The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

  Like sharks, April thought. Blood in the water. This was how her entire adventure had begun. “Did we make a mistake coming here?” she said.

  Isabel turned from the window. She looked April in the eye. “Not if your plan was to keep me silent,” she said softly.

  Gabriel stepped toward her, gripping the Staff of Obro.

  “What do you mean?” said April, alarmed. “Silent how?”

  “You know how,” Isabel said. She hefted her little white harp. “You brought me here—under the leestone—to prevent me from doing exactly what I would have done. And it’s working. The leestone is too powerful, and the harp is weak.”

  “Wait, so you were going to call the Riven down on us?”

  Isabel leaned against the window again. “Once I got the hang of this harp, yes. But not for the reasons you think.”

  “What possible good reasons could you have for summoning the Riven?” April asked.

  “It’s not the whole horde I wanted.” Isabel exhaled angrily through gritted teeth, fogging the glass briefly. “Just him.”

  Now April understood. “Dr. Jericho,” she said.

  “He destroyed Miradel. He took what was mine. He savaged her right in front of me, as cruelly as he could.”

  “And if Dr. Jericho was standing here right now, what would you do to him, exactly?” April asked, exasperated. “Throw rocks at him? You said it yourself—your new harp is weak.”

  “I don’t have to sever him for long. I might manage it, even with this toy.”

  “How long is long enough?”

  Isabel looked sharply over. “Two or three seconds, I think.”

  “Two or three seconds.” Gabriel laughed. “You’d leave him with a headache, at best. I’ve seen Riven endure severing for nearly ten seconds, and still recover. The Nevren in Vithra’s Eye takes at least twenty seconds to cross. That’s the only way to be sure that no Riven can survive the severing.”

  “Severed a lot of Riven, have you?” Isabel said, but April thought she heard doubt in her voice. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t lure Dr. Jericho closer now. Anything I try just gets swallowed up by your leestone.”

  So she had already tried. April squeezed her eyes closed, pulsing with rage. She’d had enough of this woman, if woman was even the right word. Isabel was a child—certainly more of a child than her own daughter, who was as steady and faithful and brave as Isabel was reckless, and selfish, and cowardly.

  “If it’s the leestone that’s stopping you, then leave,” April said. “Leave now.”

  “You’d trust me to do that, I’m sure,” Isabel scoffed. “You probably think I’d lead the Riven right back here.”

  “Actually, I don’t think they’d listen to you again. What do they call you? Forsworn? You said it was because they pitied you, but that’s not it. The truth is, you disgust them.” April realized she was nearly shouting, something she tried to never do. She didn’t care. She felt Gabriel’s hand on her arm and shook it off. “You’re a parasite. A greedy leech. Whatever respect the Riven gave you before, it was only because they feared you.” She pointed out the window. “Go on out there and see how much they respect you now. They’ll chew you up just like they did Miradel.”

  Isabel screamed, her face red with rage. She shoved April hard, knocking her to the floor, and lunged toward the bed, yanking the leestone out from under the pillow. She spun, her red hair flailing wildly, and hurled the heavy stone at the bedroom window, still shrieking. Glass shattered, and the leestone sailed out into the afternoon sun.

  April scrambled to her feet. Pushing Isabel aside, she rushed to the window. The leestone had landed in a patch of dirt at the edge of the lawn, lying there in plain sight. Downstairs in the house, Baron began to bark. Noise. Danger. Protect.

  “What happened?” Gabriel said. He clearly wanted to let the humour loose, but wasn’t sure he should.

  “The leestone,” April said, fuming. “She threw it out the window.”

  Gabriel bared his teeth. “Where is it now?”

  “Way out in the yard. At the edge of the trees.” April rounded on Isabel. She let all her anger surge into her fists, but kept them clenched at her sides. She made her voice stay calm, even as Baron’s angry barking threatened to tear her throat in two. “Go,” she said, her jaw trembling with rage. “You’re not welcome here. Not anymore, and not ever again.”

  Isabel glared at her with red-rimmed eyes. A few specks of blood dotted her cheeks, blowback from the shattered glass. Through the gaping window, the victorious cry of a Mordin rang through the woods. And then another.

