Hell's Gate

Chapter Thirteen

Jathmar floated in the darkness of the still, warm depths, drifting slowly and steadily toward a sunlit surface far above him. The light grew stronger, reaching down towards him, and something stirred in sleepy protest. He reached out to the darkness, wrapping it about himself, like a child burrowing deep into a goose down comforter. He didn't want to wake up, didn't want to leave the safe, still quiet. He didn't remember why he didn't want to wake, but his drowsy mind knew that something waited for him. Something he didn't want to face.

His eyes opened, and he reached out, as automatically as breathing, for Shaylar's familiar touch.

Panic struck like a spiked hammer.

She wasn't there. Where Shaylar should have been, he found only a roaring, pain-filled blackness. The shockwave of loss jolted him into full consciousness with a sharp gasp of anguished terror, and his eyes snapped open.

Sunlight burned down over him, hot and humid. There was no trace of the glorious autumn woods he remembered; all he could see was a vast stretch of muddy water and rank vegetation, heavy with the smell of rot and mold and fecundity. The trees growing at the water's edge, some growing in the water itself, were tropical varieties, heavy with vines, with no trace of the colors of a northern fall. The voices of birds?some raucous, some musical, some like those he'd never heard before?sounded through the hot, dense stillness, huge butterflies drifted over and among the swamp grasses, like living jewels, and the whine of insects hung heavy on the thick, steamy air.

He lay on something simultaneously firm and yet soft-textured, like a folding canvas camp cot, and his thoughts fluttered and twisted, trapped between confusion and the strobing panic radiating from the absence where Shaylar ought to have been. He hung transfixed between seriously broken thoughts. Then voices registered, and movement, as well, close by. He sat up and?

He yelled and scrambled wildly backwards on the seat of his trousers. The "camp cot" under him never even wiggled, but he shot over its edge, sprawling onto muddy ground a full two feet lower than whatever had been supporting him. He panted, groping instinctively for his rifle, for his revolver, even for his belt knife, and his scrabbling hands found nothing but more mud.

The … thing … turned its horror of a head to peer down, down, down at him just as his frantically searching hand closed on a dead branch. The improvised club would be useless against a thing like that, but it was better than blunt fingernails, and he came to his knees, swinging the branch wildly up between himself and it.

The sudden flurry of shouts behind him barely registered. He ignored them, all of his attention fixed on the scaled monstrosity, until a uniformed man with a crossbow stepped in front of him. The soldier shouted and pointed his impossible weapon, but not at the horror looming over them. He aimed it at Jathmar. Then another man appeared, wearing the same uniform and snarling orders?or spitting curses?in a voice of white-hot fury. The first man lowered his crossbow and sent the second a hangdog look with something that sounded like an unhappy apology. The second man?the officer, Jathmar realized?said something else, his tone considerably less sharp but still reprimanding, and the crossbowman came to what had to be a position of attention and saluted oddly, touching his left shoulder with his right fist.

The officer nodded dismissal, watched a moment while the crossbowman marched off to wherever he'd come from, then turned his own attention to Jathmar.

Jathmar clutched his stupid stick, panting and sweating in the supercharged swampy air, and the officer met his gaze squarely. He held it, never taking his eyes from Jathmar's, and issued what was clearly another order.

Another man appeared and shouted at the beast, and Jathmar's eyes snapped back to the towering horror. It looked down at the man who'd shouted, rustled enormous demon's wings, and hissed, but it also moved away. The soft ground sucked at its immense, clawed feet as it slunk off, if anything that size could be said to slink …

"Jathmar."

The sound of his own name whipped him back around to the officer. Aside from a long knife or short sword at his left hip, the other man wore no obvious weapon, but Jathmar had no doubt that he faced the commander of all the other armed men surrounding him and dared make no move at all. Then he frowned.

"How do you know my name?" he demanded.

The other man clearly didn't understand his question. He held up both hands in a trans-universal sign for "I don't have the least idea what you just said." Despite his own panic, despite the terror pulsing through him at the marriage bond's continued silence, Jathmar's lips quirked in bitter amusement. But then the officer in front of him said another word.

"Shaylar."

"Where is she?? Jathmar snarled, any temptation towards amusement disappearing into the suddenly refocused vortex of a panic far more terrible than he could ever have felt for himself. The club came up again, hovered menacingly between him and his enemy, and his lips drew back from his teeth in an animal snarl.

And then memory struck with such brutality he actually staggered, crying out in remembered agony. He was on fire, caught in the withering heat of an incandescent fireball, flesh blazing even as he fought to reach Shaylar, but he couldn't, and?

Someone moved toward him urgently, and the club came back up. A guttural sound clogged his throat, hot and hungry with primeval rage and a berserker's fury. He heard the officer saying something else, something sharp and urgent, and he didn't care. The club came back, poised to strike, and then it froze as his eyes focused on its target.

It wasn't another soldier; it was a girl. A slender, lovely Uromathian girl, taller than his Shaylar, but still small, delicate. She was saying his name, then Shaylar's name, pointing urgently to one side.

