The Portal and the Veil Read online

  “I saw it myself, Dorothy,” Mr. Meister said. “Do you still doubt it? Even Isabel knew it to be true.”

  “She knew no such thing.”

  “How can you say that, after what has transpired here tonight?”

  “That’s not the point. There are customs to be followed. Rules to be obeyed.”

  “Yes, and I was honoring them long before you even went through the Find. But tonight—”

  Bewildered, Horace held up his hands. “Wait, wait. Can someone please explain?”

  Gabriel said, “Joshua now possesses the Laithe of Teneves. But if so, we believe it did not choose him. Neither did he choose it himself. Instead, the choice was made by another.”

  “By Isabel.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “One does not meddle with the Find,” Gabriel said stiffly. He looked furiously toward Mr. Meister, his ghostly blue eyes colder than usual. “And in the absence of a proper Find, one does not simply . . . declare that a candidate has become a Keeper.”

  Chloe made a small noise of surprise, and Horace didn’t blame her. He had never before heard Gabriel utter a word of disagreement toward Mr. Meister.

  If Mr. Meister was taken aback, he didn’t show it. “And yet one might be forgiven for making such a declaration, after the fact,” he told Gabriel calmly.

  “There is no fact without the Find.”

  “The Laithe left here tonight in Joshua’s hands,” Mr. Meister said, fussing absently with his Möbius-strip ring. “It comes as no surprise. I knew he was the Keeper of the Laithe the moment I laid eyes on him.”

  “Forgive me,” said Gabriel tersely, “but that is not for you to say.”

  “And yet I have said it.” The finality in Mr. Meister’s voice was unmistakable. He started down the steps, then paused and turned to Gabriel one last time. “One cannot turn a truth into a lie simply by refusing to hear it, Keeper. You of all people should know that.” With that, he continued down the stairs, leaving the rest to follow in uncomfortable silence, wretched and surly. Neptune floated down lightly. Despite his blindness, Gabriel descended with his usual grace, aided by a faint whisper of the Humour of Obro that seeped invisibly from the tip of his great gray staff, allowing him to sense the hazardous steps.

  Horace, Chloe, and April brought up the rear as Arthur took flight and coasted overhead.

  “That was tense,” Chloe muttered blackly.

  “Like watching parents fight,” agreed Horace.

  April frowned and said, “I don’t know how you guys usually do things, but as the new kid, I can tell you I’m a little freaked out that people are arguing about etiquette—whether the fork ought to go on the left or the right—when Brian is missing.”

  Gabriel cocked his head back at them sharply. “It is not merely a matter of etiquette,” he said gruffly. “A Keeper who is forced through the Find is vulnerable.”

  “And dangerous,” Neptune said, drawing a frown from Gabriel.

  “Vulnerable to what?” Chloe asked.

  “Outside influences,” said Gabriel. “Promises of more power. Lostlings struggle to fully settle into their roles as Keepers. They struggle to truly embrace the completeness that is Tan’ji—the surrender, the belonging. And because they struggle, they are more likely to seek comfort in dark places.”

  “The Riven, you mean,” said Horace. Immediately his thoughts went to Ingrid, the former Warden who had turned against them and joined forces with Dr. Jericho. Chloe said aloud what Horace was only thinking. “Is that what happened to Ingrid? Was she a Lostling?”

  From several yards ahead, Mr. Meister spoke, as if he’d been listening all along. “Idle chatter feeds busy rumors. Let us focus on the task in front of us.”

  At last they reached the bottom of the stairs. They passed by the mysterious bridge that spanned the Maw, and entered the tunnel to Brian’s workshop. Ordinarily the oublimort should have been here—a dark slab of woven shadow that was particularly tricky to pass through—but now it was simply gone. Horace knew Isabel must have removed it, a frightening thought.

  At their feet, Arthur strutted past and suddenly took flight, his great wings hissing audibly in the air. He flew down the passageway ahead, his raucous cries echoing painfully. One by one, they followed the bird down the hallway.

  They entered the workshop. The place was silent. Mr. Meister pointed at a curio cabinet across the room.

