The Gate Thief

13



TRUST


Danny was getting dressed for another morning practice when he felt it: Something had happened at the Wild Gate.

He stopped pulling on his running shorts, froze in position. The feeling didn’t come again. He tried to think what he had actually experienced. It came from that portion of his outself that was entwined in the Great Gate in the Silvermans’ barn.

It felt like when Veevee or Hermia passed through his gates. Only far stronger.

Why? Because it was a Great Gate?

Because it was more than one person going through a gate at once.

He had felt it before when his friends went through his first Great Gate, but had not been able to think about it then because he was immediately engaged with the Gate Thief.

Now he even knew the direction they had passed. It was a group of four people, and they came from Westil to Earth.

Whoever it was had arrived in Silvermans’ barn. It was milking time. Leslie would be there.

Danny even knew who it was. Because lingering after the sensation of the Great Gate being used there was another feeling—a quickening in the gates that Danny held captive inside him. The strange gates were saying—not in words, but deeper than words—“He is coming, he is coming.” And the gates that belonged to Loki himself were brightening because their true owner was now in the same world with them. “Let us go home,” they were saying, straining ever so slightly against the restraint of Danny’s hearthoard.

The Gate Thief had brought three people with him through the Wild Gate.

Danny pulled off the shorts and put on pants and a shirt, socks and shoes and a jacket. He would not be running this morning after all.

Once he was dressed, he stepped through the gate in his house that led to the Silvermans’ upstairs hall, then walked from house to barn through the biting cold of this autumn morning. The trees were dazzling with color. There was a trace of frost on the grass.

Inside the barn, Leslie and Marion were standing side by side, looking up at the loft where Loki stood with a woman and two young boys.

“Took you long enough,” said Marion.

“I was mostly naked,” said Danny. “I stopped to dress.”

“Thank you for that,” said Leslie.

“Danny North,” said Loki.

“I don’t want you here,” said Danny in Westilian.

“I need your help,” said Loki. “But it will be hard to converse with your friend prepared to make the ground swallow us up.”

“Only swallow,” said Marion, in his heavily accented version of Westilian. “Not chew.”

“His mercy is noted,” said Loki. “That’s why I didn’t gate him to the bottom of a convenient river. Or into a tree.”

“You didn’t harm him,” said Danny, “because you are afraid of me.”

“I didn’t harm him,” said Loki, “because I am an intruder, and he is protecting his home and his friend.”

“And you didn’t leave, because you wanted to be here when I arrived.”

“I promise not to do anything to anyone here,” said Loki. “I will not try to take back my own gates, or swallow any others’. In return I hope you will not try to take the few that remain to me.”

Danny turned to Marion and Leslie. “May I invite them into the house?”

“Guest law will apply then,” said Marion.

“I know,” said Danny.

“It will bind you as well as us,” Leslie reminded him.

“It will bind us all,” said Danny. “Aren’t you curious to know about the woman and the children?”

“Anonoei, onetime mistress of King Prayard of Iceway,” said Loki. “And the unofficial but potentially useful sons of the King, Eluik and Enopp.”

Danny nodded to them formally. It was a ritual greeting that all the children learned very young, to be used on important and solemn occasions. Only as a child, Danny’s bow had been deep, and from the waist; the nod he gave now was that of a ruler toward subordinates—the nod that Baba bestowed on those saluting him as Odin. No one could mistake what he was asserting, and indeed they did not. The return bow of the woman and her sons was deep, though not so deep as to imply worthlessness. And Loki also bowed slightly from the waist rather than merely nodding in return. The hierarchy had been asserted and agreed to.

“May we enter your home?” Danny asked the Silvermans again.

Leslie sighed. “Gate me to the kitchen, please, Danny.”

He did.

“I’d like to walk with our guests,” said Marion.

Loki understood, and instead of gating down from the loft, he descended the ladder, Anonoei and the boys after him. Then Marion drew Loki with him, and walked beside the ancient yet youthful gatemage toward the house.

