The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

  Horace rolled over. His back ached. Beside him on the ground, Chloe lay snoozing, her fists in balls and her brow puckered into a scowl. The huge crucible scar on her forearm, wide as a hand and twice as long, pointed at her face like a dark dagger. Her dragonfly pendant, the Alvalaithen, seemed to glow in the dark.

  A few feet away, Neptune slept flat on her back atop her cloak, her long legs still crossed and her hands loose in her lap. One of her pinkies was dislocated, jutting sideways from her hand like the pinky of a disfigured doll. Horace flinched, grimacing, and then remembered: Neptune had fallen during the night’s battle, when an Auditor had taken over her Tan’ji. Powerless, and suddenly exposed to the forces of gravity, Neptune had fallen to the ground.

  The battle. Snippets of the night’s events came to Horace slowly, piecemeal, in no particular order. The Riven surrounding April’s house. The charging Mordin in the woods. The phalanx. The tense standoff with Dr. Jericho, and Horace’s narrow escape.

  Slowly he strung the images into the full story. It wasn’t easy, because traveling by falkrete stone had fogged his memory. There was a circle of falkretes here, of course—every cloister had one. He examined the wide ring of motley stones now and recognized the bear-shaped stone that had transported him and the other Wardens to the ruined cloister near April’s house in the countryside. He recognized another that would lead them back toward the Warren, the secret sanctuary hidden under the busy downtown streets of Chicago. But the evening had begun long before any of that.

  So much had happened, so many paths taken. Horace had made seven leaps by falkrete stone tonight, each leap leaving him feeling split in two. The Horace who teleported forward to the next circle was haunted by the feeling that an entirely separate Horace had chosen to stay behind. But gradually this Horace here—himself, the only Horace—remembered dinner earlier that night, in his own home in the city. Not a normal dinner, by any stretch of the imagination.

  Horace and Chloe had arranged for their mothers to meet, for the first time in decades. How strange that Horace and Chloe had met each other only recently—both of them powerful Keepers with powerful Tan’ji—only to find out that their mothers had not only known each other as children, but had actually known the Wardens. They even seemed to have known Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade well, if such a thing was even possible. This whole time, Horace’s mom had been aware all of it: the Tan’ji, the Keepers, the Warren, the Riven, and even what it meant for a Keeper to join the Wardens, as Horace and Chloe had.

  Not that Horace’s mom nor Chloe’s—Isabel—had actually been Keepers. To be a Keeper, and become Tan’ji, you had to bond to an instrument. Chloe’s instrument was the Alvalaithen, the dragonfly pendant that allowed her to move through solid matter. Horace’s Tan’ji was the Fel’Daera, the small box at his side that allowed him to look into the near future. And Neptune’s was her gravity-defying tourminda.

  No, Isabel and Horace’s mom weren’t Keepers, but they had powers nonetheless. Potentially dangerous powers. They were Tuners, and they used instruments called harps to manipulate the Medium, twisting that energy, braiding it, and even severing or cleaving it. Horace shuddered at the thought and placed his hand on the Fel’Daera.

  When they were younger, Isabel and Horace’s mom, Jessica, had worked for the Wardens, tuning unclaimed instruments that were in search of new Keepers. Isabel had been particularly talented. Isabel alone was strong enough to use the powerful harp she called Miradel, even if she couldn’t control it completely. In fact, Isabel had used Miradel to tune the Fel’Daera years before Horace was even born, a revelation that made Horace squirm. Isabel, in a way, had helped to make him. And yet she had also betrayed them all.

  Horace sat cross-legged and watched Chloe sleep. This was a common occurrence, what with all their late-night adventures and Chloe’s prodigious napping abilities. He plucked at cluster of weeds, wondering what stormy dreams she was wrestling with now. Except for her black hair—and her many scars—Chloe looked almost exactly like her mother. Tiny and fierce. Pretty like a prowling cat. Chloe surely saw the resemblance, but she would hate to hear Horace say it.

  Chloe had never really known her mother, and showed no interest now. Horace couldn’t blame her. Isabel was difficult to trust, to put it mildly. As a girl, after stealing Miradel from the Warren, Isabel had run away from the Wardens, and had been banished for good. As an adult, she had run away from her family not long after Chloe became Tan’ji, seven years ago.

