David Weber - Hell's Gate

Whatever it was that the Voice was going to do for Andrin, though, it was important, and Janaki loved his sister. Which meant Parliamentary Representative Kinlafia was as good as elected, as far as Crown Prince Janaki was concerned.

"All right, Your Highness," Kinlafia agreed finally. "I'll take you up on your offer. Both your offers." He looked at his watch, then glanced up at the sun sliding steadily westward overhead. "I'll stick with the column for the rest of the day and bivouac with you tonight. Then I'll move on ahead tomorrow."

"Good." Janaki managed to keep his relief out of his voice as he smiled at the other man. "That'll give me time to dash off a couple of more notes of introduction for you before you disappear. One of them?" he smiled wickedly at the Voice "?will be addressed to my father. He has a little political influence of his own, you know."

Shaylar and Jathmar stood on the Arcanan ship's foredeck as the vessel moved steadily towards another wooden pier. This one extended out from a considerably larger fort, built on the southeastern curve of a bay which, according to Jathmar's Mapping Talent, was over thirty miles wide from north to south and over sixty from east to west. Shaylar was almost positive that it was on the southern coast of the big island of Esferia?the same island Jasak and Gadrial called Chalar?which dominated the New Farnal Sea and the Gulf of New Ternathia. On Sharona, Esferia was a prosperous transshipment point for commerce between Chairifon and New Ternathia and New Farnal, but on Arcana Chalar was the home of the greatest maritime empire in the planet's history.

They could see the broad arc of a portal well inland, beyond the river that meandered down out of the hills to the raw-looking town clustered against the fort's eastern face. It was hard even for Jathmar to judge distances, but it looked as if the portal was perhaps fifteen miles inland, in which case it must have measured about ten miles across. It was easy enough to see the portal's boundaries, though. The sky on this side was a cloudless, scorchingly hot tropical blue; on the other side, it was night … with a violent thunderstorm raging. Even as she watched, she could see the crackling flare of lightning lashing the stormy bellies of the clouds on the far side, and an outrider of thunderheads thrust through the portal to this side. Where she stood, the sun was hot and warm, the breeze gentle; along the fringe of the portal, powerful gusts of wind swept treetops into dancing fury on a tempest's breath, and rain born in an entirely different universe came down in sheets.

Shaylar shivered at the sight, but it was one of the bizarre juxtapositionings one got used to traveling between universes. Which didn't make the thought of venturing into it any more pleasant.

Actually, she was much more interested in what she could see closer to hand as their vessel slid alongside the pilings.

This fort?Fort Wyvern, Jasak had called it?was considerably larger than the one they'd left behind. That didn't make it huge, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was clearly a more substantial, longer established structure. It had to have been here for a while, judging by the size of the town nestled up against its inland perimeter, but there was much less of the sense of bustle and frontier energy which would have clung to most Sharonian settlements.

At first glance, the entire town looked like some primitive farming village, with no sign of the steam- or water-powered local industry which would have sprung up in any Sharonian-explored universe. But as she and Jathmar continued to study it, they quickly realized just how deceiving first appearances could be.

They were close enough to get a decent look at what was obviously the local shipyard, for example. It wasn't very large, and there were only three vessels under construction, but Shaylar felt her eyes opening wide as she studied it. She'd seen enough Sharonian boatyards located in equivalent settlements to know what to look for, but there was no sign here of the steam or water-powered sawmills and forges she would have found in one of them, nor did she hear or see any axes or adzes.

Instead, she saw big timbers levitating themselves effortlessly into the air, hovering there while some unseen force slabbed them into neatly trimmed planks which stacked themselves to one side. Tearing her eyes away from that fascinating sight, she saw workmen engaged on an entire series of equally improbable activities.

Two men were shaping what were obviously framing timbers for the largest of the vessels under construction, but they were doing it without any tools Shaylar could recognize. Instead, each of them held what looked like simple hand grips at either end of a shaft of shining crystal. The grips were mounted at right angles to the shaft, which was about eight feet long and an inch in diameter. It swelled into a thicker cylinder?perhaps a foot long and seven or eight inches across?at its central point, and the workmen were moving that thicker cylinder carefully across the timber they were shaping while chips and sawdust flew away from it in bizarrely silent clouds.

Other pairs and small groups of workmen were dealing with other jobs?jobs which would have been accomplished with snorting steam or raw muscle in Sharona. Here, though, they were done with more of that eerie "magic" of Gadrial's, and the implications were frightening. There couldn't have been more than thirty men working in that shipyard, but the biggest of the three vessels they were constructing was probably three hundred feet long. That was smaller than the ship on which she and Jathmar presently stood, but it was still a substantial hull, and unlike the smaller ships being built beside it, it was not sail powered. Back in Sharona, the construction crews working on a project that size would have been far bigger. If Arcana's "magic" allowed that much greater productivity out of its workforce …

"We'll be going ashore shortly," Jasak announced, walking up behind them. "I'll have to report to Five Hundred Grantyl, the base commandant. I'm sure he'll want to … meet both of you. I don't imagine we'll stay long, though."

"That doesn't look very pleasant," Shaylar offered, waving one hand at the violent storm raging across the portal threhhold.

"No, it doesn't," he agreed. "The other side of the portal is in what I believe you call Uromathia in your home world. The temperature's not too bad there, but we'll have some mountains to cross to reach the next portal. We'll have to wait for the weather to clear before we can leave, and we'll have to bundle up for the flight."

"Flight?" Jathmar repeated, and Jasak nodded.

"We're going to be spending a lot of time on dragonback," he told them. "That's one reason I hope Windclaw's reaction to you had something to do with your head injury, Shaylar."

"So do I," she replied, just a bit tremulously, although she'd come to the conclusion that Windclaw had probably reacted less to her head injury than to her efforts to use her damaged Voice Talent to communicate with Darcel. Those efforts had coincided with both of the transport dragon's determined efforts to eat her, and she was just as grateful, in a guilty sort of way, that there couldn't be anyone within her range now.

"In case it didn't have anything to do with the concussion, though," she offered with a wan smile, "I'd personally vote for traveling on horseback!"

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Gadrial told her. Shaylar looked at the other woman, standing beside her with the hot breeze stirring her hair, and Gadrial made a face. "Believe me, I've already made this trip, and it's going to be a pain. They haven't extended the slider rail beyond Green Haven, and that's something like twenty thousand of your miles from here. And it's sixty thousand more miles from Green Haven to New Arcana, so even with dragons to get us as far as the sliders, it's going to take something like four months to get to Garth Showma. You don't even want to think about making that trip on horseback!"