The Gate Thief (Mither Mages) (41 page)

And in the moment of ecstasy and release, he could feel it, this thing entering him at the groin and filling his whole body, taking control of his body. He tried to fight it, tried to move, but already he couldn’t, already it had him.

He could feel his body roll off the girl. He could see her lying there, gasping, looking confused. Looking relieved. And then weeping.

“That’s right, Nicki,” his own lips said, though he was not speaking, and only found out what they were going to say when they said it. “I’m gone now. You can have your body back, nicely healed by Danny North here. Maybe pregnant. Wouldn’t that be nice? Now be a good girl, get dressed, and go home.”

Danny’s body sat up and watched her as she gathered her clothing and put it on, still weeping softly.

“I enjoyed being inside you,” said Danny’s mouth. “You’re a sweet thing and you’ll find that this all becomes like a bad dream, and then like a good dream, and then you’ll miss me, you really will. They all do. The ones that live.”

And Danny was thinking: He was here for weeks. He found me weeks ago, when I came to Lieder’s house and healed his daughter. Was he already inside her then, or did he find her afterward, take control of her when she was clean of her cancer? Maybe Danny could have fought him off any other time, but now, asleep, exhausted, half in a dream, and then the Dragon asked him through Nicki’s mouth, asked him to let him come into Danny, and Danny said yes. But I didn’t realize what I was saying, I thought I was consenting to the sex, and it was sex in a dream, not real, nothing was real, it’s not …

Not fair.

Except this was war. Shaped like love, a moment ago, but it was the crucial battle in a war. The enemy had stolen a march on him, was suddenly in a place where he wasn’t supposed to be.

Now he has control of a gatemage.

But he doesn’t, thought Danny. Because I can still think these thoughts. I can still …

Danny tried to make a gate and pass himself through it, to see if he could shed this creature like a disease.

“Uh-uh-uh,” his own throat said, the glottal stops that said, No no no. “Let’s make a gate for
her
, to send your little girlfriend home.”

In that moment Danny learned several important things. The Dragon had no idea that Danny really had just gated his girlfriend home—the real one, the one that he
hadn’t
had sex with. The Dragon also had to use Danny’s mouth to talk to him—it couldn’t just put thoughts into his head. So it wasn’t completely in control, and didn’t even have complete access. He controlled movement and he controlled speech. But that was all a matter of muscles.

Except he could block Danny from creating the gate he wanted to create. Could he
make
Danny create one?

No, no, that’s not the question, not the question at all.

Inside Danny’s hearthoard, he now realized who had been warning him, screaming at him. Loki’s gates.

Loki knew. Loki had never been possessed, so his outself could not
remember
having been possessed by Set. That meant Loki was observing him from the outside. From another planet, however many lightyears away it was, Loki had realized what was happening, had seen past the fog in Danny’s mind, past the belief that it was an erotic dream, into the truth.

But what Loki’s gates
did
remember was being
given
. They knew how one Gatefather could
give
the obedience of his gates to another.

And so Danny tapped into their kinetic memory, and with their consent, Loki’s gates obeyed him and showed him how to give them back to Loki.

The act of giving back the gates didn’t move them or make them. Those would have been physical acts, apparently, and the Dragon who possessed him could have felt such an action, could have blocked it. But in all likelihood, the Dragon had never possessed a gatemage who gave a gate to another. It had no idea what was happening.

He felt his control over Loki’s gates slip away.

But now he knew how to do it.

So, again without moving or making his gates, leaving them wherever they already were, Danny gave all of his own gates, every one of them, to Loki.

And just like that, they were not under his control. He was still aware of them. They were still where they were supposed to be. But they weren’t his. They didn’t belong to Danny North.

Nicki was dressed now. Danny could feel it when the Dragon gave the command to make a gate to take her back to her home. He could sense that the Dragon knew how to do it, knew where both the mouth and the tail of the gate should be.

But no gate came rising out of the hearthoard at his command. No gate formed.

