The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  Shaylar shuddered. “Thank you, but I’ll pass on that offer.”

  “That sounds remarkably like how people in Sharona deal with blizzards. There’s not some magic to find your way through the snow?” Jathmar said.

  “There’s a whole field of applied magic for that,” Gadrial explained, “but when it gets cold enough, sarkolis gets brittle. When that happens, the crystals tend to crack—which does horrible damage to the stored spells. It’s best to have a safety line.”

  Jasak tapped the map to bring their attention back to his lecture. “Ahem. Now, then. The demesne lies along the river. You can see the falls from the ducal palace, which is my parents’ main house. They maintain another in Portalis, the city that sprawls along both sides of Arcana’s first portal.” He tapped the map, where a symbol in red ink marked the location of the portal.

  “My father lives on the estate and governs all of Garth Showma directly in his own right—it’s complicated,” he added as Shaylar and Jathmar frowned at him. “Like I said, in theory the Olderhan family owns the entire duchy; actually, it’s more a matter of everyone who lives in it owing fealty to the Duke of Garth Showma as their liege lord. But that’s a personal relationship between him and them. He governs the rest of New Arcana in the name of the Union of Arcana, and none of the other citizens of New Arcana owe him any sort of personal fealty.”

  “But the governorship is also hereditary, right?” Jathmar asked in the tone of someone wanting to be very sure he has something straight.

  “Yes,” Jasak agreed, nodding encouragingly.

  “Then how can the people he governs not owe him personal fealty?”

  “Like Jasak said, it’s complicated,” Gadrial put in with a wry grin. “In fact, it’s complicated even for an Andaran. Just take his word for it that Duke Thankhar has two different personas: one is Duke of Garth Showma and the other one is Governor of New Arcana. They just happen to both live in the same body.”

  “Right. ‘Complicated,’” Jathmar muttered, and Jasak chuckled.

  “Don’t worry too much about the details, Jath. The important point for us is that my parents can get away with living on the estate because of how close it is to the capital, Portalis. Or, rather, to the side of the city on New Arcana, not the side on Arcana Prime. Of course, when his duties call him to the capital, he and mother stay in their town house in Portalis, which is considerably smaller than the ducal palace.”

  “Hah!” Gadrial interjected once more. “Small is relative. I’ve never been to the ducal palace, mind, but I’ve passed that so-called town house hundreds of times. It fills an entire city block. Not one side of the block; the whole block.”

  Jasak looked exasperated. “Well, it has to be large, since it houses the government administration staff for the whole of New Arcana, Gadrial! The family lives in a very small portion of the house.”

  “How many rooms?” she asked in a sweet tone, and he scowled.

  “I don’t remember, exactly,” he muttered.

  “Oh, just a close estimate will do.” She actually batted her eyelashes. Jasak turned red, and Shaylar suppressed a splutter of laughter as she recognized the ploy.

  “Uh…maybe thirty?” he said finally, and Gadrial sat back in queen-like satisfaction.

  “I rest my case.”

  Shaylar couldn’t help it. The laugh she’d struggled right womanfully to restrain broke loose in a bubble of delight, and Gadrial nodded to her in the shared satisfaction of their gender while Jasak rubbed the back of his neck, which was as hot as his face. Then he stopped rubbing and grinned sheepishly, and that let Jathmar’s chuckle surface, as well. He glanced at Jasak with a look that said, very clearly, Women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t drown ’em, might as well love ’em.

  Jasak’s return glance agreed with that assessment.

  Shaylar, dying of curiosity by inches, asked in the same sweet tones Gadrial had used, “Are those your parents’ only houses?”

  “Well,” he said cautiously, “ah, no. Actually, there are two more. There’s a manor house at the demesne in the Earldom of Yar Khom and another smaller demesne property in the Barony of Sarkhala. Neither of those is in New Arcana, though. Those are the oldest family titles, the oldest family estates. The dukedom wasn’t created until the portal formed, two centuries ago. They’re located here,” he pointed to his map, “but in Arcana Prime, of course.”

