The Gate Thief (Mither Mages) (28 page)

Now, as he ran from the grounds of Rockbridge High, up to the crest of Greenhouse Road and then down the steep slope toward the nursery that gave the road its name, he found that Loki’s gates were the music giving meaning and rhythm to his running.

Education, that was the idea they were talking about. Learning. He needed to learn. But they were not talking about calculus or social studies. There were things that Loki’s gates thought that he absolutely had to know, and didn’t know.

So he asked them, silently: What should I know?

Belmage. Danger of the Belmage. The danger that made us close all gates, prevent all Great Gates. Danger of the Belmage.

Immediately Danny remembered the Fistalk inscription quoted in that book in the Library of Congress. “Here Loki twisted a new gate to heaven.… Here Odin crushed the might of Carthage until the survivors wept in the blood of their children.” Nasty stuff. An earlier time.

Oh, like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden were any better.

That was not Loki’s gates talking—what would they know of that? It was an interruption from Danny’s own observer-self, criticizing his own conscious thoughts. “Nasty stuff, earlier time” had provoked his deep self to push a thought to the surface, refuting his own foolish conclusion. Of course, the moment the thought came to the surface, it
became
his conscious thought, while the observer-self continued to lurk in the background.

But now he felt the prodding of Loki’s gates. Yes yes yes, they were saying. Think about that. That’s what you need to think about.

What? Danny demanded. What was I thinking about?

That’s how Loki’s gates differed from his own deep self—he never didn’t know what his observer-self was responding to. But Loki’s gates were still not himself. They were his, they served him, but they were not truly a part of him.

Yes yes yes, they said again. Think about this.

So they wanted him to continue this self-examination as he ran down the hill, staying on the right, the outside, as he went around the blind curves, because people took this road too fast and he had to make sure he was visible to them. They wanted him to think about the difference between his deep observer-self and his conscious mind and the gates Loki had given him and …

Where were his own gates?

Oh such a good question. It was as if they applauded him.

If Loki’s gates talk to me, then why don’t my own gates?

And then he thought—or did Loki’s gates put the thought into his mind?—The reason my gates don’t talk to me is that they
are
me. For all I know they
do
talk to me, but I hear them as myself, as …

No no no.

It was like playing hot-and-cold as a child, the cousins all yelling “Warmer, warmer, hot, hot,
cold
now!” as the child who was It searched blindly for the hidden object.

This memory had come unbidden. Did that mean it came from his own gates?

No no no.

“Then what are my gates doing?” he asked aloud.

And then, as he came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, where a complicated three-way intersection with Furrs Mill Road was too narrow and dangerous for him not to pay attention, he realized: Who has been operating my body as I ran down this hill, thinking all these thoughts?

It wasn’t my observer-self—that was listening to my ponderings. It certainly wasn’t my conscious mind—it was
doing
the pondering. I have no memory of anything I did, any choices I made coming down the hill, and yet I was making them. I was passed by several cars—now I can remember, vaguely, that they came from behind and ahead, several of them—but they never interrupted my conscious thoughts.

My gates were operating my legs and arms. Keeping me on the road. I had a mindless task to perform—keeping myself alive while running—and I turned it over to someone else while my conscious self and my deeper observer-self were engaged in this inner conversation.

And it all came together. While Loki had been asleep in a tree for a thousand years or so, he had set most of his gates to carrying out a simple but urgent task: watching the world for gatemages. And they had stuck with that task the way his own gates—his outself—had taken care of his running body while his mind was otherwise engaged.

But Loki had freed his captive gates from their old, unceasing assignment, and given them to me. They weren’t watching the world anymore, they were …

No, they
were
watching the world. They were still doing what Loki had set them to do. But they were reporting to me. Or rather, preparing me to be ready for battle.

And he realized that
this
realization had come from the voices. Or at least it had been confirmed by them. They want me to learn about the Belmage because now that there are Great Gates in the world and a Gatefather capable of making more of them—me—I am the person that the Belmage will come after.

The words of the inscription came back to his mind. “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.” Of course this wasn’t the Loki whose gates Danny now had within him. It was a much earlier Loki, one who had defeated Bel in his day.

“Loki found the dark gate of Bel through which their god poured fear into the world and through which he carried off the hearts of brave men to eat at his feasting table.” What did that mean, actually? Was it something like what the Gate Thief did?

But more of the inscription came to mind and his observer-self realized that it was the voices that were pushing it to his attention. “The jaws of Bel seized his heart to carry it away. Loki held tight to his own heart and followed the jaws of the beast.”

Wasn’t that the very passage that Danny had used to guide him in overcoming the Gate Thief? That had to be what it meant, didn’t it? That Bel was a gate thief, too?

“Loki tricked Bel into thinking he was captive, but he was not captive. His heart held the jaws; the jaws did not hold his heart.” Yes! That’s what I did to Loki! That’s how I defeated him!

“And when he found the gate of Bel, he moved the mouth over the heart of the sun. Let Bel eat the sun and drag it back to his dark world! He has no more home in Mittlegard.”

That was the end of the inscription. What am I missing? It sounds like Bel is a gatemage, not a manmage at all.

Then it dawned on him. Just because the inscription was ancient didn’t mean that the person who wrote it knew what he was talking about. Was it written by that earlier Loki himself? Doubtful. It was written by somebody later, repeating what he had heard. Had he heard it from the Loki’s own lips? Maybe. But would that even matter? If the writer was not himself a gatemage, would he understand anything that a Gatefather said about what he had done in fighting the Belmage?

He was at the top of Furrs Mill Road, where it intersected with Highway 11. Danny turned right onto the bridge and ran along it as the light turned green and cars and trucks set the whole bridge to vibrating like an earthquake. It always did that. It was nothing.

