by Ted Sanders
And in the humour, there were Mordin. All those black smudging trails he’d seen on the Laithe were Mordin on the move, swarming around and into the house. And an Auditor too, with her long pale braid.
Gabriel and April were inside the house, he knew now. The silver dot and the green. He had no idea whether they’d seen his portal or not, but Baron had. And maybe—just maybe, if April had been in the dog’s head—she had seen it too.
Joshua plucked the closed portal out of the air and swung it around the Laithe again. Arthur rocked nervously from foot to foot on the table. Neptune looked like she wanted to swallow Joshua whole.
“Why did you close it? You said there were Keepers.”
“Dr. Jericho is there. Gabriel and April are inside April’s house, but the Riven are all around.”
“Get them, then! Save them!”
“It’s not like that. I can see them from above, but I can’t get inside the house.”
“Get close. Get to the door.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t just be close. I have to be right there.”
Neptune gritted her teeth, but then nodded. He nodded back at her, grateful. He was the Keeper of the Laithe, not her.
He was already going back down to the house, falling through the sky like a rock. The ghostly trails of the Riven were coming together now, collapsing around the property. An inky black blot jittered along the north side, different from the others, bigger. An object, not a being. A golem.
He came in close, just over the top of the house, looking straight down at the roof. Inside, April and Gabriel were moving now, slowly. He could see the dots that represented them, right through the roof. They were at the edge of the house, close to where the golem was. What were they doing?
It occurred to him suddenly that he’d never really been to April’s house. It was strange to think it. Maybe with all the practicing he’d done today, he was learning to forget the difference between a place he’d been on his own two feet and a place he’d only seen through the Laithe. Was that a good thing? Either way, he wished he knew more about this place, this house. He had to understand.
“I need to get in the house, but I don’t know how. And I don’t know where to be to get them out.”
“Can’t you just . . . dive in? You know. Zoom in?” She stabbed the air with her hand. Arthur, startled, flew up from the table and flapped loudly over near Joshua.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Joshua said. “I go down to things, not through.”
“So you’re an expert now?”
He frowned, hurt. “I’m not, I just . . . you told me I was supposed to know. I think I know this.”
“Okay. You’re right. Sorry.”
In the Laithe, Gabriel and April had stopped moving. Now they seemed to separate a little bit, Gabriel moving away. “You fight the Riven all the time,” Joshua said. “If you were there, what would you do?”
“With their powers? God, I don’t know. How many Riven?”
“I think nine. There’s an Auditor. And a golem.”
Neptune looked away. “Nine. Okay. And probably blocking the exits too. Well, Gabriel is brave, and he’ll be most worried about protecting April. . . .”
Joshua suddenly realized that Neptune was terrified. She’d said she was worried about Gabriel, but she was more than worried. But somehow, her being afraid made him less afraid, like they were standing on opposite ends of a scale. “I’m going to get them,” he told her. “I am.”
She smiled at him. Not an easy smile. “Okay. All right. So, in a small place like that, Gabriel can’t hide forever. He’ll try to get somewhere where they can get out, and sneak away.”
Joshua studied the house. Neptune was right—the Mordin were guarding what had to be the doors, one front and one back. “They could go out a window, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
But even as he said it, it seemed wrong. The green and silver dots—short streaks now, moving faster—were moving toward the middle of the house. In fact, they moved to dead center, and came to a stop.
“But wait,” he said. “They’re—”
“They’re what?”
He studied the dots. The black trails of the Mordin were closing in from both sides, north and south. The golem was creeping over the north wall. They were close now, so close. Get outside—of course. It was the only way.
“Does April’s house have a porch?” he asked quickly. “With a roof?”
“Yes. Front and back.”
“I can get them. I’m going to get them.” He looked down at Arthur. “I’m going to get her.”
The raven bobbed his head eagerly, eyeing him. “Getter,” he squawked hoarsely. “Getter.”
Neptune stood up, standing gingerly on her injured ankle. She didn’t ask how he knew, or if he was sure, and he sort of loved her for that. “I’m coming with,” she said.
