Ced understood now what the threat was. “If he takes over the body of a great mage…”
“Then he has all that mage’s power. That’s what the Belmages did, before we understood and began to fight them. A great mage of our kind would suddenly change, become more powerful and yet more ruthless. Systematically evil, that’s how it looked. But when we fought against a mage who had become so terrible, we simply … won. Killed him sometimes. But sometimes we were able to imprison him, talk to him-and he wouldn’t remember a thing. Not a thing. He didn’t remember the way heartbeasts remember their jaunts together with their mage inside. He never felt controlled. He was simply-absent. Cut off from his own body. Asleep in some deep sense. One of them said that he was wandering, but he couldn’t say where, or anything that happened to him.”
“So the mage you had imprisoned-he really hadn’t done the terrible things that made you go to war with him.”
“There was a thing that took over his body, but when we got control of him, made him powerless, the thing was no longer interested in staying inside him. It left. The Egyptians discovered the danger first. That’s why they cut the organs out of the bodies of great mages and put them in separate jars. So there’d be no way for the Belmage to use their body for evil after their own inself was gone.”
“But how do you even fight something like that?” asked Ced.
“Another Loki faced him once, and won. He gated the body containing the Belmage into the Sun of Mittlegard. We always assumed that the Belmage died there, along with the body, because there was no other human close enough to jump into. But now I wonder if the Belmage didn’t simply wander for a long time, lost. If that’s the case, then there’s only the one. But he came back, and in my time he was too clever to be fooled again. I couldn’t use the trick that other Loki used. So I took all the Great Gates from the world, so that no matter what body he took, it would be a weaker one, and he could never get from there to here.”
“So if I went back…”
“Everyone that Danny North brought here to Mitherwee-to this world, to Westil-is now more powerful than any other mage in Mittlegard. The Belmage will know. It will crave that power. They’re all in terrible danger, and none so much as Danny North himself. Because if the Belmage takes him, he can make all the Great Gates he wants. And if there are many of them, and not just one, they’ll all be able to come here, to the heart of magery, and make their bid to rule the universe.”
Ced nodded. “Displacing all the gods. Becoming the permanent, immortal, unkillable gods.”
“If they really are unkillable. If we don’t stop them.”
“What if this Belmage really did take over Danny North? What could we do?”
“Kill Danny,” said the Gate Thief. “What choice would we have?”
“Why didn’t you kill him already? You were there with him at the Great Gate.”
“Because Danny North hasn’t done anything that makes him deserve to die.”
“He made a Great Gate.”
“When people made Great Gates, I took the power to do it away from them,” said Wad. “But I didn’t kill them. I’m not the Belmage. I refuse to be a monster.”
“I refuse to be a monster, too. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not one.”
Wad smiled. “I know. But I can help you get control of your power. To become master of the wind, instead of the wind ruling you, as it’s doing now.”
“It feels as though I’m controlling it. And yet I can’t stop, because I want whatever it wants.”
“That’s right,” said Wad. “You’re like the wick of a candle. The flame could not survive without the wick to concentrate it-but the wick is not the master of the flame. The flame consumes it, bit by bit.”
Ced knew at once that this was true. He nodded. “I wouldn’t have said it that way, but it’s the truth.”
“I’m glad that you’re aware of it-it’s the beginning of wisdom. It’s the hardest thing for a mage to learn.”
“And you’ll teach me, Wad? How to control my power?”
“Me?” Wad laughed. “How, when I never learned the lesson all that well myself? I’m the tool of spacetime in just the way that you’re the tool of the wind. No, I’ll take you to the best teachers. The ones who can help mages of every kind, because they have almost infinite patience and understanding, or they could never become masters of their own magery.”
“Who?”
“Treemages. Not all of them. Just a few. The best of them, the master teachers. The ones who understand that the tree is in the root. It was a treemage of fourteen centuries ago who saved me alive to do the work I’m doing now. He persuaded a great tree to open itself to me. Inside its living wood, I made a tiny gate that drew me upward through the tree, a tiny fraction of an inch every day, so little movement that I almost wasn’t moving at all. But I passed through the gate each day, healing all the ills of my body. And it also healed the tree, so that limbs never broke off without regrowing. The tree lived those fourteen centuries in perfect health, as I did. Until I felt a shuddering in the All. I felt Danny North coming into the universe-coming into his power. I didn’t understand it at the time. I only knew it was time to come out of the tree. I hardly knew who I was. I couldn’t speak. I had to learn to be human again, instead of being a part of the tree. But I learned. All too well. I’m human now. And Danny North is in the world. He bested me and has my gates. I’m nearly helpless to fight the Belmage, or even the Families of Mittlegard. That’s why I need you to become master of yourself, so you can stand beside me.”
“I’m not a brave man,” said Ced. “I don’t know what I’ll be like in war.”
“No one ever does,” said Wad. “And the answer is never the same on two different days. Will you come with me to the treemages of Gos in the Forest Deep, and see if one of them will take you on?”
“I think you’ve already asked one, and he’s said yes, or you wouldn’t have come to me,” Ced answered.
“I’ve asked,” said Wad, “but he won’t say yes until he meets you, and you have to come of your own free will.”
“I’ll go with you and learn what I can learn. And if I find that everything you said is true, I’ll stand with you as best I can.”
“If it isn’t true,” said Wad, “it won’t be because I lied. It will be because I’m only guessing at half the things I know about the Belmage, and I might be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I hope we can defeat him in the end.”
9
Danny wrote out the message and rehearsed it with his friends until they had it memorized. He didn’t want them to read it. He wanted them to look at the Families face to face, eye to eye. Not challengingly, but calmly, easily. They were the messengers of a Great Mage. They had to act like it.
“I come from Loki,” the message began. “He has made a Great Gate. He has faced the Gate Thief and defeated him. He has passed through the Great Gate to Westil and returned. He will allow each Family to send two mages to Westil and return at once, but only if you agree, individually and as Families, to these three promises.
“One. You will not make war on or cause harm to any other Family or any individual mage.
“Two. You will not take the lives of drowthers or enslave them, but will respect their laws and customs.
“Three. You will cease the killing of gatemages or suspected gatemages. Instead, you will send them to Loki to be trained. Gatemages will never belong to any Family, but only to the company of Gatekeepers. I will return tomorrow for your answer.”
Danny sent them one at a time and watched carefully through a peephole in case someone tried to harm them. He made peepholes for Veevee and Hermia as well. The messengers held on to their amulets. Danny was determined that no one would be harmed.