Danny thought of all the teaching of the Mithermages: To gain power from trees, you must love the trees: Pay them attention, serve their needs, protect them from their enemies. As you show your love for them, they give you whatever power they can share with you, because they trust you to act in their interest. Then the eagle lets you ride inside him, and follows your wishes as if they were commands, because his life means more obeying you than it ever did in his solitary freedom. But if you betray that trust, then you are worse off than those who have no influence with plants or eagles, rock or rain.

All this memory flowed into Danny’s mind, and This One assented to the memory. This One seemed to say, I’m glad they have kept that much understanding: that power comes from willing obedience, and willing obedience flows from trust and love.

But they love only the thing they serve as mages, Danny answered. They love nothing else, and harm many against their will.

All of them? asked This One.

And Danny suddenly understood that by his testimony he was causing This One to judge all the Mithermages. And so he immediately remembered those he knew who never used their power to harm others. Marion and Leslie. Veevee. Stone. And for all Danny knew, countless others among the Families and the Orphans. Even inside the North Family, there were Uncle Mook and Aunt Lummy.

And Thor and Mother and Father meant well—Danny could see that now, and understood that when his parents came to see him that day at Parry McCluer, they weren’t seeking some advantage as he had feared, but rather they truly loved him, attended to him, wanted to serve his happiness, wanted his love and trust in return.

This One answered him: I see that many do harm, and mean to. And many do harm without meaning to. And many do good without meaning to. And many do good by deliberate action, and at great cost to themselves, and act with courage and strength to serve the happiness of others. Yet you do not love them.

I fear them, replied Danny honestly.

That is wise yet childish of you, answered This One. You fear that you cannot trust their love, so you do not trust their love, and thus you can never know if you can trust their love. Your fear protects you from harm, yet it exposes you to the pain and terror of loneliness, so it harms you through another door. Why do you think that you, of all the ones who come home to Duat, should return to Mittlegard?

Not me, not for my own sake. Not Pat either, not for her own sake and not for mine. I’m here to learn how to free myself from Set or to overpower him so he cannot harm another or acquire the power to rule the worlds.