The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  “Yes,” said Falo. “And when she returned, when I could bear it, I sent her again. And again. And again. These were dark times.”

  Horace could scarcely tear his gaze away from the Loom, snug inside the Fel’Daera. The box seemed to be almost purring in his hands—or at least, it emanated a contentment he had never felt from it before. And he himself felt . . . old. Or wise, or something. Complete. If he closed the box now, Hiraethel would travel into the future—a mere seven minutes, the breach very narrow. It would be deeply satisfying, he knew. Like scratching an unreachable itch. But then Falo would . . .

  Horace looked up into Falo’s eyes. Ancient eyes, deep and lucid and utterly fearless. As fearless as the universe was boundless.

  He stood. He stepped up to Falo and reached over her lap, holding the Fel’Daera out to her, the Starlit Loom still nestled inside. The box hummed in his hand, a sustained, trembling chord of purpose.

  “You understand me, Keeper,” Falo said. “You understand everything at last.”

  “I do,” Horace said.

  And then he closed the box.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Great Need

  A JOLT COURSED FROM THE FEL’DAERA AND INTO HORACE, LIKE nothing he’d ever felt before. Not a tingle, no. A freight train. Even sending the Alvalaithen hadn’t been like this. His muscles seized and his body buzzed—not quite unpleasant, not quite, but bone deep and necessary. Necessary, above all else. If the urge to send the Loom had been an itch, this was like scratching that itch until it bled. He went rigid, giving in to a force he could not hope to resist. His head rocked back and he stood that way for several seconds. When at last it passed, he opened his eyes. He hadn’t even known they were closed.

  Chloe was already on her feet. “What did you do?” she demanded.

  He’d sent the Starlit Loom traveling. He’d done what the box wanted him to do, what it was meant to do.

  But what had he done?

  Falo had scarcely moved. Horace knew her Tan’ji was nowhere right now, traveling, beyond all senses. She was severed. Yet although the light in her eyes had dimmed a bit, she was still there. Still aware. She saw him, knew him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I—”

  “You owe me no apology, Keeper,” she said clearly. Some of the music had left her voice, but she was talking. Horace had never before seen a severed Keeper actually able to utter a complete, coherent sentence. “Every Tan’ji is a temptation,” Falo continued. “Yours more than most.”

  “The Loom was in the box, and I just . . . I had to.”

  “No. You chose to. But it is all right. I put the temptation before you, and you took it. Now you know. Should the situation arise again, in other circumstances more dire, you will know better what is it you choose to do.”

  Other circumstances more dire. Horace shuddered to imagine what those circumstances might be, or why he would be asked to send the Loom away.

  Chloe was watching Falo with a look so fearful it almost seemed angry. It occurred to Horace that she and Falo might be the only Keepers in existence who knew what it was like to send their Tan’ji traveling through the box. Chloe almost hadn’t survived it. How had Falo endured, time and time again? And not for the seven minutes she faced right now, but for what sounded like long painful hours, perhaps even full days, one after the other?

  “How are you doing this?” Chloe asked her, echoing Horace’s thoughts. “Are you just . . . amazing?”

  Falo laughed. “What should I tell you? That my will is so strong? Unbreakable?” She shook her head, and turned to Horace. “What about you? Are you all right? Sending the Loom is quite an intense experience, I know.”

  Horace was beginning to realize that he ached, everywhere. Muscles he couldn’t hope to name throbbed dully. “Yes. Intense.”

  “Sending objects forward in time—even ordinary objects—creates a disturbance in the Medium. Like a rubber band snapping. The effect is magnified when the object in question is Tanu. But when the Loom is sent, the echoes of that disturbance—by design—resonate outward from the Fel’Daera. That’s what you felt. Those echoes merely pass through you, but they take up residence in me. They sustain me while I’m severed. Not very well—it’s like the smell of food when one cannot find anything to eat. But it’s enough.” She bent forward to look Chloe in the eye. “My will is strong, yes. I know who I am, and I do not easily forget. But without those echoes, even I could not survive the utter abyss of the severing caused by the Fel’Daera.”

