The Road to Hell (Hell's Gate Book 3)

by David Weber

  Chan Rahool finished his recitation with palms held up.

  “I know none of it makes any sense from a human perspective, but I’m their ambassador too. They wanted the message delivered, so I needed to take it to Empress Varena.”

  He looked pleadingly at Alazon. “I heard you’d stepped down as Privy Voice, but perhaps you still have contacts? If you could just take the transmission, I could say I’d given it to a woman in the empress’s service. I think the gorillas would accept that.”

  Darcel handed the now obviously distraught ambassador the rest of the appetizer tray and sent his wife a speaking glance. This was clearly a question for the former Privy Voice, and Alazon sighed.

  “I can relay your gorilla’s message and this conversation exactly as we’ve had it to the emperor…and,” she added at his cough, “to Empress Varena as well. But you’ll have to explain to them that humans don’t order other humans to procreate the way it sounds like the simians can.”

  “Yes. Yes. Already done three times over,” the ambassador said. “But at least I can tell them I passed on the message. They don’t normally cling to things this long. I thought sure migrating for the dry season would put it out of their minds, but almost a full month since the last rain and they’re sending me off with messages like I’m one of their teen boy chimps. That’s what the clicking and cheek blowing means, you know: human grandmother’s little boy chimp.” He winced. “If you must tell the emperor about that bit, please do include that I had no idea at all what it meant when I first agreed to the name.”

  Alazon nodded gravely, trying very hard to keep her lips from twitching in amusement.

  “They’re willing to change the name for me,” chan Rahool continued, “but they insist that I should kill a tiger with a spear I carved myself first. And then I’ll be an adult and the male chimps have said they’ll need to fight me from time to time just to help me keep in shape.

  “I’d really rather not complicate the ambassadorship with all that, if you didn’t mind terribly.”

  Chan Rahool’s head turned, following a tray of food in a passing waiter’s hand. “Say, do you have any more of the crunchies?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hayrn 17, 205 YU

  [January 9, 1929 CE]

  Garth Showma.

  Jasak had forgotten how much he loved it…until an unwary glance out the slider window snatched him up out of the briefing he’d been conducting for his shardonai. The sight of the first cluster of snow-draped forest pulled the heart-hunger up into his throat, with a fierce power made even stronger by how many terrible things had happened since his last visit home, and he stared out that window, unaware of emotion which had transfigured his expression in that moment. The winter-struck trees of the ducal estate, which ran in forests thirty miles on a side, had been lovingly maintained in their pristine, virgin condition over most of its vast extent, and he drank in their icy beauty like strong wine. Despite two full centuries of settlement, Garth Showma was a jewel of natural beauty, punctuated by the massive Showma Falls.

  He’d been showing Jathmar and Shaylar the maps as they traveled by slider for the last portion of their three-month long inter-universal journey, comfortably ensconced in their own private car.

  And comfortable in more than one way. That thought sent a wave of mingled darkness and satisfaction through him, pulling him back almost brutally from his thoughts of home, and his glance moved from the trees to the end windows where another slider car was now coupled to the rear of their own. It bore the colors of the Dukes of Garth Showma, that other car, nor was it alone; there was an identical car coupled to the front of theirs, as well.

  Jasak’s messages to his father had reached home just over a month ago, and his father’s reply had been waiting at the incoming slider station in the city of Theskair in New Ransar—three universes, eight thousand miles, and fourteen days’ travel from Garth Showma. He’d expected a hummer message; what he’d gotten was a security team—a very professional, highly trained, very dedicated, and heavily armed security team from the Garth Showma Guard commanded by Commander of One Hundred Hathysk Forhaylin.

