“You know the tale, then?” asked Danny. “Is this the war that you’re still fighting?”

“He thought he had won, just as I thought I had won. But we never win. He can’t be killed, and he outwaits any wall we raise against him. Eventually it wears down. He keeps returning.”

“Was he dropped into the sun?” asked Danny. “Did he somehow live through that?”

“His body died, of course,” said Loki. “But his inself can’t be killed, any more than yours or mine can die.”

“But we do die,” said Danny.

“Our bodies die,” said Loki. “But you know our outselves can outlive the body—those are the ancient gates that I kept captive for so long. They’re still alive in that Wild Gate.”

“But without an inself,” said Danny.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Loki. “They only live because the inself also lives. Wherever it is, the outself draws its life from there. The Wild Gate is filled with the rage of those inselves, so angry that I took their gates from them.”

“So the inself of Bel did not die with the body.”

“It took him a thousand years to return to Mittlegard, and his rage was terrible.”

“What did he do?” asked Danny.

“Not as much as he intended,” said Loki. “He conquered everywhere, but I closed all the gates against him. He couldn’t possess any of our mages and follow them to Westil because there were no gates. And so our mages were able to defeat him.”

“How would you know?” asked Danny. “After the gates were gone, you were gone as well.”

“If he had not been prevented, you would not be alive to talk to me. The language of Westil would have died in this world. There would have been no Gatefather from any Family to create a Great Gate. I knew, because you existed, that for fourteen centuries I had kept him trapped in Mittlegard.”

“And you fear that now he will break loose and come to Westil through the gates I make?”

“I know he will,” said Loki. “And since I can’t prevent him, and you don’t know how, then I beg you to trust me. Let me teach you how to do the things that in all of history before me, no one learned to do. You alone can learn them.”

“The eating of gates,” said Danny.

“The poem you were reciting to me,” said Loki. “That Loki ate gates, as did the Persian Gatefather whom Belgod had captured and turned to his purposes.”

“What is it that you do, then, that you would teach me?” asked Danny.

“Don’t believe him,” said Marion. “He’s promising you power. It’s like the temptations of Christ.”

“It’s exactly like the temptations of Christ,” said Loki. “Only not the way you think.”

“You’ve heard about the Christian god?” asked Leslie, incredulous.