The Gate Thief

17

How do you learn anything with your brain switched off? Yet Danny quickly realized that this was exactly what he had to do here in the Egyptian desert. Loki’s gates didn’t actually know anything, or remember anything, except at one remove: They remembered where Loki had been when he learned powerful secrets about the Belmage, and they remembered what he had been doing.

So Danny had to be where Loki had been, and do what he had done, and then let memory flow into his mind. Memory that was not his own, of things he had not done. And the memory included no language. It only included what Loki came to know, at a level below language.

The moment Danny tried to make sense of the memories, his conscious mind took over. And his conscious mind introduced language. Language drove out the inchoate, wordless Loki-memories.

So he could not make sense of anything, while it was happening. He had to let it wash over him. It required a sort of trance. His conscious mind had to be off in space, not concentrating on anything.

It is so hard to concentrate on not concentrating.

So at first the memories were jagged. They flashed in and out like lightning. There was no coherency. Images of a scrawny, sun-burnt Egyptian man, small in stature, bald, his shoulders tented by thin white linen, a dusty linen kilt around his loins, but otherwise naked. The memory included heat. And then cold, and darkness.

The man was talking, but Danny heard no words. He did not want the man’s words, though this man was the teacher-some kind of hermit that Loki had consulted. A man who knew ancient lore of Egypt, knowledge older than Christianity, though he was certainly a Christian ascetic. But the memory of his words could not be recovered this way. Instead, Danny had to recover the memory of the story that Loki had built up in his own memory.

When words came to mind, then, they were not the hermit’s words, they were the words that mattered to Loki as he listened. Ka. Ba. But as soon as Danny attached to the words, their meaning in this context fled away.

Fortunately, the memory could be endlessly started over, repeated again and again. The gates were patient. What else did they have to do? So as Danny gradually mastered the art of meditation, at least well enough for this purpose, this day, the memory began again, and now it washed over Danny and became his own.

Later, he told himself. I will remember remembering the memory, and that will become the story. For now let it flow. Let it fill you.

He had no idea of the passage of time. Captured by the memory, he did not know if it was day or night where he sat alone in the desert, in front of the cavelet that he and Wheeler and Hal had cleared of sand. He only knew what the time was in the memory, as it flowed through a long, long conversation.

A couple of times, breaking the memory flow, he despaired. Loki had placed all the things the hermit told him into a context of Loki’s own experience with gates, with mages of every kind, in a world where magery was far more common, where a gatemage was educated in his Family’s history and knowledge and skills. How could Danny, in his ignorance, possibly make sense of any of this?

He let it flow.

He let it flow.

And then a hand touched his shoulder.

That had not happened before in the memory! Who was it who interrupted Loki?

Danny waited for the memory of Loki turning, to see what he saw, to know what he knew.

Then the hand touched him again, more sharply this time, shaking him, and Danny realized: This is not in the memory. This did not happen to Loki. This is happening to me.

“Please,” he whispered. His voice was a feeble croak. “Please wait.”

The hand shook him again. Very hard. It almost knocked him over.

Danny felt like weeping, did weep one great sob, and then the intruder’s work was done: The trance was broken, the memory fled.

His own memories rushed back. He was in Egypt, a nation for which he had no passport or visa. He was caught.

He almost gated away. But then it finally dawned on him that the person was talking. The sunlight was dazzling. He could hardly see. And he must have been deaf, for now the voice swelled and faded. It was English. He knew the voice. He squinted. He shaded his eyes.

The face came down to be directly in front of his. She was angry. Hermia. Hermia had followed him here.

Stupid stupid stupid! Didn’t she know he was doing something important, something vital? How did she dare to interrupt him?

“Drink this!” she was saying.

He looked down and saw that she was holding a bottle of water. Evian. He didn’t like Evian.

She had the cap off. She jammed the mouth of it against his lips. It hurt. His lips were dry and chapped. Split. He looked at the top of the water bottle. There was blood on it.

“Dehydrated.” That was one of the words she said.

He opened his mouth and tipped his head back and let her pour water into his mouth. He had to work at swallowing. It was as if he had forgotten how to do it.

