by Ted Sanders
“Why does the Fel’Daera sometimes lead you astray? Knowing that a thing can happen is not the same as understanding how it will happen. I do not want to give you false hope.”
“It’s only false if we fail,” Horace said, the words coming out of him as though someone else had spoken them. He suspected he sounded much braver than he felt.
Mr. Meister opened his mouth to reply, but seemed to think the better of it and only nodded instead. “Just so,” he said. “Well said. And speaking of hope, your mother is waiting for us. Let us see what help she may provide us in tracking down Isabel. Brian and Joshua must come before all else—even the Mothergates. Are we agreed?”
Horace took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the conversation to come—it was hard even to imagine his mom and Mr. Meister in the same room together—but there was no one he trusted more than his mother. He knew no one more competent and sturdy. And frankly, sturdiness was just what he needed right now.
“Okay,” Horace said, standing. “Let’s go recruit my mom.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Friends Like These
“I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE,” SAID BRIAN, “BUT IT’S MOIST.” His head was tipped up to the dark trees above them. Tunraden sat at his feet. Joshua watched as Brian reached out and plucked a leaf from a low-hanging branch. He sniffed it and ran it through his fingers. “The outside world is a lot stickier than I remember.” Brian let the leaf fall and walked over to the river, standing on the muddy bank, watching the water flow by.
Isabel too was looking around. “That canoe,” she said. “That’s the canoe we rode in, two nights ago.”
“Yes,” said Joshua. “This is where April and I first met the Wardens.” It was this very riverbank where Horace had pulled their canoe ashore, where the Wardens had been waiting for April. The Riven had attacked them almost at once, and only Isabel’s sudden arrival had saved them. Joshua was relieved that the bodies of the Riven she’d cleaved that night were gone.
Brian examined the canoe, crumpled against the base of a tree. “What happened to this? It looks like it’s been in a tornado.”
“Dr. Jericho threw it at me,” Isabel said lightly. When Brian stared at her with round eyes—Joshua guessed he’d never seen one of the huge, powerful Mordin in person before—she only shrugged. “He missed,” she said, and turned to Joshua. “You said there was a cloister nearby.”
Joshua nodded. The cloister was only a quarter mile away. Technically, Joshua had never been inside a cloister, but he knew that they were safe places the Wardens used, where the Riven’s hunters—the Mordin—would not be able to detect them. He also knew from the cloister map that the leestone inside this cloister was a brown bird with a blue wing. Leestones were always birds. He had no idea why.
The walk was short, but it was slow going with Brian handcuffed by Tunraden, his hands again buried in the stone up to his wrists. Joshua led them over a bridge just downstream. They crossed a bike path and an open grassy area before diving back into forest again. At last, two hundred yards in, the high walls of the cloister loomed in the shadows.
Isabel laid a hand against the bricks. “This must be how Horace and Chloe got back to the Warren that night, after the fight on the riverbank. They leapt home from here through the falkretes.”
“Where’s the door?” Joshua asked.
“We have to make our own door.” She began to circle the cloister, searching the wall for something. “I need to find the passkey. Ah!” She stopped and pointed to a small kite-shaped stone, high up on the wall.
“Oh,” said Brian, as if he’d just realized something. “Oh my god.” He started to laugh.
Isabel rounded on him. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m an idiot.” He shrugged and indicated his arms, his hands still buried in Tunraden. “I can’t get in.”
Isabel squeezed her eyes shut, groaning.
“What’s the matter?” said Joshua.
Brian said, “The only way into a cloister is to press your fingers against the passkey. As long as you touch it, you can walk through the wall. Like Chloe. But I can’t touch the passkey and carry Tunraden at the same time. I can’t get in.”
“Can’t you carry her with one hand?” asked Isabel. “You said she lifts herself, when you ask her to.”
“She does. But it takes two hands. Just one of those design flaws, I guess.”
Isabel shook her head angrily. “Not a flaw. It’s a feature. It’s made that way to keep you hobbled.”
