Hell Hath No Fury

Chapter Eighteen

Sir Jasak Olderhan sat backward in the pedestal-mounted swivel chair, resting his crossed forearms on the top of the chair back, and leaned his chin pensively into the cushion they provided. Outside the observation dome, the virgin forests of the universe called Dystria flowed past. It was early morning, and the humid air of the Kythian lowlands hung in a sort of translucent golden haze as the slider rushed towards the coast and the passenger ship waiting to transport them across the fifteen hundred miles of saltwater to the next portal in Paerystia.

Thirty-five thousand miles, he thought. That was how far he'd traveled with his shardonai and Gadrial Kelbryan in the last two months. And we're still less than halfway to New Andara. I wonder if-

His musing thoughts broke off as he heard feet on the steps behind him. He looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes brightened as he saw Gadrial climbing up them from the lounge level.

"So here you are," she said. "We missed you at breakfast, you know."

"Sorry." He smiled briefly. "I wasn't very hungry this morning."

"So we all surmised. The question, of course, is why not?"

Jasak wondered for a moment if she realized just how scolding her tone sounded. There was a gleam in her dark eyes as she folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head to one side. She looked for all the world like a nanny waiting for her obstreperous charge's latest excuse, he thought with an inner smile. Then the temptation to smile faded, and he shrugged very slightly.

"By my calculations, Five Hundred Klian's initial dispatch got to New Andara somewhere around four o'clock this morning, our time," he said.

Gadrial's eyes darkened, losing their glint of amusement, and she unfolded her arms to touch him lightly on the shoulder.

"I hadn't even thought about that," she said quietly.

"I'm not surprised." He smiled crookedly at her. "We're still barely forty percent of the way home, and it feels like we've been traveling forever. Sometimes, I think 'home' doesn't really exist, you know. There's only this bubble around us, filled up with dragons and slider cars and passenger cabins aboard ships. We just think there's anything else out there."

"It is strange," she agreed. "I know it took just as long to get to Mahritha as it's going to take to get home again, but you're right. Somehow, I do feel less … connected with everything around us than I did on the way out."

"Because it was all new on the way out?"

"That may have been part of it, but I don't think it's the real reason for the difference."

Gadrial frowned, gazing out the observation dome's windows and apparently forgetting about the slim, fine-boned hand still resting lightly on his shoulder.

"I think the real difference is the reason we're making this trip," she said slowly after several seconds, and he nodded.

"Of course it is. And, to be honest, a part of me wishes we could just stay inside my nice, safe bubble.

But we can't, can we?"

"I'm afraid not." Her hand squeezed his shoulder for a moment, and her own smile was sad. "Sooner or later, we're going to get home, whatever it may feel like now. And what happens then?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "We'll find out in another couple of months, I suppose. At the moment, to be honest, I'm more concerned about how my mother and father felt when the hummer finally arrived."

Gadrial nodded slowly. With no equivalent of the Sharonians' Voicenet, the Union of Arcana had to rely on the arcanely augmented, specially bred "hummers" for quick long-distance communication. But

"quick," she had discovered, was a relative term. From what Shaylar and Jathmar had said so far, it would have taken Shaylar's original message less than two weeks to reach their own home universe.

Exactly how much distance that represented was one of the questions they'd declined to answer, for which neither Gadrial nor Jasak blamed them. From several things they'd let drop, however, Gadrial was convinced that the total distance was substantially less than the distance between Mahritha and New Andara. Still, that had to be a very different thing from "short," given how long Shaylar's message-

which unlike Five Hundred Klian's, had moved literally at the speed of thought, except when it had to slow down to cross the occasional water gap-had taken to cross it.

But however great the distance might be, the communications loop between the swamp portal and Sharona was eighty percent shorter than the one between Fort Rycharn and New Andara. Gadrial was no soldier, but even she could see the military implications of that sort of advantage.

Not that those implications were foremost in her mind at that instant.

"I know you're worried about your parents," she said after a moment. "I don't blame you. But I've learned a little bit about the Duke during my years in Garth Showma. And I've learned quite a bit more from you."

He turned his head to quirk an eyebrow at her, and she snorted quietly.

"You don't exactly run on and on about them, Jasak, but when you do talk about them, I hear an awful lot of love … and trust. And just from watching you in action with Shaylar and Jathmar, I've learned a lot about the values they thought were important enough to teach their son. So I know they're going to be worried, and they're going to be upset, but they're also going to understand what you did and why you did it."

