Hell's Gate

The implication was clear; they'd realized?or, feared, at least?that their position was hopeless, so they'd destroyed the evidence of where they'd been. If they were, indeed, a civilian version of Jasak's Scouts, working to survey new universes and map new portals, they would have carried detailed charts that showed the route back to their home universe. From a military standpoint, losing those maps was a major disaster for Arcana. From a political standpoint …

Jasak thought about the reaction news of this battle was bound to trigger?particularly in places like rabidly xenophobic Mythal, whose politicians trusted no one, not even themselves. Especially not themselves. As he thought about them and their probable response, Jasak Olderhan was abruptly glad these people had destroyed their maps, even as the Andaran officer in him recoiled from such blatant heresy.

He told the Andaran officer to shut up, and that shocked him, too. Yet he couldn't help it, for a shiver had caught him squarely between the shoulder blades, an odd prescience quivering through him like a warning of bloodshed and disaster.

Than a log snapped in the fire, jolting him out of his eerie reverie, and the unca

Inside were two … machines, he decided, not knowing what else to call them. In the lid section, there was a glass cover that sealed off a thin metallic needle, flat and dark against a white background. Tiny hatchmarks were spaced evenly around the circular "face" with neat, almost military precision. More alien symbols?letters or numbers, he was certain?marked off eight points around the perimeter.

Someone moved beside the casualty tent, and Jasak glanced up, automatically checking to see if it had been Gadrial. It hadn't, and when he turned back to the device in his hand, his gaze snapped back to the needle. He'd moved the case with the rest of his body, but the needle?which appeared to be floating on a post, able to spin freely?hadn't moved with the rest of the case. Or, rather, it had moved, swinging stubbornly around to point in the same direction as before despite the case's movement.

The discovery startled him, so he experimented, and found that no matter how he turned the case around, the needle swung doggedly to point in the exact same direction: north.

Understanding dawned like a thunderclap. It was a navigation device. But this was no spell-powered personal crystal that oriented its owner to the cardinal directions, as every Arcanan compass ever built did. It was nothing but a flat needle on a post, an incredibly simple mechanical device, powered by nothing he could see. How the devil did it work?

The bottom section of the metal case was much heavier than the lid, providing most of the heft he'd noticed when he first picked it up. Clearly, it housed something dense, and this object, too, had a flat glass face, under which lay another dial with hatchmarks, and another series of letters or numbers of some kind, beside each of the twelve longest hatch lines. There were three needles on this device: a short one which scarcely seemed to move at all; a long one which moved slowly; and a very thin one that moved continuously, sweeping around the dial in endless circles.

Its purpose, too, came in a flash of understanding as the slow, audible click-click of the long needle reminded him of the changing numbers in his personal crystal's digital time display. Yet this was no spell-powered device, either. Or, he didn't think so, at any rate. He discovered a small knob at one side which could be pulled out slightly to change the positions of the needles, or simply turned in place. Turning it without pulling it out resulted in a slight clicking sound inside the device, and a gradually stiffening resistance which increased the pressure needed to turn the knob. He stopped before it got too stiff to turn at all, lest he damage it by trying to force it.

He laid the two halves of the case in his lap, gazing down at them in the firelight, and frowned in unhappy contemplation. He was no magister, but his touch of Gift should have been enough to at least recognize the presence of any sort of spellware. Yet he hadn't detected even the slightest twitch of magic. He would have liked to believe that that meant the weapons he'd examined had exhausted whatever powered them, but he knew that wasn't the case.

Instead, what he had was a weapon which had amply proved its deadly efficiency; a navigation device which, for all its simplicity, looked damnably effective; and another device which obviously kept very precise track of time, indeed.

And none of them?not one of them?depended on spellware or a Gift. Which meant they would work for anyone, anytime, anywhere.

The night wind blew suddenly chill, indeed.

Chapter Twelve

The sun had disappeared into darkness when Windclaw reached the swamp portal camp after almost seven, arduous hours of high-speed flight. There were few landmarks to navigate by, but the camp's scattered lights stood out sharply against the unrelieved blackness of a world mankind had discovered considerably less than a year earlier.

Windclaw backwinged neatly to a landing between the base camp's tents and the portal itself. An icy breeze blew across the camp from the portal, rustling the dead trees that speared into the sky on the other side, rattling the reeds on this one. The vast sweep of black-velvet heaven visible above the trees revealed brilliant stars, in an u

It didn't seem to matter how many portals Salmeer saw or stepped through; the spine tingling awe never changed, and he'd been flying portal hops for the better part of thirty years.

Windclaw had barely furled his wings when a soldier ran across the muddy ground, holding what proved to be the transcript of another hummer message. He climbed up the foreleg Windclaw had been trained to offer, and Salmeer recognized him. He didn't know Javelin Kranark especially well, but he'd always impressed Salmeer as a competent trooper, utterly dedicated not only to the second Andaran Scouts, but also to Hundred Olderhan.

"Thank the gods you're here, Squire!" Kranark panted as he handed Salmeer the transcript. "The Hundred's halted at these grid coordinates. He didn't dare keep moving his wounded after dark. He needs you to bring the dragon through for an emergency evacuation of the worst wounded."

Salmeer stared at Kranark in disbelief. He hadn't taken Windclaw through the portal, but he'd made enough deliveries to the base camp when it was daylight on the far side to have a pretty fair grasp of the sort of terrain?and tree cover?waiting on the other side.

"Is he out of his mind?" the pilot demanded harshly. "He wants me to try to set a dragon down out in the middle of those fucking woods?"

"You can't do it?" The javelin's expression was barely visible in the darkness, but the horror in his voice was clear, and Salmeer winced. The critically wounded men out there were this man's brothers in arms, the closest thing he had to a family out here.

"I've seen that canopy out there, and it's murder," the pilot said in a marginally gentle voice, waving one hand at the looming portal. "I haven't actually flown over it, not in that universe, anyway. But I've seen plenty of forests like it. That's a solid sea of trees, Kranark, stretching for hundreds of miles. A transport dragon can't slide sideways between branches that are damned near interwoven!"