Shaylar and Jathmar sat in their quarters in Fort Wyvern, talking quietly with Gadrial, and listened to the wind.
It was dying down at last, and they were glad. The thunderstorms on the far side of the portal had raged with only occasional periods of relative calm for better than twenty-four hours after their arrival here, and the violent weather seemed to have spread to this side. At least, that was what it had felt like for the next two days, as rain and strong winds pummeled Fort Wyvern. None of the transport dragon pilots had been at all happy about the prospect of taking off under such conditions, and Jasak had decided not to push the issue. Instead, they'd settled down to wait out the weather on both sides of the portal before proceeding.
It had not been a comfortable wait. Five Hundred Grantyl, Fort Wyvern's commanding officer, was very different from Five Hundred Klian. There'd been none of the sympathy, none of the awareness that what had happened certainly wasn't their fault, that they'd seen in Klian. Instead, there'd been suspicion, hostility, and more than a little fear. It had been obvious to Shaylar that Grantyl would have been far more comfortable locking them up in a dungeon somewhere, and preferably losing the key.
The fact that he hadn't gone ahead and done exactly that underscored the accuracy of what Jasak and Gadrial had told them about the institution of shardon. Shaylar had been too far away to catch more than a few fragments of the "discussion" between Jasak and Grantyl, but she hadn't needed her Talent to recognize how disgruntled—and angry—Grantyl had been. Yet despite his anger, and despite the fact that he outranked Jasak substantially, the five hundred hadn't even attempted to put them into close confinement. He'd insisted on stationing sentries outside their quarters, but aside from that, they'd been treated almost as guests. Not welcome guests, perhaps, but still guests.
"You know," she said now to Gadrial, "I don't think I'd truly realized—not deep down inside—just how lucky we are that Jasak is basically a decent man."
Jathmar stirred, sitting on the bed at her side, and she reached out and took his hand. Her husband's attitude towards Jasak remained far more ambivalent than her own.
"I don't think this fort's commander," Shaylar went on, "was all that happy about not throwing us into chains the instant we got here."
"You're right, Grantyl did want to lock you up in the brig beside vos Hoven," Gadrial said. "But he's an Andaran himself, which didn't leave him much choice but to accept Jasak's position. Of course," she smiled thinly, "he also knows who Jasak's father is, which may have had a little something to do with it."
"I'll settle for that," Jathmar said with a slightly grim answering smile.
"So would I, in your place." Gadrial nodded, but there was an edge of unhappiness, or concern, perhaps, in her tone, and Shaylar arched her eyebrows.
"You don't seem entirely satisfied about something," she observed, and Gadrial grimaced.
"It's just that I'm not too happy about the commander of the next fort," she admitted.
"Why?" Jathmar demanded, his eyes suddenly intent.
"Two Thousand mul Gurthak most definitely isn't Andaran. In fact, he's a Mythalan, and although he hasn't chosen to flaunt it, he comes from a fairly prominent shakira clan-line. He's also a long way away from any authority which might overrule him . . . or punish him. Frankly, if anyone's likely to try to violate Jasak's role as your baranal, it's going to be a Mythalan."
"Why do you and Jasak hate Mythalans so much?" Shaylar asked. Gadrial simply looked at her, and Shaylar shrugged. "You said Magister Halathyn was a Mythalan, and from what I saw and sensed about him, he was a wonderful man. But I've never heard you or Jasak say a positive thing about any other Mythalan, aside from Sendahli. And that other soldier of Jasak's—that vos Hoven—almost sets himself on fire with his own hatred every time he looks at Jasak."
"It's a long, complicated situation," Gadrial said slowly. "And I take the point you're trying to make. In fact, it's probably true that the mere fact that mul Gurthak is Mythalan would be enough to make me . . . wary of him. But if the question you're really asking is whether or not our opinions of Mythal and its society are warranted, you might think about the fact that Jasak and I come from extremely different backgrounds . . . and neither of us can stomach the way Mythalans think societies should work."
"Why?" Jathmar asked, and Gadrial sighed.
"In our universe, Mythal—what you call Ricathia—has the oldest civilization of any of our major cultures. It's also where almost all of the techniques for handling magic, tapping the energy field, were first worked out. A lot of that development stemmed from pure trial and error in the early days, but Mythalans have been studying magic for a long time, and they began working out the theory behind those early brute force applications well over two thousand years ago. The true scientific method only evolved in the last few hundred years, but most of their original theoretical work has stood up extremely well. Even today, they dominate in the field of theoretical sorcery. They're not as good at devising practical applications of their own research as, say, my own people are, but the most prestigious of all of the academies of magic is still the Mythal Falls Academy, where Magister Halathyn used to teach."
