The Gate Thief

20

“In so many ways the boy is the opposite of me,” said Wad.

Anonoei was brushing her hair in front of the mirror. “You mean he’s tall? Or he’s a terrible lover?”

“Taller than I am,” said Wad, “but we may never know what kind of lover he’d be, since he seems grimly determined never to give or get pleasure of that kind.”

“You’re spying on him?”

“Yes,” said Wad. “I could hardly believe he didn’t realize that by giving him my gates-which he already had-I was given a window into his mind. Well, his perceptions, anyway.”

“Taking advantage of an untrained child. Shame on you.”

“He even knows that he can use my gates to access my memories. Yet it seems not to have occurred to him that I can use those gates to access his present actions.”

“Maybe he has nothing to hide,” said Anonoei.

“Nobody has nothing to hide,” said Wad. Then he thought better of it. “No, I think you’re right. This Danny North really is exactly what he seems.”

“Unlike Wad the kitchen boy,” said Anonoei.

“Equally unlike Anonoei, King Prayard’s drowther mistress,” said Wad.

“Manmages have to hide what we can do,” said Anonoei. “Fortunately, our magery makes it fairly easy to do. That’s one of the main reasons for the drastic penalty. If you manage to recognize manmagery, you rarely get a second chance to strike.”

“Quite the contrary,” said Wad. “I think the death penalty for manmages was created as an all-purpose excuse for murder. ‘I had strange compulsions whenever I was near him, so I knew he was a manmage, so I killed him.’”

“I have strange compulsions when I’m near you,” said Anonoei.

“Those are normal compulsions,” said Wad. “Everybody has them.”

“But few would feel them toward you.”

“But you know what I am,” said Wad. “Godlike powers are such an aphrodisiac.”

“You’re not half the mage you used to be.”

“Still mage enough to port you around from place to place,” said Wad. “What I’m wondering is, how much of my eagerness to serve you in this way comes from my natural generosity and how much from the arcane influence of your magery.”

Anonoei paused in mid-stroke. “Now, now. We’ve had this conversation before, and we agreed that it’s circular. No matter what you desire or think, you can always say, ‘I wonder why she’s making me feel this desire.’ Or ‘this revulsion,’ or ‘this compulsion,’ or whatever comes to mind.”

“It’s in the nature of circular arguments that you can never quite escape them. You didn’t have to charm me into helping you seek vengeance on Bexoi. I have reasons enough of my own.”

“And don’t forget your powerful guilt over imprisoning me and my sons,” said Anonoei.

“I know that didn’t come from you,” said Wad. “I felt it long before you knew who your captor was.”

“Even if I had known, my abilities at that time depended on being present with the person I was influencing.”

“And now that you’ve been through a Great Gate?”

“I can divide my outself, rather the way you can. Perhaps I always could and didn’t know it. But now I can leave a bit of myself inside my clients, to keep my influence fresh and strong, and to see what they’re experiencing.”

“Sounds distracting. I actually have to pay close attention to see what’s going on with Danny North.”

“You’re not a manmage,” said Anonoei. “They all float in the back of my mind. Or rather, the back of my mind floats in them.”

“And have you given me a piece of your mind?” asked Wad.

“If I had, would I tell you?” asked Anonoei.

“It depends on your motive,” said Wad. “What if you’re so devoted to my happiness and well-being that you leave a bit of your ba inside me so you can be sure that everything you do pleases me?”

Anonoei got up from her chair and went to the window. “Why shouldn’t I use my abilities while I’m making love?”

“I’m not suggesting that there’s anything wrong with it,” said Wad. “But you are far, far too aware of exactly what pleases me from moment to moment for me to believe that you’re not using your magery.”

“Am I hearing a complaint?”

“You’re hearing a question,” said Wad. “When the lovemaking is finished, my lovely one, how much of you remains inside me?”

“More of you is inside me right now than there is of me inside you,” she said.

“Not a clear answer.”

“If I were the sort to spy on you, I would deny it, and I would make you believe me. So what’s the point of your asking?”

“Because I want to hear the words.”

Anonoei sighed. “I leave a bit of my ba in you exactly as I do in everyone else. It’s hard not to. I care about you. I also need you and depend on you. It’s important for me to know how you feel about me, what you want, what you fear.”

Wad couldn’t help but smile. “Honesty-the cruelest deception of all.”

“You know that I’m not deceiving you.”

“Or you’re using honesty while disguising the fact that you’re making me take such delight in it.”

“Will you send me to Keel?” asked Anonoei. “I have to deal with his fear of discovery. He thinks Bexoi has set spies on him.”