“Of course you are,” said Joshua, and he took the Laithe all the way down to where he needed to go.
IN THE NEW, blinding light of the sun, the humour torn away, April searched for Gabriel. He stood on the peak of the roof like the captain of a ship in a storm. He clenched the Staff of Obro with both fists, his face twisted with anger and effort. He grimaced and grunted. “Get . . . out!”
The Auditor. From somewhere unseen, the filthy parasite had entered the staff. She was wrestling Gabriel for control of the humour, and he couldn’t keep them covered. They were exposed to the world now.
Without the least bit of effort or intent, April opened her mind wide to every possibility of the Ravenvine. In an instant, countless animal minds tumbled into her own, from every direction. Patient spiders in the attic and under the eaves, teeming ants in the woodwork, peaceful carpenter bees on the back porch. Earthworms and beetles and roly-polys, down in the dirt. And in the trees all around, brighter minds, less oblivious minds. Squirrels and sparrows. A cardinal pair. And keenest of all, three crows, watching from the north. All of this came to her in an instant, flooding her. The sharp sight of one of the crows lay over her own, easy and familiar and keen. She saw herself, saw all of them, perched insanely on this roof, as helpless as stranded nestlings, while chaos roiled around them.
Because there were shouts now, from down below, from everywhere. They’d been seen by more than crows. On one side of the house, two Mordin on the lawn. One of them reached casually up to the porch roof, fourteen feet up, and began to climb, watching April greedily. And on the other side, an even worse sight—Dr. Jericho. He began to climb too, but as he climbed, the golem rose out of the grass all around him, helping to lift him, bearing him up like some horrible serpent riding the waves of a black sea.
Isabel saw them coming too. She plucked desperately at her harp, first this way and then that. The Mordin on the south cried out and crumpled, falling to the ground. Isabel had severed him. April heard his rasping shout through a dozen ears, watched him fall through her own eyes and the distant crow’s. But the Mordin struggled to find his feet again the moment he hit the ground. His companion hoisted him, and together they began to climb once again.
On the other side, Dr. Jericho folded over for just a moment in obvious pain—Isabel had gotten to him, too—but it was far too brief, and he did not fall. The golem held him fast, and after a vigorous shake of his evil head, he grinned at them.
“The power you wielded was never truly yours, Forsworn,” he sang. “And neither is this quarrel. Step aside.”
Isabel cursed at him. She severed him again, but still it no more than staggered him. Now two more Mordin appeared below him, climbing up the golem’s growing face. And through the crow, through the entire teeming mass of life all around the house, April knew even more were coming. The hated Auditor was on the front porch, fists clenched as she fought her silent mental battle with Gabriel. Gaunt shadows moved behind the windows of the house. The Mordin were everywhere. They couldn’t be stopped.
“The Altari have taken your friends,” Dr. Jericho said, and smiled cruelly ag
ain at Isabel. “Or daughter, as the case may be. But they won’t come back for you.”
Isabel shrieked with rage. She threw the little white harp at Dr. Jericho.
“No!” April cried as the Mordin swatted the harp away. It splintered into shrapnel.
The humour swallowed them briefly again. Light and sound ceased to be.
“Sit tight,” said Gabriel, his voice curling with effort. “I’m going to set this right.”
“Don’t do it,” said Isabel. “We can—” The humour vanished again, leaving her last word to spill out into the open air. “—surrender.”
Dr. Jericho was even closer now. Just ten feet below her, his outstretched hand clawed at the shingles, tearing them like cloth.
The crow in the tree cawed. April saw herself, her hair shining in the sun. She saw Gabriel, neck bent, the handle of the staff pressed against his forehead. Isabel, on her hands and knees. She saw the Mordin climbing toward them like monsters out of the deep. And then one more thing, hardly an arm’s length behind her at the top of it all—an astonishing, wonderful thing, a shimmer in the air.
A circling glint of floating gold.
