The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

  The Dailens began to speak. The words came out normally, fluidly. But as if by magic, each Dailen spoke only a single word, so that the single voice that spoke to them—out of a dozen mouths in turn—seemed to be whizzing around them. “When you are ready, open the Fel’Daera and look into the future.” Twelve words, twelve mouths. When the last Dailen had spoken, he started again, and the voice swept in the other direction. “In the next several seconds, one of me will cease to exist.” In unison, the twelve Dailens all turned around, facing outward. “Witness the future, and then point to the Dailen that will vanish.”

  “One of you is going to disappear, and Horace just has to see which one?” said Chloe. “This is too easy.”

  All twelve Dailens looked back over their shoulders at Horace, smiling. “Go,” they said together.

  Dizzied by the display, but not wanting to appear more impressed by Dailen than Dailen had been by him, Horace readied himself.

  “When I say go,” he said.

  The Dailens nodded and looked away.

  Horace gathered the threads of the moment together—this path, this chain of events, these moving ripples on the river of time. Dailen’s challenge, his power, Horace’s own power. When he was centered, Horace raised the box. “I’m looking . . . now,” he said, opening the lid. He began to spin slowly, watching the encircling Dailens through the glass. And through that glass—Dailen after Dailen, tall and still, crisp and clear. The future looked certain, at any rate. Three seconds passed. Four. Suddenly, more than halfway around the circle—a Dailen disappearing, winking out of sight. There was no mistaking it. “I see it, no problem,” Horace said calmly, pointing with one hand. With the other, he flicked the box closed and dropped it to his side. “Right there.”

  Less than two seconds after he spoke, the Dailen in question vanished as if deleted.

  “Was that supposed to be tricky?” said Chloe, watching.

  Horace started to shake his head, but in that very moment, someone snatched the Fel’Daera from his hand.

  He whirled around, shocked and fuming. The Dailen from the opposite side of the circle stood there, having sprung forward and grabbed the box with ease. He held it high in the air, smiling down at Horace with a kindly look of apologetic triumph.

  “Forgive the trespass, please,” Dailen said, and handed the Fel’Daera back to Horace at once. “Merely trying to make a point.”

  Horace seized the box, embarrassed and outraged. “But that wasn’t fair.”

  The other ten Dailens evaporated, leaving just the one, pressing a hand to his injured chest in mock offense. “Fair? I’ve never known Ja’raka Sevlo to be fair. Does he give you do-overs?”

  “No, but . . .” Horace kicked at the ground. The Altari had outsmarted him, and he knew it. “No. He doesn’t.”

  “That was pretty sneaky,” said Chloe. “Are all the Altari this sneaky?”

  Dailen knelt down. “My apologies, Horace, please. I hope you’ll see nothing but friendship in this little show. When we get to Ka’hoka, expect the Wardens’ Council to test you far more harshly than I just did.”

  The Wardens’ Council. Horace didn’t much like the sound of that, but he was too frazzled to ask. He slid the Fel’Daera back into its pouch. “I’d like to think that if I’d known how sneaky you were, I’d have seen what you were planning to do.”

  “Me too. All the more reason to be prepared for the Council. Not every Altari is sneaky, but some are downright devious.”

  Now Horace had a terrible thought. If this Council was glad that the Fel’Daera was gone, what were they going to do when they found out it still existed? “Wait a minute,” he said. “Am I in danger going to Ka’hoka? Is the box in danger?”

  Chloe stepped up beside him. He could practically feel her bristling protectively.

  “In what way?” asked Dailen.

  “The obvious way,” said Chloe. “The same way that Frankenstein’s monster would be in danger if he wandered into a frightened village.”

  “No, no,” said Dailen. “There’s a big difference between being concerned about an instrument’s power and wanting to destroy it. Willfully destroying a Tan’ji is criminal.”

  “Then is there some other way Horace might be in danger?” Chloe insisted.

  “I won’t say that. But I will suggest that you do your best to pass whatever tests the Council gives you.”

  Chloe balled her fists. “Or else what?”

