The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  “No,” Horace said. He stepped forward, slipping out from under his mother’s hand. “No. That’s not what happens.”

  Dr. Jericho scoffed—a cruel, snarling bark. “Horace Andrews, Keeper of the Fel’Daera. You’ll tell us the story of what does happen, I suppose. Another story we have no reason to believe.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” Horace replied, choosing his words carefully. “All that matters is that you know I’ve witnessed this future. I know everything that’s about to occur.”

  Isabel stirred, frowning at him. “And why should that matter?” she asked.

  “This is the last Mothergate,” Horace said. “It wouldn’t take much to push it over the edge, to force it to collapse. And when it does, every Keeper will die. Chloe will die.”

  Dr. Jericho growled warily. Horace knew the Mordin could see the fear and doubt that crept now into Isabel’s face.

  “Do you know about thrall-blight, Isabel?” Horace asked, pressing. This was the moment. “The Fel’Daera should never have been made, you know. I know that now. No other instrument has done more to tangle the multiverse, to hasten the deaths of the Mothergates. Every time we deny the future the box reveals—every time we willingly disobey it—the Mothergates die a little more.” He paused, letting his words sink in, and then he said, “I wonder how much disobedience it would take in the next two minutes to make the Mothergate collapse completely?”

  “Lies,” Dr. Jericho spat. “Fables and fantasies.”

  “If you say so,” Horace said. But he wasn’t lying. He couldn’t lie. Everything depended utterly on the truth. He was conscious of all the eyes on him, trembling and waiting, afraid to act. His own mother. Mr. Meister. The Maker of the Fel’Daera herself.

  “You won’t believe Falo’s story, but sooner or later you’ll have to believe mine,” Horace said. “The future is coming and it can’t be stopped. It’ll either be the future I witnessed, or one I did not.” His inner clock was ticking smoothly. Everything was happening just as he had foreseen. But it wasn’t enough. Isabel had to know the future too, so that she would be bound to it.

  He began moving slowly toward Chloe, just as the Fel’Daera had revealed. This was the willed path. He said, “In thirty seconds, Isabel, you’re going to release Chloe. You’re going to undo your severing, and all your knots. I’m going to take her by the hand and help her to her feet. This is the future I saw. The willed path. Will you walk it with me, or will you disobey the box and ruin us all?”

  Dr. Jericho threw a savage gesture at Isabel. “Don’t listen to him. Never trust the Keeper of the Fel’Daera to speak the truth.”

  But Isabel was listening. Horace could see that. “Fifteen seconds,” he said. He kept moving, shocked at his own confidence, at the power that spilled from him now, as if he had taken the entire world hostage. Dr. Jericho was afraid, too. The Mothergate trembled, grumbling.

  “He lies,” Dr. Jericho roared.

  “But what if he doesn’t?” said Isabel. “What if they’re right?”

  Horace held his breath. Had he told the proper story after all? Was the truth really all that was needed?

  Dr. Jericho reared back in anger. The spines on his shoulders bristled, quavering. He thrust out a hideous hand, pointing at the web. “This? This is a trick. A desperate attempt to lead us astray, to make us believe all their damage has been undone. Only you can repair the Mothergates, Isabel.”

  “You’re wrong,” Isabel said. “This work is beyond me. It was always beyond me. But I see now. I see. This was what needed to be done.” Her voice was dreamy and sad. And then she seemed to see Chloe’s limp form for the first time, and her voice broke. “My daughter,” she said.

  Miraculously, Chloe grumbled and stirred. Isabel had released her. Horace’s heart leapt. He reached down for her, helping her slowly to her feet. He spotted the strange silver blade, tucked into her belt loop

  “You fool!” Dr. Jericho cried. “You’ve fallen for their lies again, just as you did at the start.” He whirled on Horace and Chloe, fuming, towering over them, burning with rage. Beyond Isabel, the golem roared to life. It reared up high over Isabel, poised to strike. Chloe blinked, finding herself more swiftly than Horace could have dared hope. She reached for the silver blade just as Dr. Jericho lunged at them, grasping for Horace. Brian cried out. The wings of the Alvalaithen whirred to life as Dr. Jericho leapt. Chloe raised her blade.