THE RABBIT RAN. The portal began to open wide. The first thing Joshua saw was April, straddling the peak of the roof. She was looking away, but then she swung her head back toward him, right at the portal. Her eyes were cloudy and faraway, the way they were when she used the Ravenvine. But he knew she couldn’t see him, not while he stood on this side of the one-way door, holding the Laithe.
Twenty feet past April, Gabriel stood holding his staff. He looked like he was in pain. There was no sign of the humour. But there was someone else, lying on her belly between them, clinging to the roof. Isabel.
The rabbit slammed to a stop. The portal was wide and clear.
“Ready,” he said to Neptune, and she was through it in a flash, launching herself into the air. Joshua staggered a bit as she did it—something pulsed in his head, a flicker of a shadow across his mind, like a bird across the sun. That was new. Had he actually felt her going through the portal?
No time to wonder. On the other side, Neptune hovered high above the others. Heads turned up to her, listening. But no one could get back through the portal to safety without Joshua, without the Laithe.
He stepped through right behind her, carrying the glowing golden sphere. He barely felt the portal as he passed. But as he stepped into sunshine, and into the foul stink of brimstone, he forgot he was going from flat ground onto a steep roof. Stupidly, he fell.
For a second he slid. The shingles tore at his knees and hands. But April, kind April, reached out and caught his wrist, stopping him. Her mouth flashed a smile of relief at him. Her eyes were wide with fright.
“Go,” he said, jerking his head toward the portal. And then something grabbed his leg, tearing him away, hauling him upside down into the air. Joshua hugged the Laithe to his chest.
“Patience is a virtue after all,” sang Dr. Jericho, grinning victoriously into Joshua’s face. “Have you come to reconsider?” The Mordin was half wrapped in the golem. It slithered around his legs, holding him aloft on the rooftop. Two other Mordin climbed up it from lower down, and two more were coming from the other side of the roof. Then Dr. Jericho glanced over through the portal, where Neptune’s room in the Warren was plain to see. “Oh my,” said Dr. Jericho. “Oh my, oh my.”
Joshua thought he might faint. He’d been so stupid. He saw it now and couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t before.
He’d opened a door to the Warren right in the middle of a pack of Riven.
Before he could even pretend to imagine some way to fix the problem, to take back his terrible mistake, something fell from the sky. It crashed into Dr. Jericho’s wrist. Joshua heard the crisp snap of a bone breaking in his arm, and the Mordin dropped him with a painful growl, toppling backward. Joshua fell belly first onto the roof and started clawing his way up the slope. Neptune crouched there—she’d dropped in from high above, saving him. She clutched her ankle briefly, wincing, but then sprang back into the air.
A shadowy pulse swept across Joshua’s mind, his vision. He looked up to see Isabel crawling through the portal, back into the Warren.
And then he saw nothing.
The humour was back. Gabriel’s voice roared through it. “Now!” he cried. “April, go!”
Apparently Gabriel was guiding her through the humour somehow, because Joshua felt her pass. She was safe. She was safe, and the Riven were blind for the moment.
“Neptune, go!” said Gabriel. “We’re right behind you.”
“One more,” Neptune said. “Got to clear a path.” Joshua felt the roof shake beneath him as she dropped onto another Mordin.
Suddenly a thousand crawling fingers slithered up onto Joshua’s legs. The golem, cold and strong. But then a firm hand—a human hand—scooped him up from under his armpit, and yanked him free. “We’ll go together,” said Gabriel, dragging him.
“I have to go through last,” Joshua told him.
“I’ll make sure you do.”
Joshua felt Neptune slip through the portal. Just he and Gabriel were left now. Joshua could feel the meridian looming, very close, the portal pulsing with power. He could feel the globe tucked under his arm, greeting it.
“We’re going,” said Gabriel, and then something terrible happened.
Joshua wasn’t alone with the Laithe. Someone else was there, some . . . thing. Another mind, reaching for the Laithe and the Meridian too, willing the rabbit to run. This new mind was trying to shut the portal. Joshua fought back before he even understood, as fiercely as he could, forcing the portal to stay open. It was an Auditor, all through him, all through the Laithe—across its surface and through the ring, into the blue eyes of the rabbit.
