by David Weber
"As all of us, I'm sure, have already been informed," he said, his voice harsh and rusty with fatigue, "Crown Prince Janaki chan Calirath has fallen in battle against the enemies of Sharona. Regiment-Captain chan Skrithik and Division-Captain chan Geraith both agree that it was only the Prince's Glimpses which allowed Fort Salby to hold. And—" he looked up, forced to clear his throat hard, despite all his years of political experience "—the Division-Captain has confirmed that Prince Janaki knew it was a Death Glimpse before he chose to remain as part of the garrison defending Fort Salby and Salbyton's civilian population."
There was a moment of profound silence, and then Taje straightened his shoulders.
"Rather than rehearse the truly harrowing details, which have been summarized in reports that are being bound for distribution as we speak, I will turn the podium over to His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor-Elect of Sharona. But first, I ask that all please rise and bow heads for a moment of silence to honor the Crown Prince and the thousands of others that we estimate have been murdered in this Arcanan assault."
Kinlafia heard Temple bells tolling in the distance as the word raced out through Tajvana and the rest of Sharona, signaling Voices across the world to sound the bells in honor of their dead, royal and common, military and civilian. He shivered as he listened to those deep, rolling tones of grief and respect. He'd never heard so many Temple bells at one time. The sound reverberated through the city, through his bones. They rang out their dirge for five full minutes, calling to the thousands of Sharonian souls trying to find their way to the heavens of home.
In the end, the last shivery tone died into silence, and Zindel chan Calirath took the podium.
It was obvious he hadn't slept. Kinlafia's seat was close enough for him to see the bloodshot eyes, haggard with dark circles. The Emperor gripped the sides of the podium for long, silent moments, simply standing there in the heartlessly plain black and white mourning tunic and trousers instead of the jeweled coronation robes he ought to have been wearing.
Then he began to speak.
"Over the past several weeks," he rasped, his deep voice rough-edged with fatigure and grief, "we have wondered and debated over Arcana's possible intentions. Those intentions are now brutally clear. We neither asked for nor provoked this war. We attempted to deal fairly and openly with the enemy—only to be met with treachery and escalating violence.
"I have been closeted with the Chiefs of Staff, the elected Speakers of this Conclave, and the first Director of the Portal Authority for most of the night. We've discussed threats and options for meeting them, and we have reached the following decisions.
"We are instituting an immediate recall to active duty of every soldier, sailor, and marine under the age of forty. We realize the terrible hardship this will place on families and businesses, but we have no choice. Our standing army is far too small to fight a war of this magnitude. If circumstances force our hand, we will recall all former military personnel under the age of fifty, placing those with health and eyesight difficulties in administrative slots that must also be filled in order to make this war effort succeed.
"We are also asking for emergency volunteers from the Talents to fill critical positions in communications, intelligence gathering, medical care, and many other areas. If we cannot fill those needed positions through volunteerism, we will have no choice but to institute conscription."
Shock detonated through every Talented delegate to the Conclave. Even Darcel was stunned by the suggestion. Of all the major Sharonan nations, only Uromathia practiced conscription. Ternathia, Farnalia, Harkala, and New Ternath and New Farnal all relied upon a tradition of voluntary military service. So did virtually all of the smaller Sharonian nations, and even in Uromathia, the Talents were automatically exempt from conscription because they were so relatively scarce, as necessary to the civilian infrastructure as to the military. What Zindel had just suggested—or threatened—was unprecedented, hadn't happened in over four hundred years, and a roar of protest rose. It hammered at the Chancellery's banner-hung walls and—
"You will be silent!"
Zindel chan Calirath's bull-throated bellow stunned the entire vast chamber into silence.
"By our best estimate, judging from when we initially lost contact with our forces in Hell's Gate," he said into the ringing stillness, biting off each rough-edged, husky word like a sliver of bone, "the Arcanans advanced over four thousand miles in approximately twelve days. They are now little more than forty-four thousand miles from Sharona. If they launch a second—and successful—assault on Fort Salby and continue to advance at the same pace, they could cover the remaining distance to this very city in barely three months. Do not presume to protest anything the Throne demands in a war of survival. We don't have time for it, and I will not let any of you jeopardize all of us. Is that clear?"