  Chloe had never forgiven her. Isabel had returned suddenly only a few days ago, unsettling everyone. The way Horace saw it, people who ran away usually had selfish reasons for running—good or bad—and nothing he’d learned about Isabel so far gave him much confidence that her reasons were good.

  Still, they’d tried the dinner. It had been Chloe’s idea, thinking that Horace’s mom could help her figure out the real reason Isabel had returned. For family, Isabel claimed. To set things right. Horace wanted to believe her, but he still wasn’t sure, especially after what had happened with the expired raven’s eye.

  A raven’s eye was a weak kind of leestone, a Tanu that protected Keepers from the Riven. But an expired raven’s eye, blackened and depleted, was useless—or so Chloe had thought when she let Isabel take one from her room.

  After dinner at Horace’s, Isabel had sneaked upstairs and found the harp belonging to Horace’s mom. With the harp, Isabel had toyed with the weaving inside the old raven’s eye. They’d caught her in the act, and suspected—even though Horace’s mom couldn’t prove it—that she’d been up to no good. Only later, after Chloe and her family left, with Joshua along for the ride, did they realize what Isabel had truly done.

  She had reversed the weaving inside the raven’s eye, turning it from what had once been a shield against the Riven into a beacon. She claimed it was an accident, but accident or not, the new weaving she’d made had led the Riven straight to Chloe’s family as they drove back to the Academy, nearly getting them all captured, or worse.

  The only reason they escaped was because Isabel had struck a deal with the Riven. If they left Chloe alone, they could have April, Keeper of the Ravenvine, an empath who had left the safety of the Warren and had returned to her home outside the city, with only Gabriel as an escort. But Isabel’s efforts only put them all in more danger, forcing the Wardens to come to April and Gabriel’s rescue. It was that rescue, and the desperate battle it sparked, from which Horace and the others had only narrowly escaped.

  But all that was over now. They were all safe. Back here in this cloister with its protective leestone—always a bird, this one orange with a gray head. The Riven could never find them here. Still, now that he’d slept the edge off his exhaustion, Horace found it hard to relax. They still had to jump five more times to return to the Warren, and Chloe and Neptune had already made a problematic number of jumps tonight. They’d leapt all the way back to the Warren before returning to search for Horace, when his final encounter with Dr. Jericho had kept him from following them right away. That was six jumps home and five jumps back.

  He was worried about the other Wardens, too. Would those traveling by car be back at the Warren by now? Horace looked up at the stars again and tried to clear his head, to let the time come to him. He’d always been able to do this—to simply know the time without looking. It was a talent suitable for the Keeper of the Box of Promises. Abruptly he knew that it was 11:58, give or take a minute. He’d escaped the battle just over a half hour ago, and had slept for fifteen minutes after that. The other Wardens probably wouldn’t get back to the Warren for another fifteen minutes more.

  Horace waited for the girls to wake. He’d give them ten minutes and then rouse them for the journey home. As he waited, he tried not to think about what Dr. Jericho had said just before Horace fled the meadow next to April’s home—his warning about the Mothergates, the remote and mysterious artifacts from which the Medium flowed. Dr. Jericho was one of the Riven, bent on taking all Tan’ji and ridding
the world of human Keepers like Horace. He was a trickster and a beast. Nothing he said could be trusted.

  And yet.

  Neptune had sort of confirmed the Mordin’s warning just before falling asleep. Loopy and careless from the falkrete jumps, she had mentioned the Mothergates too, suggesting that there was something wrong with them. When pressed, she wouldn’t explain, but did eventually drop a bomb of a hint that clung to Horace still, a teasing echo of what Dr. Jericho had said outright: Nothing lasts forever.

  Horace had tried to interpret this hint any other way, but he couldn’t.

  The Mothergates were dying.

  According to Dr. Jericho. But also, apparently, according to Neptune. Meanwhile Mr. Meister, the leader of their little pack of Wardens, had yet to utter a single word about it. As for Horace, he struggled to let himself believe a thing he so hated to believe. But it was impossible to ignore.

