The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  She shook her head, genuinely confused. “No one wants me to save them. Am I so frightening? Are my methods so abhorrent? Would you rather die than see me succeed?”

  “Leave him be,” Dr. Jericho said. “His refusal is irrelevant. We do not need his cooperation, only his power. The Quaasa comes.”

  Footsteps in the doorway, light and calm. The Riven murmured expectantly. Joshua heard the same harsh whisper over and over. Quaasa.

  Isabel backed into the shadows. Joshua turned just as the new arrival stepped through the doorway, and he nearly swooned. A Riven, but not at all like any of the others. Smaller than the Mordin, as tall as a man. Long hair of the palest gold, pulled back into a sharp, severe braid that hung down her back. Eyes as blue as winter ice. A red stone embedded in her forehead, pulsing rhythmically. Beautiful and horrible.

  An Auditor.

  Dread bubbled miserably in Joshua’s gut. He should have known, should have guessed what Dr. Jericho would do. The Auditor was here to borrow and steal, to defile the Laithe.

  To take its power for her own.

  Joshua remembered the Auditor—or maybe more than one, since they were all identical except for their eyes—who had chased him and April into the city, and done battle with the Wardens, using all their own powers against them. The Auditor who had fought Chloe to a draw by the lakeshore, mirroring Chloe’s powers inch for inch, her mind side by side with Chloe’s inside the Alvalaithen, wrestling for control. Worst of all, the Auditor—this Auditor, actually, with the blue eyes—who had wormed her way inside the Laithe after Joshua opened a portal out of the Warren. He had tried to stop her, tried to kick her out of his mind and out of the Laithe and away from all its powers, but he couldn’t do it in time. That was how the Riven had learned the secret location of the Warren.

  All Joshua’s fault.

  And now she was here. With the Auditor’s arrival, Dr. Jericho didn’t need Joshua to cooperate. He only needed Joshua to stay alive, so that the Auditor could worm into Joshua’s mind and bend the Laithe’s power to her will.

  The Auditor exchanged a few soft words with Dr. Jericho. He heard that name again—Ulu’ru. The Auditor nodded and turned to Joshua.

  Joshua braced himself. The Auditor slunk nearer, moving with the grace of a dancer, so lovely. The Riven all around them murmured excitedly.

  “Do you remember me, Tinker?” the Auditor said. Her voice was low and smooth and gritty, like a monstrous snake sliding over sand.

  “Yes,” Joshua said.

  She circled him slowly, stalking like a cat. “I feel I must thank you. Without you—without your Tan’ji—we could never have found the Warren. And now you know in truth what I tried to tell you before.” She leaned in close, hissing in his ear. “Ruuk’ha fo ji Quaasa. All doors are open to me.”

  Without warning, she grasped the Laithe with a strong, elegant hand and snatched it away. Curls of revulsion smoked through Joshua’s flesh at her touch, but he knew there was worse to come.

  The Auditor gazed down at the little globe. It was tiny in her hands. “Koli tantra laithe desh kali tant’ro,” she purred. “What a marvelous world, to be full of such wonders.”

  And then suddenly, horribly, her mind was inside the Laithe. Her presence was like a poison, an invader. Joshua tried to fight her off, grappling for control of the Laithe. But he was too weak, and she was too strong. She shoved back so hard that she pushed him out completely, evicting him. He was severed, the Laithe lost to him. He swam senseless for a moment before regaining the tiniest fingerhold, gasping. He looked over at Isabel. She watched from the shadows, frowning faintly. Not shocked by what was happening to him, not worried about him.

  Disappointed in him.

  “If you will promise to be good, I will let you watch,” the Auditor said. “See how I’ve learned from the last time we met.” She took hold of the sleeping copper rabbit and began to slide it.

  And though Joshua couldn’t quite see with his eyes, still his mind followed what the Auditor was doing. She brought the Laithe down over the Pacific, sliding to the west and south. New Zealand came and went. Australia loomed, filling the hemisphere. It wasn’t as smooth or as swift as it would have been with Joshua in control, but she was managing it. With a surge of anger, Joshua pushed at her again, but her concentration held.

