The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  “That’s how the Union ended up renting part of the ducal estate, instead. My ancestors have kept the rents very low, but the Union needed a large parcel and the rents were assessed per acre, on a sliding scale to reflect changing land values over time. Over the two centuries since that agreement was signed, those rents have provided my family with a very comfortable income.”

  “Comfortable?” Gadrial echoed. “Sweet Rahil, Jasak, your father’s the richest man on New Arcana! Maybe the richest back on Arcana Prime too.”

  “No, not on Arcana,” Jasak corrected her promptly. “There are at least half a dozen Mythlan shakira caste lords that outstrip his total portfolio, some by a considerable margin. But on the whole,” he agreed, “we’ve done well for ourselves. And I’ll admit we periodically bless Great-Great-Great-Something-or-Other-Grandfather Sherstan’s stiff-necked Andaran stubbornness. Otherwise, we’d have blue blood, a lot of beach sand in Andara, and not much else.”

  Gadrial leaned back in her seat, chuckling. “It’s impossible to remain exasperated with you, Jasak. If I were in your shoes, I’d bless him, too.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” he replied mildly. “Now, then, back to our discussion…” He met Jathmar’s gaze. “You and Shaylar will be staying with my family, permanently. You’ll move with us whenever we shift residences, whether it’s moving into the townhouse in Portalis for the social season or traveling through the portal and crossing the original Ocean of Storms on Arcana Prime, to spend part of the winter at the Earldom of Yar Khom or the Barony of Sarkhala.”

  “I thought we were required to live with you, Jasak. You don’t have your own house?” Jathmar asked, surprised, and Jasak shrugged.

  “I keep an apartment in Portalis, but I don’t use it all that often. Both the ducal palace and the town house are large enough, my parents and I can live in the same house and still maintain our privacy. The palace has four wings, all connected to the central tower, and each wing has about eighty rooms.”

  Shaylar’s mouth fell open. “Mother Marthea!” One wing of that house was larger than the King of Shurkhal’s entire palace!

  “That’s where we’ll stay, at any rate, and I think you’ll like it better than the town house. The portion of the estate not rented to the Commandery’s been left largely pristine, still covered in heavy mature growth forest. That’s where I learned my basic woodcraft as a boy.”

  “That’s something else we share, then,” Jathmar murmured. “I learned mine in the Kylie Forest, which corresponds almost exactly to your demesne. It’s a major national park, set aside for public use. I very nearly lived in that forest, as a boy.”

  The two men looked at one another with a shared smile, and Shaylar’s heart warmed as she saw it. She and Gadrial had become close friends, during their journey, but Jasak and Jathmar had remained at a distance from one another, for reasons she understood only too well. Her husband had lost his closest friends in the savagery of Toppled Timber—friends he would never be able to replace, given their status as permanent prisoners in their captors’ society—and he bitterly missed the easy camaraderie of the explorer’s lifestyle.

  As a Voice, Shaylar had always been connected back to life in Sharona through the Voice network. Some of the team had craved that connection and routinely wanted updates on the settled universes they’d left behind, but Jathmar had never been like that. As intimately connected as their marriage bond made them, Jathmar could have relived news updates as vividly as if he were a Voice himself. Instead he’d reveled in the experience of the new universes and the time tracking through pristine worlds with their team. The Union of Arcana and Jasak Olderhan had taken that away from him. Their lives and the lifestyle they’d loved were gone for good.

  But here in New Arcana, Jasak’s family had preserved a piece of Jathmar’s home forest, kept it nearly as pristine as in a brand new universe, and Shaylar watched the two men lean in to discuss childhood woodsmanship and identical landmarks in very different universes with a glint of hope.

  If Jasak and Jathmar could somehow learn to trust one another enough to become friends—genuine friends—Shaylar would be grateful for the rest of her life.

