“He’ll know who they are because they came through the gate, and they’ll know him because the gate has led them straight to him.”

“What if they come back through the gate?” asked Anonoei.

“The gate is gone. I took it back. I husband my gates carefully these days,” said Wad. “A few are all I have. You see, the Gate Thief got the rest.”

She looked at him sharply. “You said that you—”

“I was the Gate Thief for a thousand years or so,” said Wad. “I burgled one hearthoard too many. I am punished now, and the punishment is just.”

Wad turned to Eluik, who was not looking at him. “Whatever you are or might become,” said Wad, “passing through a Great Gate will strengthen you.” But the older boy gave no sign of hearing.

“He’s still singing to himself,” said Enopp.

Wad and Anonoei waited for the younger boy to explain.

“Alone in the cave, with all the falling,” said Enopp. “We sang to ourselves.”

Wad wondered if Enopp had some connection with his brother that allowed him to know what he was doing during their many months of isolation.

“That’s what you did, is it?” asked Anonoei.

“Of course,” said Enopp. “I sang every song I knew. You should have taught me more of them, Mother.”

“I’m glad you’re not still singing them now,” she said.

“Oh, I am,” said Enopp. “I hear them all the time. I just don’t listen to them. Eluik does, though. He’s still trying to understand the words.”

“But they’re all in plain language,” said Anonoei.

“Not the words of the songs,” said Enopp impatiently. “The words beneath the songs.”

“What words are those?” asked Wad.

“I didn’t understand them either, not at first, but I was little. There were many words I didn’t understand, when I was little.”

The words beneath the songs. Wad thought he might have some idea what words those were, and who spoke them. The gates that held the prisoner, that surrounded them—they were connected to Wad, to his hearthoard. To the place where the thousand gates of other mages were imprisoned. They had shouted all the time, Wad hardly heard them. But it was possible that these voices carried with the gates. That an isolated child, with nothing else to occupy him, might have heard something. Especially if there were gates in his own hearthoard, gates that he was yet too young to use. But the captive gates cried out to the captive boy, and if he was a gatemage himself, he would have heard them in the same way that Wad, at the height of his powers a millennium ago, could sense the location and the owner of every gate in two worlds.

Wad took the boy by his hand. “Would you like to come with me and your mother now?”

“And my brother,” said Enopp.

“Him too,” said Wad.