Hell Hath No Fury: Chapter Eleven

    The door to Alazon Yanamar's office was less ornately carved than the private audience chamber's. It was more ornately carved, on the other hand, than any other door Kinlafia had ever seen outside a Temple, he observed sourly, remembering his activist parents' views on "imperial trappings." And, for that matter, on "professional political operatives," which, from what the Emperor had said, undoubtedly included the woman behind that door, Voice or no Voice.

    Great, he thought. Just great. My political keeper's going to be another Voice, with all the opportunities for "subtle coaching" that provides! Won't that be fun?

    His guiding chamberlain rapped discreetly on the gleaming portal. The sound he produced was so soft Kinlafia doubted anyone could possibly have heard it, but he was clearly wrong, since the door was quickly opened by a young, golden-haired woman with bright blue eyes.

    "Yes?" she said.

    "Voice Kinlafia to meet with Privy Voice Yanamar," the chamberlain said, and those bright blue eyes moved to Kinlafia.

    "Voice Kinlafia!" The welcome in the young woman's voice was genuine, Kinlafia realized. "It's an honor to meet you, sir! Privy Voice Yanamar is expecting you. Please, come in!"

    "Thank you," Kinlafia replied, just a bit taken aback by her enthusiasm. Then he glanced at the chamberlain who had been his lifeline -- so far, at least. "And thank you," he said, with utmost sincerity.

    "You're welcome, sir," the chamberlain said. "It's been my honor." He bowed to Kinlafia, then bestowed a somewhat less profound yet still deeply respectful bow upon the young woman in the doorway, and headed off down the endless hallway.

    Of course, Kinlafia thought, they're all endless in this place, aren't they?

    The young woman opened the door wider and stood back, and he accepted her silent invitation to step across the threshold into a pleasantly furnished office.

    "I'm Ulantha Jastyr, Privy Voice Yanamar's assistant," the young woman said. As he concentrated on her, Kinlafia realized she was a very strongly Talented Voice herself. "As I say, the Privy Voice has been expecting you. If you'll follow me, please."

    He followed Jastyr across the outer office to an inner doorway. Unlike the chamberlain, she didn't knock; she simply alerted Yanamar via Voice, then smiled over her shoulder at Kinlafia, opened the door, and stood aside.

    "Thank you," he said once more, and stepped past her into yet another of Calirath Palace's obviously infinite number of rooms and chambers.

    This one was smaller than the Emperor's private audience chamber, although it was still spacious and high-ceilinged. It also had windows overlooking the same garden, and it was decorated with horses. Lots and lots of horses. There were paintings, two tapestries, and half a dozen large, framed photographic prints on the walls, and a long display shelf across the entire width of the office's bookshelves held literally dozens of ceramic, crystal, and bronze horses. Kinlafia was no art connoisseur, but he didn't have to be one to recognize that many of them were exquisite (and undoubtedly expensive) art pieces in their own right.

    The plethora of equines distracted his immediate attention from the new office's occupant. Only for a moment, though. Then he turned towards her -- and froze.

    Alazon Yanamar, he realized, was about his own age. She was slender, high-bosomed, delicately boned and of little more than moderate height for a Ternathian woman, which meant she was perhaps an inch and a half shorter than he was. And she was obviously a very powerful Voice; he could feel the strength of her Talent from ten feet away.

    All of that was true, he realized, yet it wasn't what registered upon him so immediately and powerfully. No, what registered upon him were the huge, incredibly deep, clear gray eyes and the mass of midnight-black hair framing an oval face which the gods had clearly designed for laughter, humor, and intelligence.

    They trapped him, those eyes. He remembered the ancient saying, the description of eyes as the "window of the soul." Between Voices, that could be literally true, and as Darcel Kinlafia looked into these eyes' crystalline depths, he Saw the glowing power deep in the heart of her.

    It wasn't until much, much later that he finally realized Alazon Yanamar, despite an exquisite figure, was not a beautiful woman in any classical sense of the word. Her cheekbones were too high, her nose was too pert, her chin too determined. And none of it mattered at all. Not then, and not ever.

    "Voice Kinlafia." Her speaking voice was deep, for a woman. It was also rich and musical, shimmering with subtle undertones that rippled like clear water over beds of golden sand. It went through him like harp notes of sunlight, and he drew a deep, lung-filling breath.