Danny felt a kind of blindness come over him. No, it was rage. Fear? It wasn’t an emotion of the body, it was a transformation of some kind within the Dragon itself, and then Danny’s own body responded to it. Blood flowed hard and hot, his face flushed.

“What’s wrong?” asked Nicki, sounding frightened.

Danny’s body rose from the bed and stood on the floor, pants dropping around the ankles, but definitely not aroused, not as it had been. No, it was filled with rage and terror and it screamed.

Nicki screamed back and then ran from the room, ran out of the house. Danny heard the screen door slam behind her.

“What have you done?” demanded the Dragon in Danny’s own voice, with Danny’s mouth and throat and lungs, his tongue and teeth.

I’ve done nothing, Danny said silently. I gave a gift to a friend.

“The gates are still there, I can
feel
them,” said the Dragon. It used Danny’s body to dance around the room, jump up and down, as if somehow this would jar something loose. “You’re a Gatefather, I took a Gatefather, why can’t I touch your gates!”

He ran to the kitchen, and Danny understood that his body was in search of a knife. It was the animal mind that sought for one—for the first time Danny could feel the distinction between animal intention and his own will, his own ka. The animal’s desire did not reach inside him and kindle any answering wish. The body wasn’t his to control now. But he was still inside it, still absolutely tied to it, feeling all its sensations.

The knife was in the hand.

It stabbed down, into Danny’s thigh. Again. Again.

The pain was excruciating. The Dragon felt it too; he groaned in agony.

“Make it better,” said his own voice. “Make a gate.”

But there was no gate that belonged to him.

Another stab. “You’ll bleed to death unless you heal this. Do you understand that?”

I do understand it, thought Danny. I understand that I’ll die. But what happens if I die with you inside me?

Nothing happens, thought Danny, despairing. Because Set isn’t tied to my body the way my ka is. When my body dies, I’m done, my ka moves away from here. But
he
will remain.

“I can keep it going after you bleed to death,” said Danny’s mouth. “Not terribly long, but long enough to get to somebody else. Someone you know.”

He was trying to call up a clear memory. Danny immediately thought of Hermia.

Hermia was the one. Let him find Hermia and take possession of her.

“I don’t want your enemies, I want your damn friends! I want to make you watch me kill them, slowly! Rape them and kill them! I’ll do it to everyone you love if you don’t let me use your gates! And then they’ll come for you and take you and execute you, and
you’ll
be dead, not me!”

It wasn’t even making sense. Was it crazy? I’ll let you bleed to death, I’ll keep your body going, and then they’ll kill you
again
? No, Set was confused. His rage was clouding his mind.

Because it was a human mind he was controlling.

The human brain, rather. Because Danny’s
mind
was still there, thinking his own thoughts. Hermia, he was thinking. Imagining her body in a way he never had before—with desire, with lust. Never mind that it was someone else’s body that he had felt all those desires for. The face he put into his memory, the name he thought of, they were Hermia’s.

One more time he stabbed. One more thrill of agony. But it didn’t hurt as much. No, it
did
hurt, every bit as much, perhaps even more. But Danny didn’t care as much.

I’m detaching. My ka is fleeing from the pain. From the threat of death. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him drive me from my own body. I gave away my ba, my outself, all my unmade gates, but I can’t let him take away my body or I’m dead. Literally dead.

For a moment he had the idle thought: Then I’ll know. What happens to the ka after the body dies. Do I return to Duat, as the desert hermit said? Or do I go somewhere else, or just haunt the place I died? Or do I dissolve like smoke?

But he stifled his curiosity and forced himself to connect with the pain, to feel it with the greatest possible intensity. You won’t drive me out of my own body this way.

As if the Dragon could feel him dig his ka more deeply into his own body, the Dragon again gave a cry of frustration and rage. “Bastard!” he cried. “You’re no match for me! Give it up! No one ever withholds from me the thing I want!”

Obviously the statement was false, or it wouldn’t have needed saying.

But the pain in his thigh was a high price to pay for that small satisfaction. And Danny could feel the blood pumping out. This last time, Set had used Danny’s own hand to drive the knife deep enough to find the femoral artery.

I really am going to die.

