layla could have done it, I think, if he’d managed to recruit her properly. I never worked out who’d made the original version. It wouldn’t be the first time someone came up with a new potion, then offered it to the wrong person and got murdered to ensure the secret remained a secret.”
He turns away from her, looking at the dark ocean beneath their feet. “I’d known the council had flaws for years,” he says. “There were limits to its powers. Mistakes happened, most of them never openly acknowledged. But I’d always thought the councillors were working to fix the problems. I never confronted the rot within the council until it took the coward’s way out and turned a blind eye to a dark wizard on the verge of taking control of a kingdom. And then I knew it had to be removed, before things got any worse.”
Emily says nothing for a long moment. “I see your point,” she says, finally. She does see it. She’s always understood it. “But you’re just making things worse.”
“Yolanda and its neighbours are gone,” Void says. “They were invaded and crushed by the necromancers, long before you and I first met. They played petty politics while ignoring the threat on their borders, until it was far too late. Their magical arts were lost along with the kingdom itself. They twiddled their thumbs while the necromancers advanced on their borders. What will the surviving kingdoms do, now the necromancers are gone?”
“That’s true,” Emily says. She’s seen enough of the aristocracies, of their permanent selfishness, to fear the worst. The threat of the necromancers was barely enough to keep the Allied Lands united. Now, the unity is effectively gone. “But your empire will not last.”
“It can be yours,” Void says. “Join me.”
“I can’t,” Emily said. The empire wouldn’t last past her. She likes to think she can’t be corrupted by power, that she’ll retain her compassion and humanity no matter what happens, but she fears the worst. Her dark counterpart had dived headlong into madness. A strange game, she quotes mentally; the only way to win is not to play. “It won’t work.”
Void studies her for a long moment. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he says, finally. She hears genuine regret in his voice. He does care about her, in his way. She finds it reassuring even as she worries about what it might mean. “And I hope that, in time, you will come to change your mind.”
The ocean boils beneath his feet. Emily looks down. She sees images of fire and blood and death within the waters, memories... no, not memories. Things happening now. Void holds up a hand, in salute, and then the darkness rushes up and over her ...
... And she wakes up, in bed.
The world spins around her as she sits up. Jan is snoring gently beside her. The night sky beyond the windows looks normal, yet ... there is something fragile about the world, as if the merest touch would cause it to break. She’s seen paranormal realms before, places outside the world as humans know it, but ... she touches the bed lightly, reassured by its solidity. And yet, her mind feels as if it is on the verge of slipping and falling out of her skull, flying back into the dreamland ...
She leans back in her bed and closes her eyes.
But it is a long time before she manages to get back to sleep.
The End.
Emily Will Return In:
Child of Destiny
Coming Soon!
Afterword
“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
-Robert A. Heinlein
When I outlined the overall plot for Schooled in Magic - I go into more detail in the afterword for Child of Destiny - and started including a handful of non-Emily novellas, I knew I would have to do one for Void. His role in the series has been clearly visible right from