  “Be good, I said,” she spat.

  Down they went, into the central highlands of the little continent, in the Alice Springs area. And suddenly Joshua understood the name Dr. Jericho had uttered earlier.

  Ulu’ru.

  Down into a massive expanse of rippled red, closer and closer. And now a great shadowed form began to resolve, growing larger. Shaped vaguely like an arrowhead, it pointed almost due east. The thin ribbon of a road looped around it.

  Ulu’ru. Not just an Altari name, but a name Joshua knew well. Ayers Rock, it was also called, maybe the most famous landmark in Australia. A huge monolith of red rock rising out of the plains, nearly a thousand feet high and two miles long.

  This was where they were going. This was the site of the next Mothergate, in the sanctuary called Ulu’ru, no doubt deep underground.

  The Auditor brought the Laithe down right atop the grooved surface of the massive stone. She stepped back and tugged at the meridian. It refused to budge for a moment, but then she had it free.

  “Open, please, Quaasa,” Dr. Jericho said greedily. “Open so we may breathe life into what the Wardens would let die.”

  Joshua felt the Auditor willing the copper rabbit to run. Grudgingly, slowly, it ran, and the portal began to widen. The tunnel of shapes appeared as it grew, a swift, unseeable flight from this place to that, hurtling over the surface of the earth. And when at last the portal opened wide, the light of the bright Australian sun and a pale blue sky poured into the room. Joshua shielded his eyes. Although it was late evening here, it was early afternoon in Australia.

  Dr. Jericho began to laugh. He stepped into the sudden light. “Come now,” he said, leering around at the room, his gaze settling last on Joshua. “The path has been laid, with or without you. Now it is time to go.”

  Joshua shook his head. “I’m not going,” he said, but of course it was a pointless thing to say. He wanted to spit, wanted to vomit. The Auditor’s thought still curled inside the Laithe like a tumor.

  “Don’t be silly,” Dr. Jericho said, and he spread his arms wide, encompassing the crowded room. “We are all going.”

  All of them. A small army of Riven. But what was the point? The Mothergate would be protected deep below the Nevren, and the Riven wouldn’t be able to get through.

  Would they?

  “I rather hope your friends will be there when we arrive,” Dr. Jericho said. “Horace and Chloe. It will be quite the party, and you know what they say about parties.” He leaned in closer than ever, grinning savagely, the sulfurous stink rolling off him. “The more the merrier.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Seven Minutes, Six Days

  CHLOE STEPPED OUT OF THE MOTHERGATE, HER HAND STILL wrapped around Horace’s. The Veil of Lura rippled around them, faint and wispy. The ground beneath their feet was dry and gritty, the air chilly.

  “So this is Australia,” Chloe said, looking around, her voice echoing. They were in a vast stone chamber, scarcely different from any of the other chambers where the Mothergates lay hidden. “It’s really good to get out in the world, see the sights, you know?”

  Horace laughed, letting her go with a squeeze. “We can’t say we never go anywhere.”

  They wandered apart, letting the strange intimacy of traveling through the Mothergate fade peaceably away. This place—Ulu’ru, it was called, home to the second Mothergate—was as empty as a tomb. April had given them no alarms, not yet, but it was Horace who had come up with the idea to get here early, before Isabel. As he’d pointed out, seeing the future wasn’t a whole lot of help if you arrived in the middle of the party.

  “Are you going to open the Fel’Daera?” Chloe aske
d him.

  “I was thinking I wouldn’t yet. Not here, anyway. I was thinking about what we’d do if we had no box, knowing Isabel was coming.”

  Chloe considered it. “Well, if we could stop her, I don’t think we’d let her get anywhere near the Mothergate.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” Horace said. “And that means we need to find the entrance. We’ll find the Nevren, and see what we see.” He patted the Fel’Daera.

  “And do you know where the entrance is?” Chloe asked, knowing that he didn’t.

  Horace shrugged. “We’re probably hundreds of feet underground. Up means out, right?”

  They left the Mothergate. The Veil was so thin here, scarcely more than a fog, that they had no trouble finding their way. Even when they reached the edge, Chloe could still spot the Mothergate far behind them, like a black ship out at sea.

