The Harp and the Ravenvine

by Ted Sanders

  Horace slammed the box closed, his mind racing. He stared out into the darkness with his own eyes, seeing nothing yet. But there could be no doubt—the thin man was out there somewhere right now, perhaps even far away across the flat meadow, stalking through the impenetrable darkness and watching Horace from his great height with his keen night eyes. He could see Horace, right now. Dr. Jericho might be a thousand feet away, but because he was watching, Horace could not escape through the falkrete.

  And what was worse, Horace suspected that the Mordin had seen Chloe, too, but had chosen to let her go. It would have been easy—a simple matter of closing his eyes until she was gone.

  Dr. Jericho wanted Horace all to himself.

  “I know you’re out there!” Horace shouted, loud as he could. His words rolled across the open meadow. A few seconds later, a faint and shivery tinkle of laughter returned to him on the night breeze, chilling him even further.

  “Patience, Tinker,” Dr. Jericho called, clearly still a very long ways off. His voice sliced through the night like a knife. “I’ll arrive when I arrive—as you’re no doubt aware.”

  Horace started to panic. He was well and truly alone out here, and the thin man was coming. Yes, Horace still had the phalanx, but even if he used it to immobilize the Mordin, it seemed likely that Dr. Jericho would still be able to see him, preventing his escape. Meanwhile, seventeen seconds had already passed since closing the box. How much time did Horace have?

  Horace yanked the box open again. He didn’t look inside—not yet. He didn’t even know what, exactly, he hoped to see. But he knew that the Mordin would sense that the Fel’Daera was open. He wanted Dr. Jericho to fear Horace’s knowledge of the future. The question was, how could Horace use that knowledge to make his escape?

  “Ah, there it is,” Dr. Jericho called out from the distant darkness, clearly sensing the box. “Good news, I hope? Tell me, how far into the future are we looking today?”

  So it seemed Dr. Jericho couldn’t sense how wide the breach was. That was good news. But Horace could smell the brimstone now. He tried to calm himself. He was going to have to outsmart the Mordin somehow, which meant that this approaching future was a puzzle he was going to have to solve. And the first step in the solving—as always—was to see truly. He lifted the open box to his eyes.

  But through the blue glass, a horrifying sight—the clear meadow marred with blurring shapes, one small and one tall, first here and then there; the thin man—stooping, running, fallen, standing, absent altogether; Horace himself—dodging, crawling, backing away, the blue light of his jithandra flashing.

  None of it was clear. None of it was decipherable. The future was a mash of a dozen different possibilities, and Horace couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  His panic grew. He’d opened the box too quickly. If he couldn’t see the future clearly, his greatest weapon against the Mordin was lost. He couldn’t threaten Dr. Jericho with the future if he couldn’t even see it! He started to close the box, to reset himself, when suddenly a memory drifted to the surface of his mind: Horace in the Riven’s nest, telling Dr. Jericho what his own future would be. And the Mordin had asked the obvious questions:

  Why on earth would Horace tell Dr. Jericho his future?

  And was that future true?

  If Dr. Jericho knew what his future was, he could then work to avoid it. The logical assumption, of course, was that Horace might be lying, trying to steer Dr. Jericho into any dangers—or away from any successes—that the box had foreseen. In that particular instance, in the nest, Horace hadn’t been lying.

  But why couldn’t he lie? Why shouldn’t he?

  Horace looked into the still-open box. More blurring, more uncertainty. And then for a moment, the entire scene went utterly black. Horace held his breath, but then the meadow returned, the uncertain futures of Horace and Dr. Jericho blurring to and fro across it.

  Horace knew what that blackness was. He’d seen it before at the river. The box in the present was occupying the same space as either himself or Dr. Jericho in the future, the glass opening up inside one of their bodies. It was a gruesome notion, but one he’d become accustomed to. In fact—somewhat morbidly—he had often wondered what would happen if he were to send something forward at just that moment, into that future body. He was pretty sure the result would be something like what happened when Chloe used the dragonfly to meld—

  Horace’s mouth fell open. “Oh, holy cow,” he said. He knew what he had to do.

