Hell's Gate

Chapter Ten

Jasak had to send another message. However little he might relish the thought, he had no choice, and he strode over to Iggar Shulthan.

"Iggy, I need two more hummers."

"Yes, Sir. I thought you would, Sir."

The hummer handler opened a small wire cage, made of heavy gauge mesh rather than the sort of wires and crosspieces wealthy ladies used to house chirping canaries or rainbow-winged near-sprites.

He moved carefully and gently, whispering the whole time, as he retrieved one of the ten remaining hummers from the dozen he carried everywhere First Platoon?or whichever of Charlie Company's subunits he was attached to at the moment?went.

Hummers were so aggressive they required not simply soothing handling, but also carefully controlled incantations that turned off their natural attack instinct. The bird Shulthan had retrieved was a beautiful creature, with iridescent green feathers and a ruby throat. And it was also five times the size of any wild hummingbird, with a stiletto beak that was even larger in proportion.

The Andaran Scouts, like all other trans-universal military organizations, bred magically augmented hummers by the hundreds of thousands. Incredibly fast in the air?a hummer could top a hundred and fifty miles per hour?male hummers were aggressive enough to ward off attacks by any airborne creature smaller than a gryphon. They formed the backbone of the Union of Arcana's long-distance communication network, routinely flying distances of well over a thousand miles.

The most remarkable thing about hummers, to Jasak's thinking, was how they transported messages. Rather than strap a message to the outside of a large, slow bird vulnerable to gryphon attacks, the inventor of the hummer system?an Andaran Scout, Jasak thought, with a touch of familiar smugness even know?had found a way to embed a message inside a smaller, faster bird. Every hummer in service was surgically implanted with a message crystal, wafer thin yet capable of storing complex and surprisingly long messages.

Just as Gadrial and Halathyn used spells to store their notes and personal-crystal displays, hummer handlers used spells to store urgent messages which could be retrieved by the receiving hummer handler. Dragons always gave Jasak's spirits a lift, but hummers were sheer artistry.

"Ready to record your messages, Sir," Shulthan said. "Destination?"

"First bird to the coast," Jasak said. "The second to Javelin Kranark at the portal."

Shulthan nodded and spoke the proper spell to implant the first destination's coordinates, then looked back up at Jasak.

"Begin message, Sir."

"Hundred Olderhan, second Andarans Scouts to Five Hundred Klian, Commander, Fort Rycharn. Urgent. First Platoon of my company has sustained heavy combat casualties. The platoon's combat strength has been reduced to eight?I repeat, eight?effectives after an encounter with what I believe to have been a survey party from another trans-temporal civilization." Even as he said the words, they still sounded impossible, even to him. "Several of my casualties have serious internal injuries," he continued. "They are in critical condition and urgently require a healer's services. I am transporting them to our base camp as quickly as possible, but I estimate that it will require twenty-plus hours from the time chop on this message to return."

Jasak paused, considering what he'd said, wondering if he should say still more. But what could he say until he got back to report in person and answer all of the no doubt incredulous questions Five Hundred Klian was certain to have?

He grimaced and tossed his head.

"Hundred Olderhan reporting," he said. "End of message."

Shulthan spoke again, locking the message properly into the crystal. Then he stroked the hummer gently, whispered to it, and tossed it into the air. It sped away so rapidly Jasak couldn't follow the motion with his eyes even though he'd been waiting for it.

He drew a deep breath, trying to visualize the consternation that hummer was going to create when it reached Fort Rycharn. Then he turned back to Shulthan.

"Second hummer, please," he said.

At least he could include one piece of good news with the message to Kranark. He could reassure Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah that Gadrial had taken no harm, despite the fact that Halathyn had trusted her safety to Sir Jasak Olderhan.

He recorded the message and tried to watch the second bird streak away through the forest. He failed again, as always, and steeled himself to turned back to the remnants of his shattered platoon. He'd done all he could; it remained to be seen whether that?and Gadrial's minor Gift for healing?would keep the wounded alive.

He hoped twenty-five hours of travel time wouldn't turn out to have been an overly optimistic estimate.

