The Road to Hell

Chapter Eighteen

January 9

Shaylar sat beside the slider window and peered out with rising excitement. They were very near the end of their journey, at last, and she was eager to see the Union of Arcana’s capital city. The universe explorer in her had longed to stop and do surveys all along the way here, but as prisoners of war, even honored shardonai, they didn’t control the itinerary. And despite the length of their journey, they’d seen very little of Arcana’s cities.

They’d spent most of the journey through the outer universes flying on military dragons, which landed on military bases, not in civilian cities. Once they’d reached the inner universes, they’d boarded sliders, which passed through every crystal-controlled traffic junction at high speed. Some truly enormous towns for frontier universes had hung tantalizingly on the other side of the slider windows, but they’d been so busy passing through that there’d been no time to really study anything.

The only real Arcanan city they’d even spent an hour in was Theskair. While Shaylar had been amazed by that city-it had a population of almost two million-it was little more than a sleepy, backwater town compared with Portalis, according to Gadrial. Now that they were close enough to actually see Portalis in the distance, she knew the other woman had been right. The capital of New Arcana stunned the senses.

Tajvana was a large city, the largest Shaylar had ever visited. During the years she’d spent at the Portal Authority’s academy, she’d marveled at the city built on both sides of the Ylani Straits. But Portalis made Tajvana seem small.

Their final approach wasn’t made at ground level. The slider’s crystal control network lifted into the sky, running alongside a wide pedestrian bridge which floated nearly eighty feet above the earth, skimming well clear of the magnificent winter forest below. The vast expanse of trees was the estate where Jasak had grown up, and he hadn’t exaggerated his description of the lands. She could tell at a glance that she was looking at pristine, old-growth forest, truly untouched despite two centuries of settlement. Even with only winter-bare branches, it was breathtakingly lovely.

That soaring bridge should have been impossible. On Sharona, it would have been. The crystals that guided the sliders were embedded only now and again in the bridge rail, and the towers connected to the bridgeway from below were very nearly gossamer structures, like spider’s trailing lines that must surely sway to the touch of any breeze. Those slender couldn’t possibly be structural supports for the bridge, let alone the sliders floating past on either side.

“Why is the sliderway so high, here?” Jathmar asked as they hurtled silently over the treetops, and Jasak’s mouth crooked in a half smile that was part embarrassment.

“When the Union wanted to put in a slider path, several decades ago, my grandfather-who, just coincidentally, also happened to be named Sherstan-refused to allow the construction battalion to cut down any trees. He said that forest had been held in a pristine state for a century and a half and no transport clerk was going to cut the heart out of it with a slider right of way.”

He rolled his eyes. “Grandfather was fond of colorful exaggeration. All they wanted to do was cut down enough trees to entrench a control lattice, something on the order of fifty feet wide. But Sherstan was a stubborn old…gentleman,” he said carefully, causing Shaylar and Gadrial to glance at one another in amusement. “He told them,” Jasak continued, determinedly ignoring their suppressed laughter, “that if they were so set on building sliderways to hook Portalis to the rest of the multiverse, they could by Torkash run the sliders over the forest. Which is exactly what they did.

“So many people stopped their sliders along the route to take in the scenery that they ended up building the pedestrian bridge too and modding the guidance crystal spellware to ensure all the sliders keep moving. My family added the lifts later-” he pointed to the towers “-to allow people to walk around in the forest itself.”

“But weren’t there already roads cut through it?” Jathmar asked. “If this is the main portal out of Arcana, there must be roads leading out of the city, through your family’s land?”

“There are,” Jasak nodded. “Those roads were built at the same time the Union formalized the treaty conferring property rights on my family. The city and the Union can maintain and widen those roads as necessary, which they’ve done many times. For all practical purposes, there’s only one portion of the original land grant still in forest cover.” He pulled over the map again and zoomed in to show them. “This section, surrounding the falls, across to here, is still in forest. The rest of it’s been leased out to the city and to the Union-for the military bases, primarily, but also for access corridors to the suburbs that extend for many miles beyond the leased land.

“That’s why Portalis is lopsided, like this.” He zoomed back out and pointed to the irregular blob of the city, which bulged and fanned out across the map on the sides away from the forested estate. “What the Transportation Corps wanted to do was run a line through the inviolate section left in old-growth forest. Grandfather refused to cut down even one more tree of what was left.”

“That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me,” Shaylar said, studying the map and glancing out the window. “When one has a legacy to protect, one has to be adamant about such things. Otherwise, there’d eventually be nothing left to conserve.”

Jasak smiled. “That’s precisely how he felt and frankly, I agree with him. For one thing, it would’ve robbed the citizens of Portalis, since the section they wanted to cut the line through runs through a section of the forest that’s open to the city as a public park.”

Shaylar broke into a delighted smile. “That’s a wonderful thing to do for your neighbors!”

Then the slider rounded a curve on its approach to Portalis and Shaylar got her first close look through the wide train windows.

“Oh…”

The single word was a soft exhalation of wonder.

