David Weber - Hell's Gate

Gadrial's frown of concentration was deeper, more intense. Shaylar had the feeling that the other woman was attempting to explain color to a blind person, and she didn't like it. She was a telepath, a Voice; communication was her speciality, what she'd been born to do, and she'd never felt blind before. Not until now.

"Other people," Gadrial continued, "have very strong Gifts. My Gift is a strong one, for instance. The only person I ever knew with a stronger one was Magister Halathyn. He taught?"

Her voice caught suddenly, raggedly, and her eyes filled with tears.

"I'm sorry," Shaylar said softly, touching Gadrial's hand. The other woman's emotions were a chaotic whirl of love, grief, and empty, aching loss.

"I know you are," Gadrial said, and her voice was a small sound in the silence of the cabin.

Shaylar could sense, as well, that Gadrial was struggling not to blame her and Jathmar for Halathyn's death. She wished she knew a way to comfort the other woman's grief, but she couldn't?not given the circumstances. And so she could only wait until Gadrial dashed the tears from her eyes and straightened once more.

"I know you are," she said again, her voice firmer, then cleared her throat. "Anyway, Halathyn's Gift was profound. No one, I think, understood the field better than he did. He taught me everything I know about it. What I've learned on my own is built entirely on the platform he gave me."

Once more the agony in her eyes and voice tore at Shaylar, but this time she refused to yield to them.

"He taught me," she said more steadily, "and he wouldn't want me to fall to pieces like this now. So … This field can be tapped, manipulated?harnessed. It's power is immense. That's what moves the ship." She gestured. "Someone with a Gift speaks the proper formula to tap the field, which allows them to channel that power into the ship's storage cells. When that energy is released, it drives the ship forward through the water. It also powers other machines, all kinds of machines."

She dug through her luggage again, and pulled out another case.

"This is a machine Halathyn and I developed together. It helps us find portals. That's what we were looking for when we stumbled across you. Looking for a portal nearby."

She murmured to the gadget, which began to glow. Several colored indicators came to life in what looked like a rectangular window on the front of the device.

"Here. See these displays?" Her index finger indicated its several small glowing arrows and columns of light. "We'll be docking sometime tomorrow morning at the island we call Chalar back home. That's where our next portal is. See how the arrow points to it?"

Shaylar nodded slowly, but deep inside she was stunned. This single small device in Gadrial's hand was more effective?and efficient?than any Portal Hound she'd ever heard of! If they could do this, what else could they do? Then she realized that Gadrial was still talking.

"?still experimental, of course. That's what we were doing that day in the forest, when your people killed Osmuna?"

"Osmuna?" Shaylar asked. "Who is Osmuna?"

"The soldier your people killed," Gadrial replied in a surprised tone.

"Our people killed?" Shaylar demanded. "Your people killed Falsan! Gods, Gadrial?he died right in my arms! He'd staggered for miles with that arrow in his chest, trying to reach our camp?"

"I didn't know he'd died in your arms," Gadrial said quietly. "I'm sorry about that. As sorry as I can possibly be."

"But that didn't keep your people from killing the rest of us, did it?" Shaylar replied, more harshly even than she'd intended to. Gadrial winced, but she refused to look away.

"That wasn't what we wanted," she said. "Jasak realized what must have happened sooner than anyone else. Two men met in the forest. Just the two of them, and no one will ever know which one of them shot first. We certainly didn't. We couldn't even figure out how Osmuna had died. All we knew was that someone had killed him, and we trailed that person back to your camp. But you'd already headed toward the portal we'd come to find, and?"

"And then you ran us to ground like dogs!" Shaylar jerked up off the bed, her face twisted as the words she'd acquired?the words that finally freed the pain so deep inside?poured out of her. "We were terrified! Someone had murdered Falsan?that was all we knew. And they were chasing us. We couldn't run fast enough!"

"Of course we were." Gadrial stared at her. "What would one of your army officers have done if one of his men was dead? If he'd been responsible for controlling the situation?"

"Controlling the situation?" Shaylar barked a harsh, ugly laugh. "Is that what you call it? You were only 'controlling the situation' when Ghartoun tried to talk to you, without even a weapon in his hands, and you shot him?!"

"Garlath shot him," Gadrial snarled, and even without touching her Shaylar realized that the other woman was genuinely angry. No, not angry?she was furious. And not, Shaylar realized in shock, at her.

"That stupid, cowardly, arrogant, incompetent son-of-a?" Gadrial was abruptly using words Shaylar hadn't heard before, but they hardly needed translating. Whoever this Garlath was, Gadrial had despised him. Still despised him.

"I wasn't close enough to see it happen," Gadrial said finally. "Jasak wouldn't let me get that close. But I heard him shouting at Garlath. Only that idiot shot anyway, and then unholy hell broke loose. I'd never heard anything like that."

Shaylar was trembling. Her perfect Voice's memory replayed the shouted command she'd heard when Ghartoun stood up. The words which had meant nothing at the time, which she'd assumed all this time had been the order to attack. But now she'd learned at least some Andaran, and in her memory, she heard the voice once more. The voice she recognized now as Jasak Olderhan's.

"Hold fire, Fifty Garlath!"

The words rang through her mind like a jagged lightning bolt, and she stared at Gadrial.

"Jasak ordered him not to shoot," she said slowly, softly. "He ordered him not to shoot."

"Yes, he did!" Gadrial's expression was tight with remembered anguish. "I heard him say it. Heard that crossbow's slap and twang after he'd shouted that order. Then that horrible, thunderous roar?"

Shaylar felt nothing but truth in Gadrial Kelbryan, and she began to weep. Silently at first. Then she covered her face with both hands and began to sob.

They'd died for nothing. For nothing! And Company-Captain Halifu had come looking for them, with no way to know Jasak had never meant for anyone to die, and more blood had been spilled. Halathyn had died, and so had a lot of others. And all anyone in Sharona would know was what she'd transmitted to Darcel. The images of fire and blood. Of intentional murder and deliberate slaughter, because that was what she'd thought?known?was happening!

There would be a war, she realized. She could see it as clearly as she had ever seen anything in her life. As if she'd been a Calirath experiencing a Glimpse. There would be a terrible, monstrous war, and more people would die, stupidly, on both sides, because no one back home knew the first massacre had been a mistake.

Gadrial had put both arms around her, was making helpless sounds, trying to comfort her. And then, suddenly, the door between the sleeping cabin and the tiny sitting room of Gadrial's quarters crashed open and Jathmar was there, white to the lips.

"Shaylar!"

She turned blindly toward him. Then she was in his arms, clinging to him, weeping helplessly.

"What happened?" he demanded raggedly. "What did she do to you?"

"Nothing." Shaylar hiccuped. "Nothing, Jathmar. Oh, Jath?the whole thing was a terrible mistake!"

She'd tried to tell him, although her explanation wasn't nearly as coherent as Gadrial's had been, and he listened to her words, to the emotions churning through the marriage bond. When she finally got the ghastly truth Gadrial had just revealed through to him, he sat in silence for long moments, jaw muscles clenched tightly. Then a deep sigh shuddered out of him.