  They kept walking. Chloe sort of loved the place. Whereas Ka’hoka was all clean lines, straight corridors, and soaring planes of smooth rock, Ulu’ru was rough and meandering. The rock was reddish and coarse, and had a damp, earthy smell. The lights, too, were red, similar to the amber ones in the Warren, emitting soft swirls of drifting sparks. The place seemed larger than the Warren, but not nearly the labyrinth Ka’hoka was. In no time, following Horace’s sensible idea that up meant out, they stumbled onto what was clearly the sanctuary’s main passageway.

  Here and there, small tunnels branched off from the main route. They passed a massive wall lined with walkways and dotted with doors—the living quarters, no doubt. But there was no one living here now.

  “Why are they all deserted?” Chloe asked. “All these places?”

  “It’s the end of things. Some fled to Ka’hoka, I’m sure. Others just fled.”

  “Or faded,” said Chloe.

  “Like Neptune.”

  “Yes,” said Chloe, thinking of that sad news and whether it really was sad. Neptune was free now, or would be soon. Whether it would happen fast enough to save her, no one seemed to know, not even Falo. Chloe listened to the Alvalaithen’s song, a song she didn’t remotely understand how to live without. “I couldn’t have done it, could you?’

  “No,” Horace said. “But even if I could, I wouldn’t. Not now. Not when we’re so . . .”

  “Needed,” Chloe finished.

  “Yes.”

  They walked on in silence. Up and out. They crossed a bridge above a smooth underground river, clear as glass. They passed through a honeycomb of narrow tunnels that seemed at first like an impossible maze, but was so interconnected that every path led them through. And when they came through, they found themselves in a vast cavern, bigger even than the biggest chambers in Ka’hoka. It was alive with crimson light.

  A huge mountain of fallen rock lay before them, apparently broken loose from the ceiling far above. Red boulders—some as big as dogs, some the size of small buildings—were heaped a hundred feet high, jagged and precarious and uninviting. The entire chaotic pile was alight, not just red in color but actually illuminated by some red light within, so that it looked like a chiseled mound of gigantic, glowing hot coals. But there was no heat.

  “I’m checking it out,” Chloe said, stepping forward.

  “Be careful,” said Horace. “I’d bet anything the Nevren is here.”

  Chloe had already come to the same conclusion. The place had that feel to it—a quiet, massive barrier, meant to deter the Riven but allow passage to those who belonged here. “I’m on it,” she said.

  She didn’t bother trying to climb. The boulders were too huge, too sheer, too sharp. She wondered briefly if her jithandra might get her through, revealing a secret path or something. But she didn’t need it.

  She went thin. She didn’t dare go under, didn’t dare move with the speed she could have, not when she might stumble across the Nevren at any moment. Instead she simply began walking up the pile as if she were wading through thick red snow, letting her feet sink and get purchase as she trudged up the hill. Even so, it wasn’t easy going. Up one glowing boulder, and down the next.

  Suddenly, when she was about halfway to the peak of the pile, a creeping cold seized hold of her. She froze in place.

  “Nevren,” she announced. “Just ahead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Chloe rose out of the glowing red stone she was standing in, clinging instead to its surface. She eased forward, and in just a few feet the Nevren took her. The Alvalaithen’s song vanished.

  She jerked back before she went any deeper. The dragonfly returned to her at once.

  “Definitely sure,” she said.

  “This is it, then. Isabel will be coming through here.”

  Chloe backed away cautiously until she felt the cold no more. She looked around, picturing Isabel climbing over this mess, coming to find the Mothergate. She leaned out, pressing her hand against a nearby stone the size of a car. What if Isabel was walking on this, and then suddenly . . . ?

  Drinking from the Alvalaithen, Chloe willed the stone to go thin. Since the mal’gama, she’d been practicing cautiously, and had learned more about her limits. She couldn’t simply make patches of earth go thin, not when it was a continuous piece of matter. She needed chunks, discrete bits—big though those bits might be. The stone she bled her power into now was separate from the other boulders around it, and far smaller than the mal’gama.

