The Road to Hell

Chapter Thirty-Two

February 7

Noriellena Drubeka, one of dozens of SUNN correspondents assigned to cover the newly elected members of Sharona’s Imperial Parliament, flipped through notes and prepared to throw her life away over a handful of interview questions. Voice Kylmos Trebar watched her do it with a carefully suppressed sigh.

Their assigned region of Uromathia included Emperor Chava’s capital city, but they didn’t have to be in his waiting room or attempting to get in to interview the emperor to do their jobs. They could have stayed in Tajvana, interviewing MPs representing that part of his empire instead of following a very dangerous man back to his home country after the conclusion of the Conclave.

Correspondents all over Sharona’s populated worlds were interviewing the members of parliament and trying to get reactions from public officials about likely power blocks in the new Parliament. But Drubeka wasn’t satisfied with that approach. Years ago, as a beginning SUNN hometown news correspondent, she’d asked Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal to comment on a Uromathian ambassador who’d proposed euthanizing elderly cetaceans for their whale oil.

Shalassar’s response still replayed in the Voicecasts, and he could tell Drubeka was hoping for another career-making interview.

She’d initially planned for a single question, if they could only manage to intercept Emperor Chava in transit: “SUNN is honored that you’d take this interview, Your Majesty. Please, tell us just what would it take for you to support the Imperial Parliament’s war caucus?” But it looked like they’d be getting a full formal interview with the emperor, instead.

The war caucus had other, longer names. “The Sharonan Imperial Defense Group,” for one. Then there was “MPs for the Restoration of the Frontier Universes and Defeat of the Arcanan Scourge”-which was just the beginning of an unwieldy mouthful of a name advocated by MP Ruftuu. Whatever they called it, the MPs who’d joined it were in agreement about supporting the war. The conflict was on how to support it, and the group most reporters were calling the “war hawks” were pushing to extend the policies begun as Emperor Zindel’s executive orders.

No surprise to political observers, the New Farnalian MP Kinlafia was one of the many representatives expected to vote with that power block. The Uromathian MPs-both from the Uromathian Empire and other historically Uromathian nations-were also supporting the war, however, which was enough to make anyone suspicious, given Chava’s influence. Virtually every one of SUNN’s political analysts expected them to become the opposition party, but as yet they hadn’t formed any distinct caucus of their own or even explained exactly how they intended to support the war, and Drubeka wanted answers about what they were really up to from the power everyone knew was writing their marching orders.

The waiting room lacked mirrors, so Drubeka used Trebar’s eye for her final pre-Voicecast touch ups. The Shurkhali Voice took no special care for his own appearance, beyond buckling on platform shoes to raise his height of eye from five foot three to five foot eight. Viewers liked correspondents at eye level and Drubeka stood five seven in flats and five eight in the pastel court attire selected to complement her olive skin and contrast nicely with the audience chamber’s carpet, where she expected to make her obeisance before and after the interview. SUNN might cut it to show only a cordial bow for the ’cast shown in regions outside Uromathia, but that would be for other staffers to decide. Trebar would capture the best lighting and angles and try to keep Drubeka in sight as much as possible.

Voices were never harmed in Uromathia except by chance street violence. Critics without the Voice ability to send an exact record of their final moments did not fare so well. But there were more kinds of power than back alley brutality. Drubeka knew that as well as he did, but she was betting the Emperor of Uromathia would see the value of occasionally giving his version of events directly to the people of Sharona.

If the worst happened and she vanished, SUNN would give her memory as many headline stories as it could, but Drubeka wasn’t planning to die. There was still too much news to find and tell.

The correspondent’s carefully practiced sexy but still serious personality had a lot of fans, including the court page managing the order of the supplicants to see the Emperor of Uromathia. The young man controlled the political factions in the room without a blink, but his interactions with the famous must have been few. He fairly melted when Drubeka spoke to him and eagerly complied with any requests Trebar conveyed.

Now Drubeka set aside her notes and nodded to Trebar.

A word to the page about the need for processing time before the evening Voicecast saw their audience shuffled forward to next in line. A quickened pulsing at Drubeka’s temples caused Trebar to reach for a hairbrush. He could adjust her hair to mask more of her temples, but she lifted a hand and he held back. That wouldn’t be the right look for Drubeka’s public personality, and Emperor Chava was unlikely to be fooled into believing he didn’t scare them.