  He moved quickly, unsure how much time he had until Dr. Jericho arrived. He pulled his jithandra out of his shirt and returned to the ruins of the barn, to the hard-packed dirt floor. Leaving the box open, he got on his knees and pried a pebble the size of a grape out of the ground. He crawled around, scanning and scraping, until he’d found six more stones of decent size, and then he went back outside to the falkrete circle.

  He could hear the thin man’s footsteps now, faint but steady, perhaps two hundred feet away. Horace knew the thin man could still see him, but it didn’t matter. Let him watch. Let him sense the Fel’Daera. Let him wonder.

  Horace picked a spot at random a few feet away from the sea serpent stone and made a show of looking through the box without actually looking. He took note of the time—just a handful of seconds before 11:20. He dropped a single rock inside and then closed the lid, sending the rock four minutes and thirty-four seconds into the future. No sooner had the familiar tingle wormed up his arms than Dr. Jericho spoke again from the darkness, much closer now. “What’s this? What are we up to, Tinker?”

  Horace ignored him. He opened the box again and hurried to a new spot near the falkrete circle. He sent another stone, fast as he could. He continued this way methodically, picking a new spot each time, sending stone after stone. Just as he reached the sixth stone, Dr. Jericho at last appeared in the flesh, looking taller than ever in the flat expanse of the meadow, faintly lit by the jithandra’s blue glow and the white light of stars overhead.

  Horace looked into the box as if taking careful aim and dropped the sixth rock inside. Barely twenty seconds had passed since he began. Then he met the thin man’s eye and closed the lid, slowly and deliberately. The stone vanished with a tingle. Still gripping the seventh and final stone in his other hand, he then slipped the Fel’Daera back into its pouch and pulled the phalanx from his pocket. Swiftly he filled the phalanx with the Fel’Daera’s power.

  “My, but you’ve been busy, Tinker,” Dr. Jericho said. “What have you been up to, I wonder?”

  “Stick around and you’ll find out.”

  “Such confidence.” The thin man began to circle him slowly, looking predatory even with his gruesome hands folded behind his back.

  “The Fel’Daera tends to do that to a person,” said Horace. “Maybe you’d like to hear what I saw through the glass just now.”

  “Once again, you’re so eager to share,” Dr. Jericho sneered. “Just like you were on the riverbank.”

  “When I saved your life, you mean.”

  The Mordin let out a low growl and took a half step toward Horace.

  “Yes,” Horace said sweetly. “Keep moving. Just like that.”

  Dr. Jericho froze. His eyes dropped to the Fel’Daera. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Horace would tell him, yes—but not the truth. “I saw you, on your hands and knees. You were immobilized.” He indicated the phalanx.

  “How fascinating,” said Dr. Jericho, frowning deeply at the ivory-colored wand.

  “It gets better,” Horace said. “You seem to know a lot about the Fel’Daera. So maybe you know what happens when the Keeper of the box looks forward through time and finds his view of the future obstructed by an object that has moved—”

  “Juxtaposition,” the Mordin said.

  Horace nodded as though he’d heard the word before. Again the Mordin’s familiarity with the Fel’Daera was like a blade of doubt between Horace’s ribs. He was sweating now. “Juxtaposition,” Horace repeated confi
dently. “Right. Like I said, the box showed you on your hands and knees. You were pinned—you will be pinned. You will be struggling. I came in for a closer look. Very close. In fact, I put the open box into the space where your chest will be. It was black, obviously—no light—and so I only approximated. But I’m pretty sure I got close enough.”

  Dr. Jericho crossed his long arms, considering it. “Close enough for what?”

  For an answer, Horace tossed him the seventh and final stone. The thin man snatched it out of the air deftly, quick as a snake. He examined it and smiled gruesomely.

  “You sent a stone forward into my heart.”

  “Yes,” Horace lied. “I sent six altogether—I’m sure you felt them. But I sent them to six different times.”

  “Playing with the breach again, oh my.”