They’ll rule it a suicide. Died by his own hand. Literally true, and yet utterly false.

In that moment he remembered that there were other gates. The captive gates. Not Loki’s and not Danny’s own.

Danny reached to make a gate and this time the Dragon let him, for now he felt for the first time the existence of the captive gates. Using Danny’s mouth, Set cried out with triumph as Danny formed a captive into a living gate, passed it over himself so it could heal him, and then … gave the gate to itself.

Just like that, the gate was gone.

But not before Danny himself was healed. No pain. No injury. No bleeding.

The other captive gates sensed what had happened, and the clamor began afresh, now with a new goal, a different goal. Give me to myself and set me free! cried every captive in his hearthoard.

“You bastard,” muttered the Dragon with Danny’s mouth.

It swung Danny’s body around and smashed his head into the corner of the kitchen counter with such force that Danny instantly lost consciousness.

He woke up hours later on the kitchen floor. Alone in the dark. His head throbbed.

He reached for another captive gate.

“No,” whispered his mouth.

What was he doing while I was unconscious? Was he unconscious, too? No, he isn’t as deeply tied into my body as I am. He was conscious and had nothing he could do but lie there feeling the agony. Or was it eased while I was asleep?

You won’t drive me out of my own head with pain, thought Danny. So if you refuse to let me use a gate to heal the body whose agony we both feel, then so be it. I can bear it. Or I can die. Whatever you choose. What you will
not
do is make a gate that lasts.

Finally Set relented and made a gate. Danny let him draw on one of the captives and then, the moment the gate had passed over Danny and he felt no more pain in his head, Danny gave the gate to itself and it was gone.

“What are you doing!” his own voice demanded. “I don’t know what you’re doing. How can the gate be
gone
?”

But my head feels so much better.

“Until you learn who is master in this house, I will make your life pure hell,” said Danny’s mouth.

I’m sure you can do that, thought Danny. What you can’t do is make gates that I don’t approve of. And when we run out of captive gates, then you’re done, because none of
my
gates belong to me anymore, and so you can’t use them.

22

T
HE
Q
UEEN

When Anonoei arrived in Keel’s office, he wasn’t there. Nobody was.

Yet she could sense that Keel was near, now his dread was so strong it nauseated her a little. He was terrified for his life. Where was he?

She looked up.

He was hanging upside down from the rafters in the high-ceilinged room. His arms were trussed like the wings of a roasting fowl.

“When it all burns, won’t he make a delicious smell?” asked a woman’s voice.

Anonoei turned to see a woman standing in the doorway. She was simply dressed, like a peasant woman, and she was well along in pregnancy. Depending on how she carried, she might be two months from delivery, or the baby might be due right now. She smiled, and she was beautiful.

Anonoei recognized her then, though the pregnancy, the clothing, and the great length of time since Anonoei last saw her from a distance had delayed her.

“My Queen,” said Anonoei. She sent a calming influence to the Queen, only to realize that Bexoi was already calm. No agitation at all.

Or none that Anonoei could feel.

“I know what you are,” said Bexoi. “It’s not as if you tried to conceal it. Who but a manmage could interfere with so many of my most trusted friends? That is, without sleeping with them. And now I see who you are. You were pointed out to me, years ago, back when you still shared my husband’s bed and I did not. Anonoei, is it not?”

“It is,” said Anonoei. Now she tried turning Bexoi’s emotion to amusement, but again there was no change in Bexoi’s feelings. Until it dawned on Anonoei that Bexoi might
have
no feelings, not about little things like murder and torture to advance her cause. She wasn’t even angry, apparently.

“I’ve made a great study of manmages, because once I discovered what
I
was, I realized that only two kinds of mages could thwart me. Gatemages—but I knew the Gate Thief would take care of them. And manmages, because I feared that they would be able to overmaster me. So I learned all the lore about manmagery, especially what happened during the great war of Dapnu Dap, when the sandmages turned the steppe into a sandy desert in the effort to destroy the manmages of the far south. History is very important, when you prepare to defeat enemies you haven’t met yet.”