"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.
"There are three major Ransaran religions, Shaylar, and quite a few subsidiary sects floating around the fringes. I personally belong to the Fellowship of Rahil, and we Rahilians follow the teachings of Rahil, the Great Prophetess. By all accounts, she was a magistron of truly phenomenal ability back in the days before the theoretical basis for magic was at all understood. We believe her abilities in that regard were directly inspired by God as a sign of His favor, and her writings about God constitute the seminal text of our religious beliefs. In the Rahilian view, God is infinite, and as such infinitely unknowable, but a benign and loving Creator who progressively reveals to us as much about Him as finite mortals are capable of understanding.
Like the Mythlans, Rahilians believe that the purpose of a physical, mortal existence is for the individual soul to live and grow?to 'evolve' upward, to use the Mythalan term?by making choices and acquiring experience. But we also believe that God is separate from the universe around us, that He extends beyond and transcends it as an individual distinct from it, and that He seeks an individual relationship with each of us. That was what Rahil taught, at any rate.
"Over the centuries, the Rahilians and the other two major Ransaran religions have spent quite a lot of their time massacring one another over various points of religious disagreement," Gadrial admitted. "We stopped doing that about, oh, nine hundred years ago, I guess. Not that we all turned into sunshine and light where our differences are concerned, of course. But at least all of us got to the point where we agreed that whoever was right, God would probably be fairly irritated with His?or Her?worshipers if they insisted on slaughtering everyone else in job lots simply for being mistaken.
"At any rate, there are three things that all three of our major religions have in common. First, we believe there's an individual God, an all-powerful being who exists outside the material universe, rather than being bound up in it.
"Second, none of us believe in reincarnation, although all of us do believe in the immortality of the human soul. And we believe that each soul has a single mortal existence in which to establish its relationship to God. There's some disagreement among us about what happens to the souls that don't manage to establish the right relationship with God. In fact, that's one of the points we used to kill each other over, back in the good old days.
"Third, we believe each individual must have the greatest possible opportunity to become all that he or she can become. Not simply because all of us agree God wants us to love one another, but because it's in the process of becoming all a person can be, that person is brought closer to God and so to the ability to establish that 'right relationship' we all believe in … even if we're not quite in total agreement over what it ought to be."
She stopped again, gazing at Shaylar, and the Voice nodded slowly. Gadrial was right, she reflected. Assuming that the magister had described the Mythalans and Ransaran viewpoints as accurately?or, at least, honestly?as Shaylar was confident she had, it was scarcely surprising that the Mythalans would hate, despise, and fear everything Ransar stood for. And she could think of nothing someone with Gadrial's religious and philosophical values would find more revolting and cruel than the Mythalan caste system. Which only made the deep and obvious love which had existed between Gadrial and Magister Halathyn even more remarkable.
"At any rate," Gadrial continued, "given the Ransaran views on the preciousness of each individual life, the possibility of any of our major religions?most of which were still quite cheerfully chopping up the adherents of their Ransaran coreligionists at the time?signing off on the notion of trial-and-error experiments on humans was … remote, shall we say. So both the Mythalans and the Ransarans, each for their own very different reasons, outlawed that sort of experimentation on humans from the very beginning."