"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?"