The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  Shaylar stared in horror and Jasak shook his head, partly in sorrow, partly in obvious disgust.

  “Some people are just too stupid or too desperate to pay attention to public warnings or the mandatory prison sentences for anyone trafficking in djinn, whether it’s selling a corked bottle or uncorking one for gain or revenge. Those are the worst cases, by far—the revenge cases. Trying to undo a revenge-motivated djinn attack can be a nightmare. People have died, from it. Lots of people, over the years. There’s a reason for those mandatory sentences, and anyone responsible for a djinn episode that kills someone is tried for voluntary manslaughter even if that was never his intent. If it was his intent, it’s an automatic charge of premeditated murder, whatever he may claim about extenuating circumstances.”

  Jathmar’s jaw muscles quivered as fury swept through him. “Just how the hell did these things come to exist?”

  “They were created, we think,” Gadrial replied when Jasak hesitated. “During the Arcanan portal war, two centuries ago. By Mythlan shakira caste lords and their greatest magisters. The Ransarans lodged massive protests when the Mythlans turned the djinn loose against Andaran armies and ships—in fact, that’s what brought most of Ransar actively into the war on the other side—but the protests didn’t do any good. We’ve been trying to bottle them back up—permanently—for two hundred years. So far, no one’s succeeded.”

  “There’s no way to destroy the things?” Jathmar demanded, and Gadrial bit her lip.

  “The last team that tried it…” She shuddered. “No one’s tried actually killing one since, although we’ve been working on an approach we think would work at Garth Showma. The problem is that we aren’t sure it’ll work, and it’s the sort of field test that only gets to go wrong once. Sooner or later, we may have no choice but to give it another try, and we intend to go right on refining our R&D until we have to trot it out. In the meantime, fortunately, they can be forced back into bottles, eventually, with enough sufficiently Gifted magisters. But trying to kill one just makes it desperate enough and mean enough to get truly ugly.”

  Her voice turned bitter.

  “They know being bottled won’t be a permanent state. Most of them think it’s an amusing game, being released and having their fun, trying to elude capture in the chase, then being cornered and put back into a bottle, then waiting for some black marketeer to steal the bottle again so some other idiot will open it. They actually make a contest of it, amongst themselves. They’re hoping that eventually, we’ll get tired of chasing them down and leave them unbottled.”

  “Which is something we don’t dare do,” Jasak added grimly.

  “Why don’t they just kill anyone who tries to bottle them?” Jathmar asked, still seething with anger.

  “Because it isn’t sporting,” Jasak growled. “Their creators gave them a sense of humor and a twisted sense of respect for anyone clever enough to re-bottle them, as well as an appetite for creative ways to dupe their victims. So far, that seems to be holding true, but as Gadrial just implied, we can’t be certain it’ll stay that way forever. And, of course, the day it stops being true is the day some poor team of magisters is going to find out about it the hard way. The magisters know it, too,” he said grimly, his eyes flicking sideways to Gadrial for just a moment, “but they have to go right on bottling them and pray each time that this isn’t the moment the djinn stop playing games and start slaughtering magisters. That,” he added with a vicious snarl in his voice, “is another reason I hate most Mythlan shakira.”

  Shaylar stared from Gadrial to Jasak and back again, then shuddered.

  “Every time I think I’ve gotten used to your culture, something like this knocks the props out from under me, again, and I end up feeling like a lost and scared little girl. Again.”

  Jathmar slipped an arm around her, and she needed it. If they were willing to do that to one another, she thought, what would they do to Sharona? Would their Commandery decide to uncork those bottles and turn the djinn loose against Sharona’s forts? Sharona’s cities? She leaned against her husband’s shoulder, trying to blot that ghastly image from her mind and not succeeding very well.

  Jathmar’s worry for her prompted him to change the subject, bringing the conversation back to the one they’d been discussing before their unexpected digression.

  “So these ‘motics’ respond to programmed pods that steer them?”

