Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  The emperor who, at that moment, wore a look which so nearly matched Andrin's own mood that she felt herself trying not to gape open mouthed.

  Zindel chan Calirath caught the grim set of his daughter's jaw, the stiffness of her shoulders, and knew, without a word spoken, that Andrin felt it, too. He halted in the doorway, halfway in and halfway out, and nearly had the door rapped into his heels. The doorkeeper had been opening and closing the Rose Room door every day at six p.m. sharp for the last twenty years, and not once in all that time had the Emperor stopped dead in the middle of the doorway.

  But Zindel couldn't help it. The warning that vibrated through him when his gaze locked with his eldest daughter's was as brutal as it was unexpected. He sucked in a harsh breath, totally oblivious to the doorkeeper's frantic, last-minute grab at the door handle. He never even realized how close the door had come to slamming into him as his entire body vibrated with the Glimpse.

  Something was going to smash her life to pieces. Soon.

  Dear gods, no, not Andrin, a voice whispered inside his head, and his eyes clenched shut for just an instant. Clenched shut on a bewildering dazzle of half-guessed images, so fleeting, so jumbled, they were impossible to capture. Explosions of flame. Weeping faces. A powerful locomotive thundering along a desert rail line, with the Royal Shurakhalian coat of arms displayed on either side of its cab. A great whale rising from the sea in an explosion of foam. Gunfire stabbing through darkness and rain. A city he'd never seen yet almost recognized, a ship flaming upon the sea, a magnificent ballroom, and his tall young daughter weeping like a broken child… .

  His nostrils flared under the dreadful cascade of almost-knowledge which had been the greatest gift and most bitter curse of his line for twice a thousand years and more. He was no Voice, yet he could taste the same splinters of vision ripping through Andrin, as if the proximity of their Talents had somehow sharpened the fragmented Glimpse for both of them, and he bit his lip as he felt her anguish.

  But then he fought his eyes open again and saw Andrin biting down on her own distress. He understood the tension singing just beneath her skin, the shadows in her eyes. They were echoes of his own fear, his own gnawing worry, and his eyes held hers as the cheerful greetings from his wife and younger daughters splashed unheard against him, drowned out by the terrible prescience. Andrin's eyes were dark with its heavy weight, all the more terrible because they could give it neither shape nor name, and when she smiled anyway, it broke his heart.

  She'd grown so tall, these last two years, too tall for mere courtly beauty. She was strong beneath the silks and velvets of an imperial princess. She wasn't a beautiful girl, his Andrin, not in the conventional sense. Her chin was too strong, her nose too proud, her face too triangular, for that, but strength lived in those unquiet eyes and the firm set of her mouth. Her long sweep of raven hair, shot through with the golden strands which were borne only by those of Talented Calirathian blood, lent her an almost otherworldly grace she was entirely unaware she possessed, and her eyes were as clear and gray as the Ternathian Sea.

  "Hello, Papa," she said, holding out one hand.

  He crossed the Rose Room swiftly and took her into a careful embrace, denying himself the need to crush her close, to protect her. He was careful, as well, to hug each of his younger daughters in turn?and his wife?in exactly the same manner, for exactly the same amount of time. He didn't want Varena to guess his Talent was riding him with cruel spurs. Not yet. Not until he'd Glimpsed more of whatever terrifying thing he might yet See.

  "Now, then." He smiled at Razial, who'd just turned fifteen, and Anbessa, whose eleventh birthday had been celebrated two months previously. "How did your lessons go today?"

  He let their youthful voices wash across him, finding comfort and even mild humor in little Anbessa's complaint that she saw no need to learn what Ternathia's imperial borders had been eight hundred years previously, since the Empire's current borders were far smaller. Then there was Razial. His middle daughter's bubbling enthusiasm over her latest art lesson was, Zindel knew, motivated more by the physical attractiveness of her art tutor than it was by any real love of watercolor painting. But he also knew the tutor's proclivities did not include nubile young grand princesses. And since Janaki was not only old enough to hold his own in affairs of the bedroom, but out of the Palace and several universes removed, Zindel had no real worry about the safety of his offspring under the roving eye of a handsome young art instructor. Razial's current infatuation was merely entertaining, in a gentle and soothing way that dispelled some of the gloom after a day like today. He gave Razial another six months, at most, before some other gloriously handsome devil caught her eye and the tension of her raging hormones. He'd worry about that devil when the day came.

