The Lost Gate (6 page)

“Actually, the tea comes from Indonesia,” said Aunt Lummy. “Odd that we call coffee ‘Java,' when the island of Java produces nothing but tea.”

“It produces many things,” said one of the men, “and we transport a great portion of the island's exports. But it's true that the mountains are one big tea plantation.”

So he had been to Indonesia. Big deal, thought Danny. He couldn't get to Westil, and that's the only thing that any of the Westil Families cared about now.

He heard the door open as Auntie Tweng and Auntie Uck went out for the refreshments that were waiting on carts at the head of the stairs.

Someone came in when they went out. It took a moment before the Greek girl came into view, walking slowly and taking everything in, looking up and down the bookshelves. The Greek adults couldn't take their eyes off her—but they didn't rebuke her for coming in, either. They just watched her explore the room, and because their attention was so focused on her, all the Norths began to watch her closely, too.

From across the room, the girl turned and faced directly toward the spot where Danny was watching through a pinhole in the wall. “What is it, Yllka?” murmured one of the Greek men; one of the women shushed him.

The girl walked around the table and out of Danny's range of vision, but in a moment she reappeared, much closer now, and immediately walked right to where Danny was watching and put her eye up to the pinhole.

Danny was so startled that he tried instinctively to back away. Of course there was nowhere to back
to,
so he ended up banging his head against the clapboard of the outer wall, making a thump; and the pain of it made him utter a sound. Halfway between a groan and a cry, instantly stifled—but it had been heard, and Danny knew that he was dead.

“Someone's spying on us,” said Uncle Mook.

“Out of the way,” said Gyish. And then there was a crash as the shovel from the fireplace shattered the plaster and broke through some of the laths, right where the pinhole had been.

Danny went from sick fear to absolute panic. He threw himself toward the passage that led outside, only to discover that it didn't exist. He had never had trouble finding it before, but now all he could feel with his hands was the solid wood of the tall eight-by-eight timber that ran all the way up that corner of the room, from deep in the earth to hold up a roof beam.

There was no secret passage. Without ever thinking about it, in the darkness Danny had created a magical gate, just as he had done in the tree when he tied up the girls' clants in his shirt. And now he couldn't find the gate. He'd be trapped here like a bug under a glass.

Crash!
The shovel came through the wall again, lower down. And then someone started pulling away the laths, letting even more light into the gap between walls. In a moment one of them would stick his head in and recognize Danny.

The girl had done something, he realized that now. She had hidden the gate from him so he couldn't get away.

Well, she couldn't hide a gate that didn't exist. Danny didn't know how to consciously
make
a gate, but he knew what it felt like to be rushing somewhere and have a gate simply
happen.
In this moment of extreme danger, it was time to run.

So he threw himself toward the great timber, while thinking of his goal—to get out of the house, out of the compound, so that he could absolutely prove that he had been nowhere near the house.

He threw himself … and of course banged into the heavy timber.

I need more of a head start, he thought. So he forced himself to move back toward the place where the wall was getting smashed in, and threw himself toward the place where he had always thought his secret passage was.

He struck solid timber again, and fell.

Only this time it was different. He was outside, and though the spot was shady, there was winter sunlight filtering through pine needles. His hands were full of fallen leaves and needles. The timber he had bumped into wasn't part of the structure of the house. He had passed through a new gate and struck the trunk of a living pine, and his forehead was bleeding.

He knew the spot. One of his secret gates that bypassed the watching trees was only a few paces away. He was outside the compound. He had made a gate that went all the way from the library wall to a place beyond the Family's protective barrier.

I made a gate when I needed it most, thought Danny. I can go anywhere.

But this was no time to feel boastful, even in the privacy of his own mind. If he were found outside the compound, when none of the sentinel trees remembered his passing, it would be almost as bad as being found inside a wall space that had no nonmagical entrance. He had to get back inside the compound if he was going to bring off the claim that he could
not
have been the spy in the walls.

Unless the girl already knew, and told them. How could Danny guess how much the girl understood about gates and gatemages? Obviously she must be nothing more than a Doormouse—if she were so much as a Keyfriend, all the Families would insist that she be killed. Sniffers and Doormouses were allowed to live, as the weakest kind of gatemage, for the sole reason that if there was a living gate somewhere, the Sniffer would find it. Ostensibly the purpose of keeping Sniffers alive was because finding a gate was proof that one of the Families had broken the law and had a Pathbrother or Gatefather who could create gates where none had been before. Then war would begin again.

But the real hope of all Families, whenever they had a Sniffer or Doormouse, was that they would find a longforgotten gate to Westil that Loki had somehow overlooked when he was closing all the gates in the world. Then the Family could pass through to the other world, return with their power vastly increased, and rule all the Westilian Families in Mittlegard.

No passage to Westil here. Only the criminal existence of Danny North, child gatemage, who should be put in Hammernip Hill to keep the war from breaking out again. The Greek Doormouse had found him. But she could not possibly know that he was the one she found. He could bluff this out.

“You're not thinking of going back, are you?”

And just like that, his hope of escape was over.

It was some adult's clant, of course, so the voice did not sound like himself. More like a whisper in the woods. The rustling of leaves. But the voice was clear enough.

“Thor,” said Danny. “Of course I'm going back.”

“I understand. Life is burdensome for you. You think of Hammernip Hill as a fine resting place.”

“No one knows it was me inside that wall.”

“Well, now
I
do,” said Thor.

Danny refused to take the bait. If Thor's clant was waiting for Danny here, then he already knew. “You knew about this place.”

