The Gate Thief Page 3

  “Are you kidding?” asked Hal. “Nobody’s telling anybody about it because they’ll all think we’re crazy. Hallucinating. On something.”

  “But you know it really happened.”

  “I do now,” said Hal, “cause you apparently remember it. What was that, man? What happened?”

  This was so weird. People claimed miraculous things happened all the time, even though nothing happened at all. But this time, when it was something real, they weren’t talking about it. It’s as if when something really scares people, the blabbermouth switch gets turned off.

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” said Danny. One of the gifts of gatemages was that they were good tricksters, which meant they were good liars, since it’s hard to bring off any kind of trick if you can’t deceive people.

  Hal looked hard at him. “You look like you’re telling me the absolute truth, but you’re the one who told me to hang on to the bottom of the rope and spin, and then I shot up to the top. You’re the one Coach Bleeder told to get me up the rope, and so what am I supposed to think except that you did whatever it was.”

  “And if I did,” said Danny, “what then? Who would you tell? How far would the story go?”

  “Nowhere, man,” said Hal. “You saved my ass all over the place, you think I’m going to do anything to hurt you? But you took off yesterday, you went outside when the rope trick stopped working, and when I went out after you, you were gone. Vanished. What are you, man? Are you, like, an alien?”

  “A Norse god,” said Danny.

  “What, like Thor?” Hal laughed.

  “More like Loki,” said Danny.

  “Is this your final answer?” asked Hal. “Am I really supposed to believe this one?”

  “Believe what you want,” said Danny. “Class is about to start.” He went to the door and Hal followed him into the classroom.

  * * *

  HERMIA WAS SITTING in the Applebee’s on Lee Highway, looking out the window at cars pulling in and out of the BP next door, when her mother slid into the booth across from her.

  “Have you already ordered?” Mother asked.

  Hermia felt a thrill of fear. She was too far from the nearest gate to make any kind of clean escape. Mother was a sandmage, which should have meant she was powerless in a place as damp as western Virginia, but as Mother often pointed out to her, her real affinity was for anything powdered or granulated, from snowflakes to dust, from shotgun pellets to salt and pepper and sugar. The table was full of things that Mother could use.

  Besides, wherever she was, Father would not be far away, and he was a watermage—a Damward, able to choke her on her own saliva, if he chose. If they wanted Hermia dead, to punish her for running off and not reporting to them about the gatemage she had found, she could do nothing to stop them or avoid them.

  So apparently they didn’t want her dead. Yet.

  “They’re getting me a hamburger,” said Hermia. “There’s not much you can do wrong with a hamburger.”

  “They could leave it on the counter for twenty minutes, letting it get cold while the bacteria multiply,” said Mother. “And then they bring it to you, without apology, assuming that you’re the mousy little thing you seem to be and won’t utter a word of complaint.”

  “I’m not mousy,” said Hermia.

  “They don’t know that,” said Mother. “And you look so Mediterranean—they know you don’t belong here in this hotbed of Scotch-Irish immigration.”

  “So you’ve made a study of American demographics and genealogy?”

  “I study everything,” said Mother. “People are like grains of sand—from a distance, they all look alike, but when you really study them, each is a separate creation.”

  The waiter came over and Mother ordered a salad. But before the waiter could get away, she said to him, “What do you think of a daughter who suddenly disappears and doesn’t tell her mother and father where she’s going and whom she’s with? What would you call such a girl?”

  The waiter, who had flirted with Hermia a little when he took her order, answered instantly: “Normal.”

  Mother laughed, one of her seal-like barks. “Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it, dear boy. But I assure you, you’re not her type.”

  The waiter, looking a little baffled, muttered something about putting her order in and left.

  “You do enjoy toying with them,” said Hermia.

  “Observing them,” corrected Mother. “Seeing how they respond to unusual stimuli. I’m a scientist at heart.”

