The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  Though daylight never reached the buried halls of Ka’hoka, the lights that ebbed and flowed with the cycle of the sun indicated that it was early afternoon. Even without them, Horace knew it was just past 12:34. A rather likeable time, on any ordinary day.

  Today was not one of those days.

  The entire Wardens’ Council was here—all except Ravana, fallen in the battle. Her chair at the Council table was left empty, and Go’nesh sat beside it, looking huge and desolate and grim. Teokas was as beautiful as ever in a gleaming white robe, but her face was dark with sadness. Judging by the wardrobe choices Horace had seen today, white was a color of mourning among the Altari. In fact, someone had given Chloe a white flower shaped like a star, and she’d tucked it into her thick black hair. It made Horace’s stomach flutter, for some reason.

  The rescue party had returned in the early morning hours, bringing Mr. Meister with them. The old man’s leg was broken, but somehow he was still wearing the oraculum, his Tan’ji. Horace could only assume that his other Tan’ji—as well as the polymath’s ring, which gave him the unusual ability to bond with more than one instrument at a time—were lost forever.

  Once Chloe was alone in the room she shared with Horace and April, she hadn’t wanted to talk. It was clear she was bone weary. But when she learned that Falo had spilled secrets while she was gone, she had insisted on hearing them. Horace and April told her some of what Sil’falo Teneves had revealed, as simply as they could. Not everything. Not the bits Horace couldn’t yet bring himself to say out loud—the bits about the Fel’Daera.

  They explained the multiverse. They told her why the Mothergates had to die, about the many universes that would be utterly destroyed if the Mothergates remained open, including their own. Chloe had brooded through the explanation, listening intently but not asking a single question. When they were done, she’d simply said: “I just need to know what I’m fighting for. Now I know.”

  Then she’d laid back in the bed and closed her eyes, the Alvalaithen gleaming faintly at her throat. A few minutes later she said softly, “I didn’t save everyone.”

  “Who didn’t you save?” April asked her.

  “Lots of people. Somewhere between three and infinity, apparently. I guess you’ll find out more tomorrow.”

  And now it was tomorrow. Since waking, Horace had learned what Chloe had done the night before, in the tunnels under the hell pit. He’d never liked that place, and wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the Riven lurked beneath it. But the story he heard about Chloe—not from Chloe, naturally, but from Dailen and Mrs. Hapsteade—was utterly shocking. Almost beyond belief. The tale had been floating through the halls of Ka’hoka all morning, spreading in tones of wonder. Taking charge of the huge mal’gama, and making it go thin. Bringing it down through the solid earth to save the others. It frightened Horace a little, the kind of fear that pulled him closer to her instead of chasing him away. Maybe that was why his heart was fluttering.

  But when he’d tried to mention the mal’gama to Chloe, she’d said, “I believe in what happened, Horace. And I could never tell anyone a story that would make them understand either one of those things. Not even you.”

  It was as mysterious a thing as she could have possibly said. April seemed to understand it completely, but Horace still hadn’t puzzled it out. But maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe he just had to accept it.

  Here in the Proving Room now, many eyes were on Chloe. But even more were on Mr. Meister. It was his story everyone had come to hear. Mal’brula Kintares sat next to him at the Council’s table, frowning like a Scrooge. Horace wasn’t sure Brula could help it—he even frowned when he smiled. Falo and Dailen were here too, and every single one of the human Wardens. Horace, Chloe, April, and Brian sat together in a row, and Gabriel and Mrs. Hapsteade sat in front. Neptune sat alone, away from the others, rooted firmly in her seat. And there were two or three dozen more attendees, too, mostly Altari. Though far from the entire population of Ka’hoka, it was still quite a crowd. Seats had been brought in to accommodate everyone, with the humans’ legs dangling from the tall chairs.

  Up front, a low, wide bowl sat before Brula—his Tan’ji, named Veritas. Anyone who told a lie while gazing into its smooth green waters would find that the lips of their reflection would refuse to move. Brula would sense it. Horace wondered if Brula had any plans to make use of Veritas today.

