Hell's Gate

Chapter Thirty-Three

He knows, Shaylar realized with a jolt of pure terror. He already knows… .

The cold anger in Jasak's eyes was bad enough, but what lay under that anger had Jathmar moving abruptly, thrusting her behind him, facing Jasak with nothing in his hands but courage.

"If you hurt her," Jathmar said softly, each word enunciated precisely, carefully, "I will do my best to kill you."

Something lethal stirred in Jasak Olderhan's eyes. Then he drew a long, slow breath through his nostrils and let it out again, just as slowly. The glittering threat left his eyes. He was still angry?deeply angry, with a cold, controlled fury?but homicide no longer stared them in the face. Jathmar stayed where he was, anyway.

"Gadrial," Jasak said heavily, "please stay in the passage. I don't want you walking into this cabin."

Shaylar wanted to tell him Gadrial wasn't at risk, but what she felt from Jathmar held her silent. If anything threatened her, Jathmar would use whatever was at hand to keep Jasak away from her. Even Gadrial, the closest thing either of them had to a friend in this entire universe. Her breath sobbed in her throat. This was madness… .

Jasak stepped fully into the cabin and closed the door carefully behind him. He didn't lock it?not that there was much reason to on a ship in the middle of the ocean?but he stood with his back still against it, staring at them for several more seconds. Then he drew another deep breath.

"Gadrial tells me you want to know your status as my prisoners?"

"That's right."

"Well, I'd like to know how you sent a message to your soldiers."

Icy silence lay between them. It lingered, chilling despite the sunlight through the scuttle.

"Do you have any idea," Jasak asked softly, "what your people did to my men?"

"From what I've gathered, about the same thing they did to my crew," Jathmar said in a flat voice.

Jasak's eyes flashed. That murderous look glittered in them again for a moment, but then his nostrils flared.

"All right. I suppose there's a certain justice in that view." He very carefully unknotted his hands, then scrubbed his eyes in a gesture that combined weariness, frustration, and almost unbearable tension in one.

"Do you remember Hadrign Thalmayr?" he asked finally, abruptly.

"The man who replaced you? The one who hated Shaylar and me?"

"Yes." Jasak's voice was as dry as a Shurkhali summer wind. "He was a very …" He paused, clearly searching for words Jathmar's limited Andaran would allow him to understand. "He thought in narrow terms. I tried to convince him to pull out, to abandon that portal at least for a time. We'd already made one mistake, and I didn't want anyone making another one that led to more shooting. But he wouldn't listen. Neither would Five Hundred Klian at Fort Rycharn. They thought it was unlikely there was a body of your soldiers anywhere near our portal. And they thought it was unlikely you'd gotten a message out. But they were wrong on both counts, weren't they?"

"Where they?" Jathmar countered.

"You tell me," Jasak said softly. "And before you do, think about this. I've been adding things up. Puzzling things. We've been holding you for barely two weeks, yet you speak Andaran astonishingly well. How? Nobody learns languages that fast?not in Arcana.

"Then there's your wife's ability to know things about people. She's a very sensitive creature, your wife. Always touching someone. Always concerned. Always so understanding. She understands too much, Jathmar. It's almost like she knows what you're thinking."

He looked past Jathmar, staring directly into Shaylar's eyes, and her insides flinched. But she forced herself to meet his gaze, the way she'd met Gadrial's. It was harder?much, much harder?to simply meet Jasak Olderhan's gaze, let alone lie to those cold-steel eyes. When those eyes tracked back to Jathmar, she nearly sagged in relief. It felt as if someone had turned off the blowtorch they'd been holding on her.

"Then there's the dragon," Jasak added softly.

"The dragon?" Jathmar echoed, genuinely baffled this time.

"Oh, yes. The dragon. You were still unconscious, but Shaylar remembers. Don't you?" The glance he flicked into her eyes felt like a lance driven through her. Then he clicked that glance back onto Jathmar. "We had to airlift you out to save your life. When the transport dragon arrived, we loaded you on with no trouble. But when we tried to load Shaylar, the dragon went berserk. He hated her on sight, and I want to know why. What did the dragon sense about her that we couldn't?

"Stranger still, the dragon's rage seemed to hurt her. Not just terrify her; hurt her. She clutched at her head, and she screamed. Not just once, either. Not just the first time we tried to put her on the dragon's back. It happened again, right after we got airborne. The dragon actually tried to buck us off in midair, tried to reach her with his teeth. But your wife didn't even see that, because she was clutching her head again, screaming in pain. Gadrial had to put her to sleep, knock her unconscious with her healing Gift, just to stop the pain she was in. And to?how did Shaylar put it? To 'get the dragon out of her mind.'"