  Horace was hardly listening. Despite what had just happened, he wasn’t worried about passing some test. He was the rightful Keeper of the Fel’Daera. He was distracted by something the Altari had just said. “You said destroying a Tan’ji is criminal,” he told Dailen. “But you guys thought it already had been destroyed, so Falo must have invented some kind of story. Who did she say destroyed it?”

  Dailen took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I won’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?” Horace objected. “You said knowing is better than not knowing.”

  “Actually, you said that. And I do agree, but I can’t really give you any knowledge here. The story Falo told us, even though it was a lie, has to be partly true. And since I don’t know where the truth ends and the lies begin, we would only be guessing.”

  “Why does her story have to be partly true?” Horace asked.

  But Dailen shook his head, his face dark. “The history of the Fel’Daera is not mine to tell.” He turned away. The mal’gama began to move again. The breeze strengthened, coursing over them. The front edge folded once more into a cone.

  “It was the last Keeper, wasn’t it?” Horace asked. Just admitting that the Fel’Daera had once belonged to another was still hard for him. But he’d gotten plenty of little hints, dark suggestions. Something bad had happened. And logically speaking, it must have been something so bad that the destruction of the precious Fel’Daera might very well have been a part of it.

  Dailen said, “If no one has yet told you that story, I won’t do it now. And I already told you, I don’t know the truth. But I will say this.” He turned to face Horace again, his sad and hopeful eyes full of worry. “Some tales are better left unheard.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Well of Giving

  CHLOE WASN’T WORRIED. NOT EXACTLY.

  Sure, she was a thousand feet in the air, riding a giant flying carpet piloted by an eight-foot-tall Altari who could multiply himself, and she and Horace were headed to a mysterious new place where the Fel’Daera wouldn’t exactly be welcome. Still, she wasn’t worried. Concerned? Maybe. Alert? Definitely.

  She watched Dailen, trying not to be too obvious about it. Although she didn’t normally think in these terms, he was magnificent to look at. He was every bit as pretty as the Riven were revolting. Maybe more. She sort of hated it about him. And he was different from the other Wardens, too, not because he was Altari, but because he was a fighter. His power wasn’t meant for hiding or observing. It was meant for getting dirty. She couldn’t help but admire the way Dailen had stood his ground with the Riven in the meadow, fending them off single-handedly. Well, not quite single-handedly, but still. Maybe if there were more Wardens like Dailen, this whole war would have been over by now.

  Of course, she would never have said any of this out loud. Not in a million years.

  “So this Council you were talking about,” she said. “What are they going to do to us? Pass judgment, or whatever?”

  Dailen turned to her. The circles of light in his eyes seemed to glow. “No, not really,” he replied. “The Council will likely want to see you demonstrate your powers. And as with all visitors, they will decide what you can and cannot see in Ka’hoka, where you can and cannot go.”

  Chloe grunted. She didn’t much like people telling her where she couldn’t go—not that they could stop her anyway.

  “What about Falo?” Horace asked. “She’ll definitely be there?”

  “She will. I’m sure she’ll want to meet you.”

  “Is s
he on the Council?”

  “Falo is the Keeper of the Starlit Loom. She does not answer to Councils.”

  “Then why should we?” asked Chloe.

  Dailen laughed. “Why indeed?” he said. “Tell me, Keeper, what is the name of your Tan’ji?”

  Startled by the question, Chloe stuck out her jaw. “The Alvalaithen.”

  “The Earthwing,” Dailen said, surprising her again. But apparently he was only translating, because then he added, “I have never heard of it.”

  “What’s the name of your Tan’ji?” she shot back. “I’ve probably never heard of it either.”

  “Few have,” said Dailen. “But I’m not beyond sharing.” Dailen stood and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his torn, high-collared robe. He bared his lean shoulders. The three deep scratches from Dr. Jericho had made—slashes, really—looked shockingly red against his pale skin. Chloe got yet another surprise as she glimpsed a jithandra, hanging from the usual long chain. But that obviously wasn’t what he wanted them to see.

