The Road to Hell - eARC (53 page)

“
That’s insane!
” Gadrial snapped, and this time there was no hint of apology in her expression when the duke looked at her. “One of the few things we knew for
certain
before we ever started for home was that Magister Halathyn was killed by one of our own infantry dragons! That was absolutely established in the earliest reports, whatever lies may’ve hit the crystals since!”

“Precisely.” The duke shook his head, looking older in that moment than Shaylar had ever seen him look. “Precisely. Apparently whoever’s feeding the troops the false reports is at least attempting to cover himself by saying his information is ‘unconfirmed,’ but as far as I’m concerned, that’s simply a glaring tipoff that it’s deliberate and authorized at the highest levels. Harshu
has
to know the truth. For that matter, he has to know that eventually the truth is going to
come out
. But it’s evident from Ulthar’s report—assuming he’s got it right, and I’m very much afraid he does—that at the very least none of the Expeditionary Force’s senior officers are attempting to correct the ‘rumors’ sweeping through the ranks. And you know as well as I do, Gadrial, exactly how that’s going to inflame our people. Especially the
garthans
like Ulthar’s brother-in-law. I can’t think of anything better calculated to generate atrocities than to allow our own troops to believe the
Sharonians
routinely commit them.”

A crackling silence invaded the room, lingering like a static electricity on the skin, until Shaylar broke it.

“You Grace,” she said very, very carefully, “why do I think those ‘atrocities’ are the reason Jathmar and I are here this evening?”

“Because they are.” The duke faced her squarely, and his shoulders braced. “I’m afraid Two Thousand Harshu, faced with your own people’s huge advantage in communications—apparently on the advice of Five Hundred Neshok—settled on a technique to prevent your Voices from warning anyone up-chain about our advance.”

Shaylar blinked. Sharona had been forced to develop techniques for neutralizing the Voice Talent long ago, but it hadn’t been easy and it had taken centuries. How could the Arcanans, who’d never even
heard
of Talents before Toppled Timber have devised one so quickly?!

Then she felt the spike of pure, unadulterated fury coming off of Jasak and the sudden horror radiating from Gadrial. The emotions were so powerful—and so focused on
her
, for some reason—that they almost knocked her breathless despite the weakening of her Talent.

“I don’t care
who
he is, Father,” Jasak snapped. “I’ll cut his black heart out on the dueling ground!”

“I understand your sentiments, Jasak,” the duke said. “And I share them. But that’s getting ahead of where we are now. What we have to do now is find out if what Ulthar’s reporting is true. We have to
confirm
that, with evidence that will stand up before any tribunal, before we can do anything else. And we have to find out whose idea it
really
was. Harshu’s for the dragon as far as I’m concerned, no matter who came up with it, but given how this information’s reached Portalis—and who in Portalis has it—I have to wonder who else could be manipulating the situation…and why?”

“
Mul Gurthak
,” Gadrial hissed. “We keep hearing about Harshu, but mul Gurthak’s his
superior
, and this has the stink of
shakira
all over it, Your Grace!”

“That’s exactly what I think, my dear. Unfortunately, we can’t
prove
it. In fact, at the moment, we can’t prove
any
of this.”

“Any of
what?
” Shaylar demanded. “What do you all talking about, and why is Jasak so…so
furious
about whatever it is?”

Jasak crossed to the couch upon which she and Jathmar sat. He dropped to one knee in front of her, reaching out and taking her free hand in both of his while he looked straight into her eyes with that unyielding personal integrity she’d come to know so well.

“I’m furious because I’m your
baranal
,” he said. “Because you and Jathmar—
all
your people, even those I’ve never met—have already suffered and lost so much because of this entire stupid, unforgivable nightmare. And because whoever came up with Harshu’s ‘technique’ for neutralizing your Voices only knew they had to be neutralized in the first place because
I
reported the capability.”

“That’s not fair, Jas!” Gadrial said sharply. “You
had
to report that, and you had no idea—no idea at all—anyone would use that information for
this!
”

“For
what?!
” Shaylar demanded again, and Jasak drew a deep breath.

“There’s only one way we could ‘neutralize’ a Voice, Shaylar.” His voice was gentle, yet it was cored with steel, hammered on the anvil of his fury. “We don’t have a spell to do that. The only way
we
know to…‘turn off’ a Talent is to kill whoever has it.”

Shaylar stared at him for a second or two longer, unable to process what he’d just said. And then understanding filled her like a sea of poison. It rushed into her, filling every nook and cranny of her soul with a black, crushing tide of horror. And of guilt. And of hatred.

