“Ragewinnoway wanting to talk or wanting to find wizard?” the firecat asked with silky malice. “Time running out for sleeping mother.”
“All right,” Rage said stiffly. “Where is he?”
“Stand,” the firecat said, a note of triumph in its voice. “Take hourglass. Speak these words: ‘Night gate! Appear!’”
Rage obeyed. The hourglass glittered in the sunlight as she spoke the words. They echoed oddly in the air, as if they were being repeated again and again, by many different people.
A slab of pure darkness appeared.
Rage moved back, then stopped. The lines engraved on the hourglass said to step through a door on the shore of the Endless Sea. This darkness was a door. The hair on her arms prickled just as it had by the bramble gate.
“Ragewinnoway must go through night gate,” the firecat commanded.
“It doesn’t smell like the bramble gate,” Elle said, sniffing at it.
“It doesn’t smell of anything,” Mr. Walker said.
“Ragewinnoway must take the hourglass through night gate now,” the firecat insisted.
Rage didn’t trust the firecat one bit, but what else was there to do? She hadn’t come so far just to turn away from the final step of her quest.
“Where will it take me?” she asked.
“To wizard!” the firecat shrilled in fury. “If not going now, then never going.”
“I don’t like this,” Mr. Walker muttered. “Why is it so eager for you to go?”
“It’s a liar, and it stinks of lies,” Bear growled.
“I don’t have any choice, Bear,” Rage whispered. “I’m scared, but I have to go.”
“Now or never,” the firecat hissed. There was a desperation in its voice that told Rage this really was the last moment in which she could act.
“I am Rage Winnoway whose name is also Courage,” she said, and stepped toward the door.
“No,” Billy cried, grasping her arm and pulling her back. “I’ll go first.”
“Let me,” Elle insisted, pushing them both aside.
A violent crackling sound filled the air. Then an explosion threw them all to the ground.
The firecat screamed: “No!”
“What happened?” Billy asked groggily.
“A trick! I knew it was a trick!” The firecat’s voice sizzled with fury.
“Mama!” Billy howled, and Rage knew that Bear had gone through the gate while they were arguing.
“Where is she?” Rage demanded angrily of the firecat. “Where did you send Bear?”
“Gone!” it hissed venomously. “Gone forever into the black and the nothingness. Gone!”
Then there was another explosion. Rage flew sideways, as if a giant hand had slapped her. She fell into darkness.
“Rage…” It was the voice that kept asking her to break the spell that bound it.
“I don’t know how to help you,” Rage muttered. Something heavy was pressing down on her. Something monstrous and unbearable.
She felt a hand on her cheek, and a prickling tingle ran through her body.
She opened her eyes to find a man staring down at her. He was very thin and rather old, with faded amber eyes. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, and his gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Around him the night sky bloomed with stars.
“You…you are the wizard, aren’t you?” she said. “It was your voice that I kept hearing in my dreams.”
“I could only make contact when you were asleep, because of the trap spell I was under. But I gave what magical help I could on your journey.”
“What help?”
He gave a slight smile. “Light when you needed it in the tunnels under Fork, mental manipulation of blackshirts at the pier, a little direction in the city when you were seeking your friends in the blackshirt prison. And I was able to make you hard to see on several occasions.”
“That was you?” Rage said slowly. “But how did you know…where…” She stopped, remembering all the times the hourglass had grown inexplicably hot. The firecat had told her the truth when it claimed that all the wizard knew lay within the hourglass.
“You were trapped in the hourglass!” she groaned. And that, of course, explained why Ania’s spell had backfired.
“All riddles look simple with hindsight,” the wizard said. “I was trapped within that form until the sand ran out, or until it was broken.”
Rage sat up and saw that although they were still on the beach, there was no sign of the others.
“I am afraid I have much to answer for,” the wizard went on. “I apologize for the things that you have endured since using the bramble gate. I should not have left it there. Yet if you had not used it, Valley and all of its life would be lost.”
“Why did you put the bramble gate there?” Rage asked. “And how did you come to be trapped in the hourglass?”
He held up his hands. “Dear girl, I cannot answer a thousand questions at once. It will take time.”
“Time!” Rage gasped. “I forgot. There is no time! Sir, the keepers, the river…they only have two days, and maybe most of that has already—”
The wizard shook his head and held a finger against his lips until she fell silent. “Have no fear. I will return to Valley in time to save it from destruction. Remember that I know all that you know, Rage Winnoway. Was I not a secret companion on your journey? I know exactly what the sharp-voiced Mother of the witch folk wanted said to me. And I know what the High Keeper has become. I know the stories told of me by Niadne in the banding house, and by the baker in the village. If you could only know how it felt to be unable to speak or act. Never have I felt so helpless!”
“Did you really make Valley?”
The wizard shook his head. “Rue had it most accurately when she said I took Valley from time. The original valley exists in your world, but I seized the moment of its existence before it was flooded, and I turned it into a land with its own inner time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Valley is like that lagoon you swam in by the river,” the wizard explained. “It was once part of the flow, but now it exists apart from it.”