Its a trick! his mind shrieked, but he looked anyway.

The tents registered first. There was an entire encampment of them, in orderly rows, and more incongruously armed soldiers swam into view, their crossbows pointed carefully at the muddy ground. Then he saw the glassy tubes, and sweat and terror crawled down his back as he remembered the fireballs.

Then he saw the wounded. The brutal carnage of gunshot wounds registered in a kaleidoscope of torn flesh, shattered limbs, blood splashes on bandages, clothing, and skin. Someone cried out, the sound knife-sharp and piteous, as a wound was re-bandaged. The sights and sounds shocked him, horrified him … gratified him. And while those conflicting emotions hammered each other in his chest, he saw her.

She was literally so close he'd overlooked her, caught by the deeply shocking sights further afield. He fell to his knees beside her, barely aware of his own anguished moan, completely oblivious for the moment to the way her strange "cot" hovered unsupported above the ground.

She was alive, breathing slowly, steadily. But her face … His breath caught. One whole side of her face was a swollen, purple mass of damage. Bruises had nearly obliterated her left eye, and it looked as if her nose might well be broken. Cuts and scrapes along her swollen cheek and brow told their own story, and memory struck again.

The fireball exploded all around them once more, as if it had just happened. He could literally feel himself flying into the tangle of deadwood while his skin and hair crisped in unbearable agony. He groped for his own face, the back of his neck, shocked all over again by a complete and impossible absence of pain. He found no charred skin, no blisters, no burns at all, and that was impossible. His rational mind gibbered?he'd been burned, horribly. He knew it, and his flesh shuddered and flinched from the memory of it. Yet he wasn't burned now, and that simply couldn't be true.

He knelt in the mud beside his wife and literally trembled in the face of far too many things he couldn't comprehend. Then her eyelashes shivered, a soft sound?half-sigh, half-whimper?ghosted from her lips, and he dropped everything. Dropped the club he still held, his vast confusion, even his attention for the enemy, and swept her up in his arms. He folded her close, held her like fragile glass, rocking on his knees, and buried his face in her singed and scorched hair.

"Shaylar," he gasped raggedly. "Shaylar, gods. You're still with me, love!"

The silence in her mind terrified him. He could feel her slender weight in his arms, feel the steady beat of her heart, hear her breathing, but when he reached with his mind, she simply wasn't there. Fresh horror rolled through him as the savagery of her bruised and battered face coupled with the silence of her mind in nightmare dread. What if?

Her eyes opened. They were hazy, at first. Blank with confusion … until she saw him.

"Jathmar!"

Her arms were suddenly around him. Jathmar was no giant. Faltharians tended to be tallish, and he was, yet he was also whipcord thin, built more for speed and endurance than brawn. Shaylar, on the other hand, was tiny, even for a Shurkhali. She was a most satisfactory size for hugging, in his opinion, but she'd always said she felt like a kitten trying to hug a mastiff when she returned the favor. They'd laughed over it for years, but today she clutched him so tightly he knew her fingers were leaving fresh bruises on the miraculously undamaged skin of his back, and it felt good. So good.

She buried her face against his chest, weeping with shocking strength, and he brushed back her hair, smoothed the scorched tresses and tangles which would take shears to put right. When he could finally bear to let go of her long enough to sit back and peer into her eyes, she touched his face, wonderingly.

"Oh, Jath," she whispered, huge eyes still brimming with tears. "You're a miracle, love."

"I?" He swallowed. "I was burned. Wasn't I?"

"Yes." The single word was barely audible, and she nodded. "Their healer came. He?" It was her turn to swallow hard. "You were dying, Jath. I knew you were. But he gave you back to me. He touched you, just touched you, and the burns healed. Like the gods themselves had reached down to make you whole again."

The swamp and even her face wavered in his awareness. No Talent could do something like that. Even the most Talented Healers were limited mostly to healing minds which had been shattered, or encouraging the body to heal itself more effectively. They could work wonders enough, but none that came close to this.

The shiver began in his bones, and he turned his head almost involuntarily to stare at the man who stood watching them. Just watching. Not threatening, not intruding. Their officer looked like an ordinary man, they looked ordinary, and yet …

"I don't understand." He brought his gaze back to Shaylar. "If they could do this for me, why haven't they healed you? Or," he added, his voice turning harsh and bitter, "The men we shot to pieces?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "None of it makes sense. But these people, Jath, they're not like us. Not at all. I think their Healers are more … more energy-limited than ours are." It was obvious to him that she was searching for words, trying to explain something which had puzzled her just as much as it did him. "I don't think they encourage the body to heal; I think they make it heal. When their Healer was working on you, you glowed, and there was this tremendous sense of energy, of power, coming from somewhere. I think they can do things our Healers could never even imagine, but they can only do so much of it before they … exhaust themselves. And they only have one real Healer, so I think they must be rationing the healing he can do, using it for the most critical cases."

