Many Gates

By T. E. Waters

A well-respected witch investigates the death of her former apprentice and lover, by now a famous warlock in his own right... And in the process, rediscovers her own humanity. A short novella/long short story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. E. Waters
• Release date: Aug 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476422626

T. E. Waters

A sneaky snaky writer of historical fantasy with the occasional slippery science fiction element. Like giant robots.

Book preview

Many Gates

T. E. Waters

Copyright © 2012 by T. E. Waters

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His ghost came to me on a full-moon night, the night of my fortieth birthday. I hadn’t seen him in about a decade, but he looked exactly as he did when he first arrived on my doorstep sixteen years ago: hands jammed in pockets, shirt untucked, hair tousled and flying everywhere.

I had only just heard the news on the radio that morning and couldn’t be sure if I were dreaming. My office had been bombarded with calls all day. Then I’d seen the paper. The photos. The speculation. Even then I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

Shan? I remember saying, as I pushed myself upright.

At my voice he turns from the daffodils on my windowsill and peers at me with those sleepy eyes of his — cornflower blue in life, colorless now save in memory.

Oh, it’s you.

Some of the old anger flares in me again, then peters out as swiftly as it came.

Shan, you’re dead.

I noticed.

Sweetheart, I say, then pause, struggling for words. Why are you here?

That’s what I’d like to know, babe.

They said you died in your sleep.

Huh. Didn’t expect that.

You were sick. You’d been sick, for years, only no one knew. Not until a few months ago. There wasn’t a thing the court physicians could do. I watch him as I speak. He simply stares back in response, challenge written in his gaze. Bitterness seizes me, and I add, unable to stop myself, But then, if even you, the greatest warlock of our generation, couldn’t find a cure for his own addiction, who could?

Hm. For just a brief moment, the smirk on his face wavers. Then there’s no reason I should have come back.

We just established that, honey.

No, we didn’t. All we established was that neither of us has a damn hell clue what’s going on here.

And now you do?

He shrugs. Nah. Just that it doesn’t matter. He glances again at my daffodils, as if they hold the answers to the universe itself. Well, won’t be troubling you any longer, then. See ya.

And just like that, he vanishes.

So here I am now, kneeling on my pallet, unable to sleep, replaying our exchange over and over again, wondering if I should have said something, done something differently. Already his visitation seems so distant, no more real or tangible than the memories I have kept stored in my heart all these years.

I’m not vain enough to believe he came back for me. Shan was never much of a sentimental man, and ghosts don’t work like that, anyway. Capricious, irrational things, they are. Sometimes they return, sometimes they don’t: that goes without saying.

Most of them don’t. And of those who do, only a few remember much anything of importance. Because of that, fewer still manage, afterwards, to leave again without help.

Like Shan.

But in one way they’re predictable, after a fashion. In just one way, all ghosts are similar, almost logical, in their comings and goings.

You see, they only come back when foul play’s involved.

* * *

The problem is, of course, that no one really knows for sure what foul play encompasses. Least of all me.

Sure, the scholars have their theories, as do the Gatekeepers and magisters and bakers and courtesans and everyone else besides. There is much argument over whether these entities are truly the souls of the living detached from the Cycle and returned to the mortal plane, or merely impressions, imprints, shadows of what once was.

Scholars in particular have argued for years over whether or not suicide constitutes foul play. Surprisingly, there’s been no convincing evidence either way. There is no confirmed record of suicides having ever returned, though most now agree that to take one’s own life is no different from taking another’s. Nor has there been evidence of those who passed on through disease or old age, or even sheer accident, no matter how violent — not even those occasional victims of manmade plague. Illogical? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is merely that the laws of nature follow no logic comprehensible by mere mortals. So it goes.

But I have seen the ghosts of young soldiers and seasoned warriors from ages past wandering the mountains and the fields, dazed and confused, swords and spears still clutched within colorless hands, drifting along as if borne by some invisible tide. I have seen the most vicious of crime bosses mingling among crowds of innocent children with distended bellies and fleabitten skin and gaggles of wealthy matrons with jewels dripping from their hair,