Portalis was a magical city…literally. The dominant feature was, naturally, the portal. It wasn’t the largest she’d ever seen, but it was a whopping big one, nonetheless, and every single mile of that immense hole in reality was jammed with roads, control towers for sliders, floating highways, and what looked like flocks of migrating birds, except these “birds” were dragons of so many bewildering sizes and hues the air seemed to shimmer from all their wings. They flew in what seemed at first to be total chaos, but as she stared, entranced, she began to discern patterns.

Beasts of a certain size flew in one line, on what was clearly a well-established flight path. There were dozens of such lines, each with dragons of a different size, going at different speeds. Some of the small beasts were falcon-fast, making impossible maneuvers as they shot over and around other flight paths.

There were smaller winged creatures, as well. The gryphons they’d seen again and again at military bases whipped through Portalis’ skies at phenomenal speeds, intent on errands Shaylar couldn’t even guess at. Other flying things registered as she gazed in wonder at the astonishing panorama ahead, and what looked like small lozenges floated well above the ground, although still far below the sliderway, moving at a surprisingly rapid pace.

“What are those?” she pointed.

Gadrial answered. “The very latest in transportation. They’re automated carriages, powered by the latest motive spells. The official name is ‘automoticars,’ but that’s too big a mouthful. The advertisers are calling them ‘motics,’ although I’m not sure the name’s going to catch on. At this point, they’re still new enough, the public really hasn’t decided, yet, what to call them.”

“Why so new?” Jathmar frowned. “Those motic things are much smaller than a slider. Why weren’t they developed first?”

“Ah,” she smiled. “The problem was one of steerage. Sliders are guided by the control net and even dragons are guided by pilots. Gryphons are small enough and smart enough to avoid mid-air collisions, but the idea of hundreds of ungoverned vehicles-even thousands of them-flying anywhere people chose, straight through established flight paths, flown by anybody with enough cash, not by responsible, licensed pilots, buzzing across roads, whipping around people’s houses and through city streets…” She shuddered. “The very idea horrified city councils. Most cities passed laws prohibiting ungoverned flying vehicles piloted by non-licensed pilots.

“Things stayed that way for a long time, until a very bright spellcaster-a Ransaran, of course,” she added, eyes sparkling with mischief and challenge, “figured out how to cast a motive spell that follows pre-determined flight paths, responding to a series of permanent traffic pods put up in a grid all over the city. Once he did that, the door opened and the djinn was out of the bottle, so to speak.

“Although I’ve never understood why any rational person would actually want to let a djinn out of its bottle,” she added in a surprisingly grim tone. “They’re bad-tempered, incurable liars who invariably cheat any fool stupid enough to fall for their promises. Of course, they do provide a decent living for spell-casters who specialize in personal disaster and curse reversal, not to mention attorneys representing people damaged when some idiot wished for the most beautiful women in the world, which caused a djinn to yank a thousand or so perfectly innocent girls out of their houses, offices, or schools with no warning at all and no way to get home again, without suing the irresponsible worm responsible for djinn-napping them.”

Shaylar and her husband gaped at Gadrial.

“You…are joking, aren’t you?” Shaylar gulped.

“I never joke about women wronged through no fault of their own,” Gadrial said, grim as any soldier on the way to combat.

“It’s a recurrent problem,” Jas said quietly. “The military’s returned victims home many times, as a public service. There are djinn-victim aid societies, too, and it’s illegal-profoundly so-to traffic with a djinn. But idiots and reckless, irresponsible jackasses keep risking it, convinced they’ll come out ahead. They never do, but the challenge and the lure is just too irresistible for some.

“It doesn’t help that djinn are almost impossible to control, once released. There’s a whole branch of the UBI-the Union Bureau of Investigation-devoted to tracking the magic trails left by renegade djinn some fool’s let loose, but it takes a powerful spell-caster to re-bottle a djinn. It usually requires a team of them, acting in concert. More than one team’s subsequently encased a djinn bottle in concrete, to keep anyone from releasing it again, but the black market thrives on stealing bottled djinn out of holding facilities and selling them at huge prices to gullible fools. We can’t just dump them into deep ocean water, because some black marketer would use lifting spells to bring the bottle back up to the surface. And you can’t drop a djinn’s bottle into a volcano, either. That just melts the bottle and lets it out, again. That was tried, once, with genuinely horrifying results. You can’t kill a djinn by roasting it in lava, but you can make it furious enough to level a city.”

Shaylar stared in horror and Jasak shook his head, partly in sorrow, partly in obvious disgust.

“Some people are just too stupid or too desperate to pay attention to public warnings or the mandatory prison sentences for anyone trafficking in djinn, whether it’s selling a corked bottle or uncorking one for gain or revenge. Those are the worst cases, by far-the revenge cases. Trying to undo a revenge-motivated djinn attack can be a nightmare. People have died, from it. Lots of people, over the years. There’s a reason for those mandatory sentences, and anyone responsible for a djinn episode that kills someone is tried for voluntary manslaughter even if that was never his intent. If it was his intent, it’s an automatic charge of premeditated murder, whatever he may claim about extenuating circumstances.”

Jathmar’s jaw muscles quivered as fury swept through him. “Just how the hell did these things come to exist?”