  Swiftly the stone became a ghost. It wasn’t difficult, not at all. When it was nearly thin, the boulder abruptly began to shift and sink into the pile. Chloe yanked her hand back, releasing it. The huge stone, suddenly solid again, shuddered violently as it melded with the rocks into which it had partially sunk. A great booming crunch rocked through the ground and into the air above.

  “Be careful,” Horace called up to her.

  “I don’t have to be careful,” she replied. “I’m the Keeper of the Alvalaithen.”

  “Well then, be . . . judicious.”

  “I think if I waited here for Isabel to come here, I could make it very hard for her to get through.”

  Horace didn’t say anything. She knew what he was thinking, though—things she could barely bring to the surface of her own mind. Making it hard for Isabel to get through here this way very likely meant not letting her get out alive.

  “Is that what you want to do?” Horace asked.

  “Is it what I do?”

  He beckoned to her. “Come down. Come back.”

  Unafraid of the Nevren now, Chloe slipped into the stone and flew back to Horace, cold red light flickering past her. She was down in no time, arcing from the stone up into the air, landing on her feet beside him.

  The Fel’Daera was already in Horace’s hands. “Do you want me to look?”

  Chloe hugged herself, rubbing her arms. “Why is it so cold in here? I thought Australia was hot.”

  “It’s winter in Australia right now. But we’re in a cave. It’s the same temperature all year round.” He gestured with the Fel’Daera. “Do you want me to look?”

  “I won’t tell you yes. Only you can decide to open the box, Horace. You know that.”

  “But you won’t tell me no.”

  She rubbed her arms again, then shook her head. “I won’t tell you no.”

  Horace turned to the massive, glowing rockfall. He settled himself, his face going slack, doing that thing again. Preparing to open the box. It was a kind of meditation, Chloe had decided, and while she didn’t exactly envy it, she knew it was a state of mind she’d never find for herself.

  After several seconds of careful thought, Horace opened the box. He lifted it, gazing into the rockfall. Into the future. On the side of the box, the silver rays of the sun began to dim, one by one. He was adjusting the breach, moving backward in time again, looking nearer and nearer to the present.

  Finally only one spoke was left. It slowly began to shrink. Less than an hour. Maybe Isabel wasn’t coming at all. Maybe—

  Horace inhaled sharply, and the silver held fast. A fraction
of an hour. Chloe ached to ask him what he was seeing, but didn’t dare.

  Horace actually took a step back. He scanned across the rockfall, this way and that. Then he slammed the box closed.

  “We’re in trouble,” he said. “The Riven are pouring through here. The Nevren isn’t stopping them.”

  “But that’s not possible.”

  “It happens. It will happen. I think Isabel did something. I saw her, up there.” He pointed to the top of the rockfall, at what must have been the center of the Nevren. “There were flows of the Medium around her, like ghosts.”

  Ghosts. Chloe didn’t like the sound of that. They had only recently learned what truly lay at the heart of every Nevren—a Keeper, buried underground, suspended in a state of undeath, willingly fused to his or her Tan’ji. The act of fusion created a kind of black hole from which any nearby flows of the Medium could not escape, which was why no Tan’ji would work within it. What could Isabel possibly have done to reverse such a sacrifice? She’d promised she would become more powerful, and it seemed she had.

  “How many Riven?” Chloe asked. “And how long?”

  “Fourteen minutes. And I don’t know how many Riven. I saw two dozen, at least.”

  “I can fight them,” Chloe insisted, knowing it was true. “I can fight them here in the rockfall. I can move underground, make the boulders go thin beneath them one by one, drop them into the earth. They won’t be able to touch me.”

  Horace only shook his head. “But that’s not what you do.”

  Chloe wanted to tear her hair out. The willed path. Except that on that path, she apparently didn’t have the will to do what she wanted. She could fight the Riven here and win; she knew she could.

  “Why wouldn’t I do that?” she demanded. “It’s our only chance.”

  “We obviously decide it isn’t.”

  “Well, when do we figure out another chance, Horace? When does our brilliant plan arise?”

  Horace shrugged. “Now, I guess.”

  “Do you have that brilliant plan yet?”