Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  That choice of hers told mul Gurthak everything he needed to know about Kelbryan's views on Jasak Olderhan's precious shardonai. It was scarcely a surprising position for her to take, given her pedigree and history, and if she wanted to spend time with them, so much the better. The woman represented one of the greatest public relations disasters in the history of Mythal, after all, not to mention a staggering affront to anything approaching decent behavior. And at least this way, he wouldn't have to clench his teeth against nausea while listening to her expound her thoughts about these Sharonians. If it should happen that she developed any genuine insights, they'd undoubtedly show up in Olderhan's reports, anyway, so he wasn't overly concerned about depriving himself of critical military intelligence.

  The problem was that, aside from the regrettable power of her Gift, Kelbryan was typical of Ransarans, and there were a lot of them. An appalling number of them, as a matter of fact, when it came to seats in the Union Parliament. Unlike Mythal, which was experiencing a steady decline in population, thanks to the current massive garthan exodus (which had the caste-lords howling in outrage and threatening to impose emigration quotas?as if the Accords would have permitted them to do any such thing), the Ransaran population on Arcana Prime was growing steadily. Not just in absolute terms, but as a percentage of the total planetary population, as well.

  Despite their much vaunted individualism and the depressing technological advantages it had given them, however, Ransarans as a group tended not to relocate as much as other Arcanans. In part, that was simply because they preferred the creature comforts of home. Given the almost universally high standard of living amongst Ransarans, higher than that of any other group in the Union, outside a few dozen shakira ruling families, Ransarans simply preferred to stay home.

  Roughing it in a cabin in the wilderness, with no hospitals, no universities, no theaters or museums, no banks or stock exchanges, and no shopping emporia stuffed with luxury goods from every Arcanan universe, was simply too crude for most self-respecting Ransarans. That was one Ransaran attitude mul Gurthak understood perfectly. He missed the comforts of home, as well. Bitterly, at times.

  But sacrifices had to be made. That was a concept he'd embraced long ago, although it clearly continued to elude most Ransarans. Of course, one of these fine days, those same Ransarans would wake up to discover that a few changes had been made. Nith mul Gurthak took great personal satisfaction in being part of the mechanism which would make that moment inevitable.

  The world would be a far safer?and vastly more stable?place when that day finally came, but that wasn't something he could discuss even with Skirvon. He had allies, to be sure, and the diplomat was one of them. But Skirvon wasn't part of the inner circle, and never would be, for the simple reason that however useful he might be, he wasn't Mythalan.

  mul Gurthak grimaced again at that thought, then pushed his chair back and stood, reviewing the string of unutterably bad news he'd received over the past few weeks. One hand clenched itself around his belt dagger's hilt, and he managed?somehow?not to swear. This whole nasty business had thrown a serious spanner into a very delicate piece of machinery, and he had so many piles of pieces to pick up that he hardly knew where to start. He could perceive?imperfectly, as yet, but perceive?certain strands of opportunity running through the chaos which had engulfed so many years of effort. But even the best of those opportunities were problematical, and it had taken all of his formidable self-control not to curse out loud during the past few hours.

  Dissembling was a game which had long since palled. He'd grown weary of presenting a calm and measured face to the world, hiding his true opinions in order to accomplish his mission. But it had never been as difficult as it had while he listened to Olderhan?Olderhan, of all people?spouting his goodness-and-light interpretation of the current situation. He'd needed to curse someone, starting with the incomparably incompetent Shevan Garlath and ending with the next problem on his list.

  He glowered out his office window at the rapidly settling evening and reached a decision. Then he turned his back on the dusk and his eyes hardened as he looked down at the antique rankadi knife on his desk. That problem he could safely vent spleen on to his heart's content, he decided. And by all the gods of his grandfathers' fathers, the stupid little bastard had earned every ounce of spleen mul Gurthak intended to vent.

  He opened his office door and looked at his clerk.

  "Send someone to the brig. I want to see Bok vos Hoven."

  "Yes, Sir." The clerk snapped a salute and stepped out to arrange for the brig's sole occupant to be escorted to the commandant's office. Eight minutes later, there was a tap at mul Gurthak's door.

