The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

  The Nevren.

  The loss was so sudden that she almost forgot she was falling. Her skin tightened painfully in the cold. Or someone’s skin, anyway. She couldn’t close her eyes, not because of fear but because they weren’t hers to close. Whose eyes even were they? But there were still sights here in the frozen dark—tall shapes, strung from the central chain. Bodies. Long limbed and pale. They seemed to be sleeping, curled into balls, each one clasping an object to its chest. She began to see faces—long and lean, smooth and peaceful, eyes mercifully closed.

  She curled into a ball herself as she fell, clutching at her own chest. She had something too, she knew. Or she once had. Something that was absent now. Despair choked her. The Nevren had taken everything she was. But still the greedy force pulled at her, tore at her as she sped past the motionless, sightless forms. And was she falling, or were they rising? Was there a difference?

  The string of dangling figures—a dozen, two dozen—rose into the growing heights overhead, the depths below. She would die here, she knew it for a fact, the only fact she knew. Die here in this bottomless, roofless pit. Die in a way these suspended bodies would never die. She was already dead, not flesh or bone or energy or even thought. Just a hollow husk of stone. A streaking meteor, going nowhere. She would orbit this place forever, through ten thousand famished moments just like this one. And this one. And this.

  Suddenly the chain was bare. Just as quickly as the cold had come, warmth flooded her. Her skin went slack. She sucked in a great breath and pulled at the power throbbing at her chest now, reborn. The Alvalaithen. She was Chloe, and she went thin, filling herself with the dragonfly’s sweet, exuberant song.

  Off to one side, moving with her through the shaft, she saw Horace. The Fel’Daera was in his hands, and he had his forehead pressed against it. His eyes were squeezed shut. And then, abruptly, a kind of electric shiver flashed through her body. It felt like falling through a thin plane of effervescent bubbles. Her stomach did a violent flip-flop, and her hair too. Somehow she was rising now. She and Horace were in a new shaft, dark and bottomless. There was no chain here. She spotted Dailen, beneath them, his robe flapping elegantly. They were all rising very fast but slowing, approaching their zenith.

  “Release the Alvalaithen,” Dailen called. “Get your feet beneath you.” Chloe stilled the dragonfly and swung her arms, struggling to turn herself upright. She glanced up, and saw that they were rushing toward a flat, smooth ceiling. She threw her hands over her face and cried out.

  But instead of crashing into the ceiling, she found herself awash in golden light. The walls of the well disappeared. An instant later, she reached the peak of her ascent and began to fall again, landing almost at once on a hard surface, dropping to all fours. Breathing hard, she stared down between her hands and saw her own pale and panting face, reflected up at her. She crouched now on a mirrored surface just like the one at the top of the well. A mir’aji.

  But this was a new place, bright and clean. Slender arches stretched to the heights above. A hundred feet directly overhead, the bottom end of the Well of Giving yawned darkly. The great chain dangled motionless from the well’s mouth, a massive triangular weight at the end, pointing straight down at them like a titan’s javelin. Farther up, darkness hid the heart of the Nevren they’d just fallen through, where the fused figures still hung suspended, unseen but unforgotten.

  Chloe struggled to her feet. Off to one side, Horace lay atop the mir’aji, his cheek pressed against his own perfect reflection, still clinging to the Fel’Daera. Beyond him, Dailen stood easily, graceful as always, watching them with worried eyes.

  “Are you okay?” the Altari asked.

  Horace rolled to his knees, hugging the Fel’Daera against his gut. “Fine,” he said hoarsely. He lifted his eyes to the open mouth of the well far above them, and then to the silver glass below. Chloe could see him trying to figure out how the whole thing worked.

  “You said it would suck,” Chloe said to Dailen. “But you didn’t quite explain just how much.”

  “I told you more than most would have,” said Dailen.

  “Those fused Keepers. They were Altari.”

  Horace looked over at her sharply. “You saw them?” he said. “You watched?”

  So, he’d had his eyes closed the whole time. Chloe was glad he hadn’t seen what she’d seen . . . but not a hundred percent glad. He’d left her to witness it alone, to remember it alone.