"I know." He inhaled deeply. "I really do know. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep me from wishing that if they'd had to hear about something like this, I'd been able to tell them in person."

"Maybe not, but look at it this way. This way, at least they're going to have had a couple of months to begin coping with it before they actually see you. And unless I miss my guess, your father's going to have been using that time to very good purpose."

"Gods, I hope so," Jasak said softly, and Gadrial squeezed his shoulder once more.

She started to say something, then stopped and shifted mental gears. Jasak had already made it abundantly clear that he didn't want to discuss the board of inquiry he would certainly face, or the courtmartial which might very well follow close upon its heels.

"How do you think Parliament is going to react?" she asked instead.

"I think it's going to be a godsdamned mess," he replied flatly. "The Mythalans, at the very least, are going to go absolutely berserk, and I'm afraid at least a chunk of the Andaran MPs are going to find themselves in at least limited agreement this time around."

"Really?"

"Not for the same reasons." Jasak shook his head quickly. "We Andarans don't go in much for xenophobia for xenophobia's sake, and I don't imagine most of us are going to hold the fact that Sharonians don't know anything at all about magic against them. But what they did to Thalmayr when they punched out the portal … that's going to really, really worry a lot of Andarans."

"I can see that, I suppose. But is it going to make them more cautious, or is the perceived threat going to make them more belligerent?"

"That I couldn't begin to tell you," Jasak said frankly. "I'd prefer to see more caution, but I'm afraid the opposite is probably at least as likely. To be honest, an awful lot is going to depend on what else has happened out there in Mahritha."

"And no one in Parliament is going to be able to affect that very much either way, are they?"

"No, and that's one of the things that worries me most," Jasak admitted. "Even if Parliament does its dead level best to put the brakes on the situation-and I know that's what Father, for one, is going to be recommending-it's still at the end of a four-month two-way communications loop. Which means that whatever happens out there is really in the hands of the local command structure and likely to remain there."

"You're thinking about Two Thousand mul Gurthak, aren't you?"

"Yes." Jasak pursed his lips and exhaled noisily. "The more I think about it, the more I wonder exactly why he wanted me out of his office before he talked things over with that diplomat, Skirvon. I keep trying to tell myself I'm just being paranoid, pessimistic. But I keep coming back to it."

"Why?"

"Because he knows who my father is, and he knows where we're headed. What if he wanted me out of that office because he didn't want me to know what his plans really are?"

Gadrial turned back from the windows, her eyes narrowing.

"I don't much care for Mythalans either, you know," she said with truly massive understatement, "but why would he want that?"

"I did say I know it sounds paranoid," Jasak reminded her. "But if I'd been the local senior officer, and if I'd known that someone with a close, personal connection to the Duke of Garth Showma was headed directly back to New Andara, I'd have done my damnedest to make sure he carried with him the clearest possible statement of my intentions. I'm not talking about dispatches, Gadrial. I'm talking about the sort of face-to-face conversation where the real explanations get made. The opportunity to use me as his gobetween to Father. Unless, of course, for some reason he didn't want Father to know what he's really up to."

Gadrial started to tell him he truly did sound more than a bit paranoid. But then she stopped. Maybe he did, but as one of her research team members in Garth Showma was fond of pointing out, even paranoiacs sometimes had real enemies.

And mul Gurthak is Mythalan, she reminded herself.

"What do you think he might not want your father to know about?" she asked instead.

"I don't know."

"But you obviously suspect that there's something, or you wouldn't be worrying about it this way."

"I just can't quite understand why he'd want to discuss his instructions to his diplomats in such … privacy. Not under these circumstances, anyway."

"Maybe he just felt he could speak to them more freely without you," she pointed out. "You were the officer in command during the initial incident. Maybe he felt they'd be more frank about discussing options and possibilities-or the consequences of the incident-without you. And you said you didn't think he was very happy about your decision to make Shaylar and Jathmar your shardonai. Maybe he was afraid they really have managed to influence you-us-somehow, and he wanted to minimize any secondhand impact that might have had on what Skirvon might say or think."