This time, Shaylar flinched. She couldn't help it. Her memory of that dreadful night was too chaotic, to confused, for detailed recollection, even for a Voice. But she remembered that moment. Remembered her desperate plea to Gadrial. Yet she'd never suspected Gadrial might actually have understood her. The deadly implications of that revelation stabbed through her and she felt the same awareness resonating through the marriage bond with Jathmar.

"Would you care to explain all of that, Jathmar?" Jasak said. "If I hadn't known such things were impossible, I'd have said she was doing something with her mind?something that enraged our dragon, and that the dragon's rage was somehow spilling over into her mind. But that was impossible. Absurd. Except that it isn't impossible, after all, is it? You people have these Talents." He spat the word out like poison. "You do things with your minds. Just what kind of game are the two of you playing with our minds?"

He's scared, Shaylar realized abruptly. He's scared to death of something he doesn't understand. She knew exactly what that felt like; she'd just gone through the same experience herself, with Gadrial's explanation. But his fright ran much deeper than hers had, much deeper than simple fear of something he didn't understand.

He's terrified that we'll put thoughts into their minds, control them somehow. What else could he think, if they don't have anything like telepathy? And he feels responsible. He's not just afraid for himself. It's not that simple for him. He's a military officer, responsible for others, for making certain we don't do something to them.

"It doesn't work that way, Jasak," she heard herself say.

"Shaylar!" Jathmar twisted around to stare at her, his eyes dark with protest, but she shook her head.

"No, Jathmar. I need to say this. Trust me, please." She'd deliberately spoken in Andaran, and her husband searched her eyes even as he searched her feelings through their bond. He bit his lower lip, taut with fear for her, and yet in the end he nodded and turned to Jasak once more.

"I'll say it again, Jasak Olderhan. Hurt her, and I will do my best to kill you."

Their gazes locked for a long, dangerous moment. Then Jasak let out an exasperated sigh.

"For people with 'Talents,' you can be amazingly unobservant, Jathmar! I don't kill women. Not if I know they're in the line of fire. And I don't hurt women, either. When I discovered Shaylar in those trees … "

The agony reflected beside the anger in his eyes was plainly visible, and not just to Shaylar, and she felt a little of the tension drain from her husband. Just a little, but it was enough to take them all one step back from the killing edge of danger. Jathmar still wouldn't let her move closer to Jasak, not even to stand at his own side, which was where she desperately wanted to be?held in his arms, not cowering behind his shoulder. But there was no point in making the tension worse.

She did reach forward, needing contact with him, even if that contact was as slight as interlacing her fingers through his, and he reached back to squeeze her hand.

"Please open the door, Jasak," she said then. "I know you're afraid. You're worried Jathmar might try to use Gadrial as a hostage, out of fear. But she needs to hear what I have to say."

Jasak stared into her eyes for long moments, trying to see past them into her mind. She could feel the attempt battering at her, and wondered abruptly if perhaps he did have at least a trace of Talent himself. But even if he did, he didn't have the slightest idea how to use it, and so he ended up with nothing but intense frustration and no real answers. In the end, he finally turned and opened the door.

Gadrial's eyes were wide and worried. She started to step forward, but Jasak lifted a hand.

"Don't come in," he cautioned. "Not yet. But Shaylar wants you to hear this, too. It ought to be … interesting."

He turned that cold-steel gaze back onto her and waited.

"I am Talented," Shaylar said, speaking very quietly, very steadily. "A Talent is a little bit like a Gift. You're born with it. But we don't use Talents to control some energy field outside ourselves. We use our minds to do different kinds of work. We call someone with my Talent a 'Voice." I can use my mind to talk directly to another Talented Voice. I can't do that with anyone else, not even Jathmar."

Jasak stood rigidly in the open doorway, clearly not believing it, but Shaylar kept going, because she didn't have any other choice. She released Jathmar's hand just long enough to reach up and brush fingertips across her husband's temple. Then she moved her hand from his temple to her own.

"Jathmar and I share a special bond. When Talented people marry, there's such closeness, such sharing, that a deep and permanent bond forms. But it isn't the same as a full Voice. He can feel my emotions; I can feel his. And I can feel Jathmar's mind. Not hear it, exactly, but feel it?like I'm touching something solid. And he can feel mine, even across a distance of several miles. We can often guess what the other is thinking, because we know each other so well, but I can't read his mind.

"And I can't read yours or Gadrial's, either. I can't hear your thoughts. I can't put thoughts into your mind. You noticed how often I touch people." Her rueful smile startled him. "I knew one of you would, eventually, but I didn't know who would see it first. Gadrial spends more time with me, but you're more suspicious." She shrugged. "You're a soldier. It's your job."