  She was Clytemnestra and Medea rolled into one, that’s what was in her heart, thought Hermia, but she knew better than to say it. “So you found me,” she said.

  “Oh, we’ve known where you were the whole time,” said Mother.

  Hermia didn’t bother to answer.

  “I know you think we couldn’t possibly have traced you, with all your jumping through gates, but you see, when we first realized you might have gatemaking talent, we implanted a little chip just under your jaw. We track it by satellite. We Illyrians are truly godlike in our prescience, don’t you think?”

  It had never crossed Hermia’s mind that they might have installed a tracking device in her body. She had given Danny away every time she used one of his gates.

  Or maybe not. When she made a jump through one of Danny’s gates, it would take time for them to get to where she was. Knowing where she was wasn’t the same thing as being there to observe her.

  But last night they’d had plenty of time to get to Parry McCluer High School.

  “You spent the night here?” asked Hermia.

  “In the Holiday Inn Express,” said Mother. “It has a nice European feel to it.”

  “Meaning that the rooms are tiny and have no space to put your luggage?”

  “We didn’t make ourselves known during the festivities. But we saw some of the Norths challenge you, and watched as a couple of mere Orphans brought old Zog’s eagle down and then cracked open the earth and swallowed up their truck.”

  “They gave it back afterward,” said Hermia. “Or did you fall asleep before the end?”

  “From these actions, we cleverly deduced, in our Aristotelian way, that somebody had passed through a Great Gate. I think it wasn’t you who made the gate, because if you were able to make gates, you would have disappeared the moment I sat down.”

  “No, I can’t make gates. You know I can’t.”

  “I know you have always said you can’t. But now I believe you. Maybe.”

  “I’m not telling you who—”

  “It’s Danny North who’s the gatemage,” said Mother.

  “Don’t you dare lay a hand on him.”

  “No habanero powder in his eyes or up his nose?” asked Mother. “Why must you always spoil my fun?”

  “He’s not just a gatemage, he’s a Gatefather,” said Hermia. “In all the history of the world there’s never been a gatemage like him.”

  “The world has a lot of history. And there are two worlds, for that matter.”

  “He beat the Gate Thief,” said Hermia.

  “Isn’t that nice.”

  “What do you want, Mother?”

  “My darling daughter to tell me she loves me, even if it’s a lie, and to pretend she’s glad to see me.”

  “I’m not reporting to you anymore.”

  “You don’t have to report, as I just explained,” said Mother.

  “Danny and I and the other gatemage—”

  “So you are a gatemage, and not just a Finder.”

  “I’m a Lockfriend,” said Hermia.

  “And the other gatemage? Victoria Von Roth?”

  “A Keyfriend.”

  “How lovely. It’s like you’re twins, born thirty years apart.”

  “The next time Danny makes a Great Gate, we’re going to make sure all the Families and the Orphans have equal access to it.”

  “Even the drowthers?”

  “We aren’t going to let a Great Gate give one Fami
ly an advantage.”

  “But you already have, silly girl,” said Mother. “That cow Leslie now has the power to snatch other people’s heartbeasts away from them, and Marion can crack open the earth without causing so much as a three point oh on the Richter scale. They could take down every Family right now.”

  “And yet they haven’t done it,” said Hermia. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Doesn’t the fact that we didn’t kill you tell you something, too?”

  “It tells me that your hope of getting through a Great Gate is greater than your desire to keep anybody else from getting through it.”

  “It should have told you that we mean to play nice,” said Mother. “We’re going to let you and your boyfriend Danny and his aging mistress Veevee set out the rules, and we’ll play along.”

  “Till you see a way to get an advantage,” said Hermia.

  “Wasn’t it nice of me to come and inform you? Some of us wanted to kill you and then deal with Danny North separately. We would pretend we didn’t know where you were. They’re very angry with you for betraying us.”

  “I didn’t tell him anything,” said Hermia.

  “You didn’t tell us anything,” said Mother. “But … water over the dam, isn’t that what they say?”