Brian grimaced and put Tunraden down, flexing his fingers. “I’m aware of that, but thanks for crushing my little delusion.” He shook out his hands, like they had fallen asleep. He rubbed the tight bands around his wrists and glanced nervously into the dark woods around them. “I gotta say,” he said, “I’m not crazy about Tunraden being out here without protection.”
“You’ve been living in the Warren for three years,” Isabel said. “The protection it gives you will linger with you for a while.”
“For a while,” Brian agreed. “But using Tunraden will burn through it pretty fast. I could drain a raven’s eye in just a few seconds.”
“I just didn’t expect . . . ,” Isabel began, and glanced at Joshua. “I thought we would have more options available to us.”
Joshua wasn’t stupid. He knew what that meant. “You think it’s my fault,” he said. “Because I can’t take us wherever you want.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, but he knew she didn’t mean it. “But if you would only just—”
“It’s not Joshua’s fault,” Brian repeated, cutting her off.
Joshua frowned at the high cloister wall. Whether helping Isabel was the right thing to do or not, or whether any of this was really his fault, it was driving him crazy that he’d brought them all this way only to be stopped by something simple like a brick wall. “Maybe I can open a portal inside the cloister,” he said. “Now that I’ve been here.”
Brian shook his head, gazing at the Laithe. “Portals can’t be opened into cloisters. Out, yes, but not in.”
“Let me think,” said Isabel. Without another word, she stalked off into the darkness, rounding the far side of the cloister.
Brian watched her go, then ambled closer to Joshua. He spoke low, sounding almost guilty. “Don’t let us teach you anymore.”
“What do you mean? You’re not teaching me.”
“We are. Mostly Isabel, but I’ve been doing it too. Isabel and I know more about the Laithe of Teneves than we have a right to—her because she tuned it, and me because of my abilities. But it’s not good to tell you what we know. We can’t take back the fact that you weren’t given a proper choice with your instrument, but we don’t have to make a bad thing worse.”
In Joshua’s hands, the Laithe was spinning slowly inside the meridian. The Pacific slid by, west to east, sparkling and blue. “Mrs. Hapsteade told me not to let Isabel fix my mistakes,” he asked. “Is that what she meant?”
“Yes . . . look, you’re supposed to Find your instrument and figure it out all on your own.”
“Did you do yours alone?”
“Yes. I actually . . .” Brian sighed. “I was in the Find for like a year, living in the Warren, and I didn’t speak the whole time. Literally. Mrs. Hapsteade brought me food. I ate it. And I thought about Tunraden pretty much every second. But nobody said anything to me, and I didn’t say anything back. I was too busy thinking. Too busy figuring things out.”
More and more, Joshua was feeling like Brian’s life was just too strange to imagine. “But I don’t want to not talk for a year,” he said.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, if you really want to become Tan’ji—solid and true and self-sufficient—you’ve got to let the bond forge naturally. The Laithe is you. You and the Laithe are becoming Tan’ji. The more you let others interfere with that, the weaker you’ll be.”
“Weak how? Like I won’t have powers?”
“T
hey won’t be as strong as they could be. But you’ll be weak in other ways, too.”
“What ways?”
“Just trust me. Figure it out on your own.” Brian walked away. He knelt awkwardly on the ground beside Tunraden, obviously done talking.
Joshua wasn’t sure he understood. How could he be weak? He had already made one portal. Still, even though he didn’t want to spend a year in a cave doing it, it was true that he wanted to figure out the Laithe on his own. He didn’t want anyone telling him what to do. And somehow, he knew that the Laithe felt the same way. The Laithe would help him help himself. He—they—didn’t need anyone else.
Joshua wandered away. He fussed with the globe. He had noticed that it seemed to sort of float in his hands, and experimentally he let go of it. He felt almost no surprise when the Laithe simply hovered in the air, gleaming and beautiful, a softball-sized earth with a copper ring around it. He took a step back, and the Laithe drifted after him like a patient dog.
“It’s mine,” he said, loud enough for Brian to hear.
“No one’s saying it isn’t,” said Brian without looking over.