“They were created, we think,” Gadrial replied when Jasak hesitated. “During the Arcanan portal war, two centuries ago. By Mythlan shakira caste lords and their greatest magisters. The Ransarans lodged massive protests when the Mythlans turned the djinn loose against Andaran armies and ships-in fact, that’s what brought most of Ransar actively into the war on the other side-but the protests didn’t do any good. We’ve been trying to bottle them back up-permanently-for two hundred years. So far, no one’s succeeded.”

“There’s no way to destroy the things?” Jathmar demanded, and Gadrial bit her lip.

“The last team that tried it…” She shuddered. “No one’s tried actually killing one since, although we’ve been working on an approach we think would work at Garth Showma. The problem is that we aren’t sure it’ll work, and it’s the sort of field test that only gets to go wrong once. Sooner or later, we may have no choice but to give it another try, and we intend to go right on refining our R amp;D until we have to trot it out. In the meantime, fortunately, they can be forced back into bottles, eventually, with enough sufficiently Gifted magisters. But trying to kill one just makes it desperate enough and mean enough to get truly ugly.”

Her voice turned bitter.

“They know being bottled won’t be a permanent state. Most of them think it’s an amusing game, being released and having their fun, trying to elude capture in the chase, then being cornered and put back into a bottle, then waiting for some black marketeer to steal the bottle again so some other idiot will open it. They actually make a contest of it, amongst themselves. They’re hoping that eventually, we’ll get tired of chasing them down and leave them unbottled.”

“Which is something we don’t dare do,” Jasak added grimly.

“Why don’t they just kill anyone who tries to bottle them?” Jathmar asked, still seething with anger.

“Because it isn’t sporting,” Jasak growled. “Their creators gave them a sense of humor and a twisted sense of respect for anyone clever enough to re-bottle them, as well as an appetite for creative ways to dupe their victims. So far, that seems to be holding true, but as Gadrial just implied, we can’t be certain it’ll stay that way forever. And, of course, the day it stops being true is the day some poor team of magisters is going to find out about it the hard way. The magisters know it, too,” he said grimly, his eyes flicking sideways to Gadrial for just a moment, “but they have to go right on bottling them and pray each time that this isn’t the moment the djinn stop playing games and start slaughtering magisters. That,” he added with a vicious snarl in his voice, “is another reason I hate most Mythlan shakira.”

Shaylar stared from Gadrial to Jasak and back again, then shuddered.

“Every time I think I’ve gotten used to your culture, something like this knocks the props out from under me, again, and I end up feeling like a lost and scared little girl. Again.”

Jathmar slipped an arm around her, and she needed it. If they were willing to do that to one another, she thought, what would they do to Sharona? Would their Commandery decide to uncork those bottles and turn the djinn loose against Sharona’s forts? Sharona’s cities? She leaned against her husband’s shoulder, trying to blot that ghastly image from her mind and not succeeding very well.

Jathmar’s worry for her prompted him to change the subject, bringing the conversation back to the one they’d been discussing before their unexpected digression.

“So these ‘motics’ respond to programmed pods that steer them?”

Gadrial nodded, and her expression was relieved.

“Yes. The pods keep them in clearly marked lanes high enough above the streets and houses not to endanger anyone on the ground but low enough to avoid collisions with other air traffic. A car’s owner must tell the vehicle’s guidance crystal where he or she wants to go, and the GC is programmed to contact the nearest traffic control pod by means of a short-range communication spell. The pod sends back a response call that gives the car’s GC the flight path to reach the next pod in the system, leading the car from pod to pod until it reaches the its destination.”

“It sounds complicated,” Shaylar put in, grateful that her voice didn’t shake as much as her insides, which were still quivering.

“It is complicated. The initial spellware was very complex to build, and it took the designers and city traffic engineers a couple of years to set up the grid, put the pods in place, test the system, and work out the kinks even after the initial spells were created. Then they had to convince the air traffic controllers and the city councilors it would work and that it would be safe. But they finally did it and the system went live a few months before I left to join Halathyn. Motic sales soared so quickly the makers couldn’t produce them fast enough to fill the orders.”

“If there was so much resistance from the government, what gave the companies enough incentive to go ahead with them?” Shaylar wondered.

“The military wanted them,” Jasak explained. “For the officers’ corps, mainly. It’s cumbersome to schedule a pilot and dragon to fly across town, but that’s usually the fastest way to get around, especially in a city as large as Portalis. We have the best mass transit system in New Arcana, but the public sliders make so many stops it can take double the dragon flight time to reach anywhere in Portalis even with the faster slider speeds. And the portion of the city in Arcana, beyond the portal, wasn’t built for the public city slider system, but the pod control system’s flexible enough to be made to work even in Old City Portalis. Of course, motics can’t cross a portal threshold any better than a slider can, and that’s going to be an ongoing problem for their owners. You’ve seen the elaborate arrangements the slider stations have for transferring passengers between coaches at a portal, but how does the owner of a private motic manage that?” He shook his head.

“I think they’ll manage it in the end,” Gadrial said confidently. “There’s been some fundamental research into purely mechanical ways of getting entire sliders across thresholds, Jas. If we can make that work, we can scale it down for motics. And there’ll be a lot of motivation to do just that.” She shrugged. “As you say, it’s flexible enough to make it work anywhere. Eventually, everyone’s going to want one of them, so the pressure to make it work will certainly be there!”

