The Keepers #4 Read online

  Dedication

  For the entire Mulholland gang,

  in all their noisy glory

  I couldn’t ask for a better family.

  Epigraph

  Your children are not your children.

  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. . . .

  You may house their bodies but not their souls,

  for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

  which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

  — KAHLIL GIBRAN

  Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

  — WALT WHITMAN

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Approaching Thunder

  The War Party

  In the Pit

  The Empath

  The Fates of the Unchosen

  Tangled Universes

  Rescued

  Approaching Thunder

  Earthen Sky

  The Corners of the Earth

  The Great Council

  The Same Fire

  What Could Have Been Known

  The Faded

  Through the Mothergate

  The Starlit Loom

  A Great Need

  A Refusal Refused

  Seven Minutes, Six Days

  The Sending

  Uroboros

  Memories

  A Traveler’s Tale

  The Story Told

  The Answers to Everything

  Epilogue

  The Boy Who Knew Tomorrow

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Approaching Thunder

  Chapter One

  The War Party

  TRAVELING BY MAL’GAMA AT NIGHT WAS ALMOST ENOUGH TO make Chloe forget everything.

  Not that she wanted to forget. In fact, she was annoyed that so much of her anger had slipped away—anger about the Warren, her home and sanctuary for these past few months, now invaded and conquered by the Riven. Anger at Joshua, whose fault it sort of was and who was maybe a traitor. Anger at Isabel—that was a given. Anger at Mr. Meister and Brian and Sil’falo Teneves and the rest of the Wardens, who had hidden the wretched truth about the Mothergates all this time.

  It had only been a day since the Warren had fallen.

  A day since she had learned she was going to die.

  But up here, Chloe found it hard to cling to that anger. It was well past midnight. The mal’gama sped through the darkness, a thousand feet above the open farmland of Illinois, carrying its small crew of Wardens. All around them, the night sky was a black dome of unbroken cloud. Somehow it seemed right that there were no stars, since Horace wasn’t here to name them. Chloe was glad he’d stayed behind. It was safer for him back at Ka’hoka, a sanctuary deeper and better protected than the Warren had ever been. The thought made her almost sleepy, him being safe.

  And it didn’t hurt that the mal’gama itself, a massive carpet of small soft stones, cradled Chloe as it flew, undulating like water. The front edge of the mal’gama had formed into a kind of a prow, so that the wind barely licked at her short black hair. The overall sensation, she realized, as she fiddled with the Alvalaithen hanging from her neck, felt a little bit like going thin and diving into the dark earth, soaring through solid ground, as only she could. Except that here she was not in control. And although she hated to admit it, not being in control right now was . . . nice.

  She supposed Dwen’dailen Longo, the Altari warrior, was in control. That was nice too. The mal’gama wasn’t Tan’ji, and so it didn’t have a Keeper, but Dailen wore the ring that controlled the huge Tanu. Did that make him the pilot? The dog walker? Flying carpet wrangler? She’d been watching the young Altari, to see what he did, but he didn’t do much. Maybe the mal’gama had a bit of a mind of its own. All Chloe knew was, they were going fast. Fast was good. The faster the better.

  This was a rescue mission. Allegedly. And Chloe had to admit that the rescue team she was a part of was definitely badass, even if the word “team” made her gag a little. Besides herself and Dailen, five other Keepers rode the mal’gama now, all of them Wardens. They were headed back to Chicago to try and save those who had been captured by the Riven in the raid on the Warren. They were going to find Mr. Meister, for sure. And possibly Joshua too, whether he wanted to be saved or not. And maybe Isabel—her mother.

  Even if the word made Chloe gag a little.

  If her mother was even alive.

