“I imagine they’ll have some talent for this or that when they get older,” said Anonoei. “Maybe even the much-sought-after seamagery. Or maybe one of them will be a gatemage by and by.”
“It’ll be me,” said the younger one, Enopp. “I’ll be a gatemage!”
Eko clapped her hands together. “He spoke!”
Anonoei rushed to her younger son and embraced him. “Oh, my baby, no, you can’t just decide, the power chooses you, it’s already inside you and someday you’ll find out what it is.”
But Enopp kept looking at Wad. “A gatemage,” he said. “Because you can go wherever you want.”
It was in that moment, in those words, that Wad first realized what he had to do. He had come to this place with no plan other than to tell the truth and then take them wherever Anonoei decided they should go. But he heard Enopp’s innocent words as if they were a recipe for how he might possibly redeem himself. How he might really help Anonoei. How he might get the power to undo Bexoi and destroy her root and branch.
Go wherever I want, the boy said, but Wad knew that he could not. He did not have gates enough inside him now to make a Great Gate, so he could not go to Mittlegard. But then he realized that he could. That there was a Great Gate, a wild one, controlled by no mage now. Danny North could not lock it and so anyone who knew of its existence could make use of it. Wad could pass through that Wild Gate and go to Mittlegard and back again, restoring what power he had left to its full strength. It would not get him back his gates-Danny North still had those safely locked inside a place where Wad could never go against the young Gatefather’s will. But it would sharpen his faculties, bring him back to the state he had once been in, when he saw all the gates in the world, even the gates of the Semitic gods, and he ate them all.
Unlike Danny North, he had not been fool enough to try to use the captive gates, but he had found them and held them. He could make himself that strong a mage again. He could restore his own vision, the range of his seeing.
And if he could take himself to Mittlegard and back again, he could take Anonoei as well.
But perhaps not. Wad was a gatemage who knew how to rule over the lost and disobedient outselves that were woven into the Wild Gate. Anonoei could not resist them. Manmage that she was, she would know that they were there, but not the form they took. They might entice her out of herself. They might entwine her in the Great Gate. And because she was a manmage, they would only be fulfilling the law by taking away her power.
No, if Wad were really to strengthen her so she might be a match for Bexoi, he would have to get Danny North to help him hold the Great Gate open for her. He would have to teach him what to do, to train the man who bested him so that he could never be defeated and Wad could never get his lost gates back.
How could he give even more power and wisdom to the mage who had shattered him?
Because I deserved the shattering, thought Wad. He was an instrument in the hands of spacetime and so I got what I deserved. I misused my power and so I lost all but a tiny shred of it. And I will have to go as supplicant to Danny North, to get him to help me make amends for how I raised the monstrous Bexoi to be mistress of Iceway.
All of this came to him between Enopp’s words and Wad’s answer to him.
“I see that your outself may indeed be divisible,” said Wad. It was true enough-the outselves of all children might be divisible, and those that were going to be gatemages would be the most divisible of all. But there was no way to tell at such a young age. “But things like that take time. No one knows what you’ll become.”
Anonoei looked at Wad. “For you he speaks,” she said.
“He sees my power,” said Wad. “He’s too young to understand my wickedness.”
“The wickedness of all the mages,” said Anonoei. “What did I ever do but seek to advance myself?”
“And love your children.”
“Look at the danger I put them in,” said Anonoei.
“Their very conception was dangerous,” said Wad. “But all children are born into a world of danger, where they’re bound to die.”
“Listen to the two of you,” said Eko.
They looked at her, surprised that such a quiet, mousy person would speak to mages of their kind.
“Bragging about who is most monstrous,” said Eko.
Was I bragging? Wad asked himself.
“Monstrous or not,” said Anonoei, “I want revenge.”
“I came here so you could have it,” said Wad. “Against me, if you choose. I will not gate away.”
“And what then?” asked Anonoei. “Without your help, what vengeance can I have on her?”
“Promise me this,” said Wad. “That you will not harm her baby.”
“This from the man who-”
“I know what I did to your sons,” said Wad. “I’m telling you now that if you harm her baby, you will not be able to live with it. I know what I’m talking about. No matter how you rage against her, her baby has done nothing. Your children did not deserve to suffer, even though their existence posed a danger to my son. My son did not deserve to die, even though his existence posed a danger to this new child of Prayard’s and Bexoi’s. And their son does not deserve to die.”
“So this is the root you’ve found for your morality?” asked Anonoei. “Do what you want, just don’t hurt the children?”
“For lack of any deeper root, that will have to do for now,” he said. “Agree to that, or kill me now, because I’ll never help you get revenge against a child. I’ve gone down that road and it’s too terrible to travel on again.”
“There’s no way that we could hurt her more,” said Anonoei.
“But what good is it to hurt her, if we destroy ourselves in the process?” asked Wad.
“Listen to the two of you,” Eko said again. “All your power, and all it is to you is a means to get revenge.”
Wad looked at her sadly. “I tried to save the world, once upon a time, but what I was saving it for I still don’t know, and in the end I failed.”
“Then try again,” said Eko. “The world’s as much in need of saving as it ever was, and somebody ought to try.”
Anonoei put her arms around her sons. “This is all the world I care about now.”
“If that were true,” said Eko, “you wouldn’t be plotting vengeance on a queen, a firemage. You’d be looking for a place to take your sons where they’d be safe.”
“I thought I had that here,” said Anonoei.
“We’re in Iceway, and your enemy’s the queen,” said Eko. “And by the way, Man-in-the-Tree, thanks for bringing the king’s missing mistress to our house. That will help us prosper, you can be sure.”
“I didn’t know anywhere else to take them,” said Wad.
“Well, I’ve done what you wanted. And I’m not turning them away even now, though if it’s discovered who they are, her enemies will happily kill me and my whole family, don’t you think?”
Wad slumped down to sit on the floor of the tiny house. “I think that I’m the puppeteer, pulling strings, but then I trip on them and find that someone else has hold of my strings.”
“Who?” asked Enopp.
“Fate,” said Wad. “Unintended Consequence. That’s the only god that’s real.”
“Do you have an actual plan?” Eko asked Wad.
“Yes,” said Wad. “As of this moment, yes, I do.”
11
Danny hadn’t had enough sleep, but his inner clock woke him at exactly the time required for him to make it to Coach Lieder’s house for a special practice. Now that Danny had capitulated and ran his fastest for Lieder’s stopwatch, he found that he enjoyed it. Showing off, not competing.
Danny was human enough to like being admired, and one thing about Lieder, when he was working with an athlete who was really trying, he knew how to show respect and give encouragement. It was a side of Lieder Danny had never seen, and never would have seen as long as he was with the slackers and geeks.