The Portal and the Veil

by Ted Sanders

  At Horace’s side, Chloe grunted in angry approval, startling him. He’d been so intent on hearing the story, he’d almost forgotten her. But now a cold and ragged realization flooded over him. Isabel. No one had even implied that Chloe’s mother might still be alive. Far from it.

  “Hey,” he began softly, nudging her.

  “No,” she whispered sharply, her voice like a falling blade. Horace looked away.

  Brula, meanwhile, had no answer for Sil’falo Teneves. Falo turned her back on him and spread her graceful arms to the refugees from the Warren. “Come with me, all of you. Join me in my chambers. This is a time for companionship, not confrontation.”

  She turned to leave. The Wardens and Horace’s mom fell in behind her, and Horace and Chloe got to their feet.

  Brula stood too. “I would remind you that our secrets are still sacred, Sil’falo Teneves,” he said.

  Without so much as a glance back, Falo replied, “Yes, and I regret ever sharing them with you.”

  They left. Horace found himself wishing Dailen was here, with his sureness and his steady good humor. But the Altari were on high alert after Joshua’s portal, and apparently Dailen was still needed above. Meanwhile, here below, the Wardens’ dismal little procession moved mostly in silence. Horace snuck worried glances at his mom—they’d barely spoken since she arrived, just a long hug and calm reassurances that they were both okay—but he was worried just the same. She’d given up her harp. That had to mean something. A pain, maybe, that she’d keep for herself.

  Falo led them back to the guard with the green ax, back through the narrow, rough-hewn cave, and into the grand vaulted chamber beyond. Arthur rose high into the air above them. April gasped.

  “What do you see?” asked Brian. He stood with his hands buried in the surface of Tunraden, looking like a prisoner.

  April shook her head, her eyes still cloudy.

  “You are an empath,” Falo said, not really asking. “Do you feel it?”

  April looked up sharply, searching Falo’s face. “Yes,” she said simply. “I felt it the moment I stepped through the portal.”

  Falo seemed impressed but unsurprised. “You are terribly strong. It may be hard for you, then, when we get closer.”

  Horace could only assume Falo meant the intense thickness of the Medium as they got closer to the Mothergate. Maybe April, being a powerful empath, was especially sensitive to it. Not that he could imagine why, or how.

  On the far side of the chamber, the great white doors split open for Falo. The Medium surged richly around Horace, through him, into the box and Horace’s flesh, his bones.

  “Oh, there it is,” said Neptune, lifting lightly off the floor. Gabriel twisted his hands around the Staff of Obro, making them squeak. April cocked her head down and to the side, as if she were walking into a powerful wind.

  They reached Falo’s chambers. Gabriel and Mrs. Hapsteade took seats on two of the human-sized chairs. Brian set Tunraden on the floor, freeing his hands, while Neptune hovered over one of the giant Altari seats. Mrs. Hapsteade pulled out the little silver compass, and the four of them began discussing Mr. Meister’s whereabouts—whether he was still in the Warren or not. Across the room, Falo was crouched down in front of Horace’s mom, and they murmured to each other like old friends.

  Chloe was looking at Mrs. Hapsteade, clearly still uninterested in talking. Horace glanced over at April. She stood alone at the entrance to the tall, narrow passageway that lay straight ahead, staring down it, gazing at the rippling white light that swam in the distance. The Mothergate lay that way. And it was clear April could feel it.

  Chloe, still watching Mrs. Hapsteade and the others as they fussed over the compass, suddenly spoke. “I don’t know why you care,” she said to them.

  Neptune’s head snapped around. Mrs. Hapsteade sat up straight.

  “Chloe, what are you talking about?” Horace asked.

  “I don’t know why anyone really cares about the Warren,” she said. “About the Tanu that were lost. About any of it. You heard what Falo said, Horace, and I’m sure we’re the last to know—the Mothergates really are dying. Soon there won’t be any more Tan’ji, not even us. So why should we care about what happened today? Or any of the days we’ve been with the Wardens?” The dragonfly’s wings were fluttering wildly, but Horace wasn’t sure she even noticed. She went on, getting louder. “Why should I even care about the people we lost tonight? Why shouldn’t I just go home to my dad and my sister and my aunt and be with them—be with my family?”

