No, it was Wad who was feckless. Danny North had accomplished everything he set out to do. His mistakes had been mistakes of ignorance. Even Wad had not known what would happen to a Great Gate made of the captive outselves of other Gatefathers, for the very good reason that few mages had ever had captive gates to work with.

It was Wad who had no sense of responsibility.

No. He could not lie to himself, even in self-loathing. He had far too great a sense of responsibility. When he adopted someone, he took absolute responsibility for them—even when they were his captives, like Anonoei and her sons during their many months in prison; even when they were using him without conscience, like Bexoi and, for all he knew, Anonoei.

Wad especially took responsibility for his failures. Even when he had no idea what the right thing to do might have been, he blamed himself for not having done it.

As he watched Anonoei manipulate everyone whose life touched Bexoi’s, Wad understood quite clearly that Anonoei’s purpose was dark and destructive, and she showed him over and over again why manmagery had always been feared and banned, why manmages were destroyed whenever they were caught at their work. When her plotting came to terrible fruition, just as with Bexoi’s, Wad would bear the terrible guilt of having helped her accomplish it. And yet he had no will of his own to give him the strength to say, Enough, we will do no more.

Or was it that his will was every bit as dark and evil as Bexoi’s, as Anonoei’s, as anyone’s, but by letting them make the decisions, he left himself an excuse? Yes, I share responsibility, but it was not my plot to do this terrible thing.

These were the thoughts that he brooded over, whenever he was not actively doing something else, and sometimes even when he was. Watching Ced raise a tiny dust devil and whip it into such power that it became a blade that could cut through stone, Wad could not stop his mind from wandering back to his own troubles, his own mistakes.

Where is the teacher who can help me know when to use my power, and whom to trust, and whose plans are worth fulfilling?

I don’t even know if my own former plans are the ones I should support, or if I made a terrible mistake fifteen centuries ago.

At that moment, on another world, Danny North took the gates that Wad had given to him—and why not, since he already had them?—and used them to bring back a memory.