The Gate Thief (Mither Mages)

by Orson Scott Card

  “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.

  14

  LOYALTY

  Keel wa
s as loyal a servant as a king could have, or so it seemed to everyone but himself. But Keel knew that it was mere coincidence that created that illusion.

  In his twenties, he had been called Plank, because he was master of refitting of the King’s ships. His own father trained him to the task, for he was Plank son of Plank son of Plank, three generations of master shipwrights, who could heal a damaged ship and make it whole again.

  Unlike his father, who was a grumbler and griper, Keel-when-he-was-still-Plank had never uttered a word of complaint. After the war with Gray ended badly, and the treaty forbade Iceway to have more than six small fighting ships, suited only for subduing pirates, Plank never criticized the treaty, nor said a word against King Prayard’s father for having started and then lost the war.

  Instead, he quietly set about repairing all the ships that managed to limp home from the war. Five of the smallest and fastest he refitted for speed, to skim lightly across the water in pursuit of pirates.

  The others—the great warships—he refitted so that even the most suspicious inspectors from Gray would see nothing but cargo vessels, suitable only for trade, ships that wallowed in the water, sluggishly lurching from port to port.

  When Prayard became king, he came himself to see what Plank had done. He stood on a tower overlooking the harbor and watched the clumsy cargo vessels that once had been proud warships, as they bumbled up the Graybourn to the docks, or yawed their awkward way downstream, barely manageable from the helm. Prayard did not complain, either. “You have kept my father’s word,” he said to Plank. “It is a good servant who preserves the King’s honor.”

  “I am the King’s true servant,” said Plank. Then, most softly, he said, “Return at night and see my obedience.”

  Five days later, Plank was wakened by the hand of his youngest son, Knot. “A visitor who has no name,” said his son, and Plank knew it had to be the King.

  No word was spoken, and only the most shaded lamp was used, casting a tiny bar of light whenever Plank raised the shield. He led his hooded visitor onto the most sluggish of the former warships. He dismissed the watch and took the King down into the belly of the ship, one deck above the bilge.

  Then Plank lifted a hatch, handed the lantern to the King, and plunged down into the bilgewater. Rats squealed and scurried, but Plank paid them no attention. “Cast the beam here,” he said softly.

  The King raised the shield and aimed the beam at Plank’s hands. Plank gripped a lever that was snugged up under a deck joist and pulled it toward himself, moving it through an arc that was one-eighth of a circle. Where the lever had been invisible, now it was plain to see.

  “What does it do?” asked the King softly.

  “This lever is attached to a baffle under the hull. When the lever is parallel with the joist, the baffle is extended. It catches the water and makes the ship move slowly and awkwardly. It’s a home for barnacles. But at sea, far from shore”—he did not say, Far from the observing eyes of the Grayfolk—“a captain could send a trusted mate down into the bilge, to wade his way along the whole length of the keel, turning all these levers one-eighth of a circle, and then the baffles are drawn up snug against the bottom.”

  The King nodded. He was a seamage. He understood that this would make the ship move much more smoothly through the water. The sailcloth, with its load of barnacles, would still be a drag on the ship, but it could be managed now.

  “But the mate must be careful,” Plank continued. “For if he turns the levers forward instead of aft, the baffles are completely released and fall away from the ship, leaving the hull smooth and clean. That would be a tragic accident, for the ship would then move as swiftly and surely as a warship, and some might think that the treaty had been violated.”

  “An awkward design,” said the King softly. “What madman would think of such a thing?”

  “I fear it was my own invention, sir. I’m glad the King will never know how clumsily I obeyed his command.”

  “You must be sure to acquaint every captain of this mechanism, and make sure they know which way to turn the lever,” said the King. “We would not want to find ourselves, quite by accident, with a war fleet of a hundred ships, where the treaty binds us to no more than five fighting vessels.”

  “On your advice, sir, I will train the captains,” said Plank.

  Every time a ship came into port, Plank would send his divers down to replace the sailcloth in the baffles, and to make sure the mechanisms worked smoothly. But only those divers saw how the baffles were made, and only the captains of the ships understood how the mechanisms were controlled.

  It was up to the King to decide how large a crew these wallowing merchantmen would carry, and how well the men might have been trained for war.

  Two years later, when Plank’s overseer, the steward of the royal factories, retired, it was Plank, and not the man’s own son, who was appointed to the post. “Because you serve me so loyally,” said Prayard, “doing for the King what the King cannot even think to ask.”

