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

by David Weber

  The duchess smiled again, sweetly.

  “And by placing me in the same company as Halathyn vos Dulainah, you’ve paid me one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. So, having settled how admirably suitable you are for my son, let’s get some breakfast into you.”

  Sathmin touched a spell accumulator beside her chair. Nothing happened here, but Gadrial knew the spell would inform the staff that the duchess was ready for the rest of her breakfast. Less than one minute later, that breakfast arrived, set out efficiently by the maids who looked after the family meals. The spell-enhanced serving dishes were the best on the market, programmable for various temperatures, with a simple dial on each serving dish allowed the staff—or diners—to dial the holding temperature up or down, as desired.

  She settled in and tucked into her meal as Sathmin worked exceedingly hard at putting her at her ease. Within minutes, she’d relaxed enough to actually enjoy the stories of Jasak’s childhood mishaps, hijinks, and triumphs. She needed that, and she blessed Jasak’s mother for helping her prepare for the coming ordeal. And she prayed to Rahil, as well. Prayed hard, hoping that what she’d heard that terror-filled, agonizing day in a forest far from this lovely breakfast room, would save the man they both loved.

  The alternative was unbearable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Hayrn 22, 206 YU

  [January 13. 1929 CE]

  The door chime rang as the hummer battered its beak against the bell mounted beside Arylis Ulthar’s porch door.

  She turned from the cake she’d been frosting, and her eyes widened as she realized how exhausted that hummer was. The wings were missing a few iridescent green feathers, and whatever Novice or Journeyman had been supposed to recharge the levitation spell at the last way station to help the small beast’s natural magic maintain its breakneck speed had obviously bungled the job. The creature had settled, exhausted, into the open wire cage by the doorpost instead of taking any number of more natural perches in the small yard or nearby trees.

  Strong compulsion spells gave the hummer no choice in its destination, and the crystal chip in the base of the cage glowed as it transferred the message from the travel-worn creature. Arylis wanted that message—wanted it badly—but she knew hummers well enough to realize how thoroughly distressed this one was. The message would be there whenever she got to it; the hummer might not be, if something wasn’t done about its exhaustion.

  She’d worked summers as a hummer trainer and run a hummer nursery business with her sisters before marrying Therman Ulthar. It was the sort of support work—on the edge of the Army but not quite in it—many Andaran women did between school and marriage and sometimes after, and her family was garthan. They’d found refuge from the nightmare of Mythalan society under the protection of Andara, and like most refugees, their patriotism and devotion to their new home burned hot and fierce, which had made that support work even more satisfying. The young hummers needed about a year’s growth after leaving the nest before they gained enough strength to receive their enchantments, and her family had bought hummer chicks from Gifted breeders and fed them up before reselling the strong, older birds to the Union Army and private communications services. She’d come to love the swift, jewellike little creatures, and she didn’t bother to close the cage door or slip on the bespelled handling gloves hanging under the cage before she reached for this one with her bare strong, dark-skinned hands. She knew hummers too well to bother with them, and she didn’t care to mess the inside of the gloves with cake frosting from her interrupted baking.

  She hand-fed the creature a couple of ounces of honeywater with her icing bag. The small magic in the icing tip wasn’t designed to feed birds, but it worked—beading in a fat wet globe at the end of the bag between the hummer’s red-throated gulps. It was very hungry, and she wanted the worn creature fed before she confirmed the download from its message chip and let it follow its next spell-compulsion to streak back to the North Portalis Hummer Aerie. She hoped it would receive a gentle grooming and a few days rest before its next long message route.

  Her half-iced cake had been more in the way of practice than actually needed for a gathering, so she didn’t mind interrupting her decorating efforts to ensure the little creature at least got some sugar in its system before powering back home again. Not only had she spent years raising them for the mail service, but more recently, sleek-winged hummers who’d probably never flown farther than the outskirts of Old Portalis on Arcana Prime arrived weekly with short messages from the Commandery’s Bureau of Family Relations and Military Support Services. That always happened when a unit was deployed, and Arylis had grown accustomed to their general nothing messages about Therman’s unit when it was on deployment.

  Of course, those messages had been anything but “general” or “nothing” since the first news of the clash with the mysterious Sharonians had blasted over the entire Union of Arcana. The nightmare of not knowing for almost two weeks what had happened to him—if he was even alive or dead—had been horrible, despite the way in which all the 2nd Andarans’ wives and family members had rallied about one another. But then had come the wonderful news that he was alive and recovered from his wounds, although he was now stationed in a universe called “Thermyn,” which she’d never even heard of. Once she’d gotten over the shock—and finished weeping in joy—at the news that he was alive, she’d been a bit amused that his current post’s universe bore a name so similar to his own.

