Hell Hath No Fury (46 page)

"I-" Chava began again, but a third voice interrupted him. It was a youthful voice, a soprano, which had never been raised in that Chancellery before.

"Do not discuss me as if I were not here!" that voice said with icy precision, and every eye turned to the Ternathian delegation.

Andrew Calirath stood there, and the golden strands in her midnight hair seemed thicker, brighter than ever, gleaming as she faced the combined leaders and rulers of her entire planet. She stood in her gown of muted grays and dark blues, the mourning band dark about her sleeve, and her eyes were Calirath eyes, dark with portents of the future, yet hard with the lightning flash of purpose. In some indefinable fashion she looked like both the teenaged girl she was and the avatar of Sharona's future-tall, strong, fearless, and wounded.

Emperor Zindel stared at his daughter, and his eyes were no longer those of an emperor. They were the eyes of a father, stark with fear for a daughter he loved more than life itself. They were the eyes of a man who had been asked for one sacrifice too many, of a man who could not-would not-give his family's juggernaut destiny his daughter, as well as his son. And they were the eyes, Darcel Kinlafia realized, of someone who recognized in this instant one fragment of the Glimpse he and Kinlafia had shared.

That man opened his mouth, his face hard with bitter determination, but the daughter looked up at her father and shook her head.

"Chanaka s'hari, Halian. Sho warak," Crown Princess Andrin Calirath said softly, and her father's face twisted as if the words had been bullets.

Yaf Umani was one of Sharona's foremost linguisticians. He'd never held a position in any university's Department of Ancient Languages-his career as the Portal Authority's Chief Voice had precluded that

– but he had a true Voice's love for languages … and he was one of the very few people in that enormous chamber who recognized the language in which she'd spoken. He was also a man of impeccable integrity, but the shocks had come too hard and fast over the past fourteen hours; his recognition of what Andrin had said leaked out to every Voice in the Chancellery.

"I am your daughter, Halian. I remember."

Silence hovered, and then, slowly-so slowly-Zindel chan Calirath bowed his head.

Andrin smiled at him almost gently. But then she turned to look across the Chancellery floor, and there was no gentleness in the tempered steel of the eyes which fixed themselves upon the Emperor of Uromathia.

"I beg leave to inform Emperor Chava that he is in error," she said clearly and distinctly. "The Act of Unification has been neither nullified nor invalidated by my brother's death, nor will the House of Calirath seek to evade its obligations under that Act. There is still an heir to the throne of Ternathia, and that heir is prepared to accept her obligations under the subsection Emperor Chava has just cited.

"But I am the Imperial Crown Princess of Ternathia, Heir to the Winged Crown of Celaryon, daughter of the House of Calirath, descendent of Halian and Erthain the Great!" Her eyes flashed gray lightning, and her voice rang out like a soprano sword. It was no longer the voice of a teenaged girl, but the voice of the most ancient lineage in human history, speaking through its current avatar, and all the weight of that lineage crackled in its pride and defiance … and anger. "My ancestors were emperors of half the world while yours were still picking lice, raiding their neighbors' sheep, and stealing their neighbors' wives.

You will not presume to dictate to me the man I will marry, Chava Busar!"

Busar's face darkened in fresh rage, but Andrin's eyes were deadly, and she continued speaking with that cold, lethal precision.

"Subsection Three of Article Two requires the Heir to Ternathia to wed a Uromathian royal prince within three months of the ratification of the Act of Unification, and that Act was ratified two weeks ago. Very well. You will submit to me no later than noon tomorrow a list of those you wish to nominate as my husband. You may list every unmarried male of your lineage, if such is your desire. But I, Chava Busar-I, and no one else-will make my choice from all the eligible nominees. I will marry as the Act requires, within the next ten weeks, but do not ever make the mistake of attempting to dictate to a member of my House again!"

"I can't believe she did that," Alazon Yanamar shook her head. "What was she thinking?"

"You know exactly what she was thinking, love," Kinlafia chided her sadly.

The two of them stood in Alazon's office in Calirath Palace, surrounded by her collection of horses as they gazed out the windows. The lamps were turned low, the sun had set hours ago, and a silver moon drifted over the palace gardens. It was a serene and beautiful sight, utterly at odds with the chaos and confusion which had enveloped the people who lived and worked in the Palace.

"You just don't want to admit that she was right," Kinlafia continued.

