“Why would you meddle? We’re gatemages. In the old days, each side allowed the other to gate people as they would, and engines of war as well.”

“Within limits,” said Loki.

“None that I heard of,” said Hermia.

“Apparently your knowledge also has limits. I was there.”

“Let them have their demonstration,” said Hermia. “Nobody’s impressed with this stuff on Mittlegard anymore. They’ve all seen too many movies with special effects to think real explosions matter—unless they get caught by the shock wave or eat a little shrapnel.”

“I suppose I should let the demonstration happen, so I’ll know what a shock wave and shrapnel are.”

“We aren’t close enough for you to experience those, and that’s a good thing.”

“But that’s no use,” said Loki. “I think we need to see the effect of these devices on a human body.”

“Not a good idea,” said Hermia. “I’m not sure you can make a gate fast enough to repair your body from the effects of an explosion.”

“Thanks for the suggestion,” said Loki. And he was gone.

Hermia turned and saw him standing in midair, about twenty yards out from the face of the butte. She could see that he was continuously falling through a gate that raised him about a millimeter so he would fall through again and again. Since gates would not be affected by the explosion, gravity would pull him through the gate and heal him, even if he was torn to bits.

Unless fragments of him were blown every which way, so they’d miss the gate entirely. She might have warned him about that—part of the shock-wave concept—but he was such a know-it-all he deserved whatever happened.

The chopper was still about two hundred meters out when it loosed a missile. The pilot might have seen Loki in the air near the target zone, but probably not, or if he saw him, he wouldn’t have known what he was seeing.

It turned out Loki was far enough away that while his body shuddered with the shock wave, it didn’t fly into fragments, and if for a moment it lost coherency, it was instantly reassembled in proper order by its passage through the gate. And now she saw that Loki had a very large gate on the far side of himself from the explosion. If he had been torn to pieces, the pieces would have been caught by a gate. Whether it would still have the power to heal such a torn-up corpse would have been interesting to learn, but … not today.

“Why would you send your clant so close to the target?” asked Queen Genoesswess.