The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  A moment later, Horace crumpled to the ground.

  “Stop,” Chloe said calmly, though her insides were a melting vat of fury. Horace was severed, mumbling incoherently with empty eyes, cut off from the Fel’Daera. Chloe took a step forward, edging toward Isabel. “Let him go.”

  “You came here to stop me,” Isabel said. Shadows deepened in her face. “You don’t have the first idea. Do you know what I endured to get this power? To do this thing?” She flung a hand at the Mothergate, at the stitched patch of the Medium splayed out like a stretched hide.

  “I know some of it,” Chloe said. “I know what Mr. Meister did to you, and what you might have become if he’d let you.”

  “Then you know what kind of man he is. What kind of monster.”

  Chloe took a deep breath. Still she kept walking. “I know he did the right thing.”

  Isabel gasped as if she’d been slapped. Behind her, Horace groaned.

  “Look at what you’re doing right now,” Chloe said. “Look at what you’re doing to the Mothergate. This won’t fix anything.”

  “I’m saving you,” Isabel said. “I’m saving it all.”

  “You’re not saving anyone. And I don’t even remember asking you to save me anyway.”

  “That’s what a mother does. She does things that shouldn’t need asking.”

  Too much. Too outrageous. A flood of heat rushed up Chloe’s neck into her head. “Is that why you—”

  Chloe stopped herself, holding up her hands and looking down at her feet, refusing to let anger carry her down the path she needed to walk now. She inched closer to Isabel, keeping herself steady.

  “Do you remember that night on the pier?” Chloe asked. “With the Riven? You told the Auditor you were no mother of mine.” Chloe was trembling now, her hands aching to ball into fists. “But you are my mother. Not the mother I wanted, no, and probably not the mother I deserved. And maybe I don’t know much about it, but it seems like mothers can never forget the ways they’ve wronged their children. I hope you never forget.”

  She stepped up to Isabel. Here in front of the Mothergate, at the Medium’s source, the Alvalaithen’s music was an easy, forceful song. She only needed the tiniest sip. Chloe sank slowly into the ground, looking up at her mother. She sank in to her knees. She hung there effortlessly, hovering.

  “Does this look familiar?” Chloe said. “It should. This is how I was when you severed me that day. The day that made you leave.”

  Isabel stared at her, rigid with horror. Chloe thought she could see the memories flickering in her eyes.

  “It was an honest mistake,” Chloe said. “I know it was. You couldn’t control the harp, and . . . and I would have forgiven you.” She felt the truth in her own words, and the confusion that came with them. “But then you left us. That was how you fixed it then. Instead of giving up the harp, you left.”

  “Mr. Meister—”

  “Let Horace go,” Chloe said quietly. “Let him go, or I’ll release the Alvalaithen. I’ll meld myself right here, right now, and I won’t get out this time. Let him go, or there won’t be anything for you to save.”

  Chloe felt the cold stone in her legs, in her bones, broken so badly all those years ago. Maybe she meant it. She thought she probably did. She let herself sink deeper, up to her waist.

  “Let him go,” she said again.

  Neither of them breathed. Chloe let the wings of the Alvalaithen slow, its song fading. She felt the faint bite of matter inside her flesh.

  At last Isabel stepped back, tearing her eyes away. Back by the Mothergate, Horace took a great gasping breath.

  Chloe shot to the surface, finding solid ground beneath her feet again. She turned and hurried back to Horace, kneeling beside him. “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Fine. How did you—”

  “They lie, you know,” Isabel called out. “Mr. Meister and all the rest. They lied to me and they’re lying to you too. Have they told you about the Fel’Daera? How it’s to blame for all of this?”

  “Is that what Dr. Jericho told you?” Chloe asked. Everyone was a liar. Everyone told stories, or hid them. But no one more than Dr. Jericho.

  “I tuned the Fel’Daera, remember?” said Isabel. “And Tuners know things about the instruments they touch. Things even their Makers don’t know.”

  “So you’re the expert, then,” said Horace.

  “I tuned it when no one else could. Not even Jessica could do it—not even your own mother, Horace Andrews.”