  “The Laithe was here in this cabinet,” he said. “I removed it from my office before bringing Joshua into the Warren, so that we could prepare for a proper Find when the time was right. But now it is gone.”

  A stool beside one of the workbenches had been tipped over. A box of rivets had been dumped onto the floor, along with a couple of unfamiliar tools. An object was lying there, made of leather, with thin, trailing straps. Arthur was plucking at one of them playfully.

  “Something Brian was working on when Isabel arrived, I believe,” Mr. Meister explained.

  April crouched down and picked up the leather object, examining it. She slapped a hand over her mouth and let out a soft, sorrowful huff of surprise.

  “What is it?” said Chloe.

  “It’s . . . it’s for me.” April stood and placed the leather object on her shoulder. She fumbled with the straps for a second, but then secured it in place. “For Arthur,” she said.

  It was a perch for the bird. To protect April from his sharp talons. Horace could see that Brian had even been engraving a vine around the edges, complete with a tiny flower just like the one that hung from the Ravenvine right in front of April’s ear. But the flower was only half finished.

  April looked to Mr. Meister, her sad hazel eyes seeming to catch fire. “Tell us where they went.”

  Silently, the old man led them deeper into the workshop, toward the back where a small, secluded chamber lay. This was where Brian kept his Tan’ji, where he used Tunraden to sculpt the Medium when creating and repairing Tanu. As they entered the little chamber, Horace sucked in his breath. Whatever had felt sacred here before had now faded, the space bigger and hollow and robbed of its weight. The usual electric bite in the air was barely noticeable. Tunraden was gone. But how?

  Mr. Meister stepped up close to the far wall and stood studying it, his hands behind his back. He bent this way and that, craning his neck. Obviously, there was something there the others couldn’t see. The left lens of Mr. Meister’s glasses was an oraculum, a Tan’ji that allowed the old man to see the invisible Medium, to perceive things about instruments and their Keepers that others could not. After several moments, Mr. Meister said, “Tell me, Horace, have you ever contemplated the Laithe of Teneves?”

  “Me?” said Horace, startled. “I guess so. A little.”

  Chloe stepped in front of Horace, as if protecting him. “What’s Horace got to do with it?”

  “I imagine he must be curious,” said Mr. Meister, still looking up and around himself. “The Laithe was made by the same hand that made the Fel’Daera, after all. It was offered to him on the day of his own Find. And now it belongs to another, whose affinities are not unlike Horace’s own.”

  Horace and Chloe exchanged a glance. Her fierce face was wrinkled with concern. “I’ve been trying not to think about it,” Horace told Mr. Meister truthfully. “But I know that you guys had Joshua use the Vora. And I saw what he wrote—the ink was blue. The same as mine.” The Vora, Mrs. Hapsteade’s Tan’ji, was used on new recruits. Before they went through the Find, potential Keepers were invited to write with the great white quill, and the color of ink they produced revealed their talents and affinities, giving a clue as to what their Tan’ji might be.

  Mr. Meister turned to face them. “His ink was similar to yours,” he stressed, tapping his glasses. “Similar, but not the same. Just as the Laithe of Teneves and the Fel’Daera are similar, but not the same.”

  “But the Laithe is a globe. A map.”

  “Yes. The Laithe is the most astonishing map that
has ever been made. A living globe, accurate down to the last tree, the last cloud, the last house. It is a marvel only Sil’falo Teneves could have devised—just like the Fel’Daera. Can you name for me another similarity between the globe and the box?”

  Gabriel leaned over his staff. He didn’t look particularly happy, but he seemed to be listening intently. Watching him, it occurred to Horace that Gabriel was only now hearing what the Laithe’s powers were. Gabriel was so competent and so self-assured, so steadily formal about the ways of the Wardens and the responsibilities of being Tan’ji, but in this moment, he was just as lost as Horace was. And maybe Gabriel’s naked curiosity in this moment was another reminder of how deep the rabbit hole ran, of how much there still was to learn. Horace would learn. He was learning right now.