  Horace took the Fel’Daera from its pouch. The striped wood shimmered; on its front, the silver sun with its twenty-four rays was almost entirely dark, an indication that the breach was very small right now. The box felt perfect in his hands. Perfect. How could he live without this? Logically speaking, if the Mothergates were dying, and every Tan’ji depended on the Mothergates for power, then the Fel’Daera was dying too. The thought was so agonizing and frightening that Horace could hardly find a place for it. He was a Keeper. The Fel’Daera was as much a part of him as his hands, his brain, his heart. Without the Fel’Daera . . . would he even exist?

  He thought for a moment, orienting himself, and then opened the box. The lid split in two, its wings unfolding smoothly to the sides. Inside, the blue glass bottom rippled in the starlight. Through that glass lay the future—the future four minutes and thirty-four seconds from now, to be precise. That’s how wide the breach was at the moment, the gap between the present and the future the box opened into. He raised the box and looked through it at future Chloe—still sleeping; fists still clenched.

  He briefly considered putting a handful of grass into the box and closing it above Chloe’s head. The grass would disappear, only to reappear four minutes and thirty-four seconds later, to fall onto his friend’s sleeping face. He snorted a soft laugh at the thought, but almost immediately felt childish. Would it be funny? He decided it would, but it would not be mature. It was the sort of thing his dad would do. And a part of Horace suspected that the real reason he wanted to send the grass had nothing to do with jokes. He wanted to reassure himself that the Fel’Daera was working fine, that nothing bad was coming, that the Mothergates—whatever and wherever they were—would last forever.

  Despite his worry, the box was working just as it always had. He swung it toward Neptune.

  “Whoa!” said Horace. Through the glass, a surprise—Neptune awake and very close, sitting up, eyes and mouth open; shaking her head and gesturing with her disfigured hand. She was looking up at something, or someone, and when Horace swung the box to see, he saw—himself, tall and shaggy haired, standing and talking animatedly.

  It was always unsettling, seeing his future self. What were he and Neptune talking about? He watched his lips move, crisp and clear through the rippling glass. He couldn’t hear, of course, but he was getting better at reading lips. As he watched, he saw his future self say, quite plainly—But what if she can?

  Horace snapped the box closed, frowning. What if who can? He slipped the Fel’Daera back into its pouch and told himself not to analyze it. The future came as it would. It was better not to overthink it.

  But Horace had never been an underthinker. Through the box, his future self had looked upset. And the scene had been crisp and clear, which usually meant that the Fel’Daera was seeing truly. What would possibly upset him in the next four minutes? He and Neptune seemed to be arguing. Was it something about the Mothergates again? Horace glanced over at Neptune, who was still sound asleep, but he resisted the urge to wake her.

  He watched the stars instead, naming the ones he knew by heart. Altair, Polaris, Kochab. He picked out one of his favorites, Eltanin, which was headed in earth’s direction and which—in a couple of million years—would become the brightest star in the sky. But tonight, as always, Vega was far brighter. Vega lay in a tiny constellation that was hard to pick out, but he knew it was there. He let his mind paint its shape on the night sky. Lyra, the harp.

  “But what if she can?”

  She was Isabel. He was sure of that. Isabel the Tuner and her strange wicker harp.

  What if Isabel can . . . what?

  As far as Horace knew, Isabel was still back at the Mazzoleni Academy. She was powerless, too, because Mr. Meister had confiscated Miradel. And yes, she had given up her harp willingly, which was comforting, but Horace also remembered what Chloe had once said about her mother. Isabel would never truly surrender Miradel. Isabel believed she was Tan’ji; she believed she was meant to be a Keeper. Isabel thought the Wardens could somehow make her a Keeper, and in fact Horace and Chloe had talked about whether Brian, with his incredible powers, could possibly—

  “Oh, no no no,” Horace said, realization dawning over him. He stood up, reasoning it through quickly as he could. “No no no,” he said again.

  Abruptly, Neptune sat up, groaning and rising from the ground like a reanimated corpse. “Gahhh,” she moaned. “Oh man, I hurt.”

  “Isabel wants Brian,” Horace blurted out, not even waiting for her to fully wake.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Neptune said, her voice thick with skepticism. She swept tangled strands of long brown hair out of her face, gazing at him with her sad, flat eyes.

