The Width of the World Page 10

  I looked back down at the body.

  Gunther Adronis. Alice’s husband. Empyrean had been their home. She was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery, yet he was here.

  I moved back away from the coffin, suddenly trembling all over. This room was so terribly sad. There was death and defeat and despair in every part of it.

  I had no idea why the diary would have had me come here. I mean, what was the point of it?

  As if in answer to my unspoken thought, the diary began to tremble in my pocket once more. With shaky hands I took it out and held it up.

  The pages swirled, but again no writing appeared.

  Instead the same voice said, “You must know the price that will have to be paid. You must look upon these walls and upon that body and fully understand what it is that is demanded of you. It is awful but it is necessary. If you are unwilling to pay this price, then you may stay here, at Empyrean, in comfort and safety, until your last days. But if you are willing to pay the price, aid will be there for you.”

  When I glanced down at the body in the coffin, I nearly fainted. Gunther was no longer there, and the coffin had swelled to three times its original width.

  And lying inside the coffin were Petra, Delph … and me. With our necks slashed and our lives gone.

  I rushed pell-mell from the room, down all the stairs and back to my room. I flung myself on my bed and lay there, paralyzed. A moment later Harry Two, panting, jumped up and lay next to me.

  He nudged my hand, but I didn’t respond.

  So many had fought and lost their lives. They had done so in the war. The lost war. It seemed to make their ultimate sacrifice not worth anything.

  And beyond just me, would I want to sacrifice Delph and Petra to this same failed fight?

  I had no answers to any of these questions. And suddenly I was unsure of what I would do.

  Time marched on.

  Then Harry Two nudged my hand again.

  I pushed him off, but he wouldn’t stop.

  Finally, I looked down at him.

  “Harry Two,” I began.

  And then I stopped.

  Dead.

  It was not Harry Two looking back at me. I mean it was his face, but the eyes, his eyes were different.

  I swallowed a large lump in my throat and sat up.

  There was only one pair of eyes I had ever seen that looked like those.

  I was here in this room right now —

  With my grandfather. I didn’t know if this was simply my imagination , but I so wanted to believe that he was here with me now. I needed my family. I needed them so much.

  And though Harry Two could not speak, one sentence formed in my head:

  Be not afraid, Vega, for you are never truly alone.

  I RUSHED FROM MY room, down the hall and, not bothering to even knock, I pushed open Delph’s door and called out his name.

  He sat up in bed and stared over at me.

  I was breathing so hard and my stomach was churning so badly I thought I might be sick.

  “Vega Jane?” he said warily. “Are you okay?”

  I stumbled forward, took a moment to calm myself and then perched on the edge of his bed.

  “Vega Jane?” he said again. I could tell that Delph was fearful. I had come bursting in, looking like a madwoman, and I hadn’t uttered a word.

  I told Delph about the diary’s message, my visiting the room, what I had seen, particularly the body of Gunther Adronis. And, finally, the image of our three bodies lying there in the coffin.

  As I spoke, he sat up straighter and straighter and his eyes grew wider and wider until I thought they might simply plunge off his face.

  When I got to the part about Harry Two’s eyes and hearing my grandfather’s voice in my head, I truly believed that Delph might fall off the bed in a dead faint.

  “Y-your grandfather? In your head? H-Harry Two? His eyes? B-but h-how?”

  I said, “Am I going mad, Delph?”

  I was suddenly so tired I lay down on the bed and curled into a small ball.

  Delph reached over and clutched my shoulder. “ ’Tis okay now, Vega Jane. You’re safe.”

  I abruptly sat up, making him lurch back.

  “But that’s the thing, Delph. We are safe here. If we stay here we won’t be harmed. But we can’t do that. It’s not why we came all this way, is it?”

  He took a long breath and studied me. I had always known there was far more to Delph than most folks believed. Big, strong, simple Delph. Only he wasn’t simple. Not close to being simple. He had proved that time and again.

  There was a lot of thinking going on inside his head. In many ways he was ruddy brilliant.

  “That’s what you meant at lunch,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He looked around the room. “ ’Tis a nice place. A very nice place. A bloke could get used to being here, all right. Especially after the Quag.”

  “In the Quag, everything can kill you,” I noted.

  He nodded and gave me a weak smile. “But you’re right. We didn’t come here to live in a place like this. We came here for answers.” He paused and didn’t speak for such a long time that I thought someting was wrong. “But we need to do it in a smart way.”

  “How?” I said eagerly.

  “Well, to start with, we need to go on little scouting trips. Like me and my dad would do when we would go hunting in the forest. You find out where what you’re hunting likes to be, and that way you don’t have to keep searching for them every time you go out.”

  “So we go out but then come back here?” I said doubtfully.

  “It makes sense, Vega Jane. That way we learn things and then come back here and sort through them. Then go out and get more knowledge and return here and do the same. Way I see it, we nearly died in True because we had no safe place to return to while rummaging through this new bleeding world we’re in. This can be like our camp. It won’t help no one if we go and get ourselves killed because we tried to do too much too soon.” He paused and blurted out, “It’s all so … new, Vega Jane!”