  Could the Laithe have been his? After all, he’d almost reached for it that day in the House of Answers, when all of this began. But instead he had become the Keeper of the Fel’Daera. And it was strange, because the Fel’Daera cut through time, but he didn’t see what time had to do with the Laithe of Teneves. Why had it been offered to him? Besides the fact that both instruments had been created by the same maker, Sil’falo Teneves, how were the two instruments related? He churned through it logically, trying to find a way that the Fel’Daera was like the Laithe.

  “I guess . . . the Fel’Daera is a map too,” Horace said slowly. “A map to the future.”

  Mr. Meister straightened and tugged at his vest. “Excellent. But the Fel’Daera is not just a map. It has another power.”

  “Yes. I can send stuff through the Fel’Daera. So it’s like a doorway.”

  The old man nodded hungrily, his face full of that familiar, eager light, urging Horace forward. “And?”

  “And . . . and . . .” Just like that, it all fell into place. Easily, so easily. Horace felt not a trickle of surprise, not a sliver of confusion. Time and space, space and time. One was always part of the other. “The Laithe is a doorway too,” he breathed.

  Mr. Meister clapped his hands together in satisfaction. “When one travels through space, he must also travel through time, yes? And when he travels through time, he must travel through space. Like the Fel’Daera, the Laithe is a doorway. Or, to put it properly—a portal.”

  “That’s how they escaped,” Horace went on. “That’s how Isabel got Brian and Tunraden out of the Warren—with Joshua’s help.”

  “Yes. They opened a portal here in this very room, and escaped.”

  Gabriel grumbled ruefully.

  “But where did she take him?” Chloe insisted. “Where does the portal lead?”

  Mr. Meister clasped Horace firmly by the shoulders, his face lit with an almost holy wonder. His left eye loomed, as keen as a knife and as wild as a flame.

  “That is what Horace is about to tell us,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Door upon Door

  “WITH ISABEL’S HELP, NO DOUBT, JOSHUA OPENED THE PORTAL,” Mr. Meister said, gesturing. “Just here. They departed through it, taking Brian and Tunraden with them. I saw the portal closing from this side, yet even I cannot tell you where they went.”

  “But if the Laithe is a globe,” said April, “doesn’t that mean they could be anywhere in the world?”

  “In theory, yes,” said Mr. Meister. “But I doubt they went far. Even with Isabel’s guidance, Joshua is still a neophyte. He would find it easiest, I think, to open a portal into a location he has been to before. And the greater the distance, the more difficult the gateway.”

  “So, what does that have to do with me?” Horace asked.

  Mr. Meister eyed the Fel’Daera thoughtfully, looking at the silver sun. “The breach is very narrow at the moment, yes, Keeper?”

  “Four minutes and thirty-four seconds,” Horace said automatically.

  “Narrow enough. Will you open the box, please? Look toward this wall and tell us what you see.”

  Chloe leaned in close to Horace, whispering. “Something about that wall going to change in the next four minutes?”

  “If Horace will indulge me,” Mr. Meister said with a bow.

  Horace pulled the box from its pouch, bemused but preparing himself. Before opening the Fel’Daera—even to look at a blank wall—he had to orient himself and his companions in space and time. In order to see truly, he had to briefly consider all the recent paths that had led to the current moment, because the very act of opening the box to see the future changed that same future. It was a lesson Horace had learned the hard way, again and again. But by now, his preparations were smooth and automatic. He loosely plotted all the necessary trajectories as best he could—actions, positions, intentions—gathering them in his mind like strands of twine. When he felt grounded, he held the box in front of him and opened the lid.

  Through the rippling blue glass, as expected—nothing; the blank wall, unchanged from the present.

  “I see a wall,” he reported dryly.

  Mr. Meister stepped toward the wall, cocking his head and once more peering through the oraculum at what looked like nothing. He made a karate-chopping motion through a slab of air a few feet ahead of Horace. “Come closer, Keeper. Right here.”

  Still holding the box aloft, Horace moved forward. Nothing but wall. Whatever the old man was hoping for didn’t seem to be happening.

  And then as Horace pulled even with the old man, as the blue glass entered the invisible plane where Mr. Meister was waving his hand, a blast of static flickered inside the box—a frenzy of wild movement, a rush of jumbled jagged shapes.

