The Width of the World

by David Baldacci

  I watched as she stared off into the distance. There was so much hurt in her eyes that I seemed to feel it in my bones.

  “You … you loved Jason very much, didn’t you?”

  She slowly turned to me. “As much as one could love another,” she said simply.

  “I haven’t felt that for a male,” I said.

  “Are you certain about that?”

  I looked at her in confusion. “What? Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because I have seen how you look at your friend Delph. And I see how he looks at you.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face and I had to turn away.

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Friendship often is and should be a precursor to love.”

  I glanced back at her. “You said you represent regret. Does that mean you regret loving Jason?”

  “That is the only thing I do not regret.”

  Silence passed between us until I worked up the courage. Or the panic, I’m not sure which. Perhaps both those roads often lead to the same destination.

  I looked at her with pleading eyes. “Uma, can you help me? Please? I … know I must do this, but I’m not yet sixteen years old and … and I’m terrified that I’m going to fail and let everyone down.”

  She reached out a hand and gripped mine.

  This stunned me, for I had just assumed that she was not flesh and bone.

  “Let me show you something,” she said.

  She rose and drifted out of the room. I hurried after her.

  I followed her ghostlike form down this corridor and that, up that staircase and down that one. We finally reached a passageway that I’d had no idea was even there.

  At the end was a simple wooden door.

  She passed right through it, whereas I was forced to use the doorknob.

  When I entered, Uma was hovering next to the far wall.

  The room was not large, but it was brightly lit by torches that I was sure had just come to life at our entry.

  There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the room. In fact, there was only one item in the entire space: a small glass box hanging from the wall.

  And in that box was a wand.

  It was long and as golden in color as the Elemental when fully formed.

  Even though no one was holding it, the thing seemed to pulsate with power.

  “Whose wand is that?” I asked.

  “My father’s.”

  “That’s Bastion Cadmus’s wand?” I exclaimed.

  “He was a tremendously powerful sorcerer. It was acknowledged by all that even Alice Adronis was second to him in ability.”

  “But how did his wand come to be here?”

  “Alice recovered it and brought it here after he was killed.”

  “And if he was so powerful, how exactly did he die? On the battlefield?”

  “No. He was betrayed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Victoria, my mother.”

  I gaped. “Your mother? Then also his wife?”

  She nodded.

  “How did that happen?”

  “She didn’t do it voluntarily. I was already dead, and the war had commenced. She was placed under the Subservio spell and she gave the Maladons information about my father. When he would be home alone. She let them in and my father found himself surrounded by Maladons one night. There was no one to help him. He killed a dozen of them, but he had received a mortal wound. He died in the great hall of his beloved home.”

  “I’m so very sorry, Uma,” I said.

  “Necro did not want to face him on the battlefield. He knew my father would triumph. My father never wanted war. And he may have gone too far in trying to appease the Maladons. But he was a tremendous warrior, which is why they decided to get to him by trickery, using my poor mother.”

  “That’s so awful, Uma.”

  “He was not simply my father, you know, but the father of all of our people. So when he died, much of the spirit went out of us,” said Uma wistfully. “And the Maladons took full advantage of that. They fought even more fiercely. They could sense weakness. They smelled blood. Thus they did awful, terrible things. They desecrated the bodies of those they killed. They turned our kind against each other with their bloody incantations. It was all chaotic and, well, terrible.”

  I looked at the box as she traced her fingers over the glass. Though it could possibly have been my imagination, it seemed as though the wand sparked at her touch of the glass.

  “I think that’s why I remain here,” she said. “To be somewhere that was happy, that was safe. That was free of the Maladons!” she concluded fiercely.

  “And your mother? What happened to Victoria?”

  “She came out of the spell, realized what she had done … and killed herself.”

  I could think of nothing to say.

  “Like mother, like daughter,” said Uma gloomily.

  “You thought the love of your life was dead,” I said.

  Delph’s face shot through my mind.

  What would I do if something happened to Delph? If he were killed?

  She said, “Do you know what the most powerful thing in the world is?”

  I shook my head.

  She took my hand and pressed it against my chest.

  “That is the most powerful thing there is, Vega. All magic, all grand sorcery, pales next to it.”

  I didn’t get her meaning right away. Then, I did.

  “You mean my heart?”

  “And what it represents. It means desire, Vega. It means what you want more than anything else. But there are differences in feelings. In their potency.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Some are fleeting, like fear and happiness. Others are more permanent. Like vanity or kindness. But in my brief life I found that there are only two that stand the test of time, that define who and what we are.” She paused as I waited in great anticipation. “Love and hate.”

  “And so does that mean I will be soundly defeated as well?”

  She again pressed my hand to my chest.

  “The answer to that, Vega, lies right here.”

  And in the next instant, as was the case with my grandfather, she vanished.

  I just sat there for what seemed a very long time.

  I nearly jumped when I felt something touch my hand.