  Horace clambered slowly to his feet. “To be fair,” he said with a little shrug, “she wasn’t my mother yet. She might have tried harder if she’d known.”

  Chloe thought her heart would burst with pride.

  “It’s because of the Fel’Daera that the Mothergates are dying,” Isabel insisted.

  “Nothing you’re saying makes sense,” Horace said reasonably. “The Mothergates were an accident from the start. They were never meant to last. And while they’ve been open, we’ve each grabbed the power and the knowledge pouring out of them and twisted it all up. Tangled universes together. The Fel’Daera has done that, for sure. I know that now. But so have all the other Tanu. Even the Alvalaithen. And if we don’t let the Mothergates close like they’re supposed to—”

  “Lies, lies, lies!” Isabel shrieked. “You think you know everything. Just like the Fel’Daera’s last Keeper.”

  “You knew Samuel?” Horace asked calmly.

  Isabel recoiled in surprise. It was obvious she neither knew the name nor expected that Horace would know it.

  “I didn’t have to meet him to know him,” she said. “I scraped all his evil out of the Fel’Daera when I tuned it.” She shook her head. “I should have left it twisted, full of all of his arrogance. Full of all the damage he’d done.”

  “Horace is the Keeper of the Fel’Daera now, not Samuel,” said Chloe.

  Isabel pointed at him. “But Horace carries the astrolabe, doesn’t he? Just like the last time.”

  Now it was Chloe’s turn to be surprised. How Isabel knew that Horace had the astrolabe, Chloe couldn’t have guessed. She willed herself not to react. “We had an important date to keep,” said Chloe. “With you.”

  “Horace is your friend, and that’s why I’m sparing him, but you need to know. When I tuned the Fel’Daera, it was full of death.”

  “Death?” Chloe scoffed, trying to laugh. “What death?”

  But beside her, Horace was silent.

  “Horace knows what I mean,” Isabel said triumphantly. “Sil’falo Teneves would have never sent him to see me on a day like today without telling him herself. Wouldn’t it have looked bad for her if the truth had come from me?”

  More lies. More stories. “What do you know about the truth?” Chloe demanded.

  Isabel started to answer, but Horace cut her off, staring the woman right in the face.

  “The Fel’Daera destroys universes,” he said.

  The words hung there for a moment. Chloe snatched the silence away. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “That’s not tr—”

  “It is,” Horace said. “That’s how it finds the future. It erases all the other possible futures that might evolve from the present. It . . . consumes all those possible paths to feed the one path that then happens. The willed path.”

  “Future universes that might evolve,” Chloe repeated, grappling with this news. “The Fel’Daera eats them?”

  “Basically,” Horace said, still pouring his brick-wall stare into Isabel’s wild eyes.

  Chloe took it in, thinking hard. The multiverse thing wasn’t exactly beyond her, not at all, but it was not something her brain liked to wrestle with. Or maybe it was her heart that didn’t like it. April’s heart was loose enough to encompass all the other universes ever, it sometimes seemed, but not Chloe’s. And now Horace was talking about other future universes. Other future paths.

  She watched him. She could tell by his expression and his voice—a kind of steely certai
nty that was pleasant to witness, in small doses—that he’d been working through this. He’d clearly already worked through it, in fact, without ever telling her. They’d spent the entire day together. Not a word. And while part of her was irritated that Horace hadn’t told her how the Fel’Daera did what it did, another part of her was glad he hadn’t.

  Because honestly?

  Chloe did not give a crap.

  These were future universes Horace was talking about. People and places that didn’t even exist yet. If the Fel’Daera wanted to chow down on a future universe with a future Chloe in it, in order to save the present universe with the present Chloe in it . . . well . . . munch away. Munch away all day.

  But she said none of this to her good friend now. He didn’t need to hear it. She took him firmly by the elbow.

  “It’s not your fault,” she told him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “It matters to you.”

  “If you’re looking for fault,” Isabel said, “there’s plenty to go around. Beginning with Sil’falo Teneves herself. She’s the Maker. She created an instrument that’s done more damage than any hundred instruments combined.”

