by Ted Sanders
“I told you, we don’t keep track. I’m young. If you want to see really old, wait till you meet Falo.” Half of Dailen’s face wrinkled doubtfully, and he added, “Don’t tell her I said that.” Then he turned away, heading off through the woods. “There’s an entrance just ahead. Let’s go.”
They moved deeper into the trees. The mal’gama gathered itself and moved behind them like a great green ghost. In short order, they came upon a small, shallow lake. A weak, wispy fog hung over the morning water. A black island stood dead in the middle of the water, bristling with tall, spiky evergreens. Dailen didn’t speak, but the mal’gama slid past them and laid itself down over the surface of the water, making itself long and narrow, creating a bridge. The Altari led the way.
The island was even smaller than it looked, barely as big across as a small house, and perfectly round. The ground was spongy under Chloe’s feet. Passing through the dense trees that ringed it, they came upon a round pool at its center, deep and black and perhaps twenty feet across. The island forest, tall and straight, rose high overhead, surrounding the pool like a stockade.
Gracefully, Dailen pulled out his jithandra. Its crystal, longer than the ones on the jithandras they used at the Warren, glowed with a reddish-purple light, a kind of vibrant magenta. And instead of emerging from silver flower petals, this crystal was mounted in a miniature cluster of bare, black tree branches.
“Follow me,” Dailen said. “Do as I say. This may seem familiar at first, but then it won’t.” He dipped the crystal into the pool, and the water—just like in Vithra’s Eye—began to solidify around it with a crackling gurgle. He stepped out onto this new surface, moving the dangling jithandra into open water ahead. Horace followed him, and Chloe came behind, inching out onto the walkway.
After just a few steps, Dailen halted near the center of the pool. “Now the fun part,” he said. He leaned forward, and with a graceful, practiced sway, swung the jithandra in a wide circle through the open water ahead. In the crystal’s rippling wake, the surface of the water solidified, creating a ring in the center of the pool with an even smaller pool inside, three feet across.
“Koltro sis’koltro,” said Dailen. “Rings within rings.” After a moment, there was a rumble and a thud beneath them somewhere. And all at once the water inside the newly formed ring dropped away with a deep gurgle. No swirling, no sloshing. The water just fell, revealing a dark shaft that plunged straight into the ground.
“Wow,” said Horace. Chloe, unable to find a way to be unimpressed, said nothing.
“Quickly, before the walkway dissolves again,” said Dailen. “There are handholds in the wall. They’ll be slick, so be careful. When you get to the bottom, make room for the mal’gama.” He swung his long legs over the edge and disappeared swiftly into the hole.
Horace hesitated, peering into the dark shaft.
“We could bail, you know,” Chloe said, watching him. “You don’t have to do this.” She knew he was going to do it, but as a matter of practice she felt Horace needed to be reminded now and again that options were available. Just knowing other choices were there made the main thing that much easier.
But Horace simply pulled his jithandra out of his shirt. “I can’t bail,” he said. “And neither can you. There’s a Mothergate here.” And then, before Chloe could respond or even react, he climbed awkwardly over the edge and disappeared into the earth.
A Mothergate. One of the three mysterious artifacts that powered all Tanu. And supposedly it was dying—whatever that actually meant. Chloe remembered Horace’s mom explaining how she could feel the Mothergates. She’d even pointed at them. Two of the Mothergates were far away—halfway around the world—but one was much closer. A couple hundred miles, she’d said. Could she have meant here? Horace obviously seemed to think so. And when Horace sounded sure of something, he was almost never wrong.
Chloe scampered to follow him, annoyed with him for dropping his little bombshell without giving her a chance to answer. The shaft down through the pool was not quite as cramped as it looked, but she could hear Horace nearly wheezing below her. The rungs were cutouts in the stone, wet and cold. They descended thirty feet, maybe, until the shaft ended in a tunnel running left and right. The passageway was tall but narrow—built for Altari, obviously.
As she alighted, Chloe gazed meaningfully at Horace. He avoided her eyes. Fine. If he wasn’t going to ask Dailen about the Mothergate, she could go along with that for a little while. But eventually someone would have to say something.