"Or the ones with valuable information," he said bitterly before he could stop himself.

"That's probably part of it," she said unflinchingly, "but I don't think that's all of it. They put you first in line because you were the worst hurt of all."

Doubt flickered in his eyes, and she shook her head.

"I mean it, Jath. The woman with them, Gadrial, she's some kind of Healer, too, but not a very strong one. Or not by these people's standards, anyway. She wasn't strong enough to heal either of us, but …" Shaylar bit her lip. "Without her, you would have died before their real Healer ever got to you."

Her voice had dropped to a terrible whisper, and his blood ran cold. Yes, his memories were brutal enough to believe that. He didn't need the inexplicably broken marriage bond to sense her deep anguish, the horror of her belief that he was already dead still burning in her memory, and his mind flinched like a frightened animal from the vision of her all alone among their enemies.

"It's all right," he whispered raggedly, pulling her close again. "It's all right, I'm still with you."

But even as he cradled his shaken wife, his gaze sought and found the girl?Gadrial?who stood a few feet from the officer. She wasn't Uromathian, no matter what she looked like. It took a real effort to dismiss his preconceived notions, to remind himself that she wouldn't think like a Uromathian or hold the same opinions, attitudes, biases, or customs. And he owed her his life. For a Faltharian, life-debt was a serious business, entailing obligations, formal courtesies, reciprocal bonds of protection, none of which she would understand.

And none of which he particularly relished.

He would owe the other, stronger Healer, as well, he realized, wherever he or she might be. That didn't make him any happier, he admitted. And meanwhile, Gadrial was watching him, her expression uncertain. When he met her gaze, she gave him a tentative smile. Very sweet, very human. Very … normal.

Another shiver touched his impossibly healed back, which, he realized for the first time, was bare. Startled, he glanced down and discovered that his entire shirt was missing. Momentary disorientation swept over him as he found himself kneeling on the ground beside his wife, shirtless, just beginning to realize that he had absolutely no idea where he was, or how far he and Shaylar were from the site of that hideous battle, or how much time had passed. The totality of his ignorance appalled him, and he looked back into Shaylar's worried eyes and frowned as something important nibbled at the edges of his scattered thoughts. Then he had it.

"Shaylar? Where are the others?"

Her composure crumbled. She began to cry again?helplessly, this time, softly and hopelessly, shaking her head in mute grief?and horror sent ice crystals through Jathmar's blood.

"No one?" he whispered. "Nobody else? Just us?"

She nodded, still unable to speak. Her struggle to hold herself together, to stop herself from falling to pieces, broke Jathmar's heart again. He drew her close, held her while she trembled, and he realized their bond wasn't gone, so much as wounded. Too badly wounded to function properly, but not so badly he couldn't feel her grief, her sorrow and despair.

"I'm sorry," he groaned. "I'm sorry I dragged you out here, into this?"

"No!" She looked up swiftly and shook her head with startling violence. "Don't say that! It isn't true!"

She was right, but at the moment, that was a frail defense against his own crushing sense of responsibility and guilt. His awareness of his complete inability to protect her.

It was painfully evident they were prisoners, but how did their captors treat prisoners of war? They must have some sort of procedures to deal with captured enemy personnel, and a further thought chilled him. Would these people think he and Shaylar were soldiers? Even he knew soldiers and civilians received different treatment from the military during armed conflicts. It had been a long time since any major Sharonian nation had gone to war, but even on Sharona there was the occasional border dispute, the "incident" when a patrol from one side wandered across the other side's frontier, the "brushfire" conflict between ancient and implacable enemies. And there'd been more than enough violent conflict in Sharona's pre-portal history to make such procedures necessary.

But how in the multiverse could he convince these people he and his wife were only civilians, when they'd killed so many genuine soldiers and wounded so many others? If Company-Captain Halifu sent real troops after them, these people would get a taste of what Sharonian soldiers could do, but would that help him and Shaylar? If the crossbows he'd seen were the best individual weapons their soldiers had, if they'd never before even seen what rifles and pistols could do, would they believe that ordinary civilians carried such weapons, even in the wilderness?

The memory of that frantic, dreadful fight replayed itself once more in jagged, terrifying flashes, but one thing was clear to him. It was only their artillery?that terrifying, unexplainable artillery?which had turned the tide against Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl's survey crew. As severely outnumbered as they'd been, they'd still been more than holding their own until the fireballs erupted among them.

No wonder those crossbowmen were so twitchy.

He'd already seen evidence that the regular troopers were poised on a hairtrigger where he was concerned, but how would their commanding officer behave toward him and Shaylar? If anyone hurt Shaylar, he'd …

Jathmar bit his lip. He couldn't do that. Couldn't even defend his own wife. If he tried, he'd wind up dead, and Shaylar would be at the mercy of his killers. His pain and self-blame doubled?tripled?but wallowing in misery accomplished nothing, so he dragged his attention back to the present.

"Where are we? Do you know how far we've come?"

