by Ted Sanders
But there was no sign of Isabel. Or Dr. Jericho. And gradually Chloe realized that no Altari were being severed, none being cleaved. Where was Isabel? What was her plan?
And then she saw. A golem, snaking swiftly outside the main part of the fray, edging past the battle like a moving mound of coal. She understood at once. The battle was only a distraction—Isabel was trying to reach the Mothergate alone.
Chloe leapt. She fell, plunging into the ground far below like water. Bottoming out and rising to the surface again at speed, she made for the golem.
Two quick dolphin leaps, right through the heart of the battle, and within seconds she came up just where she meant to, inside the body of the golem. It arced over her like a dome, a hollow space beneath it.
And in that space—Isabel, and Dr. Jericho at her side.
They froze when they saw her, Dr. Jericho’s face spreading in a grin of rage.
Chloe threw her arms wide. “Mom!” she said, mustering all the cruel cheer she could.
Isabel recoiled, scowling. “Don’t follow us, Chloe,” she said. “I’m going to fix it. I’m going to set it right.”
“That’s a nice gesture,” Chloe said, “but we’re already fixing it.” A confused rage roiled through her, seeing her mother here now with the hated Dr. Jericho. Half of Chloe wanted to reason with Isabel, to explain that everything was going to be okay. The other half fumed furiously at the idea that she owed the woman any explanation whatsoever.
“Fixing it.” Dr. Jericho laughed, sneering. “What has Sil’falo Teneves promised you now, I wonder?”
“More than either of you ever did,” Chloe said. She took a deep breath, searching for calm, struggling to find reason. “I’m telling you, we don’t need you. Thanks for coming, but we’ve got it under control. Falo is—”
And then Isabel severed her.
The Alvalaithen’s song snuffed out. Chloe collapsed. The thin blade at her belt jabbed her in the leg and her face smacked the floor, but she scarcely felt it. Dimly she understood that this severing was bad. Not cleaving, no, she’d already be dead if she’d been cleaved. But Isabel’s severing came with a brambly tangle of confusion, as if all Chloe’s powers had been tied in knots.
She began to drift. She couldn’t find her Tan’ji. What was it again? How could she have forgotten so fast? Something white. A predator.
Heavy footsteps, and a foul smell. A bad smell meant bad things. Something ugly and savage bent to look her in the eyes. Why couldn’t she see her eyes?
No love lost, then, the voice said. A rotten voice, a rotten thing. I hope you’ll find forgiveness on the other side.
A hand around her. And now she was being carried. Or maybe she was flying. The Earthwing, yes, but the earth was darker than this, and that was where the flying was.
Come and see, said the voice. Let us show you.
You’ll see, she said, or tried to say. They’re fixing it and we’ll all see. I see the moon and the moon sees me.
Cruel laughter. And then another voice, a woman, a voice she’d always known. The Alvalaithen, it said. The Fel’Daera. She hated that voice and the voice hated her. The voice had hurt her and hurt was bad. Bad little girl. Little boy. Little boy blue, a true blue moon.
Whatever it is they’re planning, the cruel voice said, sooner or later it will fail.
Still flying, still voices. Where were they taking her again? Sooner or later a moon elevator. But that wasn’t true.
The Fel’Daera. The Alvalaithen. One into the other. One into every other. She grabbed at the thought because the thought meant something. Something about a plan. One into every other was how it worked, it turned out. And that meant the plan wouldn’t work.
She tried to cling to the thought, but thoughts were so slippery here. Something was happening. Something was wrong. Not these voices, no, some other happening. A plan for someone, yes. An important one.
One into every other everything. What did it mean? She had questions, lots of them, and there had to be answers.
The answers to everything.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Story Told
HORACE WALKED WITH BRIAN, SLOWLY CROSSING THE GREAT empty vault toward the distant Mothergate. The gate looked stark and ominous now that the Veil was gone. Falo was already beside the Mothergate, studying it carefully. Horace’s mother stood a little ways back, watching Horace and Brian approach, Mr. Meister lying on the floor at her side.
The alarm bells had stopped ringing.