Danny knew that Marion would make dire warnings about what would happen if Loki broke his word. Danny also knew that Loki would agree cheerfully, knowing that in a pinch, he could always gate away, so Marion’s threats were more symbolic than practicable.

Meanwhile, Danny looked at the woman and smiled. “You’re a mother. I had one once.”

“I hope a mother that you loved.”

“Devotedly,” said Danny. “Why don’t you and your older son walk ahead, and let me talk to the young one. Enopp, is it?”

Anonoei took Eluik by the hand and walked from the barn, whose smaller door was still standing open after Marion’s and Loki’s departure.

“These are cows, aren’t they,” said the boy Enopp.

“They are,” said Danny.

“They’re huge,” said Enopp.

“Cows may be bigger here than in the place you came from,” said Danny. “But these are particularly well-fed and healthy cows. Leslie takes good care of them. Though at this moment I believe they still want milking. Would you like to help me?”

The boy nodded. “I’m only little,” he said. “And I’m not very strong. I’ve been in prison, you know.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Danny. “Did you do something very bad?”

“No, but I’m dangerous, because there are people who think my brother or I should be king after my father, and not the child of Queen Bexoi. She’s from Gray, and her brother is our enemy.”

“I’m glad you’re out of prison, since you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Enopp shrugged. “I’m glad to be out, too, but it’s dangerous for me even to exist. I don’t have to actually do anything.”

“I know the feeling,” said Danny. “I was older than you, though, when people made the same judgment about me.”

“Did they put you in jail?”

“I’m a gatemage,” said Danny. “They couldn’t if they tried. All they can do is kill me or leave me alone.”

“Or kill someone you love,” said Enopp.

“Ah,” said Danny. “I see you understand how power works.”

“I’m son of a king,” said Enopp. “I think I’m going to be a gatemage, too.”

Meanwhile, Danny had attached the milker to a cow. “Do you see how I did that?”

“Does it hurt the cow?”

“It’s designed to fit her teat exactly right,” said Danny. “She likes it.”

“What does it do?”

Danny spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the milking machines and letting Enopp help in whatever way he was large enough and strong enough.

“What do you think of Loki?” asked Danny.

“Who?” asked Enopp.

“The gatemage who brought you.”

“Wad,” said Enopp.

The word made no sense to Danny in this context. “You want bread?”

“His name,” said Enopp. “That’s what Mother calls him.”

“Wad,” said Danny. “Not a noble name.”

“He used to be the castle spy. He would climb everywhere, watch everything. Hull named him. The chief baker. She’s dead, somebody murdered her because she refused to murder the Queen. It would have been better if she had done it. The Queen is an evil bitch.”

Danny was amused at the way Enopp echoed what he must have heard. “What about Wad? Is he evil or good?”

“He kept us in prison,” said Enopp. “But when Queen Bexoi said to kill us, he didn’t. After a while he gave us better food. And he got us out just when soldiers were trying to kill us in our caves.”

“That sounds frightening.”

“It was,” said Enopp. “They were my father’s soldiers.”

“Did they know who you were?”

Enopp thought a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “But they knew I was little.”

“You have a point,” said Danny. “Enopp, why did your mother and Wad bring you here?”

Enopp shrugged. “It isn’t safe for us in Iceway. I think they want us to be safe here.”

“This world isn’t safer. People die on both worlds, just as easily.”

“When I’m a gatemage, I’ll hide where they can’t find me.”

“Are you sure that’s what you’ll be?”

“I’m already good with languages,” said Enopp. “That’s a sign.”

“It is,” said Danny. “Are you also a devilish little brat?”

Enopp gave that more thought than Danny had expected. “I don’t know. I have only been free of my prison for a few weeks.”

“We’d better watch carefully then,” said Danny, “so we don’t get taken by surprise when the pranks start.”

They kept milking till the job was done. Only then did Danny take Enopp by the hand and walk with him across the yard to the house.

In the kitchen, Leslie had the table spread with small plates and a big platter of warmed-up sliced bread and an array of butter, jams, and honey. Everyone was eating. Enopp ran right to the table beside his brother and started jabbering to him. Danny saw that Eluik did not answer him, or even show a sign of listening. But Enopp was undiscouraged by this; and it wasn’t as if Eluik were inert, for he was eating steadily, though without any visible pleasure in the food, which Danny knew from experience was extraordinarily good.