Trebar applied a light coat of powder to hide the shine on her forehead.

“We can walk out of here and catch a train back to Tajvana. Get some interviews with the MPs themselves. Noriellena, we don’t have to do this,” Trebar said. He didn’t like to see her sweat.

“I’ve got this,” Drubeka said. She was deepening her voice and lengthening the vowels to stretch her normal speech patterns-getting mentally ready to be on. “SUNN needs this interview. We’re going to bring in ratings gold on this one.”

“You can’t move up to Special Correspondent if a third of the features are in areas SUNN can’t send you because Chava has you declared persona non grata.” Trebar reminded her. “Go easy, Noriellena. Just remember he’s an Emperor and this is his seat of power. Don’t push too hard. Promise me, okay?”

“No promises; no lies, Kylmos.” Drubeka rolled back her shoulders and smoothed her dark hair, tucking a lock behind her ear in her signature interview pose: Noriellena Drubeka, SUNN, listening for you. “How do I look?”

“Ready as always,” Trebar replied, just as the page gave them the nod and opened the double doors of the entry hall. They were on!

“Good. Let’s do this.” She flashed her classic grin.

* * *

Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia and power behind a dozen or more theoretically independent polities, understood perception-and how to create it-well. He met the SUNN team on his own terms a few steps inside the audience chamber.

The emperor wore normal street wear and held his formal court robes tucked over one arm, as if he was a mere justiciar who’d just finished ruling on a long case, without a legion of servants to take that heavy brocade and see it cleaned and pressed for his next audience.

Drubeka in her SUNN personality began a very creditable obeisance for a woman who’d spent the last several years interviewing small town fishermen and plebeian business magnates. She got no further than the initial bow, because the emperor stepped in close and clasped both her arms in the warm greeting of colleagues. That caused the robe to slide, and Drubeka caught it.

Emperor Chava laughed out loud, the handful of courtiers attending to business around the room chuckled in pure delight…and a chill ran down Trebar’s spine.

Chava’s eyes twinkled inviting all of Sharona to share in the joke. The Uromathian-based Voice Broadcast Service had accused SUNN of carrying the robe for Emperor Zindel. The phrase implied an ugly willingness to do distasteful things to further the desires of the robe’s owner-an insinuation SUNN Voicecasters had simply ignored. Now VBS would play the nasty comment to the hilt with their audience if SUNN used the interview.

“Mistress Drubeka.” The emperor chuckled. “You SUNN correspondents simply cannot help yourselves. I shall have to ask the VBS to take your natural inclinations into account when they make their news bulletins.” He tipped his head at a courtier standing a half dozen paces back up the entry wearing, Trebar noticed belatedly, the sash of office adopted by Voices in the employ of VBS.

So they could be sure this interlude would run tonight whether SUNN showed it or not, he thought. SUNN in the person of Noriellena Drubeka would be accused of being Emperor Zindel’s robeholder, and the VBS report would surely expand that to imply Drubeka was so used to being Zindel’s servant that she’d reached out and grabbed Emperor Chava’s robe too out of helpless habit. Regrettably the other man had had a better view of the whole exchange, and Trebar moved quickly around to position himself for the rest of the interview.

Drubeka rallied by offering the robe to the VBS Voice…who avoided ruining his version of events by making a leave-taking bow to Emperor Chava and exiting the chamber. At a crook of the emperor’s finger, a servant relieved Drubeka of the heavy garment.

“Please, please.” Chava motioned to an alcove, clearly set up specifically for this meeting. “Let us sit. My page, he tells me he is a big fan of your work, but you have questions about the new Parliament, of course. And you would like to ask me about the war caucus. Is that not so?”

Trebar was already very still taking the record. Drubeka only froze for a fraction of a second. Then she smiled right back at the Emperor.

Chava Busar was good. He’d had to be to build and hold the political position Uromathia had maintained for the last decade, but in Ternathian-influenced areas of Sharona it was too easy to discount the man as a power-mad aristocrat more likely to be killed by his own kin than to survive to old age.

The emperor sat and the interview began.

Drubeka skipped the formal, flowery intro she’d practiced. This had become Chava’s Voicecast, not hers. He was setting the tone and she’d have to scramble to slip in her best questions wherever she could make them fit. The plan had been to distract him with a few cetacean rights questions, the topic she was known for pursuing in many of her interviews, and then shock him into an unplanned response with questions about the MPs who might emerge as parliamentary leaders.