"That's certainly possible. And, for that matter, he's a commander of two thousand, and I'm only a lowly little commander of one hundred … for now, at least." His mouth tightened briefly, and Gadrial's eyes flickered. Those last four words were about as close as he'd allowed himself to come yet to admitting his worry about the probable consequences for his military career. "But none of that changes the fact that I was absolutely the closest thing he had to some sort of expert-or informed opinion, at least-on the people he was sending Skirvon off to talk to. Even if he didn't want me sitting in on that discussion, why didn't he send Skirvon to pick my brain for additional information before sending him off to talk to Shaylar's people? Sure, they had my written report-and yours. But if I'd been a diplomat setting off to talk to a completely unknown civilization, I'd have wanted every scrap of information or firsthand impression I could possibly get."

"You're beginning to make me very nervous," Gadrial said slowly. "Are you suggesting mul Gurthak said something to them in private, gave them some kind of secret orders, he doesn't want anyone else to know about?"

"I'm afraid that might be what happened," he admitted.

"But what kind of orders?"

"I don't know," he said again. "On the other hand, there is that Mythalan xenophobia to think about."

"Surely you don't think he wants-?"

Gadrial broke off, unable-or unwilling-to complete the question, and Jasak grimaced.

"I can't believe that even a Mythalan would actually want a war, especially with someone who's already revealed the combat capability these people have. At least, I don't think I can. But I do worry about just how hardline he may have wanted them to be. We're the ones who were in the wrong initially. What if he's unwilling to admit that? What if he's decided to draw his own line in the mud, like Hundred Thalmayr?"

Gadrial nodded very slowly, her expressive eyes dark and shadowed with worry. Hadrign Thalmayr had been a complete and total idiot, but at least his mental processes-such as they were and what there'd been of them-had been straightforward and almost agonizingly clear. He'd been arrogant, stupid, and far too conscious of the 'military honor' of Arcana in general and himself in particular, but Gadrial doubted that there'd been a single subtle bone in his entire body. Certainly there'd been an acute shortage of brain cells, at any rate!

Nith mul Gurthak was something else entirely. Everything she'd heard about him suggested he was anything but an idiot. Which, unfortunately, might not be as good thing as she'd been assuming it was.

Given the typical Mythalan attitude towards the non-Gifted, and given the almost inevitable Mythalan revulsion at the very concept of someone whose very different Talents might challenge the primacy of the Gifted, "xenophobia" might actually be too pale a word for his reaction to the Sharonians' sudden appearance. If he'd opted to respond as a Mythalan, rather than as an officer of the Union Army, then he very well might have issued far harsher and less accommodating instructions to Rithmar Skirvon than he'd admitted.

"You're definitely making me nervous now." She balled the hand on his shoulder into a small fist and smacked him lightly on top of the head with it. "I'll have to think of some way to thank you for convincing me to share your paranoia."

"Sorry." He caught her wrist and looked up at her. Even with him seated in the chair and her standing beside it, he didn't have to look up very far, and something deep inside her tingled at the warmth in his eyes. He, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to his own expression, she thought, with more than a hint of frustration.

"Have you sent a letter ahead to your father to tell him about your suspicions?" she asked after a moment.

"Not yet. I've been turning it over in my mind. But I probably will send word ahead by hummer after we dock in Paerystia." He twitched his shoulders. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about it before I wrote to him. I kind of hoped you'd just tell me I was crazy."

"I wish I could-tell you that, I mean. But even though you may be wrong, I don't think you're crazy.

And the truth is, I'm afraid you're not wrong, either."

"Great."

Jasak's spine slumped just a bit, and he shook his head with a deep, heartfelt sigh.

"I'll go ahead and write. In the meantime, though, I don't think this is anything we need to discuss with Shaylar and Jathmar."

"Rahil, no!" Gadrial shook her head quickly, emphatically. "There's nothing anyone could do about it at this point, and there's absolutely no reason to worry them any more than they're already worried, Jasak!"

"That's exactly what I was thinking."

He pushed himself up out of the chair and took the hand which had rested on his shoulder in both of his.

He held it for just a moment, smiling at her, and then drew himself up to his full towering height.

"And now that you've come and rousted me out of my hiding place up here, I've discovered that I'm actually hungry, after all. Would you care to come down to the dining compartment and share a cup of tea with me while I irritate the stewards into finding me something to eat?"

"Where did Gadrial go?" Shaylar asked.

"I think she went up to the observation dome looking for Jasak," Jathmar replied, looking up from the book in his lap. Then he straightened, and his eyebrows rose as he sensed her quiet consternation through their marriage bond. "Why?"

"I need-we need-to talk to her, Jath."

