The Gate Thief (Mither Mages)

by Orson Scott Card

  “You know why,” said the Gate Thief. “My captive gates have told you.”

  “They say the name of Bel.”

  “Bel, the gatemage from the other world,” said the Gate Thief. “The world of soul stealers. The world of manmages. Fool.”

  “Let’s go,” said Hermia. “Who knows what he’s plotting to do while he keeps us talking?”

  Meanwhile, Stone knelt in the grass, his hands splayed out, digging into the soil. “It’s so alive,” he whispered.

  “It’s you that’s alive,” said the Gate Thief. “Coming through the Great Gate has made you strong. All of you too strong. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “That’s what he wants us to believe,” said Hermia.

  “Gatemages are such liars,” said Veevee—rather proudly, Danny thought.

  “What do I call you?” asked Danny. “Loki?”

  “Wad,” said the Gate Thief. “It’s my name since I came out of the tree.”

  Danny had no idea what that meant. “I’m not giving you back your gates,” said Danny.

  “I don’t need them,” said Wad.

  “Do you know what happened to Ced?” asked Stone. “He came through the earlier gate and he stayed.”

  “A windmage,” said Wad. “I know where he is.”

  “Is he safe?” asked Stone.

  Wad laughed. “Is Westil safe, with him here? The most powerful mage in the world now—the winds that he blows!”

  “Is he causing harm?” asked Veevee.

  “He doesn’t know how not to cause harm,” said Wad. “Any more than you do. And there’s no one to balance him, no one to teach him. That’s what you’re doing here. Setting monsters loose in the world.”

  “Becoming monsters ourselves, by that reckoning,” said Danny.

  “We’re all monsters,” said Wad.

  “Let’s go back,” said Hermia.

  Danny could see him clearly now, standing between two stones, leaning on neither. A slight man—like Danny, he was neither tall nor short, neither strong-looking nor weak. And his face was neither young nor old, but ageless, with eyes like deep water, gray as the belly of a thundercloud, looking into Danny with such sadness, such anger, such understanding.

  “Don’t look at him,” said Hermia. “He’s too strong for us.”

  “I’m weak,” said Wad. “You have most of my outself inside you now. What do I call you?”

  “You don’t,” said Danny. He gathered the mouth of the Great Gate around himself and they were in the barn again.

  The sunlight was gone. The stones. The grass.

  Stone knelt, his fingers pressed against the floor. He was weeping. “It’s a desert here, compared to there,” he said.

  “We met the Gate Thief,” Veevee told Marion. “He was almost as pretty as Danny, and as old as the stars.”

  “I can’t lock the other gate,” said Hermia. “The outbound gate, the one you made from the hearts of strangers.”

  Danny could see that she had locked the return gate, and was trying to close the other. “You can’t control it because there are twenty mages in it,” said Danny. “You have to close them one at a time.” He began pinching off the gates.

  But by the time he got to the third gate, the first was open again. “It won’t stay closed,” he said.

  “I see now,” said Hermia, and instead of trying to close the whole Great Gate, she began to join him in closing the individual gates. “I can see everything more clearly. I’m so much stronger. You’d think I could close them.”

  Danny could see that she was getting no better results than he was.

  The inbound Great Gate, the one made entirely from Danny’s own gates, was closed and locked, but the gates of other mages were not so obedient. They willed themselves to be open, and though Danny and Hermia could close them, they would not stay closed.

  “We have a wide-open public gate here,” said Veevee. “I can see what you’re doing, and they won’t stay closed. They don’t want to be closed.”

  “Wild Gates,” said Danny. “‘Angry Wild Gates,’ he called them.”

  “Angry at him, not us,” said Veevee.

  “I held them prisoner, too,” said Danny. “And it doesn’t matter who they’re angry at. They aren’t people, just the wraiths of people, the lingering memory of them. But strong.”

  “Going through a Great Gate strengthened us,” said Veevee. “But they are a Great Gate. How strong is that?”

