The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  Please be true.

  She let the raven’s eye fly. It soared like a comet out over the waves, so bright that its reflection shone like some luminescent underwater beast, racing to catch up. The leestone arced into the water, plunging into its reflection, still burning as it sank beneath the waves. Chloe watched it sinking slowly out of sight, stubbornly fading, until at last it was swallowed and the darkness of the deeps ate it up.

  She stood there for another minute, breathing hard and waiting, until finally she realized she had no idea what she was waiting for. She descended the ladder, slipped out through the fence, and started slowly back down the long, curving pier.

  She wasn’t even halfway back to shore when she heard them. Footsteps, several sets, heavy and slow. And though she couldn’t smell anything—she was well upwind—she knew immediately what it was.

  Riven.

  She found that she wasn’t surprised. She didn’t even feel a lick of fear—not for herself anyway. Just as long as they hadn’t discovered her father’s car.

  Three huge shapes, eight or nine feet tall, marched down the pier toward her, backlit by the fading glow of twilight behind. Side by side, the Mordin completely blocked the pier—not that they could stop her, of course. But as they came closer, she saw they weren’t alone. Another figure walked in front, smaller and feminine. For one crazy moment Chloe thought it was Isabel, but then she saw. Long, pale arms. A dangling white braid. The glint of a small red stone.

  Chloe went thin immediately, swiftly drawing on the Alvalaithen’s power. But no sooner had she done it than the Auditor was right there with her, inside the dragonfly. The Auditor yanked a thick ribbon of the Medium toward herself. Chloe wrestled with the invader briefly inside the Tan’ji, feeling violated and infuriated—a silent tug-of-war, a struggle of wills.

  In that first flush of rage, Chloe pushed the Auditor’s presence down hard, feeling for a moment like she might be able to oust her from the dragonfly completely, as Horace had done along the riverbank. But she couldn’t do it. Not alone. This time, all the Auditor’s attention was on her, and the Riven surged back hard, staking her claim, easily snatching enough of the Alvalaithen’s power to make herself every bit the ghost that Chloe was.

  “Come now,” the Auditor said silkily, coming closer, showing not the least hint of effort. The red stone on her forehead shone clearly now. “Surely there’s enough for two.”

  Not wanting to look desperate, Chloe stopped fighting, but she held on hard to what she had and stayed thin. She’d learned the other night that the best the Auditor could do was fight her to a draw. Infuriating and humiliating, yes. Fatal, no. Chloe stood her ground as the Auditor and her escorts approached, stopping just ten feet away. She realized the Riven were breathing hard after their long chase. She eyed the Mordin, catching a faint whiff of their foul stench now. None of them was Dr. Jericho.

  “Hello again,” Chloe said to the Auditor. “Looks like you recovered from your little fainting spell on the riverbank the other night.”

  The Auditor narrowed her chillingly blue eyes and shook her head. “Na’gali ji kothuk,” she said, her words like the flickering blades of knives, her voice like a crackling fire. “Do not presume to know me. I am Quaasa—merely one of many.”

  Chloe nearly took a step back. Apparently this wasn’t the same Auditor as before. And then Chloe remembered—the Auditor on the riverbank had had green eyes. “I see,” said Chloe. “Must get pretty confusing at the Christmas party.”

  “Let us not waste time with jokes,” the Auditor said. “I believe we have business to attend to.”

  “And what business is that?”

  “Why don’t you tell us?” sang one of the Mordin, his face particularly lean and skeletal. Chloe was surprised—she’d never heard any Mordin except Dr. Jericho speak English before. “You put out a beacon that was felt for miles. We are simply answering the call.”

  “That was an accident. A butt dial. My bad.”

  The Auditor smiled thinly. “More jokes,” she said. She stepped aside, indicating one of the slouching Mordin behind her. With a start, Chloe realized it was the ugly Mordin who’d jumped onto the station wagon. He was favoring his right leg heavily, the flesh of his thigh still impaled by the crowbar. “It does seem you had some doubts, if indeed you meant to call us. But no matter. I’m still glad you did. I’ve very much wanted the chance to . . . get to know you.”

