Hell's Gate

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They left the fort at dawn.

Shaylar knew something terrible had happened, but no one would tell them what. No one even tried. Jasak had escorted her and Jathmar from Gadrial's quarters to their own the afternoon before, but he'd barely spoken, and Shaylar hadn't been able to touch him, so she had no idea what had happened. Whatever it had been, it had obviously been bad, because they'd spent the night locked in their quarters, with one armed guard at the door, another at the window, and for all they could tell, another on the roof.

Now they crossed the open parade ground in total silence and found Gadrial waiting for them at the fortress' barred water gate. Her haggard appearance shocked Shaylar. The circles under her eyes were so dark they looked bruised, her eyes themselves were swollen and red from prolonged weeping, and an exhausted, defeated look clung to her. It was one Shaylar recognized from her own recent, bitter experience.

"Who?" she started to ask, then realized she didn't know the word for "died." Not that it really mattered. Gadrial didn't answer her partial question, didn't even look at her. In fact, nobody was looking at them?not directly. People's glances sort of sidled past them, without ever coming to rest on them, and she and Jathmar exchanged baffled, worried looks.

The fort was built so that the wharf extending out into the harbor was a virtual extension of its walls. The only way onto or off of the long, narrow dock was through the fort itself, and other people were waiting at the water gate, as well. One of them was a tall man, with iron-gray hair. He stood ramrod straight, staring at absolutely nothing, and Shaylar vaguely remembered him from that first ghastly day, after the battle at the clearing of toppled timber. She hadn't seen him since, though, and that made her frown.

If he'd been with Jasak Olderhan the day Jasak's men had slaughtered her crew, where had he been in the meantime?

The likeliest answer terrified her, because he had the tough, no-nonsense look of a professional soldier. A good one. The sort of experienced noncom a good officer might detach for some important independent duty … like a reconnaissance mission. Had he been to their portal? Shaylar knew nothing about Jasak's and Gadrial's people, nothing about the extent of their knowledge of this region. If they'd already known about the portal cluster, then the logical thing for Jasak to have done would have been to send someone to check the ones they already knew about the moment his men stumbled across Shaylar's crew, just to see if anything and changed. And if he had, that grey-haired man would have found plenty.

Like Company-Captain Halifu's fort. And if Company-Captain Halifu had sent someone to look for them …

She glanced at Jathmar, who'd picked up some of what she was thinking, or more precisely, feeling, through the marriage bond.

"I think they know about our entry portal," she said in a low voice.

"You may be right. Something big's happened, at any rate. If I had to guess, I'd say they've tangled with our military out there. And I don't think they'd enjoyed the experience."

"Then Company-Captain Halifu did send someone to look for us."

"Or to find out if anyone had survived what you transmitted." Jathmar nodded grimly. "You said they left most of their lightly wounded to walk the whole way back to their swamp base camp when they flew us out. That would have left a trail a child could follow, leading straight back to their portal."

Shaylar nodded, but fresh worry tightened her mouth. She had no doubt that Darcel Kinlafia would have accompanied any rescue force Halifu might have sent out. And if the other Voice had managed to make it to this side of the swamp portal, he would undoubtedly have done his best to contact her. But he hadn't succeeded, and neither had she managed to contact him, despite making the attempt again and again, especially at their normally scheduled contact times, since they'd Healed her head injury. Not that she'd ever had much hope that she'd be able to. She still didn't know exactly how fast a dragon could fly, but she was virtually positive that the long dragon flight from the swamp portal to their present location had taken her well outside her own contact range from the portal, and hers was much longer than his.

Without knowing about these people's flying creatures, and given the way the swampy terrain would hamper any sort of ground-based movement, Darcel wouldn't have any reason to believe that she could have been transported out of his range from the portal in no more than a week. Which meant that when he'd tried to contact her and gotten only silence?and hadn't heard anything from her, either?he'd undoubtedly assumed that it confirmed his worst fears.

But there was nothing she could do about that, and so she did her best to put the thought behind her. Instead, she considered what Jathmar had said from another perspective.

"Gadrial's in a state of shock," she said very quietly into Jathmar's ear. "She's lost someone?someone precious to her."

Jathmar glanced at her sharply, then his nostrils flared.

"That man at the camp," he said softly. "The one who looked Ricathian."

"The one with the words in the crystal, and the fire rose." Shaylar nodded. "Gadrial was close to him, emotionally. I could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. They'd known each other long enough for that easy bantering between good friends, and then she had that fight with him just before they left. Her and Jasak both, now that I think about it. You don't suppose … ?"

