Hell's Gate

Fear, cold as a Ransaran winter wind, blew through her heart. She stood for a moment longer, watching Jasak bend to duck under the fly of Halathyn's tent. Then she trudged off toward her own tent, and started to pack.

"There's more trouble brewing," Jathmar said tersely, and Shaylar nodded.

Judging by the raised voices coming from a nearby tent, Jasak and the elderly, dark-ski

But Thalmayr paused, just outside the tent flap, obviously eavesdropping. At least he didn't intrude and make whatever was going on still worse, but Jathmar would almost have preferred that to the man's nasty grin before he moved on.

Whatever Jasak and Halathyn were arguing about, Jathmar decided he'd better worry about it, if Thalmayr was glad it was taking place. Thalmayr scared him straight down to his socks, and he didn't mind admitting it. Not, at any rate, as much as he hated admitting that he and Shaylar needed Jasak and Gadrial as protection against the other man.

"Gadrial's packing her belongings, too," Shaylar said abruptly. "Look there."

She nodded toward the tent beside Halathyn's, where the slim, not-Uromathian woman was visible through the open flap. She was, indeed, packing, but nobody else was.

"Whatever's going on, they're not evacuating the whole camp," Jathmar muttered. "They must intend to stand their ground at this portal."

"Will Grafin order out a search party?" Shaylar wondered.

"I don't know. That's a military question which means it's also a political one. On the other hand, Darcel won't rest until he locates us?or our bodies. And Darcel can be mighty persuasive."

He smiled crookedly at Shaylar, but his smile disappeared as she shook her head.

"He won't find any bodies, Jath," she said, her voice hollow, and Jathmar felt something prickle along his scalp at her expression.

"What do you mean? Surely they buried the dead!"

"No." She shook her head. "No, they burned them. Cremation, I guess I should call it. All of them. Theirs and ours with?" She swallowed convulsively. "I don't know what it was. It burned fast, and hot. It consumed … everything."

"Those sick, sadistic?" Jathmar began savagely, but she shook her head again, harder.

"No, it wasn't like that!" Her distress was obvious, but she felt carefully for the right words. "They treated our people just like theirs, Jathmar. It was . . . it was like some kind of funeral rite. They couldn't carry the bodies out. And there weren't enough of them left to bury all the dead. So they did the best they could, and they gave our people just as much respect as their own."

Jathmar stared at her, and she managed a tremulous smile. But then her eyes closed once more, and she leaned her forehead against him.

"I know that's what they were doing, what they intended. I read it off Jasak. But seeing it …"

She began to weep yet again, and he held her tight, whispering to her, begging her not to cry.

"No. I need to," she said through her tears. "Barris told me that, after Falsan died in my arms. He told me to go ahead and cry. It was the psychic death shock, he said, and he was right. And then I watched him. Just watched him burn to ashes … "

"Oh, love," he whispered into her hair, rocking her gently, eyes burning.

He started to say something more, then stopped himself and closed his eyes. He hadn't been there when Falsan died, but he knew Barris had given Shaylar the right advice. Now, hard as it was, Jathmar had to let her do the same thing when all he really wanted to do was comfort her until she stopped weeping.

He concentrated on just hugging her, and deliberately sought something else to distract him from his desperate worry over her and his fury at the people who had driven her to this.

He opened his eyes once more and looked up at Gadrial once again. The other woman was almost finished packing, it seemed, and he found himself wondering just who Gadrial was. It was obvious that it was her intervention which had brought the incandescent confrontation between Jasak and Thalmayr to a screeching halt. And, ended it in Jasak's favor, unless Jathmar was very mistaken. The tall, menacing Thalmayr had backed down from her like a rabbit suddenly confronted by a cougar. And she and Halathyn appeared to be the only civilians in the entire camp. So just who were they? And how important was Gadrial?

The confrontation continued to rage in Halathyn's tent. Gadrial stood beside a packed duffel bag, her head cocked to one side, her body language tense and unhappy as she listened to it. Then she obviously came to a decision.

"Oh, my," Shaylar murmured in his ear. She'd almost stopped crying, and she managed a damp smile as she and Jathmar watched Gadrial march toward Halathyn's tent. The other woman's mouth was set in a thin, hard line, and her almond-shaped eyes flashed.

"I don't think I'd like that lady mad at me," Shaylar added, and Jathmar produced a smile of his own.

"I always knew you were a smart woman, love," he replied

Gadrial disappeared into the tent. A moment later her voice joined the fray, pleading at first, then increasingly sharp with anger. It went on for quite a while until, finally, she let out an inarticulate howl and stormed back out again.

A part of Jathmar wanted to be glad. Surely any discord in the enemy's camp had to be a good thing from Sharona's perspective! But then he saw Gadrial's face. Her lovely, honey-toned skin was ashy white, her lips trembled, and tears sparkled on her eyelashes.

Shaylar saw it, too, and rose swiftly, taking Jathmar by surprise.

"Gadrial?" Shaylar lifted a hand toward her, part in question, part in sympathy, and Gadrial's face crumpled. She looked back at Shaylar for a moment, then shook her head and turned away, retreating back into her own tent and letting the flap fall. Shaylar bit her lower lip, then sank back down beside Jathmar.

"I hate that," she whispered wretchedly. "I can't stand seeing her that distressed, especially after the way she's tried to comfort me."

"It's not our affair," Jathmar said gently. Anger sparked in her eyes, but he laid a fingertip across her lips and shook his head.

"It isn't," he said again, gently but firmly. "There's nothing we can do, because there's nothing they'll let us do."

"You're right." A sigh shuddered its way loose from her. "That doesn't make it any easier, though."

"Not for you," he acknowledged. "Me, now, I'm just a bit less forgiving than you are. I think I could stand quite a bit of distress on these people's part!"

"But not on Gadrial's," Shaylar replied.

"Well, no," he admitted, not entirely willingly. "Not on Gadrial's."

She smiled and touched the side of his face, then both of them looked up as Halathyn's tent flap opened again and Jasak emerged. Actually, "emerge" was too pale a way to describe his explosive eruption, or the eloquent gesture he made at the sky. Then he stalked away, heading toward another tent on the opposite side of the encampment.

Halathyn's tent flap stirred again, and the long, frail black man appeared. He called out something, and lifted one hand in a conciliatory gesture, but Jasak refused to listen or even glance back, and the storm in his eyes as he raged past their campfire frightened Jathmar.

Protector or not, Jasak Olderhan obviously wasn't a man any sane individual wanted pissed off at him, Jathmar thought. But he'd already concluded that, watching Jasak and Thalmayr. It wasn't fear of Jasak's temper that tightened Jathmar's arm around Shaylar; it was the iron discipline which held that temper in check. Angry men were dangerous?men who could control and use their anger, instead of being used by it, were deadly.