“I don’t want him smarter,” said Anonoei. “I’m not going to use him to defeat Bexoi. Manmagery doesn’t let me add new powers to my clients—they are what they are. He will be my puppet, but no match for Bexoi.”

“Who is?” asked Wad.

“You,” said Anonoei. “But I don’t expect you to face her down, either. You’re still too much in love with her.”

Wad recoiled at that. “She murdered my son.”

“The son you made with her. Remember what I am, and believe me, Wad. However much you hate Bexoi, you still have love enough for her that it will make you hesitate at the last moment, and she’ll destroy you.”

“How will you bring her down, then? How will you defeat her? Do you think that you’re manmage enough to make her your servant?”

“Watch and see,” said Anonoei. “When it’s over, you’ll be the only one who knows what I have done. But you’ll agree that my victory was perfect and complete. I could find no better way to punish her.”

“And you won’t tell me now?”

“You would prevent me,” said Anonoei, “even though you think you wouldn’t. I’m not controlling you, but I do need to use your talents. Not knowing, you’ll continue to help me, even though you know that if you knew my plan, you wouldn’t.”

Wad smiled. “Or so you think.”

“You think that you would approve, and so you help me,” said Anonoei. “I don’t have to use manmagery on people who are sure they’re wiser than they are.”

But of course she did use manmagery on him. She used it on everybody. She used it all the time. But part of the power of manmagery was the ability to make its victims believe that they were freely doing what she manipulated them to do. That would be her vengeance on him, for those years of torment in captivity. For the damage that he did to her sweet son Eluik. But because he had also saved them, and because of all his help to her, she would never tell him of how she controlled him. So he would not suffer. She could enjoy her triumph over him, and enjoy the fact that he so ignorantly enjoyed it too.

Ka and Ba

17

KA AND BA

How do you learn anything with your brain switched off? Yet Danny quickly realized that this was exactly what he had to do here in the Egyptian desert. Loki’s gates didn’t actually know anything, or remember anything, except at one remove: They remembered where Loki had been when he learned powerful secrets about the Belmage, and they remembered what he had been doing.