The Keepers #4 by Ted Sanders

Author:Ted Sanders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Through the Mothergate

“IF WE DON’T COME BACK,” CHLOE ANNOUNCED, “IT’LL PROBABLY be because my mother killed us.”

Beside her, Horace gazed up at the black mass of the Mothergate, clutching the astrolabe. “Let’s hope that’s why,” he said.

Chloe let herself frown at him. She had never had a lot of control over her facial expressions—or so she’d been told—and Horace definitely deserved her most miserable frown for that comment. She’d been kidding about the mom thing. Mostly. But it was no joke for Horace to suggest that something worse might happen to them as they prepared to step into the depths of the Mothergate. Horace caught her frown but only shrugged at her. He was barely sorry.

Falo stood beside them, her tall shadow seeming to dance as the Veil of Lura slid over her. “You will come back,” she said. “A Paragon of the Fel’Daera holds the astrolabe, and a Paragon of the Alvalaithen goes to meet her mother. A mother who wants nothing more than to see her daughter safe.”

Another frown, then, just for Falo. Falo saw it too, but didn’t even have the decency to shrug.

April seemed the most nervous of all, but Chloe wasn’t exactly sure where her worry lay. She’d sounded the alarm, alerting them that their greatest fears were coming true. With whatever awful power Grooma had given her, Isabel was attempting to repair one of the Mothergates. Horace and Chloe were going to stop her, in some remote Altari stronghold halfway around the world. In Crete, apparently.

“Where are we going again, exactly?” Chloe asked.

“Nlon’ka,” Falo said, the word falling out of her lips like a rock into water. “Though it was once a great Altari city, Nlon’ka is now all but abandoned. The Nevren keeps the Riven out, but since Isabel isn’t a Keeper, she likely faced no resistance when she made her way through the Veil to the Mothergate hidden there.”

“And once we get there, our plan is to . . . what, exactly?” asked Chloe. Not that she hadn’t been thinking of a plan. But planning wasn’t exactly a strength of hers. In fact, sometimes she thought her greatest strength might be not planning.

“Stop her,” said Falo. “Use your powers. Use whatever you can. But do not underestimate the power of words. Isabel is likely to be alone, which means she’ll have no Riven whispering into her ear. Because Joshua cannot open a portal into a location underground, he would have brought Isabel—and any Riven that accompanied her—close to the entrance of Nlon’ka. But Isabel would then have had to pass through the Nevren within Nlon’ka to get to the Mothergate. No Riven could have come with her.”

“Why won’t she be expecting us?” Horace asked. “Doesn’t she know that the Mothergates are actually . . . gates?”

“Travel through the Mothergates is rare,” Falo explained. “True accounts of such travel have been told only in whispers, and those whispers have faded into rumor.”

Horace studied the Mothergate. “Time is slippery inside,” he said. “The astrolabe should fix that.

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