Gatefather by Orson Scott Card

feel the same way.
    â€œWhat if I help you with the soap?” asked Wad. “Help you get ingredients. Take you to where you can make the soap.”
    â€œI don’t want to be a soapmaker, Wad. I want to teach soapmakers.”
    â€œCan’t teach them without making it yourself, Ced. Let me help you. But let’s do it in Drabway. They’re a trading city. If your soap catches on with them, merchants can take it far and wide.”
    â€œI don’t want to get rich from soap, I want to teach—”
    â€œTeach soapmaking. But nobody will want to learn your methods unless they first learn to want your soap .”
    â€œLawsy me,” Ced intoned, clearly imitating a woman’s voice. “You a capitalist, Wad.”
    â€œWhat dialect is that?”
    â€œThe old black woman who took me in when my mother died,” Ced answered. “And that wasn’t her real dialect. She was born and raised in Seattle, for pete’s sake. That was the voice she put on when she was being sarcastically black.”
    â€œDialects interest me more than soap,” said Wad. “But that’s natural for a gatemage. I’m just trying to think what soap has to do with wind.”
    â€œNothing at all. I’m human before I’m a mage, Wad. Unlike you and your kind, my life isn’t about power.”
    â€œTell that to the—”
    â€œThis training you sent me to, it worked, Wad. I’m not the self-indulgent stormbeast I became when I first passed through a Great Gate. I’m myself again. But who will you be, when you get over being a gatemage? I think that’s all you are. I think that without gates, there’d be nothing left.”
    Ced’s words stung, because they were so obviously true. But Wad couldn’t blame himself for it—there were only a few times when windmagery was useful or even possible. Whereas gates were a part of every moment of Wad’s life. Ced could do tricks with wind. Wad’s magery was as much a part of his life as walking. As breathing.
    But if he couldn’t. If Danny North had completely stripped him instead of leaving him his last eight gates … what then? Who would he be?
    The kitchen monkey in Prayard’s house? He had learned how to make a dough that passed Hull’s inspection. Would I bake bread for a living? Or learn how to make noodles or fine pastry or …
    â€œGot you thinking, didn’t I?” asked Ced.
    â€œYes,” said Wad. “I’m also a little hungry.”
    â€œSuppose I go with you to Drabway, and I’m making soap, and you come to me and ask me for something. What would it be?”
    â€œA little demonstration. Power of a kind they haven’t seen in fifteen centuries.”
    â€œYou don’t want me to kill somebody, I hope. Because I’m not really interested in doing that.”
    â€œI’ve seen you drive a twig through a sheet of metal. If they see something like that, and then imagine what the same twig might do driven through a shirt or a shield, they might become more interested in preparing to unify against the threat from Mittlegard.”
    â€œWhy do you assume it’s going to be a threat?” asked Ced.
    â€œBecause look what you did when you first came through the Great Gate.”
    â€œSo you’re not expecting an invasion. More like a plague of locusts.”
    â€œYou’re a decent guy, Ced. You didn’t want to be some force of destruction. But you know that the Families are full of mages who are dying to be like that. The more drowthers weeping, the more powerful they’ll feel.”
    â€œI only knew my mother, Stone, and Danny North. None of them were like that.”
    â€œBut Stone must have told you about the Families,” said Wad.
    â€œNot much. But you told me about Bexoi. And I saw you and Anonoei. You were both drunk on your own power—and you’re the good guys. I know the danger.