Hell's Gate

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"I need to know everything," Janaki chan Calirath said.

He sat crosslegged on his bedroll, having surrendered his single camp stool to his guest, despite the visitor's obvious discomfort at accepting it. But that discomfort over seating arrangements disappeared abruptly, devoured by something far worse, as the civilian's eyes met his, dark with memory.

"Everything?" Kinlafia asked hoarsely, and Janaki nodded.

"Believe me, I'm not asking this lightly. I've read Company-Captain chan Tesh's reports. I've spoken to Company-Captain Halifu, and Voice Traygan. I know what happened out here, but I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like to live through it, and?"

"No," Kinlafia agreed harshly. "You can't."

"I know that. But if we're going to protect others," Janaki said very gently, "we have to understand these people."

"What's to understand?" The demand was bitter, full of gritty rage, the pain feeding the white furnace of his hate. "They blew my crew to hell without a shred of mercy. They shot down Ghartoun chan Hagrahyl while he stood there with his hands empty, in plain sight. They attacked an unarmed man under a parley banner! They're butchers. You want to protect our people? Then send in a division or six and wipe 'these people' off the face of the earth. Off every frigging earth we find them on!"

Janaki sipped air slowly. This man was even more bitter than he'd feared, and the prince wondered if he'd been wise after all to wait until after supper. Perhaps if he'd charged straight ahead earlier, before Kinlafia had had time to anticipate this moment?to finger through his dreadful memories and cut himself on their sharpnesses all over again?it might not have been so painful.

But Janaki had wanted time to chew on the strange little flash of Glimpse he'd had earlier, and so he'd waited. He hadn't been able to refine what he'd Seen, but he was even more convinced that it had been a true Glimpse. That narrowed his own options considerably, and while the Voice had every right to be bitter, he had to be made to see the larger picture, as well. And not just because of the information he might provide.

"Voice Kinlafia," he began again, "I understand?"

"No, you don't!"

"If you would be so good as to let me finish speaking before assuming you know what I'm about to say," Janaki said levelly, "we'd get through this agonizing conversation faster."

The man seated on his camp stool glared at him, breathing hard for a long, dangerous moment. Then Kinlafia's shoulders slumped suddenly. He sat back with a weary sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry, Your Highness. That was … out of line."

"Yes, it was," Janaki agreed calmly. "What I was going to say is that I understand that you've been through a very personal hell which no one else?certainly no one who isn't himself a Voice and can't experience it directly himself?will ever be able to fully comprehend. I recognize that, and I regret the necessity of dragging you back through it all over again. But you have to understand that you're going to have to go back over it again and again. Not just for me, but for all of the analysts waiting to debrief you, to try to get some feeling about, some handle on, just what in all the Arpathian hells we're really up against out here.

"And what that means for you, is that somehow you've got to move forward. Not 'put it behind you.' Not 'let go of it.' I'm neither coldhearted nor arrogant enough to tell a grieving man something like that."

Suspicious brilliance touched Kinlafia's eyes. Eyes which blinked rapidly while their owner looked briefly away.

"But you do need to move forward," Janaki continued with that same gentle implacability, drawing Kinlafia's gaze back to him. "You have to decide what you're going to do about it. Not what the Army or the Corps is going to do. What you're going to do."

"What can I do?" Kinlafia lifted his hands in a helpless, frustrated gesture. "Other than join the Army and shoot as many of the bastards as I can line up in my sights, that is?"

Even to himself, that carried an edge of something that was almost … childish. Petulant, perhaps. Somehow, he felt vaguely ashamed to be sitting here in front of the heir to the throne of Sharona's most powerful and ancient nation whining about his own sense of helplessness. As if the entire multiverse revolved around or depended upon his personal exaction of vengeance for his dead.

But even as that thought crossed his own mind, Janaki surprised him by smiling.

"You'd be wasted in the Army, Kinlafia!"

"I beg your pardon?" Kinlafia blinked, and Janaki shrugged.

"Think about it. What would you accomplish, in the Army? You'd be just another soldier, and you're a Voice. That means you'd be stuck using your Talent, not your rifle. One more messenger, passing other people's orders through the Voice chain. Going where you were told to go. Shooting when you were told to shoot . . . and not shooting when you were ordered to hold your fire. Vothan! Voices are way too valuable for the military to risk in combat if it can possibly be avoided?you know that. So if you were to enlist, your chances of actually shooting anyone would go down, not up!"

That drew a scowl, and the Crown Prince chuckled a bit grimly.

"I didn't think you'd thought about that aspect of it," he said.

"No," Kinlafia muttered. "I hadn't."

