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

by David Weber

  “As you know, all the public’s been officially told—all anyone outside a handful of highly placed officials at the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence knows—is that negotiations broke down, virtually all of our own negotiating team was killed in some sort of confrontation, hostilities have been resumed, and Two Thousand Harshu has advanced beyond Thermyn,” the duke replied flatly. “And all of that’s true. But if the information Sertal’s people have turned up is correct, the real reason those negotiations ‘broke down’ was because—according to Rithmar Skirvon and Uthik Dastiri—the Sharonians ‘made their warlike intentions clear’ from the outset by failing to stipulate that there would be no attack during negotiations. Because that clause is an essential hallmark of all serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate a cease-fire agreement, it was clear to Skirvon that Sharona had no intention of signing any peace treaty and intended to keep its hands free to attack at a time of its own choosing.”

  “What?” Jathmar stared at him. “That’s crazy!”

  “In fairness to Skirvon’s interpretation, the agreement by both parties not to attack during negotiations is, indeed, a fundamental part of traditional Arcanan diplomacy,” the duke said heavily. “Traditionally,” he emphasized the adverb heavily, “there was no obligation to agree to any such thing, and it was understood by all parties that unless it was specifically agreed to, either side was free to—and probably would—resume active operations at the moment it felt would be most advantageous. Mind you, no one’s negotiated any peace treaties since the establishment of the Union, so I think it’s safe to say our procedures are a little rusty, and we haven’t had any true ‘diplomats’ in the better part of two hundred years. I’d think that gave us plenty of opportunities to get it wrong from our side, as well. More to the point, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that we’re dealing with someone from a completely different—a totally alien—society which might not understand all of our own diplomatic niceties.”

  “Diplomatic niceties?” Jathmar visibly gripped his temper in both hands. “No Sharonian would even think about that! It’s obvious that anyone seriously interested in negotiating a cease-fire wouldn’t be planning to attack in the middle of the talks! One of the first things each side’s Voices—”

  He broke off, and the duke nodded unhappily.

  “Exactly,” he said softly.

  Silence hovered for the better part of a minute before he cleared his throat.

  “One of the minor points which hasn’t yet been officially reported to Parliament or the Commandery is that the ‘diplomatic incident’ which resulted in the deaths of at least one of our negotiators and most of their military escort occurred because Two Thousand Harshu’s offensive began with a preemptive attack predicated on the supposition that Sharona was preparing to attack us. In other words, contrary to what most of the citizens of the Union believe, there was indeed treachery and a ‘sneak attack,’ but it wasn’t launched by the Sharonians.

  “Skirvon and Dastiri were involved in face-to-face negotiations with the representatives of the Sharonian Empire when the attack kicked off. They were supposed to keep the Sharonians talking right up to the moment our troops arrived. In fact, although there’s no way to confirm it at this point, I suspect our ‘diplomats’’ ceremonial guard detail was supposed to kick off the entire operation by capturing—or killing—the entire Sharonian negotiating team.”

  The duke’s expression showed what he thought of that tactic.

  “Unfortunately for the attack plan, that particular bit of treachery apparently came a cropper. By the time our cavalry reached the negotiation site, the Sharonians were long gone, leaving behind the bodies of Uthik Dastiri and most of the ‘ceremonial guards.’ As far as I’m aware, the Sharonians are still at large somewhere behind our lines.”

  Shaylar felt her hand tighten like a claw on Jathmar’s, yet it was obvious the duke wasn’t done. There was worse to come, and she tried to brace herself to meet it.

  “There are suggestions in the material,” he continued, turning to glance at his son instead of the Sharonians, “which appear to confirm Fifty Therman’s report of Kerellian Accord violations. At the moment, I can’t even begin to decide which of the ones he’s reported is the most egregious. There’s going to be hells to pay over any of them, but the worst are that the head of Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence staff—a five hundred named Neshok—is using torture to—”

  “Neshok?” Gadrial blurted, then blushed as she realized she’d interrupted the duke. The senior Olderhan paused, cocking an eyebrow at her, and she had the oddest sensation he was actually grateful for the discourtesy surprise had startled out of her.

