FIFTY-THREE: The Auriad

Alden kept waiting for something to go wrong.

But for the first time in months, nothing did. The car climbed in and out of larger depressions, and it spun its wheels in patches of loose soil a couple of times, but it made it all the way back to the lab. When it arrived, the ramp to the underground entrance even opened for it.

Kibby was waiting for him.

“It works,” she said, sounding stunned as he climbed from the vehicle.

“I know. I can’t believe it either. Also, you’re supposed to be in the vault.”

“You were gone a long time.”

He hadn’t been. It had been almost the shortest possible amount of time the trip could have taken. “I was worried about you, too. Vault. Now. I’ll be right there after I shower.”

Did showering do anything to remove excess chaos residue? Probably not. But it made him feel like he was being proactive.

When he rejoined Kibby, he found she had set up their learning cushions side by side in front of one of the screens.

“I thought you didn’t want to practice anymore,” Alden said. “Wasn’t it making things worse instead of better for you?”

“I am not practicing. I’m teaching. This is your present for returning safely.”

Alden held back a sigh.

He wanted sleep far more than he wanted a class right now, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He was already barefoot like a proper student, so he walked over to join her. Just before he was about to kneel down, he spotted something unfamiliar on his mat.

It was a loop of iridescent white string, meticulously coiled into the logogram for “friend.”

“Like you used to do with my marleck berries,” Kibby said, pointing at it.

“I remember.”

Alden stared at the string. He knew immediately that it was a magic item because his brain was a little hung up on it. Sympathy for Magic being weird again. He’d mostly gotten used to the effect that particular stat increase had on him, and lately it was rare for something to draw his attention to it so noticeably that it became a distraction. “Kibby, is this…?”

“It’s for you. It’s an auriad.” Kibby used the word Alden had learned just a couple of days before when he asked about the spell Instructor Gwen-lor had erased from the screen before starting her class. “Distinguished Master Ro-den gave it to me with the cushions. It was inside mine so it would be safe until I was ready to bond with it. But I haven’t passed the right test for Instructor Gwen-lor to send my beginner auriad lessons, yet. I have to learn all the hand casting spells she teaches first.”

Kibby examined his fingers. “You should take off the ring before you hold it.”

Crouching, Alden slipped the ring off and set it aside on the floor. He lifted the string carefully and knelt on the cushion. The auriad was fascinating. It flowed through his fingers so smoothly it was almost like it was made of liquid.

“Kibby, you don’t have to give me this,” he said. “It’s so kind of you, but I know the things Joe—Distinguished Master Ro-den—gave you are important to you.”

“Someone will give me another one,” she replied, eyes fixed on the string. “Maybe even Distinguished Master Ro-den will do it, when I finally get to call Instructor Gwen-lor and tell her I finished her lessons. Or someone else will when I go to school. But…maybe nobody will ever give you one. Maybe they don’t have them on Earth.”

“I’ve never seen one there before,” Alden said.

“Since I’m your instructor, I’ll give you one.” She spoke firmly. “And you will use it your whole entire life and be the best Avowed.”

He smiled at her. “You said it’s a tool that bonds to authority?”

“After you start using it, it does. Then it’s only yours. You have to take good care of it and keep it with you all the time, and it will get stronger so that you can cast better spells with it.”

So Jel-nor wasn’t just wearing one in her hair as a fashion statement that day by the pond. You’re supposed to keep them close.

“We only have one auriad spell, so you will have to try very hard and learn it,” Kibby said in a businesslike tone. “I will pause the video just before Instructor Gwen-lor clears the spell from the screen, and you will study the casting shapes while I read all the logograms to you.”

“Do we even know what that spell does? Or if all of it is listed on the board?”

“It’s all there. It hits things.”

“It hits them?”

She mimed punching something with a small fist. “It does that. But farther away. And harder. And in a square shape. It’s the graduation spell at Instructor Gwen-lor’s school. For the Year Sixes. It says ‘Congratulations!’ on the board beside it and lists all the students’ names and their second schools.”

The tiny children Alden and Kibby had been learning with up until now were the Year Ones, and going by the length of Mother Planet years and the way Artonan kids aged…that was probably the human equivalent of a ten or eleven year old? So it was like an elementary school graduation spell.

“You only have a few days to learn,” Kibby said. “You have to listen and remember everything I say.”

“I will,” Alden agreed. “Thank you so much for the present. It’s perfect.”

He couldn’t help feeling a little excited. And nervous. What if something like the auriad wouldn’t work for an Avowed, and the gift was wasted on him?

She turned on the screen, and their lesson began.

************************

The auriad lesson became Alden’s main free time distraction now that they were committed to only leaving the vault for Plan-related prep work and other essentials. Kibby read the instructions to him over and over until he could nearly recite them from memory, and then he spent ages sitting on his cushion working out how to use the loop of string.

It was a mix of making the necessary shape sets with the auriad and manipulating his authority to touch the gaps created by each shape. Like a complicated version of the partner-greeting exercise the students learned to start with.

Alden couldn’t usually feel solid objects with his authority when he wasn’t actively using his skill on them. It had never even occurred to him to try. But the auriad invited him to do it. Kibby had called it “sticky,” and that was a fine word for it. He wanted to touch it, and as he worked with it more and more over the passing days, it started to feel like an actual extension of himself.

And on the third day of practice, there was another development.

“It’s not white anymore,” Alden said, surprised. He held up the final shape in the set that formed the spell—a lacework of string with a square at the center—to show it to Kibby.

She was bundled in the coat again, reading lab files on the tablet. She’d been at it for ages. She was taking her role in Plan 2 seriously. Which was good, since Alden didn’t have a prayer of reading the kind of highly technical writing she was going through. He was lucky to pick out the occasional common noun or adjective.

She glanced up. “That’s good!” she said. The auriad had turned a very pale shade of blue. “It means you’ve almost finished bonding with it.”

“It changes colors when you’re done?”

“It turns your favorite color.”

Alden stared at the silky string. I guess I do like blue.

“You should be careful where you aim when you do the final shape from now on,” she warned him. “You might be able to cast with it now that you’re bonding. You could hit stuff.”

Alden grinned. “I want to hit stuff.”

She sighed.

Stolen story; please report.

“When I learn to hit stuff, I’m going to go squash the evil vine that’s escaped from the greenhouse!”

“It’s not supposed to be a fighting spell. It’s just to learn aiming and knock things over.”

“I bet it can fight a plant.”

She considered it. “Probably,” she agreed.

“And I bet I get it right next time,” he said, unclenching his authority and letting the string fall from his fingers.

He was wrong.