Rage nodded slowly, thinking she understood, though it was very complicated. She remembered another question she wanted to ask. “Did you really bring women to Valley to serve the keepers?”
The wizard laughed out loud. “Of course not. Look at Rue and Ania. Do they seem obedient and willing to serve?”
“Then why do the keepers—”
The wizard shook his head. “The keepers! You know, when I brought their ancestors to Valley, they were young idealists, weary of a world in which nature was squandered. I bid them take better care of it, but they quickly moved from loving and nurturing to keeping and Ordering.” He shook his head. “I did not want to repress the keepers and control them. I thought that they would work it out for themselves, given time.”
“Then you didn’t tell them to keep Order?” Rage asked, wanting to be clear.
“Of course not! I brought humans to Valley because I wanted to share my love of it. But the zealots among those I brought to Valley felt useless. All that energy and hunger to be doing something. First they bothered me endlessly. The pettiness of their questions and complaints! The idiocy of their ideas of improving Valley! I felt I would go mad. Generation after generation of them were the same.”
“You must be very old,” Rage murmured, her mind reeling at all she had been told. To think she had not even believed that magic existed!
The wizard sighed. “Those who dwell in Valley age according to Valley time. I have always spent time outside, and so I seem immortal to the Valley folk.”
“I still don’t understand why you made Valley into a land if it wasn’t for the keepers,” Rage said.
“I froze Valley to preserve it. I could not bear to think of it buried under thousands of tons of water. Lost forever to sunlight and greenness. All that natural beauty drowned for no better reason than the rules of economi
cs and politics.”
“But you made Fork,” Rage said, thinking that any city buried land.
He nodded. “I did, so that the rest of Valley would remain in its natural state. Yet I sought to make a city that lived and shaped itself to nature and life. Oddly, Fork might be the most wondrous thing I have ever made. When I was in your pocket inside the hourglass, I saw that it is not only a city that reflects life but one that is truly sentient. It lives, just as Valley lives. It has been so long since I was in Fork that I had not seen this. I will restore it to light and life. The streets will be green again, and the bridges will sing.”
“What will you do with the keepers?”
“I do not know,” the wizard admitted. “I see no point in punishing them or locking them up. Some of them might be capable of changing, but some…Perhaps I will return them to the world from which their ancestors came. But I must be careful. I do not want to overreact.”
“Will you stay in Valley?”
The wizard sighed. “I wish I could swear that I would, but I know my own nature. In time, curiosity and my studies will lure me elsewhere. But I will leave it better able to fend for itself. The time has come for me to atone for the things I have neglected or abandoned.”
“Nothing you do will bring back the animals that the High Keeper killed,” Rage said, suddenly disliking the wizard. “It won’t bring back the wild things that died in the blackshirt prison or the people who were sent down the River of No Return on the death boats.”
The wizard sagged before her eyes, and something began to nag at Rage. Something to do with the absence of the animals. Where were Billy and the others?
“Don’t force your memory,” the wizard advised, his eyes watchful. “When the trap spell broke and released me, you took the full weight of the shock because you were carrying the hourglass. You have been unconscious for hours. It is almost dawn.”
“Where are the others?”
“Sleeping in the dunes. They were exhausted, and I said I would sit with you. It was windy down here, but I shielded you with magic. It was best not to move you.”
Rage had the sensation that something heavy was lying against her forehead. “Where is the firecat?”
“It vanished as soon as it saw I was free. It was afraid of what I would do, of course. But it will return eventually. It won’t be able to stay away from me.”
“Then it was the firecat that trapped you inside the hourglass?” Rage’s head had begun to ache. She rubbed at her temples to ease the pain.
“I am afraid I trapped myself,” the wizard said. “I was so eager to be rid of the firecat that it was able to trick me.”
“You are not its master?”
“Better to say I am its creator.” The wizard sighed. “I was interested in what the witch women were doing in creating wild things. I wondered what would result from the creation of a thing out of pure magic. I was less experienced then, and too foolish to be aware that the things I was experimenting with were dangerous. The firecat is a thing that has no soul. It has no compassion or goodness. You see, I gave none of myself into its making.”
“How did it…”
“Trick me? I wished to be rid of it, for it had caused endless trouble and mischief over the years.”
“What did you do?” Rage prompted.
“I was determined to trick the firecat into unmaking itself. It could use magic, but the deepest workings eluded it. I told it that it could master magic if it gained a soul, and I invented a quest for a soul—the very quest you have undertaken and whose directions were inscribed on the hourglass. But the firecat did not trust me. It demanded that I bind myself into the hourglass that it was to carry to the shore of the Endless Sea. Like a fool I did so, thinking it would not matter, for soon I would be free of the hourglass and the wretched firecat. I never imagined it would force you to undertake the quest I had set it!”
“Why did it choose me?”