He glowered at her, but then, to her vast relief, he seemed to unbend the tiniest bit.

"Yes. It is my job," he said gruffly, then drew another deep breath and forced the steel burr out of his voice.

"All right. I'll try to listen with a little less suspicion. I need to understand this, for a lot of important reasons. And while I'm listening," he met her gaze, "I'll remind myself that despite what your soldiers did to my men, despite the threat to my people they represent, neither you nor Jathmar tried to kill my men until we fired on you."

"No," Jathmar said stiffly. "We didn't. We weren't stupid. We were good enough woodsmen to notice panicked wildlife rushing ahead of a wide line of men driving through a forest to surround us. We guessed right then that we were outnumbered. That's why we found a hiding place. And when we finally saw your people, it was obvious we faced soldiers. Less than twenty civilians against enough men to cut off our escape from every direction? We'd have been crazy to shoot first! But that didn't help us in the end, did it?because you had to come in shooting anyway! Maybe Gadrial is right and you didn't order your people to shoot, but you were in command. You were the one who pushed it?chased us?until it was inevitable!"

His accent was more pronounced even than usual, and he had to pause several times to find the words he wanted. But his anger came through with perfect clarity, and Jasak studied him for long silent moments.

"Let me tell you what I see about that day," he said finally. "You had personal weapons more terrifying than anything we'd ever seen?certainly more terrifying than anything we 'soldiers' had. Something that killed with horrifying violence, something we couldn't even identify. And when we tracked the man who'd killed one of my men to your camp, we discovered that you hadn't made the sort of open encampment we 'soldiers' made when we bivouacked. Oh, no, you'd built a palisade, well placed on commanding ground, with good fields of fire. An obviously military palisade. One of my men was already dead, I had no idea who you were, where you'd come from, who'd shot first, what other weapons you might have, how close other military forces might have been, what your intentions were, what sort of people you were. And when we finally did catch up with you, you were holed up in the best military position we'd seen anywhere on that side of our portal! Yes, you turned out to be civilians, but how was I supposed to know that then? I knew nothing about you?except that you'd already killed one of my people?and every member of the Arcanan military forces has standing orders where contact with another human civilization is concerned. We're to make it a peaceful contact if we possibly can. But, if there's already been blood shed, especially by what appears to be an organized military force, then those same standing orders required me to control the contact. Given all of that, Jathmar, how would you have reacted differently up until the instant fire was opened?"

It was his turn to hold Jathmar's gaze challengingly, and he did. Yet even Jathmar could see it was a challenge, not simple anger, and he felt his own anger waver.

He didn't want to feel that. The sudden realization that he wanted?needed?to cling to his anger shook him badly, but it was true. He didn't want to take a single step toward understanding what Jasak had known, what Jasak's options had been, because understanding might undermine his hatred.

Yet he couldn't afford to clutch that hatred to him, either. And so, finally, he shrugged.

"I don't know," he said shortly. "I'm not a soldier. I'd like to think I wouldn't have run down a civilian survey crew, but if I'd thought they were soldiers?" He shrugged again. "I don't know."

"I appreciate your honesty in coming that far," Jasak said. "But there was another side to it, as well. Something I'd already recognized even before the shooting started. You were trying to keep the situation under control, too. You didn't want a bloodbath any more than I did, and I knew it."

"How?" Shaylar asked, totally astonished.

"You could have opened fire without warning. I was sure you'd gone into those fallen timbers. If you'd wanted a fight, you could have dug in in your palisade, tried to set up an ambush when we followed your man back to your camp. You hadn't done that; you'd run for your portal, instead, tried to break contact. There could have been a lot of reasons?military reasons?for that, but you didn't open fire when we started closing in on your position out in those fallen trees, either. You had concealment and cover?you could have killed a lot of my men before we even knew where to shoot back?and you didn't. Not until someone on our side killed someone else on your side who was trying to talk, not shoot."

He shook his head again, slowly, heavily.

"I'm not prepared to second-guess all my decisions that day, and we'll never know what happened when your man?Falsan?met Osmuna. But the bottom line is that my people shot first, whether I wanted them to or not, in the second encounter with you. However it happened, that was the outcome. And that means you deserve for me to at least listen with as open a mind as I possibly can."

Shaylar started to speak, but he raised one hand. The gesture stopped her, and he smiled without any humor at all.

