The Keepers (46 page)

Cautiously, Horace began groping his way slowly down the stairs—a simple act made incredibly difficult by the loss of his senses. He took six wary steps down and found the landing. Five more steps, and then the brutal tearing sound that meant he was out of the humour. His senses returned, hitting him like a wall of water. A dim light. Silence. The smell of decay, fresh again.

Horace looked back up the stairs at the humour. He saw . . . nothing. Not a bank of fog or a cloud of smoke, but not the stairs either. There was simply nothing there, not a blackness but a
blankness
, as if his eyes could not conjure sight. Floor, walls, ceiling, yes, but the place between them just did not exist. His eyes slid from one side of the stairwell to the other. He turned away, blinking and rubbing his forehead. His hand came away sticky with blood. He wiped his hands on his pants as he lurched ahead into the gloomy basement.

So Mr. Meister wanted them to extinguish the crucible, destroy the nest. But why not just come out and say it? Why these games? He tried not to let himself get distracted. The path was all that mattered now, no matter what the Warden wanted. Fifteen minutes had passed since the sending of the dragonfly, and surely by this time tomorrow night Chloe would have escaped and rescued Horace from the boiler. But Horace wanted to be sure. He hoped Gabriel was right when he said the golem was upstairs—now if only he knew where Dr. Jericho was.

Horace wandered the tunnels cautiously, trying to find his way. Before long, something caught his ears: music, sweeping notes that rose and fell like a breeze. The flute. The sound of it seemed to somehow reach for him. He remembered what Chloe said—that the flute girl had seen her when she shouldn't have.

Horace ran. He ran from the music as best he could. Was it growing fainter, or louder? He thought he was leaving
it behind, but the basement's labyrinth made everything uncertain. He took a left turn and then a right, and almost immediately he spotted the round passageway that led to the boiler room. He swung into it, his feet slapping across the damp floor. As he ran, the flute grew fainter, then faded away completely. He slowed and caught his breath, listening hard. Silence.

At the tunnel's end, Horace peeked into the boiler room. It was as empty as they'd left it. The black face of the coal boiler loomed on the left-hand wall, heavy and mute. He double-checked the time—3:32. Surely he and Chloe would be gone by this time tomorrow. Horace took out the box. He grounded himself with reminders of how he'd gotten here, focusing hard on Chloe and Gabriel and even Neptune, intersecting their lines of action with his own. So many turnings: but Horace held them all in his mind. He flicked open the lid—
a sweeping curtain of motion across everything, curling and swaying, as though he were looking through a great black flame or flood
. Horace stared, confused, trying to see through this strange new interference. Had something gone wrong? Was the box malfunctioning?

Horace spun, looking deeper into the room, trying to be quick. Relief flooded him:
the ash door, open; soot scattered across the floor
. And then, farther down the wall—
a soot-covered Horace, almost unrecognizable; crawling, legs trailing, groping along the wall toward the coal cellars
. Chloe had done it, then, she'd freed him.

Horace walked deeper into the room, still staring.
The cells stark and shadowy, the third door down still shut tight
. Horace looked into the third cell, stepping inside, heart pounding.
Empty; no Chloe, no dragonfly; the words on the floor scuffed and blurry, but still there
. So Chloe was free too. But why were the words blurry now? And where was she? He spun, still searching.

Another figure against the opposite wall, a great surprise—
Gabriel, both hands clasping the Staff of Obro; black flame coursing from the tip of the staff, the humour itself casting its curtain over everything; Gabriel's eyes, wide open and black, as black as ink
.

So this was the interference Horace was seeing—it was the humour! The Fel'Daera saw through it as if the humour were nothing more than smoke. But Horace's heart sank at the sight of the Warden. If Gabriel was here, perhaps he had been the one to free Horace, and Chloe was somewhere else. But where? And why was Gabriel using the staff? What danger was he protecting them from?

Full of dread, Horace moved the box along the gaze of Gabriel's black eyes, as smooth and featureless as marbles. What were they seeing?

Horace peered through the veil of the humour. His skin went cold. Ten feet up from Gabriel—
Dr. Jericho, many-headed and crouching low, like a nest of snakes, groping savagely through the humour toward Gabriel, searching half blind
. But that was not what chilled him.
Just inside the doorway, a beast
like a Mordin—or not a Mordin, something far larger and far worse—crouched on all fours into the shape of a bear, a cat, a great hound, skull flat and long, eyes bulging, neck arched painfully—all beneath the cruel weight of the crucible buried in its shoulders, like an upturned grasping hand, and in the center of that shape, a sharpened oval of light burning, white-hot and almost blinding
. Horace could hardly bear to lay his eyes on that light. Even from the here and now, he felt the pull of the crucible. And this creature was its Keeper.

All around the crucible dog, a cluster of Riven, creeping closer, pale and staring blind in the humour
. Horace examined them. There were three men, too, shambling mindlessly, and one of them stood out—
tall and muscular, standing on the edge of the group, eyes closed, lips curled in dismay
. Chloe's father.

Horace snapped the box closed. He'd had it open too long, and yet he still hadn't seen enough. He still hadn't seen Chloe. He shut his eyes, forcing himself to think.

Chloe would be there. She had to be. This was the moment toward which everything was rushing, wasn't it? Twenty-four hours from now, in this very room—Gabriel, Horace, Dr. Jericho, the crucible dog, Chloe's father, all together. But why? Horace felt helpless, unable to do anything but watch. If only there were something he could do—

But maybe there was. One small thing. Horace flicked open the box with a twist of his thumb.
The smoke of the humour, gone now; Horace, lying half in and half out of the first open cell, his eyes and mouth wide
. Horace stepped closer, looking down
at himself—
his future self, lying half inside the first cell, looking right up at the box now, as if knowing it was there. Lips moving. Hands out
.