  Horace rounded on her. “Really?” he said. “I tell you what. How about we test it out?”

  And he pulled the Fel’Daera from its pouch.

  Chloe had seen him do it a hundred times, but watching Horace now as he prepared to look through the blue glass—grounding himself in the present, awash in a focus so deep and devoted that it had to be called selfish—Chloe understood without question that she would never admire anyone as much as she admired this boy. Her knees nearly buckled beneath the weight of her certainty. Horace was terrified. Anyone could see that—or she could, anyway, plain as day. The future universes she could so easily dismiss were poisoned thorns in Horace’s belly. And he was going to do this anyway.

  Horace opened the box with the familiar flick of his thumb, just about the only thing he ever did that could ever be called graceful. He lifted the box to his eyes, to Isabel.

  He watched. No one spoke. Chloe felt unreasonably giddy as Isabel squirmed grimly under his gaze. She actually took a step back. But there was no hiding from the Fel’Daera. Horace watched her for several seconds, then turned to face the Mothergate. He studied it through the glass, silent and sturdy. They stood there for what felt like forever. Horace’s lips parted; it was so quiet Chloe heard it happen. What was he seeing? The Veil tumbled over them like night endlessly chasing day.

  At last Horace snapped the box closed. He slid it back into the pouch.

  He turned back to Isabel. “You have three minutes,” he said.

  Chloe could practically see the woman choking back the urge to ask Horace what he’d seen.

  “It’s not a toy you’ve got there,” Isabel said.

  “That’s good, because I’m not playing,” Horace replied.

  And then, strangely, Isabel’s mad, clouded eyes seemed to clear, just for a moment. As she looked at the two of them, her face wrinkled with a sadness that couldn’t have been feigned. “You chose which stories to believe,” she said. “And I’ve chosen mine. I know in my heart that you’re wrong about the Mothergates, but either way, one has to wonder why Falo did what she did. Why she allowed herself to bring a thing like the Fel’Daera into the world.”

  Chloe looked at Horace. He shifted uneasily. For the first time since Isabel had unsevered him, a shadow of doubt seemed to fall across him.

  “Tell me why, then,” said Horace. “I suppose you know that, too.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” Isabel said. “The Altari always have the same reasons for doing what they do. Arrogance and ambition. Never stopping to wonder if they should, once they started wondering if they could. It’s not about why Falo did it. It’s about why she didn’t stop herself.”

  “We’re done here,” Chloe announced, unable to listen to any more. “Your time is almost up. Go back to your friends, Mom.”

  Isabel flinched from the word. “I’m not finished,” she said, but she could not quite avoid looking at the Fel’Daera.

  “You are,” Chloe said. “Leave this place and try again. There are two more gates. Maybe you’ll get lucky. But if you come back here alone, I’ll come back too. And I’ll come back with an Altari army so big you’ll never be able to cleave them all before they swarm you.”

  Isabel looked down at herself. She clenched and unclenched her fists, as if testing her strength. “You’ll never hear me say Falo is a fool,” she said. “I know she sent you here because you were the one person I wouldn’t cleave dead on the spot. But she’s underestimated me. She underestimates what Grooma did to me.” She laughed. “I’m still weak from the weaving, you know. Truth be told, I can barely stand! I’m here now only because that Mothergate behind you is about to die. The few stitches I managed to get in place won’t hold. But like you say, there are two more gates. And tomorrow I’ll be stronger.” She lowered her chin and smiled, her red hair like demon fire. “You have no idea how strong.”

  She lifted her hands. Swirls of the Medium began to rise around her, like blades emerging from the floor. They spun swiftly into a cyclone with Isabel at the center. Chloe refused to step back. The song of the Alvalaithen roared inside her like a sea. Horace didn’t budge either. He’d seen this through the Fel’Daera, no doubt. His expression didn’t change.

  Around Isabel, the Veil began to flutter. Its light began to bend into her cyclone, drawn like water to a drain, like smoke to a fan. Up and up the spinning funnel of golden blades went, faster and wider, and as it spun, the Veil was drawn inexorably into it and torn to shreds, howling like a banshee wind. In just a few shocking seconds, the vast ocean of light was gone. The chamber they stood in was now revealed, looking naked and vast, a great blue dome three hundred feet wide and a hundred feet high.