  And then the Mordin crumpled.

  He fell to the floor with a sickening crunch, his thick jaw cracking against the stone. Behind Isabel, the golem fell apart, clattering to the floor like a sudden shower of heavy hail.

  Chloe stood there staring, heaving, the blade unused in her hand. No one spoke. No one moved. The only sound was the grating rumble of the Mothergate.

  Isabel had cleaved Dr. Jericho.

  Not the blade, not at all. Words, turned into action. Slowly, every eye turned toward Isabel. She stood there amid the ruin of the golem, frozen. “So many lies,” she said quietly. “All my life, all these lies. I think I don’t need to hear any more.”

  “He’s dead,” Chloe said. “You killed him.”

  “Yes,” said Isabel at last. “I think . . . I think now it was long overdue.”

  “Amen to that,” Brian said.

  Isabel looked around. Her eyes fell on Horace. “You knew this would happen.”

  “I knew it would happen,” he said. “I didn’t know how.”

  “I walked the willed path.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  Now Isabel looked to Horace’s mother and she tipped her head, tears welling up. “Jess,” she said. “Jessica. Do you know what they did to me?”

  His mother went to her, kicking through the stones of the golem. “I know,” she said, wrapping her up. “I know what they did.”

  Chloe poked at Dr. Jericho’s lifeless form with her toe. She looked around, saw the radiant web of light spread out from the Mothergate behind her, Falo’s magnificent clock.

  “If anyone tells me I’m dreaming, I’ll pinch them,” she said.

  “You’re dreaming,” said Brian.

  Chloe scowled. “Anyone sensible, I mean.”

  Gently she knelt down before Dr. Jericho. She laid a hand on him, as the Alvalaithen’s wings continued to whir. Steadily the Mordin’s body began to sink into the ground. She let him drift slowly under. She guided him down until her arm was in past her elbow, and then stood up. She left him there, buried. Only then did she glance up at Falo.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I didn’t really want that lying there.”

  “Nor did I,” said Falo.

  Isabel pulled away from Horace’s mom. “Chloe,” she said, starting toward her. “Chloe, I—”

  “No,” Chloe said, not even looking at her. “Not now. Not yet.” The Mothergate groaned crunchily behind her, rumbling.

  “It is time to finish what we began,” Falo said.

  The Starlit Loom blazed to life. Brian bent down before Tunraden, setting it aglow. They resumed their weaving, the final strands falling into place swiftly now.

  The chamber was alight, as if by the sun, from the sheer volume of threads that stretched across the open expanse. Falo seemed to be slowing, tiring, and Brian’s arms drooped. And then finally, blessedly, just when Horace thought the entire effort might fail, Falo dropped her arms. Tunraden swallowed its shower of light, and Brian all but collapsed across it.

  “It is done,” Falo said, and she dimmed from the ethereal being she had been back to herself, pale and solid. “It will hold. It will hold while we do what we must do.”

  Horace didn’t doubt her, even though the Mothergate still seemed to strain around the edges, even though the magnificent webbed clock still shivered. Falo turned to Horace, Hiraethel in her hands. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  For an answer, Horace turned to his friend. His great friend, the only friend that mattered. He needed her help now, even if he didn’t k
now how.

  “Are we ready?” he asked her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Answers to Everything

  CHLOE’S EYES WERE LOCKED ON HORACE. SHE CROSSED TO HIM, and he recognized the moment, recognized the look on her face. The same look he’d seen through the box earlier—she knew something. She’d figured something out. “Tell me your plan,” she said. “Inside the Mothergate.”

  “I’m going to send Hiraethel.”

  “And what’s that going to do?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think I can send her through one of those doors you were talking about. Into some other universe. Some other future.”

  Chloe nodded. “And you felt those doors?”

