The Lost Gate Read online

  Right now, though, they were still outdoors in the cold December air, being inspected by some of the people who had killed a lot of the Family in years not long past.

  The Greeks walked up and down the line of children, looking at everyone closely. Some of them—especially the middle-aged women—gave them all a look of disdain. And why not? The North cousins were mostly barefoot, even in the cold weather, with hair that only vaguely remembered having been touched with brush or comb. They were all suntanned and dirt-smudged, and their clothes were patched-up hand-me-downs or offerings from Wal-Mart or Goodwill, chosen by thrifty grownups guessing at the child’s size.

  By contrast, the Greeks were all dressed as if they were going to a rich man’s funeral—dark suits and dresses, all looking like they cost serious money, with hair perfectly coiffed and fingernails manicured. Above all, they were clean. Yet they wore their perfect costumes with ease, as if they dressed this way every day, and didn’t care if they got dirty as they walked through the mud of melted snow from the storm a week ago. They could always replace whatever clothes got mussed. They could buy a small planet, Thor had once said. Not that any amount of money could buy passage to the one planet where they all had wanted to go for nearly fourteen centuries.

  From time to time as they walked along the line, the Greeks would pause in front of a child and ask something in the ancient tongue of Westil—the original from which Indo-European sprang five thousand years before—and one of the Norths would answer. If they had spoken louder, Danny could have understood them; he was the only one of the lined-up cousins who had achieved real fluency in the language. But they spoke softly, so it was not until they came quite close that Danny realized that these murmured words were questions about what branch of magery a particular child was showing affinity for.

  It should have been Baba who answered them, but he was away buying new equipment. Danny suspected that the Greeks had waited until Baba was gone, so they could speak to others less accustomed to answering questions without revealing anything interesting. The result was that Auntie Tweng usually answered—she being the most taciturn of the adults—though sometimes Uncle Poot would answer, since he worked most closely with the children. One thing was definite: Every question was answered, and promptly, too.

  The little children directly in front of Danny were not interesting to anyone—they hadn’t shown any particular affinities yet, though of course they could already raise a bit of a clant. But the girl just to Danny’s right was Megan, Mook and Lummy’s daughter, just turned fifteen, and a very promising windmage. So there was some discussion of her, and Danny noticed that while Poot praised her highly, the particular feats he mentioned were actually things Megan had done when she was ten. So every word was true, but the impression Poot made was that the Norths were such a pathetically weak Family that they boasted when a fifteen-year-old did things that a talented ten-year-old should do.

  Danny wondered about this. Years before he had overheard an argument about whether the Family should appear strong, to deter attacks and insults, or appear weak, so that no one would feel envy or resentment. “They don’t attack us because they fear us,” Baba had said, “they attack us because they think they can get away with it.”

  But Gyish, perhaps because he had led the family during the last war, took the opposite side. “All the Families are getting weaker and they all blame us. The flames of hatred burn deep and long, Odin—they need to see that we are weak so that their hate for us is satisfied.”

  Apparently Baba had given in to Gyish’s view—or, in Baba’s absence, Gyish had bullied the others into following the strategy of humility.

  “And this one?” asked the short, slightly heavy woman who seemed to be the Greeks’ chief inquisitor.

  Danny raised his head to look Poot in the eye. Poot said nothing.

  It was Auntie Tweng who spoke. A single word. “Drekka.”

  A little smile flickered on the Greek woman’s face. “And still here?”

  “We still have hope for him,” said Poot, and then turned and walked away. The others followed him, though Tweng took a moment to glare at Danny before she strode behind them.

  That’s all I needed, thought Danny. One more reason for the Family to wish me dead.

  Danny noticed now that there was a girl of about eleven or twelve among the Greek adults. She was the only child that they had brought along; Danny wondered why they had brought any. The girl stayed well back and looked bored. Maybe she was the spoilt child of the woman who always took the lead—certainly the Greek leader took the girl’s arm and hustled her along, which suggested that the girl was her daughter. A bratty child, perhaps, who threw a tantrum when they thought to leave her behind. It pleased Danny to imagine her that way, because as the son of Odin he was always accused of being that way, though he was pretty sure he never had been.