  Meanwhile …

  Zindel sat beside his wife, drawing comfort from Varena's warmth at his side, while they waited for the servants to arrive with their supper. Varena's needlework?a new cover for their kneeling bench at Temple?was a work of art in its own right. Varena's designs were copied eagerly throughout the Empire, viewed as instantaneous must-haves for anyone on the Society list, or anyone with the aspiration to be on it, and not simply because of who she was.

  Her Imperial Majesty Varena smiled as her husband sat beside her, but her skilled hands never paused in their work. She drew no small pleasure from the work she created with nimble fingers, needle, and thread … and if her hands were busy making something beautiful, no one would see them twist into the knots of fear which came all too often for an imperial wife.

  She was Talented, of course; it was legally required for any Calirath bride. But hers wasn't a very strong Talent, just a middling dollop of precognition. It was nothing like the Glimpses her husband and her older children experienced, yet it was enough to set up tremors in her abdomen which threatened to upset the balanced poise of her busy fingers. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her own limited way, and she knew the signs to look for in her husband and her daughter, but she let them think they were succeeding at hiding their inner agitation, because it was kinder to give them that illusion.

  Neither of them wanted to add stress to her life, so she carefully hid her own disquiet, aware that whatever was wrong would come in its own good time. She saw no sense in rushing to meet trouble before it arrived, unless one had a clear enough Glimpse and sufficient time to alter what might be coming.

  Which happened all too seldom.

  "Well," Zindel said to Razial at last, "while I'm delighted to hear your art studies are coming so well, I'm not at all sure Master Malthayr is quite prepared to pose nude for you." He glanced down at Varena with a tender, droll humor which was heartbreaking against the background tension she felt quivering through him. "What do you think, love?" he asked her.

  "I think," she said calmly, setting her needlework aside as the doors opened quietly and supper began to arrive, "that your sense of humor requires a sound whacking, Your Imperial Majesty."

  "No!" He laid one hand on his heart, gazing at her soulfully. "How could you possibly say such a thing?" he demanded while Anbessa giggled and Razial looked martyred.

  "I believe it has something to do with having been married to you for over twenty years," she said with a smile.

  He chuckled and took her hand as she stood. But the darkness still lingered behind his eyes, and she squeezed his strong fingers tightly for just a moment. Awareness flickered through his expression at the silent admission that she was only too well aware of the frightening black cloud of tension wrapped around him and Andrin. Then she smiled again.

  "And now, it's time to eat," she said calmly.

  After the gut-wrenching cremation of the dead, Shaylar's captors stayed where they were for over an hour, camped mercifully upwind of the remains in the toppled timber. Despite the insight her Talent had given her into these people and their intentions, Shaylar felt an inescapable measure of grim satisfaction as she contemplated the heavy price they'd paid for slaughtering her friends.
They didn't have enough unhurt men to carry all of their wounded, she thought fiercely, and she also felt a slight, fragile stir of hope as she thought about what that might mean.

  Darcel probably thought she was dead, but he couldn't be positive, and as far as he could know, some of the others might have survived, even if she hadn't. Under the circumstances, Company-Captain Halifu would almost certainly have to be sending out a party to rescue any possible survivors, and if these people couldn't retreat because of their own injured men …

  The woman who'd been trying so hard to comfort her was moving among the wounded who lay sprawled in the trees. She paused at each man, touching him lightly and whispering something. She also consulted frequently with their commander, but she obviously wasn't a soldier. Shaylar was virtually certain of that. She'd already noticed the other woman's lack of a uniform, but Shaylar wondered if she might be a civilian healer assigned to this military unit. Certainly what she'd done for Shaylar's throbbing head and her current attentiveness to the wounded suggested that might be the case, which surprised Shaylar on two separate levels.