“Did my son bore you?” asked Anonoei. “He chatters as if he thought himself a great philosopher or statesman, with the world eager to hear his words.”

“I could not have been more eager,” said Danny, adopting the arch-formal tones he had only overheard when spying on the adults meeting in the library of the old house in the North Family compound. “Your son is surprisingly happy for one so recently a prisoner.”

“He is resilient,” said Anonoei.

Danny could not help glancing at Eluik, but then looked at Loki, as if he had only chanced to look at Eluik as his gaze passed from Anonoei to the Gate Thief.

“You have achieved your first purpose,” Danny said to Loki. “You have passed through a Great Gate.”

“My first purpose was to see that no such gate existed,” said Loki. “But having failed in that, it is true that I thought it wise to refresh such small powers as are left to me.”

“You know more than I about how these powers work,” said Danny, “but it seems to me that while our brute force depends on the number of our gates, our dexterity depends on knowledge and experience. I have the brute force, it’s true, but you have the deftness of long practice.”

“Long practice followed by far longer disuse,” said Loki. “I have spent fourteen centuries and more drifting upward through a tree, aware of little but occasional flashes of gatemaking, which I quickly extinguished.”

“Yet you did come out of the tree,” said Danny, “and apparently some time before I attempted a Great Gate.”

“But not before you made your first few dozen gates,” said Loki. “Your first few hundred, I should say.”

It was the Gate Thief’s admission that he had been aware of Danny for some time. That he had sensed, however dimly, that Danny was alive, a great mage in potential if not in accomplishment.

“I didn’t even know I was making the gates,” Danny admitted.

“Be careful what you say,” said Marion.

“He knows,” said Danny. “He has been watching me even before he knew that it was I whom he watched.”

“Aren’t we the lofty speakers now,” said Leslie. “I feel as if I’m in a school, studying Westilian style.”

“These gatemages and their linguistic show-offery,” said Marion in English.

“I am learning your English a little,” said Loki, and while his words were slow and stilted, his Ohio accent was nearly perfect.

“How?” demanded Leslie in English. “Who in Westil could possibly teach you? Do you have spies here?”

“He does,” said Danny, also in English.

Leslie stood up and paced to the kitchen counter, then turned around, as if somehow the sink had been besieged, and she were its sole defender.

“Me,” said Danny. “His spies are inside me—the gates I took from him. Thousands of them, and through them he can glimpse a little. He can hear.”

“How much?” demanded Marion. “What does he know?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “All his gates ever do that I know of is demand that any working gate be eaten up. If he had succeeded in swallowing my gates, then I could tell you just how much a mage can learn through his captive gates. But I’d rather have my ignorance than his knowledge.”

“If I could hear more, I’d speak better,” said Loki, reverting to Westilian. “In truth, I see nothing. I hear nothing. I am inside the womb of his mind. But there is where his language dwells, and his memory. I cannot search at will; but I can overhear his thoughts, when he makes them into language. I can see his memories, when he concentrates on them. I am not spying. Where he has imprisoned my outself, I have no choice but to see and hear what he shows me.”

But Danny didn’t believe Loki. The trouble was he didn’t know in which direction the lie was leaning: Did Loki see and hear far more than he admitted? Or had he seen and heard nothing at all until he passed through the Wild Gate, enhancing his powers and coming so much nearer to Danny himself?

“What did you come here for?” asked Danny. “You came with these three, so your purpose was more than your own enhancement.”

“Their lives are in danger,” said Loki. “Here they will be safe.”

“That’s absurdly false,” said Marion. “All the mages of the world would be assaulting us, if they knew this Wild Gate existed in our barn. There’s no more dangerous place on Earth.”

“But who would tell them?” asked Loki. Then he raised a hand. “That was not a threat.”

Marion did not relax, his posture even more alert. “How else can we hear that statement?”