  “You got your physics degree at Stanford, Mother. Don’t pretend to be uncertain of your English.”

  “We’re going to station an observer at the high school,” said Mother. “And we’re going to expect you to stay there, too.”

  “I’m too old for high school,” said Hermia.

  “But you’re such a little slip of a thing, they won’t doubt that this is your senior year.”

  “I don’t have to be at the high school. I can gate in and out whenever I want to talk to Danny.”

  “As long as he keeps gates available to you,” said Mother. “No, we want you there where we can watch you both.”

  “And where you can threaten to do violence to me in order to get him to do what you want.”

  “Would that work?” asked Mother.

  “I don’t think so,” said Hermia, “but with Danny you never know. He’s not in love with me. I don’t think he particularly likes me. But he’s a compassionate kid. You could probably just point a gun at a puppy, take a picture, and then send it to him along with the threat, ‘Do what we say or we’ll shoot this dog.’”

  “Well, we aren’t going to threaten to shoot you or a puppy. We think—some of us think—that now that you know that we’ve known where you are all along, and didn’t interfere with you, you’ll return to us with renewed trust and loyalty.”

  “Are you among those who think so?” asked Hermia.

  “I’m only one vote among many,” said Mother. “But it’s pleasantly needy of you to ask for my reassurance.”

  “You know that whoever you send, Danny can just gate away.”

  “Oh, I hope he doesn’t do that,” said Mother. “We’d have to shoot the dog.”

  * * *

  CEDRIC BIRD STOOD in a circle of tall standing stones on the brow of a grassy hill. Sheep grazed on the gentle slope below him, but Ced saw no sign of a shepherd.

  He had meant to do what the others did. Step into the Great Gate, and then, the moment he was in Westil, take the next step and go back to Earth with his power greatly enhanced.

  Only in the moment they arrived—in daylight on Westil instead of night the way it was in Buena Vista—he felt a touch of breeze on his cheek. And as a windmage he couldn’t go, not without first feeling the movement of the air, getting a sense of the way the sunlight warmed the air and the grass moved in the breeze.

  It was only a moment, a second or two. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the others step forward and disappear. And then he stepped forward—and felt the grass brush against the cuffs of his pants. The Great Gate was already gone, and just like that, Ced realized that he had decided to stay on Westil.

  He felt a momentary thrill of fear. All the bedtime stories his mother had told him about the faraway world their ancestors came from. The place where the gods of legend lived. It was a terrifying place where huge storms could be conjured by the anger of a sandmage, where Stonefathers could fashion copies of themselves in stone, where a lake could be swallowed up in stone, or an island be overswept by a Tidefather’s wave.

  Yet he could also feel the wind.

  He had always felt the wind, even in his sleep, it would wake him by whistling through the eaves and trembling the windows, and he would get up and open the door and go out into the wind. Mother would hear him and rush out after him and gather him up and say, The wind is a terrible thing, Cedric, it carries birds far from shore and sweeps nests out of the trees. But Cedric would say, It never hurts me, Mother. I love the wind.

  Yet he had never really felt the wind until now, today, as he stood in this gentle wind on a grassy hill in Westil. He felt it shape itself around the standing stones and sensed all the eddies within the circle. He was aware of the play of the breeze in the wool of the nearest sheep, and the sweep of it through the grass exhilarated him.

  It’s not the breeze of Westil that’s different, Ced realized. It’s me. I’ve been through the Great Gate, and now I have all the awareness of the wind that I ever wanted. Now I’m the mage I always was in my dreams.

  He couldn’t resist the temptation now; it wasn’t enough to feel the wind. He had to shape it. He had been studying with Norm Galliatti, an Orphan Galebreath in Medford, Oregon, and he had raised his abilities from making tiny whirlwinds and raising a slight breeze on a still day to the point where he could direct a breeze, narrow it like a dart, blow out a candle from a hundred yards, change the flight of a ball in midair.