  It sounded horrible, frankly. Horace was ashamed that he hadn’t resisted the temptation to send the Loom, and ashamed again that Falo apparently hadn’t expected him to resist. But even in his shame and dismay, Falo astonished him. With everything else the Fel’Daera could do, she’d built in a mechanism that would allow her to survive the long severings she knew she would have to face.

  “Dark times,” he muttered, repeating Falo’s words of a few minutes before.

  “Yes,” said Falo. “Now sit. Sit while we wait for the Loom to return, while I tell the tale of why I ever wanted it to leave in the first place, all those years ago.”

  They sat, but Falo didn’t speak right away. For a moment Horace thought she was slipping away, giving in to the void. If she slipped too far, she would be permanently dispossessed and beyond all hope.

  But then she shook her head. “Dark times,” she muttered again. “Ka’hoka was . . . unsafe for me in those days.”

  “Unsafe how?” Chloe asked quietly.

  “My rival,” said Falo. “The one who could have claimed the Starlit Loom for himself. He was Altari. Kathra was his name. He lived among us, here at Ka’hoka.” She sighed. “Understand that not every Altari believes the Mothergates should be allowed to die. Kathra was one such. And some believe that only the Hiraethel can save the Mothergates—that only the Keeper of the Starlit Loom could contrive to keep them open.”

  “So what happened?” Horace asked.

  “Among the Altari, when you become nul’duna, your right to your Tan’ji can be challenged by another who possesses the same affinities. Such challenges are extremely rare, and rarely honored. But when they happen, you must prove yourself.”

  “What, like a competition?” said Chloe. She sounded mad, and Horace didn’t blame her. No one had ever told them that a Keeper’s right to his or her Tan’ji could be challenged.

  “A demonstration,” Falo said. “That is the purpose of the Proving Room. A Keeper who wishes to defend her right to her Tan’ji must go there and make the strongest demonstration of her power that she can. The rival does not get a chance to lay hands on the Tan’ji in question—thank goodness—but his potential is weighed against the prowess the Keeper displays. There are judges, possessing some of the same skills possessed by Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade. And if they deem the rival’s potential to be stronger than the Keeper’s demonstration . . .”

  “So what did you do?” Chloe asked. “What was your demonstration?”

  “The Fel’Daera,” Horace said, sure of it. “You made the Fel’Daera.”

  Falo actually laughed. “Yes. My greatest creation. It took me weeks to make the vessel, a full day to sculpt the foramen and weave the Medium. Only Hiraethel could have handled the flows I wrestled with that day, flows I had scarcely imagined.” She looked around the room, as if the memories of that day were emblazoned on the walls. And for all Horace knew, maybe they were. “I barely finished in time. When I brought it before the Council, the Fel’Daera was hot from the forge, humming with power. I knew I had made something earth-shattering. I had meddled with time before, in some of my earlier creations—”

  “What creations?” asked Chloe.

  “Teokas’s bracelet, Thailadun,” Falo said. “And a clockwork ball that was never given a name, never found a Keeper.”

  “I think I’ve seen that ball,” Horace exclaimed. “It was there when I found the Fel’Daera.”

  “It was offered to you, yes. Your
affinities demanded it. But you took home the greater prize that day. Thailadun and the clockwork ball can manipulate one’s perception of time, to an extent, but the Fel’Daera was the first Tan’ji to actually encroach upon the future. It was the first true time machine.”

  “First and only,” Horace prompted, not quite sure if this was true.

  “First and last,” Falo confirmed. She sighed again, wistful now. “I hope you won’t think I am bragging when I say the Fel’Daera was truly astonishing. So astonishing that I feared my demonstration before the Council might backfire, that they might think me too powerful.” She straightened, rearing to her full seated height and looking down at them haughtily, emanating strength and wisdom, as if the mighty Starlit Loom still hung around her neck. And then she shrugged, like a child might, slouching. “But it did not matter. Their judgment did not matter. With the Fel’Daera in hand, I could guarantee Hiraethel’s safety, regardless of what they said. And that was all that mattered.” She smiled. “The Council was different then, but Mal’brula Kintares was there. You should have seen his face when I opened the Fel’Daera and sent Hiraethel—sent her out of all knowing, all finding, and severing myself in the process. . . .”