“An observation,” said Loki. “This Wild Gate has existed for days now, and yet they leave you alone. If your secret were out, they would not wait.”

“They’re afraid of our power of defense,” said Leslie. “Marion and I have passed through a gate. No beastmage can hold on to his heartbound, if they come against us. The ground surrounding us is under Marion’s control. Danny could gate them away, even if they got past our defense.”

“So you think they do know, and bide their time?” asked Loki.

“What do you want,” demanded Marion. “I don’t believe you brought this woman here for her protection. I feel a great power in her.”

“I felt it first,” said Leslie. “She’s a mage in her own right, and passing through the Great Gate made her dangerous.”

“It did,” said Anonoei. “But the very fact that you mistrust me shows that I have used none of my power on you.”

It took only a moment for the implications of her remark to sink in. Marion rose to his feet and joined Leslie by the sink. “Danny, she’s a manmage,” Marion said in English.

“I got it,” said Danny. “But as she said, she hasn’t used it.”

“Or she’s so powerful that we can’t feel that she used it on us.”

“So you think she’s making you so suspicious of her?” asked Danny.

“If she tried to use it I would gate her away myself,” said Loki. “I gain nothing if she irritates you, and neither does she. We face a deadly enemy on Westil, a Firemaster at least, if not a Lightrider.”

“Queen Bexoi,” added Enopp helpfully. “Our father’s true wife.”

Danny looked from Loki to Anonoei, and saw that Bexoi was, indeed, Anonoei’s objective here. The grim determination in her face, the hand that rested on Enopp’s nape, the little toss of her head, all these testified to Enopp’s having said the truth.

But Loki was another matter. His approval had come a fraction of a second late, and looked too much like an imitation of Anonoei’s. He had a very different goal.

“You want Anonoei empowered,” said Danny. “You want her battling this Bexoi. But that’s not why you’ve come.”

“Ced,” Leslie suggested. “That windmage who stayed on Westil.”

“I’ve befriended him and stopped his storming all over Westwold,” said Loki. “I have him studying with a treemage to learn how to still his inself so he can control his powers and use them with finesse.”

Still only a partial truth, Danny saw. “Do we have to talk alone?” he asked Loki.

Loki studied Danny for only a few moments, but in those moments Danny felt the Gate Thief’s gates stir within him. “You have something that I need,” said Loki.

“Take them back if you can,” said Danny. “But I warn you that I know enough now, and have power enough, that I can take the rest whenever I want.” Danny was telling the truth as far as he knew it, but he also had no idea of what defenses Loki might retain, especially now that he had passed through a Great Gate.

“You misunderstand me completely,” said Loki. “And I have no desire to hide from your friends the thing I came to get, the thing I need so desperately.”

“If not your gates, what?” asked Danny.

“Your trust,” said Loki.

Danny looked at Anonoei. “Is that why he brought you? To use your manmagery to make me trust him and not you?”

“If that were his plan,” said Anonoei, “is it working?”

“No,” said Danny.

“Then I think you can safely conclude that this is not his plan. Whatever he wants from you, he hasn’t told me anything.”

“Trust isn’t a prize in itself,” said Danny. “What do you need my trust for?”

“There is a war much older than you, much older than myself,” said Loki. “A war as old as humankind. Between the Belgod and the Mithermages.”

Danny waited.

“I need you to take over my work,” said Loki. “I know you don’t trust me, and the very fact that I said this much has raised your suspicions even higher. Yet the war must be fought or lost, and I don’t have the gates to do it. The job of protecting against the Belgod is yours now.”

Danny thought again of the runes he had read in the Library of Congress. “Hear us in the land of Mitherkame, hear us among the great ships of Iceway, among the charging dunes of Dapnu Dap, among the Mages of the Forest and the Riders of the Wold.”

He was reciting in the old language of the inscription, a language Loki had to know: Fistalk, or something near it. The language of the Norse as it had first been bent and twisted by the Semitic language of the Carthaginians.

“This is very old,” Loki murmured. “Where did you learn it?”

Danny went on reciting. “We have faced Bel and he has ruled the hearts of many. Bold men ran like deer from his face, but Loki did not run.”