  Gadrial nodded, and her expression was relieved.

  “Yes. The pods keep them in clearly marked lanes high enough above the streets and houses not to endanger anyone on the ground but low enough to avoid collisions with other air traffic. A car’s owner must tell the vehicle’s guidance crystal where he or she wants to go, and the GC is programmed to contact the nearest traffic control pod by means of a short-range communication spell. The pod sends back a response call that gives the car’s GC the flight path to reach the next pod in the system, leading the car from pod to pod until it reaches the its destination.”

  “It sounds complicated,” Shaylar put in, grateful that her voice didn’t shake as much as her insides, which were still quivering.

  “It is complicated. The initial spellware was very complex to build, and it took the designers and city traffic engineers a couple of years to set up the grid, put the pods in place, test the system, and work out the kinks even after the initial spells were created. Then they had to convince the air traffic controllers and the city councilors it would work and that it would be safe. But they finally did it and the system went live a few months before I left to join Halathyn. Motic sales soared so quickly the makers couldn’t produce them fast enough to fill the orders.”

  “If there was so much resistance from the government, what gave the companies enough incentive to go ahead with them?” Shaylar wondered.

  “The military wanted them,” Jasak explained. “For the officers’ corps, mainly. It’s cumbersome to schedule a pilot and dragon to fly across town, but that’s usually the fastest way to get around, especially in a city as large as Portalis. We have the best mass transit system in New Arcana, but the public sliders make so many stops it can take double the dragon flight time to reach anywhere in Portalis even with the faster slider speeds. And the portion of the city in Arcana, beyond the portal, wasn’t built for the public city slider system, but the pod control system’s flexible enough to be made to work even in Old City Portalis. Of course, motics can’t cross a portal threshold any better than a slider can, and that’s going to be an ongoing problem for their owners. You’ve seen the elaborate arrangements the slider stations have for transferring passengers between coaches at a portal, but how does the owner of a private motic manage that?” He shook his head.

  “I think they’ll manage it in the end,” Gadrial said confidently. “There’s been some fundamental research into purely mechanical ways of getting entire sliders across thresholds, Jas. If we can make that work, we can scale it down for motics. And there’ll be a lot of motivation to do just that.” She shrugged. “As you say, it’s flexible enough to make it work anywhere. Eventually, everyone’s going to want one of them, so the pressure to make it work will certainly be there!”

  Shaylar glanced out the window, where the vast spread of the city stretched for miles. “I can well imagine. It’s certainly faster than any carriage I’ve ever seen! And some of our largest cities are a nightmare to navigate during peak traffic times.”

  Curiosity touched Jasak’s eyes, but he was careful about pushing Shaylar and Jathmar for details they were unwilling to share. She and her husband both knew how fortunate they were that to have avoided falling into the hands of someone like Hundred Thalmayr. He would have treated them like criminals. Or worse. Each time Jasak Olderhan showed restraint, Shaylar and her husband gave thanks for their good fortune.

  So she said, “What did you want to ask about our cities, Jasak?”

  Surprise lit his eyes. Then he leaned forward. “You’ve never told us what the capital city of Sharona is cal
led. Will you at least tell me that?”

  The unspoken, “So I’ll have something concrete to tell my superiors” was clear, and Shaylar glanced at Jathmar, who met her gaze with as much dismay as she felt. Neither of them knew what to say. Sharona had no capital city because it wasn’t a unified world, the way Arcana was. Yet admitting that would only make Sharona seem weak and disorganized. Even Shaylar, about as unmilitary as a person could be, realized the danger inherent in that.

  She felt her husband’s desire to handle this one, so she let him speak. His answer surprised her, but it made sense, as well.

  “The city’s called Tajvana. For several thousand years, it was the capital of Sharona’s largest and most ancient empire, called Ternathia.”

  “The name of the language you taught us,” Gadrial said in surprise.