  I looked down, and there was Harry Two. He had finally decided to follow me. I was a bit cross, but when I looked down into his beautiful, mismatched eyes so full of love, my annoyance slipped away.

  Love was indeed very powerful.

  And as I sat there thinking about that, a plan came together in my mind. I mean a real plan, with steps and a goal at the end. There were many reasons for me coming up with it. But the main one was something Uma had said.

  I stood and took out my wand.

  I guess it all came down to whether I believed in myself or not.

  I went back to my room, packed my tuck, threw it over my shoulder and headed down the stairs with Harry Two marching right next to me.

  My dog looked as resolute as ever I’d seen him.

  I met the others in the foyer of Empyrean.

  They looked as ready as I did.

  That was good, because we would need to be perfect to pull this off.

  Mrs. Jolly had prepared food for us. Delph put it in his tuck.

  We stepped outside the front door tethered together.

  We looked at one another.

  “Well,” I said. “This is it.”

  “Do you really think we can do it?” asked Petra.

  “Let’s bloody well go find out,” I said.

  AS SOON AS we were far enough away from Empyrean, I cast my Pass-pusay spell, and with the thought of the town in mind, we were instantly delivered to the center of True.

  It was midday, so folks were bustling around. Motors zipped past, people chatted away as they walked, shops were open, doing a thriving business. I watched women scrubbing the cobbles and men soap
ing up storefront windows.

  They all looked pleasant and happy and oblivious to the fact that an insidious race had stolen their very lives from them.

  Perhaps because of that, they would never know a bit of unhappiness or true sorrow or maybe even pain.

  Yet I thought that all of them, fully informed of the choice, would accept a real life of ups and downs over a manufactured one devoid of the whole spectrum of existence.

  I very much desired to give them the chance.

  Delph said, “I thought we were going to Greater True?”

  “We are. But we need something from here first.”

  They followed me down the cobbles until we reached the place.

  It had been our original hiding place on our first night in this new land.

  The steeple rose up, and I could just catch a glimpse of the huge bell inside.

  “Why are we going there?” asked Delph as he followed my gaze.

  The door opened and a group of people came out, all well dressed and looking like they had just had a pious experience. One woman was carrying a baby draped all in white. The baby was screaming, while the mother was trying to calm it.

  We did that with our newborns in Wormwood. Christened them at Steeples.

  We slipped through the door before the wood thunked closed, and moved swiftly up the aisle.

  The place was empty. The group that had left must have been the only one in the church.

  The first night there we had headed upstairs. I didn’t go that way. I had no interest in the upstairs.

  There was a corridor down here. It was off to the right.

  I went that way.

  There was a wooden door partially open at the end of the corridor.

  I peered through the crevice and saw a man sitting at a large desk writing something on a pad of paper.

  It was the same man who had chased us when we’d left there before. The man wore the same stiff white collar. But all the rest of his clothes were starkly black.

  Too bloody ironic, I thought.

  He took off his spectacles and rubbed at his face as he took a moment’s respite from his writing, and then turned and opened a book.

  What I saw sticking out of the open drawer of his desk confirmed my suspicions. He had seen us that night. And reported us. That’s why the other bloke had followed us. He was a Maladon set here among the “Ordinaries.” Just as my grandfather had warned me about.

  Well, now it was my turn.

  I raised my wand and said, “Subservio.”

  The jet of light hit him directly in the back, and he instantly stiffened.

  I kicked the door open and moved into the room with the others trailing behind.

  I reached across his still form and snatched the wand out of the desk drawer.

  Through the spell books we had discovered at Empyrean, I had added a number of incantations to my quiver. I was prepared to use one of them now.

  I might as well make certain.

  I pointed my wand at the man, gave it a long sweep and said, “Origante.”

  The moment after my spell hit him, we all took a step back as the “person“ transformed into the hideous Maladon that he was.

  The face elongated. The hands became claws. The nose looked as sharp as a knife blade, the mouth cruel and hideously shaped. When he turned to us, his eyes were large red drops of blood.

  Petra screamed, but I gripped her by the shoulder.

  “Keep quiet. He’s under my spell.”

  “What the Hel is that … that thing?” exclaimed Delph.

  I had forgotten that they had never seen a true Maladon before.

  “A Maladon in its original form,” I replied. I glanced at Petra. She had a funny look on her face that took me a moment to interpret.

  She’s worried that if I use the spell on her, she will turn into something like that.

  I looked back at our captive.

  “What is your name?” I asked. “Your real Maladon name,” I added.

  When it opened its mouth to answer, I saw that, like the vile Orco’s, its tongue was long and forked at the end. It was not surprising that these vile creatures shared that hideous physical characteristic.

  The creature said, “My name is Krill.”

  Its voice was like a serpent’s hiss and a banshee’s shriek wedded at the vocal cords.

  Truly lovely.

  “And you work here to spy on the people living in True?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you report to those at Maladon Castle?”

  He glanced at what I was holding.