  Falo closed her eyes. She took a sharp breath, as if in pain. After a moment, though, she opened her eyes again and fixed them with a pale grin.

  “Not long now,” she said.

  “Eighty-seven seconds,” said Horace. Eighty-seven seconds until the Loom would arrive.

  “Such precision,” Falo said kindly. “On that day in the Proving Room, I was the only one who knew when Hiraethel would return. I did not tell anyone. Not the Council, and certainly not Kathra. In fact, I may have implied that I could not be sure how long the Loom would be gone.” Her eyes twinkled dimly. “But of course I was sure. Down to the second.”

  “So what did the Council do?” Horace asked.

  “After witnessing the power of the Fel’Daera, the greatest testament to my abilities, they could hardly honor Kathra’s challenge for the Loom. However, Kathra then made the argument I had feared. He said I had become too powerful. Some on the Council agreed with him, including Brula. Worse, my demonstration rekindled the debate about the Mothergates, and whether their continued existence was indeed the threat I knew it to be. Kathra argued that I, in my arrogance, was only hastening the Mothergates’ demise. He said that if the Loom were in his hands, he could use her to repair the Mothergates safely. He claimed that they could remain open without endangering us. Some began to listen to him, and believe him.”

  “But he was wrong,” Chloe said.

  “Very wrong. I am the Keeper of the Starlit Loom, perhaps the most powerful that has ever lived. I know better.”

  “So what did you do?” asked Horace.

  Falo didn’t answer. She cocked her head as if listening to a distant sound. Horace realized what was happening a moment before it did. With a pop, the Starlit Loom materialized in the air over Falo’s lap. Hiraethel fell into her already waiting hand, and Falo closed a grateful fist around her, eyes aglow.

  “She returns, just as she did then,” she said, pressing the Loom against her chest. “The Fel’Daera always delivers.”

  Horace, awash with relief, busied himself for a moment trying to imagine the simultaneous arrival of the Starlit Loom in thousands of other universes, just as the Fel’Daera promised. Was there a universe where Falo had been telling a different story while she waited? Where Chloe was a boy instead of a girl? Where Falo dropped Hiraethel as she fell? He shook his head, feeling fractured, his thoughts slipping back to the tumbling realms inside the Mothergate, where everything had been not only possible but present.

  “When Hiraethel reappeared in the Proving Room the following day,” said Falo, “I collected her in secret. And then I left Ka’hoka. I fled to other sanctuaries.”

  “What about Kathra?” Chloe asked.

  “He continued to find support for his ideas, but not as much as he craved. Eventually, he realized that there was a better audience for his notions, and for his plan to take Hiraethel from me. A better audience by far.”

  “The Riven,” Horace breathed.

  “He was a traitor,” said Chloe.

  “He was misguided,” Falo said. “Full of fear and arrogance—as all the Riven are. But he had always been a nasty fellow. You are aware, I think, that what we now call the Riven were once Altari. A great rift grew among the Altari, long ago, between those who accepted the rising phenomenon of human Keepers and those who did not. Those who continued to believe that only Altari should be allowed to become Tan’ji rebelled. They left us, renaming themselves the Kesh’kiri, the Riven. They started along the dark path they still tread now. They blamed the human Keepers for what was happening to the Mothergates—a distant threat at the time, but one we could not ignore. And even among those who stayed with the Altari, there were many who nursed a silent, fuming resentment. Kathra was one of these. Not particularly surprising, since many in his family had gone the way of the Riven. And when he could not claim Hiraethel for himself, he joined them in earnest.”

  “And you took Hiraethel into hiding,” said Horace.

  “Yes. I truly was nul’duna, disposable. I was in great danger. We all were. Should the Kesh’kiri manage to find the Starlit Loom, I would have been killed and the Loom would have fallen into the hands of one who might have forced the Mothergates to remain open. In doing so, Kathra would have put our universe—and every universe where the Tanu exist—on the path to certain destruction, just as Isabel is unwittingly doing now.”

  “You stayed at the Warren, didn’t you?” Chloe asked Falo. “That’s when you brought the Fel’Daera there.”

