Hell's Gate

The Chief Voice showed his teeth in a smile that was really quite unpleasant, Elivath thought.

"Chava Busar thinks he's clever, and in a brutal sort of way, he is," Perthis said. "And he thinks Uromathia is an ancient empire, and that he's a ruthless sort of fellow. Both of those are true, too. But Ternathia's one hell of a lot more ancient, and the fact that the Caliraths have traditionally put their subjects' best interests first doesn't mean they aren't ruthless. In fact, Darl, if you go back and look at Ternathian history, I think you'll discover that nobody's ever been more ruthless than a Calirath when there was no other way to win. And do you really think Chava is even in the same league as Zindel chan Calirath when it comes to intelligent ruthlessness?"

Elivath opened his mouth. Then he stopped, looking thoughtful, and his frown turned slowly into a smile of its own.

"Actually, when you put it that way," he said finally, "no."

Chapter Forty-Nine

Hadrign Thalmayr lay rigidly on his side on the white-sheeted bed in the airy, sunlit room. His eyes were screwed tightly shut, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and his fists were clenched so tightly that his nails had cut bleeding crescents into his palms.

The breeze through the open window moved gently, almost caressingly across him. He could hear the distant but unmistakable sounds of a drill field: voices shouting orders in a foreign language, whistles shrilling at irregular intervals, the occasional clatter of weapons as troops went through their own version of the manual of arms, and the deep-voiced sound of drill formations counting cadence. The air was cool, the distant background noise?deeply familiar to any professional soldier, despite the fact that he couldn't understand a single word of the orders he overheard?only made the quiet around him even more soothing, and he could almost literally physically feel the relaxing, comforting peacefulness which had settled over this place.

It was all reassuringly calm and normal … and its very normality only made his terror and helpless rage still worse.

The man sitting in the chair beside his bed spoke again, in that same utterly incomprehensible, comforting voice, but Thalmayr wasn't fooled. He squeezed his eyelids even more tightly together and bit his lip, welcoming the pain of the bite as it helped them summon all of his resistance while that insidious, loathsome touch slid once again across the surface of his mind.

It took all he could do not to moan or whimper in terror. He called up all of his hatred, all of his fear and disgust, to bolster his defiance, but it was hard. Hard.

He never knew exactly how long it lasted this time. Sometimes the man behind that lying, soothing voice stayed longer; sometimes he gave up sooner, and left. But he always came back, Thalmayr thought despairingly. And he always would come back, again and again. Until, finally, he managed to breach his victim's defenses at last, and the mere thought of what would happen then filled Hadrign Thalmayr with horror.

But eventually, finally, his tormentor gave up … this time. The commander of one hundred lay rigidly still, refusing to move or even open his eyes until he was positive the other man had truly left. That he wasn't just waiting, lurking above the bed like a vulture.

He lay there for a long time, then slowly and cautiously let his eyes slip back open. The chair beside the bed was empty, and he heaved a tremendous sigh of relief and finally allowed himself to relax, at least a bit.

He wanted to roll over onto his back, but the sandbags holding him on his side prevented it. Which, he admitted, was just as well, given the incision across his spine.

His teeth clenched again as he thought about that wound and all the pain their so-called "healers" had inflicted upon him. Butchers?barbarians! He'd been right about them all along, and he cursed Sir Jasak Olderhan in vicious mental silence as he remembered the other hundred's precious "shardonai."

I should've fed the pair of them to the nearest godsdamned dragon! he thought savagely. Them and all their fucking friends!

He'd long since figured out that that sneaky little bitch with her bruised face and pitiful "poor me" eyes had somehow managed to get a message out to her butchering friends. He still didn't know how, but the way they'd flung her name at him again and again in their questioning proved she had … and the way they kept battering at his own mind suggested several ugly possibilities as to how she had.

The whole time that fucking idiot Olderhan was standing there 'protecting her,' she was busy telling her friends where we were and how to come find us and kill us! It's the only way they could've known she was still alive!

His molars ground together. It was all her fault. She was the one who'd brought the attack in on Thalmayr's command. It wasn't his fault. There was no way he could possibly have known what the little bitch was doing, that she'd managed to bring an entire godsdamned regiment down on him! If it hadn't been for her, his men would still be alive. Magister Halathyn would still be alive.

And Hadrign Thalmayr wouldn't be the half-paralyzed prisoner of the butchers who'd started all of this by massacring that brainless incompetent Olderhan's men in the first place. The butchers who'd somehow transported him over what had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of miles without his remembering a single thing about the journey. The butchers who cut open the flesh of helpless captives in some obscene pretense of trying to "help them," and then, when they were weakened by the pain, tried to rape away any useful information in their minds.

Well, they might break him in the end. Any man could be broken by enough torture, enough cruelty, and he had no way of knowing what other, even more horrendous powers of mental destruction they might yet be able to bring to bear upon him. But they wouldn't find it easy. He swore that to himself yet again, repeating it like a precious mantra of defiance, while despair poured over him with the gentle, soothing breeze.

"Frankly, Sir," Company-Captain Golvar Silkash said, "I'm at a loss." The Healers' Corps officer shook his head, his eyes unhappy. "I've done all I can, and Tobis is still trying, but I've never had a patient with this man's attitude. I just don't know what else we can do to get through to him."

Namir Velvelig grunted unhappily. It wasn't the first time Silkash had reported the same things to him, but the regiment-captain kept hoping that somehow, some way, something would change. But it didn't, of course, he thought moodily, playing with the mug of tea on his desk. Silkash had a matching mug in his left hand, but the Healer had been ignoring it ever since he sat down.

"Is Tobis right, do you think?" he asked.

"What? About the man having at least a trace of Talent of his own?"

"Yes. Could that be what's going on?"

"I suppose it could," Silkash said with a grimace. "Tobis knows a lot more about that sort of thing than I do, but I think even he's shooting blind on this one. We just plain don't have any experience with people who've never even heard of Talents!"

Velvelig grunted again, gazing out his window, where the steadily setting sun sank slowly behind the Sky Bloods, as if he imagined he could somehow find the answers he needed out there in the bronze and copper glow gilding the mountains. Company-Captain Silkash was the finest surgeon and medical doctor with whom Namir Velvelig had ever had the pleasure of serving. But, unlike the majority of the Healers' Corps's commissioned officers?or Platoon-Captain Tobis Makree, his assistant surgeon, for that matter?he had no Talent at all. That put Silkash at a distinct disadvantage when it came to trying to analyze the Arcanan prisoner's reaction to Makree's Healing Talent. And, as Silkash had just pointed out, no one had ever had to deal with a patient who didn't even know what the Healing Talent was!