The Keepers (20 page)

Mrs. Hapsteade's face was unreadable. “This will be remembered.”

The golem vanished into the darkness of the long room, and Chloe with it. Horace realized he was counting:
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
. He found his voice. “How much longer will the dumin hold?”

“She must hurry,” said Mrs. Hapsteade.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight
. The golem barreled back into sight—not a tornado now but a fist, a churning knot, coming closer. Chloe had to be at the center of that knot, running blind as the stony coils of the golem tore through her.
Thirty-five, thirty-six
. . .

The golem slammed against the dumin with the force of a truck. A moment later, Chloe sliced through the shining wall, crying out, stumbling to her knees before Mrs. Hapsteade. The golem fumed and thundered, trying to get at them all. The ground trembled. The dumin held.

Chloe choked and coughed, looking as though she might vomit. Her arms were peppered with a dozen little wounds—black, purple, red. The quill and ink bottle spilled from her hands.

“Hold on,” she croaked. “Hold on.” Horace watched, horrified, as one of the black shapes wormed its way out of the skin of her forearm and clattered to the floor, motionless. Chloe reared back, one hand on her chest, gagging. Another stone emerged, this time from the little hollow at the base of her throat. It fell loose, and the dragonfly went still. Mrs. Hapsteade crushed the two black stones beneath her heel, one after the other. They made a ghastly gritty sound and left a powdery stain on the floor. Mrs. Hapsteade bent and picked up the quill and bottle, slipping them into a pocket in her dress. Her eyes shone as she gazed down at Chloe.

“Felt them in me,” Chloe gasped. “Don't know how they got in there.” She looked back at the golem, pressing a hand against her side. “And there was something else in there. I felt it, like a knife or something. So fast, and sharp.”

“We'll speak more of what you've done here, Keeper,” said Mrs. Hapsteade. “For now it must be enough to say—” Her voice broke, and she clutched her dress. “It must be enough to say that no words will do.”

Mrs. Hapsteade helped Chloe to her feet. Once she was standing, Chloe pulled a roll of mints from her pocket. She thumbed one loose into Horace's waiting hand. She nodded.

Horace knelt, searching for the crack he'd found earlier. He spotted it and dropped the mint into it, like a coin into a slot. As he stood again, he found Mrs. Hapsteade's eyes on him. “What would happen if you didn't do this? If you didn't follow the future revealed by the box?”

Horace was surprised to be asked. He shrugged. “It would hurt.”

Mrs. Hapsteade nodded. “Good.” She stepped into the open doorway, her hand under Chloe's arm. Horace peered past her into the dark. Behind them, it sounded as though the golem had begun to tear apart the very walls around the dumin.

Mrs. Hapsteade reached into her collar and pulled out another chain, this one long and black. How many necklaces were hiding under that collar? A slender black crystal hung from the chain, mounted in a silver setting that curled open like the petals of a flower. The crystal glowed, emitting a strange blue-black light. “Just through here is an unpleasantness,” Mrs. Hapsteade said, nodding into the dark. “Unavoidable, I'm afraid. I won't ask whether you're ready.”

“We
are
ready,” Chloe replied. She stepped away from Mrs. Hapsteade, straightening.

“That's unlikely, but it hardly matters. Hold on to yourselves as best you can.” Mrs. Hapsteade closed and barred the great door behind them. The eerie light from the long black crystal around her neck lit the passageway dimly. Once their eyes adjusted, they discovered the dumin's back end, here in the tunnel. Apparently the shield wasn't just a wall, but a complete sphere. As Horace struggled to imagine how it worked, though, the dumin flickered out of sight with a faint crackle. An instant later, the door shook seismically beneath the golem's weight. Dust and grit showered them.

“We need to hurry,” Horace said. “It's going to get through.”

“The golem won't come through the door.” Mrs. Hapsteade glided into the tunnel, apparently untroubled. Horace and Chloe followed the circle of black light that spread out from her necklace. Much to Horace's relief, the tunnel was large—as broad and as high as the House of Answers itself, and pleasantly cool.

“Why won't the golem come through the door?” he asked.

“Can't you feel it?” Mrs. Hapsteade replied.

“All I can feel is that it's cold in here,” Chloe said.

“As a matter of fact, it isn't,” Mrs. Hapsteade said, and led them on. Despite her words, the air grew noticeably colder. The beast's pounding eventually faded, and Mrs. Hapsteade turned and pointed a stern warning finger at them both, lingering for a long moment on Chloe. “You must not reach for your instruments. Understand?”

They nodded. In a few steps more, their scuffling footsteps became hollow and clanging as they stepped out onto ridged metal plates of some kind. Before Horace could wonder what the surface was, a heavy, numbing chill struck him like a blow. It was a cold so pure and so sharp that it sank into him like a fist of icy knives, a pain beyond nerves. Horace could no longer feel himself, could not sense the floor beneath his feet, could not taste the air he presumably still breathed.

And he could not feel the box.

H
ORACE CRIED OUT
. T
HE BOX
,
A CONSTANT PRESENCE IN HIS
mind for so long now, had vanished, stolen away by this cruel cold. He groped for the pouch at his side, slapping blindly, but his fingers were numb and could tell him nothing. He dimly registered Chloe's scolding voice, off to the left somewhere, an angry note of panic.

“Do not struggle,” came Mrs. Hapsteade's voice, thick and deep and slow. They might have been miles apart. “Only walk.”

“The box. It's gone,” Horace called out, or tried to, his words seeming to freeze and drop to the ground.

“It's not gone. The box is with you.”

“No, no, it's gone,” Horace pleaded. “It's not . . . here.” By
here
he meant in his head, in him. He searched for Chloe and Mrs. Hapsteade, saw a sliver of light, and movement within
it—they were drifting, fractured shapes, slow and distant.

