by John Norman
I found it difficult to remove from my mind the image of the two Chamber Slaves, and that of Vika, perhaps because the plight of these girls touched my heart, perhaps because each, though differently, was beautiful. I found myself congratulating myself that I had been taken to the chamber of Vika, for I had thought her the most beautiful. Then I wondered if my having been brought to her chamber, and not to that of one of the others had been simply my good fortune. It occurred to me that Vika, in some ways, resembled Lara, who was Tatrix of Tharna, for whom I had cared. She was shorter than Lara and more fully bodied but they would have been considered of the same general physical type. Vika’s eyes were a sullen, smouldering, taunting blue; the blue of Lara’s eyes had been brighter, as clear and, when not impassioned, as soft as the summer sky over Ko-ro-ba; when impassioned they had burned as fiercely, as beautifully, as helplessly as the walls of a raped city. Lara’s lips had been rich and fine, sensitive and curious, tender, eager, hungry; the lips of Vika were maddening; I recalled those lips, full and red, pouting, defiant, scornful, scarlet with a slave girl’s challenge to my blood; I wondered if Vika might be a bred slave, a Passion Slave, one of those girls bred for beauty and passion over generations by the zealous owners of the great Slave Houses of Ar, for lips such as Vika’s were a feature often bred into Passion Slaves; they were lips formed for the kiss of a master.
And as I pondered these things I sensed that it had not been accident that I had been carried to Vika’s chamber but that this had been part of a plan by the Priest-Kings. I had sensed that Vika had defeated and broken many men, and I sensed that the Priest-Kings might be curious to see how I might fare with her. I wondered if Vika herself had been instructed by Priest-Kings to subdue me. I gathered that she had not. It was not the way of Priest-Kings. Vika would be all unconscious of their machinations; she would simply be herself, which is what the Priest-Kings would desire. She would simply be Vika, insolent, aloof, contemptuous, provocative, untamed though collared, determined to be the master though she were the slave. I wondered how many men had fallen at her feet, how many men she had forced to sleep at the foot of the great stone couch, in the shadow of the slave ring, while she herself reclined on the pelts and silks of the master.
***
After some hours I found myself again in the Hall of Priest – Kings. I was gladdened to see once more the moons and stars of Gor hurtling in the sky above the dome.
My footsteps rang hollowly on the stones of the floor. The great chamber reposed in vastness and stillness. The empty throne loomed silent and awesome.
“I am here!” I cried. “I am Tarl Cabot. I am a warrior of Ko-ro-ba and I issue the challenge of a warrior to the Priest-Kings of Gor! Let us do battle! Let us make war!”
My voice echoed for a long time in the vast chamber, but I received no response to my challenge.
I called out again and again there was no response.
I decided to return to Vika’s chamber.
On another night I might explore further, for there were other passageways, other portals visible from where I stood. It might take days to pursue them all.
***
I set out on my way back to Vika’s chamber.
I had walked perhaps an Ahn and was deep inside one of the long, dimly lit passageways which led in the direction of her chamber when I seemed somehow to sense a presence behind me.
I spun quickly about drawing my sword in the same motion.
The corridor behind me was empty.
I slammed the blade back in the sheath and continued on.
I had not walked far when I again became uneasy. This time I did not turn, but walked slowly ahead, listening behind me with every fibre I could bend to the effort. When I came to a bend in the passageway I rounded it, and then pressed myself against the wall and waited.
Slowly, very slowly, I drew the sword, taking care that it made no sound as it left its sheath.
I waited but nothing occurred.
I have the patience of a warrior and I waited for a long time. When men stalk one another with weapons it is well to have patience, great patience.
It of course occurred to me a hundred times that I was follish for actually I was conscious of having heard nothing.