  Horace wanted desperately to argue with her. And maybe she was just lashing out, talking about her family because there was little reason to believe her mother was even alive. Everything that had happened tonight mattered. Of course it did.

  And yet.

  She wasn’t wrong. Logically speaking, wasn’t this a pointless fight? Horace felt the heavy flows of the Medium coursing through the Fel’Daera, thick and alive. He watched April in the doorway, her eyes still locked on the light that quivered in the distance. The Mothergate down there was fading. When it and the other two Mothergates went out, the power of the Fel’Daera—and all the rightness and wholeness it brought to Horace—would forever cease. What would he be then? Would he even be?

  He realized his mother was watching him. Her eyes were agonizing pools of sadness, still and deep. She knew, of course. She’d always known. He could barely scratch the surface of the idea.

  “Your thoughts are misguided, Keeper,” Mrs. Hapsteade said to Chloe. “You don’t yet know everything you should.”

  “Well, I wonder whose fault that is,” Chloe snapped. “All I know is, I’ve been asked to battle the Riven to save my Tan’ji, and now I find out my Tan’ji is doomed anyway. How does that make sense?”

  Falo stood, towering over them. She spread her long, elegant hands, her fingers like rays of light. “These are fair questions,” she said. “Because of the Mothergates’ impending death, our struggle with the Riven may seem pointless. Why should a setting sun bother to battle a passing cloud?”

  “Exactly,” said Chloe doubtfully, obviously confused by Falo’s agreement.

  “However,” Falo continued, “the fall of the Warren, and the capture of the Chief Taxonomer, and above all the loss of the Laithe—these are not mere clouds. With the Laithe, and with the power and knowledge held within the Warren, the Riven may be able to find the Mothergates at last. That cannot happen.”

  Chloe scoffed. “What do you think the Riven are going to do?” she said. “Make the Mothergates die faster?”

  “Enough of this talk,” April said suddenly, softly, still fixed on the distant, swimming light. “Enough of this listening. I need to see.” And then she left the room, stepping into the passageway.

  “She is right,” said Falo. “It is time to see. It is time to understand.” She looked around the room. “If you have never stood before the Veil, come with me now.”

  Horace stood up, his knees threatening to buckle. Chloe rose beside him. No one else moved. “Seriously?” said Chloe, looking around.

  “I went when I was younger,” Neptune said. “After I was solidly through the Find. It was required of me.” Gabriel nodded.

  “Even me,” said Brian sheepishly.

  “Go and see,” Mrs. Hapsteade told them. “Go and learn.”

  Falo entered the hallway after April, walking slowly. She nearly filled its narrow heights. Horace and Chloe went after. Horace’s heart was a racehorse, his belly a pit.

  The Medium grew ever thicker as they walked. The slowly flickering lights grew thicker, too, heavy washes of brilliance between bands of utter black. Horace’s hand felt warm, and he realized Chloe had taken it. She’d released the dragonfly, and together they walked this way, into the deepening light and power.

  At last they emerged into a place with no walls, no ceiling. The size of the place seemed to crush him, make him small. A vast curtain of light—the Veil of Lura—arched high over them like a crashing wave t
hat never fell, rippling with a brilliance so complete Horace was sure it could be touched, felt. It blinded him but caused no pain. He stared wide-eyed into it, at April standing tiny at its foot, seeming to glow.

  But there was something beyond that curtain. Something Horace couldn’t see or even imagine, a presence that seemed to know him, that seemed to somehow be him in some small and flickering way, him and the Fel’Daera both. It was expecting them, had been waiting for them all along.

  April turned. “I need to see what it is,” she said. “It’s hurting. I need get through—how do we get through?”

  Sil’falo Teneves approached the arching Veil. Even she looked small beneath it. “You could learn to find your own way,” she said to April, “but I will lead you this time. And the others will certainly need my help.” She took April’s hand in one of her own, and turned to Horace and Chloe, holding out the other.

