Danny exulted at the knowledge that he was not a drekka at all, but instead a rather powerful mage of the rarest kind. But eating away at the thrill of triumph was the fact that to be a gatemage in the North family was worse than being drekka.
For the last gatemage in the world had been Loki the trickster, the monster Loki who had sealed up every Great Gate in the world so thoroughly that all traffic between Westil and Mittlegard was cut off at once. It had shattered the power of every Family in the world, for the mightiest of powers could only be sustained by frequent passages back and forth. Magic gathered in one world was magnified a hundred times by passage through a Great Gate into the other. Little gates like the ones that Danny made had no such power—they led from Earth to another spot on Earth, and meant nothing except that his body moved from there to here. But the Great Gates had been what turned the mages of Westil into gods when they came here to Mittlegard.
And when they closed, when Loki made it impossible for anyone to even find them, even the gates that had stood for three thousand years or more before his time, the gods became mere mages, and easy to find and kill if someone was determined to; they could die from the blows of drowther swords or the darts from drowther bows. They had to learn caution, to isolate themselves, to pretend that they were ordinary people. To hide, as the North family was hidden here in the Virginia hills, where people who kept to themselves were not exceptional and others mostly left them alone.
The wars had been fought at first to force the Norths to reopen the gates, for no one believed that Loki’s actions were not part of some nefarious plan. Only after the Families had decimated each other and the Norths had fled with Leiv Eiriksson to Vinland—only then, seeing how helpless the Norths had been against five centuries of onslaughts, did the other Families finally believe that Loki had acted alone, that the Norths were not holding on to some secret Westil Gate that would enable them to build up power that no other Family could withstand.
Even so, once America was conquered the Families made war on the Norths again from time to time, whenever the pain of being cut off from Westil became too much to bear, if only to punish the Norths or perhaps destroy them utterly—what else did they deserve?
But as truces and treaties were formed and broken, made anew and once again broken, they always included this clause: That if any gatemage was born into the world, into any Family but most especially the Norths, he would be killed. And not just killed, but his or her body cut up and one piece sent to each of the other Families as proof that it was done.
Otherwise, whichever Family got a gatemaker first would have a devastating advantage and could destroy the others if they were not stopped in time. All the Families feared the others would cheat, because that’s what they themselves would do.
If any of the adults had sent a clant to watch Danny and saw what he just did to reach this spot, then when he came back down they’d hack him to death on the spot, and care nothing. For if the Norths were caught with a gatemage of any degree of power left alive and making gates, the other Families would unite again and this time they would not stop till every North was dead.
I am a mage with power to do what no other living mage can do; and yet I am a dead man. If Loki had not played his monstrous, inexplicable prank and closed the gates, the discovery of my power would be a cause for celebration. I would at once become one of the leading members of the Family, and mere beastmages like Zog would defer to me, and Lem and Stem would never dare to raise their hand against me. But Loki closed the gates, and now it’s a crime for me to breathe. If I were a good boy, I’d fling myself from this tree and die, saving them the trouble of killing me.
But Danny was not that good a boy.
He owed them nothing. He was not one of them. He did not accept their power over him. He would not let them kill him if he could avoid it.
The only trouble was, he didn’t actually know how to use his power. He had made a gate, but unconsciously; he could map with his mind all the gates that he had ever made, because they were a part of him. But he had no idea what to do in order to create another. Useful as it might be right now to make a gate that would take him from this treetop to a place somewhere in Canada or Brazil, he had never made a gate that took him more than fifty yards, and never made a single one on purpose.
So he inched his way out to where he had tied the shirt, unfastened it, opened it, and released the two feeble fairy clants. At once the girls’ outselves let go of the pieces of their clants and let the twigs and leaves and nutshells tumble or flutter to the ground. Upstairs in the schoolhouse, their eyes were opening; no doubt they were wailing and clinging to each other and making noise about how terrified they’d been.
And it’s a near certainty that they’ll never wave their clanty boobs and butts at me again, thought Danny, if I were ever set to watch over them again. So my plan was a good one, except for the part where it nearly got me killed.
Danny made his way slowly down the tree, pausing here and there to try to hear what was going on below him. Then he noticed that his shoulder did not hurt at all any more. That it had not hurt since he made the leap through the gate and hung from the branch where his shirt was tied. He looked at his shoulder and saw no trace of injury—not a bruise, not a scratch.
Gates heal. He had vaguely known that, but since it was a positive aspect of gatemagery, no one spoke of it much. When Auntie Uck referred to not having a first-rate healer, she was talking about the lack of a Meadowfriend who specialized in herbs and could enhance their healing powers. But before 632 A.D., any injury could be healed by pulling or pushing someone through a gate.
