by Ted Sanders
“—but broadly speaking, our need then was the same as it is now. To prevent the Riven from finding and repairing the Mothergates.”
“The Mothergates. Right. And they’re about to die, taking us Keepers with them.” His mother let loose a soft grumble of worry and tucked her chin against her chest. Horace wouldn’t let himself pause. “So why bother telling me this now? It’s like . . . a guy is falling from a building to his death, and on the way down someone leans out a window to tell him he’s a terrible person.”
His mother slid nimbly to the floor and crossed to Horace, climbing up on the bed beside him. She lifted his hand from his lap and held it, squeezing it. Her grip was warm and strong.
Falo watched her. As far as Horace was concerned, his mom was the best mom possible, but somehow in the light of Falo’s steady, maternal gaze, she looked like a child. Falo shone with frightening wisdom and endless care, as if she had given birth to the very idea of motherhood itself.
“She worries,” Falo murmured, turning to Horace. “She is well aware of the fate we Keepers will face if the Mothergates die—of the fate that may await her only son. And yet we intend to let the Mothergates fade away. Have you not wondered why she is not more angry?”
“Don’t speak for me, Falo,” his mother said.
“You’re a Tuner,” Falo told her. “You know the dangers of keeping the Mothergates open as well as I. Tell your son. Tell him what we face.”
“Don’t say I’m not angry. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“You are not so angry that you cannot accept the truth,” said Falo. She leaned toward Horace again. “Tell me, Keeper, have you heard of thrall-blight?”
Thrall-blight. Horace’s queasy gut gnawed at him. He’d first heard the word from Dr. Jericho. “When I don’t follow the future the box shows me, I feel sick.” Dr. Jericho had told him that the awful sickness spread outward from Horace into the Medium, all the way to the Mothergates themselves. Was it true? Were the Mothergates dying because of the Fel’Daera, and Horace?
Falo said, “Thrall-blight is an affliction that strikes the Keeper of the Fel’Daera when he rejects the universe the Fel’Daera promised him.”
“Mr. Meister told me the Box of Promises makes no promises.”
“He was being kind. It’s more truthful to say that the Fel’Daera makes no promises its Keeper cannot break.”
“Fabulous,” Horace said. “So okay . . . tell me what thrall-blight is. I suppose when I reject the future the Fel’Daera showed me, I’m destroying yet another universe. Is that why I feel so crappy? I’m killing the universe the Fel’Daera promised me?”
“No,” Falo said. “That universe remains, even if you reject it. Somewhere, another Horace did not reject it, and still walks the willed path. What you feel, rather, is the rebirth of universes that were extinguished when you opened the Fel’Daera.”
Horace actually rocked back, stunned. “But that seems good. Why does it feel so bad?”
“Because you are treading ground you were never meant to walk,” said Falo. “Doing work meant to be done by the multiverse itself, in a manner of speaking.”
“So it’s my fault,” Horace said. “This . . . sickness the Mothergates have. It’s because of me, and the Fel’Daera, and thrall-blight.”
Falo’s brows went high and her eyes slid closed. She shook her head as if she did not know how to explain to him everything he’d just gotten wrong.
“A dying thing isn’t necessarily sick, Horace,” his mother said. “The sun dies every day.”
April, silent for several minutes, suddenly spoke. Her voice was hollow, far away. “I can explain it to you, Horace,” she said. “Or at least, I can explain what I feel.” She pointed to the Ravenvine, peeking out from under her auburn hair. Falo nodded her encouragement. “The Mothergates are temporary,” April said. “They are . . . fleeting, actually, in the grand scheme of things. Like the eyes of a sleeping giant, cracking open for just a second. They’ll close again. But while the Mothergates are open, the life force that creates new universes is spilling through them into our world. The life force of the universe itself. All the universes. And when it spills into our world, it becomes something we can twist and bend.”
“The Medium,” Horace said.
April nodded. “But the more we witness it—the more we use it . . .”
