Hell's Gate

"It is done," he murmured.

Shalassar's heart shivered under Thaminar's arm, and they looked up into Tharsayl's face, more than half-dreading, even now, what they might see there. The chief of staff loomed up across the last of the golden sunset as he straightened and looked back at them.

"The amendment was sustained by a single vote more than was required, and Uromathia, as was agreed, has formally ratified the Act," he said simply. "We have a new Emperor: Zindel chan Calirath. Zindel XXIV of Ternathia … and Zindel the First of Sharona."

Thaminar's breath exploded out of him. Until it lifted, he hadn't truly realized how heavy the weight of his fear had been. Despite all he'd said to Shalassar, all the arguments logic and reason could present, he'd been so afraid that at the last minute …

"Mother Marthea," he whispered, feeling Shalassar's matching relief rippling through her, "thank you for this mercy."

A burst of light dazzled their eyes for just an instant; then the sun slipped down past the edge of the world, and he realized that their long vigil here by the sea had come to its close, after all.

"Let me take you in, love," he murmured to Shalassar. "You're cold and tired."

She turned in his arms, peering up into his eyes, and then her eyes lit with their first real smile since the dreadful news had arrived.

"So are you," she said. "And … I'm actually hungry."

She sounded almost surprised, and Thaminar crushed her close for just a moment, nearly weeping with relief. Then he stood and reached down, pulling her up from the sand, and walked slowly with her back to the home they'd made together over so many years.

They were just passing the dock, when the bell rang. The sound startled them, and they paused. Then Shalassar gave Thaminar's hand an apologetic squeeze and hurried out onto the dock. He and Tharsayl followed her more slowly, then stopped.

It was a dolphin. There was just enough light to see its sleek hide, glistening wetly where the elegant snout had lifted out of the water to reach the bell pull, and Shalassar knelt down beside it, resting one hand on the dolphin's head, just behind one large, liquid eye.

Those eyes had always seemed to Thaminar to watch her?and him?with deep and endless curiosity whenever one of these beautiful, mysterious creatures came calling at their dock. But there was something different about it, this time, and he stiffened as Shalassar's breath caught in obvious surprise.

The dolphin made a sharp staccato, chittering noise that sounded … happy, somehow. Thaminar wasn't actually able to Hear the dolphins his wife Spoke with. But he could sometimes feel echoes of her conversations through their marriage bond, and the dolphin's reaction felt light and buoyant in a way he couldn't explain. It lingered for several moments, then rolled slightly in the water, nodding its head deliberately toward Thaminar and Tharsayl. And then it uttered a strange burbling sound and slipped away from the dock.

It submerged, but only for an instant. Then its dorsal fin reappeared, cutting through the water with a dark V-shaped wake until the entire dolphin suddenly exploded out of the water once more. It leapt into the air, droplets of spray flying high enough to catch the fringe of the setting sun and glitter like a shower of topazes and rubies. The dolphin made a complete flip, three feet above the dark water, then splashed back into its mysterious world and was gone.

Shalassar straightened slowly, turning away from the waves, and Thaminar felt her sense of wonder through the marriage bond.

"They wanted to know if we'd decided yet," she said. "They wanted to know if we'd decided who would lead us."

"They what?"

Thaminar wasn't quite sure he'd heard her preposterous statement correctly. In all the years she'd served as an ambassador, the dolphins had never taken notice of human political affairs. Not like this.

She crossed the dock to his side and slipped one arm around him. She stood beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder, gazing at the spot where the emissary had vanished from sight.

"They knew, somehow, that we were making this choice today," she said softly. "Marthea alone knows how?tonight, I could actually believe She told them! But however they learned about it, they knew. So one of them came to ask, when the light went. He was an emissary I'd never met before, but it felt as if he must be very important in the pod in which he travels, and he was very concerned when he asked."

"What did he say when you told him?" Tharsayl asked in an almost reverent voice, and a smile of wonder spread slowly across her face.

"He didn't say anything. Yet I felt a burst of joy, one unlike anything I've ever sensed in dolphin-kind before. I don't understand it. You may tell King Fyysel that, Dalisar. I don't understand it, but … the dolphins are pleased?very pleased?that Zindel chan Calirath has been chosen to lead us. It felt?"

She hesitated, biting her lip.

"Lady?" Tharsayl prompted gently, and she met his gaze in the steadily darkening evening.

"It felt as though their emissary had reached a decision. A desperately important decision. It's very difficult to put dolphin-speech into human words, but they've decided something. I'm sure of it. Decided something critical, but whether or not they ever tell us what it is … "

She shrugged and held out her palms in a gesture indicating helplessness.

"We may never know. But I find it very intriguing that the dolphins, at least, are paying attention to what happens to human politics. That's never happened before."

"Never?" Tharsayl asked almost sharply, and she shook her head.

"Never. The cetaceans are remarkably indifferent to most of us land-dwellers, on the whole. The great whales are more indifferent than the dolphins or orcas, who are naturally curious souls. But even the dolphins, who enjoy playing with us in the water and almost always help swimmers in trouble, have never shown any interest in how we govern ourselves. Their only 'political concerns' have always been strictly limited to how our actions, our plans, might affect them, and vice versa, not how we reached our decisions in the first place."

Tharsayl stood frowning at the dark water, barely visible now, and his eyes were troubled.

"Crown Prince Danith had a remarkable story to tell his father, the day he came home from here, Lady. The day you learned what had happened."

Thaminar frowned. So did Shalassar.

"When you were linked with the Portal Authority's Voice?" The chief of staff hesitated, clearly choosing his words with care. "There were dolphins here, in the floating ring, and one of the singing whales, and they … reacted to the news.

"Reacted?" Shalassar repeated with a frown. "Reacted how? To what?"

"There came a moment, a terrible moment, when you screamed, Lady," Tharsayl said. "And when you did, the sea came alive. They leapt from the water?all of them. His Highness said … He said the sound that broke from them was unearthly, horrifying. A sound of rage."

Shalassar's eyes went wide in shock. She stared at the chief of staff, and Tharsayl shook his head slowly.

"Representative Kinshe said your pain was so great, Lady, that it spilled across into their minds. They were angry, Lady. Both the Representative and His Highness agreed on that."

"But why?" Shalassar half-whispered, her eyes meeting Thaminar's equally dumbfounded gaze. "I could understand grief. Most of the emissaries who come here knew Shaylar, watched her grow up. Many of them, of the dolphins and orcas, at least, have played with her in the water. But anger? I've never felt anger from a cetacean." She turned a baffled look on Tharsayl. "Why did they say it was anger?"

"I don't know, Lady, but they both felt the same thing. The sound was a sound of rage, and their anger was so deep, so powerful, that Lady Kinshe Felt it through her Healing Talent. The singing whale came completely out of the water Lady. It stood on its tail and bellowed so loudly it shook the windows."