David Weber - Hell's Gate

"For the last forty years or so, Mythal appears to have been trying to overcome some of those problems. More multhari have been attending the Army Academy at Garth Showma before joining the army, which appears to have smoothed down at least some of the rough edges. For that matter, some of the younger shakira from outside the multhari have actually been signing up for at least a tour or two in the enlisted ranks. They're being encouraged to do so by their caste-lords, on the grounds that whether their caste agrees with the rest of us or not, they're stuck with the terms of the Accords, and they have to learn to get along with those restrictions if they ever want to reduce the traditional friction between their own people and the rest of us.

"It's at least a pragmatic idea," Gadrial admitted a bit grudgingly, "and I suppose they may actually be sincere. Unfortunately, their 'solution' doesn't come without problems of its own. For example, the soldier you were talking about, Shaylar?vos Hoven?belongs to the shakira. That's what the 'vos' in his name indicates. But Sendahli belongs to the garthan caste. He fled Mythal and enlisted in the Union Army as a way to escape the limited, second-class future which was all he could expect at home. And the reason vos Hoven is under arrest is that Jasak caught him brutally beating Sendahli to extort Sendahli's pay out of him."

Jathmar frowned deeply and quickly. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Gadrial continued.

"The reason he was doing that?and the reason Sendahli was letting him do that, despite the fact that he could have broken vos Hoven's neck any time he wanted to?is that under Mythalan custom and law, garthan have no legal rights in any dispute with a shakira. They can't even testify in court against a shakira defendant. Up until the formation of the Union of Arcana, garthan were legally property. They were required to belong to someone from the shakira caste, and they were denied the right to own property, the right to vote, or the right to choose their own trades and professions . . or to any income they might have earned from that trade or profession. In many cases, they were denied even the right to choose who they married, and even today, Gifted children of garthan parents are taken from their birthparents by the courts and placed for adoption by shakira families."

"That's barbaric!" Shaylar burst out, and Gadrial nodded.

"That's exactly what it is," she agreed grimly. "I'm Ransaran. My people believe in the fundamental equality of all human beings. We're the dangerous, humanistic, liberal part of the Union, and there's been a fundamental hostility, almost a hatred, between us and the Mythalans for as long as anyone can remember on either side. Jasak, on the other hand, is an Andaran, and they're as different from us as the Mythalans are. Their entire culture is bound up in concepts of mutual obligation and duty, of responsibilities that define who they are. They believe in the rights of the individual, but they also believe that those rights have to be earned by meeting all of those obligations and responsibilities, and they have no sympathy for anyone who fails to measure up to their standards of honor.

"Yet they despise the Mythalans as much as we Ransarans do, because of the Mythalan attitude towards the garthan?that the mere fact that people like Sendahli aren't Gifted makes them less than human in the eyes of their own rulers. It turns them into something which exists solely for the convenience of their natural superiors, the shakira. If an Andaran like Jasak considered the non-Gifted as truly inferior?which he never would?his cultural obligation would be to protect and defend them, not to abuse them. When he came across vos Hoven beating Sendahli, he ordered vos Hoven off … and vos Hoven tried to kill him."

Jathmar shook his head in a combination of dismay and disbelief, and Gadrial smiled humorlessly.

"I'm sure there are people back home in Sharona you wouldn't exactly be proud to be associated with, Jathmar. Maybe not anyone as bad as the Mythalans, but I can't imagine your people are that different from ours, Talent or no. Unfortunately, we Ransarans and Andarans had no choice but to include Mythal in the Union. Partly, because whether we like them or not they do live on the same planet we do, which I suppose gives them at least some inherent right to share in the exploitation of the portals. But, frankly, mostly because when the first portal appeared on Arcana, it sparked the most terrible war in our history. The weapons that were developed were devastating, so terrible we barely managed to stop short of our own complete destruction."

Jathmar and Shaylar froze, their faces suddenly tight with fear.

"Andara and Ransar realized the situation was about to spin totally out of control," Gadrial continued grimly. "We proposed the creation of the Union as a world-government to ensure that every Arcanan nation had the same opportunities to profit from the existence of the portals, and the Andarans supported us strongly. It was only our united front which forced Mythal to accept the proposal, and the Mythalans held out for a much greater degree of local autonomy?essentially the protection of their own social system within their own territory?than any of the rest of us wanted to give them. Unfortunately, they'd been the leading researchers for the weapons which had been used in the Portal Wars. They had more of them them, and better ones, than the rest of us, and they refused to destroy them unless we accepted their terms in that regard."

Shaylar's face was white as she absorbed the implications of magical weapons capable of destroying an entire planet's civilization. Jathmar looked equally horrified, and Gadrial faced them squarely.

"I know what you're afraid of, and I don't blame you. But I will tell you there are severe limitations on even the most deadly weapon, when it's applied to inter-universal warfare. For one thing, no spell can be cast through a portal, so you'd still have to physically assault each portal and establish a bridgehead on the other side before you could deploy any sorcerous weapon. That wasn't a factor in the Portal Wars, because they were fought entirely on Arcana, over who'd end up with possession of the portal in the first place.

"For a second thing, those weapons were outlawed two hundred years ago. As part of the Union Accords, all signatories were required to destroy all weapons of mass destruction and the spellware and research which had supported them. Several other particularly nasty spells were outlawed at the same time, and an inspection process was set up to ensure that there were no holdouts and that no one was doing fresh research in the proscribed areas."

"But if things get nasty enough, your people could always change the law, couldn't they?"

"Yes, Jathmar, we could," Gadrial said very, very quietly. "And the people most likely to push for doing just that are going to be the Mythalans. They're xenophobic to an almost crippling degree, even with their fellow Arcanans. I don't even want to think about how they're going to react when they find out about your people. Especially," she smiled wanly, "because they're going to think they're looking at an entire worldwide civilization of Ransarans."

Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, and Gadrial leaned forward in her chair to take Shaylar's hand. Shaylar's eyes stung with tears as she realized the other woman was deliberately giving her the opportunity to read her emotions, her honesty.

"The Andarans and Ransarans would never stand for the resurrection of those hideous weapons," she said flatly. "Not unless your people were foolish enough to convince us that our only other alternative was our own complete destruction. From what I've seen of the two of you, I don't think that's ever going to happen. I can't promise that, obviously, but I truly, truly believe it."