Hell's Gate

"Try hard save life," Skirvon insisted, dredging up more tears. "But bad, bad hurt. Hard talk. Long, long walk go healer. Arcana big, big grief. Arcana, Sharona, no shoot. Ne-go-ti-ate," he said with exaggerated care. "No shoot."

"If she was so badly hurt," chan Tesh demanded coldly, "how did you manage to get enough of our language out of her to learn to talk to us?"

Skirvon saw the man's knuckles whiten around the pistol grip and realized abruptly?emotionally, not just intellectually?that his own life hung by the proverbial thread. Obviously, Olderhan's estimate of Shaylar's importance in these people's eyes had been on the mark. In fact, Skirvon was begi

He managed (he hoped) to keep his thoughts from racing across his expression, but it suddenly occurred to him that his strategy of insisting Shaylar was dead might have been a mistake. Returning her and her husband before they'd been thoroughly interrogated back in Arcana or New Arcana was clearly out of the question, of course. He'd figured that insisting they were both dead?and he knew from Olderhan's report that Shaylar had believed Jathmar was dead even while she was busy sending her accursed report back home?would be the simplest and neatest way of keeping their return off the table. Now he was suddenly confronted by the fact that because he'd claimed she was dead he couldn't put her return onto the table even if he wanted to. Which, given the hatred looking at him out of all those Sharonian eyes suddenly seemed as if it might have been a very good idea, indeed.

Unfortunately, there was no going back now.

"She hurt bad," he said instead. "Head hurt?inside." He tapped his own temple, where?again, thanks to Olderhan's invaluable report?he knew the little bitch actually had been injured. "Not … work right," he continued, deliberately searching for words. "She talk. Not to us?to her. We recorded it."

He intentionally used the Andaran verb for "recorded," and chan Tesh glared at him right on cue.

"That's the second time you've used that word?'record,'" he said. "What does it mean?"

"It mean?" Skirvon paused and rolled his eyes in obvious frustration. "Not know words. Can show. Please?"

He managed not to heave an overt sigh of relief as chan Tesh's eyes narrowed. The company-captain's anger didn't disappear, but he was obviously forcing it back under control.

He even managed to take his hand away from his pistol.

"Show how?" he asked skeptically.

"Please, bag," Skirvon said, pointing to his own briefcase. chan Tesh cocked his head for a moment, then nodded and said something to the big chief sword. Although Skirvon's Ternathian language skills were far better than he was prepared to admit, they weren't good enough to follow the rapidly spoken sentence. On the other hand, they didn't need to be, as the noncom handed him the briefcase.

Skirvon opened it cautiously, then withdrew his PC. To his surprise, chan Tesh tensed obviously, and the diplomat found it less than easy to ignore the half-dozen rifles which were suddenly pointed in his direction once again.

"What is that?" chan Tesh asked sharply.

"Is only personal crystal," Skirvon said soothingly, once again using the Andaran words and holding the crystal up. chan Tesh looked blank.

"What does it do?" he demanded.

"Rock hold talk. It records talk."

"What?" chan Tesh blinked.

"Hold talk," Skirvon said again, and murmured the activating incantation. The PC's glow as he initiated the spellware was lost in the brilliant sunshine, of course, but it was angled so that he could see its display. He tapped the menu with the tip of his stylus, calling up the special, limited word list they'd manufactured from Magister Kelbryan's primer specifically for this exchange. Then he touched the playback command.

"Shaylar," a woman's voice said.

Putting together that word list had required days of careful work. He and Dastiri had deliberately limited the audio recordings Magister Kelbryan had downloaded to them, choosing individual words on the basis of how clear Shaylar's voice had sounded when they were recorded. All of them were recognizably her voice, but distorted by fatigue … or pain. In some cases, he knew, the pain had been purely emotional, but that didn't matter for his purposes. What mattered was that the chosen words sounded like someone who'd been severely injured. Like someone who was muttering to herself, wandering through her own injury-confused thoughts.

He'd expected a powerful emotional reaction, but not the one he got.

chan Tesh's jaw fell. Literally.

Skirvon stared at him and experienced a sudden epiphany. Despite everything Olderhan had told him, despite his study of the notes Kelbryan had meticulously recorded, despite even chan Tesh's obvious reaction when his chief sword had found the PCs in the first place, he hadn't really believed until that moment that Sharonians had no experience with magic. He couldn't believe it, because no one could possibly build a real civilization without it. He'd been absolutely convinced that Shaylar and Jathmar had been shamming in a successful effort to confuse and mislead their captors.

But chan Tesh wasn't shamming. The company-captain was clearly a disciplined, confident officer, and what his forces had done to Hadrign Thalmayr's command was brutal evidence of his competence. Yet his astonishment at hearing a simple recorded word played back from a completely standard personal crystal was total. Indeed, it appeared to border on superstitious terror, and deep inside, Rithmar Skirvon gri

Olderhan had been right. They had no magic!

Why, they weren't nearly as formidable as he'd first believed. If they couldn't do something this simple, they were babes in an adult world?a mean and nasty one. mul Gurthak had been right, too. All they had going for them was their machines, the "guns" they'd used?used by surprise?in both violent encounters. And, as mul Gurthak had pointed out, it was only that surprise, that totally unanticipated ability of theirs to throw not a spell, but a physical projectile, through a portal which had defeated Thalmayr.

Skirvon had been convinced these people must actually have their machines and their "Talents" in addition to the magic which was the necessary foundation for any advanced civilization. But they genuinely didn't have it, and that reordered everything he'd thought about them.

But first things first, he told himself firmly. First things first.

He waited until chan Tesh shook himself.

"How did you do that?" The Sharonian's voice was ever so slightly hoarse, Skirvon noted with carefully hidden satisfaction.

"Rock is personal crystal," he repeated the Andaran phrase carefully. "Shaylar talk, it record?" again he used the Andaran "?her word. Then spellware?" yet another Andaran word "?work words. Make … list our words, your words."

He tapped the menu again, bringing up the Andaran and Ternathian word for "word" side by side in the display, then angled it so that chan Tesh could see it. The company-captain's eyes narrowed once again. Clearly, the phonetic spelling of the Ternathian word meant no more to him than the totally unknown characters of the Arcanan alphabet floating decided. Equally clearly, he was intelligent enough to realize what he was seeing. He stared into the crystal for several seconds, then shook himself and looked back at Skirvon.

"So you say this … 'personal crystal' of yours let you capture Shaylar's words and then analyze our language?"

"Please," Skirvon said, summoning up a pained expression, "too many words. Not have big number."

chan Tesh scowled in evident frustration.

"If you could do that," he gestured at the PC," why couldn't you save Shaylar?"