"No. I was asleep when we came through that."

Shaylar pointed to something behind him, and he turned, then blinked. A portal. Gods, he really was a scattered, distracted mess to have missed seeing or even sensing a portal literally right behind him. It led into the forest their survey crew had discovered just days ago, but it clearly wasn't the one they'd used to enter that forest. This pestilential swamp was nowhere near the cool, rainy universe on the far side of their portal, and this portal was tiny compared to theirs.

"They took us out in the middle of the night," Shaylar murmured. "On a … dragon."

She hesitated over the word, but Jathmar glanced at the hideous creature and grunted in agreement. If there was a better word for that monstrous beast, he couldn't think of it.

"They put all the most critically wounded on its back," Shaylar continue. "They rigged up a special platform, like an ambulance, or a hospital car. Only this hospital car can fly. I tried to contact Darcel, but something's wrong inside my head. I can't hear anyone?not even you. There's a roaring blackness where my Voice should be, and I have a terrible headache. It never stops."

"That's what I sensed when I tried to touch the bond," he muttered. "When I first woke up, it was all I could hear. I … I thought it meant you were gone."

He met her gaze, saw the pain burning behind her brave eyes, saw it in the furrows that never quite smoothed out between her brows and the tension in her neck and face, where the bruises and swelling so cruelly disfigured her.

"Why the hell haven't they healed you?" he demanded again, much more harshly this time.

"I told you," she said, her tone clearly an explanation, not an excuse for their captors. "Their Healer has his hands full, Jathmar. And as decent as Gadrial and their commander have been, I'm glad their hands are full. I wish they were fuller."

The bitterness in her normally gentle voice shocked Jathmar. He'd never seen such cold hatred in his wife. He wouldn't have believed she was capable of it, and the discovery that she was appalled him.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was sharp as steel. "But what they did to us … I may never be able to forgive them for that. I'm trying, but I just can't."

"Who the hell wants you to?"

"I do," she whispered. "My soul hurts, feeling this way."

His heart twisted, and the look he turned on the enemy commander who'd ordered their massacre could have frozen the marrow of a star.

There's not enough blood in your veins to make up for what you've done to her, his icy eyes told the other man.

The officer looked back, meeting that hate-filled glare squarely. Whatever else he might be, this wasn't a weak man, Jathmar realized. His regret for what had happened appeared to be genuine, but he met Jathmar's steely hatred unflinchingly. They shared no words, couldn't speak one another's language, but they didn't need to in that moment. They looked deep into one another's enemy eyes, and Jathmar could actually taste the other man's determination to do his duty.

Whatever that duty was; wherever it led. Whatever the consequences for Jathmar . . . and Shaylar.

There was no hatred behind that determination, no viciousness. Jathmar was sure of that. But there was also no hesitation, and so Jathmar bit down on his own hatred. He held it in his teeth, knowing he dared not loose it, dared not let it tempt him into even trying to strike back.

He knew it, but as he stared at that enemy's face, he realized that the other man recognized the depth of his own hatred.

Jasak Olderhan looked back at the kneeling prisoner with the eyes of icy fire. He understood the causes of that lethal glare only too well, although he doubted Jathmar would have been prepared to accept how well Jasak understood … and how deeply he sympathized.

But understanding and sympathy might not be enough. Unconscious, barely clinging to life, Shaylar's husband had been an obligation, a responsibility. Jasak's duty?both as an officer of the Union and as a member of the Andaran military caste?had been to keep him alive, at all costs. Everything else had been secondary.

But Shaylar's husband, awake and conscious, was another kettle of fish entirely. And from the look of things, a dangerous one.

"Is he a soldier?" Gadrial's question broke into his own brooding chain of thought, and he glanced at the slim magister. She, too, was looking at Jathmar, and her eyes were worried.

"Why do you ask?"

"He doesn't seem to be afraid. Not the way I'd expect a civilian to be, anyway. That look of his … that's not the kind of look I'd expect from someone who's frightened."

"No," Jasak said slowly. "It's not. But that's because he isn't 'frightened.' He's terrified."

"He's what?" Her gaze jerked away from Jathmar, snapping up to meet his.

"Terrified," Jasak repeated. "And in his place, that's exactly what I'd be, too. I don't know, at this stage, whether he's a soldier or not. I'm strongly inclined to think he isn't, but he knows we are, and he knows we've slaughtered his friends. That gives him a very clear notion of our highest priority."

"That being?" she asked uncertainly.

"Getting them safely back to Arcana so we can learn everything we possibly can about their people. I won't abuse them, but he can't know that. He'd probably face the possibility of his own abuse with courage, even defiance. But he's not alone. If I'd ever doubted that you were right about their relationship, I wouldn't now. That's his wife, Gadrial. You can see it in the way he's holding her, the way he looks at her, touches her. The idea of someone abusing her, possibly even torturing her for information, terrifies him. He already hates us for what we did to the rest of his friends. That's bad enough. But he also hates us for what we might do next. He knows he couldn't stop us if we tried to hurt her, but if it comes down to it, he'll damned well die trying, and that's something we can't afford to forget. Ever."