  Healers assigned to the Sharonian military were full-fledged members of that military, part of the Healers' Corps. They were also all men. Women didn't serve in the Sharonian military. Even in Ternathia, which was deplorably "progressive" by the standards of other Sharonian cultures, only a tiny handful had ever been accepted for military service, and then, inevitably, only in staff positions or as nurses well to the rear. Officers and even enlisted men could marry, of course, and their wives and children could travel with them to their assigned duty posts. But those wives and children remained in military-built and financed housing in the civilian towns which sprang up around the portal forts. They didn't accompany their men on missions, whether in the wilderness or to put down the occasional outbreak of banditry in more settled country, and not even Ternathian female nurses were ever assigned to the Healer Corps which served units in the field.

  Whoever this woman was, she finished tending the wounded and returned to Shaylar's side. She sat beside her, looked into Shaylar's eyes, and pointed to herself as she spoke slowly and clearly.

  "Gadrial," she said. It was an odd name, but a name was clearly what it was.

  "Jathmar?" she continued, pointing at Jathmar and confirming Shaylar's guess.

  "Yes." Shaylar nodded, wincing at the movement of her aching head. "Jathmar."

  Gadrial nodded back, then cocked her head, waiting expectantly, and Shaylar touched her own breastbone.

  "Shaylar," she said, and a lovely smile flickered like sunlight across Gadrial's face.

  "Shaylar," she repeated, then said something else. Shaylar tried desperately to make contact with Gadrial's mind, hoping that this woman might be some sort of telepath, but she could touch nothing. The place inside her own mind where such connections were made was a throbbing mask of blackness and pain. She was still Voiceless, and panic nibbled at the edge of her awareness. If the damage proved permanent …

  Don't borrow trouble.

  Her mother's voice echoed through her memory, and grief and the fear that she would never see her mother again were nearly Shaylar's undoing. She felt her mouth quiver, felt fresh tears brimming in her swollen eyes, but then Gadrial took her hand gently and pulled her back from that brink.

  "Shaylar," she said again, then something else. She pointed to Jathmar and the others, then to the south. Shaylar frowned, and Gadrial pantomimed walking with two fingers on the ground, then pointed again.

  Shaylar felt herself tensing internally once more. They were leaving, walking toward something in the south … which was the direction Darcel had sent them to locate the nearest portal to another universe.

  She looked at all of the other wounded, then back at Gadrial, cursing the whirling unsteadiness of her own senses and thoughts. She couldn't imagine how the remaining fit soldiers could possibly transport all of their wounded fellows, and her heart sank as she realized Gadrial might be referring only to her and Jathmar. If their own portal to this universe was as close at hand as Darcel had thought, they might want to get their prisoners safely away for future interrogation, and that thought was terrifying.

  But if they want prisoners to interrogate, they'll have to keep us alive until they can start asking questions, a little voice said somewhere deep inside her. And that means they'll have to get Jathmar proper healing as quickly as possible.

  Her jaw clenched as the exquisite anguish of her plight gripped her like pincers. Every step, every inch, toward the south would take them further and further from any possibility of rescue. But those same steps might very well take Jathmar towards healing and survival.

  Shaylar had known the risks when she signed up for this job, but she'd never dreamed how devastating it would be to face a moment like this, knowing her beloved needed medical care only their enemies could provide. Yet in the end, that was the only chance fate was likely to put into her trembling hands, and so she nodded, and felt as if she were somehow sealing their doom.

  And either way, it's not as if I have very much choice, she thought grimly.

  "I know you're frightened," Gadrial said gently to the other woman?Shaylar?and touched her arm. "But I swear Sir Jasak will do everything he can to save Jathmar for you."