Andrin Calirath felt twitchy.

It was an uncomfortable sensation, like feeling swarms of honeybees buzzing just under her skin. It plucked at her nerve endings with a constant, jarring twang, until it threatened to drive her mad. It had plagued her most of the afternoon, too vague to consider a true Glimpse, yet far too insistent to ignore.

The weather hadn't helped. The last week had been fair and fine, like a holdover of summer, but today had set out to remind everyone that autumn was upon them. Like the sensations under her skin, the weather was maddeningly neither one thing nor another, for today had been one of those perpetually drizzling days, too wet to call a mist, too halfhearted to call rain. Below the vast expanse of glass that served the Rose Room as a window, the gardens were all but obscured by the combination of misting rain and approaching evening, and her mood matched the garden?cold, foul, and unsociable. The cheerful chatter of her younger sisters was almost enough to drive her from the room, ripping out handfuls of hair as she went.

Andrin bit down on the impulse?hard. A grand princess of the Ternathian Empire did not display public fits of temper, no matter what the provocation. That stricture?not to mention responsibility?weighed heavy on shoulders that had seen only seventeen changings of the seasons, but she didn't really mind the pressure of her birth rank. Not much, anyway. She enjoyed her many opportunities to help people, to make a difference in their lives. She was grateful for what she had, and for what she could do, but she never forgot who?and what?she was. She was a Calirath, born to a tradition of service to her people, her family, and to herself. Everything else, including any private dreams she might nourish, was secondary.

A coal fire burned steadily behind her in a fireplace built when coal had been little more than a funny sort of black rock and trees and peat had been the only fuel on the island. The vast fire pit could have held half a mature oak tree; instead, it held five separate coal fires, spaced evenly along the length of the fireplace. The scent of coal dust, sharp and thick at the back of her throat, was just one more irritant to be weathered. Winter in Ternathia was nothing like the snow-laden ordeal of Farnalia, and it was still only early October, but the wet, raw day had brought an early chill to the Palace. It was more than enough to make her grateful for the fire's heat, and she'd draped a woolen shawl around her shoulders, as well. Its soft, warm touch was like a soothing caress, offering at least a little comfort against the angry honeybees.

The little clock on the mantle chimed the hour with a sprinkling of liquid crystal notes, and the silver-sweet bells were a reminder that yet another hour of her life had been devoured by someone else's schedule. The honeybees snarled louder at the thought, whittling away another few notches of her temper, and she sighed. She loved her mother and her sisters, but on days like this, with the Talent riding hard with sharpened spurs, Andrin desperately needed time alone. Time to focus inward, to ask?demand?of this inner agitation what message lay beneath it.

Another clock chimed, farther down the mantle, setting her teeth on edge. Her mother loved fussy little bric-a-brac, like clocks that chimed with the sound of real birdcalls. The Rose Room, Empress Varena's private domain, was filled with her collection of delicate breakables. Andrin had been terrified to move in this room for the first ten years of her life, for graceful deportment had not come naturally to her. Unlike her younger sisters, she'd been forced?grimly?to learn it in the same way a fractious schoolboy might be forced to learn his arithmetic.

I want out of here! her soul cried out. Out of this room, this Palace, this awful sensation of doom …

Andrin's Talent never made itself felt for joyous things. That blistering injustice was the reason she was so agitated?no, be honest, afraid, she thought harshly?standing here beside the window, staring hard at the garden she could barely see through the mist and the misery. On days like this, she would have given a piece of her soul to be an ordinary milk maid or shop clerk somewhere, untroubled by anything more serious than helping some wealthy fribble choose which color of ribbon looked best with a card of lace. Shop clerks didn't have inscrutable portents buzzing like angry bees under their skin.

Precognition was a curse of royalty.

At least Janaki is the heir, she consoled herself.

The stiff set of her face eased a little at that thought. Her older brother was in the Imperial Ternathian Marines, assigned to border patrol in a newly colonized world at the edge of Sharonian exploration. She envied him enormously. The open sky, the freedom to gallop one's horse for the sheer mad delight of it, the ability to actually step through portals, not just read about them from the confines of stone walls and garden hedges. She would have been happy just to ride her palfrey through the streets of Estafel today, despite the drizzling rain that had?by now?turned the capital city's cobbled streets into slick and dangerous ribbons of stone.