"I don't know," Jathmar said, still softly. "But I'd hate to think anything happened to that fellow."

Shaylar blinked, unable to conceal her surprise. The marriage bond made it impossible for her to be unaware of Jathmar's feelings where all of their captors were concerned. But that same bond made it impossible for him to misunderstand her surprise, and he shrugged.

"It's obvious he wasn't a soldier, any more than she is." He nodded slightly in Gadrial's direction. "Neither of them wore uniforms. And, well, I don't know how to say it. There was something about him …" He shook his head, unable to find exactly the right words. "I hope Grafin blew the rest of them into an Arpathian hell, but I'd be sorry to learn that that particular man had been killed. What was his name?" He frowned. "It started with an 'H,' didn't it?"

Shaylar glanced at the others, then leaned even closer to her husband.

"Halathyn," she said in a half-whisper, and he nodded.

"Yes. That was it." A regretful sigh escaped him. "I suppose they'll tell us, eventually. Or maybe we can ask. But not yet. I really don't think now's a good time at all."

Shaylar glanced from Gadrial's tear-swollen eyes to Jasak's thin-lipped, pale silence, and then at the big, grey-haired soldier's clenched jaw and strangely disturbed eyes.

"Right," she agreed firmly. "We ask later. Much later."

Then the massive wooden bar at the gate rattled and clanked as the sentries unfastened it and it creaked ponderously open. They didn't open it all the way?just far enough to let Jasak, Gadrial, and the soldier whose name she didn't know pass through the opening more or less abreast. She and Jathmar went next, followed by several other soldiers, including one in chains.

The sight of one of Jasak's soldiers in manacles and leg irons startled her into staring. She hadn't noticed him while standing at the gate, but she recognized him. Not by name, of course?she had no idea who he was, or what his duty might have been?but she'd seen him that first ghastly day, as well. He was dark-skinned, like Halathyn, and to Shaylar's eyes he looked like a Ricathian. But only physically. All resemblance to any Ricathian Shaylar had ever known ended with the color of his skin and the look of his hair.

Despite his chains, he walked with his spine ramrod straight, and he wore an expression of unmistakable aristocratic disdain. His lip curled in the way she'd seen occasional aristocrats sneer back home, particularly those from Othmaliz, who felt they were superior to pretty much everyone else on Sharona simply because their ancestors had retained possession of Tajvana. She'd had to deal with one or two of that sort, and she'd never enjoyed the experience, although not even the most haughty Othmalizi noble had wanted to cross swords with a fully accredited Voice of her stature.

But there was more than simple arrogance to this man. The look the chained prisoner sent Jasak Olderhan as Gadrial and the officer stepped past him contained such malice, such lethal hatred, that Shaylar's breath caught for just a moment. Then another soldier spoke sharply to him, and he stalked through the gate in turn, as though he were some great lord making his way through a gaggle of filthy beggars despite the jingle of his chains.

"I wonder who he thinks he is?" Jathmar murmured.

"Good question," Shaylar agreed.

"I'm not sure I like the idea of sailing on the same ship he does," her husband growled under his breath, gripping her hand tightly.

Since they didn't have most choice in the matter, Shaylar found herself hoping that these people had good locks on their doors. Then she shivered at the thought, since she and Jathmar would be held behind locked doors, as well. Gods' mercy, surely they wouldn't put her and Jathmar in the same cell as that fellow? She shivered again, wondering what he'd done.

The roughly built wharf looked almost rickety, but it was reassuringly solid underfoot, and Shaylar turned her attention to the ship tied up alongside it. Partly, she admitted, she was interested in anything which might distract her from the thought of being confined in the other prisoner's company. But the ship itself was more than enough to claim her attention in its own right, for it was, without reservation, the oddest vessel Shaylar had ever seen, and Jathmar was staring at it in just as much perplexity as she was.

"What on earth makes it go?" he wondered aloud.

Shaylar could only shake her head in bafflement. It wasn't a huge ship, although it was clearly large enough to tackle the open ocean. It was actually a bit bigger than she'd thought it was on the day of their arrival. Of course, she hadn't been in very good shape for making detailed observations at the time, not before their healers had gone to work on her.