She snatched her hand out of Jasak’s and slammed back against the couch’s luxurious cushions. Of course that was what they’d done. It was what they did. They
butchered
anything they didn’t understand! But they couldn’t have done it—couldn’t have
known
to do it—if not for her. If she hadn’t survived, if she hadn’t told them about her Talent, if
Jasak
hadn’t passed that information along, then Sharona couldn’t have been surprised the way it clearly had been! And all of those Voices, all those people whose only crime had been to be Talented…

“
Monsters
,” she whispered, staring back and forth between Jasak and his father. “You’re all
monsters!
Mother Marthea, how do you
live
with yourselves?! I
knew
some of those Voices! I’ve touched their minds, shared their thoughts. They were
part
of me, and some of them were only
children!
”

Jasak reached out to her again, but she shrank away, shaking her head convulsively.

“Don’t
touch
me, Jasak Olderhan!” she snapped. “
Don’t!
Not now!”

“Shaylar—”

“No, Gadrial.” Shaylar shook her head again, even harder. “I don’t want to hear it! Not now.” She released Jathmar’s hand to wrap her arms about herself, huddling in on her bones as if she were freezing. She rocked on the couch, like a mother morning the deaths of her own children, and tears ran down her face.

“I don’t want to touch an Andaran—
any
Andaran. I want to wake up and find out this was all some hideous nightmare, but that’s not going to happen. I’m going to have to live with this. I’m going to have to live with knowing what monsters you can be and knowing
I
helped you. I
helped
you, Gadrial—whether I wanted to or not—and the gods only know how many others—how many other
Voices—
are dead because I did that!”

“No, you didn’t,” Jasak said stonily. “You were a prisoner.
You
did absolutely
nothing
wrong, Shaylar. And you’re right, the people who did this, who ordered it—who
permitted
it—
are
monsters. I promise you we
will
find out who those people are and why they’ve done what they’ve done. And I promise you—
I
promise you, not the Union of Arcana—that when I do find out, they’ll face justice for their actions. I don’t care who they are, I don’t care who tries to protect them, and I don’t care whether or not I can do it through the courts. I
will
find them, and they
will
pay.”

She stared at him, hating him in that moment with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t shut down the incandescent edge of sincerity and determination blazing from him like the sun. And when she jerked her eyes from his face, looking over his head at the Duke of Garth Showma, she saw only matching fury and the same flinty determination. The pain and the guilt and the anguish within her fought to reject that recognition, but she couldn’t. As hard as she wanted to, she couldn’t.

“I can’t give your people back their lives, Shaylar,” Jasak Olderhan told her very, very quietly, “but I
will
see to it that whoever took them pays for it.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

January 16

The air in Portalis was oppressive. The walls of the duke’s townhouse, where he stood, alone, staring out at the city from his bedroom window, were worse than oppressive. They seemed to close in around him like the jaws of a vise until he felt himself gasping like a winded runner.

There were doubtless some Sharonians whose hearts were large enough and gentle enough to forgive Arcana—or at least those Arcanans not directly responsible—for what Harshu the Butcher had done. Jathmar wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive these people for that series of atrocities. It was all he could do to forgive Jasak and Gadrial and Jasak’s parents, all of whom had gone to great extremes trying to make what amends they could.

It wasn’t enough. The score Jathmar needed to settle just kept getting larger by the day, and he cherished his anger, rubbing the hands of his soul above its heat. Yet even as he did, he knew a very real component of that anger was directed—irrationally, to be sure, but still directed—against
himself.
Against his inability to
do
anything to protect himself, his world…or Shaylar.

Standing now in front of the carefully spelled window that would neither allow him to leave nor allow anything from the outside to enter, staring in silence at the capital city of his captors, Jathmar was forced to admit that not all Arcanans were outright monsters. Indeed, the fact that Shaylar wasn’t with him today only confirmed that. The duke had flatly—and curtly—denied every request that she return to the court-martial for further testimony. For that matter, the duchess had actually picked up a daggerstone and promised to kill any soldier who tried to drag Shaylar back into a courtroom—
any
courtroom.

The Commandery, thrown into total disarray, had backed down, which was why Shaylar remained safely at the Ducal Palace outside Portalis, where the duchess had vowed to remain at her side during every moment of Jathmar’s absence. She’d canceled every other appointment and made it perfectly clear that during her husband’s absence,
she
commanded Garth Showma’s personal armsmen and that the Garth Showma Guard would meet
any
attempt to intrude upon Shaylar with unyielding force. The depth of the duchess’ devotion to Shaylar had caught him by surprise.

Even more telling, in some ways, was the duke’s reaction. Jasak’s father had presented Jathmar with documents bestowing a lifetime income—a very comfortable income, so far as Jathmar could tell—upon him and his wife. Half of it came from a trust funded entirely by the duke and his wife, which hadn’t really surprised him, given how seriously they took Jasak’s position as their
baranal
. What
had
surprised, him, however, was the fact that the other half had come from the Union of Arcana’s Parliament as the result of a piece of legislation Thankhar Olderhan had rammed through Parliament in less than twenty-four hours.