“Make way,” said Dailen, backing up. They stepped away, and the hazy sunlight streaming in from overhead winked out, eclipsed by the mal’gama. Their jithandras—red, blue, magenta—lit the huge Tanu as it poured slowly into the tunnel after them, like lumpy green molasses. Moments later, there was another thud from above, and the sound of rushing water. Dailen’s ring-shaped walkway had dissolved, and now the pool was refilling itself, hiding the entrance once again.
Dailen turned. “This way.”
The floor of the passage sloped gently downward as they walked. The ceiling, though, remained level, so that as they walked, it got higher and higher until it could no longer be seen by the light of their jithandras.
Horace, walking steadily in front of Chloe, gazed up into the shadows. “Is the Nevren here in Ka’hoka?” he asked. “Or will there be something else?”
Dailen cocked his head. “Something else?”
“You know, like . . .” Horace trailed off, and glanced back at the mal’gama coursing through the tunnel behind them. “In the Warren, there’s a . . .”
“A what?” said Chloe. She had no idea what he was getting at.
But now Dailen apparently understood. He stopped and turned. “So it’s true,” he said. “The Chief Taxonomer has embraced the sa’halvasa.”
“What are you guys talking about?” said Chloe.
Horace told her the tale. Mr. Meister’s multiple Tan’ji. Sanguine Hall, the Warren’s elusive back entrance. A swarm of tiny, deadly Tanu. The Fel’Daera, screaming as the sa’halvasa feasted on it. Chloe hoped her face looked as horrified as she felt. She looked up into the shadowy heights overhead, as if the little scythe things would come after them here.
“I confess I’ve always wanted to witness the sa’halvasa,” said Dailen. “It’s related to the golem and the mal’gama, as you might have guessed, but it’s the wildest of the three. It has no heart. It takes no leash.” He shook his head. “But to actually remove the Nevren . . .” He sounded not so much worried as disgusted.
“So, there used to be a Nevren in Sanguine Hall?” Horace asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it safe using the sa’halvasa instead of the Nevren?”
Dailen shrugged. “It’s hard to imagine any Riven being able to endure the sa’halvasa. And of course, they’d have to find the Warren first. Still, the Nevren is the surest way to keep out the Riven. We would never rely on the sa’halvasa here in Ka’hoka. We have several Nevren scattered throughout the city, in fact. But we’ll only have to pass through one to get where we’re going. Goth en’Sethra, it’s called.”
Chloe checked Horace’s face. It was stony. “Great, it’s got a name,” she said. “Probably just a tiny little Nevren, then.”
“Goth en’Sethra is the most powerful Nevren in existence,” said Dailen.
“Oh,” said Chloe. “Or that.”
“Goth en’Sethra,” said Horace. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t translate exactly—the Well of Sacrifice, the Well of Giving. I should warn you that it’s a bit different than other Nevrens you’ve encountered. And it’s ungated, so you may find it shocking at first.”
Horace and Chloe exchanged a confused glance. “Ungated?” said Horace.
“Yes, it’s—” Dailen began, then frowned. “You know what the Nevren is, yes? How it works?”
“It’s some kind of energy field,” Horace said.
“But you don’t know what creates that
field?”
“We never got the handbook, sorry,” said Chloe.
Dailen seemed to consider it, then actually knelt on the ground, so that his face was level with theirs. He didn’t invite them to do the same, apparently wanting to look them in the eye. “I assume you know that the bond of Tan’ji can be destroyed in many ways,” he said.
“Dispossession,” said Horace. “Cleaving.”
“Yes, to name just two. One slow, one swift. Either the bond withers away because of prolonged severing, or it is forcibly torn apart. But certain Keepers find another end. A sort of end.”
“What else is there?” Horace asked. Chloe suspected he was thinking about the Mothergates again. Or maybe the last Keeper of the Fel’Daera.
Dailen bent his head and said, almost reverentially, “Fusion.”
“Fusion?” Horace repeated. “Like nuclear fusion? Things being put together?”
“Not nuclear, no. But yes—being put together. It’s when a Keeper and his Tan’ji get fused into one. One entity. One being. One . . . instrument, if you like.”
