Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  "I know you are," she said again, her voice firmer, then cleared her throat. "Anyway, Halathyn's Gift was profound. No one, I think, understood the field better than he did. He taught me everything I know about it. What I've learned on my own is built entirely on the platform he gave me."

  Once more the agony in her eyes and voice tore at Shaylar, but this time she refused to yield to them.

  "He taught me," she said more steadily, "and he wouldn't want me to fall to pieces like this now. So … This field can be tapped, manipulated?harnessed. It's power is immense. That's what moves the ship." She gestured. "Someone with a Gift speaks the proper formula to tap the field, which allows them to channel that power into the ship's storage cells. When that energy is released, it drives the ship forward through the water. It also powers other machines, all kinds of machines."

  She dug through her luggage again, and pulled out another case.

  "This is a machine Halathyn and I developed together. It helps us find portals. That's what we were looking for when we stumbled across you. Looking for a portal nearby."

  She murmured to the gadget, which began to glow. Several colored indicators came to life in what looked like a rectangular window on the front of the device.

  "Here. See these displays?" Her index finger indicated its several small glowing arrows and columns of light. "We'll be docking sometime tomorrow morning at the island we call Chalar back home. That's where our next portal is. See how the arrow points to it?"

  Shaylar nodded slowly, but deep inside she was stunned. This single small device in Gadrial's hand was more effective?and efficient?than any Portal Hound she'd ever heard of! If they could do this, what else could they do? Then she realized that Gadrial was still talking.

  "?still experimental, of course. That's what we were doing that day in the forest, when your people killed Osmuna?"

  "Osmuna?" Shaylar asked. "Who is Osmuna?"

  "The soldier your people killed," Gadrial replied in a surprised tone.

  "Our people killed?" Shaylar demanded. "Your people killed Falsan! Gods, Gadrial?he died right in my arms! He'd staggered for miles with that arrow in his chest, trying to reach our camp?"

  "I didn't know he'd died in your arms," Gadrial said quietly. "I'm sorry about that. As sorry as I can possibly be."

  "But that didn't keep your people from killing the rest of us, did it?" Shaylar replied, more harshly even than she'd intended to. Gadrial winced, but she refused to look away.

  "That wasn't what we wanted," she said. "Jasak realized what must have happened sooner than anyone else. Two men met in the forest. Just the two of them, and no one will ever know which one of them shot first. We certainly didn't. We couldn't even figure out how Osmuna had died. All we knew was that someone had killed him, and we trailed that person back to your camp. But you'd already headed toward the portal we'd come to find, and?"

  "And then you ran us to ground like dogs!" Shaylar jerked up off the bed, her face twisted as the words she'd acquired?the words that finally freed the pain so deep inside?poured out of her. "We were terrified! Someone had murdered Falsan?that was all we knew. And they were chasing us. We couldn't run fast enough!"

  "Of course we were." Gadrial stared at her. "What would one of your army officers have done if one of his men was dead? If he'd been responsible for controlling the situation?"

  "Controlling the situation?" Shaylar barked a harsh, ugly laugh. "Is that what you call it? You were only 'controlling the situation' when Ghartoun tried to talk to you, without even a weapon in his hands, and you shot him?!"

  "Garlath shot him," Gadrial snarled, and even without touching her Shaylar realized that the other woman was genuinely angry. No, not angry?she was furious. And not, Shaylar realized in shock, at her.

  "That stupid, cowardly, arrogant, incompetent son-of-a?" Gadrial was abruptly using words Shaylar hadn't heard before, but they hardly needed translating. Whoever this Garlath was, Gadrial had despised him. Still despised him.

  "I wasn't close enough to see it happen," Gadrial said finally. "Jasak wouldn't let me get that close. But I heard him shouting at Garlath. Only that idiot shot anyway, and then unholy hell broke loose. I'd never heard anything like that."

  Shaylar was trembling. Her perfect Voice's memory replayed the shouted command she'd heard when Ghartoun stood up. The words which had meant nothing at the time, which she'd assumed all this time had been the order to attack. But now she'd learned at least some Andaran, and in her memory, she heard the voice once more. The voice she recognized now as Jasak Olderhan's.