More than anything, Joshua wanted to prove to Isabel that he didn’t need her help. And they still needed to get Brian to safety. Without stopping to think whether it was smart, or even totally wanted, he took the Lathe in hand and centered his view on St. Louis. This was where Isabel really wanted to go. There were sanctuaries there, safe places for Brian. He slid the sleeping rabbit swiftly with one hand, zooming in fast. With the other, he nudged the globe so that he came down on top of Cahokia Mounds, just east of the city.
The site was easy to find, because of the very recognizable lake not even two miles to the north. Horseshoe Lake, it was called, but to Joshua it always looked more like a fishhook than a horseshoe. Now that he was seeing it through the Laithe, though, it looked less like a fishhook and more like a creepy, clawed hand. Sort of like the hand of a Riven, if he let his imagination run away from him, which Joshua sometimes did. The roads and farmland around the lake were bent along the curves of the shore, as if the giant hand were clawing at the earth itself.
But quickly the lake slid out of sight over the northwest horizon. Joshua could see the mounds now, like small grassy pyramids. He came in closer, feeling nervous as the rabbit started to rise toward the north pole. He tried to remember other maps he’d seen of this place, the positions of the biggest mounds. He imagined himself walking among them. The rabbit passed the nine o’clock position, halfway up the western meridian, and he started to really hope. This was better than he’d done in Madagascar. But no sooner did he think it than the fuzzy rings started to appear, blurring everything.
“Stop,” said Isabel. She stood nearby, hands on her hips, frowning at him. “A mishandled Tan’ji draws as much attention as a broken one. It was fine back in the Warren, but not here.”
Joshua glanced at Brian. The older boy said nothing. “I’m only trying to help,” Joshua said. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”
“I know. But if you want to help, take us somewhere we know you can go.”
“Like where?”
Isabel looked up at the high cloister. “Like to a cloister without walls.”
It took Joshua a second. “You mean the barn?”
Brian stood up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You’re talking about the leestone near April’s house? Where you sent the Riven?”
“It’ll be safe by now,” said Isabel. “We all saw Meister and Gabriel in the Warren. The rescue was a success. The Riven will be long gone. And even if they aren’t, Joshua should be able to—”
“Fine,” said Joshua, cutting her off just like Brian had a few minutes ago. “The barn.”
Brian hesitated, and then gave Joshua a firm nod. “Okay. Fine. But you’ll get us out of there if anything goes wrong.”
“I will.”
Isabel looked offended for some reason. Angry. But then she pushed another smile onto her face. “It’s settled, then,” she said. “Can you do it, Joshua? Are you ready to try again?”
And despite everything—despite Isabel, despite this plan he’d never asked for, despite not even knowing fully why he was even here, Joshua knew one thing: he was itching to use the Laithe again. He was aching to. And, of course, he also knew precisely where the barn was, twenty-seven miles to the north-northwest. He peered down upon the Laithe. He took hold of the golden rabbit.
“I won’t just try,” he said.
It turned out to be easy. With the Laithe, he found the meadow near April’s house and swiftly zoomed in, sliding the rabbit. He came down near the back of the huge, abandoned barn, not far from the falkrete stones. When he was all the way in, and the rabbit awoke, he pulled the meridian loose and set it in the air. The globe in his hands became a golden sun, and inside the floating ring the tunnel of shapes appeared, flashing and tumbling.
Joshua gave the meridian a hard spin. The rabbit ran, faster than ever. He locked eyes with it, willing it to run. The portal opened swiftly, the tunnel of shapes slowing. When at last the portal was open wide—only two more spins by hand this time—and the rabbit had stopped running, the meadow appeared through the portal, an expanse of black under a starry sky.
“I’ll go first,” Isabel said. “I’ll make sure it’s safe.”
“No arguments there,” said Brian.
Isabel stepped lightly through. In the long grass beyond, she turned in a cautious circle, Miradel gleaming faintly at her chest. After a moment, she turned to them with unseeing eyes and gestured for them to follow.
Brian looked at Joshua. “Am I stupid for doing this? For trying to fix her?”
