The Gate Thief (Mither Mages) (31 page)

So at first the memories were jagged. They flashed in and out like lightning. There was no coherency. Images of a scrawny, sun-burnt Egyptian man, small in stature, bald, his shoulders tented by thin white linen, a dusty linen kilt around his loins, but otherwise naked. The memory included heat. And then cold, and darkness.

The man was talking, but Danny heard no words. He did not want the man’s words, though this man was the teacher—some kind of hermit that Loki had consulted. A man who knew ancient lore of Egypt, knowledge older than Christianity, though he was certainly a Christian ascetic. But the memory of his words could not be recovered this way. Instead, Danny had to recover the memory of the story that Loki had built up in his own memory.

When words came to mind, then, they were not the hermit’s words, they were the words that mattered to Loki as he listened.
Ka
.
Ba
. But as soon as Danny attached to the words, their meaning in this context fled away.

Fortunately, the memory could be endlessly started over, repeated again and again. The gates were patient. What else did they have to do? So as Danny gradually mastered the art of meditation, at least well enough for this purpose, this day, the memory began again, and now it washed over Danny and became his own.

Later, he told himself. I will remember remembering the memory, and that will become the story. For now let it flow. Let it fill you.

He had no idea of the passage of time. Captured by the memory, he did not know if it was day or night where he sat alone in the desert, in front of the cavelet that he and Wheeler and Hal had cleared of sand. He only knew what the time was in the memory, as it flowed through a long, long conversation.

A couple of times, breaking the memory flow, he despaired. Loki had placed all the things the hermit told him into a context of Loki’s own experience with gates, with mages of every kind, in a world where magery was far more common, where a gatemage was educated in his Family’s history and knowledge and skills. How could Danny, in his ignorance, possibly make sense of any of this?

He let it flow.

He let it flow.

And then a hand touched his shoulder.

That had not happened before in the memory! Who was it who interrupted Loki?

Danny waited for the memory of Loki turning, to see what he saw, to know what he knew.

Then the hand touched him again, more sharply this time, shaking him, and Danny realized: This is not in the memory. This did not happen to Loki. This is happening to me.

“Please,” he whispered. His voice was a feeble croak. “Please wait.”

The hand shook him again. Very hard. It almost knocked him over.

Danny felt like weeping, did weep one great sob, and then the intruder’s work was done: The trance was broken, the memory fled.

His own memories rushed back. He was in Egypt, a nation for which he had no passport or visa. He was caught.

He almost gated away. But then it finally dawned on him that the person was talking. The sunlight was dazzling. He could hardly see. And he must have been deaf, for now the voice swelled and faded. It was English. He knew the voice. He squinted. He shaded his eyes.

The face came down to be directly in front of his. She was angry. Hermia. Hermia had followed him here.

Stupid stupid stupid! Didn’t she know he was doing something important, something
vital
? How did she dare to interrupt him?

“Drink this!” she was saying.

He looked down and saw that she was holding a bottle of water. Evian. He didn’t like Evian.

She had the cap off. She jammed the mouth of it against his lips. It hurt. His lips were dry and chapped. Split. He looked at the top of the water bottle. There was blood on it.

“Dehydrated.” That was one of the words she said.

He opened his mouth and tipped his head back and let her pour water into his mouth. He had to work at swallowing. It was as if he had forgotten how to do it.

No, he was simply waiting for Loki’s kinetic memory to kick in. He was waiting for Loki to remember drinking. But Loki hadn’t drunk anything.

That’s because Loki’s whole conversation had only lasted an hour. But Danny’s attempt to remember it had lasted much longer, starting over again and again.

He succeeded in swallowing. The water came down his throat so painfully that he realized: I have gone a long time without drinking.

Hermia was gone. But he still held the water bottle in his hand. He tried to lift it to drink more. He couldn’t remember how. He bent over and touched his cracked and bloody lips to the plastic lip of the bottle. The water didn’t come upward. But he was able to hold it against his lips as he straightened his body. This brought the bottle up with him. Water flowed from it over his lips. He made his lips and tongue work and swallowed some of it. This time it felt better. But then it went down wrong and he coughed. Choked. Dropped the bottle. Even as he continued to try to cough out the water that had gone down his windpipe, he felt around for the bottle. Why can’t I see it? he asked himself. Everything’s so bright.