  “No, but—”

  “When I was severed,” she said, interrupting him, “while they were dragging me here, I was thinking about when you talked me into sending the Alvalaithen.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never thanked you for that.”

  He drew back, surprised. “Why would you thank me for that? Sending the Alvalaithen was completely mental. You almost died.”

  “But I didn’t. And it was the right thing to do. You told me to be brave, and I was, and now I’m . . .”

  “You’re, like, a better person because of it,” Horace said.

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “I was being serious.”

  “Yeah, well, so was I.”

  Falo approached them. Hiraethel was in her hand, Uroboros a circling shadow within. “It is time to make our intentions known.”

  The Mothergate was rumbling constantly now. The woven clock rippled like a spiderweb in the wind.

  Horace opened the Fel’Daera. Slowly, smoothly, Falo slipped the Starlit Loom inside. So perfect. Such purpose. The creator inside its creation, for the last time.

  “I don’t have the astrolabe,” Horace said. “What if I get lost?”

  “You won’t get lost,” his mother said. “You’re the Keeper of the Fel’Daera.”

  He had no idea if that was true. He stepped up to the Mothergate. This was not the way things were supposed to be, not yet, and the Mothergate was straining to resist. But he was about to fix that. Fix it for good.

  Suddenly Chloe was at his side. She looked up at him, the dragonfly’s wings blurring.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  And he knew that already. He’d seen it. He didn’t understand why and was terrified to ask. “Okay,” he said.

  Even though he hadn’t asked why, she gave him a reason. “To show you the way,” she said. She looked over at Isabel. She frowned. “Isabel, congratulations on doing the right thing today,” she said. “I don’t remember you thanking me for being right.”

  And then she took Horace’s hand, and led him into the Mothergate.

  They broke through the blaze of white glass and into the chaos beyond. And suddenly they were falling. Or rising. Or both at the same time.

  But no, the kaleidoscope of worlds around them heaved up on all sides and rolled into them, passing through them, going under. When they’d entered the Mothergate before, the churning space inside had taken no notice of them. But not now. Now they were at the center of a storm that crashed against them from all sides.

  “It’s the Loom!” Chloe cried.

  And she was right. Hiraethel was causing this, as if it had an immense gravity that the storyscapes of the multiverse could not resist. Cities and glaciers and seas roared up high overhead, only to pound down around them.

  “We can’t stay,” Horace said. “I’m sending it. We have to hope I do it right.”

  Chloe laid a hand on his wrist. “There is no right way for you to do it, Horace,” she said. “I think you know that.” Her face shifted through a swift series of Chloes, young and old, all of them somber, all of them wise.

  “Do I?” said Horace, but he did know. This was the look on her face. She’d figured something out, something he didn’t yet understand. His heart pounded heavy but slow, like it was pumping mud. The Mothergate boiled around them like a volcano. “Tell me,” he said.

  “No, you tell me. Tell me where the doors are.”

  He cast about for some sense of a door. Other than the patch of emptiness at his feet that led out through the Mothergate, he had no clue. And he knew this was not the kind of door Chloe meant. He shook his head, embarrassed and frightened.

  Chloe stepped away from him, into a cascading field of purple flowers, into a billowing sea of fog, into a tumbling precipice of stone. As she moved, and the worlds moved around her, she laid her hands into the air again and again, left and right, high and low, like she was clutching at ghosts. “Here. Here. And here and here. Here.” Horace could see nothing, sense nothing. She turned to him, still reaching out. “Here and here and here. They’re moving fast, gone in a second, but there are so many that they’re everywhere.”

  “So I’ll just send the Loom,” said Horace. “If the doors are everywhere, then it’s bound to go through one of them.”

  “Not just one of them, Horace. Remember what Falo told us. Remember what she said about sending the Alvalaithen.”

  He stopped himself, his mind seizing. This wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work. Or if it did, it would be a disaster. “Whatever I send goes into every future,” he said flatly.

  Chloe came back to him, her face flickering. “Yes.”