Pain flickered through the magister's dark eyes. More pain than mentioning Halathyn usually caused her, Shaylar thought. But whatever its cause, she brushed it off quickly, almost angrily, and continued in that same level tone.
"No one—especially a magister like me—can fail to respect the work Mythal Falls has carried out over the centuries. But it's unfortunately true that Mythal developed a very different society from the rest of Arcana, one based almost entirely on whether or not the members of that society are Gifted. In fact, I've often thought that they developed their society as a result of their single-minded focus on the principles of magic.
"If you're Mythalan and Gifted, then you belong to the shakira caste, or perhaps to the multhari caste; if you aren't Gifted, then you belong to the garthan caste. There are some exceptions, but not very many."
"Castes?" Shaylar frowned at the totally alien word, and Gadrial sighed.
"The best way to think of it is that the Mythalans divide their society into three distinct groups, what we call 'castes,' each of which has a specific place. The relationships between castes—and what's permissible behavior within a caste—are defined by ironbound tradition and, in most cases, statutory law, as well. For the most part, the caste you belong to—shakira, multhari, or garthan—depends on whether or not you were born Gifted, and there's nothing you can do about that.
"As I say, the shakira are the Gifted caste. They're the small percentage of the total population, no more than twenty percent or so, at best, who form the tip of the social pyramid. They control the wealth and political power of the entire society, and they think of themselves as extremely enlightened because they practice a form of direct democracy no other Arcanan nation practices. Of course, the only people who get to vote are members of the shakira and traditional multhari families. That's one reason they can use direct democracy; they've got so few voters that the system actually works.
"Next in power and prestige after the shakira are the multhari, the traditional Mythalan military caste. You might think of them as the Mythalan equivalent of Andarans, although there are tremendous differences between them. Not least because one of the multhari's primary responsibilities is to keep the garthan's neck firmly under the shakira's heel. Some of the multhari—many of them, in fact—are also shakira, and the enlisted ranks of the Mythalan military have always contained quite a lot of garthan, although all of its officers are multhari.
"In Mythal, most garthan who end up in the army are conscripts. Traditionally, the shakira who entered the army could usually expect to attain high rank, especially if their families were also part of the traditional multhari hierarchy. Since the creation of the Union, there isn't any official Mythalan Army these days, and the integration of the multhari into the Union armed forces hasn't always gone smoothly. They've tended to carry a lot of that traditional shakira sense of superiority and automatic privilege around with them, and they seem to resent the fact that they have to compete with the non-Gifted—and non-Mythalans—on an equal basis for promotion. Their resentment when they don't get it has had a tendency to be . . . fairly evident, let's say, and that's created a lot of friction between them and, say, Andaran or Ransaran personnel.
"For the last forty years or so, Mythal appears to have been trying to overcome some of those problems. More multhari have been attending the Army Academy at Garth Showma before joining the army, which appears to have smoothed down at least some of the rough edges. For that matter, some of the younger shakira from outside the multhari have actually been signing up for at least a tour or two in the enlisted ranks. They're being encouraged to do so by their caste-lords, on the grounds that whether their caste agrees with the rest of us or not, they're stuck with the terms of the Accords, and they have to learn to get along with those restrictions if they ever want to reduce the traditional friction between their own people and the rest of us.
"It's at least a pragmatic idea," Gadrial admitted a bit grudgingly, "and I suppose they may actually be sincere. Unfortunately, their 'solution' doesn't come without problems of its own. For example, the soldier you were talking about, Shaylar—vos Hoven—belongs to the shakira. That's what the 'vos' in his name indicates. But Sendahli belongs to the garthan caste. He fled Mythal and enlisted in the Union Army as a way to escape the limited, second-class future which was all he could expect at home. And the reason vos Hoven is under arrest is that Jasak caught him brutally beating Sendahli to extort Sendahli's pay out of him."
Jathmar frowned deeply and quickly. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Gadrial continued.
"The reason he was doing that—and the reason Sendahli was letting him do that, despite the fact that he could have broken vos Hoven's neck any time he wanted to—is that under Mythalan custom and law, garthan have no legal rights in any dispute with a shakira. They can't even testify in court against a shakira defendant. Up until the formation of the Union of Arcana, garthan were legally property. They were required to belong to someone from the shakira caste, and they were denied the right to own property, the right to vote, or the right to choose their own trades and professions . . . or to any income they might have earned from that trade or profession. In many cases, they were denied even the right to choose who they married, and even today, Gifted children of garthan parents are taken from their birthparents by the courts and placed for adoption by shakira families."
"That's barbaric!" Shaylar burst out, and Gadrial nodded.
