Orson Card - The Gate Thief

“You speak Armenian?” asked Danny.

“It came up,” said Hermia. “I’m a gatemage, it’s a language.”

Danny reached out his hand, and the two of them gated to the barn.

“What did you do with them?” demanded Leslie.

“They’re alive,” said Hermia. “And safe.”

Leslie looked at Danny suspiciously. “I want to hear it from him.”

“Because you think you can tell if I’m lying?” asked Danny.

“We assume you’re lying,” said Stone. “Because we’re all hoping you killed them and had done with it.”

“I’m hoping no such thing!” said Leslie.

“We can’t control a gatemage anyway,” said Marion to Leslie. “He did what he did, he’ll do what he does.”

“I can make him feel guilty about it,” said Leslie.

“That’s not very sporting,” said Veevee. “Danny feels guilty for being alive.”

“Make the Great Gate,” said Hermia. “If the Hittites are onto us, then everybody knows that there are gatemages in the world again, and they’ll be looking for a Great Gate.”

“That’s an argument against making one,” said Stone.

“It’s an argument for making one now ,” said Hermia, “and all of us going through it except Marion and Leslie, because they’ve already gone and somebody has to keep watch.”

“You’re coming right back, aren’t you?” Leslie asked Danny.

“Unless the Gate Thief gets me this time,” said Danny.

“Do you think there’s any chance of that?” asked Veevee.

“He’s weaker than he was,” said Danny, “but he knows a lot more than I do.” Danny walked to the rope, took hold of it, pulled the noose wide open.

“I hate that noose,” said Veevee. “It looks so grim.”

Danny made no answer, just pulled the noose down over his head and shoulders, then tightened it under his armpits. Now he could put his weight on the rope while keeping his hands free.

His feet were still on the floor of the barn. He turned around and around until the rope was so twisted that it lifted him off the floor. Only the tips of his toes touched.

“Want us to wind you tighter?” asked Hermia.

“I’m pretty tightly wound already,” said Danny.

“Very funny,” said Veevee.

“I’m still not sure whether I should go through it,” said Stone.

“Do it,” said Veevee, “and keep me company.”

“It will give you the power to make plants grow and cover everything,” said Marion.

“That’s kudzu,” said Stone. “It doesn’t need any help from me.”

Veevee took hold of his hand. “‘Come and go with me to that land where I’m bound,’” she sang.

“Is that a real song?” asked Stone.

“A very old one,” said Veevee. She sang again: “‘I’m gonna walk the streets of glory on that great day in the mornin’.’”

“I need to concentrate,” said Danny. “And I need the two of you to be watching, so you know when to go through the gate.”

Veevee smiled. “‘They’ll be singin’ in that land, voices ringin’ in that land. There’ll be freedom in that land where I’m bound.’”

“Nobody’s ever heard of an obedient gatemage,” said Stone.

“Serves you right, Danny,” said Leslie.

Danny silently raised his feet, leaned back, closed his eyes. He began to spin. Twenty gates at once this time.

Only this time he wasn’t alone-there were all the other mages’ gates inside him, and many of them, most of them, were clamoring, demanding that he use them to make the gate.

One by one he drew them in, until now he was spinning a score of other mages’ gates along with his own. He couldn’t tell if they were making the Great Gate stronger, by adding more threads to the connection, or weaker, by adding new textures that didn’t fit well with his own. Danny knew nothing about what he was doing. Yet it seemed fair to him to include the outselves of these long-dead mages, which had been stolen from them because of their attempts to make Great Gates.

You lost your magery by doing this. Did I capture you to keep you imprisoned, or to set you free and let your power live again in the world?

Free free free, answered the gates inside him.

Me me me, demanded so many gates that he had not yet used.

Enough, thought Danny. Twenty of mine and twenty of you.

He was spinning rapidly now. Not as fast as he had been spinning in the gym, but it was enough. This time he could feel the power in it, this time he understood that what mattered was not the speed of the spinning, but the intertwining of the gates. It truly felt like a rope-four great strands, each consisting of ten gates. Because he had made a Great Gate before, and learned so much in the making of it, he could understand it better this time.

Two of the strands were made entirely of Danny’s gates, and the other two were made of the other mages’ gates. He wove all of his into the return gate, whose tail would be here in the barn to bring them home, and all of theirs into the gate of sending, whose mouth would be here. They spun themselves together like forty slender tornadoes, all of them spinning on their own, weaving their own patterns.

And then he cast them upward and outward, with all the strength of his inself, and felt rather than heard the song of rejoicing as the strangers’ gates leapt out into space, into time, carrying his own gates with them.

They connected in another world. The Great Gate was made.

“Now,” said Veevee.

“Untie me,” said Danny, still spinning.

Strong hands stopped his spin; other hands loosened the noose and pulled it over his arms. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. He didn’t need them. It was with another sense that he saw the Great Gate. It was very different this time, as if the earlier gate had been woven of one color of thread, while this one was of many bright colors that combined and recombined. Gate of many colors, thought Danny. What does it mean to have a gate of many colors?

He felt Veevee and Hermia take him by the hands. The mouth of the gate was wide. Danny stepped into it. Joined to him, they did not need to step; they were with him as the gate gathered him in and there they were, in bright sunlight on the other world.

Danny opened his eyes. The light was dazzling after the relative darkness of the barn. But he could see that they were surrounded by tall stones, rough-hewn, set on end into the grassy ground at the brow of a gently sloping hill.

“Stonehenge,” said Danny.

“A gatecatcher,” said Stone.

“Fool,” said another voice. A stranger’s voice. A man.

Danny turned to where the voice had come from. But it wasn’t the voice that told him who the man was. It was the inself. It was the few gates the man had inside him.

“Gate Thief,” said Danny. “Why are you here?”

“Fool,” said the Gate Thief. “To use those angry Wild Gates.”

“They wanted-”

“Centuries in prison have made them uncontrollable. Insane.” The Gate Thief spoke Westilian with a strange accent, but Danny understood him perfectly.

“They wanted to be part of the Great Gate,” said Danny. “Are you here to do battle with me again?”

“He wants to come through the gate,” said Veevee.

“He’s here to kill you,” said Hermia.

“You know nothing,” said the Gate Thief. “Someone has to teach you.”

“Lock the gate behind us, Hermia,” said Danny.

“Do we have to go so quickly?” asked Veevee. “This is Westil, and the sun is so bright I can hardly claim to have seen it.”

“I don’t want him to follow us,” said Danny.

“You’ll be back here soon enough,” said the Gate Thief. “Begging me to teach you how to undo this terrible thing you’ve done.”