Shaylar's magnificent brown eyes were worried, and Jathmar laid the book aside and stood to take her in his arms.

"What is it?" he asked. She leaned back in his embrace, looking up at him, and he shrugged. "I've been able to tell that you were worrying about something for several days now, love. I just haven't been able to figure out what it was. I've been figuring you'd tell me about it in your own good time. So, is that time now?"

"I don't know if it's a 'good time' or not, but I'm afraid it is something we need to talk about," she said unhappily. "And, frankly, the fact that you haven't been able to figure out what's bothering me is part of the problem."

"What?" He couldn't quite keep an edge of hurt out of his tone, and she squeezed him quickly.

"That's not how I meant it!" she told him quickly. "What I meant was that we've always been so sensitive to one another because of our marriage bond that each of us has almost always been able to figure out what's bothering the other one, when something is. But this time, you haven't been, have you?"

"Well, I didn't want to push you …"

"Of course you didn't. But that's not my point, either."

"In that case, what is your point?" he asked with an unusual sense of frustration.

"It's about our bond, Jathmar," she said softly, her eyes anxious.

"What about it?" His expression was perplexed, and she sighed.

"You're not a Voice," she said. "Maybe that's why you haven't noticed."

"Noticed what?"

"It's weaker, Jath," she said very softly. "It's weaker."

"What?" He stared at her in consternation.

"It's weaker," she repeated. "Oh, it's not like it was when I had that head injury. It went away practically entirely then. This is different. It's … it's like we're losing some of our connections. When Voices Speak to one another, there are all sorts of side traces-emotional overtones, thoughts which aren't fully articulated but still transmitted, traces of memory. We're trained to filter those out when we're working to pass on messages, but they're always there. Well, marriage bonds are like that, especially when they are as strong as ours has always been."

"I've never really noticed it," he said slowly. "Not the way you're describing it right now, at least."

"Yes, you have," she disagreed. "But because you're not a Voice, you haven't realized they were all there, deepening and enriching the way our feelings flow back and forth. I am a Voice, though. I've always been aware of them. And now, for some reason, they're … weakening."

"What do you mean?" For the first time since the conversation had begun, he felt truly frightened by where she seemed to be going. "You mean we're losing our bond, somehow?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. All I know right now, though, is that we started losing those side trace elements a universe or two back. I don't have any idea why, and I don't have any idea how far it's likely to go. I've never heard of anything like it, so I don't have any way to hazard a guess about any of those questions."

"Then what do we do, love?" Jathmar hugged her tightly.

"I don't know," she repeated yet again. Then she looked up at him again.

"Have you tried using your Talent lately?"

"Not really," he replied slowly. "We haven't really stopped anywhere long enough for me to get a clear Look at things."

"Well, maybe the next time we stop, you should try," she suggested. "I'm the only Voice in this entire universe. I don't have anyone else to test my Talent with, but you don't need another Mapper."

"I don't think I like where you're going with this one, love," he said unhappily.

"I don't like where I might be going with it," she told him.

"Do you really think we should discuss it with Gadrial?" he asked her after a moment, trying to ignore the sick look in her eyes which he knew was mirrored in his own.

"I can't think of anyone else to discuss it with," Shaylar replied with a small, wan smile. "There's no one else with a Talent in the vicinity, that's for sure. She might have at least some suggestion about what could be causing it. Even if she can't come up with an answer, she might start us thinking in the direction of one."

"But then she'd also know about the problem."

Shaylar's eyes narrowed as she tasted the suddenly darker tinge of his emotions.

"Of course she would. Why?"

"Shaylar, I know Gadrial is our friend. And," he added a bit more reluctantly, "I know Jasak will do everything in his and his family's power to protect us. But unless these negotiations of theirs actually produce some sort of peaceful resolution, without anyone else getting killed, they're still going to be the enemy, love. Maybe not of us personally, but of Sharona. And both of them are honorable people who take their obligations seriously. If there is something happening to our marriage bond, to our Talents-

possibly because we're spending so much time in proximity to someone who's Gifted, for all I know-do we really want to let the enemy know? Even if they would never do anything to hurt either of us, if it turns out to be something they could use against other people's Talents, you know that Jasak, for sure, and Gadrial almost equally for sure, would feel compelled to pass it along."

"But if we can't even ask Gadrial about it, then who can we ask?" Shaylar asked in a tiny voice.

"I don't know, love." Jathmar said softly. "I don't know."