  The children had been told to stay out of sight as soon as they were dismissed, and most of them took this to mean it was a play day, as long as they took their games to remote locations within the compound. The whooping and hollering began the moment they were out of the dooryard.

  Naturally, no one invited Danny along. He made his way toward the schoolhouse as if he intended to study something in the one place where none of the other children would willingly go during a play day, but after entering the school he waited only a little while before he slipped out the back and made his way around behind Hammernip Hill to approach the old house from the most isolated side.

  A steep slope on Danny’s left side led to a runoff ditch on his right. The ditch ran right under the crawl space of the newest wing of the house—it had obviously been dug long before the wing was built, and Danny knew that was more than a hundred years ago. Danny made a point of not checking to see if anyone was watching him. He knew that a glance around would make him seem furtive, whereas if he just ducked under the house without the slightest concern about who might see him, he would seem innocent. If anyone asked, he would say that he liked to nap in the near darkness there. That story was a bit more plausible in summer, because it was so much cooler under the house. In winter, though, it provided shelter from the wind, so he could still make a case for its being his private hideaway.

  And it was, wasn’t it? The only thing he concealed was that instead of lying down on the cold earth of the crawl space, he made his way to the cranny through which he entered the wall spaces.

  He had discovered it first when he was only five, small enough to fit through the passage more easily. But long habit had taught him how to bend his body to fit around tight corners. He had grown quite a bit in the months since he had last crept inside, and he worried that he’d have to turn back at some point, or—even worse—get stuck and have to call for help. But no, he moved smoothly through the familiar passages.

  The leaders of the two Families would meet in the library, at the opposite end of the house, because that’s where the important meetings were always held. There was a big table in the middle of the room, and several extra side chairs around the walls.

  The books that filled the shelves, written in every Indo-European language and sometimes in Westil itself, contained all the lore of the North family clear back to the ancient time when the tribes began splitting off, each taking a Family of gods with them to lead them to victory and guarantee them the support of heaven and earth, beast and tree. In those days the power of the Families had been unstoppable, and the Indo-Europeans—Hittite and Persian, Aryan and Celt, Illyrian and Latin, Dorian and Ionian, German and Nord and Slav—prevailed over the locals wherever they went. Their conquests only ended when their gods got bored or distracted, and refused to help them invade the next land and subdue or slaughter its inhabitants.

  The Families that prospered most were the ones that worked hardest at supporting their worshipers in battle and in agriculture. But the more a particular tribe succeeded in spreading across a large area, ruling over subject nations, the more likely it was to fragment into smaller c
lans or city-states. When they divided, the clans vied for the attention of their favorite gods. Sometimes a Family divided, some following one clan, some another. Sometimes the divided Families fought each other for decades, using their worshipers as surrogates.

  More often, though, to keep up their strength a Family would simply pick one of the tribal clans and stay with it, letting the others fend for themselves without the help of gods. But if the Family felt itself to be ill-served by their worshipers, they would choose another clan or city, and leave the first bereft of Westilian help. That was the secret history behind the histories, behind the waves of invasion, the ups and downs of a city’s fortunes. And drowther scholars actually thought that Homer had made up the doings of the gods! That the Eddas and Vedas and Sagas were a kind of religious fantasy! Drowthers convinced themselves so easily that gods they hadn’t seen with their own eyes must not exist. But then, compared to earlier days, the Westilian Families were not gods at all, but mere shadows of the old glory.

  Danny slid along through the west wall of the library, the one with no windows in it. There had been windows, back when it was a dormitory, but it had been turned into a library back in the 1920s and the windows were sealed up. Where they had been, the casements remained, and Danny had to crawl under them if he wanted to go all the way to the end of the room. But he didn’t need to go that far. Years ago he had pushed pins through the plaster, right through the wallpaper on the other side, so he could see into the room. As he got older and taller, he had created new pinholes higher up.