  He swept his hand down the map, indicating two tracts of land some eleven hundred miles south of Garth Showma, but on the same continent.

  Yar Khom encompassed a long, narrow peninsula of sub-tropical land at the southern extremity of that continent, which jutted into the warm waters that formed—on Sharona—the meeting point of the North Vandor Ocean and the South Vandor Ocean.

  “Andara,” Jasak explained, “is first and foremost a military power. Before the creation of the Union, we had the largest army on Arcana. We also had the second largest navy, for that matter. We’re an aristocracy, with a military tradition that stretches back centuries. My father’s other Arcana Prime estate, the Barony of Sarkhala, lies here.” He pointed to the large island off the southern tip of that long peninsula.

  Gadrial chuckled. “The democratic republics of Ransar like to say that Andara is an army that somehow acquired a state. We’re not entirely sure how they managed that, since it makes no sense to us, either, but that’s essentially what they did.”

  Jathmar blinked in surprise. “Your country’s a democracy, Gadrial? Governed by the people?”

  “Oh, yes. Ransar”—she pointed to the vast sweep of land that to Sharonan eyes corresponded to the various kingdoms and empires of the Uromathian peoples, plus the entirety of the Arpathian Septentrion—“is comprised of several independent republics, with elected presidents and legislatures. We’re all part of the Union of Arcana, of course, just as Andara is, but democratic principles are very important to Ransarans.”

  “Mmm,” Jasak commented.

  Gadrial’s eyes sparkled. “Go ahead, Jasak. Don’t let your chivalry or stiff-necked Andaran pride stop you from commenting.” She grinned to take any implied criticism out of her comment and rolled her eyes at Jathmar and Shaylar. “‘Those unstable, chaotic Ransarans,’” she murmured in pedantic tones, “‘with their lunatic notions of personal freedom and the worth of individual initiative. They’ll be the ruin of the Union.’ You know it’s been said,” she added when Jasak gave her The Look.

  “More often in Mythal than Andara,” he replied, and the sparkle of humor in her eyes flashed into a sudden anger that surprised Shaylar.

  “Yes, it has,” the magister half-snapped. “Which undoubtedly explains why Ransar has the highest standard of living on Arcana, why Ransaran manufacturing capacity is twice the size of every other nation’s—or culture’s—in the world, including those self-worshipping shakira narcissists in Mythal!”

  Her anger was growing almost exponentially as she very nearly spat out her words.

  “And that ‘unstable chaos’ is obviously why Ransarans consistently produce more applied magic innovations than the rest of Arcana combined!” she continued, still building steam. “Not to mention the most advanced high-tech magical industry in the history of Arcana, despite the over-hyped, over-confident, self-satisfied, power-worshipping, godsdamned Mythlan control of theoretical magic research.”

  The anger in her eyes had gone volcanic and she turned her furious gaze away from Jasak to meet Shaylar’s gaze.

  “The shakira spend their time sitting on their backsides for long, arduous hours, toying with the interlocking magical building blocks of the multiple universes and wondering which is more profound, the religious underpinnings of the multiple universes or their own elevated place in the multiple cosmos. And while they’re staring at their navels and pondering the imponderable, Ransarans develop the tools and the technology that make their lives comfortable and easy enough to spend those lives sitting there, doing damned near nothing else. Of course, their slave labor policies
are a big help. It gives the shakira lords a lot more spare time to devote to doing nothing! If I could, I’d rip their whole ugly society to shreds and send them into the fields and factories to get a dose of reality!”

  “Peace, Gadrial.” Jasak leaned across and touched her wrist very gently. “I hate the shakira caste system almost as much as you do, and not because of what they’ve done to me. My family’s always sided with the garthans, and you know it, so don’t think I don’t have your back on this one. After the way they mauled you at Mythal Falls Academy, you’ve got every right to feel that way, and I’m ready to stand in line to help you! But don’t let your hate for what they are turn you into something you don’t want to be.”

  Rage transmuted into sudden tears and she bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, squeezing shut her eyes. “It’s just…I have to see Halathyn’s widow…tell her what happened, out there…and that’s raked up all the old agony, again.”