"Don't misunderstand me. I'm still a soldier, and my duty is still to protect my people. After what happened at our portal?after what your soldiers did to us, when they came looking for you?I'm very much afraid that an ugly, brutal war is waiting for all of us." He spoke with dark and bitter honesty. "Even if we, the four of us, could figure out a way to stop it, it may be too late already. Military people on both sides are obviously already beginning to react to what's happened as the reports go up the chain of command, and the gods only know where that's likely to go. And once the politicians get their hooks into this, it may be impossible to stop.

"All we can do is this; try to convince me, Shaylar. Convince me your mental Talents aren't super weapons. That you can't use your minds to destroy Arcana at any time you choose. Whether you believe it or not at this moment, I am absolutely the closest thing to a friendly judge you're going to find. If you can't convince me, you'll never convince the Andaran High Commandery, let alone the politicians who govern the Union of Arcana."

"I know that," she whispered. "And that terrifies me."

"It should."

The dark thing riding his shoulders left Shaylar trembling. She was more than afraid for herself; she was afraid for Sharona. For every Talent alive. But then Jasak went on.

"Whatever else you say or don't say, before I come to a final decision about whether or not I believe what you're telling me, answer me this. Why do you touch people, if it isn't to read minds?"

He still sounded suspicious, although less unbelieving, and she met his gaze unflinchingly.

"Most people, even those without Talents, can tell a great deal about a person's emotions. When you look at a person, Jasak, you can see emotion in him, can't you? In his expression, his eyes, the way he stands or walks. You learn a great deal about a person that way, don't you?"

He nodded, clearly unsure where she was going.

"Well, I can see all that, too, visually. But when I touch a person, I can sense their emotions directly. Not their thoughts, just their feelings. If they're terrified, I feel waves of terror, as though I'm terrified of something, too. If they're angry, it's like being hit with a fist. If they're grieving, it's like drowning in the need to weep."

She turned to look at Gadrial, who still stood in the passage beyond Jasak.

"The day we came onto the ship, Jathmar and I knew something terrible had happened. That was obvious, because Gadrial had been crying. Her deep emotional shock showed in her eyes, in her face, in her posture?anyone could see that. But," her gaze moved back to Jathmar's face, "when you took my hand to help steady me on the gangway … "

Shaylar shut her eyes, shivering involuntarily.

"I almost fell down, your grief was so terrible. I know now it was for what had happened to your men, but I didn't know that then. And I didn't even have time to block it out. It just smashed into me like a club. It literally knocked me off my feet. I would have fallen, if you hadn't caught me, and then Gadrial took my hand, and that was almost worse. It felt?"

She cast through every nuance of that memory, trying to be as accurate as possible.

"There was terrible loss. Personal loss, even worse than yours for your men, Jasak. Like when a family member dies. It felt … as if you'd lost a father?" she finished uncertainly, reopening her eyes to meet Gadrial's.

"Yes." Gadrial's breath caught on a ragged half-sob. "That's exactly what it feels like. Halathyn was a father to me."

"I'm sorry he was killed," Shaylar said softly. "I touched him that first day." She had to blink to clear her eyes. "I trusted him instantly. He was very gentle inside. It felt like he loved everything."

"Yes." Gadrial wiped away tears. "He did. I still can't believe he's gone. That he died so horribly … so stupidly."

"They all died horribly," Shaylar said, her voice suddenly harsh. "They all died stupidly. There was no need for any of it! I bleed for you and Halathyn, Gadrial?but who bleeds for us? Who bleeds for Ghartoun, who stood up to talk to you with empty hands? For poor, maddening Braiheri, who studied plants and animals? For Barris Kasell, who kept me sane when Falsan died in my arms? Who died trying to keep me alive? We had boys with us, too. Young men, barely out of school, who took care of our pack animals, the supplies. Boys with dreams and their whole lives to live. And they all died horribly. Stupidly. For nothing."

Gadrial bit her lip, and Shaylar looked directly into Jasak Olderhan's eyes.

"That first day, that horrible first day …" She didn't even try to fight the tears. "You can't ever know how terrified I was. How deep the shock was, even before you cremated the dead. I was badly injured?your own Healers have confirmed that. My husband's life hung by a thread, with burns so terrible I couldn't even bear to look at them. And then you burned the dead."

She shuddered. Her mind wanted desperately to shy away from that particular memory, but there was a point she needed to make, and she couldn't do that without facing the memory herself.

"When you burned them, I started to fall. You caught me?just like you did on the gangway. Do you remember that, Jasak?"

He nodded slowly.

"When you touched me?" She paused, swallowed sharply, wrapped both arms around herself. "My Talent was badly damaged because of my injury, but I could still feel your regret. Your horror. It shocked me. I didn't expect it, and I was too dizzy, too sick, to understand fully. But I felt more than enough to realize you'd actually intended to honor my dead."