  But here … just by thinking of doing it, it happened. A whirlwind rose all around him, spinning inside the circle of stones, whipping his hair and clothing, and it was so much larger and stronger than anything he’d ever been able to do before that he laughed aloud, then cried in joy. Oh, Mother, can you see me? O Bird of my Youth, O my Hummingbird, Calliope, are you watching now? See what I can do!

  The whirlwind created so much suction inside it that he rose up into the air, but he was in no danger. This was no tornado, snatching up creatures and flinging them here and there, randomly. No, the air that spun around him knew him, cared for him, carried him. The wind rejoiced in him as much as he rejoiced in it. Here you are, it was saying. We are sheep too long without a shepherd, cows with udders full and no dairyman to ease us, till you came.

  Carry me, he thought. Carry me away from here. Show me this world.

  The whirlwind raised him higher and he could see now over the nearby groves of trees. There was a shepherd’s hut just beyond the river, and out of it stepped the shepherd, looking upward at Ced as the whirlwind bore him along the river’s course, downstream because that’s what Ced felt like, but the wind might have carried him anywhere.

  Now I know why people called us gods, if we Mithermages of Westil could pass through Great Gates and to this. When they painted Hermes with wings on his feet, was it a windmage like me that they remembered?

  Ced had only to think of going to the crest of a rocky outcropping, and the whirlwind bore him there and gently set him down. What had once been such a labor to him, just to make a whirlwind go where he wanted it to go, was now effortless, and he could ride within it. Here is how a magic carpet flies. This is the wheel Ezekiel saw in the middle of the air.

  But now that he was on solid ground, Ced stretched out his arms and gathered more and more wind into the vortex. He moved it away from himself and made it spin and spin and spin. The top of it rose up, and at the base it began to gather dirt and dust and bits of grass and old leaves and insects from the ground and now the whirlwind became darker, more visible as a column, more like the television image of a tornado, only it wasn’t in the distance, it was here, and he was in control of it.

  This is the real god, thought Ced.

  No: In his mind he was speaking t
o the wind itself. Thou art the god, O whirlwind of my making. I have wakened thee.

  With the realization that the wind was alive and could hear him, Ced crossed a threshold. His outself went into the wind. It became his clant. It became his heartsblood, and he was riding in the wind the way his mother flew in hummingbirds, riding it and guiding it, both as companion and controller, passenger and pilot.

  He never left his body; he still stood watching the tornado from the tor. Yet he also was the tornado, not seeing through it, for tornados have no eyes, but rather feeling it with the kinesthesia of his body, the way a person can sense with eyes closed just where the hands are, and what the fingers are doing. He could feel the location and dimension and speed and strength of the tornado just as he could tie his shoelaces in the dark, the fingers moving smoothly through well-remembered patterns.

  He rode the tornado for a hundred miles before he was sated with the joy of it. Enough, enough, enough. He let go of the wind and immediately felt it slacken and fade, the air also rejoicing with the memory of such rapid, powerful flight. His outself returned to him. He stood, whole again, and yet bereft because the wind was just a gentle breeze again. He had been a giant; now he was only a man.

  He climbed down from the outcropping of rock. It wasn’t easy—a windmage can fly to a place where a goat can’t climb. But there was a grassy way, a step here, a jump there, that let him get down from peak to riverside.

  Then he began to walk downstream, looking for people. But he found none.

  Instead, he met the wreckage of a village, the houses torn up by their roots.

  He had to raise a little whirlwind to lift him over the tumble of a broken forest, with trees uprooted and cast upon each other like a game of pickup sticks.

  And then he came to a city where the trapped cried out from inside collapsed walls, where men and women keened aloud over the bodies of the dead, and children wandered looking terrified and lost.

  He could not understand their language, though he recognized that it sounded somewhat like the language his mother sometimes spoke to him in snatches, the language she spoke to the birds that gathered around her when she fed them or sang to them in the yard.