“I am not that Loki,” said Loki.

“You know the tale, then?” asked Danny. “Is this the war that you’re still fighting?”

“He thought he had won, just as I thought I had won. But we never win. He can’t be killed, and he outwaits any wall we raise against him. Eventually it wears down. He keeps returning.”

“Was he dropped into the sun?” asked Danny. “Did he somehow live through that?”

“His body died, of course,” said Loki. “But his inself can’t be killed, any more than yours or mine can die.”

“But we do die,” said Danny.

“Our bodies die,” said Loki. “But you know our outselves can outlive the body—those are the ancient gates that I kept captive for so long. They’re still alive in that Wild Gate.”

“But without an inself,” said Danny.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Loki. “They only live because the inself also lives. Wherever it is, the outself draws its life from there. The Wild Gate is filled with the rage of those inselves, so angry that I took their gates from them.”

“So the inself of Bel did not die with the body.”

“It took him a thousand years to return to Mittlegard, and his rage was terrible.”

“What did he do?” asked Danny.

“Not as much as he intended,” said Loki. “He conquered everywhere, but I closed all the gates against him. He couldn’t possess any of our mages and follow them to Westil because there were no gates. And so our mages were able to defeat him.”

“How would you know?” asked Danny. “After the gates were gone, you were gone as well.”

“If he had not been prevented, you would not be alive to talk to me. The language of Westil would have died in this world. There would have been no Gatefather from any Family to create a Great Gate. I knew, because you existed, that for fourteen centuries I had kept him trapped in Mittlegard.”

“And you fear that now he will break loose and come to Westil through the gates I make?”

“I know he will,” said Loki. “And since I can’t prevent him, and you don’t know how, then I beg you to trust me. Let me teach you how to do the things that in all of history before me, no one learned to do. You alone can learn them.”

“The eating of gates,” said Danny.

“The poem you were reciting to me,” said Loki. “That Loki ate gates, as did the Persian Gatefather whom Belgod had captured and turned to his purposes.”

“What is it that you do, then, that you would teach me?” asked Danny.

“Don’t believe him,” said Marion. “He’s promising you power. It’s like the temptations of Christ.”

“It’s exactly like the temptations of Christ,” said Loki. “Only not the way you think.”

“You’ve heard about the Christian god?” asked Leslie, incredulous.

“I exiled myself from Mittlegard in 632,” said Loki impatiently. “The Roman Empire had fallen, Christians were all over Europe, Byzantium ruled the East, of course I know about the Semitic gods. I studied in Egypt, I had all the gospels, I had the ancient Coptic lore. What do you think I want to teach this boy?”

“How should we know?” said Marion. “If we knew it, we would have taught him ourselves.”

“Teaching you is the most dangerous thing that I can do,” said Loki, “because once you know it, if the Belgod captures you then all is lost and Westil is undone.”

“Don’t teach me, then,” said Danny.

“But only you have the power to stand against him. Look at me! Think what I did! If I had the power to stand against him, do you think I would have eaten all the gates and run away?”

“I have no more power than you,” said Danny.

“You have a thousand times my power,” said Loki, “and that is what it’s going to take. My knowledge and your power. But you have to trust me, and I don’t know how to win your trust, because you know better than anyone what liars we gatemages always are.”

“I don’t always lie,” said Danny.

“Only when you speak,” said Loki.

“I’m not just like every other gatemage,” said Danny. “I made the choice not to lie.”

“Too bad,” said Loki. “Because unless you can lie, with the expertise at lying that comes from long practice, you will lose against the Belgod, because he is the father of lies, and yet you must deceive him or you are doomed.”

“Do the job yourself!” cried Danny.

“I couldn’t do it even if you gave me back my gates!” Loki answered him. “Even if I ate this Wild Gate, as long as you are alive in the world, he’ll lay his traps for you until he has you and then you can make a thousand gates to let him through, and he’ll use your millions of gates to rule both worlds and none will ever stand against him, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand, not in a billion years.”

Danny didn’t know whether to believe him or laugh. So he made a joke. “Well, there is the heat death of the universe.”