"Then there's probably another thing you haven't thought about, either. Frankly, the last thing we can afford to do is to repeat what Company-Captain chan Tesh and Platoon-Captain Arthag managed to accomplish here."

"Why?" This time, the question wasn't belligerent, just baffled.

"Because we don't know how many of them there are, for one thing. How many universes do they occupy? How big is their army? Their navy? What the hells do they use for technology? Most of what we've seen doesn't make any sense at all yet?you know that even better than I do, because you've actually seen it. And Seen it, for that matter."

Janaki paused, holding Kinlafia's eyes levelly with his own, and wondered if the Voice saw the ghosts hovering within them. A part of him hungered to tell the Voice?tell anyone?what he'd Glimpsed that night in the mountains. But he couldn't. The visions of death and destruction, of flame exploding across the night, of bizarre weapons spitting devastation … those were his alone, for now at least. He was desperately afraid that they were going to become the property of other Sharonians, but they hadn't yet.

The thought flickered through his mind once again that he really ought to consider sending word to his father by Voice of what he had Glimpsed. Yet, what could he truly tell the Emperor? That he'd Seen images of war and slaughter? That he'd felt the foretaste of his own terror? That he was afraid? His father's Talent was much stronger than Janaki's?almost as strong, Janaki suspected, as his sister Andrin's. He'd probably already Glimpsed everything Janaki had, and even if he hadn't, the Calirath Glimpses weren't something to be discussed through any intermediary, even that of a Voice. They had to be discussed face-to-face, where Talent could speak directly to Talent.

I wish my Glimpse had been clearer, just this once, at least, he thought for a far from the first time, with familiar frustration. But it hadn't been clear . . . only vast, powerful, and terrifying.

Well, at least if chan Tesh is sending me all the way home with these people, I'll be seeing Father in person for that little chat a lot sooner than I'd expected. That's something.

"We punched right through them here," he continued, still holding Kinlafia's gaze captive with his own. "Punched through so quickly and easily it wasn't even a contest. But this time we had the advantage of surprise, since they presumably don't understand our technology any better than we understand theirs. And armies, unfortunately, tend to learn more from failure than they do from success. Do we really want to assume we're looking at an endless succession of walkovers? They obviously didn't expect anything like Platoon-Captain chan Talmarha's four-point-fives. What if it turns out that they've got weapons we haven't even seen yet? Weapons that make mortars look like damp firecrackers by comparison? Do we want to send in 'a division or six' to wipe out every post they have in this region, then discover they've got six hundred divisions, with heavy weapons support, poised to wipe out every man, woman, and child from here to Sharona?"

"No." Kinlafia bit his lip, and his voice was low and reluctant. "No, we don't."

He sat slumped on the camp stool, gazing at nothing and seeing something that made his eyes go bleak, and for two long, endless minutes, he said absolutely nothing more. But then, finally, his eyes refocused on Janaki, deep, dark … and lost.

"What I never told anyone," he said in a terrible whisper, "was how much I loved her."

Janaki didn't speak. He couldn't.

"You're not a Voice," Kinlafia said softly. "You don't understand what it's like to communicate with another Voice. When you're linked, deeply linked, the way we were during that ghastly attack … "

His voice trailed off for another long moment, and his hands twisted themselves together in his lap.

"You become the other person, for a few minutes. For however long you're linked. Voices try to avoid going that deep. No matter how voluntary the link is, it's almost a … violation. It doesn't happen with normal message relays, but when the psychic impact is this deep, hits this hard, you fuse. Everything she felt, everything she saw, and heard, and smelled happened to me."

A shudder rippled visibly through him.

"For those few minutes, I was Shaylar. I could Hear and See more than just the thoughts and sights she was transmitting. I could taste her terror. Her love for Jathmar. The realization that she would never see her parents again, never have children, never leave that tangle of broken trees alive. Yet she stayed linked with me, deeper than I've ever linked with another Voice. And she kept shooting at them, when anyone else would have been cowering on the ground with both arms over his head. Hell, some of the others were doing just that! But not her. No, not her. She heard the fire dying, knew our friends?our family?were being killed all around her, and she never stopped. Never quit once. She burned all her maps, all her notes, everything, and then she reached for her gun again, because there was no one else still up and shooting, No one but Jathmar, and the bastards killed him right in front of her! Gods! She was so beautiful, so brave … and I couldn't get to her, couldn't reach her, couldn't be with her, and then I felt her go… . "

His voice shattered.

Janaki's own eyes burned, and his vision blurred, but his hands were steady as he drew the cork from a bottle of highland single malt whiskey. He'd suspected from the beginning that it was going to be required, but even his darkest estimate had fallen short of how badly it would be needed. Now he poured some into a glass and thrust it into the shaken Voice's hands.