She started to sigh again, but checked the impulse before it could become audible. She didn't want to inflict her sour mood on her mother or sisters.

The door clicked open.

Andrin turned, grateful for any diversion, yet so anxious about what might be happening somewhere in the many universes Sharonians now called home that her heart stuttered until she saw that the sound was merely her father's arrival for dinner.

She tried to summon a smile, grateful that bad news hadn't actually arrived on their doorstep … yet, at least. Her father was a large man, as were most Ternathians. Not stocky, and certainly not fleshy, but he was built like a bull, with the massive shoulders and thick neck that were the hallmark of the Calirath Dynasty. To her private dismay, and the despair of her dressmaker, Andrin looked altogether too much like her father, and not a bit like her mother. The Empress Varena might stand nearly five feet eleven inches in her stockings, but she looked delicate, almost petite, standing beside His Imperial Majesty, Zindel XXIV, Duke of Ternath, Grand Duke of Farnalia, Warlord of the West, Protector of the Peace, and by the gods' Grace, Emperor of Ternathia.

The emperor who, at that moment, wore a look which so nearly matched Andrin's own mood that she felt herself trying not to gape open mouthed.

Zindel chan Calirath caught the grim set of his daughter's jaw, the stiffness of her shoulders, and knew, without a word spoken, that Andrin felt it, too. He halted in the doorway, halfway in and halfway out, and nearly had the door rapped into his heels. The doorkeeper had been opening and closing the Rose Room door every day at six p.m. sharp for the last twenty years, and not once in all that time had the Emperor stopped dead in the middle of the doorway.

But Zindel couldn't help it. The warning that vibrated through him when his gaze locked with his eldest daughter's was as brutal as it was unexpected. He sucked in a harsh breath, totally oblivious to the doorkeeper's frantic, last-minute grab at the door handle. He never even realized how close the door had come to slamming into him as his entire body vibrated with the Glimpse.

Something was going to smash her life to pieces. Soon.

Dear gods, no, not Andrin, a voice whispered inside his head, and his eyes clenched shut for just an instant. Clenched shut on a bewildering dazzle of half-guessed images, so fleeting, so jumbled, they were impossible to capture. Explosions of flame. Weeping faces. A powerful locomotive thundering along a desert rail line, with the Royal Shurakhalian coat of arms displayed on either side of its cab. A great whale rising from the sea in an explosion of foam. Gunfire stabbing through darkness and rain. A city he'd never seen yet almost recognized, a ship flaming upon the sea, a magnificent ballroom, and his tall young daughter weeping like a broken child… .

His nostrils flared under the dreadful cascade of almost-knowledge which had been the greatest gift and most bitter curse of his line for twice a thousand years and more. He was no Voice, yet he could taste the same splinters of vision ripping through Andrin, as if the proximity of their Talents had somehow sharpened the fragmented Glimpse for both of them, and he bit his lip as he felt her anguish.

But then he fought his eyes open again and saw Andrin biting down on her own distress. He understood the tension singing just beneath her skin, the shadows in her eyes. They were echoes of his own fear, his own gnawing worry, and his eyes held hers as the cheerful greetings from his wife and younger daughters splashed unheard against him, drowned out by the terrible prescience. Andrin's eyes were dark with its heavy weight, all the more terrible because they could give it neither shape nor name, and when she smiled anyway, it broke his heart.

She'd grown so tall, these last two years, too tall for mere courtly beauty. She was strong beneath the silks and velvets of an imperial princess. She wasn't a beautiful girl, his Andrin, not in the conventional sense. Her chin was too strong, her nose too proud, her face too triangular, for that, but strength lived in those unquiet eyes and the firm set of her mouth. Her long sweep of raven hair, shot through with the golden strands which were borne only by those of Talented Calirathian blood, lent her an almost otherworldly grace she was entirely unaware she possessed, and her eyes were as clear and gray as the Ternathian Sea.