  “Let them stay open,” said Danny. “It isn’t going to work, no matter what we do.”

  “Are you saying that you can’t close the Great Gate?” asked Marion.

  “I closed the one coming back to Earth,” said Hermia. “But not the one leading to Westil from here.”

  “So my barn is now a Great Gate, and you can’t close it?” demanded Leslie.

  “Why did you use those gates?” said Hermia.

  “They wanted it,” said Danny. “It seemed only fair, after so long in prison.”

  “But you didn’t know them—what kind of men they were,” said Hermia. “A wraith preserves the character of its maker, and these might have been very bad mages.”

  “Yes, that seems obvious now,” said Danny. “I chose the most insistent. The most selfish. But it never occurred to me that I couldn’t control these gates.”

  “You’ve never faced a gate that wasn’t under your control,” said Marion. “You’ve never seen a gate that wasn’t of your making.”

  “But he did make it,” said Veevee.

  “I wound them together, I threw them into spacetime,” said Danny. “But Marion’s right—they aren’t my gates.”

  “Then move them,” said Leslie. “Get it out of my barn.”

  Danny tried. The gate wouldn’t budge. Only when he stopped trying to move it did it move—in the opposite direction. And it widened.

  “It’s trying to eat us,” said Hermia, alarmed.

  It was true. The mouth of the Great Gate was seeking them out.

  “Take them!” cried Veevee. “They were captive before, capture them again!”

  Danny tried to unmake the gate as he had done with his previous Great Gate, but these were not his own gates, and they dodged him. He could work on one at a time, but they all resisted him. They refused to be captive again.

  “I thought passing through the gate was supposed to make me irresistibly strong,” said Danny.

  “They’re stronger, too,” said Veevee. “Dead as they are, it made them more powerful, to be part of a Great Gate.”

  “Wad took them, though. Loki, I mean,” said Danny.

  “They weren’t all woven together like this,” said Hermia. “And he knows more than you.”

  Now Danny understood what Wad had meant: “You’ll be back here soon enough, begging me to teach you how to undo this terrible thing you’ve done.” Danny wanted to go back right now, to demand answers from Wad.

  “No!” shouted Hermia.

  “No what?” asked Danny.

  “Don’t step into that gate!” she cried. “Don’t you see? It’s not yours. What’s to stop it from moving itself into the depths of the sea?”

  “What have we done?” asked Veevee miserably.

  “You don’t control it at all,” said Leslie. She wasn’t just angry now. She was afraid.

  “It could go out and look for the Families that are hunting for it?” asked Marion.

  “I don’t know what it can do,” said Danny. “Wad was right, I am a fool.”

  “At least the return gate is closed,” said Hermia. “If the Families go to Westil, they can’t get back.”

  “But that’s terrible,” said Danny. “What right do we have to set them loose in that world? I have to reopen the other gate. I have to make it so there’s no space between them, so that if you go through the gate you come back here immediately. No pause, no chance to see the sights.”

  Danny acted even as he spoke. But no sooner did he move the mouth of the return gate directly in
front of the outbound gate than the Wild Gate moved its tail away. Not far—the two Great Gates were so woven together, so inseparable, that it was only a few yards between the tail of the Wild Gate and the mouth of Danny’s return gate.

  “It can’t get away from my gate either,” said Danny in relief. “As long as I keep mine anchored, it can’t go far.” Danny tethered the mouth of his own part of the Great Gate to the walls of the barn. It was like hobbling a horse. The Wild Gates could move the mouth of the combined gate, but only a few yards.

  “This is our worst nightmare,” said Leslie. “A gate you can’t control, here in our barn. Do you understand what the Families will do now?”

  “Whatever it takes to get to this gate,” said Hermia.

  “They don’t know it’s gone wild,” said Veevee. “I don’t plan to tell them. Do you?”

  “The gate is hungry,” said Danny. “It wants to be used. It’ll find a way.”