  It vanished as quickly as it had come. Horace blinked. The box had never done anything like that before.

  Mr. Meister leaned in even closer, his looming left eye shifting back and forth between Horace’s face and the empty air. “Ah, you’ve seen something,” he said excitedly. “Back up, just a tiny bit. Hold the box quite still.”

  Horace stepped back cautiously, holding the box steady. And abruptly, there it was again: a rush of movement, shapes flying at him, as if the box were moving at a tremendous speed. He held the box rigidly, staring. None of the shapes were recognizable in any way, not at all real, just a hurtling tangle of lines and curves and planes. Still the sensation of immense speed was so convincing that he found himself leaning away. He leaned too far, and the vision vanished. He snapped the box closed and turned to Mr. Meister.

  “Well?” the old man asked. “Have you anything to report?”

  Horace’s mind raced. “It’s the portal, isn’t it? The whatever—the residue of the gateway Joshua opened with the Laithe.”

  “Just so,” Mr. Meister said proudly. “And what did you see?”

  “Nothing. Just static. Shapes, flying at me.”

  “No more than that?”

  “No. But why can I—”

  “Shorten the breach, if you will. Make it as narrow as you can. Try again.”

  Horace glanced back at the others. Gabriel and Mrs. Hapsteade looked like statues, grim and motionless, Mrs. Hapsteade’s head bowed as if in prayer. April’s fists were at her mouth. She seemed not to notice that Arthur, perched on her leather-clad shoulder, was plucking at her hair. Chloe gazed back at Horace steadily.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Mystified and exhilarated, Horace readied himself to try again, focusing on the silver sun emblazoned on the front of the box. He had only recently learned that this sun was a sort of valve, that he could adjust the breach by concentrating on it and narrowing or widening the flow of the Medium. The sun’s twenty-four rays, one for each hour, meant that the farthest he could see into the future was a single day. When the breach was open that far, the entire sun shone silver. Right now, with the breach at less than five minutes, only the tiniest slice of the topmost ray glimmered. The rest of the rays were black.

  Horace felt for the breach with his mind. He found it easily, felt the rush of energy blasting through the tiny gap. With effort, he closed the breach even further. Three minutes. One. The Medium seemed to howl as i
t poured through the shrinking aperture. The shining sliver on the topmost ray of the sun dwindled to a speck. Horace squeezed until he got where he wanted to be.

  He pinned the breach in place—a kind of mental hammer blow—and released it. He blew out a breath. “Ten seconds,” he said. Would it be enough? He didn’t understand what was happening, why he should be able to see the leftovers of Joshua’s portal. And he certainly didn’t understand why shortening the breach might make a difference.

  “Remarkable,” said Mr. Meister. “Let us try again.”

  Horace opened the box, merging the glass once more with the ghost of Joshua’s portal, a ghost only Mr. Meister’s oraculum could recognize—or rather, the oraculum and the Fel’Daera, it seemed. What was this residue, exactly? What was the Fel’Daera showing him? He got the alignment right, and once more through the box—a rushing jungle of careening shapes, swift and mad. It seemed slightly slower now, and once or twice he imagined he recognized something—a flicker of a tree-shape, a cluster of vertical lines so smooth they had to be man-made.

  “Still nothing,” he said. “I can almost see something, but . . . I can’t.”

  Mr. Meister spun away, clearly frustrated.

  “It cannot be done,” said Gabriel. “I wonder if it should even be attempted.”

  For some reason, this angered Horace. He’d always respected Gabriel, and thought of him as perhaps the most sensible and reliable of the Wardens. But now he closed the box and rounded on the older boy. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said, “or why I saw what I just saw, but I know Brian is out there. If the box can help find him, then I’ll attempt whatever I like.”

  Gabriel stood silent for a moment, then nodded.

  “I need someone to explain, though,” said Horace. “Why can I see the residue of the portal? Is it in the future?”

  “No,” said Mr. Meister, and then corrected himself. “Yes, but no more than it exists in the present. The effects of the portal are lingering, like smoke from a fire. And because Joshua is a neophyte—because he made a messy fire—the smoke will linger for much longer than it should. Let us be thankful.”