Clearly surprise was now out of the question. She could ask about the cetaceans after all, but that was old news, with well-worn talking points he’d already spoken to with a dozen VBS reporters. Drubeka had pursued this audience to get something fresh, and the war caucus was the topic of the day.

The group supported Emperor Zindel, celebrated the unification of the Sharonan universes, and sought to transfer as much power as possible to the Winged Crown. One MP had even suggested folding existing national police agencies into a single imperial police force-far beyond anything Emperor Zindel had requested. The obvious question was what the Uromathian Emperor would have to say about this support for his rival’s objectives.

Drubeka didn’t do obvious, but she didn’t normally interview emperors, either.

“Mistress Drubeka.” She’d waited too long and Chava was taking the interview’s reins again, and the correspondent clenched her teeth at the thought. “Why is it, exactly, that your news organization, this SUNN, is so negative towards all things Uromathian?”

“Your Excellency, I’m no emperor to speak for all of SUNN.” Trebar breathed relief as Drubeka rallied enough to speak calmly. “Personally, I find Uromathia a lovely place and, as you yourself mentioned, we have many fans here, including Master Rihva your Excellency’s Court Page.”

She didn’t take the bait and attempt to defend the reporting, for a lot of reasons. One was that it was true reporting, highly critical not of Uromathia itself but of Uromathia’s current emperor, as she and her Voice was in a far better position than most non-Uromathians to know. Kylmos Trebar and Noriellena Drubeka were among the many who’d been greatly relieved when Zindel had emerged as Emperor of Sharona instead of Chava. Another reason, of course, was that attempting to defend it would give Chava exactly what he wanted: legitimization for the VSB’s claims of bias. The SUNN correspondent had obviously been scrambling for an explanation of Chava’s legitimate question, their mouthpieces would opine. It wouldn’t matter what she’d actually said, either; they were past masters at twisting clear, simple declarative sentences into pretzels to make those sentences say exactly what they wanted them to say.

“Your Excellency,” Drubeka said instead, “while I have this wonderful chance to ask, and I must say it’s beyond gracious of you to have allowed this interview, I must ask some questions myself. So I suppose I should start with a question your page told me he hoped I would ask: Who’s your favorite MP?”

It was a simple question, she’d never thought to ask, but after the page had mentioned it, Drubeka hadn’t been able to let it go. If Chava answered, he’d probably name the man he’d chosen as leader of the opposition and she’d be able to stop leaning on the SUNN analysts’ guesses about which Uromathian MPs had influence and which didn’t.

Emperor Chava smiled indulgently, as Drubeka held her breath waiting to see what he’d say.

“Here in Uromathia,” he said. “All our MPs are the exquisite flowers of their districts, as difficult to chose between as an orchid over a rose. So I would not normally answer this question.” Emperor Chava leaned in with a knowing look directly at Trebar. “But for my friend Mistress Drubeka who sees the loveliness of Uromathia, I tell this secret. My favorite is the fine Mister Darcel Kinlafia.”

Trebar blinked quickly. He needed to focus and catch all this.

Kinlafia had no connection to Uromathia. The MP’s district was in New Farnal, which had been populated by settlers from Ternathia not Uromathia, and the MP’s wife was even Emperor Zindel’s former Privy Voice.

Someone was being played right now. Quite possibly it was all of Sharona, but it might be just SUNN and Drubeka. Trebar couldn’t tell where this was going and he needed to see and hear what Chava decided to announce next.

Drubeka glanced downward with an eyelash flutter that was something of a signature expression for her. It gave the viewers a distraction while she thought.

And she might not realize it, but Trebar knew she used it far more often when she thought the interviews were going exceptionally well than when she thought they were out of control. Not for the first time he wished she’d been at least a trace Mind Speaker so he could whisper a warning as she played with a black tendril of hair by her ear.

“Oh my, that is a secret.” Drubeka tilted her head with another eyelash flutter at Trebar inviting all of Sharona to join her and the emperor in this interview-turned-intimate-conversation. “I know all the women out there agree Darcel has that wild universe-explorer handsomeness, but tell me really, what attracted Your Excellency?”

Kinlafia was on the wrong side of average in Trebar’s opinion, but the right angles and lighting could make anyone look good, as every SUNN correspondent certainly knew.

