Hell's Gate

Chapter Thirty-Two

Shaylar sat crosslegged in Gadrial's cabin while the two of them?the only women aboard the warship?enjoyed what she thought of as a quiet "girls' day" together. She was bent over a project very dear to her. Using a borrowed needle and thread, some shears the ship's doctor had provided, and some cloth the captain had asked the purser to locate in storage, she was making a dress for herself.

It wouldn't be a fancy dress, not given the cloth she had to work with?military-issue gray cotton twill?but it would be a dress, and it would be hers. The only other clothing she had was what Gadrial had given her and some navy-issue pajamas she'd contrived to make into slacks and shirts which almost fitted her.

Gadrial was no seamstress, but she'd admitted to some skill in fancy needlework, so she was using the voyage time to decorate some of her own shirts and slacks. The style and patterns were lovely, unlike anything Shaylar had ever seen. While they worked, they talked. Not about anything important?just easy conversation that allowed Shaylar to practice her steadily growing command of Andaran.

Shaylar had come to realize that the speed with which she was mastering Andaran had aroused Gadrial and Jasak's suspicions. No Sharonian, accustomed to telepaths' "ear" for languages, would have been surprised, but she wasn't in Sharona any more. Unfortunately, by the time she realized Gadrial had never seen anyone from Arcana (which was what she and Jasak called their home universe) learn a completely foreign language so quickly, she'd already demonstrated her abilities. The best she'd been able to do was to appear to slow down, to stop and obviously fumble for a word more frequently and emphasize her 'foreign accent.' She had no idea whether or not it had done any good. For that matter, she wasn't even certain that trying to hide her language-learning ability was a good thing in the first place! It was so frustrating trying to envision what a civilization which apparently had never heard of the Talents would expect … or find frightening or threatening.

On the other hand, the speed with which she'd been able to acquire at least a usable command of Andaran worked both ways, she reflected, setting small neat stitches in the sunlight streaming through the bulkhead scuttles. It would allow Jasak's superiors to ask pointed questions much sooner, but by the same token, it had permitted Shaylar to probe for additional information about Arcana before she and Jathmar had to face those pointed questions.

Much of what she'd learned had been frightening. Other bits and pieces, however, had seemed to offer at least some grounds for cautious hope.

For example, she'd learned that Jasak came from one of several Andaran kingdoms which dominated the landmass she and Jathmar had known as New Farnalia. Andara, it appeared, provided the bulk of the Arcanan army, and it was a culture with a long, deep, highly developed military tradition. However poorly Arcana might appear to have performed in its initial encounters with Sharona, what Shaylar had learned so far discouraged her from hoping things would stay that way.

On the other hand, what she'd learned about Ransar was more encouraging. As nearly as she could tell, Gadrial's home region of Arcana corresponded to the region of Sharona encompassed by the Kingdom of Eniath, the Kingdom of Dusith, and the northern portions of the Empire of Uromathia. Unlike the monarchies of the various Uromathian states, however, Ransar was a democracy. Shaylar wasn't particularly interested in politics, but she was trying to learn what she could, and it was quite obvious to her already that Ransaran notions were much less militaristic?more "humanistic," she was tempted to say?than those of Andara.

And then, of course, there were the people called "Mythalans," but for some reason, neither Gadrial nor Jasak seemed to want to talk about them.

Despite the situation in which she and Jathmar found themselves, Shaylar was fascinated by the bits and pieces about Arcana she'd so far been able to fit together. It was frustrating to have so incomplete a picture, however, and not just where politics was concerned. In fact, there was something else which continued to puzzle her even more, and she looked up from her sewing.

"Gadrial?"

"Hmm?"

"What moves this ship?"

Gadrial glanced up in obvious surprise. She gazed at Shaylar for a moment, then used a word with which Shaylar wasn't yet familiar.

"What does that word mean?" she asked, and Gadrial laid her needlework in her lap and folded her hands, her expression thoughtful as she clearly considered how best to answer.

"It's what powers our whole civilization." She spoke slowly, choosing her words. "Not everyone can use it," she added. "You must be born with a Gift for it."

A small thrill of astonishment ran through Shaylar. Whatever it was, it sounded a little like Talents, except that no Talent had ever powered a ship. Then Gadrial stood up and retrieved a small leather case from her luggage. She opened it and extracted a familiar crystal.

