David Weber - Hell's Gate

Darcel choked down more frantic demands. Parcanthi couldn't do the impossible, and he knew it. So he turned to Hilovar instead, and the Tracer glanced at Parcanthi.

"Go on." The Whiffer nodded. "I've got everything I'm going to get out of this spot. I'll head over to the trees, where the enemy's lines were, try to find the spot where they tended the wounded. Maybe I can tell more there."

Parcanthi extricated himself from the spot where Shaylar and Jathmar had fallen. As he did so, Hilovar met Darcel's gaze squarely.

"You have to realize," the ebony-scanned Ricathian said in a low, cautionary tone, "that I may not be able to tell, either. I can tell you what happened to an object and the person or people most closely associated with it, but I may not be able to Trace anything beyond the event itself."

"But Tracers can find missing persons from hundreds of miles away!" Darcel protested. "I know they can. You've done it yourself!"

"Sometimes I can," Hilovar agreed. "That was useful in police work when I was still working homicide. But you have to understand, Darcel. The more traces there are at a crime scene, the harder it is to filter out just one. I worked a case once where an entire extended family had been killed by portal pirates. These bastards had a nasty habit of raiding isolated mining camps, taking off with years worth of profits, and killing all the witnesses.

"There were so many members of the gang, so many victims, and so much violence done in such a small space, that I couldn't get an accurate Trace on anything. It took us over a year?and three more slaughtered mining camps?to run the bastards down. If there'd been only one or two victims, or fewer pirates, I could probably have nailed them in a matter of weeks. Maybe even days."

Hilovar's eyes were dark with remembered pain and frustration, and he sighed.

"We've got the same trouble here. There was so much violence the event residues have contaminated the objects caught in the middle of them. Everything I've touched so far has so many echoes clinging to it that I can't get accurate readings. If we had more objects to Trace from, the odds would be better. But with so little evidence, and so many strong residues, it's going to be tough. I'll do my dead level best, I promise you that. And if we can find the place where they took the wounded, if we can isolate something there that she and Jathmar touched, the odds will go up. But even then, it's going to be dicey. And if there's another portal nearby?"

He spread his hands, indicating helplessness.

"I don't understand," Darcel said, with a frown.

"Portals always screw up a Trace." Hilovar seemed surprised by Darcel's response. "You're a Voice?and a Portal Hound, too. Can you transmit a message through a portal?"

"Of course not. No one can trans?"

Darcel stopped abruptly, and Hilovar nodded with a compassionate expression.

"The energy around a portal is always weird stuff, damned weird. That's another reason it took us so long to trace those damned pirates. You can't Trace anyone through a portal any more than a Voice can send a message through one, or a Mapper can Map through one of them … and you can't just follow someone through and pick him up again on the other side. Stepping through a portal … scrambles the residue. Those pirates would slip through a portal, and every trace of them would literally vanish. It was like the gods had stepped down, erased their very existence. This?" he waved at the virgin forest surrounding them "?isn't anyone's home universe, which means the other side came through a portal, too. If they've taken any survivors back through it with them, the odds of Tracing them on the other side?Well, I'd be lying if I told you they even existed, Darcel."

Darcel cursed, then gritted his teeth and nodded. At least Hilovar was too honest to offer false comfort, he told himself.

"All right," he said. "I understand. Do what you can."

The Tracer took a deep breath, turned away, and grasped the branch Jathmar had struck. His knuckles locked, and a ghastly sound broke from his throat. His eyes shot wide, and his pupils dilated in shock, then shrank to pinpoints. He shuddered, then jerked his hands loose and shook them violently, as though flinging off drops of acid.

"Sorry," he muttered, scrubbing sweat from his face with one forearm. "I'll . . . try again."

He gripped the branch longer, this time, but his entire body began to shake. The muscles of his face quivered, veins stood out in his temples, and his voice, when he finally spoke, was thick with pain and shock.

"Hurlbane's balls … ! Bones broken … bleeding inside, deep inside … burns from scalp to knees …"

Blood vessels popped up in terrifying relief along the backs of Hilovar's dark hands, hands like grey marble, carved from stone.

"He can't … he can't possibly have lived. Not with those injuries. Not more than a few minutes …"

Flashes of memory?that accursed, perfect memory of a Voice?showed Darcel Jathmar's easy laughter. His boundless enthusiasm, his sheer joy in the adventure that was life itself. There were hundreds of those memories, thousands, and Darcel Kinlafia closed his eyes as he felt his heart turn to cold steel.

Then he opened them again. Hilovar had let go of the branch. He stood flapping his hands, as though they, too, had been burned.

"And Shaylar?" Darcel asked after a moment. "What about Shaylar?"

The Tracer drew a shallow breath, as though it hurt to expand his chest more deeply. Then he cleared his throat.

"Is there something specific here I can Trace?" he asked, and Darcel pointed to the charred map satchel. And to the bloody branch with the dark hair caught in its bark. Hilovar looked at them both, then nodded.

"Only one way to find out," he muttered, and Darcel literally held his breath as Hilovar's strong fingers closed gently around the strands of hair and the blood-crusted branch. Dark eyes closed once more as Hilovar gave himself to the Traces.

"She was alive when they took her away," he said after a moment in a strong voice, and Darcel's hope leapt. But then Hilovar frowned. "Alive, but unconscious." He bit his lower lip, and his voice faded to a terrible whisper. "Blood pooling under the skull. Putting pressure on something critical. Swelling …"

His hands began to shake, and he shook his head hard, then released the branch and opened his eyes.

"I can't see anything beyond that, Darcel. She was alive, but …"

The pain was even worse because of that brief, thunderous stab of hope. But hemorrhaging in the brain sounded at least as serious as Jathmar's more overt injuries, and might well have been worse. Darcel looked away, blinking burning eyes, as the anguish stabbed through him.

"Could?" He stopped, cleared his throat. "Could she have survived something like that?"

"I don't know." The Tracer's voice was hollow, full of bleak uncertainty and exhaustion. "I'm no surgeon, Darcel. I can't even tell what part of her brain was injured, only that it felt … critical. If the injury wasn't in a life-threatening area, if they had a skilled surgeon close enough … "

Hilovar didn't have to finish. There were probably no more than a dozen surgeons in all of Sharona's far-flung universes who would have been capable of repairing the sort of damage Hilovar was sensing. What were the odds that a pack of crossbow-armed barbarians would have a surgeon with those skills with them out here in the middle of these godsforsaken woods?

Hope died, messily, and what grew in its place was colder than the frozen Arpathian hells. It cut through him, cruel as any razor, and it hungered.

Darcel Kinlafia looked into Soral Hilovar's eyes and caressed the butt of his revolver almost gently.

Jathmar remembered his own wistful thoughts about the joy of flight on the morning of the nightmare attack?was it really only two days ago??and how he'd envied even a common sparrow's ability to wheel and dart and soar.