No one said a word, and Zindel chan Calirath's nostrils flared with satisfaction.
"Good," he said much more quietly. "Then understand this, as well—all of you. We did not start this war, but we will finish it. We will take back the portals they've taken from us in their treacherous attack. We will punish the atrocities they have committed against our people. And we will insure that this 'Union of Arcana' will never again pose a threat to us, to our children, or to our grandchildren."
A roar of approval went up, louder by far than the previous protest. Kinlafia found himself on his feet with the rest, applauding madly, yet even as he did, he looked down from the gallery at Chava Busar's face and saw the cold, calculating eyes that watched Zindel with carefully veiled contempt.
When the tumult finally died, Zindel continued his implacable, methodical outline of his preparations. Troops to be raised and trained, railroads to be extended, shipyards to be built, munitions factories to be expanded, fortifications to be planned and built, weapons to be improved, developed, and deployed . . . the list went on and on, marshaling the resources of every universe Sharona had ever explored and hammering them into a weapon of war.
"What I require from you," he finished finally, "is the immediate passage of sufficient taxation to pay for these utterly critical measures. We do not have time to wait for formal parliamentary elections. The Arcanans have taken that luxury out of our hands. When those elections are held, I will seek approval of our present emergency revenue measures from that Parliament, but they must be passed now, and they will not be a negligible burden for anyone. This will be an expensive war. Never doubt that. Every Sharonian will feel the bite of higher taxes, and that bite will be deep. Many will protest when they realize just how deep. But when they do, ask them this question. Which do you prefer—higher taxes and higher prices, or Arcanan dragons in your skies, burning down your homes and loved ones? That is their choice. We did not ask for this war, but we will, by the Triad, fight it with everything we have—with every ounce of strength we possess!"
Another ovation met that statement, although it was more subdued than the last one. Talk of things like higher taxes and conscripted labor forces had that effect.
"That concludes my prepared remarks," Zindel said when silence had fallen once again. "Does anyone have questions? Not debate—questions?"
No one spoke for several seconds, but then the Emperor of Uromathia stood in the heart of his own delegation.
"Your Majesty," he began, bowing in Zindel's direction, "and esteemed colleagues, Uromathia shares the profound grief which the heroic death of Crown Prince Janaki has brought to all of Sharona and applauds the Emperor of Ternathia's determination to deal with this crisis."
Something flared deep inside Kinlafia as Chava said the word "Ternathia."
"However," Chava continued, "while no one could deny the necessity of the measures which he has outlined, Uromathia must question whether or not he possesses the authority to demand them." A stir of protest began, but he continued speaking, clearly and strongly. "It is unfortunately true that Crown Prince Janaki's death has reordered both the Ternathian imperial succession and the
proposed succession of the Empire of Sharona. And it is also unfortunately true that as of this moment, there is no 'Emperor of Sharona,' nor an Empire for him to rule. There has been no Coronation, and the conditions specified by the Act of Unification for the Empire he is to rule have not been—and cannot, as written, be—satisfied."
"What are you suggesting?" Ronnel of Farnalia demanded furiously.
"I am simply suggesting," Chava replied, "that this is a time of enormous uncertainty, and that under those circumstances, it is particularly important that all these matters be handled in strict accordance with the provisions under which the nations represented at this Conclave agreed to surrender their sovereignty. Yes, we are at war. Yes, it may be a war for our very survival. But if we are to face our enemies as a single, cohesive whole, we must be truly united, and there must be no question of the legality and legitimacy of the government under which we will fight."
"Come to the point—quickly," Zindel chan Calirath said icily.
