David Weber: Hell's Gate

Shalassar straightened slowly, turning away from the waves, and Thaminar felt her sense of wonder through the marriage bond.

"They wanted to know if we'd decided yet," she said. "They wanted to know if we'd decided who would lead us."

"They what?"

Thaminar wasn't quite sure he'd heard her preposterous statement correctly. In all the years she'd served as an ambassador, the dolphins had never taken notice of human political affairs. Not like this.

She crossed the dock to his side and slipped one arm around him. She stood beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder, gazing at the spot where the emissary had vanished from sight.

"They knew, somehow, that we were making this choice today," she said softly. "Marthea alone knows how?tonight, I could actually believe She told them! But however they learned about it, they knew. So one of them came to ask, when the light went. He was an emissary I'd never met before, but it felt as if he must be very important in the pod in which he travels, and he was very concerned when he asked."

"What did he say when you told him?" Tharsayl asked in an almost reverent voice, and a smile of wonder spread slowly across her face.

"He didn't say anything. Yet I felt a burst of joy, one unlike anything I've ever sensed in dolphin-kind before. I don't understand it. You may tell King Fyysel that, Dalisar. I don't understand it, but … the dolphins are pleased?very pleased?that Zindel chan Calirath has been chosen to lead us. It felt?"

She hesitated, biting her lip.

"Lady?" Tharsayl prompted gently, and she met his gaze in the steadily darkening evening.

"It felt as though their emissary had reached a decision. A desperately important decision. It's very difficult to put dolphin-speech into human words, but they've decided something. I'm sure of it. Decided something critical, but whether or not they ever tell us what it is … "

She shrugged and held out her palms in a gesture indicating helplessness.

"We may never know. But I find it very intriguing that the dolphins, at least, are paying attention to what happens to human politics. That's never happened before."

"Never?" Tharsayl asked almost sharply, and she shook her head.

"Never. The cetaceans are remarkably indifferent to most of us land-dwellers, on the whole. The great whales are more indifferent than the dolphins or orcas, who are naturally curious souls. But even the dolphins, who enjoy playing with us in the water and almost always help swimmers in trouble, have never shown any interest in how we govern ourselves. Their only 'political concerns' have always been strictly limited to how our actions, our plans, might affect them, and vice versa, not how we reached our decisions in the first place."

Tharsayl stood frowning at the dark water, barely visible now, and his eyes were troubled.

"Crown Prince Danith had a remarkable story to tell his father, the day he came home from here, Lady. The day you learned what had happened."

Thaminar frowned. So did Shalassar.

"When you were linked with the Portal Authority's Voice?" The chief of staff hesitated, clearly choosing his words with care. "There were dolphins here, in the floating ring, and one of the singing whales, and they … reacted to the news.

"Reacted?" Shalassar repeated with a frown. "Reacted how? To what?"

"There came a moment, a terrible moment, when you screamed, Lady," Tharsayl said. "And when you did, the sea came alive. They leapt from the water?all of them. His Highness said … He said the sound that broke from them was unearthly, horrifying. A sound of rage."

Shalassar's eyes went wide in shock. She stared at the chief of staff, and Tharsayl shook his head slowly.

"Representative Kinshe said your pain was so great, Lady, that it spilled across into their minds. They were angry, Lady. Both the Representative and His Highness agreed on that."

"But why?" Shalassar half-whispered, her eyes meeting Thaminar's equally dumbfounded gaze. "I could understand grief. Most of the emissaries who come here knew Shaylar, watched her grow up. Many of them, of the dolphins and orcas, at least, have played with her in the water. But anger? I've never felt anger from a cetacean." She turned a baffled look on Tharsayl. "Why did they say it was anger?"

"I don't know, Lady, but they both felt the same thing. The sound was a sound of rage, and their anger was so deep, so powerful, that Lady Kinshe Felt it through her Healing Talent. The singing whale came completely out of the water Lady. It stood on its tail and bellowed so loudly it shook the windows."

Shalassar gasped and her hand tightened on Thaminar's forearm.

"They don't do that!" she protested. "They just don't."

Neither man spoke, and Shalassar shivered, abruptly and oddly frightened as the night closed in around them.

"I want to go inside now," she said in a small voice.

Thaminar nodded and slipped his arm around her once again, steadying her on the walk back to their home. She was more shaken, he realized, than she'd been by anything since the day the news from Hell's Gate had shattered their world.

He glanced back once at the dark water, where the vast sweep of black sea met the equally vast bowl of mostly-black sky. A faint glow remained visible on the western horizon, where the sun had set beyond the coast of Ricathia, but stars were already visible in the eastern sky and overhead.

Why were the cetaceans angry over Shaylar's death? Why were they so interested in the outcome of the day's vote? The world which had been so quiet and predictable for the vast majority of his life seemed very cold and frightening tonight. And under other skies, he knew, there were Sharonians even closer to the danger that loomed, out there in the darkness.

Keep them safe, Mother Marthea, he prayed with a sudden fervor he couldn't explain. Keep us all safe… .

Then they reached the house, with its warm gas lamps to dispel the cold and frightened feelings which had overwhelmed them all on the darkened dock. Merely closing the door felt like an act of preservation, somehow. An act that barred the way against the evil that lay waiting, out there in the multi-universal darkness.

He helped Shalassar into a chair, poured whiskey into three glasses, and handed them around. While they sipped their whiskey and felt safe behind the closed door, here inside these walls where the lights were warm and comforting, he wondered again what the cetaceans were planning … and why he'd felt that sudden, deep surge of fear.

Keep them safe, he found himself praying once more. Please, keep them safe.

"All right, Five Hundred," Commander of Two Thousand Mayrkos Harshu said to his senior Air Force commander as the early afternoon sunlight burned down across Fort Rycharn. "Let's get these dragons in the air."