  “Wand wire.”

  “Wand wire?” This was a new term for me.

  “We send messages using our wands. Like writing in the air. It leaves one wand and comes out through the wand of the intended recipient in the form of a thought in one’s mind.”

  That’s actually truly clever, I thought.

  “Tell me the spell to accomplish that.”

  He did so, and I tucked that away in my memory. I glanced sharply at Petra. She nodded that she had done the same.

  I turned back to Krill. “There are people who have had their magic taken from them. Do you know this?”

  Krill nodded. “I do.”

  “And do you have information on these people? Where they are living and what they are called?”

  That was why I was here. I thought if there was one place where such records would be kept, it would be here, a place of goodness and worship where all came together. Thus, it would make perfect sense that the Maladons would want to keep records of all their slaves in such a “holy”place. The very idea, though, made my skin crawl.

  And the place was called Saint Necro’s, after all. And his original followers had been called “worshippers.”

  Krill pointed to a large tome on a shelf above his desk.

  “It is all there.”

  “Is that for only those in Greater True?”

  “Greater True and Maladon Castle are the only places they are located. There are none in True.”

  “You’re positive?”

  He nodded. “Quite positive.”

  “Why is that, then?”

  “These ‘things’ are rewards for the most elite among the Ordinaries. And they live in Greater True. And of course, a very few at Maladon Castle.”

  “Why only a very few at Maladon Castle? I’d have thought they would love to be waited on hand and foot by the enslaved.”

  “Because our masters do not like to be associated with filthy weaklings, regardless of how they are clothed.” He spat on the floor.

  I bristled at his foul words, but I did believe he spoke the truth. The Maladons would see us that way.

  “Why do you keep these records at all?” Petra asked.

  “We always keep records of property, however unsavory.”

  This statement made me want to curse him to dust.

  Instead, I pointed my wand at the book, said the familiar spell and watched as it zoomed into my hand. I set it down, pointed my wand at it, said, “Duplicado” and an exact replica appeared in my free hand. I pocketed it and sent the original book zipping back onto the shelf.

  I looked at Krill. “Do the Maladons know that there are intruders among them? Has Mr. Endemen spoken to you about it?”

  Krill said, “Mr. Endemen does not speak to the likes of me. He uses intermediaries. But, yes, I have heard that there are those about what should not be here.”

  I pointed my wand at Krill and reversed my Origante spell. Then I said to him, “You will remember nothing of this, understood?”

  He nodded. “Nothing.”

  “Turn around and go back to work.”

  He did so while I freed him from the Subservio spell and then used the Pass-pusay spell to take us from this unholy place.

  Invisible and back out on the street, Delph and Petra were ecstatic.

  “That was brilliant, Vega Jane,” exclaimed Delph so loudly that I had to shush him.

  I led th
em into an alley, took out the book and opened it to the first page.

  I read down the page and said, “This is all we need to return the magic to those poor people. We have their names and where they live now.”

  “How many names on the list?” asked Petra.

  I swiftly counted.

  “Fifty-five. Fifty of them live in Greater True. The others are at Maladon Castle. One of them was the Victus we met.”

  “Blimey!” Delph said. “Fifty names. Where do we start?” he added in a hopeless tone.

  I placed my thumb over the first name on the ledger.

  “Amicus Arnold. He lives on Goldofin Street in Greater True.”

  “But what do we do when we get there?” asked Petra. “Like you said, we can’t just free him without anyone knowing. And word will get out and everyone will be on guard.”

  “I’ve thought of a way around that,” I said.

  Next, I used the Pass-pusay spell to get us to Greater True.

  We landed in the center of the place and looked around.

  We had one obvious problem. We didn’t know the streets of Greater True.

  We wandered around for a bit until Delph exclaimed, “Look there.”

  We looked where he was pointing. It was a shop that sold maps!

  We went to the shop door and I looked in through an open window.

  I looked over the shelves as a bloke at the counter helped a customer.

  A moment later I spotted the map I wanted. I waited until the bloke had turned his back and did my incantation. The map flew through the window and into my hand.

  We hurried around to an alley and I opened the map. It took a few moments, but I located Goldofin Street. It was only three streets over from where we were presently.

  Number Forty-Seven was the one we wanted.

  We quickly walked there and looked at the solidly built brick house attached to its neighbors on either side. There was a bright red door that reminded me of blood. The place was impeccable, the windows sparkling clean with not even a smidgen of dirt on the stone pavement in front.

  As we watched from across the street, the red door opened and we saw a blank-eyed man appear there with a rag and bottle of liquid in hand.

  This was undoubtedly the unfortunate if elegantly attired Amicus Arnold.

  Elegantly attired!

  The truth about this suddenly occurred to me. It was a badge of humiliation. A cruel joke, for all the “elites” here knew that these people were slaves by their blank eyes. You could dress them up, but that didn’t change the fact that they were owned by others. It was a heartless act.