Gadrial frowned, then looked back at Jathmar and Shaylar and realized just how accurately Jasak had read the other man.

"So how can we convince him that we won't hurt them?" she asked, and Jasak sighed in frustration.

"Honestly? We can't. Not until we've learned their language, or they've learned ours. And not until enough time's passed for us to demonstrate our good intentions. Until then?"

His eyes narrowed, and he glanced at Gadrial again.

"Until then, that's one damned dangerous man," he said. "I hate to put you in the dragon's mouth, so to speak, but I really need your help."

"Of course. What can I do?"

"I want you to be our official go-between. If any of us," a tiny flick of the fingers indicated himself and the men of his command, "try to talk with them, his defenses will snap into place so strongly we couldn't possibly actually communicate. He'll be too busy worrying about an assault on his wife, and we'll be too busy worrying about an attempt to grab a weapon, or a hostage, or something else desperate."

"Whereas I wouldn't threaten him as much?"

"Exactly," he said, and she looked him straight in the eye.

"He might try to use me as a hostage," she pointed out, and he nodded slowly.

"It's a possibility, yes. I won't pretend it isn't. But if he's smart enough to realize how hopelessly outnumbered he is, and that he has no idea how far he is from their portal, with a wounded wife and no supplies, he won't try it."

"If," she repeated dryly, then snorted and gave him a wry smile. "Somehow, I can't imagine Shaylar marrying anybody that stupid. Not marrying him voluntarily, anyway," she added, realizing they knew nothing of the marriage customs among Shaylar's people.

"And I can't imagine that lady marrying anyone involuntarily," Jasak said even more dryly. "Besides, it's obvious how devoted to one another they are. So even if her people are as 'enlightened' as, say, Mythal, these two seem to have adjusted to each other quite nicely, wouldn't you say?"

Gadrial's eyes glinted with amusement at his choice of examples, and her lips quirked in a brief smile.

"Let's just agree that we shouldn't make any assumptions about their marriage customs," she nodded toward Jathmar and Shaylar, "when our own are so varied. But if you want my opinion, theirs certainly isn't an arranged marriage. I can't imagine Shaylar doing this kind of work, out in the wilderness, if she were simply following her husband in the pursuit of his career, either. That doesn't make sense, just from a practical standpoint. Everybody's got to pull their weight and perform an important function on the team like theirs, so there's no room for the luxury of someone's spouse tagging along for the ride."

"I agree." Jasak nodded.

"So. What do you suggest I do now? We can't just stand here, staring at each other."

"No," he smiled faintly, "we can't. Do you think you could get through to Shaylar, somehow? She trusts you, at least a little."

"I'll try. But what, exactly, do I try to communicate? I don't know your plans, you know," she said, her tone tart enough to put a slightly sheepish smile into his eyes.

"Sorry about that." His cheeks actually turned a bit pink, she observed. "I've been so focused on getting them here alive that it hadn't occurred to me to share my plans with you. Despite the fact that you're fairly central to them."

Gadrial grinned. Sir Jasak Olderhan was adorable when he was embarrassed, she decided. And if she really wanted to complete his demolition, all she had to do was tell him so.

"So tell me now," she said, womanfully resisting the temptation. He looked decidedly grateful and rubbed the back of his neck, clearly gathering his thoughts.

"I intend to abandon this camp," he said. "Withdraw completely from this portal and evacuate everyone to the coast. There's no way anyone can track us if we evac by air, and that's critical, because the armed confrontation has to stop here. None of us are trained diplomats, and that's what we need. If we get a diplomatic mission out here, there's at least a chance we can keep anyone else from getting killed. At this point, it doesn't matter whether Osmuna shot their man first, or whether he shot Osmuna first. What's going to matter to them is that we slaughtered their entire crew; what's going to matter to us are the casualties we took, and the weapons capability they revealed inflicting them. We didn't mean for any of this to happen, but they're going to have trouble buying that, and there's going to be a lot of pressure on our side for a panic reaction when people higher up the military and political food chains hear about what's happened. Especially if the other side send in some sort of rescue mission that leads to additional shooting."

"Which is why we need a diplomatic mission to help convince them it was all an accident." Gadrial nodded. "And civilian diplomats won't be as … incendiary as a camp full of soldiers. There'd be less chance of another confrontation ending in shots fired."

"Right on all counts," he said, and Gadrial gave him an intent look.

"At the risk of airing my own prejudices, Sir Jasak, I have to admit that that's the last thing I expected to hear from a professional officer. I also happen to think it's the best idea I've heard since Garlath got his stupid self killed."

Jasak's eyes flickered, and she snorted.

"Never mind," she said. "I know you can't agree. Proper military discipline, stiff Andaran upper lip, all of that." She smiled sweetly at his expression. "Since, however, you've elected to proceed with such wisdom, how soon can we leave? And exactly what do you want me to try to convey to them about it?"