"Right?" Alazon stared at him in stark disbelief. "Gods, Darcel! She's seventeen! And she's a Ternathian!

The youngest of that bastard's sons is twenty-nine, and they're all just as bad as he is! Can you imagine what will happen to her when she marries one of them? Especially after humiliating his father the way she did this morning? Why not just invite him to rape her on the floor of the Conclave and be done with it?!"

"Yes." The word came out harshly, but Kinlafia met her angry eyes levelly. "I can imagine exactly what will happen. Vothan! Do you think I like the thought? But that doesn't change the fact that she's right.

That we've got to unify, and that we don't have time to give Chava the opportunity to reopen the entire unification debate."

"Yes we do!" Alazon protested. "And if Chava's going to open the door then I say we should use the opportunity he's given us to delete that entire subsection from the Act!"

"You know better than that." Kinlafia regarded her sternly. "In fact, I know you know better than that-

you've been the one teaching me to think in strategic political terms for the last two weeks! Do you really think Chava would have opened this entire subject if he wasn't prepared to announce that Uromathia would use the pretext of Janaki's death and the 'invalidation' of the Act to justify refusing to accept unification after all unless it's revised once again? This time to give him more power, more room to spin his webs? And do you think he waited until after the Emperor detailed his requirements by accident? He wanted every member of the Conclave to accept, gut-deep, just how serious the threat is.

And then he issued his demand.

"He wanted them to know how big a pistol he was prepared to hold to all of their heads. If he claims the Act is nullified, if he refuses to acknowledge Zindel's rightful coronation, then what happens to all of the preparations we need to make? Do you think for an instant that once that sack of snakes was untied, there wouldn't be enormous pressure from other members of the Conclave to give him more of what he wanted in the first place if that was the only way to get him to sign back up quickly now that the Arcanans have proven they're a genuine, immediate threat?

"He might as well have handed us a written memo about his new strategy, Alazon! The way he saw it, he won either way. Either he got to name Andrin's husband under the terms of the Act, or else Zindel told him to go straight to the Arpathian hells before he gave one of Chava's sons his daughter. And if that happened, if Zindel refused to honor the Act's terms, then Chava could declare that Zindel's decision to invalidate the Act absolved him of his agreement to surrender the sovereignty of Uromathia to Zindel … and that would have given him all the leverage in the world, unless we chose to fight that very civil war the Emperor told me last night he wanted to avoid!

"It's obvious from the Voice reports and print articles you've had me Watching and reading ever since I got back that Chava never really regarded the original Arcanan massacre as a genuine threat. He was doing his best to game the situation then, and he's doing exactly the same thing now. He's just changing technique, using the threat everyone else sees as genuine to frighten them into conceding the points they refused to give him before. If he can simultaneously frighten the other members of the Conclave badly enough and appear sufficiently intransigent, he'll get at least some of his demands-maybe even most of them. And he won't give a good godsdamn how long he delays unification, how much damage he does to our ability to deal with the Arcanans, as long as there's a chance of improving his position."

"But-"

""thinspace"'But' nothing, love," Kinlafia said softly, sadly. "You know that's what would happen. And so does her father. My gods, Alazon, you know how much he loves her, and you saw as well as I did what he was prepared to do out there today! Yes, it was her decision, and I know as well as you do that she never even warned him she was going to do it. That she deliberately didn't give him time to think about ways to stop her, or for the father in him to find some justification-any justification-for keeping her from doing this. But if he hadn't realized in the end that she was right, he would never have let her get away with it. Never."

"But there has to be another way." Alazon was no longer protesting or denying. She was almost pleading. "We can't just let her do this, Darcel. We can't!"

Tears glittered in the Privy Voice's eyes, and Darcel put his arm around her and hugged her tightly.

"I don't see how we can stop her," he said, and in the back of his brain he saw once again the image of Andrin weeping. "I'm finally beginning to understand-really understand-what sort of price being born a Calirath can exact. She's going to do this. The only person who could stop her is her father, and he won't-he can't. He'll do everything he can to protect her, but this is the one thing he can't stop her from doing."

"It will kill her," Alazon said softly. "Maybe not physically-not quickly. But it will kill her." She looked up at Kinlafia, and a single tear broke free and trickled down her cheek. "I never really knew her until this entire impossible crisis just exploded in our faces. But now that's changed. And if she marries someone like one of Chava Busar's sons, it will just destroy her inside."