No, he was simply waiting for Loki’s kinetic memory to kick in. He was waiting for Loki to remember drinking. But Loki hadn’t drunk anything.

That’s because Loki’s whole conversation had only lasted an hour. But Danny’s attempt to remember it had lasted much longer, starting over again and again.

He succeeded in swallowing. The water came down his throat so painfully that he realized: I have gone a long time without drinking.

Hermia was gone. But he still held the water bottle in his hand. He tried to lift it to drink more. He couldn’t remember how. He bent over and touched his cracked and bloody lips to the plastic lip of the bottle. The water didn’t come upward. But he was able to hold it against his lips as he straightened his body. This brought the bottle up with him. Water flowed from it over his lips. He made his lips and tongue work and swallowed some of it. This time it felt better. But then it went down wrong and he coughed. Choked. Dropped the bottle. Even as he continued to try to cough out the water that had gone down his windpipe, he felt around for the bottle. Why can’t I see it? he asked himself. Everything’s so bright.

Then there were hands again, hands on both sides of him, picking him up, raising him to his feet. It hurt to unwind his body, to stand up. His legs would not support him. His legs had no feeling. How long had he sat in the same position without moving?

They were talking to each other. Two women. Hermia again. Veevee. The other gatemages. His friends. They were both angry. They were both worried. But they were speaking in language, and he was avoiding language. He didn’t want to hear language because that would distract him from …

No, no, he wasn’t remembering anymore. He was no longer in the trance. It was good to have language now. He needed to hear what they were saying and understand them.

“He’s not hearing us,” said Veevee.

“Tell me what I don’t know,” said Hermia.

“We have to get him to Naples,” said Veevee.

“There’s no gate to-oh, Naples, Florida. Let’s just concentrate on getting him back through this gate to the house he left from.”

Danny staggered. His legs were beginning to get feeling again. An ecstasy of pins and needles. An agony of pain in his long-unmoved joints.

“He’s trying to walk,” said Hermia.

“He was just staring at the cave?”

“Makes the Narcissus story make sense,” said Hermia. “Forced to stare at the same spot forever.”

“Only not his own reflection.”

“How do we know what he was seeing?”

What was I seeing? Can I remember anything? Was this all wasted, because it didn’t enter my own mind in a way that I have any hope of making sense of?

They got him down the sandy, rocky slope to the gate and suddenly they were indoors. Hal’s bedroom. Was that really the last place he had been? It didn’t matter which had been last. There was a gate from Hal’s room to the cave in Egypt, and that’s all that mattered. Hermia had found it. Then she had gone for Veevee to help her. Chaining from gate to gate.

Hal was there. He swore, tried to help.

Danny should have been able to walk easily. He should have been healed of everything by passing through a gate. Certainly the physical pain was gone. The feeling in his legs was back. But he was still having trouble walking.

“We’re getting him back to his own house, dear,” said Veevee. “You were a great help, but we’ve got it from here.”

“You’re sure that nobody made him do this?” asked Hermia.

“He was completely normal,” said Hal. “For Danny, anyway. He had this project he was doing. It had something to do with Loki. He had to go to the desert and we had to dig out the cave. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“But you don’t think anybody else was controlling him?” asked Hermia.

“How would I know?” said Hal. “For all I know, somebody’s controlling you.” He was standing between them and the gate back to Danny’s house.

“You’re such a dear,” said Veevee. “Please don’t worry. The gate already healed him. But he’s still not functioning properly, so we’re not sure what’s happening. If we take him to a hospital they’ll find nothing wrong and we’ll have to explain why we brought him in.”

“I’m OK,” said Danny to Hal. “I’m just having trouble … using my body.”

“He’s like a beastmage who got lost in his heartbound,” said Veevee.

“Apparently, judging from his motor skills, his heartbound is a drunken slug.”

Hal stopped blocking the way. They got him to and through the gate.

Back in his own house, Danny wouldn’t let them take him to Naples. “No reason to go there,” said Danny.

“We have to rehydrate you,” said Veevee. “Going through a gate doesn’t replace the water you lost. A day and a half in the desert sun. Not to mention a night in the desert. What were you thinking?”