She nodded toward Shaylar and her husband once more.

"I intend to put them?and you?on the first flight I send out of here, along with the most seriously wounded Sword Morikan hasn't been able to heal yet."

Gadrial nodded. A Gifted healer, even a fully trained one like Naf Morikan, could stretch his Gift only so far before depleting his own energy. Gifts dealing directly with living things?like healers and the other magistrons and journeymen involved in things like the dragon breeding and improvement programs, the hummer breeding program, and even the agronomists who were constantly seeking to improve food crops and sources of textiles?were quite different from Gadrial's own major arcanas. Those Gifted in such areas required special training, and no one had yet succeeded in figuring out how to store a major healing spell, although Gadrial was confident that the coveted vos Lipkin Prize waited for whoever finally did.

Actually getting the spellware loaded into the sarkolis didn't seem to be the problem. It wasn't one to which Gadrial had devoted a great deal of her own attention?her major Gifts lay in other areas?but she suspected that the difficulty lay in the inherent differences between each illness or injury. The sort of blanket spells involved in most pre-loaded spellware were frequently a brute force kind of approach. That was acceptable for inanimate objects, but even small glitches could have major?even fatal?consequences for living things. So each healer was forced to deal with an unending series of unique problems, each demanding its own unique solution.

She and Magister Halathyn had discussed the theoretical ramifications fairly often over the years, although neither of them had enough of the healing Gift to make it a profitable avenue of research for them. They'd come to the conclusion that the difference between a magister, trained in the "hard sorcery" dealing with inanimate forces and objects, and a magistron, trained in the "life sorcery" someone like Naf Morikan practiced, was the difference between a symphonic composer and a brilliant, sight-reading improvisationist. Neither was really qualified to do the other's job, or even to adequately explain the inherent differences between their specializations to each other.

"I've still got a camp full of wounded men who are going to need Naf's attention," Jasak continued, "but Five Hundred Klian has his entire battalion medical staff at Fort Rycharn. I need to get the more critical cases off of Naf's back, and I'm worried about what you've had to say about Shaylar. She doesn't seem to be in a life-threatening situation, so I can't justify pulling Naf off of the men who really need him, but I want her to get proper attention as soon as possible."

"All right. I understand?and, for what it's worth, I agree. I'll try to get your message across to Shaylar. Wish me luck."

"Oh, I do."

"Thanks."

Gadrial dried damp palms on her trousers, drew a quick breath, and started across the open ground, dredging up the best smile she could muster.

Jathmar had never previously considered what it could mean to be a prisoner, let alone a prisoner of war. But as he and Shaylar sat together under their captors' gazes, trying to eat, he was altogether too well aware of the hostility directed at them. The soldiers who'd so brutally slaughtered the rest of their crew obviously hated them, regardless of what their commander felt.

You killed our friends, those hostile looks said, and you tried to kill us. Give us an excuse to finish what we started. Please.

He tried to tell himself he was reading too much hatred into their stares. That he might be projecting his own emotions onto them, whether they deserved it or not. That it was probably as much fear of the unknown he and Shaylar?and their firearms?represented as it was actual hatred.

Some of that might even have been true. But he couldn't know that. He didn't have Shaylar's ability to read the emotions of other people, which left him unable to trust even Gadrial the way Shaylar seemed able to do. Nor could he relax under the cold, unwavering stares coming their way.

He couldn't get away from them, either. He needed even a short respite, needed to go someplace private, where he and his wife wouldn't be the focus of such intense hatred, or fear, or uncertainty, or whatever the hells it was. And he couldn't. He couldn't even stand up and walk away from camp to relieve himself! If he tried, someone would put a crossbow quarrel through him.

It was intolerable. He and Shaylar had come out here, exploring new universes, because they treasured freedom. The freedom to move from one uninhabited place to another, to savor the silence, the exhilaration of no boundaries, no strict rules governing their every move, no limits on where they went, or what they did.

Now they'd lost all of that, and he had no idea when?or if?they would ever regain it. The long vista of captivity that stretched bleakly ahead of them, denied everything they valued in life, weighed like a mountain on his shoulders. And unendurable as it might be for him, watching Shaylar endure it would be still worse. Every time he looked at her battered face, the anger tightened down afresh. Watching her struggle to chew, struggle to put her own terror aside and try to smile at him?and at their captors?was a pain he could hardly bear.

The sound of alien voices washed across him like acid, leaving him on edge. He couldn't even ask these people what their intentions were, or read their emotions from their body language, because he had no reference points. Not everyone used the same gestures to mean the same things even on Sharona, and these people were from an entirely different universe. He had no knowledge of their language, or their customs, or even how they gestured to indicate nonverbal meaning.

"We have to learn their language," Shaylar said. "Quickly."

He glanced up. Their eyes met, and he smiled slightly, despite the snakes of anger and fear coiling inside him, as he realized how well she truly knew him. Despite their damaged marriage bond, she'd followed his own train of thought perfectly.