This ship was somewhat smaller than the standard Voyager-class ships the Trans-Temporal Express had developed to cross the water gaps in its inter-universal transportation system, but not by very much of. The Voyagers were about four hundred feet long and had a beam of about fifty-five feet, and Shaylar, like everyone who'd ever served in a portal survey crew, was thoroughly familiar with them. They were certainly serviceable craft, if not especially speedy, but they'd been designed primarily as cargo vessels, and their passenger accommodations left much to be desired. On the other hand, in the Voyager, the TTE had produced a design which lent itself to modular construction and mass production. The freighters were literally shipped across intervening stretches of dry land in pieces, carried on huge, special freight cars, and assembled once they reached their destinations.

But if this ship was of roughly the same dimensions, that was about all it had in common with the TTE design.

First, it appeared to be built of wood. That wasn't really all that surprising, in a lot of ways. Wooden hulls were more common than steel hulls for locally produced Sharonian shipping, after all. The TTE's modular designs were one thing, but for most people, it was far simpler to import a gang of shipwrights and the men needed to fell timber to build ships than it was to import enough infrastructure to build steel-hulled vessels in barely explored universes.

But the fact that this one was built of wood did seem odd considering the second obvious difference between it and the Sharonian ships with which she was familiar, because it was a far sleeker design. Whereas a Voyager had a straight, almost vertical stem, this ship's bow was sharply raked, and the hull flared gracefully as it approached deck level. Shaylar was no sailor, but she'd had the opportunity?or misfortune, depending upon one's viewpoint?to experience heavy weather aboard more than one of the TTE ships, and she suspected that this vessel would have provided much more comfortable transport under the same circumstances. It looked far more … modern, for want of a better word, which made its wooden construction one more of the endless anachronisms she'd observed since her capture.

The third thing she noticed was the size of the superstructure, and the fourth was the absence of anything remotely resembling a Sharonian ship's smokestacks. It had only a single mast, which carried no sails, so it had to have some sort of propulsive system, but she couldn't imagine what it might be.

But the fifth thing she noticed was a row of three-foot-wide ports which ran down the entire length of the superstructure right at deck level. At the moment, those ports were closed by hatches, but she didn't think they were access ways for ventilation or trash chutes. There were eight of them on the side of the ship closest to the wharf, and she assumed there was a matching row on the ship's outboard side.

She and Jathmar followed Jasak and Gadrial down the wharf towards the waiting ship, and she found herself wondering uneasily how far from Jasak's home universe they were … and what it might say about these people if this universe wasn't close to their home base. This vessel was obviously a warship, or at least armed for self protection, and no TTE design she'd ever seen had carried actrual weapons. It was also far too large for any sort of coastal patrol craft. No, this was a ship designed for blue-water combat?at need, at least?which argued that it had been constructed by a fiercely militaristic society. Who else would send actual warships to a raw frontier?

That thought carried her clear to the boarding gangway, which proved to be much flimsier than she'd expected. Jasak said something to Gadrial, speaking much too quickly for Shaylar's very limited Andaran to follow. The other woman looked at him, managed a wan smile, and shook her head. Then she stepped onto the steeply inclined gangway, gripping its rope rail firmly, and started up it to the deck towering above them in the cool morning light. Jasak watched her for a moment, then turned to Shaylar and surprised her by producing a wry smile, despite the visible weight on his shoulders.

"Women go first," he said in careful, slow Andaran, holding out his hand, and Shaylar actually flushed, embarrassed that his courtesy had, as a surprise. Despite all of the obvious care he'd taken to protect her and Jathmar, she'd still allowed herself to expect a lack of consideration from him.

She hesitated for a moment, looking at him. Part of it was surprise at the offered courtesy, but there was more to it. She wanted?needed?to touch him, to use her Talent to acquire any information she could. But at the same time, she was almost afraid to. Despite his disciplined exterior, there was too much pain behind his eyes, too much pain waiting for her if she dared to sample it.

Gadrial had halted a few feet up the gangway, looking back with those bruised, swollen eyes, and Shaylar felt of fresh stab of confused shame. Despite Gadrial's own obvious anguish, she was still capable of worrying about the prisoners placed in her charge, capable of looking back because she sensed Shaylar's hesitation, even if she didn't begin to understand all the reasons for it.

That realization was enough to galvanize Shaylar, and she opened her Talent wide and reached for Jasak's waiting hand.

It was a mistake.

Shaylar knew that the instant she touched Jasak. She bit down on a hiss of shock and stumbled heavily, as if someone had just hit her in the back of the head with a hammer. Jasak's self-control was so rigid that she'd seriously misjudged the actual depth of his anguish, and she'd pushed her Talent hard, prepared to strain for any detail she might have been able to pick up.