    "Voice Yanamar," he replied, and saw those gray eyes widen slightly even as he heard the edge of hoarseness in his own voice.

    She started to say something more, then paused. He could Feel her looking into his own eyes, and then her nostrils flared.

    "Oh, dear," she said softly, and Kinlafia reached out to touch her cheek with birdwing fingers.

    He'd never done such a thing in his life. Certainly not with a woman he'd never even met before! This time, it was the most natural possible gesture in the multiverse.

    I never really believed anyone when they told me about things like this, he thought. Which just proves the gods do have a sense of humor, I suppose.

    "This is an unexpected complication," she said after a moment, and Kinlafia smiled as that magnificent voice sang through him.

    "I suppose it is," he agreed. "I never expected it, anyway."

    She laughed. It was a delightful sound, and Kinlafia found himself smiling hugely at her.

    Under any other circumstances, a corner of his mind recognized, he would have felt like an utter idiot standing here, touching a strange woman's face, grinning like a fool, and floating with his feet ten inches off her office floor. Under these circumstances, it was inconceivable that he could have done anything else.

    Occasionally -- very occasionally -- Voice met Voice and, in that first instant of awareness, recognized one another. Felt the interlocking of Talent and heart. Other people might speak about "love at first sight," but for Voices, it could be literally true . . . and the bright glory of that moment of recognition could be the greatest tragedy in their lives. There was no guarantee that two Voices "meant for one another" would find each other at all, much less before one of them had met and loved someone else. When that happened, when one or both of them weren't free, this soul-deep fusion could cause incredible pain for everyone involved.

    I just thought I loved Shaylar, Kinlafia thought. Then he gave himself a mental shake. No, that's not true. I did love Shaylar, and I always will. But this --

    "What to do we do now?" she said, as the laughter left her voice but not her eyes.

    "You're asking me?" Kinlafia shook his head. "I didn't even know your name until ten minutes ago!"

    "Does that matter?" she asked simply.

    "Not at all," he told her softly, fingertips caressing her cheek.

    "Good." She closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her cheek against his touch, then inhaled deeply, opened her eyes, and straightened her spine.

    "Good," she repeated. "I'll remind you of that quite often in the future, I'm sure. But I'm very much afraid we don't have time to explore us at this moment."

    "No, we don't," he agreed, yet even as he did, his Voice continued. {But we will find time for it, My Lady. Soon.}

    {Oh, that we will, love,} she promised him in a Voice every bit as deep and musical as her speaking voice.

    Most people, Kinlafia knew, would never have understood. Even another Voice would find it difficult -- as Kinlafia himself always had, when he'd seen it between other Voices -- to truly realize, or to believe, perhaps, that two total strangers could meet and know instantly that the gods themselves had crafted them to be the two halves of a single whole. That they could share such a serene, unshakable confidence that they were meant to be together. That, in fact, they already were together.

    I never understood it, at any rate, even when Mayla and Hilas tried to explain it to me. He shook his head mentally at the memory of his friends trying to tell him how it worked. But maybe it's different for everyone. Maybe it hits all of us in a different way. Or maybe it's just something no one can explain, even to another Voice, unless it's happened to them?

    He didn't know the answer to his own question, but he knew that he would never be able to explain it. Not how it had happened, or how potent it was, or how magical. Or how something so deep, so powerful, could be simultaneously so calm, so patient and ready to wait upon the future. It was like standing in the eye of a hurricane. All the incredible power and passion, the wonder of having met one another, the promise that so much more was still to come, roared about them with strength to shake the multiverse by the scruff of its neck until its teeth rattled, and yet they stood in a place of crystal clarity that was poised and peaceful, like gold fish drifting effortless as dreams over golden gravel in a deep, clear pool.

    "Please," she said, stepping back and waving one graceful hand at the comfortable chairs placed to flank the coffee-table and form an intimate little conversational nook. "Sit down. We've got a lot to discuss. Officially, I mean."

    "Of course," he agreed, and obeyed the invitation.

    She let him settle into his chair before she picked up the folder on her blotter, walked around the desk, and seated herself in her own chair, facing him. She looked into his eyes for a moment longer, then took a fountain pen from her pocket, uncapped it, and opened the folder in her lap. It was, he recognized, her way of announcing that it was time for business.

    "Now," she said briskly, "about this parade. . . ."

    Zindel chan Calirath's eyebrows arched as Yanamar Alazon and Darcel Kinlafia were ushered into the private dining room.