“My girl Krethva,” the emperor named a Uromathian society journalist for VBS who certainly wouldn’t disagree with any words he put in her mouth, “tells me the strong shoulders are more than sufficient reason to favor a man.

“But,” he continued with a side look at Trebar, proving himself an adept at Voicecast interviews, “We all know the famous Mistress Drubeka does not fall for just a pretty face.”

He made a mournful expression inviting the audience to sympathize with him for not personally attracting the correspondent in that way. Then he winked as if to tell the viewer he knew full well that he, one of the most powerful men in all of Sharona, had not a chance with their darling beautiful newsgirl.

It wasn’t the truth, but perception, even on live Voicecasts, showed only the surface. No emotions were permitted in commercial Voicecasts without the express permission of the interviewee. And without that, no amount of additional commentary would convince the audience which Saw this that Emperor Chava was really a dangerous man who’d have a pretty reporter slaughtered like a farm animal if he found her responses disrespectful.

Drubeka blushed, and Trebar thanked the Double Triad that she was a capable actress.

“Many of my viewers have quite the crush on you, Your Excellency.” She covered the Emperor’s implied self-disparagement, carefully.

Chava shrugged off the flattery, this time not quite managing to appear unconceited. He acknowledged the comment with a shade too much arrogance.

“Darcel Kinlafia and I have much in common in this way. I do for Uromathia what I can to protect the people from those who would wish us ill. And sometimes, regrettably, always regrettably, there is a conflict of understanding in the need for these protective acts. And,” Chava’s accent was thinning as the interview went on, but Trebar suspected few viewers would notice, “Mister Darcel with his Voice report of the Arcanan brutality brings us warning of the danger. We must have this man in the Parliament. His warning must be repeated again and again until all of Sharona demands a leader who will defend our universes properly.”

Trebar held back a blink and shifted focus to Drubeka who took the volley.

“Your Excellency, we all saw you agree to the Unification Treaty establishing the Empire of Sharona for the fight against Arcana. Are you saying Emperor Zindel can’t defend our universes?”

“He tries.” Chava shook his head as if in concern for a small child. “But we can see what it costs the Caliraths. His own firstborn dead already? And this after losing how many universes to the Arcanan horde? I say only that Sharona may not be able to afford the Calirath style of protection. Must we lose that many more universes for every one of the Grand Princesses? I would not see Sharona so splintered or let my friend and fellow emperor, Zindel, suffer so much.”

Chava stood and perforce, Drubeka came to her feet as well even though this was far from the note on which she would have chosen to end the interview.

“My friends at the SUNN,” his accent returned, “I must say goodbye and return to my work.” He gestured at the audience chamber where the court page had brought in a young woman with three sobbing children. Trebar turned his head back to the Emperor and correspondent quickly, not wanting to linger on the staged setup.

Drubeka made her bow, and the very smug court page saw them out.

* * *

An old friend at SUNN contacted a politician’s wife with news of the Uromathian Emperor’s words, and Alazon Yanamar’s eyes widened in shock, and then closed in disgust.

“A problem?” Crown Princess Andrin whispered in her ear. “We could cut back on the wedding flowers a bit, if you really hate them.”

“Just a negative Voicecast piece, Your Highness” Alazon explained and tried to narrow her focus back to just this room of the Grand Palace. Ulantha Jastyr would be more than able to relay the newest set of aspersions being cast by Emperor Chava. Today Alazon was supposed to pretend to like wedding planning.

Lilies-enormous lilies, and piles of other flowers she couldn’t begin to identify-bedecked a massive display the very proud florist had rolled into the center of the Tajvana main ballroom.

“Pretty! So pretty!” Nine-year-old Grand Princess Anbessa squealed in delight. The girl danced a circle around the thing pointing out this and that flower from places Darcel Kinlafia had worked survey missions.

Crown Princess Andrin patted Alazon on the shoulder. “They aren’t actually from the border universes.” She whispered. “Don’t tell Anbessa.”

“But we got all the right ones, yes? Picked from the geo-match locations here in Sharona.” A young florist’s assistant hovered, clearly concerned about a possible failure of diligence in meeting the latest elaborate wedding request.

Andrin reassured the young man, and he calmed immediately. The Crown Princess’s falcon Finena nuzzled her beak into her feathers for a nap, expressing about the same level of interest as Alazon herself felt.