  At the bottom of his neck, a segmented band made of battered black metal wrapped tightly around his throat. It was plainly Tan’ji, plainly ancient. Each section was a rectangular slab about the size of a domino, each one etched with a different symbol, inlaid in fading gold. Horace, predictably, moved closer to get a better look.

  “This is Floriel,” said Dailen. “Forged over the Starlit Loom, long before Falo’s days.”

  Chloe wouldn’t let herself be impressed. It seemed to her that practically everyone she knew had a Tan’ji made with the Starlit Loom. She held out the dragonfly. “Likewise.”

  Now it was Dailen’s turn to look surprised. His strange eyes roved over Chloe, taking in the mottled skin around her throat and the large dark patches on her forearm. She didn’t mind. She wasn’t ashamed of her scars. But then Dailen rolled up his own sleeve, uncovering an enormous red welt, a foot long and raised. “It seems you and I have something else in common, Keeper,” he said. “Floriel has brought me more than my share of scars.”

  Chloe considered him, then lifted up one side of her shirt just high enough to reveal yet another wound, a permanent red welt—much like Dailen’s—across her torso. She’d gotten this one weeks ago, while battling through the golem in the House of Answers. “Again, likewise,” she said.

  “Whoa!” said Horace. “You’re hurt again. What happened?”

  Chloe looked down at herself. Horace wasn’t talking about the old wound; he’d been there when that happened. Instead he was looking at the purpling bruises on her ribs, obviously fresh and shaped suspiciously like long fingers. She yanked her shirt down, wincing. “Oh, yeah. Dr. Jericho popped a rib last night. But don’t worry, I set it while you were sleeping.”

  “Set it?”

  “Yeah, you know.” She let the wings of the dragonfly flicker. She made a pinching motion at her side. “Everything’s back in one piece now.”

  Horace just stared at her like she was crazy. So she’d melded her own rib back together again, reaching into her torso while thin. It was easy, once she got the alignment right. Just the very edges, not too much. There’d been a lot of pain the moment she released the Alvalaithen, and the bone actually knitted together—like a tiny punch hitting her at a hundred miles an hour—but it felt much better now. Mostly.

  Dailen, meanwhile, seemed unconcerned. He watched her with genuine interest. “Tell me, Keeper,” he sang. “Can you be killed?”

  “Wow, is that your icebreaker? Very charming.”

  “I mean it. What if, for example, you were to fall from the mal’gama down to earth?” As he spoke, a hole as wide as a bed suddenly broke open in the mal’gama, a few feet away from Chloe. Wind blasted through it, ruffling her hair. “Could you survive?”

  Chloe barely glanced at the hole, at the quilted green countryside hundreds of feet below. “Yes,” she said. “I mean, I’ve never done it, but I’m pretty sure I could survive any fall. Go thin before I hit, slow myself inside the earth, wing my way back up.”

  “Holy creeping cow,” said Horace, sounding horrified. Frankly, she was surprised he’d never thought of it.

  “What about you?” Chloe asked Dailen. “You can be injured while you’re doing your doppelgänger thing. Let’s say a train hits one of you, or a tree falls on one of you. Do you die?”

  “I can vacate a variant more quickly than you could pull a hand from a fire. It’s a reflex, like a flinch. I’m usually out before any serious damage can be done.”

  “What if you got hit by lightning? Even you aren’t that fast.”

  “If one of my variants were to die, a part of me would die too.”

  Horace spoke up. “But that’s never happened, right?”

  “Floriel has sixteen stones, each one named. With each, I can produce a variant of myself.” Dailen turned slowly, revealing the rest of his Tan’ji. The black tiles went all the way around, but just at the neck of his nape, a single tile was gleaming white. “Last year I lost Ne’vele. I wasn’t fast enough. Now that variant is gone forever.”

  “Gone,” Horace said hoarsely. “Like dead. And a part of you died too.”

  Dailen turned back around, buttoning his robe again, covering Floriel. “Yes. I lost certain memories. A skill or two.” He smiled again. “I’m told I also lost some of my caution, which I didn’t have in abundance to begin with.”

