Hell Hath No Fury (16 page)

None of that worried Neshok particularly, however. There might not be any handy landing zones between here and the New Uromath-Thermyn portal, but there was also no reason for the expeditionary force to need any. The next portal was smaller than Hell's Gate-Magister Halathyn's detector had already told them that much, not that they'd really needed the detectors for that; no one had ever seen a portal Hell's Gate's size, far less one bigger. But his prisoner interrogations had confirmed that it was still the next best thing to ten miles across … and that the so-called "fort" built to cover it was little more sophisticated-or manned-than Fort Shaylar had been. The advanced forces Two Thousand Harshu and Thousand Toralk were sending ahead should find it child's play to slip through a portal that size under cover of night without being spotted.

And the terrain on the far side of the portal was very different from that on this side. Fort Brithik lay in the midst of the vast, level plains of central Andara, which-unlike these miserable, dripping woods or the smoldering desert left by the forest fire still raging in the Hell's Gate universe-was ideal terrain for air-mobile operations. Those same prisoner interrogations had also told them which way to go in search of the next portal beyond Brithik … and where to find the next half-dozen Voice relay stations.

Magister Halathyn's detectors would undoubtedly have pointed them in the direction of the next portal, even without the information Neshok had wrung out of his prisoners. For that matter, the fact that the Sharonians had no dragons meant there were bound to be roads-or at least tracks-to point the way to their next destination. But it was thanks to Neshok' efforts that they knew how far they had to go (and where to look when they got there) to find those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Voices.

The Voice relay between New Uromath and Thermyn, for example, was on this side of the portal connecting them. The distance was short enough to require only a single relay, but whereas Fort Brithik was built in Thermyn, where there was at least less rain and better lines of sight, the Voice outpost was in New Uromath. As far as the Sharonians knew, there was no real security need to put it under the cover of Fort Brithik's palisades, and by putting the Voice on this side of the portal, he was more handily available for contact from Fort Shaylar or the Voice at Fallen Timbers. Clearly, the Sharonians had decided messages moving up-chain were more likely to the time-critical than messages moving downchain, which explained the Voice's location. He was close enough to the portal that he could easily cross it to transmit messages up-chain or check for messages coming down-chain at regularly scheduled intervals, yet always available at any other time for any potentially critical message from the Sharonian negotiators.

Without the information Neshok had gotten out of his prisoners, it was likely the relay station would have been overlooked by people who expected the Voice they wanted to be inside Fort Brithik's protection. And if that had happened, the odds were entirely too good that the Voice might have evaded the Arcanans long enough to break back across the portal himself and pass a warning back to Sharona.

That wasn't going to happen now. Those same interrogations had informed Neshok that the relay station had been built on ground which, unlike most of the rest of the terrain between here and Thermyn, was not covered in dense woodland. It was hard to conceive of a forest fire in these environs, and Neshok suspected that the one which had made the clearing in which the relay station had been built had actually been set by a prairie grass fire coming through the portal from Thermyn long before the Sharonians discovered either universe. Where the fire had come from didn't matter, however. What mattered was that it was big enough to offer landing space for dragons relatively close to the relay station, yet far enough back to land unseen and invisible on a moonless, drizzling night.

And that the relay station itself was far enough away from the portal for the discharge of weapons less … showy than the Sharonians' to pass unnoticed by the fort's garrison.

And, he thought coldly, still watching the quartet of transports and their escorts fade into the early evening sky, even if something should happen to go wrong there, there's always the next Voice relay beyond Fort Brithik.

There Voices might offer the Sharonians all sorts of strategic advantages … but only as long as the long, vulnerable chain of relay posts remained unbroken. And it would remain unbroken only as long as Arcana didn't know where to find it.

Alivar Neshok smiled again, baring his teeth in a snarl of triumph, then straightened. It was time to get his professional interrogation face back in place to greet the next batch of prisoners, he thought, and turned around to walk back inside.

"You wanted to see me, Fifty?"

