The Gate Thief

4

Wad was so very old that even his own grief and rage could not hold him deeply, not for long. The being who had dwelt inside a tree for fourteen centuries, watching for only one thing, a gate between worlds, was not fully engaged in being a human being, not yet, perhaps not ever.

Wad was a watcher above all. Yes, he had been taken as the lover of a queen. Yes, he had loved his son, had tried to protect him, and then had been outwitted by his lover, his enemy, Queen Bexoi, and his son was dead. Yes, he had imprisoned an innocent woman and her sons, then set them free. Surely this qualified as having been truly alive.

But Wad was still watching. Not only seeing what lay outside himself, as he had done creeping through the castle at Kamesham, but also what was happening inside himself, where his gatesense lay.

In his early life as Loki, and then for centuries as the Gate Thief, Wad had captured and held the gates of other mages, but never had a gate of his own been taken from him. So he had not understood what it was like to have his outself captive in another mage’s hearthoard.

Of course it was well known what happened to other mages when their outself was taken captive. How they lay inert, comatose, waiting for their wandering self to return.

But they were not gatemages. Their outselves were usually indivisible. Only the greatest of mages could control multiple clants or ride several heartbeasts at once-and even they suffered from the self-division.

Gatemages, though, were divisible by nature. They could leave bits of themselves here and there forever, as gates that others could use, always aware of where they were, but never putting their whole attention into any one gate.

Which is why, when Wad stole all the gates from mage after mage, he did not leave their bodies empty and helpless. They were able to continue their lives almost normally. Wad had therefore believed that he had done them no real harm. They were still themselves, still alive and aware, still able to control their own bodies.

He had not understood.

When the new Gatefather from Mittlegard stole most of Wad’s gates from his hearthoard, including all the gates that Wad had stolen from others over the years, at first Wad could only think about the handful of gates that he still had under his own control. He had used those gates to save Anonoei, King Prayard’s concubine, and her two sons, Eluik and Enopp. He still had some power. He was still a mage.

But now, without an urgent task, he realized what he had not understood before. More of the gatemage is in his gates than Wad had ever supposed. For he was still aware of his stolen gates. He still knew exactly where they were. He felt them all the time. He just couldn’t do anything with them.

Yet, like the outself of a beastmage, riding with the heartbeast, or like a clant raised from plants or stones or sand or water or fire, his stolen gates were aware, alert, sensing what the possessor of the gates was doing, seeing, hearing.

And the longer Wad concentrated on his stolen gates, the more he was able to get glimpses of what the other gatemage wanted, what he planned, what he needed, what he hungered for. It was not quite words; always the words remained just out of reach. Unless this thief, this Gatefather, this Danny North spoke his thoughts aloud, Wad could not gather them up and study them. But as surely as if he were a beastmage, Wad could feel the inner longings of this man-no, this boy.

He could not change anything, could not take control of him-Danny North was master, and there was not enough of Wad within his captured gates for him to hope to take control. The deepest self of a gatemage was not in his outselves, the way it was with other kinds of mages. This was why gatemages could raise no clants. But the gates were still a part of him, and so now he was a part of Danny North.

And all the gates that Wad had stolen over the centuries, they had felt the same. The mages were not as strong as Wad, and so perhaps they had not felt themselves inside him as clearly as Wad now felt himself inside Danny North. But they must have been aware.

And because Wad had lived on and on inside the tree, the captured gates had not faded and died after their mages died. They were all still alive.

Wad had suppressed them, kept them silent. But they had been watching. They knew him as no one could ever know another human being, from the heart out-unless manmages also had such deep understanding.

In only a few days inside Danny North, Wad knew him intimately, the feel of him, the kind of man he was, the loves and fears and hopes and hates of him. So in these fourteen centuries, how well did the other gatemages still shadowed in Wad’s hearthoard come to know him?

And now their knowledge was inside Danny North.