  “We’re past that now,” Gabriel said. “Brace yourselves.”

  The humour swallowed them all.

  Almost by instinct, April opened herself to the vine. Downstairs, Baron was still free, barking and listening and smelling. Gabriel was keeping the humour small, letting April reach out.

  Gabriel took April’s hand in the void now, his grip gentle but strong. “Reach for Isabel,” he said. “She must come with us.”

  It was clear Gabriel was speaking only to her, not letting Isabel hear. “No way,” said April. “Are you kidding?”

  “We cannot leave her.”

  April shook her head in disbelief. “I’m pretty sure we can.”

  “The spitestone has been destroyed, April. Isabel knows the location of the Warren.”

  April’s skin went cold. Of course. And suddenly she understood—that was why Mr. Meister had brought her the harp. It was a bribe, a tease. Enough, hopefully, to keep Isabel on the Warden’s side.

  “We cannot let the Riven take her,” Gabriel prompted.

  Reluctantly, April reached out for Isabel. She found her frizzy hair—Isabel had slumped to the ground, apparently.

  “Isabel,” Gabriel said, his voice deep and commanding, but thick with an almost fatherly kindness. “Fear not. Come with us. Come with us, and we will try to put right what has gone wrong.”

  “There’s way too much wrong to put right,” Isabel said bleakly.

  “If that could ever be true for us, I would have surrendered my staff years ago.” Gabriel’s words were so soothing, so right, that April felt a sudden sympathy for Isabel rising in her chest. She tamped it down angrily—was this a power of Gabriel’s that no one ever openly acknowledged? This compelling voice, this magnetic presence ringing out through the abyss of the humour?

  But Gabriel’s wasn’t the only voice in April’s head now. Downstairs, Baron was still barking, and she could hear more Riven calling to each other, closing in on the house.

  “I know why you won’t leave me,” Isabel murmured. “The Warren. You don’t trust me.”

  We don’t, April wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “You haven’t earned our trust,” Gabriel said. Not an accusation, but a gentle and inexorable truth. “Earn it now.”

  “I can’t. And if you won’t leave me—kill me. Kill me and then go.”

  The words chilled April’s blood. Gabriel’s casual response froze it solid.

  “I would prefer not to,” he said.

  “Because you need me.”

  “I do not. But you have a husband. Daughters.”

  “My daughters don’t need me, either. They don’t love me.”

  “Perhaps not, but that is not for you to say.”

  Downstairs, the back door shook beneath a thunderous blow, and then was kicked off its hinges with a crash. Brimstone flooded April’s nose. At the front of the house, Baron cowered into a corner, tail tight between his legs. Stinging. Hate. Fear.

  “They’re here, Gabriel,” she said. “They’re inside.”

  “Get up, Isabel,” Gabriel pleaded forcefully. “If you have regrets, make the only decision now that might truly erase them.”

  Isabel groaned, her voice rolling through the humour like a dirge.

  “Get up,” said Gabriel. Power and warmth. April squeezed his hand.

  And then suddenly, another hand, reaching for her in
the gray. April grabbed it, pulling Isabel to her feet. At the same instant, at the bottom of the stairs, a Mordin strode into the front hall. The front door slammed open, and two more entered the house.

  Baron yelped at them desperately, flooded with fear, backing into a corner. He piddled on the floor. Warmth flooded through April. Terror. Shame.

  And then the same nothingness that now buried April abruptly blanketed the dog, sight and sound. His senses were swallowed as Gabriel let the humour open wide. He had said he could bury the whole house, and apparently he was doing it.

  “We’re trapped,” Gabriel said, obviously sensing the Mordin at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Out the window,” April said. “Onto the porch roof. We can—”

  Suddenly, below, April felt Baron on the move. He scampered out of the corner, blind and frightened, trying to get away. Fear. Hurt. Bite. He brushed against a Mordin’s leg, growling, but somehow he managed to get out on the front porch—she could feel the peeling paint of the porch boards under his paws. Out of sheer habit the dog kept going, launching off the porch with the muscle memory of years, and within a second he was free of the humour.