  “Then let’s feed it,” said Hermia. “Negotiate with the Families, let them each send a couple of mages through, exactly as we planned all along. They don’t have to know that we can’t close the gate or move it or … anything. You gate them here, two at a time, and send them through—how will they know that you aren’t as much in control of the Great Gate as you are of the gates you make here on Mittlegard?”

  “Or make another Great Gate, one you control completely,” said Veevee, “and starve this one to death.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Danny. “Wad was right. I have to go talk to him. I have to ask him.”

  “Terrible idea,” said Stone.

  “If you do go back, make another Great Gate,” said Hermia. “Don’t ever step into this one again.”

  “She’s right,” said Veevee. “This is an angry gate, isn’t that what Wad said?”

  “Who’s Wad?” asked Marion.

  “Loki,” said Danny.

  “The Gate Thief,” said Hermia.

  “He’s dangerous,” said Stone. “He makes me believe in the devil.”

  “I’m screwing everything up,” said Danny.

  Stone was sitting on the floor now. “What else did you expect?” he asked. “Nobody’s done this in fourteen centuries. And it’s not your fault that the Gate Thief had all these captives. It’s his fault, not yours. The only thing you did was not let him capture you.”

  “That was my first mistake,” said Danny.

  “No,” said Leslie. “Not a mistake.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” said Marion. “We’ll find a way to get it all under control.”

  “But first,” said Leslie, “we’re getting all my cows out of this barn.”

  7

  AMULETS

  Danny had first come to Parry McCluer High School as a long-dreamed-of adventure. And the dream had come true. He had made friends. He had learned how to use his power and he had done good things with it. A few pranks, too, but he hadn’t used it to win races and he hadn’t hurt anybody, unless you counted humiliating Coach Bleeder.

  Now, though, he came as if he had graduated, then found out he had flunked a test after all and had to come back. Only nobody knew he had been gone. Nobody knew he had failed. His friends didn’t believe him when he told them.

  They were gathered in the old smoking area—the one that the teachers regularly checked. But since they were only talking, not smoking anything, it was a good place for Danny and his friends to gather.

  “So can we use the gate?” asked Pat.

  “I told you, nobody can.”

  “I thought you said it was wild,” said Wheeler. “Anybody could use it.”

  “We’re not letting anybody get near enough to use it,” said Danny.

  “Then what’s the big deal?” asked Hal. “Is it, like, the last gate you can ever make?”

  “No, I can make as many as I want.”

  “So can you take us to that other world?” asked Laurette.

  “Why would I do that?” asked Danny. “You’re not mages, it wouldn’t do you any good, and what if you got stranded there? It isn’t a safe place.”

  “You’re right,” said Pat. “Here, you can only get run over by cars or catch some hideous disease or get blown up in chemistry class.”

  “I didn’t blow anybody up,” said Hal.

  “But you tried,” said Wheeler.

  “I tried to get them to cancel school for the day,” said Hal.

  “Can we stop talking about your failures, Hal?” said Xena.

  “Yeah, let’s go back to talking about mine,” said Danny.

  Xena gripped his arm and spoke so earnestly and pressed so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “You haven’t failed at anything, Danny North,” she said. “You’re, like, a god.”

  “The god of screw-ups,” said Danny.

  Xena kissed his cheek. “Your screw-ups are better than other people’s successes.”

  “So you went to the other world. Westil,” said Laurette. “That was supposed to make you more powerful.”

  “I don’t feel any different,” said Danny.

  “Well, can you do stuff you couldn’t do before?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you know?” asked Laurette.

  “There isn’t a manual,” said Danny. “They kill mages like me. They don’t exactly provide me with instructions.”

  “Who reads the instructions?” asked Laurette. “Haven’t you tried anything?”

  “I wouldn’t even know what to try,” said Danny. “I made gates before. I can still make gates.” He shrugged.

  “So you can take us to Disney World?” asked Sin.