“I was doing research,” said Danny.

“Into near-death experiences?” asked Hermia. She was tasting water from a glass in Danny’s kitchen. “You drink this stuff?”

“Buena Vista’s finest,” said Danny. She handed him the glass and he drank it down in one long sloppy draught.

“I can’t believe that your third-degree sunburn has turned into a tan,” said Veevee. “I think of all the lotions and hours in tanning booths and … all I needed to do was get a savage sunburn and go through a gate.”

“Do you have any idea how you terrified us?” demanded Hermia. “Suddenly nobody can find you. Marion and Leslie have no idea. Nobody knows. Until Veevee finally thought of asking your high school fan club.”

“My friends,” said Danny.

“You are the world’s only Gatefather,” said Hermia, “and you don’t have the right to disappear without telling anybody.”

“I told my friends,” said Danny. “And I was only going to be gone for a few hours.”

“At least thirty-six hours,” said Veevee.

“I didn’t know,” said Danny.

“You could have died,” said Hermia. “Do you understand that? What drug did you take?”

“No drug,” said Danny.

“Don’t lie,” said Hermia. “It took forever to get you out of that trip you were on. Were you hallucinating?”

“Not half well enough,” said Danny. “Instead of being mad at me, do you want to find out what I was doing? I warn you-in order to do that, you’ll have to actually listen to me.”

“Oh, you’re telling me off?” said Hermia. “You do a foolish, stupid-”

“Hermia,” said Veevee, “let’s listen to him and find out whether he was foolish or stupid.”

“Now you’re on his side?” demanded Hermia.

Danny and Veevee looked at her in silence.

Hermia stood up straight, took a deep breath, and flopped down on the couch beside him. Veevee pulled up a kitchen chair. “So the old woman gets the straightback chair.”

“You just went through a gate, you feel fine,” said Hermia.

“You know I have Loki’s gates inside me,” said Danny.

“You captured them, yes,” said Hermia.

“But now he’s given them to me. So we … talk.”

“You and Loki?” asked Veevee.

“In a way. Maybe. But I think I’m just talking to his gates. They obey me now. But they’re still part of him, so maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. There are things in his memory that I need to know, and he’s not here. Plus, if I asked him I don’t think he’d tell me. He doesn’t seem really eager to teach me.”

“But you can talk to the gates?”

“I don’t know how it works,” said Danny. “Have you ever heard of anybody giving their gates to somebody else?”

“That would be like giving away your outself,” said Veevee.

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” said Hermia. “Old family legend. Two friends who were so devoted to each other that they became each other’s heartbound.”

“But it isn’t like that,” said Danny. “He’s not riding me, and I’m not riding him. He isn’t controlling me. He isn’t a manmage.”

“Can you make his gates?” asked Hermia.

“After what happened with the Wild Gate, I wouldn’t dare to try. But please, please let me tell you what I learned while I can still remember it.”

“Learned?” asked Veevee.

“I was there to act out the kinetic memory of the time when Loki learned some great secret from a Christian hermit in Egypt. A Coptic-speaker, but a scholar all the same. A collector of ancient Egyptian lore. Secret stuff that isn’t in the inscriptions, it isn’t in the books of the dead, it isn’t anywhere. It’s just known, and he told it to Loki, and the gates can’t give it to me in language, they can only help me recover Loki’s mental state when he learned it. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think you understand, sweetie,” said Veevee.

“I don’t,” said Danny. “But let me talk it through. Because it was working. There at the end when you shook me, I was finally getting it. After starting over again and again.”

“Sorry I saved your life,” said Hermia.

“Please, please let me tell it.” He almost cried with desperation.

“He’s asking you to shut up, dear,” said Veevee.

“I know what he’s asking.”

“If you don’t want to listen,” said Veevee sweetly, “then will you please leave and let him tell me?”

Hermia buried her face in her hands.

“It’s going to be a jumble,” said Danny. “I feel it slipping away like a dream. It’s about the ka and the ba. The ka is the inself, the ba is the outself.”

“Everybody knows that,” said Hermia.

“I didn’t!” said Danny.