The wizard hesitated. Emotions fled over his face: fear, guilt, sorrow. Finally resignation settled there. “It seems you will have the whole story from me. Well, perhaps it is time.”
Rage’s head started to ache again, and she lifted her hand to her brow.
The wizard looked concerned. “This should wait….”
Rage was sick of being put off. “Does it have something to do with Grandmother Reny? Rue said there was a connection between you and her. Did you meet her when you were in my world? Did she fall in love with you, and then you left her? Is that why she married Grandfather Adam and then was so unhappy that she faded away?”
The wizard looked as if she had punched him in the stomach. He sat down right where he was standing. “Oh, child! Every word you say is a knife to my heart,” he gasped.
Rage was astonished and embarrassed to see a tear roll down his grizzled cheek. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered.
“No. It is I who am sorry. Although I speak of atonement, and mean it, some things cannot be healed. Sometimes it is too late.” He paused and wiped his eyes and cheeks with a crumpled handkerchief.
Rage did not speak. She did not know what to say.
“You ask if your grandmother Reny loved me. She did, but only as a friend. It was Adam she loved.” He looked into Rage’s eyes. “My brother, Adam. I am your great-uncle Peter.”
“But how can you be Grandfather’s brother?” Rage demanded. “You’re a wizard!”
“I discovered magic as a child. Most wizards and witches begin before they are adults. It seems adults are incapable of making the mental leaps that magic demands. I did not plan to leave my world, but when the government diverted the river to flood the valley…”
Rage gasped, suddenly understanding. “Valley is the land that used to be part of Winnoway!”
“It is a moment from the life of that valley. The last moment,” he added sadly.
Rage frowned. “But Valley is much bigger than the flooded land back home.”
He nodded. “I used magic to make Valley bigger within than without.”
Rage stared at him in awe. Then she frowned, her excitement fading. “Why didn’t you ever go back to Winnoway to see Grandfather Adam?”
The wizard’s face fell into lines of grief. “We were so close as boys. He used to follow me everywhere.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know that my going would mean so much. I always meant to contact him. That was why I left the bramble gate open. I even created the magic mirror so that I could see him, but I never used it.”
“You didn’t care that he loved you,” Rage accused, angrier than she had ever been in her life.
“You are a child,” the wizard said, drawing back. “You don’t understand.”
This was a wizard with terrifying powers, but Rage was reckless with fury. “I’m not old and I can’t work magic or create it, but I understand better than you do that when you hurt someone who loves you, it doesn’t end there, because love is a flow, too. How come you know so much about magic but you don’t know that? What use is magic if you can’t care about people who love you?”
The wizard looked pale and shaken. “You are right,” he whispered. “I loved my brother, but I loved my research more.”
Rage’s head was pounding now, and she was beginning to feel sick. “How can you ever make up for all the harm you’ve caused?”
“I can’t,” the wizard said. “My brother died of grief while I was trapped inside the hourglass. I saw it in my magic mirror, even as the firecat held me trapped in the hourglass and scried for you.”
“Me?” Rage was taken aback. “The firecat was looking for me?”
“For someone that I would care about. Family. It knew the mirror connected me to my past. It sought my brother out first, but he was close to death. The firecat sought your mother next, but by the time it figured out how to activate the bramble gate, she was…well, as she is now. Your uncle Samuel, of course, had gone away.”
“Why did you put the night gate here?” Rage asked.
“I had to magi
c a gateway that I could key to nothingness. The firecat was to come to the shore of the Endless Sea and command the night gate to appear. Then it was to leave the hourglass behind and go through it if it desired a soul. The glass would break, I would be freed, but the firecat would cease to exist.”
“It was right to mistrust you,” Rage said, disliking the wizard more and more. But some terrible awareness was growing in the back of her mind, pushing aside her anger and disgust.
“I told myself that lying to a soulless creature filled with malice and mischief did not truly count as a lie,” the wizard said.
Rage felt a great wave of sorrow engulf her as her memory returned of the moments before the explosion. “Bear! Bear went into the night gate!” she cried.
The wizard nodded, his pale eyes seeming to glow.
“This is all your fault!” Rage cried. “You are a hateful, selfish man! You are worse than the High Keeper!”
“Yes,” he said in a low, sad voice.
Rage could not bear to think of him as her great-uncle. “Bring her back!” she screamed at him. “Use your magic!”
“No magic can return your friend. She went out of time when she entered the night gate. She is beyond time.”
“No!” Rage wept, but she had heard the truth in the wizard’s voice. They had saved Bear from the river and from the conservation tank of the High Keeper only for her to die anyway.
“It may help you to remember that Bear chose to take a risk so that no one else would have to,” the wizard said gently.
Rage stood up and turned her back on him. That was when she saw Billy, sitting alone at the top of a dune. His outline in the dark blue sky was unmistakable.
She went slowly up and sat by him. He said nothing. He did not look at her. Rage put both of her arms around him and held him as tightly as she could. “Oh, Billy. My poor Billy,” she whispered, pressing her face into his neck.
Night Gate Page 20