It happened fast. Hardly more than a second. But this was far worse than the Nevren. This was a kidnapping, an invasion, a theft. He threw every bit of anger he had at the Auditor, but she wouldn’t budge. She knew everything about the portal that he did, understood everything it could do. A fury blazed up inside him, a hate he’d never known he could summon.
He was falling backward now, into the portal. He felt Gabriel go first, and the humour winked out. Sunshine blinded Joshua. And then he went too, still clutching at the Laithe’s power. He thought he saw the Auditor, a pale figure snarling at him beautifully from the other end of the roof, staring with bright blue eyes that seemed to see . . . everything. And then the golem rose up over all.
Joshua fell into the Warren. The Auditor’s terrible presence vanished at once. The Laithe was his again. Completely his.
He lay in Neptune’s room atop Gabriel, heaving. “Well done, Keeper,” Gabriel said. “Well done.”
Other voices murmured at him, worrying over him, congratulating him. He could barely hear them, barely see their faces. On the other side of the portal, the golem was rearing up over the meridian, blanketing it.
Joshua squirmed to his feet. He asked the rabbit to run. It listened to him. Only to him. The portal closed swiftly, the rooftop and the golem vanishing from sight. When the rabbit stopped, Joshua plucked the meridian from the air, hands trembling. He didn’t say anything to anyone.
He’d brought them back to the Warren. Out of the thick of danger, away from Dr. Jericho, and away from that awful Auditor. He’d opened that window—Joshua had, and Joshua alone—into the one safe place they had.
The one safe place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Veritas
WHATEVER ELSE COULD BE SAID ABOUT KA’HOKA, IT WAS CERTAINLY more comfortable than the Warren.
Horace lay on a stuffed mattress bigger than any bed he’d ever seen before—ten feet long and nearly as wide. The room he rested in now had its own peculiar light, too, whiter than the amber lights that lit the Great Burrow. They shone from behind round openings high in the stone walls, like little windows. If he got tired enough, and let his eyes droop enough, he could almost forget that he was hundreds of feet undergrou
nd.
But he wasn’t very tired, despite coasting on only three hours of sleep, and despite the undeniable comfort of the huge mattress on this bed. He was too antsy, too eager for whatever was going to happen next. It didn’t help that he knew when that next thing would happen. The box had told him. It was 5:35 in the afternoon, and at 5:44 Dailen would come and get him and take him away. He didn’t know where, exactly, but he had a guess. He and Chloe would be taken to meet the Wardens’ Council.
Brula, the scarred Altari who’d greeted them that morning—was “greeted” the right word?—was one of the Council members. The leader, if Horace was reading the situation correctly. Once Horace had revealed the Fel’Daera, Brula had acted quickly. Several of the Altari had hustled forward to take Horace away, separating him and Chloe. Horace suspected that only Dailen’s intervention had prevented them from actually locking him up. Not that he wasn’t a kind of prisoner now anyway—the room’s wooden door, ordinary in every respect except for being twelve feet tall, was definitely locked. But behind that locked door, the accommodations were very nice. He’d been given clear, cool water, and a truly gigantic loaf of some weighty, spicy bread.
Best of all, they hadn’t separated him and Chloe, which was just as well, because they couldn’t have held her even if they wanted to. She would have come looking for him, and all sorts of trouble might have ensued. He looked over at her now, curled up into her usual sleeping ball on the room’s other huge bed, looking extra tiny. She’d been asleep for hours. He envied her.
They’d been promised a meeting with the Council sometime today. Dailen seemed to think there was nothing to worry about, and was sure that Brula would do as he’d promised. But unable to leave something knowable unknown, Horace had used the box that morning to fast-forward through the day, to see when things would begin. And now the time was nearly here.
Idly, he fussed with the box. He played with the breach, filling and emptying the silver sun. He was working on nice round numbers—twelve hours, four hours, ten minutes, thirty seconds. He thought of his mom, and where she must be now, what she must be worrying. As far as he knew, no word had gotten back to Mr. Meister and the others at all.