by John Norman
Many have entered the mountains and so many must have learned the secret of the Priest-Kings, though none has returned to tell it.
But let me now speak of Tharna.
Tharna is now a different city than it has ever been within the memory of living man.
Her ruler—the gracious and beautiful Lara—is surely one of the wisest and most just of rulers on this barbaric world, and hers has been the torturous task of reuniting a city disrupted by civil strife, of making peace among factions and dealing fairly with all. If she were not loved as she is by the men of Tharna her task would have been impossible.
As she ascended once more the throne no proscription notices were posted but a general amnesty was granted to all, both those who had espoused her cause and those who had fought for Dorna the Proud.
From this amnesty only the silver masks of Tharna were excepted.
Blood was high in the streets of Tharna after the revolt and angry men, both rebels and defenders, joined in the brutal hunt for silver masks. These poor creatures were hunted from cylinder to cylinder, from room to room.
When found they were dragged forth into the street, unmasked, cruelly bound together and driven to the palace at the point of weapons, their masks hanging about their necks.
Many silver masks were discovered hiding in obscure chambers in the palace itself and the dungeons below the palace were soon filled with chains of fair, lamenting prisoners. Soon the animal cages beneath the arena of the Amusements of Tharna had to be pressed into service, and then the arena itself.
Some silver masks were discovered even in the sewers beneath the city and these were driven by giant, leashed urts through the long tubes until they crowded the wire capture nets set at the openings of the sewers.
Other Silver Masks had taken refuge in the mountains beyond the walls and these were hunted like sleen by converging rings of irate peasants, who drove them into the center of their hunting circles, whence, unmasked and bound, they were herded to the city to meet their fate.
Most of the silver masks however, when it was understood their battle had been lost and the laws of Tharna were irrevocably shattered, came of their own free will into the streets and submitted themselves in the traditional fashion of the captive Gorean female, kneeling, lowering the head, and lifting and raising the arms, wrists crossed for binding.
The pendulum in Tharna had swung.
I myself had stood at the foot of the steps to the golden throne when Lara had commanded that the giant mask of gold which hung behind it be pried by spears from the wall and cast to the floor at our feet.
No more would that cold serene visage survey the throne room of Tharna.
The men of Tharna watched almost in disbelief as the great mask loosened, bolt by bolt, from the wall, leaned forward and at last, dragged down by its own weight, broke loose and plunged clattering down the steps of the throne, breaking into a hundred pieces.
"Let it be melted," Lara had said, "and cast into the golden tarn disks of Tharna and let these be distributed to those who have suffered in our day of troubles."
"And add to the golden tarn disks," she had exclaimed, "tarn disks of silver to be formed from the masks of our women, for henceforth in Tharna no woman may wear a mask of either gold or silver, not even though she be Tatrix of Tharna herself!"
And as she had spoken, according to the customs of Tharna, her words had become the law and from that day forth no woman of Tharna might wear a mask.
In the streets of Tharna shortly after the end of the revolt the caste colors of Gor began to appear openly in the garments of the citizens. The marvelous glazing substances of the Caste of Builders, long prohibited as frivolous and expensive, began to appear on the walls of the cylinders, even on the walls of the city itself. Graveled streets are now being paved with blocks of colored stone set in patterns to delight the eye. The wood of the great gate has been polished and its brass burnished. New paint blazes upon the bridges.
The sound of caravan bells is no longer strange in Tharna and strings of traders have found their way to her gates, to exploit this most surprising of all markets.
Here and there the mount of a tarnsman boasts a golden harness. On market day I saw a peasant, his sack of Sa-Tarna meal on his back, whose sandals were tied with silver straps.
I have seen private apartments with tapestries from the mills of Ar upon the walls; and my sandals have sometimes found underfoot richly colored, deeply woven rugs from distant Tor.
It is perhaps a small thing to see on the belt of an artisan a silver buckle of the style worn in mountainous Thentis or to note the delicacy of dried eels from Port Kar in the marketplace, but these things, small though they are, speak to me of a new Tharna.
In the streets I hear the shouting, the song and clamor that is typically Gorean. The marketplace is no longer simply some acres of tile on which business must be dourly conducted. It is a place where friends meet, arrange dinners, exchange invitations, discuss politics, the weather, strategy, philosophy and the management of slave girls.
One change that I find of interest, though I cannot heartily approve, is that the rails have been removed from the high bridges of Tharna. I had thought this pointless, and perhaps dangerous, but Kron had said simply, "Let those who fear to walk the high bridges not walk the high bridges."