His own memories of that dreadful day floated like ghosts in his eyes as she stared into them.

"And under the regret there was a sense of desperate sorrow?one I finally understood when Gadrial told me today, in this cabin, that you'd ordered your man not to shoot Ghartoun. I didn't want to believe it when she did, but a Voice has perfect recall, Jasak. I can shut my eyes anytime I want and hear you shouting not to shoot. And when I learned that, it hurt me, terribly, to finally know for certain that my friends had died for absolutely no reason except one scared man's stupid mistake. But it also confirmed what I'd felt inside you that day."

He looked down at her, his eyes still hooded, still suspicious, and her temper snapped.

"Gods' mercy, Jasak! Why else do you think I was able to trust you that day? To let you touch me? To not jerk back in horror every time you even looked at me? You've talked about how frightening our weapons were to you?what about your weapons to us? You'd just butchered my dearest friends?burned them alive, curse you! My gods, I'd never seen anything so barbaric in my life! You claim to be civilized people, but you build weapons designed to roast an enemy alive!

"You can't possibly know what you did to me that day! What you're still doing to me, every single day I spend trapped in a room with guards staring at me if I even try to look out a window. I can't go for walks in the moonlight anymore. I can't go for walks anywhere! I can't even take a bath by myself, without having to ask Gadrial to order some musclebound guard not to shoot before I step outside that cabin door without permission!"

She stood glaring at him, bosom heaving with emotion she could barely contain. She wanted to scream, wanted to hit him with her fists to make him see what he'd done to them, what he was still doing to them. And buried in her anger, making it burn even fiercer, was the knowledge that he did know. That he understood, and deeply regretted it. That he would have done anything to undo it … and that he was still unflinchingly determined to do whatever his "duty" required of him. That unless she could convince him their Talents did not present some deadly danger to his nation and the men in his army, he would take whatever steps seemed necessary to eliminate that danger.

"It was my Talent?the Talent you're so worried about right now?that let me understand what you were feeling. I wanted to hate you. Gods, I wanted to kill you! I was in deep shock, and the shocks just kept coming and coming, and it was all your fault. I didn't want you to touch me, not then, not ever, but you did.

"And because you did, and because I'm Talented, I knew you hadn't wanted it to happen. I knew how terribly you regretted it, and how determined you were to protect me from still more harm. And when that happened, I couldn't keep hating you. I couldn't. I'm a Voice?I was born to understand people. I can't help understanding people. Even," she sobbed in rage, "when I don't want to!

"I wanted to hate you, and my Talent wouldn't let me. I'm not a weapon?I'm a Voice. A bridge between people. A living tool to help people communicate and understand one another. It's in my blood, my bones, my very skin. It you would just stop holding onto your suspicion with both fists and all your teeth, you'd see the truth, Jasak Olderhan."

She drew a deep breath, scrubbed the angry tears from her face, then shook her head.

"I can't prove to you that my Talent is no danger to you," she said quietly, almost softly. "But if it were, don't you think I'd already be using it? All I've done is use it to learn your language. If there were something I could do to strike back at you after all of the agony, fear, humiliation, and helplessness your people have inflicted on us, you can be certain that I would." She met his eyes levelly, challengingly. "You'd deserve that, and I'm sure you'd expect it. But there isn't, and I can't, and you're not a Voice, don't have a scrap of telepathy. So words are all I have to convince you I'm telling you the truth."

He continued to gaze down at her, then turned to look at Jathmar again, and she wanted?more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life before?to touch him. To see what emotions were streaming through him behind that expressionless mask of a face. But that was the last thing she could do, and so she simply stood, waiting.

Jasak looked at the tiny woman standing in front of him. Looked at the face of that woman's husband and read Jathmar's desperate fear for Shaylar, and the horrible, debilitating knowledge that there was no way he could protect her from whatever Jasak decided to do.

And that was the crux of the problem, wasn't it? Jasak had to decide what to do, and Shaylar was right. He had no 'Talent" of the mind, no yardstick to measure the truth of what she'd said, or to sense what her true emotions might be. He had to choose whether or not to take her unsupported word for it.

Despite all she'd just said, it was entirely possible that she could be?and had been?subtly influencing his judgments, his decisions, his very thoughts. The very passion with which she'd presented her argument had only driven home the fact that he had no way of knowing what other hidden abilities lurked within her. Not only had she admitted that she could sense the emotions of others, but the way she'd described herself?as a 'Voice'?had told him exactly how they'd gotten a message back to their own side. And she'd forgotten to try to disguise her fluency in Andaran. Jathmar's progress in learning Jasak's language had been phenomenal enough, but the command of it which Shaylar had just demonstrated was little short of terrifying.