  Now he didn’t poke any more, but just bent himself enough to see with one eye through the highest of the old holes. He could hardly make out faces, but he could get a good count of how many were present. He had long since learned that seeing wasn’t as important as hearing. Once he knew who was in the library, he would recognize the voices and know who was speaking.

  He knew none of the Greeks, however, so he bent to take a census of who was in the room. They hadn’t brought the girl in with them, so there were seven Greek adults, three women and four men. Danny didn’t bother trying to learn their names, beyond the fact that their last name was Argyros. He would google them later if he was curious. This conversation was about Greeks against Norths, and what mattered to Danny was what might be said about him.

  The pleasantries lasted a long time. He was astonished that they actually reminisced about the last war. The Greeks talked about a time when one of their number found himself trapped inside the North compound, holding only an axe to defend himself against the North treemages.

  “Oh yes,” said Gyish. “Alf was just a lad, we didn’t know yet all he could do. He loosened the head on that axe, so when your boy went to take a swing at one of the trees, the axe flew apart and there he was, ready to do battle against trees with a stick of wood!”

  “Beat him to a pulp,” said Zog. “Pounded him into the ground like yams.”

  Danny could hardly believe they would brag about such a thing right in front of the dead boy’s family—but to his surprise, the Greek men laughed just as hard as the Norths.

  The women of both families kept stolid faces and said nothing.

  There were more stories, snide remarks about the “magery of money,” and other nonsense, before Auntie Tweng cleared her throat and said, “Well, you inspected our lot. What did you think?”

  “That perhaps you should acquire more soap,” said a Greek woman.

  One of the men started to chuckle. “No, no, Valbona. Agon was saying, They obviously have a dirtmage and he’s been practicing on the other children!”

  At that, all the men again burst into laughter. Again, the women made no sound.

  How could these enemies laugh together?

  Maybe there was a camaraderie among warriors, now that the war was over. Or maybe laughter was how they pushed painful memories out of their minds. Perhaps laughter was the only way they could keep from killing each other.

  “It’s the country life,” said Aunt Lummy with a smile in her voice. “You wash them, but five minutes later they’re dirty again. We could raise them in air-conditioned boxes, I suppose, but the fresh air is so healthy, and the exercise makes them strong.”

  “Shoeless even in winter?” asked the Greek woman called Valbona.

  “You’d be amazed how tough one’s feet can become,” said Aunt Lummy.

  “Oh, I’m sure they become like hooves,” said Valbona. “Shoes, though, you can change with the styles.”

  Again the men laughed as if this were the most hilarious jest.

  “I think it’s time to bring in a bit of refreshment,” said Auntie Tweng. “It’s winter, so the tea is hot, but we just got a refrigerator this year, so if you want lemonade or cold iced tea, that can be arranged as well.”

  Danny almost laughed at that, partly because he enjoyed the irony—the Norths had owned refrigerators Danny’s whole life—and partly because he had never known that Auntie Tweng had a sense of humor, still less one with a nasty bite to it.

  “And cakes,” said Aunt Lummy. “Tea and cakes.”

  “How British,” said a Greek woman.

  “Actually, the tea comes from Indonesia,” said Aunt Lummy. “Odd that we call coffee ‘Java,’ when the island of Java produces nothing but tea.”

  “It produces many things,” said one of the men, “and we transport a great portion of the island’s exports. But it’s true that the mountains are one big tea plantation.”

  So he had been to Indonesia. Big deal, thought Danny. He couldn’t get to Westil, and that’s the only thing that any of the Westil Families cared about now.

  He heard the door open as Auntie Tweng and Auntie Uck went out for the refreshments that were waiting on carts at the head of the stairs.

