The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

“So I just grope around and hope I get lucky.”

  “I’m going to try something. I’m going to . . . thin the humour out around you. I can lower the density enough so that you should be able to see faint shadows nearby. For a little while, anyway.”

  This was utterly new. But Chloe’s surprise was followed by a queasy wash of guilt. “That’s what you were practicing, back at the Warren.”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel dryly. “Trying to be better than myself, as you pointed out.”

  Chloe grimaced. “Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my . . . head.”

  “You may need your mouth now. You’ll only see shadows, and remember—the Mordin will see you too. You’ll be able to speak to each other, but you won’t hear anything else unless I think you need to. And you’ll only have a minute or so to get the ring.”

  Suddenly April spoke again, sounding hopeless. “It’s no good. I can’t—”

  Her voice cut out. Another voice cried out April’s name—Joshua, Chloe thought.

  She barely had time to wonder what had happened before Gabriel’s low voice thundered against her ears again. “The ring is on his left hand. Are you ready?”

  Chloe nodded. Instantly, magically, her useless eyes began to work. A shadow slowly resolved out of the nothingness up ahead. A huge shadow, long limbed and suspended in midair—Dr. Jericho, thrown half onto his back, pinned in place by a blow from Horace’s phalanx. And now a faint, nasty trickle of brimstone wormed into Chloe’s nostrils.

  Chloe stepped forward. The Mordin, just a faint silhouette in the gray, tipped his head toward her.

  “Ah,” he sang happily, as if being trapped here didn’t trouble him at all. “A glimmer in the gloom. A visitor—young Chloe, by the feel of it.”

  Dr. Jericho’s great left hand hung in the air just a few feet in front if Chloe, his fingers like the gnarled limbs of a dead tree. She couldn’t see the golem’s ring, but she knew what it looked like, a twisting black band with a scarlet stone. Deep inside the body of the golem, she also knew, there was a jagged crystal that same exact color that swam among the golem’s stones like a ruby fish in a black sea. The heart of the golem. But Chloe had no idea how to actually get the ring away. And she didn’t know how long Gabriel could keep this up, or how long the effects of the phalanx would keep Dr. Jericho pinned.

  “I’m not really here to visit,” Chloe told the Mordin.

  “Come looking for your mother, then?”

  Of course he knew about Isabel. She hated him for knowing it.

  “I freed her, you know,” Dr. Jericho continued. “I took the Forsworn’s proxy and swallowed it up myself.”

  Swallowed it. Miradel. Somehow Chloe knew he meant that literally. She couldn’t see his face but could practically feel him grinning in the shadows. “Good for you,” she said. “Where’s Horace?”

  “Ah, I see. Friends before family. Don’t worry—he’s safe in the golem’s embrace.” Dr. Jericho flared his great hand and then balled it into a giant fist. “For now.”

  If she could lunge for him, and reach the ring, she could make it go thin and slip it from his hand. But she knew from experience that the Mordin’s reflexes were far quicker than any human’s, even hers. “Let him go,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t.

  “Oh, goodness—did he not want to be caught? It was foolish of him to come alone, if he had no idea what the future held.”

  Chloe thought quickly. The Mordin was acting calm, as he usually did, but she knew a fierce temper always lurked just beneath the surface, and something in his voice told her that his rage was boiling extra hot tonight. Maybe she wasn’t quite as logical as Horace was, but she was prepared to do anything. And being prepared to do anything meant that more options became logical. If she couldn’t grab for the ring, maybe she could let the ring come to her. Possibly not smart, but smart was for people with time. It was Horace’s job to be reasonable. Chloe’s job was to be fearless.

  Chloe released the Alvalaithen, knowing Dr. Jericho would sense it. The dragonfly’s wings went still. She sauntered closer to the Mordin, just outside his reach.

  “Horace always knows what the future holds,” she said. “He saw all of this.” That was a lie, but she had to hope it would work.

  “Did he? How strange. I haven’t felt the Fel’Daera’s gaze upon me.”