  “Six different times, and also six different places, somewhere in a twenty-foot radius of where I’m standing now. Five of the stones were decoys, but one was not. Good luck figuring out which one was the one that mattered.”

  Dr. Jericho chucked the rock into the weeds. “Such a big promise from such a clever boy,” he sang. “I wonder if you will deliver.”

  “Wonder all you like. But good luck deciding what to do.”

  Horace went on meeting the Mordin’s gaze, determined not to back down. Everything depended on this bluff, on convincing the Mordin to avoid the false future Horace had invented. Horace kept his strength going by putting himself in Dr. Jericho’s shoes, by realizing that—just as Horace had hoped—he’d presented the Mordin with a difficult proposition. Dr. Jericho had to at least suspect that Horace’s version of the future was true. And if it was true, how could Dr. Jericho possibly know how to avoid it? Two steps this way, three steps that way, a sudden charge—any of these things might lead to his death. As the Fel’Daera had supposedly seen.

  There was one problem, of course. Time was passing. Any moment now, Dr. Jericho would feel the Fel’Daera opening in the past, right after Horace’s last failed attempt with the falkrete stone. And roughly two minutes and ten seconds after that, the first of Horace’s six pebbles would arrive. The rest would follow quickly after, and his fragile threat would fall apart.

  Right on cue, Dr. Jericho smiled and spread his arms wide, just as Horace had foreseen when he first opened the box four minutes and thirty-four seconds ago. “Ah, there it is. The Fel’Daera is open in the past. Watching this very scene, no doubt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And as for the stones, you claim that I won’t know when or where they’ll arrive.”

  “That’s right.”

  Dr. Jericho went on watching him thoughtfully. Abruptly he feinted a step to the left, making Horace’s heart skip a beat. Now he feinted to the right. Horace held the phalanx at the ready but didn’t so much as blink. Dr. Jericho shook his head ruefully. “This way, that way,” he muttered, echoing Horace’s own hopeful thoughts. “Whatever I do now, there’s a chance I’ll be starting a chain of events that ends with you killing me.”

  “No,” Horace said. “You’d be killing yourself.”

  “Perhaps so, perhaps so.” Dr. Jericho grinned viciously. “But what if I said I did not believe a bit of this tale?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not,” Horace said. “It’s still true.”

  After a beat, Dr. Jericho broke into laughter. He went on laughing, his musical cackles filling the night air. He bent forward toward Horace. “Delicious,” he said through a toothy, foot-wide smile, and then straightened to his full, towering height. “So delicious, in fact, that perhaps I will yield to you. Perhaps I will let you go, Horace.”

  Horace tried not to grimace, hearing the sound of his own name on the Mordin’s lips for the first time. “You say that like you have a choice.”

  “And I do. You of all people should know that there is always a choice.” He laughed again and then sighed. “But I cannot risk my life on a suspicion. You win.”

  Relief flooded through Horace. He didn’t dare show it. In one more minute, the first stone would arrive. “Yes,” he said. “I win, again.” He stepped back and knelt beside the falkrete stone that would take him away, unholstering the Fel’Daera with one hand while clinging to the phalanx with the other. “Now close your eyes.”

  Dr. Jericho’s smile abruptly faded. He bent his neck like a coiled snake. “First, a question,” he said. “By convincing me not to risk my life, haven’t you changed the future the box supposedly promised you? I’m curious whether you’re feeling ill yet. You’ve disobeyed the Fel’Daera, after all.”

  Thrall-blight. Horace hadn’t thought of that. He reasoned it out quickly—if he said he felt sick, that would mean the pretend future where Dr. Jericho died had been lost, right? “I feel fine,” he said, a stab in the dark.

  “Interesting,” said Dr. Jericho, with a flat tone that suggested Horace had guessed right. But the Mordin went on. “Thrall-blight is a pernicious condition, you know—it does its damage slowly, unseen. I’m sure Mr. Meister told you all about it.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Horace said, refusing to take the bait. Twenty-five seconds until the arrival of the first stone.

  Dr. Jericho bent down from his great height until his eyes were level with Horace’s. “Then he also told you—I’m sure—that the Mothergates are dying.”