  Chloe moved forward, pulling Horace toward the Veil. They came up beside April and Falo, and Chloe took the Altari’s hand. The light swam across April’s clouded, worried eyes.

  “I’m afraid,” April said. “I’m afraid of what’s on the other side. The Mothergate, it . . .”

  “The Wardens like to say that fear is a stone, and to wish that that stone will be light,” Falo said. “But I cannot pretend that the stone that lies ahead of you now will be not be heavy. The heaviest stone you have yet encountered.”

  “Is it dangerous to be near the Mothergate?” Horace asked.

  “No,” Falo said. “That’s not the danger I mean. Those who come to the Veil come to learn the truth, and that truth will be your stone today.” And then as one of the roving pillars of light swept past her, she stepped inside, pulling them with her.

  Inside the Veil, an ocean of moving light, coming from and going to nowhere, everywhere. Their footsteps fell upon a floor their eyes wouldn’t see, featureless and white.

  They kept walking. Deeper into the presence that pressed against them like the heat of an unseen sun, the push of a motionless wind. Then a darkness ahead, slowly coalescing until it became a bulging black mass. Slowly the darkness grew, rippling and swaying, suspended like a great slab of dark water that gravity couldn’t touch.

  The Mothergate. It burned with intensity, a furnace that gave off no heat. Meanwhile the Fel’Daera was its own magnificent fire, a newborn thing, straining with a power that coursed through Horace’s veins.

  Chloe dropped Horace’s hand, and Falo’s too. At her throat, the Alvalaithen bled a blinding light as bright as the Veil itself.

  Falo approached the pulsing, suspended Mothergate. It towered over her, twice her size, though Horace wasn’t sure what size meant in this place. “Come closer,” Falo told them. “Come and witness.”

  They went. As they drew nearer, Horace began to see specks of light within the Mothergate, streaking outward toward the surface. It was impossibly deep, a thing that could be seen into forever—into, but never through. Its blackness was total, threatening to erase itself. And yet it was the most . . . present thing Horace had ever seen. A miracle of sheer being.

  April crept up close. “It’s alive,” she whispered.

  Falo reached out a hand to the teeming mass, and it billowed toward her, sparkling and black, caressing her palm, seeming to greet her.

  “All the universe is alive, Keepers,” Falo said, her voice like a storyteller’s song. “But it is only alive because living things witness it. Me. You. The tiger. The tree. Our thoughtful gaze—our consciousness—is the spark that stitches the fabric of the earth and all the heavens together, and turns the very wheels of time. And here in this place, in the presence of the Mothergate, that gaze is returned. This is a gateway, a gift, an opening into the mind of the universe. Here, the universe spills its consciousness into us, just as we spill ours into it. Here, Keepers, we are seen. We are known.”

  And although Horace could barely wrap his head around it—certainly not in the way the old Horace would have needed to, the Horace who had not yet been through the Veil—still, here and now, he felt the truth of Falo’s words in every atom of his body.

  “And that consciousness spilling through the Mothergate—that’s the Medium,” he said.

  “Yes,” Falo replied. “It brings life to our instruments, connects us to the universe. It is the reason for the depth of our bonds.”

  “It’s the reason for everything,” April murmured.

  “What lies within the gateway is the reason for everything,” Falo corrected. “Not the gateway itself.” She watched April closely and then murmured, “What do you see, Keeper? What do you feel?”

  April squeezed her eyes shut. She swayed in place, her arms rigid at her side. The Ravenvine gleamed in her hair. “I see life,” she said, trembling.

  “A manifestation of life, yes,” Falo said. “A messenger without a message. A visitor without a destination.”

  “And it’s dying.” April’s cheeks shone beneath her faraway eyes.

  “But it’s the universe,” Chloe said. “It’s everything. If it’s dying—”

  “As I said, the Mothergate is not everything,” said Falo. “Merely a window . . . between everything. The universe is not dying, any more than it ever was. Only these gateways are fading, these windows. They are collapsing, as they were always destined to.”

  “And when they do collapse, our instruments will die too,” Chloe said.

  “Yes.”

  “And what about us?” said Chloe. “What about the Keepers?” This wasn’t a question that needed to be asked. Not here, not now. But somehow it seemed right that an answer should be uttered.

