The Gate Thief (Mither Mages)

by Orson Scott Card

  “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 Wil
d 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 M
arion. “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.”