"Very well, Your Majesty." Chava bowed once more. "My point is this. The death of your son has invalidated Section Three of Article Two of the Act of Unification. Unless the provisions of that article and section are satisfied, the Act is not binding upon Uromathia or any other signatory power. If there is to be a true Empire of Sharona, then I must respectfully request that the succession be secured as contemplated by Article Two in light of the changed circumstances resulting from your son's lamentable death. Is Crown Princess Andrin ready to marry the son I designate as her groom?"
A savage roar of outrage erupted. Half the members of the Conclave were on their feet, shouting and demanding Chava's ejection from the Chancellery, and Zindel's hands tightened on the podium with such force that Kinlafia expected the wood to crack. Then the gavel crashed down again and again, hammering for order, and all the while, Chava stood in the tumult, eyes defiantly insolent and wearing a smug little half-smile of satisfaction.
The furor died down at last, trickling slowly away into silence. When the entire Chancellery was still once more, the Emperor turned his attention back to Chava Busar.
The Uromathian's smile faltered as Zindel chan Calirath's icy gray eyes bored into him with scalpel-sharp contempt.
"The son you designate?" the Emperor said, and Chava actually blanched at the menace in his deadly soft voice. "Haven't you overstepped your authority by presuming to name which of your lecherous, ill-bred mongrels will have the right to rape my daughter?"
Chava Busar's face went sickly white with shock, then purple with rage.
"How dare you—?!" he began.
"Do not presume to dictate terms to me!" Zindel thundered.
"I—" Chava began again, but a third voice interrupted him. It was a youthful voice, a soprano, which had never been raised in that Chancellery before.
"Do not discuss me as if I were not here!" that voice said with icy precision, and every eye turned to the Ternathian delegation.
Andrin Calirath stood there, and the golden strands in her midnight hair seemed thicker, brighter than ever, gleaming as she faced the combined leaders and rulers of her entire planet. She stood in her black mourning gown, with its bodice of stark, pitilessly unadorned white, like a votive candle burning before the Triad's altar in its holder of polished ebony, and her eyes were Calirath eyes—haunted by portents of a future dark as the mourning band about her sleeve, yet hard with the lightning flash of purpose. In some indefinable fashion she looked like both the teenaged girl she was and the avatar of Sharona's future—tall, strong, fearless, and wounded.
Emperor Zindel stared at his daughter, and his eyes were no longer those of an emperor. They were the eyes of a father, stark with fear for a daughter he loved more than life itself. They were the eyes of a man who had been asked for one sacrifice too many, of a man who could not—would not—give his family's juggernaut destiny his daughter, as well as his son. And they were the eyes, Darcel Kinlafia realized, of someone who recognized in this instant one fragment of the Glimpse he and Kinlafia had shared.
That man opened his mouth, his face hard with bitter determination, but the daughter looked up at her father and shook her head.
"Chanaka s'hari, Halian. Sho warak," Crown Princess Andrin Calirath said softly, and her father's face twisted as if the words had been bullets.
Yaf Umani was one of Sharona's foremost linguisticians. He'd never held a position in any university's Department of Ancient Languages—his career as the Portal Authority's Chief Voice had precluded that—but he had a true Voice's love for languages . . . and he was one of the very few people in that enormous chamber who recognized the language in which she'd spoken. He was also a man of impeccable integrity, but the shocks had come too hard and fast over the past fourteen hours; his recognition of what Andrin had said leaked out to every Voice in the Chancellery.
"I am your daughter, Halian. I remember."
Silence hovered, and then, slowly—so slowly—Zindel chan Calirath bowed his head.
Andrin smiled at him almost gently. But then she turned to look across the Chancellery, with its endless tiers of men and women, and there was no gentleness in the tempered steel of the eyes which fixed themselves upon the Emperor of Uromathia.
"I beg leave to inform Emperor Chava that his concerns are premature," she said clearly and distinctly. "The Act of Unification has been neither nullified nor invalidated by my brother's death, nor will the House of Calirath seek to evade its obligations under that Act. There is still an heir to the throne of Ternathia, and that heir is prepared to accept her obligations under the subsection Emperor Chava has just cited.