    That dining room lay in the Emperor's Wing, the most recently modernized portion of the palace (for Calirath Palace, "modernization" was an unending process which had begun literally thousands of years ago), and the gas-jets and oil lamps of the less modern areas had been augmented with the relatively new incandescent lights. Personally, Zindel didn't much care for them, esthetically speaking. Their light was much harder edged, in his opinion. But it was also undeniably brighter and a huge boon for people (like certain emperors he could have named) who found themselves forced to deal with ream after ream of paperwork and reports. And unlike him,Vareena much preferred the new lighting -- probably because of her interest in needlepoint -- while even he had to admit that it made it easier to see people's faces and read their expressions.

    Like now, for instance. For two people who had never met before that very afternoon, the two Voices were indisputably together, and the Emperor forcibly suppressed an all but irresistible temptation to grin like a triumphant urchin. The human being in him was simultaneously touched by and envious of the all but visible glow radiating from them. Like most Caliraths with the Calirath Talent, Zindel had often resented the fact that Glimpses were so often things of tragic portent and never of things like this. But he needed no Glimpse to realize what had happened, and that was the reason for his sense of triumph. He'd never expected, never dreamed, that anything like this might occur, but the Emperor in him recognized instantly how valuable it could prove.

    Stop that, Zindel! he scolded himself. Just this once stand here and be glad for someone without thinking about how what's happened to them can help you do your damned job! Besides, you've never seen Alazon look happier in her life.

    "Voice Kinlafia," he said, walking towards the Voice with his hand once more extended. The footman who had ushered Kinlafia into the chamber looked moderately shocked, but it was important to Zindel that this evening be placed firmly on a non-state-occasion basis as quickly as possible.

    "Your Majesty," Kinlafia responded, and gripped the extended hand with rather more aplomb than he'd shown the first time Zindel had held it out to him. "I'm honored by the invitation," the Voice continued. "And I'd be even more honored if you could see your way to using my first name."

    "Oh, I think I can see my way clear to doing that," Zindel assured him, then turned and extended his free hand to the tallish, early-middle-aged woman standing beside him. She was an extraordinarily handsome woman, with the very first frosting of silver just beginning to touch her hair, and despite her height, she looked petite and delicate as she stood beside the Emperor in a simple little gown which even Kinlafia recognized had probably cost thousands of marks.

    "Darcel Kinlafia," the Emperor said, "my wife, Varena. Varena, my love, this is Voice Kinlafia."

    The footman who'd looked moderately shocked at Zindel's informal greeting to Kinlafia looked as if he'd dislocated his plunging jaw this time, the Emperor noted with a fair degree of pleasure. The Hawkwing Palace staff were accustomed to his often deplorably casual private manners. Many of them even recognized that his deliberate informality on private occasions was one of the ways he maintained his sanity during the endless nonprivate occasions to which he and his family were subjected. The expanded staff here in Calirath Palace were still figuring that out, and some of them were clearly scandalized by it all.

    Well, it's just as well if they start getting used to it early, he thought. I'm too old and set in my ways to change now. Besides, maintaining my sanity probably just got a lot harder.

    "Voice Kinlafia."

    Janaki had obviously gotten his physique from his father's side of the family, Kinlafia decided, yet as he looked into the prince's mother's eyes, he saw an echo of Janaki's enduring patience. He could readily envision Janaki matching Zindel's famous Conclave outburst about the "godsdamned fish," but the patience which had taken the Crown Prince through Kinlafia's debriefing again and again . . . that had come from his mother. Darcel Kinlafia never doubted for a moment that Zindel chan Calirath would have been just as thorough, have taken just as much time, just as many pains, had that task fallen to him instead of his son. But Janaki's gently supportive sympathy, even as he forced Kinlafia to relive every horrible moment of Shaylar's last Voice message, had owed as much to his mother's compassion as to his father's iron sense of duty.

    "Your Majesty," he replied now, and bent over the hand she extended. New Farnalians didn't spend as much time kissing ladies' hands as some, but Kinlafia's training -- both as a Voice, and from the Portal Authority -- had included the rudiments of courtesy from virtually all of Sharona's major civilizations. His instructors might never have anticipated that he would someday find himself kissing a hand quite as exalted as this one, and they might not have included the proper modalities for being privately introduced to the Emperor of Sharona, but they had covered this, at least, he reflected with profound gratitude.