Commander of One Thousand Carthos sounded brusque, as well he might, given the thousand and one details he had to deal with at the moment. The captured fort was a bubbling cauldron of movement, orders, questions, answers, and curses as the thousand's infantry and cavalry got themselves sorted out for the next day and the leap forward to position themselves for the attack upon the universe the Sharonians called Thermyn.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you for finding time."

Fifty Jaralt Sarma made his own voice crisp and firm-the sort of voice a senior officer might expect out of a subordinate who was determined not to waste his time.

"Well?" Carthos said impatiently.

"Sir," Sarma drew a deep breath and braced himself, "I'm afraid we've had a serious violation of the Kerellian Accords."

"Really."

The single word came out flat, devoid of any emotional overtone at all, and Tayrgal Carthos sat back in the chair behind the desk which had once belonged to the fort's Sharonian commander. He interlaced his fingers across his flat midsection and cocked his head to one side.

"What sort of 'violation,' Fifty?" he asked after a moment.

"Sir," Sarma said, "it's Five Hundred Neshok. My platoon has the guard duty on the fort's armory. We saw one of the five hundred's troopers drag a Sharonian prisoner out of the side of the main building where the five hundred's set up for interrogation. He-the prisoner, I mean, Sir-had been beaten. Badly beaten."

"And?" Carthos prompted with a slight frown as Sarma paused.

"And a little later we heard screams, Sir," the commander of fifty said. "A lot of screams. None of the other prisoners came back out. Not until two of Five Hundred Neshok's men dragged out another prisoner. Sir," Sarma met the thousand's eyes levelly, "the man's throat had been cut. He'd been murdered."

The fifty used the verb deliberately, and watched Carthos's eyes harden. Silence hovered for a moment, then the thousand allowed his chair to come back upright.

"As it happens, Fifty Sarma," he said, "I've already received a report on the events you've described.

According to Five Hundred Neshok-and the corroborating testimony of five of his men who were physically present at the time-the dead prisoner attacked the Five Hundred. Exactly what the lunatic thought he was going to accomplish eludes me, of course, but five reliable witnesses-six of them, counting the Five Hundred himself-all agree that the prisoner managed to get his hands on one of the guard's weapons and that Five Hundred Neshok killed him in self-defense."

Sarma's jaw dropped. He couldn't help it … but he managed, somehow, to stop himself before he actually said anything.

Carthos' expression hardened ever so slightly, but the thousand kept his own voice level.

"I commend you for your obvious desire to see to it that Two Thousand Harshu's standing orders extending the protection of the Kerellian Accords to any prisoners we take are adhered to, Fifty. And I assure you that any possible violations of the Accords will be investigated most carefully. In this case, however, given the existence of half a dozen witnesses, all of whose testimony corroborates one another's, I suspect that you've overreacted to a situation in which you weren't privy to all the facts."

Sarma got his mouth closed again, locking his teeth against the protests which hammered upon them from behind. Gotten his hands on another guard's weapon, had he? Then perhaps Thousand Carthos could explain Just how that had happened when the dead man's hands were still chained behind him as he was dragged out of the interrogation room like so much slaughtered meat. Or explain where those screams had come from, or the reason for the savage beating the first prisoner had obviously sustained.

But those, Jaralt Sarma knew now, were questions he dared not ask. Not now, not here. Perhaps never, but definitely not today.

"I see, Sir," he heard his own voice say levelly. "You're right, of course. Obviously, I wasn't aware of all the details. Nor was I aware that you were already so well informed about the incident. I … apologize for wasting your time at a moment like this."

"Nonsense, Fifty," Carthos replied. "No officer is ever guilty of 'wasting' his superiors' time when he believes that something as serious as you obviously thought had happened has occurred. A deliberate violation of the Kerellian Accords?" The thousand shook his head. "The Articles of War themselves are quite specific about the responsibility of any Union officer to report something like that, after all."

"Yes, Sir, they are. I still appreciate your being so understanding, though."

Sarma was distantly surprised that he could get the words out without gagging, but he managed.

"Don't worry about it, Fifty." Carthos' smile somehow failed to reach his eyes, Sarma noticed. The thousand paused for a moment, then arched one eyebrow.

"Was there anything else, Fifty Sarma?"

