Gatefather (13 page)

It meant that Set would spend way too much time searching through anatomically complete but soulless pictures of women behaving in ways that Danny had never found particularly alluring; but it also meant that Danny could at least notice the subject lines of emails as Set used his eyes to glance through them.

That was how Danny came to realize that someone who knew his situation was trying to pass messages to him. After a couple of days, he realized that the pertinent emails all seemed to come from three senders, none of whom he recognized: [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

All three of these referenced classical women who went to the land of the dead and returned. Well, Isis didn't go to the land of the dead—rather she gathered up the fragments of Osiris's murdered body—murdered by Set—and put them all together. Lacking only one piece, his penis, she made one out of gold, attached it to his corpse, and then brought Osiris back to life by the use of a spell she had learned from their father, the earth god Geb. He lived only long enough to impregnate her with Horus, though he continued to be worshipped as the god of the dead, among many other things.

The other two women, though, were definitely taken down to the land of the dead. Eurydice stepped on a snake and died from its bite, and her husband, Orpheus, went to Hades to retrieve her. He sang so sweetly that Hades' heart was softened and he allowed Orpheus to take her home. Some versions of the story included a don't-look-back warning, which mythic people always ignored, and so Eurydice was snatched back to Hades until Orpheus himself died.

Persephone, though, was particularly interesting because
she
was rescued from Hades by Hermes—the traditional name for gatemages in the Greek Family. Of course, Persephone wasn't really one of the original Westilian names, because her cult was practiced around the Aegean long before any of the Indo-European tribes arrived. Hades' kidnapping of her was sometimes viewed as a symbol of the conquest of the female-deity-worshipping Aegean by the male-deity-worshipping Pelasgians or Phrygians or Danae or Hellenes or whatever name the first Indo-European invaders used.

But because the Earth wept and suffered with Persephone in the underworld, Zeus decreed that she must come back to the surface. Hades, having tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, was able to make her come back to the land of the dead for six months of the year. All very just-so, but it mattered that Hermes was the messenger that Zeus sent to Hades to bring her back to the surface.

Though the three addresses were different, the emails all repeated the same kind of subject line. First it was, “Take me home and find out what I know.” Then, “You can be a god if you follow me into the shadows.” And finally, “I'm old enough to decide. Don't make me go home alone.”

All three subject lines sounded like sexual come-ons designed to evade spam filters. And when Set clicked on two of the messages, probably searching for porn, the URLs in the emails did lead to sites specializing in underage-looking women posing explicitly. But Danny knew that the contents of the emails didn't matter, because whoever sent them knew that Danny couldn't choose to open any email message. All that mattered was the sender's email address and the subject line.

All three dealt with people who were brought back from death. All three subject lines could be taken as advice or requests to Danny. I'm going to die, they seemed to say. It's your job to follow me to the land of the dead—Hades, Dis, or Duat—and “find out” whatever it was that Duat had to teach him. And one of them asserted that she was “old enough to decide,” which meant he shouldn't feel bad about her dying, but should instead use the opportunity to learn whatever he could.

Danny didn't allow himself even to attempt to take action, but his anxiety grew with every letter. Since all the addresses were female, he assumed that they came from a woman—from the same woman. “I'm old enough” implied that it wasn't Veevee or Leslie. It was either one of his high school friends from Parry McCluer High, or it was Hermia from the Greek Family.

Hermia seemed unlikely, if only because she was the one who betrayed him by moving the Wild Gate and letting all the Greeks go through, turning loose the power of augmented mages—gods—in Mittlegard again.

And of the girls at Parry McCluer, the only ones educated enough to think of the names of these three mythical women were Pat and Laurette.

Danny might be wrong, he knew, but he believed Laurette was way too selfish to put her own life at risk, even in a noble cause. So the letters came from Pat. Pat was planning some insane move to try to break him free from the power of Set. Clearly her plan involved going to the land of the dead—which meant, from what Danny had been able to learn, Duat, the third planet, the one from which all the kas and bas of humankind derived.