"This is my PC," Gadrial said. "My personal crystal. You've seen me use it in our language lessons, but I also use it to store my other work?my notes, my calculations. Anything I need to record. It's?" she used the unfamiliar word again "?that makes it possible."

"Gadrial, it's just a stone."

Even as Shaylar said it, she knew she sounded foolish. Certainly Gadrial had already given more than sufficient proof that that "just a stone" was capable of remarkable things. It was just that the very notion continued to offend Shaylar's concept of how the physical laws of the multiverse worked. In fact, she realized, the real reason she'd said it was that a part of her desperately wanted for it not to work after all.

"Don't be silly, Shaylar," Gadrial chided, as if she were the telepath and she'd read Shaylar's mind. "You've seen it work before. But it won't work for just anyone. It takes someone born with a Gift to build a PC or compile the spellware to make its applications work. But each crystal can hold immense amounts of data, if you know how to encode and retrieve it, and someone with a Gift can even program it so that non-Gifted people can use it. Here."

She began to murmur. Whatever she was saying, it wasn't in Andaran, and despite the number of times she'd already seen it, Shaylar's scalp prickled as the crystal began to glow. Squiggles of light appeared within it, recognizable as writing, although the words weren't in the same script as the signs aboard this ship.

"Here," Gadrial repeated, extending the crystal towards Shaylar. "This time I've powered it up for you."

Shaylar accepted it very gingerly. It was heavier than she'd expected. It still looked like nothing so much as absolutely clear quartz, yet it was clearly denser than quartz from the way it weighed in her hand. The squiggles glowing in its depth shifted slightly as the crystal settled into her palm. The unintelligible words moved, as if to present themselves to her for easier reading.

"What do you mean, powered it up for me?" she asked.

"I mean I've … turned it on for you. Activated its spellware in non-Gifted mode and released my password so that you can enter and retrieve data if you want to."

"But how?" Shaylar demanded in frustration. "This isn't a machine?it's just a lump of rock!"

"Of course it's a machine," Gadrial replied.

"No, it isn't. It's not?" Shaylar shook her head, searching for the Andaran word for "mechanical." Unfortunately, that wasn't one she'd learned yet. "There are no switches," she said instead. "Nothing to provide power."

It was Gadrial's turn to blink in apparent surprise. Then she shrugged.

"I provided the power," she said.

"But how?"

"By saying the proper words. Here, try this." Gadrial handed Shaylar a stylus or wand which appeared to be made out of the same transparent not-quartz as the crystal itself. "Write something on it," she encouraged.

Shaylar looked at her for a moment, then pressed the tip of the stylus hesitantly against the "PC." A spark of light?a bluish-green light, quite different from the color of the words already floating in the crystal?glowed to life at the point where stylus and crystal made contact. As she moved the stylus, the spark became a line, following the stylus tip as she slowly and carefully wrote her own name. She finished and lifted the stylus away, and her name floated instantly to the glassy center of the crystal, displacing the words which had been there before.

Shaylar stared at it, half-delighted and half-terrified by the implications, then shook her head.

"I don't understand!"

"That's because you don't have a Gift," Gadrial explained. "A non-Gifted person can use most of our machines if the spellware is set up that way and someone who is Gifted charges them first. But if you don't have a Gift yourself, you're completely dependent on someone else to write the spellware and power the system."

They were speaking the same language, but no communication was taking place, and Shaylar drew a deep breath.

"You can't run a machine by just talking to it," she said slowly and patiently, and Gadrial's brows drew together.

"Of course I can! I told you?I'm Gifted."

"But?" Shaylar wanted to tug at her hair. "You keep saying that, but what does Gifted mean? What is it you can do?that someone without a Gift can't?that makes hunks of rock light up this way?"

"I can tap the field," Gadrial said, exactly as if that actually explained something.

"What field?"

Gadrial used the same word that had started this conversation, and Shaylar let out an exasperated howl.

"Why are you upset, Shaylar?" Gadrial asked, starting to frown.

"Because your words make no sense!" Shaylar pointed to the ominously glowing rock in her own hand. "This piece of stone makes no sense. This ship makes no sense! Nothing about you people makes any sense!"

She realized she was breathing hard, teetering on the edge of a genuine panic attack. She was afraid?terribly afraid?and she didn't quite know why. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, and if Gadrial kept talking, she would tip right over the edge and fall.

Gadrial reclaimed her "personal crystal" and set it carefully on the blanket to one side. She let her left hand rest lightly on it while she regarded Shaylar steadily, and then she shook her head slowly.

