Gatefather (19 page)

“Shhhh,” whispered Enopp. But whether that was a command for her to be silent or simply an escape of air, Pat could not tell.

“Eluik,” murmured Pat, “it's all right now for you to tell him what you want. To let your brother resume his place. His body isn't a lonely cave, it's his inheritance, his kingdom to rule alone. As yours was also meant for you alone. Stand beside each other now as brothers, not inside each other with all this confusion, with one of you helpless and the other lost.”

She realized that now she
was
urging an outcome; but why not? Neither of them could have any kind of life until this conjoinment at a metaphysical level was replaced by the proper distribution of souls in bodies: one for one.

And then, having said all she could think of several times over, Pat wearied of her own words, and fell silent.

The boys sat unmoving, expressionless, Enopp with his eyes closed, Eluik with his eyes open but focused on nothing.

Pat turned to Marion and Leslie Silverman, intending to shrug, to communicate her helplessness, her growing certainty that this had been beyond her ability after all, that if Danny could not do it, then it could not be done.

But their faces stopped her from shrugging, for Leslie was openly weeping, tears flowing down her cheeks as she looked unwaveringly at the boys. And Marion, though tearless, was no less focused on the boys. How much had they seen and understood?

A sound from the boys turned Pat back to them, and to her surprise, Eluik was looking at her, his eyes focused. His face still expressed nothing, but Pat could see that his lips were moving slightly, and a few sounds emerged, like a phone coming in and out of a good reception area.

At the deepest level, she could sense Enopp's action as he withdrew his ka almost completely from Eluik's body. Pat could only imagine what it felt like to Eluik, to have his body back, to have it now respond to his will, for the first time in years.

But to Pat's consternation, then worry, then fear, Enopp's ka, coming free of Eluik's body, was not returning to his own body. Instead, Eluik seemed to be gathering his ba out of his own body and drawing it back to himself. And Pat realized: He is starting to die. He is preparing to make his way back to Duat.

“No,” she said aloud. “That is wrong,” she said. “Enopp, I forbid you to die. This body has been waiting for you all this time. Don't abandon it now.” And to reinforce her words, she sent her ba into Enopp's body. She could feel that the body was preparing to die, as its controlling mind and will withdrew from it. Back and forth she sent her ba, from Enopp's ka-and-ba to the body he was leaving derelict.

It couldn't be that Enopp did not sense what she was doing—if he had understood her before, he could surely understand her now. No, he was doing this because he didn't
want
the body. No, not that. As her ba drew near to his ka-and-ba, surrounding it, she could sense his answer to her words. It was overwhelming surprise and shame at what he had done to his brother.

You didn't know, Pat told him silently. There is no blame, no shame; no harm was intended, and so no guilt ensues. It's not time for you to return to Duat now. Take up your body and live the life you were sent to live. You still have much to do, and it can only be done with a body, with the power of the gatemage you were born to be.

Enopp seemed to ignore her—he made no move to reinhabit his body—and yet he also did not rise up to make the quick voyage across the lightyears to Duat. Is it because he wants to stay alive, but doesn't think that he deserves to have a body after depriving Eluik for so long? Or am I holding him here by surrounding him with my outself?

I have no more right to hold his ka than he had to inhabit his brother.

Pat pulled her ba back inside herself.

And then felt Enopp's ka-and-ba start to rise. His last connections with Eluik's body began to attenuate and break. He had chosen. He was going to die.

At that moment, Eluik threw himself clumsily from his chair to land on top of Enopp, where he sat on the floor. It knocked Enopp over. Eluik lay on top of him, embraced him awkwardly, and he began shouting something. Weeping and shouting.

Pat was not a gatemage. She had no gift for languages, and did not understand the language of his cries.

But she did understand—for who could fail to understand?—what Eluik's ka was communicating to Enopp's ka. So much force. It felt like shouting. This One had not used even a fraction of this power when communicating with Pat and Danny on Duat. And the message was simple and pure: Stay with me. Live.