  She took a step closer. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “But Horace saw me take this ring from you.” She stretched out casually for the Mordin’s filthy hand. He yanked it out of her reach. She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and took another step forward. “He saw me controlling the golem with it,” she said.

  The Mordin cackled. “Impossible. Even with the ring in hand, you cannot make the golem obey.”

  This was just what Gabriel had said. The golem wouldn’t listen to her. But she wanted the Mordin to underestimate her. She stepped even closer, as if still trying to reach the ring. The Mordin’s huge, insectlike shadow grew darker, resolving. She tried not to recoil from his long, shadowy fingers and his sharply pointed nails.

  “If that’s true, then why are you afraid to let me see it?” she taunted. “Are you afraid a Tinker has some talents you don’t know about? If so, I don’t blame you. It’s been happening to you a lot lately.” She took another step.

  The Mordin struck so fast that Chloe didn’t even have time to flinch. His arm shot out like a snake, clutching her around the torso, his hand so huge that it pinned her arms to her sides. His strength was swift and immense, as if he hoped to crush the life from her before she could go thin. She felt a pop as one of her ribs broke.

  Chloe gasped and gurgled. A rush of blood surged into her head, dimming her vision. But this was what she wanted. She drank deeply from the Alvalaithen. Its music filled her, and the dragonfly’s wings whirred to life. She willed its power to spread, to carry out from her own body and into everything that touched her—every last thing but one. She’d learned to do this with her own clothes, with small objects she carried, and once—in a moment of great need—with Horace’s entire body. She summoned up some of that same need now.

  She couldn’t make Dr. Jericho’s entire body go thin; he was far too large for that. But she didn’t need the whole body. She only needed a bit of it, the flesh and bone of his hand. Everything but the golem’s ring. It took less than a second for the Mordin’s fist to become as much of a ghost as she was.

  The awful pressure crushing her body faded.

  And the ring fell free.

  Chloe ducked out of Dr. Jericho’s grip—unholdable now—and neatly caught the ring just before it hit the ground. The Mordin roared and swiped at her. This time she didn’t flinch because she didn’t have to. His huge clawed hand swung through her. He flailed furiously at her, raging.

  “Well done, Tinker,” he spat. “Now that no one wears the ring, the golem sleeps. With Horace deep inside. You’ve gained nothing.”

  Chloe scowled, her heart racing. Her rib ached, but she refused to grab at it. Was it true? Was Horace now trapped inside the golem? She clutched the foul ring. It was as big around as the lug nut of a tire, the misshapen scarlet stone faintly warm.

  “I’ll just destroy the ring, then,” she said. It would be easy, after all. Make it go thin, stick it deep into the ground. Let it meld with the earth and cease to be.

  But Dr. Jericho inhaled sharply, as if in genuine fear. “Destroy the ring, and the golem destroys itself. Quite violently. None of us will survive, least of all Horace.” He reached out with a hideous finger and stuck a sharp nail directly into the ghostly Alvalaithen. “Correction. None of us will survive except you.”

  Suddenly his immense shadow shifted. He started to slip out of the air. He reached nimbly for the ground, catching himself. The effects of the phalanx had worn off. Slowly Dr. Jericho stood to his full height, a shadowy ghoul towering over her.

  “Ah,” he sang merrily. “Better.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Eyes, Ears, and Nose

&nb
sp; FOR APRIL, THE FALKRETE STONES WERE EASY.

  Mr. Meister had explained how to do it, to get quickly back to the meadow and help save Joshua and Brian—she had to lay her Tan’ji against the proper stone, and suddenly she would be in two places at once. Part of her would remain where she was, but another part of her—another April entirely?—would be in the next cloister along the line. From there, it was simply a matter of believing that she was there in that second cloister, rather than here in the first one. If her belief was strong enough, true enough, then suddenly she would travel. If she had faith, the new April would be the only true April, and the old one would be left behind. Mr. Meister had led her to think that finding that faith might be difficult, that believing might be a challenge.

  But for April, it was no challenge at all.

