It was Set, the Dragon, making his first assault upon the greatest Gatefather in the history of the world. And it was working, because the boy was an adolescent who was easy to arouse to passion, and he was deeply weary, and he was coming out of a sound sleep, and he knew the girl and did not fear her. All of it worked together so that even though Wad knew the boy felt the deep dread, the warning of Wad’s gates inside him, he went ahead.

He not only coupled with the girl, he consented when her voice asked him for permission to enter him.

Fool. Fool.

Not Danny—in his confusion, he was only as foolish as any boy would be.

The fool was Wad. When Danny’s exploration of Wad’s memories had brought everything back to Wad with such clarity, it had not been half so clear to Danny North. Wad should have dropped everything then, should have used the Great Gate again to go to Danny North and explain everything, not in the vague way Danny would have learned it, but with the clarity of Wad’s bright memory, and of all that he knew beyond the information that came from Kawab during that desert conversation.

I should have prepared him for exactly this danger. But in my arrogance and solitude, I thought it was enough that I knew. Why would I think that? I’m in Westil. Danny’s the one who was in danger, the one who needed to be alert to the way this sort of thing is done, and I betrayed him by my silence, my delay.

Now all is lost. Set has him, and can make as many Great Gates as he wants, a thousand of them. He can flood Westil, the world of Mitherholm, with his Sutahites, and find a people totally unready to resist them. All the powers of the Mithermages will be in their hands, compounded by as many passages between the worlds as they might need or want.

Everything I tried to prevent has now taken place. So what if I delayed this day by fourteen centuries? All that happened in the meantime was that drowthers had created terrible weapons that now would be completely in the hands of the mages who had the power to take them and wield them, or induce the drowther armies to use them. How long before those terrible machines made their way to Mitherholm as well? How long before they were used, and Mitherholm destroyed, along with Mittlegard? Then Set would have his great triumph over Duat, having ruined both the other worlds.

In that moment of despair, Wad was shocked to feel himself awash with a sense of power and connection.

He had never felt this thing before, because he had never given his gates away before. It took a moment to realize that this was how it felt to have them given back.