Enopp's ka stopped its upward movement.

Eluik began clumsily punching and slapping Enopp's arms and chest, as if to wake up his senses, or even to provoke him into striking back.

Pat felt it, empathically, as Enopp's ka returned to his body and thrust its tendrils, or rather its influence, into every place in his body where those connections needed to be complete.

And as he did, he let go of his last few connections with Eluik's body. In a moment, Enopp's ka-and-ba existed only inside his own body, and almost at once his connection was deep and complete. More complete than most people's self-connection. Now he was connected to himself as Pat and Danny had learned to connect with their own bodies.

Eluik, too, had learned how it was done, and his ka reached deep inside himself. Like Danny, his domain could not be usurped again.

The hitting and punching stopped. Eluik rolled off his brother and they both lay on the floor against the wall, their bodies touching at many points, but their inself and outself completely distinct for the first time in years.

“Good choice, Enopp,” said Pat. “Eluik, you were the reason he stayed. You saved your brother again.”

A single great sob convulsed Eluik's body. And then he lay there, weeping desperately, like a heartbroken toddler.

Enopp half-rolled so he could reach his hand to touch his brother's face. “I'm sorry,” he said in English. “I didn't know.”

Eluik answered him in another language, but this time Leslie saw that Pat didn't understand, and murmured a translation. “He's saying that it's all right, he didn't mind. Neither of them had to be lonely in the caves, and that was good.”

Not for the first time, Pat thought, Loki has much to answer for. Imprisoning these boys, almost forcing them into the tortuous intertwining they had lived with all this time.

Then she remembered: Loki had been commanded by his queen, by his lover, to kill them. And yet he decided he owed more to his conscience than to Queen Bexoi. He kept them alive. And now here they were, tormented and suffering … but alive. Still able to choose, to act, to live their lives. All the entanglement was now untangled. They were themselves again.

Danny had trusted her to do this, and even though she hadn't known what she was doing, she muddled through, and what she couldn't control, the boys had settled for themselves, between themselves.

“I'm just wondering,” said Leslie, “when people are going to start thinking about lunch. Now that we've all decided to stay alive.”

Enopp rose easily to his feet, but Eluik was out of practice controlling his body. Marion had to lift him up, and then Eluik leaned on his little brother and on Marion to make his way to the kitchen table, where Leslie had stacked plates and was now setting out slabs of homemade bread and various sliced meats and cheeses, vegetables and spreads.

Once the boys were seated at the table, and Eluik had proven that he could put together a sandwich and bring it to his mouth, Marion came to Pat in the kitchen doorway. “Well done,” he said softly. “You did things I didn't imagine were possible. I saw things—well,
understood
things in a way I never did before. You were brave and patient and wise. Danny's a lucky boy. I hope he's smart enough to know what you are.”

“If he isn't,” said Leslie, “I'll tell him in a way he can't mistake.”

Pat smiled in relief, feeling tears coming to her eyes. She didn't like to cry in front of other people, but she also didn't want to leave.

“Oh, don't worry about a few tears,” said Leslie. “Sit down and let them salt your sandwich.”

So Pat sat at the table with the boys as they ate their first meal together as independent souls, each bound to his own body, each free to make his own choices and act on them.

What they just won, with such effort, is possessed easily by almost every human being on Earth and Westil, thought Pat. The difference is that, having been without that independence for so long, they know what they have.

I hope they never forget. I hope
I
never forget. How precious it is to be alive, to have a body of my own, to be free to act on this physical world in whatever way I choose.

“What I want to know,” said Enopp, “is whether you can sing.”

Eluik answered in the other language, and both boys laughed until they cried.

Marion interpreted this time. “What he said was, ‘I never could before.' And apparently that's hysterically funny.”

Pat couldn't help grinning—a huge grin, stretching her cheeks because she rarely called on them to show so much happiness.

“And I see that you agree,” said Marion.

“Let the girl eat,” said Leslie. “She's had a busy day.”

