TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO: Here-to-There XII

232

******

In the first moments after Alden rushed into the living room with the others, he had the impression that nothing was wrong. All the furniture was still in its place, and a sweet scent lingered from the mist Stuart had filled the house with earlier. The only spot that looked so much as cluttered was a hobby table by one of the chairs, full of tools one of the bors used for making knick-knacks out of eggshells.

The others saw the problem more quickly. Stuart’s gasp and a high cry from Bithe directed his attention toward the hearth.

The wand was gone.

No. It was worse than gone.

Bithe bounded across the room, almost stumbling over a footrest in his rush to get to the fireplace. He let out another cry at the sight of shards on the floor, then jumped up, clinging by his fingers to the high shelf where the wand should have rested in its protective case.

Alden ran to join him, barely remembering at the last second that the bors were scared terrible things would happen if he touched their family stone. He avoided standing on it and stared up at the case that had held the wand.

It was elegant—a smooth, clear ovoid on button feet. And it held its contents on such delicate loops that the wand looked like it was floating there.

Or it had been like that. Now, part of the case’s front was shattered, and what was left stood there, still firmly adhered to the shelf. It no longer contained a milky white wand, only the remains of one.

It seemed obvious that the wand itself had blown up and done the damage. The case was full of pieces so fine they looked like grit. A few larger fragments had embedded themselves in the clear walls, and one shard had almost melted its way through the side. The supposedly impact-resistant substance was rippled around that splinter.

Alden finished seeing it all and had just begun shifting to frantic hypothesizing about how and why this could have happened, when Stuart and Bithe started speaking at the same time.

“Tass-ovekondo is calling me,” said Stuart. “So she’s not dead.”

“This is ruin. The bors will think it’s an <<omen>> if they don’t take it as a failure.”

“The way it felt…somebody did this on purpose.”

“They’ll do something excessive. They’ll swear to make their children’s children <<strive to erase an ancestral sin>>.”

“The case wasn’t made to protect it from someone attacking it with spells! Why would it be?”

“Everything is ruin.”

“A wizard did this.”

The quaver in Bithe’s voice, the shock in Stuart’s, the devastation that would wipe the smiles from every face when the family came back home…

Bithe and the others would probably apologize and apologize again for not protecting the household until the very last second of their time in this city. Because even though this wasn’t their fault, what else could they do to try to make it better?

And Uro-bor wouldn’t smile with pride every time she lit her candles on this mantle. And Tass-ovekondo was calling because she must have felt it—a more permanent severing than she had intended—like losing an auriad.

This was such a cruel turn for so many people.

“Everything was fine a few dawns ago.” Bithe’s feet hit the floor. He brought a hand up to cover his face. “I don’t understand how so much has broken so suddenly.”

Sometimes it’s like that, Bithe. Sometimes, the shit just piles on top of us until we’re drowning in it.

Alden felt sorry for Bithe and the bors. He felt sorry for Stuart, who’d already been tired and worried and was now looking at the broken case like it was the most disappointing thing he’d ever seen.

And we can’t fix it. It’s not like there’s glue for this one.

At that thought, inspiration jolted him. It was followed by a flood of excitement. Then a dozen questions and details that would have to be figured out.

In five or so minutes. Less than that.

Crap! How long has it already been?!

“Stuart!” he said, as his class contact list popped up in front of his eyes and he selected Kon’s name with a thought. “Stu, I need to know if I can preserve the pieces of the wand. And…”

Think it through. Think faster. This is sort of like someone else’s auriad, but it’s destroyed.

Stuart looked alarmed. Probably because Alden had charged at him and was now yelling in his face. “What would happen if the wand, the whole wand, was instantly on Earth instead of here? Would Tass-ovekonstantin—” That was not right, but he didn’t have time to correct himself. “Would it break without her?”

Why wasn’t Kon answering?

“Alden, the wand is already gone,” said Stuart. “It can’t be more broken than it—”

“No! Pretend I carried it to Earth, and it got fixed suddenly. Would being that far away from the village master damage it again? It would, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes?”

“Then she would need to come with…no, that’s probably slower. Think about whether or not I can preserve the pieces! Sweep all of them together. All of them. I have to talk to somebody and then you might need to summon him. Sweep! I might know a way to fix it.”