  The Auditor bent down in front of the ugly Mordin. Her poisonous presence thickened again inside the Alvalaithen. The Auditor took hold of the crowbar and considered it thoughtfully for several seconds. Chloe realized she was making the crowbar go thin. Sure enough, the Auditor lifted the crowbar out of the Mordin’s flesh as if it were made of smoke. The Mordin grunted and buckled slightly, but stayed on his feet.

  “My compliments to your Tan’ji,” the Auditor said, examining the crowbar briefly. Then she lifted her blue eyes to stare hungrily at the Alvalaithen. “Truly, it is quite spectacular. Ja’raka Sevlo told me all about it—and you—but I had no idea it was this extraordinary.”

  “Who?”

  “Ja’raka. You’ve met, dear—many times.”

  “Ja’raka.” Chloe whispered the word to herself. “You mean Dr. Jericho?”

  “Yes,” the Auditor said, frowning faintly. “Though the Quaasa don’t care for blue-sky names.”

  “No, of course you don’t. You’re way hardcore. But if Dr. Jericho told you all about me, I don’t suppose he included the part where we tricked him, back in the nest. He ended up looking pretty stupid.”

  “Oh, he told me—trapped in the dumin. Unlike you, we do not disguise our failures. And Ja’raka would be the first to admit that he should have sought our help sooner that night.”

  “He had your help on the riverbank the other day. That didn’t turn out too well either.”

  The Auditor frowned. “Do not concern yourself. I will discuss those events with him.”

  “What, are you his boss or something?”

  Another crystalline laugh. “I am Quaasa. The Mordin do not answer to me, and I do not answer to them—not even Ja’raka Sevlo.” She spread her pale, graceful arms. “I am everyone’s equal.”

  “Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that,” Chloe said.

  The Auditor hefted the crowbar thoughtfully, then slowly approached. Chloe stayed her ground. They were both formless, their bodies turned to phantoms by the Alvalaithen. Nowhere near as colossal as the Mordin, the Auditor nonetheless stood almost a foot taller than Chloe. The triangular red stone in her forehead seemed to glimmer rhythmically.

  Without a word, without a sound, the Auditor plunged the tip of the crowbar into Chloe’s chest. At first Chloe felt almost nothing at all, because the crowbar had no more substance than she did, but then a trembling bolt of cold took up residence right through the center of her heart. The Auditor had allowed the crowbar to resolidify inside Chloe’s body. If Chloe herself were to become solid again with this inside her, she’d be dead in an instant.

  Holding the crowbar in place, the Auditor leaned in, watching the flickering wings of the dragonfly. “I wonder how long you can last,” she whispered.

  Chloe didn’t so much as blink. “Dr. Jericho wondered the same thing in the nest. It turned out to be longer than he liked.” There was a limit to how long she could stay thin, of course—just over three minutes, give or take. She’d been thin for a minute or two already, but as far as she was concerned, the limit didn’t exist until she hit it.

  “You cannot do this forever,” the Auditor said. “I know you cannot, because I cannot.” Her voice was so lovely, so reasonable, so perfectly hateable. Her presence shimmered revoltingly along the taut strands of the Alvalaithen’s song.

  Her rage bubbling up high and hard, Chloe stepped in closer to the Auditor, impaling herself more deeply on the crowbar. She felt the tip emerge from her back. “Let’s find out how long we can last, then,” she said, lifting her scarred right arm. She reache
d up for the Auditor’s neck, reached right inside and parked her rigid hand within the boneless flesh of that smooth white throat. “Let’s find out together.”

  An unmistakable surge of fear flared briefly in the Auditor’s eyes, but she didn’t back down. Chloe could feel the creature’s pulse thumping in her palm, keeping time with the rhythmic glinting of her bloodred stone. Neither of them spoke or moved. They stood there like that for a long time—twenty seconds? Forty? Waves slapped sloppily against the pier. The flat blast of a boat horn rolled across the water—once, twice. The Mordin shifted furtively, gesturing and muttering quietly among themselves. Chloe had the strange sense that they were making predictions.