  She sighed and sat back in her seat. After the intense stress of capture and the unending strain of imprisonment, it would be wonderful to stop traveling, to settle down in one place, a private home, no matter how large that home might be. She ached to crawl into a bed, knowing she’d actually sleep in it more than once or twice. And it would be a major blessing to never again sprawl wearily in a succession of military forts, slidercars, ships, or dragon saddles.

  It had been so long since she’d lived in a real house, rather than a tent or the temporary accommodations they’d used on this long journey, that she’d nearly forgotten what it was like. And if that house was to be their prison, there would at least be a beautiful forest to walk through. If, she bit her lip, they were allowed to walk through it.

  Or, for that matter, if it was safe for them to walk through it. She’d noticed how carefully Jasak didn’t speak about the reasons Hundred Forhaylin and his men had joined them in New Ransar. She didn’t think he’d have been so reticent if he hadn’t wanted to shield her and Jathmar from still more bad news, and they’d seen more than enough hostility out of all too many of the Arcanans with whom they’d come in contact on their journey from Hell’s Gate.

  Jathmar caught a glimmer of her feeling and slid an arm around her. She leaned against him, much as Gadrial had leaned against Jasak, and drew great comfort from the warmth and the aura of protectiveness that wrapped around her. But even that was a source of sorrow. It continued to be more and more difficult for them to “read” one another, despite the marriage bond. They still hadn’t spoken to Gadrial or Jasak about it, and nothing had changed their reasons for that. If something was weakening their Talents—and it was getting even worse; even the range of Jathmar’s Mapping Talent had been drastically reduced and continued to dwindle almost daily—that was potentially deadly military intelligence. They couldn’t let anyone know, not even Jasak and Gadrial, but the steady erosion distressed them both, and the fact that they couldn’t explain it—to themselves, much less to anyone else—only added uncertainty to the distress. And there was already more than enough of both those things in their lives, without adding more to the load.

  At least Jasak had done what he could to reduce their worry about the end of this journey. And much as she suspected she wouldn’t have liked all the reasons Duke Garth Showma had sent Hundred Forhaylin to escort them, she was also profoundly grateful for his presence for at least one reason. Like Jasak, the duke appeared determined to minimize the temptation of the Arcanan high command—the “Commandery,” Jasak called it—to break its own custody rules and seize Jathmar and Shaylar. That could have happened at any of the weary progression of military dragonfields and forts through which they’d passed, out of sight of any civilian agency or witnesses, and the temptation to do just that must have grown steadily greater as the ominous official silence from the war front stretched longer. That was the real reason, she knew, Jasak had used commercial sliders rather than using military transport ever since they passed through the universe of Pegasus, two universes before even New Ransar.

  Shaylar had begun to truly believe how wealthy and powerful the Olderhan family was as she watched Jasak chartering private slidercars—not just tickets, entire sliders—in his father’s name…and seen the alacrity with which everyone from station masters to concierges to maître d’s scurried to do his bidding. That belief had been an indescribable relief as it seeped into her bones, and Hundred Forhaylin was further proof of the power of the family whose sense of honor had become her and her husband’s only protection.

  There’d been another sign of that family’s—or at least their baranal’s—sense of honor, too. Jasak had picked up a new dress uniform from the post store at Shaisal Air Base, just outside Chemparas, the largish city at the portal between Basilisk and Manticore. But the base d
idn’t have anything suitable for Jathmar and Shaylar or Gadrial. He’d apologized to them all for that, but it wasn’t until Forhaylin and his men turned up in New Ransar that she’d realized why apologizing was all he’d done. Once the security team was on-site with them, he’d taken all three of them on a shopping spree in Theskair…with a wary-eyed squad of the Garth Showma Guard prominently displayed everywhere they went.

  The shopping trip had surprised them, since Shaylar and Jathmar had picked up practical Arcanan-style clothing along the way; but Jasak hadn’t wanted them to arrive in Portalis wearing workmen’s sturdy clothes. They might be prisoners, but they were political prisoners more than anything else, and their status was high enough to warrant the finest clothing available. Particularly since Arcana had done them sufficient injury to make any reparations he could offer them a high personal priority.