******

Alden ran upstairs, an unanalyzed feeling that he should ask this favor in private driving him even though he was panicking about a notice telling him Kon wasn’t accepting calls right now.

It was after midnight on Anesidora. He was most likely asleep.

Someone had to wake his ass up as soon as possible, which meant Alden was about to place a very expensive call to…

“Mehdi! Go get Kon for—”

“Helloooo.” Mehdi was on the narrow sidewalk that ran along what Alden thought of as the back of the Garden Hall boys dorm. There wasn’t much of a view on that side unless you liked tall hedges and infrequently used bocce courts. “You’ve never called me before. Do you want to play a board game in the common room? Heloísa and Rebecca are still aw—”

“Mehdi, I need Kon right now! Something important broke. Please.”

Mehdi’s brows lifted. “Okay.”

The two shopping bags he was holding hit the sidewalk, and in a couple of fluid moves, he was hanging onto a third floor sill, prying the window open and saying, “Code red, Kon!”

When Alden had decided to call Mehdi, he’d assumed he would already be in the apartment he shared with Kon and just run down the hall, but this was equally quick. Standing at the top of the bors’ staircase, Alden could see the park through a window, and at the same time, he could hear Kon through his interface, gasping awake in a dark bedroom and exclaiming, “Window rules, Mehdi!”

“Tell him to answer my call. It’s urgent.” He hung up and called Kon again.

Forgot to thank Mehdi.

Kon answered almost at once. He was grabbing a pair of black uniform trousers from the pile of dirty laundry on his desk chair while Mehdi asked what had broken. Alden couldn’t see the Agility Brute at the moment. He pictured him hanging halfway through the window.

“You need me downstairs right now?” Kon said. “No. Where are you? I don’t recognize that place.”

For the first time since he’d launched into action, Alden took several luxurious seconds to think.

“I’m on Artona I. A wizard’s heirloom wand just broke. You might be summoned to fix it if I tell them you can. Do you want to come try? I’m not the one who broke it, and I won’t be in trouble if you say no.” One more precious second. “The ones who’ll summon you are knights. Generals.”

Clear. Necessary info. As little pressure as possible without lying. He hoped he’d done all of that.

“Take a few seconds,” he said, turning to head back down the stairs. “Yes or no is fine.”

He was almost to the living room when Kon—hands on his waistband, still ignoring Mehdi’s questions—said, “Yes?”

“Yes?”

“Yeah!” He gave Alden a full, toothy grin. “Sounds fun!”

He reached for a shirt. “I’ve never done a wand before. The reading might take longer. It might not work.”

“A wand!”

They both ignored Mehdi’s shout.

“Got it,” said Alden. “I’ll try to make it happen. Stay on this call with me.”

The Systems would block anything Stuart and Bithe said that Kon wasn’t supposed to hear.

******

“I don’t think your plan will work,” Stuart said the moment Alden reentered the room. He was on his knees by the hearth, wiping an ink-stained handkerchief across the floor in hurried circles to pick up any tiny shards. “The wand was more than a simple object, and what it was is fading from reality. Fixing it would be compli—”

“I have a classmate with a powerful repair ability.” Kon was trying to button his shirt while Mehdi thrust a hairbrush toward him. “He says he’ll come. Can Bithe summon Konstantin Roberts of Earth? If he’s not here in thirty seconds, you need to pass me every bit of the wand. His skill is limited by time.”

One Mississippi. He realized that was dumb by the time he got to the fourth Mississippi and set a timer.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“It would be better if Kon made it in time,” he added.

There weren’t enough seconds to explain anything, so it was a relief when Stuart shoved his handkerchief full of glass and wand particles into the case that was now on the floor beside him and looked up at Bithe, who was rubbing the same kind of fabric square all over the mantle.

“I don’t know if I sh—” Bithe was saying.

“Let me take this decision as your votary. Success would relieve the suffering of many people, including your own. Alden’s classmate has agreed. I would be summoning him for you already if I had the right.”

Stuart was on his feet, taking Bithe’s handkerchief from him in one breath, then he was releasing more wand fragments into the case on the next.