  But the first order of business, apparently, was to honor Ravana. Go’nesh rose, bowing to her empty seat. Then he sang, low and slow, his voice so deep it rumbled in Horace’s chest.

  “Ji’ro kothra do Ravana,

  Ravana kothru nahro du.

  Tel ji’ro dansu fal ka raethen.”

  The gathered Altari sang the last line back to him in unison: “Tel ji’ro dansu fal ka raethen.”

  “Light,” Chloe murmured sadly.

  “What did you say?” Horace asked. But Chloe only shook her head.

  Go’nesh sat heavily. Brula bowed to him.

  “Thank you, Go’nesh,” Brula said. “We must now speak of our vigil, here at the end of things. We do not ask if we are still one. We are here. We do not sunder.”

  The crowd then took up the words. “We do not sunder,” the Altari intoned meaningfully. Heads nodded earnestly all around the room. Wise, sad eyes. Committed eyes. Not for the first time, Horace considered what it would be like to have lived with the truth of the Mothergates all his life. Maybe that was why the mourning of Ravana had passed so swiftly. Nearly everyone in the room was a Keeper, every one of them likely to die once the Mothergates closed for good. Nonetheless they were here, fighting to ensure that the Mothergates did close, for the sake of billions of others, billions of billions, who would never even know the sacrifice that had been made. But this morning, wandering the halls of Ka’hoka with the new knowledge Falo had given him, Horace had come to understand that the Altari did not see it as a sacrifice. Most of them, anyway.

  Instead, they saw it as a way of righting a wrong they themselves had created. Tangles between universes, created by the Tanu they wielded. A vast patch of the multiverse, forced to forget itself. There was a duty to correct it.

  Dailen had put it to him best, just that morning. “Whether the Mothergates stay or go, either way, we die,” he’d explained. “Do we force multitudes of innocents to go down with the ship we ourselves set afire?”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” Horace had countered. “What if the ship isn’t on fire?”

  “We are not wrong,” Dailen had replied, touching his collar. “Floriel herself admits it. And to deny what our Tan’ji tell us is to deny ourselves, is it not? To deny it, is to be one of the Riven. That is what makes them who they are.”

  Horace reached out for the presence of the Fel’Daera now, unsure whether he could feel the tangled sickness of the Medium. The Fel’Daera itself wasn’t sick, no. It was as magnificent as ever, a beacon of pure and astonishing function, powerful and true.

  But he now knew that it left a trail of fire in its wake that burned as bright as any Tan’ji that had ever been made. There were wrongs that had to be righted. And if he had to die, he would not die until they were.

  Mr. Meister began to speak. He looked tiny at the table beside the Altari, particularly since he could not stand. And without his red vest, he hardly seemed the man he had been before.

  “Thank you for gathering here, my friends,” he said. “Many of you have already heard pieces of the tale that unfolded last night. I come before you now to tell you my piece, a piece that has dire consequences for us all. Last night I learned that our vigil is in danger.” He cleared his throat, clearly nervous. “The Kesh’kiri have a Dorvala, and—”

  Brula cut him off. “This we already know,” he said. “The Keeper of Aored, the third. Hardly a danger. No Dorvala so weak could ever hope to delay the deaths of the Mothergates.”

  Mr. Meister nodded in acquiescence. “Your wisdom shines,” he said. “I saw as much myself. But the Dorvala has a
talent—this I also saw.” The old man paused, as if speaking the next words would pain him. “He is a flesh-weaver.”

  Brian, sitting next to Horace, inhaled sharply. In the audience behind him, faint noises of disgust and dismay erupted.

  “They call him Grooma,” Mr. Meister called out. “He is adept at weaving the medium into flesh and bone, at making Tanu out of living beings. A forbidden practice, yes, but . . .” He trailed off, clearly finding it difficult.

  “Tell the tale, Henry,” Mrs. Hapsteade prompted.

  Mr. Meister cleared his throat. “More than with ordinary Tanu, the power of a Tanu made from flesh is dependent upon the nature of that flesh—the nature of the vessel into which the Medium is woven.”

  Brian was leaning forward in his seat now, straining to hear. On Horace’s other side, Chloe had barely moved.