Yet that was the entire point, wasn't it? Should it be terrifying, or did it simply feel that way because he didn't understand? Because it was a simple, everyday ability of her people which simply lay so far outside his own experience that he couldn't recognize it as such?

"Sit down, Shaylar. Please," he said finally.

She stared at him for a few more seconds, then stepped back behind Jathmar and settled gingerly on the foot of Gadrial's bed. Jasak waited until she'd seated herself, then pulled the straight-back chair back away from the small desk in the cabin's corner and placed it for Gadrial. He waited until the magister was seated, as well, then drew a deep breath.

"First," he said quietly, "I acknowledge that I was in command of the troops who killed your companions and wounded the two of you. That's a significant point, which I'll return to in a moment."

Jathmar was watching his face even more intently than Shaylar. Now he reached out and took his wife's hand once more, and Jasak realized he was also clinging to that 'marriage bond' Shaylar had mentioned. That he was using it to help himself follow what Jasak was saying with his own, more limited Andaran.

"Second," he continued, "whatever concerns I might have over the threat your 'Talents' might or might not pose to the other people on this ship, or to the Union of Arcana as a whole, I wouldn't blame you for using them any way you could. Indeed, I'd expect no less out of you, just as I would expect no less out of Gadrial and her Gift under similar circumstances.

"And, third, I believe you." He saw both of his prisoners' taut spines relax ever so slightly, and shook his head. "I believe what you've told me is the truth. That doesn't mean I believe you've told me the entire truth."

They stiffened again, but he continued calmly.

"In your places, I certainly wouldn't tell my captors anything which would help them against my people unless I absolutely had to. I've seen enough of both of you by now to realize you won't, either. But you're also both highly intelligent. That means you know that sooner or later you're going to be very thoroughly questioned. Questioned by professional interrogators who know how to put bits and pieces together and learn things you never even realized you were telling them. For the moment, however, and speaking for myself, I'm going to operate on two assumptions. First, that what you've told me up to this point is true. Secondly, that I have your parole."

Not even Shaylar recognized the last word, and he smiled crookedly.

"Your 'parole' is your word?your promise?that you won't attempt to escape, that you won't hurt anyone else except in direct self-defense, and that you will refrain from hostile actions so long as you're treated humanely and with respect. And?" he continued, looking directly into Jathmar's eyes as the Sharonian stiffened with an expression of borning outrage "?I believe that if you're honest with yourselves, you have no choice but to acknowledge that you have been treated both humanely?and with respect?by both Gadrial and myself. I can't undo what happened that day in the forest, but I've done the very best I could to see to it that you were treated well afterward."

Jathmar inhaled, but before he could speak, Shaylar squeezed his hand hard. He turned and looked into her eyes for several heartbeats, then turned back to Jasak.

"You want us to promise to be … obedient prisoners," he said in his slower, more halting Andaran. "What about our duty to escape?"

"Escape to where, Jathmar?" Gadrial put in gently from her chair. He looked at her, and she smiled sadly. "Even if you could escape custody, where could you go? How could you ever possibly hope to get home on your own?"

"Gadrial is right," Jasak said as Jathmar looked at her mulishly. "Trust me, however much any of us may regret it, you aren't going to be able to escape, no matter what you do. Unless, of course," his smile turned even more crooked, "your 'Talents' are quite a bit more … useful than I've just agreed to assume they are."

"If escape is so impossible, why should we promise not to?" Jathmar challenged.

"Because it will affect the precautions I have to take as the officer responsible for you," Jasak replied unflinchingly.

"But how much longer will you be the officer 'responsible' for us?" Shaylar asked. "I said I trust you, Jasak, and I do. As much as I'll ever be able to trust any Arcanan, at least. But what about that other man?that Hundred Thalmayr? What about all of the other soldiers and officers I've seen glaring at us? Sooner or later, someone senior to you is going to be the one 'responsible' for us. How do we trust him? And why should any promise we make to you affect how he treats us?"

"Because of that point I told you I'd come back to," Jasak said. "Because I was in command when your people were killed. That makes me responsible for what happened to them, and for everything that's happened to you since."

"But I know you ordered that other officer not to shoot!" Shaylar protested.

"Yes, I did. And I doubt very much that even with your Talent you can understand how much it means to me that you realize that. But the officer who opened fire was one of my subordinates. I ought to have ignored the letter of the regulations and relieved him before we ever caught up with your people. I didn't, and after he was killed, after the shooting had become general and I had men down all over that clearing?wounded, dying, dead?I assumed tactical command of the battle. I fought that battle, not Shevan Garlath. And I'd do it again, exactly the way I did it then, under the same circumstances and given what I knew at the time."