“I have no idea what that means,” said Loki.

“The ultimate result of entropy,” said Danny.

Loki looked at him blankly.

“The end of everything.”

“Fool,” said Loki. “There is no ‘end of everything.’ What you call dying or ending is nothing but changes in the shapes of things. Who told you such nonsense? Only Belgod benefits from telling such a lie.”

Danny leaned on the table, burying his face in his hands. Even as his body spoke of weariness, though, he remained alert, in case Loki tried to do something sneaky while Danny was thinking about the distracting things that Loki was telling him.

And in that moment, Loki struck.

Danny could feel it inside himself, in his hearthoard, the place where he held captive all but eight of Loki’s gates. A shifting of the hundred thousand gates that were Loki’s outself, for now he could feel them all and knew the number without counting them. A hundred forty-three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-four gates, and every one of them moved within Danny and became …

Danny’s servants.

The shouting stopped, except the feeble struggles of the remaining prisoners that Loki had captured long ago. All of Loki’s own gates, the ones that were a part of Loki’s outself, fell silent. No, not silent at all. They turned attentive. Alert to Danny’s own will. As alert to him as Danny’s own gates were.

“I give them to you,” said Loki.

“What does that mean?” asked Danny.

“They’re yours to build with,” said Loki. “Yours to weave. If you use them, they won’t turn wild. They can’t.”

“You can’t give me something that’s a part of yourself.”

“Yes I can, and yes I did,” said Loki. “How else will you trust me?”

“But they’re still a part of you.”

“That’s true,” said Loki. “The ones that are still inside you will continue to show me what you think and remember, what you see and do. I can’t help that, it’s how the world works. But believe me, they’re yours now. I couldn’t take them back, unless you freely gave them back to me. Which I hope someday you will. But if you never do, they’re yours forever.”

“Or until I die,” said Danny.

“Or until the Belgod takes you, and it all belongs to him,” said Loki. “This is the only way that I can earn your trust. To show you how completely I trust you. The only reason I withhold the eight gates you left to me is because without them I can’t help Anonoei or Ced on Westil. I’m going there now, if you permit it. I’m taking her back there with me.”

Enopp had been listening, rapt, but now he looked worried and spoke up. “Taking her?”

“Yes,” said Anonoei. “And leaving you here in safety, if we can.”

“No!” shouted Enopp, jumping up, knocking his chair backward, though it didn’t fall. “You can’t leave me here!”

Then, to Danny’s surprise—to everyone’s surprise—Eluik’s hand shot out to rest firmly on Enopp’s shoulder and push him back and down into his chair. The older boy said nothing, but Enopp fell silent and looked at him. Then he burst into tears.

“He says I have to stay,” said Enopp. “And he does too.”

“He didn’t say a thing,” said Anonoei.

“It’s his outself,” said Loki. “I can see it now. Hiding inside Enopp. It’s where he went when I held them both in prison. He must have sent his outself to comfort his brother through their captivity. He’s been riding inside his brother all along.”

Leslie immediately stepped forward to put her hand on Eluik’s head. “I should have seen it, but it never occurred to me. Yes, he’s riding him like a heartbound.”

“So you can break the link?” asked Marion.

“I’ve never tried with a manmage,” said Leslie.

“He’s a manmage?” asked Anonoei.

“No,” said Loki. “Not necessarily. He’s too young to know what he is.”

“He’s too young to have sent his outself,” said Marion. “But he did.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” said Loki. “He couldn’t have. It isn’t magery, not with any kind of skill. And if you tear them apart, against his will—”

“How do we know what his will is?” demanded Anonoei. “He was taking care of his brother, but maybe he didn’t know how to get back.”

“Like an outself trapped in a bagged-up clant,” said Danny, remembering when he tied up some of the cousins.

“Exactly like that,” said Marion.

“This boy took such care of his brother,” said Leslie. “Completely forgetting himself. I never heard of such love.”

“You want us to take care of these boys,” said Marion.

Loki said nothing.

Danny understood now. “He wanted someone to take care of them. He and Anonoei have work to do, and they want the boys out of danger. But he didn’t know you existed.”

