"Or light, for that matter," she said. "And that's what it looks like?light."

"I'm the wrong person to ask." Jathmar shook his head, baffled. "I can't begin to imagine how something like that works."

Whatever Halathyn was doing with the stylus, the squiggles of light shifted rapidly inside the crystal. It certainly looked like writing of some sort, and it did, indeed, look as if Halathyn were storing the words inside that water-clear rock. He glanced up, eyes twinkling, then he whispered something else, and the light faded.

He handed it to Shaylar, who took it with a deeply dubious expression. Then he spoke one word and tapped the crystal with his stylus, and the glowing text sprang back to life. It glowed deep inside, scrolling past at what would probably have been a comfortable reading speed, if they could have read it at all.

Shaylar stared, open-mouthed, then looked up to meet Jathmar's amazed gaze, and Halathyn chuckled. He looked inordinately pleased with himself as he retrieved his crystal, and the look he gave Gadrial was just short of impish. She responded by rolling her eyes, and handed over the mugs she carried.

They contained a beverage that smelled like tea. Jathmar took a hesitant sip and let out a deep sigh. It was tea, spiced with something wonderful. He blew across the surface, sipping with pleasure while Gadrial cradled her own cup in both hands and drank deeply. The Uromathian-looking woman glanced at Halathyn, then turned to Shaylar and spoke again. She pointed to Shaylar and Jathmar in turn, then to herself and to the dragon.

"Looks to me," Jathmar muttered, "like we're about to be taken out of here."

"Yes," Shaylar agreed. "And look at Jasak. He's paying awfully close attention to this conversation."

Jathmar glanced up and decided that Shaylar's comment was a distinct case of understatement.

"I'd say our friend in uniform sent Gadrial over as his errand-boy," he said. Then he glanced at Gadrial's figure, whose shapeliness was quite evident, despite her bulky hiking clothes, and smiled crookedly. "Well, maybe not errand-boy, exactly," he amended. "I find it mighty interesting that he sent her over, rather than telling us himself, though."

Shaylar gave him an unusually hard look.

"He doesn't want to push you into starting something that one of his soldiers might decide to finish," she said sharply, and he nodded.

"You think I don't realize that? With you in harm's way," he added gruffly, "I won't be starting anything I'm not likely to win. But I'll admit it. If not for his trigger-happy soldiers, I might be tempted."

Her breath caught, and terror exploded behind her eyes. She took one hand from her mug of tea, reaching out to grip his forearm with painful force.

"Please, Jath," she whispered, "don't even think of trying that. I couldn't bear to lose you again."

That shook him, and he looked deep into her eyes, suddenly seeing that hideous fight from her perspective. When he remembered that ghastly fireball engulfing him, he remembered agony and terror, but they were his agony, his terror. When she remembered it, she remembered seeing him die.

Deep as that instant of consummate terror and pain had been as the fire took him, the memory which had followed his return to consciousness in this camp, before finding Shaylar alive beside him, had been far worse. For those few, ghastly moments, when he'd believed she was dead, the world had been an unbearable place, darker, deeper, and far bleaker than the far side of the moon. Yet even that, hideous as it had been, had been far less horrifying than it would have been to see her wrapped in the furnace heat of a fireball, burning to death before his very eyes.

"No," he choked out, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. "Never. I'll never risk anything that would leave you here alone."

Her breath shuddered unsteadily against the side of his neck, but she held herself together, and when she finally sat up again, her courageous smile sent an ache of proud pain through his heart. He dried her face with gentle hands, careful on her bruises, but before he could speak again, they were distracted by a sudden shout.

Both of them slewed around in time to see another dragon come winging in from the east. Translucent leathery wings vaned and twisted, altering its flightpath and slowing its airspeed. There seemed to be something indefinably wrong about the way it braked, how quickly it lost velocity, but Jathmar reminded himself that he was scarcely in mental condition to make reliable hard and fast judgments about mythological beasts who couldn't possibly exist anyway.

Jasak Olderhan had turned with everyone else at the dragon's approach. Now he strode rapidly to meet it, his face set in grim lines, and Gadrial spoke to the dark-skinned man sitting beside them. She sounded worried, and Halathyn shrugged, peering with obvious curiosity of his own as the dragon backwinged with a thunderclap of its immense wings and settled with surprising delicacy at the edge of camp.

Jathmar frowned at the newcomer, and even more at the reactions he saw around him.

"Trouble?" he wondered aloud.

"Could be," Shaylar replied. "It's obvious that Jasak isn't rolling out the welcome mat for whoever's on that thing, anyway."

Chapter Fourteen

Jasak Olderhan reminded himself not to curse out loud as he shaded his eyes with one hand, peering up at the approaching dragon.

Muthok Salmeer had made the condition of Cloudsail, Windclaw's assigned wing dragon, abundantly clear. It would be weeks, at least, before Cloudsail could return to service, which hadn't exactly filled Jasak with happiness when he found out. The distance between the base camp and Fort Rycharn was just long enough to prevent a single dragon from flying a complete round-trip without pausing for rest. With only Windclaw, that was going to limit him to at most one and a half round-trips per day, which was going to put a decided kink into his plan to pull back to the coastal enclave by air.

Under the circumstances, the sight of a second operable dragon should have delighted him. Unfortunately, since it couldn't be the injured Cloudsail, it had to be one of the additional dragons they'd been promised for months. Given the water gap between Fort Rycharn and Fort Wyvern, at the entry portal into this universe, it could only have arrived by ship. Which meant the next regularly scheduled transport from Fort Wyvern had also arrived.

Which almost certainly meant …

The dragon landed, and Jasak's mouth tightened as a stocky man in the uniform of the Second Andaran Scouts with the same silver-shield collar insignia Jasak wore climbed down from the second saddle. The newcomer turned, surveying the camp and the rows of wounded troopers with a hard, grim frown, and Jasak snarled a mental obscenity.

He had been looking forward to his replacement's arrival, or, at least, to going home himself for a well-earned bit of R amp;R. But that had changed the moment Shevan Garlath sent the situation crashing out of control by killing an unarmed man. His men were shattered and demoralized, and the thought of turning his command over now was thoroughly unpalatable.

"Hundred Thalmayr." Jasak saluted the newcomer.

"Hundred Olderhan." Hadrign Thalmayr returned Jasak's salute with a flip of the hand which which turned the ostensible courtesy into something one thin inch short of a derisive insult. Then he reached into his tunic pocket and extracted an official message crystal. "As per the orders of Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak, I relieve you."

Jasak's jaw muscles knotted as he saw the contempt in Thalmayr's dark eyes. The man knew nothing about what had happened out here, but it was obvious he'd already made up his mind about it. Jasak's temper snarled against its leash, but he couldn't afford to release it. Not yet.