  Maybe it was because she’d always imagined there were other Aprils out there, in this universe or another. Other versions of herself—but still herself, of course. An April in a universe where her uncle Harrison wasn’t fat and crude. An April in a universe where Uncle Harrison was much worse than fat and crude. An April in a universe where she and her brother, Derek, lived happily alone, or sadly alone. An April in a universe where her parents had never died in the first place.

  It wasn’t that she was unhappy being the April she was. Not at all. She just assumed all the other Aprils, along all those other lines of existence, were no more or less happy than she was. April didn’t believe in looking back.

  And so with each jump, it was easy to commit herself to that next new April. Easy to commit to the notion that the April she’d left behind was no one worth clinging to.

  Naturally she was worried about what she would find in the meadow—and also about what she wouldn’t find—but first and foremost she’d been worried about losing her way. Each falkrete circle had a dozen stones or more, and only one stone led along the right path, the path to the meadow by Uncle Harrison’s house. But as Mr. Meister had promised, the proper stones were still marked with mints from the rescue mission they’d sent for April earlier in the evening. Chloe’s mints.

  April jumped from cloister to cloister with no troubles whatsoever, taking her time so that she wouldn’t catch up to Chloe, who was traveling the falkretes just ahead of her. One tricky aspect to the falkretes, Mr. Meister had explained, was that a jump could not be made while anyone was watching you. If someone was watching, you were locked in place by their observation, and you couldn’t split and make the jump. He hadn’t bothered to clarify that animal observations didn’t count—only people and, apparently, Riven—but April wasn’t surprised. People generally didn’t bother to include animals when they talked about awareness. And the falkretes didn’t seem to include them either.

  And so she jumped from stone to stone, even as possums and cicadas and other night creatures watched her. Five jumps, Mr. Meister had told her. After four jumps, she found herself in a cloister far from the city, with a leestone colored like a Steller’s jay. All the leestones had been birds, she noticed—and not just any birds, but corvids. Jays and magpies. Crows and ravens. Some of the smartest birds—the smartest animals period—that there were. She tried not to think about Arthur.

  She found the last falkrete, the one that would take her to the barn, the white mint still atop it. The falkrete was shaped like a bear asleep in the earth, or a dog. She crouched in front of the stone, the Ravenvine in her hand. Here, at last, she felt doubt. What would she find at the barn? What could she possibly do to help the Wardens? The golem sounded frightening, and without Arthur, she wasn’t sure how much good her powers would do. There would be other animals in the meadow, but she would be lucky to discover something useful.

  She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. And it didn’t. She couldn’t not help, couldn’t stand the thought of staying behind while poor Joshua was out there, lost and way in over his head. Not while Brian, who had fixed her precious Ravenvine and made her whole at last, was lost and in danger. Not while Horace and Chloe and Gabriel did the fighting for her. She would find a way to help them. And although she’d been trying hard not to fret about it all night, she had another reason for wanting to go back: First Baron.

  Her dog had been injured earlier that night as he tried to attack Dr. Jericho. The Mordin had struck Baron, sending him flying; April had felt the crackling pain in her own ribs. A painful injury, but not fatal. Still, she’d had to leave him there, pulling away with the vine, before the dog could make his escape—if he had even tried to escape. He was a good dog. He would fight to protect her, just like good dogs did.

  She blinked away an unwanted swell of tears. Probably she would not even get the chance to go looking for Baron tonight. And that was okay. Baron was strong. Independent. Probably he didn’t even need her, right?

  She gritted her teeth and touched a golden curve of the Ravenvine to the stone. Immediately, with a wrench she hadn’t felt before now, she vanished from where she was. She materialized in a new place, but for a moment it didn’t feel like anyplace at all. She was blind and lost inside a thick and endless soup of gray. Had something gone wrong?

  Then a deep voice rang at her, coming from all sides.

  “April!”

  Gabriel. She was in the humour. She was in the meadow by the barn after all.

  She drew back her hair and tucked the Ravenvine around her left ear, snugging it against her temple. “Tell me what to do,” she said, her voice drifting into the humour like a coin into water. “How can I help?”