  April clung to him. An Auditor was in the driveway. Dr. Jericho stood beside her, huge and bristling. Baron paused, barking uneasily at the Riven.

  “Dr. Jericho is out front,” she said, her heart hammering. “And an Auditor too. We need to get out of here.”

  Dr. Jericho lunged at Baron, cocking back one huge arm. April flinched. Baron scampered away. He barreled down the driveway, not looking back, kicking up stones with every loping step. They dug into April’s hands, her feet, but didn’t hurt. Baron kept going until he was nearly at the end of the vine’s reach, and she was about to let him go, and then—

  The dog stumped to a halt, perplexed.

  Shimmer. Strangeness. Curiosity.

  “April,” said Gabriel. “We must—”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  A golden ring, barely a foot across, hung in the air over the driveway. It made no noise and had no smell, but for a moment it had all of Baron’s attention. Danger. Listen. Smell. And then suddenly the ring widened, opening like the iris of an eye, growing as tall as a Mordin. Baron skittered back a few steps.

  April had seen this ring once before, in the meadow. “A portal!” she said, hope leaping up in her heart. “Right out front.”

  Baron eyed the portal warily, watching it grow, but then swift clawing footsteps from behind made him turn. Dr. Jericho was galloping straight toward him—or more likely, straight toward the portal, kicking up driveway stones as he ran.

  “Joshua’s looking for us,” Isabel crowed. “We need to get to him.”

  But no sooner had Isabel spoken than the hanging ring began to shrink. “No, no, no,” April murmured. The portal dwindled rapidly to the size of a plate, and then vanished altogether.

  Dr. Jericho slowed to a halt, glaring. Baron took off again, down the driveway away from the house and away from danger. In seconds, he sprinted beyond the range of the vine. She lost him, lost his eyes and his nose and his ears. She came back to her own dull human senses, flattened by the humour. But at least Baron was gone. She shut the Ravenvine down, panting as if she’d been the one doing the running.

  “It’s gone,” she said. “The portal. Joshua closed it. Dr. Jericho was charging at it and . . .” Isabel’s hand went slack in hers.

  “Joshua did what he had to,” Gabriel said. “Now out the window. Let me clear the glass.”

  A few long seconds passed, some of the longest of April’s life. Baron was safe. Away. But his terror, and her rage, along with the sudden spike of hope the portal briefly brought, left her feeling exhausted. And now, beneath her own feet, she thought she felt faint steady vibrations. She immediately recalled all the nights she’d felt Uncle Harrison climbing the stairs to his bedroom, vibrations like this. Heavy bodies, creeping on the stairs. In the humour, April had lost all sense of where her own bedroom door was. How long before a Mordin stumbled through it?

  “Okay,” said Gabriel at last. “Hurry.”

  He pulled them forward. April had climbed out this window a hundred times, and she managed it easily now, even in the humour. She hadn’t forgotten the last time she went this way, either—pulled outside by Baron’s barking, as Dr. Jericho lurked in the woods behind her house. Despite all her fears that night, she could never have imagined a moment like this one.

  She climbed onto the porch roof. This, at least, felt familiar. There was no sun in the humour, of course. It could have been day or night. But the feel of the warm sloping roof beneath her feet gave her confidence. Isabel, coming out behind her, seemed much less confident, though she was usually sure-footed. She said nothing—nothing that Gabriel was letting April hear, anyway—but she squeezed April’s hand so hard she thought her fingers might break.

  “Stay close to the wall, and you’ll be fine,” April said. Isabel said nothing, but clung to her hand harder than ever. April let her, resisting the urge to pull her hand away. It occurred to her, briefly, that a blind fall from this height might break Isabel’s legs, but wouldn’t be enough to kill her. April was ashamed to wonder if that was the only reason she didn’t let Isabel go.

  “Can we get higher?” asked Gabriel. “Up onto the highest roof?”

  “Yes, the next window down. We can climb up on the air conditioner. It’s not easy.”

  “I found it,” Gabriel said. “I’ll go first.”

