Night Gate (23 page)

Rage swallowed a lump in her throat.

As they left the wetlands behind, they also left the shining waters, and it became very dark and silent. The rivulets that flowed into the hills were set deep, so that they shed little light. Yet there was enough to see that there were plants growing here and there, bushes and shrubs. Rage did not know how such things could thrive without sunlight and fresh air. It must be the magic in the water. The cave did not smell the least bit musty. If she had not known better, she would have believed she was outside on a dark night.

“How did you know we had stopped back there?” Billy asked.

“There are watchers here who serve me, unseen but seeing all,” the witch woman answered. “It was they who summoned me.”

They reached the summit of the third and highest hill in the cavern and found themselves looking down into a small, deep valley. A grove of trees grew at the bottom, and light flowed within it, yellow like the lantern light and quite different from the eerie illumination of the magical water. This was obviously their destination, and despite all the strange and wondrous things that had happened to Rage since leaving Winnoway, something about the grove of trees in this cavern deep under the earth thrilled her to the depths of her heart and lifted the black despair that had sunk its claws into her in the dank tunnel. It was true that she was no closer to finding Mam, but she had rescued Billy and Elle from the blackshirts, and they had saved Bear from a horrible death. They were free, and together, and maybe at last they had found someone with the power to help them.

Light was thrown from lanterns suspended from tree branches and from a large bonfire in a small clearing in the grove. There were hundreds of people milling around under the trees. Only when they were closer did Rage see that the crowd consisted not only of witch folk and wild things but also, astonishingly, of gray-clad Fork citizens. Some were little older than Rage. Most looked grave and worried, but a few had wary, suspicious expressions.

There were also natural animals. A leopard with pale blue eyes, several intelligent-looking squirrels, and a number of horses were standing with a handsome male centaur. A monkey with yellow eyes sat on the centaur’s back, chewing at its fingers and looking anxious. Another surprise was that some of the witch women, with their long hair and tattered robes, were not women! Apparently men could be witches as well, or at least align themselves with them. In fact, there were representatives in the grove of all the factions in Fork, except for keepers.

Rue went to the center of the clearing, where the fire was lit, and everyone began to draw nearer. She let go of Kelpie’s hand and turned to Rage. “There are many things that must be dealt with at this gathering, but first you must greet your old friends.” She made a gesture and two sprites came from the trees, leading Mr. Walker and a shyly smiling Goaty, his ringlets plaited with little blue flowers.

“Goaty!” Elle cried, and rushed to hug him so ferociously he gasped.

Rage knelt down and gathered Mr. Walker up, cuddling him for a long, glad moment. “I was so afraid when you didn’t come back.”

“I couldn’t!” Mr. Walker said, twitching his feathery tail in agitation. “That vent led to a pipe, and I couldn’t stop myself sliding down it. It went on and on, and I thought I was going to slide forever. But I came out and landed on a pile of soft rags. The Mother—”

“Foresaw that you would drop from a drain and arranged for a soft landing?” Rage finished the sentence for him, sitting back on her heels.

“How did you know?” Mr. Walker demanded.

Rage did not answer because a hush had fallen over the grove. The witch Mother lifted her hand, but before she could utter a word a little man the size of a three-year-old child darted out and took her hand. He bowed with a flourish and kissed her hand extravagantly. Like the fairies he had dragonfly wings protruding from the back of his brown shirt.

“Welcome, Mother,” the fairy man said to Rue in a deep, elegant voice that hardly matched his comical face and plump form.

“I
wish
you would not make such a fuss, Puck,” the witch Mother said crossly, sounding more like the baker’s sister than a leader.

“It is in my nature to revere that which is worthy of reverence,” the winged man said, and he bowed again to her. “Was I not made so?” he demanded pertly.

“I fear so,” the witch woman said, but now her eyes were amused. “A miscalculation on my part, no doubt.”

“I can be irreverent, too, when it is needed,” he responded with a sly smile. He snapped his fingers, and two sprites ran forward with a stool for the witch.