Jathmar doubted any of the legislators who’d voted for it had the least idea what had driven the duke’s unyielding determination. They didn’t know—yet—what their army had been doing in Sharona’s universes. He found it very hard to remind himself of that, and part of him burned with the need to hurl his own knowledge into their teeth. But he couldn’t. There were so
many
reasons he couldn’t…including the fact that they had no official proof of what was happening.

Jathmar hated admitting that. And that burning part of him didn’t really
care
about all the reasons to keep his mouth shut. The shame and the rage the duke and Jasak felt was genuine. He knew that. But Arcana wasn’t
his
country, and the fact that someone might be trying to manipulate the situation to undercut Andara and the Union Army meant exactly nothing to him.
Let
them come down in ruin!
They
were the ones who’d killed his friends, almost killed him and Shaylar, invaded the universes claimed by Sharona treacherously, under cover of negotiations, and slaughtered every Voice in their path!

That part of him wanted only to hurl the money back into Thankhar Olderhan’s face, but he couldn’t. First, because he was a penniless beggar with a wife and one day, if the gods were kind, a family to support, and beggars couldn’t afford pride. The money would at least give Shaylar and him a measure of independence. They could pay for their own clothing, their own personal items, without the indignity and shame of having to ask for such basic necessities. And, second, because another part of him did know Olderhan was just as determined as his son to find the men behind the Union of Anccara’s murderous crimes and bring them to justice.

So he’d accepted the money, if not the conciliatory gesture Parliament’s contribution to it represented. That, he would never accept, and he’d told the duke so while signing the requisite records with a stylus that recorded his signature in the personal crystal designated to hold Jathmar’s financial affairs. Still, it was a beginning, at least. A first painful step on the road toward true autonomy. At times like this, alone in a spell-locked room, waiting for Jasak’s trial to resume tomorrow, the dream of freedom to come and go as they chose seemed so remote, so unattainable, he might as well have reached for the moon by climbing a ladder too short to touch the sky.

Shaylar, love, I need you beside me tonight
. Separated like this, Jathmar felt only half alive, as though his soul had been ripped down the center. Shaylar was too far away for him to sense her through their damaged marriage bond, and he regretted, again, his decision to support her crusade to join a survey crew.

It was undoubtedly as irrational as blaming himself because he couldn’t protect her now, but that made the regret no less bitter, no less intense. Reasonable or not, he simply could not shake off the belief that
he
was the one who’d brought her to this, to such terrible suffering. Had he known…had he even
suspected
…But this was one risk they’d never considered.

Tomorrow he must face his captors’ relentless questions alone. He knew, already, that he’d spit in their faces before he would reveal anything of military value. He didn’t care, any longer, if their lie-detection spells caught him in an outright fabrication. The rules had changed, permanently, when the duke shared his suspicions with them.

In his memory, he saw again the crossbow quarrel slam into Ghartoun’s throat, choking him to death on blood and steel. Saw again the lightning bolt slam into Barris Kassell. Felt, again, the searing agony of the fireball igniting his hair, his clothing, his very skin. Saw the dragons attacking Shaylar outside a fort. Saw the whole sorry parade of soldiers, politicians, and even servants who looked at them with hatred, with the desire to injure, to strip their very minds bare.

The hatred in his heart ran to the bottom of his soul.

But how could one prisoner exact retribution?

He stood in front of his darkened window, gazing out at the blazing sea of lights that sparkled and glittered and danced across Portalis’ rooftops, domes, spires, and crystalline towers. Another fireworks display detonated in the darkness above the city, spreading a sparkling pattern of light across the stars.

They weren’t true fireworks, of course, since there was no gunpowder involved. They were silent light displays, sent racing skyward by Gifted wizards who performed “sky light” shows for momentous occasions such as state anniversaries, religious holidays, or the celebration of invading and slaughtering people who’d never done Arcanan citizens harm.

From his room high above the rooftops, Jathmar could see the crowds in the streets, tonight. There was a festival underway in Portalis—a rally in support of the Union of Arcana’s “heroic defenders.” He’d seen news crystal reports of other rallies just like it, watched the recorded images as people danced and laughed, consumed sweetmeats and sparkling wine and made toasts to the downfall of Sharona’s portal forts and towns.

Now, as he watched those distant fireworks, the pain in his heart was too deep to express in mere words. Somehow, he vowed, someday, Sharona would avenge those murdered Voices. Someday, somewhere in the widely scattered universes, a Sharonian soldier would avenge the slaughtered civilians in those towns, in Jathmar’s crew. Somehow, Sharona would force Arcana to pay for its sins. All Jathmar could do was pray for that moment to arrive before too many more innocents lost their lives.

He turned away from the “sky light,” soul-sick. He dimmed the window, using a spell-powered controller to turn the “glass” opaque, so the celebration wouldn’t shine into his eyes all night. That done, he climbed into bed and turned out the lights. Tomorrow would be here all too soon.

He needed to be ready for it.