Rage transmuted into sudden tears and she bit her lip. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, squeezing shut her eyes. “It’s just…I have to see Halathyn’s widow…tell her what happened, out there…and that’s raked up all the old agony, again.”
Jasak abandoned his seat and joined Gadrial in hers, and she turned toward him, resting her head against his shoulder. Shaylar recognized the tenderness in his expression and wondered if he, himself, had realized, yet, how deeply he loved Gadrial Kelbryan. While he held Gadrial close, Jasak spoke very softly, telling them what had happened to her as a student, the prejudice, the accusation of cheating, Halathyn’s defense of her, the whole sordid story.
“Did I come reasonably close?” he asked finally, looking down at her as he finished at last, and she nodded.
“Very,” she whispered. Her eyelashes were wet. “Oh, Jasak, it still hurts so desperately…”
He actually kissed her hair. She sniffled and sighed, then scrubbed her face with the back of one hand and sat up, again. She met Shaylar’s distressed gaze.
“I don’t blame you for his loss, Shaylar. Truly, I don’t. It wasn’t your fault that Halathyn…”
Her lips trembled as memory burned in her eyes, and she bit the lower one again, making herself pause and draw a deep breath.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she continued once more after a moment, her voice more ragged than she would have liked. “But Halathyn was the finest man I’ve ever known, the most gifted theoretical magister I’ve ever met, and the only Mythlan shakira who deserved courtesy and respect. As for the rest of them…”
Her eyes went hard as granite. “I detest Mythal and all the magic-using Mythlans in it! And thanks to what Halathyn built in New Arcana, we don’t need the Mythlan shakira to understand the multiple universes or theoretical magic.”
“What Halathyn started and what you built,” Jasak said mildly. When she looked uncomfortable, he chucked her chin, very gently. “Those are Halathyn’s words as much as mine. He was deeply proud of you, Gadrial. With good reason.”
Her eyes went wet again.
Jasak fished out a handkerchief and handed it over, then looked back at the two Sharonans.
“Now, then, getting back to our original conversation,” he said more briskly, “Gadrial’s made several very valid points. Not the least of which is that compared with Ransar, we Andarans are little more than barbarians with clubs in our hands.”
Gadrial chuckled, wetly-but it was a chuckle, nonetheless. “Well, yes, but you’re such adorable barbarians, it’s easy to overlook your shortcomings.” She leaned up to give him a swift kiss, an endearment that reflected the increasingly intimate relationship Jathmar and Shaylar had watched blossom over the course of their long journey.
Jasak’s face scalded. Even his ears turned red.
Shaylar had to admit that he did look awfully adorable, sitting there in his uniform, flushed with embarrassment and looking like a man who couldn’t make up his mind whether to bolt for the nearest exit or grab Gadrial by the shoulders and show her just how well barbarians could kiss their women.
He settled for clearing his throat and bending over his map again.
“Where were we?” he muttered. “Oh, yes. Explaining Garth Showma to you. Arcana’s first portal opened here, in the Grand Duchy of Tharkan, an imperial territory of the Kingdom of Elath.”
Shaylar peered at the map and frowned. The Grand Duchy was located smack in the center of what would have been the Ternathian Empire, on Sharona, and that puzzled her, since the kingdom that controlled the Grand Duchy was located on Arcana’s analog to New Farnal. Elath was all the way across the North Vandor Ocean, sandwiched between the southern region where Jasak’s father owned an earldom and a barony and the northern sweep of land that corresponded to Jathmar’s birthplace. It seemed an…odd arrangement. On Sharona, Ternathia and Farnalia had colonized and controlled, at least at first, the two connected continents of New Ternathia and New Farnal. On Arcana, the political control had run in the other direction, eastward across the North Vandor instead of westward.
“Elath was desperate to hold onto the portal, so they asked their Andaran neighbors for help. Which was immediately forthcoming, of course, since even an army that’s managed to acquire a state,” Jasak continued, eyes glinting as they met Gadrial’s, “could see the value of controlling that portal.”
Gadrial refused the bait. She merely gave him a charming smile and waited for him to go one and he grinned.
“At any rate, everybody could see the value of that portal, which meant no one wanted anyone else to control it. Particularly not Ransar and Mythal, not to mention Lokan and Yanko,” he added, touching in succession landmasses that corresponded to Arpathia/Uromathia, Ricathia, New Ternathia, and New Farnal.
“The upshot was a very nasty, intense war that lasted about five years. It fueled a truly appalling arms race as both sides developed more and more powerful battle spells. Some were literally powerful enough to wipe out whole cities. Those spells were banned, after the war came to a negotiated end.
“That war brought us right to the brink of Sharskha,” he said very quietly. Jathmar and Shaylar looked perplexed, and he grimaced. “Sorry. It’s from one of Andara’s oldest myths-a final battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness which ends only in the entire world’s death.”
Perplexity was replaced by something else, something with an edge of disbelief, perhaps. Or the look of someone who recognized hyperbole when he heard it. Jasak saw it and laughed harshly.
“I’m not exaggerating,” he told them. “Some of the spells they came up with were so destructive they could have wiped out entire cities. One of them was used by the losing side in a major battle and effectively annihilated every man in both armies-over a hundred and ten thousand men gone, like that!” he snapped his fingers, eyes bleak. “And the researchers weren’t stopping there. They were still coming up with worse ones when the war finally ended! Thank all the gods they were banned under the terms of the final peace treaty.”
Shaylar and Jathmar exchanged horrified glances, appalled by that simple, dreadful recitation. Spells that could destroy entire cities? Would the army that had acquired a state pull those banned spells out of mothballs and use them against Sharonian cities?
“At any rate,” Jasak continued, unaware of their sudden fear, “the same treaty created a new world government-the Union of Arcana-which took control of Tharkan, where the portal was located. And that’s how the city of Portalis was born. The Arcanan side of the city is the capital of the Union of Arcana. The New Arcanan side of the city is the capital of both New Arcana and houses the Union’s Commandery, where the Union’s Army, Navy and Air Force are headquartered. It’s also where the Union’s officers are trained and where enlisted men are given basic training.
“The land for a radius of seventy miles from the New Arcanan side of the portal was originally given to old Sherstan Olderhan, the first Duke of Garth Showma, as his personal desmesne during the war, as one inducement to back up Elath’s bid to keep control of the portal. The rest of the Duchy was added later, under the peace treaties, once the Union took over the portal. The new government had to reach a negotiated settlement with Sherstan, as well as Elath, and the truth is, they came out much better with Elath.”
Gadrial made a rude sound and Jasak’s lips twitched.
“Sherstan was tenacious and he wielded enough military power to come out of that negotiation very well placed.” He conceded. “He kept most of the original land grant ceded him by Elath, the Duchy of Garth Showma was created and placed under his direct, hereditary rule, and he ended up named Governor of New Arcana, as well. At the time the entire planet amounted to a howling wilderness, so it probably seemed like a reasonable bargain to the Union’s negotiators. Of course, things have changed a bit over the last couple of centuries.