  First impressions were also important, he’d explained with a very sober expression. His parents would do their best to see Jathmar and Shaylar as foreigners, not bound by the same social conventions as Arcanans—any Arcanans, let alone Andarans—but having them show up in the kind of clothing the family’s gardener wore would make it difficult for other people to treat them with respect.

  Gadrial had been impressed that he’d recognized the problem, when he broached the subject with her earlier. And when he’d asked for her advice, she’d plunged into the spirit of things with childlike glee.

  The results were well worth it. Shaylar had been transformed from a sturdy, tough-as-hickory pioneer into a stunningly graceful young woman. She wore the silks Gadrial had chosen like a queen, and the current Arcanan ladies’ fashions, with their nipped-in waists and clean, elegant lines suited her petite stature. She would’ve been swallowed whole by the ruffles and flutters that had been popular when Jasak had left New Arcana for the frontier, but now—! If she’d been single, instead of married, Jasak would’ve been hard-pressed to turn away smitten suitors, her status as political prisoner notwithstanding, Gadrial thought, watching Shaylar run her fingers down a long, silken sleeve with absent sensuality.

  Not that Shaylar had been the only one to profit from the expedition.

  Now Jasak had to swallow a laugh as he, too, watched from the corner of one eye as Shaylar stroked her shirtwaist’s sleeve and remembered the other side of the excursion…and his own reaction to it. Gadrial was close enough to Shaylar’s shape and size for the styles and silks to be stunning on her, as well, and he’d gotten his first taste of jealousy when they left the first boutique, with Gadrial and Shaylar each wearing one of the ensembles they’d just purchased. The long, appreciative male glances at Gadrial, in particular, had left Jasak with rising blood pressure and a need to stomp hard on an equal rise in irritability. He’d gotten used to being the only unattached male in Gadrial’s company.

  He hadn’t liked the change.

  The intoxicating scent she’d picked up hadn’t helped. The perfume was some earthy and exotic Ransaran concoction that punched him in the gut with the first whiff. Whatever it was, it smelled totally different on the two women despite the fact that he’d seen them both dabbing various pulse points from the same little bottle. On Shaylar, it was evocative of the wilderness and endless forests drenched with patches of sunlight and droplets of water from the last rain.

  On Gadrial…

  It should’ve been illegal on Gadrial.

  To distract himself, he’d studied Jathmar critically, comparing him with the well-dressed men on the streets and in the lines at the slider station, and he’d come to the conclusion that Gadrial and the salesman had done equally well by Jathmar.

  Jathmar was a rather non-descript fellow in a lot of ways, the kind of man most people wouldn’t glance at twice, neither handsome nor homely. But he was in very good physical condition, if not the hardened, top-notch condition of military veterans on active duty. He not only wore the current styles well and contrived to look surprisingly distinguished, he moved well in them, with the kind of cat-like grace trained athletes possessed. Once the uneasiness at finding himself in unfamiliar, expensive clothes wore off, he’d been transformed from a man who faded into the background into one who commanded intent glances from unattached women. He would certainly pass muster with Jasak’s family and servants.

  On the whole, the shopping trip had been well worth the time and money spent on it. As their slider whipped silently across the miles, following the shining dotted path of crystal control nodes, Jasak felt better about their reception in his parents’ household. As to their reception into Arcanan society…That, he knew, would depend largely on how the press chose to portray the events at the frontier, and that wasn’t looking good. By now, everyone knew the fighting had resumed, but still there was no official explanation of how and why, and in its absence, the rumors only grew more extreme every day.

  Now, watching Jathmar and Shaylar, particularly the lovely woman his men had come so close to killing, Jasak felt an ominous foreboding about the future—his own and theirs and both of their people’s. Jasak’s culture and theirs should have been able to meet one another peacefully, for they shared enough common ground to form genuine friendships. Watching Shaylar and Gadrial together was proof of that. If only that incompetent bastard Garlath—

  He cut short that thought. Yes, Garlath had effectively started the war, but Jasak had been Garlath’s commanding officer. The blame might be Garlath’s, but the responsibility had been his, and he fully expected a court-martial. But the question of how the Commandery’s officers would vote on that court was as up in the air as everything else, and until that court-martial was out of the way and resolved, one way or the other, he could make no plans for his own future.