"That's exactly what it is," she agreed grimly. "I'm Ransaran. My people believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings. We're the dangerous, humanistic, liberal part of the Union, and there's been a fundamental hostility, almost a hatred, between us and the Mythalans for as long as anyone can remember on either side. Jasak, on the other hand, is an Andaran, and they're as different from us as the Mythalans are. Their entire culture is bound up in concepts of mutual obligation and duty, of responsibilities that define who they are. They believe in the rights of the individual, but they also believe that those rights have to be earned by meeting all of those obligations and responsibilities, and they have no sympathy for anyone who fails to measure up to their standards of honor.
"Yet they despise the Mythalans as much as we Ransarans do, because of the Mythalan attitude towards the garthan—that the mere fact that people like Sendahli aren't Gifted makes them less than human in the eyes of their own rulers. It turns them into something which exists solely for the convenience of their natural superiors, the shakira. If an Andaran like Jasak considered the non-Gifted as truly inferior—which he never would—his cultural obligation would be to protect and defend them, not to abuse them. When he came across vos Hoven beating Sendahli, he ordered vos Hoven off . . . and vos Hoven tried to kill him."
Jathmar shook his head in a combination of dismay and disbelief, and Gadrial smiled humorlessly.
"I'm sure there are people back home in Sharona you wouldn't exactly be proud to be associated with, Jathmar. Maybe not anyone as bad as the Mythalans, but I can't imagine your people are that different from ours, Talent or no. Unfortunately, we Ransarans and Andarans had no choice but to include Mythal in the Union. Partly, because whether we like them or not they do live on the same planet we do, which I suppose gives them at least some inherent right to share in the exploitation of the portals. But, frankly, mostly because when the first portal appeared on Arcana, it sparked the most terrible war in our history. The weapons that were developed were devastating, so terrible we barely managed to stop short of our own complete destruction."
Jathmar and Shaylar froze, their faces suddenly tight with fear.
"Andara and Ransar realized the situation was about to spin totally out of control," Gadrial continued grimly. "We proposed the creation of the Union as a world-government to ensure that every Arcanan nation had the same opportunities to profit from the existence of the portals, and the Andarans supported us strongly. It was only our united front which forced Mythal to accept the proposal, and the Mythalans held out for a much greater degree of local autonomy—essentially the protection of their own social system within their own territory—than any of the rest of us wanted to give them. Unfortunately, they'd been the leading researchers for the weapons which had been used in the Portal Wars. They had more of them, and better ones, than the rest of us, and they refused to destroy them unless we accepted their terms in that regard."
Shaylar's face was white as she absorbed the implications of magical weapons capable of destroying an entire planet's civilization. Jathmar looked equally horrified, and Gadrial faced them squarely.
"I know what you're afraid of, and I don't blame you. But I will tell you there are severe limitations on even the most deadly weapon, when it's applied to inter-universal warfare. For one thing, no spell can be cast through a portal, so you'd still have to physically assault each portal and establish a bridgehead on the other side before you could deploy any sorcerous weapon. That wasn't a factor in the Portal Wars, because they were fought entirely on Arcana, over who'd end up with possession of the portal in the first place.
"For a second thing, those weapons were outlawed two hundred years ago. As part of the Union Accords, all signatories were required to destroy all weapons of mass destruction and the spellware and research which had supported them. Several other particularly nasty spells were outlawed at the same time, and an inspection process was set up to ensure that there were no holdouts and that no one was doing fresh research in the proscribed areas."
"But if things get nasty enough, your people could always change the law, couldn't they?"
"Yes, Jathmar, we could," Gadrial said very, very quietly. "And the people most likely to push for doing just that are going to be the Mythalans. They're xenophobic to an almost crippling degree, even with their fellow Arcanans. I don't even want to think about how they're going to react when they find out about your people. Especially," she smiled wanly, "because they're going to think they're looking at an entire worldwide civilization of Ransarans."
Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, and Gadrial leaned forward in her chair to take Shaylar's hand. Shaylar's eyes stung with tears as she realized the other woman was deliberately giving her the opportunity to read her emotions, her honesty.
"The Andarans and Ransarans would never stand for the resurrection of those hideous weapons," she said flatly. "Not unless your people were foolish enough to convince us that our only other alternative was our own complete destruction. From what I've seen of the two of you, I don't think that's ever going to happen. I can't promise that, obviously, but I truly, truly believe it."
She decided—again—not to mention the fact that she'd already received specific instructions from mul Gurthak to program all available data on the Fallen Timbers cluster into the other three prototypes of the portal detector she and Halathyn had come out here to field test. She could think of only one reason he might want those, and while she had to agree, however unwillingly, with the logic, she doubted that Shaylar or Jathmar would find the news reassuring.