As she trailed off, Falo picked up the thread. “There are things that are not meant to be known. Bridges we are not meant to build. Yet through the Medium, through the Tanu, we reach out to other universes. We may slip between universes, like Chloe. We may, like Neptune, borrow the laws of physics from another universe. We may live in another universe while we die in this one, like those that have sacrificed themselves to the Nevren. We may extinguish other universes, Horace Andrews, or even bring them back to life. And even if we do none of these things, we seize hold of the consciousness of the multiverse every time we use a Tanu. This in itself is not bad, but in all these cases, we tie our universe to another, and another, and another. We bind things that are not meant to be bound.”
Horace realized he was holding his breath. “Not meant by whom?”
“Consciousness has one rule,” Falo said. “Time moves forward. And as time moves forward, everything expands—knowledge, self, space.”
“Why?” said April.
Falo looked surprised by the question. “Because if things do not expand, we do not become. And becoming is what consciousness is all about. We are not unmade; we are made.”
“Then why is it not okay to expand into another universe?” Horace said.
His mother hummed, pleased with the question. She squeezed his hand, which she’d been holding all this time, and then let it go.
“Because then we are no longer ourselves,” said Falo. “No longer individuals. The mind of the multiverse is all-encompassing. It is the same mind in every universe. But the individual minds that live within the multiverse—yours and mine, and the minds of every living thing—are confined to the universes in which they live. They are the building blocks of the multiverse itself, and the multiverse depends upon them not to stray.”
“But we Keepers,” said Horace, grasping it at last, “we stray.”
“Yes.” Falo scooped out a huge handful—an Altari handful—of spicy bread from the loaf sitting on the bedside table. She crushed it between her fingers, working it into a large pile of tiny crumbs, and then scattered the crumbs across the floor, thousands of amber specks against the gray. “The multiverse,” she said. “Each crumb a universe unto itself, each universe expanding. And of course, the entire multiverse itself must expand, too.”
She leaned down, stooping between her long legs like a mantis, and drew a circle in the middle of the mess, isolating a little island of crumbs. “If it has not occurred to you, recognize now that the Tanu do not exist in every universe.” She pointed at the little island. “Here are the universes where the Tanu exist. Our own universe is one of them. Like the rest of the multiverse, this group of worlds should be expanding. But it is not. Because of the Tanu, these universes are entangled. Tied to one another. Overlapping, interdependent, jostling each other. This section of the multiverse cannot expand. Instead it struggles, like an insect caught in a web of its own making.” For some reason, she glanced at April.
“Tangles,” April said again, firmly this time.
“Yes. And eventually . . .” Falo encircled the little island of crumbs with her huge nimble fingers and crushed it, flicking the crumbs away, leaving a huge patch of empty space. “The tangles become so knotted that the mind of the multiverse will cease to know this part of itself. It will no longer understand the witnesses within, witnesses that give it life. It will no longer understand the difference between those witnesses and itself. And when that happens, our universe and thousands of others—every universe where the Tanu exist—will be destroyed.”
Chapter Six
Rescued
THEY WERE COMING. JOSHUA COULD HA
RDLY DIGEST THE thought.
Somehow they’d found him, and Mr. Meister too.
The Altari were here.
But before Joshua could even think what it might mean, sudden music filled the chamber—the wavering strains of a flute, sweet and somehow cunning, playing a tune that was not a tune. The notes seemed to reach for Joshua, to enter not just his ears but his skin, his very flesh.
Ingrid stood by the doorway with Dr. Jericho, playing her white flute, sending the awful, beautiful music down the hallway and out in to the passageways beyond. Her Tan’ji gleamed in the darkness like a bone.
Ingrid’s music was a way of seeing, somehow—Joshua knew that much. If anyone was within earshot of the flute’s tune, Ingrid would know they were there. But who was there? Joshua had never even seen an Altari, the mysterious beings who lived in Ka’hoka. They were the lost brothers of the Riven, and their sworn enemy, too. He now knew that the Altari, along with the Wardens, were fighting to let the Mothergates die. But he still didn’t understand why. Was April helping them? Did she know? What about Horace and Chloe? Were his friends here with the Altari now, attempting a rescue?
And if so, had they come for him, or for Mr. Meister?
Joshua caught his breath. The sharp-eyed Mordin had left his side, and was standing now with Ingrid and Dr. Jericho. Grooma was still gazing mutely at the ceiling, clearly shaken by the presence of the Altari somewhere above. Isabel, all but forgotten after Grooma’s weavings were interrupted, was a heaving lump of cloth and red hair, collapsed at the Dorvala’s feet.
