The Width of the World

by David Baldacci

  I lifted my wand and was about to utter an incantation when Delph gripped my hand and shook his head.

  “Let me,” he whispered.

  He drew from his pocket a small ball. I recognized it at once as the same one that Astrea Prine had used to help train me on the Rejoinda spell. I’d had no idea that Delph had kept it.

  I watched as Delph put the ball on the floor. He said to both me and Petra, “Keep your eyes peeled and get ready.”

  He gave the ball a little push and it rolled off. Once it was past the shield of invisibility, it hadn’t gone more than a few inches when a bolt of light hit it, destroying it.

  Petra and I pointed our wands at the source of the light and uttered our Impacto spells.

  We heard a gasp and a crash.

  We all leapt up and charged toward the sound.

  Then out of the darkness we saw a figure.

  It was a Bowler Hat.

  He was lying under a pile of rubble. I supposed our spells had hit the wall, and the collapse of the stone had buried him under it.

  I had supposed that he was unconscious or even dead.

  As it turned out, he was neither. What he was, was dangerous still.

  He exploded out of the rubble with a slash of his wand and a wordless incantation. Then he pointed his wand toward us and a light shot out. I knew he couldn’t see us because of the invisibility shield, but the path of the spell was so broad that it caught us up in a whirlwind of sheer force and hurled us off our feet.

  The impact with the wall I hit was so hard that I was momentarily stunned.

  When I rose, the bloke was staring right at me. I mean he was seeing me!

  What the Hel.

  I looked to my left and right and saw Petra, Delph and Harry Two slowly regain their feet. The impact must have broken the magical tethers. I looked down at my ring. It had moved round my finger. Before I could move it back the Bowler Hat roared, “I’ve got you now!”

  He cast another spell that I barely evaded.

  Petra shot a spell at him but he effortlessly blocked it.

  Delph pulled out his ax and hurled it.

  The Bowler Hat laughed and said, “Oh, why that’s a stunner.”

  He shot a spell right at Delph, and had I not blocked it, Delph would have been crushed. As it was, he was thrown heels over arse against the wall and slumped down, barely conscious.

  Petra and I kept shooting spells and the Bowler Hat kept blocking them. He shot spells at us, and between the two of us we barely stayed alive. It was clear that he was by far the superior fighter, and had it been one on one, we would be dead.

  He had backed us up against a wall. I felt the cold stone behind me with one hand while my other gripped my wand. I was frantically trying to think what to do. I had cast so many spells and blocked so many of his that I was completely exhausted.

  But the Bowler Hat looked perfectly fresh and ready to battle on. They truly were elite fighters, as my grandfather had said.

  He was actually sneering at us. “Well, luv, lucky for you that you’re wanted alive, or I would have already killed you and your bloody mates.”

  When I was battling creatures in the Quag, it had not been nearly this tiring, but then I realized that most times a single spell had been sufficient for victory. I was reminded of Astrea Prine’s warning that the Maladons would have no compunction about killing me. Looking into the vile face of our opponent right now, I could see why my kind had lost the war against his kind.

  My wand was so heavy it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I glanced at Petra. Her chest was heaving and sweat poured down her face, as it did mine. Her wand hand was twitching uncontrollably.

  Our foe, sensing our weakness, smiled and moved from side to side, seeming to build both power and momentum in his mind. I could see he was about to raise his wand and no doubt hurl some unbelievably powerful and tricky incantation at one of us. He could easily see that taking out one of us would be akin to defeating both of us. It was only together that Petra and I were able to hold him off.

  So, I thought, this is it. This is the end. I could see no way around it. I didn’t even have the strength to will my wand into the Elemental. I also feared to do that because if it somehow went awry I would be wandless and thus defenseless.

  What I had not counted on was Harry Two.

  He charged straight at the bloke, an easy target.

  I screamed, “No, Harry Two!“

  The Bowler Hat smiled nastily and leisurely took aim.

  I raised my wand.

  Yet the spell shot out of his wand so fast I had no time to block it.

  “No!” I screamed again.

  And then my mouth gaped.

  The spell hit.

  But Harry Two wasn’t there.

  The spell rebounded off the stone and blasted a hole in the ceiling.

  I looked wildly around for my dog.

  The fellow was looking madly around for him too.

  Until Harry Two leapt out of the darkness and sank his fangs into the bloke’s neck.

  Then he knew right where my special beast was.

  Green shot out of the neck wound, and the Maladon screamed in agony.

  He twisted sideways and managed to knock Harry Two off with a glancing blow from a spell.

  Harry Two hit the stone floor and rolled away.

  I could see the venomous look in the Maladon’s eyes as he located Harry Two and pointed his wand.

  “Rigamorte.”

  I said the spell, not him. And the killing incantation shot from my wand and hit the Maladon right in the chest.

  He staggered back, looked at me with a disbelieving expression and slowly sank to the floor.

  Dead.

  I looked down at my shaky wand and then over at the dead man.