"Still, you need to be aware that Mythalans share neither my own people's belief in the inherent rights of the individual—especially not of non-Gifted individuals—nor (to anyone outside their own caste, at least) Jasak's people's ironclad belief in honor obligations and an individual's overriding obligation to meet them. You need to be careful—very careful—what you say to any of them, and you have to be aware that if one of them thinks he sees an opportunity to get around Jasak's protection, he may well try to seize it.
"That's the bad news. The good news is that seventy or eighty percent of the entire Arcanan army is Andaran, just like Five Hundred Grantyl. Even if they don't like what Jasak's done, they'll respect it, and they won't like it one bit if some Mythalan dishonors all of Andara by harming you in any way."
Shaylar thought about that conversation three days later as their transport dragon circled above yet another fortress. This one was even bigger than Fort Wyvern, and unless she was very much mistaken, it lay in what would have been east Farnalia back home in Sharona. Endless ocean waves of coniferous forest spread out in every direction, and the flight over the sharp-spined mountains between Fort Wyvern's portal and this new fort—Fort Talon—had been just as freezingly cold as Jasak had warned them that it would be.
It had also required them to fly so high that the dragon's pilot had issued each of his passengers a small cylinder of oxygen attached by a tube to a tightfitting mask which had covered mouth and nose. Shaylar had huddled down in her thick, fur-lined flying garments and leaned against Jathmar's back as the dragon carried them through the ice-cold, crystal-clear gulfs of the heavens. Despite her protective clothing (and another one of those unnatural seeming little spells which had actually heated her furs), she'd never been so cold—nor felt so far from Shurkhal's beloved, sunstruck warmth—in her entire life, and she'd been almost prayerfully thankful when they landed on the western side of those towering mountains.
The total flight from Fort Wyvern had taken almost a full three days. She and Jathmar had been rather relieved to realize there were some real physical constraints on the Arcanans' uncanny capabilities. Dragons could fly at preposterous speeds, but their endurance clearly wasn't unlimited. They appeared to be capable of perhaps a thousand miles or a bit more in a single day, but the greater exertion of crossing those high mountains had taken its toll. Their dragon had required additional rest after they finally landed, and Jasak and the pilot had agreed to take an extra day at the small, bare-bones dragonfield.
But they were here at last, descending through a drizzling rain towards their next destination. Their next interim destination, she reminded herself grimly, smearing moisture away as she wiped her protective goggles and recalled what Gadrial had said about the distance between them and New Arcana.
Fort Talon's portal rose out of the forests behind it. It was larger than Fort Wyvern's, and the terrain on the other side of it looked like the flat sweep of Jathmar's native New Ternathia's midwestern plains. She could see a small river, but it was late night on the far side, and she didn't have much time to consider details before the dragon planed gracefully down. She was still trying to get used to how suddenly and abruptly the huge beasts decelerated when they landed, and her arms tightened around Jathmar's waist as they hit the ground.
Then they were down—once again in one piece—and she drew a huge breath of relief.
I'm going to have to get over this fear of landing, she told herself firmly. Of course, given how far we've got to go, I should have plenty of time for it.
The thought made her chuckle sourly, and then they were once again climbing down for yet another brief stay.
Aside from her, Jathmar, Jasak, and Gadrial, they were accompanied only by Jugthar Sendahli, Otwal Threbuch, Javelin Shulthan, and Bok vos Hoven. That left a lot of unused passenger space aboard the dragon, and Shaylar was just as happy that it did. Vos Hoven was a brooding, hate-filled presence, and she was relieved that there was enough room for him to be kept well away from her and Jathmar. Not that the Mythalan was likely to pose much of a threat, given his manacles and the eagle eye Threbuch kept trained upon him. Shaylar was reasonably certain that nothing would have pleased Threbuch more than for vos Hoven to try something which, regrettably, ended up with the prisoner plunging several thousand feet to his doom after a brief, desperate struggle with his guard. From vos Hoven's attitude, he probably thought the same thing.
A uniformed reception committee waited for them on the edge of the dragonfield hacked out of the virgin forest which rose like green walls around it. None of them were Mythalans, and all of them looked remarkably young, certainly not much older than Jasak. Apparently the fort's commander couldn't be bothered to greet the new arrivals in person, and she saw what looked like a hint of irritation far back in Jasak's eyes.
"Hundred Olderhan," their baranal said, with one of his people's crisp, clenched-fist salutes, "en route to New Arcana with Magister Kelbryan and party."
"Commander of One Hundred Neshok," the officer Jasak had greeted responded in a cool voice. "You're late, Olderhan. Five Hundred Klian's hummer message told us to expect you three days ago."