“I guess it’s good I wore a subtle shirt today,” Brian said. “Nobody likes a skeptic.”
“Why is it subtle?” asked Horace.
Brian grinned. “Look in my pocket.” Horace pulled Brian’s breast pocket open and peeked inside. On the fabric within, he’d written:
BYE!
“You won’t be needing that,” Horace said. “Not today.”
“I could almost believe you,” said Brian.
When they reached the Mothergate, Brian set Tunraden down, and Falo began talking at once.
“Let us assume that Brian and I can do what we have suggested,” she said. “That we can weave a hold on the Mothergate, a hold that will gradually fade over twenty years. What then?”
“We take Hiraethel inside,” Horace said. “Away from here.”
“And yet the realms inside the Mothergate are not a place,” said Falo. “They are neither here nor there. You cannot simply leave Hiraethel inside.”
Horace thought hard. He thought about portals, and the Fel’Daera. How the two were interconnected. “Chloe said the space inside the Mothergate is full of doors,” he said. “Doors everywhere. Billions of doors. Maybe I can send Hiraethel through the box, through one of those doors. After all, sending the Loom was the reason you made the Fel’Daera in the first place.”
“Wait, what?” said Brian.
Horace ignored him. “It’ll go. It’ll be gone.”
Falo studied him for a long, somber moment. She still burned like a ghost, rippling with energy. It wasn’t exactly soothing. “And you think that will work.”
“I think the Riven are coming. Isabel is coming. I think if the Starlit Loom is still here, there’s nothing to stop her from cleaving you.”
Falo drew back. “Very well. You have quite the logical mind, Horace Andrews.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank your mother.” She turned to the Mothergate. She lifted her hands. “Brian, I may need your help. Watch me as I begin, please.”
“Like I could ever not,” Brian said.
Falo began.
A golden nest of tendrils snaked from the Mothergate, thin as reeds. They came gently, coaxed, and then more came by the bushel. The snaking lines thickened and reached out gently, not as if they were being pulled, but as if they wanted to be in this place. They grew longer and longer, grew strong and thick, radiating out of the mouth of the Mothergate in every direction. Falo’s hands swooped like birds, her marvelous fingers working like the leaves of a tree in the wind. The tendrils of the Medium fanned out a hundred feet in every direction, thinning into nothing as they went, though Horace knew they went much farther, into places and shapes he could not see.
“Oh my god,” his mother said, staring. And she fell to her knees, her Tuner’s eyes wide and glowing. Mr. Meister sat on the floor beside her, mouth open in wonder, the threads of the Medium reflected on his glasses like shooting stars. The spokes kept coming, kept growing, angling and lacing over one another.
“Do you see, Keeper?” Falo roared, looking down at Brian. “Do you understand?”
Brian nodded. “I see. I can help.” He bent down to Tunraden and plunged his hands into the stone. It erupted into a fountain of light, and he pulled great clumps of it into the air.
Brian’s way of weaving was nothing like Falo’s, but as he sent laceworks of glowing Medium out into what Falo had done, they meshed seamlessly with hers, complementing them like the cross trusses of a ma
gnificent spiral bridge. They worked in tandem, Falo pulling more and more threads from the Mothergate, Brian wrapping them tight with immaculate, easy precision.
Although Horace could barely follow what they were doing, he slowly began to understand that there was a pattern at play. A symmetry. Though the threads and spokes were far too numerous to count, they were regimented in a way that looked oddly familiar. Or if not familiar, at least translatable. And suddenly Horace realized.
It was a clock. Not a clock that counted hours or days, but years. Twenty years. Time was Falo’s specialty, after all, and whether the great decade-spanning clock shape she and Brian wove now was a necessity or an indulgence, he hardly cared. It was beautiful. Orderly. Logical.
They wove for what felt like hours, but it was only minutes. Tens of thousands of strands now emerged from the black mass of the Mothergate, each one a gentle anchor, plus thousands more woven crosswise and spiraling.
“Henry,” his mother said. “Do you see it? This is going to work.”
“I see it,” Mr. Meister said grimly.
And it would work. It had to. But Horace felt helpless watching them. There was nothing he could do to help them. Was there?