  “But how do you . . . how can you even . . .” Horace was stammering. Not for the first time, Chloe wondered how exhausting it must be to be filled with so many questions all the time. “Sixteen variants,” Horace said. “Or fifteen, sorry. And they’re all you.”

  “All me.”

  “And you can keep track of all those versions of yourself,” said Horace.

  “Yes. It’s like juggling. Or to put it better, if this makes sense, it’s like playing several games of chess at once, but moving so quickly between the boards that you’re hardly ever missed at any of them.”

  Chloe couldn’t help herself. “Were you away from the board when you lost Ne’leve?”

  “Briefly. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.” The tone of Dailen’s voice suggested he didn’t want to discuss it further.

  But Chloe pressed on. “How did you die?” she asked. It was a strangely delicious sort of question, one she’d probably never have the chance to ask anyone again.

  Dailen hesitated, then broke into another luminous smile. “Tree fell on me.”

  She let herself smile back at him. “Did it hurt?”

  “Very much.”

  “Good,” Chloe said matter-of-factly. But then, realizing how that must sound, she tried to clarify. Reluctantly, she found herself liking this Dailen, wanting to trust him and wanting—as much as she hated to admit it—him to like her. “I mean, of course it did. I’ve had my share of trees.”

  Dailen bowed. “I’ve no doubt that’s true.” Then he looked down through the hole still yawning in the mal’gama. “We are there.”

  Chloe leaned over. Below, she saw part of a lake, and a highway, and thick clumps of forest surrounding fields lined with trails. There were hills there too, strange-looking hills.

  A lurch in her stomach told her that the mal’gama was beginning to descend. It was some kind of park they were approaching now. She saw what looked like a visitors’ center, and a parking lot, and people walking trails below.

  “It seems like somebody might notice a giant flying carpet coming down out of the sky,” she remarked.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dailen. “The mal’gama can’t be seen from below if I don’t want it to be.”

  The hole in the mal’gama closed itself with a rustle. They continued to descend. Eventually they dropped below the tops of trees, into a forest. The mal’gama rearranged itself smoothly, sliding silently down through the branches like melting snow. They landed in a small clearing on the edge of the woods, away from the trails and the cars. The mal’gama became a soft green carpet again, spread throughout the trees like a blanket of mos
s. Dailen stepped lightly off onto the ground.

  “Welcome to Ka’hoka,” he said.

  “Where?” said Chloe. There was nothing here but trees.

  “All around us. Beneath us, actually. It’s not the city it once was—most of the smaller sanctuaries are abandoned now—but it’s still the largest gathering of Wardens anywhere in the world.”

  Horace was gazing off through the trees. In the distance, beyond the woods, two of the strange little hills Chloe had seen earlier rose out of a wide flat lawn, like noses on a face. Definitely not natural.

  “Wait a minute,” said Horace. “I know this place. This is Cahokia Mounds.”

  “That’s another name, yes,” said Dailen.

  “My parents brought me here. It’s like an old Native American site. A city, or something.”

  “For a while it was. Long ago, it was the largest city on the continent. But it’s been ours alone for nearly seven hundred years now.”

  Chloe had read about Cahokia Mounds. They were still in Illinois, just on the other side of the Mississippi River from St. Louis. But yikes. “Seven hundred years,” she repeated, trying to grasp it. “And the Altari have been here all that time?”

  “Yes,” said Dailen. “And actually, we were here long before that. The humans who lived here came and built their city on top of us. They . . . had dealings with us. But then the floods came. Famine. Disease. The city above was abandoned, but we remained below.”

  “You say that like you were actually there when it happened,” Chloe said.

  “Don’t be silly. How old do you think I am?”

  “I honestly don’t have the slightest idea. You might as well ask me how tall I think God is.”

  “I’m barely an adult,” Dailen said. “Basically still a teenager, by your way of thinking.”

  That was a surprise. And not a terrible one. “How many years is that?”

  “We don’t usually talk about age. We don’t celebrate birthdays. But if numbers make you feel better, multiply human years by four or five to get Altari years. Roughly.”

  “So, you’re like eighty or ninety,” said Horace. “Roughly.”