  Most of the Wardens’ Council was here, with their towering bodies and their powerful Tan’ji. The hulking Go’nesh carried his blue-bladed staff, the Fairfrost Blade, whose every swing left a swath of impenetrable ice hanging in the air. Okay, not quite ice and not quite impenetrable. But bitterly cold and brutally dense, as Chloe knew all too well. Beside him, dark and surly, Ravana wore her faultless wooden bow over her shoulders. Named Pinaka, it was as thick as a man’s arm and three times as long. And off to Chloe’s side, exasperatingly beautiful Teokas had her . . . whatever it was. Some kind of bracelet. Thailadun, she called it: the Moondoor. She’d shown it to Horace, but Chloe had no idea what it did, and it was nagging at her. Whenever Chloe glanced over at Teokas now—a painfully graceful silhouette, a magnet for anyone’s eyes, her long legs dangling over the edge of the mal’gama—it seemed Teokas was looking back at her.

  Gabriel was here too, the tallest of the humans, though still dwarfed by the Altari. He sat with Dailen, well back from the edge, the Staff of Obro across his lap. The staff was the only cure for Gabriel’s blindness, and a temporary one at that, but he would never use it here. Not when calling forth the humour that gave him sight meant blinding everyone else.

  Gabriel and Dailen were talking animatedly in low voices, even laughing now and again. Other than Chloe, Gabriel was the youngest here, five or six years older than she was. And as far as she understood it, Dailen was not much older than Gabriel, in Altari years—he was a kind of teenager himself. Barely an adult, anyway. But because the Altari lived much longer, Dailen was closer to eighty than eighteen.

  The final member of the party sat with Gabriel and Dailen, mostly silent. Mrs. Hapsteade bent over her own lap, tiny and dark, her prim black dress piled around her. Every now and again she muttered something quietly to Dailen. Unlike the others, Mrs. Hapsteade hadn’t come to fight. Her Tan’ji was no kind of weapon; it was useful only in identifying the powers of new Keepers. But she had insisted on carrying the Tanu that told them where to go, a compass whose red needle pointed straight at Mr. Meister.

  Before being captured, he’d swallowed a small Tan’kindi called a backjack, and as long as it was inside him—no matter where the Riven might take him—this compass would track him down. The others assumed the old man must still be in the Warren, deep under the streets of downtown Chicago. But Chloe wasn’t so sure. If she were the Riven, she would have gotten Mr. Meister out of there quick. The Warren might have fallen, but she suspected it was still full of traps, and Mr. Meister certainly knew them all.

  But whatever. Wherever the compass took them, that’s where they would go. Chloe was ready. She was ready because she had no idea what else to do.

  And she had to do something.

  The mal’gama rippled beneath her, pulsing. Teokas walked along its very edge, coming toward her, the green stones shifting under her graceful steps. She was small for an Altari, only seven feet tall or so. Watching her move, it occurred to Chloe that Teokas wasn’t as old as Chloe had thought—again, for an Altari. Older than Dailen, but younger than her splendor and confide
nce made her seem. Maybe a hundred years old? It was hard to guess, to say the least.

  Teokas stopped beside her, gazing down over the edge of the mal’gama, looking like the sculpture of some untouchable goddess atop a windswept cliff. Or something equally daunting and majestic. Her Tan’ji, the Moondoor, hung from a strap around her wrist, a shadowed sphere as big as a plum.

  Chloe frowned up at her, opening her mouth for the first time since they’d left Ka’hoka. “Will the Moondoor save you if you fall?” Chloe asked. “You seem pretty carpe diem about the whole falling-to-your-death thing.”

  Teokas laughed, a thick, enchanting chorus of oboes and low bells. All of the Altari had rich, musical voices, but Teokas’s voice was especially full of slinky woodwinds and soft percussion. As Brian had put it, she sounded like the sultry part of the orchestra.

  “It won’t save me, no,” Teokas crooned. “But it is hard to fall off the mal’gama.” Abruptly, she took a step forward, as if she planned to walk right off the edge. With a leathery rustle, the mal’gama shifted in an instant, stretching out to catch her foot just as it alighted.

  “Teokas, please,” Dailen said, looking over.

  “Ji tolvë tanduvra?” Teokas said lightly, stepping back. Chloe only understood a few words of Altari, and none of these, but Teokas was obviously teasing. Flirting, maybe.