  Horace froze. Precious seconds ticked past, but the Mordin’s words stunned him so deeply he stopped counting.

  “As I suspected,” the Mordin said quietly, straightening again. “Go then. Ask your master. See what he has to say.” He took a step back and closed his eyes.

  Horace still couldn’t speak. The Mothergates, the source of the energy that powered all Tanu . . . dying? Impossible. “You’re a terrible liar,” he managed at last.

  “Am I?” Dr. Jericho murmured, his voice like a sad violin. “Ask him to take you there. Lay your eyes upon the Veil. Take the empath with you, and see what she learns. And then when we next meet, perhaps we will speak more about the truth.” He turned his back on Horace. “Go now, before I change my mind. Before the others come. My eyes are closed, so go—go and find your answers.”

  His mind in a spin, with mere seconds before the arrival of the first rock, Horace touched the box against the falkrete stone—gently, gently, without the slightest sound. Immediately he was yanked out of himself, torn in two. The open sky overhead disappeared. The smell of brimstone vanished. Horace toppled onto the ground in some new place, gasping and struggling to rid himself of the remnants of a dream he hadn’t had—a dream in which he’d died, in which the Mothergates died with him. He blinked, trying to get his bearings. There was a stone in the ground in front of him. It looked like a mother bear sleeping.

  “Horace.”

  Horace struggled to sit up. High cloister walls surrounded him. “Chloe?”

  “Horace. Am I dreaming this?”

  He spotted her. She was on her hands and knees in the dirt, the dragonfly shining in her hand. And somehow the sight of her Tan’ji cleared Horace’s mind, made him remember himself. He’d escaped from Dr. Jericho and his terrible tales. He’d come through the falkrete stone. Chloe must have been here in the next cloister, and her presence had yanked him through.

  “Chloe,” he said again, her name on his lips helping him shed the horrors that clung to him. “Have you been waiting here this whole time?”

  “No. Not waiting. Been breaking and breaking and breaking in two.”

  Horace understood at once. She’d gone all the way back to San’ska, the home cloister. But when Horace hadn’t followed, she had eventually come back for him. Six jumps home, then five jumps back—on top of the six they’d made to get to April’s in the first place. He could scarcely imagine it.

  He found his feet. He holstered the box and shoved the phalanx into his pocket. He went over and sat down beside her. Chloe rolled onto her back, arms thrown out to her sides.

  “Tell me I’m here,” she said. “Tell me this is it.”

/>   “You’re here. This is it. You came back for me—you shouldn’t have.”

  “I almost didn’t. Lots of me didn’t. Part of me with every jump. I need to gather myself for a minute.” Her eyes found his. “Tell me again.”

  “You’re here. We’re here. This is it.”

  She nodded and looked up into the sky. The soft broad branches of a ginkgo hovered overhead. “You were late,” she said. “So late. I waited forever—didn’t I?”

  Horace did the math. “Seven minutes. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  No, he almost blurted out, and then said simply, “Dr. Jericho.”

  She nodded. “God, I hate that guy. How did you get away?”

  “I . . . outsmarted him. I think.”

  Another nod. “You were always the smartest.” She lay there breathing and gazing up into the leaves above. “I need to lie here awhile. I can’t go back yet.”

  “Of course not. There’s no hurry. We’re safe here.” He lay down beside her, looking up into the tree. He tried to open his mouth to tell Chloe what Dr. Jericho had said about the Mothergates, but he couldn’t bring himself to repeat that terrible lie.

  Chloe spoke instead. “That Auditor,” she began.

  Horace nudged her foot with his, urging her silently on.

  “She died,” said Chloe.

  “I know,” he said gently.

  “I mean I killed her.”

  Horace swallowed. “I know.”

  After that, they both let it be. Overhead, the leaves of the ginkgo shifted and rustled like a flock of whispering birds. The Alvalaithen shone in Chloe’s hand, a captive star. Slowly the urgency and horror of the last half-hour lifted. The night’s hard deeds began to become memories, remote and pliable. After a while, a solitary lightning bug flashed its way through the night air above them.