“I don’t know,” Joshua said. And he didn’t. “Why are you doing it?”
“Oh, I guess a little teenage defiance, a little personal pride. A little fear for my own skin.” He laughed and bent over, sticking his hands into Tunraden and hoisting her into the air. “What could possibly go wrong with a recipe like that?”
He entered the portal. It shimmered and bent as he pushed Tunraden through.
Joshua didn’t hesitate to follow this time. He stepped through the portal, globe in hand, and into the wide-open meadow. Behind him, the big barn was a sagging black shadow against the night sky. He and Isabel had stayed in the barn for several nights earlier this week. This back end of it, he knew, was a maze of stalls and grain bins and low, slatted corridors. Above the barn, a million stars gleamed.
Brian lay down on his back in the long grass, Tunraden between his spread legs. He pointed into the sky with both hands and said, “So. Big. So freaky big.”
Isabel, meanwhile, was squatting a little ways off, examining what was left of the falkrete stones here, and the leestone in the middle that once upon a time protected this place—a flat stone, Joshua remembered, in the shape of a blue jay with black shoulders and a black crested head.
Neither Brian nor Isabel seemed very interested in Joshua’s second portal. He was beginning to wonder if he actually needed to spin the meridian by hand at all. He tried now, concentrating his hardest as he stared into the blue eyes of the golden rabbit, high atop the open portal. He willed the rabbit to run back, the portal to close. Nothing happened. After ten frustrating seconds, he gave up and spun the meridian by hand. The portal shrank easily, the rabbit running smooth and sure. The riverbank winked out, replaced by the tunnel of shapes. Go, go, he said silently to the rabbit, and to his delight it ran and ran until there was nowhere else to run. It folded itself to sleep. Joshua snagged the shrunken meridian out of the air and nestled the golden sphere of the Laithe back inside.
“One spin, huh?” Brian said. He was sitting up now, watching.
“Yeah,” Joshua said, embarrassed.
“You’re getting better already.”
“Thank you,” Joshua said quietly, because it was important to be polite. But inside, he was a storm of pride. He was doing it. He was the Keeper of the Laithe of Teneves. He glanced at Isabel. She was prowlin
g around the leestone now, Miradel leaking little sparks of green.
Brian lay back in the grass. “There are a lot of smells out here,” he said. “Hey, did you know every time you smell something, that means a molecule of the thing the smell came from is actually inside your nose?”
“I don’t know what a molecule is,” Joshua said. And he didn’t care.
“A lot of strange bits of the world are up inside my nose right now, is all I’m saying.” Brian sniffed dramatically and pointed into one of his nostrils. “Cow poop. Right in there.”
“That’s gross,” Joshua said. He turned away, cradling the Laithe against his belly. Isabel was still ignoring them both, muttering over the leestone.
Brian went over to her. Joshua followed. The leestone, as Joshua had remembered, was broken in two. It was dusty and weatherworn.
“You didn’t mention it was broken,” said Brian.
“Physically broken,” said Isabel. “But it’s still active. You can see that. Will it work?”
“It’s not giving us as much protection as I’d like,” said Brian.
Isabel clutched at Miradel. “I don’t know how much is enough. I’ve never seen a Loomdaughter in action before.”
“You said it was like a dinner bell,” said Joshua. “As big as a church.”
“Did I?” said Brian. “Well, like we also said earlier, I’ve been living in the Warren for three years—basically living inside a leestone. The remains of that protection, plus this leestone, should be enough. But we’ll need to get star—”
He broke off. He turned and stared out over the dark meadow, cocking his head. He walked a few steps away. “Uh, guys?” he said. “Something’s out there. Something’s coming.”
Brian was looking to the north, in the direction of April’s house. And now Joshua could hear it, too. Something moving through the tall grass. Something . . . not small. He began to panic. Was it the Riven? Had they felt him using the Laithe wrong? This was like April’s broken Tan’ji all over again.
Isabel hurried to Brian’s side, Miradel blazing to life. “I don’t feel anything. It’s not Riven. Not a Warden, either.”