“Of course,” said Wad. “But tell me, first: Have you ever placed your ba inside Queen Bexoi herself?”

“I’ve never been in her presence,” said Anonoei. “Both Prayard and I saw to that. So no. I’ve seen her from a distance, but never close enough, in my pre-gating days, to get inside her devious mind.”

“So the one person it would be most useful to watch, you can’t see.”

“But you can,” said Anonoei. “Through your little spy-gate.”

“That only shows me what she wants me to see,” said Wad. “I think she lives her entire life as if she expected me to be watching. She undresses and dresses as if she had an audience. She knows what I can do.”

“She has that kind of self-control? Every action is a performance, all the time?”

“Absolutely,” said Wad. “She plays her roles every moment, waking and sleeping.”

“Sleeping!” Anonoei scoffed.

“I think even her dreams are lies that go along with the persona she’s adopted. I think she believes her own lies as she tells them, and keeps on believing them.”

“If she believes them, are they lies?” asked Anonoei.

“A question I once asked Pope Boniface the Fourth,” said Wad. “He was busy converting all the pagan temples in Rome into Christian churches. I tried to explain to him how resentful the Greek and Roman Families of mages were about such treatment, and he told me that the gods didn’t exist. I considered myself proof of the contrary, and I showed him what I could do. I gated us both up into the Alps-very high mountains in Mittlegard. There we stood in the bitter cold of an Alpine winter, with him still dressed in his lightweight sleeping gown, and he informed me, even as he was freezing to death, that my existence was a lie. That I was tempting him as Satan tempted Christ.”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” said Anonoei.

“I realized that he really did believe that what he was actually experiencing-the cold of the mountain wind, the sight of high mountains and snow all around him-was a delusion, a vision I had created to deceive him. I told him that the snow and the wind and the mountains were real, that he was lying to himself, and I wasn’t even from the same planet as the person he called ‘Satan.’ He informed me that I was the liar, and that’s when I pointed out that I couldn’t be lying, because I believed what I was telling him, while he knew perfectly well that the cold was real, so he was lying to me.”

“Another circular argument.”

“He told me that this only proved I was a better liar than he was. He admitted he felt the cold, which showed how powerful the illusion was. My obvious shivering from the cold did not change the fact that it was a delusion. ‘If you lie to yourself, it’s still a lie,’ says he, ‘even if you do it so well that you believe it.’ A very wise man, for a Pope.”

“I take it ‘Pope’ is like ‘King’?”

“More or less,” said Wad. “I can meet with anybody I want. I can always get past the guards and bureaucrats.”

“Speaking of which,” said Anonoei, “I’m a bit concerned about Keel. He seems to be quite urgently afraid at this moment.”

“Then maybe that’s an excellent reason for you not to go.”

“Keep an eye on me, my castle-monkey, and extricate me if there’s any real danger.”

At that moment, however, Wad sensed that someone was coming to Westil through the Wild Gate. Several people. More and more. Yet Danny North seemed oblivious to the fact. Certainly he wasn’t sending them.

“This is actually a very bad time for me to send you anywhere, especially anywhere dangerous,” said Wad. “Someone’s coming through the Wild Gate.”

“What is the boy thinking? I thought you said he fully understood the danger of accidentally letting this Dragon through to Westil, hidden inside the body of some traveler.”

“Danny North isn’t doing it. Ah, now he’s finally noticed it, and he knew at once what was going on. One of his friends moved the gate.” Wad was impressed. “Clever girl, that Hermia. It’s very hard to move someone else’s gate without their noticing.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I have to go watch this end of the gate. As long as everyone turns around and goes straight back to Mittlegard, there’s no danger. But if somebody tries to stay…”

“That young windmage stayed,” said Anonoei.

Wad got out of bed and began to dress. “By the time Danny North helped me remember with clarity who our enemy is and what he can do, Ced was already here. I knew him well enough to be reasonably sure he was not possessed by Set.”

“And if some other arrival is possessed by Set-how will you know?”

“I won’t. So anyone who tries to stay, I get him back to the return Gate and push him through.”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll possess you, if you come so close?”

“By ‘push’ I didn’t mean push,” said Wad. “Any would-be immigrant, I’ll gate him to a point where he’ll stumble directly into the Wild Gate the moment he emerges. I will never be near him. And Set can’t jump so easily from one person into another. Especially someone with a powerful inself. A ka that won’t just move out of the way.”

“You flatter yourself,” said Anonoei.

“Possibly,” said Wad. “But it’s not the same as what you do. He jumps in with his whole ka. But never having owned a body, worn the ape as his very self, it’s harder for him to get in. So I think I could keep him out.”