No one spoke for a moment. Chloe twirled the Alvalaithen madly. What was Dailen saying?
“You mean physically?” Horace asked. “Like the Riven?”
“No, it’s like a permanent and irrevocable bond with the Medium.”
“But how?” said Horace.
“Essentially, the Tan’ji—the unified Keeper and instrument, that is—starts drawing in great quantities of the Medium. Massive amounts, dangerous amounts, looping from Keeper to instrument over and over without release. Eventually the whole system basically implodes. It collapses on itself. It forms a kind of loop, and this loop is actually a hole—you might imagine it as being kind of black hole. It’s so powerful that it sucks into itself every last bit of the Medium nearby. Any Tanu that come close to the fused Tan’ji cease to function.” Dailen watched them for a moment, letting them digest it, and then said, “Sound familiar?”
Horace said, “Wait, so are you saying this hole—this collapsed Tan’ji—that’s the Nevren?”
“That’s what makes the Nevren, yes. It consumes the Medium all around, like a black hole consumes light. And without the Medium, no Tanu can function. No Keeper can even connect to his or her instrument.” Dailen shrugged. “And there’s your Nevren.”
Chloe hardly knew how to respond, fascinated and horrified at the same time. “But what about the Keeper?” she said. “Does the Keeper die?”
“No. But after the fusion, it is hard to say that they live, either. Not in the way you are used to thinking of it.”
“Then what happens?” Chloe demanded.
“The Keeper . . . remains,” Dailen said. “Kept in a kind of stasis by the Medium. Outside of knowing, outside of time.” He watched them warily, his strange ringed eyes sad. “Wherever you find the Nevren, that’s the source. There’s a Keeper at the core, usually kept in a chamber underground. Fused for all eternity.”
Chloe strode forward, hardly thinking, red with rage. She stepped up to Dailen, reared back, and slapped him, hard, right across the face. The sound of the slap echoed smartly through the tunnel. Dailen left his head where the slap had thrown it, curled against his shoulder, looking strangely childish. A red welt began to bloom across his white cheek.
“Chloe,” Horace said low. “That’s not what anybody here deserved.”
Chloe whirled toward him. “Don’t you think I know that?” she shouted, and then she spun back to Dailen. “Don’t you think I know?”
She couldn’t even name her anger. Not that she needed to. She thought back to the first time she and Horace had passed through the Nevren, behind the House of Answers. She remembered walking across hollow metal plates in the floor. And now she was afraid she understood—there had been a Keeper beneath those plates, fused to her instrument, imprisoned forever in the dark, outside of time and light and knowing. The thought made her want to puke.
“I know it sounds dreadful,” said Dailen. “I won’t try to convince you to understand this gift the way we Altari do. But only a willing Keeper can be fused.”
“You’re right,” said Chloe. “You shouldn’t try to convince me.”
Horace spoke, his own voice shaky too. “Wait, so the lake in the Great Burrow—Vithra’s Eye. There’s a fused Keeper out there in the center of that?”
Chloe pictured it—the forbidden brick walkway that led across the center of the lake. Somewhere out there in the darkness . . . what? Another pit covered in steel plates? A cage? She hated to imagine.
“Yes,” said Dailen. “But just to be clear, Vithra’s Eye isn’t the name of the lake. It’s the name of the Nevren.”
Chloe said, “And Vithra is name of the Keeper who’s trapped there.”
“Vithra remains there, yes. She fused herself. She . . . gave herself, and her Tan’ji. She became the Nevren.”
“To protect the Warren.”
“Yes. To protect those who took refuge there.”
“When did that happen?”
“I’m not sure. Well over a century ago. Before the American Civil War.”
“And ever since, she’s just been . . . there. Remaining.”
“Yes. But there is no suffering. It’s a kind of sleep, a meditation. A oneness.”
Chloe looked over at Horace. She recognized the look on his face at once, a sort of tightly bundled thoughtfulness that meant he’d figured something out before she did. “What?” she said.
“Ungated,” he murmured, and turned to Dailen. “This Nevren up ahead. The Well of Giving. The Keeper there isn’t caged, is that what you’re saying? We’ll see him. Or her.”