    {She's really a very nice person who wouldn't dream of having your head cut off just because you didn't kiss her hand properly,} Alazon's deep, rich Voice murmured in the back of his brain.

    {Really? What a relief!} he replied as he straightened and met the Empress' eyes.

    "I'm very pleased to meet you . . . Darcel," Varena said. "I wish that the events which have turned all of our lives on end over the last few months had never happened, of course. But everything I've read and heard tells me how very fortunate we were to have you out there at Hell's Gate. I only regret," her voice and eyes alike softened, "that you were forced to endure so much sorrow and pain for the rest of us."

    "Your Majesty," he told her, "what happened to my friends -- and to me, I suppose -- had nothing to do with anyone except the people who killed them."

    "Perhaps not," she acknowledged. "Yet the fact remains that you were the one who got Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's message to all of us. And so, however it was that that duty fell to you, the fact remains that all of us are deeply, deeply in your debt."

    "And about to become more deeply so," Zindel put in briskly. Kinlafia and the Empress both turned their heads to look at him, and he chuckled. "Darcel is a Voice, my dear. I think you're about to find that he's brought you more than just letters from Janaki."

    "But I --" Varena began, only to pause as Kinlafia gently squeezed the hand he was still holding.

    "Your Majesty, I realize you aren't a telepath yourself. That's one reason I asked if Privy Voice Yanamar might join us this evening, as well, when I discovered that she was a Projective, as well as a Voice."

    {"One reason?"} a musical Voice rippled through his thoughts. {I like that!}

    {Hush woman!} he replied. {It's not only diplomatic, it's even true.}

    "I hadn't realized you were aware of that," Zindel told him dryly. "It isn't exactly something we've announced to the world in general."

    "Oh, I've become aware of quite a few things about the Privy Voice, Your Majesty," Kinlafia assured him.

    "Good. And, if I may be permitted to touch upon just a bit of official business after all, have you and Alazon gotten your schedule squared away for that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned parade we're all going to have to endure tomorrow afternoon?"

    "We have, Your Majesty," Alazon replied for Kinlafia. "Mind you, I think the tailors left Darcel in a state of shock."

    "Really?" Zindel's eyes twinkled, and Kinlafia shrugged.

    "Your Majesty, I hope you won't mind my saying that I've never seen such a ridiculous looking outfit in my entire life. I couldn't believe they were serious when they showed me the pattern sketches!"

    "After five thousand years, court fashion has tried out pretty much all the variations," Zindel said. "There's not much new they can do to us, so they have these periodic spasms of 'historical inspiration' when they go back and reinterpret famous periods of the past. If I remember correctly, the inspiration for our current . . . costumes was the period of Wailyana the Great. Which, if you're familiar with your Ternathian history, was just over nine hundred years ago. Of course, according to my own research, Wailyana's tailors were inspired by the Time of Conquest, which technically ended about six hundred years before her time."

    Kinlafia looked into the Emperor's eyes. For a moment, he was certain Zindel had to be putting him on, but --

    {Oh, no, he isn't,} Alazon Told him. {There are some disadvantages to being the descendents of the oldest imperial dynasty in Sharonian history, you know.}

    "I hadn't realized their . . . lineage was quite so distinguished, Your Majesty," he told Zindel. "And I hope I'm not going to poke anyone's eye out with that ridiculous rapier Privy Voice Yanamar insists that I really do have to wear. But, to be totally honest, what truly astounded me was their promise to have the entire outfit ready for final fitting before lunch tomorrow."

    "Our staff, unfortunately, has had entirely too much experience meeting impossible deadlines, I'm afraid," Empress Varena said with a slight smile. "Mind you, we take shameless advantage of that experience!"

    "Yes, we do," her husband agreed. "In fact, I --"

    Zindel broke off as a side door opened to admit the imperial daughters. Kinlafia turned towards the new arrivals, one eyebrow rising, then, for the second time in a single day, froze as if he'd just been punched squarely between the eyes.

    He recognized all of them. He would have been able to put names with faces just on the basis of all of the recent newspaper coverage. Gods knew their photographs and sketches had been everywhere in the papers he'd been devouring ever since he'd reached civilized universes once more! But this wasn't simply a matter of identifying them from their pictures. He recognized them.

