The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  Not for the first time Chava longed for a way to make slavery desirable. If he’d just been born a few thousand years earlier, he could have established a stronger Uromathian tradition for the Talented to be wards of the state. Property of the state would have been better, but his otherwise competent ancestors had denied him that possibility. When the Talents which had first arisen in Ternathia finally found their way into Uromathian bloodlines, the rulers of the kingdoms which had predated his own empire adopted many of the Ternathians’ practices in order to encourage their growth. He liked to think they would have showed more wisdom if they’d realized where it would lead, and at least they’d stopped short of the more ridiculous of the Ternathian excesses, but they’d established early on that the Talented were exempt from enslavement except after conviction for certain very specific crimes. By the time of Chava’s birth, those traditions were too ingrained to be overcome in a single generation. He was working on it, of course, and the empire did have the tradition of service, but something stronger than that—something which allowed the assigning of spouses and obligated apprenticeships—would be so much more useful.

  Perhaps a breeding program…The idea intrigued him. Not all the Talents would be willing, but surely some could be enticed. And other Talents were valuable enough they didn’t need to be willing.

  But that was later. For now Chava needed to tone down the Seneschal’s aspirations. A public flogging of an imperial princess would never happen. The man was a fool to even speak of it. Positions and titles must be respected or the public might come to think they could live without emperors and kings. Or even seneschals.

  This had to be an assassination, and a speedy one, because the attacking team itself would never survive the Calirath response. Of this Chava approved. An emperor should be properly ruthless.

  For that matter, the entire Order of Bergahl was unlikely to survive a less than fully successful attack on the Caliraths, not that Chava intended to mention that to Raynarg. And such a neat clean up would be distinctly convenient for Emperor Chava—a reality the Seneschal failed to note and which the Uromathian emperor carefully declined to reveal to him.

  A certain breed of man-eating fish could be adapted to survive in saltwater and be trained to enjoy the taste of warm-blooded cetacean, but as soon as the orca became aware of their presence, that nest was as good as eaten. The Bergahldian could make for a useful toothy little fish. If Faroayn Raynarg thought of himself instead as a shark, Chava would let him continue in the delusion.

  * * *

  Drindel Usar received his recall orders two hours later—the time required for a trusted Uromathian courtier to decode Emperor Chava’s orders and issue all the necessary secondary commands required to see His Excellency’s will accomplished, plus a terrifying hour and a half for the Haimath Island Director of Talents to actually find the grubby Talent.

  Drindel had neither updated his residency card nor filed his papers with Haimath Prefecture and thus was guilty of several small felonies. These would have to be immediately lost in governmental paperwork, because the seal on the Flicker-sent summons meant the missing Drindel Usar was required for Service to Uromathia.

  No mere prison term could be allowed to stand in the way.

  The Director wished fervently for an option to have Drindel locked in a dank cell overnight first, but dared not report to the Imperial Court that he’d taken any action other than performing his own Service to Uromathia as expeditiously as possible. So he settled for slapping the papers in Drindel’s face and storming out of the rundown dockside establishment in which he’d finally found the man.

  The Director left too quickly to notice Drindel’s pleased misinterpretation of the slight. In the young Talent’s mind a local bureaucrat had hand-delivered his orders and left with all speed, honoring the importance of Drindel’s work, while the Director’s silence proved the petty rules of Talent registration were beneath one such as Drindel Usar!

  Drindel took great pleasure in tearing open the missive immediately. He scattered wax bits all over tavern the floor and ground some into the space between the boards for the wait staff to crawl after.

  Rena would probably be the one bent down on her hands and knees. He hoped she saw the slight gleam in the wax and spent the evening on the floor picking up each little bit to gather the miniscule amount of gold fleck added to the wax of an Imperial Order.

  Her father Toruph certainly wasn’t going to do it. Drindel shot a dark look at the old man, but he was careful to keep his own head down and his eyes lidded. Old Toruph’s arms were as wide around as some of the shark jaws adorning his tavern walls, and he’d never needed a bouncer to keep order in his tavern. That didn’t mean he had any right to keep Rena working in the back just because Drindel was in town, though!

  But he’d deal with that later.

  “I am recalled to active service!” Drindel announced to no one. He lifted the papers with a flourish anyway.

  He waved a hand at the stacked glasses and plates: one of everything and no matter that he couldn’t eat that much and didn’t care for the taste of any of the liquors available in his hometown. He dumped the drinks he hadn’t touched on the floor to ensure Toruph didn’t pour them back into the bottles to serve him again next leave.

  “Charge these to Uromathia.”

  Drindel had no right to authorize anything, but his hometown had chaffed him irritatingly. And he wanted to hear all about Toruph trying to get a reimbursement from the Empire. Maybe the Prefecture could take care of Toruph for him. The man’s skill with a sea spear made the usual methods too challenging.

  Drindel stomped out of the tavern into the brisk evening air holding tight to his papers, but under his swagger there was an edge of disquiet. They were marked urgent, and a cold knot of fear squeezed his belly.

  What if the fearful Director of Talents had found the right ear to whisper into? The island administrator might lay the blame for a slow start on Drindel Usar—instead of on the sloppy care the Prefecture provided for their elite Talents.