Rage stared at the little man in confusion. Puck was a character in a play she had seen with her drama class. Rue must have named him after that character. Something about this idea seemed tremendously important, but there was no time to tease it out.

Now seated, Rue addressed the gathering. “Witch folk, wild things, citizens of Fork, natural beasts, thank you for coming. I know it is dangerous for all of us to meet in this way, and I know that some of you were reluctant to do so. Yet as I said in my message to you, Valley is dying, and we have very little time in which to save it and ourselves.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Rage turned around to see a man in gray glaring at Rue.

“What is this place?” another Fork man demanded. “Why was it necessary for me to be blindfolded to come here?”

“I was in the middle of bathing when your people came for me,” a woman complained. “Why was I given no warning?”

“It would have been too dangerous to set a meeting place and time in advance,” Rue said calmly. “Someone might easily have spoken out of turn, alerting the blackshirts.” She paused but no one spoke. “This is the Place of Shining Waters, and it is the source of all magic in Valley.”

Rage was no less astonished than the Fork people. “The wizard gave Valley its magic—” a Fork man began.

“That is true,” Rue agreed. “He stood in this very grove and infused the waters in the cavern with pure magic. He knew that it would flow, as water does, up through the land, to succor all things.”

“Magic no longer succors Wildwood!” a gray-clad woman said.

“The flow has all but ceased in Wildwood,” Rue agreed mildly. “As it has begun to cease in the provinces, and as it will soon cease in Fork.”

There were exclamations of disbelief, but there were also nods and cries that it was true, that magic
was
dying in Fork.

“In order to know the truth of what ails Fork, you must know other truths,” Rue said in a voice that was suddenly chilly and majestic. “The High Keeper claims that witch folk offended the wizard and made him abandon Valley. This is not true. The wizard wearied of ruling and retreated to his castle and his arcane researches. Then he vanished. I do not know where he went. Witch folk went to dwell in Wildwood after his withdrawal to Deepwood, for we did not desire to live by keeper rules, or Order our lives as they commanded.”

There was a mutter of disapproval from the Fork citizens, but Rue ignored it. “We continued to create wild things and to use magic to feed them. But I say to you that the working of magic to free wild things does not remove magic from the land.”

“Then why is it that Wildwood lost magic first?” a Fork woman called truculently.

“Because the High Keeper decided it should,” Rue answered flatly.

There was a loud rumble of disbelief from the crowd of Fork citizens, who had drawn together into a group.
No doubt to give themselves courage to speak,
Rage thought.

“I
knew
that the High Keeper was bad,” Mr. Walker hissed.

“He smelled of badness,” Elle agreed.

“
Why
did he stop the magic?” Billy muttered.

“
How
did he stop it, I’d like to know,” Mr. Walker said.

“Shh!” Rage hissed, for the centaur had turned to glare at them.

“The High Keeper knows of this cavern,” Rue continued, and many of those gathered looked about in alarm. “He knows it is the source of magic in Valley because the knowledge is passed from each High Keeper to his successor. I do not know why the wizard showed this to the first High Keeper. Perhaps in pride, for it was a mighty deed to freeze the moment in time within which Valley exists. Yet it was inevitable that there would come a High Keeper with arrogance enough to try to use the pure magic. The man who is now High Keeper of Fork used the power here to block the flow of magic to Wildwood. He wished to punish witch folk for their disobedience.”

“I do not believe this,” a man in gray exclaimed. “How do you come to know so much of the High Keeper’s doings, you who have always dwelled in Wildwood?”

Rue looked suddenly weary and older. “I have dwelled in Fork. Like many, I was forced here as a girl and unwillingly banded. I made no secret of my unhappiness, and soon agents of the witch folk sought me out. I believed them when they told me that witch folk were not responsible for the harm being done in Valley, and I agreed to help them seek out the source of magic. The witch who was Mother then believed there was some blockage in the flow. She did not dream it had been done deliberately. But she knew there was no point in approaching the High Keeper for help. His hatred of us seemed to grow daily. When I was sixteen, my bands were to be replaced, and the man who was supposed to weld the permanent bands on my wrists gave me false bands. He was an ally of the witch Mother.