  “And therein lies the danger,” Mr. Meister continued, “because the Riven have in their possession—they have taken into captivity—a very powerful vessel indeed.”

  Suddenly Horace understood. Tingling dread crept from his chest down his arms. He looked at Chloe again, and her eyes darted at him briefly. She knew this story already—had perhaps even witnessed it herself. He pushed his foot gently against hers. She kicked it away.

  “Her name is Isabel,” Mr. Meister said, confirming Horace’s worst fears. “She is a Tuner . . . a very powerful Tuner. When the rescue party arrived last night, they interrupted Grooma at work on Isabel. I witnessed this work with my own eyes.” He pointed to the oraculum, almost apologetically. “With Grooma’s help, the Riven seek to turn Isabel into something that has never existed. There is no word for what I saw being done in the pits of the city last night. If Grooma succeeds—and I have no reason to think he will not—Isabel will become an instrument unto herself, an instrument powerful enough to force the Mothergates to remain open.”

  A voice from farther back in the room spoke up, thin and reedy. “Her body will be her Tan’ji? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Isabel will not be Tan’ji,” said Mr. Meister. “Nor a Tuner, either. She will be a new thing. Consider the talents she already had. Consider the—” He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. “Consider the wounds left by the kaitan when she was made a Tuner, from which the essence of that talent still drips. Grooma aims to stitch those wounds, to turn them round upon themselves, to create a knotted nest of power within Isabel herself. She will need no harp, no instrument. She will be immune to severing, to cleaving, to dispossession. But above all, she will have the strength to make happen that which must not happen.”

  “Isabel is a powerful Tuner, you say,” said Brula now, glaring at Mr. Meister. “How powerful? What would she have been, if not for the kaitan?”

  Mr. Meister lifted his head high, trembling but defiant. “A Dorvala.”

  A Maker. Isabel. The room broke into talk, shouts and murmurs, musical sighs of disbelief. Horace looked over at Chloe, alarmed. She sank deeper into her seat, refusing to look at him. Farther down the row, his mom sat like a statue, but her eyes were wide with shock. She’d been in that kaitan with Isabel, all those years ago. Tuners were always made in pairs. His mother would have become an empath, like April—though far weaker—but apparently she had not known the truth about Isabel.

  Abruptly Neptune got up from her seat. She walked instead of floated, pushing hurriedly down the row past Horace. Mrs. Hapsteade watched her silently, and Gabriel twisted the Staff of Obro between his hands. Neptune swept stiffly from the room.

  But no one else even seemed to notice. Horace struggled to listen as the room teemed with argument, as Mr. Meister explained his reasons for turning Isabel into a Tuner when she could have become a Dorvala instead. She was uncontrollable, he argued—full of rage, sure to reject the truth about the Mothergates when it was finally revealed. How could a person like Isabel be asked to accept that the Mothergates must close, and that she herself must die in order to save countless universes? Some Keepers were willing to accept the truth about the Mothergates, and some were not.

  Horace knew in his heart that Mr. Meister was right. Isabel was not. How could he have handed such a person the power to force the Mothergates to remain open?

  But then again, how could he have done what he did?

  Chloe murmured under her breath, so low Horace had to lean closer to hear. She said, “If I had come to them with the potential to become a Dorvala, instead of what I am, do you think Mr. Meister would have put me in the kaitan too?”

  “You’re not your mother, you idiot,” he said, surprised at the sudden anger that flared up inside him.

  And to his even greater surprise, Chloe laughed.

  Falo spread her arms. So regal did she look, so full of wisdom, that the hubbub in the room died down at once.

  “Friends,” she said. Her voice filled the Proving Room like a peaceful wind, like the scent of sleep. “Fellow Keepers. We can lament the actions of the Chief Taxonomer endlessly, if we so desire. We can imagine we would have done differently in his place. We can conjecture, I suppose, where we would now stand had he not done what he did.” She bent her head, seeming to pity the crowd. “We can wonder if we would still be standing at all. But that is not the issue before us. What is done is done. There is a question before us now, the gravest question we have ever faced.” She leaned into the room, her face like a vengeful angel. “What do we do?”