  He forced himself to calm. No. The orders had come only on paper without a member of the Emperor’s special police to oversee their execution. This wouldn’t be noticed.

  And besides, who was the Director of Talents to be listened to? The administrator probably had just one name like most of the rest of the Haimath. Drindel was no longer just little boy Drindel, or worse, Drindel son-of-Drand. No, he was Drindel Usar—a man of rank who’d taken a second name to honor his Emperor.

  And he wanted to visit his mother. There should be time to see his Maman Usar, before he headed as directly and quickly as possible across the inlet to catch a night train across Uromathia.

  Maman jumped to her feet and ran to see him when he knocked at the door.

  She respected him, oh yes.

  A dinner, a lunch, and copious extra tidbits—she pressed on him for the journey. Maman Usar had proper respect for his work and the honor bestowed on him by selection for Service to Uromathia.

  As for Drand, well, his father was a long time ago.

  And it hadn’t been his fault, really. The way Drindel saw it, and the way he’d convinced Maman to see it, was that all of the mess truly had been Drand’s own fault. The old man had been a Talent himself and never even registered: a crime. And worse, his father’s Talent had been to call fish easily into the nets, despite which they’d been only a moderately prosperous fishing family. Drand should have brought them the best and largest fish every day, with never a boat trip returning with empty nets. But no, the old man had been too squeamish about the registration and always hid the Talent away.

  Drindel had the better Talent. The regular fish ignored him entirely, which had seemed a deep misfortune at first, until he found that the sharks would follow him for miles and not just the little ones that got caught up in the nets.

  His father, Drand, had been a criminal. That was the important part. Drindel using his Talent to teach a criminal a lesson was almost a Serv
ice to Uromathia, really.

  All that had been before Drindel was old enough to formally register and have his own Talent tested. And some of the comments the Prefecture Mind Healer had made to Maman had been sadly lacking in perspective. But that man had transferred inland before Drindel’s first home leave, so Drindel had never had a chance to even things up properly. Some of the locals still thought he’d been sent into Service as some kind of punishment. Drindel kept track of who said such things and who wasn’t appropriately kind to his mother.

  Maman had lists for him every home leave of who to teach lessons to. Everyone was very nice to her. Now.

  Toruph was about the only one left who didn’t make a point of greeting Maman cordially on the street and sending her things now and again to ease her troubles. His Maman deserved the best of life while her one son was off working so hard for the good of Uromathia.

  A boat ride across to the mainland was easy to cadge at the docks, with half the local fishermen falling over themselves to offer him a trip across. Drindel accepted the one with the largest boat and seated himself carefully in the center of the vessel. He hated being on the water. He always tried to blank his mind as much as possible to reduce the chance of even the smallest tendril of his Talent squeezing out. It was just that he wasn’t always successful.

  This trip across was uneventful, for which Drindel thanked Heaven most fervently, but only in the confines of his own heart.

  Outwardly, he took care to pose as if he’d known exactly what went on beneath the surface of the waves and had all the ocean’s mysteries under his complete dominion.

  The truth, Drindel had to acknowledge, if only to himself, was something significantly less comforting. He could call sharks, all kinds of sharks and especially the biggest of the white ones. And the sharks would come great distances for him, even without enough food and without the energy to do more than wash up dead on the beaches once they arrived.

  But they would come. He just couldn’t direct them to do a single thing once they arrived. And deep down Drindel wondered if they didn’t all come in hopes of finally getting a bite of him, snapping him in half with those great teeth, and tearing out mouthfuls of his liver and lungs. Those open jaws seemed like they would do anything to stop the compulsion to come, to follow, to swim to wherever he was.

  The compulsions he couldn’t find a way to stop sending. Drand had said the Talent could be controlled with mental exercise and should be expanded only most carefully after control was proven. The work of control had hurt and left him exhausted, though, and Drindel was now sure it had been no more than a trick his father had played on him. There was certainly no pain and exhaustion in expanding the summons! When Drindel unfurled his Talent, it felt like Arcunas Himself had descended from the Heavens to kiss his brow.

  The euphoria was better than anything. In fact, Drindel couldn’t stop calling, at least softly, even if he wanted to. And he wasn’t sure he could imagine ever wanting to stop. It wasn’t like the sharks should really mind. They were cold, wet, and heartless creatures.

  The biggest ones would just eat the smaller ones he’d also called, so Drindel didn’t feel like he really starved them all that often. It wasn’t fair of them to blame him for anything, if indeed they did want to eat him.

  The qualms he sometimes felt were just echoes of the foolish things Drand had said about the sea needing its balance.

  But Drindel did have the nightmares. At the frazzled edges of the euphoria, where he couldn’t tell real from phantasm, he sometimes saw his father. The Drand in those fever dreams wore the body of a great shark with a pale grey, almost white, skin, and it swam from sea to sea, looking for him.

  That one couldn’t possibly be real. But Drindel was careful never to embark on too small a boat or come too close to the side of a larger vessel. Starving sharks could do quite a lot to get at meat. Especially if his Talent let the flare of the Call get too loud.