"No, Sir," Jaralt Sarma said. "Nothing else, Sir."

Chapter Ten

"Voice Kinlafia?"

Darcel Kinlafia's head snapped up, like a startled rabbit exploding out of cover, as he turned to face the assistant chamberlain. His movement wasn't quite sudden enough to count as "whipping around," he realized an instant later, but it was too sudden for any other description.

"Yes?" His response came out half-strangled, and he cleared his throat, blushing furiously.

"If you'll come this way, please," the assistant chamberlain said with a small smile. Kinlafia didn't have to touch the man to feel the sympathy-and understanding-behind that smile, and a trickle of comfort flowed through him. Obviously, he was far from the first visitor to the Great Palace to wonder if his blood pressure was going to survive the visit. He supposed that the fact that most of them appeared to have made it through the ordeal intact should have been comforting, but somehow it didn't actually make him feel all that much better as the chamberlain led the way down the broad, marble-floored passageways with the walls adorned with paintings and tapestries, any one of which was probably worth a prince's ransom.

Don't be silly! Kinlafia scolded himself. Most of them are only worth a duke's ransom, you twit, whatever the cliche says! And it isn't "the Great Palace," any more, either.

He'd been more than a little surprised by the name change. For the better part of three centuries, this enormous, glittering fairyland had been known as the Great Palace, or the Grand Palace, depending upon how one chose to translate the Shurkhali. Now, though, it had reverted to the name it had borne for over two thousand years: Calirath Palace, the ancient and future home of the Calirath Dynasty.

The change in names had not met with universal approval. The Palace had been renamed by one of the early seneschals who had been restored to rule after the Ternathian withdrawal from Othmaliz. It had been widely proclaimed as a gesture of Othmalizi pride in its restored independence, and Kinlafia had no doubt that at least some Othmalizis had seen it as a poke in the eye for the dynasty which had ruled over them for so long.

Of course, what none of them realized at the time was that the seneschal in question only got away with it because the Caliraths themselves agreed to it. It's amazing how few people knew the family never actually surrendered ownership. I suppose that's because it's been imperial policy for almost three hundred years to allow the Othmalizi government to use it as if it owned it. But given the most recent seneschal's track record, it's probably also the only reason it didn't get sold-or turned into a rescort hotel!

None of the seneschals had gone out of their way to make known the minor fact of who actually owned the place (or the fact that it sat on what was technically still Ternathian territory, under the terms of the Empire's withdrawal from the rest of Othamliz and Tajvana), and Kinlafia suspected that had the Great Palace belonged to anyone else, some seneschal would have seized title by force long-ago. No one was quite stupid enough to do that to the Caliraths, however, and Kinlafia wondered how badly it must have irked generations of Othmalizi rulers to realize that they were living in someone else's house on sufferance … and that they couldn't even collect property taxes on it.

Judging from the current Seneschal's reaction to "his" parliament's decision to revert to the ancient and original name for the most historic single edifice in Tajvana, it must have irked them badly, indeed. The Seneschal had put the best face he could on the decision, but his mouthpieces had inveighed furiously against the entire notion in his usually tame parliament. Their failure to vote down the proposal had constituted a major political defeat for the Seneschal, and his irritation had been obvious despite his flowery speech of approval when the change became official.

Now Kinlafia remembered some of Shaylar's pithy comments about the Seneschal and surprised himself with a quiet chuckle of genuine amusement as he reflected upon how inordinately pleased she would have been by his current discomfiture.

The chamberlain glanced back at him, and this time Kinlafia's smile felt far more natural and unforced.

The chamberlain gave him a slight nod, as if approving the change. Then they reached a huge, ornately carved door with the ancient motto of the Caliraths-I Stand Between-etched into the stone lintel above it. An armed guard in the green-and-gold of the Calirath Dynasty's personal retainers stood outside it, and the Voice felt something as the guard looked him up and down.

Kinlafia wasn't certain what he'd felt-or, rather, Felt. He'd never experienced anything quite like it before, and he found himself abruptly wondering if the occasional whispered rumors about the Ternathian imperial family's bodyguards and their Talents might not hold at least a kernel of truth, after all. Certainly there was something going on as the guard's eyes swept over him. Kinlafia could Feel a peculiar sort of … probing. Or testing, perhaps. Whatever it was, he couldn't put his mental hands on exactly the right label, but he knew it was there … whatever it was.

