It was intolerable. He and Shaylar had come out here, exploring new universes, because they treasured freedom. The freedom to move from one uninhabited place to another, to savor the silence, the exhilaration of no boundaries, no strict rules governing their every move, no limits on where they went, or what they did.

Now they'd lost all of that, and he had no idea when?or if?they would ever regain it. The long vista of captivity that stretched bleakly ahead of them, denied everything they valued in life, weighed like a mountain on his shoulders. And unendurable as it might be for him, watching Shaylar endure it would be still worse. Every time he looked at her battered face, the anger tightened down afresh. Watching her struggle to chew, struggle to put her own terror aside and try to smile at him?and at their captors?was a pain he could hardly bear.

The sound of alien voices washed across him like acid, leaving him on edge. He couldn't even ask these people what their intentions were, or read their emotions from their body language, because he had no reference points. Not everyone used the same gestures to mean the same things even on Sharona, and these people were from an entirely different universe. He had no knowledge of their language, or their customs, or even how they gestured to indicate nonverbal meaning.

"We have to learn their language," Shaylar said. "Quickly."

He glanced up. Their eyes met, and he smiled slightly, despite the snakes of anger and fear coiling inside him, as he realized how well she truly knew him. Despite their damaged marriage bond, she'd followed his own train of thought perfectly.

"They certainly won't bother to learn ours," he agreed. "Unless it's to interrogate us more effectively."

She shivered, and he kicked himself mentally. He couldn't unsay it, though, so he took her hand carefully and rubbed her fingers.

"Sorry," he said. "And I'm probably looking on the dark side. You say their commander's a decent sort, and you've seen a lot more of him than I have. Besides, I can't imagine they'd want to risk … damaging us with barbaric questioning methods. We're their only information source, and they need us, not just alive, but healthy and cooperative."

He knew he was grasping at straws, trying to reassure her, and the look in her eyes said she was perfectly aware of it. People capable of murdering an entire civilian survey crew were capable of anything, and torture could be undeniably effective. No Sharonian nation had used it?openly, at least; there were persistent grim rumors about the current Uromathian Emperor and his secret police?in centuries. But in Sharona's dim, grim past, torture had been an approved and often frighteningly effective method of extracting detailed information from captives.

"If I could just get past this headache," Shaylar muttered, "I could concentrate on learning their language. It wouldn't be easy without another telepath to help with translations, but I could pass anything I learned on to you. Verbally, if the bond's been permanently damaged."

Her voice went thin and frightened on the last two words, and Jathmar gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Let's stay focused on what we can do, not what we can't, let alone what we might not be able to do. Agreed?"

"Agreed," she said in a much firmer voice. Then her gaze sharpened. "Who's this?"

A tall, aged man with the ebony skin of a Ricathian had emerged from one of the tents and was approaching them. His face was open and unguarded, almost childlike in his obvious curiosity about them. Curiosity and?

Jathmar blinked, startled, when he registered the other emotion in the older man's face: delight. He and Shaylar exchanged startled glances, then both of them looked back at the dark-skinned man again.

He gave them a curiously formal bow, then folded his long, lean body down to sit beside them. His voice was strangely gentle as he said something, then indicated himself and said slowly and carefully, "Halathyn. Halathyn vos Dulainah."

Shaylar glanced at Jathmar, then touched her own chest.

"Shaylar," she said, then indicated her husband. "Jathmar."

Halathyn's face blossomed in a beatific smile. He moved his hands in an intricate fashion, murmuring almost under his breath, and the air began to shimmer. Shaylar gasped, and Jathmar stiffened in shock as a flower of pure light formed in the air between the silver-haired man's palms. It was a rose, scintillating with all the dancing colors of the rainbow.

Halathyn moved his hand, and the rose of light drifted toward Shaylar. The older man took her hand, lifted her palm, and the impossible rose drifted down to rest against her fingertips. It shimmered there, ghostlike and lovely, for several seconds, then sparkled once and faded away.

Shaylar sat entranced for several heartbeats, staring at her empty palm, then turned to stare at the aged man beside them. Halathyn was grinning like a schoolboy, and she felt herself smiling back, unable to resist. Despite the pain in her head, she could feel the clean, gentle radiance of the black-skinned man's soul, and it washed over her like a comforting caress.

Then Gadrial said something in gently chiding tones. She'd been speaking with Jasak just moments previously, and she'd stopped at another campfire to pick up mugs of steaming liquid and carry them over. Now she stood gazing down at Halathyn, head cocked to one side, smiling for all the world like a tutor?or possibly even a nanny?at her favorite charge.

When she spoke, Halathyn merely waved one hand in a grandly dismissive gesture that left her laughing.

"What was that?" Shaylar breathed in Jathmar's ear while Halathyn and Gadrial were focused on each other.

"If there's a better word than magic, I don't know what it is," Jathmar murmured back in awe.

"Dragons, magical roses … Do you suppose what they used against us really was … magic? Honest to goodness magic?"

Jathmar raised one palm in a helpless "who knows" gesture.

"That doesn't make any logical sense," he said, "but neither does that rose." He shook his head. "There is no 'logical explanation' for that! Not any more than there's a logical explanation for what they hit us with in that clearing, or how they healed my burns. Until we know more, we'll just have to reserve judgment."

Halathyn, meanwhile, had produced a large crystal. It was clear as water, one of the most perfect specimens of quartz Jathmar had ever seen. The old man was fiddling with it, using a stylus to draw odd squiggles and shapes across its surface, which struck Jathmar as a fairly ludicrous thing to do. Ink wouldn't stick to a smooth crystal. Besides, Halathyn wasn't even using ink, just a dry stylus.

But then Halathyn angled the crystal so that they could see, and Jathmar leaned forward abruptly. The crystal was glowing. Or, rather, the strange symbols he'd drawn were glowing, squiggles and shapes that burned steadily down in the heart of the crystal. And there was something else strange about it, too. The crystal, large as it was, was no bigger than Jathmar's closed fist. Logically, anything contained inside it had to be quite small, yet those glowing symbols were clearly visible. He couldn't read them, because he had no idea at all what they might stand for, but when he focused his attention on them, they grew to whatever size they had to be for him to make them out in every detail.

"What is it?" he wondered aloud.

Shaylar leaned closer and "casually" rested one hand on the older man's arm as she peered over his shoulder. A familiar abstracted look appeared on her face, then she smiled wonderingly.

"It's a tool of some kind. Something to … store things in?"

She sounded hesitant, and Jathmar frowned.

"Store things in?" he echoed. "That looks like writing of some kind, but how could anyone store writing inside a rock?"