 

9

King Prayard no longer showed any surprise when Wad appeared in Bexoi's heavily guarded chamber. Whether he guessed at Wad's connection to the Queen—as her lover or as her enemy—was not a particularly interesting question to Wad. The baby in her womb right now was Prayard's. So whether Prayard resented past betrayals was not a matter of concern to Wad. He had no grounds for feeling betrayed
now
.

Of course, Wad also knew that people judged whether something was right or wrong by their own standards, and those standards were rarely rational. Wad's own standards were as mad as could be. Yet they felt viscerally right and true to him, so that if he did not live by them he felt a deep unease until he made things right. That was why he couldn't simply kill Bexoi and have done with her—because if killing
his
baby had been wrong, then killing her baby must be just as wrong. Because the crime in killing his boy Trick had not been the offense to and betrayal of Wad, it was in depriving that wonderful, clever, beautiful boy of his life. So taking vengeance on Bexoi by killing a child that was just as innocent would not be vengeance at all, but a new crime, a new injustice. Wad knew this was the law he had to live by, but he did not know why he felt this way, or where his moral code came from. He only knew that he could not bear the idea of doing something as vile as the crime Bexoi had committed.

Yet Prayard might have a completely different moral code, one in which cuckolding a man was not such a bad thing, but cuckolding a king was treason. Or in which a wife's womb, once it had borne bastard fruit, could never bear a truly legitimate heir. Prayard himself probably did not know how he would feel about Bexoi's adultery, particularly since it happened at a time when Prayard himself was not acting in such a way as to conceive a child. Not that such a distinction would necessarily matter to Prayard.

There were times when Wad was curious about how Prayard would decide to act if he knew the whole truth about the past. He toyed with the idea of telling him. And then he had to recognize that one not-unlikely response Prayard might have would be to kill Bexoi forthwith. And since by that act, Wad would be indirectly causing the death of the baby, he could not take the chance. Could
never
take the chance. This baby would be Prayard's true child. Prayard should not be given any reason to doubt it. So Wad kept his peace.

Yet he also made it a point to come to Bexoi's sleeping body only when Prayard himself was there. If he came to her when Prayard was away, the King might suspect that Wad was hiding something from him. That would provoke suspicion and Wad did not want to provoke suspicion.

“There's been no change in her,” said Prayard softly.

“Except the baby is growing,” said Wad.

“Nearly to term now,” said Prayard. “And how can a baby be delivered when the mother is asleep?”

“Maybe the coming of the baby will waken her,” said Wad, though he did not believe it.

“And maybe not,” said Prayard. “Maybe the baby will be ready for birth, but her body won't know it, won't work to squeeze it out. Maybe it will stay within her, growing and growing, until it bursts her belly and she dies, and the baby dies.”

“I won't let that happen,” said Wad.

“And how will you stop it? Is midwifery among your talents?”

“You can have a surgeon cut the baby out.”

“I know of that procedure,” said Prayard. “The mother always dies, and the baby often dies, or it was already dead.”

“If I'm here,” said Wad, “then the Queen will
not
die, and the baby will
not
die, and I can promise you that as of this moment, the baby is healthy and alive. Why do you think I come so often? It's to make sure that this remains true up to the moment when the baby is born—or is taken.”

“Do you really think I'll let anyone cut into my lady's belly? Do you think I'll allow a knife anywhere near her?”

“Yes, I do,” said Wad. “If your choice is between the knife and her certain death, you'll choose the knife, with me watching to keep her safe.”

“You can heal her from the knife, but not from this … this
sleep
that is on her.”

“She is not asleep,” said Wad. “I believe she hears all, knows what is happening, listens to this conversation. She's helpless to respond, because her body is not under her control.”

“So is she under the control of a manmage?” asked Prayard.

“Don't imagine manmages to be all that powerful,” said Wad. “This is a weak age of the world, with no Great Gates to enhance the power of mages. No manmage could steal this woman's body from her.”