It lasted for no more than one or two heartbeats. Then the guard came to attention and nodded respectfully.

"Voice Kinlafia," he said quietly. "You're expected."

Kinlafia wondered if he was supposed to say anything in response, but before he could, the guard reached back-with his offhand, not his gun hand, Kinlafia noticed-and opened the door behind him.

The Voice hesitated. He knew who was waiting for him on the other side of that threshold, and he abruptly discovered that even "call-me-Janaki's" letter of introduction wasn't nearly enough to preventthe butterflies in his midsection from launching into a complicated Arpathian drum dance.

In that moment, Darcel Kinlafia, who had accompanied Company-Captain chan Tesh's troopers through the swamp portal with rifle in hand, who had faced down brigands and outlaws, fought off claim jumpers and raiders, and stood his ground against charging bison, Ricathian cape buffalo, and even an infuriated grizzly bear, decided that the only thing to do was run. He was a fleet-footed man. If he started now, he could be all the way back to the train station in no more than twenty or thirty minutes.

And from there-

The chamberlain's cleared throat interrupted the Voice's brief fantasy of escape. Kinlafia looked at him, and the chamberlain twitched his head at the open doorway. For an instant, Kinlafia actually considered backing away, but he discovered that he lacked sufficient nerve to chicken out at the last minute. And so, he nodded back to the chamberlain, and followed the palace staffer through the doorway with a surprisingly steady tread.

The room on the other side was on the small side-indeed it was positively tiny-by the scale of Calirath Palace, which meant it was no more than twenty-five or thirty feet on a side. It was furnished with surprisingly worn, overstuffed armchairs and a long, comfortable looking couch. A coffee-table which appeared to have been made from driftwood stood in front of the couch, and an old leather-topped desk sat before the wide bay window which looked out over the sun-soaked palace gardens.

Bookshelves lined the wall opposite the window, and the priceless artwork so much in evidence elsewhere in the palace had been replaced by what were very good but obviously amateur watercolors and oils of a land whose soft, misty greenery was far removed from the sunbaked heat of Tajvana.

All of that registered instantly, but almost peripherally. It couldn't have been any other way, when the man who'd been seated behind that desk stood and held out his right hand.

Kinlafia froze. No one had ever instructed him in formal court protocol and etiquette, but he had a shrewd notion that one didn't simply walk up to the Emperor of Ternathia, say "How the hell are you?" and shake hands with him. On the other hand, he had an equally shrewd notion that one didn't refuse to shake hands with him, either.

"Voice Kinlafia."

Zindel chan Calirath's voice was a shade deeper than his son's, but it sounded remarkably similar, and the physical resemblance between him and Janaki was positively uncanny. The crown prince stood eight inches over six feet, and he and his father were very much of a size. If anything, Zindel might have been a fraction of an inch the taller, and his shoulders were definitely broader. Aside from that and the strands of gray beginning to thread themselves through the dark, gold-shot hair of the Caliraths, the Emperor looked far more like Janaki's older brother than his father, the Voice thought. Then he gave himself a mental shake as he realized he was keeping the Emperor of Ternathia-no, the designated Emperor of Sharona-standing there with his hand held out.

"Your Majesty," Kinlafia got out. It sounded a little strangled to his own ears, and he drew a deep breath, then reached out and gripped the hand of the most powerful man in Sharonian history.

Darcel Kinlafia had come into this room determined not to intrude upon the Emperor's privacy in any way, only to discover that the stress of the moment was too great for him to shut down his Talent completely. He was far too well trained, and too experienced, to let things get fully out of hand, of course. He didn't even come close to tapping into Zindel's thoughts, but the Emperor's emotions were something else, entirely. Kinlafia couldn't help sensing those, and he felt a moment of something very like panic as he realized that was the case.

Yet that flare of almost-panic was brief. It vanished in a moment, blown away on the genuine welcome flowing out of Zindel like some warm, comforting tide, and something else swept over him in its wake.

