Tenthé did nothing but watch as they were transported elsewhere. The instant Isabell had grabbed his hand, he found himself beside her, hovering in front of a window showing the café they had just left. Everyone on the other side was frozen.
Surrounding them was a black, black space with other windows floating at various points, dazzling in the darkness. Reality hiccuped and they were somewhere between the windows. Although Tenthé was finding it difficult to think, he could see tangles of black threads passing in front of a few of the windows. His view jumped a few more times until they were facing another window, then reality popped into being around them. It was an empty hallway in the College. They were immediately surrounded by a cadre of ghostly versions of the Guardians.
One of them, whom Tenthé didn’t recognize, held up a hand to indicate he wait. What now?
“You know I can talk to you,” Tenthé stated to the Guardian.
“Yeah, but gesturing is much more intimidating.”
Bear chimed in, “I agree. Like this,” then he made a different gesture, doing very well with only vestigial fingers. The other Guardians laughed silently, then money changed hands. Tenthé had no idea what they’d bet on.
“What’s going on? Any hints?” Tenthé asked the Guardian.
“You’ll see.”
At that point, Isabell shimmered into cubes, momentarily disappeared, and then became ghostly herself. He couldn’t hear anything, but she was carrying on a conversation with the Guardians in whatever plane they existed in. They continued talking as everyone began walking down the hallway.
That was impressive. Even he hadn’t figured out how to get to their plane, yet. By design, it was only accessible to the College defenders. As he watched, Tenthé noticed that some of them were asking her for her autograph. She had fans! He felt mildly offended. No-one ever asked for his autograph. Although, until recently, he wouldn’t have really understood what to do.
Isabell stopped. It looked like she was thinking. She turned to look at him.
“Tenthé, you know, I have an idea,” she said.
He was surprised. Somehow, she had tapped into the way he could communicate with the Guardians. This differed from how he spoke with Bear and when he was grouped up. She definitely wasn’t the old Isabell. Or, at least, not just the old Isabell.
She continued, “It is reasonably likely the Horde is coming, and we all know the City isn’t ready. The Guardians and the College are the main magical defense, and they co-ordinate with the Gods and other forces. Maybe we should talk with them. By them, I mean the Guardians. Obviously.”
“Um, sure.”
Isabell started speaking energetically, once again silent. One of the smaller individuals seemed to be a leader, at least it carried most of the conversation with Isabell. Some agreement was reached and the bulk of the Guardians and Isabell walked off in a direction that didn’t correspond to the hallways in the school. The rest went back to their normal patrols. That left him alone with Bear.
Who was being unusually quiet. Maybe the trip through the weird space had upset him. He had few defenses and would shut up when there was the potential for real trouble. Unfortunately, it was never permanent.
While he was debating whether he should wait, the Guard loomed into view and reached down for him. Tenthé let himself be scooped up, but watched closely to see where the scooping took him. It was subtle, but he got an idea of what happened. It would take some study, but he might be able to duplicate the effect, he was pretty good at mixing things he knew with what he saw to come up with new ways to do stuff.
His time at the College had shown him this wasn’t how most Magisters practiced magic. They kept to the tried and true. A lot less explosions, but kind of boring.
A lot of his abilities had come from taking a chance. For instance, it was how he came up with the way to make a copy of himself. It ran on automatic; if one of him was destroyed, another took his place. It was a very handy thing that he’d figured out in the first Pool where everything was connected, even though they were separate. So far, it had worked. He supposed if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t be here to care.
When the Guard put him down, he looked around. He was surrounded by corridors, rooms, and passageways extending up to the other planes.
The Guard spoke. “So, Tenthé… I wanted… to talk to you… about Isabell… but she wants… to talk with all of us… Pushy, isn’t she?”
“Yeah. I like her too.”
“Yeah… Ha… Ha… Ha.” The Guard paused, then added, “You know… we will figure her out… There are… a lot of resources… working on it.”
“I guessed. How’s the betting going?”
The Guard launched into a slow long-winded discussion about the approaches they were looking at and the odds of success. Tenthé didn’t follow the math, or really anything, but the more the Guard talked, the more Tenthé learned about how the Guardians operated. Although no-one had ever accused him of being a good conversationalist, he wasn’t stupid. He knew that the Guard was wise enough not to let out any real information, but everyone liked to talk if you found their passion. And sometimes, you’d get a little tidbit that might be useful.
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The discussion, more monolog, continued as they walked through the halls of this version of the College. Being large and magical, the Guard ignored trivial things such as walls and ceilings, which forced Tenthé scrambling to follow as best he could. While he was running back and forth, and phasing up and down a few planes, Tenthé was also thinking about methods to get to this overlay on his own. Now that he was here, it looked to him that some of his shortcuts brought him pretty close, but it would take some more work.
Eventually, Tenthé walked into the Guardian’s version of the large dining room. He hadn’t really thought about it, but if people like the Lady’s kids worked here, they needed to eat and have somewhere to sleep.
Looking up through the ceiling at the Guard, he wondered if it ate. For the Guard, a cow would be just a nibble.
