Shaylar's face was white as she absorbed the implications of magical weapons capable of destroying an entire planet's civilization. Jathmar looked equally horrified, and Gadrial faced them squarely.
"I know what you're afraid of, and I don't blame you. But I will tell you there are severe limitations on even the most deadly weapon, when it's applied to inter-universal warfare. For one thing, no spell can be cast through a portal, so you'd still have to physically assault each portal and establish a bridgehead on the other side before you could deploy any sorcerous weapon. That wasn't a factor in the Portal Wars, because they were fought entirely on Arcana, over who'd end up with possession of the portal in the first place.
"For a second thing, those weapons were outlawed two hundred years ago. As part of the Union Accords, all signatories were required to destroy all weapons of mass destruction and the spellware and research which had supported them. Several other particularly nasty spells were outlawed at the same time, and an inspection process was set up to ensure that there were no holdouts and that no one was doing fresh research in the proscribed areas."
"But if things get nasty enough, your people could always change the law, couldn't they?"
"Yes, Jathmar, we could," Gadrial said very, very quietly. "And the people most likely to push for doing just that are going to be the Mythalans. They're xenophobic to an almost crippling degree, even with their fellow Arcanans. I don't even want to think about how they're going to react when they find out about your people. Especially," she smiled wanly, "because they're going to think they're looking at an entire worldwide civilization of Ransarans."
Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, and Gadrial leaned forward in her chair to take Shaylar's hand. Shaylar's eyes stung with tears as she realized the other woman was deliberately giving her the opportunity to read her emotions, her honesty.
"The Andarans and Ransarans would never stand for the resurrection of those hideous weapons," she said flatly. "Not unless your people were foolish enough to convince us that our only other alternative was our own complete destruction. From what I've seen of the two of you, I don't think that's ever going to happen. I can't promise that, obviously, but I truly, truly believe it."
She decided?again?not to mention the fact that she'd already received specific instructions from mul Gurthak to program all available data on the Fallen Timbers cluster into the other three prototypes of the portal detector she and Halathyn had come out here to field test. She could think of only one reason he might want those, and while she had to agree, however unwillingly, with the logic, she doubted that Shaylar or Jathmar would find the news reassuring.
"Still, you need to be aware that Mythalans share neither my own people's belief in the inherent rights of the individual?especially not of non-Gifted individuals?nor (to anyone outside their own caste, at least) Jasak's people's ironclad belief in honor obligations and an individual's overriding obligation to meet them. You need to be careful?very careful?what you say to any of them, and you have to be aware that if one of them thinks he sees an opportunity to get around Jasak's protection, he may well try to seize it.
"That's the bad news. The good news is that seventy or eighty percent of the entire Arcanan army is Andaran, just like Five Hundred Grantyl. Even if they don't like what Jasak's done, they'll respect it, and they won't like it one bit if some Mythalan dishonors all of Andara by harming you in any way."
Shaylar thought about that conversation three days later as their transport dragon circled above yet another fortress. This one was even bigger than Fort Wyvern, and unless she was very much mistaken, it lay in what would have been east Farnalia back home in Sharona. Endless ocean waves of coniferous forest spread out in every direction, and the flight over the sharp-spined mountains between Fort Wyvern's portal and this new fort?Fort Talon?had been just as freezingly cold as Jasak had warned them that it would be.
It had also required them to fly so high that the dragon's pilot had issued each of his passengers a small cylinder of oxygen attached by a tube to a tightfitting mask which had covered mouth and nose. Shaylar had huddled down in her thick, fur-lined flying garments and leaned against Jathmar's back as the dragon carried them through the ice-cold, crystal-clear gulfs of the heavens. Despite her protective clothing (and another one of those unnatural seeming little spells which had actually heated her furs), she'd never been so cold?nor felt so far from Shurkhal's beloved, sunstruck warmth?in her entire life, and she'd been almost prayerfully thankful when they landed on the western side of those towering mountains.
The total flight from Fort Wyvern had taken almost a full three days. She and Jathmar had been rather relieved to realize there were some real physical constraints on the Arcanans' uncanny capabilities. Dragons could fly at preposterous speeds, but their endurance clearly wasn't unlimited. They appeared to be capable of perhaps a thousand miles or a bit more in a single day, but the greater exertion of crossing those high mountains had taken its toll. Their dragon had required additional rest after they finally landed, and Jasak and the pilot had agreed to take an extra day at the small, bare-bones dragonfield.
But they were here at last, descending through a drizzling rain towards their next destination. Their next interim destination, she reminded herself grimly, smearing moisture away as she wiped her protective goggles and recalled what Gadrial had said about the distance between them and New Arcana.
Fort Talon's portal rose out of the forests behind it. It was larger than Fort Wyvern's, and the terrain on the other side of it looked like the flat sweep of Jathmar's native New Ternath's midwestern plains. She could see a small river, but it was late night on the far side, and she didn't have much time to consider details before the dragon planed gracefully down. She was still trying to get used to how suddenly and abruptly the huge beasts decelerated when they landed, and her arms tightened around Jathmar's waist as they hit the ground.
Then they were down?once again in one piece?and she drew a huge breath of relief.
I'm going to have to get over this fear of landing, she told herself firmly. Of course, given how far we've got to go, I should have plenty of time for it.
The thought made her chuckle sourly, and then they were once again climbing down for yet another brief stay.
Aside from her, Jathmar, Jasak, and Gadrial, they were accompanied only by Jugthar Sendahli, Otwal Threbuch, Javelin Shulthan, and Bok vos Hoven. That left a lot of unused passenger space aboard the dragon, and Shaylar was just as happy that it did. vos Hoven was a brooding, hate-filled presence, and she was relieved that there was enough room for him to be kept well away from her and Jathmar. Not that the Mythalan was likely to pose much of a threat, given his manacles and the eagle eye Threbuch kept trained upon him. Shaylar was reasonably certain that nothing would have pleased Threbuch more than for vos Hoven to try something which, regrettably, ended up with the prisoner plunging several thousand feet to his doom after a brief, desperate struggle with his guard. From vos Hoven's attitude, he probably thought the same thing.
A uniformed reception committee waited for them on the edge of the dragonfield hacked out of the virgin forest which rose like green walls around it. None of them were Mythalans, and all of them looked remarkably young, certainly not much older than Jasak. Apparently the fort's commander couldn't be bothered to greet the new arrivals in person, and she saw what looked like a hint of irritation far back in Jasak's eyes.