"Hello, Papa," she said, holding out one hand.

He crossed the Rose Room swiftly and took her into a careful embrace, denying himself the need to crush her close, to protect her. He was careful, as well, to hug each of his younger daughters in turn?and his wife?in exactly the same manner, for exactly the same amount of time. He didn't want Varena to guess his Talent was riding him with cruel spurs. Not yet. Not until he'd Glimpsed more of whatever terrifying thing he might yet See.

"Now, then." He smiled at Razial, who'd just turned fifteen, and Anbessa, whose eleventh birthday had been celebrated two months previously. "How did your lessons go today?"

He let their youthful voices wash across him, finding comfort and even mild humor in little Anbessa's complaint that she saw no need to learn what Ternathia's imperial borders had been eight hundred years previously, since the Empire's current borders were far smaller. Then there was Razial. His middle daughter's bubbling enthusiasm over her latest art lesson was, Zindel knew, motivated more by the physical attractiveness of her art tutor than it was by any real love of watercolor painting. But he also knew the tutor's proclivities did not include nubile young grand princesses. And since Janaki was not only old enough to hold his own in affairs of the bedroom, but out of the Palace and several universes removed, Zindel had no real worry about the safety of his offspring under the roving eye of a handsome young art instructor. Razial's current infatuation was merely entertaining, in a gentle and soothing way that dispelled some of the gloom after a day like today. He gave Razial another six months, at most, before some other gloriously handsome devil caught her eye and the tension of her raging hormones. He'd worry about that devil when the day came.

Meanwhile …

Zindel sat beside his wife, drawing comfort from Varena's warmth at his side, while they waited for the servants to arrive with their supper. Varena's needlework?a new cover for their kneeling bench at Temple?was a work of art in its own right. Varena's designs were copied eagerly throughout the Empire, viewed as instantaneous must-haves for anyone on the Society list, or anyone with the aspiration to be on it, and not simply because of who she was.

Her Imperial Majesty Varena smiled as her husband sat beside her, but her skilled hands never paused in their work. She drew no small pleasure from the work she created with nimble fingers, needle, and thread … and if her hands were busy making something beautiful, no one would see them twist into the knots of fear which came all too often for an imperial wife.

She was Talented, of course; it was legally required for any Calirath bride. But hers wasn't a very strong Talent, just a middling dollop of precognition. It was nothing like the Glimpses her husband and her older children experienced, yet it was enough to set up tremors in her abdomen which threatened to upset the balanced poise of her busy fingers. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her own limited way, and she knew the signs to look for in her husband and her daughter, but she let them think they were succeeding at hiding their inner agitation, because it was kinder to give them that illusion.

Neither of them wanted to add stress to her life, so she carefully hid her own disquiet, aware that whatever was wrong would come in its own good time. She saw no sense in rushing to meet trouble before it arrived, unless one had a clear enough Glimpse and sufficient time to alter what might be coming.

Which happened all too seldom.

"Well," Zindel said to Razial at last, "while I'm delighted to hear your art studies are coming so well, I'm not at all sure Master Malthayr is quite prepared to pose nude for you." He glanced down at Varena with a tender, droll humor which was heartbreaking against the background tension she felt quivering through him. "What do you think, love?" he asked her.

"I think," she said calmly, setting her needlework aside as the doors opened quietly and supper began to arrive, "that your sense of humor requires a sound whacking, Your Imperial Majesty."

"No!" He laid one hand on his heart, gazing at her soulfully. "How could you possibly say such a thing?" he demanded while Anbessa giggled and Razial looked martyred.

"I believe it has something to do with having been married to you for over twenty years," she said with a smile.

He chuckled and took her hand as she stood. But the darkness still lingered behind his eyes, and she squeezed his strong fingers tightly for just a moment. Awareness flickered through his expression at the silent admission that she was only too well aware of the frightening black cloud of tension wrapped around him and Andrin. Then she smiled again.

"And now, it's time to eat," she said calmly.