  Jathmar nodded. “Ternathia either controlled or colonized at least two thirds of the world. Today, Tajvana is the seat of world governance. Even our Portal Authority is headquartered there, despite the fact that no portal lies in or near Tajvana.”

  Shaylar could very nearly see the thought that formed behind Jasak Olderhan’s eyes: Their capital city is protected from direct invasion through a portal. She managed to hold in the shiver that touched her spine, feeling glad—very glad—Jathmar had answered. She would’ve bungled it, she knew, but Jathmar hadn’t actually lied, not once.

  Which hadn’t prevented him from leaving the distinct impression of a long-unified multiverse government. The failed truce in Hell’s Gate had been called under the auspices of something called the Sharonan Empire, but neither of them knew if that really existed as more than a polite fiction useful for negotiating with the Union of Arcana. Yet if Sharona as a unified political entity had come into existence after Toppled Timber, Tajvana was the city most likely to be named as the seat of that new multiversal government.

  Who would head it and what form it might take were unknowable. Shaylar couldn’t even hazard a guess. So she sent a flood of gratitude to Jathmar over the weakened bridge of their marriage bond and turned her attention back to the city they were approaching. The closer they got to Portalis’ heart, the more amazing it grew.

  Buildings soared to impossible heights, rising at least forty or fifty floors above the streets, and the shapes were even more astounding than their height. One immense building resembled a butterfly, with wings outstretched beyond a central tower shaped like the long, slender body of that delicate insect. The windows in those “wings” dazzled the eye, catching the sunlight with myriad colors, mimicking real butterfly wings with uncanny success.

  Others had fantastic, soaring arches that spanned entire city streets, connecting buildings, allowing people to cross busy thoroughfares without leaving a covered building. Yet those arches seemed gossamer thin, like bridges made of spidersilk and thistledown and soap bubbles. She couldn’t imagine how they didn’t fall apart or plunge into the busy streets below, let alone support so many people’s weight as they crossed along the soaring spans.

  Other buildings had strange projections, like shelf mushrooms made of glass and what caught the sunlight like metal. Only these “shelves” were the size of large houses, projecting sixty and seventy feet from the sides of buildings, with no visible support. Their walls and roofs were almost entirely glass and they were undeniably beautiful, but Shaylar would have been petrified just nerving herself to step out onto one of them. When the slider slowed and the sliderway angled down to a height merely twenty feet above street level, she stared in wonder at yet more sights nothing could have prepared her for.

  Everywhere she looked, there was something new and marvelous, so much, her senses began to overload. She couldn’t take it all in. Little flashes now and again came clear in the blur of unfamiliar sights. People rising up the sides of buildings in lines like marching ants, to reach doorways cut into the sheer, vertical sides of those buildings. Many of those doorways were cut into the sides of the strange, cantilevered “shelf mushroom” extensions, which she could see more clearly, now that they were actually inside the city.

  She saw street entertainers performing complex acrobatics and dances, while hovering mid-air. They whirled like spinning tops, made prodigious leaps, turned graceful somersaults like a high-trapeze artist, except there were no apparatuses to assist them. They simply danced and whirled and leapt like birds who’d decided to take up acrobatics.

  Sidewalk artists painted the air. Glorious swaths of color burst into being as they swept their hands in complicated patterns, creating breathtaking works of art that shone with unearthly beauty. Some glowed with soft tones, others glittered like gold dust, and still others scintillated like sun-struck opals. As Shaylar watched, entranced, a girl pointed to one of the patterns hovering mid-air and the whole glowing “painting” floated gently over to an easel, where it landed on what looked like a sheet of that strange, glassy substance that stored spells.

  The artist picked up the sheet and handed it to the girl, who passed money to him, then walked away with her artwork, smiling happily. The other patterns floated over to other sheets of that strange glassy material, creating yet other paintings the artist then stacked up beneath the easel, and Shaylar sighed as she sat back in her seat.

  “What’s wrong, Shaylar?” Gadrial asked in sudden worry.