Kinlafia nodded, hearing the pain in her beautiful voice. That pain, he knew, was the reason someone with Alazon's sharp intelligence and grasp of politics could insist that Andrin had to be stopped. And gods knew she was right. If there'd been any way to avoid this … .

"We're just going to have to hope she's stronger than that," he said. "I've read the entire Act since you gave me a copy. If I could see any way for her to-"

He paused suddenly, and Alazon stiffened in the circle of his arm as she Felt a sudden, incredible cascade of thoughts and emotions tumbling through him. Then he inhaled sharply and looked into her eyes.

"Gods!" he half-whispered. "That's it."

"What?" Alazon demanded.

"I've just had an idea," he told her. "My gods, it's what Janaki Glimpsed!"

"What's what Janaki Glimpsed?!"

"We've got to go find Andrin," Kinlafia told her. "And be sure you bring your copy of the Act!

Epilogue

The sun had set hours ago.

The slider car raced up what should have been the valley of the Razinta River almost silently, but for the rush of wind. It was a cloudy, moonless night, cold and still … and very, very empty.

The Arcanans called the Razinta the Kosal, and they'd traveled almost eighteen hundred miles across the face of the universe they called Lamia to reach it, racing steadily southwest towards the next portal in their endless journey. From the maps Jasak had shown them, that portal lay some miles south of Usarlah, the capital of the province of Delkrath back in Sharona, almost in the center of the Narhathan Peninsula.

But this Usarlah lay almost a hundred thousand miles from the Usarlah Shaylar had visited as a young university student so long ago.

I've come almost half the distance to the moon from home, she thought, staring out into the darkness, and that's as a bird-or a dragon-might have flown it. Half way to the moon. She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around the sheer distance involved. And we still have almost forty thousand more miles to go.

"You seem … pensive tonight, Shaylar," Gadrial said, and Shaylar turned back from the window.

The Ransaran magister sat across the small table from her, shuffling the sixty-card deck with slender, adroit fingers. She'd been teaching Shaylar and Jathmar an Arcanan card game called Old Basilisk. The rules weren't all that complex-certainly not any more complicated than several Sharonian card games Shaylar could think of-but the deck had five twelve-card suits instead of the three eighteen-card suits she was accustomed to, which made keeping track of exactly what had been played challenging. Or would have, if Voices hadn't had photographic memories, at any rate.

"I feel pensive," Shaylar admitted. "We're such a long way away from everything I've ever known. And it's so … empty out there."

"Appearances can be deceiving," Gadrial told her, looking out the window herself. "Back home, all of this is part of the Duchy of Forkasa, one of the oldest and wealthiest independent territories of Shaloma.

Of course, the factors that made Forkasa so wealthy back in Arcana don't necessarily apply in the outuniverses.

And we're still a long way from Arcana or New Andara. But the last time I checked the census figures, Lamia had a population of somewhere around three million, I think."

"Three million," Shaylar repeated. She had to remind herself that Arcana had been expanding into the multiverse for two centuries, almost three times as long as Sharona. Still, the thought that they had three million people living in a universe forty thousand miles from their home universe was sobering, to say the least.

"Well, Lamia's attracted more colonization than a lot of other universes," Gadrial said as she offered the deck for Shaylar to cut. "The distance between portals is shorter than in some, and it's all overland, which helps. And the natural tendency is to spread out to either side of the slider right-of-way, which just happens to run across some of Shaloma's best real estate. Not to mention the fact that some of the most beautiful beaches of the Western Hesmiryan are less than a hundred miles from where we are right now."

She began to deal, and Shaylar nodded in understanding. The Hesmiryan Sea was what the Arcanans called the Mbisi Sea, and Gadrial was certainly right about the Narhathan beaches. Tourism was one of Teramandor Province's most lucrative industries back home in Sharona, and Teramandor beach resorts were famous throughout the multiverse.

"Anyway," Gadrial continued, "I think every universe looks emptier when you see it in the dark. It always makes me feel like there's nothing really quite real out there."

"I've felt that way a lot, lately," Shaylar said in a low voice, and Gadrial's hands paused. She looked across the table at the other woman, and her almond-shaped eyes were dark with sympathy.

"I know you have. And I wish none of this had happened to you and Jathmar."

"We know that, Gadrial." Shaylar managed a smile. "Go ahead and deal, silly!"