  I slowly nodded, his words striking me as both thoughtful and accurate.

  “I agree,” I said.

  “So when do you want to leave?” he asked.

  I looked out the window.

  “I want to leave now, while it’s still dark.”

  He looked at me funny, the reasoning for my use of the word I sinking slowly into him, like an illness taking you.

  “You’re not going to go alone, Vega Jane,” he said forcefully.

  “I am, at first, Delph, just to get the lay of the land. It’ll be easier and safer with just one. Then you can come.”

  “But —” he began to protest.

  “It’s just the way it has to be, Delph.”

  Before he could say anything else, I rose from the bed.

  “I need to get ready. I’ll see you when I get back, Delph.”

  I added, to myself, I hope.

  * * *

  I QUICKLY DRESSED, wearing clothes that we had taken from the trunk in True, and slipping my cloak on, I retrieved my wand from the nightstand, put the Adder Stone in my pocket and took the diary as well. The thing hadn’t spoken to me again, but one never knew when it might do so once more.

  When I was done with that, I looked at Harry Two, who sat still as a statue on my bed.

  “You stay here, Harry Two. I’ll be back soon,” I said, giving his solitary ear a rub.

  I left the room and hurried down the hall.

  I passed by Delph’s door. I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He would be up until I got back, I was sure.

  I next passed by Petra’s door and then stopped.

  I took out my wand, pointed it at the door and said quietly, “Crystilado magnifica.”

  A split second later I could see inside her room. I had expected her to be asleep. Only she wasn’t.

  Petra was squatting down on the floor, her wand twirling in a practiced fashion between her fingers.

&nb
sp; She pointed it at a chair next to her bed and muttered an incantation.

  “Mutatio hydrus.”

  As I watched in horror, the chair transformed into a writhing mass of deadly vipers.

  I nearly fell over as I watched.

  The next instant she calmly said, “Rescindo.”

  Where in the world had she — and then the truth hit me. That spell had been in a book in Jasper Jane’s room.

  A book of dark spells.

  Even as I looked, I saw her take some pages from her pocket and glance down at them. As I looked more closely, I could see that they had been torn from a book, or books.

  She had stolen dark spells from my ancestor’s room and was now practicing them.

  I was horrified. I had told Petra that I trusted her. And I had. But now?

  I looked down at my wand, unsure of what to do. Should I place her in some sort of prison? Should I paralyze her and deal with it when I got back? I shuddered. Should I … attack her, or even … ?

  Fortunately, as I was pondering all of these awful possible solutions, Petra rose, put her wand and pages away, got into bed and blew out her candle. I waited long enough to hear her breaths lengthen into gentle snores.

  I retreated and continued on down the hall.

  I had other things to command my attention, and if I wanted to survive to return here and deal with Petra, I needed to keep my focus.

  I reached the front door, luckily without running into Pillsbury.

  But even as his name entered my head, there he was, appearing out of nowhere.

  “Mistress Vega?” he said. His visor seemed screwed up in confusion. “Are you leaving us?”

  “Just going for a stroll, Pillsbury. I won’t be long.”

  Before he could say anything else, I opened the front door and then closed it quietly behind me.

  I looked out into the darkness and then turned and eyed the facade of Empyrean. So solid, so peaceful, so just there.

  Remaining here for life would have been so … easy.

  I looked down at my ring, turned it round and vanished instantly.

  I had no idea how the enchantments round the house and grounds worked or how far they extended, but I would take no chances of being seen by the forces that I knew were aligned against us.

  I touched my waist, around which lay Destin. Should I fly? Should I walk?

  Then an absolutely brilliant idea occurred to me.

  I reached down, tapped my right leg twice and muttered, “Pass-pusay.”

  I had one destination in mind.

  Greater True.

  I just prayed it would work.

  It didn’t.

  I tried it again. Nothing.

  I thought about it for a bit.

  Okay, I thought, let’s give this another go.

  “Pass-pusay,” I said, and in my mind this time my destination was not Greater True, but the town of True.

  An instant later I was standing in the middle of a street.

  I looked around. This was True all right. And then it hit me. The Pass-pusay incantation apparently only worked if the place you wanted to go to was one you had already been to. It would have been nice if Astrea Prine had told me that, I thought irritably.

  So now my dilemma was how to get to Greater True. Under cover of invisibility, I headed to the train station.

  I wasn’t going to take a train. I was just going to follow one heading to Greater True.

  An hour after I arrived at the station, the big marquee board announced the boarding of the early morning train with a final destination of Greater True.

  With Destin around my waist, I took to the air and waited, hovering there.

  A few minutes later, the train pulled out of the station and headed onward.

  I followed from the air. The trip included a few other stops at stations along the way. These places were far smaller than either True or Greater True. Two people got off at one stop, and another climbed aboard at a second stop. The countryside in between was dotted with small homesteads and, where the winks of lights were more numerous, perhaps tiny villages that appeared even smaller than Wormwood.

  Finally, I could see tall buildings rising up in the distance. I passed the train, reached town and landed. Unfortunately, confused a bit by the lingering darkness, I landed in the middle of a roadway.

  The next second I leapt out of the way or else — just as had occurred in True — I would have been crushed to death by a huge motor flashing past.