The Mothergate began to rumble. A swath of golden strands near the top trembled.
“Do not fear,” Falo said. “It fights us now, but the weavings will hold. We must finish. We must send Hiraethel far from here. All will be well.” Her tone was light, but Horace could hear the strain in her voice.
“How much longer?” Horace asked.
“A few minutes. We have to hope the others hold Isabel off long enough.”
Hope. A hope for a future that was nearly here.
“I hear something,” his mother said suddenly. She was looking back across the room toward the entrance.
Now Horace heard it too. A distant grate and rumble, growing nearer.
The golem.
“Faster,” said Falo. “Keep weaving. Let us hope there is time.”
And when Horace heard those words, suddenly he knew. He knew what he had to do.
They didn’t have to hope.
He pulled the box from its pouch. He gathered his thoughts swiftly, clearing his mind. The Mothergate shook, quivering.
Falo looked back at him, apparently sensing what he was about to do. “Now is not the time, Keeper,” she said. “Everything hangs in a fine balance, and the Fel’Daera—”
“You have to trust me,” said Horace. “Keep weaving.” With an ease that astonished him, he set the breach to one minute and pinned it in place. Looking across the vast room to the faraway entrance, he opened the box.
He lifted it to his eyes, ignoring the shuddering Mothergate behind him. This was the time. Isabel was coming. This was the moment that mattered, here at the end of everything.
And through the glass—two figures, drawing closer, one large and one small, the larger figure flickering and bristling like a ghoul; Dr. Jericho, Isabel at his side; the black mass of the golem sliding behind them.
Horace felt no surprise whatsoever. Instead of fear, a kind of blessed relief flooded him. This was knowing. This was seeing. This was what he could do.
He kept his eyes on the glass, watching the future unfold. Dr. Jericho, coming closer; a limp figure in his arms.
Chloe.
He choked back a gasp.
“Don’t tell me what you see, Horace Andrews,” Falo said, still weaving.
“I’ll second that,” said Brian, his voice wrinkling with effort.
But Horace had no intention of telling them. What he saw now was not for them, not at all.
Dr. Jericho in their midst now, walking up to the Mothergate; pausing briefly to stare straight into the Fel’Daera from the other side of the glass; now moving to the Mothergate, depositing Chloe heavily onto the floor. Dead? Alive? Alive, it had to be, because Isabel was still here. Isabel wouldn’t hurt Chloe. Whatever else she might do, she wouldn’t do that. Horace believed it, knew it.
He kept watching. Ever so gently, he slid the breech ahead, fast-forwarding into the future, trying to see everything he could while he still had the chance. Falo and Dr. Jericho were talking. Isabel was standing far back from the Mothergate, the golem looming behind her. Falo’s golden clock shone like streaks of golden starlight.
Forward and forward, into the near future. A future so close he could almost touch it. Through the box, everything was sharp, crystalline. Meanwhile, in the present, the sounds of the golem grew nearer, and a few seconds later the beast itself emerged into the room. It unfolded, revealing Isabel and Dr. Jericho within.
Horace ignored them. He tried not to wonder how close Isabel would have to get before she could sever him. Sever him, or worse. In the future, through the glass: Horace himself, moving to Chloe’s side, talking to someone—Isabel; Chloe stirring, looking around. His heart leapt. Not dead, only severed. But why had Isabel released her? His mind raced. He turned the box to look at look at Isabel in the future, but saw nothing that meant anything clear. And when he turned back to Dr. Jericho . . .
He nearly dropped the box. The Mordin, crumpled lifeless on the floor, Chloe and Horace standing over him.
Dead.
This was what death looked like, Horace was sure of it.
But how? And then he realized Chloe held something in her hand. A dagger, thin as a pencil.
Here in the present, Dr. Jericho stalked triumphantly toward them, aware that Horace was watching the future, but with no idea what that future held for him. The Mordin was apparently in no hurry, shoulders high and bristling. Isabel walked beside him, silent and glowing. Chloe was a limp bundle in Dr. Jericho’s arms, her short dark hair hanging loose.