  “I did stay there, yes. But I didn’t leave the Fel’Daera with Mr. Meister until much later. I had need of it still. Even in the Warren, the other Wardens and I lived in constant fear that the Riven would discover us, and the Loom would be found. I kept myself severed as often as I could, using the Fel’Daera to send the Loom beyond reach in the space between days. But I grew tired. I could not keep it up forever. I needed a companion, one who could help me deal with the dangers the future might hold.”

  “The Fel’Daera needed a Keeper,” Horace said.

  “Yes. I could send the Loom into the future, but I could not see what that future held. I could guarantee her safety while traveling, but not when she returned. And so Henry—Mr. Meister—put out the call. It was risky, putting the Fel’Daera on display in his warehouses, hoping to attract a Keeper with the right affinities. But we had no choice. And eventually the call was answered.” Falo smiled, and now her eyes truly did shine. “A girl. Not so different from you, Horace. A bit older. Elizabeth was her name.”

  Despite himself, Horace felt a surge of jealous rage. The Fel’Daera, taking another Keeper. And not just any Keeper, but the very first. Elizabeth. He tried to swallow his irritation. It was illogical, hating someone he’d never met who’d done nothing wrong.

  “Once Elizabeth had come through the Find, and could see the future truly, I felt safer keeping Hiraethel with me. But not always. We had reason to fear that the mere presence of the Loom might draw Kathra near, and the Fel’Daera was powerful enough in its own right to draw its own kind of unwanted attention.”

  “Dr. Jericho.”

  “Ja’raka Sevlo, yes. He is a hunter, and like all Mordin he has a Tan’ji that helps him track down others Keepers, and their instruments.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Horace said, sickened by the memory of the gleaming bulge of blue metal, embedded in the Mordin’s spine.

  “Dr. Jericho and I are connected, in a way,” Falo said. “I have a flair for making kairotics—Tanu that alter time and space. His Tan’ji, Raka, is particularly attuned to such instruments. Meanwhile, to make things worse, the Loom called to Kathra, day and night. Therefore, Henry and I decided it would be best for me not to remain in one location. But travel was risky, of course, unless one was willing to endure the miserable falkrete stones
, and so I . . .”

  “You created the Laithe,” said Horace.

  “Yes. It was easier than the Fel’Daera, but I poured a great deal of beauty into it. It was, in fact, the last Tan’ji I ever made. After it was finished, again Mr. Meister put out the call, and again we found a Keeper—rather quickly, as I remember. Once the Laithe had been mastered by its first Keeper, we settled into a kind of routine, my companions and I. With the Laithe, we could move safely from sanctuary to sanctuary. With the Fel’Daera, we could keep Hiraethel beyond all reach, for several hours a day—all that I could endure. And all the while, the Riven searched and searched for the Loom.”

  “And so what happened in the end?” Horace asked. “You said Kathra was killed, or something.”

  “‘Dealt with,’” Chloe said. “That’s what you said.”

  Falo scrunched up her face. “Yes. Eventually, I was too exhausted to continue with our routine. Over time, the constant severing takes a gruesome toll. At one point I even considered destroying Hiraethel, and putting an end to it all—although Henry believes the Loom cannot be destroyed, and he may be right. At any rate, I did not try. Instead, we did something only mildly less desperate.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We set a trap. Hiraethel was our bait. We lured Kathra near, and there was a battle. We knew what was going to happen, of course. Or we knew some of it, anyway. Elizabeth had seen it through the Fel’Daera, and so we made a . . .” She paused, considering the box in Horace’s hands. “If you devise a plan only after the Fel’Daera reveals what you will do, can it rightly be called a plan?”

  “Are you asking me?” Horace said, surprised. After all, she was the Maker here.

  “I ask no one. I am merely offering a question that has no answer. Through the Fel’Daera, Elizabeth saw what we would do. And so we did. Kathra came near, in the thick of the battle. The Keeper of the Laithe had opened a portal, into a particular location chosen in advance. Kathra stumbled through the open portal . . . stumbled? Fell? Pushed?” She shrugged. “And then we closed the Laithe behind him.”