The Road to Hell - eARC (43 page)

“I respect Otwal Threbuch for the incredibly difficult tasks he performed. He survived that first firefight, when we were shooting down every man we could center in our gun sights. He managed to reconnoiter our portal fort, survived the
second
battle, and slipped across to the Arcanan side of a guarded portal without being caught.
Any
man who can do that has my respect. But he deserves my respect far more for the way he broke the news of Halathyn vos Dulainah’s death to Gadrial.”

That surprised Brith Darma.

“Why?” he frowned.

“He had to tell her that a man she loved as a second father had been killed—
by his own soldiers
. I’ve seen a lot of soldiers. Every portal my crew passed through has a fort sitting in it. We stopped at every one of those forts, picking up supplies, replacing gear. I’ve seen a lot of men like Chief Sword Threbuch, the kind of men who find it difficult to talk to civilian women, to talk about
anything
emotional, whether happy or painful. Yet he broke that ghastly news to her gently, on his knees and with tears in his eyes. I
profoundly
respect a man like that.”

Then her voice went scathing, again.

“But
you
,” she raked him with her gaze just as rudely as he’d raked her, “haven’t even bothered to give me your bare name. I don’t know how things are done in your society, but in
mine
, gentlemen and soldiers—particularly
officers
—are neither deliberately arrogant, nor rude, nor cruel to women.”

The second silence was even worse than the first.

This woman was
dangerous
.

Brith Darma sat rigidly still, staring down at her through eyes trying to widen in shock and dismay. She might be a prisoner, but she was neither cowed nor frightened, and she was far, far from alone broken. Despite every ordeal this woman had endured, despite facing a lifetime of house arrest, she retained enough spirit to spit in his eye and make him cringe in shame.

If a Sharonian civilian, a
woman
, displayed this magnitude of sheer guts, it was little wonder the men who wore the Sharonian uniform had smacked Hadrign Thalmayr into the mud like a swatted mosquito. These people were
trouble.
Brith Darma studied her in silence for a moment, mulling over possible responses. He decided to address her barbed and accurate accusation of rudeness with an attempt to judge her reaction to authority.

“You want to know who we are? Very well. Fleet Third Kordos is on this board as a representative of the Arcanan Navy. His rank is the third highest possible for a naval officer. Commander of Legions Githrak is the head of Army Intelligence. And I am Horvon Fosdark, Earl of Brith Darma and Commander of Wings for the Arcanan Air Force. My rank is the second highest in the Air Force.”

Her smile and formal curtsey shocked him. “Thank you, My Lord. I won’t say it’s any kind of pleasure to meet you, but it’s much nicer to at least know
who
is shouting at me.” She then folded her hands neatly in front of her once more and waited.

He sat blinking in consternation. She was too damned
small
to be this much trouble. He frowned down at her where she stood simply waiting for him to bring forth his next shout, and her attitude and accusations stung even deeper than she probably realized, since one of the tenets of the Andaran code of conduct was the importance it placed on how an officer and gentleman, particularly one born into the peerage, treated ladies. Worse yet, the fact that she surprised him on a constant basis worried the hell out of him. If he couldn’t accurately predict the responses of a civilian prisoner of war, how poorly would he and his brother officers fare against
her
world’s officers?

“You said our soldiers hunted you down like a dog,” he said finally. “Explain.”

Her recitation was cool, detailed, and astonishingly clear, both in the sequence of events and thoughts and emotions she’d experienced at the time. She even repeated the shouts she and others nearby had traded, fighting off the attack from flanks and rear. He finally interrupted with a question.

“How is it you can give us such a detailed description
weeks
after an event that was emotionally and physically traumatic? None of the other witnesses recalled the kind of detail you’ve been so glibly repeating.”

She didn’t react angrily to what amounted to an accusation of lying—or more accurately, stretching the truth. Nothing she’d said had triggered the lie-detection spells, which would have caused an indicator light on the wall behind her to glow instantly. Given her earlier reactions, he expected her spit in his face, again, for such a criticism, but she didn’t. She merely blinked in surprise.

“Of course they couldn’t. They don’t have my Talent. Jasak and Gadrial are Gifted, but they can’t do what I do. I’m a Voice.”

