They did not care much about what happened with Coach Lieder, because Danny didn’t actually care that much. It was a part of the high school life that he had desired, but since arranging to come to Parry McCluer, things had become quite strange, and the whole enterprise of American public education seemed a little pointless to Danny. Homework? Really? A track team? He was going through the motions now.
To him, the only thing real about high school was his friends. His feelings about them-and Loki’s gates agreed. About them they had suggestions, though mostly they reinforced his own intentions. Don’t let Xena think for a moment that you return her imaginary affection-check. Pat might be something real; don’t mess with her or hurt her if you can help it. Check. Trust Hal, because he can be counted on, but recognize that Wheeler is the slave of impulse and doesn’t know how to keep his word. Right, right.
Now, as he ran from the grounds of Rockbridge High, up to the crest of Greenhouse Road and then down the steep slope toward the nursery that gave the road its name, he found that Loki’s gates were the music giving meaning and rhythm to his running.
Education, that was the idea they were talking about. Learning. He needed to learn. But they were not talking about calculus or social studies. There were things that Loki’s gates thought that he absolutely had to know, and didn’t know.
So he asked them, silently: What should I know?
Belmage. Danger of the Belmage. The danger that made us close all gates, prevent all Great Gates. Danger of the Belmage.
Immediately Danny remembered the Fistalk inscription quoted in that book in the Library of Congress. “Here Loki twisted a new gate to heaven.… Here Odin crushed the might of Carthage until the survivors wept in the blood of their children.” Nasty stuff. An earlier time.
Oh, like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden were any better.
That was not Loki’s gates talking-what would they know of that? It was an interruption from Danny’s own observer-self, criticizing his own conscious thoughts. “Nasty stuff, earlier time” had provoked his deep self to push a thought to the surface, refuting his own foolish conclusion. Of course, the moment the thought came to the surface, it became his conscious thought, while the observer-self continued to lurk in the background.
But now he felt the prodding of Loki’s gates. Yes yes yes, they were saying. Think about that. That’s what you need to think about.
What? Danny demanded. What was I thinking about?
That’s how Loki’s gates differed from his own deep self-he never didn’t know what his observer-self was responding to. But Loki’s gates were still not himself. They were his, they served him, but they were not truly a part of him.
Yes yes yes, they said again. Think about this.
So they wanted him to continue this self-examination as he ran down the hill, staying on the right, the outside, as he went around the blind curves, because people took this road too fast and he had to make sure he was visible to them. They wanted him to think about the difference between his deep observer-self and his conscious mind and the gates Loki had given him and …
Where were his own gates?
Oh such a good question. It was as if they applauded him.
If Loki’s gates talk to me, then why don’t my own gates?
And then he thought-or did Loki’s gates put the thought into his mind? — The reason my gates don’t talk to me is that they are me. For all I know they do talk to me, but I hear them as myself, as …
No no no.
It was like playing hot-and-cold as a child, the cousins all yelling “Warmer, warmer, hot, hot, cold now!” as the child who was It searched blindly for the hidden object.
This memory had come unbidden. Did that mean it came from his own gates?
No no no.
“Then what are my gates doing?” he asked aloud.
And then, as he came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, where a complicated three-way intersection with Furrs Mill Road was too narrow and dangerous for him not to pay attention, he realized: Who has been operating my body as I ran down this hill, thinking all these thoughts?
It wasn’t my observer-self-that was listening to my ponderings. It certainly wasn’t my conscious mind-it was doing the pondering. I have no memory of anything I did, any choices I made coming down the hill, and yet I was making them. I was passed by several cars-now I can remember, vaguely, that they came from behind and ahead, several of them-but they never interrupted my conscious thoughts.
My gates were operating my legs and arms. Keeping me on the road. I had a mindless task to perform-keeping myself alive while running-and I turned it over to someone else while my conscious self and my deeper observer-self were engaged in this inner conversation.
And it all came together. While Loki had been asleep in a tree for a thousand years or so, he had set most of his gates to carrying out a simple but urgent task: watching the world for gatemages. And they had stuck with that task the way his own gates-his outself-had taken care of his running body while his mind was otherwise engaged.
But Loki had freed his captive gates from their old, unceasing assignment, and given them to me. They weren’t watching the world anymore, they were …
No, they were watching the world. They were still doing what Loki had set them to do. But they were reporting to me. Or rather, preparing me to be ready for battle.
And he realized that this realization had come from the voices. Or at least it had been confirmed by them. They want me to learn about the Belmage because now that there are Great Gates in the world and a Gatefather capable of making more of them-me-I am the person that the Belmage will come after.
The words of the inscription came back to his mind. “We have faced Bel and he has ruled the hearts of many. Bold men ran like deer from his face, but Loki did not run.” Of course this wasn’t the Loki whose gates Danny now had within him. It was a much earlier Loki, one who had defeated Bel in his day.
“Loki found the dark gate of Bel through which their god poured fear into the world and through which he carried off the hearts of brave men to eat at his feasting table.” What did that mean, actually? Was it something like what the Gate Thief did?
But more of the inscription came to mind and his observer-self realized that it was the voices that were pushing it to his attention. “The jaws of Bel seized his heart to carry it away. Loki held tight to his own heart and followed the jaws of the beast.”
Wasn’t that the very passage that Danny had used to guide him in overcoming the Gate Thief? That had to be what it meant, didn’t it? That Bel was a gate thief, too?
“Loki tricked Bel into thinking he was captive, but he was not captive. His heart held the jaws; the jaws did not hold his heart.” Yes! That’s what I did to Loki! That’s how I defeated him!
“And when he found the gate of Bel, he moved the mouth over the heart of the sun. Let Bel eat the sun and drag it back to his dark world! He has no more home in Mittlegard.”
That was the end of the inscription. What am I missing? It sounds like Bel is a gatemage, not a manmage at all.
Then it dawned on him. Just because the inscription was ancient didn’t mean that the person who wrote it knew what he was talking about. Was it written by that earlier Loki himself? Doubtful. It was written by somebody later, repeating what he had heard. Had he heard it from the Loki’s own lips? Maybe. But would that even matter? If the writer was not himself a gatemage, would he understand anything that a Gatefather said about what he had done in fighting the Belmage?
He was at the top of Furrs Mill Road, where it intersected with Highway 11. Danny turned right onto the bridge and ran along it as the light turned green and cars and trucks set the whole bridge to vibrating like an earthquake. It always did that. It was nothing.