Kinlafia wrapped himself around the liquor and gulped at it, his hands unsteady as he struggled to regain control. Janaki was wise enough to say nothing. He simply refilled the glass when it emptied, then sat down on his bedroll again and waited until Kinlafia finally mastered himself sufficiently to meet his gaze one more.

"Thanks," the Voice said then, hoarsely, gesturing with the empty glass in his hand. Then he wiped wetness from his face with a brusque sleeve and cleared his throat, roughly.

"I still hoped, you know," he said. Janaki raised an eyebrow, and the Voice grimaced. "I still hoped she was alive. Parcanthi and Hilovar Saw her still alive after the fighting. Saw her being taken back to that camp of theirs. I hoped so hard that after we hit those bastards, we'd find her. But we didn't."

"But there were those glimpses of some sort of transport animal," Janaki said gently. "And we didn't find her body, either."

"Do you think I didn't think about that?" Kinlafia demanded harshly, half-glaring at Janaki. "But you've seen that swamp. My maximum range for reaching her was over six hundred miles. Sur, I had to trance to do it, but even if her own Voice had been completely shut down by some head injury, like Hilovar described, I'd have been able to sense her at up to four hundred, maybe even five, after linking that closely during the fight. I'd be able to feel her presence the same way I can feel the direction to the closest portal, and there was nothing. What kind of 'transport animal' could have taken her across four hundred miles of this kind of swamp in less than thirty-six hours?"

"I don't know," Janaki admitted. "I can't think of one."

"Neither can I. But we already know she was critically wounded, probably dying, just from what Hilovar and Parcanthi could tell us. So they put a dying woman on what ever 'transport animal' they had and dragged her off to die somewhere out there in the middle of all that mud and water."

The Voice's jaws clenched again, and his hands tightened around the whiskey glass.

"They were probably trying desperately to keep her alive, you know," Janaki pointed out quietly. Kinlafia glared at him again, and the crown prince shrugged. "I didn't say they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, Voice Kinlafia."

"No, they weren't," Kinlafia grated. Then he drew a deep, shaky breath. "And whyever they were doing it, they were the ones responsible for what happened to her and all of the rest of my friends in the first place. They were the ones who chased them down like animals, then slaughtered them around her. The ones who did all of that to her before she died."

He shook his head, his eyes harder than obsidian.

"I will never, ever forgive them for that," he said quietly. "Maybe Shaylar could have done that. I can't. But you're right about what would happen if I enlisted. So what can I do, really?"

"You can start by telling me everything," Janaki replied. "Every detail you can recall, no matter how trivial. I won't lie and tell you this won't be painful, because it will. I intend to take you through every moment of contact you've had with these people, both directly and through Shaylar, over and over again."

"Why?" Dark emotion flared in Kinlafia's shadowed eyes.

"Because you need to get back to Sharona as quickly as possible, where what you know will do the most of good for the people responsible for deciding how we respond. But before you go, the people at this end of the multiverse need the same information. I'm going to get that for them before we pull out, and the more times you go through it, step-by-step, the more you'll remember."

"Voices have perfect recall," Kinlafia objected harshly. "You said that yourself."

"Yes, they do. And at the moment, yours is shrouded with severe emotional shock. That's why it's imperative that we take you through it repeatedly?now, while it's still as fresh as possible. To be honest, this should have been done right after the initial attack, not after this long a delay's had time to cloud details."

Kinlafia winced, and Janaki shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but that's the way it should have been done, and it wasn't. We can't afford to let those experiences get any more distant. It's going to be hell going back through them, but there's no way of knowing what tiny bit or piece may prove to be vitally important before this is all over. Even her emotions could give us important information, and it's all there. Everything you Saw, Heard. Everything she touched or smelled. Everything she did, even everything you thought while you were linked. All the ideas, the impressions, the unconscious judgments?they're all in there, simmering away in the back of your mind. What we have to do is extract them, pull them out past the barriers of emotional reaction. And, for what it's worth, I have perfect recall, too, which is one reason I get to be the coldhearted bastard who drags you back through it all."

"Yes." Kinlafia was biting his lip again, but he nodded slowly, manifestly unhappily. "I see your point?all too clearly. I don't want to relive any of that, but I don't have a choice, do I?"

"No. Not if you really want to help us understand these people. And I don't have a choice, either, I'm afraid. I imagine you hate my guts before we're done."

"Probably." A humorless smile touched Kinlafia's mouth. "At the time, at least. But not permanently. I hated my third-level teacher while she was drilling multiplication tables into my head, when all I wanted to do was spend the day outside with a fishing pole or a hiking trail. But I didn't hate her for long. Not once I figured out how useful math is."