  Chloe’s heart continued to pound around the crowbar. The flow of power from the Alvalaithen began to slow, growing tight, but she refused to panic. She purposefully clenched and unclenched her fist inside the Auditor’s neck, and when the Auditor didn’t flinch, Chloe broke the silence, making sure her voice showed no sign of effort. “I suppose you know this is how I destroyed the crucible. Maybe you’ve noticed my scars.”

  The Auditor nodded gingerly. Was that a hint of strain around her eyes? “I see your scars. And I feel them, too—all of them. The ghosts of knives and hammers under your skin. I’m beginning to understand what Ja’raka sees in you. Do you know, I rather think he admires you?”

  Knives and hammers—that hit too close to home. And as much as Chloe tried to ignore it, staying thin was becoming more difficult by the second. She held on hard as the Alvalaithen’s song was stretched toward the breaking point. Could the Auditor feel her struggles? How much longer could either of them last? For an instant, Chloe considered running. There was nothing stopping her. But no—she wouldn’t run. She would outlast this creature, no matter what it took. She was the Keeper of the Alvalaithen, and the Auditor nothing but a filthy parasite. “So Dr. Jericho is a fan, is he?” Chloe said lightly. “Next time you see him, tell him the feeling is not mutual.”

  “Why not come with us, and tell him yourself?”

  “Why not take a long swim with a big bag of rocks?”

  The Auditor frowned, baring her teeth. Then she slid the cold, solid shaft of the crowbar slowly across Chloe’s chest, letting it come to rest dead center through the flickering dragonfly.

  Chloe nearly lost the fragile grip she still had on her power. But then two of the Mordin stepped forward in alarm. The gaunt-faced Mordin barked what sounded like a curse. Chloe understood at once. “They’re calling your bluff,” she said. “You could never allow this instrument to be destroyed. No more than I can.”

  The Auditor’s scowl turned into a rueful smile. “You are correct,” she said, her voice cracking now with unmistakable strain. “I cannot destroy what is precious.” And then she slid the cold metal up through Chloe’s neck—her chin, her mouth, her nose—and brought it to a halt directly between Chloe’s eyes. “There. Much better.”

  Chloe went rigid, clinging painfully to the last desperate threads of the Alvalaithen’s song. It was like she’d been slowly inhaling a great breath and was still trying to pack more air into lungs that were close to bursting. She wondered if she might faint.

  But the Auditor was grimacing openly now too, clearly at her own limits. She glared at Chloe, eyes alight with rage and disbelief. “You are close to the end, Tinker,” the Auditor said. “Step back. You know you want to save yourself.”

  Chloe clenched her fist ever tighter inside the Auditor’s throat. She forced her own lips to move. “Do not . . . presume . . . to know me,” she snarled.

  Without warning, a new voice cut through the windswept night, shrill but firm, coming from the shoreward end of the pier.

  “Stop!”

  The Mordin hissed and whirled around. The Auditor spun too, the crowbar slipping out of Chloe’s skull, swift as an arrow. With a gasp of relief, Chloe released the Alvalaithen and staggered back, blinking hard. The gaunt-faced Mordin leapt and seized the small figure that stood out there in the darkness, curly hair bobbing in the breeze.

  Isabel.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Isabel said as the Mordin dragged her closer like a child. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  The Auditor, sagging as much as Chloe, could only watch them approach. Chloe took a breath, recovering, and reached for the Alvalaithen again. She went thin, and a beat later she felt the Auditor do the same. This time they were both so exhausted that neither of them wrestled for control of the Tan’ji. Chloe let the Riven take what she would, seething, promising herself that someday the creature would get what was coming to her.

  And now Isabel was here. Unarmed and helpless. Pleading for Chloe’s safety. What was the woman thinking?

  “You,” the Auditor said, seeming to recognize Isabel. “Why are you here, Forsworn? And without your proxy, too.”

  Proxy—the harp, apparently.

  “I’m not here to fight,” Isabel replied. “I’m here to talk. To negotiate.”

  The Auditor considered her for a moment, and then turned to study Chloe’s face. She looked back and forth between Chloe and Isabel, then started to laugh. “How exemplary. You are here to negotiate. For your . . . daughter, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Chloe said. “I’m not her d—”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Isabel interrupted.

  Chloe was filled with fire. What did Isabel think she was doing? “There’s no negotiation necessary,” Chloe said. “I’m not in any danger.”