  Danny hadn’t expected that—not from the goth with constantly infected piercings. “You want to go to Disney World?”

  “I’d say Paris, but I don’t speak French,” said Sin. “Come on, I’ve never been.”

  “Me neither,” said Xena.

  “I don’t want to go,” said Pat.

  “I don’t like using gates to steal,” said Danny.

  “Who said anything about stealing?” asked Sin. “Just get us in.”

  “And then get us through all the lines and into the rides without tickets,” said Laurette. “Is that so much to ask?”

  “They’ll catch me,” said Wheeler. “I always look guilty.”

  “How about Cape Canaveral?” asked Hal.

  “You provide the security badges, and I’ll get us in,” said Danny.

  “This isn’t even fun,” said Pat.

  “What about all those people trying to kill you?” asked Xena. “Are you safe now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Danny.

  “And what about teaching us how to help you?” asked Hal. “Or is that off, just because you screwed up and made some gate angry?”

  “I can’t have you help me,” said Danny. “I’d just screw that up, too, and then you’d get killed.”

  “Wow, he’s really down on himself,” said Laurette.

  “He needs cheering up,” said Xena. She kissed his cheek. Not a sisterly peck. Her lips brushed his cheek and lingered. It made him feel a tingle in his legs and in his butt. He didn’t know that tingling could be so weirdly dislocated.

  “Don’t go there, Xena,” said Hal.

  “Even if you are a warrior princess,” said Wheeler.

  “Jealous?” asked Xena.

  “Yes,” said Wheeler.

  Everyone looked at him in surprise.

  “It’s just Danny, and all of a sudden you’re getting all kissy with him,” said Wheeler.

  “Yeah,” said Laurette. “Just because he’s a god, why would you want to kiss him?”

  “You’re right,” said Xena, clinging to Danny all the more tightly. “I want to have his baby.”

  At that, Danny pulled away. Joking around was one thing. This was something else. “I just have to think,” he said.

  “He can’t think if all his blood has rushed out of his head,” said Laurette.

  “I’m
just trying to figure out if there’s a way I can keep you guys safe,” said Danny.

  “We’d be safe in Disney World,” said Sin. “It’s the safest place on earth.”

  Danny thought of what he needed his friends to do. Gate them as emissaries to the Families, to explain the terms they’d have to agree to in order to pass someone through a Great Gate. Danny couldn’t go himself, and he couldn’t send Veevee or Hermia, either. The Families would set traps for them. But what would be the point of trapping drowthers?

  That was the problem. Since the Families didn’t regard drowthers as having any value, they wouldn’t hold them as hostages. If they got annoyed, they’d just kill his emissaries.

  In fact, as soon as anyone realized that Danny had friends, they might try to use them against him. Threaten them. Follow them. Kidnap them. Kill them. Without waiting for Danny to send them anywhere.

  He couldn’t concentrate on all of them at once. He couldn’t keep them safe. “What have I done to you guys?” asked Danny.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Laurette.

  Danny explained his worry.

  “Cool,” said Wheeler. “It’s like being inside a comic book.”

  “Except we’re collateral damage,” said Hal.

  “We’re the red shirt guys,” said Pat.

  Danny made a gate, a very small one, and put it directly above a small stone lying in the clearing. “Hal,” said Danny. “Would you pick up that stone?”

  Hal didn’t bother looking to see exactly which stone. He just lunged for the general area, reaching for any stone, and when his hand brushed the gate, he fell into it and he was sitting ten feet away. “That is disorienting,” he complained.

  “That wasn’t what I wanted,” said Danny. “I’m trying to see if I can tie a gate to a thing instead of a place. Just move the stone, somebody. Laurette, keep your hand low and move it slowly and I’ll tell you which stone.”

  She moved carefully—though Danny also noticed that she bent over at such an angle that her considerable cleavage was aimed right at him. Was that because it was her habit, or because she was thinking the same way Xena was, that because Danny could do magery he was suddenly cool enough to be worth flirting with?