  But she hadn’t heard a great deal directly from him yet. There’d been a brief note from her brother Iftar, telling her Therman had been found alive and rescued. And there’d been an even briefer standard Military Support Services survivor’s message, from Therman himself. Aside from that, there’d been nothing, which suggested the censors were clamping down pretty hard. Arylis had enough of a garthan’s suspicion of those in authority to make her uneasy over that silence, but she trusted the Army to tell her if anything bad—anything else bad—happened to her husband.

  This message might well be from BFR or even from Therman himself, which was why her fingers itched to check its contents, but she made herself take the time to finish caring for the hummer. Hummer stations could transfer the messages from creature to creature as they came down the line, but the hummers didn’t get immediately sent back after long trips, either. So if the message was from Thermyn and not the BFR office right here in Portalis, this hummer might have been the one to bring her message much of the way across New Arcana from the outbound portal to New Andara. Or it might have brought some other message and simply been reused for a purely local message by a sloppy handler who hadn’t noticed the creature’s need for rest.

  If it had been Threeday, she’d have been certain it was just another Bureau of Family Relations nothing message. But today was Fiveday and she’d already gotten one of those this week.

  The hummer finished the last bead of sugar water, pressed its needle-sharp beak against the back of her hand with feathery gentleness, then squirmed until she released it. It hopped back into the cage, crossed to the cage’s message chip, and tapped the chip once with that same beak. Its complex enchantments had completely transferred the message to the sarkolis chip in the base of the cage, and it was clearly impatient—thanks to those same complex enchantments—for her to confirm receipt and send it upon its way once more.

  She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, however. It needed a longer feeding, and so she refilled the icing bag with more honeywater and hung it from the top of the cage before she extracted the crystal from its receptacle. then she latched the hummer into the cage to ensure it would get to finish feeding before the homing compulsion forced it on.

  Arylis tried not to hope for too much when her shaking hands slotted the message chip into the carved lines of the family’s old message reader. A family with a magister, or even a novice in its household, would use a PC for this and a multitude of other tasks. Since neither Arylis nor Fifty Ulthar had a scrap of Gift
between them, she used reliable single purpose spellware for the few things in their homelife that required enchantment or disenchantment.

  “My name is Arylis Ulthar.” She spoke carefully into the device, enunciating, and projecting her voice a bit more than normal to make sure its aetheric energy made a strong enough field for the old spellware to work.

  The carved lines marking out runes and amplification circles around the message chip glowed a familiar solid blue, and Arylis relaxed. The old device hadn’t chosen this moment to stop working.

  The chip slowly warmed until it too glowed. Then it did exactly what she expected.

  “Personal message from—” the spellware paused to access the sender’s name and then continued, and Arylis’ heart leapt as Therman’s familiar reference number rolled out of the reader “—soldier 2AS-50C-03-73524. Speak access code to retrieve message.”

  “I love you Therman. It’s Arylis.” She wiped a little wetness from her face. It was hard to deliver her personal access code in the deadpan tone necessary for the spellware, but she managed. Sheer stubbornness kept her from changing it, even as difficult as it sometimes was to speak the phrase clearly on the first try.

  The hummer chirped happily. She glanced up and saw it return to feeding.

  “Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”

  She waited.

  And waited. And waited. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. This message was far longer than the MSS survivor’s message had been, and she wanted it—wanted it more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her life! But it would take however long it took, she told herself firmly…and was just about to poke at the crystal chip to see if it was seated properly when it finished.

  “Arylis, my love,” Therman’s voice said from the reader, clearly him, but with the extra rasp camp-recorded messages always had. “I’m fine. Things have been rough out here. I’ll tell you about it when we all get home. The war, well, its war, but I’m okay and I’ve seen Iftar. He’s fine, even if he isn’t any happier about this whole damned mess than I am. Pass that on to your sisters and give them my best, as well. And I’m sorry about putting you in this position, but I knew you’d find a way. I love you.”

  The message continued with just soft rasping over silence while Arylis stared at the crystal chip. He was sorry? About what position? Then the reader’s spellware clicked on a second time.

  “Personal message for soldier 2AS-Actual. Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”

  Arylis’ mind froze. 2AS-Actual? That was…that was ridiculous!

  Her husband, Fifty Therman Ulthar was 2AS-50C-03-73524, the fifty commanding Third Platoon, Company C, Second Andaran Scouts and assigned the lineal number of 73524. But 2AS-Actual was the commander of the entire Second Andaran.

  That was the Duke of Garth Showma himself.

  She was still staring at the reader in shock when the hummer tilted its long beak away from the tip of the icing bag and gave a bright chee-dit. It was done feeding, and her hands moved as if they belonged to someone else as they loosed the fine bird. It tapped the cage’s floor once, its complex enchantments received the signal that the message had been completely transferred, and with a blur of wings, it was gone. Arylis’ eyes tracked it automatically as it disappeared.

  “Decryption complete,” said the message crystal reader. “Message ready for replay.”