  His stomach seemed to congeal inside him as that familiar thought went thought him once more, and his glance lingered on Gadrial, who was busy poring over her PC, studying the Sharonian primer she and Shaylar had put together. She was now very nearly as proficient in their language as the Sharonians were in Andaran, and her expression was rapt with a scholar’s joy as she worked on becoming even more proficient. Jasak’s heart twisted as he watched that expression, watched the light play across Gadrial’s face while the slider whipped across the last hundred miles toward home.

  He wanted Gadrial to share that home with him.

  Desperately.

  He hadn’t spoken to her about that. Not yet. And as the final miles flashed past, all the reasons he hadn’t—the reasons he couldn’t—crashed in upon him. It was like a vast weight, slamming down on him, blotting away the amusement he’d felt only a moment before. The moment was coming when he’d have to say something to her…one way or the other. And he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t.

  He wasn’t free, couldn’t be free, to say a single thing to her about his hopes and dreams. He didn’t want to think about what it would mean to him, personally, if a court-martial found him guilty, and not because of whatever sentence it might hand down. A woman like Gadrial deserved the very best in life, not a future tied to a man drummed out of the military in disgrace. He wouldn’t—could never—even ask her to endure that.

  Yet even if he was acquitted, would a Ransaran whose deeply held convictions about personal worth had been tested and turned to granite in the volcanic fires of Mythlan prejudice, even be willing to accept a proposal that would tie her to an Andaran officer and aristocrat? Submerge her in the suffocating web of obligations and honor-debts that comprised the only world Jasak truly understood? She’d had years of experience with Andaran customs during her time at the Garth Showma Institute, but that was a very different thing from joining that culture. She and Magister Halathyn had been enormously respected scholars and teachers, and that’s what she still was. In their cases, Andaran custom had accommodated itself to them, not the other way around, and rightly so. But if he asked her to share his life, he wasn’t simply asking her to live in Garth Showma with him, or even to accept the outer forms of culture and custom. He was asking her to marry the heir to Garth Show
ma, to accept the knowledge that one day he would become Duke…and she would become Duchess. One of the things he’d learned about her—one of the things he most loved about her—was that she would never, ever shirk an obligation she’d assumed, and she wouldn’t shirk that one…if she accepted him.

  He didn’t see how she could.

  True, one day he would be Duke of Garth Showma, a man of immense political power and wealth, whatever happened to his military career. Assuming, of course, that none of the charges which might be levied against him carried the death sentence. But the mere inheritance of a title would carry less weight with Ransarans than with almost anyone else in the Union of Arcana. Many of them actively despised hereditary titles and the—in their opinion—unearned power that went with a mere accident of birth. Gadrial wasn’t one to be prejudiced against someone by the mere fact that he possessed a title, but she was no friend of aristocratic privilege, either. If she ever had been, her time in Mythal would undoubtedly have cured her of the infatuation!

  Why should one of the most gifted theoretical magisters—Ransaran theoretical magisters—in the entire Union chain herself to a man who might soon find himself stripped of his commission and utterly disgraced? A lesser woman might accept him based on the Olderhan wealth and title, but no amount of money could make a man worthy of Gadrial Kelbryan. She was too exceptional, too accomplished, too brilliant in her own right—too strong—to ever live as a man’s shadow. She deserved everything. He could only complicate her life and add extra responsibilities to interfere with her passion for magical research.

  And even if she might be willing to entertain the thought of accepting his proposal, what about her family? How did they feel about aristocrats? What if, unlike her, they did despise the very concept of aristocracy? And how would they feel about his dishonor if the court-martial did strip him of his rank and expel him from the military in disgrace? About the part he’d played, whatever a court decided, in launching the first inter-universal war in human history?