Yet my awareness or sense that something followed me in the corridor might well have been occasioned by some tiny sound which my conscious mind had not even registered, but yet which had impinged on my senses, leaving as its only conscious trace a vague wind of suspicion. At last I decided to force the game. My decision was motivated in part by the fact that the hall allowed few concealments for ambush and I would presumably see my pursuer almost as soon as he saw me. If he were not carrying a missile weapon it would make little difference. And if he had been carrying a missile weapon why had he not slain me before? I smiled grimly. If it were a matter of waiting I acknowledged that the Priest-King, if such it were, who followed me had had the best of things. For all I knew a Priest-King could wait like a stone or tree, nerveless until necessary. I had waited perhaps better than an Ahn and I was covered with sweat. My muscles ached for motion. It occurred to me that whatever followed might have heard the cessation of my footsteps. That it knew that I was waiting. How acute would be the senses of Priest-Kings? Perhaps they would be relatively feeble, gaving grown accustomed to reliance on instrumentation; perhaps they would be other than the senses of men, sharper if only from a differing genetic heritage, capable of discriminating and interpreting sensory cues that would not even be available to the primitive five senses of men. Never before had I been so aware of the thin margin of reality admitted into the human nervous system, little more than a razor’s width of apprehension given the multiple and complex physical processes which formed our environment. The safest thing for me would be to continue on as I had been doing, a pattern of action which would give me the benefit of the shield formed by the turn in the passage. But I had no wish to continue on. I tensed myself for the leap and cry that would fling me into the open, the sudden interruption in the stillness of the passageway that might be sufficient to impair the steadiness of a spear arm, the calm setting of a crossbow’s iron quarrel on its guide.
And so I uttered the war cry of Ko-ro-ba and leaped, sword ready, to face what might follow me.
A howl of bitter rage escaped my lips as I saw that the passageway was empty.
Maddened beyond understanding I began to race down the passageway, retracing my steps to confront what might be in the passage. I had run for perhaps half a pasang when I stopped, panting and furious with myself.
“Come out!” I cried. “Come out!”
The stillness of the passageway taunted me.
I remembered Vika’s words, When the Priest-Kings wish you, they will come for you.
Angrily I stood alone in the passageway in the dimmed light of its energy bulbs, my unused sword grasped futilely in my hand.
Then I sensed something.
My nostrils flared slightly and then as carefully as one might examine an object by eye I smelled the air of the passageway.
I had never much relied on this sense.
Surely I had enjoyed the scent of flowers and women, of hot, fresh bread, roasted meat, Paga and wines, harness leather, the oil with which I protected the blade of my sword from rust, of green fields and storm winds, but seldom had I considered the sense of smell in the way one would consider that of vision or touch, and yet it too had its often neglected store of information ready for the man who was ready to make use of it.
And so I smelled the passageway and to my nostrils, vague but undeniable, there came an odour that I had never before encountered. It was, as far as I could tell at that time, a simple odour, though later I would learn that it was the complex product of odours yet more simple than itself. I find it impossible to describe this odour, much as one miught find it difficult to describe the taste of a citrus fruit to one who had never tasted it or anything much akin to it. It was however slightly acrid, irritating to my nostrils. It remi
nded me vaguely of the odour of an expended cartridge.
Although there was nothing now with me in the passage it had left its trace.
I knew now that I had not been alone.
I had caught the scent of a Priest-King.
I resheathed my sword and returned to Vika’s chamber. I hummed a warrior’s tune, for somehow I was happy.
Chapter Eight
VIKA LEAVES THE CHAMBER
“Wake up, wench!” I cried, striding into Vika’s chamber, clapping my hands sharply twice.
The startled girl cried out and leaped to her feet. She had been lying on the straw mat at the foot of the stone couch. So suddenly had she arisen that she had struck her knee against the couch and this had not much pleased her. I had meant to scare her half to death and I was pleased to see that I had.
She looked at me angrily. “I was not asleep,” she said.
I strode to her and held her head in my hands, looking at her eyes. She had spoken the truth.
“You see!” she said.
I laughed.
She lowered her head, and then looked up shyly. “I am happy,” she said, “that you have returned.”
I looked at her and sensed that she was.
“I suppose,” I said, “that in my absence you have been in the pantry.”
“No,” she said, “I have not,” adding as an acrimonious afterthought, “– Master.”
I had offended her pride.
“Vika,” I said, “I think it is time that some changes were made around here.”
“Nothing ever changes here,” she said.
I looked around the room. The sensors in the room interested me. I examined them again. I was elated. Then, methodically, I began to search the room. Although the sensors and the mode of their application were fiendish and beyonf my immediate competence to fully understand, they suggested nothing ultimately mysterious, nothing which might not eventually be explained. There was nothing about them to encourage me to believe that the Priest-Kings, or King as it might be, were ultimately unfathomable or incomprehensible beings.
Moreover in the corridor beyond I had sensed the traces, tangible traces, of a Priest-King. I laughed. Yes, I had smelled a Priest-King, or its effects. The thought amused me.