If they saw his shoulder, they would know. The injury had been severe enough it could not have healed without a mark. Only a gatemage could be unscathed.
Pulling on his shirt would not be enough. One of the aunts would insist on seeing the wound, dressing it. He had to have a suitable injury to show them. Yet how could he inflict it on himself, here in the tree?
He gripped his shoulder with all his might, jabbing his longish, dirty thumbnail into several spots. It hurt, and there were red marks, but had it been enough to bruise himself? He could only hope as he pulled his shirt on again.
When he got to the bottom of the tree, only Uncle Mook and Aunt Lummy were waiting for him. Lummy was Mama’s youngest sister and looked like her, only plumper and not as irritable as Mama always seemed to be. But then, Aunt Lummy was not a great lightmage; she was good with rabbits, a skill not much called for once she had persuaded them to leave the vegetable garden alone. So she spent her days trying to teach all the useful languages, written and spoken, to children who mostly could not understand what they might ever be used for.
And she was kind to Danny. So was Uncle Mook. And these were the two who had been left behind to wait for him.
Danny dropped from the lowest branch to the ground and faced them. “How much trouble am I in?” he asked them.
“With me,” said Aunt Lummy, “none at all.”
“Those girls should have been wrapped in a sack long ago, to teach them sense and manners,” said Uncle Mook.
“But Zog and Gyish are now your enemies,” said Aunt Lummy, “and they want you dead, to put it plainly. And many there are who think they have a point, and that the only reason you’re still alive is because your parents are who they are.”
“As if Mama would miss me if I died,” said Danny, “or Baba would even notice I was gone.”
“Don’t be unjust,” said Uncle Mook. “Your parents are complicated people, but I assure you that they care a great deal about you and think about you all the time.”
“But if the Family decided I was drekka and dangerous and had to be killed, Baba would put me up in Hammernip himself, and Mama would shovel on the dirt.”
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Lummy.
“Of course they would,” said Uncle Mook. “It’s their duty.”
“Now, Mooky,” said Aunt Lummy.
“The boy is old enough
to know the truth,” Mook said to her. And then to Danny, “They know their duty to the Family and they will do it. But right now the madness is over and it’s time for you to come back home to eat. With us, I think, in case somebody takes it in their head to make a preemptive strike before your folks come home.”
“Oh, Mooky,” said Aunt Lummy impatiently. “Don’t scare the boy!”
“He should be scared,” said Mook. “He should have cut off a hand before he put those children’s clants in a sack. Now he knows it, but the deed’s been done. Everything he does from now on will be viewed with suspicion. If we mean to keep him safe, we have to help him learn to be as innocuous as possible. No more strutting around about how smart he is in school—”
“He never struts,” said Aunt Lummy. Danny was grateful that she defended him, but he realized that there had been times when he flaunted his superiority in classwork.
“It looks like strutting to the other children,” said Mook, “and you know it.”
Aunt Lummy sighed. “If only he could leave here and grow up in safety somewhere else.”
“Don’t put a thought like that into his head!” cried Mook.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of it a thousand times?” said Danny truthfully. “But I know they’d track me down and find me, and I won’t do anything like that. The only life I’ll ever have is here, and all I can hope to affect is how long it lasts.”
“That’s the attitude,” said Mook. “Humility, acceptance, willingness to sacrifice.”
They led him back to the house, and Danny ate well that night, since Lummy’s best talent was neither with rabbits nor students, but with cooking. After dinner, she insisted on applying her favorite and smelliest salves to his injuries, and when she pulled his shirt off, he was relieved to see that his self-inflicted replacement injuries had left bruises, though small ones.
“Well,” said Lummy, “either Zog is getting weaker in his old age or he was being gentler than it seemed, because you’re only bruised a little.”
“Danny has the resilience of youth,” said Uncle Mook. “They’re tougher than they look, these children.”
Well-salved and stinking to high heaven, Danny went to bed. Only then, alone in the darkness, did he allow himself to know what he must know: that he intended to survive, no matter what.
Now the entire business of his life was to figure out a way to escape from the North Family compound in such a way that they could never find him. Fortunately, unlike so many others who had ended their lives on Hammernip Hill, Danny had the power to move himself from anyplace to anywhere—if only he could figure out just how his power worked, and how to make it do things that he consciously desired.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LOST GATE
Copyright © 2010 by Orson Scott Card
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2657-7
Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I Page 28