Kendra gets the rod

Treading carefully, she peeked around the corner and saw a large, rectangular room. If the room was twenty yards wide, it must have been sixty yards long. Similar to outside by the river, the light in the room had no observable source. At the far end of the chamber, a smooth wooden rod stood vertically atop a tall pedestal. A rectangular reflecting pool filled most of the room, with aisles down the sides granting access to the far end. On the left side of the pool, Celebrant strode purposefully toward the pedestal across the room. On the right side, Obregon hurried toward the same destination. Mysteriously, no matter how many steps they took, neither man seemed to make any progress.

Kendra crept into the room. If Celebrant or Obregon looked back, they would easily see her. The room was not very large, and both of them were only a third of the way toward the far end. Kendra crossed to the center of the base of the reflecting pool, directly opposite the rod, which was mirrored clearly in the still water. She heard forlorn whispers and sighs emanating from the dark pool, just like in the river. It was impossible to guess how deep the water might be.

Moving carefully, Kendra snuck over to the side of the pool behind Obregon. He was only about fifteen paces down the aisle from her, still walking briskly without advancing. If she could creep up behind him and turn him to platinum, that might even the odds quite a bit!

Her first step toward Obregon caused her to pause. With that step, the entire room seemed to elongate. The far end of the reflecting pool looked almost twice as far away, and it would now take more than twenty paces to reach Obregon.

Kendra took a couple more steps and watched the room telescope even more. Obregon had to be thirty or maybe even forty paces away now. And the far end of the room was getting truly distant. Kendra walked forward more, watching as the room continued to elongate until Obregon was barely in view and the rod was out of sight. The reflecting pool seemed to stretch ahead forever.

Looking back, Kendra found that the start of the reflecting pool looked much more distant than the number of steps she had taken. Walking back in the direction she had come, Kendra found that her progress was as slow as it looked like it should be. Evidently, her return steps neither stretched nor shrank the room, but steps toward the far side quickly increased the journey.

Kendra paused, considering her predicament. Celebrant and Obregon had a huge head start. No wonder they didn’t see her—they had probably gone so far that the near end of the room was long out of view from their present perspective. They had also gone so far that they probably had an impossible lead.

Curious, Kendra jogged back to the front of the room. The ground she had covered in about twenty paces now required a five-minute jog. When Kendra got back to the near end of the pool, she found the room had returned to its original shape—Obregon once again looked perhaps fifteen paces away and was still only a third of the way to the far end.

The farther Celebrant and Obregon went, the longer the room became for them. When Kendra followed, the room stretched for her as well. Was there a better way? Or was the dwarf requiring an epic journey that appeared short at the outset?

Kendra wondered whether Celebrant and Obregon understood how slowly they were progressing. Once both ends of the pool were beyond sight, it was probably difficult to perceive how much ground they had covered and how much remained. If her current vantage of their infinitesimal progress was accurate, it looked like Celebrant and Obregon would be traveling for a very long time.

Studying the room, Kendra wondered if there might be a shortcut. The rod looked tantalizingly close! Besides walking alongside the reflecting pool, the only other obvious option was attempting to swim. If the room didn’t stretch when she was in the water, it would be a relatively short distance to cover. If it did elongate, she might, without going very far, get stranded and drown. Or maybe she could always swim sideways and get out? Perhaps only the length of the room could increase, not the width?

Kendra crouched at the edge of the water. The faint, overlapping whispers made the liquid seem sinister. She had a bad feeling about getting in. Was it just cowardice?

She was no longer trying to find Risenmay. Her instincts were probably there for a reason. Jumping into that water might be the end of her.

It was frustrating. It looked like she could walk to the rod in less than a minute! But as soon as she started to approach, she knew it would stretch out of reach again. How could it be so near and so far? Squatting low like this, at the edge of the water, it almost looked like she could reach out and touch the reflection of the rod. As she considered the reflection, something about the perspective seemed off. Shouldn’t the reflected rod be a little farther away? After she dropped her head even lower, the reflection appeared reachable.

Part of the poem came back to her:

In the end if you reflect
The rod you will detect

That wasn’t exactly right. But it was close. Could it be so simple? There was no way. Her idea was absurd. Kendra did not want to touch the whispery water to test her theory. What if it gave cooties to her soul?

But the reflection seemed nearer than it should be. And the way to the rod was so far and difficult. And the dwarf seemed to like tricks.

Keeping her head low, Kendra reached out into the pool and grabbed the reflection of the rod. Feeling tangible wood in her grasp, she removed it from the pool. And the rod at the far end of the pool was no longer there.

Chapter 29-Banishment