"This is very difficult," he said. "We have one view of these things; you have another view. We are trying to apologize for the violence, but you are so suspicious, we cannot even finish a thought. And while we understand how angry you must be, there is-or will be, once the news gets all the way to our home universe-great pain and anger in our world, as well. Not only have we lost many of our soldiers, not only have we killed civilians, but we have lost a civilian, as well.

"The civilian killed in your attack on our camp was one of the most important research magisters our civilization has ever produced. Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah was in our camp. He did not even try to fight, but he was killed without pity. The whole of Arcana is or soon will be in an uproar. Magister Halathyn was beloved by millions, hundreds of millions. The shock of his death, the anger felt over it, is very terrible."

"So now you say one of your civilians has been killed as well?" Chan Baskay frowned.

"Indeed, a most important and very beloved one."

"Perhaps," chan Baskay said coolly, "one as beloved as Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr was among our people?"

Skirvon appeared to wince slightly, and chan Baskay shook his head.

"Lord Rothag is Shurkhali," he said, repeating his earlier . . . misrepresentation. "A moment, please, while I discuss this with him. I'll be . . . interested in his perspective on our relative losses."

He turned to chan Rothag and cocked his head.

"I think we may actually be looking at something important here, Trekar," he said, once again in Farnalian. "The problem is, I don't know what-or how important it may be-and I've got the feeling he's about to try selling me a used horse. Can you give me any guidance on how many lies he's telling this time?"

"Actually he's telling the truth about this fellow being killed," chan Rothag replied in the same language. "And about how popular he was and the sort of reaction he anticipates. But you're right that something funny's going on, as well. I notice he's not saying anything about why this important researcher was out here in the middle of all this nowhere. And he's being careful not to say that we actually killed him."

"I caught that, as well," chan Baskay replied, managing to keep his frustration out of his tone or his expression. "I wonder what these twisty bastards are up to this time?"

He turned back to Skirvon. The Arcanan's expression remained attentive, leavened with exactly the right degree of sorrow and regret, but chan Baskay saw the curiosity in the backs of the man's eyes. Obviously, Skirvon was simply dying to know what he and chan Rothag had just said to one another. The thought gave chan Baskay a certain amount of amusement, but he produced a dutifully sad frown of his own.

"Sharona grieves to learn that another civilian has died, and especially one who was so beloved that his death can only add to the anger and fear between our peoples," he said, meaning every word of it. "But that only underscores the urgent need for us to negotiate a cease-fire. Sharona does not want any more innocents to die."

"That is exactly Arcana's position, as well," Skirvon said earnestly. "We want an end to the shooting while we talk with you about a permanent settlement." It was his turn to smile sadly. "It may take a long time for us to agree as to where guilt and innocence truly lie. And I am sure it will take even longer for us to reach agreement on the terms of any final settlement, and on how best to manage further contacts between our peoples. For example, there is the question of who holds ultimate possession of this entire universe."

"Hell's Gate is Sharonian territory." Chan Baskay's tone was flat.

"Hell's Gate?" Skirvon repeated, and chan Baskay smiled coolly.

"Given what your soldiers did to our civilians here, it seemed an appropriate name to us," he said. Then he allowed his expression to soften very slightly. "And, I suppose, given what happened to your troops, it may seem appropriate to your people, as well."

"Indeed, it may," Skirvon agreed. "Still, whatever we may call it, the question of who controls it must be of vital importance to both your world and mine."

Chan Baskay allowed his eyes to narrow once more, and Skirvon shrugged with an open, honest expression.

"Surely, My Lord, your people realize as well as my own that this-" he waved at the trees about them and the steady drift of bright colored leaves sifting downward whenever the breeze blew "-is what we call a 'portal cluster.' There are many portals close together, giving access to many universes. However much we may regret the violence which has already occurred, your emperor and your Portal Authority must recognize that the control of so many portals is not something either of us will gladly give up, especially to someone we do not fully trust because of the violence which has already occurred.