  “When do you never?” Dailen replied, and Teokas and the other Altari all laughed.

  Teokas sank to the floor beside Chloe, stretching out her long form as the mal’gama rose to meet her. “What I’ve always wondered,” she said quietly to Chloe, as if in confidence, “is whether he could stop it from saving me.”

  Chloe shrugged. “He couldn’t stop it from saving me, if I didn’t want him to.” She blushed as the words left her. It seemed like one of the stupider things she’d ever said.

  “No, I suppose not,” said Teokas. “Even Go’nesh couldn’t stop you.” She gazed at the Alvalaithen, openly fascinated. Even in the feeble light, Chloe could see the golden rings around Teokas’s dark irises, like halos. When Teokas blinked, her crisscrossed double eyelids seemed to flicker. Suddenly the Altari frowned at Chloe’s Tan’ji. “Why a dragonfly, do you suppose?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not complaining. Our Tan’ji are what they are. But why do you suppose your Maker chose a dragonfly?”

  Chloe looked down at the Alvalaithen. She didn’t much like the question. Perfectly white, with intricate mazy wings, the dragonfly was precisely what it needed to be. Chloe tapped briefly into its sweet song, letting its power fill her. How many more times would she get to do this before the Mothergates died? The dragonfly’s wings fluttered buzzily, blurring. She felt her body go thin, become a ghost. She kept herself afloat atop the mal’gama’s rippling stones with no effort whatsoever, though she could’ve just as easily fallen straight through them, with nothing to stop her. Not even Dailen. After a moment, making sure everything was clear of her flesh, she released the Alvalaithen. Its song left her, and the dragonfly’s wings went still.

  “Wings,” Chloe said. “I can fly underground.”

  “I know. I witnessed as much, in the Proving Room.”

  “Oh, but you didn’t know that Alvalaithen means ‘Earthwing’?” Chloe said, letting her voice bend with irony. “I could have sworn I just heard you speaking your own language.”

  “You did,” said Teokas earnestly, as if sarcasm were so far beneath her it couldn’t touch her. “But why a dragonfly, and not a bird? We are fond of birds, we Altari.”

  Mrs. Hapsteade’s voice rang out in the dark. “A dragonfly is always a predator,” she said.

  “Ah,” said Teokas, as if that answered everything. She pointed at Chloe’s forearm, where two dagger-shaped patches of dark skin ran from palm to elbow, front and back. “These are the scars of a predator, then?”

  “You could say that,” Chloe replied. She still remembered the awful burn of the crucible the day she’d gotten these scars. Certainly not her only scars, or even the worst. Still, it had been one of the two or three most excruciating things she’d ever done, extinguishing the Riven’s mind-consuming flame with her own flesh and bone. Were they heading to another Riven nest even now? Would there be another crucible dog there, with its beckoning green fire?

  “I know how you got the scars,” said Teokas. “But you won’t tell me the full story, will you? You’re not a bragger.”

  Now Gabriel stirred. “Chloe brags before she does things,” he said. “Not after.”

  Chloe found herself fighting a sudden grin of pleasure. This was maybe the nicest thing Gabriel had ever said about her.

  “Confidence,” Teokas sang, smiling at her. “I respect that.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Chloe, “it’s easy to be confident when you know you’re going to die. Consequences schmonsequences, am I right?”

  Teokas blinked at her thoughtfully, and then clearly chose to pretend she hadn’t understood what Chloe meant. “I wonder if your friend Horace feels the same way. The Keeper of the Fel’Daera deals purely in consequences, after all.” She shook her head as if in wonder. “My talents have to do with time too, but Horace is on another level altogether, far beyond my own.”

  Across the mal’gama, Ravana raised her head, watching them. Go’nesh stood beside her like a boulder. It was no secret that Horace hadn’t come with them tonight because his Tan’ji, the Fel’Daera, made some of the Altari uneasy. Most of the Altari were still adjusting to the fact that the Fel’Daera still existed, since it was supposed to have been destroyed long ago. Chloe blamed them for their discomfort, but only a little—partly because Horace was better off where he was and partly because, well . . . it wasn’t exactly easy, having a companion who could see the future.

