Hell's Gate

"There's no one else to blame, sweetheart. It certainly isn't your fault." He captured her hand, kissed her fingers, and tucked them against his heart. "I know how hard that was, lying to Gadrial just now. I don't think I could have done half as well as you did. She's half convinced you don't know for sure if a message went out."

"Only half," Shaylar muttered, "and Jasak Olderhan won't be so easy to fool."

"No, he won't. Still, you're right. What else should they expect from us? If they were in our shoes, to you think they'd have volunteered that information about magic powering their whole civilization?"

"Probably not," Shaylar agreed dryly. "It would be interesting to know how much information our side's managed to gather from their prisoners." She shivered. "I'm not sure I want to know how we're treating their soldiers, though. We've been so fortunate … "

His arm tightened around her. He didn't need to speak; she could taste his fear for her, his fear about what lay ahead. When Jasak came into the room to explain, Shaylar would know he was telling the truth, if only she could arrange to touch him. But having said as much as she had already, he would undoubtedly be doubly suspicious if she tried anything so obvious. Up until now, their captors had viewed her penchant for touching people as a simple personal habit. She'd been careful to be just as "touchy-feely" with Jathmar as she was with them, but now?

She might never be given another opportunity to touch them again. She faced that probability squarely. And as she did, she also realized that lying to them now and being caught in that lie later would not do them a great deal of good down the road. It might well damage their circumstances, worsen their treatment, incur all sorts of unpleasantness.

The thoughts flowed through her, but before she could discuss them with Jathmar, it was too late. The door opened again, and Jasak Olderhan filled the frame, his eyes hooded as he stared down at them.

Chapter Thirty-Three

He knows, Shaylar realized with a jolt of pure terror. He already knows… .

The cold anger in Jasak's eyes was bad enough, but what lay under that anger had Jathmar moving abruptly, thrusting her behind him, facing Jasak with nothing in his hands but courage.

"If you hurt her," Jathmar said softly, each word enunciated precisely, carefully, "I will do my best to kill you."

Something lethal stirred in Jasak Olderhan's eyes. Then he drew a long, slow breath through his nostrils and let it out again, just as slowly. The glittering threat left his eyes. He was still angry?deeply angry, with a cold, controlled fury?but homicide no longer stared them in the face. Jathmar stayed where he was, anyway.

"Gadrial," Jasak said heavily, "please stay in the passage. I don't want you walking into this cabin."

Shaylar wanted to tell him Gadrial wasn't at risk, but what she felt from Jathmar held her silent. If anything threatened her, Jathmar would use whatever was at hand to keep Jasak away from her. Even Gadrial, the closest thing either of them had to a friend in this entire universe. Her breath sobbed in her throat. This was madness… .

Jasak stepped fully into the cabin and closed the door carefully behind him. He didn't lock it?not that there was much reason to on a ship in the middle of the ocean?but he stood with his back still against it, staring at them for several more seconds. Then he drew another deep breath.

"Gadrial tells me you want to know your status as my prisoners?"

"That's right."

"Well, I'd like to know how you sent a message to your soldiers."

Icy silence lay between them. It lingered, chilling despite the sunlight through the scuttle.

"Do you have any idea," Jasak asked softly, "what your people did to my men?"

"From what I've gathered, about the same thing they did to my crew," Jathmar said in a flat voice.

Jasak's eyes flashed. That murderous look glittered in them again for a moment, but then his nostrils flared.

"All right. I suppose there's a certain justice in that view." He very carefully unknotted his hands, then scrubbed his eyes in a gesture that combined weariness, frustration, and almost unbearable tension in one.

"Do you remember Hadrign Thalmayr?" he asked finally, abruptly.

"The man who replaced you? The one who hated Shaylar and me?"

"Yes." Jasak's voice was as dry as a Shurkhali summer wind. "He was a very …" He paused, clearly searching for words Jathmar's limited Andaran would allow him to understand. "He thought in narrow terms. I tried to convince him to pull out, to abandon that portal at least for a time. We'd already made one mistake, and I didn't want anyone making another one that led to more shooting. But he wouldn't listen. Neither would Five Hundred Klian at Fort Rycharn. They thought it was unlikely there was a body of your soldiers anywhere near our portal. And they thought it was unlikely you'd gotten a message out. But they were wrong on both counts, weren't they?"

"Where they?" Jathmar countered.

"You tell me," Jasak said softly. "And before you do, think about this. I've been adding things up. Puzzling things. We've been holding you for barely two weeks, yet you speak Andaran astonishingly well. How? Nobody learns languages that fast?not in Arcana.

"Then there's your wife's ability to know things about people. She's a very sensitive creature, your wife. Always touching someone. Always concerned. Always so understanding. She understands too much, Jathmar. It's almost like she knows what you're thinking."

He looked past Jathmar, staring directly into Shaylar's eyes, and her insides flinched. But she forced herself to meet his gaze, the way she'd met Gadrial's. It was harder?much, much harder?to simply meet Jasak Olderhan's gaze, let alone lie to those cold-steel eyes. When those eyes tracked back to Jathmar, she nearly sagged in relief. It felt as if someone had turned off the blowtorch they'd been holding on her.

"Then there's the dragon," Jasak added softly.

"The dragon?" Jathmar echoed, genuinely baffled this time.

"Oh, yes. The dragon. You were still unconscious, but Shaylar remembers. Don't you?" The glance he flicked into her eyes felt like a lance driven through her. Then he clicked that glance back onto Jathmar. "We had to airlift you out to save your life. When the transport dragon arrived, we loaded you on with no trouble. But when we tried to load Shaylar, the dragon went berserk. He hated her on sight, and I want to know why. What did the dragon sense about her that we couldn't?

"Stranger still, the dragon's rage seemed to hurt her. Not just terrify her; hurt her. She clutched at her head, and she screamed. Not just once, either. Not just the first time we tried to put her on the dragon's back. It happened again, right after we got airborne. The dragon actually tried to buck us off in midair, tried to reach her with his teeth. But your wife didn't even see that, because she was clutching her head again, screaming in pain. Gadrial had to put her to sleep, knock her unconscious with her healing Gift, just to stop the pain she was in. And to?how did Shaylar put it? To 'get the dragon out of her mind.'"

This time, Shaylar flinched. She couldn't help it. Her memory of that dreadful night was too chaotic, to confused, for detailed recollection, even for a Voice. But she remembered that moment. Remembered her desperate plea to Gadrial. Yet she'd never suspected Gadrial might actually have understood her. The deadly implications of that revelation stabbed through her and she felt the same awareness resonating through the marriage bond with Jathmar.

"Would you care to explain all of that, Jathmar?" Jasak said. "If I hadn't known such things were impossible, I'd have said she was doing something with her mind?something that enraged our dragon, and that the dragon's rage was somehow spilling over into her mind. But that was impossible. Absurd. Except that it isn't impossible, after all, is it? You people have these Talents." He spat the word out like poison. "You do things with your minds. Just what kind of game are the two of you playing with our minds?"