  "Come!" he called, and the door opened six inches.

  "The prisoner and escort have arrived, Sir."

  "Good. Have the escort wait in your office, but send the prisoner in."

  "Yes, Sir."

  The clerk disappeared again, briefly, and Nith mul Gurthak reseated himself behind the desk and assumed the stern guise of a thoroughly disgruntled shakira caste-lord. A moment later, the door opened once more to admit a single person.

  Bok vos Hoven was all starch and swagger as he entered. Clearly, he was confident mul Gurthak would get him out of the trouble he'd gotten himself into, and the two thousand shook his head mentally. This was what the caste was coming to?

  The clerk closed the door with a sharp click. vos Hoven smiled and started to step closer to mul Gurthak's desk, then paused. His smile seemed to falter as mul Gurthak simply sat staring at him through narrow eyes and said nothing at all. The younger shakira looked around, uncertainly, and mul Gurthak waited until the first few beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

  "Would you kindly explain," the two thousand said then, suddenly, coldly, chopping the first hole in the icy silence he'd so carefully built, "which variety of dragon shit you use for brains?"

  "Sir?" vos Hoven's eyes shot wide in shock, and fury exploded through mul Gurthak. It was the depth and genuineness of the swaggering jackass's confusion that did it. Did the blundering idiot expect mul Gurthak to congratulate him for his conduct?

  Pure rage jerked the two thousand explosively out of his chair. He snapped to his feet and slammed both fists against his desktop.

  "Imbecile!" he snarled. "How dare you risk everything we've accomplished for your petty personal convenience?"

  The prisoner stumbled backward, almost falling as he flinched from mul Gurthak's wrath.

  "Mightiest Lord," vos Hoven whispered in Mythalan, using the form of address the most groveling supplicant used to address the highest caste-lord of his birth line, "how have I erred so grievously? I thought?"

  "You thought?" Mul Gurthak hissed. He stepped around his desk and snatched vos Hoven up onto his toes by the front of his suddenly sweat-stained uniform blouse. "If you'd thought, you wouldn't be chained and awaiting trial! Did you honestly think I'd lift a fingernail to save you? When you've proven yourself to be the stupidest fool ever born in Mythal?"

  He released the fool in question with explosive energy, shoving him away, and vos Hoven went to his knees, shaking. Weeping. mul Gurthak glared at him, then slapped him hard enough to send him sprawling all the way to the floor.

  "You're so proud and conceited you can't even grovel properly!" the two thousand grated. "A man in your shoes should be on his belly begging not to be ordered to commit rankadi!"

  The words struck home?and finally pierced the armor of vos Hoven's inflated self-worth. He went rigid for a long, horrified instant, then rolled onto his belly, where he belonged, moaning and covering his head with his chained hands to hide his shame.

  "Better!" mul Gurthak hissed.

  "M-may I plead with My Lord?" vos Hoven's voice quivered with the tremors running through him.

  "Plead for what? Your miserable life?"

  "N-no, Mightiest Lord. That is yours, to end, if you demand it," vos Hoven whispered, then gulped and waited.

  "It's good to see that at least
a few basic facts continue to rattle around inside that empty skull of yours. What do you plead for?"

  "Understanding. I have failed the caste, and I don't know how!"

  There was genuine anguish in that confused cry?the anguish of a spoiled, selfish child taught poorly by careless, empty-headed adults. A child now caught in the jaws of a genuinely vicious trap. If he could see and admit that he'd erred without knowing how, there might?just might?be some hope of salvaging something from the ruins.

  "What fool raised you?"

  vos Hoven cringed under the withering scorn of that question. There was no more profound insult than to openly denigrate a Mythalan's family line. In the world of the shakira, there was nothing more important than family line. The family determined one's position in the caste, just as the caste determined one's position in the world of men and the realms of the gods. Without caste, a man was nothing to the gods. Without family line, a man was nothing to the caste. To be born of a line of fools was to serve the forces of chaos … and to well deserve one's inevitable divine destruction.

  mul Gurthak listened to the desperate weeping of the man whose place in the eternal cosmos he'd just ripped so totally and unexpectedly into shreds. The two thousand felt no pity at all. Mithanan's bollocks! That terrible deity, God of cosmic destruction, would wreak vengeance on the entire caste for the utter idiocy of this worm at his feet. Such awe-inspiring stupidity was beyond belief.

