We have to get Danny to let us pass through a Great Gate! You saw how powerful his friends became-a Cowsister took your eagle right out of the sky, Zog! A mere Cobblefriend was able to open up a rift in the ground and swallow our truck! Imagine what Odin will do with his power over metal and machinery, what Gerd will do with electricity, when they pass through a Great Gate.
And imagine what the other Families will do to us if Danny lets any of them through a Great Gate before us. No, that’s not a reason to kill him-how will we even get near him now? He’s warned, he’s ready, he’ll just gate away from us. You know the stories. The winged feet of Mercury, seven-league boots-gatemages can be gone before your attack comes close to them. Or they can suddenly appear behind you and kill you before you turn around.
Gatemages are slippery! Once they come into their power, you can’t kill them. Even if you sneak up on them somehow, passing through a gate heals any wound. We’re no threat to a gatemage. We need him-alive and on our side. So we have to talk to Danny. Appeal to his family loyalty.
And if you can’t stop trying to kill him, then we’ll have no choice but to put you in Hammernip Hill. For the good of the family.
You understand, yes, you do-you’d do it yourself. There’s a gatemage in the world, one who created a Great Gate and wasn’t destroyed by the Gate Thief. And that gatemage is our own Danny. He knows us, he grew up among us. He has roots in our garden. We need to play that up. We need to bring him back to us. Not irritate him with foolish attempts to murder him. Get it? Are you going to leave him alone? Keep him safe? Make friends with him?
Yes, you say so now, but can we trust you? Stay away from him. Let Odin and Gerd do the negotiating. Or Thor. Or Mook and Lummy. People he likes and trusts. Don’t let him see you. We want him to forget all the nasty things you did to him growing up.
* * *
THE NORTHS WEREN’T the only Family that spotted those YouTube videos-they were just the closest. The Illyrians, for instance, were already aware that there was a gatemage in the North Family. That’s why they were spying on the Norths constantly.
And when their own gatefinder, Hermia, went missing, their suspicions were confirmed. For a while, they thought the Norths’ gatemage had killed her-gated her to the bottom of the ocean, for instance, or out into space. But then one of their clants had spotted her, still very much alive, and she was using the gates.
Now the YouTube videos confirmed that the Norths’ gatemage was powerful-a Gatefather, able to raise a Great Gate all by himself, or perhaps drawing partly on Hermia’s abilities-and it was time to get Hermia back under Family control. Chances were good that the Norths’ gatemage could be turned, recruited into the Argyros Family. Hermia was their tool to accomplish that. To get Illyrian mages to Westil and back again.
Once mages were restored to their full power, who could stand against them?
Left to themselves for fourteen centuries, the drekka had made a mess of things, and they were only getting worse. It was time for Earth to be ruled by gods again.
2
It was early morning, and Coach Lieder was still at home, Danny had run here from the tiny cottage where he lived alone. He could have created a gate, but that would have made a mockery of his decision the night before, after confronting his family, not to make any more gates at the high school. Technically, Coach Lieder’s house wasn’t the school, but since his promise had been made only to himself, who would he be fooling?
Besides, he had hardly slept last night. He needed the run in the brisk-no, cold-morning air. It was better than coffee, when your goal was to become alert rather than jittery.
He knocked lightly on the door, avoiding the doorbell in case someone in the house was still asleep. He also waited patiently before giving another couple of raps. Then the door opened.
Coach Bleeder-sorry, Coach Lieder-stood there in all his half-dressed glory. Apparently he slept in boxers and an old tee-shirt-no one would change into such an outfit first thing in the morning. And he looked bleary-eyed, tense, worried. This surprised Danny, since at school Bleeder usually showed only two emotions: contempt and anger. Now Lieder seemed vulnerable somehow, as if something had hurt him or might hurt him; as if he were grieved, or expected to grieve.
“You,” said Coach Lieder. And now the contempt reappeared.
Danny expected Lieder to say something about the rope ladder incident yesterday in the gym. But he just stood there.
“Sir, I know it’s early,” said Danny.
“What do you want?”
Well, if he was going to act like nothing happened, that was fine with Danny. Only now he had to have a reason for being there. Instead of doing damage control from showing off his godlike powers in the gym, what else could plausibly have brought Danny here? “I wondered if you could time me.”
Lieder looked puzzled, suspicious. After all the months in which Danny had taunted him by never letting Lieder time his fastest runs, it was natural that Lieder would suspect a trick.
“I’m tired of the game,” said Danny. “I’m in high school. I should care about high school things.” And even as Danny said the words, they became true. It might be fun to be a high school athlete, even if Lieder was a complete jerk.
“Like waking up your teachers?” asked Lieder coldly.
Had Lieder really still been asleep? It was early, but not so early that someone coaching the first team of the day at seven shouldn’t already be up and dressed.
“I stepped off a hundred yards,” said Danny. Actually, part of his gift was a very good sense of distance, with reliability down to a foot in a hundred yards, or a twentieth of an inch in a foot. “Do you have a watch?”
Lieder held up his left wrist. “I’m a coach, I wear a stopwatch.”
Danny jogged easily down to his starting place. “Ready?” he called.
Lieder, looking annoyed, put his finger to his lips. Then he put his right hand to his watch, looked at Danny, then nodded.
Danny took off at a sprint. A hundred yards wasn’t that much-it’s not as if he had to pace himself. He gave it everything-or at least, everything he had at six-thirty in the morning after a night of no sleep.
When he came parallel to the walkway leading up to Lieder’s door, Danny burst through imaginary tape and then jogged to a stop and faced Lieder expectantly.
“Can you do it again?” asked Lieder.
“Do you want a couple of miles?” asked Danny.
“Just those hundred yards again.”
So Danny jogged back to the starting point, waited for the nod, ran again. This time he let his after-race jog take him up to Lieder’s porch.
“Do I make the track team?” asked Danny.
“On probation,” said Lieder.
“Because I’m only marginally fast?” asked Danny. “Or because you want me to suffer a little for being such an asshole so far this year?”
“Everybody starts out on probation, till I see whether you’ll listen to a coach.”
“So I’m not fast after all?”
“Even the fastest can get better,” said Lieder. “The fast ones are worth the time you spend working with them.”
“Just tell me. Am I any good?”
“You’ll be starting for us,” said Lieder. “Now can I finish my breakfast?”
Danny grinned. “Knock yourself out,” he said.
Lieder closed the door behind him.
As Danny headed back down to the street, Lieder’s door reopened. “Have you had breakfast?”