  She turned her gaze away from the astonishing city. She was still so amazed by what she’d just seen, she blurted out precisely what was on her mind.

  “I wanted one of those glorious paintings. The ones that artist painted in the air.” Then she reddened and covered her face with both hands. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she said, aghast.

  Jasak laughed softly. “If you want a spell painting, Shaylar, I believe I can afford to buy one for you.”

  She lowered her hands to meet his gaze. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t,” he said gently. “But it’s my fault you’re here, unable to leave. If you want something beautiful, that’s only natural. And Shaylar, if you ever need anything, tell me. Please. My responsibility for you is as deep as though you were members of my own family. I’m bound by honor to provide you with everything you need, and the friendship I’ve come to feel for you makes me want to provide you with gifts, as well—things you might have purchased for yourself, before all of this happened.

  “At some point, it’s my hope we’ll be able to help you work in some fashion, to earn your own money. I know it must gall to be totally dependent on what you surely view as charity or the grudging support of a jailor,” he added, looking into Jathmar’s hooded eyes, as he spoke. “You probably think I don’t understand how you feel, and I will admit I probably don’t.

  “But I do understand wanting to feel like I’ve accomplished something on my own merit. Neither I nor my sisters have the slightest need to work, but we all do, nonetheless. Except for the youngest, who’s still in school. Working, contributing to society, earning your own money—that’s something important to self-esteem. But until we can find some way for you to do that, until we can help teach you to live safely in Arcanan society, you must rely on my help, financially.

  “You’ve been watching the city with wonder and fright in your eyes. Now that you’ve seen some of the things that happen on an ordinary city street, I think you have a better understanding of the fact that we have to teach you how to live, here. How to avoid unseen dangers, such as accidentally stepping into a spell-field that sends you thirty stories up the side of a building when you’re not expecting it. That will take time, as well.

  “I hate seeing you virtually helpless as young children, when both of you are extremely intelligent, well-educated, talented—and Talented”—he added with a very serious expression of respect—“people, highly skilled at what you do.”

  Shaylar, seated on a train in the middle of the most amazing city she’d ever seen, met Jasak’s worried eyes and bit her lower lip. “I’d like to work, somehow. But there’s very little I can do, here.”


  “You and Jathmar could find some way, surely, to put your Talents to use,” Gadrial said.

  Shaylar glanced at her husband, trying to send a silent question to him. It was like trying to walk through thick syrup, now, to reach his mind, and what little she could still sense took as much mental effort as it had once taken to connect another telepath at the very edge of her eight-hundred-plus-mile range.

  His glance into her eyes was hooded and wary; then a sigh escaped him and he shrugged.

  “We might as well tell them,” he said softly. “Maybe Gadrial can tell us why.”

  “Tell you what?” she asked as Jasak leaned abruptly forward, gaze sharp with sudden interest.

  Jathmar lifted one hand to touch Shaylar’s face, then turned to Gadrial. “We can barely Hear one another, now.”

  Gadrial blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we,” he said.

  “What, exactly, do you mean?” Jasak asked.

  Shaylar tried to explain. “At one time, I could touch Jathmar’s emotions, his feelings, so easily, I could often guess what he was thinking. You saw, yourself, what happened on board that first ship, when I was so distressed. Jathmar felt my chaotic emotions so clearly, he came charging into Gadrial’s cabin from ours. That’s gone,” she whispered, very nearly in tears. “I have to very nearly Shout to make Jathmar sense my emotions through the marriage bond, now. And it’s terribly difficult for me to sense his. Even sitting close, like this, it’s hard to do. When we’re in different rooms, now, we can’t Hear each other at all.”

  Jasak stared from one to the other and back. “That makes no sense.”

  “You think we don’t know that?” Jathmar demanded in a harsh voice. “We’ve lost everything else. And now we’re losing the most precious thing our marriage gave us: the telepathic bond between us.” Pain and anger throbbed through his voice.