There was also the possibility that it was real. Though with Bexoi, to have something really be exactly what it seemed was so unlikely.
At last, late in the day, Wad allowed himself the luxury of sleep.
He was wakened by an urgent stirring of his outself. It was the gates that he had given to Danny North. They no longer obeyed him, but they were still part of him, and their agitation, their panic, filled him with fear as well. Immediately he tried to make sense of what they were perceiving from Danny’s mind.
The boy thought he was dreaming, but he was not dreaming. There was a woman in his bed, a woman that he did not love and did not want. He knew that he did not want her, and yet his body wanted her, and so he continued to believe it was a dream, or to pretend to himself that he believed it.
But it was this very dreamstate that had alerted Wad’s outself to the danger. For Wad had seen possession many times and his ba remembered it. A dozen of the Sutahites were in and out of Danny North, possessing him only lightly, only enough to whisper reassurance to him. This is safe, they were saying wordlessly. What harm can it do. It’s a dream. Nothing is real.
Wad joined with his given-away gates in shouting their panic to the boy. Someone as strong-willed as Danny North, the Sutahites would never bother with. They could never own him; he would drive them out. What could they possibly gain by encouraging him to be intimate with this girl? And why was she there, uninvited?
Wad came quickly to the conclusion that there was something in the girl, something that wanted very, very much to have her body intimate with Danny North’s. Something that hungered for a clear pathway from one body to the other.
It was Set, the Dragon, making his first assault upon the greatest Gatefather in the history of the world. And it was working, because the boy was an adolescent who was easy to arouse to passion, and he was deeply weary, and he was coming out of a sound sleep, and he knew the girl and did not fear her. All of it worked together so that even though Wad knew the boy felt the deep dread, the warning of Wad’s gates inside him, he went ahead.
He not only coupled with the girl, he consented when her voice asked him for permission to enter him.
Fool. Fool.
Not Danny-in his confusion, he was only as foolish as any boy would be.
The fool was Wad. When Danny’s exploration of Wad’s memories had brought everything back to Wad with such clarity, it had not been half so clear to Danny North. Wad should have dropped everything then, should have used the Great Gate again to go to Danny North and explain everything, not in the vague way Danny would have learned it, but with the clarity of Wad’s bright memory, and of all that he knew beyond the information that came from Kawab during that desert conversation.
I should have prepared him for exactly this danger. But in my arrogance and solitude, I thought it was enough that I knew. Why would I think that? I’m in Westil. Danny’s the one who was in danger, the one who needed to be alert to the way this sort of thing is done, and I betrayed him by my silence, my delay.
Now all is lost. Set has him, and can make as many Great Gates as he wants, a thousand of them. He can flood Westil, the world of Mitherholm, with his Sutahites, and find a people totally unready to resist them. All the powers of the Mithermages will be in their hands, compounded by as many passages between the worlds as they might need or want.
Everything I tried to prevent has now taken place. So what if I delayed this day by fourteen centuries? All that happened in the meantime was that drowthers had created terrible weapons that now would be completely in the hands of the mages who had the power to take them and wield them, or induce the drowther armies to use them. How long before those terrible machines made their way to Mitherholm as well? How long before they were used, and Mitherholm destroyed, along with Mittlegard? Then Set would have his great triumph over Duat, having ruined both the other worlds.
In that moment of despair, Wad was shocked to feel himself awash with a sense of power and connection.
He had never felt this thing before, because he had never given his gates away before. It took a moment to realize that this was how it felt to have them given back.
He didn’t have them; they were still in Danny’s hearthoard. But he owned them. They would obey him now, if they obeyed anybody. If Set, through Danny, tried to make them into gates, they would not become gates at all, they would simply return to Wad. Wad wasn’t sure if Danny understood that. It was likely that Danny knew only that they were no longer Danny’s to command, and therefore they were out of the reach of Set.
The boy was braver than Wad had imagined. Danny must realize now that he had lost his battle with the enemy, but he was not giving up. Inside his own body, which Set must now control like a beastmage riding his heartbound, Danny North was still himself, and was still capable of doing things that Set had no idea how to prevent.
But since Danny did not have the power to free the gates he held captive in his hearthoard, this gift would only be a small limitation on Set. A futile gesture, really.
Then Wad realized that it was not as futile as it seemed. There were things that Wad knew how to do that required him to have a huge aggregate of gates-and his own store of them had seemed huge indeed, until he met Danny North, whose natural hearthoard made Wad’s seem small and shallow. Wad might not have his gates with him; he might not be able to make them into gates; but they were his gates all the same, and if he reached out to swallow up another mage’s gates, these captive gates of his would be part of his strength. If Wad was careful and clever, he might be able to find some way to resist Set after all. At least to slow him down.
For one thing, Wad would have the power to swallow up the rebellious gates that were woven into the Wild Gate the Greek girl had moved out of Danny’s control. Unfortunately, half of the outbound Great Gate and all of the inbound one was made up of Danny’s own gates, and those would remain in place.
Wad was still trying to think of possible uses for his newly restored power when he was overwhelmed by a force so strong his body could hardly cope with it. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath, whimpering with a feeling so strong that he could not tell if it was ecstasy or pain.
In moments, though, he understood what had happened to him.
Danny North had given Wad his gates. The seemingly infinite store of Danny North’s own natural endowment was now utterly placed in perfect obedience to Wad, and Wad alone.
Danny was still connected to them; they were still part of his ba. But they were almost as deeply connected to Wad. They were part of his power.
Having his own gates returned to him had given Wad the scope to swallow the gates of any mage but Danny North, for Danny’s strength was like the sun compared to Wad’s otherwise-impressive moon.
But with Danny’s gates as part of his own strength, Wad had power to swallow anything.
He still could only make the eight gates that Danny North had left to him in their original struggle. But anytime he wanted to, he could change that. Though he had no way to make the gates that Danny held within his hearthoard-Set could force Danny to hold on to those, to prevent their being made.
But the gates that were outside of Danny’s body, the gates that he had made before Set took him, those were there for the taking. For with all of Danny’s strength under his control, Wad had the power to swallow all of Danny’s made gates.