  Or for the interruption, anyway.

  “That was the name, Magister Gadrial,” he said. “An Alivar Neshok, I believe. According to the memo that went to the Directorate of Intelligence, he was specifically requested by Two Thousand Harshu and given the acting rank of five hundred so he’d have the necessary seniority. Should I take it you met him?”

  “We all have, Father,” Jathmar said grimly. “At least I’m pretty sure we have. Hundred Alivar Neshok was the officer who wanted to separate Shaylar and Jathmar from us in Erthos. The one Gadrial backed down when she told him to put her in the same cell to make sure nothing…untoward happened to them. Are you saying he’s who’s been in charge of Two Thousand Harshu’s intelligence this entire time?”

  “Yes, I’d say I am, although I confess I hadn’t connected him with your description of your time in Erthos.” The duke’s tone was even grimmer than his son’s had been. “I don’t think the name’s a coincidence, at any rate. And apparently he’s been just as…untrammeled by any scruples as Gadrial was afraid he might be. Therman informs me that there have been numerous reports of torture and of prisoners dying under questioning. In fact, he says that according to healers to whom he’s spoken, they’ve flatly refused to heal prisoners undergoing interrogation because healing them only allowed them to be tortured even further.”

  Jasak’s face could have been hewn out of granite. Gadrial held his hand tightly, her own expression anxious as she looked up at his profile. Despite the weakening of her Talent, Shaylar physically felt the fury raging through him behind that stony mask, and she found herself clutching Jathmar’s hand even more tightly.

  “I wish I could say that was the worst thing Fifty Ulthar had to report,” the duke said even more heavily. “Unfortunately, it isn’t. According to Therman’s brother-in-law, the lie that Magister Halathyn was shot down in cold blood by the Sharonians after surrendering, not in a ghastly friendly fire accident, isn’t just a wild story concocted by rumor mongers and so called reporters desperate for a story. According to Ulthar, the troops have been told—told officially—the same lie by their own intelligence officers.”

  “That’s insane!” Gadrial snapped, and this time there was no hint of apology in her expression when the duke looked at her. “One of the few things we knew for certain before we ever started for home was that Magister Halathyn was killed by one of our own infantry dragons! That was absolutely established in the earliest reports, whatever lies may’ve hit the crystals since!”

  “Precisely.” The duke shook his head, looking older in that moment than Shaylar had ever seen him look. “Precisely. Apparently whoever’s feeding the troops the false reports is at least attempting to cover himself by saying his information is ‘unconfirmed,’ but as far as I’m concerned, that’s simply a glaring tipoff that it’s deliberate and authorized at the highest levels. Harshu has to know the truth. For that matter, he has to know that eventually the truth is going to come out. But it’s evident from Ulthar’s report—assuming he’s got it right, and I’m very much afraid he does—that at the very least none of the Expeditionary Force’s senior officers are attempting to correct the ‘rumors’ sweeping through the ranks. And you know as well as I do, Gadrial, exactly how that’s going to inflame our people. Especially the garthans like Ulthar’s br
other-in-law. I can’t think of anything better calculated to generate atrocities than to allow our own troops to believe the Sharonians routinely commit them.”

  A crackling silence invaded the room, lingering like a static electricity on the skin, until Shaylar broke it.

  “You Grace,” she said very, very carefully, “why do I think those ‘atrocities’ are the reason Jathmar and I are here this evening?”

  “Because they are.” The duke faced her squarely, and his shoulders braced. “I’m afraid Two Thousand Harshu, faced with your own people’s huge advantage in communications—apparently on the advice of Five Hundred Neshok—settled on a technique to prevent your Voices from warning anyone up-chain about our advance.”