After the gut-wrenching cremation of the dead, Shaylar's captors stayed where they were for over an hour, camped mercifully upwind of the remains in the toppled timber. Despite the insight her Talent had given her into these people and their intentions, Shaylar felt an inescapable measure of grim satisfaction as she contemplated the heavy price they'd paid for slaughtering her friends. They didn't have enough unhurt men to carry all of their wounded, she thought fiercely, and she also felt a slight, fragile stir of hope as she thought about what that might mean.

Darcel probably thought she was dead, but he couldn't be positive, and as far as he could know, some of the others might have survived, even if she hadn't. Under the circumstances, Company-Captain Halifu would almost certainly have to be sending out a party to rescue any possible survivors, and if these people couldn't retreat because of their own injured men …

The woman who'd been trying so hard to comfort her was moving among the wounded who lay sprawled in the trees. She paused at each man, touching him lightly and whispering something. She also consulted frequently with their commander, but she obviously wasn't a soldier. Shaylar was virtually certain of that. She'd already noticed the other woman's lack of a uniform, but Shaylar wondered if she might be a civilian healer assigned to this military unit. Certainly what she'd done for Shaylar's throbbing head and her current attentiveness to the wounded suggested that might be the case, which surprised Shaylar on two separate levels.

Healers assigned to the Sharonian military were full-fledged members of that military, part of the Healers' Corps. They were also all men. Women didn't serve in the Sharonian military. Even in Ternathia, which was deplorably "progressive" by the standards of other Sharonian cultures, only a tiny handful had ever been accepted for military service, and then, inevitably, only in staff positions or as nurses well to the rear. Officers and even enlisted men could marry, of course, and their wives and children could travel with them to their assigned duty posts. But those wives and children remained in military-built and financed housing in the civilian towns which sprang up around the portal forts. They didn't accompany their men on missions, whether in the wilderness or to put down the occasional outbreak of banditry in more settled country, and not even Ternathian female nurses were ever assigned to the Healer Corps which served units in the field.

Whoever this woman was, she finished tending the wounded and returned to Shaylar's side. She sat beside her, looked into Shaylar's eyes, and pointed to herself as she spoke slowly and clearly.

"Gadrial," she said. It was an odd name, but a name was clearly what it was.

"Jathmar?" she continued, pointing at Jathmar and confirming Shaylar's guess.

"Yes." Shaylar nodded, wincing at the movement of her aching head. "Jathmar."

Gadrial nodded back, then cocked her head, waiting expectantly, and Shaylar touched her own breastbone.

"Shaylar," she said, and a lovely smile flickered like sunlight across Gadrial's face.

"Shaylar," she repeated, then said something else. Shaylar tried desperately to make contact with Gadrial's mind, hoping that this woman might be some sort of telepath, but she could touch nothing. The place inside her own mind where such connections were made was a throbbing mask of blackness and pain. She was still Voiceless, and panic nibbled at the edge of her awareness. If the damage proved permanent …

Don't borrow trouble.

Her mother's voice echoed through her memory, and grief and the fear that she would never see her mother again were nearly Shaylar's undoing. She felt her mouth quiver, felt fresh tears brimming in her swollen eyes, but then Gadrial took her hand gently and pulled her back from that brink.

"Shaylar," she said again, then something else. She pointed to Jathmar and the others, then to the south. Shaylar frowned, and Gadrial pantomimed walking with two fingers on the ground, then pointed again.

Shaylar felt herself tensing internally once more. They were leaving, walking toward something in the south … which was the direction Darcel had sent them to locate the nearest portal to another universe.

She looked at all of the other wounded, then back at Gadrial, cursing the whirling unsteadiness of her own senses and thoughts. She couldn't imagine how the remaining fit soldiers could possibly transport all of their wounded fellows, and her heart sank as she realized Gadrial might be referring only to her and Jathmar. If their own portal to this universe was as close at hand as Darcel had thought, they might want to get their prisoners safely away for future interrogation, and that thought was terrifying.

But if they want prisoners to interrogate, they'll have to keep us alive until they can start asking questions, a little voice said somewhere deep inside her. And that means they'll have to get Jathmar proper healing as quickly as possible.