“Shut up, please, Hermia,” said Veevee. Her voice sounded so sweet that it was clear she was murderously angry.

“And it’s not the same. That was what was so hard,” said Danny. “We think of the ka as being tied to the body, part of the body. So we send out the ba into our heartbeasts, into our clants, into our gates. But neither ka nor ba is part of our body. Neither one.”

“That’s absurd,” said Hermia. Then she clapped her own hand over her mouth.

“This is what Loki heard that made him so excited and frightened,” said Danny. “I remember how he felt about it. I remember him understanding this. The ka and the ba are bound to each other. Together, they’re both the thing we actually are. The body is just-a dwelling place. A tool set. It has a life of its own, a mind of its own, but it isn’t us. Any of us. Mages and drowthers alike. We are ka, we are ba, we are not these animals that we wear.”

“We’re listening,” said Veevee.

“Sounds very gnostic,” said Hermia.

“No it doesn’t,” said Danny. “It doesn’t sound gnostic at all. Or Coptic. It sounds like the thing that made Loki close all the gates.”

“If the ka and ba aren’t part of our human body,” said Veevee, “then where do they come from?”

“From the world of the Belmages,” said Danny.

“In other words,” said Hermia, “from ‘heaven.’”

Danny clamped his hands over his ears. “Please, please don’t pollute this. Let me say it first. Let me say it before you start trying to bend it to fit whatever shit you Greeks think you already know. Did any of you go closing gates? No? Loki did. So shut up and let me try to remember why.”

“Sorry again,” said Hermia.

“From the world of the Belmages,” said Danny. “It was a gate from their world that first turned these hairless apes into humans. But it was also these bodies that gave them the powers we turn into magery.”

“No,” said Veevee. “I mean, I thought the powers came from the ka and ba.”

“That’s the thing. Everybody has a ka and ba. It comes into the body when we’re born or … whenever. It comes in. But in the process, the body has a … a … an interface with the ka and the ba. When mine came into me, when Loki’s came into him, that’s what I mean, that’s what I remember, when Loki’s ka and ba entered his body, it fragmented his ba into all his gates. That’s when he became a gatemage. Body plus ka and ba. You see? There’s no magery without the body.”

“So far this is so exciting I can see why you nearly died to learn it,” said Hermia.

“I haven’t gotten to the exciting part yet,” said Danny. “It’s in the book of Revelation. ‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’”

“I thought you said this was ancient Egyptian lore,” said Hermia.

“Sounds like the King James version to me,” said Veevee.

“The devil. Satan. That’s the Belmage. He was cast down-that means he was sent through a gate to Mittlegard. But he wasn’t put into a human body. He and his angels were sent here as naked ka and ba.”

They pondered this. So did Danny. “I feel so much of what Loki understood slipping away from me. Now I don’t even know how much of this is what he concluded and how much of it I’m making up right now, trying to make sense of it.”

“Just go ahead,” said Veevee. “I’m finally beginning to see why this matters.”

“I’m not,” said Hermia.

“Belmage is not a manmage. There are manmages, and what he does is very similar to manmagery, but he isn’t in a human body. He’s bodiless. But think what the devil keeps doing all the way through the New Testament. He possesses people’s bodies. He and the other devils. His angels, you see? Jesus was always casting them out.”

“I thought that was just schizophrenia,” said Hermia.

“Or multiple personality disorder,” said Veevee.

“That’s the only thing today that looks like what the Bible describes. But there are all these bodiless kas and bas around. The Belmage is their boss. The big guy. The main enemy. That’s all ‘satan’ means-”

“Don’t bother telling gatemages what words mean,” said Hermia.

“So the Belmage hates us all, because our ka is joined to a body and it changed us. Gave us these powers. If we learn how to use them. The ability to use magery is hereditary. Tied to the body. But that’s why he wants to take possession of the bodies. Take over, get the power.”

“But they aren’t joined to our body the way we are, are they?” asked Veevee.