What she got was death. Massive amounts of violent death, coupled with a sense of desertion, a tidal wave of helpless guilt. The fact that Jasak had been relieved by the other officer, the one who'd wanted to hurt her and Jathmar, had already been obvious to both of them, but that wasn't enough to absolve Jasak of that terrible, crushing sense of guilt. Or, perhaps, of responsibility. It didn't matter what she called it; what mattered was the raw, bitter poison of its strength.

She felt herself falling?falling physically, as she stumbled, and falling psychically, as she toppled into the dreadful abyss of Jasak Olderhan's pain?and she gasped as Jasak's powerful arms caught her before she could tumble to the dock's splintery planking. It was all she could do to keep from crying out as he lifted her, as if she were child, and his genuine concern for her cut through the churning vortex of his darker emotions.

Shaylar fought her way up and out of the darkness, frantically shutting down her own receptiveness, backing away from the contact she'd sought as a means to gather information. It took her two or three heartbeats to pull far enough back to regain her own sense of self, and even as she did, she sensed Jasak's consternation and worry over her reaction.

She managed to shake her head, smile up at him with a mixture of apology for her "clumsiness" and thanks for his quickness in catching her. And then Gadrial reached out, as well.

The other woman's gesture was oddly hesitant, almost halfhearted, unlike anything Shaylar had seen from her before. It was almost as if she were fighting a war with herself, making herself offer that token of assistance.

Warned by her experience with Jasak, and again by Gadrial's uncharacteristic hesitation, Shaylar braced herself for the contact shock before she reached out for the offered hand. Instead of opening herself wide, she buttressed herself, and even so, her nostrils flared and her face went white as her fingers closed on Gadrial's.

Jasak's pain had been terrible enough; Gadrial's was worse, and Halathyn's name burned so hotly through her chaotic, grief-torn emotions that Shaylar actually heard it. She'd never done that with a non-telepath before, and she had to bite down hard on an impulse to fling both arms around the other woman. Gadrial had done so much to comfort her, had somehow kept Jathmar alive long enough to reach this fort. Now her agony cried out to Shaylar, and the Sharonian woman felt a desperate need to repay some of that comfort. Yet she couldn't, not without risking the revelation of her Talent, and for now, that must remain secret. And so she managed not to, managed to simply take Gadrial's hand as the two of them made their way up the steep, swaying gangway together.

They reached the ship's deck, and Shaylar released Gadrial's hand. She stood beside the other, grieving woman, looking back across the wharf at the land they were leaving, and wrapped both arms around herself to hold in the shivers while she tried to make sense of what she'd just sensed.

Halathyn was dead.

She was utterly certain of that individual death, but there were others, too. So many others. That was clear from Jasak's churning emotions, not to mention the way she and Jathmar were being treated. Company-Captain Halifu must have attacked their base camp at the swamp portal, and it was obvious he'd blown it straight to hell when he did.

Which Shaylar found a terrifying thought. She and Jathmar were helpless, prisoners of war in a society that would undoubtedly see Sharonians as far more warlike than they really were after this second violent contact.

She didn't believe Jasak would retaliate against her and Jathmar, despite the fact that it was his men who had just become the latest casualties. She couldn't believe he would, not after the other things she'd already sensed out of him. But Jasak Olderhan was only one officer, and a relatively low ranking one, at that, unless she was seriously mistaken. Shaylar had been around enough military units since joining the field teams to develop a fairly good sense of the military pecking order, and Jasak clearly wasn't at the top of his. In fact, she suspected she was actually older than he was, given his apparent rank and assuming that his military worked at all like the PAAF and other Sharonian armies.

If events were escalating even remotely as quickly as she feared they were, it was unlikely that an officer of his junior rank would be able to protect them. Even if he was inclined to make the effort after his own men had suffered such brutal casualties.

The commandant of the fort?which looked strangely small from here, silhouetted against the endless miles of virgin swamp that stretched to the horizon?was obviously of much higher rank than Jasak, and considerably older, as well. He'd visited her and Jathmar in their quarters in his fort only once, and he hadn't spoken to them at all when he had. He'd simply looked at them for long, silent moments?studying first Jathmar, then Shaylar. Whatever he'd been looking for, it hadn't shown in his face. And whatever conclusions he'd drawn would remain a mystery, because he'd merely nodded to them once, then departed.