Counting. Waiting.

And Horace knew why. With his free hand, he took the dumindar from around his neck. He laid it in the open box. He looked through the glass at his own outstretched fingers, his own mouth counting out the seconds.

It was 3:33 . . . but that wasn't good enough. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the watch Mr. Meister had given him. The second hand was just crossing the five. He leaned into the dark cell, positioning the box over tomorrow's open hands. “Be there,” Horace said aloud, as if his future self could hear him. The second hand swept across the watch face, and at precisely 3:33:33, Horace slammed the box closed. Electricity coursed up his arms, and he let out a long, staggering breath.

And then, from behind him, a silky voice spoke—high and lilting and sinister. “Oh, my dear Tinker,” it said. “Now
that
was rather fascinating.”

H
ORACE WHEELED TOWARD THE DOOR OF THE BOILER ROOM
. A towering shape was peeling itself away from the wall, as if the room was coming alive. The shape began to resolve, began to color itself something other than brick and pipe and stone—white skin, black suit, leering face. “Fascinating indeed,” Dr. Jericho said, striding forward and bending over Horace.

Horace resisted the urge to hide the box behind his back. Instead he stood and held it in both hands, owning it, practically daring the thin man to take it from him. “Took you long enough to find me,” he said. He could be brave for this. He would be brave. No more running.

Dr. Jericho's eyes lingered first over the box, then over Horace's face. “But worth the wait, it seems. My, how you've changed. I sensed the aberration in you, that first day I saw
you in the street—but the Fel'Daera! Who could have foreseen it? And now you've cozied up to the Wardens. How quaint.” He paused and reached into his pocket. “Oh! Before I forget. I found something that truly does belong to you. A key to the castle, I believe.” He held out his hand, revealing Horace's jithandra.

“That won't work for you,” Horace said.

“Won't it? Pity.” Dr. Jericho crushed the jithandra in his massive hand. The crystal shattered with a powdery crunch. He let the dust trickle to the floor and sniffed his palm. “Smells like secret handshake. I suppose every child's playhouse must have one.”

“This place isn't so great either, you know.”

Dr. Jericho looked around, sighing. “It is rather awful. But since my work here is nearly finished, thanks to you, I won't have to endure it much longer. I hardly imagined it would happen like this, though. This evening has been a bouquet of surprises. Gabriel here among us again, with his fabulous toy. And the girl, of course. Where has she gone?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Horace said, trying not to be startled that the Mordin knew who Gabriel was.

“Your little friend. The girl with the dragonfly pendant. Chloe.”

Horace grimaced at the sound of her name on the Mordin's lips. “She's dead. She died in the fire you started.”

“Oh, I doubt that. I doubt that very much. To whom,
then, are you sending presents through the Fel'Daera? ‘Be there,' you said.”

Dr. Jericho wasn't believing his lies. Horace remembered the advice he'd given to Chloe:
“Tell the truth whenever possible.”
“Myself. I sent it to myself.”

Dr. Jericho's slitted eyes widened. He broke into a long, tinkling laugh that was like spiders on Horace's skin. “Yourself? Well, that's not going to work out, is it? I'm here now, and I'll be right here again tomorrow. You, however, will not. But tell me, what was it you hoped to send to . . . yourself?”

“A dumindar.”

“A dumindar!” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “How fascinating. Too bad you did not keep it. Perhaps you hoped that tomorrow it would buy you time. But today, sadly, there is nothing between us. Nothing to prevent me from taking the Fel'Daera from you.”

“Why bother? The box is useless without me.”

“Which is why I allow you to go on breathing. It's true: you are—dare I say it?—precious to me. All you need now is a little education. Perhaps then I will allow you to keep the box.”

“Education?”

“To open your eyes to things the Wardens would keep hidden. To open your mind to the possibility that they do not tell you everything.”

Horace had been warned that the Riven would try to turn him. “I'm already open to that possibility. But at least they
don't tell me lies.” Even as the words came out of him, his conversation with Gabriel bubbled into his thoughts.

“Omitting the truth is its own kind of lie. I can do for you what I did for the last Keeper of the Fel'Daera. I can teach you the full truth, and let you make your own decisions. They will not be difficult decisions to make, once you know everything. Certainly its last Keeper did not find them hard.”

“The last Keeper.”
That tugged at Horace, but it was just a taunt. Dr. Jericho wanted to keep him uneasy, keep him wondering about everything he didn't know. Horace swallowed his anger and his curiosity. “Well,” he said steadily, “it sounds like the last Keeper was a lot more lame than me.”

Dr. Jericho frowned. “How amusing,” he said. “Nonetheless, it seems we have two shared concerns: the welfare of the Fel'Daera, and the welfare of yourself. In the interest of both, you will hand the instrument over to me now. No struggle. No messy resistance. No—” He rolled his eyes, searching for a word. He leaned down and bared his teeth, his mouth as wide as a wolf's. “No
savagery
.” He held out his horrible hand.

“Take it. I won't stop you, but I won't hand it over.”

“An odd distinction.” Dr. Jericho reached out. The moment the Mordin's grotesque fingers touched the box, Horace's stomach bucked and groaned, threatened to empty itself. He clutched at the box and thought for a moment that he would not be able to let it go. But this was the moment he'd known was coming, the moment that led back to Chloe, to her father, to the crucible and freedom for everyone. The
way back to the box again. He forced his fingers to loosen. The box slipped free, gone but not gone. Taken unwillingly. He gritted his teeth.

Dr. Jericho chuckled. “Do you feel it? I do. A delicious sensation. I have taken that which wishes to belong to you. Feel how it pulls until it tears, like muscle from the bone.”