  Jasak abandoned his seat and joined Gadrial in hers, and she turned toward him, resting her head against his shoulder. Shaylar recognized the tenderness in his expression and wondered if he, himself, had realized, yet, how deeply he loved Gadrial Kelbryan. While he held Gadrial close, Jasak spoke very softly, telling them what had happened to her as a student, the prejudice, the accusation of cheating, Halathyn’s defense of her, the whole sordid story.

  “Did I come reasonably close?” he asked finally, looking down at her as he finished at last, and she nodded.

  “Very,” she whispered. Her eyelashes were wet. “Oh, Jasak, it still hurts so desperately…”

  He actually kissed her hair. She sniffled and sighed, then scrubbed her face with the back of one hand and sat up, again. She met Shaylar’s distressed gaze.

  “I don’t blame you for his loss, Shaylar. Truly, I don’t. It wasn’t your fault that Halathyn…”

  Her lips trembled as memory burned in her eyes, and she bit the lower one again, making herself pause and draw a deep breath.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she continued once more after a moment, her voice more ragged than she would have liked. “But Halathyn was the finest man I’ve ever known, the most gifted theoretical magister I’ve ever met, and the only Mythlan shakira who deserved courtesy and respect. As for the rest of them…”

  Her eyes went hard as granite. “I detest Mythal and all the magic-using Mythlans in it! And thanks to what Halathyn built in New Arcana, we don’t need the Mythlan shakira to understand the multiple universes or theoretical magic.”

  “What Halathyn started and what you built,” Jasak said mildly. When she looked uncomfortable, he chucked her chin, very gently. “Those are Halathyn’s words as much as mine. He was deeply proud of you, Gadrial. With good reason.”

  Her eyes went wet again.

  Jasak fished out a handkerchief and handed it over, then looked back at the two Sharonans.

  “Now, then, getting back to our original conversation,” he said more briskly, “Gadrial’s made several very valid points. Not the least of which is that compared with Ransar, we Andarans are little more than barbarians with clubs in our hands.”

  Gadrial chuckled, wetly—but it was a chuckle, nonetheless. “Well, yes, but you’re such adorable barbarians, it’s easy to overlook your shortcomings.” She leaned up to give him a swift kiss, an endearment that reflected the increasingly intimate relationship Jathmar and Shaylar had watched blossom over the course of their long journey.

  Jasak’s face scalded. Even his ears turned red.

  Shaylar had to admit that he did look awfully adorable, sitting there in his uniform, flushed with embarrassment and looking like a man who couldn’t make up his mind whether to bolt for the nearest exit or grab Gadrial by the shoulders and show her just how well barbarians could kiss their women.

  He settled for clearing his throat and bending over his map again.

  “Where were we?” he muttered. “Oh, yes. Explaining Garth Showma to you. Arcana’s first portal opened here, in the Grand Duchy of Tharkan, an imperial territory of the Kingdom of Elath.”

  Shaylar peered at the map and frowned. The Grand Duchy was located smack in the center of what would have been the Ternathian Empire, on Sharona, and that puzzled her, since the kingdom that controlled the Grand Duchy was located on Arcana’s analog to New Farnal. Elath was all the way across the North Vandor Ocean, sandwiched between the southern region where Jasak’s father owned an earldom and a barony and the northern sweep of land that corresponded to Jathmar’s birthplace. It seemed an…odd arrangement. On Sharona, Ternathia and Farnalia had colonized and controlled, at least at first, the two connected continents of New Ternathia and New Farnal. On Arcana, the political control had run in the other direction, eastward across the North Vandor instead of westward.

  “Elath was desperate to hold onto the portal, so they asked their Andaran neighbors for help. Which was immediately forthcoming, of course, since even an army that’s managed to acquire a state,” Jasak continued, eyes glinting as they met Gadrial’s, “could see the value of controlling that portal.”

  Gadrial refused the bait. She merely gave him a charming smile and waited for him to go one and he grinned.

