Orson Card - The Gate Thief

“And yet the Gate Thief does not come to retrieve you. Do you think he sent you to me as a love offering? ‘Here is your enemy, Bexoi. I give her to you, so that your child can be born into a world at peace.’ Or did you think he really loved you? He loves no one.”

If Bexoi was gloating, she gave no sign.

“But the longer I delay, the more chances Wad will have to change his mind and come to your rescue. So I’ll kill you now, I think, and use the heat of your body to ignite the wood of this building. Keel can see how powerless you are before the flames roast him. I’m betting he’s still alive when the rope breaks and drops him down onto the burning floor. I really wouldn’t want him to miss any of this. When servants choose the wrong master, it’s very important that they understand their mistake. But then, did Keel ever have a choice? Manmages like you don’t let them. And here I go, talking more. But it’s important to me that you understand just how thoroughly you have been lured, trapped, defeated.”

The gloating showed that there was some emotion in play here. Anonoei probed for it. Not an emotion of the body. Pride and ambition were emotions of the ka, so they followed different rules. But it still offered a road in, and now Anonoei had it.

She made a move, sending her outself to turn Bexoi’s vanity into complacency, and her complacency into unwariness.

Instead, Bexoi’s eyes widened. “Is nothing sacred?” she demanded. “Are there no bonds between women?”

Anonoei thrust with all her might. And now Bexoi grew afraid, alarmed. The emotion touched her body. I have her now. I will win.

At once she felt her body grow hot. A fever beyond any she had ever felt.

“The trick,” said Bexoi, gasping, “is to heat all the body except the head, so that you can remain conscious through the entire process of burning alive.” Bexoi was hurrying, heating her body quickly, trying to distract Anonoei from her probe. And it was working, Anonoei knew, because it grew harder to concentrate on her outself. Her inself was screaming: I’m going to die!

In that moment of desperation she thought of Set, the manmage who never dies, because his ka is free of any flesh. But that’s because he has never fully bonded with a body. I have. This body, this burning body.

Flames erupted from her skin. But she could still see. Her muscles still, for this moment, responded to her will. So she leapt forward, threw her arms around Bexoi, embraced her.

“Don’t you know that I can keep the fire from touching me?” said Bexoi scornfully. “Now die, whore.”

The sudden surge of heat destroyed Anonoei’s whole body in an instant.

But in that instant, Anonoei followed the road she had found into Bexoi’s mind, and then on into her body. I am not dead yet, she thought-but, lacking a mouth, could not say. I am here in you , Queen Bexoi. Not as a visitor, not as a beastmage partnering with his heartbeast. I am here as a ka that knows how to fully possess a body of flesh and bone.

Anonoei felt the cool skin of the new body, the Queen’s body. Suddenly she could see again-through Bexoi’s eyes, because they were now Anonoei’s eyes. She willed herself to move, and she moved.

Moved, and in the movement became the master of this body. She could still feel Bexoi inside her, struggling to control the body, failing, failing.

Anonoei’s dead body was still brilliantly hot, and the bones, not yet crumbled, still held it up. The arms were still wrapped around Bexoi. But Anonoei had no skill as a firemage and did not know how to control it. Nor did Bexoi have access to the body’s ability to command the fire.

So the heat of the fire suddenly passed the boundary between the charred corpse of Anonoei and became an agony of burning flesh in Bexoi’s body, whose pain both women felt.

Anonoei screamed and thrust the burning mass away, but too late. Her own-Bexoi’s own-clothing had been charred in the instant, and the skin of this unfamiliar new body was burning. Anonoei had no knowledge of how to put the fire out. Bexoi knew, but if Anonoei let her have enough control to block the flame, Bexoi’s strong ka would take her body back.

Either die now by being thrust out of this body by its evil owner, or die later from these agonizing burns. Nobody could burn like this and live. I will have died twice by fire, Bexoi only the once.

But then she thought: fall to the floor, smother the fire.

It worked to put the fire out. But it restored nothing. Her flesh was charred. Her bodily fluids were flowing out of the entire front of her ruined body. The pain was so agonizing that Anonoei knew she would faint.

But she could not faint. If she did, Bexoi could take her body back.

Then, to Anonoei’s surprise, she felt something else: Bexoi’s inself was retreating, fading, ceasing to reach into every corner of this half-burnt body. It had never occurred to Anonoei that Bexoi might surrender. It had to be a trick.

No. Not a trick. It was death. Bexoi’s body, the ape her ka had once controlled, was dying, and Bexoi knew it, not intellectually, but deep in the core of her being. It was time to shed the body and move on. Bexoi was no manmage. She did not know how to attach herself to a body and hold on. But Anonoei did.

I will be alone in here.

For a moment that felt like triumph. In the next moment she realized it was failure.

Only if Bexoi’s ka remained in this body was there any hope of having access to her firemagery-not to mention her role as Queen, the love of Prayard, and …

The baby.

The baby, thought Anonoei. The baby! she screamed inside her mind.

If Bexoi heard the thought, she did not respond. She continued receding, dying.

Stay! It was Anonoei’s will, her demand that Bexoi refuse to die.

Here, thought Anonoei, I give you a place to remain. Here are the hands and feet, here is the mouth, the eyes, the groin, the belly with a baby in it. See? I invite you back. No, I will not leave to make room for you. There is room for both. We can both control this flesh, this tortured and dying flesh.

Only half understanding what she was doing, Anonoei drew Bexoi’s ka more firmly and fully into the dying flesh. You will stay through all of it, thought Anonoei. Just as you were going to make me stay conscious until I burned to death-you will stay here in this body until it dies.

But Anonoei knew that was not what she meant at all. For she had not despaired. To her, this body was not dead, was not going to die. For the flake of ba that she had put in Wad was still there, still calling, still demanding that he come. And if he came soon enough, if he came now, he could still pass her through a gate and save this flesh, save even the baby.

That was when she felt the vibration in the floor. Someone standing there. No door had opened. No one had heard the talking or the shouting, or if they heard, they didn’t want to intrude. So only one man in all the world could be standing here, though Anononei had no power to raise her head, no voice with which to speak, no strength to move.

“You killed her and then you burned for it. Justice.” Wad’s voice was quiet. She could feel the grief and rage. “Everything I love you take from me.” So he did love her. It was not just any-bed-when-the-need-comes-on.

And then she realized: He is talking to this dying body on the floor as if it were Bexoi and only Bexoi. He has no intention of healing her. He is going to watch her die.

Save her! Anonoei shouted through the bit of her ba that dwelt in Wad’s mind. She did not try to control him; she did not dare use more than this small bit of her attention, lest the distraction give Bexoi a chance to either slip away entirely, and die, or to wrest control of her body back again.