The Lost Gate (46 page)

He took the tails of the twelve gates and threw them upward into space, with no destination in mind except a vague idea of “there,” wherever there was. “There” meaning Westil. Meaning the natural home of the mages. Meaning the place where the Gate Thief was waiting for him.

It took less than an instant. “There,” he thought, and the tails of the gates arrived. Just like that.

“It's open,” said Hermia. “This way.”

Danny had no time to notice whether anyone was going through the gate or not. For the Gate Thief was there, just like that.

“Oh God,” said Veevee.

The Gate Thief had him, just the way Bel had Loki in the runic inscription: “The jaws of Bel seized his heart to carry it away.” But that had been followed by “Loki held tight to his own heart and followed the jaws of the beast.”

Danny understood now exactly what the inscription meant. He could feel his entire outself, all the gates he could ever make, moving away from him. He could simply let them go, or he could concentrate on them, try to keep control of them.

But no, fighting the Gate Thief wasn't the way. “Loki tricked Bel into thinking he was captive, but he was not captive. His heart held the jaws; the jaws did not hold his heart.”

Danny stopped resisting, though he maintained his concentration, his awareness of all the gates as the Thief dragged them away. He also felt it as the Gate Thief began to slurp up all the gates that Danny had ever made in his life, sucking them in like noodles from a bowl of soup.

Then suddenly his gates, his outself
arrived.
Inside another person, so it was no machine—but there was a powerful impression of a thousand other outselves as well. The Gate Thief had all the outselves he had stolen kept in one place, and Danny was among them. Yet he also sensed that he was stronger than any of them. No, he was stronger than all of them. His mass of potential gates was greater than the entire satchelful of outselves combined.

Which of them belonged to the Gate Thief himself? Easy to find: the largest. And in that moment Danny became aware of the entire map of the Thief's active gates.

What mattered, though, was the satchel, the repository where the Thief kept his unused outself and the outselves of all the mages he had ever stripped and all the gates that he had stolen. Danny knew that he was more powerful than all of them combined, but he also knew that the Gate Thief knew things that Danny did not. He wants me to fight him. If I try to pull my own gates back, that's the moment when the jaws snap shut and cut the gates from me, like breaking a fully stretched-out rubber band.

Instead, Danny held his gates right where they were, inside the Gate Thief's stash. Then he created all his gates at once, his entire outself as one vast mouth, with the tail of it in Danny's own heart, his inself. Mouth to tail, a million gates, uncountable gates. He widened the mouth and engulfed the Gate Thief's entire satchel within it, just as he had swallowed Eric when he dragged him out of Rico's office.

His gates were back, just like that. And along with them had come all the stolen gates in the Gate Thief's satchel. And all the Thief's own gates that had not yet been made, his unused outself.

He could feel the Gate Thief pulling back on his own outself—doing exactly the thing that would allow Danny to cut it off entirely, to swallow it and leave the Gate Thief bereft.

Because he still had the Gate Thief's map of gates inside his mind, Danny knew that he was leaving them behind, not stripping the Thief entirely. But Danny had no idea how to suck them in the way the Thief had sucked in Danny's, and he didn't want to take the time to try, for fear it would give the Thief time to recover.

Instead, leaving behind the few gates the Thief had deployed in Westil, Danny broke the connection between all these outselves and the Thief himself.

The Gate Thief was gone. His map of gates was gone. But Danny had most of the Thief's gates and all the stolen ones.

Alone with the outselves of a thousand mages, Danny suddenly became aware that they were screaming. And loudest of all, the huge and powerful outself of the Gate Thief. They weren't
doing
anything, but they were filled with fear and hatred and hope and hunger all at once, and they were screaming in his mind, and all that he could do was scream back at them until he dropped from the rope onto the floor of the gym, screaming and gasping and screaming again. He could not hear his own mind, no matter how loud he screamed. I am Danny, he was trying to say. I am Danny, this is
my
heart, not yours. It belongs to me.