“No, they aren’t. They don’t get magery of their own. They get inside us and boss us around and get the use of our magery. That’s the danger of the Belmage. He’s not a guy who sends his ba into other people the way a manmage does. Persuading you, changing your perceptions. No, his whole ka and ba climb into you. He wears you like a puppet. He makes you use your powers to do his will. But when you die, he doesn’t die. In fact, he loves it when your ka gets separated from your body, because then he’s in sole control.”

“So why doesn’t he just kill you and take over?” asked Veevee.

“That’s the thing. The ancient Egyptians believed the Semitic gods could animate dead bodies. That’s why they emptied out the brains and internal organs of the people of great power, and put them in the canopic jars. So that the body wouldn’t work. So that the Belmage or his minions couldn’t animate your corpse and continue ruling in your place. Embalming wasn’t about living forever. It was about making damn sure you stayed dead.”

“But can they?” asked Veevee. “That would be-zombies.”

“No, no,” said Danny. “The hermit called that superstition. The Belmage can’t control a dead body unless he’s already in control when the ka leaves. People believe what they believe, right? But the Belmage needs to take control of a living body, and he wants powerful ones. He wants mages. Then he uses their magery.”

“So when he possesses somebody, you have to kill the person he possessed?” asked Veevee. “That seems really final.”

“It doesn’t even work,” said Danny. “The Belmage isn’t dead. You can’t kill the ka or the ba. They don’t die. I mean, the ones truly attached to human bodies die, but that only means they’re cut loose from the body. The ka and ba are still alive. That’s why we can still hold on to the gates of these mages who’ve been dead for a thousand years. They’re severed from a ka that’s still alive … somewhere. But the Belmage-he didn’t really have a body, so he’s not changed by the death of the body. He just goes on to another.”

“You’re saying that these Belmages are the only ones who reincarnate.”

“I don’t know, that’s not the way they discussed it. I don’t know what happens to regular people who die in the regular way. This is a memory so I couldn’t exactly ask questions,” said Danny. “And here’s the thing. The Belmages were really bad at this at first. They aren’t manmages. They aren’t any kind of mage. So they don’t have powers the way we do. What they have is a lot of practice. They’ve been diving into people, getting whatever control they can, for ten thousand years. Even Loki hasn’t lived that long. So the smartest, the best of them-the Belmage. The Enemy. The great Dragon. That one is the most powerful, the one that has acquired the greatest skill. He’s learned ways of getting inside people that are far more powerful than any of the other castoffs.”

“So what Loki realized,” said Hermia.

“What made him close the gates,” said Veevee.

“Was the realization that the Dragon had finally figured out how to attach himself so firmly to a person that he could ride him through a gate.”

“Oh my,” said Veevee.

“Think about it. The presence of a Belmage inside you, being possessed-that’s a disease. Isn’t it? Passing through a gate should cast him off.”

“But people holding hands with other people can take them through a gate,” said Hermia.

“Holding hands. Two people with their own bodies. But this extra, this rider, this possessor, he gets cast out. What do you think Jesus was? Healing people, casting out devils.”

“Oh, you’re saying he was a Gatefather?” asked Veevee.

“This isn’t from the hermit, we’re away from what Loki learned, the hermit wasn’t going to say anything that denied the divinity of Jesus. Let’s get back to what Loki knew. He realized that the Belmages were learning how to attach to people in such a way that they could go through gates. I think that’s what’s really going on with that passage from the Library of Congress. That Belmage had taken possession of a gatemage. The Loki of that time didn’t realize what was going on. He thought that the gatemage he saw in the body was his enemy. But it was the Belmage inside him. So when the Loki of that ancient time fought the Belmage, he actually killed the poor sap of a Gatefather that the Belmage had possessed. The Belmage himself never left this world. He couldn’t actually pass through a gate. He could use the power of the Gatefather he was controlling to make gates, but he couldn’t go through them. And sending him through one threw him out of the body.”

“This isn’t what you remember from Loki,” said Hermia.

“No, sorry, no, it just makes sense now, that’s all. And I don’t remember-I mean, I didn’t find out why Loki knew that the Belmage of his time was getting ready to go through gates. The Dragon was probably riding a Gatefather at the time, so Loki ate all that Gatefather’s gates-not killing him. That made the Gatefather useless to the Dragon. He’d leave him then, see? Because he was powerless. But he would just have found another gatemage. Or he would have gotten into anybody and then gone through a Great Gate and magnified his power and so-”

“So Loki ate all the gates, and kept eating them,” said Hermia. “Until we brilliantly came along and made a Great Gate after all.”