  I didn’t know how I had found the strength to do that. But I had. I could not allow Harry Two to die. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to prevent that.

  I felt something nudge my arm.

  It was my dog. He looked perfectly fine.

  And I wondered if he had done what he did to give me the motivation to finish off the Maladon. Putting himself in jeopardy to give me the emotional strength.

  But how had he done what he did? He had vanished and reappeared behind the Maladon. I really wanted to know the answer, but it wasn’t like I could ask him.

  Yet in those bewitching mismatched eyes, I think I received all the answer I required.

  He truly was more than a mere beast. In some ways he was as magical as I was. This was a thought that gave me shivers up and down my spine.

  And they were good shivers!

  I knelt down and hugged him, pushing my face into the wonderfully soft fur.

  He had once more saved my life.

  “Thank you,” I murmured into his one remaining ear.

  “Vega Jane?”

  I looked up and saw that Delph had risen on shaky legs and was staring at me.

  “We … we need to, um.” He looked past me, an uncomfortable expression on his face.

  “The body,” interjected Petra. “We need to get rid of it.”

  I looked over at the dead Maladon and knew that she was right. If it was discovered, then for all I knew, every slave in Greater True would be rounded up and put to death. And our grand plan would be defeated before it had even been given a chance to succeed.

  I rose and pondered the matter.

  There was only one way that I could see.

  While the others stayed behind, hidden in the station, I tethered the dead man to me, and, covered by the invisibility shield, I flew far out of Greater True, smack into the middle of the countryside.

  I found a thicket of trees and landed in the middle of them.

  It was so dark that I needed my wand to light the surroundings.

  I found a patch of dirt near a mighty oak and used my wand to dig the grave.

  I placed the Bowler Hat in it, unable to look at his face.

  He was undeniably
evil and would have killed us with absolute glee in his heart, I was certain. But still, I had ended his life.

  And something in me, I was sure, had died alongside him.

  As my grandfather had said, that was the true difference between us and the Maladons.

  I magically covered him with dirt after breaking his wand in two and then smashing it to mere splinters with an Impacto spell. I sprinkled the remains of the wand over the countryside as I flew back to Greater True.

  The words of Astrea Prine came back to me once more.

  Could we really prevail against the Maladons, who were absolutely smashing at slaughtering their enemies?

  I had killed, with ample justification, but I felt sick to my stomach.

  I told myself that it would become easier over time.

  But as I landed near the station, I knew in my heart that it would only become more difficult.

  EMPYREAN.

  The only place I had ever truly felt safe since leaving Wormwood.

  But right now all I felt was frustrated.

  We had freed all the slaves and then I had placed them back into a trance.

  That had been the most difficult part of my plan. How do you free someone and then tell him they have to go on being a slave for a bit longer? I knew if it had been me I would have rebelled. But I also knew it was the only way to make this work. Otherwise, all would be lost. But still, I felt sick having to do it.

  Now they were unconsciously waiting for the signal from me.

  And I was desperately trying to make sure that signal could actually be sent.

  I was sitting in the old chambers of my ancestor Jasper Jane, with virtually every book I could find in the place.

  They were stacked haphazardly, some in towering piles. I had read them all, trying to make the idea in my head a reality.

  But the problem was, I had thought of nothing that could absolutely do what needed doing. And there was no room for error.

  I had a sudden inspiration, and took the parchment out of my cloak.

  I summoned Silenus and he dutifully appeared moments later.

  I explained everything to him, what I had done and what I needed to do.

  He pondered all this for such a very long time that I seriously wondered if he had become totally frozen in the parchment.

  Finally, he stirred. “The problem is you do not have the requisite knowledge to make this happen.”

  “But you once told me that magic was borne of necessity,” I said sharply. “That if I needed a spell, I could create it. I was counting on that, Silenus.”

  “What I told you was perfectly true. But from what you’ve just said, you don’t have in your mind the firm idea required to create the necessary spell. Are you certain that none exists currently to perform the task?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know.”

  “Then perhaps you should try to know more.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing?” I pointed around at the stacks of books.

  “Knowledge needn’t always come from books,” he noted.

  Well, that was true enough, I thought. Astrea had been a font of knowledge. But she wasn’t here. She was back in the Quag.

  “I doubt that Pillsbury or Mrs. Jolly will know how to do the necessary spell work,” I said in a depressed tone. “And there’s no one else I can turn to.”

  Silenus looked around. “I sense certain elements here that one cannot see.”

  I thought about this. Well, there was Uma. But I could see her. Yet like Silenus said, she might not be the only element hereabouts.

  “You think someone like that might be able to help me?”

  Silenus said, “Well, when one has no other options?”

  He disappeared from the page and I put the parchment away.

  Sometimes, Silenus could really be an infuriating git!

  Immensely frustrated, I headed back to my bedroom.

  Along the way I heard voices.

  I stopped at the door, which I knew was Delph’s bedroom.

  I put my ear to the wood.

  There were two voices coming from within, and I recognized them both.