Shaylar glanced out the window, where the vast spread of the city stretched for miles. “I can well imagine. It’s certainly faster than any carriage I’ve ever seen! And some of our largest cities are a nightmare to navigate during peak traffic times.”

Curiosity touched Jasak’s eyes, but he was careful about pushing Shaylar and Jathmar for details they were unwilling to share. She and her husband both knew how fortunate they were that to have avoided falling into the hands of someone like Hundred Thalmayr. He would have treated them like criminals. Or worse. Each time Jasak Olderhan showed restraint, Shaylar and her husband gave thanks for their good fortune.

So she said, “What did you want to ask about our cities, Jasak?”

Surprise lit his eyes. Then he leaned forward. “You’ve never told us what the capital city of Sharona is called. Will you at least tell me that?”

The unspoken, “So I’ll have something concrete to tell my superiors” was clear, and Shaylar glanced at Jathmar, who met her gaze with as much dismay as she felt. Neither of them knew what to say. Sharona had no capital city because it wasn’t a unified world, the way Arcana was. Yet admitting that would only make Sharona seem weak and disorganized. Even Shaylar, about as unmilitary as a person could be, realized the danger inherent in that.

She felt her husband’s desire to handle this one, so she let him speak. His answer surprised her, but it made sense, as well.

“The city’s called Tajvana. For several thousand years, it was the capital of Sharona’s largest and most ancient empire, called Ternathia.”

“The name of the language you taught us,” Gadrial said in surprise.

Jathmar nodded. “Ternathia either controlled or colonized at least two thirds of the world. Today, Tajvana is the seat of world governance. Even our Portal Authority is headquartered there, despite the fact that no portal lies in or near Tajvana.”

Shaylar could very nearly see the thought that formed behind Jasak Olderhan’s eyes: Their capital city is protected from direct invasion through a portal. She managed to hold in the shiver that touched her spine, feeling glad-very glad-Jathmar had answered. She would’ve bungled it, she knew, but Jathmar hadn’t actually lied, not once.

Which hadn’t prevented him from leaving the distinct impression of a long-unified multiverse government. The failed truce in Hell’s Gate had been called under the auspices of something called the Sharonan Empire, but neither of them knew if that really existed as more than a polite fiction useful for negotiating with the Union of Arcana. Yet if Sharona as a unified political entity had come into existence after Toppled Timber, Tajvana was the city most likely to be named as the seat of that new multiversal government.

Who would head it and what form it might take were unknowable. Shaylar couldn’t even hazard a guess. So she sent a flood of gratitude to Jathmar over the weakened bridge of their marriage bond and turned her attention back to the city they were approaching. The closer they got to Portalis’ heart, the more amazing it grew.

Buildings soared to impossible heights, rising at least forty or fifty floors above the streets, and the shapes were even more astounding than their height. One immense building resembled a butterfly, with wings outstretched beyond a central tower shaped like the long, slender body of that delicate insect. The windows in those “wings” dazzled the eye, catching the sunlight with myriad colors, mimicking real butterfly wings with uncanny success.

Others had fantastic, soaring arches that spanned entire city streets, connecting buildings, allowing people to cross busy thoroughfares without leaving a covered building. Yet those arches seemed gossamer thin, like bridges made of spidersilk and thistledown and soap bubbles. She couldn’t imagine how they didn’t fall apart or plunge into the busy streets below, let alone support so many people’s weight as they crossed along the soaring spans.

Other buildings had strange projections, like shelf mushrooms made of glass and what caught the sunlight like metal. Only these “shelves” were the size of large houses, projecting sixty and seventy feet from the sides of buildings, with no visible support. Their walls and roofs were almost entirely glass and they were undeniably beautiful, but Shaylar would have been petrified just nerving herself to step out onto one of them. When the slider slowed and the sliderway angled down to a height merely twenty feet above street level, she stared in wonder at yet more sights nothing could have prepared her for.

Everywhere she looked, there was something new and marvelous, so much, her senses began to overload. She couldn’t take it all in. Little flashes now and again came clear in the blur of unfamiliar sights. People rising up the sides of buildings in lines like marching ants, to reach doorways cut into the sheer, vertical sides of those buildings. Many of those doorways were cut into the sides of the strange, cantilevered “shelf mushroom” extensions, which she could see more clearly, now that they were actually inside the city.

She saw street entertainers performing complex acrobatics and dances, while hovering mid-air. They whirled like spinning tops, made prodigious leaps, turned graceful somersaults like a high-trapeze artist, except there were no apparatuses to assist them. They simply danced and whirled and leapt like birds who’d decided to take up acrobatics.

Sidewalk artists painted the air. Glorious swaths of color burst into being as they swept their hands in complicated patterns, creating breathtaking works of art that shone with unearthly beauty. Some glowed with soft tones, others glittered like gold dust, and still others scintillated like sun-struck opals. As Shaylar watched, entranced, a girl pointed to one of the patterns hovering mid-air and the whole glowing “painting” floated gently over to an easel, where it landed on what looked like a sheet of that strange, glassy substance that stored spells.