  “We must stop her,” Go’nesh growled at once. “But this is an enemy I do not know how to fight.”

  “The question,” Teokas said, “is how Isabel might proceed, once the powers you describe have become real.”

  “They may be real already,” Mr. Meister interjected. “She will need a day or two to recover once the weaving is done, but our time is short.”

  “All the more reason to ask, then,” said Teokas. “What will Isabel do, and how do we stop her?”

  Falo tapped her chin, seeming to ponder the question deeply. “To actually weave the knots that would keep a Mothergate open, I believe Isabel would have to be standing in front of that Mothergate. Do you agree, Keeper?”

  Horace elbowed Brian gently. It was him Falo spoke to now, her gaze finding him in the crowd.

  “Oh!” Brian said, looking up, clearly shocked to be asked. “Well, if I were trying to force a Mothergate to stay open, I’d need to see it, yes. But I mean . . . I’m not exactly super awesome.”

  Horace leaned into him. “That’s pretty much the opposite of what you said about yourself the first time I met you,” he whispered.

  Brian shrugged and glanced at Chloe, still sagging blankly in her chair. “I was trying to exude confidence,” he whispered back.

  “I don’t know that I qualify as super awesome either,” Falo said. “But I could not force a Mothergate to remain open without standing directly in its presence. And if we two Dorvalas cannot do it, we must hope Isabel will not be able to, either.”

  “But that means she has to find the Mothergates first,” said Dailen. “She’ll never manage it in time.”

  “She already knows where they are,” Horace’s mom called out. “Or at least, she can feel them calling. I can feel them. I’ve always been able to feel them, ever since—” Her eyes flicked to Mr. Meister. “Since I was young.”

  Horace thought back to that day in his kitchen at home when his mother had revealed her powers. It felt like years ago. She’d mentioned the Mothergates and had pointed straight at them, even straight through the center of the earth, to the far side of the globe. She had pointed unerringly in the direction of Ka’hoka, he realized now, long before Horace even knew Ka’hoka existed.

  Horace cleared his throat. “Where are the other Mothergates, exactly?” he asked.

  Brula scowled. “The location of the Mothergates is a secret only—”

  “Australia,” Falo said, cutting him off breezily. “One of them is in Australia, deep in the central highlands. The other is in Crete.”

  For some reason, this news hit Horace l
ike a splash of cold water. The Mothergates were real, of course—he’d seen one—but somehow knowing that the other two were in actual places, places that could be traveled to and named, made the entire endeavor seem suddenly concrete. No longer an imagined thing unfolding in imagined places, but a real thing happening now, even if it was happening in places that were far away. Australia. And Crete—that was an island, he was pretty sure, somewhere near Greece.

  Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to him. “Joshua,” he said out loud.

  Falo nodded. “Yes. With the Keeper of the Laithe under their sway, opening portals at their command, the Riven will be able to take Isabel to the Mothergates in no time at all.”

  “We don’t know that Joshua is under their sway,” April said, sounding distressed.

  “We don’t know that he isn’t,” said Gabriel. “But we do know that he is there, and not here.”

  Horace, regretfully, was inclined to agree with Gabriel. “Okay,” he said. “But locating the Mothergates, getting to those locations—that’s one thing. Actually standing in front of them is another. Aren’t all the Mothergates buried safely away like the one here? In an Altari stronghold, protected by the Nevren? And what about the Veil of Lura?”

  “Isabel can’t be severed, Horace,” his mother reminded him gently.

  “Correct,” said Mr. Meister. “And the Nevren is no obstacle to those who cannot be severed. In fact, if Grooma succeeds in planting the flows I saw him weaving last night . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “As for the Veil of Lura,” said Falo, “it no longer protects the Mothergates as well as it once did. Just as the sun turns red when it sets, revealing itself in a way it had not during the day, so too the Mothergates are revealing themselves now in their final days. Those who are most sensitive to the Mothergates’ presence—Dorvalas, Tuners, empaths—may find themselves no longer hopelessly lost within the Veil. They may enter it and, with patience, find the Mothergate within.” Her gaze seemed to light upon April. “Indeed, some have already done so.”