Shaylar would not?dared not?assume that other officers would show equal leniency. Especially not now. So she stood, holding in the shivers until Jathmar joined her on the deck. He wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, and she turned toward him, wrapping both her own arms around him and holding on tight while the rest of the passengers passed them.

A half-dozen men who were obviously members of the ship's crew sorted out the new arrivals as they reached the deck. Like Jasak and the other soldiers, the sailors were uniformed, although their uniforms?composed of red jerseys for most of them, although one wore a red tunic with gold braid, over white trousers?were quite different from Jasak's. The one in the tunic was obviously a junior officer or petty officer of some sort. He and Jasak exchanged salutes, and the naval officer said something to one of his own men, then nodded towards Shaylar and Jathmar. The sailor started towards them, but Jasak said something, and the sailor stopped, looking back at his own officer. Again, the conversation was too quick for Shaylar's embryonic Andaran to follow, but it wasn't hard to guess what was being said.

Once again, Jasak was intervening on their behalf, asking the ship's officer to let them remain on deck at least a little longer before they were sent below to whatever quarters or confinement awaited them. After a moment, the other officer nodded in agreement and turned his attention back to more immediate duties.

The last few passengers trooped up the gangway, and the officer gave an order to one of the sailors. An instant later, the gangway began to rise. The sailors didn't haul it up. They didn't use a winch or a crane to lift it. It simply rose, detaching itself smoothly from both the side of the ship and the wharf below, turning until it was parallel with the centerline of the ship, and then rising still higher. It lifted until it was a good ten feet higher than even Jasak's head, and then nestled itself neatly into what were obviously waiting mounting brackets on the side of the ship's superstructure, one deck level above them.

Shaylar stared at it in disbelief as it drifted across above them, and she heard Jathmar's gasp of surprise when its shadow fell over them.

"How in all the Uromathian hells did they do that?" he demanded as a pair of sailors made the gangway fast in its new position. Shaylar was as startled as he was, but her memory flashed to that ghastly moment in the toppled timber when they'd first lifted Jathmar's stretcher.

"It's more of that levitation of theirs," she said wonderingly. "Remember your stretcher, or the ones they used for their own wounded?"

"Those little glassy cubes you were talking about?" Jathmar looked at her for a moment, then twitched his shoulders in a half-shrug. "I suppose if you can levitate stretchers, there's no reason you couldn't levitate gangplanks, as well, at that," he admitted. Then he snorted with a grimace. "Probably explains why they don't have any cargo derricks on this ship of theirs, for that matter. Why bother with cranes when you can just stick a little glass bead on your cargo pallets and fly them to where you want them?"

He shook his head wonderingly, then turned away as Jasak called his name quietly.

"Go to quarters now," Jasak said.

The quarters to which they were led were a pleasant surprise … and a far cry from the damp, dark, undoubtedly rat-infested cell Shaylar's imagination had pictured.

The cabin to which she and Jathmar were assigned lay one deck up in the superstructure, above the ship's weapons ports, on the outboard side and directly between Jasak's assigned quarters and Gadrial's. The older man with the iron-gray hair, was given quarters on the other side of Jasak's, and the man in chains disappeared somewhere below?probably to the cell she and Jathmar weren't in after all.

It was a small cabin, but that was true of every shipboard cabin Shaylar had ever used. It might be even a bit smaller than what they might have received aboard one of TTE's Voyagers, but if she was right, and this was a warship, that was probably inevitable. At any rate, she'd always assumed accommodations would be more cramped aboard a man-of-war than aboard a civilian-crewed vessel.

It was also heartlessly utilitarian, but that didn't matter. It was clean, reasonably comfortable, with white-painted bulkheads and neat built-in storage compartments under its pair of bunks, and it had a porthole. It wasn't large enough to wiggle through, even for Shaylar, but it allowed them a view of the sea and?more important?it let in daylight, which was even more welcome for its contrast with the windowless cell she'd feared.

At night, they would even be able to see the moon.

She held back a sigh as she settled herself on the nearer bunk. It wasn't the softest bed she'd ever sat on, but it was softer than a sleeping bag on the ground. Then she looked up again at the sound of a cleared throat.

"Stay," Jasak said from the open doorway. "I come soon."

Shaylar nodded, knowing what came next. Then their door closed, but not before she'd caught a glimpse of the armed guard who'd taken up his station outside. A lock clicked, and Jathmar crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the door.