It had never occurred to him, because he had not foreseen this outcome, that to take other mages' outselves into his heart would be the equivalent of a heartbound beast allowing the outself of a mage to ride him. And if Danny was not strong enough, not skilled enough, they would control him like a clant.

And Danny had no skill with this at all.

22

J
USTICE

Queen Bexoi seemed happy to see Wad when he appeared in the nursery. He had been watching her for more than two weeks, and she was never alone. He knew it was no coincidence, no accident. Whenever Prayard left her, she made sure someone else was with her—usually a court official, but when necessary, one of the nurses tending her child. Wad had seen her do exactly the same thing when avoiding the agents of Gray, only it had been even more difficult, of course, to avoid Wad, since he would know whenever she was alone and could get into any room. So when Queen Bexoi suddenly had not so much as a moment of privacy—she who had once had hours to herself every day, and who
could
have solitude with a wave of her hand—Wad knew exactly what was going on.

Today, though, she had finally slipped. The nurse who was supposed to be in the nursery when Bexoi arrived had stumbled on the stairs and was now in the kitchen, having her wound bathed and bandaged by the day cook, Mast. So when Bexoi left her ladies-in-waiting at the door and came inside the nursery, she had no company but the baby, Oath. And, in a moment, Wad. They were alone together at last, unseen by anyone except the baby and whoever might be watching at the open viewport he had created in Anonoei's old room.

Yet Bexoi didn't bat an eye when he appeared. She smiled warmly, resting her folded arms across her huge belly, which was one month from delivery, and said, “Oh, Wad, I've missed you so much, my only friend, please, sit down.”

He did not sit. He was here to make sure she knew that she could not harm Prince Oath with impunity. He had no time to waste. “I realize that things are over between us, Bexoi,” he said, “and I am not angry.”

“Over?” she said. “Friendship does not
end.
”

“But I will never be in your bed again, and I'm content,” said Wad calmly—as deceptive as she was, and better at it.

“I have a husband, now, of course,” said Bexoi. “My lonely vigil is over. You have been such a blessing in my life, do you think I could ever forget your kindness? You have my friendship and loyalty forever.”

Wad wondered how many times she had rehearsed the speech, knowing that for any normal man it would be infuriating, would stir him to violence or ranting or grief. Was that what she wanted from him? Wad did not care—he was not here to follow her plans, but to bend her to his own.

“I came,” said Wad, “to ask you whether Prayard's baby is doing well.”

Bexoi smiled beatifically, opening her arms to stroke the sides of her own belly with affection. But Wad saw her also become more tense, more alert. “Why do you ask? Have you heard that I am unwell? That the baby is in danger of any kind?”

“How could a baby inside your womb be in danger?” asked Wad. “Who would dare to reach inside your body and pinch off the cord until the baby died? What kind of monster would do such a thing, even if there was a man who could?”

There. The threat was made.

She grew solemn. “I have a friend who makes sure that babies pass out of my body in their proper time, healthy and undamaged. He tends my body as well, so I suffer no ill effects. That friend is the most precious person in my life.”

Oh, yes, my love, he answered silently, do remember how childbirth nearly killed you—would have killed you, without my help. Think of that before you raise a hand against my son. “Not more precious than Prayard,” said Wad. “Not more precious than the baby you carry. Not more precious than the baby Oath whose birth has made you Queen and wife in fact as well as name.”

“Who can measure one love against another?”

“That is my question,” said Wad. “I have in my possession, you see, a woman who was once the King's beloved, who gave him sons that once he loved. These last two weeks, as you avoided me, I found it harder and harder to get food for them unnoticed.”

“How unfortunate,” said Bexoi, with real sympathy in her voice, if not her eyes.

“It occurred to me that perhaps it is time, now that you occupy your proper place as Queen, for me to bring forth the prisoners who have spent a year and a half in my care. These were children the King once loved with all his heart. Think how happy you would make him, to produce them for him in his own bedroom, and their once-beloved mother, too. How he would thank you for having kept them alive all these months.”

Bexoi continued to smile, but her eyes were hard. “I thought they must have passed from the land of the living many months ago. I know I asked you from the start to send them plunging to the bottom of the lake.”