One might also mention that the men of Tharna have formed the custom of wearing in the belt of their tunic two yellow cords, each about eighteen inches in length. By this sign alone men of other cities can now recognize a man of Tharna.
On the twentieth day following peace in Tharna the fate of the silver masks was determined.
They were herded, roped throat to throat, unveiled, wrists bound behind their backs, in long lines to the arena of the Amusements of Tharna. There they would hear the judgment of Lara, their Tatrix. They knelt before her—once proud silver masks, now terrified and helpless captives—on the same sparkling sand that had so often been stained with the blood of the men of Tharna.
Lara had thought long on these matters and had discussed them with many, including myself. In the end her decision was her own. I do not know that my own decision would have been so harsh, but I admit that Lara knew her city and its silver masks better than I.
I recognized that it was not possible to restore the old order of Tharna, nor was it desirable. Too I recognized that there was no longer any adequate provision—given the destruction of Tharna's institutions—for the indefinite shelter of large numbers of free women within her walls. The family, for example, had not existed in Tharna for generations, having been replaced by the division of the sexes and the segregated public nurseries.
And too it must be remembered that the men of Tharna who had tasted her women in the revolt now demanded them as their right. No man who has seen a woman in Pleasure Silk, or watched her dance, or heard the sound of a belled ankle or watched a woman's hair, unbound, fall to her waist can long live without the possession of such a delicious creature.
Also it should be noted that it was not realistic to offer the silver masks the alternative of exile, for that would simply have been to condemn them to violent death or foreign enslavement.
In its way, under the circumstances, the judgment of Lara was merciful—though it was greeted with wails of lamentation from the roped captives.
Each silver mask would have six months in which she would be free to live within the city and be fed at the common tables, much as before the revolt. But within that six months she is expected to find a man of Tharna to whom she will propose herself as a Free Companion.
If he does not accept her as a Free Companion—and few men of Tharna will be in a mood to extend the privileges of Free Companionship to a silver mask—he may then, without further ado, simply collar her as his slave, or if he wishes he may reject her completely. If she is rejected she may propose herself similarly to yet another of the men of Tharna, and perhaps yet another and another.
After the six months, however—perha
ps she has been reluctant to seek a master?—her initiative in these matters is lost and she belongs to the first man who encircles her throat with the graceful, gleaming badge of servitude. In such a case she is considered no differently, and treated no differently than if she were a girl brought in on tarnback from a distant city.
In effect, considering the temper of the men of Tharna, Lara's judgment gives the silver masks the opportunity, for a time, to choose a master, or after that time to be themselves chosen as a slave girl. Thus each silver mask will in time belong to a beast, though at first she is given some opportunity to determine whose yellow cords she will feel, on whose rug the ceremony of submission will take place.
Perhaps Lara understood, as I did not, that women such as silver masks must be taught love, and can learn it only from a master. It was not her intention to condemn her sisters of Tharna into interminable and miserable bondage but to force them to take this strange first step on the road she herself had traveled, one of the unusual roads that may lead to love. When I had questioned her, Lara had said to me that only when true love is learned is the Free Companionship possible, and that some women can learn love only in chains. I wondered at her words.
There is little more to tell.
Kron remains in Tharna, where he stands high in the Council of the Tatrix Lara.
Andreas and Linna will leave the city, for he tells me there are many roads on Gor he has not wandered and thinks that on some of these he may find the song for which he has always searched. I hope with all my heart that he will find it.
The girl Vera of Ko-ro-ba, at least for the time, will reside in Tharna, where she will live as a free woman. Not being of the city, she is exempted from the strictures imposed on the silver masks.
Whether or not she will choose to remain in the city I do not know. She, like myself, and all of Ko-ro-ba, is an exile, and exiles sometimes find it hard to call a foreign city home; sometimes they regard the risks of the wilderness as preferable to the shelter of alien walls. And, too, in Tharna would be found the memory of Thorn, a captain.
This morning I said good-bye to the Tatrix, the noble and beautiful Lara. I know that we have cared for one another, but that our destinies are not the same.
In parting we kissed.
"Rule well," I said.
"I shall try," she said.
Her head was against my shoulder.
"And should I ever again be tempted to be proud or cruel," she said, a smile in her voice, "I shall merely remind myself that I was once sold for fifty silver tarn disks—and that a warrior once purchased me for only a scabbard and a helmet."
"Six emeralds," I corrected her, smiling.
"And a helmet," she laughed.
I could feel the dampness of her tears through my tunic.
"I wish you well, Beautiful Lara," I said.
"And I wish you well, Warrior," said the girl.