  Shaylar blinked. Sharona had been forced to develop techniques for neutralizing the Voice Talent long ago, but it hadn’t been easy and it had taken centuries. How could the Arcanans, who’d never even heard of Talents before Toppled Timber have devised one so quickly?

  Then she felt the spike of pure, unadulterated fury coming off of Jasak and the sudden horror radiating from Gadrial. The emotions were so powerful—and so focused on her, for some reason—that they almost knocked her breathless despite the weakening of her Talent.

  “I don’t care who he is, Father,” Jasak snapped. “I’ll cut his black heart out on the dueling ground!”

  “I understand your sentiments, Jasak,” the duke said. “And I share them. But that’s getting ahead of where we are now. What we have to do now is find out if what Ulthar’s reporting is true. We have to confirm that, with evidence that will stand up before any tribunal, before we can do anything else. And we have to find out whose idea it really was. Harshu’s for the dragon as far as I’m concerned, no matter who came up with it, but given how this information’s reached Portalis—and who in Portalis has it—I have to wonder who else could be manipulating the situation…and why?”

  “Mul Gurthak,” Gadrial hissed. “We keep hearing about Harshu, but mul Gurthak’s his superior, and this has the stink of shakira all over it, Your Grace!”

  “That’s exactly what I think, my dear. Unfortunately, we can’t prove it. In fact, at the moment, we can’t prove any of this.”

  “Any of what?” Shaylar demanded. “What do you all talking about, and why is Jasak so…so furious about whatever it is?”

  Jasak crossed to the couch upon which she and Jathmar sat. He dropped to one knee in front of her, reaching out and taking her free hand in both of his while he looked straight into her eyes with that unyielding personal integrity she’d come to know so well.

  “I’m furious because I’m your baranal,” he said. “Because you and Jathmar—all your people, even those I’ve never met—have already suffered and lost so much because of this entire stupid, unforgivable nightmare. And because whoever came up with Harshu’s ‘technique’ for neutralizing your Voices only knew they had to be neutralized in the first place because I reported the capability.”

  “That’s not fair, Jas!” Gadrial said sharply. “You had to report that, and you had no idea—no idea at all—anyone would use that information for this!”

  “For what?” Shaylar demanded again, and Jasak drew a deep breath.

  “There’s only one way we could ‘neutralize’ a Voice, Shaylar.” His voice was gentle, yet it was cored with steel, hammered on the anvil of his fury. “We don’t have a spell to do that. The only way we know to…‘turn off’ a Talent is to kill whoever has it.”

  Shaylar stared at him for a second or two longer, unable to process what he’d just said. And then understanding filled her like a sea of poison. It rushed into her, filling every nook and cranny of her soul with a black, crushing tide of horror. And of guilt. And of hatred.

  She snatched her hand out of Jasak’s and slammed back against the couch’s luxurious cushions. Of course that was what they’d done. It was what they did. They butchered anything they didn’t understand! But they couldn’t have done it—couldn’t have known to do it—if not for her. If she hadn’t survived, if she hadn’t told them about her Talent, if Jasak hadn’t passed that information along, then Sharona couldn’t have been surprised the way it clearly had been! And all of those Voices, all those people whose only crime had been to be Talented…

  “Monsters,” she whispered, staring back and forth between Jasak and his father. “You’re all monsters! Mother Marthea, how do you live with yourselves? I knew some of those Voices! I’ve touched their minds, shared their thoughts. They were part of me, and some of them were only children!”

  Jasak reached out to her again, but she shrank away, shaking her head convulsively.

  “Don’t touch me, Jasak Olderhan!” she snapped. “Don’t! Not now!”

  “Shaylar—”

  “No, Gadrial.” Shaylar shook her head again, even harder. “I don’t want to hear it! Not now.” She released Jathmar’s hand to wrap her arms about herself, huddling in on her bones as if she were freezing. She rocked on the couch, like a mother mourning the deaths of her own children, and tears ran down her face.