Jasak smiled back at him.

"That's hopeful sounding. I was rather looking forward to the chance to get better acquainted. I don't have much opportunity to talk with civilians, let alone Talented ones. Not just out here, either. Generally, people seem sufficiently in awe of my title to produce conversations that are a bit … stilted. If not downright impossible."

"I can't imagine." Kinlafia gave him a wan smile. "Be fair, Your Highness. It is a little unnerving talking to the Crown Prince of Ternathia."

"Who occasionally puts his socks on inside out in the dark, the same as any other man jolted awake in the middle of the night."

Kinlafia actually grinned. Then he sat back with a sigh.

"All right. I'll go through it all as many times it takes, but what then? It sounded like you had something specific in mind for me to do, beyond helping you learn what I know."

"I have." Janaki nodded. "Tell me, Voice Kinlafia. What are the best ways a man?or woman?can have a really big impact on civilization?"

"Civilization?" Kinlafia echoed, and Janaki nodded.

Rather than answer off the cuff, the Voice took time to think about it. Janaki was glad. That was a good sign, considering what he wanted this man to do. Finally, Kinlafia pursed his lips.

"You can invent something really important," he said slowly. "Like a new form of transportation, or a new weapon or a new medicine."

Janaki nodded again.

"You can write something that influences the way people think," Kinlafia continued. "Or you could report the news in a way that changes how people think and act."

"That's true, all of it," Janaki agreed. "But tell me?who tells an army what to attack?"

"The generals."

"But who tells the generals?" Janaki pressed. "Who sends the generals?"

"The politicians, of cour?"

Kinlafia broke off, and his eyes widened.

"You can't be serious! I'm not a politician. I'm just a survey crew Voice!"

"You are not 'just a survey crew Voice.' Not any longer," Janaki told him. "You're the sole survivor of the crew that was wiped out by the greatest threat our civilization has ever faced. You were there. As close to there as any Sharonian anywhere. People will want to hear your story, and how you tell that story will have enormous impact on what people think about this crisis and how government leaders respond to it."

"But?"

Janaki's raised hand halted the automatic protest.

"If I were in your shoes," the Crown Prince said, "I'd run for the very next seat in the House of Talents of whatever government you call home. For that matter, by the time you get home, there may be just one government. The gods only know how all of this is going to play out in the end, but if we're not alone out here in the multiverse after all, then Sharona needs a world government, and that government will have a House of Talents. Make no mistake about that. And if I were you, I'd move heaven and earth and half the Arpathian hells, if necessary, to get myself into it."

"Gods, you're serious." A fire had kindled in Kinlafia's stunned eyes. "Do you really think I'd have a chance to get elected to something like that?"

"I can't name anyone with a better shot at it," Janaki said frankly. "You'd have instant name recognition. By the time you get back to Sharona, you'll be so famous the news media will flock to you, turn you into a major celebrity. If you tell them you're running for office on a platform of protecting other innocents, they'll give you so much free coverage you won't have to buy ad space in anything?newsprint or Voice network.

"And speaking of the Voice network, you're one of their own. They'll adore you, Kinlafia, and they'll champion your cause. You couldn't ask for better advocates than the Voice Guild and the Voice News Association. Play your cards right, and they might even bankroll your campaign. Yes, yes. I know they can't do that directly. That's illegal in most nations." He snorted. "The only one I know of where it isn't is Uromathia, which is hardly the sort of example we want to be following, I suppose. But the point is that they'll bend over backwards to publicize your need for funds. The money will come. Never doubt that. You may even find schoolchildren taking up donations for you."

Darcel Kinlafia stared at him. Then he drew in a deep breath, released it again with a sound of perplexed astonishment, and finally found his voice once more.

"Why are you doing this, Your Highness? Why would you tell me these things? Especially after telling me why what I want to do to eradicate these bastards from the face of the multiverse is a bad idea?"

"For several reasons, really," Janaki said.

He considered telling Kinlafia all of them, but decided?once again?against it. People tended to get … nervous when they found out a member of the Imperial family had experienced a Glimpse which convinced him it was absolutely vital for them to do something. Especially when the Calirath in question couldn't explain why it was vital, since he didn't know yet himself. No, better to stick with all of the other perfectly valid reasons Janaki had been able to come up with.

"First," he said, "public outrage over this is going to be incredibly high. Sharona needs a focal point for that outrage. Something or someone people can support to feel like they're doing something to help.