"At the moment, each side desires complete control of the entire cluster, if only to provide for its own security, and neither side will be willing to concede that to the other. In the end, some sort of agreement-possibly some compromise, under which control is shared, or under which certain portals are ceded to either party-would have to be worked out if we were to have any real hope that our natural desires and fear of one another will not push us into additional conflict. Working out any such agreement would certainly be difficult, and would without doubt take much time and patience. But surely, it is always better to talk rather than to shoot."

Beside chan Baskay, chan Rothag crossed his legs once more, and chan Baskay sighed inside, wishing chan Rothag could tell him exactly which parts of what Skirvon had said this time were "mostly true."

Part of him wanted to stand up and call Skirvon on his lies about Shaylar right then and there. In fact, the cavalry officer in him wanted to choke the truth out of the bland-faced Arcanan. If Shaylar hadn't died the way he said she had, then how had she died? What had they really done to her in their quest for information like the words stored in their crystal? He could think of several reasons why her stored voice might sound slurred, confused, even broken. Reasons which had nothing at all to do with any wounds she might have suffered here at Fallen Timbers. Had they done those things to her? Was that how she'd died-in some grim little cell somewhere? And if so, did this smiling bastard across the table from him know she had?

The questions burned inside him, demanding answers, but he kept his expression under control. He couldn't give in to the anger he felt, couldn't call them cold-blooded murderers, even if he did know that an innocent, courageous young woman had not died the way they'd told him she had. And the fact was that Skirvon also had a perfectly valid point about the question of who would hold eventual sovereignty over the Hell's Gate Cluster. Certainly, no one in Sharona would be at all happy about the thought of abandoning the cluster-which the Chalgyn crew had clearly discovered before the Arcanans ever ventured into it-to a bloodthirsty, murderous lot of savages whose uniformed soldiers had slaughtered its original surveyors. And whatever he thought of Skirvon, or his unknown superiors, the man was right that Arcana would be no happier at the thought of conceding all of those portals to Sharona. Especially not with the spilled blood which already lay between them.

The sovereignty issue was going to have to be dealt with. That much was painfully obvious, as was the fact that he must not do anything at this point to prejudice Sharona's position on the issue. It would be another five days before Company-Captain chan Tesh's message that the Arcanans had asked for talks could even reach Sharona; it would take another week after that for any response to reach Hell's Gate. He could not allow his own emotions to erupt and sabotage any possibility of a diplomatic solution-especially not when he'd never actually been authorized to represent the Authority or his own emperor in the first place!

"Of course it's better to talk than to shoot," he said, smiling at the lying bastard across the table from him. "Is that your formal position?"

"We wish for there to be no more fighting while we talk," Skirvon said, nodding vigorously, and chan Rothag touched his left cuff once more.

Well, that's certainly something I can agree to in good faith, chan Baskay thought with a distinct feeling of relief. And he's right, I suppose. Talking is better than shooting. I just wish I knew what else is going on inside that twisty brain of his. And I suppose the only way to find out is to go ahead and talk to him.

"Very well," he said. "Sharona will agree to talk, instead of shooting."

Chapter Forty-Seven.

"I have to say that this is a heavenly relief." Shaylar sighed, leaning back in her deck chair. "Don't get me wrong," she cracked one eye, glancing at Gadrial as the magister reclined in the deck chair beside hers. "I've gotten very fond of Skyfang, and I'm delighted they were able to fit him aboard, but dragon riding is still pretty . . . strenuous. Especially for Jathmar and me."

"Especially for you?" Gadrial looked back at her.

"Well, at least you and Jasak have more experience with the entire process."

"We've done it before, if that's what you mean. But if you think having made the same trip on the way out is making it any more restful to make the trip on the way back in, I'm afraid you're mistaken." The Arcanan woman grimaced. "Believe me, I'm not particularly enjoying all those endless hours with the wind whistling around my ears any more than you two are."

"I suppose not," Shaylar conceded with a smile. "And I have to admit, it is fascinating to watch the world rolling by underneath. Jathmar's always had dreams about wanting to fly. I think it has something to do with his Mapping Talent. The fact that his dreams had to come true this way's put a pretty heavy damper on his enjoyment, of course, but there's still a 'little kid in a fairy tale' excitement to it. Of course, it starts to wear a little thin after the first five or six hours in the saddle."