“Thereafter, I was secretly trained in the working of magic. Eventually I found this place, and it was here that I first saw the High Keeper dip his hands into the shining waters.”

Rue paused, a challenge in her eyes, but no one spoke. “I heard him cackle and shriek like a madman afterward. He ranted his hatred of the witch folk and his horror of the wild things. I heard him command the magic to cease its flow through Wildwood. He vowed he would not reverse his order until all witches and wild things had been wiped from Valley.”

She stopped. The anger in her eyes became weariness. “He was a fool not to see what any witch apprentice could have seen. One cannot stop
part
of a flow. When the High Keeper prevented magic flowing through Wildwood, he began the process that would one day stop the flow of magic in all of Valley.”

“You are saying magic is dying here because of an accident?” This from one of the witch women.

“Is it an accident when the wrong done is greater than the wrong intended?” Rue asked. “I do not think so, for wrongness is a flow, too.”

“I do not believe the High One did this,” a Fork woman shouted. “I did not come here to hear him accused! I—”

“You came to hear how to save Fork and yourself,” snapped Rue. “Therefore listen. The High Keeper saw us as evil—”

“Yet it is he who is evil and does evil now.” A new voice. The crowd drew back to reveal the speaker. Rage was amazed to see the elderly, white-robed keeper who had assisted the High Keeper in the conservatorium.

“Isn’t that—” Elle began, but Billy shushed her as the old man shuffled through the crowd to Rue’s side.

“Evil is only another kind of illness, Hermani,” Rue said in a surprisingly gentle voice.

“Once the High Keeper was my friend,” he said in a quavering voice. “He spoke with such poetry of the need to keep and Order Valley. When Wildwood lost its flow of magic, I agreed to the pogrom against witch folk because I believed you were endangering the true beasts in our care. I believed it was your fault that they had to be kept in provinces, for why else would magic have died in Wildwood? But then the High Keeper began to band children and to forbid travel. He set curfews in the city and allowed the blackshirts to punish anyone who disobeyed him or spoke out against his methods. Fork became dark. Yet I held my tongue, for I truly thought all would be healed once Wildwood was emptied out.”

He paused for breath, his face haggard with grief. “But then the High Keeper began to bring natural beasts in from the provinces. He killed them and had them stuffed, claiming they could be better kept in Order dead than alive.” Tears began to run down his wrinkled face. “The conservatorium grew and grew. Only now do I understand that his madness began here.”

“His madness began before he used the shining waters,” Rue said coldly. “It began with his hunger for power.”

“At first I made excuses for him,” the old man said in a broken voice. “I told myself that the animals were old or ill. That they had lived good lives. I could not admit to myself what was happening. You see, I have loved him, and to face the truth meant that my whole life had been a lie. But I could not go on seeing the animals die. I began to work with others to secretly remove from the provinces animals in danger of conservation and to transport them back over the river to Deepwood.” He bent his head forward and wept in earnest. Rage felt her own eyes fill with compassion at his terrible despair.

“Do not torture yourself,” Rue said, and now there was pity in her face.

At a signal, a sprite brought another stool, but the stricken keeper turned to face those assembled. “I came to this meeting because the High Keeper is mad, and I can ignore it no longer. Magic is dying in Fork, and all keepers know it. I believe the Mother speaks the truth when she says it is the High Keeper’s doing. If there is hope for Valley now, it lies with the Mother and her kind.”

Rue laid her hand on his shoulder, and he sat. Then she examined the pale faces of the Fork citizens. “Many of you came here seeking someone to blame. If we can save Valley, then it will be worth understanding how this came to pass. Only then can we ensure that it will not happen again. But now we have very little time in which to act.”

“How long, Mother?” a witch man asked.

“We have perhaps six months before the flow of magic is weakened so much that Valley will slide back into time.”