  "Please, Mightiest Lord," vos Hoven cringed, "will you not instruct me? How have I sinned? How have my teachers failed me and caused me to fail the caste?"

  mul Gurthak paced thoughtfully around the creature on his office floor, trying to decide how best to go about attempting to salvage something out of it.

  "Explain the purpose of the garthan," he commanded finally, and for just a moment, vos Hoven lifted his face off the floor, staring up at him in total confusion.

  "My Lord?" he said, and mul Gurthak reached for patience.

  "What is the purpose of the garthan?" he repeated. "Of their entire caste?"

  "To serve the shakira," the prisoner managed to get out as he pressed his face back where it belonged: on the floor.

  "To serve the shakira?" mul Gurthak glowered down at the prostrate body. "How?"

  "As our slaves." vos Hoven's voice was low, tentative. Obviously he wondered why he was being taken through this basic nursery school catechism. "To do whatever we demand."

  "Fools." mul Gurthak shook his head almost pityingly. "Triple-cursed fools have had the raising and teaching of you."

  "B-but … why are they fools?"

  "Garthan exist to make it possible for the shakira to carry out the most critical work in the cosmos: the study and mastery of magic. To understand magic, at all its levels, in all its nuances, is to touch the minds of the gods themselves. To gain admittance into the Divine's sacred presence. To bring one's yurha to a point of growth worthy of Divine notice, as a first step toward achieving oneness with the Divine.

  "If the shakira had to plow the ground and grow food out of it, if shakira had to weave cloth and cook and raise the cattle that provide leather for shoes, if shakira had to haul the freight and clean the latrines, no one in all of Arcana would understand magic. No one would be able to use magic. It was Mythal that tapped the Divine spirit and won the Gifts for the human race. It was Mythal that set down the laws of magic, mapped the dimensions of magic, discovered what magic could do when properly harnessed. It was Mythal that built Arcanan civilization, spell by spell, and Mythal did it through the shakira caste's tireless efforts across millennia of study.

  "But none of that would have been possible without the garthan. Without the magicless masses?unwashed, untutored, unlettered, inferior in every possible sense of the word. Yet without them, Arcana?and the glories of Arcanan civilization?would be nothing more than a collection of illiterate laborers and herders. That is the purpose of the garthan. That is their sole purpose. They don't exist to polish your boots and pop the zits on your worthless arse because you're too godsdamned lazy to do it yourself!"

  vos Hoven flinched under the whiplash of that caustic voice, and mul Gurthak snorted harshly.

  "Next question. What does caste law say of the man who beats his children in a public place?"

  "The Law Giver's holy command is that such a man be punished by his caste-lord in kind, for the disciplining of children is a private matter, to be carried out in the domain of the family line, the privacy of the home. To beat children in public shows lack of judgment, lack of patience, and lack of sufficiently wise instruction of the young entrusted to the family line. These things bring shame to the family line and to the caste."

  He was parroting the words by rote, without the slightest understanding of their meaning, mul Gurthak thought disgustedly.

  "Under caste law?true caste law, not the bastardized, compromised version forced upon Mythal when the Union formed?what were a family's garthan?"

  "Its property."

  "A narrow reading. Give me the ancient reading of that law?its full meaning."

  mul Gurthak could practically see vos Hoven's mind searching through the texts memorized by rote, repeated recitations spanning one's entire childhood.

  "The oldest text I have heard mentioned, although I was never shown a copy of it, Mightiest Lord, mentioned garthan as our … children… ."

  vos Hoven's voice trailed off, and he gulped.

  "But I didn't discipline the garthan in public!" he protested. "I was careful to do it in private! Away from the eyes of others."