"Oh, you noticed that, did you?"

Shaylar grimaced at Gadrial's teasing tone, and the magister chuckled. Then, reminded of Jathmar by Shaylar's comments, she turned her head, glancing up at the fat lookout pod on the ship's single mast. Jasak and Jathmar were both up there at the moment, gazing out across the endless blue waters of the southern Evanos Ocean. She doubted that they were going to see anything significant from up there, but that wasn't really the point.

Jathmar's emotions remained much less . . . resolved than Shaylar's where Jasak was concerned. That was undoubtedly inevitable, for at least two reasons, Gadrial admitted unhappily.

First, Jathmar lacked Shaylar's ability to directly sense the emotions of those around her. Shaylar was a Voice. As she'd said, she'd been born and bred to communicate. She couldn't help communicating, even when she didn't want to. That meant she had a much more direct grasp of Jasak's feelings about what had happened. And from several things she'd said, Gadrial also suspected that the Shurkhali honor code was probably quite a lot closer to that of Jasak's native Andara than the one Jathmar had grown up with. Which was particularly ironic, given that it sounded as if Jasak and Jathmar had probably grown up within a few miles of one another on their respective home worlds.

But, second, and possibly even more important, Jathmar was also male. Gadrial tried not to sigh in exasperation, but there it was. There was a zoologist's term one of her friends at the Garth Showma Institute had explained to her. It was "alpha male," and from the moment her friend had explained what it meant, Gadrial had thought it was a great pity that the Andaran military hadn't been required to take courses in zoology. If she'd ever met an "alpha male," it was that paragon of all Andaran virtues, Sir Jasak Olderhan. And if she'd ever met a second "alpha male," it was Jathmar Nargra.

Which just goes to show you that truly irritating male characteristics are inter-universal in scope, she thought grumpily. Rahil! What did I do to deserve two of them at a time like this?

Jathmar knew that Jasak was completely-one might almost say fanatically-dedicated to protecting him and Shaylar from additional harm. But he was also Shaylar's husband, and he loved her, which meant that primitive male wiring of his demanded that he protect her. That he protect her. Which, of course, he couldn't do. The fact that he was totally reliant upon Jasak (the officer whose men had slaughtered all of his and Shaylar's friends, whatever Jasak might have wanted to happen) to provide the protection he couldn't, only made his own sense of frustration and failure even worse. And the fact that Shaylar, as deeply as she loved Jathmar, was comfortable with the notion that Jasak's honor code required him to protect her-and that she looked to Jasak (who was not her husband) as the protector for both of them probably punched more than a few male jealousy buttons, as well.

Then there was the fact that Jasak, in his own invincibly "alpha male" fashion, couldn't conceive of any circumstances which could possibly absolve him of his responsibility to protect his shardonai. That left him with a protective attitude not just towards Shaylar, but towards Jathmar, as well. Which, despite the fact that Jathmar's intellect knew better, struck his raw-edged and bleeding emotions as . . . patronizing. Not to mention insulting, diminishing, and infuriating.

That was why Gadrial and Shaylar had effectively packed the two of them off to the lookout pod where they could-hopefully-spend a little time getting over the worst of their mutual prickliness.

Of course they can, the magister thought dryly. And the Evanos is only a little damp.

"Do you think they've said three words to each other the whole time they've been up there?" Shaylar asked, and Gadrial blinked as the other woman's words broke in on her thoughts.

"What?" she asked, and Shaylar snorted in amusement.

"I asked if you think they've said three words to each other the whole time they'd been up there," she repeated, waving one hand at the lookout pod.

"I'd like to think so," Gadrial said after a moment, grinning as they both admitted what was really going on. "I'm not holding out a lot of hope, though."

"Me either." Shaylar's slight smile slowly faded, and she drew a deep breath. "Not that I can really blame either of them. It's an . . . ugly situation, isn't it?"

"Very," Gadrial agreed with a heavy sigh of her own. "If there were any way we could undo it, we'd-"

"Don't say it," Shaylar interrupted. Gadrial's eyes widened, as if with an edge of hurt, and Shaylar shook her head. "What I mean, is that you don't have to say it. I know it's true, and so does Jathmar, however . . . uncomfortable he may still be around Jasak. It's just that there's not any point. Saying it won't change anything, and there's no good reason why you should keep beating yourself up over it, apologizing for things that weren't your fault and that no one can change, anyway."