  The Auditor ignored her, speaking to Isabel instead. “It was you that lit the beacon.”

  “Yes. By accident.”

  The Auditor nodded as if she understood. “Fumbling with powers you were never meant to understand,” she murmured sadly. She sounded sincere. “And now you’re here to make amends for your mistake. To save your daughter.”

  “I don’t need saving,” Chloe said. “You couldn’t stop me from leaving if you tried, I—”

  “Quiet,” said the Auditor calmly, holding up a long, pale hand. Chloe was so infuriated that she lost her words entirely. The Auditor rounded on her and continued. “You do not yet understand the predicament you are in, Tinker. It is true I cannot stop you, but neither can you escape. I am Quaasa. I am everyone’s equal.” The Auditor sipped at the dragonfly and—to Chloe’s astonishment—let herself sink briefly into the concrete pier, up over her ankles. Then she rose smoothly to the surface again and smiled. “There is nowhere you can go that I cannot follow.”

  The sight—and the very idea—sank into Chloe’s bones like bitterly cold air. This Auditor seemed much more skilled than the one at the riverbank. Between her astonishing mimicry and the presence of the Mordin, maybe it was true. Maybe Chloe couldn’t escape. Even now she was exhausted from staying thin for so long; she was already starting to lose her grip on the Alvalaithen for a second time. But as her doubts rose higher, so did her outrage. She tried to crush her fears back down again. “You’d be surprised where I can go.”

  The Auditor simply shook her head. “Nothing surprises the Quaasa,” she said, making Chloe practically quiver with fury. Then she smiled in a gruesomely friendly way and plucked at a thread of the Alvalaithen’s waning song. “I grow tired. You do too. Let us not push each other to the edge again. Let us catch our breath, five seconds only—and then we will resume. Is this fair?”

  Not fair, not at all, but Chloe had no choice but to accept the offer. She wouldn’t last even another minute, and she didn’t dare allow the Auditor to stay thin while she herself did not. She nodded, watching the Auditor warily, and then they both released the Alvalaithen at once. The Auditor silently counted off five seconds on her long, four-knuckled fingers, and they took the reins again, each to their corners. She gave Chloe an agreeable nod, as if to suggest that this poisonous stalemate was fine and dandy. Chloe wanted to rip out her braid by the roots.

  The Auditor turned to Isabel. “You want to negotiate, Forsworn. But with what? You know we have no use for your . . . talents.
We cannot invite your kind into our nests.”

  “It’s not my talents I’m offering. It’s information.”

  Chloe felt dizzy. The mysterious remark about the Riven having no need for Tuners threw her, and suddenly here was Isabel, offering up information to this monster. What was she about to say? Chloe opened her mouth to stop her, but Isabel beat her to it. “I know where you can find easier quarry,” said Isabel. “Another Keeper. A Warden.”

  The Auditor cocked her head, clearly intrigued. “What Warden? Where?”

  “First, let my daughter go. Promise you won’t follow her.”

  “No.”

  “Then I have nothing to tell you.” Isabel’s eyes flickered onto Chloe for a moment, still pleading. Chloe stared daggers back at her.

  The Auditor hesitated, and then said, “Tell me what you have to tell me. If I believe you, your daughter will be free to lose herself in the city again.”

  “Swear it,” Isabel said.

  The Auditor shook her head. “The Quaasa take no oath but their own.”

  Isabel sighed in apparent frustration. She glanced at Chloe one last time and then spoke. “The girl I was traveling with—the empath. She’s gone back home. She’s there now. You know where she lives already.”

  Chloe surged forward. “Are you serious?” she fumed, storming up to Isabel. “What is wrong with you? You used her to find the Wardens again, and now you’re betraying her?”

  “I’m saving you,” Isabel said calmly. “You are my daughter. April is not.”

  The Auditor watched Chloe with interest. “So the empath has gone home, you say. April, is it?”

  “You tell me,” said Chloe.

  The third Mordin, silent so far, spoke. Shorter than the others, his voice was a deep and hearty wind chime. “The Wardens would never let her go back home by herself. If she’s there, she’s not alone.”