Lurking by the door, Tenthé’s attention was drawn to a table halfway across the room. Isabell was standing by it, deeply engaged in an animated conversation. Although they had started without him, Tenthé felt no urge to join in.
She stood out, looking like a glowing beacon in a sea of grey and blue. He tuned in to hear what she was saying.
“… and if the Horde showed up at the gates tomorrow, would we be able to defend against them?”
It was apparent that she was mostly addressing the smaller Guardian beside her, who answered somewhat huffily, “We’re always prepared, but the fact of the matter is that without access to our Dreamer we will have difficulty countering their equivalent, the Mentor. We have contingency plans in the works and hope to find some reasonable approach over the next few years.”
“About that…” Isabell looked at Tenthé and called out over the crowd, “So, Tenthé, if you were going to invade somewhere, what would you do?”
Everyone turned to look at him. Fortunately, he wasn’t bothered by crowds and answered, “Um, make sure I knew what the enemy could do, then attack them at a point they didn’t expect, when they didn’t expect, and in a way that they didn’t expect.”
“Exactly! I think the Horde will be here much sooner than we are predicting, to catch us when we are most vulnerable!”
Another being sitting at Isabell’s table harrumphed, “Well, very good and dandy, but we are keeping tabs on them. They are currently camped outside Angel City. They’ve been there quite a while, and don’t seem in any hurry to leave.”
It continued. “If the Wilds are stable, that’s hundreds of kilo-paces from here and we would know if they broke off and headed this way. They are following pattern A-6, used two hundred and thirty years ago, before the Dreamer of the time altered our history.”
“And how do you keep track of an opponent who can alter reality?” Isabell asked.
“Our troops are extremely competent. We have set up multiple observers with separate reporting chains. It is a tried-and-true method that has served us well over the years.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, obviously skeptical.
The Guardian didn’t appear to be the brightest; it reiterated, “Yes, a method we have a good deal of experience with. One that we know is difficult to counter.”
There was some mumbling at Isabell’s table. Tenthé guessed these were most of the leaders of the Guardians. From what he could tell, not everyone was satisfied with the answer. He sure wouldn’t be. Nothing made him happier than when he knew what an enemy was going to do. It was solid information he could work with to counter their plans. Just off the cuff, he could come up with several ways to get around the kind of system the Guardian had described. How many, he would be hard pressed to say, but it was more than one.
“Um, yes,” Isabell responded. “I think we have a problem. Our Dreamer, wherever he is, has set up a process that runs the City well when we are looking at commerce and general happiness. Unfortunately, he has not really spent much effort preparing us for a real war. We’re on more of a peacetime footing.”
She continued, “Let me summarize. The families are fighting. As usual. The gods are off doing their own thing. The Guardians are relying on well-known practices and we have already seen an incursion of the Horde which was not detected until very late. I would be anxious, if I were you.”
The short Guardian, who Tenthé thought might a general, spoke up. “I have no argument with your observations, but I maintain we are prepared and will not be caught sleeping.”
A small smile flitted across Isabell’s face. “Really? If that’s true, let’s find out. Since you have an agent provocateur in your midst, we should ask him what he thinks.”
Again, she turned to Tenthé.
“So, if you had to disrupt the defenses of the City, what would you do?”
Tenthé wasn’t sure it was wise to answer. This sort of thing often led to upset feelings. He looked up at the Guard, who shrugged its shoulders.
Tenthé reached down, down, deep into the Heart of the World. What he was trying to do was like the quake he caused in the Turtle’s temple, but a bit different.
The room shook. In fact, this time he knew that the whole College was involved. A number of Guardians leaped up and looked around, while others turned to glare at Tenthé.
Who stood watching, ready to bolt if necessary.
The little general appeared confused. “Well, that was impressive, but I don’t see what you accomplished,” it stated.
“Try… looking… at the… College.” The Guard’s voice echoed through the room.
A moment later, the mumbling grew into a loud din as more of the Guardians stood up, obviously perturbed.
Nearly as one, the Guardians turned towards Tenthé, who, typically, was nowhere to be seen. The yells continued to rise in volume.
Isabell’s commanding tone pierced the roar. “Calm down! Nothing much has happened, or rather, nothing terrible. If I am not wrong, he’s separated the planes a bit and made it significantly harder for the Guardians to access the College.”
She broke into cubes for a moment, then shimmered back into herself and continued.
“Yep. The effect isn’t permanent, but it’ll take a while to reverse itself. For the duration, you will be stuck here. Imagine if this happened during an attack! That would be bad, wouldn’t it? A big part of the defenses disabled, just like that,” and she snapped her fingers. “I think we have a lot to discuss,” she finished.
The room settled down, and the real discussions began. Tenthé hadn’t stayed. He was back in the College, but his little visit to the plane of the Guardians let him know enough that he could listen in to the meeting. Isabell was being very commanding, and even better, he wasn’t in trouble.
The Guardians were poking at his work, but they wouldn’t be getting through, anytime soon. Of course, the Guard could probably step right past his barrier, but, for the moment, it wasn’t doing anything. Or rather, what it was doing was collecting money. Tenthé smiled. It was good to help a friend.
And, something nearly as good, he wasn’t stuck in a meeting. He hated those.