David Weber - Hell's Gate

She used her fork to push food around on her plate, trying to convince herself to try at least one more bite. There was nothing wrong with the food itself. Breakfast had been as delicious as it always was; it was simply that a stomach clenched into a permanent knot of tension couldn't appreciate it.

Almost a week, she thought. A week with the bumblebees crawling through her bones, the nightmares which woke her and skipped away into the shadows before she could quite grasp them. A week with visions of chaos and destruction, the outriders of heartrending grief to come, of loss and anguish. No wonder she couldn't eat! She knew she was losing weight, and she'd seen the shadows under her eyes in her morning mirror, and that didn't surprise her one bit, either.

She'd had other Glimpses in her life, some of them terrible beyond belief. The Talent of the Caliraths was … different. Unique. Precognition wasn't actually that uncommon. It wasn't one of the more common Talents, but it wasn't as rare as, say, the full telempathic Healing Talent.

But precognition was limited primarily to physical events and processes. A weather Precog could predict sunshine and rain for a given locale with virtually one hundred percent accuracy for a period of perhaps two weeks. Longer-range forecasts of up to two months could also be extremely accurate, although reliability tended to begin falling off after the first month or so, and the level of accuracy degraded rapidly thereafter. Other Precogs worked for forestry services, predicting fires. And along the so-called "crown of fire" around the Great Western Ocean, they watched for volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. They'd saved countless lives over the centuries with their warnings, like the one they'd issued before the island of Juhali in the Hinorean Empire?and its analog in every explored universe, for that matter?had blown up so devastatingly thirty-seven years ago.

Yet those events were all the results of physical processes. Of the movement of unthinking masses of air and water, the random strike of lightning bolts, the seething movement of magma and the bones of the earth. The Glimpses of the House of Calirath dealt with people.

Quite often, they also dealt with natural disaster, because people were trapped in them. But those disasters would have happened whether there'd been anyone there to witness them, or not. What Andrin and her father and their endless ancestors before them had seen in those cases was the human cost of the disaster. The impact on the lives of those trapped in its path.

There had been times when a Calirath Glimpse had been enough to divert or at least ameliorate the consequences of cataclysm. Andrin was grateful for that. She herself had saved possibly thousands of lives with her Glimpse of the Kilrayen National Forest fire in Reyshar before high winds had sent it sweeping over the town of Halthoma like a tidal bore of flame. She'd Seen the flames leaping the firebreaks, cutting the roads, consuming the town, burning women and children to death. It had been that human element?the terror and pain and despair of the people involved?which had generated her Glimpse … and her father's frantic EVN message had warned the Reyshar government in time to evacuate and thwart that very Glimpse. She treasured that memory, despite the nightmares of the disaster only she had Seen, which still came back to her some nights. And she was only too well aware from her history lessons of how often in Ternathia's past it had been a Glimpse, the Talent of the imperial house, which had plucked victory from defeat, or turned mere survival into triumph.

But there were times?like today?when all those accomplishments seemed less than a pittance against the cost of her Talent.

If only she could make it come clear! If only she could take it by the throat, choke it into submission. But it didn't work that way. Glimpses could be of events from next week, or next month, or next year. Some had actually been of events which had not occurred until the person who had Glimpsed them was long dead. Sometimes, they never came to pass at all, but usually they turned out to have been terrifyingly accurate … once they were actually upon you. And one thing the Caliraths had learned over the millennia was that the closer the event came, the stronger the Glimpse grew.

Which was the reason her stomach was a clenched fist and there were shadows under her eyes. This was already the strongest Glimpse she had ever endured, far stronger than the Halthoma Glimpse, and it was still growing stronger. The images themselves were growing sharper, even though she still lacked the context to place them, and she felt as if she were a violin string, tuned far too tightly and ready to snap.

"Andrin," her father said calmly, "I've been thinking that this afternoon, perhaps you and I might drop by the stables, and?"

He stopped speaking abruptly, and his and Andrin's heads turned as one, their eyes snapping to the breakfast parlor's door an instant before the latch turned. Andrin felt herself go white to her lips, and her father's hand tightened into a fist around his napkin, as the door opened and Shamir Taje stepped through it.

"Your Imperial Majesties," the First Councilor of the Ternathian Empire said, bowing first to Zindel and then to Varena and the rest of the imperial family, "I apologize for intruding on you."

Varena Calirath held her breath as she saw Zindel's face. His entire body had gone deathly still, and she bit her lip as she realized that whatever he?and Andrin?had awaited appeared to be upon them.

"I'm sure you had an excellent reason, Shamir." Her father's voice was amazingly calm, Andrin thought, when he had to feel the same jagged lightning bolts dancing along his nerves.

"It's an urgent message, Your Majesty," Taje said formally, and Zindel nodded.

"Very well." He glanced down into Varena's eyes. "I beg your pardon, my dear. Children," he added with an apologetic smile, then glanced at Taje again. "Will I be back shortly, Shamir?"

"I … doubt it, Your Majesty."

"I see." Zindel kissed each of his daughters in turn, beginning with little Anbessa and leaving Andrin until last. He gripped her hands for a moment, meeting the worry in her eyes with a steady gaze as she stood to kiss him back, and she actually managed to summon a smile for him.

"I'll let you know what I can," he said quietly, and she nodded.

"If you can't, I'll understand."

"Yes." He brushed a lock of hair from his tall, straight daughter's brow. "I know."

He gave her another smile, then turned briskly and stepped back through the door with Shamir Taje, and she discovered her knees were trembling. She all but fell back into her chair, not even bothering with proper deportment, but her mother didn't scold. She just bit her lip and tried to smile in a brave effort that didn't fool Andrin.

A moment later, the door opened again, and Andrin's head whipped back around. Her father stood there, pale as death, staring straight at her.

"Zindel?" the Empress' voice sounded breathless, frightened.

"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't mean to alarm you." His eyes met hers, held for an instant, then moved back to his eldest daughter. "Andrin, I'm afraid you have to come with me. It's essential that you join the Privy Council's deliberations.

Andrin heard someone gasp and wasn't sure if the sound had come from her mother, or from her. She tried to rise, then paused to take a deeper breath, and made it to her feet on the second attempt.

"What is it, Father? What's happened?"

"It's just a precaution, Andrin, but it's necessary. I'll brief you with the rest of the Council."

Andrin saw the flicker in his eyes, the tiniest of speaking glances at her baby sisters, and swallowed down a throat gone dry.

"Of course, Father." She bent to press a kiss on her mother's suddenly cold cheek. "I'm sorry, Mama. Will you convey my apologies to Aunt Reza for missing my lesson this morning?"