"Your people truly don't have anything like this, do they?" she finally said, her voice filled with wonder and what sounded like pity.

"No," Shaylar admitted, and Gadrial inhaled deeply.

"Magister Halathyn told me that," she said. A flicker of pain went through her eyes as she mentioned Magister Halathyn's name, but those eyes never left Shaylar's face, and she continued steadily.

"I didn't really want to believe him," she admitted. "It suggested a universe so different from ours that I can't really wrap my mind around it. Not yet, anyway. But everything I've seen from you since has only confirmed it, and now this."

She shook her head again.

"No wonder you're so lost. Let me try to explain."

She sat back, once again obviously thinking, looking for the best way to explain something complicated using the still limited vocabulary they had in common.

"There is a force in the universe," she began finally. "People with a Gift can sense it, can touch it?use it to do certain things. Some Gifts are very weak. People born with them can do only little things, because they can touch only a little of that force. It's like … like a field of energy. Of sunlight. A sea of energy that lies between things."

Gadrial's frown of concentration was deeper, more intense. Shaylar had the feeling that the other woman was attempting to explain color to a blind person, and she didn't like it. She was a telepath, a Voice; communication was her speciality, what she'd been born to do, and she'd never felt blind before. Not until now.

"Other people," Gadrial continued, "have very strong Gifts. My Gift is a strong one, for instance. The only person I ever knew with a stronger one was Magister Halathyn. He taught?"

Her voice caught suddenly, raggedly, and her eyes filled with tears.

"I'm sorry," Shaylar said softly, touching Gadrial's hand. The other woman's emotions were a chaotic whirl of love, grief, and empty, aching loss.

"I know you are," Gadrial said, and her voice was a small sound in the silence of the cabin.

Shaylar could sense, as well, that Gadrial was struggling not to blame her and Jathmar for Halathyn's death. She wished she knew a way to comfort the other woman's grief, but she couldn't?not given the circumstances. And so she could only wait until Gadrial dashed the tears from her eyes and straightened once more.

"I know you are," she said again, her voice firmer, then cleared her throat. "Anyway, Halathyn's Gift was profound. No one, I think, understood the field better than he did. He taught me everything I know about it. What I've learned on my own is built entirely on the platform he gave me."

Once more the agony in her eyes and voice tore at Shaylar, but this time she refused to yield to them.

"He taught me," she said more steadily, "and he wouldn't want me to fall to pieces like this now. So … This field can be tapped, manipulated?harnessed. It's power is immense. That's what moves the ship." She gestured. "Someone with a Gift speaks the proper formula to tap the field, which allows them to channel that power into the ship's storage cells. When that energy is released, it drives the ship forward through the water. It also powers other machines, all kinds of machines."

She dug through her luggage again, and pulled out another case.

"This is a machine Halathyn and I developed together. It helps us find portals. That's what we were looking for when we stumbled across you. Looking for a portal nearby."

She murmured to the gadget, which began to glow. Several colored indicators came to life in what looked like a rectangular window on the front of the device.

"Here. See these displays?" Her index finger indicated its several small glowing arrows and columns of light. "We'll be docking sometime tomorrow morning at the island we call Chalar back home. That's where our next portal is. See how the arrow points to it?"

Shaylar nodded slowly, but deep inside she was stunned. This single small device in Gadrial's hand was more effective?and efficient?than any Portal Hound she'd ever heard of! If they could do this, what else could they do? Then she realized that Gadrial was still talking.

"?still experimental, of course. That's what we were doing that day in the forest, when your people killed Osmuna?"

"Osmuna?" Shaylar asked. "Who is Osmuna?"

"The soldier your people killed," Gadrial replied in a surprised tone.

"Our people killed?" Shaylar demanded. "Your people killed Falsan! Gods, Gadrial?he died right in my arms! He'd staggered for miles with that arrow in his chest, trying to reach our camp?"

"I didn't know he'd died in your arms," Gadrial said quietly. "I'm sorry about that. As sorry as I can possibly be."

"But that didn't keep your people from killing the rest of us, did it?" Shaylar replied, more harshly even than she'd intended to. Gadrial winced, but she refused to look away.

"That wasn't what we wanted," she said. "Jasak realized what must have happened sooner than anyone else. Two men met in the forest. Just the two of them, and no one will ever know which one of them shot first. We certainly didn't. We couldn't even figure out how Osmuna had died. All we knew was that someone had killed him, and we trailed that person back to your camp. But you'd already headed toward the portal we'd come to find, and?"