  “If it even works at all, it’ll backfire. I’ll be sending Hiraethel into every universe. Hiraethel has to go to just one future. Or one universe, anyway—one seed. But if I send Hiraethel here, I’ll just be spreading the problem into every other universe.”

  “I think so,” said Chloe.

  Horace clutched the open box. “But we’ll be fine. Our universe will be okay.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but that wasn’t our intent. We intended to do much more.” And the way she said it told him that he could not do this thing. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t what they’d come here to do.

  “We can’t fix it then,” he said. “We can’t do it.” The words tore at his throat. Not because the plan was going to fail, but because he knew what the words meant, knew what Chloe was going to say next. He could barely bring himself to hear her.

  “We can’t fix it,” she said. “But I can.”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No.”

  But Chloe only spread her arms. “All these doors, Horace. I told you I can feel them. Doors into every world there is. And I only need one.” The Alvalaithen began to flutter, becoming a shimmer of white.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said, even though he knew he couldn’t.

  “You can’t. I wish you could. I would take you with me everywhere.” She was crying. She reached up and touched the Alvalaithen. “The Earthwing,” she said. “I can fly between worlds.” She held out her hands. Wrinkled and smooth. Bony and weathered. “Give me the Loom, Horace.”

  The mind of the Mothergate swirled around them, tumbling over them. The ground shook below. “I can’t,” he said.

  “You can. You will. You already have.”

  He looked down. The Fel’Daera was empty. In Chloe’s hands, Hiraethel lay like a black pool, pulsing and gleaming and bottomless, Uroboros swimming within. At Chloe’s throat, the Alvalaithen was an unseeable white song, glimmering.

  “What if you get lost?” he said.

  “I’ve always been lost.”

  “Not with me,” said Horace, his voice cracking. “You were never lost with me. Promise me you’ll come back.”

  “Promise me I can,” Chloe said. “You’re the one that can see the future.”

  He took a step toward her. He put his hand inside the ghost of hers and made a fist. She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and then made a fist inside his. Blood mingling. Skin inside skin. The song of the Alvalaithen poured through them both. Somehow, she snagged him there, gently, bone crossing bone. She tugged at him. She held him. He couldn’t have let her go if he tried.
r />   She was going. She would take the Starlit Loom through some door he couldn’t see. Into another world that they could or could not imagine. She would leave it there. Elsewhere. Elsewhen.

  Horace looked down. At his feet, in the midst of this tumbling chaos, the patch of sturdy blankness still gleamed. The way back. He pointed at it. “Remember this door, Chloe. Remember it. Come back. In twenty years this door will start to collapse, and you’ll find it. You’ll come back and go through, out of the Mothergate again, back the way you came. That’s the story’s end.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  “Promise me,” he said again.

  She lifted her chin high, blinking fast, her eyes wet. She was Chloe now. His Chloe, the only Chloe he knew. She nodded. She looked at him. “I promise,” she said.

  And then she released him. His arm fell to his side, the Alvalaithen’s song snuffed out. “Go back,” she said. “Go out and tell them what I did.”

  His chest felt like it would tear in two. And maybe it was.

  Chloe turned away. She looked around, searching. She took a step into the seething body of the Mothergate.

  And then she didn’t exist.

  He barely knew what came after. An agony of sadness. A fall into white. The churning fugue forgotten, left behind. A trip through a blaze of colorless light, through a barrier of sound. A stumble into a great stone hall. Dozens of waiting eyes upon him, and gasps of surprise all around. He hated every one of them for it.

  Sil’falo Teneves was there. She swooped toward him, scooped him from the ground like a child. And he was a child.

  Someone was crying out. A woman, shouting at him. Asking questions full of Chloe’s name. Isabel fell to her knees.

  “She’s taking it where it needed to go,” Horace said to Falo. “She had to. She had the best intentions.”

  “She always did,” Falo said.

  They walked. Gradually Horace became aware that a small crowd walked with them, Altari and humans alike. April was here, Arthur riding her shoulder like a wave. And Gabriel, and Joshua. Brian.