Hell's Gate

Farnalians were even taller than Ternathians, tending towards big, robust men with blond and red hair, and statuesque women who were as comfortable in the saddle or behind the plow as their menfolk?and just as capable of wielding a sword (or, these days, a rifle) in defense of their own homes. Once upon a time, the sea rovers of Farnalia had been noted for their fondness for axes, other people's possessions, and their own boisterous, brawling independence. That, Andrin supposed, might have been one reason her ancestors had established treaties with Farnalia, rather than attempting a more … energetic approach.

At one time, Ternathia had controlled almost all of Chairifon south of Farnalia and west of Uromath, but that had been long ago. Sometimes the sheer depth of history behind something as simple as that map took Andrin's breath away. It was difficult to comprehend the vast gulf of time which had passed since Ternathia had signed its first treaties of alliance with Farnalia, more than four thousand years previously. Trade between the two empires had been brisk and lucrative throughout that immense stretch of time, and the Farnalians themselves joked about how Ternathian influence had finally civilized their ancestors. Of course, that was partly because so many of those ancestors had been Ternathians themselves. Along the borders of the western half of Farnalia, intermarriage with Ternathians was so common that it had long ago become impossible to distinguish a person's nationality on the basis of physical appearance.

There were those?particularly in Uromathia?who muttered occasionally about "mongrels," but absorption had been the true key to Ternathia's successful expansion of its borders. Those borders had been extended primarily because of the Empire's need to protect its trade routes from the brigandage and unrest which always seemed to be simmering away just on the other side. Yet as each troubled region was acquired and pacified, the traders?and their rulers?found themselves facing yet another new area of unrest, where ship-based pirates and land-based brigands harassed Ternathian merchants from the other side of the new border. Which, inevitably, provided fresh impetus to expand still further.

And so, the Empire had grown ever larger. There had never really been a conscious plan to forge an empire in the first place. At every stage, it had been primarily a pragmatic matter of seeking border security, not fresh lands to rule, yet the result had been the same. Ternathia had become a spreading, irresistable tide, bringing Ternathian arts and technology to the cultures it had engulfed, learning from those cultures, in turn, and?always?intermarrying with them. The Calirath Dynasty had been wise enough to bind its subject peoples to it by making them full members in the Empire which had overrun them, and marriage had been one of the promises and guarantors of that equality. So had respect for local religions. The process of absorption had worked both ways, gradually and almost always successfully, over centuries, and one reason it had was the fact that the Ternathian traders had brought with them something far more valuable than gold or spices or precious stones.

Ternathians had been the first to harness the Talents of the mind. Legend had it that Erthain the Great, the semi-mythical founder of the House of Calirath, had been the very first Talent. Andrin took that with a hefty lump of skeptical salt, but there was no question that Ternath was, indeed, the birthplace of the Talents. The telepathy of the Voices, Precognition, Mapping, the prescient Glimpses which were the heritage and curse of Ternathian royalty, Telekinesis, Distance Viewing?all of them had been developed and nurtured in Ternath, and then bequeathed to the children of Ternathia.

Intermarriage had carried those Talents throughout the sprawling Empire. Eventually, they had spread far beyond Ternathia's borders, through other intermarriages, and today their possession wove throughout all Sharona, like a gleaming net of precious gold.

Yet the world had turned and changed, until, eventually, the vast territory under direct Ternathian rule could no longer be administered at an affordable cost. Ultimately, a Ternathian emperor had made the decision to set free those provinces the Empire could no longer afford to govern. Andrin had always been glad Ternathia's borders had shrunk not from the fire of rebellion, or the crumbling of internal decay, but because her ancestors had been wise enough to return control of its far-flung provinces to the people who lived there.

That was the reason the wealthy Kingdom of Shurkhal and the many smaller kingdoms which shared its cultural heritage were once again Shurkhal and her sister states, just as the Harkalian states were once again sovereign, with legal bonds to no one but themselves. It was better that way. Andrin knew that. Not only because her tutors?including her father and mother?had taught her so, but because she could see it for herself.

It was worse than folly to grip something one could no longer afford to keep, simply for the perverse joy of possession. It was cruel to do so, and cruel to hold people in bondage. Had they wanted to remain Ternathian, she thought, they would doubtless have found a way to make it profitable for Ternathia to keep them. But only a few kingdoms or republics or principalities had refused their freedom when it was offered.

Ternathia's empire had shrunk steadily, and for the most part gracefully, and those who ruled the Ternathian Empire had retained their humanity in the process. Andrin Calirath was proud to be part of that lineage, proud to be the daughter of Ternathia's current Emperor, who still ruled five hundred and seventeen million souls, give or take a few hundred thousand. And she was proud that even as they had taken back their freedom, Ternathia's one-time provinces had retained much of what Ternath had brought them. Proud of their independence and individuality, yes, but also mindful of thousands of years of shared history and the common heritage which continued to bind them together, as well.

After Ternathia and Farnalia, the next largest "empires," if the term could be used, were the Arpathians of the Septentrion, famous for furs, amber, vast herds of horses, and nomadic warriors, and Uromathia.

In reality, there was no such thing as an "Arpathian Empire"?the Septs were far too fiercely independent for anything that centralized?but the Septentrion formed a recognizable union of cultures, religion, and political interests. It gave all the Septs representation, enforced the peace between them, and dominated the immense sweep of land from the Ibral Sea to the Scurlis Sea, four thousand miles to the east.

South of Arpathia lay the tangled kingdoms of the Uromathian culture. Those kingdoms included Eniath, whose fierce deserts had given rise to a people with a love of horses and hawks that rivaled Andrin's own, as well as to genuine empires and several smaller independent states. The larger of the two empires was the Uromathian Empire itself, which had given the entire culture its name and rivaled modern Ternathia in size.

The smaller Hinorean Empire was no welterweight, but it couldn't match its larger neighbor, Uromathia, in size or wealth. Uromathians tended to produce enormous population densities, far greater than Ternathia's or, indeed, than the rest of Sharona in general. There were so many Uromathians, in fact, that large numbers of them had migrated to the new universes discovered beyond the portals.

Andrin had never met any Uromathians in person, although she'd seen a handful of envoys who'd come to Hawkwing Palace on official business. They were an exotic people, but far smaller than most Ternathians. Andrin had been taller than any of the male Uromathians she'd seen, which doubtless would have made them uncomfortable had they actually met her face-to-face.