  * * *

  The well-fed hummer landed at North Portalis Hummer Aerie. The delay while it was fed had also delayed its confirmation that its message had been downloaded to Arylis Ulthar’s reader. That meant its implanted crystal had been active when Arylis spoke her access code and Therman’s brief message played itself. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did occasionally, and the privacy laws were clear. When it did, any scrap of personal information which had made its way onto a hummer’s crystal was immediately deleted. But in this instance, when it returned to its aerie and the scrap of conversation uploaded to the central traffic crystal, someone who shouldn’t have even known about it read it before it was deleted.

  * * *

  “Straight to the duke,” Arylis told herself. “Just take the message straight to the duke.” She almost laughed. Of course Therman had thought that would be easy; he hadn’t been living in northern Garth Showma these past six weeks. He didn’t know what they’d been hearing about the war. Instead he’d been experiencing the truth of it.

  She shivered at that thought, because it shouldn’t have been that different. What she’d been certain of and believed with absolute conviction and what she thought was probably true now, after hearing Therman’s version—they shouldn’t be so opposite.

  Not knowing what else to do, she packed up the half frosted cake in its beautiful red striped carrier and matching satchel. One of her sisters had given her the thing. A cake carrier bespelled for freshness and balance to keep the frosting from messing even if the whole thing was tumbled end over end…and just a little greater in diameter than the flat, round spellreader. She put the reader into the fitted satchel first, then slid the cake carrier on top. The rosy bubble over the cake stuck out a half palm’s width more than it should have, but with a little effort Arylis still got the satchel to close. Tinkling bells played a soothing arpeggio and the Ransaran company logo on the satchel changed from pale rose to burgundy. Good, it had sealed.

  She hung her apron on its hook, wrapped the satchel strap twice around her wrist for a good hold, and set off for Portalis. The duke was in residence, and he wasn’t likely to be anywhere else when she arrived. Not with the news services’ daily, breathless reports about the closed sessions of the courts-martial.

  Arylis Therman didn’t follow those reports…mostly because she already knew exactly what their outcomes should be. Her family’s memories of Mythal were long, deep, and bitter. None of them had ever been bound in service to the vos Hoven line, but one shakira clan was very like another, and what she’d heard of the charges against him told her precisely what sort he was. Magister Halathyn would have spat on his shadow, she was sure.

  The memory of the dead magister sent a fresh stab of grief through her…and an even hotter stab of fury. She hadn’t actually read Therman’s message to the duke; that was between him and his CO. But he’d wanted her to know at least some of why it was so important for that message to be delivered, so he’d included a brief synopsis just for her. Which meant she now knew that the official stories coming from official government spokesmen—the stories she’d put down to an effort to control the rage of every garthan in a hundred universes—were actually the truth. That they hadn’t been fabricated to still the outrage, as journals like the Herald Times trumpeted in every issue. That the “scoops” from “official sources speaking on condition of anonymity” were the lies. The Sharonians hadn’t killed the magister; their own troops had! And like her brother and her husband, Arylis could think of only one reason—and one group—with the motive to lie so consistently, so passionately, and so convincingly about it.

  And vos Hoven’s part of that same stinking, lying, twisted sewer of shakira, isn’t he? she thought bitterly. Well, at least maybe he’ll get what he has coming! And if Ulthar and Therman are right, the duke may just see to it that another batch of the scum get what they’ve got coming, as well!

  She hugged that thought to her, but at the same time, a fresh shiver of concern melded with the hot fury, like an icy wind through the throat of an angry volcano. If Therman was right about what was happening, then the odds against Sir Jasak Olderhan were even worse than she’d feared they were. Like virtually every garthan, Arylis knew about the bitter hatred between the Olderhans’ faction of the Andaran nobility and the shakira. That was one reason she’d been so proud when Therman was assigned to Hundred Olderhan’s company. But if Therman was right about how high the lies and the manipulation had to go, then Sir Jasak had to be in the sights of whoever was truly behind it. And no one had to tell a garthan how deadly any shakira line lord’s
malice could be. And if there truly was some sort of general conspiracy behind all of this…

  Arylis hugged the float-assisted cake carrier to her chest as she walked into the public slider station and checked the schedule. She found the connection she wanted, bought her ticket, and settled into an available seat with the cake carrier cradled in her lap, and her mind went back to the questions and speculation buzzing through it like Mythalan mosquitos.

  There was no news about either of the courts-martial, and there wouldn’t be, until they were concluded one way or another. The Union Army’s tradition—adopted from the Andarans—was that the public was entitled to full disclosure of charges, testimony, evidence, and verdicts in any court-martial…but only after the trial was completed. The accused was guaranteed the protection of confidentiality until his guilt or innocence was determined, and that confidentiality could be extended still further if he was convicted and chose to appeal…assuming the Judiciary General’s Office granted an appeal hearing. That was another reason she’d avoided coverage of the trials; all the reporters and talking heads could do was rehash rumors, speculation, and more of those “confidential sources,” and she didn’t trust any of them as far as she could spit.