The artist picked up the sheet and handed it to the girl, who passed money to him, then walked away with her artwork, smiling happily. The other patterns floated over to other sheets of that strange glassy material, creating yet other paintings the artist then stacked up beneath the easel, and Shaylar sighed as she sat back in her seat.

“What’s wrong, Shaylar?” Gadrial asked in sudden worry.

She turned her gaze away from the astonishing city. She was still so amazed by what she’d just seen, she blurted out precisely what was on her mind.

“I wanted one of those glorious paintings. The ones that artist painted in the air.” Then she reddened and covered her face with both hands. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she said, aghast.

Jasak laughed softly. “If you want a spell painting, Shaylar, I believe I can afford to buy one for you.”

She lowered her hands to meet his gaze. “I didn’t mean-”

“I know you didn’t,” he said gently. “But it’s my fault you’re here, unable to leave. If you want something beautiful, that’s only natural. And Shaylar, if you ever need anything, tell me. Please. My responsibility for you is as deep as though you were members of my own family. I’m bound by honor to provide you with everything you need, and the friendship I’ve come to feel for you makes me want to provide you with gifts, as well-things you might have purchased for yourself, before all of this happened.

“At some point, it’s my hope we’ll be able to help you work in some fashion, to earn your own money. I know it must gall to be totally dependent on what you surely view as charity or the grudging support of a jailor,” he added, looking into Jathmar’s hooded eyes, as he spoke. “You probably think I don’t understand how you feel, and I will admit I probably don’t.

“But I do understand wanting to feel like I’ve accomplished something on my own merit. Neither I nor my sisters have the slightest need to work, but we all do, nonetheless. Except for the youngest, who’s still in school. Working, contributing to society, earning your own money-that’s something important to self-esteem. But until we can find some way for you to do that, until we can help teach you to live safely in Arcanan society, you must rely on my help, financially.

“You’ve been watching the city with wonder and fright in your eyes. Now that you’ve seen some of the things that happen on an ordinary city street, I think you have a better understanding of the fact that we have to teach you how to live, here. How to avoid unseen dangers, such as accidentally stepping into a spell-field that sends you thirty stories up the side of a building when you’re not expecting it. That will take time, as well.

“I hate seeing you virtually helpless as young children, when both of you are extremely intelligent, well-educated, talented-and Talented”-he added with a very serious expression of respect-“people, highly skilled at what you do.”

Shaylar, seated on a train in the middle of the most amazing city she’d ever seen, met Jasak’s worried eyes and bit her lower lip. “I’d like to work, somehow. But there’s very little I can do, here.”

“You and Jathmar could find some way, surely, to put your Talents to use,” Gadrial said.

Shaylar glanced at her husband, trying to send a silent question to him. It was like trying to walk through thick syrup, now, to reach his mind, and what little she could still sense took as much mental effort as it had once taken to connect another telepath at the very edge of her eight-hundred-plus-mile range.

His glance into her eyes was hooded and wary; then a sigh escaped him and he shrugged.

“We might as well tell them,” he said softly. “Maybe Gadrial can tell us why.”

“Tell you what?” she asked as Jasak leaned abruptly forward, gaze sharp with sudden interest.

Jathmar lifted one hand to touch Shaylar’s face, then turned to Gadrial. “We can barely Hear one another, now.”

Gadrial blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we,” he said.

“What, exactly, do you mean?” Jasak asked.

Shaylar tried to explain. “At one time, I could touch Jathmar’s emotions, his feelings, so easily, I could often guess what he was thinking. You saw, yourself, what happened on board that first ship, when I was so distressed. Jathmar felt my chaotic emotions so clearly, he came charging into Gadrial’s cabin from ours. That’s gone,” she whispered, very nearly in tears. “I have to very nearly Shout to make Jathmar sense my emotions through the marriage bond, now. And it’s terribly difficult for me to sense his. Even sitting close, like this, it’s hard to do. When we’re in different rooms, now, we can’t Hear each other at all.”

Jasak stared from one to the other and back. “That makes no sense.”

“You think we don’t know that?” Jathmar demanded in a harsh voice. “We’ve lost everything else. And now we’re losing the most precious thing our marriage gave us: the telepathic bond between us.” Pain and anger throbbed through his voice.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Gadrial asked, baffled. Jathmar only looked at her, but, after a moment, Jasak answered for them.

“Because it’s important data, Gadrial,” he said. “Militarily important.” He sounded weary, frustrated. It came as a shock when Shaylar realized he felt that way because of the added pain it was causing them. When Gadrial still looked baffled, Jasak explained.

“If their Talents don’t work as well here, their military’s greatest advantages-including their Voice network-disappear. That places their soldiers at a serious disadvantage.”

“But why?” Gadrial wondered. “If their Talents don’t work as well here, would our Gifts not work as well on their homeworld?”

“You tell me,” Jasak said quietly. “With Halathyn gone, you’re the best theoretical magister we have. The team you’ve built at the Garth Showma Institute is as good as anything in Mythal. Surely there’s something you can do to figure out why something like this might be happening?”