  Horace could only see one day into the future, sure. One day at most. And only in his immediate surroundings, looking through the rippled blue glass of the Fel’Daera, the Box of Promises. But to be honest, when Horace looked through the box and then told you your future, told you—just for example—that you were going to let yourself be captured by the Riven, or that you were going to surrender your Tan’ji, or that you were almost definitely going to figure out a way to survive some deadly dangerous thing you hadn’t even imagined yet . . .

  No pressure. No biggie.

  Just your fate.

  On a plate.

  No, it wasn’t always easy being Horace’s friend, even for Chloe, even though she trusted Horace with her life. In fact, she had done precisely that, more than once, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. She trusted Horace more than she trusted herself.

  Chloe looked Teokas in the eye. “Horace is on a whole other level, yes,” she said.

  She meant it as a dig. But Teokas gave her a warm, eager smile in return, not at all condescending. Not the knowing smirk of a grown-up, but a childish smile of enthusiasm. Chloe realized abruptly that Teokas didn’t fear Horace; she admired him.

  “I’m glad you have such a friend, truly,” Teokas said. “We’ll all have need of good friends in the days to come.”

  Chloe decided to stop trying not to like her.

  They sailed on, she and Teokas sitting silently side by side. After a while, the glow of Chicago became plain in the northeastern sky, lighting the clouds above. Eventually the city itself came into view, a golden spiderweb of light. Or half a spiderweb, anyway. On the far side, the spray of light ended abruptly, the dark unbroken expanse of Lake Michigan stretching out to the far horizon beyond.

  “About the Mothergates,” Chloe said, and she had no idea why she was saying it. She had no idea what she expected Teokas to tell her.

  “What do you want me to say?” Teokas said, when it became clear Chloe wasn’t going to finish. “That we will survive?”

  “I want you to tell me that the Mothergates have to die. Tell me that the Riven are wrong to want to keep the Mothergates open.”

  Teokas shrugged. “They are not wrong to want. But they are
wrong to try to make it happen. If the Mothergates remain open, the entire world will come to an end.”

  “And you’re staking your life on that.”

  “My life is not the issue.” Teokas pointed at the sprawling city lights below. “You have family down there, I think. Will you stake their lives that the Riven are correct? That the Mothergates should be forced to remain open, and our powers allowed to live on, regardless of the consequences?” She spread her great arms wide, encompassing the city as whole. “Will you stake all these lives?”

  Chloe glared down at the city, practically beneath them now. Her father was down there somewhere, and her sister too. She said, “I asked Falo what would happen to us Keepers when the Mothergates die. When the source of our power is cut off, and we lose our bonds with our Tan’ji.”

  Teokas nodded. “Vital bonds,” she murmured, holding Thailadun aloft. “Bonds that cannot be safely broken.”

  “Falo said—and I’m quoting here—‘Some may survive.’”

  “Maybe,” said Teokas. “But if the Mothergates remain open, no one will survive.”

  “Define ‘no one.’”

  Teokas fixed Chloe with her golden-green gaze. “No one you have ever known, or ever will, or ever could.”

  A shiver jittered down Chloe’s arms, nothing to do with the sky’s night air. “That’s . . . very thorough,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “The Mothergates cannot remain,” Gabriel said suddenly. “The Riven cannot be allowed to save them. Mr. Meister is the Chief Taxonomer, and he knows more about the Tanu and the Mothergates than any living Keeper, except perhaps Sil’falo Teneves herself. He would never betray us, but we cannot risk the Riven learning what he knows.”

  “We’ll save him, then,” said Chloe. “So that he can die when we win this war.” She meant for the words to sound bitter, but they spilled into the air like a resolution. Like a fate that had already been sealed and delivered.

  “Spoken like a true Altari,” Teokas said, and she laughed. “We’ll rescue him to death.”