  That was how Plank became Keel, master of shipyards, wagonyards, smithies, road graders, armorers, and all other manufactories that served the royal will. As Keel, he did all that the King expected, preparing Iceway to be constantly ready for war while seeming to be committed to peace, and keeping the secret of it from all but a handful of the men who labored under him.

  But the deepest secret of all was this: Keel was not loyal to the King at all.

  Keel was loyal to Iceway. Not to the rocks and canyons, the fertile mountain valleys fed by icy streams, the great fjords that cut their way into the bitter coast, the islands where Icewegians kept their trading posts and fishing villages.

  Keel was loyal to the people, one by one and all together, the nation of Iceway. As long as the King acted in the interest of the Icewegians, Keel obeyed and served. But if the King betrayed them, Keel did what was right for the survival and the freedom of the Icefolk.

  That’s why, as Plank, he had never shown the levers to King Prayard’s father, for he was the man who had lost the war and betrayed Iceway with a humiliating treaty. Prayard, though, seemed to Keel to act in the interest of the people, and so he showed him the fleet that was ready for his use, should he choose to use it.

  But King Prayard did not use the fleet. He was grateful enough—Keel’s advancement to a place of greater trust and authority, not to mention wealth and status, was proof of that. But the King did not use the hidden warfleet. He stayed married to the Birdbrain of Gray, the useless Bexoi. He allowed the men of Gray to strut through the streets of Kamesham unkilled, he allowed the ambassador and his spies to have the run of the castle Nassassa without a taste of poison or the cold bite of a dagger in the ear.

  King Prayard did not suspect that Keel was the center of a plot to kill Queen Bexoi and assassinate every Grayman in Iceway, because Keel was careful with his plans. No one understood the whole plan; no one knew any part but his own.

  It was to have begun with the poisoning of Bexoi, but the nightcook of that time, the woman Hull, discovered the plan and blocked it. Keel arranged for her to die that night, and began again. He knew of a much more foolish plan to murder Bexoi outright, one that originated among the Graymen; he was content to have the bitch from Gray be murdered by the hands of Gray. But that plot, too, was blocked, though this time Keel did not know how.

  A third time he planned, and this time he understood that King Prayard himself would have to die. But not before his concubine, Anonoei, and her two sons were safely out of Nassassa and hidden where no one from Gray could find them.

  That was when Anonoei, in the midst of preparing for a journey she had only learned about that morning, simply disappeared, along with her sons.

  Keel understood then that even plans that no one knew about were somehow known. There was a manmage in the castle, he realized. Someone who could peer into the thoughts of his heart—or someone’s thoughts, someone’s heart.

  Ever since the disappearance of Anonoei, Keel had
bided his time, making no new plans, watching to see who it was who had kidnapped or murdered Anonoei and her boys.

  He had watched as Bexoi gave birth to a darling child that everyone loved, hailing the brat as true heir, even though Bexoi was no mage and the child would surely be drekka, or weak if he was a mage after all. He had watched as Prayard trotted Bexoi out before all the people, and they began to love her instead of hating her as the symbol of their enslavement to Gray.

  He had rejoiced when that baby died, accidentally smothered by a pillow in his bed; the nurse who had been careless was promptly killed. Keel would not have lifted a finger to save her—fools deserve whatever comes to them—but at the same time he was glad of her foolishness.

  But that same day, there had been a flurry of activity among the palace guards, some business about rappelling down the face of the cliff below the castle and bringing out—dead—some squatters who had apparently been living in some of the ancient caves. How the squatters had got there, and how they had been supplied with food, no one explained, and when Keel set out to learn more, he found that all the guards who had been involved in the operation were gone. Sent away the same day. It was very strange, and Keel did not like it when he did not know what was going on in Nassassa.

  He made no complaint at being kept ignorant; indeed, he never showed interest in anything but his own duty. He was the perfect servant, the embodiment of loyal service to the King. But with Queen Bexoi so pregnant that she seemed about to burst with the next baby—the next heir whose succession to the throne would mean Gray’s perpetual domination of Iceway—Keel knew that it was time to act, and perhaps not subtly this time.

  What stayed his hand was the knowledge that he did not know enough. He still did not understand how the earlier plots had been detected and blocked. These days Queen Bexoi took great care never to be alone.