  "Hold fire, Fifty Garlath!"

  The words rang through her mind like a jagged lightning bolt, and she stared at Gadrial.

  "Jasak ordered him not to shoot," she said slowly, softly. "He ordered him not to shoot."

  "Yes, he did!" Gadrial's expression was tight with remembered anguish. "I heard him say it. Heard that crossbow's slap and twang after he'd shouted that order. Then that horrible, thunderous roar?"

  Shaylar felt nothing but truth in Gadrial Kelbryan, and she began to weep. Silently at first. Then she covered her face with both hands and began to sob.

  They'd died for nothing. For nothing! And Company-Captain Halifu had come looking for them, with no way to know Jasak had never meant for anyone to die, and more blood had been spilled. Halathyn had died, and so had a lot of others. And all anyone in Sharona would know was what she'd transmitted to Darcel. The images of fire and blood. Of intentional murder and deliberate slaughter, because that was what she'd thought?known?was happening!

  There would be a war, she realized. She could see it as clearly as she had ever seen anything in her life. As if she'd been a Calirath experiencing a Glimpse. There would be a terrible, monstrous war, and more people would die, stupidly, on both sides, because no one back home knew the first massacre had been a mistake.

  Gadrial had put both arms around her, was making helpless sounds, trying to comfort her. And then, suddenly, the door between the sleeping cabin and the tiny sitting room of Gadrial's quarters crashed open and Jathmar was there, white to the lips.

  "Shaylar!"

  She turned blindly toward him. Then she was in his arms, clinging to him, weeping helplessly.

  "What happened?" he demanded raggedly. "What did she do to you?"

  "Nothing." Shaylar hiccuped. "Nothing, Jathmar. Oh, Jath?the whole thing was a terrible mistake!"

  She'd tried to tell him, although her explanation wasn't nearly as coherent as Gadrial's had been, and he listened to her words, to the emotions churning through the marriage bond. When she finally got the ghastly truth Gadrial had just revealed through to him, he sat in silence for long moments, jaw muscles clenched tightly. Then a deep sigh shuddered out of him.

  "All right. I believe it. Because you believe her. Gods, what a stupid, monstrous waste!"

  Shaylar just nodded, and he tipped her chin up, smiled into her eyes, and wiped tears from her cheek with his index finger.

  "You need a handkerchief, sweetheart, only I haven't got one."

  She sniffed, then flashed a grateful look at Gadrial when the other woman pressed a scrap of cloth from her sewing into her hand. Shaylar dried her eyes, blew her nose, and gave Gadrial a watery smile.

  "Thank you," she said, then realized Gadrial was watching both of them closely, her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

  "Shaylar?" she said slowly, almost uncertainly.

  "Yes?"

  "How did Jathmar know you were upset?"

  Shaylar and Jathmar exchanged mortified glances.

  "Oh, hells," Shaylar said, but Jathmar shook his head.

  "My fault," he muttered in Shurkhali (which was not the Ternathian they'd been teaching Gadrial), rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You just scared the daylights out of me, honey. I caught your fear, then your emotions went so crazy I just?"

  "Hush." It was Shaylar's turn to shake her head, and then she shrugged with a crooked smile. "It had to happen sometime. And it's no more your fault you
responded than it's my fault for having felt that way in the first place!"

  "But why did you? You were already headed that way before she dropped that little bombshell about what's-his-name, Garlath. That's what set off the explosion, but you were already under a lot of pressure, Shaylar. What in all the Arpathian hells has been going on in here?"

  "Gadrial's been explaining something important to me, Jathmar. Something about the way their technology works. We joked about Halathyn using magic, but, Jathmar, I think that's exactly what it was. Magic. I don't know what else to call it."

  She drew a deep breath and tried to explain. On the one hand, she was handicapped by the fact that she simply didn't understand it all herself by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, she had the advantage that she and Jathmar shared a far more complete command of their language?not to mention the marriage bond?plus a common base of reference. It took a while to get the fundamental concept across, and longer for Jathmar to accept it. But then he nodded abruptly, choppily.