"They certainly won't bother to learn ours," he agreed. "Unless it's to interrogate us more effectively."

She shivered, and he kicked himself mentally. He couldn't unsay it, though, so he took her hand carefully and rubbed her fingers.

"Sorry," he said. "And I'm probably looking on the dark side. You say their commander's a decent sort, and you've seen a lot more of him than I have. Besides, I can't imagine they'd want to risk … damaging us with barbaric questioning methods. We're their only information source, and they need us, not just alive, but healthy and cooperative."

He knew he was grasping at straws, trying to reassure her, and the look in her eyes said she was perfectly aware of it. People capable of murdering an entire civilian survey crew were capable of anything, and torture could be undeniably effective. No Sharonian nation had used it?openly, at least; there were persistent grim rumors about the current Uromathian Emperor and his secret police?in centuries. But in Sharona's dim, grim past, torture had been an approved and often frighteningly effective method of extracting detailed information from captives.

"If I could just get past this headache," Shaylar muttered, "I could concentrate on learning their language. It wouldn't be easy without another telepath to help with translations, but I could pass anything I learned on to you. Verbally, if the bond's been permanently damaged."

Her voice went thin and frightened on the last two words, and Jathmar gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Let's stay focused on what we can do, not what we can't, let alone what we might not be able to do. Agreed?"

"Agreed," she said in a much firmer voice. Then her gaze sharpened. "Who's this?"

A tall, aged man with the ebony skin of a Ricathian had emerged from one of the tents and was approaching them. His face was open and unguarded, almost childlike in his obvious curiosity about them. Curiosity and?

Jathmar blinked, startled, when he registered the other emotion in the older man's face: delight. He and Shaylar exchanged startled glances, then both of them looked back at the dark-skinned man again.

He gave them a curiously formal bow, then folded his long, lean body down to sit beside them. His voice was strangely gentle as he said something, then indicated himself and said slowly and carefully, "Halathyn. Halathyn vos Dulainah."

Shaylar glanced at Jathmar, then touched her own chest.

"Shaylar," she said, then indicated her husband. "Jathmar."

Halathyn's face blossomed in a beatific smile. He moved his hands in an intricate fashion, murmuring almost under his breath, and the air began to shimmer. Shaylar gasped, and Jathmar stiffened in shock as a flower of pure light formed in the air between the silver-haired man's palms. It was a rose, scintillating with all the dancing colors of the rainbow.

Halathyn moved his hand, and the rose of light drifted toward Shaylar. The older man took her hand, lifted her palm, and the impossible rose drifted down to rest against her fingertips. It shimmered there, ghostlike and lovely, for several seconds, then sparkled once and faded away.

Shaylar sat entranced for several heartbeats, staring at her empty palm, then turned to stare at the aged man beside them. Halathyn was grinning like a schoolboy, and she felt herself smiling back, unable to resist. Despite the pain in her head, she could feel the clean, gentle radiance of the black-skinned man's soul, and it washed over her like a comforting caress.

Then Gadrial said something in gently chiding tones. She'd been speaking with Jasak just moments previously, and she'd stopped at another campfire to pick up mugs of steaming liquid and carry them over. Now she stood gazing down at Halathyn, head cocked to one side, smiling for all the world like a tutor?or possibly even a nanny?at her favorite charge.

When she spoke, Halathyn merely waved one hand in a grandly dismissive gesture that left her laughing.

"What was that?" Shaylar breathed in Jathmar's ear while Halathyn and Gadrial were focused on each other.

"If there's a better word than magic, I don't know what it is," Jathmar murmured back in awe.

"Dragons, magical roses … Do you suppose what they used against us really was … magic? Honest to goodness magic?"

Jathmar raised one palm in a helpless "who knows" gesture.

"That doesn't make any logical sense," he said, "but neither does that rose." He shook his head. "There is no 'logical explanation' for that! Not any more than there's a logical explanation for what they hit us with in that clearing, or how they healed my burns. Until we know more, we'll just have to reserve judgment."

Halathyn, meanwhile, had produced a large crystal. It was clear as water, one of the most perfect specimens of quartz Jathmar had ever seen. The old man was fiddling with it, using a stylus to draw odd squiggles and shapes across its surface, which struck Jathmar as a fairly ludicrous thing to do. Ink wouldn't stick to a smooth crystal. Besides, Halathyn wasn't even using ink, just a dry stylus.

But then Halathyn angled the crystal so that they could see, and Jathmar leaned forward abruptly. The crystal was glowing. Or, rather, the strange symbols he'd drawn were glowing, squiggles and shapes that burned steadily down in the heart of the crystal. And there was something else strange about it, too. The crystal, large as it was, was no bigger than Jathmar's closed fist. Logically, anything contained inside it had to be quite small, yet those glowing symbols were clearly visible. He couldn't read them, because he had no idea at all what they might stand for, but when he focused his attention on them, they grew to whatever size they had to be for him to make them out in every detail.