And Mr. Meister was on the move.
The old man was taking advantage of the distraction, inching his way across the floor toward Joshua. The golem off to his left just sat there, a mindless pile of stone, Dr. Jericho’s attention elsewhere.
Ingrid dropped her flute. Her grasping song fell away. “Grooma’s right,” she told Dr. Jericho. “Altari—several of them, two levels up. And humans too. They know we’re here.” She hesitated, and then added, “Gabriel is with them.”
Dr. Jericho growled angrily. He barked something to the sharp-eyed Mordin, who nodded and galloped down the hallway after the others.
Mr. Meister kept creeping closer to Joshua, clutching his broken leg. His eyes were wide and wild now behind his glasses. He silently mouthed a single word at Joshua, his teeth glinting.
Open.
The Laithe. He wanted Joshua to open a portal. But there was no chance. The moment Joshua began to use the Laithe, steering the surface of the little globe down onto some safe place—Ka’hoka, maybe?—Dr. Jericho would sense it. Besides, the Altari were coming. He shook his head at Mr. Meister, hugging the Laithe, but the old man kept crawling toward him, nodding.
“They have warriors,” Ingrid was saying. “One has a bow, and another—”
“Ravana,” Dr. Jericho said. A name, apparently. He cocked his head at Ingrid. “How many did you say there were?”
“At least a dozen Altari.”
“No,” Dr. Jericho said. “Not a dozen. Far from it. Young Dailen is here, I’m sure of it. And he is only one, at the end of the day.”
Suddenly Joshua heard the sounds of distant battle. The Ravids screeching. grunts and shouts. A steady twang like a great string being plucked, and now a scream.
Dr. Jericho laughed. “The Ravids have found them.”
Ravids. The hissing, screeching little monsters. The Wardens had barely managed to escape from them in the Warren.
Mr. Meister was just twenty feet away now. Close enough so that if Joshua opened a portal, the old man might be able to reach it and crawl through. But Joshua would have to be fast. Faster than he’d ever been.
He laid a hand on the meridian, the flat copper ring that encircled the Laithe. A silver slider straddled it, in the shape of a dozing rabbit. Once the globe was focused in on the exact location he chose, and the Laithe was torn loose, Joshua could make the rabbit run, letting the meridian spin beneath its feet, opening the portal wide. He looked down at the tiny earth in his hands, at North America and the Midwest, a swath of green brushed with imperceptibly drifting clouds. Ka’hoka was just there, near a kink in the bend of the Mississippi. Dr. Jericho was still talking to Ingrid. No one was watching. Maybe he could do it.
But did he want to?
The Mothergates were dying, and Mr. Meister was determined to see that they did. This secret, this truth, had been kept from them all. Maybe Dr. Jericho was right. Maybe whatever it was Grooma had tried to do to Isabel could fix the problem with the Mothergates, in ways the Wardens had never imagined.
Across the room, still oblivious to the creeping Mr. Meister, Dr. Jericho fished something out of his pocket. “Enough,” he said. Joshua saw a glint of crimson. It was another golm’ruun, the ring that controlled the golem. Dr. Jericho lifted his hand, and off to the right, in the darkest shadows of the broad chamber, the wall crumbled and then rose again. Joshua swallowed a gasp as a second golem peeled itself away from the stone, darkness come to life. It poured forth, splitting in two briefly as it rumbled past Grooma and Isabel, like a river around rocks. Dr. Jericho lifted his other hand, and the first golem reared up. The two moving mountains flanked him like faithful hounds.
“There will be no rescue today,” Dr. Jericho said.
Mr. Meister, watching, turned his eyes to Joshua once more, just ten feet away now. His face was full of horror. Now, he mouthed. Trust me.