  "You're right," he said. "Manipulating energy with special words? Spells and incantations? Magic rings?well, those little cube things?to store the spells inside? It's utterly fantastic, impossible, but how else could they be doing it?" He sighed. "And now I've blown our cover. We've got to tell her something."

  "Yes, we do," Shaylar agreed. "Let me think."

  Her thoughts raced as she tried to figure out how to word it without giving too much away. Finally, she faced Gadrial, who sat watching them through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

  "I'm sorry," Shaylar sighed. "Jathmar was very confused. He wanted to know why I was upset, so I had to explain. Everything. He, too, is very distressed by the mistake that was made."

  "But how did he know?" Gadrial, and Shaylar gave her a crooked little smile.

  "You said you have a Gift. Something you were born with. On Sharona, our home world, we have … not the same thing. We don't have your … magic." She wasn't sure she was using Gadrial's word properly, but it was as close as she could come at the moment. "Not anything like it. But some people are born with something other people don't have. We call it … "

  She hunted for the word, only to discover she didn't have exactly the right one in her still limited vocabulary.

  "What do you call it when a great artist, or a great singer, has something other people don't? The thing that lets him do what he does so much better than anyone else can?"

  "A talent?" Gadrial suggested, and Shaylar nodded vigorously.

  "Yes. A talent. Some people in my world have special Talents. They're?" she wrinkled her brow trying to find the way to say it. "They're in the mind." She tapped her temple. "Jathmar and I are married. We both have a small Talent, nothing very special, really," she said as smoothly as she could, grateful that Gadrial was no telepath to sense her departure from the truth. "But when two people with Talents marry, a bond forms. A bond of the mind. The emotions. Jathmar always knows when I'm afraid or upset. And I always know when he's worried or angry. It's stronger when we're closer together, but we don't have to be in the same room to feel it. Don't your people have anything like this? A mother who just knows when her child's been injured, for example?"

  "No." Gadrial shook her head, eyes wide, and Jathmar and Shaylar exchanged startled glances.

  "Nothing like it?" Jathmar's astonishment showed even through his slower, more labored Andaran.

  "No."

  The three of them stared at one another, thunderstruck for entirely different reasons.

  "Well," Gadrial finally said, "it's clear we come from very different people. Very different."

  "Yes," Shaylar gulped. "Even more different than we'd realized."

  "Which brings up another question." Gadrial held Shaylar's gaze. "What are your … Talents?"

  Shaylar had known it was coming. It was, after all, the next logical question. She just wished she'd thought to come up with an explanation for it before this. Lying, even by withholding information, did not come naturally to a Voice. For that matter, she wasn't certain exactly which lies she should tell! Should she understate what Talents could do in an effort to lull these people into a false sense of security? Hope they would take Sharona and the Talented too lightly? Or should she exaggerate the Talents? Hope she and Jathmar could make the Arcanans nervous enough that they'd move slowly, cautiously? Possibly create enough nervousness to buy time for their own people to mobilize in response to the threat?

  "Jathmar is a Mapper," she said finally. "He … Sees the land around him. Not very far," she added. "For a few miles in any one direction, at most."

  Gadrial's mouth had fallen open. She stared at Jathmar for a moment, then back and Shaylar.

  "And you?"

  "Oh, my Talent isn't very much," Shaylar prevaricated. "Mostly, I sense Jathmar through the marriage bond. It helps me know if he's in trouble, when he's out Mapping. And I help draw the charts, too."

  "We didn't find any maps," Gadrial said, studying them with hooded, wary eyes. Shaylar met those eyes forthrightly and shook her head.

  "No, of course you didn't. I burned them."

  "You burned them?"

  "What would you have done?" Shaylar challenged. "Would you have just handed them over? To people you didn't know? People who'd murdered one of your friends, who'd chased you down like animals, who were shooting and killing the rest of your friends all around you? Trying to kill you? Would you have let people like that get hold of maps that showed the way to your home?"