"And then you ran us to ground like dogs!" Shaylar jerked up off the bed, her face twisted as the words she'd acquired?the words that finally freed the pain so deep inside?poured out of her. "We were terrified! Someone had murdered Falsan?that was all we knew. And they were chasing us. We couldn't run fast enough!"

"Of course we were." Gadrial stared at her. "What would one of your army officers have done if one of his men was dead? If he'd been responsible for controlling the situation?"

"Controlling the situation?" Shaylar barked a harsh, ugly laugh. "Is that what you call it? You were only 'controlling the situation' when Ghartoun tried to talk to you, without even a weapon in his hands, and you shot him?!"

"Garlath shot him," Gadrial snarled, and even without touching her Shaylar realized that the other woman was genuinely angry. No, not angry?she was furious. And not, Shaylar realized in shock, at her.

"That stupid, cowardly, arrogant, incompetent son-of-a?" Gadrial was abruptly using words Shaylar hadn't heard before, but they hardly needed translating. Whoever this Garlath was, Gadrial had despised him. Still despised him.

"I wasn't close enough to see it happen," Gadrial said finally. "Jasak wouldn't let me get that close. But I heard him shouting at Garlath. Only that idiot shot anyway, and then unholy hell broke loose. I'd never heard anything like that."

Shaylar was trembling. Her perfect Voice's memory replayed the shouted command she'd heard when Ghartoun stood up. The words which had meant nothing at the time, which she'd assumed all this time had been the order to attack. But now she'd learned at least some Andaran, and in her memory, she heard the voice once more. The voice she recognized now as Jasak Olderhan's.

"Hold fire, Fifty Garlath!"

The words rang through her mind like a jagged lightning bolt, and she stared at Gadrial.

"Jasak ordered him not to shoot," she said slowly, softly. "He ordered him not to shoot."

"Yes, he did!" Gadrial's expression was tight with remembered anguish. "I heard him say it. Heard that crossbow's slap and twang after he'd shouted that order. Then that horrible, thunderous roar?"

Shaylar felt nothing but truth in Gadrial Kelbryan, and she began to weep. Silently at first. Then she covered her face with both hands and began to sob.

They'd died for nothing. For nothing! And Company-Captain Halifu had come looking for them, with no way to know Jasak had never meant for anyone to die, and more blood had been spilled. Halathyn had died, and so had a lot of others. And all anyone in Sharona would know was what she'd transmitted to Darcel. The images of fire and blood. Of intentional murder and deliberate slaughter, because that was what she'd thought?known?was happening!

There would be a war, she realized. She could see it as clearly as she had ever seen anything in her life. As if she'd been a Calirath experiencing a Glimpse. There would be a terrible, monstrous war, and more people would die, stupidly, on both sides, because no one back home knew the first massacre had been a mistake.

Gadrial had put both arms around her, was making helpless sounds, trying to comfort her. And then, suddenly, the door between the sleeping cabin and the tiny sitting room of Gadrial's quarters crashed open and Jathmar was there, white to the lips.

"Shaylar!"

She turned blindly toward him. Then she was in his arms, clinging to him, weeping helplessly.

"What happened?" he demanded raggedly. "What did she do to you?"

"Nothing." Shaylar hiccuped. "Nothing, Jathmar. Oh, Jath?the whole thing was a terrible mistake!"

She'd tried to tell him, although her explanation wasn't nearly as coherent as Gadrial's had been, and he listened to her words, to the emotions churning through the marriage bond. When she finally got the ghastly truth Gadrial had just revealed through to him, he sat in silence for long moments, jaw muscles clenched tightly. Then a deep sigh shuddered out of him.

"All right. I believe it. Because you believe her. Gods, what a stupid, monstrous waste!"

Shaylar just nodded, and he tipped her chin up, smiled into her eyes, and wiped tears from her cheek with his index finger.

"You need a handkerchief, sweetheart, only I haven't got one."

She sniffed, then flashed a grateful look at Gadrial when the other woman pressed a scrap of cloth from her sewing into her hand. Shaylar dried her eyes, blew her nose, and gave Gadrial a watery smile.

"Thank you," she said, then realized Gadrial was watching both of them closely, her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

"Shaylar?" she said slowly, almost uncertainly.

"Yes?"

"How did Jathmar know you were upset?"