  “Some may survive,” Falo said simply.

  No one spoke. Horace wanted desperately to touch the Mothergate, as Falo had, hoping somehow to give it comfort, or strength. To help heal it somehow. But he was afraid. The Mothergate might scald him, freeze him, erase him, replace him. This was a window into the mind of matter itself, a messenger of space and time, a doorway into everything that ever was or ever could be. He was only Horace Andrews, a boy. He stood still and let the Mothergate’s power spill through him.

  “There’s one last secret, though,” he said. “Something we still don’t know.”

  Falo nodded. She cast her marvelous eyes at the ground, in a gesture—Horace would realize later—of apologetic shame. It reminded him of his mother. “As I said, the words are not easy,” Falo said. “And even the best words I could find would not be easy to hear.”

  “We don’t need the best words,” said Chloe, clutching the Alvalaithen. “We just need the words.”

  The Veil’s light washed over Falo, rippling slow, like moonbeams sweeping through a deep black sea. The Mothergate glittered and roiled. Falo lifted her gaze to Horace and the others in turn, her bottomless eyes soft with sadness, but unflinching. Quietly she said, “We could prevent the Mothergates from dying if we wished to.”

  Horace’s mouth went dry as Falo’s words found him. He had to play the sentence over again in his head—twice, three times. “You could . . . ,” he said at last, but got no farther. “I don’t understand.”

  “I could heal the Mothergates myself, in fact,” Falo went on, gesturing at the sparkling black well beside her. “Here and now. It would be far from the hardest thing I have ever done. But I refuse.”

  “Why?” Chloe demanded. “Because of the Riven? Are you so afraid of the Riven taking your Tan’ji that you’re willing to let it all come to an end?”

  Falo shook her head. “Our refusal to interfere with the fate of the Mothergates has nothing to do with the Riven. But our war with the Riven has everything to do with the Mothergates.”

  “The Riven want to interfere,” April said calmly.

  Horace’s head swam as the truth began to grasp him. “No,” he said. “No, no.” Dr. Jericho’s sneering voice rose in his mind, full of dark promises Horace had refused to believe.

  “It is true,” said Falo. “The Riven would save the Mothergates if they could. We
stand watch to prevent that from happening. Indeed, that is our entire purpose—to ensure that a rescue does not occur. We are not warriors. Rather, we are sentinels, custodians, guards.” She took a deep breath, straightening to her fullest height. “We are Wardens.”

  Horace could scarcely let himself hear it. With every word Falo spoke, the world seemed to roll under his feet, capsizing everything he thought he’d known.

  Chloe threw her arms open wide. “This is crazy. You’re telling us you’re prison guards. The Mothergates are your prisoners? And when they die, we’ll all die too—do you have a death wish, or something?”

  “We have no death wish,” Falo said. “Far from it. We wish for life, for all.” She lifted her gaze to the Mothergate and sighed, clutching the black oval pendant at her throat. “The truth, Keepers—the stone I lay upon you now—is that our power comes at a price. To witness the heartbeat of the universe is to invite unchartable chaos into the ordered existence that defines us. To unravel the knotted rules upon which life depends. As long as the Mothergates remain open, our world is in peril.”

  “But how?” Horace asked, fighting off her words even as they clung to him. “What chaos? What peril?”

  “I will explain, but for now I ask only that you imagine I speak the truth. There is a price for our power.” Falo looked suddenly old, as old as she must truly be, as fragile and wrinkled as the petal of a wilted flower. When she spoke again, her musical voice seeped into Horace’s flesh like a chanted dirge—into his chest, into his bones, into the Fel’Daera blazing with life. Horace’s life. “For the sake of this world, if not ourselves, the Mothergates cannot be rescued,” Falo said. “For the sake of this world—if not ourselves—the Mothergates must die.”

  GLOSSARY

  Altari (all-TAR-ee) the Makers of the Tanu, and the ancestors of the Riven

  Alvalaithen (al-vuh-LAYTH-en) Chloe’s Tan’ji, the dragonfly, the Earthwing; with it, she can become incorporeal