Still, there were roses in the mix, and Darcel had given her a massed bouquet of them the day after the election results came in. He didn’t have to do that. They were psionicly-paired lifemates. She knew exactly what he felt and how much he cared for her…but he still sent flowers out of the blue, just to see if they might make her happy.

Anbessa completed another turn around the flowers and twirled around Alazon.

“Mistress Yanamar, you do like them right? Can we keep them in the wedding?” She looked uncertainly back and forth between Alazon and the florist. Empress Varena, Marithe Kinlafia, and Anbessa’s other sister Razial stood a little way off, surrounded by a pile of silks, making some kind of plan for table linens-too preoccupied to make another wedding decision on Alazon’s behalf this time.

Alazon laughed and pulled Anbessa in for a hug.

“I’m going to let your mom plan my wedding however she wants it,” she whispered to the youngest grand princess, letting her in on the secret.

“Oh.” Anbessa whispered back. “It is going to be really big. Lots and lots of flowers,” the girl cautioned, wide-eyed.

Alazon nodded. The grand princess was more right than she knew. Empress Verona had been robbed of the opportunity to make a grand spectacle of Andrin and Howan Fai’s wedding, so she’d redirected all that energy towards this one, throwing all the wedding planning zeal she hadn’t been able to spend on her daughter’s state wedding into the reception she and Zindel were throwing for Alazon Yanamar and Darcel Kinlafia.

She and Darcel got to keep the service itself simple and traditional, with full respect for the ceremony before the Holy Double Triad. And in exchange for this one hard line, the grand princesses and the empress (especially the empress) had an entirely free hand in the reception festivities.

Thank the Triad they were also paying for the reception, or Alazon imagined she’d be indenturing her great-grandchildren to cover the price of the meticulously planned party. The newlywed Crown Princess Andrin gamely stayed at Alazon’s side during these wedding planning sessions, offering few suggestions of her own. But, Alazon noted with some suspicion, the crown princess delighted in encouraging her younger sisters in their greater flights of fancy. She was beginning to suspect that Crown Princess Andrin had received exactly the kind of simple wedding she’d always wanted, and that she was delighting in redirecting all the hoopla onto another couple.

If Darcel’s mother, Marithe, hadn’t turned out to have a surprising appreciation for over-the-top festivities, Alazon would have put her foot down on a lot more than the ceremony. But since her future mother-in-law was also enjoying participating in the spectacle, Alazon left them to it.

Andrin winked and covered her exit, and at least being a Voice made it easy to arrange to sneak off with Darcel. She’d have to stop in again before dinner to agree with everything the four women had decided on, but in the meantime she got to spend a lovely afternoon walking with her fiance: the Honorable Mister Kinlafia, Member of Parliament in the House of Talents.

She rather liked the ring of that. Perhaps she could attempt to introduce herself as MP Kinlafia’s wife later and see if any of the other newly elected delegates were politically naive enough to accept that summation of her identity at face value.

She suggested as much to Darcel. He first laughed and then actually thought it through and agreed. Some politicians were elected because politics was simply what their families did and the voters were used to choosing that name, and most members of the new House of Talents were from long established political families. This test might be a way of finding out which of them had taken their seats with intent to actually do something. Anyone who intended to show up for debates and make their own choices about votes would know Alazon Yanamar had been the Emperor’s Privy Voice.

And she would be again, very soon. She’d actually tried to convince Emperor Zindel to retain Ulantha in the position, and he’d admitted she was doing very well. Unfortunately, she lacked both Alazon’s experience and the strength of her Talent. Ulantha was a very good, very strong Voice, but she wasn’t a Projective Voice. Alazon was, and there were times when that could be a critically important ability for Privy Council meetings. On the other hand, Alazon had been thinking about her protege’s future, and it seemed more and more likely to her that Ulantha would make the perfect Personal Voice for Andrin, which would also guarantee the younger Voice’s career.

In the meantime, it amused Alazon immensely that some people thought she’d become a quiet politician’s wife.

The security concerns for the wedding nagged her a bit. Crown Princess Andrin and Prince Consort Howan Fai had discussed sitting in the balcony with most of the Calirath family to watch the ceremony, and she felt almost physically queasy at the thought of putting so many eggs into one basket. On the other hand, Telfor chan Garatz, the Chief of Imperial Security, had everything in his capable hands. Alazon had to trust him to outwit any threats.

