Gatefather (27 page)

“When they have to solve a problem, I rarely know the answer, but I usually know someone who
might
know what to do.”

“Manmage,” said Eluik.

“Why didn't we see that right away?” asked Enopp.

“Why didn't
Stone
see it? Or Leslie, or Marion?” asked Eluik.

“Because it's not magery,” said Diamond. “It's just … being a good friend.”

“The way a Rootherd is a friend to corn, or a Stonefather to a mountain,” said Eluik. “Mother said that she sees what a person really loves and cares about, and then she can talk to them and help them realize how the thing she wants them to do is exactly what they already wanted to do.”

“Ah,” said Diamond. “But I don't do that. My friends decide for themselves what they want.”

“You haven't been through a Great Gate,” said Eluik. “And do they really? Don't you sometimes persuade them to accept ideas that they didn't like at first?”

“Everybody does that,” said Diamond.

“But manmages always succeed,” said Eluik.

Diamond laughed sharply. “If I let you keep talking to me, you'll persuade me that I know how to ride a hawk and fly.”

“Not a Bloodfather, not a Clawfriend, not even a Furboy,” said Eluik. “Manmagery isn't like beastmagery. You can't use words with a hawk or a lion or a horse. The beast has to trust you and let you in, because of how you treat them, how you feel about them.”

“Well, as you said, there aren't any Great Gates anymore, so we'll never know about me,” said Diamond.

“I'm a gatemage,” said Enopp.

“You might
become
a gatemage,” said Eluik. “You might even become a Gatefather like Wad or Danny. But it won't matter because if you try to make a Great Gate, the Gate Thief will stop you.”

“He doesn't do that anymore,” said Enopp.

“What makes you think that?” asked Eluik. “He didn't block Danny because Danny was stronger. But he ate the Wild Gate that Hermia had moved, didn't he? He has all of Danny's gates and he didn't give them back.”

Enopp fell into a thoughtful silence.

“I'm probably wrong,” said Eluik to Diamond. “You're probably not any kind of mage at all. You're just a really nice man who makes friends easily and holds on to all of them.”

“That's what I think I am,” said Diamond. “Or what I try to be, anyway. My kids will tell you I'm not
always
a really nice man.”

“Your kids don't always do what you want?” asked Enopp.

“Are you kidding?” asked Diamond. “I tell them what's the right thing to do, but they're free to choose, and … then they do whatever they damn well please.”

“So … not a very good manmage,” said Enopp.

“No, an excellent manmage,” said Eluik. “Like Mother. She didn't control us. She left us free.”

“Because she loved us more than anybody,” said Enopp.

“Hardest thing I've ever done,” said Diamond. “Letting my kids do some of the insane things they chose to do.”

“Doesn't mean you're not a manmage,” said Eluik. “Just means you're not the kind of manmage that needs killing.”

There were fields on the left side of the car when they turned off to the right, plunging into trees and winding up a narrow lane through deep woods. “Almost home,” said Diamond.

“I can see why somebody might think you're a treemage,” said Enopp. “This is serious forest.”

“I love trees,” said Diamond. “I know most of the grand old trees on my property by name.”

“Name?” said Enopp. “Trees don't have names.”

“He just means the name of the
kind
of tree,” said Eluik.

“No,” said Diamond. “I mean: Annie's Sycamore. Elm by the Brook. The Reading Oak. Things that we've done with or on or under or near the tree. They all have a story and that becomes the tree's name. We love these trees.”

“Treemagery is a lot safer,” said Enopp. “Nobody kills a treemage.”

“That settles it, then,” said Diamond.

The car crested a rise and emerged at the top of a hill. The ground was meadow for a ways around the house on all sides, but as soon as the ground started downward again, the trees came back. In every direction, they could see miles and miles of tree-covered hills, but hardly any houses at all.

“It almost looks Westilian,” said Enopp. “Like there aren't any paved roads or big houses except this one.”