"We had a weather delay at Fort Wyvern," Jasak replied in a level voice. "And the pilot and I agreed that the dragon needed some extra rest after clearing the mountains."
"I see." Neshok's tone made it perfectly clear he did nothing of the sort, Shaylar thought, holding Jathmar's hand tightly. The Fort Wyvern hundred gazed at them for a second or two, then looked back at Jasak.
"The Commander of Two Thousand will see you shortly. Follow me."
Neshok turned on his bootheel and started toward the fort without another word.
"If there'd been any more warmth in that greeting," Shaylar murmured to Jathmar in Shurkhali, "the air would've frozen solid."
"I'd say that was a bit of an understatement," Jathmar agreed. "And frankly, after what Gadrial told us about this mul Gurthak, I find that disturbing. I hope she was right about how hard it would be for anyone to take us out of Jasak's custody!"
"Yes. Mother Marthea, yes," Shaylar replied fervently, but her attention wasn't on Neshok. She was looking at two men who stood well back in the little crowd beside the hard-packed dirt road leading from the dragonfield to the fort's gates. Most of the men in that crowd were soldiers, but not the two who'd drawn her attention. They stood out because they weren't in uniform, and because they were also older than the soldiers standing around them.
Jathmar followed her eyes and frowned.
"Wonder who they are?" he muttered under his breath.
"So do I." The edge in Shaylar's voice surprised Jathmar. She'd wrapped both arms around herself as though still warding off the chill of flying across the mountains, and her reaction worried him.
He turned his attention back to the two unknowns. Both were in their forties or fifties, at a glance, and although Jathmar knew nothing of Arcanan fashions, their clothing was clearly made of high-quality material. It looked custom-tailored, too. That kind of garment wasn't what he'd expected to see in a frontier fort, and they looked even more out of place than he felt.
According to Jasak and Gadrial, Arcana's exploration of virgin universes was conducted by the military. So who were these two civilians? And what were they doing out here among the trees, mosquitos, and swamps, wearing tailored garments made of what looked like silk?
Government functionaries of some kind, perhaps. Or could they be independent businessmen intent on opening trade routes? He knew there wasn't much point in speculating in the dark, but something about them compelled his curiosity. There was a hardness in their eyes, or perhaps a hooded look of speculation, that made him intensely uncomfortable. He'd grown used to seeing fear, or at least anxiety, as the rumors of the Sharonians' "demonic weapons" traveled up the transit chain ahead of them. But these men weren't looking at Shaylar and him fearfully. There was something measuring, watchful . . . calculating about them.
He couldn't put his mental finger on just what it was about them that bothered him any more accurately than that, but it was enough to raise his hackles, and he put his arm around Shaylar as they walked past the silently watching civilians.
Neshok led them up the road toward the new fort, and Jathmar abruptly found the two civilians displaced from the forefront of his concerns. The landing field was literally ringed with dragons. There were dozens—possibly even scores—of the beasts, and their path led them directly past half a dozen of them.
Skyfang, the dragon which had transported them here from Fort Wyvern, had shown no sign of Windclaw's ferociously hostile initial reaction to Shaylar. Jathmar had concluded that she'd been right in her suspicion that it was her attempt to use her Voice which had set the original transport dragon off. Now, as they headed across in front of six of them, he found himself hoping fervently that they'd both been correct after all.
Most of the beasts ignored them completely, but one of them raised its head abruptly. The predominately crimson and gold beast was smaller than any of the dragons Jathmar had previously seen, but that scarcely made it tiny. Its head was still longer than Jathmar's body, much less Shaylar's, and the spikes protecting its throat and head were sharper looking, and proportionately longer, than Windclaw's had been.
It cocked its head, like some huge falcon, turning to fix its knife-sharp gaze upon Shaylar, and its mouth opened, showing carnivore fangs the size of serving platters and a long, shockingly red forked tongue. Then its forefeet thrust at the rain-slick ground, shoving it half-upright, and it hissed like a Trans-Temporal Express locomotive venting steam.
Shaylar went white. She closed her eyes, trembling, and Jathmar felt her desperate effort to completely close down any hint of Talent. Even the marriage bond was abruptly muted, almost impossible to feel, and his arm tightened around her.
The dragon's reaction hadn't escaped Jasak or Gadrial. As if they'd been the telepaths, the two of them moved as one, in perfect coordination, to interpose their own bodies between the clearly agitated beast and Shaylar. And Gadrial, Jathmar realized with sudden shock, was abruptly outlined by a literal corona of light. Fire seemed to crackle in midair, three inches from her skin, her hands rose in an odd, intensely graceful posture which reminded him of some sort of martial artist, and he felt a sudden, ominous, ozone-breathing pressure radiating from her. It was like knowing he was standing directly in the path of a lightning bolt, a corner of his mind gibbered, and for the first time since they'd met, he was actually afraid of her.
