Aahz moved over behind me. “We’re going to have to do this together,” he said. “Tanda, when I say ‘ready’ you connect the gold in this shovel to whatever gold you can sense nearby. Pull in as much as you can.”
“Oh, so you’re going to make the shovel bigger?” I asked, starting to understand his plan.
“Exactly,” he said.
Tanda nodded. “I’m going to have to make the gold wide, at least ten feet around.”
Tanda could see the giant flow of energy as well as I could. She also knew how insane this attempt was.
“I know,” Aahz said, nodding.
“Can you hold that much?” I asked. “I sure can’t.”
“We’re both going to try,” Aahz said. “You steer, I’ll lift. I’m going to get under the shovel. When Tanda connects other gold to it and starts expanding it, it’s going to get really, really heavy very quickly, so be ready the moment I say go. I don’t want to drop it.”
I nodded. This gold-plated shovel wasn’t that light as it was. I couldn’t imagine how Aahz and I could even try to hold up a gold block ten feet across, even a thin one.
“We have to keep it out of the flow until it’s big enough,” Aahz said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this and get on to the next life.”
Aahz laughed. “That’s what I like about you, apprentice. Always a good mental attitude.”
“Give me something to be positive about,” I said.
Aahz moved around and got under me, bracing himself solidly as I held the shovel up in position next to the side-flow of energy. When the gold got big enough for what Tanda was going to do, we were going to simply let the shovel fall to our right and cut off the side-flow to the spell. However, if we let the shovel fall forward into the main flow, there was no telling what would happen.