Orson Card - The Gate Thief

“It means that Set can only possess one person at a time. And most of the Sutahites are so weak that they cannot possess even one person-they have to join together, two or five or ten or more, in order to get control. They drive their victim mad with a chaos of voices, and even when his ka has retreated deep into the mind, and the wanderers have control, they can hardly agree among themselves. No one of them is master. We think the man is mad, because his behavior is not guided by a single will.”

Wad-who-was had seen this, and now he thought he understood. “Set himself, this great Dragon, can rule over a person by himself, needing no allies.”

“He and the mightiest of the Sutahites. We call these devils by many names, but we don’t know if any of them is the true name of the Master Sutahite. We only know that only a fool calls upon one of the great ones, for they can take possession far more easily when they are called. The fool who summons one believes that he is the master over the Sutahite, but he is deceived; it is the Sutahite who rules.”

“So the pentagons they draw-”

“Decorations only,” said Kawab. “They have no power, these fools who call themselves wizards and necromancers. The power that you Mithermages have, those are real. But when a Master Sutahite has power over a man, then the Master calls many lesser Sutahites. They obey him then, and gain great power from their obedience to a Master who rules a human body. They can easily influence the minds of many other people, so they think that the one possessed by the Master is a great wizard with mighty powers. All illusion.”

“So they are not as powerful as we think they are,” said Wad-who-was.

“I said ‘when a Master Sutahite has power over a man.’ But when he has power over a Mithermage, then the mage will do his bidding, and his powers belong to the Sutahite who rules him.”

“Until a gatemage comes and drives out the possessor,” said Wad-who-was.

“Which works with every Sutahite, but not with Set himself, or so your story tells me. For if he has the power to resist you , there is no gatemage among all your kind who can drive him out.”

“But as long as he rules a mage, he has that mage’s power,” said Wad-who-was.

“And when he takes possession of you ,” said Kawab, “he will be master of all. Because only those who obey him will be permitted to use any Great Gates, and all others will therefore be weaker than he is. He will rule both worlds, passing back and forth between them. He will summon ten thousand, a hundred thousand Sutahites to Westil, and take possession of all the mages, there on that world where few have strength enough to resist them. For humans here on Mittlegard have developed strength in the ape-brain, to resist possession; those who have this strength are far more likely to have children than those who are easily possessed. On Mitherholm, there is no resistance. All the power of all the Mithermages will be in Set’s hands, through the Sutahites who will be unable to resist his will. Then they will return to Earth and conquer all. When that work is complete, they will challenge Duat. But even if that fails, they will still have this: possession of all the bodies that were reserved for the ka-and-ba who obeyed the law and fought against Set in the war in Duat. Is that not a victory? Is that not the triumph of the devil?”

Those words rang in the ears, in the mind of Wad-that-is. He would have leapt to his feet, finally understanding what he had forgotten during his centuries in the tree.

But Danny North had not seen with such clarity, because of course he had no personal memories of the interview with Kawab. And so he started it over, every word of it again and again. And Wad lay trapped on the meadow in Mitherkame while Danny sat dehydrating in the desert of Egypt, replaying the same memory over and over, struggling to understand it.

Then, at last, it ended. Hermia wakened Danny North in Egypt, and Wad’s eyes flew open and he cried out in relief to have his mind finally clear of the memory.

“Who held you?” demanded Anonoei.

“When did you come here?” asked Wad. “You weren’t here.”

“You lay here unmoving an entire night, and then a day. Ced came for me, through a gate you left for me to use, and we came back by another gate you left for me.”

Wad remembered now that Anonoei had been visiting one of her toadies who was working against Bexoi in the castle of Nassassa. He had sent her through a gate, and had already made the gate that would bring her back. He had made them overlap perfectly, so that it remained public for her to use for her return. That way he didn’t have to watch and bring her back herself. He was tired of watching her flirt with men and turn them into jelly.

But a public gate is public in both directions, unless Wad locked it, which he hadn’t. Ced must have noticed where Anonoei stepped through from this meadow. And when Wad fell into the trance of memory …

What had Danny North learned?

Would it be good or bad if he understood?

It was certainly good that Wad now understood completely what once he had guessed at. For now he remembered how he had gone at once to the beastmage he had failed to save. Only she fell to her knees before him this time, instead of mocking. “Thank you, Loki!” she cried out as soon as he appeared. “You saved me.”

“I did not save you,” Wad had said.

“But he’s gone,” she said.

Gone, but of his own free will. Not cast out by my power. He simply didn’t want me to find him.

That was a good sign. That meant that the Belmage-Set, to use Kawab’s name for him-still feared Wad enough to want to avoid him. Set had given the beastmage back to herself so that Wad would not know where to find him.

It was in that moment that Wad began to eat the gates. It took him a little while to figure out how to do it, but hadn’t Kawab told him it was possible?

And it worked. Wad ate all the gates. All the Great Gates but one. Then he passed through it, ate it behind him, then ate all the gates on Westil.

But it was not enough. The other gatemages saw what was happening, felt their own gates consumed, and immediately began to create new gates where the old ones had been.

It was not enough to eat the made gates. He had to reach into the other mages and eat the gates they had not yet made.

It took him days to learn how to do it, and during that time he could hardly sleep, because he knew that the other gatemages were searching for him. They could find him because he was holding their gates captive. He had to block them by eating every gate as soon as it was made.

That was when he trained his outself, his ba, to watch for any gate at all and cry out to him with strength enough to waken him from his exhausted sleep. Gate gate gate, they cried, and he awoke and ate whatever gates the mages searching for him had created.

Until at last he was able to reach inside them, find their gatehoard-their ba-and gather it all in. The more they resisted, the easier it was to snap off the connection. All the gates they would ever make, and he took them and held them, ruling over them, controlling them.

And then there were no gates left in the world, and no gatemages left to make new ones.

Only then did Wad go in search of the ancient treemage-now long dead, though this one who was training Ced was a disciple of a disciple of-who got a tree to let him inside its bark, to feed on its sap and keep both himself and the tree vibrant and alive forever.

Forever, that had been the plan.

But the tree expelled him. Or he unconsciously pulled himself out of the tree. Or both. And Wad had no idea why. The system had been working, and now it was broken.