And so he did it.
He swallowed first the Wild Gate that Hermia had moved, including all his former captives. They were in Wad’s hearthoard once again, under his discipline again. Their freedom had been shortlived, and they despaired and fell silent almost at once.
Then Wad reached out, gate by gate, and swallowed the rest. But now, knowing that Danny North had made them all for a purpose, and Danny’s friends relied on them, Wad remade them immediately, only now as gates of his own making, though the gates were Danny’s.
It was a subtle thing indeed, but with enormous consequences. If Set had understood his danger, he could have quickly gathered in all of Danny’s made gates. But Set had only a little practice at possessing a gatemage; he would know only what was known to previous gatemages he had possessed, and there could not be many of those. He could not possibly know what was possible to a Gatefather of such magnificence as Danny North.
Now, though, the gates were not of Danny’s making, though they were his gates. Danny, under Set’s control, could not gather in these gates. They would not obey him. And because his hearthoard was reduced to zero, Danny North couldn’t even do what Hermia had done-move another mage’s gate.
Wad was astonished at the things that Danny North had done. Gates attached to amulets, which his friends could use for quick escapes. Gates that chained from place to place, which could be found only if you knew where the mouth was hidden. Wad understood now that Danny had provided highways for his drowther friends, to keep them safe if the Families went after them. The boy had more love for ordinary people than Wad had ever heard of in a mage-more than Wad had ever shown, though he considered himself a drowther-friend, compared to most.
The Great Gates were harder. He could not unmake them and then remake them as a whole. Instead he spent hours carefully gathering each single strand, then remaking it by weaving it into the existing Great Gate, exactly where it had been before. It taxed all of Wad’s power of concentration to hold the shape of it in place, but finally it was done. Even the Great Gates were now outside of Danny North’s control, and therefore beyond the reach of Set to gather them back in.
What irony, thought Wad. The outcome is almost identical to what it would have been if I had won our little battle when I first tried to eat the gates of Danny North. His hearthoard is full of gates, that’s true-most of his and most of mine. But he has no gate in either world that will respond to his commands. No gate that adds to his strength. He is as bereft of power as if I had stripped his gates away.
Only the captive gates remain within him. He can’t give them to me. But if Set tries to spin a Great Gate, it will be completely wild.
And then, as Wad observed Danny from inside, he saw something that he wasn’t sure he would have thought of, or, having thought, had the courage to act upon. The Dragon was torturing Danny to try to get him to do what Danny no longer had the power to do-allow the Dragon to control the making of Danny’s gates. The game was simple enough: The Dragon was threatening to kill Danny and move on if Danny didn’t give him what was no longer Danny’s to give.
By the time the Dragon understood how Danny had deceived him, he had done so much damage to Danny’s body that Danny North would surely die unless he made a gate to pass himself through. At first, Set might have been content to let him die, as punishment for Danny’s clever, stubborn disobedience. But then it must have occurred to Set that he was nowhere near any other person. Cut off from a human body, Set was weak again, unable to jump right in and control a person who had any willpower at all.
If Danny’s body died, it might take Set weeks or months to get control of a body that was worth controlling.
Meanwhile, there was Danny’s hearthoard. So many gates-and so many captives, too, including Wad’s own gates. Even though Set hadn’t the power to use them, if Danny died then he would never have the power.
As long as he remained in control of Danny’s body, and Danny’s body remained alive, then Set had a hope of persuading Danny to cooperate; and if that never happened, he could use Danny’s body to bring him close enough to another person to make the jump smoothly and easily.
He could always kill Danny later, he doubtless thought.
And so he made one of the only gates remaining under Danny North’s control-the captive gates. He made it and then moved it so that it passed over Danny’s body, healing him. Danny North would not die.
And then Danny did something Wad had not known was possible. He gave the captive gate to itself. The ka that the gate had once been attached to was long dead, gone wherever the kas of dead gatemages went. But the ba was still part of that self, wherever it was, and even though Danny could not find that ka, he figured out that the ba could find it, could always find its ka, and so he gave the ba to itself, and through itself, to its original maker, even though he was dead.
The result was that the ba was gone. Simply gone. Danny hadn’t unmade the gate-Set would have known what that felt like, would have prevented Danny from doing it. But Set did not know what Danny was even doing, when Danny performed the act of giving a gate. Because as far as Wad knew, he was the first mage ever to give a gate to another mage-if someone else had done it, Wad had never heard of it. And Danny had taken that new technique, had learned it, and then extended it to a use Wad would never have imagined.
Danny’s body was healed, and Set was in check. His total supply of gates was limited to Wad’s old captives, and now he knew that each time he made such a gate, he could use it once, but then it would be gone. Danny North would set it free, would let it die and disappear. And though there were many hundreds of gates, that number would be exhausted very soon if Set made heavy use of them.
If spacetime really had brought Danny North into the world as a giant prank, it was a good one. Because even though Danny North tried hard to be a decent man, he still had a prankster’s heart, and he had chosen his victim well. Set had thought he would be master, and he was; but Danny had taken the mastery out from under him, even though it meant that Danny would be left utterly empty when Set abandoned his body. If Set let him live, Danny would be an empty gatemage, just like all the mages Wad had emptied through the years.
Wad knew well how rare it was for a mage to make such sacrifice. The usual thing, when a mage had been possessed, was for the mage to yield, to surrender quickly to the Sutahite’s will, and then become its partner, obeying it but receiving the rewards of power ruthlessly applied.
Danny North could have taken that road. Set would have used Danny’s gates to become the most powerful mage in history, forcing all the other mages to bend to his will. Truly he would have been the Great Dragon then, master of two worlds, manipulator of humankind, mage and drowther alike. Mage of mages. God of gods, at least in the eyes of drowthers.
Women, money, mastery of everyone. Anyone that Danny hated, he could have punished; Set would have had no scruples about the taking of a life, of many lives.
But Danny had thrust all of that away, removed it from himself with no hope of getting any power back, so that Set would not have the use of that power. So that Westil was still safe. So that Wad’s work was not undone.
Danny North, I admire you for your courage. I honor you for your cleverness. I pity you for your loss.
Because even if Set moves on to someone else, even if he doesn’t kill you in revenge for having tricked him, do not think for a moment that I will ever give these gates back to you. I do not even want to be as noble as you. For a while you were a greater mage than me. I am now, again, the greatest Gatefather in the world, and you are nothing. I will never give that up. I am the Gate Thief, and because of your nobility, the victory is mine.