Dailen stood, his face stony and smooth, his reddish-purple jithandra swinging in the dark. “Them,” he corrected. And then he turned and continued down the passageway.
Horace and Chloe followed him in silence, each wrapped in their own thoughts. The mal’gama tumbled after them. If Chloe was understanding Dailen correctly, there was more than one fused Keeper in the Nevren up ahead. And they would be visible. She couldn’t explain to herself why the idea angered her so much, why she’d slapped Dailen. She wasn’t opposed to sacrifice, not at all. But dead was supposed to mean dead. Gone was supposed to mean gone.
She had no idea how long they walked. It was hard knowing such things underground, where you could only see twenty feet ahead and twenty feet behind. It was like walking a treadmill, with no sense of progress. But gradually she became aware that the passageway had widened and that they seemed to be in a natural cavern now. A big one, the walls and ceiling all lost to shadow, the echoes of their footsteps coming back slow and tinny. Dailen had pulled far away, a spindly but graceful silhouette inside a cloud of magenta light. At last he stopped. A moment later, just beyond him, four amber lights like those in the Warren began to glow, forming the corners of a broad, dark square that seemed to almost shine in the new light.
“I think maybe we’re here,” Chloe said.
They caught up to Dailen and found him standing by the edge of a square pool, fifty feet across. The water was as smooth as the water in Vithra’s Eye, but whereas that water was black, this had a more silvery sheen. And there was something else, too. A massive chain, thick as a man’s torso, descended from the shadows above and plunged down through the center of the square pool, into its own faintly rippling reflection. Chloe stepped right up to the edge of the water, which was paved with broad, flat stones. Each of the stones, she noticed, was engraved with a ferocious-looking bird. Leestones, undoubtedly. She stood on one and peered into the water. Her own face shone back at her, quivering dreamily, reflected on the gently undulating surface of the pool.
“Welcome to Goth en’Sethra,” Dailen said. “The Well of Giving.”
“Are we supposed to swim, or what?” Chloe said.
Dailen laughed kindly. “There is no water here.” He stooped to pick up a small rock and tossed it into the well. The rock hit the water with a thin clatter, skittering and sliding over the sur
face.
Not water. Glass. Glass or something like it. Dailen stepped out onto it, onto his own gleaming reflection. He strode out halfway to the huge chain, and beckoned them to follow.
Chloe frowned at the glass, and the massive chain. “Is this like an elevator?” If so, it was the biggest elevator she’d ever seen, big enough to carry an entire house.
“In a way,” said Dailen. “Come on. Let me show you.”
She and Horace walked out onto the glass. Their footsteps made delicate ripples, as if they really were walking on water. But the glass felt as solid underfoot as steel.
“What is this stuff?” asked Horace.
“This is a mir’aji,” said Dailen. “It forms the mouth and the belly of Goth en’Sethra.”
“Sounds very gastronomical,” said Chloe. “Not very comforting.”
“Oh, were you looking for comfort?” Dailen said. “Because sanctuaries that chose comfort over security have long since been overrun by the Riven.”
“I get it, I get it,” Chloe said. “Let’s get it over with, then. Where’s the down button on this thing?”
“I have it.” Dailen removed his jithandra once again, letting it dangle over the mirror. “Ready?” he said.
Chloe glanced at Horace, feeling a sudden burble of dread. “This is going to suck, isn’t it?” she asked Dailen.
“Yes,” said the Altari. He lowered the jithandra. Horace made a little noise of surprise, and Chloe thought she knew why. Dailen’s purple-red crystal cast no reflection in the mir’aji. “Close your eyes if you like,” Dailen said, watching it. “If you can.” The tip of the crystal touched the strange glass and then pierced it silently, like a needle into flesh. The entire expanse of glass shimmered crimson for an instant . . . and then vanished beneath their feet.
They fell.
Chloe shrieked, pinwheeling her arms, as she plummeted into the suddenly open well. The massive chain stretched far below them—very, very far below—where a distant square of golden light glowed in the impossible depths. Chloe drank from the Alvalaithen as she fell, panicking, but no sooner had she gone thin than she went bone-cold, and the Alvalaithen was wrested from her. It was gone, utterly gone, her powers unreachable.