Loki looked at Anonoei. She buried her face in her hands. “I don’t want to leave them.”

“But you also don’t want them with you,” said Loki.

Danny looked from Marion to Leslie, the two of them now standing behind the boys. “You want them, don’t you?”

“They started doing magery far too young,” said Marion. “Who knows what that does to a child?”

“I did this to them,” said Loki. “I had no idea this could happen, but at the time I didn’t care. And now they’re still in prison.”

“Eluik’s fine,” said Enopp. “He says to leave him alone.”

“Nobody’s going to do anything to him,” said Marion.

“Not me, anyway,” said Leslie. “I think he has to learn how to bring home his own outself.” She looked to Loki. “He’s just lost, right?”

“No,” said Loki. “It’s not that simple. His outself and inself aren’t fully separable. He’s too young. He sent his outself before it was safe to send it. So it’s still bound to his inself. Both parts of him, the ka and the ba—he’s as much inside his brother as inside himself. It might kill him to separate him from his brother. His inself might also be lost.”

“He’s not lost,” said Enopp. “He’s right where he wants to be.”

“That’s because he’s young and stupid,” said Loki. “What he did was kind. No, it was noble. But his body can’t last like this. His ka has to come wholly back inside his body. As it is, he’s in very grave danger of losing his body. And then he would only live inside you, Enopp.”

“He can stay as long as he wants.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Right now the only reason he hasn’t taken you over is because he’s still partly connected to his own body. But if he ever lost that, then the two of you would fight for control of your body.”

“No we wouldn’t,” said Enopp.

“Right now, Enopp,” said Loki. “Who said that? Was it you, or was it Eluik talking through you?”

Enopp fell silent. Thinking.

“Exactly,” said Loki. “Eluik sent himself partly into you in order to protect you, to watch over you. But if he doesn’t get back inside his own body, then his body will die, sooner or later, one way or another. And when that happens, Eluik will become like the Belgod. A loose ka, attached to another person’s body.”

“You keep saying ‘ka’ and ‘ba,’” said Danny.

“If you trust me, I can teach you,” said Loki. “Meanwhile, these boys are bound together and they don’t want to change. For all we know, Enopp is silently begging his brother not to leave him. He might not even know he’s saying it.”

“I’m not,” said Enopp. “He can go if he wants, I’m not afraid anymore.”

“Eluik may not believe that,” said Loki. “Or he may not know how to leave you. Or he may be even more afraid than you ever were, Enopp. He might have been coming to you for comfort. I don’t know. You don’t know. He doesn’t know. But somehow he has to sort it out and get back entirely inside his own mind and outside of yours, or he will become something terrible.”

Enopp got a stubborn look on his face.

It was identical to the stubborn look on Eluik’s face. The only difference was that Enopp was looking at Loki, and Eluik wasn’t looking at anybody.

“Nobody’s going to force you to do anything,” said Loki. “Isn’t that right?” Loki looked at all the adults.

Anonoei showed grief and fear on her face. “I can’t leave them.”

“You aren’t with them,” said Loki. “Not as much as they’re with each other.” Loki spoke to Marion and Leslie. “Danny trusts you. He loves you. He has enough of me inside him that I can see how deep it goes. You’re good people, as far as he knows. Is he right? No absurd modesty here—you mean no harm to these children, right?”

“I would never let them come to harm,” said Leslie.

Marion nodded. But he looked worried.

Danny understood. “You can’t watch over the Wild Gate and these boys at the same time.”

“We can watch over anything here on our farm,” said Marion. “But I can foresee a circumstance when the things we have to do to keep other people away from the gate would be the opposite of what we would need to do to keep these boys safe.”

“You have to watch the gate,” said Loki.

“Screw the gate,” said Danny. “Protect the kids.”

“You say that because you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Loki.

“He says it because he’s a better man than you,” said Anonoei.