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Crystilado magnifica.”

  On the other side of the wood I saw Delph and Petra sitting on his bed, talking.

  They were very close to each other, their hands nearly touching.

  I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I did hear my name mentioned twice.

  Petra was smiling, but Delph looked unusually serious.

  I released my spell and hurried down the hall to my room.

  Harry Two was asleep on the bed.

  My mind awhirl with dark thoughts, I lay next to him, staring at the ceiling.

  I finally concluded that what I had seen was innocent enough. It was not like they had been snogging. And I had been spending a lot of my time alone searching for what I needed. I had to confess: I had been ignoring Delph lately.

  I sighed. I had been through this before. I was not going down this jealousy route again. I simply didn’t have time for it.

  I stared up at the ceiling and imagined the woman’s face in my mind.

  Sure enough, a few moments later, Uma appeared on the ceiling.

  “Can I ask a favor?” I said.

  My words stirred Harry Two. When he saw Uma he didn’t react, but simply closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  Uma nodded.

  I explained my dilemma. My needing more knowledge, anything that would allow me to accomplish the task I had set out.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  I leapt up from the bed as she disappeared through the door.

  She led me not up this time, but down.

  I thought I had by now explored all facets of Empyrean, but I apparently had missed some things.

  I thought we were in the very bowels of the place when suddenly a tiny door appeared that I had never noticed before. Uma passed right through it. When I reached it, however, I found it would not open.

  I used every spell I could think of to open the door, but none worked.

  Well, I thought. This is a bit of a pickle.

  I wondered if Uma would come back and tell me how to get in, but she didn’t.

  I rubbed my hand along the old wood of the door. It reminded me of the little door back at Stacks, through which I had passed to escape a pair of murderous jabbits.

  Next, I used my wand to shine a light on the door.

  I gasped.

  The door handle I had gripped was made of metal. And it was cast in the shape of a tiny screaming Wugmort.

  Just like back at Stacks.

  Then I recalled that Stacks was really the former home of Bastion Cadmus. Which meant it was the former home of Uma Cadmus too.

  But this wasn’t Stacks. Stacks was back in Wormwood.

  I stood there feeling like an idiot.

  Was Uma on the other side of the door, wondering what had become of me?

  I took a step back and pondered what to do.

  It began as just a trickle of sensation down my spine.

  But it was the commencement of inspiration, I well knew.

  I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing there of course.

  But there could be if I exercised one thing that I had long possessed in abundance.

  Imagination.

  A pair of foul jabbits had chased me all the way to the top of Stacks, or at least what I had thought was the top. That’s when I had come upon a little door like this one. I never believed that such a puny thing could hold back a pair of enraged serpents. Still, I’d had no choice but to grip the tiny screaming Wug doorknob and flee inside.

  In my mind, I re-created the fear, the total and complete horror that being chased by those jabbits through the darkened spaces of Stacks had instilled in me.

  The awful slithers, the terrifying screams, which were their trademark cry right before they struck.

  I
put myself back outside that little room, so close to certain death. My lungs heaved; my heart pumped copious amounts of blood. I felt my skin tingling, my spirits plummeting and my hope near extinguished.

  With all of that boiling inside of me, I reached out and gripped the screaming Wug.

  The door opened and I was on the other side of it.

  Uma was hovering right there. We were inches apart.

  I thought I saw her smile.

  “Good, Vega, very good.”

  She beckoned me onward, and I followed her down the revealed dark corridor.

  We turned a corner, and the brightest lights assaulted me from all corners. Things were swirling to and fro, bits of what looked like tiny clouds whipping around like lightning spears.

  “What is this place?” I asked Uma.

  She didn’t answer me, but she did put a finger to her lips and point toward a distant corner.

  I crept toward this spot as Uma receded a bit.

  Foot by foot, I drew closer to the blackness. And as I did so, I noticed the silhouette of a figure in the midst of the dark.

  I edged right to the perimeter of this space and stopped.

  At first the figure didn’t move. And I wasn’t sure what it was or whether it was capable of movement.

  The next moment it turned.

  And when I saw the face, all my breath left me.

  My mind reeled back like a pitching sea to the great battlefield where I had seen her fighting valiantly, indeed saving my life, before being vanquished.

  Alice Adronis was wearing the very armor in which she had perished.

  My heart gave a jolt when I saw that the mortal wound to which she had succumbed remained bloody and gaping in the center of her chest.

  When I had gone into the past courtesy of Eon back in Wormwood and seen Alice for the first time, I had thought that she and Morrigone looked quite a bit alike. I even told Morrigone that later. But now I could see quite clearly that it was Alice and I — despite our different hair colors — who looked very much alike.

  Alice stared at me. We were roughly the same height; her auburn hair swirled around her broad, muscled shoulders.

  There was movement in my hand, and I looked down in time to see my wand bending toward her. As it had at her grave, my wand, which formerly had been her Elemental until she had bequeathed it to me, bowed in respect toward her.