Once again, Danny had no memory of coming up the hill. Only when something different came up did his running come to his conscious attention.

I have been following that ancient inscription because it gave me the idea that helped me overcome the Gate Thief. But the Belmage is definitely
not
a gatemage, and the inscription sounds as if it’s a battle between two gatemages. That’s what the writer probably thought it was. But Loki—
this
Loki, the one I know, the one whose gates are inside me—he realized what the Belmage really was.

If the Belmage had been a Gatefather, it would have done no good to take all the gates.

So the inscription accidentally taught me how to fight another gatemage, but it taught me nothing about how to fight a manmage.

And not an ordinary manmage anyway. The Belmage.

Belmage Belmage Belmage, echoed the voices.

Who in the world can teach me about the Belmage? Danny asked.

Nobody in the world today, that’s who, Danny said to himself. For fifteen centuries and more, gatemages and manmages have been killed whenever and wherever they were caught. How can anybody possibly tell me about the Belmage?

Loki, that’s who.

Yes yes.

But he doesn’t tell me anything. If I’m supposed to learn from him, why isn’t he here teaching me?

He won’t he won’t.

Then how can I learn? Who knows?

Silence.

You know, Danny said silently to the voices. You know. Loki won’t tell me, but you know everything he knows and you serve me now, you’re mine now. So instead of obeying him and keeping silent, you’re going to teach me.

Silence.

So teach me.

He was off the bridge so the vibration under his feet stopped. Solid ground felt almost boring after the bridge.

He stopped and waited till traffic cleared so he could make the dangerous crossing of Route 11 to get on McCorkle Drive, which was far safer to run on than 11.

You’re not going to teach me, Danny said to the voices.

Silence.

But you want to teach me.

Silence.

Danny thought about how he couldn’t remember much about the running that had been controlled by his own outself. He realized that the voices had brought that memory to his mind. A memory of what he had failed to remember just a few minutes ago.

But it hadn’t been
their
memory, it had been his. They didn’t
have
memories, they could only prompt me to remember what I already knew.

Well, that’s a dead end. I can’t remember what I never learned.

Remember.

How can I remember? I never knew!

Re. Member. We. Re.

It was so vague. No words. He had no words to explain to himself what they were trying to say.

You do remember.

Remember.

But you can’t
tell
me what you remember.

Almost. Warmer. Warmer.

He thought again about how he had been able to think back and remember the cars that had passed him. Cars that he hadn’t been conscious of when they passed him, and which he had forgotten until he
tried
to remember them, but then the memory had surfaced. Sort of. Vaguely.

You remember, he said to the voices, but you don’t
remember
that you remember. Something has to call up the memories. You have to be tricked into remembering. You have to be reminded in order to remember.

The voices flooded him with relief. He was right.

He was also standing on the edge of Highway 60, directly across the road from the combination McDonald’s and Citgo station. How could he possibly already be here? No way had that much time passed.

But it had. He could think back now and remember every curve of McCorkle Drive, every uphill and downhill. He could even remember what thought he had been thinking at each stage along the way. The distance he covered had nothing to do with how much thinking he got done.

And now he remembered that he had been distracted repeatedly by other thoughts. He had thought about Pat and wondered what it would be like to sleep with her. Had thought about Xena and realized how dangerous it was to let himself think about
her
much more powerful sexuality. Thought about Nicki Lieder and wondered what her game even was and wondered even more how she had figured out that he had done something to heal her.

Yet he also remembered thinking a clear chain of thoughts about the Belmage and Loki’s gates and how they put thoughts in his head and whether they could remember things and …

This was their demo. They were showing me how they held together a clear, continuous chain of reasoning even though I actually got distracted by thoughts of women and also by some of my anger at Coach Lieder—I had been thinking of that when I actually crossed 11, about what an asshole he is, trying to get me to stick it in Ricken’s face. I thought about so many things, I wasn’t concentrating on one thing at all.

But something kept pulling me back, something held on to the thread.

It isn’t just running that the gates, the outself, can take care of for me. It’s also my thinking. They have no language, they can’t
tell
me any memories, but they can prompt me to think back and recover the memories …

There’s still the problem that
I don’t have Loki’s memories
so you can’t prompt me to recover them!

Silence.

But you didn’t prompt me to remember anything, Danny said to them as he realized it.
I
prompted
you
to remember it and then
you
fed the memories to me.

That’s what you want to do. You want me to somehow prompt
you
to tell
me
what Loki learned.

Yes yes yes.

How?

And then, for a long moment, he became profoundly stupid. Completely lost. He stood there looking blindly at the road, seeing nothing, and thinking absolutely nothing. A complete stupor.

A police car pulled up in front of him. The window came down. Danny walked over to the window, bent down to look inside.

“I couldn’t tell if you were trying to cross the road or what,” said the cop.

Danny realized that the “or what” might have something to do with throwing himself in front of a semi-truck.

“Just deciding whether to go to McDonald’s or just run back home to BV.”

“You’re going to run to BV?”

Danny indicated his clothes. “I was at the track meet at Rockbridge.”

“They have a team bus.”

“Coach Lieder pissed me off,” said Danny.

The cop grinned. “OK, I get that. Just … if you cross the street, be careful. You looked like you were about to cross, but you somehow froze in mid-step. You know? Like a freezeframe in a movie.”

“I had no idea,” said Danny. “Just got caught up in an argument I was having with Bleeder. Inside my head.”

“Well, just remember, nobody ever wins an argument with the coach.” The cop gave him a little wave and drove off, the window rolling up as he went.