“What kind of warden would I be if I allowed such a misfortune to befall them? It's true that they could fall at any time, right out of their prison cell, but who knows where the gate that catches them might lead? Right now it leads to the top of the same cave. But it could lead here to the nursery. Or to the King's chamber.”

“Why are you threatening me like this?” asked Bexoi softly. “When my husband's love is so new and fragile? You threaten my unborn baby, you threaten to return my husband's old lover and his bastard sons. Why would my friend betray me like this?”

“Why did you shun me?” asked Wad. “Why did you cut me off without a word? What am I to think, except that you are plotting something?”

“I couldn't face you,” said Bexoi. Now her performance changed. Instead of happiness to see him, instead of utter innocence, she was now a helpless little girl, asking him for help, for understanding. “I thought you would be angry. I was afraid.”

“You thought I'd take the hint and go away,” said Wad.

“You helped me when I was in need,” she said. “I was showing you I was in need no more.”

“Telling would have been better than showing.”

“Asking would have been better than showing up uninvited,” she answered.

“You know I can't approach you openly. The kitchen boy? The castle monkey? The one that was named ‘Wad of Dough' by the only one who loved him?”

“I loved you,” said Bexoi. “I love you still.”

Wad ignored her. He knew this game. “How quickly would they act to swat me away, to throw me out of Nassassa? Or imprison me, if they thought I meant to speak with you alone?”

“If you know your place so well,” said Bexoi, “perhaps you ought to have stayed there.”

Her words stung him. “On the night when Luvix meant to poison you or stab you to death, should I have stayed in my place?”

“That night your place was with me.”

“And when Oath was conceived, should I have been in my place?”

“Your place was in bed with me, because I bade you come.”

“But now my place is back where I was before, as if you owed me nothing.”

“You slept with the Queen of Iceway, sister of the Jarl of Gray,” said Bexoi. “You have had your reward. There is no other. My need for you has passed.”

There it was, stated nakedly, without pretense. “Then all is clear between us,” he said.

“No it isn't,” she said. “You have threatened my unborn baby.”

“You know I'd never harm a child,” said Wad.

“You have kept two children prisoners in a cave, for a year and a half,” she said contemptuously.

“You charge me with a crime that I committed for your sake?”

“For
my
sake you would have murdered them. I don't know for whose sake it is that you have kept them alive for all this time.”

“I didn't need to share your bed, Bexoi. I know that's your husband's place. I could have continued to be your protector and ally, if you had only asked me.”

“Then I regret that I did not. I ask you now.”

“Too late,” said Wad.

“Alas,” said Bexoi.

Wad expected her to attack him. So he was taken by surprise when she flicked a hand and the high-sided bed where Prince Oath slept erupted in flames.

Wad did not hesitate. He gated to the crib, his arms already outstretched to seize the child between his hands.

But the baby was not there. Instead, there was a mannequin, the doll that Wad himself had used to hide Trick's absences. And as he hesitated in the realization, Queen Bexoi engulfed the wooden doll in unnatural flame that created bitter smoke. The doll had been painted with something, and the smoke from its burning dulled his mind.

It was a clever enough plan, to make him think that he was saving his son, to use his own trick against him, and to place him for a long moment in the agony of fire and the stupidity of the drug.

How else could you murder a gatemage, except to entice him into the midst of poisoned smoke and hold him there until he lacked the wit to gate away?

The poison was not quick enough, the pain of the flames not sharp enough, his confusion not long-lasting enough. He gated out of the castle entirely, to a spot atop a hill overlooking Nassassa from across the fjord. He was healed in that moment by the gate itself, so his mind was clear.

He had no more than a moment to wonder where the baby was, and how she had removed him from the crib without his noticing. Only a moment to realize that she must have arranged for the nurse to “stumble” and be absent, that Bexoi had used that decoy to distract him and, with luck, assassinate him. He had not discovered an opportunity to be alone with Bexoi, he had fallen headlong into the trap she laid for him. He had never been in control of anything; whatever the risk to her or to her second child, she wanted him dead before the child was born.