  Fortunately, this time he was summoned to Othmaliz, to the City of Tajvana, and that meant no more boats. Safe inland travel would bless him all the way to Tajvana’s magnificent confluence of seas.

  * * *

  Drindel Usar picked up a tourist packet at a train station hub during the transfer to the morning train that would take him most of the rest of the way to Tajvana. From the pictures, Tajvana was a massive place.

  He couldn’t actually read much of the descriptions that went with the pictures, but the pictures were really all he needed to know. His orders always came in a code he’d been suffered to learn along with the basics of his letters.

  Uromathia did not abide ineptitude in its servants.

  But when Drindel hadn’t wanted to learn more, he’d been allowed to stop his studies there. The Service instructor might have called him a fool to his face and spat at him for quitting, but what did he know?

  The instructor’s slight Talent in Mind Healing had been applied, quite properly in Drindel’s opinion, to easing the challenge of code-based studies. That hardly made the man qualified to judge the value of the supposed literacy he also wanted to teach!

  The instructor had never even seen an ocean, nor, after a disdainful look at Drindel, expressed any interest in visiting one.

  Maman always said that if a thing actually mattered, everyone would be talking about it anyway, so there was no need to hurt your head learning to puzzle out words on a paper.

  Drindel bent his thoughts to his work in Tajvana. It was a city built for sea-borne commerce: oceans to the north, oceans to the south, a twisting strait connecting them, and inlets scattered nearly everywhere. Water meant sharks. Perhaps not the biggest, and perhaps not all the species of sharks, but there would be at least a few waiting for him and he’d Call more.

  The fear in his stomach eased a bit. This might be a simple assignment after all.

  He boarded his train and eased into a comfortable seat. A quick riffle through his luggage produced a pleasant breakfast from Maman’s parcel, and he leaned back and let his Talent go. Perhaps some sharks would try to fight up riverways until the lack of food and heavy currents forced them back. He didn’t care. It felt too good.

  Around lunchtime, Drindel finally tapered back on his Talent and dug into Maman’s sack for more food. There was salted fish and the good thick bread she did best. He chewed with pleasure.

  Perhaps the Tajvana job would rank among his favorites too.

  It couldn’t be the best though. Surely nothing could ever top that ocean prison with the very efficient warden. Drindel had only had to really work to Call the sharks for a few days. After that the warden used the condemned prisoners to keep Drindel’s listeners used to legged prey. Well-fed sharks stayed and fed even better any time an escape was attempted.

  If Drindel could stand just on this side of Tajvana’s strait and not need to cross over while Calling, it would be an entirely safe job. It’d be just like the way he’d stood on the nice rocky beach mainland while Calling every great monster he could to that island prison. The shoals and reefs were surely bare of other fish by now, but if the warden had kept his word those sharks still weren’t hungry.

  Yes, that’d be good. Drindel promised himself he’d find a way not to get on a boat at all this time. Maybe there’d even be a big crowd. Some mass of people to get bitten, tasted, and spat back out—where it didn’t matter who died and who didn’t. I could just Call, fill the beach waters with fins, and walk away.

  Or the people could be on boats even. Big sharks could overturn boats, and skiffs for sure. Maybe even some smallish ships if the sharks’re really hungry and the big big ones.

  Swimmers’re always easy, but how do I get ’em in the water after a Call? Unless it was night…

  Drindel pondered some more, trying to guess who his targets might be.

  The instructions in the orders this time were odd. He was to present himself as a new acolyte for a religious sect and follow whatever directions they gave him. The Order of Bergahl. The tourist packet had a picture of a
robed man wearing cloth-of-gold with the letters matching the sect’s name included in its caption. He might be the boss. Drindel shrugged to himself. If he was, someone would say so.

  Drindel opened up the last packet from Maman and had a nice sandwich.

  Chapter Fifteen

  December 29

  The Seneschal of Othmaliz stood breathing in the incense, listening to the majestic music of organ and woodwinds, and the bathed in the glorious polychromatic chiaroscuro light pouring in through the Temple of Taiyr’s stained glass dome and managed—somehow—not to curse.

  It wasn’t easy.

  He held the golden staff of his high office in his right hand, but he would vastly have preferred a dagger. The memory of the previous day’s insult burned deep within him, like poison, and there was only one way that poison might be purged. Yet today he had no choice but to absorb yet another insult, yet another affront to the dignity of his office, and yet another nail in the coffin of the Order of Bergahl authority here in its own city.

  He’d considered—considered long and hard—pleading illness and remaining closeted in his apartments with his personal healer. No one would have believed it for a moment, and that would have been fine with him. It would have been one way to repay at least a little of the calculated insult he’d been offered in the Emperor Garim Chancellery during that travesty of a wedding. Unfortunately, he’d discovered—or perhaps rediscovered—just how much he truly feared those Ternathian barbarians. The unspeakable Zindel had the bit well and truly between his teeth at the moment. The Seneschal wouldn’t put it past the Emperor to send his personal armsmen to drag a recalcitrant cleric to the temple. After all, he’d stood there and smiled while his bitch of a daughter used her godsdamned bird to terrify and humiliate him in front of the entire Conclave!