  And they weren’t alone. Halfway to the edge of the room, a small figure got awkwardly to his feet, watching them, seeing them for the first time now that the Veil was gone. A small blue sphere floated at his side.

  “Joshua,” Chloe breathed.

  “Yes,” said Horace. He’d already seen Joshua through the box. Seen and said nothing.

  “Should we call to him?” she asked. “We need to take him. He needs to come with us.”

  Horace only shook his head.

  And then Joshua was the one that called out. “Horace!” he cried, not waving, his tiny fists clenched at his sides. “Chloe?”

  Chloe’s heart broke a little bit. Something about her name coming out of that boy’s mouth as a question. Just a little boy, really. A little boy far beyond his depth.

  Isabel flung a hand at Joshua, almost casually. Joshua fell to the ground, severed. Chloe started to take a step forward. But she knew she wouldn’t. Knew she didn’t.

  “He’s mastered the Laithe,” Isabel called back, her voice echoing up and around the empty dome. “He’s helping me. He doesn’t want to die.”

  “Nobody here wants to die,” Chloe said.

  “You say that like you believe it,” said Isabel. “Tell me this, then. When I stop the Mothergates from closing, and you’re still alive, will you thank me?”

  Chloe found a way to laugh. She almost had to laugh not to cry. “When the Mothergates are gone, and I’m dead, will you realize how crappy a mother has to be to ask her daughter a question like that?”

  Isabel turned away. She went to Joshua, muttering something to him, and the boy got slowly to his feet. He glanced down at the Laithe for a moment and then tore the meridian free. A second later, a wide, round portal sprang to life. A single Mordin stood on the far side, gaunt and powerful and unmistakable, turning to look at the portal as it formed.

  Isabel took Joshua’s hand and roughly yanked him through the portal to where Dr. Jericho stood waiting. As Joshua passed, taking the Laithe with him, the image through the portal winked out. The empty ring of the meridian hung there for a moment, shimmering, and then shrank out of sight.


  Chloe breathed, hardly daring to imagine what Isabel was telling the Mordin now.

  “The Mothergate is closing,” Horace said softly.

  Chloe turned to look. Isabel’s unfinished stitches were tearing free. The pinned swaths of the Medium were shrinking back into the black. The Mothergate itself seemed to be pulsing, the streaks of light within it slowing.

  “It’s happening,” she said.

  “Yes. Let’s stay and watch. We’ll leave before it’s gone.”

  The suggestion was a surprise. They needed to get back. But then she realized that the box must have shown Horace that they would stay. And if they didn’t . . . thrall-blight. Denying the future the box revealed was the surest way to speed up the collapse of the Mothergates. And what if all the Mothergates closed while they were inside? On the heels of that thought, it occurred to Chloe that the Fel’Daera must have also shown Horace what they could not stay to see—the death of the Mothergate itself.

  “How long?” she asked him.

  Horace lifted his brow and pursed his lips, like he didn’t know. But then he said, “One minute, eight seconds.”

  “It’s fighting what Isabel tried to do,” Chloe said as another wide stretch of stitches gave way, and more of the Medium snapped back into the quivering Mothergate.

  They stood and watched. Chloe felt nothing through the Alvalaithen. The Medium would still flow as strong as ever, she knew, pouring with even greater force through the two Mothergates that remained. Still, she’d thought she’d feel something.

  “Tell me we shouldn’t have bothered trying to save Joshua,” Chloe said.

  “You know I can’t do that. I can only tell you we didn’t. And anyway, I thought you said he didn’t even want to be saved.”

  Chloe sighed, aggravated. She had said that, and meant it. Maybe it didn’t matter. What did it even mean to save a Keeper, when the Mothergates were about to die?

  And what did it mean not to bother?

  “I’m just saying,” she said. “If Joshua’s there at the next Mothergate . . . before you open the box, you need to know that I want to save him. Remember.”

  “Okay,” Horace said. “I won’t forget.”