On the instant, hardly knowing if it was right or wrong, Joshua let his eyes fall onto the Laithe. He slid the rabbit around the meridian, fast as it would go, not sure if he was even using his hands. He was the Keeper of the Laithe. As the rabbit slid, the surface of the globe seemed to spread like melting wax as the view changed. It zoomed in on Illinois, fast as a falling meteor. It was nighttime, of course, but on the Laithe it was never night. The Mississippi, on the west side of the state, grew from a thread to a ribbon to a fat snake in half a blink. The view flickered through a wisp of clouds and then the river was gone, over the western horizon. Down and down. The dots of trees became shrubs, and then Joshua was past them. A sea of green resolved into blades of grass, and he was there. A crooked stick lay in the meadow, close enough to touch. The rabbit had come full circle, back to where it had started. It sat alert now, ears erect, eyes wide and blazing blue, ready for the portal to be opened.
Dr. Jericho was already whirling toward him, bellowing. Mr. Meister lifted himself onto his hands, grimacing, his legs dragging. Joshua ignored them both. He tore the meridian free. The globe became a sphere of featureless yellow light in his hand. As he set the meridian in the air, where it hung like a picture frame, Joshua willed the rabbit atop it to run—fast, fast. Its feet became a blur, hurtling. It rode the meridian as the copper ring spun beneath it, and as it spun, it grew—no, it exploded—opening faster than it ever had before. It slammed fully open with a heavy thump, eight feet wide, and became a window. The green meadows of Ka’hoka lay beyond, dark and empty.
The very instant the portal was open, Mr. Meister clutched at it. His fingers passed through and he gripped the edge of the meridian. Dr. Jericho was sprinting toward them, howling, his sharp tiny teeth bared. The twin golems roared forth beside him.
“The truth,” Mr. Meister said to Joshua, and with a grunt he hoisted himself through the open portal. He rolled clumsily into the grass, two hundred and forty miles away, just as Dr. Jericho lunged forward and swiped at him with his huge sharp fingers, catching nothing but air.
Dr. Jericho straightened, heaving, glaring through the portal at the old man. The Mordin obviously wanted to go after him, but knew Joshua might trap him on the far side—or worse, slam the portal closed while he was passing through it. Joshua astonished himself, thinking these thoughts. But watching Dr. Jericho hesitate now gave him the strength to think them.
“Go ahead,” Joshua told him. “Leave this place. See if you can get back. I don’t know how those rings of yours work, but I’m pretty sure you can’t control the golems from acro
ss the state.”
As if in reply, the golems swirled around the little scene, becoming a massive stone tornado, surrounding Joshua and Dr. Jericho and the portal. The Mordin just stood there, seething. Through the portal, Mr. Meister lay gasping, looking blind. From the other side, Joshua knew—since Joshua and the Laithe were here and not there—the portal was just a hollow ring, the meridian hanging empty in the air, revealing nothing and leading nowhere. Joshua reached out with his thoughts, asking the blue-eyed rabbit to run back. It ran swiftly, the portal closing. The meadows of Ka’hoka winked out, replaced by the tumbling avalanche of shapes, until the meridian was back to its normal size, no bigger than a dinner plate.
Still Dr. Jericho didn’t move. The swirling golems ground slowly to a halt, looming all around them as if Joshua and the Mordin stood in the bottom of a dark well. Cautiously, Joshua reached out and plucked the meridian from the air. He looped it back over the yellow globe of the Laithe, and the blue-and-green living earth faded back into view.
Dr. Jericho reached out, striking like a snake. He grabbed Joshua by the throat, hauling him from the ground. The Laithe slipped from Joshua’s grip, left to hover bobbing at his side.
“The Altari,” Dr. Jericho growled. The stench of brimstone poured from his mouth. “How did they find us?”
Joshua grappled with the Mordin’s huge hand, choking. “I don’t know,” he gasped.
“Is it you? Were you left behind in the Warren on purpose—some kind of beacon the Wardens could track?”
Joshua’s vision began to dim. “No. I stayed on my own. I don’t know how they found you.”
And he didn’t.
“You heard the truth tonight,” Dr. Jericho snarled, pulling Joshua even closer, their noses practically touching. “You’ll die if the Mothergates are allowed to fail. The Taxonomer has been lying to you all. Why did you let him escape?”
And then Joshua saw a startling thing, deep in the Mordin’s dark eyes, on the edges of the black rage that burned there. It was in his voice too, Joshua realized. A shiver of something unsteady and unfamiliar.