Hell's Gate

"Believe me, Sir, you aren't any more surprised?or confused?by that than I was when they told me! But as nearly as we can tell, these people's Healers can literally force healing. Some of our strongest Healers can work what seem like miraculous cures, don't get me wrong about that. But as nearly as I can determine from what Hilovar and Parcanthi have been able to pick up, these people must have some technique which promotes extraordinarily rapid healing of physical traumas. I'm guessing that it's either very expensive or somehow debilitating to the Healer, because it looks to me as if they applied it first to the most badly injured?the ones who might not have made it at all without intervention?and then worked their way down the list through the men with the next worst wounds. The ones who weren't in danger, or who were injured lightly enough to recover fairly rapidly with less drastic treatment, were the ones still in their sick tents when we took the camp."

"You think one of these … magical Healers of theirs might have been able to repair this man's injuries?" Janaki couldn't quite keep a hint of incredulity out of his voice, and Yar snorted.

"I doubt that, Sir. Neither Hilovar nor Parcanthi is a Healer, of course, so they can't give me the kind of information another Healer could, however good their Traces or Whiffs are. From what they've told me, though, it sounds as if what they these people were doing was forcing the accelerated healing of wounds which would have healed anyway, in time. I'm not saying they weren't serious, life-threatening injuries. Don't get me wrong about that, either. But we're talking about tissues healing and bones knitting?things that would have happened with the passage of time, assuming the patient survived at all. Actually … regenerating something like destroyed nerve tissue, or treating a serious brain injury?" for a moment, Yar's voice darkened and his eyes met Janaki's grimly, dark with the memory of who had apparently suffered a serious head injury at Fallen Timbers "?would require an entirely different order of ability. I'm not prepared to say it's flatly impossible, but I'd say it's very unlikely. Unfortunately."

He was silent for a few seconds, brooding on what might have been if the other side's Healers had been capable of that sort of true miracle, then shook himself and continued.

"At the same time, though, if we had one of their Healers, we could probably get this man as recovered from his physical injuries as he's ever going to get before we started trying to transport him. In that case?if all we had to worry about was his mental and emotional state?I wouldn't be anywhere near as concerned as I am about his prognosis."

"I understand. And, like you, I hate to lose any Healer, whoever's uniform he's wearing." Janaki shook his head. "For that matter, to be honest, if they really do have that sort of a healing technique, we need to figure out what it is and learn to duplicate it as quickly as we can?for a lot of reasons."

"Agreed, Sir," Yar sighed. "Agreed."

The Healer stood a moment longer, gazing down at the stone-faced, totally nonresponsive man in the cot, then shook himself.

"Most of the rest of their wounded are in far better shape for transport," he said more briskly. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you what I mean, and then we can discuss?"

He led the Crown Prince towards the other side of the hospital tent, and Janaki followed after one more glance at the rigid, dead-eyed man responsible for so much suffering and death.

"Darcel Kinlafia?"

Kinlafia jerked as the unfamiliar voice spoke from directly behind him. He whipped around, and found himself staring at a man who was decidedly on the tall side, even for a Ternathian, in the uniform of an Imperial Marine platoon-captain.

Jumpy as a flea on a hot griddle, Janaki thought, reaching up one hand to reassure Taleena as the falcon bridled on his shoulder. Then he realized why the other man was that way. Post combat stress burned in the haunted eyes of the sun-browned man with shaggy hair that needed a barber's shears. Kinlafia was probably no more than ten years or so older than Janaki himself, but he looked far older than that at the moment.

"Yes." Kinlafia cleared his throat, easing his elbow back from its desperate clamp on the butt of his holstered pistol. "I'm Kinlafia. And you're … ?"

"Platoon-Captain chan Calirath," Janaki said, and the Voice's eyes widened.

"Good gods." He swallowed. "How can I help you, Sir? Your Highness? Your Grand Highness?"

His face had gone red as he stumbled over the correct form of address for a Ternathian imperial crown prince, and Janaki gri

"Platoon-Captain chan Calirath is fine. In fact, in light of how closely the two of us will be working together on this project, you might even opt for Janaki." Kinlafia gaped at him, and Janaki shrugged. "I don't stand on a lot of formality out here. In fact, I hate it. And, let's face it?I'm a pretty damned junior officer when all's said and done, after all."

Kinlafia's jaw was still scraping the ground, and Janaki sighed. It was always the same, although at least the military seemed to have figured out how to take it more or less in stride. No doubt because the military had its own chain of command and rules of seniority, which gave it a convenient pigeonhole marked "officer, junior, one" rather than "ruler after the gods, future, one." Still, he'd had more than enough experience even with fellow Marines, much less civilians, to understand how it worked. Occasionally, though, he wished his conversations with people he hadn't met before could be as ordinary as everyone else's conversations seemed to be.

"Look, just think of me as the officer assigned to escort our prisoners to the rear while simultaneously cleverly extracting politically and militarily critical information from them. Try to forget about the rest of it, would you? It's a damned nuisance, frankly, having people trip over their feet and stumble over their tongues every time I show up somewhere or run into someone new. And bad as it is here, it's even worse back home. I've just about made up my mind to stay in the Corps as long as they'll let me hide out here."

Kinlafia blinked at him. Then, all at once, he relaxed and actually managed a grin. It wasn't much of a smile, not on that grief and anger-grooved face, but it was genuine. And, as he saw it, Janaki also had a Glimpse of the warmhearted, humorous man who'd once lived behind that face . . and how important that man might prove to be. And not just to Sharona, the prince realized as his sister's features wavered through the same Glimpse. What in the names of all the gods, he wondered, did this man have to do with Andrin? But the Glimpse had vanished almost as quickly as it had come. Its echoes hummed and quivered down inside him, with a deep, burning sense of true urgency and buzzing about in his bones with a familiar sense of frustration. He couldn't pin it down, couldn't take it by the throat and make it make sense, yet he knew it had been a true Glimpse. Something that would come to pass, not merely something which might.

"Really?" Kinlafia said, obviously oblivious to Janaki's Glimpse. "I guess I hadn't thought of it that way. All right, I'll do my best to forget who you are?and who you're related to."

"Thanks," Janaki said dryly, suppressing any outward sign of his Glimpse with the thoroughness of long practice. "Actually, if the Corps would let me, I'd probably go ahead and trade on a bit of that familial fame after all, if it would let me spend an extra day or so right here instead of heading straight back. Trust me, even a Calirath's imperal arse gets damned tired of a saddle after a week or two! Unfortunately, they want these people?and you?back up the chain as quickly as we can get you there."

"Me?" Something almost like suspicion flared at the backs of Kinlafia's eyes.