"I suppose not. But in that case," Gadrial smiled crookedly, "what can we talk about to wile away this pleasant little ocean voyage?"

Shaylar chuckled. As nearly as she could figure out, they were traveling from the eastern coast of the great island-continent of Lissia across the Western Ocean to the western coast of New Farnalia. That was almost five thousand miles, which was going to take them around nine days, even aboard one of the Arcanans' marvelous ships. Still, as she'd told Gadrial, she was profoundly grateful for the break in their arduous travels, even if every mile of seawater they crossed did remind her of her mother's embassy back home.

"Actually," she said, after a moment, "I've been thinking about what Fifty Varkal and Jasak had to say about the difference between Skyfang and Windclaw."

"Yes?"

"I got the distinct impression that there are more significant differences between 'battle dragons' and what Fifty Varkal calls 'transports' than just their size and maneuverability." Shaylar ended on an almost questioning note and raised both eyebrows.

"Oh, there are," Gadrial agreed. "Mind you, I'm no magistron, and what I know about dragons-or, for that matter, any other augmented species-isn't much more than any other layman would be able to tell you. Well," her lips quirked, "maybe a little more than that, given what I do for a living, but not a lot. Still, if you'd like, I'll tell you what I know."

"By all means, please," Shaylar said, sitting up a bit straighter in her deck chair and rolling slightly up on one hip as she turned to face the other woman more squarely.

"Well," Gadrial began, "as Daris suggested back at Fort Talon, battle dragons are deliberately designed to be faster and more maneuverable than transport dragons."

" 'Designed'?" Shaylar repeated. Gadrial looked surprised by the question, and Shaylar gave her head a little shake. "I haven't had much choice but to accept that your people can do all sorts of 'impossible' things, but I guess I'm still just feeling a bit . . . uncomfortable over the notion of 'designing' a living creature."

"As I said, I'm not a magistron, so it's not remotely my area of specialization," Gadrial replied, "but the actual techniques have been around for a long time. As matter of fact, it's one of the few areas in which Ransar actually led the way in both theoretical and applied research for something like three hundred years."

"Over Mythal, you mean?"

"Exactly." Gadrial looked away, gazing out across the endless, steady swell as the passenger ship sliced through it with a graceful, soothing motion. "It was a Ransaran magistron who first perfected the spells for examining what he called the genetic map of living creatures."

"And what's a 'genetic map'?" Shaylar inquired with an air of slightly martyred patience.

"Sorry." Gadrial looked back at her and smiled. "The word 'genetic' is derived from the Old Ransaran word for race or descent. And the reason Hansara-Rayjhari Hansara, the magistron who developed the original concept and spells-called it that was that it's basically a symbolically congruent representation of the physical characteristics of the creature. It's a fundamental principle of magic that the map is the territory, and once Hansara came up with a way to represent a living organism's characteristics in a fashion which could be visualized and manipulated, it really did become possible to 'design' creatures to order."

Shaylar shivered as if a sudden icy wind had found its way up and down her spine. And, in fact, one had, in a metaphorical way of speaking.

"And does that include people?" she asked after moment.

"No," Gadrial said firmly. Shaylar looked both relieved and skeptical, in almost equal measure, and Gadrial shrugged. "There's no arcane reason it couldn't include people," she conceded. "Human beings' codes can be visualized just as well as those of any other creature. But from the very beginning, any efforts to tinker with humanity were outlawed."

"Even in Mythal?" Shaylar said, with rather more skepticism, and Gadrial surprised her with a harsh bark of laughter.

"Especially in Mythal! The last thing any shakira would want to do is come up with a way to turn garthan into shakira. Given their religion, they'd see it as blasphemous, at the very least. And from a practical perspective-which I personally happen to think is even more important to them than their ludicrous religious concepts-if they were to turn all of the garthan into Gifted shakira, what happens to the existing shakira's slave class? It's been my observation that their 'religious principles' serve their more worldly ambitions much more than the other way around."