Brith Darma frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand. What do you mean by that? What does being a Voice have to do with describing something that happened to you?”

“Voices have perfect recall.”

Brith Darma
blinked in surprise, this time.

“Perfect recall?” His voice was flat with disbelief.

“Of course. All Voices do. It’s part of the Talent. We have to transmit long, complex messages, whether we’re in government service or work in a corporate office, sending complex legal documents to another company’s Voice or working in the news business, transmitting news stories. Perfect recall’s been bred into us, so to speak.”

Githrak leaned forward abruptly. “Prove it!”

She repeated every word she and Brith Darma had spoken since her arrival in this room. She got it right. Terrifyingly so. She repeated things Brith Darma had already forgotten. She captured the intonations of his voice with a stunning mimicry, duplicating the emotional effect he’d striven to portray with eerie, chilling accuracy. She even described things she’d merely observed: facial expressions, movements, Kordos’ habit of toying with his stylus while listening.

A swift glance as Kordos and Githrak revealed horrified expressions. Brith Darma understood that reaction in his bones. Not only could the enemy transmit across vast distances, the enemy could do so with terrifying accuracy, not only what they’d heard, but what they’d seen, every tiny detail of it. Even a prisoner of war could transmit critical intelligence data. It was one thing to read Hundred Olderhan’s report that this woman had transmitted every instant of the Toppled Timber battle; it was quite another matter to have that report graphically demonstrated.

Brith Darma deliberately drew another slow, careful breath, then asked, “How many Talents are there?”

“What?” Surprise touched her eyes. “Clarify your question, I mean, so I’ll know how to answer.”

Why did such a simple question surprise her?

“How many Talents are there? We have two prisoners. You and your husband. Both have Talents.
Different
Talents. Here, a Gift means you can manipulate magic. Some people have stronger or weaker Gifts: magistrons are Gifted in portions of the magic field touching upon living things; magisters work primarily with
non
living things, but within that broad categorization, a Gift merely means an ability to work with spellware and the magic field. There’s no…specialization within Gifts. But you and your husband are fundamentally
different
from one another. How many different Talents are there? And how many of your people have them?”

She held his gaze steadily when she answered. “I don’t know how many different Talents there are. New ones appear unexpectedly from time to time, which makes it difficult to count them. I know or have heard of dozens.”

“And how many of your people have them?”

“About eighty percent.”

The truth spell light never even flickered, and horror cascaded through the Earl of Brith Darma.
Eighty percent
of their population were Talented?! Barely
twenty
percent of Arcanans were Gifted! If they had that huge an edge in these “Talents” of theirs…

He fought to control his expression, but some tiny glitter of satisfaction in her eye told him he’d failed. He sat there for a moment, trying to think of where to go next, feeling irrationally as if
he
was the prisoner and she the captor. But then Commander of Legions Githrak cleared his throat.

“If I may, Sir?” he said calmly. Brith Darma nodded brusquely, and the intelligence specialist looked at Shaylar. “And are all of them as strongly Talented as you and your husband, Madam Nargra?” he asked.

Something other than satisfaction flickered in her eye, but she smiled very slightly, like a fencer acknowledging a hit.

“No,” she said courteously. “One of the qualifications for a Voice with one of the survey teams is a particularly strong Talent. Obviously, the same is true of every other Talented member of a team like ours, given how far from our home base and any support we operate.”

Once again the indicator light remained dark, and Brith Darma felt a cautious sense of relief.

“I see,” Githrak said. “And what percentage of those with ‘Talents’ are sufficiently powerful to be trained to use those abilities? In a professional sense, I mean. As a way for them to earn their livings?”

“Perhaps twenty out of a hundred,” Shaylar replied, manifestly wishing she didn’t have to.

Again, the indicator light remained dark, and the relief surging through Brith Darma became a torrent, although he did his best to conceal it. Their
effective
percentage of Talented people was no higher than the Union of Arcana’s percentage of Gifted people. Of course, depending on how large their population was, the total number of Talented people could still far surpass the Union’s Gifted population. And if it did, their non-Talented population would be far larger, as well, an eventuality he did not enjoy contemplating.

