Incarceron Part 83

"So this is why no one can come out."

She looked up.

"Is it reversible, Master?"

"How do I know? Without examining every-"

He stopped dead. "You realize we have seen the Portal, the gateway? In your father's study there was a chair."

She leaned back against the table.

"The light fixture. The ceiling slots."

It was terrifying. She had to walk again, pace up and down, think about it hard.

Then she said, "I have something to tell you too. He knows. He knows we have the Key."

Without looking at him, not wanting to see the fear in his eyes, she told him about her father's anger, his demands. By the time she had finished, she found herself crouched beside him in the lamplight, her voice down to a whisper.

"I won't give the Key back. I have to get Finn out."

He was silent, the coat collar high around his neck.

"It's not possible," he said bleakly.

"There must be some way ..."

"Oh, Claudia." Her tutor's voice was soft and bitter. "How can there be?"

Voices. Someone laughing, loud.

Instantly she leaped up, blew the lamps out. Jared seemed too dispirited to care. In the dark they waited, listening to the revelers' drunken shouts, a badly sung ballad fading away through the orchard. Claudia felt her heart thudding so loudly in the hush, it almost hurt. Faint bells chimed eleven in the clock towers and stables of the Palace. In one hour her wedding day would dawn. She would not give up. Not yet.

"Now that we know about the Portal and what it does ... could you operate it?"

"Possibly. But there's no way back."

"I could try." She said it quickly. "Go in and look for him. What have I got here? A lifetime with Caspar ..."

"No." He sat up and faced her.

"Can you even begin to imagine life in there? A h.e.l.l of violence and brutality? And here-if the wedding doesn't happen, the Steel Wolves will strike at once. There will be a terrible bloodshed."

He reached over and took her hands. "I hope I've taught you always to face facts."

"Master-"

"You have to go through with the wedding. That's all that's left. There is no way back for Giles."

She wanted to pull away, but he wouldn't let her. She hadn't known he was so strong.

"Giles is lost to us. Even if he's alive."

She slid her hands down and held his, tight with misery. "I don't know if I can," she whispered.

"I know. But you're brave."

"I'll be so alone. They're sending you away."

His fingers were cool.

"I told you. You have far too much to learn."

In the darkness he smiled his rare smile. "I'm going nowhere, Claudia."

THEY COULDN'T do it.

The s.h.i.+p wouldn't hold steady, even with all of them hauling at the wheel. Her sails were rags, her rope trailed everywhere, her rails were smashed, and still she yawed and zigzagged, the anchor swinging and the bow oscillating toward the cube, away from it, above, below.