  Shaylar's mouth trembled again briefly at the sound of her companion's name. She reached down, touching Jathmar's forehead with heartbreaking gentleness, and Gadrial's own heart twisted as she recognized the grief and despair in the gesture.

  Then she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and she and Shaylar both looked up as Jasak went to one knee beside them. Weariness showed in the commander of one hundred's face and the set of his shoulders. It was obvious from the way he moved that the wound along his ribs, especially, was causing considerable pain, but the shadows in his eyes as he looked down at Jathmar and Shaylar had nothing to do with his wounds.

  "How's it going?" he asked.

  "I've got their names," Gadrial said. "And I think I just got her to understand and agree to walk with us to the swamp portal."

  "Gods, I hope so." His voice was full of smoke and gravel. "She's suffered enough without us having to drag her every step of the way."

  "They're your prisoners."

  Gadrial tried to keep from speaking between clenched teeth, but it was hard. She wasn't at all happy in her own mind about taking Shaylar and Jathmar back as military prisoners. Surely they'd already done these people enough hurt! The thought of what Shaylar and Jathmar might face at the hands of government and military interrogators, on top of all they'd already suffered, was enough to stiffen her with rage.

  It must have showed, despite her effort to control her voice, because Jasak gave her a quick, very sharp look. Then he nodded.

  "Yes, they are," he said flatly. "And my responsibility."

  Ah, yes?responsibility, Gadrial thought. That most Andaran of all traits. Noblesse oblige. The duty to codes of honor instilled into Andaran children?girls, as well as boys?from the cradle itself. She wanted to ask if that responsibility would protect these battered people from the military hierarchy that would want to peel their minds like apples. She had no idea what kind of magic might be brought to bear on the mind of the prisoner of war, and, frankly, she didn't want to find out. But if the Union of Arcana and its military decided that extracting information from Shaylar and Jathmar was vital to the security of the Union, there wouldn't be a single damned thing Gadrial could do about it.

  So she did the only thing she could do. She introduced Sir Jasak Olderhan, son of the Duke of Garth Showma, to his prisoners.

  Jasak saw the worry and anger in Gadrial as clearly as he saw the terror and exhaustion in Shaylar. The slender girl repeated his given name with a bruised weariness he recognized as post-battle trauma. He hated seeing it in Shaylar's eyes as much as he hated seeing the suspicion in Gadrial's, but he couldn't expect the magister to understand that. She was Ransaran, raised in a culture where the formality of military duty, of k
nowing one's obligations to a stratified social order, wasn't an ingrained part of everyone's basic childhood training. She didn't understand what Jasak's responsibility entailed. Not yet. But she would, he promised himself, and hoped that the worry and anger would fade from Gadrial's eyes as quickly as he hoped the terror and shock would fade from Shaylar's.

  Yet neither of those things was going to happen quickly enough, and Gadrial's worry?and Shaylar's exhaustion?were probably both going to get worse before they got better. And that, too, would result from his responsibilities. His responsibility to push everyone, including this poor, brutalized young woman, ruthlessly, even brutally, in a relentless effort to get Jathmar the healing he so desperately needed.

  He doubted either of the women would understand why that was so important to him. Important to Jasak Olderhan, not to Commander of One Hundred Olderhan. And there was no way in this universe, or any other, that he could hope to explain it to them in the time he had.

  So he did what he could do to try to reassure both of them. He lifted Shaylar's hand and stroked it the way he would have stroked a frightened kitten.

  "Don't be afraid," he said gently. "No one will hurt you again. No one. I know you don't understand, yet, but I swear that on my honor, Shaylar. And I'll do everything I can to help you understand it."

  Her hand was limp, broken feeling, in his grip, and her dark eyes were glazed. He sighed and turned back to Gadrial.

  "We'll strike camp as soon as you determine it's safe to move him." He nodded at Jathmar. "My baggage handlers survived, so at least we'll be able to lift the most critically wounded. But even so, it's not going to be a picnic stroll through the park getting them safely back to the portal and transport.