Just as Gadrial and Halathyn used spells to store their notes and personal-crystal displays, hummer handlers used spells to store urgent messages which could be retrieved by the receiving hummer handler. Dragons always gave Jasak's spirits a lift, but hummers were sheer artistry.
"Ready to record your messages, Sir," Shulthan said. "Destination?"
"First bird to the coast," Jasak said. "The second to Javelin Kranark at the portal."
Shulthan nodded and spoke the proper spell to implant the first destination's coordinates, then looked back up at Jasak.
"Begin message, Sir."
"Hundred Olderhan, second Andarans Scouts to Five Hundred Klian, Commander, Fort Rycharn. Urgent. First Platoon of my company has sustained heavy combat casualties. The platoon's combat strength has been reduced to eight?I repeat, eight?effectives after an encounter with what I believe to have been a survey party from another trans-temporal civilization." Even as he said the words, they still sounded impossible, even to him. "Several of my casualties have serious internal injuries," he continued. "They are in critical condition and urgently require a healer's services. I am transporting them to our base camp as quickly as possible, but I estimate that it will require twenty-plus hours from the time chop on this message to return."
Jasak paused, considering what he'd said, wondering if he should say still more. But what could he say until he got back to report in person and answer all of the no doubt incredulous questions Five Hundred Klian was certain to have?
He grimaced and tossed his head.
"Hundred Olderhan reporting," he said. "End of message."
Shulthan spoke again, locking the message properly into the crystal. Then he stroked the hummer gently, whispered to it, and tossed it into the air. It sped away so rapidly Jasak couldn't follow the motion with his eyes even though he'd been waiting for it.
He drew a deep breath, trying to visualize the consternation that hummer was going to create when it reached Fort Rycharn. Then he turned back to Shulthan.
"Second hummer, please," he said.
At least he could include one piece of good news with the message to Kranark. He could reassure Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah that Gadrial had taken no harm, despite the fact that Halathyn had trusted her safety to Sir Jasak Olderhan.
He recorded the message and tried to watch the second bird streak away through the forest. He failed again, as always, and steeled himself to turned back to the remnants of his shattered platoon. He'd done all he could; it remained to be seen whether that?and Gadrial's minor Gift for healing?would keep the wounded alive.
He hoped twenty-five hours of travel time wouldn't turn out to have been an overly optimistic estimate.
Andrin Calirath felt twitchy.
It was an uncomfortable sensation, like feeling swarms of honeybees buzzing just under her skin. It plucked at her nerve endings with a constant, jarring twang, until it threatened to drive her mad. It had plagued her most of the afternoon, too vague to consider a true Glimpse, yet far too insistent to ignore.
The weather hadn't helped. The last week had been fair and fine, like a holdover of summer, but today had set out to remind everyone that autumn was upon them. Like the sensations under her skin, the weather was maddeningly neither one thing nor another, for today had been one of those perpetually drizzling days, too wet to call a mist, too halfhearted to call rain. Below the vast expanse of glass that served the Rose Room as a window, the gardens were all but obscured by the combination of misting rain and approaching evening, and her mood matched the garden?cold, foul, and unsociable. The cheerful chatter of her younger sisters was almost enough to drive her from the room, ripping out handfuls of hair as she went.
Andrin bit down on the impulse?hard. A grand princess of the Ternathian Empire did not display public fits of temper, no matter what the provocation. That stricture?not to mention responsibility?weighed heavy on shoulders that had seen only seventeen changings of the seasons, but she didn't really mind the pressure of her birth rank. Not much, anyway. She enjoyed her many opportunities to help people, to make a difference in their lives. She was grateful for what she had, and for what she could do, but she never forgot who?and what?she was. She was a Calirath, born to a tradition of service to her people, her family, and to herself. Everything else, including any private dreams she might nourish, was secondary.
A coal fire burned steadily behind her in a fireplace built when coal had been little more than a funny sort of black rock and trees and peat had been the only fuel on the island. The vast fire pit could have held half a mature oak tree; instead, it held five separate coal fires, spaced evenly along the length of the fireplace. The scent of coal dust, sharp and thick at the back of her throat, was just one more irritant to be weathered. Winter in Ternathia was nothing like the snow-laden ordeal of Farnalia, and it was still only early October, but the wet, raw day had brought an early chill to the Palace. It was more than enough to make her grateful for the fire's heat, and she'd draped a woolen shawl around her shoulders, as well. Its soft, warm touch was like a soothing caress, offering at least a little comfort against the angry honeybees.
The little clock on the mantle chimed the hour with a sprinkling of liquid crystal notes, and the silver-sweet bells were a reminder that yet another hour of her life had been devoured by someone else's schedule. The honeybees snarled louder at the thought, whittling away another few notches of her temper, and she sighed. She loved her mother and her sisters, but on days like this, with the Talent riding hard with sharpened spurs, Andrin desperately needed time alone. Time to focus inward, to ask?demand?of this inner agitation what message lay beneath it.
Another clock chimed, farther down the mantle, setting her teeth on edge. Her mother loved fussy little bric-a-brac, like clocks that chimed with the sound of real birdcalls. The Rose Room, Empress Varena's private domain, was filled with her collection of delicate breakables. Andrin had been terrified to move in this room for the first ten years of her life, for graceful deportment had not come naturally to her. Unlike her younger sisters, she'd been forced?grimly?to learn it in the same way a fractious schoolboy might be forced to learn his arithmetic.
I want out of here! her soul cried out. Out of this room, this Palace, this awful sensation of doom …
Andrin's Talent never made itself felt for joyous things. That blistering injustice was the reason she was so agitated?no, be honest, afraid, she thought harshly?standing here beside the window, staring hard at the garden she could barely see through the mist and the misery. On days like this, she would have given a piece of her soul to be an ordinary milk maid or shop clerk somewhere, untroubled by anything more serious than helping some wealthy fribble choose which color of ribbon looked best with a card of lace. Shop clerks didn't have inscrutable portents buzzing like angry bees under their skin.
Precognition was a curse of royalty.
At least Janaki is the heir, she consoled herself.
The stiff set of her face eased a little at that thought. Her older brother was in the Imperial Ternathian Marines, assigned to border patrol in a newly colonized world at the edge of Sharonian exploration. She envied him enormously. The open sky, the freedom to gallop one's horse for the sheer mad delight of it, the ability to actually step through portals, not just read about them from the confines of stone walls and garden hedges. She would have been happy just to ride her palfrey through the streets of Estafel today, despite the drizzling rain that had?by now?turned the capital city's cobbled streets into slick and dangerous ribbons of stone.