Gadrial’s eyes reflected one moment of stark terror as the sudden responsibility for answering a question of that magnitude landed on her slim shoulders. Then the muscles in her jaw tightened and the look in her eyes shifted from fear to determination.

“All right,” she said, her voice hard with purpose. “We’ll do everything we can to figure it out.”

She frowned in thought for several seconds, then raked one hand through her hair with a grimace of what looked very much like irritation.

“It occurs to me,” she said slowly, “that we-theoretical magisters-have overlooked something very important. Something that was dismissed out of hand…and that I suddenly suspect shouldn’t have been. The last year I was at the Mythal Falls Academy, I ran across an entire file of reports while researching a major project for Halathyn. They’d been files by early portal explorers, Gifted ones, who reported magic didn’t work quite as well in pristine universes as it did here in Arcana. No one paid much attention to it, certainly not in academe. The analyses I read treated it almost as a joke. At best, a curiosity, but more likely just a mistake by people with poorly trained Gifts. And don’t look at me like that,” she added tartly when Jasak glared at her with a flash of irritation. “I don’t mean to belittle the soldiers who reported those observations, let alone suggest they were incompetent. We hadn’t seen anything significant, though, and what little was reported was a small enough difference to fall inside measurement error. Besides, I wasn’t the one who dismissed their reports!

“Remember, Jasak, for most of the last two centuries, the only people doing research in the field of multi-universe theoretical magic fields were shakira. To them, any non-Mythlan is an unreliable observer, particularly when it comes to something as genuinely complex as theoretical magic and the way portals interact with the magic field. The Garth Showma Institute’s the first non-Mythlan academy we’ve ever had that could match the Mythal Falls Academy.”

Jasak managed a sheepish smile, mollified by her explanation.

“Sorry about that, Gadrial. I’ve just heard snide remarks from shakira a shade too often, myself, belittling anyone in the Army. Any non-Mythlan in the Army, at any rate. My father’s position’s meant I’ve seen and heard more shakira than most other Andarans.”

Gadrial’s expression softened. “Of course, Jas. And I realize the stress you’re under, as well. I’m sorry I snapped at you.” Then she frowned in an abstracted way. “If there is something about the way universes interact that make certain things possible in some universes but not in others, we need to know what it is and why it operates.”

“Yes, we certainly do,” Jasak agreed. “Urgently.”

Gadrial’s eyes glinted, and she nodded.

“Yes, I can see that, too,” she said. “All right. I’ll pull together the best theoreticians we have and sic them onto this question as our top priority.”

“Thank you, Gadrial,” Jasak said quietly. Then he turned to Jathmar and Shaylar. “And thank you, both of you, for telling us this. I understand the risk you’ve both run, revealing that. I can’t even guarantee Arcana won’t use that information against Sharona, should we somehow fail to stop the shooting war we’ve started, out there.”

“You’ve been as honest with us as you can,” Jathmar said slowly. “I appreciate that. Our situation…” His mouth tightened. “I could try for the rest of my life to explain it and you still wouldn’t understand the depth of what we feel, cut off from everything and everyone, unable to reach our own families to tell them we’re safe. Unable to trust your superiors, your government, unable to trust even you as fully as we might if we’d met under other circumstances. And now this. If Shaylar and I have to lose a vital piece of who we are, if our souls have to be ripped apart, as well as our lives…we’d at least like to know why.”

Gadrial bit her lip. “I’ll do everything I can to find that answer for you,” she said in an unsteady voice.

“Thank you,” Jathmar said softly. “That’s all we can ask.”

Before anyone could say anything further, the slider glided down a low slope to street level and slowed even more. A moment later, they were pulling into a long, low building. It was far more graceful than most of the slider stations they’d passed through on their endless journey, and it was adorned with magnificent frescoes and glowing sculptures of light, but none of that hid the utilitarian aspects of its design. Shaylar saw the multiple rails of guidance crystals that made it easy to shunt slidercars from one track to another, and one entire wall of the building opened on what she thought of as the equivalent of the Trans Temporal Express’ switching yards. The broad pads used to recharge levitation accumulators stretched away from the covered passenger platforms in neat rows. There must have been at least a hundred-possibly twice that many, really-some of them empty, but most with sliders parked on them.

They’d reached Portalis Station.

Journey’s end. She fumbled for Jathmar’s hand and clutched it tightly. Physical contact improved her ability to read his emotions, and she could tell he wanted to put himself between her and any danger. Her hand trembled in his, and he turned and rested his brow against hers, trying desperately to restore the easy exchange they’d enjoyed since the day of their marriage, if only for just a moment or two. She could feel the love flowing from him, the fear for their future, the determination to protect her at all cost.

She lifted her face to look into his eyes and pressed a single, soft kiss to his lips, sending back all the love and reassurance she could. He even managed to smile. Then the slider sighed to a halt and a light blinked at the door leading to the station platform, letting passengers know the vehicle had settled to the same level as the platform. Jasak rose and extended a hand to Gadrial. She took it as she came gracefully to her feet and collected her equipment bag-that never went anywhere without her, although the arrival of Hundred Forhaylin and his men had at least given them plenty of other hands to carry their suitcases!