She looked at me, her eyes filled with tears, yet smiling. She laughed a little. "And if the time should come, Warrior, when you should desire a slave girl, some girl to wear your silk and your collar, your brand if you wish—remember Lara, who is Tatrix of Tharna."
"I shall," I said. "I shall."
And I kissed her and we parted.
She will rule in Tharna and rule well, and I will begin the journey to the Sardar.
What I shall find there I do not know.
For more than seven years I have wondered at the mysteries concealed in those dark recesses. I have wondered about the Priest-Kings and their power, their ships and agents, their plans for their world and mine; but most importantly I must learn why my city was destroyed and its people scattered, why it is that no stone may stand upon another stone; and I must learn the fate of my friends, my father and of Talena, my love. But I go to the Sardar for more than truth; foremost in my brain there burns, like an imperative of steel, the cry for blood-vengeance, mine by sword-right, mine by the affinities of blood and caste and city, mine for I am one pledged to avenge a vanished people, fallen walls and towers, a city frowned upon by Priest-Kings, for I am a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba! I seek more than truth in the Sardar; I seek the blood of Priest-Kings!
But how foolish it is to speak thus.
I speak as though my frail arm might avail against the power of Priest-Kings. Who am I to challenge their power? I am nothing; not even a bit of dust, raised by the wind in a tiny fist of defiance; not even a blade of grass that cuts at the ankles of trampling gods. Yet I, Tarl Cabot, shall go to the Sardar; I shall meet with Priest-Kings, and of them, though they be the gods of Gor, I shall demand an accounting.
Outside on the bridges I hear the cry of the Lighter of Lanterns. "Light your lamps," he calls. "Light the lamps of love."
I wonder sometimes if I would have gone to the Sardar had not my city been destroyed. It now seems to me that if I had simply returned to Gor, and to my city, my father, my friends and my beloved Talena, I might not have cared to enter the Sardar, that I would not have cared to relinquish the joys of life to inquire into the secrets of those dark mountains. And I have wondered sometimes, and the thought awes and frightens me, if my city might not have been destroyed only to bring me to the mountains of the Priest-Kings, for they would surely know that I would come to challenge them, that I would come to the Sardar, that I would climb to the moons of Gor itself, to demand my satisfaction.
Thus it is that I perhaps move in the patterns of Priest-Kings—that perhaps I pledge my vengeance and set out for the Sardar as they knew that I would, as they had calculated and understood and planned. But even so I tell myself that it is still I who move myself, and not Priest-Kings, even though I might move in their patterns; if it is their intention that I should demand an accounting, it is my intention as well; if it is their game, it is also mine.
But why would Priest-Kings desire Tarl Cabot to come to their mountains? He is nothing to them, nothing to any man; he is only a warrior, a man with no city to call his own, thus an outlaw. Could Priest-Kings, with their knowledge and power, have need of such a man? But Priest-Kings need nothing from men, and once more my thoughts grow foolish.
It is time to put aside the pen.
I regret only that none return from the Sardar, for I have loved life. And on this barbaric world I have seen it in all its beauty and cruelty, in all its glory and sadness. I have learned that it is splendid and fearful and priceless. I have seen it in the vanished towers of Ko-ro-ba and in the flight of a tarn, in the movements of a beautiful woman, in the gleam of weaponry, in the sound of tarn drums and the crash of thunder over green fields. I have found it at the tables of sword companions and in the clash of the metals of war, in the touch of a girl's lips and hair, in the blood of a sleen, in the sands and chains of Tharna, in the scent of talenders and the hiss of the whip. I am grateful to the immortal elements which have so conspired that I might once be.
I was Tarl Cabot, Warrior of Ko-ro-ba.
That not even the Priest-Kings of Gor can change.
It is toward evening now, and the lamps of love are lit in many of the windows of the cylinders of Tharna. The beacon fires are set upon her walls, and I can hear the cry of distant guardsmen that all is well in Tharna.
The cylinders grow dark against the darkening sky. It will soon be night. There will be few to note the stranger who leaves the city, perhaps few to remember that he was once within their walls.
My weapons and my shield and helmet are at hand.
Outside I hear the cry of the tarn.
I am satisfied.
I wish you well,
Tarl Cabot
A Concluding Note on the Manuscript
The manuscript breaks off with the letter of Tarl Cabot. There was nothing more. In the several months since the mysterious delivery of the manuscript, no message, no further word, has been received.
It is my surmise, if we may credit the narrative, and I am tempted to do so, that Cabot did indeed enter the Sardar Mountains. I will not speculate on what he may have found there.
I do not think it likely we will ever learn.
J. N.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by John Norman
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-0062-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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