  “Mostly Altari, yes,” Dailen said. “But two or three human Keepers as well.”

  “Why so many?” she said. “Why do you need a Nevren like that? What are you hiding here?”

  “Who are you to ask?” said another voice, deep and sonorous, rolling through the cavern like a cascade of massive bells.

  Chloe spun around. A dozen Altari stood beneath one of the delicate arches, watching them. They were beautiful. They varied greatly in height, the shortest barely taller than her own father, the tallest nearly as tall as Dr. Jericho himself. The tall one held a massive weapon, like a staff with a huge scimitar blade on the end. The blade, two feet long, seemed to be made of blazing blue light.

  All the Altari had the same ringed eyes that Dailen did. And although their smooth white skin had no wrinkles that she could see, somehow they all looked older than Dailen, who by comparison now seemed terribly young—something in the cast of their eyes, maybe, or a slight stoop in the shoulders. Most of the newcomers were male, but a couple were female. Again, though, Chloe could not have explained quite how she knew that.

  The Altari out front, medium height but very broad, began to approach them. His face was stern and luminescent, except for a clean slit of a scar that ran down the center of his forehead, nearly black. He walked out onto the mir’aji, right up to Chloe. He crouched down in front of her, glanced at the Alvalaithen, and then stared her solidly in the eye. “I am Mal’brula Kintares, called Brula. Who are you to come to this place, asking after our secrets?”

  Chloe looked over at Dailen. He stood erect, his head slightly bowed. Brula caught Chloe’s chin in a gentle but inescapable grip, and turned her face back toward himself. A hot blossom of rage billowed in her chest.

  “I do not ask Dwen’dailen Longo,” the Altari said. “I ask you. Who are you?”

  Chloe went thin. Brula’s grip on her face slid loose, and she backed away very slowly, just a single step. “I’m a Warden, thanks for asking. My name is Chloe Oliver. I’m the Keeper of the Alvalaithen.”

  If the Altari was surprised, he didn’t show it. He let his eyes drop to the dragonfly again, and then he stood. He turned to Horace. “And you?” he sang.

  Horace simply stood there, his hands still pressing the Fel’Daera to his belly. He didn’t look afraid.

  Brula crossed over to him, not bothering to crouch down. “Visitors to Ka’hoka must announce themselves.”

  Horace craned his neck to look up at him. “I’m here to see Sil’falo Teneves.”

  A musical murmur washed through the remaining Altari. The tall one holding the blue blade took a single step forward. Brula silenced them by holding up an elegant hand.

  “No one sees anyone here—or anything—except by the will of the Council,” he told Horace.

  “She’ll see me. Whether you allow it or not.”

  Chloe thought her face would burst as she suppressed a wild smile of pride. Dailen too seemed to be hiding a pleased grin behind his smooth face.

  “Indeed?” said Brula doubtfully. “And why is that?”

  Horace opened his hands, revealing the Box of Promises. “Because I am Horace Andrews,” he said. Brula gazed down at the box. His eyes flared open wide. He actually took a step backward. Horace took the box into his hand and held it up. He thrust it out at the Altari shrinking before him, at the others watching from afar. He held his chin high.

  “I am the Keeper of the Fel’Daera,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  As We Breathe

  THE LAITHE OF TENEVES HO
VERED OVER JOSHUA’S FACE. HE LAY on the couch in Mr. Meister’s office, gazing up at it. He’d been watching it for hours, and only touched it once. He didn’t really need to touch it.

  He was both very happy, and very discouraged. He was happy because he’d solved one of his problems with the Laithe. He didn’t know how he’d done it, exactly, but he had.

  He could go anywhere.

  He’d tried three different places, faraway places he’d never been—Tokyo in Japan, Stubbsville in Vermont, and Watership Down in England. A huge city, a small town, and a grassy hill in the countryside. All places he’d read about, but never been. He’d zoomed in on each of them easily—so easily in fact, that he hadn’t even needed to touch the sleeping rabbit. He’d just . . . asked it to move without thinking about it, and it had moved. He didn’t even realize what he’d done until later.