Shaylar and Jathmar exchanged mortified glances.

"Oh, hells," Shaylar said, but Jathmar shook his head.

"My fault," he muttered in Shurkhali (which was not the Ternathian they'd been teaching Gadrial), rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You just scared the daylights out of me, honey. I caught your fear, then your emotions went so crazy I just?"

"Hush." It was Shaylar's turn to shake her head, and then she shrugged with a crooked smile. "It had to happen sometime. And it's no more your fault you responded than it's my fault for having felt that way in the first place!"

"But why did you? You were already headed that way before she dropped that little bombshell about what's-his-name, Garlath. That's what set off the explosion, but you were already under a lot of pressure, Shaylar. What in all the Arpathian hells has been going on in here?"

"Gadrial's been explaining something important to me, Jathmar. Something about the way their technology works. We joked about Halathyn using magic, but, Jathmar, I think that's exactly what it was. Magic. I don't know what else to call it."

She drew a deep breath and tried to explain. On the one hand, she was handicapped by the fact that she simply didn't understand it all herself by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, she had the advantage that she and Jathmar shared a far more complete command of their language?not to mention the marriage bond?plus a common base of reference. It took a while to get the fundamental concept across, and longer for Jathmar to accept it. But then he nodded abruptly, choppily.

"You're right," he said. "Manipulating energy with special words? Spells and incantations? Magic rings?well, those little cube things?to store the spells inside? It's utterly fantastic, impossible, but how else could they be doing it?" He sighed. "And now I've blown our cover. We've got to tell her something."

"Yes, we do," Shaylar agreed. "Let me think."

Her thoughts raced as she tried to figure out how to word it without giving too much away. Finally, she faced Gadrial, who sat watching them through narrowed, suspicious eyes.

"I'm sorry," Shaylar sighed. "Jathmar was very confused. He wanted to know why I was upset, so I had to explain. Everything. He, too, is very distressed by the mistake that was made."

"But how did he know?" Gadrial, and Shaylar gave her a crooked little smile.

"You said you have a Gift. Something you were born with. On Sharona, our home world, we have … not the same thing. We don't have your … magic." She wasn't sure she was using Gadrial's word properly, but it was as close as she could come at the moment. "Not anything like it. But some people are born with something other people don't have. We call it … "

She hunted for the word, only to discover she didn't have exactly the right one in her still limited vocabulary.

"What do you call it when a great artist, or a great singer, has something other people don't? The thing that lets him do what he does so much better than anyone else can?"

"A talent?" Gadrial suggested, and Shaylar nodded vigorously.

"Yes. A talent. Some people in my world have special Talents. They're?" she wrinkled her brow trying to find the way to say it. "They're in the mind." She tapped her temple. "Jathmar and I are married. We both have a small Talent, nothing very special, really," she said as smoothly as she could, grateful that Gadrial was no telepath to sense her departure from the truth. "But when two people with Talents marry, a bond forms. A bond of the mind. The emotions. Jathmar always knows when I'm afraid or upset. And I always know when he's worried or angry. It's stronger when we're closer together, but we don't have to be in the same room to feel it. Don't your people have anything like this? A mother who just knows when her child's been injured, for example?"

"No." Gadrial shook her head, eyes wide, and Jathmar and Shaylar exchanged startled glances.

"Nothing like it?" Jathmar's astonishment showed even through his slower, more labored Andaran.

"No."

The three of them stared at one another, thunderstruck for entirely different reasons.

"Well," Gadrial finally said, "it's clear we come from very different people. Very different."

"Yes," Shaylar gulped. "Even more different than we'd realized."

"Which brings up another question." Gadrial held Shaylar's gaze. "What are your … Talents?"

Shaylar had known it was coming. It was, after all, the next logical question. She just wished she'd thought to come up with an explanation for it before this. Lying, even by withholding information, did not come naturally to a Voice. For that matter, she wasn't certain exactly which lies she should tell! Should she understate what Talents could do in an effort to lull these people into a false sense of security? Hope they would take Sharona and the Talented too lightly? Or should she exaggerate the Talents? Hope she and Jathmar could make the Arcanans nervous enough that they'd move slowly, cautiously? Possibly create enough nervousness to buy time for their own people to mobilize in response to the threat?

"Jathmar is a Mapper," she said finally. "He … Sees the land around him. Not very far," she added. "For a few miles in any one direction, at most."

Gadrial's mouth had fallen open. She stared at Jathmar for a moment, then back and Shaylar.