“And put a Wild Gate out in the world,” said Danny. “I have so totally screwed up.”

“No, Loki screwed up,” said Veevee. “He should have realized that someday there’d come along a Gatefather who was even more powerful than he is, and he’d eat his gates. He had to know it.”

“Maybe that’s why he woke up from the tree he was living in, because he knew I existed.” Danny stopped himself. “More speculation, more guessing. What we know is this. Loki realized he had to close all the gates to keep the Dragon and his followers, these loose kas and bas, from taking over everything.”

“I’m still not getting it,” said Veevee. “So they can use gates.”

“I get it,” said Hermia. “As long as using a gate stripped them out of you, all you had to do to cast a devil out of somebody was to pass him through a gate. But if they can stay, then nothing casts them out except death itself. Whoever they take over is possessed till they die. And the Dragon or his devils, they don’t die when the human dies, they just find another powerful mage to possess. Human life is ruled by these guys forever.”

“Human life is over,” said Danny. “Only the Belmages have a life. Everybody else is forced to be their puppets. To be spectators in their own lives.”

“So all these years that Loki has prevented Great Gates,” said Veevee, “these Belmages have been possessing people, and because there were no gates, nobody could get rid of them.”

“True,” said Danny. “That’s why it’s all about the Great Gates. When Loki did it, Westil was still free of the Belmages. They had never been able to make the passage-till then. So Loki kept Westil completely free of the Belmages. And even here, he kept all the mages weak by preventing their passage between worlds. So the Belmages could never get control of any real power. For all we know, they’ve been leaving mages like us alone, and concentrating on the people who actually run this world.”

“Stalin, not Odin,” said Veevee.

“Hitler, not Jupiter,” said Hermia.

“But now imagine Hitler with the power of a Tempester or a Tidefather or a Stonefather-one who’s passed through a Great Gate. Because just supposing Hitler was really a Belmage possessing this Austrian painter dude, then Hitler didn’t really die in that bunker in Berlin in 1945. The poor sap he was riding died. But the Dragon just cut himself loose and went in search of somebody else.”

“So maybe we’re fighting all the monsters of history here,” said Veevee.

“No, Loki was fighting them,” said Danny. “And I just wrecked everything. I just lost him his war.”

“Nothing’s lost yet,” said Veevee.

“And there’s also this,” said Hermia. “I think it’s all merde.”

Danny looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about? You think I got the memories wrong?”

“I think you probably got them exactly right,” said Hermia. “But just because one ancient man said it to another ancient man-and let’s remember, one was a crazy Christian hermit living in a cave, and the other was Loki, for heaven’s sake-just because they believe it doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“But just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Look at how you got all this information,” said Hermia. “You put yourself into a hallucinogenic trance. You were sitting there in the Egyptian sun, baking, not drinking, not eating, not moving, just locked in place, having hallucinations while conversing with-whom? Why, crazy Loki’s outself! Do you see how absolutely unreliable this is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Danny. “Loki’s a smart guy.”

“Being smart and being a loon aren’t mutually exclusive,” said Hermia. “You’re smart and you’re a complete loon.”

“No he’s not,” said Veevee.

“We just saved his life in the desert because he was catatonic in the hot sun. Please find me a definition of ‘lunatic’ that doesn’t include that!”

Danny had no answer to that. He knew she was wrong. He knew that what Loki learned was right. Or at least he trusted that it was right.

But maybe he only believed it because he had worked so hard to get at the memory.

“Don’t let her talk you out of this,” said Veevee. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“No, but I am attached to the rational universe,” said Hermia. “Not meaning to give offense, but Veevee, you spent your whole life convinced you were a gatemage without any evidence at all.”

“But it turned out that I was,” said Veevee.