  April was afraid to ask, but had to. “How many Riven are with us?”

  “Seven Mordin in the humour,” said Gabriel. “But it’s a big house, and I’m filling it. I’m in the attic, in the basement, halfway across the yard. I won’t let them find us easily.”

  Gabriel released April’s hand. “Here’s the air conditioner. I’ll climb up and reach for you. Isabel, you come first.”

  April pulled Isabel forward, letting her inch past. They brushed against each other in the gloom, and April could feel her breathing hard. “You’ll be okay,” April said.

  “I can feel them, you know,” Isabel said. “When they get close enough, I can feel their Tan’ji. There’s one inside your bedroom right now.”

  Of course—Isabel could feel the Medium. But April wasn’t sure she wanted to know that a Mordin was in her bedroom. “Maybe we should jump,” April said. A crazy idea, when she’d been thinking of broken legs just a moment ago, but getting trapped on the roof didn’t seem a whole lot better. And the porch roof wasn’t that high. She’d seen a stupid friend of Derek’s jump off it one time. He’d gotten away with a sprained ankle.

  But Gabriel was already pulling Isabel up. “Not an option,” he said darkly.

  “Will I regret asking why?” April said.

  “The golem is here. It’s below you now.”

  April pressed closer yet against the house. And was the house trembling, or was she? She imagined the golem just beneath her, creeping along the side of the house like a hungry black flood.

  A hand touched her shoulder. “Here.” She took Gabriel’s hand and found the air conditioner with her foot. As she stepped up onto it, it gave just a little, threatening to tip out of the window and dump her onto the lawn. But Gabriel’s grip tightened, and he practically hoisted her airborne onto the topmost roof of the house.

  The roof was much steeper here. April got onto all fours and scrambled to the very peak. She straddled it. She longed to reach out with the vine, to see what was happening beyond the border of the humour, but resisted. She told herself that all the most important action was happening inside the gray fog anyway. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.

  “Now what?” she said.

  No one responded, and for just a second the starkest jolt of terror she’d felt yet shot through her—were they gone? Was she alone here in the gray? But then Isabel spoke, and April realized Gabriel hadn’t answered because he had no answer to give.

  “We wait for Joshua,” said Isabel.

  “Wa
it for him how?” April said. “Wait for what? We missed our chance.”

  “He’ll find us again. He’ll open a portal and save us,” Isabel insisted.

  “Up here on the roof? Are you crazy? He’ll never find us.”

  Gabriel rumbled in agreement. “He is a neophyte at best, and a Lostling at worst. He is less than half a day into a poisoned Find. What skills do you imagine he has?”

  “Neither of you know the Laithe,” said Isabel. “And maybe you don’t know Joshua either, any better than you know me. It can be done.”

  “There is another way, if it comes to it,” Gabriel said. “Something I can do.”

  “What way?” said April.

  “Fusion.”

  Isabel scoffed angrily. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “None of the Riven will survive it,” Gabriel insisted. “Not even Dr. Jericho.”

  Isabel seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then said, “And neither will you.”

  “That is a matter of opinion,” said Gabriel. “And in the meantime, you can get April out and safely away.”

  April pawed at the humour, as if she could part it to somehow comprehend what was being said. “Fusion? What’s fusion?”

  “It’s a way out,” said Gabriel. “But I will wait. I’ll do nothing until there’s nothing—”

  A sudden crumpling roar took April’s breath away. She threw up her hand as the blinding sun poured down on her from a blue sky. The nasty bite of brimstone stung her nose.

  The humour was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Above and Beyond

  JOSHUA SPUN THE PORTAL CLOSED, FAST AS HE COULD. HE FELT like a coward doing it—there was no way Dr. Jericho could get through. Dr. Jericho couldn’t even see him, much less get to him.

  But Joshua had seen plenty. Enough to make his belly squirm, with some messy mix of hope and worry. Dr. Jericho, yes—charging down the driveway, straight at the portal like a bull—but also, beyond him, April’s house, wrapped in a smoky cloud. He’d seen that cloud before, back in the meadow.

  The humour.