Neshok, on the other hand, didn't even seem to have noticed. He'd halted, but he was staring with obvious perplexity—and what looked like quickly growing suspicion—back and forth between the dragon and the two Sharonians, not at Jasak or Gadrial.
"What—?" he began, but Jasak overrode his questions savagely.
"Get us out of here—now!" he barked. Neshok turned his head to glare at him, and Jasak snarled. "Now, godsdamn it! Unless you want a massacre on your hands!"
Fury tightened the other hundred's expression, but then he glanced at Gadrial, and his eyes widened. He'd opened his mouth as if to say something more, but it snapped shut as more fire began to crackle at the tips of her fingers. That and the look on Jasak's face—and the fact that a second dragon was beginning to rouse—seemed to get through to him. He barked orders to the escort, and the entire party moved into a half-run.
The agitated dragons began to calm once more as soon as Shaylar was forty or fifty yards away. The one who'd roused up first looked after her with one last almost querulous hiss. Then it, too, settled back into its original position and laid its fearsome head on its forelegs.
"It wasn't me, Jasak! It wasn't! It couldn't have been me! I wasn't doing anything!" Shaylar cried, and Jasak looked down at her as she hastened along between him and Jathmar.
"I believe you," he said, laying his own hand on her shoulder, but he also shook his head. "I just wish I knew why those two reacted that way, when none of the transport dragons have since Windclaw."
"What are you talking about?" Neshok demanded harshly. He was glaring at Shaylar, his eyes flinty, and he didn't seem to be very much happier than that with Jasak. "What does she mean, she 'wasn't doing anything'?"
"The transport dragon that airlifted my wounded out reacted violently to Lady Nargra-Kolmayr's presence." Jasak's voice was level, his expression calm, but Shaylar could sense his emotions through the hand still on her shoulder. He wasn't at all happy about broaching this entire subject, she realized. "We didn't have any problems with the dragon from Fort Wyvern, though. I'd hoped it was just a fluke the first time."
"That still doesn't answer my question," Neshok said flatly, stopping in the road now that they were far enough away from the dragons and glaring at Jasak. "What did she mean about not doing anything?"
"Lady Nargra-Kolmayr," Jasak said, and Shaylar realized he was deliberately stressing the Andaran title he'd suddenly assigned her rather than use her first name, "has what her people call a Talent. It's an ability to communicate with others using her mind, and we think some of the dragons may be reacting to it."
Neshok's eyes flared wide in sudden alarm, and Jasak shook his head quickly.
"It's very much like our Gifts, Hundred," he said. "In fact, you could just think of it as a different sort of Gift. It doesn't turn her into some kind of magic mindreader, nor can she influence your thoughts or communicate with her own people from this far away."
"And just how do you know that?" Neshok demanded, his face dark with anger.
"I know because she told me so," Jasak said flatly. "And because if there'd been any way for her to use her Talent effectively against us, she'd certainly have done so, and she hasn't."
"Because she told you so!" Neshok repeated in a scathing tone, completely ignoring Jasak's second sentence. "The woman's a prisoner of war, and you expect her to tell you the truth? Are you a complete idiot? She's going to lie with every breath she takes! I ought to put a bolt through her right now—or throw her back to the dragons!"
Jathmar stiffened, his hands closing into fists. Neshok was speaking too rapidly, and too angrily, for Jathmar to completely follow the conversation, but he'd understood enough. He started to step in front of Shaylar, but before he could move, Gadrial's hand—no longer limned in fire, thank the gods!—closed on his elbow. He looked down at her, then looked back up . . . just in time to see Jasak step in front of his wife.
Jasak was a good three inches taller than Neshok, and much broader across the shoulders, but it was his expression and his body language, not his size, which made the other hundred abruptly step back a pace.
"I'm getting tired of explaining this to pigheaded, pea-brained, bigmouthed excuses for Andaran officers who frigging well ought to know better," Sir Jasak Olderhan said very, very softly. "But I'll try one more time, and I advise you to listen to me very carefully, because I'm not going to repeat myself again. Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband are my shardonai. Any insult, any injury or threat, offered to them is offered to a member of my family. Perhaps you'd care to reconsider that last sentence of yours."
