Hell's Gate

Without knowing about these people's flying creatures, and given the way the swampy terrain would hamper any sort of ground-based movement, Darcel wouldn't have any reason to believe that she could have been transported out of his range from the portal in no more than a week. Which meant that when he'd tried to contact her and gotten only silence?and hadn't heard anything from her, either?he'd undoubtedly assumed that it confirmed his worst fears.

But there was nothing she could do about that, and so she did her best to put the thought behind her. Instead, she considered what Jathmar had said from another perspective.

"Gadrial's in a state of shock," she said very quietly into Jathmar's ear. "She's lost someone?someone precious to her."

Jathmar glanced at her sharply, then his nostrils flared.

"That man at the camp," he said softly. "The one who looked Ricathian."

"The one with the words in the crystal, and the fire rose." Shaylar nodded. "Gadrial was close to him, emotionally. I could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. They'd known each other long enough for that easy bantering between good friends, and then she had that fight with him just before they left. Her and Jasak both, now that I think about it. You don't suppose … ?"

"I don't know," Jathmar said, still softly. "But I'd hate to think anything happened to that fellow."

Shaylar blinked, unable to conceal her surprise. The marriage bond made it impossible for her to be unaware of Jathmar's feelings where all of their captors were concerned. But that same bond made it impossible for him to misunderstand her surprise, and he shrugged.

"It's obvious he wasn't a soldier, any more than she is." He nodded slightly in Gadrial's direction. "Neither of them wore uniforms. And, well, I don't know how to say it. There was something about him …" He shook his head, unable to find exactly the right words. "I hope Grafin blew the rest of them into an Arpathian hell, but I'd be sorry to learn that that particular man had been killed. What was his name?" He frowned. "It started with an 'H,' didn't it?"

Shaylar glanced at the others, then leaned even closer to her husband.

"Halathyn," she said in a half-whisper, and he nodded.

"Yes. That was it." A regretful sigh escaped him. "I suppose they'll tell us, eventually. Or maybe we can ask. But not yet. I really don't think now's a good time at all."

Shaylar glanced from Gadrial's tear-swollen eyes to Jasak's thin-lipped, pale silence, and then at the big, grey-haired soldier's clenched jaw and strangely disturbed eyes.

"Right," she agreed firmly. "We ask later. Much later."

Then the massive wooden bar at the gate rattled and clanked as the sentries unfastened it and it creaked ponderously open. They didn't open it all the way?just far enough to let Jasak, Gadrial, and the soldier whose name she didn't know pass through the opening more or less abreast. She and Jathmar went next, followed by several other soldiers, including one in chains.

The sight of one of Jasak's soldiers in manacles and leg irons startled her into staring. She hadn't noticed him while standing at the gate, but she recognized him. Not by name, of course?she had no idea who he was, or what his duty might have been?but she'd seen him that first ghastly day, as well. He was dark-ski

Despite his chains, he walked with his spine ramrod straight, and he wore an expression of unmistakable aristocratic disdain. His lip curled in the way she'd seen occasional aristocrats sneer back home, particularly those from Othmaliz, who felt they were superior to pretty much everyone else on Sharona simply because their ancestors had retained possession of Tajvana. She'd had to deal with one or two of that sort, and she'd never enjoyed the experience, although not even the most haughty Othmalizi noble had wanted to cross swords with a fully accredited Voice of her stature.

But there was more than simple arrogance to this man. The look the chained prisoner sent Jasak Olderhan as Gadrial and the officer stepped past him contained such malice, such lethal hatred, that Shaylar's breath caught for just a moment. Then another soldier spoke sharply to him, and he stalked through the gate in turn, as though he were some great lord making his way through a gaggle of filthy beggars despite the jingle of his chains.

"I wonder who he thinks he is?" Jathmar murmured.

"Good question," Shaylar agreed.

"I'm not sure I like the idea of sailing on the same ship he does," her husband growled under his breath, gripping her hand tightly.

Since they didn't have most choice in the matter, Shaylar found herself hoping that these people had good locks on their doors. Then she shivered at the thought, since she and Jathmar would be held behind locked doors, as well. Gods' mercy, surely they wouldn't put her and Jathmar in the same cell as that fellow? She shivered again, wondering what he'd done.

The roughly built wharf looked almost rickety, but it was reassuringly solid underfoot, and Shaylar turned her attention to the ship tied up alongside it. Partly, she admitted, she was interested in anything which might distract her from the thought of being confined in the other prisoner's company. But the ship itself was more than enough to claim her attention in its own right, for it was, without reservation, the oddest vessel Shaylar had ever seen, and Jathmar was staring at it in just as much perplexity as she was.

"What on earth makes it go?" he wondered aloud.

Shaylar could only shake her head in bafflement. It wasn't a huge ship, although it was clearly large enough to tackle the open ocean. It was actually a bit bigger than she'd thought it was on the day of their arrival. Of course, she hadn't been in very good shape for making detailed observations at the time, not before their healers had gone to work on her.

This ship was somewhat smaller than the standard Voyager-class ships the Trans-Temporal Express had developed to cross the water gaps in its inter-universal transportation system, but not by very much of. The Voyagers were about four hundred feet long and had a beam of about fifty-five feet, and Shaylar, like everyone who'd ever served in a portal survey crew, was thoroughly familiar with them. They were certainly serviceable craft, if not especially speedy, but they'd been designed primarily as cargo vessels, and their passenger accommodations left much to be desired. On the other hand, in the Voyager, the TTE had produced a design which lent itself to modular construction and mass production. The freighters were literally shipped across intervening stretches of dry land in pieces, carried on huge, special freight cars, and assembled once they reached their destinations.

But if this ship was of roughly the same dimensions, that was about all it had in common with the TTE design.

First, it appeared to be built of wood. That wasn't really all that surprising, in a lot of ways. Wooden hulls were more common than steel hulls for locally produced Sharonian shipping, after all. The TTE's modular designs were one thing, but for most people, it was far simpler to import a gang of shipwrights and the men needed to fell timber to build ships than it was to import enough infrastructure to build steel-hulled vessels in barely explored universes.

But the fact that this one was built of wood did seem odd considering the second obvious difference between it and the Sharonian ships with which she was familiar, because it was a far sleeker design. Whereas a Voyager had a straight, almost vertical stem, this ship's bow was sharply raked, and the hull flared gracefully as it approached deck level. Shaylar was no sailor, but she'd had the opportunity?or misfortune, depending upon one's viewpoint?to experience heavy weather aboard more than one of the TTE ships, and she suspected that this vessel would have provided much more comfortable transport under the same circumstances. It looked far more … modern, for want of a better word, which made its wooden construction one more of the endless anachronisms she'd observed since her capture.