“That's why I love this place,” said Diamond. “Surrounded by life—beasts as well as trees—but the trees are the mothers and fathers of all. They shelter everybody, provide for everybody. Look down there, in that glen. Those are trees that have never been clear cut. There are some thousand-year trees there.”

“For
this
world, that's really old,” said Enopp.

“The Indians used to walk among those trees. And really ancient creatures walked among the ancestors of those trees. This place was never a killing ground for trees. That means something to me.”

“You were in the Air Force,” said Eluik. “The Air Force drops bombs and blows things up.”

“Sometimes it's a job that has to be done,” said Diamond. “But that doesn't mean that a soldier doesn't dream of finding a place that's full of peace.”

Eluik thought about that. Full of peace. Kind of a backward way of looking at it. Eluik would have thought that peace was the absence of war. But maybe war is the absence of peace. Maybe when you leave a place alone, for all the creatures to live their lives, the place fills up with peace, and the peace spills over. Like a lake with a stream running out of it, so that people downstream can drink up all the peace they want, and be filled with it.

“You know, Westil might be full of magic,” said Eluik. “More than Mittlegard. But what neither world has very much of is this.”

“Trees?” asked Diamond.

“Plenty of trees in Westil,” said Enopp.

“Peace,” said Eluik. “No peace in either world. Except maybe in little islands like this.”

“Then it's a good thing we've come here, isn't it,” said Diamond. “Now come on inside, I know Annie will have all kinds of food for you. Regular food. Plain food. Bread and meat and cheese and fruits and vegetables. Nothing fancy but everything is good for you.”

“In Westil,” said Enopp, “that's all anybody knows how to make.”

“Then you'll feel right at home,” said Diamond. “Come on inside.”

Eluik and Enopp got their bags—the ones that Diamond didn't grab first—and followed him up the porch stairs into the house.

Eluik took one glance back at the trees beyond the car and he thought maybe he caught a glimpse of somebody. No, not “somebody.” Hermia. Probably not his imagination. Probably she knew exactly where they were. Can't be helped. But if anybody can damage the peace of this place, it'll be her.

Living with the Silvermans had prepared Eluik and Enopp for the American way of life. None of the customs of Iceway applied, and while there were differences between the Diamond kitchen and Leslie's cooking back in Ohio, the ways of procuring the food—buying packages in stores, keeping everything in refrigerators and freezers, baking and frying and grilling and nuking things according to an arcane set of principles that Eluik couldn't begin to guess at—were very similar. The colonel joked about cooking up the native fauna—about raccoon and squirrel stews, and how oily and nasty possum meat tasted (“but it would keep you alive in a pinch”)—but nothing like that was served.

Eluik and Enopp had grown up on wild game, when there was meat at all, and Eluik missed it, though Enopp professed that when it came to eating, he never wanted to leave Mittlegard, or America, or even stray more than a hundred miles from the Ohio River. But that was a matter not at all under their control.

Mother would call for them sometime. Probably not soon, because as Danny North explained, Anonoei had spent years setting up the destruction of Queen Bexoi, and now that she had to live inside Bexoi's body and pretend to
be
her, she had to find a way to undo all her plotting—preferably without betraying people who had, after all, trusted her when she had her own body. It was a very tricky thing to do. Of course it would take time. Of course.

Enopp seemed not to mind, but to Eluik, Mittlegard was not home. Maybe it had to do with his having been older, having a clearer memory of life in Kamesham and inside the palace of Nassassa before they were abducted and thrown into prison. To Enopp, Mittlegard was simply the world he knew; to Eluik, it was an alien place where he didn't really belong.

And maybe it was also because Enopp was already coming into his magery. Danny and Pat and Veevee and even Hermia spoke as if it were merely possible that Enopp would grow up to be a gatemage. But Eluik could see clearly that while Enopp was not a Gatefather at the level of Danny North or Wad, he still had a very large number of prets that would serve as gates inside him.

