Hell's Gate

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Shaylar and Jathmar sat in their quarters in Fort Wyvern, talking quietly with Gadrial, and listened to the wind.

It was dying down at last, and they were glad. The thunderstorms on the far side of the portal had raged with only occasional periods of relative calm for better than twenty-four hours after their arrival here, and the violent weather seemed to have spread to this side. At least, that was what it had felt like for the next two days, as rain and strong winds pummeled Fort Wyvern. None of the transport dragon pilots had been at all happy about the prospect of taking off under such conditions, and Jasak had decided not to push the issue. Instead, they'd settled down to wait out the weather on both sides of the portal before proceeding.

It had not been a comfortable wait. Five hundred Grantyl, Fort Wyvern's commanding officer, was very different from Five Hundred Klian. There'd been none of the sympathy, none of the awareness that what had happened certainly wasn't their fault, that they'd seen in Klian. Instead, there'd been suspicion, hostility, and more than a little fear. It had been obvious to Shaylar that Grantyl would have been far more comfortable locking them up in a dungeon somewhere, and preferably losing the key.

The fact that he hadn't gone ahead and done exactly that underscored the accuracy of what Jasak and Gadrial had told them about the institution of shardon. Shaylar had been too far away to catch more than a few fragments of the "discussion" between Jasak and Grantyl, but she hadn't needed her Talent to recognize how disgruntled?and angry?Grantyl had been. Yet despite his anger, and despite the fact that he outranked Jasak substantially, the five hundred hadn't even attempted to put them into close confinement. He'd insisted on stationing sentries outside their quarters, but aside from that, they'd been treated almost as guests. Not welcome guests, perhaps, but still guests.

"You know," she said now to Gadrial, "I don't think I'd truly realized?not deep down inside?just how lucky we are that Jasak is basically a decent man."

Jathmar stirred, sitting on the bed at her side, and she reached out and took his hand. Her husband's attitude towards Jasak remained far more ambivalent than her own.

"I don't think this fort's commander," Shaylar went on, "was all that happy about not throwing us into chains the instant we got here."

"You're right, Grantyl did want to lock you up in the brig beside vos Hoven," Gadrial said. "But he's an Andaran himself, which didn't leave him much choice but to accept Jasak's position. Of course," she smiled thinly, "he also knows who Jasak's father is, which may have had a little something to do with it."

"I'll settle for that," Jathmar said with a slightly grim answering smile.

"So would I, in your place." Gadrial nodded, but there was an edge of unhappiness, or concern, perhaps, in her tone, and Shaylar arched her eyebrows.

"You don't seem entirely satisfied about something," she observed, and Gadrial grimaced.

"It's just that I'm not too happy about the commander of the next fort," she admitted.

"Why?" Jathmar demanded, his eyes suddenly intent.

"Two Thousand mul Gurthak most definitely isn't Andaran. In fact, he's a Mythalan, and although he hasn't chosen to flaunt it, he comes from a fairly prominent shakira clan-line. He's also a long way away from any authority which might overrule him … or punish him. Frankly, if anyone's likely to try to violate Jasak's role as your baranal, it's going to be a Mythalan."

"Why do you and Jasak hate Mythalans so much?" Shaylar asked. Gadrial simply looked at her, and Shaylar shrugged. "You said Magister Halathyn was a Mythalan, and from what I saw and sensed about him, he was a wonderful man. But I've never heard you or Jasak say a positive thing about any other Mythalan, aside from Sendahli. And that other soldier of Jasak's?that vos Hoven?almost sets himself on fire with his own hatred every time he looks at Jasak."

"It's a long, complicated situation," Gadrial said slowly. "And I take the point you're trying to make. In fact, it's probably true that the mere fact that mul Gurthak is Mythalan would be enough to make me … wary of him. But if the question you're really asking is whether or not our opinions of Mythal and its society are warranted, you might think about the fact that Jasak and I come from extremely different backgrounds … and neither of us can stomach the way Mythalans think societies should work."

"Why?" Jathmar asked, and Gadrial sighed.

"In our universe, Mythal?what you call Ricathia?has the oldest civilization of any of our major cultures. It's also where almost all of the techniques for handling magic, tapping the energy field, were first worked out. A lot of that development stemmed from pure trial and error in the early days, but Mythalans have been studying magic for a long time, and they began working out the theory behind those early brute force applications well over two thousand years ago. The true scientific method only evolved in the last few hundred years, but most of their original theoretical work has stood up extremely well. Even today, they dominate in the field of theoretical sorcery. They're not as good at devising practical applications of their own research as, say, my own people are, but the most prestigious of all of the academies of magic is still the Mythal Falls Academy, where Magister Halathyn used to teach."

Pain flickered through the magister's dark eyes. More pain than mentioning Halathyn usually caused her, Shaylar thought. But whatever its cause, she brushed it off quickly, almost angrily, and continued in that same level tone.

"No one?especially a magister like me?can fail to respect the work Mythal Falls has carried out over the centuries. But it's unfortunately true that Mythal developed a very different society from the rest of Arcana, one based almost entirely on whether or not the members of that society are Gifted. In fact, I've often thought that they developed their society as a result of their single-minded focus on the principles of magic.

"If you're Mythalan and Gifted, then you belong to the shakira caste, or perhaps to the multhari caste; if you aren't Gifted, then you belong to the garthan caste. There are some exceptions, but not very many."

"Castes?" Shaylar frowned at the totally alien word, and Gadrial sighed.

"The best way to think of it is that the Mythalans divide their society into three distinct groups, what we call 'castes,' each of which have a specific place. The relationships between castes?and what's permissible behavior within a caste?are defined by ironbound tradition and, in most cases, statutory law, as well. For the most part, the caste you belong to?shakira, multhari, or garthan?depends on whether or not you were born Gifted, and there's nothing you can do about that.

"As I say, the shakira are the Gifted caste. They're the small percentage of the total population, no more than twenty percent or so, at best, who form the tip of the social pyramid. They control the wealth and political power of the entire society, and they think of themselves as extremely enlightened because they practice a form of direct democracy no other Arcanan nation practices. Of course, the only people who get to vote are members of the shakira and traditional multhari families. That's one reason they can use direct democracy; they've got so few voters that the system actually works.

"Next in power and prestige after the shakira are the multhari, the traditional Mythalan military caste. You might think of them as the Mythalan equivalent of Andarans, although there are tremendous differences between them. Not least because one of the multhari's primary responsibilities is to keep the garthan's neck firmly under the shakira's heel. Some of the multhari?many of them, in fact?are also shakira, and the enlisted ranks of the Mythalan military have always contained quite a lot of garthan, although all of its officers are multhari.