  "And that is precisely why you are a fool!" mul Gurthak hissed. "Because you understand nothing. You can parrot back the words, but your brain is full of sand and your yurha is as avoid of understanding as the gulfs between the stars. The words have no meaning in your emptiness, and so you make mistakes?stupid mistakes. Costly ones. Mithanan's balls, do you have any idea of the cost of this mistake? Out here, outside the borders of the homeland, we are all under scrutiny?we are all in public, fool! Is it so impossible for you to understand that there is no privacy?! Now, because of what you've done, every Andaran officer will watch every shakira in uniform, looking for evidence of garthan abuse! And what will any evidence of the 'abuse' of garthan do? It will taint all of us. It will cause these honorbound Andarans to watch our every move. And what will that do to the cause you and I are here to serve? What will that do to our mission?"

  The prisoner whimpered, and mul Gurthak sneered.

  "Oh, you see it now, do you? A shakira who's watched too closely can't function as we need him to function, can't acquire the seniority we need. You've jeopardized everything the Council of Twelve has spent the last thirty years putting into place. Our whole timetable must come to a screeching halt while we try to make certain that no one's stumbled across what we're doing because of the way you've made all of them look so much more closely at all of us. I'll have to send messages, you utter, cursed moron, warning others to stop. To lie low. Messages that will put me at risk of exposure!"

  vos Hoven trembled violently, whimpering once more. mul Gurthak was so angry he wanted to kick the idiots ribs until something broke, but he couldn't?not without risking even more probing questions than vos Hoven had already set in motion. Yet his fury was too great not to do something, so he crouched beside the other shakira, seized his hair, jerked his head up off the floor by the long braids. Dark eyes rolled in abject terror, and mul Gurthak leaned close to hiss into his face.

  "I've worked too hard, swallowed too many insults from socially and spiritually inferior louts, to attain my present position. I've gone without too many creature comforts to see everything I've struggled to achieve come crashing down in ruins. And why is it falling apart? Because you used your fists to bruise a garthan for not licking the mud off your feet! I should feed your worthless carcass to the dragons."

  vos Hoven shuddered violently. No court in Arcana had actually ordered that court-martialed soldiers or other prisoners be fed to dragons in the last
two centuries. But the actual law had never been repealed, and there were a handful of shakira lords in Mythal who did still feed the damned to their dragons. In strict and careful privacy, of course …

  mul Gurthak straightened, letting let the stupid worm stew in his own juices for long, silent moments, and the stink of vos Hoven's sweat was sharp and foul, the smell of terror.

  "I had plans for you," the two thousand said at last, coldly. "Plans that must now be scrapped. Why do you think I transferred you to Jasak Olderhan's company in the first place? Or is your memory so short you've already forgotten the private mission I assigned you to carry out?"

  "Mightiest Lord, I-I tried! But I couldn't. He never comes right out and says it, but he hates us?hates shakira. You should have seen him fawning over that garthan. Praising him?recommending him for promotions. But he hated the rest of us Mythalans, the shakira in the Company. He shunned and loathed us. You could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at us."

  "He hated shakira?" mul Gurthak asked softly. "Even Halathyn vos Dulainah?"

  "vos Dulainah," vos Hoven all but spat the dead magister's name, "was a filthy traitor. He abandoned his caste, even his wife and son. Yes, Olderhan doted on the old man. And why? Precisely because vos Dulainah had shunned and betrayed the rest of us. The rest of the shakira."

  "So you say he treated the shakira in his company badly?" mul Gurthak glared sternly at vos Hoven. "Be certain of your answer, fool. If you lie, I'll know, and I do not tolerate lies from a subordinate. Not in my command, and not in my caste."

  vos Hoven gulped. For several seconds, he kept his face pressed firmly into the floor, silent. But then, finally, he answered in a low, reluctant voice.

  "No. He didn't treat us badly. If a shakira kowtowed and obeyed like a good little garthan, Olderhan treated him like anyone else. It was a double insult. First he demanded that we act like garthan, and when we did, he treated us equally, as if he were just as good as we."