Jathmar pulled down a deep, deep breath, then he, too, rose and assisted Shaylar from her seat. Beyond the windows, the platform was a sea of people, all streaming from the dozens of other sliders, all greeting other people who waited on the platform. Shaylar could see happy reunions, almost hear the glad voices and laughter as families and friends were reunited, despite the sealed window.

Her chin quivered just once.

Then she followed silently as Jasak led the way out of the slider.

* * *

Sir Thankhar Olderhan met the travelers not as the Duke of Garth Showma, Governor of New Arcana, or any of the rest of his titles but as a father. He waved a barely recognizable crab-handed reply to the salutes hurriedly offered by Trooper Sendahli and Chief Sword Threbuch and wrapped his boy Jasak in a big bear hug. Jasak had outgrown his father by a good three inches sometime in his early teens, but the older man still managed to project power and strength.

Thankhar hadn’t thought about those intangibles in years, but if asked, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the reporter across the street using image capture spellware managed to capture clear beautifully framed shots of familial bliss. It also would not have surprised him to learn that later the editor would throw the recording crystal at the reporter’s head and send the young woman back out to get an image that could actually be used with the story headline: OLDERHAN HEIR RETURNS IN DISGRACE!

Instead he released his son from the hug and warmly greeted Gadrial, Shaylar, and Jathmar. The last two were family now, even if the Sharonans hadn’t quite internalized just how much Jasak had meant that when he explained the shardonai term to them. As for Gadrial…well, he’d read his son’s messages, and he had every hope she might be family one day too. He ushered them all into a palatial motic not so very much smaller than the slider they’d just left.

His staff coordinated with Forhaylin, Threbuch, and Sendahli to fill other vehicles, manage the luggage, and convey the rest of their gear the remainder of the way home.

* * *

Lady Sathmin Olderhan would have loved to have been waiting at the slider station for her oldest child’s return. But before the scheduled arrival, there’d been a spate of tiny disasters uniquely suited to the duchess’s touch. So she’d stayed behind expecting to follow after her husband in a second motic and still reach the station well before their son’s slider arrived.

She was still home when the Master of the Sword in crimson full dress uniform knocked at the private entry to the ducal apartments, however, and she stayed home to keep the Master there to deliver his summons privately. She only stepped out into public view when the staff told her the motic was nearly home.

The reporter stationed outside the gate snapped that shot just fine: Sathmin Olderhan, Duchess Garth Showma, outside the ducal apartments looking deeply worried as the motic bearing Jasak and his party crested the rise on its way home. A little fiddling with the lighting to make the expression deeply foreboding and the image was fit to run on page one.

* * *

“Welcome home Jasak!” Sathmin embraced her son in a hug just as fierce as the one he’d received from his father at the station. “It’s been far too long.”

“Thank you, Mother.” He hugged her back, holding her for several breaths, then inhaled deeply and stood back to do the introductions. “Mother, I believe you’ve met Magister Gadrial before. Maybe through your support of the Garth Showma Institute’s veteran scholarship fund? These are Jathmar Nargra and Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, my shardonai. They’ve had a very long trip and would rather be home, but-”

“Of course I understand.” Sathmin welcomed the group and ushered them all inside where a small army-another small army-of staff was on hand to make off with the luggage and carry it to the private suites assigned to each guest.

A quick word in her husband’s ear was enough to have him vanish into the comfortable office where she’d convinced the Master of the Sword to wait, then she turned back with a smile to try to calm her guests.

“Jasak’s written me, though not as much as I’d like.” She arched a brow at him, and her son chuckled in response.

It was an old joke between them that she always wanted more letters home though in reality she was usually quite satisfied with the ones he did send. Normally she had more than enough information to put her heart at ease while he and his troops worked on the edges of the explored universes.

“Anyway,” she waved a hand. “I do what every Andaran mother must, and spend hours and hours just pining away imagining horrible things-” She was already half way into the familiar joke before she suddenly realized it had lost a lot of its usual humor. She paused, then shook herself.

“I imagine that for about a half second,” she said composedly. “And then I remember Chief Sword Threbuch is there and I’m put entirely at ease. How is your family, Otwal? I saw your niece and her new baby just a few weeks ago. I hope everyone’s doing well?”

Otwal ducked his head in acknowledgement. “This was our first stop, Your Grace. I actually haven’t been to see the family yet.”

“Of course.” Sathmin pulled herself up straight. “Don’t let me keep you. I did prepare some places for you here if you’d like to stay with us, but I certainly don’t want to hold you to ceremony when there are people in Portalis you haven’t seen in ages.”

Otwal shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind another night of easy sleep before meeting the newest rug rat. And I’m a bachelor myself, so there’s no particular urgency to see the extended family.”

He didn’t add that reporting to the inquiry board would be easier to do from here than from his brother’s place on the outskirts of Portalis on the Arcana Prime side of the city. The chief sword had seen the duke leave, and she suspected he’d correctly interpreted what it meant when a staff member discretely called Jasak Olderhan away.

Sathmin didn’t ask after Otwal’s parents since she’d attended both their funerals several years past and, like many of the families with a long history of service in the Andaran Temporal Scouts, their ashes were scattered at the military memorial parade grounds maintained by the duke’s private purse.