Anonoei rolled her eyes. “Send me to Keel now, please,” she said.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Wad. He was fully clothed now. “I’m going to be distracted, watching all these people come through. I need to see them so I can remember them later, if they get past me somehow.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Anonoei.

“Is Keel a timid, fearful man?”

“A very bold and courageous one.”

“So whatever he fears, the danger is probably real.”

“But my beloved Wadling, I’m me. Nobody can hold on to a notion of hurting me; I change their minds. I need you for transportation, not for rescue. Please respect my abilities as I respect yours. I’m not your prisoner anymore.”

“That is such a manipulative thing to say,” said Wad.

“If I were using magery to control you, I wouldn’t need to manipulate you with guilt.”

“Unless my conscience is entirely of your creation.”

“Alas, no,” said Anonoei. “There are times I wish I could put out your conscience like a sputtering candle.” She began turning around and around. “Please send me through a gate into Keel’s office. There’s no one there at this time of day.”

Wad still had his misgivings, but she was right-she could take care of herself. It’s not as if she was going to face someone as strong-willed as Bexoi or, for that matter, Wad himself.

He sent her, still spinning like a child dancing. If she tripped, it would be her own fault.

Then he went at once to a place near the stone circle where the Wild Gate lay. Sure enough there were people milling around on the top of the hill. No one had left the circle yet-but too many of them were gazing around them instead of going back. And some of them were trying to use their powers. From inside a circle with an active gate! Didn’t they know anything?

No, of course they didn’t. And apparently the Greek girl who stole the mouth of the Wild Gate didn’t think to come through herself and make sure everyone returned.

So Wad retrieved the gate he had used to send Anonoei, made it into a large public gate, and placed it directly in front of the inbound gate, setting it so it would transfer people immediately to the outbound one. That used up four of his eight gates. He used another gate to pop each of the loiterers to the mouth of the outbound Great Gate.

Just a matter of tidying things up.

It was fortunate that no one on Mittlegard had the slightest experience with gates. They would no doubt think that any glitches were just a part of the process, and if they suspected someone caused them to return immediately with no chance to look around, they would doubtless blame the Greek girl, and if they were angry it would serve her right.

If he still had even a serious fraction of his original gatehoard, he could have swallowed up the whole Wild Gate himself and had done with it. But he didn’t have the power, and Danny, who most definitely did, lacked the knowledge and skill to overmaster the formerly captive gates. Nor was Wad interested in teaching him-the last thing he needed was for the boy to acquire serious deftness. He was dangerous enough as it was.

Through it all, he kept feeling a nagging worry about Anonoei. It got more and more intense. You’re just being a fool, he told himself. She really can take care of herself.

Only when it was clear that there were no more mages coming through the Wild Gate did it finally dawn on Wad that it was not like him to worry overmuch about someone else’s safety. Not with the kind of nagging, pestering concern that had been bothering him.

If Anonoei wanted to call for his help, and if she really did have a slice of her ba inside him, wouldn’t it feel just like that? What if that worry was actually Anonoei screaming for help?

But the feeling was gone now. So apparently she had dealt with it.

He gated back to the room they had shared, in a house whose owner was away for the season. It was only as he stoked the fire to warm the room for Anonoei’s return that he realized that there was another reason why her calls for help might have stopped.

The sickening dread he felt now was nothing like the feeling that had nagged him while he supervised the transfers at the Great Gate. It was so obvious, when he had genuine personal dread to compare it with. She really had been nagging at him, shouting at him to get her out of there.

Wad made a gate to Keel’s office and nearly went through it at once. Until he remembered that Anonoei, too, had been confident that she could deal with any problem that might arise.

He shrank the ends of the gate until it became a mere viewport, and brought it to his eye to look through it.

There was no one in the room.

He looked around twice until he thought to lower his gaze to the floor.

It was the gown Anonoei had been wearing when she left. It lay on the floor, discarded.

No, not discarded. It was filthy.

No, it wasn’t filthy. It was soaked in ash and bodily fluids, which also extended out from the gown where the head and hands and feet should be.

She had been burned to death. But not by an external fire, for the dress wasn’t even singed. In his life on Mittlegard before he closed the gates, Wad had seen what murder looked like when a Firemaster heated someone’s body from the inside until it was utterly consumed. It was Anonoei’s dress, and what was left of her dead body was still wearing it.

Keel had been partly right, when he thought he was spied on. When Anonoei went to talk to him, it wasn’t a spy who waited to intercept her. It was Queen Bexoi herself. Bexoi the Firemaster.