“How large is Sharona’s population?” he asked, taking back control of the interrogation…and reminding himself
very
firmly not to give the intelligence officer a grateful look.

“I have no idea.”

He stared hard at her. He wanted to accuse her of lying, but the lie-detection spells still refused to trip the warning light.

“Why not?” he asked.

“We’ve spread across so many universes, I’m not even sure how many we’ve colonized. We’ve never done a formal census to count how many of us there are. We’re more interested in exploring, colonizing, building factories and forts, mines and farms than we are in counting people. Why waste time when there’s so much work to be done, building a multi-universe civilization? One that’s strong and healthy and productive. Our priorities are focused on building and living, not pigeon-holing and counting and controlling everyone.”

The lie-detection light remained stubbornly dark, and Brith Darma sat back, contemplating her, what she’d said. She simply stood there, calmly waiting for the next question. A group of people who didn’t know how many members it had sounded like a slipshod bunch of backwoods barbarians, but for one thing. Their technology—the weaponry and other equipment—as well as their extremely effective use of it in combat suggested otherwise. Strongly so. Underestimating them could well prove fatal. Of course, so could
over
estimating them.

Before he could frame the next question, Kordos glanced at him and arched one eyebrow.

“May I?” the Navy officer asked, and Brith Darma nodded. Then Kordos leaned sharply forward, scowling thunderously at Shaylar. “However many of you there are, do you seriously expect us to believe that these mental Talents of yours aren’t weapons?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything I say.” Her glance at Kordos was cool and appraising. “I’ve never met such suspicious people in my life.”

“
We’re
suspicious?” Kordos snapped. “Your people launched a full bore attack through a portal—an attack that, unlike the affair you describe—most definitely
wasn’t
the result of confusion and a sudden encounter! It was clearly carefully planned before it was executed, and you massacred a complete company of our troops! And then, according to what little information we do have, your ‘negotiators’
murdered
our envoys and their entire security escort. And you call
us
suspicious?”

For just an instant, Brith Darma thought they’d found the way to frighten her. The Voice’s face went parchment white and a tremor shook through her. Then she exploded.

“Don’t you
dare
sit there on your sanctimonious Andaran arse and regurgitate the same swill your ‘journals’ printed! Otwal Threbuch admitted your officer in charge of that ‘complete company’ of yours tried to kill an unarmed Sharonian officer asking for
me
—by
name
, damn you—under a flag of truce! That officer tried to commit
murder
.

“By all the gods and goddesses of Sharona, the bastards in that camp deserved what they got! Most of them had tried to kill me. Tried hard. If you expect me to feel sorry that some of those men were already wounded because I shot them, you’ll be waiting a long time for it. The only man in that whole camp I shed tears for was Halathyn…”

To Brith Darma’s horror,
that
was what broke her.

She stood there, shaking and magnificent, her eyes rimmed red, and wept while talking about roses made of light and childlike wonder and kindness to terrified, traumatized captives, and all the other reasons a whole civilization had loved Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah.

And the lie-detector light remained dark.

If this wisp of a girl was Sharona’s norm, Arcana was in desperate trouble, and he had a sinking, hollow-gut feeling that there were altogether too many people just like her on the other side of the portal she’d walked through before running into Jasak Olderhan’s platoon. She’d been wronged. Hugely—
devastatingly
—so. Worse, her people knew she had. And they knew Hadrign Thalmayr had exhibited the moral judgment of a jackal.

Worse, if her “Voice” ability functioned the way she said it did—if the rest of Sharona had received the terrifyingly accurate report of what she and her comrades had endured that he was sinkingly certain they had—there was only one way they could possibly respond. They’d be out in force, demanding blood vengeance, and he couldn’t find it in himself to blame them. Yet it was his job to defend the Union of Arcana and its vital interests. As disastrous a course as it was bound to be, the Union would have no choice
but
to fight these people, and it was up to him and his fellows to do that fighting…however much they privately sympathized with Shaylar, her husband, and their dead companions. They had no choice, and he wanted to scream at the utter damned fools who’d botched this so badly and landed Arcana in such a foul snare.