"But what about turning garthan into even more obedient slaves?"

"Now that probably would be something that would appeal to the caste-lords," Gadrial admitted with a grimace of distaste. "These days, at least. But at the time the rules and laws which prohibit tampering with humans were being put into place, no Mythalan garthan had any hope of ever managing to escape or defy his overlords. There was no need to turn them into 'more obedient slaves,' because it was impossible for them to be disobedient under the existing system."

"And why did everyone else feel it should be outlawed?"

"Because, at the time, it was all a process of trial and error," Gadrial said. "In fact, that's still the case whenever anyone begins mapping a new species, in a lot of ways. Hansara had found a way to produce a congruent map, but it's an incredibly complex chart, Shaylar, and initially, he had no way of establishing the congruency between a particular section of the map and specific characteristics of the creature it represented. So he and his fellow magistrons not only had to come up with techniques to modify the chart, they also had to figure out which parts of it they needed to modify to achieve a specific objective. Most of their initial efforts-for decades, literally-produced creatures which couldn't possibly survive on their own. Or, at best, which were far, far cries from what they'd wanted to produce. No one was willing to allow them to experiment on humans when they might as readily produce a three-headed monster as an improvement on the original model. And, of course, Hansara and his colleagues were almost all Ransarans."

"Which was significant why?" Shaylar asked, and Gadrial paused with an arrested expression.

"You know," she replied after moment, "you speak Andaran so well that I keep forgetting how little you actually know about Arcana. Like all of the reasons, aside from the purely personal, of course, a Ransaran like me would have for disliking a Mythalan."

"Should I take it that one or more of those reasons would have a bearing on all of this?"

"Oh, I think you could probably take it that way. You see, one of the primary causes for the hostility between Mythal and Ransar is that we have totally different religious beliefs. Mythalans believe in something they call reincarnation. They believe that each individual human soul-they call it a 'yurha'-experiences dozens, possibly thousands, of lives, and that the purpose of those lives is for each yurha to become more completely realized-a 'higher being'-in each incarnation. Ultimately, the individual yurha reaches a state of actual divinity, in which it becomes one with the entire universe. That's what they visualize God to be: the entire universe. He's not an individual entity, not a creator, but a sort of . . . confluence of all of the magical energy bound up in all of creation. That's why the shakira are 'obviously' the highest of the Mythalan castes. Because they're the ones with the Gifts which allow them to manipulate that magical energy, they're clearly much closer to attaining the godhead than anyone else, since they as a caste must consist solely of people with highly evolved yurhas.

"It also justifies their treatment of the garthan on several levels. The function of the garthan is to do all of those dirty, demeaning, physically exhausting jobs the shakira couldn't possibly take the time to do, since it would draw them away from their mastery of magic and thus separate them from the godhead. It would actually be sinful for them to allow themselves to be diverted, since that might cause their yurhas to move downward through their 'great chain of being.' "

"That sounds a little bit like a really distorted version of what some Lissians believe," Shaylar said cautiously. "But the Lissians are among the gentlest, most compassionate people on Sharona."

"Well, Mythalans certainly aren't gentle or compassionate," Gadrial said tartly. Then she sighed.

"I suppose my own experiences with them really do color my reaction," she admitted. "But part of the problem I have with their entire culture is that once you accept their religious beliefs, and the mindset they've developed to go with them, then their treatment of the garthan is perfectly logical and reasonable. They really and truly simply don't understand why the rest of us can't just see that and admit that Mythal's been right all along . . . which is one of the reasons both Ransar and Andara simply can't stand them.

"As they see it, the whole object of the human race, the whole reason we exist-according to the Mythalans-is for all of us eventually to obtain oneness. And, since they believe in reincarnation, each of us has an effectively limitless number of lives in which our yurha can advance. So no matter what they do to an individual garthan-or to all garthan, as a caste-they aren't really harming that individual, are they? After all, this is only one brief stop in an endless journey, and eventually all garthan-aside, of course, from the inevitably willful or evil ones-will become shakira themselves. In fact, some of the greatest cruelties the shakira have traditionally practiced upon the garthan, like the law codes which take Gifted children away from garthan parents and give them to shakira to raise, are justified on the basis of helping their victims attain enlightenment sooner."