  "No," Gadrial said softly, after a moment. "I don't suppose I would."

  "Neither would I. Neither did I."

  Gadrial nodded slowly, but another deep suspicion showed plainly in her expression. She started to ask a question, paused, then closed her lips. Shaylar waited, meeting her gaze levelly. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but she held that gaze steadily, as though she had nothing further to hide.

  "Shaylar," Gadrial said at last, sounding unhappy, "we think?Jasak thinks?your people got a message out. One that warned your people about what had happened. Did someone on your crew get a warning out? Using this Talent of the mind?"

  Continuing to meet Gadrial's gaze was agony, but Shaylar did it anyway.

  "I don't know, Gadrial."

  "Don't know? Or won't tell me?"

  "What do you want of me, Gadrial?" Shaylar's eyes filled. "We're your prisoners."

  "Not my prisoners." Gadrial shook her head, biting her lip. "You're Sir Jasak Olderhan's prisoners."

  "Don't you mean the army's?" Jathmar asked harshly in his accented Andaran.

  "No, I don't. I don't understand all of it, because I'm not in the Army, either. And I'm not Andaran. The Andarans are a military society, and they have a lot of complicated rules I don't understand. But one of those rules is about prisoners, and about responsibilities toward them. You'll have to ask Jasak about it, if you want to know."

  "I do want to know," Jathmar said in a voice full of iron. "And I think we have a right to know. Don't you?"

  Gadrial bit her lip again, more gently this time, looking at him levelly. Then she drew a slightly unsteady breath.

  "Yes, I do. If you'll wait here, I'll go find him and ask him to explain. Explain to all of us, actually. I'm caught in the middle of this thing, too, and I don't understand it as well as I should."

  "Thank you," Shaylar said softly, and Gadrial nodded. Then she left the cabin, and Shaylar began to tremble.

  "They're going to figure it out, Jathmar," she said, once again in Shurkhali.

  "Eventually," he agreed heavily. "Probably sooner than we'd like. And it's my fault. I should have realized you weren't really in danger?not with Gadrial."

  "Don't blame yourself." She laid a hand against his cheek, and his lips quirked.

  "There's no one else to blame, sweetheart. It certainly isn't your fault." He captured her hand, kissed her fingers, and tucked them against his heart. "I know how hard that was, lying to Gadrial just now. I don't think I could have don
e half as well as you did. She's half convinced you don't know for sure if a message went out."

  "Only half," Shaylar muttered, "and Jasak Olderhan won't be so easy to fool."

  "No, he won't. Still, you're right. What else should they expect from us? If they were in our shoes, to you think they'd have volunteered that information about magic powering their whole civilization?"

  "Probably not," Shaylar agreed dryly. "It would be interesting to know how much information our side's managed to gather from their prisoners." She shivered. "I'm not sure I want to know how we're treating their soldiers, though. We've been so fortunate … "

  His arm tightened around her. He didn't need to speak; she could taste his fear for her, his fear about what lay ahead. When Jasak came into the room to explain, Shaylar would know he was telling the truth, if only she could arrange to touch him. But having said as much as she had already, he would undoubtedly be doubly suspicious if she tried anything so obvious. Up until now, their captors had viewed her penchant for touching people as a simple personal habit. She'd been careful to be just as "touchy-feely" with Jathmar as she was with them, but now?

  She might never be given another opportunity to touch them again. She faced that probability squarely. And as she did, she also realized that lying to them now and being caught in that lie later would not do them a great deal of good down the road. It might well damage their circumstances, worsen their treatment, incur all sorts of unpleasantness.

  The thoughts flowed through her, but before she could discuss them with Jathmar, it was too late. The door opened again, and Jasak Olderhan filled the frame, his eyes hooded as he stared down at them.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  He knows, Shaylar realized with a jolt of pure terror. He already knows… .

  The cold anger in Jasak's eyes was bad enough, but what lay under that anger had Jathmar moving abruptly, thrusting her behind him, facing Jasak with nothing in his hands but courage.