The ashes of the troops fallen in this current conflict were due to begin arriving back home soon, and Sathmin expected to be attending all the services. The memorial grounds were a quiet, serene place that until relatively recently had seen only weekly or monthly use as the elder and infirm passed on at great age. She didn’t look forward to their new more frequent use or the changed tone that would come when services for old veterans were replaced by services for young men killed in combat.

They names of the dead and news of their loss had, of course, out paced the arrival of their ashes. And while Sathmin’s routine visits to the bereaved were no less necessary, in some cases they were significantly less welcome when the shock of loss turned to anger. Worse, sometimes the family chose to blame the Andaran Army-especially in the absence of the official dispatches which might have explained why the young men they’d loved had died-since there were no Sharonians at hand. And through that tenuous contact, the fury made its mad connections to direct itself at Andara’s highest commanders including the Duke of Garth Showma and thus also his wife, Sathmin.

“I understand, Otwal,” she said. “Then you’re welcome to stay with us, and I shall ask Cook to do her very best to tempt you to stay for just as many meals as you can possibly manage.” She turned to Trooper Jugthar Sendahli. “And a very fine welcome to you also Trooper. I’m sorry I’m not acquainted with your family, but the same offer applies to you. We can speed you or your way or host you with us in whatever way makes you feel most comfortable.”

Trooper Sendahli executed a deep bow that caused Gadrial’s brow to furrow. Sathmin recognized it, too, as the greeting of a lowest garthan to a high caste multhari shakira.

“Oh please my friend, none of that! I’m an Andaran woman. If you start treating me like a Mythlan I’m sure I’ll mess up all the ritual responses.” That wasn’t even remotely true, but it was the response she needed to make. Both the trooper and the magister relaxed immensely to hear it, and Jugthar Sendahli even gave her a tentative smile. Sathmin reached out and clasped his forearm, entirely giving herself away by using the garthan to garthan welcome between friends with a purely Andaran nod to complete the motion.

Gadrial’s laugh was music to Sathmin’s ears. She hadn’t totally failed the first introductions at least, and she ushered the party in for lunch after ascertaining that Trooper Sendahli didn’t mind staying to eat and that his family was, as she’d guessed, not housed anywhere near Portalis anyway. It would be here or the temporary barracks for him, and she had every intention that it would be here.

After the court took Sendahli’s testimony, he’d be assigned to a local garrison, and she also intended to ensure that any duties that might naturally be assigned to a visiting trooper were kept flexible enough to allow him a week or two off to visit his family on the far side of the continent.

If army commitments wouldn’t allow that, she’d try to arrange for some of Jugthar Sendahli’s family to visit Garth Showma as her guests. Those invitations were easy enough to arrange between Andarans, but her interactions with garthan ancestry Mythlans were hit and miss. A wrongly phrased invitation could be too easily confused with a Mythlan shakira’s order for a garthan peasant to become a house servant, and Sathmin had no desire to inspire fear. A family recently escaped from Mythal might have any number of psychological wounds she didn’t want to open.

Sathmin danced through the polite social forms carefully. It wasn’t easy-not when Jasak held his shoulders lower than she’d ever seen and had aged more in the last year than he should have from a strict counting of calendar days. And the unease in Shaylar and Jathmar’s faces cried out to her heart, however bravely they tried to hide it…and not just because they were her son’s shardonai. But that, at least, she could do something about, she hoped.

She personally showed the Sharonians to the green suite and offered other rooms to Threbuch and Sendahli. For Gadrial Kelbryan there was a lady’s retiring room and a suite as well, but she expressed a desire to stay at her own home on the Institute grounds. Sathmin had half-expected that and tried not to push as she insisted the offer would remain open.

“If you’d ever like to stop by or perhaps visit for a bit, a tea, a meal, you’re always welcome.”

“Thank you.” Gadrial said. “That was a formal summons from the Commandery wasn’t it?”

Sathmin nodded, grim.

“I’d hoped we could all have one night’s rest first,” Gadrial’s tone was harsh, “but I suppose the military’s waited long enough for us to get here.” She paused. “I saw the red uniform through the doorway when Jasak went in after the duke. Is it an inquiry or a court-martial?”

“Formal summons to a court of inquiry. But-” Sathmin couldn’t leave the magister with false hope “-there will be a court-martial too. Thankhar will have to call for it if no one else does.”

“Of course. An officer does the best he can in a horrible situation, and his supervisors have to dissect his every decision the instant he returns home.” Gadrial laughed with an edge of bitterness. “Welcome to Portalis.”

Sathmin grabbed the magister’s hand. “He has us. We’ll get him through. And his father will ensure he’s treated fairly. Portalis is an odd mix of Mythal, Ransar, and Andara, but there’s honor here. And the Union has to learn why it was horrible out there. You were there and I wasn’t, but it doesn’t sound like everyone else was trying to do their best.”

“No.” Gadrial agreed. “They certainly were not. And I’ll be testifying to that if I have to enchant the doors of court myself to gain an entry.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” Sathmin assured her as she walked the magister out.