Don't do it, Pat, he thought. And then stopped himself from thinking it, because whatever he thought
too
clearly, Set could understand, at least partly, and he didn't want to alert his enemy to how important Pat was to him.

Still, he had to admit it was clever of her to figure out a way to deliver a message to him. This way, if he should run across her dead or dying body, he would know that her plan was for him to somehow follow her into death. And then, with luck, bring her back with him.

The problem with this clever plan was that he had no idea how to do it. He hadn't seen that much death in his life. At least not deaths of humans. So he had no idea of whether he could even
find
Pat's dying ka and somehow attach to it in order to hitch a ride into hell. Or heaven. Whatever.

And Persephone only made it back for half-years. Eurydice was cheated at the last moment because Orpheus looked back. Osiris's resurrection was only temporary. The track record for returning from death was pretty poor even in the stories.

Yet the emails hinted at ideas that fit within conversations that Pat and Danny had before Set took him over. He himself must have given her this really, really bad idea.

So if she died and he couldn't find her departing inself, let alone follow her, he'd bear the added guilt of knowing that she had died trying to save him, and that words of his had, unintentionally, led her to her death.

We all die in the end, he thought. All we can influence is the timetable. Not the outcome. Even if everything works according to the plan Pat seems to be proposing, and I bring her back, she'll still die eventually. Or we'll both stay dead. Which might not be all that bad, compared to living until Set gets tired of me. Everybody dies.

“Well, isn't that the truth,” said Set aloud, using Danny's mouth.

Danny pretended not to know what Set was talking about—he tried to shrug. Set blocked him, but then did an elaborate super shrug. “Oh, I didn't mean anything,” said Set in a whiny caricature of Danny's voice. “But I heard you, North boy. ‘We all die in the end.'”

Again Danny shrugged; again Set overdid the gesture.

“But you're wrong, Danny North, philosopher.
I
won't die. Bummer, huh?
You
can die. You
will
die. But your final comfort as you lie there dying can be this: The Mighty One who taught me how to live will continue to live on after me, in another body, and another after that, forever and ever. Your greatest happiness will come from knowing that you were once my sock puppet. Do you like that one? Sock puppet! Except that I didn't come in through your butthole.”

Crude as always. Set was as disgusting as a seventh-grader. Danny was surprised he didn't spend all day drinking soda pop in order to produce ever longer, louder flatulence.

The message emails stopped coming, but Danny didn't stop looking. He'd bring up the memory of checking emails, then Set would check the next batch of emails and Danny would scan them quickly to see if any of them looked like a message. None of them did. Then one night, when it was almost dark, someone knocked on the door.

Set used Danny's body to spring up and open the door.

It was Pat. She looked him steadily in the eye. “Danny,” she said. “I can't just leave you alone in there.”

“He's not alone,” said Danny's voice.

Pat's eyes turned cold. “I'm not talking to you.”

“Good thing,” said Set. “Because I'm not talking to
you
, either.”

Danny's right hand flashed out and gripped Pat's shoulder. She winced and cringed at the pain and pressure. Then Danny's left hand leapt forward and slashed across her throat. Only then did Danny realize that he—that Set—was holding his knife. Blood geysered from Pat's throat and splashed into Danny's eyes.

For a moment, startled at being blinded, Set's attention was distracted. Danny could have made one of the captive gates right then and passed it over her. He could have healed her and then given the gate back to itself.

But that wasn't what Pat had come for. The plan she proposed was for Danny to follow her to Duat. Or Hades. Or Hell. And for that to work, he had to let her die, even though healing her was within his power.

Instead, Danny watched for her ka and then he realized—I don't have to find her ka, I need to find her outself, her ba, because I
know
what those feel like. They feel like gates. Pat is a windmage now, not a gatemage—but she has a ba and as she is dying, it's going to flow back to her and I can see it, I can find it, there it is. Her ba, returning, guiding me to the ka.