He met the Sharonians' eyes levelly.

"I had no choice at that point, but that doesn't change the fact that it was my command which attacked you, or that you were civilians who were simply defending yourselves. My men destroyed your lives as surely as they killed your companions, and that leaves me with an honor obligation towards you."

"Honor obligation?" Jathmar repeated carefully, and Jasak nodded.

"Among my people?Andarans, not Arcanans as a whole?there's something called shardon. It's the term we use to describe the act of taking someone under your own and your family's shield. You and Shaylar are my shardonai. As the commander of the troops who wronged you and yours, I'm obligated to protect you as I would a member of my own family. In fact, under Andaran law and custom, a shardon is legally a member of the family of his baranal."

"Which means what?" Jathmar asked.

"Which means I'm honorbound to refuse to surrender you into any other officer's custody, regardless of our relative ranks. It means my family and I are obligated to see to it that you're treated well, that no one abuses you, and that you're assured of all the personal safeguards any other member of our family would receive. It means that even though you and Shaylar are Sharonian, not Arcanan, any children born to you on Arcanan soil will be Arcanan citizens and entitled to all of the rights and protections of citizenship. No one can take them from you, no one can use them against you, and no one can violate their civil rights. The sole difference between you, as my shardonai, and my sisters or my parents is that the protections which we can extend to you continue to apply only so long as you voluntarily remain under my protection."

"In your custody, you mean." Jathmar's tone was more cutting than it had been as he made the correction, and Jasak nodded.

"For all practical purposes, yes," he said unwaveringly. "I'm sorry, but no one can change that. Not now."

"And how long is your government going to be willing to leave us in your custody?" Shaylar asked tautly.

"For as long as I, any member of my family, or either one of you is alive," Jasak said flatly.

The two Sharonians looked at him in obvious disbelief. Then Gadrial cleared her throat.

"I've lived among Andarans for years," she told them. "There are a lot of things about them and about their honor code that I still don't pretend to understand, but I do know this much. If Jasak tells you his family will protect you, they will protect you."

"From the entire army? Your entire government?" Jathmar couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice … assuming that he'd tried to.

"I think you may not fully realize just who Jasak's family is," Gadrial said with a slightly crooked smile. They looked at her, and she shrugged. "Jasak is Sir Jasak Olderhan. His father is Thankhar Olderhan, who happens, among other things, to be the Duke of Garth Showma … and the planetary governor of New Arcana. There may be one other Andaran nobleman with as much personal political and military power as His Grace. There couldn't possibly be two of them, though. And under the Andaran honor code, the entire Olderhan family and every one of its dependents and liegemen will die before they allow anyone to harm an Olderhan shardon."

"And the rest of your government, of your politicians, would allow them to do that?" Shaylar demanded as she and Jathmar looked at Jasak with completely new expressions.

"Some of them won't like it," Jasak admitted. "Some of them will try to get around it, probably especially among the Mythalans. And there may well be some?especially among the Mythalans?who attempt to step outside the law and justify it on the basis of 'national security.' But," he added in that same flat, inflexible, rock-ribbed voice, "they won't succeed."

Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, then back at him, and as he looked into their eyes, he realized that at last they believed him.

"All right," Jathmar said finally.

He tried to keep his voice level, his tone normal, but it was hard. Partly, that was because of the enormous relief flowing through him. He'd had no idea Jasak might come from such a prominent, powerful family, nor had it even crossed his mind that the protection of that family might be extended to him and Shaylar. But relieved as he was, grateful as he might be, he couldn't forget that the price tag of that protection amounted to a lifetime as prisoners. He told himself that they'd have been prisoners under any circumstances, that this shardon relationship offered them the chance to live as human beings, anyway. He even knew it was true. But that didn't change the fact that its protection had been extended to them by the very man who acknowledged he was responsible for the massacre of their friends and their own capture in the first place.

He could feel Shaylar's reaction through the marriage bond, and knew her emotions were far less … conflicted than his own. But Shaylar was Shurkhali. She'd been brought up in that culture, that society, and its acceptance of an honor code which had obvious resonances with the one Jasak and Gadrial were describing. Jasak had finally found something Shaylar understood. A rock she could grasp, use as an anchor, and Jathmar was grateful for that, as well. Yet he couldn't quite suppress his resentment of that, either. Of the fact that it was Jasak, her captor?and not her husband?who had provided her with that almost painful sense of an understood security at last.