“But you believed without evidence,” said Hermia. “It doesn’t make you a reliable judge of weird theories like this. Don’t you get it? Danny’s probably completely right about what Loki learned. Only he was a loon learning from a loon, and Danny’s a loon using a lunatic process to recover their lunacy, and we’d have to be loons to take it seriously.”

“Since you’re the expert on lunacy,” said Veevee, “just what do you think should happen?”

“I think it’s time to let the Families use the Great Gate,” said Hermia. “There’s no reason to keep people from passing between worlds. There are no kas and bas that take possession of people’s bodies. There’s no Dragon waiting to pounce. He doesn’t exist. It’s from the craziest book in the Bible, for heaven’s sake.”

Danny pressed his palms against his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he said.

“You just put yourself through torture, nearly to the point of death,” said Hermia. “I’d say, yes, you need a nap.”

“I missed a whole day of school,” said Danny.

“That’s why we knew something was wrong,” said Veevee. “Your friends got worried and so they had the girl with the cleavage look up your records in the office and call me.”

“I thought you guys were already looking for me,” said Danny.

“I was,” said Hermia. “I just didn’t know where to look.”

“You mean that it didn’t occur to you to ask a drowther,” said Danny.

Hermia shrugged.

“But my drowther friends, they’re the ones who actually took action,” said Danny. “They’re the ones who saved me.”

“What are you doing in high school, Danny?” asked Hermia. “What is your obsession with drowthers? It’s time to let the Families through the Great Gate, and restore the proper order to the world.”

Danny looked at her, filled with dark despair. “That’s not how you used to talk.”

“Maybe I finally realized that the world was no more screwed up when the gods were running the show, using the power they got from passage back and forth with Westil, than it is now, when scientists and engineers put the instruments of slaughter into the hands of drowthers.”

“Let me think,” said Danny.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Hermia.

“Yes you do,” said Veevee.

“I don’t want to be rude,” said Hermia, “but sometimes truth is rude. You’ve been playing at high school. You’ve gotten all sentimental about drowthers. But look at your friends, Danny. They’re appalling human beings. And now they worship you, yes? You rule over them, only what a pathetic little band of worshipers you chose for yourself, don’t you think? Was that really the best you could do?”

Danny could hardly bear it. A part of him was furious that she would judge his friends like that. And a part of him saw her perspective and wondered if she was right, if he wasn’t just like all the other mages, exploiting the worship of drowthers. If that was true, then they weren’t friends at all. Just … tools. He was just using them.

The way he had used Hal and Wheeler to help him dig a cave. As if he had a right to command them to take hours out of their life to go to Egypt to dig sand. Just because Danny was a Gatefather.

I’ve reinvented all the worst features of the snobbery of the Families, and I did it in the name of trying to be a regular high school kid. On the first day, I’m putting people through gates and taking charge of their lives as if I had a right. I’m as bad as any of them.

Hermia was looking at him with a weird combination of concern and smug superiority.

She is not my friend, Danny realized.

But Hal and Wheeler, Xena and Laurette and Sin and Pat-they’re my friends. Even if I’m a lousy friend to them, they’re good friends to me.

Screw the Families. Screw the Great Gates. Whether Loki was right or wrong about the Dragon or Belmage or Satan or whatever, he was definitely right to close all the gates and keep them closed for a thousand years.

“You know what, Hermia?” said Danny. “I like my friends. They don’t try to get me to treat other people badly just because they’re not as powerful.”

“You’re such a drowther,” said Hermia.

“You used to feel the same way,” said Danny.

“I grew up.”

“In the past couple of weeks?” asked Danny.

“Oh, I see where we’re going with this,” said Hermia. “You think I’ve gone through a sudden personality change. You think I’m possessed by the Dragon.”

“What an interesting suggestion,” said Veevee. “I never would have thought of that, but now that you bring it up…”

“You do realize,” said Hermia to Danny, “that if you now start thinking that anyone who disagrees with you must be possessed by Satan, that is the road to genuine lunacy.”

“It never crossed my mind that you were possessed,” said Danny. “Not by the Belmage. I think you’ve been talking to your Family. I think they found you even though we removed the tracers. I think they’ve talked you into being with them.”

