Hell's Gate

Shaylar shivered as if a sudden icy wind had found its way up and down her spine. And, in fact, one had, in a metaphorical way of speaking.

"And does that include people?" she asked after moment.

"No," Gadrial said firmly. Shaylar looked both relieved and skeptical, in almost equal measure, and Gadrial shrugged. "There's no arcane reason it couldn't include people," she conceded. "Human beings' codes can be visualized just as well as those of any other creature. But from the very begi

"Even in Mythal?" Shaylar said, with rather more skepticism, and Gadrial surprised her with a harsh bark of laughter.

"Especially in Mythal! The last thing any shakira would want to do is come up with a way to turn garthan into shakira. Given their religion, they'd see it as blasphemous, at the very least. And from a practical perspective?which I personally happen to think is even more important to them than their ludicrous religious concepts?if they were to turn all of the garthan into Gifted shakira, what happens to the existing shakira's slave class? It's been my observation that their 'religious principles' serve their more worldly ambitions much more than the other way around."

"But what about turning garthan into even more obedient slaves?"

"Now that probably would be something that would appeal to the caste-lords," Gadrial admitted with a grimace of distaste. "These days, at least. But at the time the rules and laws which prohibit tampering with humans were being put into place, no Mythalan garthan had any hope of ever managing to escape or defy his overlords. There was no need to turn them into 'more obedient slaves,' because it was impossible for them to be disobedient under the existing system."

"And why did everyone else feel it should be outlawed?"

"Because, at the time, it was all a process of trial and error," Gadrial said. "In fact, that's still the case whenever anyone begins mapping a new species, in a lot of ways. Hansara had found a way to producer congruent map, but it's an incredibly complex chart, Shaylar, and initially, he had no way of establishing the congruency between a particular section of the map and specific characteristics of the creature it represented. So he and his fellow magistrons not only had to come up with techniques to modify the chart, they also had to figure out which parts of it they needed to modify to achieve a specific objective. Most of their initial efforts?for decades, literally?produced creatures which couldn't possibly survive on their own. Or, at best, which were far, far cries from what they'd wanted to produce. No one was willing to allow them to experiment on humans when they might as readily produce a three-headed monster as an improvement on the original model. And, of course, Hansara and his colleagues were almost all Ransarans."

"Which was significant why?" Shaylar asked, and Gadrial paused with an arrested expression.

"You know," she replied after moment, "you speak Andaran so well that I keep forgetting how little you actually know about Arcana. Like all of the reasons, aside from the purely personal, of course, a Ransaran like me would have for disliking a Mythalan."

"Should I take it that one or more of those reasons would have a bearing on all of this?"

"Oh, I think you could probably take it that way. You see, one of the primary causes for the hostility between Mythal and Ransar is that we have totally different religious beliefs. Mythalans believe in something they call reincarnation. They believe that each individual human soul?they call it a 'yurha'?experiences dozens, possibly thousands, of lives, and that the purpose of those lives is for each yurha to become more completely realized?a 'higher being'?in each incarnation. Ultimately, the individual yurha reaches a state of actual divinity, in which it becomes one with the entire universe. That's what they visualize God to be: the entire universe. He's not an individual entity, not a creator, but a sort of … confluence of all of the magical energy bound up in all of creation. That's why the shakira are 'obviously' the highest of the Mythalan castes. Because they're the ones with the Gifts which allow them to manipulate that magical energy, they're clearly much closer to attaining the godhead than anyone else, since they as a caste must consist solely of people with highly evolved yurhas.

"It also justifies their treatment of the garthan on several levels. The function of the garthan is to do all of those dirty, demeaning, physically exhausting jobs the shakira couldn't possibly take the time to do, since it would draw them away from their mastery of magic and thus separate them from the godhead. It would actually be sinful for them to allow themselves to be diverted, since that might cause their yurhas to move downward through their 'great chain of being.'"

"That sounds a little bit like a really distorted version of what some Lissians believe," Shaylar said cautiously. "But the Lissians are among the gentlest, most compassionate people on Sharona."

"Well, Mythalans certainly aren't gentle or compassionate," Gadrial said tartly. Then she sighed.

"I suppose my own experiences with them really do color my reaction," she admitted. "But part of the problem I have with their entire culture is that once you accept their religious beliefs, and the mindset they've developed to go with them, then their treatment of the garthan is perfectly logical and reasonable. They really and truly simply don't understand why the rest of us can't just see that and admit that Mythal's been right all along … which is one of the reasons both Ransar and Andara simply can't stand them.

"As they see it, the whole object of the human race, the whole reason we exist?according to the Mythalans?is for all of us eventually to obtain oneness. And, since they believe in reincarnation, each of us has an effectively limitless number of lives in which our yurha can advance. So no matter what they do to an individual garthan?or to all garthan, as a caste?they aren't really harming that individual, are they? After all, this is only one brief stop in an endless journey, and eventually all garthan?aside, of course, from the inevitably willful or evil ones?will become shakira themselves. In fact, some of the greatest cruelties the shakira have traditionally practiced upon the garthan, like the law codes which take Gifted children away from garthan parents and give them to shakira to raise, are justified on the basis of helping their victims attain enlightenment sooner."

Shaylar looked at Gadrial for several seconds, reminding herself that, by her own admission, Gadrial hated Mythalans. But she'd also come to know Gadrial Kelbryan. If the magister hated Mythalans, it was probably because she despised their beliefs, rather than a case of her despising?or distorting?their beliefs because she hated them.

"So how do Ransaran beliefs differ from Mythalan beliefs?" she asked finally.

"In just about every conceivable way," Gadrial snorted. "First, every Ransaran?with the exception of the Manisthuans?is monotheistic. That is, we all believe there's only a single God, since God is, by definition, infinite and since, equally by definition, there can't be two infinite beings. All of our theologians agreed long ago that if two beings are separate from one another, then neither can be truly infinite, since they have to stop somewhere if there are going to be two of them in the first place. Unfortunately, we're Ransarans. While we may all agree that there's only one God, we don't all agree on who He?or She?is."

The corners of her eyes crinkled with amusement at Shaylar's expression, and she chuckled.

"In fairness to the Mythalans," she said, "and much as it pains me to even consider being fair to them, I can't conceive of anyone who could possibly be more profoundly … irritating to them than Ransarans. It's almost as if God deliberately designed us to drive them crazy. And vice-versa, of course.