"But I am the Imperial Crown Princess of Ternathia, Heir to the Winged Crown of Celaryon, daughter of the House of Calirath, descendent of Halian and Erthain the Great!" Her eyes flashed gray lightning, and her voice rang out like a soprano sword. It was no longer the voice of a teenaged girl. The voice of the most ancient lineage in human history had taken its place in that Conclave. It stood before them in a gown of mourning, crowned in hair of golden-stranded black silk, and all the weight of that lineage crackled in its pride and defiance . . . and anger. "My ancestors were emperors of half the world while yours were still picking lice, raiding their neighbors' sheep, and stealing their neighbors' wives. You will not dictate to me the man I will marry, Chava Busar!"
Busar's face darkened in fresh rage, but Andrin's eyes were deadly, and she continued speaking with that cold, lethal precision.
"Subsection Three of Article Two requires the Heir to Ternathia to wed a Uromathian royal prince within three months of the ratification of the Act of Unification, and that Act was ratified two weeks ago. Very well. You will submit to me no later than noon tomorrow a list of those you wish to nominate as my husband. You may list every unmarried male of your lineage, if such is your desire. But I, Chava Busar—I, and no one else—will make my choice from all the eligible nominees. I will marry as the Act requires, within the next ten weeks, but do not ever make the mistake of attempting to dictate to a member of my House again!"
'Epilogue
The sun had set hours ago.
The slider car raced up what should have been the valley of the Razinta River almost silently, but for the rush of wind. It was a cloudy, moonless night, cold and still . . . and very, very empty.
The Arcanans called the Razinta the "Kosal," and they'd traveled almost eighteen hundred miles across the face of the universe they called Lamia to reach it, racing steadily southwest towards the next portal in their endless journey. From the maps Jasak had shown them, that portal lay some miles south of Usarlah, the capital of the province of Delkrath back in Sharona, almost in the center of the Narhathan Peninsula. But this Usarlah lay almost a hundred thousand miles from the Usarlah Shaylar had visited as a young university student so long ago.
I've come almost half the distance to the moon from home, she thought, staring out into the darkness, and that's as a bird—or a dragon—might have flown it. Halfway to the moon. She shook her head, t
rying to wrap her mind around the sheer distance involved. And we still have almost forty thousand more miles to go.
"You seem . . . pensive tonight, Shaylar," Gadrial said, and Shaylar turned back from the window.
The Ransaran magister sat across the small table from her, shuffling the sixty-card deck with slender, adroit fingers. She'd been teaching Shaylar and Jathmar an Arcanan card game called Old Basilisk. The rules weren't all that complex—certainly not any more complicated than several Sharonian card games Shaylar could think of—but the deck had five twelve-card suits instead of the three eighteen-card suits she was accustomed to, which made keeping track of exactly what had been played challenging. Or would have, if Voices hadn't had photographic memories, at any rate.
"I feel pensive," Shaylar admitted. "We're such a long way away from everything I've ever known. And it's so . . . empty out there."
"Appearances can be deceiving," Gadrial told her, looking out the window herself. "Back home, all of this is part of the Duchy of Forkasa, one of the oldest and wealthiest independent territories of Shaloma. Of course, the factors that made Forkasa so wealthy back in Arcana don't necessarily apply in the out-universes. And we're still a long way from Arcana or New Andara. But the last time I checked the census figures, Lamia had a population of somewhere around three million, I think."
"Three million," Shaylar repeated. She had to remind herself that Arcana had been expanding into the multiverse for two centuries, almost three times as long as Sharona. Still, the thought that they had three million people living in a universe forty thousand miles from their home universe was sobering, to say the least.
"Well, Lamia's attracted more colonization than a lot of other universes," Gadrial said as she offered the deck for Shaylar to cut. "The distance between portals is shorter than in some, and it's all overland, which helps. And the natural tendency is to spread out to either side of the slider right-of-way, which just happens to run across some of Shaloma's best real estate. Not to mention the fact that some of the most beautiful beaches of the Western Hesmiryan are less than a hundred miles from where we are right now."