  “Look outside the humour, if you can,” said Gabriel. She thought his voice sounded strained, but he was trying to hide it. “The golem was chasing Horace when I arrived, but they’re beyond me now.”

  “Let me try.” Through the Ravenvine, April reached out into the cacophony of animal minds all around—insects, mostly, by the thousands. She set their busy drone aside and reached for something closer to human. She sensed a family of mice in the grass nearby, but they were in the humour, as blind as she was. Farther out, beyond the edge of the humour, she briefly felt a bat flicker by. It flitted out of range before she could even borrow its eyes. She searched for more, but all she felt were bugs buried sightless in the grass, the world huge and meaningless around them.

  “It’s no good,” she said, trying to reach even farther. “I can’t—”

  And then a new mind. Warm and intelligent. So deep and familiar and startling that the tears she’d beaten back moments before now welled up and overflowed, pouring down her cheeks.

  First Baron. He was here, trotting past, apparently circling the edge of the humour. Worried and confused.

  April turned without saying a word to Gabriel and went to Baron, still crying. She wondered if Gabriel could feel her tears. The dog stopped and sat, whining. Through his eyes, out in the night beyond the humour’s edge, a wide swath of the meadow simply didn’t exist. That’s what the humour looked like from outside. April was in there, of course, hidden by the unseeable humour—but Baron didn’t know it. Not yet. All he knew was that the bad things were back. Their stink filled his nose. One of them had hurt him. His left flank was tender and sore. April reached up to her own side, rubbing the spot.

  There was a sound, too, crisp and huge in the dog’s keen ears, a sound not exactly like any April had ever heard before. It reminded her of the trucks that dumped gravel and tar on the country roads every year or two, an endless liquid slide of tiny rocks.

  The golem.

  She couldn’t see it. Judging by the sound, it was on the far side of the humour from Baron. And it was huge. Baron was afraid of it. She opened herself to that fear, letting it fill her, letting the dog’s memories come to her.

  The dog was mere feet away from her now. That meant she was nearly at the edge of the humour. She forced herself to stop.

  Gabriel’s voice surrounded her. “What do you see?”

  “The golem has Horace, farther down in the meadow, on the other side of the humour.”

  “Is h
e harmed?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t actually see him. My dog is—” It was so impossible to explain. How was she supposed to describe knowledge acquired through memories stolen from another mind? Baron had seen the golem pour over Horace, burying him. The sight made no sense to the dog, of course, but remains of the images were still there, loose shapes to be reassembled and understood. It was harder to tell how long ago it had happened—a minute? Two minutes? “The golem ran him down,” she said. “That’s all I know.”

  “Chloe is working on it,” Gabriel replied. Again, she thought she could detect a note of effort in his voice, as if he were lifting something heavy while he spoke. “Can you see Brian and Joshua? I sent them out of the humour. To the barn.”

  “I don’t see them. Maybe they’re already inside. Why did you send them out?”

  “Ingrid is in the humour. She’s playing her flute.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s because I’m not letting you. But I can only hold her off so long. I’m . . . I’m juggling a lot here at the moment.”

  That explained the strain. It was easy to forget that the humour was full of activity, unseen and unheard, and that Gabriel was like the spider at the center of the web, a finger on every thread.

  April nodded, keeping it simple for Gabriel’s sake. She opened her mind to Baron’s again. His nose was filled with brimstone. But she dug through that sharp bite and found other scents, too. Human scents. One of them was faintly familiar to Baron, a stranger he’d met only once or twice before. Instinctively April understood that the scent, herbal and biting, belonged to Isabel. It was a bit embarrassing to recognize something so personal about the woman.

  But the other two scents were unfamiliar, new to Baron. Or no—newish. She drank the emotions attached to those smells. Curiosity. Kindness. Happiness. Recently made friends, then. She let the dog’s mind slip farther into her own, and almost as if by magic, new little bridges of memory began to form, connecting sense to sense. This smell, sweaty and strong, belonged to this boy—long hair, glasses. Brian. And this smell, slightly spicy but not nearly so pungent, belonged to a small boy with dark hair. Joshua.