"We're in a room on a ship that will shortly be in the middle of the ocean," he growled. "That's a remarkably solid looking door, and it's locked tight. And that window isn't big enough for you to crawl through, let alone me! Why the hells do they bother with a guard?"

Shaylar felt the worry, fear, and frustration beating like a ragged headache under his sour mood. She went to him, brushed her lips against his, circled his chest with her arms, and rested her head against his heart.

"We must have hurt them badly," she murmured.

"I hope so!" he snarled.

"Shhh." She leaned far enough back to gaze up into his wounded eyes. "What's done is done. We have to live with the consequences. That means we'd better figure out what we're going to say when they ask how we got a message out. I'm learning their language, Jathmar, and even though it's maddeningly slow without another telepath to help, it won't be long before I know enough for them to ask that question?and expect an answer."

Muscles bunched along his jaw, but he didn't speak.

"Jathmar," she said gently, "you have to let go of at least some of the hatred and put your energy into figuring out ways to keep them guessing without making them suspicious enough to treat us worse than they have so far."

She thought for a moment that he would flare up at her, but he didn't. Instead, he bit back the surge of anger beating through him.

"They have treated us … decently," he muttered grudgingly, reluctantly. "All things considered."

"Yes," she murmured, "they have."

"But I can't stop hating, Shaylar. They've smashed everything we had, everything we ever wanted. Killed our friends, nearly killed us …"

He sucked down a deep breath, fighting to bring himself under control, but it was hard. Hard.

"I don't even dare try to love you," he whispered finally, miserably. "We don't even control the lock on our own door, can't know when someone's going to open it, drag us out of here! And what if you got pregnant?" He shook his head, teeth gritted. "Before, it would've meant dropping out of the survey crews, and that would have been bad enough. But now, what would they do with?or to?our child if they thought it would make us tell them things they want to know?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, tightened his grip on her, and buried his face in her hair. His aching need for her burned hot as lava through the bond, shot through with ripples and tremors of anger, fear, and despair, and she had absolutely no answer for him. She could only hold him, blinded by tears. They stood in the center of their comfortable little prison, and just held on while the awareness of their total helplessness and vulnerability burned through them.

Shaylar never knew exactly how long they stood there. Without their confiscated watches, it was difficult to gauge the passage of time, and so she didn't even try. She simply leaned against Jathmar, her cheek nestled against his chest and the strong steady beat of his heart, while she listened to the dim sounds beyond the locked door and the even more distant sounds drifting through the opened porthole.

Then the ship began to move, and once again she was reminded of the yawning gap between any previous experience and their present reality. There was no deep rumble of machinery, no throbbing vibration from engines. There wasn't even the flap of canvas, or the creak of masts and cordage. In fact, there was nothing at all except steady movement as the ship backed silently away from the wharf.

It halted once more, and she looked out the porthole as it rotated smoothly in place, swinging its bow away from the land. The motion swung the fort back into the porthole's field of view, giving her a last glimpse of the land, and tears stung Shaylar's eyes again. She gave Jathmar another squeeze, then wiped her eyes impatiently and moved to the window to look back at the vast sweep of marsh that ran along the coastline.

The ship began to move again, forward this time, still silently. Its speed built steadily, quickly, and there was sound at last?the ripple and wash of water and the creaking sound of wooden timbers flexing as they moved, but still not so much as a whisper to betray whatever power sent it slicing through the waves.

The fort where they had stayed for such a short time grew smaller by the minute as the ship accelerated quickly and smoothly. They were already moving faster than any of Trans-Temporal Express' freighters. It was hard for Shaylar to estimate, but they had to be moving at least as quickly as any of the great high-speed passenger ships, maybe even as fast as the new turbine-engined warships she'd heard about. Yet still there was that eerie lack of vibration, that silence. No funnel smoke, no noise, just this smooth, effortless sense of speed.

She pressed a hand to her lips, staring back through the porthole. That vast marsh and that tiny log fort looked inexpressibly lonely, kissed by the rising sun and populated only by great clouds of water birds and a tiny handful of people. Or perhaps it was only she who felt such unbearable loneliness.

Then Jathmar's arms tightened about her from behind.

"I'm here, love," he murmured. "Whatever else, I'm here."

She pulled his arms more tightly around herself and held onto them silently, her throat too constricted to speak. At the moment it was hard?so very hard?to remember that they'd come out here to see new sights, new places. Things no other Sharonian had ever seen, or even imagined. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would be able to remember that, but not just yet.

For the moment, she could only grieve … and hold tight to those loving arms which were all she had left in any universe.