"All right," he said again. "We accept that we're … shardonai, and that you?and your family?will protect us to the very best of your ability. On that basis, we're willing to give you our 'parole,' but only as long as we to remain with you and under your protection."

"Thank you," Jasak said softly.

He sat without saying anything more for the better part of a minute, then he gave himself a shake and looked at Shaylar intently.

"As a part of your parole, Shaylar," he said, "I need to know how close you have to be to another Voice for him to hear you."

Shaylar froze. Then she darted an agonized glance at Jathmar. Her husband looked just as startled as she felt, and she kicked herself mentally. They'd already known Jasak was keenly intelligent. Obviously, he'd put two and two together and come up with exactly the answer she'd hoped he wouldn't reach, and she should have realized he would.

She started to say something. She didn't know what, and it didn't matter, because Jasak's raised hand cut her off before she began.

"I know you're tempted to lie," he said. "I don't blame you for that. And I won't try to compel you to tell me if you refuse to. But honor obligations cut both ways, at least in Andara. Refusing to answer is one thing; lying to your baranal is another."

"And if she doesn't answer?" Jathmar asked, bristling with fresh suspicion.

"If she doesn't answer, then I'll be forced to assume the worst. In that case, my responsibility as an officer in the Army of the Union of Arcana will be to ensure that she isn't in communication with anyone from Sharona. Or, at least, that she has no access to information useful to Sharona. In accordance with the first possibility, I'll ask Gadrial and her colleagues at the Institute to attempt to devise spellware which will permanently shut down Shaylar's 'Voice.' Frankly, I don't know if that would be even remotely possible, however, or how we could test to be sure it was actually working if they did. In the absence of that sort of guarantee, my responsibility then would become preventing her from learning anything useful about Arcana. I'd do so as gently as I possibly could, but the consequence would be effectively close confinement. You would be almost totally isolated. I would vastly prefer to avoid doing that, but the obligations of my officer's oath would leave me no alternative."

Jathmar began a hot answer, but Shaylar touched his shoulder.

"Wait, Jath," she said softly in Shurkhali. He looked at her, and she grimaced. "I'm the one who let the cat out of the bag," she said. "I didn't mean to, but he's obviously even sharper than we were afraid he was. And, be honest?is what he's saying really all that unreasonable? If you had a prisoner who had the potential ability to communicate?tracelessly, silently?with an enemy, would you give her access to potentially useful information?"

"Well …" he began, and she shook her head.

"These people don't have Voices at all, Jath. That means they can't have anything like our Voice Protocols to cover a situation like this. Even if I wanted to tell them how to temporarily disable my Voice, they wouldn't have anyone who could do it!"

"So you want to tell them the truth? All of it?"

"They've obviously already figured out I was the one who got word back to Darcel. That's going to give them a minimum range figure, no matter what. But should we try to exaggerate my range or to minimize it?"

Jathmar thought furiously, trying to keep his expression from showing the depth of his concentration. He wished passionately that they had longer to think about this?or that he'd been smart enough to insist that they think about it in advance. But they hadn't, nor did they dare to hesitate too long before they came up with some sort of answer now. Given what Jasak had said about the difference between lying and simply refusing to divulge information at all, the security offered by the shardon relationship might well disappear if Jasak decided they were lying.

And, he thought unwillingly, Jasak's right about honor obligations cutting both ways. If we're prepared to accept the protection this relationship offers, then we should damned well accept that we're duty-bound to meet our obligations under it. Besides, if we don't, it might just go away completely, and then what happens?

"Tell them the truth," he said after a long moment, this time in Andaran.

"All right," Shaylar said in soft Shurkhali, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then she looked at Jasak.

"We're well outside my maximum Voice range," she said unflinchingly, admitting that she was the one whose warning to Darcel Kinlafia had brought the savage counterattack down on Jasak's men. She saw his recognition of that fact flicker in his eyes, but he only nodded, and his voice remained calm, almost gentle.

"How great is your range?" he asked. "And what sorts of messages can you send?"

"Range varies with the Voice," she replied. "My range is a bit over eight hundred miles, but even if it were greater than that, no Voice can transmit through a portal. As for messages?" She shrugged. "I can send?could send, if another Voice were in range?any message you could give me. Or, I could link deeply enough with another Voice that he or she could literally see through my eyes, hear through my ears. In that sort of link, the two Voices?"

Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr sat back on the bed in Gadrial Kelbryan's cabin, holding her husband's hand, looking into the eyes of the man whose honor was all that stood between her and a hostile universe's enmity, and willed for him to recognize her honesty as the ship about her carried her towards a lifetime of captivity.