    Anbessa, the youngest. The willful, eleven-year-old, golden-haired whirlwind of energy. A little terror, with all of her family's determination but without the rough edges-smoothing experience of maturity. Who, if she'd only realized, held her father's heart in her often grubby little hands.

    Razial, the middle daughter. Dark-haired, like her father, but without the golden highlights. Taller than Anbessa, at fifteen, with the awkward coltishness of adolescence and all the tempestuous passion of her raging hormones, all undergirt with an astounding sensitivity and gifted ear for the beauty of language. The painter whose landscapes decorated her father's study wall, and the daughter whose desk drawer was stuffed with poetry which could have made a statue laugh or a boulder weep.

    And Andrin. Tall, quiet Andrin, of the unquiet, knowledge-shadowed sea-gray eyes of her father and her brother. Of the gold-shot black hair of the Caliraths and the haunted soul of the Calirath Talent. Of the sword-straight spine. Andrin, who never recognized the grace of her own carriage, the strength and character already so plain for those with eyes or Talent to see, despite her youth.

    Andrin . . . whose presence reached out and took Darcel Kinlafia by the throat.

    He stood there, unable to move, while the images roared through him. Andrin, standing tall and straight, face white and strained with grief but with eyes that flashed defiance, as she faced tier upon tier of seated men and women in a magnificent chamber somewhere which Kinlafia had never seen. Andrin, weeping like a broken child. Andrin alight with laughter, launching a falcon from her wrist like an ivory thunderbolt. Andrin, in a torn gown, with a smoking revolver in her hand and murder in her eyes. Andrin, standing before the high priests of the Triad as she laid her hand upon the Book of the Double-Three to swear some high and solemn oath.

    They ripped through his mind, those images, those visions. None of them had happened yet, and yet he knew -- he knew -- that every single one would come inevitably to pass. And as he Saw them, he Saw himself. Saw himself with his arms about her, holding her as she sobbed upon his shoulder. Saw himself standing at her shoulder. She was older now, and she turned to look at him, her eyes grim, as he passed her a document of some sort. He Saw himself recognizing in her a daughter. Not simply the daughter of Zindel and Varena Calirath, but his daughter. The daughter of his heart, as surely as if she had been born of his own flesh and bone.

    This is why Janaki wanted him here!

    The thought flared like an explosion, and in that instant, Darcel Kinlafia realized what was happening. This knowledge, those visions, those recognitions, weren't his. Or, rather, they weren't solely his. In that chaotic, stunned instant, he knew precisely what it was to have the Calirath Talent, for in that moment, he shared it with the Emperor of Ternathia. It was Zindel's vision, his recognition of his daughters, roaring through Kinlafia's Voice Talent, like a flash of lightning bridging the gap between two pylons of the Ylani Strait suspension bridge.

    And in that recognition, Kinlafia discovered the true curse of the Calirath Talent. For all their clarity, all the iron certitude that they would someday come to pass, those visions were isolated from one another. There was no continuity, no thread to tie them together, to tell him why Andrin wept, or who she stood to face in such splendid defiance. No calendar to tell him when he handed her that document, or where, or why.

    He stood there for an eternity, frozen, realizing that he'd been right to suspect that Janaki had more reasons than he'd shared for sending Kinlafia to Tajvana. And he also realized why Janaki hadn't shared those other reasons. Not out of dishonesty, not out of any intent to deceive or mislead, but because without this moment of fusion, Kinlafia could not possibly have understood any explanation Janaki might have offered.

    And then, as abruptly as it had struck, the moment of almost unendurable vision ended. Ended in the tick between one second and the next. That was all the time it had truly taken -- no longer than the time between two heartbeats -- to change Darcel Kinlafia's life and future forever.

    He blinked, and the world about him flashed back into focus. He sensed Alazon's concern and realized that even though she hadn't shared the vision of Zindel's Glimpse, she'd Felt its impact upon him. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that everything was all right. But he couldn't, because he didn't know if things were "all right" . . . or if they ever would be again. All he knew was the way things had to be.

    And it was knowledge that only he and Zindel shared. Knowledge which could not be -- must not be -- shared with anyone else. Especially not with Andrin. Not yet. Perhaps never.

    "And these are our daughters," he heard Zindel chan Calirath's deep, calm voice say. "Girls, come meet Voice Kinlafia. I suspect --" Kinlafia turned his head and looked into those steady gray, Calirath eyes with their burden of ghosts yet to come "-- that we'll be seeing quite a bit of him in the future."