“I don’t deny that,” said Loki. “But Danny North doesn’t understand the monster that we’re at war with—not the Families, but Belgod. I would rather see these two boys torn apart by dogs than let Belgod pass through a Great Gate.” Before anyone could do more than gasp or groan at his heartlessness, Loki raised a hand. “If you knew what I know, you’d feel the same. A terrible enemy is poised to rule both worlds with irrevocable power, forever. It would never, never end. Do you understand me? Especially if he ever got control of Danny. To keep that enemy from achieving that kind of mastery, that infinite evil, I would let any of you die. I would die myself, if by dying I could be sure of stopping him.”

He looked so fierce that the others remained silent.

“That’s hypothetical,” Danny finally said. “You want the boys safe, and you want the gate safe. So do we all. But you don’t get to decide what Mom and Dad do, if push comes to shove. They decide. So the question is—are you going to trust them with the boys? Or not?”

Loki put his hand to his forehead. “I can’t expect any of you to understand what I know. How could you believe it, even if you understood?” He rose to his feet. “Anonoei, if I can give my gates to Danny North, you can give your sons to these good people.”

“He took your gates.”

“I did,” said Danny. “But then he gave them to me. I’m not sure how he did it—but they’re obedient to me.”

“Either give your sons to Marion and Leslie, or stay here with them,” said Loki. “With you or without you, I’m returning to Westil now.”

“If I let you,” said Danny.

“You couldn’t stop me if you tried,” said Loki.

“I could eat that Wild Gate,” said Danny.

“If you could, you already would have,” said Loki.

“Can you?” asked Danny. “Because if you can, do it.”

“Three-fourths of that gate is yours,” said Loki. “I don’t have the power to swallow any gate of yours. But the quarter of that gate that isn’t yours—you don’t know how to disentangle it. You don’t know how to swallow an active gate that isn’t your own.”

“Teach me,” said Danny.

“It can’t be taught,” said Loki. “It can only be learned. I can’t even demonstrate, because I don’t have enough outself to make a Great Gate and show you, and besides, I would never be so arrogant as to make a Great Gate with angry captive outselves bound up in it.”

“In other words,” said Danny, “you never thought of it, you never tried it, and now you want me to feel stupid for doing it.”

Loki stared at him for a long couple of seconds. “Gatemages all think they’re so smart,” he said.

“You’d know,” said Danny.

Loki reached out a hand to Anonoei. “Are you coming with me or not? I’ve been in the same world with the Belgod longer than I should. He knows me. And I’m in no shape to meet him now. So I’m not waiting any longer.”

Anonoei gave her sons one more agonized look. “Eluik, Enopp, I love you,” she said. “I promise I’ll come back. Please obey these people. And above all, find a way to separate and become yourselves again.”

“Now,” said Loki.

Anonoei took his proffered hand.

In that instant, they were gone.

Danny felt the gate that Loki made, and felt it disappear the moment they had passed through it. Loki had gated to the barn, and no sooner had he and Anonoei got there than Danny felt them pass once more through the Wild Gate, back to Westil.

“Is Mother going to die?” asked Enopp.

“No,” said Leslie.

“Let’s not start by lying to these boys,” said Marion. “We don’t know what she and Loki are going to do or how well they’ll do it. But I believe she does mean to come back for them, if she possibly can.”

“I wasn’t lying,” said Leslie. “I was encouraging.”

“Loki is the oldest, wisest mage in either world,” said Danny. “And he’s looking after your mother.”

Enopp nodded. “And are you going to teach me how to be a gatemage?”

“If that’s what you turn out to be,” said Danny. “Which we won’t know for at least a few more years.”

“Is that a promise?” asked Enopp.

“It’s an honest statement of my intentions at this time,” said Danny. “But since I don’t know the future, I’m not going to make any promises I might not be able to keep.” Danny spoke over Enopp’s head, to Marion and Leslie. “I have to get to school. Are you all right?”

“Our lives just got a little more complicated,” said Leslie. “But what could possibly go wrong?” She gave him her sweetest, most sarcastic smile.

“That’s why I love you,” said Danny.

He gated back to his little home. Only as he looked at his own kitchen did he realize that he was so stupid, he hadn’t taken any of Leslie’s bread with him to eat for breakfast.