Gadrial smiled back and resumed dealing cards. Shaylar watched them fall, listening to the quiet, snapping sounds the cardboard rectangles made as they landed on the table top. She would never have been able to hear that sound aboard a Sharonian train moving at this speed. Indeed, the quiet, vibrationless slider cars continued to amaze her, although she and Jathmar had noticed several weaknesses, compared to old-fashioned, noisy, vibrating railroads.

It had taken them a while to realize just how big a disadvantage the absence of engines was. There was no doubt that the fact that each slider was self-propelled made the slider cars far more flexible, but the price for that flexibility was high. Each slider required its own spell accumulator, and for all their luxury, they were much more lightly built than Sharonian rolling stock … for reasons which had become obvious as they'd watched the Gifted technicians recharge the accumulators at the stations where they'd stopped. The spells which propelled the sliders were obviously complicated, and it took quite a while to recharge each slider's accumulator. And as Gadrial had explained, when they'd finally asked her about it, there was a reason the cars were so light. The sliders relied upon a variant of the levitation spells used by the cargo pods dragon transports often towed, and those really weren't very efficient on a tonnage basis. From what she'd said, Jathmar (who knew far more about railroads and steam engines than Shaylar did) had calculated that the Arcanans would be lucky if one of their slider cars could transport a quarter of the tonnage one of the TTE's freight cars routinely carted across the multiverse.

It's nice to think we have at least some advantages, she thought moodily as she gathered up her cards and began sorting her hand.

She glanced across the compartment to where Chief Sword Threbuch and Jathmar were engaged in a game the Arcanans called battle squares. It was a complicated, highly stylized wargame using eighteencarved pieces on each side, played across a gameboard that was nine squares wide and nine squares deep. Jathmar had turned out to be surprisingly good at it, and he was pushing Threbuch hard while Jugthar Sendahli kibitzed. She could feel his concentration-and enjoyment-through their marriage bond, and it was obvious that Sendahli was amused by Threbuch's predicament.

Shaylar was glad Jathmar was enjoying himself, but even that was flawed for her tonight. She could feel his concentration and enjoyment, yes, but not as clearly as she should have been able to. Their wedding bond was definitely weaker, and when they'd stopped for the last accumulator charge, Jathmar had tested his Mapping Talent.

It was weaker, too.

In a way, Shaylar was almost relieved. Even in Sharona, marriages and relationships sometimes proved less enduring than the people involved in them might have wished, especially in the face of unexpected stress or anxiety. Very few people could ever have been under more stress than the two of them, and she'd seen more than one marriage bond simply wither and die as the partners drifted apart. The thought of that happening to her and Jathmar was more than she could have borne, and she was almost desperately glad that there was some other reason for what was happening. But even so, the implications of their weakening bond and Jathmar's weakening Talent were nearly as frightening as the thought of losing Jathmar might have been.

They had no idea what was causing it, and Shaylar looked up from her cards. Gadrial's head was bent as she sorted her own hand, and she failed to notice the intense, almost plaintive quality of the look Shaylar gave her. The Voice wished with all her heart that she and Jathmar could discuss what was happening to them with someone, and the most reasonable someone would have been Gadrial. But Jathmar was right.

They couldn't mention this to anyone-not when it was possible that the effect could be deliberately induced, even used against other Talents, by a sorceress who figured out what was happening.

Gadrial looked up, and Shaylar quickly banished her worries from her expression, if not from her emotions.

"Ready to bid?" Gadrial asked.

"Sure," Shaylar said, with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. "Fifteen."

Afternoon sunlight slanted in through the narrow, barred windows as the outside door slammed open.

Two Arcanan guards came through it, dragging a limp, semi-conscious body between them, and a third guard followed behind them, with one of their repeating crossbows cocked and loaded in his hands. The armed guard stood back, weapon ready, while one of the other two unlocked the cell door so that his companion could toss their burden through it.

Namir Velvelig moved quickly, catching Company-Captain Silkash before the all but unconscious Healer could hit the cell floor. Silkash cried out in pain as the regiment-captain caught him, and Velvelig's eyes could have frozen heart of any Arpathian hell as he glared up at the guards.

One of them sneered at him, obviously amused by his glare, and made a taunting gesture with one hand.