It was like when Danny swallowed the Gate Thief's gates, only instead of breaking the connection between Pat's ba and ka, he left the connection open, and when the ba found the ka and reunited with it, Danny held them both within his grasp. Whatever it was in him that did the grasping.

He waited for Set to recognize what he was doing and stop him, but either Set didn't sense it or Set couldn't stop it. Or perhaps Set wanted it to happen.

Danny hadn't
taken
Pat's ba and ka, but he had a grip on it, he knew where it was. He felt it withdrawing from her body, like a million-armed squid pulling its arms out of sucking mud.

And the moment that the last link between Pat's ka and her body was severed, Danny passed one of the captive gates over her body. Almost every cell in her body was still alive, even if the ka was missing. Her body healed.

Danny gave the gate back to itself and it disappeared.

“What are you doing?” demanded Set, using Danny's lips. “You're too late, you know that doesn't work.”

For a moment Danny thought her ka would leap back into her body, and perhaps it might have, except that he could feel her resist the impulse and let go. In that moment she chose to go ahead and die, even though he had given her the choice.

Her ka hovered nearby. Am I holding you back? thought Danny. Is my light grip on you enough to keep you here instead of letting you return to Duat?

Yet if I let you go, how can I follow you?

No, my grip on her won't hold her back—it's my grip on my own body that keeps me here. It's not enough for me to have a grasp on her. I have to let myself float free.

As soon as his attention turned inward, he realized that the strongest anchor holding him to his body was not his own ka—it was the captive gates he still held within his hoard.

So he made all those gates and gave each one back to itself, all of them in a few moments, all gone. Set screamed in rage until it hurt Danny's throat and left him nearly voiceless.

But Danny hardly felt it, for he was unburdened now. He had not understood what a heavy weight those prisoners had been to him.

He could feel Pat tugging on him. She was trying to move away, trying to go to wherever dead souls go. To the planet Duat. But Danny's grip still held her back.

Yet now her pull on him began to draw him away from his own body. He could feel his own ka trying to suck its tendrils out of his flesh.

“No!” Set shouted hoarsely.

But he had no power to stop Danny from doing what he was doing now. It was Danny's body that Set had overpowered, not Danny's ka, and he could not stop Danny from discarding the skin and bones.

If I die completely, thought Danny, can Set continue to use my body? He can't make gates because all the gates are gone. Will he leave? Whose body would he take? What poor bastard will be his next victim?

Plenty of time to answer that when Danny returned. If he returned.

Besides, whoever Set possessed next would not be a gatemage. So if Danny's death turned out to be permanent, the worlds were in far less danger than when Set owned a gatemage's body.

As more and more connections with his body pulled free, Danny could feel that the remaining ones became more attenuated. Thinner. Stretchier. Pat's tugging drew him farther away, and faster, and faster, so that when he had only three connections left, his grasp on her stopped being any kind of barrier and he was with her, traveling on.

He tried to talk to her but he had no mouth, no more power to make speech than when he was in a body controlled by Set. Instead of feeling liberated at losing most of the connection with his body, he felt imprisoned; it was the body that had given him so much strength and power. It was the body that ran, that ate, that ached, that slept, that healed. The body, with all its demands, had given him tremendous powers and now he didn't know how to function without them. When possessed by Set, at least he had still
felt
things.

Only when his grasp on Pat tightened and her movement slowed did he receive a communication from her. Not words—there were no words between two kas, just as Danny had not been able to use actual language to communicate with Loki's gates when Danny held them. But he understood the sense of what she was trying to communicate: It worked. It's working. Let's keep going.

Danny did not know what their movement consisted of, or how it was done, or how he even knew it was happening. He had no eyes to see. But he knew that they had left the world of six billion human kas and were in the vast space between worlds, between stars.