Thor formed a little whirlwind, picking up leaves and pine needles to give him a tiny tornado shape. “We've taken turns watching you come and go. We argued a little, sometimes—does he understand that he's making gates, or does he think he's simply a fast runner?”

“I realized it last summer. When I took Tina's and Mona's pathetic little clants to the top of a tree. A place so high I couldn't get back there by climbing.”

“Don't call ‘pathetic' a thing you cannot do,” said the whirlwind that was Thor.

“Oh, I'm quite aware that I'm the most pathetic of all. But then, I've had no training.”

“And who would train you? I hope you're not resentful.”

“Your sons beat me up. A lot.”

“Nasty little brutes, aren't they?”

“They're your sons.”

“I was assigned to get a drowther wife. I did. The results were disappointing.”

“But they can make clants.”

“Apart from that, and copious amounts of urine, manure, and trouble, they produce little else. But one does what the Family needs.”

“And yet you've apparently known about me for a long time, and you said nothing.”

“Gyish and Zog would never let you live, Danny. You know that. And there are plenty in the Family who would back them to the hilt.”

“But not you. And not … who
are
the others? And what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“I can't tell you until I'm sure you're not coming back,” said Thor. “Because it's possible you're such a donkey pizzle that you'll turn yourself in and name the people who protected you, and then die beside them to prove your loyalty.”

“And how do
you
prove
your
loyalty?”

“The way we've always done it in the North Family. Look for a gatemage to be born among us, and then shield him and protect him until he's old enough to escape this prison compound and reach adulthood.”

Danny sat down and thought about this. “So our compliance with the treaty is all pretense?”

“Oh, Zog and Gyish mean it with all their hearts. Gyish was never in on the secret, even when he was Odin. He was always just mad enough to take treaties seriously. Honor, you know. I don't have any. Not where our enemies are concerned. No, the only honor is doing what will allow the Family to rise again from the ashes of Loki's madness. You're the first gatemage since Loki to be clever enough to stay alive this long.”

“I wasn't clever, I just didn't know I had the knack of it.”

“Yes, but when you found out you didn't brag or ask questions or suddenly start looking up Loki in the library. And before you knew, you didn't boast about how fast you could run and then get yourself observed making instantaneous jumps through space. That's how most of the others got themselves up in Hammernip Hill.”

“And yet you knew about me.”

“Knew about you? Hoped for you is more the truth. Your mother and father—so powerful, so unusual. Why do you think they wanted to make babies together? They'd had children in their first marriages. Pipo and Leonora were very promising. Quirky in their own way. Alf and Gerd, your parents, the two mightiest mages in generations. They won the war for us, you know.”

“I thought we lost.”

“Lost? That's what we called it, for the other Families' sake. ‘We surrender! Do with us what you will!' ” The mini-tornado sank down and seemed to grovel. “But they would never have made a treaty and kept it this long if they weren't deathly afraid of us. Even now, they are making no accusations. Because they're afraid of your mother and father.”

“Why not? So am I.”

“They have to keep moving, so they won't fall into a trap. The other Families want them dead. And they shivered with fear when they heard that your mother was pregnant with Alf's child. And then Alf is made Odin, and the word gets out that their only child together is … a drekka? Oh, I'm sure they absolutely believed us on that one.”

“
I
did,” said Danny.

“How would you know that gatemages don't make clants? It's a closely guarded bit of information. Why do you need to make remote copies of yourself, when you can go, just
go,
as with the winged heels of Mercury, to whatever place you wish to see? But we knew. Your seeming drekkitude was just another hopeful sign to us.”

“Who is ‘us'?”

“Just the five of us. Your parents and Mook and Lumtur.”

Aunt Lummy and Uncle Mook. And Thor, of course.

And Mama and Baba.

Danny found himself crying. He didn't know he was going to, didn't feel it coming. He was just … crying. And then sobbing into his hands. Loud sobs. And he wasn't even sure why. Except that it had to do with Mama and Baba.

“Don't you see they had to keep their distance from you?” said Thor. “What if one of them was caught looking at you with love? Or pride? What would they say that they were proud of, without rousing suspicion? But you have to know that they
are
proud of you. Of how well you've done in your studies. Languages—what a marker for a gatemage! Amazing that no one guessed just from that alone! And how resourceful you've been. You realize that you were leaving the compound for months before we finally saw you do it and months more before we saw you use all three escape gates. That was very impressive. Your gates still go only a short way, like the gates of a Pathbrother, but you're what, thirteen? Oh, yes, they're proud of you.”

Danny got control of himself. He was ashamed that Thor had seen him cry, but he couldn't do anything about it now.

“So Mama and Baba don't want me dead?”

“Oh, don't get this wrong, Danny. If you come back into the compound now, you'll be killed. Maybe not at first—maybe they'll wait for your mother and father to come home. But only so they could lead the attack on you. Do you understand?”

“No.” Danny wasn't sure if he was furious at Thor for saying Danny's own parents would have him killed, or furious at his parents because it was true.

“Stop being angry, it just makes you dumb. They'll
have
to show that they were absolutely heartless—the law that applies to other people's children applies to their own. It's not as if they could save you at that point. The moment they seemed to be wavering, Zog would peck your eyes out and Gyish would boil your blood.”

“So now they'll track me down and find me.”

“Think, Danny. Why do you think I was put in charge of our network of informants? The only person tracking you will be me.”

“What am I going to do? In case you didn't know it, thirteen-year-olds aren't safe out in the drowther world, even if they don't have mages from another world hunting them.”

“Danny, Danny, we're not from another world. We're from
this
world. For thirteen hundred years we've been from this world.”

“You're still not answering my question.”

“You'll get along, Danny.”

“How?”