Hell's Gate

We're flying, she breathed silently. Actually flying!

For a time, the sheer delight of the experience pushed everything else out of the front of her brain. But as the novelty of it began to wear off in the cold wind, the implications of a military force which possessed aerial transport?and the far more frightening capacity for aerial combat?made itself abruptly known. Given the dragon's tough armor, not to mention its sheer size, Shaylar wondered if a rifle shot could be effective against it. There were hunters who took big game, of course, especially in sparsely settled universes where elephants, rhinos, immense?and aggressive?cape buffalo, thirty-foot crocodiles, and even vast herds of bison were a serious danger to colonists. There were some pretty heavy guns and cartridges for that kind of shooting, but Shaylar wondered if even those weapons could be effective at much greater ranges than point-blank into a dragon's belly or throat.

And what kind of weapons might something like a dragon bring to combat? Would it do what the legends of her home world said dragons could do? Breathe fire? Eat maidens for breakfast? She recalled the beast's fury at her, its rage battering her senses, the firelight glinting on claws and teeth as it reared up, and could imagine only too clearly what it would be like to have something like that actually attack her with lethal intent.

I have to warn our people! she thought desperately.

She closed her eyes behind the goggles, fought the black pain in the center of her head, and reached frantically through the spi

Darcel! she cried into the black silence. Darcel, can you hear me? Please, Darcel!

She tried to send an image of the beast she now rode, tried to project the memory of it rearing above her in hissing fury, but her head spun. The whole world revolved in dizzy swoops and plunges, a drunken ship at sea in a typhoon. …

Gadrial's voice reached her, repeating her name with some urgency. Shaylar felt the touch of gentle hands on her temples, felt Gadrial trying to ease the pain. But she flinched back, clinging to the effort?and the pain?as she fought to reach Darcel, whatever the cost to herself, and?

A massive, metal-bending screech tore the air.

The dragon slewed sideways in midair. It actually bucked, and Shaylar's eyes flew open as her teeth jolted together and the whole platform creaked against the violent motion of the beast under it. Her head jerked, and she felt herself bounced backward against her safety straps as a raging red fury lashed at her mind.

The dragon bellowed again, whipped its own head violently around, and snapped at her with huge teeth. Shaylar screamed, then clutched her head, her senses bleeding. Someone was shouting, a voice white-hot with fury, and the dragon's violent gyrations ceased as abruptly as they'd begun. The rage in her mind was still there, still hot as lava, but the beast was no longer trying to throw her off or bite her in half, and she collapsed against Gadrial, shuddering.

"Help me," she pleaded brokenly, fingers clutching at the other woman's clothing. "Get it out of my mind!" she moaned. "Please. Oh, please …"

Gadrial had both arms around her, and, gradually, the pain receded and the nausea dropped away. Shaylar's throat loosened, around the terror she'd been fighting, and a delicious lassitude stole along her nerves. It eased her down into a comforting darkness, a lovely darkness, one that shut out the pain and the mortal fear of the beast in her mind.

She barely felt the cushioned pad as her back touched it.

Gadrial eased the tiny woman gently down, rearranging the safety straps so that Shaylar could lie flat beside her. Once she'd secured the straps in their new configuration, she brushed dark hair back from Shaylar's bruised face and stared down at her.

Who are you, really? she wondered. How far did you journey to reach us? And why should a transport dragon hate you the way this one obviously does?

"Is she all right?" Jasak demanded, half-shouting above the wind.

"Yes. I've helped her go to sleep."

"Thank the gods! What in hell just happened?"

"I don't know! Is the dragon under control?" she counter-demanded, and he nodded.

"He is now, but it was damned touch-and-go for a second, there." He'd twisted around to stare at the unconscious girl beside Gadrial. "She's the source. Whatever's going on, she's the source." Gadrial could see the intense frustration in his expression even in the uncertain moonlight and despite his flight goggles. "Did you see or hear anything? Anything from her that could have triggered it?"

"No." Gadrial shook her head. "One minute she was fine. The next she was screaming, and Windclaw was trying to throw us off his back!" Then she frowned. "But there was something strange, right before she lost consciousness. She was saying something, and it felt?I don't know. It felt like she was begging for help. Not protection, help. Something to do with the dragon and her mind … "

She trailed off, wondering abruptly how she knew that. Because she did know it; knew it as certainly as if Shaylar had spoken aloud.

"What is it?" Jasak asked, and she shook her head to clear it.

"I'm not sure. It's just …" She stumbled, trying to put it into words. "She was trying to tell me something, and I think I understood her. Not the words; they made no sense at all. But I understood her, Jasak. It's eerie." She swallowed. "Scary as hell, in fact. She was asking me to help her."

"Help her with the pain?"

"No." Gadrial shook her head again, trying to put her bizarre, elusive certainty into words. "No. She wanted me to help her … get the dragon out of her mind?" It came out as a question, because she knew it made no logical sense. "I don't have the faintest idea why I know that, but I know it, Jasak. She was clutching at me, babbling, and that's what came into my head."

Sir Jasak Olderhan, commander of one hundred, stared at Gadrial as though she'd suddenly sprouted wings herself. For a moment or two, she suspected that he thought she'd gone off the deep end, but then he gave a sudden, choppy nod.

"That's damned interesting," he said abruptly. "Has anything like that happened before?"

She shook her head again.

"I don't think so."

"Well, pay close attention to every impression you receive when you're talking to her, or she's trying to communicate with you, Gadrial. Something about her caused Windclaw to react violently, and more than once. We don't understand anything about these people! Except that they use weapons and equipment that are the most alien things I've ever seen. We can't assume they're like us in any respect, which means the door's wide open for totally inexplicable technologies, or whatever it is she was using or doing to set off the dragon."

Gadrial nodded, feeling far colder than the frigid night wind could account for, and wondered what terrifying discoveries lay ahead. Shaylar looked so … normal lying unconscious beside her. Normal, lost, and frightened out of her wits.

Gadrial stroked the night-black, windblown hair back from Shaylar's brow once more, and glanced at Jathmar, wondering what matching discoveries lay behind his face.

It was obvious the two of them came from racial stock as different from each other as Jasak's pale Andaran skin and round eyes differed from her own sandalwood complexion and dark, oval eyes. And although she'd had little time to study Shaylar and Jathmar's dead companions before their cremation, even that brief examination had told her the entire survey party had been as racially diverse as anything on Arcana. These people obviously came from a large, mixed-heritage society, whether it occupied only one universe or several, and she wondered abruptly how that society's members might differ from one another.