Then there were hands again, hands on both sides of him, picking him up, raising him to his feet. It hurt to unwind his body, to stand up. His legs would not support him. His legs had no feeling. How long had he sat in the same position without moving?

They were talking to each other. Two women. Hermia again. Veevee. The other gatemages. His friends. They were both angry. They were both worried. But they were speaking in language, and he was avoiding language. He didn’t want to hear language because that would distract him from …

No, no, he wasn’t remembering anymore. He was no longer in the trance. It was good to have language now. He needed to hear what they were saying and understand them.

“He’s not hearing us,” said Veevee.

“Tell me what I don’t know,” said Hermia.

“We have to get him to Naples,” said Veevee.

“There’s no gate to—oh, Naples, Florida. Let’s just concentrate on getting him back through this gate to the house he left from.”

Danny staggered. His legs were beginning to get feeling again. An ecstasy of pins and needles. An agony of pain in his long-unmoved joints.

“He’s trying to walk,” said Hermia.

“He was just staring at the cave?”

“Makes the Narcissus story make sense,” said Hermia. “Forced to stare at the same spot forever.”

“Only not his own reflection.”

“How do we know what he was seeing?”

What was I seeing? Can I remember anything? Was this all wasted, because it didn’t enter my own mind in a way that I have any hope of making sense of?

They got him down the sandy, rocky slope to the gate and suddenly they were indoors. Hal’s bedroom. Was that really the last place he had been? It didn’t matter which had been last. There was
a
gate from Hal’s room to the cave in Egypt, and that’s all that mattered. Hermia had found it. Then she had gone for Veevee to help her. Chaining from gate to gate.

Hal was there. He swore, tried to help.

Danny should have been able to walk easily. He should have been healed of everything by passing through a gate. Certainly the physical pain was gone. The feeling in his legs was back. But he was still having trouble walking.

“We’re getting him back to his own house, dear,” said Veevee. “You were a great help, but we’ve got it from here.”

“You’re sure that nobody
made
him do this?” asked Hermia.

“He was completely normal,” said Hal. “For Danny, anyway. He had this project he was doing. It had something to do with Loki. He had to go to the desert and we had to dig out the cave. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“But you don’t think anybody else was controlling him?” asked Hermia.

“How would I know?” said Hal. “For all I know, somebody’s controlling
you
.” He was standing between them and the gate back to Danny’s house.

“You’re such a dear,” said Veevee. “Please don’t worry. The gate already healed him. But he’s still not functioning properly, so we’re not sure what’s happening. If we take him to a hospital they’ll find nothing wrong and we’ll have to explain why we brought him in.”

“I’m OK,” said Danny to Hal. “I’m just having trouble … using my body.”

“He’s like a beastmage who got lost in his heartbound,” said Veevee.

“Apparently, judging from his motor skills, his heartbound is a drunken slug.”

Hal stopped blocking the way. They got him to and through the gate.

Back in his own house, Danny wouldn’t let them take him to Naples. “No reason to go there,” said Danny.

“We have to rehydrate you,” said Veevee. “Going through a gate doesn’t replace the water you lost. A day and a half in the desert sun. Not to mention a
night
in the desert. What were you thinking?”

“I was doing research,” said Danny.

“Into near-death experiences?” asked Hermia. She was tasting water from a glass in Danny’s kitchen. “You drink this stuff?”

“Buena Vista’s finest,” said Danny. She handed him the glass and he drank it down in one long sloppy draught.

“I can’t believe that your third-degree sunburn has turned into a
tan
,” said Veevee. “I think of all the lotions and hours in tanning booths and … all I needed to do was get a savage sunburn and go through a gate.”

“Do you have any idea how you terrified us?” demanded Hermia. “Suddenly nobody can find you. Marion and Leslie have no idea. Nobody knows. Until Veevee finally thought of asking your high school fan club.”

“My friends,” said Danny.

“You are the world’s only Gatefather,” said Hermia, “and you don’t have the right to disappear without telling anybody.”