  “This whole night, all of it, Isabel planned it,” Horace said.

  Neptune hummed doubtfully and frowned down at her jagged pinky. “Even my pinky?” she asked, pouting. “That’s just mean.”

  “I’m serious. The raven’s eye she altered—it wasn’t an accident. She did it on purpose. She lured the Riven and then, to save Chloe, she sent them after April. She knew we’d have to mount a rescue. She wanted to get us out of the Warren.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. Brian. She thinks Brian can make her Tan’ji.” Brian, the most elusive member of the Wardens, was the Keeper of Tunraden, a Loomdaughter, an ancient instrument that gave him the power to create new Tan’ji—and other kinds of Tanu as well. Horace found it hard to believe that Brian, even with his immense powers, actually could make Isabel a Keeper somehow. But he definitely believed that Isabel believed it.

  Neptune hugged her knees to her chest, watching him intently. “You didn’t see this through the box.”

  “No. How could I?”

  “You’re just guessing.”

  “It’s more than a guess. It’s the only way the whole night makes sense. Isabel wants Brian.”

  “Isabel doesn’t even know Brian exists! No one does.”

  Horace couldn’t reply. He wondered if Neptune could see the blush of shame that burned across his cheeks. He glanced at Chloe, still sleeping.

  Neptune eyes widened. “Oh, god, Horace.”

  “It was an accident. Me and Chloe were talking at dinner tonight. Isabel was there. We were talking about Brian fixing April’s Tan’ji, and half an hour later Isabel was messing with the raven’s eye.”

  “So, basically, you were monumentally stupid,” Neptune said.

  “We didn’t know she was listening,” Horace protested, but Neptune was right. It was stupid to be so careless. Brian’s powers were so valuable and rare that he wasn’t allowed to leave the Warren. His instrument, Tunraden, was a prize the Riven would have dearly loved to get their horrible hands on, along with Brian himself. Brian, to put it simply, was a Maker. His existence had to remain utterly secret.

  But thanks to Horace and Chloe, Isabel knew.

  “Monumental or not, it doesn’t matter,” Neptune said. “Isabel can’t get into the Warren. She can’t even find it. The spitestone is there.”

  The spitestone, yes. Horace had seen it himself in Mr. Meister’s offi
ce, an owl figurine with a single glowing eye. Attuned to Isabel personally, the spitestone was designed to cloud her memories and her senses regarding the Warren. The Wardens had created the spitestone to banish Isabel all those years ago. As long as it existed, she could neither remember nor discover the location of the Warren, try as she might.

  But what if things had changed?

  “I don’t really know how spitestones work,” said Horace. “But what about Joshua? He’s inside the Warren right now.”

  “Joshua?” Neptune said, laughing. “You don’t trust Joshua?”

  But no, that wasn’t it. Horace was only grasping at straws. Yes, Joshua had been traveling with Isabel, and yes, he was a little weird, but he was just a boy, only eight or nine years old. Mr. Meister had welcomed him into the Warren, something the old man never would have done if he suspected him in any way. Plus, it was clear that Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade believed Joshua would become a Keeper, and maybe Horace was being a little unfair now because he had reason to believe that Joshua’s talents were somehow just like his own. He felt a tiny—very tiny, but embarrassing—bit of jealousy over the fact.

  Neptune leaned forward. “Joshua’s in the Warren, yeah,” she prodded. “But so is Mrs. Hapsteade. You think he’s going to overpower her and bring Isabel down to Brian’s workshop?”

  “No, I don’t think that,” Horace admitted, but the mention of Mrs. Hapsteade brought a memory back to him. His dread instantly doubled. “I’m not crazy, though—Mrs. Hapsteade stayed back at the Warren tonight because she was worried about Isabel.”

  “No she didn’t. She just stayed. She didn’t say why.”

  “Mr. Meister told me that was why,” Horace said, remembering. “She stayed because of Isabel, even after he reminded her that the spitestone would keep the Warren safe.”

  Neptune shook her head, waving her hands. “I didn’t hear him say that. And anyway, he’s right. The spitestone has kept the Warren hidden from Isabel for twenty years. Why would it stop now?”