The Gate Thief

by Orson Scott Card

  “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 tryi
ng 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.

  18

  CLEAR MEMORY

  What no one knew about Wad, what he barely knew about himself, was how lost he was. You don’t live a thousand years inside a tree without losing something, and what Wad had lost was his own story.

  Once he had been driven by a terrible purpose, something so important it was worth locking himself away from human life and devoting everything to the single task of taking away from any gatemage in Westil and Mittlegard the power to make a Great Gate. In doing this, he diminished all the mages, and consigned generations of human beings to suffering and death for lack of the power of healing that the gatemages had held.

  But, waking from the tree, called from it by something he did not recognize or understand, Wad had wandered with no purpose at all. A girl had fed him and given him clothing, so he did not freeze to death or starve. A bakerwoman had taken him in and so he had dwelt in a castle and learned to care about the things that castle dwellers care about—kings and dynasties.

  He had followed his body’s inclinations and fallen in love with a woman of beauty and ruthless power. Only gradually had he discovered that he had some moral principles, things he would not do. He w
ould not murder King Prayard’s mistress and their children. He would not rip the baby from Bexoi’s womb in vengeance for her murder of the child they had made together.

  It implied that once upon a time, Wad had been a man who thought deeply about right and wrong, and came to conclusions different from those that were common among the mages. That man had learned much about the workings of power, had acquired never-before-seen skills in gatemagery.

  Above all, he had strength of will. When he set his mind to a purpose, he accomplished it.

  Yet was there any sense in which Wad was still that man?

  If he was, what purpose did he have now? Anonoei had her plans, and Wad helped her, as once he had accepted the purpose King Prayard assigned to him, and then had become the willing tool of Bexoi in her plotting.

  When Wad came upon Danny North, he had acted according to what was left of the driving purpose of the man that Wad had once been. But when Danny North fought back and ate most of Wad’s own gates, Wad had backed away, beaten, and now even this feckless boy in a faraway place had more purpose in his life than Wad.

  No, it was Wad who was feckless. Danny North had accomplished everything he set out to do. His mistakes had been mistakes of ignorance. Even Wad had not known what would happen to a Great Gate made of the captive outselves of other Gatefathers, for the very good reason that few mages had ever had captive gates to work with.

  It was Wad who had no sense of responsibility.

  No. He could not lie to himself, even in self-loathing. He had far too great a sense of responsibility. When he adopted someone, he took absolute responsibility for them—even when they were his captives, like Anonoei and her sons during their many months in prison; even when they were using him without conscience, like Bexoi and, for all he knew, Anonoei.

  Wad especially took responsibility for his failures. Even when he had no idea what the right thing to do might have been, he blamed himself for not having done it.

  As he watched Anonoei manipulate everyone whose life touched Bexoi’s, Wad understood quite clearly that Anonoei’s purpose was dark and destructive, and she showed him over and over again why manmagery had always been feared and banned, why manmages were destroyed whenever they were caught at their work. When her plotting came to terrible fruition, just as with Bexoi’s, Wad would bear the terrible guilt of having helped her accomplish it. And yet he had no will of his own to give him the strength to say, Enough, we will do no more.