  But each of those first three tries, the same thing happened to him that had happened in Madagascar the night before. When he got too close to the ground, somewhere below two thousand feet, ripples like raindrops began to spread across his view, clouding it.

  The Laithe had limitations, Mr. Meister said. And he’d seen that. For example, he hadn’t seen any people in Tokyo, or moving cars. That was a limitation, and it made sense to him. Sort of. But the raindrops? That had to be his fault. Each time—or so it seemed to Joshua—he got a little closer to the ground before the raindrops appeared. That was encouraging.

  And so he had tried again. Someplace wilder yet, someplace far from humans. He brought the Laithe around to northern Africa, to the depths of the Sahara, and slid the rabbit once more. Quickly, hundreds of miles of shifting sand filled his view. The desert was so empty, so featureless, that it was hard to tell how close he was getting. He’d been trying to convince himself that it didn’t matter whether he’d been to any of these places, but now he took that one step further.

  He was in this place.

  As he got closer to the huge desert, a few little ripples began to appear. But this time, he refused to see them. It’s sand down there, he told himself. Only sand. I know sand. I have been to sand. I am going to this sand now. And as he pushed closer, the ripples didn’t grow. In fact, they stopped altogether. He kept looking, not watching the rabbit as it slid.

  And then suddenly, he was there. The rabbit stopped. Joshua was so close to the ground, he could see individual grains of sand. They were a little blurry, though, shifting jerkily, like they were being moved by the wind, but he couldn’t actually see them move.

  He tore the meridian loose and hung it in the center of Mr. Meister’s office. The blue-eyed rabbit came to life, and Joshua wanted it to run, so it ran. The ring opened quickly under its feet. The tunnel of shapes appeared, but it was slowing fast and didn’t last long. Before the gate was half open, he could see. Sand. Hints of blue sky. Ripples of heat in the distance. He was getting better.

  And then the portal was open wide, and Joshua stood looking out over the remote Sahara. It stretched before him for miles upon miles, an ocean of sand. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

  He had promised Mr. Meister he wouldn’t go anywhere, and he was going to keep that promise. But still . . . his hand wasn’t exactly him, was it?

  He reached through the tingling portal. The air was so hot and dry on the other side, and the sun so instantly warm, that it felt like reaching into an oven. He squatted down and scooped up a little handful of sand, not at all sure he should be doing this. The sand was hot at first, but it cooled in his palm, and he brought it into the Great Burrow. This was something worth learning—that even though he and the globe were on this side of the portal, meaning no one on the other side could get through, he could still reach through and bring back things himself.

  The Sahara sand was duller than beach sand, not quite as bright, but otherwise it felt the same, which was surprising. He poured the sand into a neat little pile on Mr. Meister’s desk. A gift. A prize. He had done this. He, Joshua, had reached six thousand miles across the world and brought back sand from the Sahara Desert.

  He could go anywhere. But he hadn’t.

  There was only one place he needed to go. The meadow. April and Gabriel. Horace and Chloe.

  He gazed up at the Laithe, thinking about it hard. He had been thinking about it hard for a long time now. Because yes, it seemed he could go anywhere, but as Mr. Meister had suggested, that still wasn’t good enough for what he needed to do. He had to get as close to the missing Wardens as he possibly could—within a few yards, ideally.

  But he didn’t know exactly where they were.

  Joshua’s first plan was a bad one. He thought maybe he would just make a portal somewhere near April’s house, step on through, and go looking for them himself. But of course, for one, he had promised he wouldn’t do anything like that. And for two, if Dr. Jericho was still in the area, he would feel the portal and find Joshua in no time.

  Then he had a second plan. He would just open up portal after portal, all around the meadow and the house, hoping to get lucky. But again, if he didn’t like opening up even one portal with Dr. Jericho around, lots of portals seemed lots worse.

  Then he didn’t have a third plan.

  His fourth plan was to just lie here and worry. He glanced over at the pile of sand on the desk once in a while, just to remind himself how well things had been going. He had done that. He had.

  But it was nearly noon now, and lying around was not the answer. Not for a Keeper anyway. He had to think like a Keeper—whatever that meant. But then Joshua thought some more. The first thing a Keeper would do to stay safe was to think like a Mordin. If he was a Mordin, and there were Wardens on the loose, away from home, what would he do?