  Forhaylin’s presence had been all the message Jasak really needed about how seriously his father took events down-universe. Hundred Forhaylin had served in the 2nd Andaran Scouts with Thankhar Olderhan and Otwal Threbuch. When the duke retired, Threbuch had stayed in the Scouts, but Forhaylin had followed his duke out of the Union Army and become second in command of the Garth Showma Guard, the personal guard whose men—whose Andaran men—were all sworn to the service of the Duke of Garth Showma as their liege lord, not as the Governor of New Arcana. They answered to Thankhar Olderhan directly…and Hathysk Forhaylin was the man he sent out when he expected blood in the streets.

  Jasak was just as happy Shaylar and Jathmar had been unaware of that minor point. And he was also happy Forhaylin had briefed him very privately on the occasional anti-Sharona riots which had already occurred.

  “His Grace,” the dark-haired, bearded hundred had said, sunlight bright on the silver beginning to color his temples, “is…perturbed by the dearth of additional formal reports from Hells Gate.” He’d met Jasak’s eyes levelly. “The absence of official dispatches has left people—and the news services, of course—free to make up whatever rumors they want, and some of them are pretty damned ugly. It didn’t help when word that hostilities have been resumed arrived without any real explanation of why, either. The natural assumption in New Arcana is that the Sharonians must have broken them off, but we don’t actually know anything about the circumstances. I believe His Grace shares your own suspicion that the absence of any official explanation—or several other critical aspects of events out there—may not be accidental.”

  That was certainly one way to describe his “suspicions,” Jasak had thought grimly, and he’d hated having to share the news that the fighting had flared up again with his shardonai. They’d taken it just as badly as he’d expected them to, and it had taken almost a week for them to regain their comfortable relationship—or as comfortable as it had ever been—with one another.

  That reflection finished the process of drawing him back to his present duty. They didn’t have that much longer until they arrived now, and he smiled a brief apology at the others for his distraction and bent back over the map on the table.

  “The Duchy of Garth Showma stretches from the Ocean of Storms in the east to the western-most of the Great Andaran Lakes,” he said, and pointed to an immense span of territory that corresponded, roughly, to the Republic of Faltharia where Jathmar had been born.

  “Technically, we own all of it,” he continued, smiling at the Sharonian’s expression, “but the vast bulk of it’s been permanently deeded to freeholders of one sort and another.” He shrugged. “Unless someone dies intestate or the land is seized for nonpayment of taxes or something like that, we don’t really have much to say about its disposition. The family’s personal demesne, Garth Showma, itself, is much smaller, of course. It lies here, where the Showma River drops over a horseshoe-shaped cliff that forms the Showma Falls. They’re one of the two largest waterfalls on New Arcana—and every other universe, of course.”

  Jathmar nodded. “In Sharona, we call it the Grand Emlin Falls. I was born here,” he pointed to a spot on Jas Olderhan’s map, “in the city of Serakai in the Republic of Faltharia.”

  “How did you like growing up with all those winter blizzards?” Jasak asked. “I got so tired of them as a kid.”

  Jathmar chuckled. “Serakai means ‘city of snow.’ I can remember winters when blizzards piled up drifts thirty feet high.”

  “So can I,” Jasak told him with a grin, and the two of them turned in perfect unison, as though they’d rehearsed it, to check the cold clear skies out the window.

  Shaylar, who’d grown up in the hot deserts of Shurkhal, looked from one to the other, then grimaced at Gadrial.

  “I’d never even seen snow, until I married Jathmar. We held the wedding
at his parents’ home, as Faltharian custom calls for, during the mid-winter solstice festival,” she said. “Winter solstice is considered a fortunate time for weddings in Faltharia. Personally, I think that’s just because there’s nothing else to do in Faltharia during the winter.” She shivered. “It took weeks to get warm again.”

  “We just missed Snowfall Night,” Jasak said wistfully. “It lasts a fortnight, but all the best parades are on the shortest day of the year.”