“Stop,” the Mordin called out. “Stop now or we’ll end you.”
Falo stepped back, dropping the strands of the Medium. Brian straightened, groaning, Tunraden winking out as he withdrew his hands. Horace took one last look around through the Fel’Daera—he’d never kept the Fel’Daera open before while the events it had revealed were beginning to unfold, and it didn’t seem wise to start now. Just before he closed it, he fast-forwarded swiftly a little way further into the future. Two minutes in two seconds. The golden clock, continuing to grow, all the strands falling into place; flickers of movement, comically fast; Horace and Chloe, standing in front of the Mothergate together. Horace pinned the breech in place, squinting through the glass at Chloe’s face—
“Stop,” Dr. Jericho bellowed again.
“She’s getting close, Horace,” his mother murmured. “She’ll cleave you.”
Horace slammed the box closed, breathing hard. No one moved as the awful pair approached, the golem rumbling forward behind them. Horace held his breath, steeling himself for what had to happen next, for everything he might say. And what would he say? What would it matter? All he knew from what he’d seen was that these next few minutes belonged to words, not action. And only the right words would do, if he could find them.
Mr. Meister glared at Dr. Jericho with an almost audible hatred. Horace’s mother took Horace by the shoulder, pulling him close. As the new arrivals drew nearer, Isabel slowed. Her wild eyes roved over Falo’s web, growing wide. She stopped well back, just as Horace had foreseen, staring. The golem coiled behind her like a great black snake.
Dr. Jericho kept coming. He slowed as he passed in front of Horace, his beady black eyes lighting briefly on the Fel’Daera. Horace’s mom squeezed his shoulder. Horace knew very well that Dr. Jericho hadn’t needed to witness Horace using the box to know that Horace had been watching. Thanks to his Tan’ji, the Mordin would be able to sense the Fel’Daera open in the past even now. But Dr. Jericho said nothing.
Instead, he stepped right up to the Mothergate. He dumped Chloe unceremoniously onto the ground. She groaned, wrapped deep in Isabel’s nasty knots. Horace ached for her even as the profound satisfaction of walking the willed path flowed through him. So far, this was the future just as he had seen it.
The Mord
in leaned back, examining the exquisite spread of golden strands that spread from the quivering black. “What joke is this?” he purred sinisterly. “What trick?”
“Not a trick,” said Falo. “We are fixing what you could not. And you still stand because of it. We all still stand.”
“Have you seen the light, then?” he seemed to tease. “You admit that the Mothergates need not die?”
“No,” said Isabel dreamily, still transfixed by the unfinished golden web. “What she’s doing here isn’t meant to last forever.”
“Then tear it down,” Dr. Jericho said. “Tear it down and begin again. Make it last.”
Falo laughed. “You fool. Living in the shadows, fretting and raging over the wrong fear. The Mothergates must die, Ja’raka Sevlo, even if we die along with them. If we do not allow them to collapse—if we force them to remain open forever—the entire universe will cease to be. The multiverse will erase all the tangled universes from its memory, as if we never existed. You Riven cling to your petty fears while ignoring the greater danger by far.”
“Nonsense.”
Falo turned her attention to Isabel. She gestured to the grand woven clock. “We are buying time, Isabel. Time for all Keepers, time enough to live. There is a way the Keepers can survive the collapse of the final Mothergate. Your daughter could have told you as much, if only you’d listened. When the weaving is done, we will take Hiraethel from this place. Take her out of this world and into another. What went wrong will be set right. Our universe will be saved. Chloe will be saved.”
Although he had seen these events unfold, Horace hadn’t heard them. He was stunned to hear Falo revealing their plan to Dr. Jericho. Not that it mattered. Not if the future he’d seen held true.
Dr. Jericho was chuckling softly under his breath now. “More nonsense,” he said. He shook his head sadly at Falo, as if in bewildered sympathy. “In your monstrous arrogance, Sil’falo Teneves, you imagine this sacrifice of yours will save us all. Save us from a danger that never existed.” He turned to Isabel, tipping his chin. “Enough of this foolishness,” he said, pointing back at Falo. “Cleave her.”