"Impressive or not," Markan continued now, "it will serve neither the need of the moment nor the Emperor to reflect upon that fact too loudly."

He glanced levelly at his second-in-command. The two of them stood on the front platform of the palatial passenger car which had been assigned to Markan's senior officers for the move, and a flicker of what might have been mere irritation or might have been anger showed in Garsal's eyes. Whatever it was, it was gone as quickly as it had come, however, and he nodded.

"Point taken, Sunlord," he said.

Markan nodded back. There was no need to do more, for several reasons. First, Jukan Darshu was a sunlord, what a Ternathian would have called a duke, whereas Tarnal Garsal was only a windlord, or earl. Second, despite Garsal's fastidious, finicky dislike for frontier conditions (and his undeniable arrogance), he truly was a highly competent officer. And third, because Garsal was a distant relative of Chava Busar, and knew better than to disappoint his imperial cousin.

Not to mention the minor fact that our entire multiverse?Ternathia and Uromathia alike?is at risk this time, Markan reflected.

It felt … unnatural to think of the Empire and the long-resented Ternathians facing a common threat. For as long as Markan (or any other Uromathian) could remember, Ternathia had been if not precisely the enemy, the next closest thing available. And, he admitted, since Chava had come to the throne, the long-standing rivalry between the two great Sharonian empires had once again grown both more intense and nastier.

I suppose it's a little silly of us, the sunlord reflected. Or, at least, it was in the beginning. By now, it's taken on a life of its own.

Markan knew he was rather more sophisticated, in many ways, than most Uromathians, including all too many members of the high aristocracy. Despite that, however, deep down inside, he still suffered from that ingrained Uromathian sense of … not inferiority, really, but something close.

The truth was that Uromathia could never quite forgive Ternathian for being almost four millennia older than it was. Ternathia had made Tajvana its capital thirty-three centuries ago, and the Caliraths had stayed there until less than three centuries ago. In the interim, their empire had lapped as far east as the Cerakondian Mountains, in the south, and eventually as far as Lake Arau, in the north, until it finally stopped against the Arau Mountains in far eastern Chairifon. It had reached the Araus just under nine hundred years ago, and on the far side of that mountain barrier, it had finally encountered another empire almost as large as it was.

That empire had been Uromathia, which had controlled everything beyond the Cerakondians and the Araus as far south as Harkala. In terms of territory, Uromathia had been the smaller of the two; in terms of population, they'd been very nearly evenly matched. But Uromathia had been far younger, hammered together only over the previous three or four centuries as the various Uromathian kings and, eventually, emperors had watched the Ternathian tide sweeping steadily and apparently unstoppably towards them.

There hadn't really been a Uromathia until that steadily approaching Ternathian frontier?and example?had created it. In fact, Markan's ancestors had been too busy fighting and slaughtering one another in the service of their innumerable nobles and kinglets to pay the notion of "civilization" a great deal of attention. The threat of being ingested by Ternathia had concentrated the minds of the more powerful Uromathian kingdoms marvelously, however, and they'd begun cheerfully eliminating one another by conquest in an effort to build up a powerbase sufficient to remain uningested. Strictly, of course, out of a patriotic sense of their mission to resist foreign occupation. Perish the thought that personal power could have had anything to do with it!

They'd succeeded. In fact, they'd built a very respectable empire of their own by the time Ternathia arrived on their doorstep. They'd actually been even more centralized, since they had deliberately constructed their imperial bureaucracy for streamlined, military efficiency, whereas the Ternathian bureaucracy had been the product of millennia of gradual evolution and periodic bouts of reform. Their military capability had been impressive, as well, and they'd already acquired most of the Talents by intermarriage. Taken altogether, it had been an enormous accomplishment, one of which anyone could have been proud, and they had been.

But the thing which had stuck in the Uromathians' collective psyche was the lingering suspicion that Ternathia had stopped where it had not because Uromathia's power had given the Winged Crown pause, but because Ternathia had chosen to stop. The two great empires had sat there?coexisting more or less peaceably, with occasional, interspersed periods of mutual glaring?for the better part of six hundred years. Until, in fact, the Calirath Dynasty had begun its long, steady disengagement from the Ternathian Empire's high-water mark borders. And in all that time, there had been only three true wars between them … each of which Ternathia had won quite handily.

Ternathia had never made any effort to conquer Uromathia. That had never really been the Ternathian way, as Markan was prepared to admit, at least privately. But Uromathia had never quite been able to forgive the Ternathians for never?not once?letting the Uromathians beat them. The Uromathian Empire had fought its own wars, established its own prowess, but always in the Ternathian shadow. Never as Ternathia's equal. In fact that Chava Busar's was the fourth dynasty to rule Uromathia while the Caliraths were only the second dynasty and Ternathia's history (and that they had ruled Ternathia in unbroken succession for over four thousand years) didn't exactly help the situation, either. Uromathia had become the perpetual younger, smaller, weaker brother who deeply resented his older brother's patronizing attitude … even?or perhaps especially?when that older brother didn't even mean to be patronizing.

And that attitude lingered, even today.

Of course, Fort Salby didn't belong to Ternathia, the sunlord reminded himself. It was a Portal Authority base, which?theoretically, at least?meant it was a multinational installation, belonging to neither empire. The fact that the Portal Authority Armed Forces had seen fit to adopt Ternathian rank structures, weapons, tactical doctrines, and even military tailoring might, perhaps, explain the fact that it didn't feel that way.

But this time, we were the ones close enough to respond when the lightning struck, Markan thought with a certain grim satisfaction. I only wish the Emperor had seen fit to send us more detailed instructions.

Part of Chava's vagueness was undoubtedly due to the Emperor's suspicions of the Voice network. Unlike Zindel of Ternathia, Chava of Uromathia was completely unTalented, and he cherished a deep and abiding distrust for those who were. Despite all evidence and experience to the contrary, he was absolutely convinced that the Portal Authority Voices would violate their sworn confidentiality any time it suited their purposes. And, of course, their purposes?whatever in all the Arpathian hells they might be, Markan thought waspishly?were inevitably hostile to Chava's own.

In this case, however, it was at least equally probable that the Emperor's failure to provide detailed instructions had as much to do with the totally unprecedented nature of the threat as with his undeniable paranoia. It was certainly enough to strain Markan's … mental flexibility, at any rate.

The sunlord wasn't especially fond of Shurkhalis, whether as individuals or corporate entities, like the Chalgyn Consortium. While he might sometimes feel his Emperor took his hatred for all things Ternathian to unnecessary extremes, the fact remained that Shurkhal had been a part of the Ternathian Empire for almost three thousand years and that it had stubbornly aligned its national interests and foreign policy with its one-time imperial masters, rather than its much closer neighbor in Uromathia, since regaining its nominal independence. As a consequence, it was normally a bit difficult for him to work up a great deal of sympathy for any minor misfortunes which might befall the desert kingdom.