Empress Varena was hosting the after party back at the palace. Surely the house guards would be in attendance in some form, but that particular chapel had been expressly nixed in favor of the Conclave floor for the Andrin-Howan Fai wedding because it lacked sufficient defenses. Alazon didn’t think it had been reinforced in the meantime, and while Howan Fai’s marriage to Andrin might have sealed the unification of Sharona, it hadn’t brought peace to the tempestuous Ternathian relationship with the Uromathian Empire.

She hoped the Imperial Guard had a plan to see to the Imperial Family’s safety.

* * *

The interview ran as the lead story in every SUNN market that evening with bits and pieces shared out for further discussion in the talk shows the next morning. And Privy Voice Ulantha Jastyr did indeed discuss it with the emperor. Meanwhile the SUNN correspondent team took the first train back to Tajvana.

Noriellena Drubeka’s promotion had come through, but not for Features Correspondent. Instead she was offered Lead Uromathian Political Correspondent…along with a warning from corporate that an appearance of favoritism towards the emperor could result in firing.

Trebar sometimes wondered if corporate paid any attention to the news the company collected. If SUNN wanted a permanent political correspondent in Uromathia, they’d have to accept the appearance of bias in Chava’s favor.

He also checked SUNN’s staff directory. SUNN had no other permanent Uromathian political correspondents, but “lead” came with a significant pay bump, and as her assigned Voice, he’d get a raise too.

Drubeka suggested they think of it as a hazardous duty bonus and work as many features as possible from the seat of Parliament in Tajvana.

Trebar heartily agreed.

Now Drubeka grabbed her diner-train glass and toasted her reporting teammate.

“To surviving the election season!” She lifted the glass and gulped down half of it.

Trebar tilted his own and sipped while his partner gasped at the kick.

The harsh Uromathian liquor from the bartender hadn’t been miraculously improved by the dining car’s price markup. After a few gasping coughs, Drubeka tossed back the rest of the glass with a grimace.

“I don’t understand how you can sip this stuff,” she said.

Trebar chuckled and added his own toast. “And here’s to getting out alive.”

“Hey now, all that insinuation made for good copy, but-” She waved it away.

Miles away from Uromathia’s capital city and on a fast train to their new office in Tajvana, she indicated with a wiggle of her fingers why SUNN supervisors always paired her with paranoid, or at least highly cautious, Voices. Noriellena Drubeka would never quite be brave-not with the cold blooded courage which truly recognized danger and accepted it. Hers was the sort of personality which protected itself by denying threats, not grappling with them. In the moment, she’d know there was danger and do the work anyway, but in the in between times, she never really acknowledged that that danger had existed. Trebar knew that perfectly well, and now he waited for the inevitable justification.

“You know what I think,” she said. “This battle of the two emperors is all showmanship. Uromathia clearly accepted the Treaty of Unification, and the drama with the Crown Princess’s wedding has all blown over. Yes, I agree with the VBS commentators that the wedding clothes left something to be desired. But really? Complaints about clothing hardly amount to a true attack on the Winged Crown, and we do have this multiversal war with Arcana going on.”

She caught an attendant’s eye and signaled for another round before continuing.

“I mean, surely all these people will put aside their local issues for the war. When all’s said, we’ve got to make sure we still have a Sharona-we’ll need something to fight over amongst ourselves after we smash the barbarians back into fairy dust! Speaking of which, did you see that new shooting gallery promo stunt?”

Trebar shook his head, giving her all the encouragement she needed to keep going. Running commentary was one of the things occasionally required when waiting for something truly newsworthy to occur. Thus some commentators needed to practice near monologues on random public interest topics just to fill the time. Drubeka didn’t need any more practice, but Trebar let her talk anyway.

“What’s the shooting gallery thing?”

“Well the reports are that Arcanans look pretty much like us, so they haven’t been able to come up with any really interesting new targets to sell. But some of the Voice reports say the Arcanans’ magic comes from some kind of crystals, so Tajvana’s shooting galleries have taken to making sugar crystal targets. The first one called it Metal vs. Magic, but the competitor’s branding of Crack the Crystal seems to sell a bit better. I gotta say, I like the idea. Triad forbid the Arcanans ever break as far back as Sharona, but at least if they do, all the shop keepers will know what to shoot at!”

The chances that a crystal powering anything truly deadly would be marked off with concentric circles and held fixed at twenty paces struck Trebar as unlikely, but he grunted acknowledgement.