Her jaw clenched as the exquisite anguish of her plight gripped her like pincers. Every step, every inch, toward the south would take them further and further from any possibility of rescue. But those same steps might very well take Jathmar towards healing and survival.

Shaylar had known the risks when she signed up for this job, but she'd never dreamed how devastating it would be to face a moment like this, knowing her beloved needed medical care only their enemies could provide. Yet in the end, that was the only chance fate was likely to put into her trembling hands, and so she nodded, and felt as if she were somehow sealing their doom.

And either way, it's not as if I have very much choice, she thought grimly.

"I know you're frightened," Gadrial said gently to the other woman?Shaylar?and touched her arm. "But I swear Sir Jasak will do everything he can to save Jathmar for you."

Shaylar's mouth trembled again briefly at the sound of her companion's name. She reached down, touching Jathmar's forehead with heartbreaking gentleness, and Gadrial's own heart twisted as she recognized the grief and despair in the gesture.

Then she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and she and Shaylar both looked up as Jasak went to one knee beside them. Weariness showed in the commander of one hundred's face and the set of his shoulders. It was obvious from the way he moved that the wound along his ribs, especially, was causing considerable pain, but the shadows in his eyes as he looked down at Jathmar and Shaylar had nothing to do with his wounds.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"I've got their names," Gadrial said. "And I think I just got her to understand and agree to walk with us to the swamp portal."

"Gods, I hope so." His voice was full of smoke and gravel. "She's suffered enough without us having to drag her every step of the way."

"They're your prisoners."

Gadrial tried to keep from speaking between clenched teeth, but it was hard. She wasn't at all happy in her own mind about taking Shaylar and Jathmar back as military prisoners. Surely they'd already done these people enough hurt! The thought of what Shaylar and Jathmar might face at the hands of government and military interrogators, on top of all they'd already suffered, was enough to stiffen her with rage.

It must have showed, despite her effort to control her voice, because Jasak gave her a quick, very sharp look. Then he nodded.

"Yes, they are," he said flatly. "And my responsibility."

Ah, yes?responsibility, Gadrial thought. That most Andaran of all traits. Noblesse oblige. The duty to codes of honor instilled into Andaran children?girls, as well as boys?from the cradle itself. She wanted to ask if that responsibility would protect these battered people from the military hierarchy that would want to peel their minds like apples. She had no idea what kind of magic might be brought to bear on the mind of the prisoner of war, and, frankly, she didn't want to find out. But if the Union of Arcana and its military decided that extracting information from Shaylar and Jathmar was vital to the security of the Union, there wouldn't be a single damned thing Gadrial could do about it.

So she did the only thing she could do. She introduced Sir Jasak Olderhan, son of the Duke of Garth Showma, to his prisoners.

Jasak saw the worry and anger in Gadrial as clearly as he saw the terror and exhaustion in Shaylar. The slender girl repeated his given name with a bruised weariness he recognized as post-battle trauma. He hated seeing it in Shaylar's eyes as much as he hated seeing the suspicion in Gadrial's, but he couldn't expect the magister to understand that. She was Ransaran, raised in a culture where the formality of military duty, of knowing one's obligations to a stratified social order, wasn't an ingrained part of everyone's basic childhood training. She didn't understand what Jasak's responsibility entailed. Not yet. But she would, he promised himself, and hoped that the worry and anger would fade from Gadrial's eyes as quickly as he hoped the terror and shock would fade from Shaylar's.

Yet neither of those things was going to happen quickly enough, and Gadrial's worry?and Shaylar's exhaustion?were probably both going to get worse before they got better. And that, too, would result from his responsibilities. His responsibility to push everyone, including this poor, brutalized young woman, ruthlessly, even brutally, in a relentless effort to get Jathmar the healing he so desperately needed.

He doubted either of the women would understand why that was so important to him. Important to Jasak Olderhan, not to Commander of One Hundred Olderhan. And there was no way in this universe, or any other, that he could hope to explain it to them in the time he had.

So he did what he could do to try to reassure both of them. He lifted Shaylar's hand and stroked it the way he would have stroked a frightened kitten.

"Don't be afraid," he said gently. "No one will hurt you again. No one. I know you don't understand, yet, but I swear that on my honor, Shaylar. And I'll do everything I can to help you understand it."