  “So you two think you’ve seen snow, do you?” Gadrial asked, looking back and forth between the two men, and laughed softly. “Babes in arms, the pair of you! If you want to see real weather, you should try spending a winter in Ransar. It’s not uncommon for the temperature to drop thirty or forty degrees below zero, for weeks at a time. My first winter away from home was a delightful shock. I didn’t have to bundle up in furs or tie a safety line to my waist even once, just to keep from losing my way between my parents’ house and the barn to feed the livestock.”

  Shaylar shuddered. “Thank you, but I’ll pass on that offer.”

  “That sounds remarkably like how people in Sharona deal with blizzards. There’s not some magic to find your way through the snow?” Jathmar said.

  “There’s a whole field of applied magic for that,” Gadrial explained, “but when it gets cold enough, sarkolis gets brittle. When that happens, the crystals tend to crack—which does horrible damage to the stored spells. It’s best to have a safety line.”

  Jasak tapped the map to bring their attention back to his lecture. “Ahem. Now, then. The demesne lies along the river. You can see the falls from the ducal palace, which is my parents’ main house. They maintain another in Portalis, the city that sprawls along both sides of Arcana’s first portal.” He tapped the map, where a symbol in red ink marked the location of the portal.

  “My father lives on the estate and governs all of Garth Showma directly in his own right—it’s complicated,” he added as Shaylar and Jathmar frowned at him. “Like I said, in theory the Olderhan family owns the entire duchy; actually, it’s more a matter of everyone who lives in it owing fealty to the Duke of Garth Showma as their liege lord. But that’s a personal relationship between him and them. He governs the rest of New Arcana in the name of the Union of Arcana, and none of the other citizens of New Arcana owe him any sort of personal fealty.”

  “But the governorship is also hereditary, right?” Jathmar asked in the tone of someone wanting to be very sure he has something straight.

  “Yes,” Jasak agreed, nodding encouragingly.

  “Then how can the people he governs not owe him personal fealty?”

  “Like Jasak said, it’s complicated,” Gadrial put in with a wry grin. “In fact, it’s complicated even for an Andaran. Just take his word for it that Duke Thankhar has two different personas: one is Duke of Garth Showma and the other one is Governor of New Arcana. They just happen to both live in the same body.”

  “Right. ‘Complicated,’” Jathmar muttered, and Jasak chuckled.

  “Don’t worry too much about the details, Jath. The important point for us is that my parents can get away with living on the estate because of how close it is to the capital, Portalis. Or, rather, to the side of the city on New Arcana, not the side on Arcana Prime. Of course, when his duties call him to the capital, he and mother stay in their town house in Portalis, which is considerably smaller than the ducal palace.”

  “Hah!” Gadrial interjected once more. “Small is relative. I’ve never been to the ducal palace, mind, but I’ve passed that so-called town house hundreds of times. It fills an entire city block. Not one side of the block; the whole block.”

  Jasak looked exasperated. “Well, it has to be large, since it houses the government administration staff for the whole of New Arcana, Gadrial! The family lives in a very small portion of the house.”

  “How many rooms?” she asked in a sweet tone, and he scowled.

  “I don’t remember, exactly,” he muttered.

  “Oh, just a close estimate will do.” She actually batted her eyelashes. Jasak turned red, and Shaylar suppressed a splutter of laughter as she recognized the ploy.

  “Uh…maybe thirty?” he said finally, and Gadrial sat back in queenlike satisfaction.

  “I rest my case.”

  Shaylar couldn’t help it. The laugh she’d struggled right womanfully to restrain broke loose in a bubble of delight, and Gadrial nodded to her in the shared satisfaction of their gender while Jasak rubbed the back of his neck, which was as hot as his face. Then he stopped rubbing and grinned sheepishly, and that let Jathmar’s chuckle surface, as well. He glanced at Jasak with a look that said, very clearly, Women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t drown ’em, might as well love ’em.

  Jasak’s return glance agreed with that assessment.

  Shaylar, dying of curiosity by inches, asked in the same sweet tones Gadrial had used, “Are those your parents’ only houses?”