Hermia’s silence, along with a slightly reddened face, were enough of a tell for Danny to know that he had hit it aright.

“I’m sorry they got to you,” said Danny, “and I’m sorry that you agree with them now.”

Hermia regarded him in silence.

“Well, this is awkward,” said Veevee.

“Not really,” said Hermia. “He’s saying that if I had held my current views when we first met, he would never have accepted me as his partner in this project.”

Danny shook his head. “You didn’t have these views, that’s all I know. But you also helped me learn to control my abilities. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“But we’re not friends now,” said Hermia.

“We’re friends who disagree about something important,” said Danny.

“No, I think that by talking down your drowther friends, I actually elevated them in your estimation, and lowered myself.”

Danny couldn’t disagree. That summed it up pretty well.

Hermia walked to the sink and refilled Danny’s glass. As she did, she spoke. “See, Danny, you hate your Family. And Veevee doesn’t really have one. But I love my Family. I can’t erase my old loyalties. I can’t turn against them.”

“You did, though,” said Danny.

“Because I was excited about finding real gates in the world,” said Hermia. “Now I’m over the first rush of excitement. I’m back to my true self.”

“Back under the thumb of your Family,” said Danny.

“Whatever,” said Hermia.

“I made a deal with all the Families,” said Danny.

“No, you imposed a diktat on them,” said Hermia.

“Which you agreed to.”

“Because you’re the Gatefather and I’m not,” said Hermia. “But I always thought you were wrong.”

Veevee gave a quiet little hoot of laughter. “You really have a talent for revising history, kiddo,” she said.

“I’ve gone from ‘dear’ to ‘kiddo,’” said Hermia. “I’m in a death-spiral here, aren’t I.”

“I’m sticking to the deal I offered the Families,” said Danny.

“You think you’re so egalitarian, but look how you’re treating me, because you’re the Gatefather and I’m just a Lockfriend.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Danny. “But that’s the system you prefer. By that system, yes, I’m the Gatefather and you’re the Lockfriend.”

Again the silence as she stared at him.

She dashed the glassful of water in his face.

Then she walked to the gate that led to Washington DC and went through it.

Danny wiped the water from his eyes. “Think I’m rehydrated yet?” he asked Veevee.

“She’ll change her mind, Danny.”

“I don’t think so,” said Danny. “To her I’m just a kid. A kid from the North Family. The Illyrians think they’re better than everybody-especially Norths. I don’t think she’s going to change her mind and come crawling back to try to put things back the way they were.”

“Well, so what? She can’t make gates, and you can.”

Danny wanted to cry. “I kind of like to keep my friends.”

“Like you said, sweetie. She never was your friend.”

“Yes she was,” said Danny. “She was a great friend. But she changed her mind.”

“All right. But love is not love if it alters when it alteration finds.”

“That is one of the most convoluted lines of poetry ever written,” said Danny.

“But Sense and Sensibility made me cry and cry,” said Veevee.

“Dead squirrels in the road make you cry.”

“You’re taking this all very calmly,” said Veevee.

“Because it doesn’t matter what Hermia says, Veevee. The Belmage is real. Loki is right-that’s the real war. All this bull about the Families going through Great Gates, that’s just stupid. I need to learn how to eat gates the way Loki did. I need to get to Westil and pull the gates up after me, just as he did.”

“Please don’t tell me that this will involve another trip to Egypt,” said Veevee. “At least bring somebody along to pour water over your head from time to time.”

“You know what?” said Danny. “I’m going to eat a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and go out for a run. I’ve got to make sure my legs still work.”

“So you’re going to stick with the high school thing a while longer.”

“It’s either high school or figure out how to save the world, and whom to save it from.”

“I like it when you say ‘whom,’” said Veevee. “You actually know the rules.”

“I don’t know any rules,” said Danny. “I don’t know anything.”

Inside him, Loki’s gates were murmuring to him. It’s all true, they were saying in their wordless way. Don’t doubt it. True true true. The Dragon is real. The Dragon wants to go through a Great Gate to Westil. Keep him out of the Great Gate.

“All I can do is muddle through as best I can,” said Danny.

“It’s what we all do,” said Veevee.