“Nor, apparently, does it make people any smarter.”
“It didn’t improve your intelligence or mine,” said Wad, “but we were already as clever as we needed to be.”
“As is Frostinch,” said Anonoei.
“Yet it didn’t occur to him that he should find out what your magery is.”
“I didn’t let him think of it,” said Anonoei. “That’s elementary. Whenever he became curious about me, I distracted him. Again, I barely needed magery to control him.”
“When he is Jarl of Gray, he won’t be any smarter.”
“I don’t want him smarter,” said Anonoei. “I’m not going to use him to defeat Bexoi. Manmagery doesn’t let me add new powers to my clients-they are what they are. He will be my puppet, but no match for Bexoi.”
“Who is?” asked Wad.
“You,” said Anonoei. “But I don’t expect you to face her down, either. You’re still too much in love with her.”
Wad recoiled at that. “She murdered my son.”
“The son you made with her. Remember what I am, and believe me, Wad. However much you hate Bexoi, you still have love enough for her that it will make you hesitate at the last moment, and she’ll destroy you.”
“How will you bring her down, then? How will you defeat her? Do you think that you’re manmage enough to make her your servant?”
“Watch and see,” said Anonoei. “When it’s over, you’ll be the only one who knows what I have done. But you’ll agree that my victory was perfect and complete. I could find no better way to punish her.”
“And you won’t tell me now?”
“You would prevent me,” said Anonoei, “even though you think you wouldn’t. I’m not controlling you, but I do need to use your talents. Not knowing, you’ll continue to help me, even though you know that if you knew my plan, you wouldn’t.”
Wad smiled. “Or so you think.”
“You think that you would approve, and so you help me,” said Anonoei. “I don’t have to use manmagery on people who are sure they’re wiser than they are.”
But of course she did use manmagery on him. She used it on everybody. She used it all the time. But part of the power of manmagery was the ability to make its victims believe that they were freely doing what she manipulated them to do. That would be her vengeance on him, for those years of torment in captivity. For the damage that he did to her sweet son Eluik. But because he had also saved them, and because of all his help to her, she would never tell him of how she controlled him. So he would not suffer. She could enjoy her triumph over him, and enjoy the fact that he so ignorantly enjoyed it too.
17
How do you learn anything with your brain switched off? Yet Danny quickly realized that this was exactly what he had to do here in the Egyptian desert. Loki’s gates didn’t actually know anything, or remember anything, except at one remove: They remembered where Loki had been when he learned powerful secrets about the Belmage, and they remembered what he had been doing.
So Danny had to be where Loki had been, and do what he had done, and then let memory flow into his mind. Memory that was not his own, of things he had not done. And the memory included no language. It only included what Loki came to know, at a level below language.
The moment Danny tried to make sense of the memories, his conscious mind took over. And his conscious mind introduced language. Language drove out the inchoate, wordless Loki-memories.
So he could not make sense of anything, while it was happening. He had to let it wash over him. It required a sort of trance. His conscious mind had to be off in space, not concentrating on anything.
It is so hard to concentrate on not concentrating.
So at first the memories were jagged. They flashed in and out like lightning. There was no coherency. Images of a scrawny, sun-burnt Egyptian man, small in stature, bald, his shoulders tented by thin white linen, a dusty linen kilt around his loins, but otherwise naked. The memory included heat. And then cold, and darkness.
The man was talking, but Danny heard no words. He did not want the man’s words, though this man was the teacher-some kind of hermit that Loki had consulted. A man who knew ancient lore of Egypt, knowledge older than Christianity, though he was certainly a Christian ascetic. But the memory of his words could not be recovered this way. Instead, Danny had to recover the memory of the story that Loki had built up in his own memory.
When words came to mind, then, they were not the hermit’s words, they were the words that mattered to Loki as he listened. Ka. Ba. But as soon as Danny attached to the words, their meaning in this context fled away.
Fortunately, the memory could be endlessly started over, repeated again and again. The gates were patient. What else did they have to do? So as Danny gradually mastered the art of meditation, at least well enough for this purpose, this day, the memory began again, and now it washed over Danny and became his own.
Later, he told himself. I will remember remembering the memory, and that will become the story. For now let it flow. Let it fill you.
He had no idea of the passage of time. Captured by the memory, he did not know if it was day or night where he sat alone in the desert, in front of the cavelet that he and Wheeler and Hal had cleared of sand. He only knew what the time was in the memory, as it flowed through a long, long conversation.
A couple of times, breaking the memory flow, he despaired. Loki had placed all the things the hermit told him into a context of Loki’s own experience with gates, with mages of every kind, in a world where magery was far more common, where a gatemage was educated in his Family’s history and knowledge and skills. How could Danny, in his ignorance, possibly make sense of any of this?
He let it flow.
He let it flow.
And then a hand touched his shoulder.
That had not happened before in the memory! Who was it who interrupted Loki?
Danny waited for the memory of Loki turning, to see what he saw, to know what he knew.
Then the hand touched him again, more sharply this time, shaking him, and Danny realized: This is not in the memory. This did not happen to Loki. This is happening to me.
“Please,” he whispered. His voice was a feeble croak. “Please wait.”
The hand shook him again. Very hard. It almost knocked him over.
Danny felt like weeping, did weep one great sob, and then the intruder’s work was done: The trance was broken, the memory fled.
His own memories rushed back. He was in Egypt, a nation for which he had no passport or visa. He was caught.
He almost gated away. But then it finally dawned on him that the person was talking. The sunlight was dazzling. He could hardly see. And he must have been deaf, for now the voice swelled and faded. It was English. He knew the voice. He squinted. He shaded his eyes.
The face came down to be directly in front of his. She was angry. Hermia. Hermia had followed him here.
Stupid stupid stupid! Didn’t she know he was doing something important, something vital? How did she dare to interrupt him?
“Drink this!” she was saying.
He looked down and saw that she was holding a bottle of water. Evian. He didn’t like Evian.
She had the cap off. She jammed the mouth of it against his lips. It hurt. His lips were dry and chapped. Split. He looked at the top of the water bottle. There was blood on it.
“Dehydrated.” That was one of the words she said.
He opened his mouth and tipped his head back and let her pour water into his mouth. He had to work at swallowing. It was as if he had forgotten how to do it.