  First things first, he’d keep guard over the falkrete circle by the barn. That was how the Wardens got in, and it was the quickest way out. The Riven were smart enough to do that, for sure. So maybe Joshua would just take a look. He would open up a portal there beside the barn, just for a second. If he saw any Mordin, that was actually good, wasn’t it? It meant they were still probably looking for the Wardens, that they hadn’t found them yet. And if he didn’t, well . . . he wasn’t sure what that would mean.

  It was a good plan, he decided. The only plan, but a good plan.

  He spun the globe to North America, over the Midwest. He let the sleeping rabbit slide. Down and down he went, into northern Illinois.

  Within seconds, he was over the meadow. The barn was there, a squat slab of black and gray. And there was another black blob out in the meadow, a hundred yards off. What was it?

  Closer and closer. He was no more than two hundred feet up when he realized that the barn was flattened. Down here on the surface of this tiny earth, the barn had collapsed, just like in real life. But how did the Laithe know? And that blob in the meadow—he shifted over to it easily, drawing nearer. He had to get down to a hundred feet, the rabbit nearly back to the top of the meridian now, before he recognized what he was seeing.

  A golem. Or what used to be a golem, anyway. A great lifeless pile of stones that looked like it had been dumped there. Was it dead? And how would he know?

  Movement caught his eye. Not the golem. Was it a raindrop? No, no . . . not here, not now.

  But it wasn’t a raindrop. It was smudge of pure black, sliding slowly. He went in closer. Fifty feet now. The smudge was like a caterpillar made of shadow, inching across the surface of the Laithe. Or maybe more like the trail of a ghost—a thick black dot at the forward end, growing fainter at the tail.

  Now another one, over by the barn, like a dripping streak of grease on the Laithe’s surface. Something was wrong. Joshua hadn’t seen anything move in the Laithe before except water, clouds, and trees. No people, no cars, no animals, nothing. Something wasn’t working right. Maybe he was hoping too hard, asking the Laithe to do too much. After all this, after bringing back sand from Africa, maybe he still didn’t know what he was doing.

  He could only think one thing: he couldn’t let
the black smudges get bigger, or spread. If they did, he might not be able to see the meadow at all. And if he couldn’t see, he’d never be able to open a portal to save the others. If they were even there. If they even could be saved. Maybe he was a Lostling after all.

  He realized he was breathing hard. He was panicking. He pulled back on the Laithe, rising swiftly into the sky, leaving the meadow far behind. The black smudges disappeared.

  He shoved the Laithe away. It slid a few feet through the air and hung there. He turned away, taking his eyes off the Laithe for almost the first time that morning. It hurt to do it. The Laithe seemed . . . disappointed in him, somehow. And he couldn’t blame it. He was not good enough. Maybe if it weren’t for him, if it weren’t for Isabel, the Laithe would have found a better Keeper. One who could see everything, everywhere, without fear of raindrops or smudges.

  He got to his feet. He left the office, feeling sorry for himself and feeling angry for feeling sorry. The Laithe followed him silently. Out in the Great Burrow, he saw no one. He wandered up toward Vithra’s Eye. Earlier he’d come across that water, experiencing the Nevren as a Keeper for the first time. It had been as terrible as everyone said it was—cold and lonely and lifeless. Frustrated or not, he couldn’t bear to be without the Laithe. Did the Laithe feel the same way about him?

  He passed Mrs. Hapsteade’s doba. Light peeked out from under the curtain of her door, and voices, too. It sounded like Horace’s mom was in there. Meanwhile, Mr. Meister was probably with Ingrid somewhere, and Brian was finally napping. Joshua couldn’t bear to face any of them.

  Down the hall stood Neptune’s doba, tall and thin. Her door was open. As he passed, he spotted her inside, hovering cross-legged over her bed. She was talking to someone. But who? Joshua came closer, right to the door.

  Arthur stood on the bed. Neptune, hanging in midair, spread her arms for the bird and flapped them. “Like this,” she said. “Nice and slow. Very quiet.”