Her hand was limp, broken feeling, in his grip, and her dark eyes were glazed. He sighed and turned back to Gadrial.

"We'll strike camp as soon as you determine it's safe to move him." He nodded at Jathmar. "My baggage handlers survived, so at least we'll be able to lift the most critically wounded. But even so, it's not going to be a picnic stroll through the park getting them safely back to the portal and transport.

He glanced again at Jathmar, wondering if the wounded man's unconsciousness was a mercy or a bad sign.

"We'll rig a field litter for him," he said. "And one for her, as well, if she needs it."

"Get it ready, then," Gadrial said. "The sooner we move him, the faster we'll getting back. As long as his litter doesn't jostle him too much, he should be all right. I'll do what I can for him as well as your men."

"I appreciate that. Immensely." He smiled, the expression tight with worry and fatigue, yet genuine. "I'll get right on it, then."

It took only minutes to break out the collapsible field stretchers that were part of the baggage his platoons carried in the field. Jasak couldn't imagine what battle must have been like before the development of Gifts made it possible to move heavy loads with spells, rather than muscle power.

All four of his baggage handlers had survived, along with their equipment. The most critically wounded were placed on proper field litters, canvas slings mounted between poles to which the handlers attached standard spell storage boxes. They didn't have enough of the standard litters for the less critically hurt, but Sword Harnak threw together field expedient substitutes, using uniform tunics for slings and hastily cut branches for poles. They looked like hell, but they ought to do the job, and Jasak watched the baggage handlers attaching the sarkolis crystal storage boxes.

The storage devices were all pretty much the same size and shape. Only the markings varied, with a color coding that told the soldier at a glance whether it contained spells that powered infantry-dragons, spells that lifted baggage, or spells that illuminated a landing area to guide living dragons during night airlifts. As an added precaution, those which carried weapon-grade spells featured carefully contoured shapes which would fit only into the weapons they were intended to power, but that wasn't immediately apparent at first glance.

Jasak supervised preparations closely, speaking to wounded men in a low, reassuring voice. Gripping shoulders where a bracing moment of support was required to stiffen a man's weary spine. Making sure every bit of captured equipment was secured for analysis back home. He still didn't understand how the long, hollow tubes they'd found beside the dead?or the smaller versions several had carried, as well?had managed to wreak such havoc, but he intended to find out.

When it was time to shift the unconscious Jathmar onto one of the litters, Jasak abandoned the captured equipment to the handlers he'd detailed to haul it out and personally accompanied Lance Erdar Wilthy. Wilthy was the senior, most experienced of First Platoon's baggage handlers, and Jasak had assigned him specific responsibility for transporting Jathmar. The lance had been doing his job for years, but Jasak found himself hovering, unable to restrain himself from taking personal charge of the delicate operation of getting Jathmar onto the litter despite the fact that he knew Wilthy had far more experience than he.

Shaylar sat beside her husband, one hand resting gently on his scorched brown hair, when Jasak and Wilthy approached. Her unguarded expression was full of anguish, and Jasak crouched down beside her.

"Shaylar," he said gently. She looked up, and he pointed to the canvas sling Wilthy was unrolling on the ground beside Jathmar.

"We're going to put Jathmar on this stretcher," he continued, pantomiming the act of picking something up and setting it down again. "We won't hurt him. I promise."

Shaylar looked at him, and then at the litter. Since they would have to transport Jathmar face down, the litter had to be rigid, or the sling would bend his spine painfully in the wrong direction, not to mention the tension it would put on the burned skin of his back. Harnak's improvised stretchers would never have worked, Jasak thought, watching Wilthy slide crosswise slats into place, turning the canvas sling into a rigid platform.

When it was ready, Jasak pantomimed their intentions to Shaylar again, and she nodded.

"Easy, now," Jasak cautioned Wilthy. "I'll take his shoulders, Erdar. You take his feet. Gadrial, support his waist. We only need to lift him a couple of inches off the ground. On the count of three. One, two, three?"