So to Enopp, who could go anywhere and leave a gate behind, what did it matter where he lived? He would have gates enough inside him to make a Great Gate all by himself. So the differences between worlds were less important.

Eluik knew that even without gates, he could travel from place to place, leaving no trace of his passage. He had learned that from Pat as she helped him and Enopp separate. He had seen and understood the prets, had seen how dazzling and powerful Enopp was, how many prets had chosen to follow him.

But what am I? Eluik could not help but wonder. His own pret had no dazzle or spark, and if he had a troop of followers he could not detect them. My younger brother is the great mage. What am I? Here on Mittlegard, he was likely to be, not drekka, but a drowther, and while the drowthers were mostly oblivious to magery, Eluik would know the vast gulf between those with and without power.

In Iceway, he would be just as lacking in magery, perhaps—but he was the firstborn son of King Prayard, though born to a mistress rather than a wife. There were people eager to exploit him; others who would like to have him dead. But he mattered.

So maybe it's pure vanity that makes me see Mittlegard as an alien place, where I do not have and will never have a home.

Enopp needed company, needed people to talk to, and the Diamond home was always full—not only of the Diamond family, but also of the many visitors that the Colonel was always inviting, or who came by uninvited. With Enopp happily occupied listening in on all the conversations of adults or playing videogames with the Diamond boys, who were older but seemed to enjoy teaching him, Eluik had plenty of time to himself.

That's how he wanted it. When the conversation was in full swing, Eluik would say enough to make it clear he was there, and then drift out of the room and … jump.

If he had been a gatemage, then another gatemage might have been able to track him. But because he simply
went
, his pret going without any kind of gate at all, no one could have tracked him in any way.

Eluik liked Diamond's farmstead, especially the wilder country, the deep woods, the glens, the hilltops. On summer evenings, when there was plenty of light, he would simply go. Even when he jumped to places that he could not see, he never appeared partly or fully inside a tree or a rock. Perhaps the other prets that were already there protected him against such a destructive collision. Eluik was content to know that it worked.

Sometimes he also jumped back to Ohio. Never into the Silvermans' house—he did not want to let them know he was there, and he certainly didn't want to spy on their private conversations. He would simply go to some corner of their property, or some nearby place in Yellow Springs, and sit and think for a while.

Not many of his thoughts were happy, and some were angry and some were sad. He hated that he would never see his mother's face again, that she would wear Bexoi's simpering face and he would have to find some way to believe it was really Mother. He hated Wad and yet knew he had no choice but to trust him, and he seemed really to care about Mother and, for that matter, about Eluik and Enopp. Veevee was too overpowering; Hermia always had her own agenda. Danny and Pat were the ones he liked best. So he would think about them and work up whatever emotions attached to them. And then he would think of something or someone else.

What he thought about most was going back to Westil. Enopp talked about someday making a Great Gate and Eluik always warned him that the Gate Thief would eat it, but what Eluik
really
thought was: Who needs a Great Gate? That's only for when you want other people to be able to make the passage.

Why shouldn't I just … go? I know Iceway better than I know America; if I can jump to Ohio or other parts of Kentucky, why can't I jump to Iceway?

Two things stopped him. First, he didn't know how Great Gates worked, so how could he be sure he wouldn't need one? What if his jump took him only partway, and he ended up in the vacuum of deep space?

Second, he wasn't sure he could come back, once he returned home to Westil. Because it
was
home, and this place wasn't, it might be possible that he could bridge the gap between worlds, but only one time, and only one-way.

So he didn't try that jump. He just kept imagining making it—thinking of where his arrival point might be. The palace? The prison? The poor little farm up in the mountains? On board a ship? The house where Mother took care of them when Enopp was a newborn?

Could any of the gatemages find me? Could Wad? Could Danny?

Eluik hoped not. There had to be some way to get himself out of playing a bit part in other people's dramas.

 

13

Gerd North was not happy. “I don't like Taiwan,” she told Alf.

“We won't be here much longer,” he replied.