  “Well,” he said cautiously, “ah, no. Actually, there are two more. There’s a manor house at the demesne in the Earldom of Yar Khom and another smaller demesne property in the Barony of Sarkhala. Neither of those is in New Arcana, though. Those are the oldest family titles, the oldest family estates. The dukedom wasn’t created until the portal formed, two centuries ago. They’re located here,” he pointed to his map, “but in Arcana Prime, of course.”

  He swept his hand down the map, indicating two tracts of land some eleven hundred miles south of Garth Showma, but on the same continent.

  Yar Khom encompassed a long, narrow peninsula of sub-tropical land at the southern extremity of that continent, which jutted into the warm waters that formed—on Sharona—the meeting point of the North Vandor Ocean and the South Vandor Ocean.

  “Andara,” Jasak explained, “is first and foremost a military power. Before the creation of the Union, we had the largest army on Arcana. We also had the second largest navy, for that matter. We’re an aristocracy, with a military tradition that stretches back centuries. My father’s other Arcana Prime estate, the Barony of Sarkhala, lies here.” He pointed to the large island off the southern tip of that long peninsula.

  Gadrial chuckled. “The democratic republics of Ransar like to say that Andara is an army that somehow acquired a state. We’re not entirely sure how they managed that, since it makes no sense to us, either, but that’s essentially what they did.”

  Jathmar blinked in surprise. “Your country’s a democracy, Gadrial? Governed by the people?”

  “Oh, yes. Ransar”—she pointed to the vast sweep of land that to Sharonan eyes corresponded to the various kingdoms and empires of the Uromathian peoples, plus the entirety of the Arpathian Septentrion—“is comprised of several independent republics, with elected presidents and legislatures. We’re all part of the Union of Arcana, of course, just as Andara is, but democratic principles are very important to Ransarans.”

  “Mmm,” Jasak commented.

  Gadrial’s eyes sparkled. “Go ahead, Jasak. Don’t let your chivalry or stiff-necked Andaran pride stop you from commenting.” She grinned to take any implied criticism out of her comment and rolled her eyes at Jathmar and Shaylar. “‘Those unstable, chaotic Ransarans,’” she murmured in pedantic tones, “‘with their lunatic notions of personal freedom and the worth of individual initiative. They’ll be the ruin of the Union.’ You know it’s been said,” she added when Jasak gave her The Look.

  “More often in Mythal than Andara,” he replied, and the sparkle of humor in her eyes flashed into a sudden anger that surprised Shaylar.

  “Yes, it has,” the magister half-snapped. “Which undoubtedly explains why Ransar has the highest standard of living on Arcana, why Ransaran manufacturing capacity is twice the size of every other nation’s—or culture’s—in the world, including those self-worshipping shakira narcissists in Mythal!”

  Her anger was growing almost exponentially as she very nearly spat out her words.

  “And that ‘unstable chaos’ is
obviously why Ransarans consistently produce more applied magic innovations than the rest of Arcana combined!” she continued, still building steam. “Not to mention the most advanced high-tech magical industry in the history of Arcana, despite the over-hyped, over-confident, self-satisfied, power-worshipping, godsdamned Mythalan control of theoretical magic research.”

  The anger in her eyes had gone volcanic and she turned her furious gaze away from Jasak to meet Shaylar’s gaze.

  “The shakira spend their time sitting on their backsides for long, arduous hours, toying with the interlocking magical building blocks of the multiple universes and wondering which is more profound, the religious underpinnings of the multiple universes or their own elevated place in the multiple cosmos. And while they’re staring at their navels and pondering the imponderable, Ransarans develop the tools and the technology that make their lives comfortable and easy enough to spend those lives sitting there, doing damned near nothing else. Of course, their slave labor policies are a big help. It gives the shakira lords a lot more spare time to devote to doing nothing! If I could, I’d rip their whole ugly society to shreds and send them into the fields and factories to get a dose of reality!”