He remembered how Janaki's sheer presence had radiated that mysterious magnetism, that awareness that he was in the presence of the direct descendent of Erthain the Great. Yet whatever it was that Janaki had, it was far stronger, almost physically overpowering, as Kinlafia gripped Zindel's hand. It was like an electric charge, flowing through him, and he wondered if the Emperor was aware of it.

"My son has written me quite an epistle about you, Voice Kinlafia," Zindel said. "He appears to have been impressed by you."

"Ah, Prince Janaki is too kind, Your Majesty," Kinlafia got out.

"His mother will be glad to hear that." The Emperor released the Voice's hand with a smile. "I, on the other hand, know Janaki a bit better than that. He wouldn't have written me a letter like this one-" the Emperor gestured at the creased sheets of paper lying on his desk "-unless he truly felt it was justified.

And I suppose I should add, Voice Kinlafia, that I have a very lively respect for his judgment."

"Your Majesty, I don't-"

Kinlafia broke off. The truth was, that he didn't have a clue what to say, and Zindel chuckled.

"I apologize, Voice Kinlafia. I'm sure this is all rather overwhelming after months out on the frontier.

Tajvana traffic all by itself is probably enough to leave you longing to run for cover. And as if that weren't enough, here you are, dragged into the Palace for a face-to-face interview with that bogeyman, the Emperor."

There was so much genuine warmth and amusement in Zindel's expression that Kinlafia found himself chuckling as he nodded.

"I would never call you a bogeyman, Your Majesty," he said ruefully. "A little scary, now … that I might go for."

"I don't suppose I can blame you for that. On the other hand, at the moment what I most am is a father who hasn't seen his son in months. And you, Voice Kinlafia, are the man he picked to send his letters home with. That would be enough to make you welcome without any other recommendation from him.

But you're also the Voice who relayed Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's last message to us, and from what Janaki's had to say in his letter about you, you're the sort of representative we're going to need in our new parliament, too. That's quite a combination of recommendations."

"Your Majesty, that was Prince Janaki's idea. Running for Parliament, I mean. It hadn't even crossed my mind until he raised the possibility."

"Which isn't a bad recommendation for office all by itself." Zindel's smile turned far less humorous.

"Most people who start out wanting power for its own sake shouldn't be trusted with it in the first place.

Which, I suppose, must sound a bit strange-if not hypocritical-coming from someone in my position."

Kinlafia made no response to that last statement, and the amusement returned to the Emperor's smile.

"I see Janaki was correct about your natural … diplomacy, Voice Kinlafia," he observed. "Don't worry.

I won't put your native tact to any more tests. For now, at least."

Zindel chan Calirath watched the tanned, brown-haired Voice with careful attentiveness … and with more than just his eyes. He knew the fanciful rumors-legends, really-about the mysterious Talents which were somehow reserved as the exclusive property of the House of Calirath. Of course he did; everyone knew about those ridiculous tall tales. But what Zindel knew that most people didn't was that there was a solid core of truth behind them.

The Calirath bloodline extended far beyond the immediate imperial family. It could be no other way, after so many millennia, and the longstanding policy of the emperors of Ternathia to not simply permit but actively encourage periodic marriage outside the ranks of the aristocracy had only pushed that extension harder and farther. And yet there were the Talents which had been persistently associated with the imperial house for literally thousands of years but which scarcely ever manifested outside the immediate imperial family. And in addition to the Talents which everyone knew about, there were others, most of which were spoken of only in whispers, about which very few, indeed, knew a thing.

Zindel chan Calirath had always cherished his own doubts about the mythic, almost demigod stature of Erthain the Great as the sun source of all Talents. Yet he knew of no other explanation for the knowledge conserved within the Calirath archives. Ternathia had given the Talents to the entire human race … but the imperial dynasty had not shared all it knew. Only the Caliraths, their most trusted Healers, and the high priests of the Triad knew how to activate the potential to Glimpse the future, for example. And only the Caliraths and those same trusted Healers knew how to awaken the other Talents bound up with the Winged Crown.