Yet somehow in this dry grassy wilderness, small villages of drowthers found a way to make their homes of cut-up sod, scratch their tiny farms out of the clay that they exposed, and one way or another eke out a living and store up enough strength to spawn a next generation, and then another. They did not hunt the herding beasts, for fear that they were watched over by a beastmage; nor did they wander alone, for fear that a mageridden predator would hunt them down for sport. They kept to themselves; they watched the weather on which their precarious lives depended; wariness kept them alive.
Wad gated from village to village, coming in as a stranger, but one who knew the language-for Wad could speak all the variants of Westil spoken in this world, or at least he never found one he couldn’t pick up in a few minutes. He dressed himself in clothing that made him seem to be a journeyman in search of work. He should have been far more acceptable than Ced in these little villages, yet Wad could see that they were lying to protect the windmage from Mittlegard.
“My friend would have come soon before or soon after the storm that stripped your fields and blew down your houses,” Wad said in village after village. “I have to find him-his wife is ill, and I must get him home for the children’s sake.”
But they never answered him except with a shrug or, if he forced the issue, a defiant stance, brandishing a stout stick and daring him to ask another question.
Somehow, though gales had torn roofs from houses and hail had ravaged the already scanty fields, these people took Ced as one of them instead of seeing that he was the one who had caused their misery.
Despite the help of the drowthers, Ced could not hide from a Gatefather forever. If the people would not talk to Wad openly, he would open a tiny window in their houses and listen to their conversation. They told him all he wanted to know, and more: They knew that Ced was the windmage who had harmed them so; they knew he came from another world; Ced had told them all of this himself. He was the god of the wind, come in person to apologize for the harm his mighty gales had wrought, and to make amends as best he could.
At last a window revealed Ced himself, asleep in the place of honor near the fire, in a house with a chimney, marking it as the richest in the hamlet.
Wad gated him from the house so gently that he didn’t wake up. It was the cold that woke him, half an hour later; the wind itself, cold and thin at the top of a high crag in the Mitherkame.
Ced awoke shivering and knew at once that a gatemage had him, for how else could he have been taken out of the warm house and out into the cold? The wind told him he was in an open place, the lightness of the air that he was very high up. And when he opened his eyes, the starlight showed him that he lay on a patch of ground not more than ten strides in every direction before a drop-off that hid the rest of the world from view.
“Sorry to take you from the fire,” said the young man who sat watching him. Ced recognized him at once-the mage who had come to meet Danny North at the tail of the Great Gate. The Gate Thief. The enemy.
“I’m not the one you want,” Ced warned the man at once. “He went back to Earth.”
“I know where Danny North is,” said the Gate Thief. “He has most of my outself with him. Is the captive ever unaware of the boundaries of his prison?”
“Is that where I am now? A prison?” asked Ced.
“A place for undistracted conversation,” said the Gate Thief. “No one will interrupt us. But a mage of your power-no, I could not keep you here, if you wanted to be gone.”
“A mage of my power,” Ced answered scornfully. “A monster power that harms everyone and helps no one.”
“And yet you keep using it,” said the Gate Thief.
“The air calls to me,” Ced whispered. “Day and night, I hear it singing. I feel it on the hairs of my arms, my legs. It wakens me and I can feel the motion of all the airs of the world. Faraway winds and gales, nearby breezes, the passing of a running deer, the wings of a butterfly. This place is too much for me.”
“It isn’t the place,” said the Gate Thief. “It’s you. Passing through the Great Gate was what woke you. The air has been calling to you all along, as much in Mittlegard as here in the shadow of the Mitherkame.”
“I don’t know those words, sir.”
“Mittlegard is the word for Earth, as you know quite well. And this is the Mitherkame,” said the Gate Thief. “These mountains are the spine of the world called Westil among the mages of Mittlegard-though Westil is only one of the languages here, and also the ancient half-forgotten name of a kingdom that once included all the Hetterwold and the forests of the north.”
“I’m a stranger here,” said Ced. “If the wind hadn’t called me with such strength, I wouldn’t have missed the passage back to Earth. Can you send me home?”
“You know I can’t,” said the Gate Thief. “You know that Danny North took my gates from me, all but a handful, too few for me to make a Great Gate even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Bad enough to have you here; worse for Mittlegard if I returned you there.”
Ced understood. “So here I am, alone and friendless.”
The Gate Thief looked at him quizzically. “Friendless? When they let you sleep in the place of honor near the fire?”
“They’re kind folk, and forgiving, but they don’t know who I am. They only know the power of the wind, and they’re afraid of me.”
“If they treat you well, and don’t seek to kill you or control you, then they’re your friends. Don’t set so high a standard for friendship, Ced, or you’ll have no friends.”
“So what are you?” asked Ced. “You took me here without my consent. I hear the winds that whine around this crag, far below me-if I stepped to the edge I’d fall and die. So I’m a prisoner.”
“Do you think the winds you’re hearing would let you fall? They’d bear you up if you asked them to, and land you gently anywhere.”
Ced felt a thrill of joy at what he said. “You mean that I can fly?”
“I mean that the wind you serve so well and rule so weakly has no desire to let you die.”
“I suppose if you wanted me dead, you could have plunged me into the middle of the sea.”
“There’s air in the sea, and it would find you instantly, gather around you, make a bubble for you, and bear you up to the surface, where the wind would dry you instantly and again, you would fly.”
“Then into the heart of a mountain-you could kill me if you wanted to.”
“You’ve figured out my secret,” said the Gate Thief. “I would like to be your friend.”
“What form would such a friendship take?” asked Ced. “I had a friend once who provided me a home and food, and let me make my own mistakes, and figure things out for myself.”
“I’m the kind of friend who would like to prevent your mistakes from killing people-either directly in the storms you raise, or afterward, when their ruined crops lead to famine and death this winter.”
Ced reached out and took the man’s hand and gripped it. “That’s what I want, too, with all my heart.”
“You seem to mean it,” said the Gate Thief. He looked relieved.
“I do,” Ced answered. “I’m not a violent man. I don’t like breaking things. But when the wind starts…”
“It takes on a will of its own,” said the Gate Thief. “It grows and grows, stronger and tighter, whirling and dancing. Do I have it right?”
“Yes!” cried Ced.
“And the ecstasy you feel-it’s overpowering. You want to scream with joy. Do I have that right as well?”
Ced nodded, ashamed now, because the Gate Thief had caught out the secret Ced had been keeping even from himself. “It’s a drug. It’s heroin and coke and ecstasy and methamphetamine all at once-it’s way more powerful than pot, which is the only drug I ever actually tried. Once it starts, I don’t even want it to stop. Even though I know the terrible things that are happening, I can feel the tearing and breaking at the edges of the wind, but I can’t stop.”