  “At any rate, everybody could see the value of that portal, which meant no one wanted anyone else to control it. Particularly not Ransar and Mythal, not to mention Lokan and Yanko,” he added, touching in succession landmasses that corresponded to Arpathia/Uromathia, Ricathia, New Ternathia, and New Farnal.

  “The upshot was a very nasty, intense war that lasted about five years. It fueled a truly appalling arms race as both sides developed more and more powerful battle spells. Some were literally powerful enough to wipe out whole cities. Those spells were banned, after the war came to a negotiated end.

  “That war brought us right to the brink of Sharskha,” he said very quietly. Jathmar and Shaylar looked perplexed, and he grimaced. “Sorry. It’s from one of Andara’s oldest myths—a final battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness which ends only in the entire world’s death.”

  Perplexity was replaced by something else, something with an edge of disbelief, perhaps. Or the look of someone who recognized hyperbole when he heard it. Jasak saw it and laughed harshly.

  “I’m not exaggerating,” he told them. “Some of the spells they came up with were so destructive they could have wiped out entire cities. One of them was used by the losing side in a major battle and effectively annihilated every man in both armies—over a hundred and ten thousand men gone, like that!” he snapped his fingers, eyes bleak. “And the researchers weren’t stopping there. They were still coming up with worse ones when the war finally ended! Thank all the gods they were banned under the terms of the final peace treaty.”

  Shaylar and Jathmar exchanged horrified glances, appalled by that simple, dreadful recitation. Spells that could destroy entire cities? Would the army that had acquired a state pull those banned spells out of mothballs and use them against Sharonian cities?

  “At any rate,” Jasak continued, unaware of their sudden fear, “the same treaty created a new world government—the Union of Arcana—which took control of Tharkan, where the portal was located. And that’s how the city of Portalis was born. The Arcanan side of the city is the capital of the Union of Arcana. The New Arcanan side of the city is the capital of both New Arcana and houses the Union’s Commandery, where the Union’s Army, Navy and Air Force are headquartered. It’s also where the Union’s officers are trained and where enlisted men are given basic training.

  “The land for a radius of seventy miles from the New Arcanan side of the portal was originally given to old Sherstan Olderhan, the first Duke of Garth Showma, as his personal desmesne during the war, as one inducement to back up Elath’s bid to keep control of the portal. The rest of the Duchy was added later, under the peace treaties, once the Union took over the portal. The new government had to reach a negotiated settlement with Sherstan, as well as Elath, and the truth is, they came out much bette
r with Elath.”

  Gadrial made a rude sound and Jasak’s lips twitched.

  “Sherstan was tenacious and he wielded enough military power to come out of that negotiation very well placed.” He conceded. “He kept most of the original land grant ceded him by Elath, the Duchy of Garth Showma was created and placed under his direct, hereditary rule, and he ended up named Governor of New Arcana, as well. At the time the entire planet amounted to a howling wilderness, so it probably seemed like a reasonable bargain to the Union’s negotiators. Of course, things have changed a bit over the last couple of centuries.

  “Anyway, in return for its concessions to Sherstan, the Union received everything within a twenty-mile radius of the portal, on the New Arcanan side. The seated duke owns the next fifty miles in every direction, which forms the demesne of Garth Showma. A fairly large chunk of that land’s rented—technically sub-enfeoffed—to the city and the Union’s Commandery, though. The city of Portalis expanded across the entire twenty-mile swath of land controlled by the Union pretty quickly, and the Dukes of Garth Showma wanted to see the Union prosper, so they were inclined to be reasonable. For certain values of ‘reasonable,’ at least.

  “Early on there was a lot of bluster about convincing the King of Elath to change the terms of enfeoffment to give the entire original demesne to the Union, instead of just the inner twenty-miles. But old Sherstan was a stubborn fellow, and since the territory of the duchy and its demesne were a part of the Union’s founding treaty, the King of Elath—who happened to be his first cousin, did I mention that?—had no interest in bowing to outside pressures. Besides, Sherstan had no desire to be too greedy. Not only did he want to see the Union prosper, he also recognized that being too unreasonable might just convince his cousin the king to go along with the folks doing all of the blustering. So he made a counter offer.