"At the moment, you're a very angry man. That's inevitable, given what you've experienced, and I accept that you'll never be able to forgive what happened. But you're also an honest, conscientious man. And, if you'll forgive me for saying so, a compassionate one. In fact, it's that very compassion which makes you so angry right now. I don't know how all of that anger will work out in the end, but I do know there are all too many unscrupulous men who are going to try to take advantage of everyone else's anger and fear without giving one single, solitary damn about compassion or conscience. They're going to use it to put themselves into positions of power for their own selfish ends. I'd far rather see public support behind someone like you. Behind someone who genuinely cares?who's driven by a need for justice, not a desire to put public office into the service of personal gain.

"Don't misunderstand me. The snakes are going to come out of the shadows whatever else happens, whether you run for office or not. It's simply part of human nature. But if you declare your candidacy, you'll rivet a huge chunk of the public's attention to your campaign. Hopefully, that will eclipse some of the other, more manipulative campaign messages, and that would be a very good thing for Sharona."

"I suppose that makes some sense. But the fact that it's a good thing for Sharona won't keep it from making some mighty powerful men hate me," Kinlafia pointed out.

"Probably. That's all part of the game of politics, too. But don't underestimate the power of a man who's been wronged, appealing to the world for justice. Some of the men?and women?whose plans you spike might just fall under the spell themselves, and support you. Others will try to hitch themselves to you for gain, try to find a way to use you, and you'll want to watch out for that, too.

"Because that's really the most important part, when you come right down to it. Exercising a moderating effect on the rhetoric and fury of the campaign in the first place would be worthwhile all by itself, but the real object of the exercise is to put you into a position where you can actually accomplish something. A position which lets you kick the arses of the carrion eaters out to twist this entire crisis around to their own personal advantage."

"I see."

"Actually," Janaki smiled, "I doubt you do. Not the same way I do, anyway?not yet. But I've had politics bred into me for five thousand years. Coming out here," he waved one hand at the entrance to the tent, where the chill stars of a northern autumn were beginning to prick the sky, "was part vacation from my political education, and part necessary political foundation for the job I'll have to do some day."

Kinlafia blinked in surprise, and Janaki shrugged.

"A man who commands armies and navies tends to do a better job of it if he's spent time in the army or navy in question. Not always, I'm sorry to say, but on average. And people have greater confidence in a man who's been at the pointy end himself, as it were. Maybe even more to the point, someone who's had personal experience of what 'sending in the troops' can cost the troops has a tendency to stop and think really hard before he sends them into harm's way . . and has more moral authority when he decides he has to do it anyway. Those are just a few of the reasons why emperors of Ternathia are almost always chan Calirath. We're military veterans, nearly all of us.

"But that's beside the point I'm trying to make. I truly believe Sharona needs the job you'll do, Voice Kinlafia. And," he added softly, "you'll need that job, too, won't you? Badly, I think. Not just for something to do, either. You've got to decide exactly how you want to confront Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's life … and death. Is it vengeance you want, or justice, and what price are you?and all our people?prepared to pay for whichever they choose to purchase in the end?"

Kinlafia's tightened-down fingers locked together. He couldn't speak at all, just gave Janaki a jerky nod, and Janaki nodded back.

"That's all I'll say for now, then. We'll talk about this again, if you're half as interested as I think you are. Or will be soon. We'll be traveling together at least as far as Fort Brithik, and I can probably teach you a fair bit?or give you some pointers, at least?along the way. And I can send letters of introduction ahead with you, as well. Hook you up with people who can help you in all kinds of useful ways."

Kinlafia gazed at him very thoughtfully for several seconds, then produced an off-center, lopsided smile.

"If Ternathia were a democracy, and if I were a Ternathian, I'd vote for you, Your Highness, in every election you ran in," he said, and Janaki blinked.

"Why?"

"Because you care about the people you'll rule one day. And you don't just care about Ternathians. You care about Sharonians?all of us. Hells, Your Highness, if you'll pardon my language, you even care about me, and I'm not even one of your subjects! From where I sit, that's pretty damned rare."

Janaki frowned in surprise. First, because Kinlafia was surprised. And, second, because he realized Kinlafia might just be right. Perhaps the Caliraths really were a rarer breed than he'd actually realized and he'd simply been too close to see it.

"Maybe you're right," he told the Voice with a smile even more lopsided than Kinlafia's had been. "I'll have to remember to thank my father, the next time I see him, for pounding that into me. Trust me, it wasn't always a particularly easy job!"

He chuckled, and Kinlafia chuckled back. But then the Crown Prince's expression sobered once more.

"Either way, that's probably enough said on that subject, for now, at least," he said. "Which, unfortunately, brings us to the more immediate reason for this conversation. Do you want another whiskey before we begin?"