His mocking expression and obvious satisfaction at Silkash's broken, bloodied condition was almost enough. Almost. Yet Velvelig's iron expression never even twitched. Only those frozen eyes spoke of the fury blazing within him. The time would come. He already knew that much. The time would come when he would finally make his try and die.

But not today. Not until the moment was right and he could count on taking at least one of them with him before the bastard with the crossbow shot him down.

The guard who'd mocked him snorted with contempt, spat on the floor, then slammed the cell shut and locked it. He said something to his companion, and all three of the guards sauntered out.

Velvelig eased Silkash down on the pallet he and the other officers in their cell had put together, and the Healer twitched, hissing in anguish as Velvelig's gently testing fingers found fresh breaks in his ribs.

The regiment-captain had cuts and bruises in plenty of his own. The last two times they'd come for Silkash, Velvelig had stood in front of the Healer. He hadn't launched a single blow, hadn't threatened the guards in any way, but they'd had to club him out of the way before they could get at the Healer.

Not that it had done any good in the end.

"Sir?"

He looked down at the faint, thready voice. Silkash's left eye was open; his right was swollen shut. He'd lost several teeth along the way, as well, and his speech wasn't very clear.

"I'm here, Silky," Velvelig said quietly. "You don't look too good."

"Well, I don't feel so good, either," Silkash got out, and Velvelig's eyes burned at the Healer's feeble attempt at humor.

"Tobis?" Velvelig asked after a moment, and Silkash shook his head.

"Don't know, Sir." The bruised, bloodied face twisted. "That son-of-a-bitch was still working on him when they dragged me out."

"Whoreson!" somebody snarled behind Velvelig, but the regiment-captain only patted Silkash gently on the shoulder.

"All right, Silky. Take it easy. We'll take care of you."

"I know, Sir," Silkash whispered, and his eye slid shut.

Velvelig held up one hand, and one of the other prisoners handed him the scrap of blanket they'd soaked in their water bucket. The regiment-captain began cleaning his Healer's face, and his touch was as gentle as any woman's, while black murder seethed in his heart.

Hadrign Thalmayr's sadism had a certain brutal cunning. There was no doubt in Velvelig's mind that he was going to kill Silkash and Makree in the end, but he was in no hurry to end his entertainment.

Perhaps it had begun as some sort of punishment, vengeance for the "torment" he believed the Healers had deliberately inflicted upon him. If that was how it had started, though, it had gone far beyond that by now. Vengeance might have offered him the pretext, but the truth was that he enjoyed what he was doing.

He was pacing himself, rationing himself … giving his victims time to recover between sessions. Yet Silkash and-especially-Makree were growing steadily weaker, and no one seemed to care. Certainly no one was offering them the magical healing which had saved Velvelig's own life. However spectacular their healing powers might be, the Arcanan healers were obviously content to watch their Sharonian counterparts being slowly and brutally beaten to death without raising a finger to repair the damage.

"I don't think Tobis can take much more, Sir." Silkash's voice was a little stronger, which only made the despair in it that much clearer. "It's worse for him. It blasts his Talent open. Makes him Feel how much the son-of-a-bitch enjoys what he's doing to him."

"I know, Silky. I-"

Velvelig broke off, and his belly muscles tightened in anticipation as the outside door opened once more. But it wasn't the guards dragging Tobis Makree back into the brig, after all.

Velvelig straightened, and the fury in his heart redoubled as he recognized the wiry redhead. Thalmayr was bad enough, yet at least he appeared to genuinely believe his captors had deliberately tortured him when he was in their power. The Arcanan standing outside their cell now, looking in that them, had no such excuse, and Velvelig knew that if he would only come within arm's reach of the bars … .

He wasn't that stupid, unfortunately. He only stood there, glaring at the prisoners, his face tight with hatred as he drank up the extent of Silkash's injuries. Then he turned around, as wordlessly as he'd come, and stalked back out.

Namir Velvelig watched him go, then knelt slowly back down beside his Healer and started wiping blood off his face once more.

Therman Ulthar closed the door very carefully behind him, then stood on the walkway outside the brig.

His left hand dropped to the hilt of the short sword sheathed at his hip, and his knuckles whitened with the force of his grip.

He refused to let himself look at the administration block. He couldn't, because he knew what was happening in there right this moment. He didn't have to hear the blows, listen to the gasping screams, to know what Hadrign Thalmayr was doing, and if he let himself think about it, let himself feel, then-