His hand hovered in the vicinity of the short sword at his hip, and Jathmar's tension clicked up yet another notch as Jugthar Sendahli and Otwal Threbuch quietly stepped out on either side of Jasak, facing Neshok and his detail. The Second Andaran Scouts, Jathmar abruptly remembered from Gadrial's explanations, were the hereditary command of the Dukes of Garth Showma. Apparently, he realized, that relationship extended rather further than he'd assumed it did.
None of them actually touched a weapon. But none of them had to, either.
"Very well," a white-lipped Neshok grated after a moment. "I withdraw the last sentence. But shardonai or not, how can you be so sure they're telling you the truth? For that matter, how can you be sure you didn't decide to make them shardonai in the first place because she somehow influenced your mind?"
"Because she was three-quarters unconscious with a concussion when I made my decision," Jasak said almost contemptuously. "And because after three weeks in their company, I've discovered that unlike certain Arcanans I could mention, these are both people of honor who understand the mutual obligations of a baranal and his shardonai. They may not volunteer information, and they may even refuse to answer questions, but they won't lie to me, Hundred."
Neshok's angry, frightened expression didn't change. He was obviously not convinced, but equally obviously he couldn't think of a way to continue the argument without edging back into potentially dangerous waters. That was when Gadrial spoke up unexpectedly.
"Lady Nargra-Kolmayr is as clear as glass, Hundred Neshok. It's not in her nature to lie! God above, man—all you have to do is look at her to know that!"
Gadrial's outburst had drawn Neshok's angry eyes back to her. Now those eyes softened with an expression of pity.
"Magister Kelbryan, your work with Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah is renowned, even out here on the frontier. I can't imagine the grief and shock you must have experienced after his murder by these—" his glance flicked once more toward Shaylar and Jathmar, hardening again "—barbarians."
White-hot fury exploded suddenly inside Shaylar, made even worse by the lingering echoes of the terror she'd felt when the dragons began to hiss, and she jerked free of Jathmar's arm. She took a long, angry stride towards Neshok, stepping around Jasak. The Fort Wyvern officer towered above her, but the mantle of her anger made her a giant.
"Barbarians?" she hissed in his face. "Don't you dare call us barbarians! Don't you dare use the word 'murder' after what your soldiers did to us! We were civilians, damn you—civilians! And if you don't believe that, look what happened when your soldiers finally had to face ours. You kill civilians—use weapons that burn civilians alive!—but you call me a barbarian?
"My country is four thousand years old—four thousand years of civilization, art, science, and literature! Sharonian civilization is over five thousand years old. Five thousand years of recorded history—how many do you have?"
Neshok looked like a man who'd picked up his boot and suddenly discovered a cobra in it.
"We're not the ones who've acted like barbarians, but don't think for a moment that we don't know how to respond to barbarians! My mother is a Shurkhali ambassador! Do you think she, or any of our countries, will ever forgive you for what you've done? They think—she thinks—that I'm dead, curse you!"
She stood there in a puddle of utter silence, glaring up at Neshok, and naked shock had detonated behind his eyes. Even Jasak seemed stunned.
"Your mother is an ambassador?" he asked hoarsely, and she turned on him with flaming eyes, too shaken by the encounter with the dragons to contain the pain and rage Neshok had roused.
"Yes! What? You thought our people were too primitive, too violent for something that civilized?"
"No, Shaylar," he said, deliberately taking both her hands in his so that she would know. "I never thought that. Any civilization that could produce you is worthy of respect. But your mother's status makes this whole situation even more difficult, more complicated."
Shaylar bit down on a hysterical laugh as it tried to break loose in her throat.
"You don't have the slightest idea how much more," she told him. "You don't have any concept of how the Shurkhali honor code is going to react to what's happened."
"No, but I'm trying to understand, for your sake, as well as because it's my duty. And it's also," he flicked a cold glance at Neshok, "just one more reason to treat Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband with courtesy."
His eyes locked with Neshok's, and a muscle jumped in the other man's jaw.
"The two thousand is waiting," he half-snapped after a moment and turned on his heel once more to march toward the fort.
Some people, Shaylar thought, couldn't be forced to see reason, even at gunpoint. But Neshok's reaction to Halathyn's death—not to mention his instant, unthinking attitude towards her and Jathmar—only underscored how dark the future had become.
She could scarcely imagine how Sharona must have reacted to the belief that she was dead. She'd never been a vain person, but she'd been embarrassedly aware for years of the way the Portal Authority had used her face, her image, in its public relations campaigns. She knew how all of Shurkhal, even the men who'd harbored the most reservations about her choice of career, had taken a fierce and possessive pride in her accomplishments. If Darcel had relayed everything she'd transmitted over their link before she was injured, then all of Sharona had probably been swept by a fury it hadn't seen in centuries, if not longer. As for how Shurkal must have reacted—!