Shaylar looked at Gadrial for several seconds, reminding herself that, by her own admission, Gadrial hated Mythalans. But she'd also come to know Gadrial Kelbryan. If the magister hated Mythalans, it was probably because she despised their beliefs, rather than a case of her despising-or distorting-their beliefs because she hated them.

"So how do Ransaran beliefs differ from Mythalan beliefs?" she asked finally.

"In just about every conceivable way," Gadrial snorted. "First, every Ransaran-with the exception of the Manisthuans-is monotheistic. That is, we all believe there's only a single God, since God is, by definition, infinite and since, equally by definition, there can't be two infinite beings. All of our theologians agreed long ago that if two beings are separate from one another, then neither can be truly infinite, since they have to stop somewhere if there are going to be two of them in the first place. Unfortunately, we're Ransarans. While we may all agree that there's only one God, we don't all agree on who He-or She-is."

The corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement at Shaylar's expression, and she chuckled.

"In fairness to the Mythalans," she said, "and much as it pains me to even consider being fair to them, I can't conceive of anyone who could possibly be more profoundly . . . irritating to them than Ransarans. It's almost as if God deliberately designed us to drive them crazy. And vice-versa, of course.

"There are three major Ransaran religions, Shaylar, and quite a few subsidiary sects floating around the fringes. I personally belong to the Fellowship of Rahil, and we Rahilians follow the teachings of Rahil, the Great Prophetess. By all accounts, she was a magistron of truly phenomenal ability back in the days before the theoretical basis for magic was at all understood. We believe her abilities in that regard were directly inspired by God as a sign of His favor, and her writings about God constitute the seminal text of our religious beliefs. In the Rahilian view, God is infinite, and as such infinitely unknowable, but a benign and loving Creator who progressively reveals to us as much about Him as finite mortals are capable of understanding.

"Like the Mythalans, Rahilians believe that the purpose of a physical, mortal existence is for the individual soul to live and grow-to 'evolve' upward, to use the Mythalan term-by making choices and acquiring experience. But we also believe that God is separate from the universe around us, that He extends beyond and transcends it as an individual distinct from it, and that He seeks an individual relationship with each of us. That was what Rahil taught, at any rate.

"Over the centuries, the Rahilians and the other two major Ransaran religions have spent quite a lot of their time massacring one another over various points of religious disagreement," Gadrial admitted. "We stopped doing that about, oh, nine hundred years ago, I guess. Not that we all turned into sunshine and light where our differences are concerned, of course. But at least all of us got to the point where we agreed that whoever was right, God would probably be fairly irritated with His-or Her-worshipers if they insisted on slaughtering everyone else in job lots simply for being mistaken.

"At any rate, there are three things that all three of our major religions have in common. First, we believe there's an individual God, an all-powerful being who exists outside the material universe, rather than being bound up in it.

"Second, none of us believe in reincarnation, although all of us do believe in the immortality of the human soul. And we believe that each soul has a single mortal existence in which to establish its relationship to God. There's some disagreement among us about what happens to the souls that don't manage to establish the right relationship with God. In fact, that's one of the points we used to kill each other over, back in the good old days.

"Third, we believe each individual must have the greatest possible opportunity to become all that he or she can become. Not simply because all of us agree God wants us to love one another, but because in the process of becoming all a person can be, that person is brought closer to God and so to the ability to establish that 'right relationship' we all believe in . . . even if we're not quite in total agreement over what it ought to be."

She stopped again, gazing at Shaylar, and the Voice nodded slowly. Gadrial was right, she reflected. Assuming that the magister had described the Mythalan and Ransaran viewpoints as accurately-or, at least, honestly-as Shaylar was confident she had, it was scarcely surprising that the Mythalans would hate, despise, and fear everything Ransar stood for. And she could think of nothing someone with Gadrial's religious and philosophical values would find more revolting and cruel than the Mythalan caste system. Which only made the deep and obvious love which had existed between Gadrial and Magister Halathyn even more remarkable.