"And you?"

"Oh, my Talent isn't very much," Shaylar prevaricated. "Mostly, I sense Jathmar through the marriage bond. It helps me know if he's in trouble, when he's out Mapping. And I help draw the charts, too."

"We didn't find any maps," Gadrial said, studying them with hooded, wary eyes. Shaylar met those eyes forthrightly and shook her head.

"No, of course you didn't. I burned them."

"You burned them?"

"What would you have done?" Shaylar challenged. "Would you have just handed them over? To people you didn't know? People who'd murdered one of your friends, who'd chased you down like animals, who were shooting and killing the rest of your friends all around you? Trying to kill you? Would you have let people like that get hold of maps that showed the way to your home?"

"No," Gadrial said softly, after a moment. "I don't suppose I would."

"Neither would I. Neither did I."

Gadrial nodded slowly, but another deep suspicion showed plainly in her expression. She started to ask a question, paused, then closed her lips. Shaylar waited, meeting her gaze levelly. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but she held that gaze steadily, as though she had nothing further to hide.

"Shaylar," Gadrial said at last, sounding unhappy, "we think?Jasak thinks?your people got a message out. One that warned your people about what had happened. Did someone on your crew get a warning out? Using this Talent of the mind?"

Continuing to meet Gadrial's gaze was agony, but Shaylar did it anyway.

"I don't know, Gadrial."

"Don't know? Or won't tell me?"

"What do you want of me, Gadrial?" Shaylar's eyes filled. "We're your prisoners."

"Not my prisoners." Gadrial shook her head, biting her lip. "You're Sir Jasak Olderhan's prisoners."

"Don't you mean the army's?" Jathmar asked harshly in his accented Andaran.

"No, I don't. I don't understand all of it, because I'm not in the Army, either. And I'm not Andaran. The Andarans are a military society, and they have a lot of complicated rules I don't understand. But one of those rules is about prisoners, and about responsibilities toward them. You'll have to ask Jasak about it, if you want to know."

"I do want to know," Jathmar said in a voice full of iron. "And I think we have a right to know. Don't you?"

Gadrial bit her lip again, more gently this time, looking at him levelly. Then she drew a slightly unsteady breath.

"Yes, I do. If you'll wait here, I'll go find him and ask him to explain. Explain to all of us, actually. I'm caught in the middle of this thing, too, and I don't understand it as well as I should."

"Thank you," Shaylar said softly, and Gadrial nodded. Then she left the cabin, and Shaylar began to tremble.

"They're going to figure it out, Jathmar," she said, once again in Shurkhali.

"Eventually," he agreed heavily. "Probably sooner than we'd like. And it's my fault. I should have realized you weren't really in danger?not with Gadrial."

"Don't blame yourself." She laid a hand against his cheek, and his lips quirked.

"There's no one else to blame, sweetheart. It certainly isn't your fault." He captured her hand, kissed her fingers, and tucked them against his heart. "I know how hard that was, lying to Gadrial just now. I don't think I could have done half as well as you did. She's half convinced you don't know for sure if a message went out."

"Only half," Shaylar muttered, "and Jasak Olderhan won't be so easy to fool."

"No, he won't. Still, you're right. What else should they expect from us? If they were in our shoes, to you think they'd have volunteered that information about magic powering their whole civilization?"

"Probably not," Shaylar agreed dryly. "It would be interesting to know how much information our side's managed to gather from their prisoners." She shivered. "I'm not sure I want to know how we're treating their soldiers, though. We've been so fortunate … "

His arm tightened around her. He didn't need to speak; she could taste his fear for her, his fear about what lay ahead. When Jasak came into the room to explain, Shaylar would know he was telling the truth, if only she could arrange to touch him. But having said as much as she had already, he would undoubtedly be doubly suspicious if she tried anything so obvious. Up until now, their captors had viewed her penchant for touching people as a simple personal habit. She'd been careful to be just as "touchy-feely" with Jathmar as she was with them, but now?

She might never be given another opportunity to touch them again. She faced that probability squarely. And as she did, she also realized that lying to them now and being caught in that lie later would not do them a great deal of good down the road. It might well damage their circumstances, worsen their treatment, incur all sorts of unpleasantness.

The thoughts flowed through her, but before she could discuss them with Jathmar, it was too late. The door opened again, and Jasak Olderhan filled the frame, his eyes hooded as he stared down at them.