Now Neshok's attitude gave her some idea of how Arcana was going to react to news of Magister Halathyn's death. And the fact that he'd been killed by an Arcanan soldier, not by Sharona, wasn't going to matter a bit.
Her shoulders slumped as an abrupt, crushing weariness crashed down across her. She wanted to curl up someplace sheltered and private, someplace she could hide. Someplace where men like Neshok didn't exist, where monstrous weapons didn't threaten Sharonian lives, and where no unnatural creatures could crawl inside her mind.
"We'll settle you into your quarters and let you rest," Jasak promised her quietly. "I can see how shaken you are. Jathmar will help you, all right? It shouldn't be too far now."
She just nodded, and he released her hands. Jathmar slid his arm back around her, taking some of her weight, and met Jasak's gaze levelly.
"When we leave this place," he said in a low voice, "would it be too much to ask to have those murderous beasts moved someplace else?"
"That's a very reasonable request," Jasak said, and turned a cool glance on Neshok. "And a damned good idea from a security standpoint. Not only is it my duty to protect my shardonai, but I somehow doubt the Commandery would appreciate losing Lady Nargra-Kolmayr to dragon attack."
"They'll be moved," Neshok snapped without even turning his head. "Satisfied?"
"For now," Jasak said coldly. "In the meantime, if you'll escort us to our assigned quarters, I'll see my shardonai—" he emphasized the noun deliberately "—settled in, and then pay my compliments to the two thousand. Will he want to debrief Magister Kelbryan or Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband?"
"If he does, he'll send for them. This way."
If anyone thought the confrontation between Neshok and Jasak was over, they were speedily disabused of the notion when they reached the fort and Neshok tried to lock Shaylar and Jathmar into the cell beside vos Hoven's.
It was not a wise decision on his part. The exchange between him and Jasak was short, ice cold, and bitter, with Neshok taking spiteful refuge in the instructions he'd received from Two Thousand mul Gurthak. He insisted that he was merely following mul Gurthak's explicit orders—orders he lacked the authority to countermand.
"Two Thousand mul Gurthak doesn't have the authority to order the arbitrary incarceration of any civilian member of my family without specific charges under Arcanan law," Jasak told him savagely. Neshok started to open his mouth again, but this time Gadrial interposed before the situation could get totally out of hand.
"Fine!" she snapped, glaring up at Neshok as furiously as Shaylar had. "If those are your orders, obey them. Lock them up in your filthy jail. But you'll do it with me locked in the same cell with them!"
"Magister Kelbryan, you can't be serious!" Neshok protested.
"I've never been more serious in my life," she told him icily, and her lip curled. "I wouldn't want to suggest that they might have some sort of . . . accident locked up here in your jail, Hundred. But I think we'd all feel better with a senior magister who's fully trained in combat magics—who's taught combat magics at the Garth Showma Institute for the last ten years—between them and any unfortunate little episode. Don't you agree, Hundred Neshok?"
Neshok's troopers, Jathmar noticed, seemed to stiffen into statues at the phrase "combat magics." After what he'd seen down by the dragonfield, he found he could understand their attitude perfectly.
Shaylar, on the other hand, was watching Neshok, and the sudden, dark flush which spread down his neck told her everything she needed to know about the intentions of this fort's commander. Or—just as possible—about Neshok's intentions. A man who extracted information from recalcitrant prisoners for his superiors might just find it easier to climb the rank ladder. And if he succeeded in getting information, it was unlikely anyone would quibble too strenuously with his methods, however . . . unpleasant they might have been for the prisoners in question. She shivered in Jathmar's arms at the thought.
"Very well," Neshok bit out. "I'll escort you to other quarters."
The room the Sharonians ended up in was small and utilitarian, and Jasak made a point of assigning Jugthar Sendahli to deal with any of their needs. Neshok flushed angrily again at Jasak's none-too-subtle provision of a guard he knew he could rely upon. More than that, their room was next to Gadrial's, and the guard Neshok posted at their door was fully cognizant of Gadrial's open door.
"I will hear any attempt you make to have them removed by force," that door said, without a word spoken aloud. "And if anyone tries it, they'll wish they had never been born . . . briefly."
Neshok looked as if he wanted to chew live snakes, but he choked it down raw and accepted the situation. That satisfied Jasak, who saw them settled in before he disappeared in the direction of the commanding officer's office.
Shaylar sank down onto the bed and simply looked at her husband.
"He intended to hurt us," she said, and Jathmar nodded silently.
"It's going to get worse," she said even more quietly, and her husband nodded once more.
"I'm scared, Jath," she whispered, and he wrapped his arms about her and held her very, very tightly.