“I told my friends,” said Danny. “And I was only going to be gone for a few hours.”

“At least thirty-six hours,” said Veevee.

“I didn’t know,” said Danny.

“You could have died,” said Hermia. “Do you understand that? What drug did you take?”

“No drug,” said Danny.

“Don’t lie,” said Hermia. “It took forever to get you out of that trip you were on. Were you hallucinating?”

“Not half well enough,” said Danny. “Instead of being mad at me, do you want to find out what I was doing? I warn you—in order to do that, you’ll have to actually listen to me.”

“Oh, you’re telling
me
off?” said Hermia. “You do a foolish, stupid—”

“Hermia,” said Veevee, “let’s listen to him and
find out
whether he was foolish or stupid.”

“Now you’re on his side?” demanded Hermia.

Danny and Veevee looked at her in silence.

Hermia stood up straight, took a deep breath, and flopped down on the couch beside him. Veevee pulled up a kitchen chair. “So the old woman gets the straightback chair.”

“You just went through a gate, you feel fine,” said Hermia.

“You know I have Loki’s gates inside me,” said Danny.

“You captured them, yes,” said Hermia.

“But now he’s given them to me. So we … talk.”

“You and Loki?” asked Veevee.

“In a way. Maybe. But I think I’m just talking to his gates. They obey me now. But they’re still part of him, so maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. There are things in his memory that I need to know, and he’s not here. Plus, if I asked him I don’t think he’d tell me. He doesn’t seem really eager to teach me.”

“But you can talk to the
gates
?”

“I don’t know how it works,” said Danny. “Have you ever heard of anybody
giving
their gates to somebody else?”

“That would be like giving away your outself,” said Veevee.

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” said Hermia. “Old family legend. Two friends who were so devoted to each other that they became each other’s heartbound.”

“But it isn’t like that,” said Danny. “He’s not riding me, and I’m not riding him. He isn’t controlling me. He isn’t a manmage.”

“Can you
make
his gates?” asked Hermia.

“After what happened with the Wild Gate, I wouldn’t dare to try. But please, please let me tell you what I learned while I can still remember it.”

“Learned?” asked Veevee.

“I was there to act out the kinetic memory of the time when Loki learned some great secret from a Christian hermit in Egypt. A Coptic-speaker, but a scholar all the same. A collector of ancient Egyptian lore. Secret stuff that isn’t in the inscriptions, it isn’t in the books of the dead, it isn’t anywhere. It’s just
known
, and he told it to Loki, and the gates can’t give it to me in language, they can only help me recover Loki’s mental state when he learned it. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think
you
understand, sweetie,” said Veevee.

“I don’t,” said Danny. “But let me talk it through. Because it was working. There at the end when you shook me, I was finally getting it. After starting over again and again.”

“Sorry I saved your life,” said Hermia.

“Please, please let me tell it.” He almost cried with desperation.

“He’s asking you to shut up, dear,” said Veevee.

“I know what he’s asking.”

“If you don’t want to listen,” said Veevee sweetly, “then will you please leave and let him tell
me
?”

Hermia buried her face in her hands.

“It’s going to be a jumble,” said Danny. “I feel it slipping away like a dream. It’s about the ka and the ba. The ka is the inself, the ba is the outself.”

“Everybody knows that,” said Hermia.

“I didn’t!” said Danny.

“Shut up, please, Hermia,” said Veevee. Her voice sounded so sweet that it was clear she was murderously angry.

“And it’s
not
the same. That was what was so hard,” said Danny. “We think of the ka as being tied to the body,
part
of the body. So we send out the ba into our heartbeasts, into our clants, into our gates. But neither ka nor ba is part of our body. Neither one.”

“That’s absurd,” said Hermia. Then she clapped her own hand over her mouth.

“This is what Loki heard that made him so excited and frightened,” said Danny. “I
remember
how he felt about it. I remember him understanding this. The ka and the ba are bound to each other. Together, they’re both the thing we actually
are
. The body is just—a dwelling place. A tool set. It has a life of its own, a mind of its own, but it isn’t
us
. Any of us. Mages and drowthers alike. We are ka, we are ba, we are not these animals that we wear.”