But a public gate is public in both directions, unless Wad locked it, which he hadn’t. Ced must have noticed where Anonoei stepped through from this meadow. And when Wad fell into the trance of memory …

What had Danny North learned?

Would it be good or bad if he understood?

It was certainly good that Wad now understood completely what once he had guessed at. For now he remembered how he had gone at once to the beastmage he had failed to save. Only she fell to her knees before him this time, instead of mocking. “Thank you, Loki!” she cried out as soon as he appeared. “You saved me.”

“I did not save you,” Wad had said.

“But he’s gone,” she said.

Gone, but of his own free will. Not cast out by my power. He simply didn’t want me to find him.

That was a good sign. That meant that the Belmage—Set, to use Kawab’s name for him—still feared Wad enough to want to avoid him. Set had given the beastmage back to herself so that Wad would not know where to find him.

It was in that moment that Wad began to eat the gates. It took him a little while to figure out how to do it, but hadn’t Kawab told him it was possible?

And it worked. Wad ate all the gates. All the Great Gates but one. Then he passed through it, ate it behind him, then ate all the gates on Westil.

But it was not enough. The other gatemages saw what was happening, felt their own gates consumed, and immediately began to create new gates where the old ones had been.

It was not enough to eat the made gates. He had to reach into the other mages and eat the gates they had not yet made.

It took him days to learn how to do it, and during that time he could hardly sleep, because he knew that the other gatemages were searching for him. They could find him because he was holding their gates captive. He had to block them by eating every gate as soon as it was made.

That was when he trained his outself, his ba, to watch for any gate at all and cry out to him with strength enough to waken him from his exhausted sleep. Gate gate gate, they cried, and he awoke and ate whatever gates the mages searching for him had created.

Until at last he was able to reach inside them, find their gatehoard—their ba—and gather it all in. The more they resisted, the easier it was to snap off the connection. All the gates they would ever make, and he took them and held them, ruling over them, controlling them.

And then there were no gates left in the world, and no gatemages left to make new ones.