"What is it?" he wondered aloud.

Shaylar leaned closer and "casually" rested one hand on the older man's arm as she peered over his shoulder. A familiar abstracted look appeared on her face, then she smiled wonderingly.

"It's a tool of some kind. Something to … store things in?"

She sounded hesitant, and Jathmar frowned.

"Store things in?" he echoed. "That looks like writing of some kind, but how could anyone store writing inside a rock?"

"Or light, for that matter," she said. "And that's what it looks like?light."

"I'm the wrong person to ask." Jathmar shook his head, baffled. "I can't begin to imagine how something like that works."

Whatever Halathyn was doing with the stylus, the squiggles of light shifted rapidly inside the crystal. It certainly looked like writing of some sort, and it did, indeed, look as if Halathyn were storing the words inside that water-clear rock. He glanced up, eyes twinkling, then he whispered something else, and the light faded.

He handed it to Shaylar, who took it with a deeply dubious expression. Then he spoke one word and tapped the crystal with his stylus, and the glowing text sprang back to life. It glowed deep inside, scrolling past at what would probably have been a comfortable reading speed, if they could have read it at all.

Shaylar stared, open-mouthed, then looked up to meet Jathmar's amazed gaze, and Halathyn chuckled. He looked inordinately pleased with himself as he retrieved his crystal, and the look he gave Gadrial was just short of impish. She responded by rolling her eyes, and handed over the mugs she carried.

They contained a beverage that smelled like tea. Jathmar took a hesitant sip and let out a deep sigh. It was tea, spiced with something wonderful. He blew across the surface, sipping with pleasure while Gadrial cradled her own cup in both hands and drank deeply. The Uromathian-looking woman glanced at Halathyn, then turned to Shaylar and spoke again. She pointed to Shaylar and Jathmar in turn, then to herself and to the dragon.

"Looks to me," Jathmar muttered, "like we're about to be taken out of here."

"Yes," Shaylar agreed. "And look at Jasak. He's paying awfully close attention to this conversation."

Jathmar glanced up and decided that Shaylar's comment was a distinct case of understatement.

"I'd say our friend in uniform sent Gadrial over as his errand-boy," he said. Then he glanced at Gadrial's figure, whose shapeliness was quite evident, despite her bulky hiking clothes, and smiled crookedly. "Well, maybe not errand-boy, exactly," he amended. "I find it mighty interesting that he sent her over, rather than telling us himself, though."

Shaylar gave him an unusually hard look.

"He doesn't want to push you into starting something that one of his soldiers might decide to finish," she said sharply, and he nodded.

"You think I don't realize that? With you in harm's way," he added gruffly, "I won't be starting anything I'm not likely to win. But I'll admit it. If not for his trigger-happy soldiers, I might be tempted."

Her breath caught, and terror exploded behind her eyes. She took one hand from her mug of tea, reaching out to grip his forearm with painful force.

"Please, Jath," she whispered, "don't even think of trying that. I couldn't bear to lose you again."

That shook him, and he looked deep into her eyes, suddenly seeing that hideous fight from her perspective. When he remembered that ghastly fireball engulfing him, he remembered agony and terror, but they were his agony, his terror. When she remembered it, she remembered seeing him die.

Deep as that instant of consummate terror and pain had been as the fire took him, the memory which had followed his return to consciousness in this camp, before finding Shaylar alive beside him, had been far worse. For those few, ghastly moments, when he'd believed she was dead, the world had been an unbearable place, darker, deeper, and far bleaker than the far side of the moon. Yet even that, hideous as it had been, had been far less horrifying than it would have been to see her wrapped in the furnace heat of a fireball, burning to death before his very eyes.

"No," he choked out, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. "Never. I'll never risk anything that would leave you here alone."

Her breath shuddered unsteadily against the side of his neck, but she held herself together, and when she finally sat up again, her courageous smile sent an ache of proud pain through his heart. He dried her face with gentle hands, careful on her bruises, but before he could speak again, they were distracted by a sudden shout.

Both of them slewed around in time to see another dragon come winging in from the east. Translucent leathery wings vaned and twisted, altering its flightpath and slowing its airspeed. There seemed to be something indefinably wrong about the way it braked, how quickly it lost velocity, but Jathmar reminded himself that he was scarcely in mental condition to make reliable hard and fast judgments about mythological beasts who couldn't possibly exist anyway.

Jasak Olderhan had turned with everyone else at the dragon's approach. Now he strode rapidly to meet it, his face set in grim lines, and Gadrial spoke to the dark-skinned man sitting beside them. She sounded worried, and Halathyn shrugged, peering with obvious curiosity of his own as the dragon backwinged with a thunderclap of its immense wings and settled with surprising delicacy at the edge of camp.

Jathmar frowned at the newcomer, and even more at the reactions he saw around him.

"Trouble?" he wondered aloud.

"Could be," Shaylar replied. "It's obvious that Jasak isn't rolling out the welcome mat for whoever's on that thing, anyway."