  It was gone so fast I couldn’t even see who was inside.

  I pressed myself against the stone wall of a building and took a long look around.

  The streets were empty of people, which made sense, it being so early. The buildings were larger and grander than what I had seen in True. Some were made of stone, others of fine brick. They rose higher than anything I had observed in True. As a former Finisher, I marveled at the intricate carvings, moldings and cornice pieces. I knew that it had taken great skill to craft all these things.

  I slowly walked to my left. I didn’t have a plan really, but I did want to see as much as I possibly could. I tugged my glove tighter over my hand to make sure the mark there was covered.

  The next second I flattened myself against the wall again as I heard footsteps racing toward me.

  Around the corner came a small, old fellow dressed in a suit, huffing and puffing, his chunky legs moving in a jerky fashion, as though they were rarely used for running.

  My breath caught in my throat as pounding footsteps drew closer, and around the same corner came three men in suits and brown bowler hats.

  It was not much of a chase. They caught up with the fellow, and one of the Bowler Hats raised his wand and the spell hit the little fellow in the back. He slumped to the pavement in great pain. He looked up at those gathered around him, his eyes filled with the most intense fear. They all pointed their wands at him.

  I pulled out my own wand, pointed it at the blokes and said three times rapidly, “Anesthe.”

  All three instantly crumpled to the pavement.

  I waited anxiously to see if any other Bowler Hats showed up, alerted by my incantation. But none did.

  The old fellow cowered for a few more moments, his hands over his head, until he noticed that his attackers were lying unconscious on the street.

  Since he didn’t seem inclined to flee, I said softly, “Run.”

  That did the trick. He took to his heels and was soon out of sight.

  I turned and quietly backed away until I was around another corner. Then I ran for it too. Ten minutes later I slumped breathless against a building, nursing the pain in my side from running so hard.

  So Greater True was not as peaceful as its counterpart True. Not when Endemen’s blokes went about attacking defenseless people. I wondered what the old fellow had done to command such attention. Yet after what I had seen Endemen do to those poor men on the train, I concluded it wouldn’t take much for him and his blokes to kill you.

  * * *

  THE STREETS WERE empty wherever I walked, and I realized that I had actually picked an unfortunate time to explore this place. Most people would still be in their beds for several more hours at least.

  Well, I would have to find a place to hide until the sun came up.

  And hope that I survived.

  I MOVED TO MY right and turned down another street. I kept going until I reached a bridge. I started to cross, always wary of anyone lurking in the shadows, but I saw no one.

  I wrapped my coat more tightly around me because it was cold and raw and the skies threatened rain.

  As soon as I thought this, the clouds opened up and it started to bucket down.

  My first impulse was to use my wand to provide cover against the elements, as I had back in the Quag. But then I realized I couldn’t. How would it look for a shield spell to be blocking the rain from hitting … nothing? It would be a dead giveaway. And that’s what I would be: dead.

  I rushed across the bridge
and then hooked a sharp left and slunk down under the structure. I hurried toward a stone support column near the bank. At least here I was shielded from the rain.

  I huddled down, cold, wet and miserable, leaned back against the stone piling of the bridge, closed my eyes and gratefully fell asleep.

  My eyes snapped open when I heard the noise. It was directly above me.

  The sound of marching.

  Still invisible, I crept out from under the bridge. It had stopped raining, thankfully, but it was still cloudy and there was no sign of the sun, though I could tell that the night had fully passed.

  I scrambled to a spot where I could see the top of the bridge.

  A stream of black-helmeted and booted men was striding across the bridge in a double column. As they reached the end where I was, I saw to my horror that they weren’t full-grown men.

  They were … boys.

  They all carried what looked to be very sophisticated mortas supported by straps over their shoulders. They all wore scowls. And they all looked … so proudly angry as they whipped their arms and legs in perfect synchronization.

  The one leading them brandished a gleaming sword and was calling out orders. Another in the front carried a flag. On it I saw a symbol.

  It was a five-pointed star, but it had two black dots in the center of it. As the columns drew closer, I could see that the black dots were actually eyes. I shuddered because they were the most frightening pair of eyes I had ever seen.

  They seemed capable of piercing my skin and burning right into my soul.

  I had to look away.

  The column marched on.

  Shaken, I looked around to get my bearings as Greater True awoke from its slumber. The pavement was slick with the rain, but the windows glistened as shafts of light broke through the shallow storm clouds and reflected upon them. Noises were starting to percolate out of various spots.

  The streets were in excellent shape and well laid out. I couldn’t see a bit of rubbish anywhere. Even the air seemed more pure than what I was used to.

  As I watched, the wind drove the clouds away and sunlight swept down and embraced me.

  Motors were starting up, and several of them began to appear on streets near the bridge.

  I could see the people inside the motors. They looked like the ones boarding the train to Greater True I’d seen previously — their features coldly arrogant. I had taken an instant dislike to them back in True and my opinion had not changed in Greater True. I was surprised that they even condescended to travel to True. I also wondered again what was on the palms of the hands they had shown the guards at the train station. I vowed to solve that mystery on this trip if I could.