Wad could feel them, too, the gates that were fellow captives of this boyish Gatefather. He realized now that he knew them all, that even as he suppressed their cries, the tumult of their rage and despair, their surges of will, he had come to know them. They had been a part of him, and now that they were gone, he missed that intimate connection. At such great distance, in another man’s hearthoard on another world, he longed to listen to them now.

The trouble was, they hated him. Even inside Danny North’s hearthoard, they stayed as far from Wad’s gates as they could. For even there, Wad’s power was great, his hoard of gates vast indeed compared to theirs-though all of them were puny before the billion gates that belonged to Danny North himself. The other gates-the remnants of so many dead mages-still feared and hated Wad.

And loved Danny North.

That was what astonished Wad, when he understood it. These gates were no less captive than they had been before. Danny North had not set them free. Yet they responded to their new master as if he had liberated them. As much as they had hated-still hated-Wad, they loved this boy.

That was what Wad now struggled to understand. I was a good man, thought Wad. When I walked two worlds under the name of Loki, I saw the great danger that both worlds faced from the dark manmages from the world of Bel, the possessors of men’s bodies and souls. And I sacrificed everything to save the worlds from the dragons of Bel. Did that not make me the best of men?

Yet they never came to understand the nobility and greatness of my cause. Centuries inside me, and their hatred never relented.

Inside Danny North, though, they seemed to blossom, to come to new life. A pathetic, shadowy life, but life it was. They were still alert, still aware, but calm, not seething as they had done inside Wad.

They liked Danny North. They liked living inside him. They liked seeing the world through his eyes. They were at peace with him.

And they were not fading even now.

Nor are my gates fading, though they are apart from me, thought Wad. In fact, my gates thrive there. I, too, am more at peace inside Danny North than I am inside myself.

That was Wad’s great discovery: The reason he could bear the death of his son, the betrayal of Queen Bexoi, the agony of his own guilt for what he had done to Anonoei and her sons, and the terror of having lost almost all his power, was that Danny North held a huge part of Wad inside a heart that was astonishingly pure and at peace.

Danny North was good.

Undisciplined, untrained, raw, confused, afraid-young.

Yet even so, his character was fully formed, as it is in all people by the time they reach the age of understanding-as it is, perhaps, from the moment they are conceived. And the person that Danny North revealed himself to be, by those who were held against their will inside his heart, was decent to the core.

Am I not decent, too? Why was dwelling in my hearthoard such a torment, and dwelling in his is an experience of healing, rest, calm, comfort?

Maybe the difference is this: The first thing I tried to do, when I realized I was still alert and aware inside of Danny North, was to exert some kind of control over him.

My first instinct was to rule.

But Danny North does not want to rule over anybody.

The poor child. So much power, and no idea of what it’s for.

He did not eat my gates because he saw me as a rival. He was merely trying to survive, to hold on to himself. He does not want to rule the worlds. He does not even want to be the hero who saves the worlds. What does he want? Who is this boy?

And why, when he is so utterly different from me, do I find myself so glad of his company?

Danny North was such a compelling presence in Wad’s mind that it took Wad days to realize that he knew something very important about events here on Westil.

There was a new mage in the world. A mage who had passed through a Great Gate. The powers of the Great Gate still clung to him; it was as if his footfalls reverberated like temblors through the deepest rock of the world, and made the slightest of vibrations in Wad’s gatesense. Even though the Great Gate had not been of his making, the disturbance in spacetime could not be hidden from an old Gatefather like Wad.

What was he? What magic was this interloper doing? Whatever it was, the world was waking up before this surge of magic. No one had exercised such bright power since the closing of the Great Gates fourteen centuries before. Whatever Danny North was doing in Mittlegard, Wad was here on Westil, and this new greatmage was Wad’s business.

And because Wad was not as decent, as unambitious as Danny North, his first thought was this: How can I harness the great power of this new greatmage and use it to wreak vengeance on my enemy, Queen Bexoi, and make her suffer as I have suffered?