They lifted him two inches and slid him smoothly onto the canvas. Shaylar hovered, holding Jathmar's head, biting her lips when he stirred with a sound of pain. Gadrial whispered over him, and he subsided again, lying quietly on the litter.

So far, so good, Jathmar thought.

"All right, attach the accumulator and let's lift him, Erdar."

"Yes, Sir," Wilthy said, and pulled out the box and attached it to receptacle on the litter.

Shaylar had been looking down at Jathmar's face, but she looked up again, attracted by the lance's movement. For just a moment, she showed no reaction, but then her eyes flew wide and she came to her feet with a bloodcurdling scream.

Jasak flinched in astonishment as she leapt past him, snatched the box off the litter, and hurled it violently away. Then she spun to face him?to face all of them, every surviving member of First Platoon. She was a single, tiny woman, smaller than Jasak's own twelve-year-old sister, but he could literally feel the savagery of her fury as her fingers curled into defensive claws. She was prepared to attack them all, he realized. To rip out the throat of any man who approached Jathmar with her bare teeth, and he recoiled from her desperate defiance, trying frantically to understand its cause.

"Oh, dear God!" Gadrial cried. "She thinks we're going to cremate him alive! They all look alike to her?the accumulator boxes!"

Comprehension exploded through Jathmar, and he swore with vicious self-loathing.

"Get that box, Wilthy!" he snapped. "Fasten it to something else?anything else. Show her what it does."

The white-faced trooper, his expression as shaken and horrified as Jasak's own, scrambled to retrieve the accumulator. He scrabbled it up out of the leaves where Shaylar had thrown it and fastened it to the nearest object he could find?a section of decaying log about three feet long and eighteen inches in diameter. The box was equipped with twenty small chambers, each with its own control button, and he pressed one of them, releasing the spell inside.

The log lifted from its leafy bed. It floated silently into the air and hovered there, effortlessly.

Shaylar watched, her eyes wide. Then she sagged to her knees, gasping as she panted for breath, and Gadrial knelt beside her.

"It's all right, Shaylar," she said gently, reassuringly. "It's all right. We're not going to hurt him. It'll just pick him up. See, it lifts the log."

She pointed, pantomiming moving the accumulator back to Jathmar's litter, then lifting Jathmar the same way. Shaylar trembled violently in the circle of Gadrial' left arm, and the magister glanced over her shoulder at Jasak.

"For the love of God, lift the other wounded men. She's half crazed with terror!"

"Get them airborne!" Jasak barked to the other handlers, who were watching with open mouths. "Damn it, get them airborne now!"

Wilthy's subordinates obeyed quickly, lifting all of the critically wounded. Shaylar watched them, her body taut, her eyes wide. But the wildness was fading from them, and she began to relax again, ever so slowly.

"It's all right," Gadrial told her again and again. "Let us help him, Shaylar. Let us help Jathmar. Please."

Jasak watched as Shaylar's obvious terror began to ease. The furious fear for Jathmar which had given her strength seemed to flow out of her. Her mouth went unsteady, and her eyes overflowed. Then she crumpled, and Gadrial caught her, held her close, rocked her like a frightened child, stroking her hair and soothing her.

A badly shaken Jasak turned back to Wilthy.

"Lift Jathmar's stretcher, Erdar. But move carefully, whatever you do. She's not strong enough to take many more shocks like that one."

"Yes, Sir. I'll be gentle as a butterfly, Sir."

Gadrial urged Shaylar to her feet as Wilthy slowly and carefully, pausing between each movement to let Shaylar see every step of the process, lifted Jathmar's litter until it floated just above waist level.

Shaylar watched, still panting, and Gadrial wiped the other woman's cheeks dry with the corner of her own shirt. Then the magister gave her a smile and squeezed her hand for just a moment, before moving it to rest on Jathmar's. Wilthy had tucked the injured man's arms down at his sides, which was an awkward placement, but better than leaving them hanging over the edges of the litter.

Shaylar curled her slender fingers carefully, delicately, around her husband's. Then she drew a deep breath. Her chin came up, and she met Jasak's gaze once again.

"All right, People." Jasak gave the order. "Move out."