“This is the Nevren. Don't fear it. The bond is temporarily cut, but it'll return. Keep moving and you will return.”

But Horace wanted to stop. He did not want to hear Mrs. Hapsteade's voice. He did not care about the Nevren. He could not even feel that he was moving forward, so why should he bother? The box was gone. What else mattered? There was only emptiness and hopelessness.

But now Chloe's voice pierced through his fog, thin and far but as keen as a needle. “Keep moving, Horace,” it said, and then he heard or did not hear it go on:
“You're almost through.”

“There is no through.”

“Don't be stupid. I'm through. Here, let me—”

Another voice cut through the stillness.
“No. He must come on his own, if he will come.”
Mrs. Hapsteade. But who was Mrs. Hapsteade again?

“I think you are ghosts,” Horace said. “I'm a ghost. Stop talking to me.”

“None of us are ghosts. You're almost there. Just keep moving, and you'll be free in no time.”

Horace shook his head, if he had a head. “No, no,” he said. “There is no time. No such thing as time.”

“Yes, you saw tomorrow already—another time. The box showed you.”

Ruined pillars of stone. A gleaming white crescent. The box. “That isn't real,” Horace slurred, and maybe he went on
talking or maybe he didn't. . . . “None of that is real. The box isn't real.”

The voice returned. Why wouldn't it leave him alone?
“The box is real. It's here. I have the box, Horace. Here, I have it.”

Horace lifted his head, saw sliding silhouettes.
The box?
“You have the box?”

“Yes. I have it. Come take it from me.”

The voice had the box. That was wrong. Why had she taken it from him? The box was his. “The box is mine.”

“Come and get it.”

Horace told himself he would do that. He told himself to move. He wanted to get the box away from the voice—from Chloe. Mrs. Hapsteade. The golem. The Nevren. And now a burning began to fill him, an unbearable warmth, and he could feel himself again—but only as a vessel of tingling agony, as though his entire body had fallen numb and was now rousing to life all at once.

And there, miraculously, was the box. It was
here
, its presence sweeping through him like an embrace. He laid a hand on it and staggered, nearly falling to the ground. He opened his eyes, shocked to realize they were closed.

Chloe stood before him, inches away, with a look of such relief that he thought she might embrace him. The golem's marks burned on her arms, her throat—how brave she was. Horace drank in the box, reveling in how near it was, how much of himself it was, how whole he felt. And how warm Chloe was too, and pretty, and maybe he would say that to
her, maybe she was waiting to hear it. Everything was good, so good.

Chloe searched his eyes. Horace swayed. She opened her mouth. “Dude, what the
hell
.”

“It's not his fault,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. “It shouldn't have been like that for someone so new.”

Horace rode the warmth back into himself. It felt so good he could not understand what Mrs. Hapsteade was saying. He looked back along the passageway behind, but there was nothing to see. Just the metal plates covering the floor.

“Shouldn't have been like what?” Chloe asked. “What do you mean?”

“Horace was almost dispossessed.”

“Dispossessed?” Chloe's voice was sharp, full of fangs.

“When the bond is severed for too long, we can sink into despair. We can become orphans, our instruments lost to us. Some Keepers have been swallowed whole by the emptiness of the Nevren, their minds gone forever, never to return even to what they were before the Find. A few don't make it at all.”

Chloe rounded on Mrs. Hapsteade, furious. “You stopped me from going back for him, when you knew that could happen? What is wrong with you?”

Sludgy still, Horace wasn't sure he was understanding. Mrs. Hapsteade had stopped Chloe from helping him?

“He needed to prove that he could make it on his own. He shouldn't be carried.”

“Like I carried the Vora? Maybe you think I shouldn't have done that either?”

“Don't play on my gratitude, Chloe Burke,” Mrs. Hapsteade replied, her voice as flat as a blade.

“Don't call me that,” Chloe spat.

“The box is different. The Keeper of the box—”

“The Keeper of the box was almost
dispossessed
, thanks to you. If that had been me in there, would you have left me, too?”

With a speed that dizzied Horace, Mrs. Hapsteade's arm shot out. She grasped the dragonfly and held it up in front of Chloe's eyes. Chloe became a statue, outrage stamped on her face. Horace heard himself gasp.

“This,” Mrs. Hapsteade hissed, shaking the dragonfly, “is the ripple of a bird in flight.” She threw out her other hand, pointing to the box. “And that is a hurricane. You astonished me today, Chloe, and maybe you think you are the most powerful Keeper standing in this passageway. But let me be clear: the tricks you and your trinket can perform are nothing compared to what the Keeper of the Fel'Daera needs to show me now.” She spun away, dress twirling, and stalked off down the passage, taking the black glow with her. Too stunned to move, Horace and Chloe stood there until they were nearly in darkness. Silence mounted around them.

At last Chloe spoke. “So apparently you're a hurricane now.”

Horace said nothing. He slid two fingers into the pouch and laid them along the side of the box. The box had a
name—a wondrous thing.

“The Keeper of the whatsit?” said Chloe, looking down at the box. “The Fel'Daera?”

“I guess,” Horace said, but he let the name play over and over in his mind.
The Fel'Daera
. A beautiful name. The right name. He felt the box swell beneath the thought.

In the distance, the black glow had come to a halt. “She's waiting for us,” Chloe said. “What does she want with us, anyway? What does she expect us to do?”

“I don't know. She said I had something to prove.” And with a little curl of excitement and dread, Horace wondered if Mrs. Hapsteade might not be right—maybe he did have something to prove. He was no match for Dr. Jericho or the golem, not in the way that Chloe had just proven she was, but the power the Fel'Daera granted him was so mysterious and huge. It was one thing to walk through walls. It was another thing entirely to see through time itself.