  Someone came in when they went out. It took a moment before the Greek girl came into view, walking slowly and taking everything in, looking up and down the bookshelves. The Greek adults couldn’t take their eyes off her—but they didn’t rebuke her for coming in, either. They just watched her explore the room, and because their attention was so focused on her, all the Norths began to watch her closely, too.

  From across the room, the girl turned and faced directly toward the spot where Danny was watching through a pinhole in the wall. “What is it, Yllka?” murmured one of the Greek men; one of the women shushed him.

  The girl walked around the table and out of Danny’s range of vision, but in a moment she reappeared, much closer now, and immediately walked right to where Danny was watching and put her eye up to the pinhole.

  Danny was so startled that he tried instinctively to back away. Of course there was nowhere to back to, so he ended up banging his head against the clapboard of the outer wall, making a thump; and the pain of it made him utter a sound. Halfway between a groan and a cry, instantly stifled—but it had been heard, and Danny knew that he was dead.

  “Someone’s spying on us,” said Uncle Mook.

  “Out of the way,” said Gyish. And then there was a crash as the shovel from the fireplace shattered the plaster and broke through some of the laths, right where the pinhole had been.

  Danny went from sick fear to absolute panic. He threw himself toward the passage that led outside, only to discover that it didn’t exist. He had never had trouble finding it before, but now all he could feel with his hands was the solid wood of the tall eight-by-eight timber that ran all the way up that corner of the room, from deep in the earth to hold up a roof beam.

  There was no secret passage. Without ever thinking about it, in the darkness Danny had created a magical gate, just as he had done in the tree when he tied up the girls’ clants in his shirt. And now he couldn’t find the gate. He’d be trapped here like a bug under a glass.

  Crash! The shovel came through the wall again, lower down. And then someone started pulling away the laths, letting even more light into the gap between walls. In a moment one of them would stick his head in and recognize Danny.

  The girl had done somethin
g, he realized that now. She had hidden the gate from him so he couldn’t get away.

  Well, she couldn’t hide a gate that didn’t exist. Danny didn’t know how to consciously make a gate, but he knew what it felt like to be rushing somewhere and have a gate simply happen. In this moment of extreme danger, it was time to run.

  So he threw himself toward the great timber, while thinking of his goal—to get out of the house, out of the compound, so that he could absolutely prove that he had been nowhere near the house.

  He threw himself … and of course banged into the heavy timber.

  I need more of a head start, he thought. So he forced himself to move back toward the place where the wall was getting smashed in, and threw himself toward the place where he had always thought his secret passage was.

  He struck solid timber again, and fell.

  Only this time it was different. He was outside, and though the spot was shady, there was winter sunlight filtering through pine needles. His hands were full of fallen leaves and needles. The timber he had bumped into wasn’t part of the structure of the house. He had passed through a new gate and struck the trunk of a living pine, and his forehead was bleeding.

  He knew the spot. One of his secret gates that bypassed the watching trees was only a few paces away. He was outside the compound. He had made a gate that went all the way from the library wall to a place beyond the Family’s protective barrier.

  I made a gate when I needed it most, thought Danny. I can go anywhere.

  But this was no time to feel boastful, even in the privacy of his own mind. If he were found outside the compound, when none of the sentinel trees remembered his passing, it would be almost as bad as being found inside a wall space that had no nonmagical entrance. He had to get back inside the compound if he was going to bring off the claim that he could not have been the spy in the walls.

  Unless the girl already knew, and told them. How could Danny guess how much the girl understood about gates and gatemages? Obviously she must be nothing more than a Doormouse—if she were so much as a Keyfriend, all the Families would insist that she be killed. Sniffers and Doormouses were allowed to live, as the weakest kind of gatemage, for the sole reason that if there was a living gate somewhere, the Sniffer would find it. Ostensibly the purpose of keeping Sniffers alive was because finding a gate was proof that one of the Families had broken the law and had a Pathbrother or Gatefather who could create gates where none had been before. Then war would begin again.