  “I don’t want to touch an Andaran—any Andaran. I want to wake up and find out this was all some hideous nightmare, but that’s not going to happen. I’m going to have to live with this. I’m going to have to live with knowing what monsters you can be and knowing I helped you. I helped you, Gadrial—whether I wanted to or not—and the gods only know how many others—how many other Voices—are dead because I did that!”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jasak said stonily. “You were a prisoner. You did absolutely nothing wrong, Shaylar. And you’re right, the people who did this, who ordered it—who permitted it—are monsters. I promise you we will find out who those people are and why they’ve done what they’ve done. And I promise you—I promise you, not the Union of Arcana—that when I do find out, they’ll face justice for their actions. I don’t care who they are, I don’t care who tries to protect them, and I don’t care whether or not I can do it through the courts. I will find them, and they will pay.”

  She stared at him, hating him in that moment with every fiber of her being, but she couldn’t shut down the incandescent edge of sincerity and determination blazing from him like the sun. And when she jerked her eyes from his face, looking over his head at the Duke of Garth Showma, she saw only matching fury and the same flinty determination. The pain and the guilt and the anguish within her fought to reject that recognition, but she couldn’t. As hard as she wanted to, she couldn’t.

  “I can’t give your people back their lives, Shaylar,” Jasak Olderhan told her very, very quietly, “but I will see to it that whoever took them pays for it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Hayrn 25, 206 YU

  [January 16, 1929 CE]

  The air in Portalis was oppressive. The walls of the duke’s townhouse, where he stood, alone, staring out at the city from his bedroom window, were worse than oppressive. They seemed to close in around him like the jaws of a vise until he felt himself gasping like a winded runner.

  There were doubtless some Sharonians whose hearts were large enough and gentle enough to forgive Arcana—or at least those Arcanans not directly responsible—for what Harshu the Butcher had done. Jathmar wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive these people for that series of atrocities. It was all he could do to forgive Jasak and Gadrial and Jasak’s parents, all of whom had gone to great extremes trying to make what amends they could.

  It wasn’t enough. The score Jathmar needed to settle just kept getting larger by the day, and he cherished his anger, rubbing the hands of his soul above its heat. Yet even as he did, he knew a very real component of that anger was directed—irrationally, to be sure, but still directed—against himself. Against his inability to do anything to protect himself, his world…or Shaylar.

  Standing now in front of the carefully spelled window that would neither allow him to leave nor allow anything from the outside to enter, staring in silence at the capital city of his captors, Jathmar w
as forced to admit that not all Arcanans were outright monsters. Indeed, the fact that Shaylar wasn’t with him today only confirmed that. The duke had flatly—and curtly—denied every request that she return to the court-martial for further testimony. For that matter, the duchess had actually picked up a daggerstone and promised to kill any soldier who tried to drag Shaylar back into a courtroom—any courtroom.

  The Commandery, thrown into total disarray, had backed down, which was why Shaylar remained safely at the Ducal Palace outside Portalis, where the duchess had vowed to remain at her side during every moment of Jathmar’s absence. She’d canceled every other appointment and made it perfectly clear that during her husband’s absence, she commanded Garth Showma’s personal armsmen and that the Garth Showma Guard would meet any attempt to intrude upon Shaylar with unyielding force. The depth of the duchess’ devotion to Shaylar had caught him by surprise.

  Even more telling, in some ways, was the duke’s reaction. Jasak’s father had presented Jathmar with documents bestowing a lifetime income—a very comfortable income, so far as Jathmar could tell—upon him and his wife. Half of it came from a trust funded entirely by the duke and his wife, which hadn’t really surprised him, given how seriously they took Jasak’s position as their baranal. What had surprised, him, however, was the fact that the other half had come from the Union of Arcana’s Parliament as the result of a piece of legislation Thankhar Olderhan had rammed through Parliament in less than twenty-four hours.