More fully than ever I now understood how much the forces of superstition have depressed and injured men. No wonder the Priest-Kings hid behind their palisade in the Sardar and let the myths of the Initiates build a wall of human terror about them, no wonder they let their nature and ends be secret, no wonder they took such pains to conceal and obscure their plans and purposes, their devices, their instrumentation, their limitations! I laughed aloud.
Vika watched me, puzzled, surely convinced that I must have lost my mind.
I cracked my fist into my open palm. “Where is it?” I cried.
“What?” whispered Vika.
“The Priest-Kings see and the Priest-Kings hear!” I cried, “But how?”
“By their power,” said Vika, moving back to the wall.
I had examined the entire room as well as I could. It might be possible, of course, to use some type of penetrating beam which if subtly enough adjusted might permit the reception of signals through walls and then relay these to a distant screen, but I doubted that such a device, though perhaps within the capacities of the Priest-Kings, would be used in the relatively trivial domestic surveillance of these chambers.
Then my eye saw, directly in the centre of the ceiling, another energy bulb, like those in the walls, only the bulb was not lit. That was a mistake on the Priest-Kings’ part. But of course the device could be in any of the bulbs. Perhaps one of the almost inexhaustible energy bulbs, which can burn for years, had as a simple matter of fact at last burned out.
I leaped to the centre of the stone platform. I cried to the girl, “Bring me the laver.”
She was convinced I was mad.
“Quickly!” I shouted, and she fairly leapt to fetch the bronze bowl.
I seized the bowl from her hand and hurled it underhanded up against the bulb which, though it had apparently burned out, shattered with a great flash and hiss of smoke and sparks. Vika screamed and crouched behind the stone platform. Down from the cavity where the energy bulb had been there hung, blasted and smoking, a tangle of wire, a ruptured metal diaphragm and a conical receptacle which might once have held a lens.
“Come here,” I said to Vika, but the poor girl cringed beside the platform. Impatient, I seized her by the arm and yanked her to the platform and held her there in my arms. “Look up!” I said. But she kept her face resolutely down. I thrust my fist in her hair and she cried out and looked up. “See!” I cried.
“What is it?” she whimpered.
“It was an eye,” I said.
“An eye?” she whimpered.
“Yes,” I said, “something like the “eye” in the door.” I wanted her to understand.
“Whose eye?” she asked.
“The eye of Priest-Kings,” I laughed. “But it is now shut.”
Vika trembled against me and in my joy with my fist still in her hair I bent my face to hers and kissed her full on those magnificent lips and she cried out helpless in my arms and wept but did not resist.
It was the first kiss I had taken from the lips of my slave girl, and it had been a kiss of mad joy, one that astonished her, that she could not understand.
I leaped from the couch and went to the portal.
She remained standinf on the stone platform, bewildered, her fingers at her lips.
Her eyes regarded me strangely.
“Vika,” I cried, “would you like to leave this room?”
“Of course,” she said. Her voice trembled.
“Very well,” I said, “you shall do so.”
She shrank back.
I laughed and went to the portal. Once again I examined the six red, domed sensors, three on a side, which were fixed there. It would be, in a way, a shame to destroy them, for they were rather beautiful.
I drew my sword.
“Stop!” cried Vika, in terror.
She leaped from the stone couch and ran to me, seizing my sword arm but with my left hand I flung her back and she fell stumbling back against the side of the stone couch.
“Don’t!” she cried, kneeling there, her hands outstretched.
Six times the hilt of my sword struck against the sensors and six times there was a hissing pop like the explosion of hot glass and a bright shower of scarlet sparks. The sensors had been shattered, their lenses broken and the wired apertures behind them a tangle of black, fused wire.
I resheathed my sword and wiped my face with the back of my forearm. I could taste a little blood and knew that some of the fragments from the sensors had cut my face.
Vika knelt beside the couch numbly.
I smiled at her. “You may now leave the room,” I said, “should you wish to do so.”
Slowly she rose to her feet. Her eyes looked to the portal and its shattered sensors. Then she looked at me, something of wonder and fear in her eyes.
She shook herself.
“My master is hurt,” she said.
“I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,” I said to her, telling her my name and city for the first time.
“My city is Treve,” she said, for the first time telling me the name of her city.
I smiled as I watched her go to fetch a towel from one of the chests against the wall.
So Vika was from Treve.
That explained much.
Treve was a warlike city somewhere in the trackless magnificence of the Voltai Range. I had never been there but I knew her reputation. Her warriors were said to be fierce and brave, her women proud and beautiful. Her tarnsmen were ranked with those of Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba, even great Ar itself.
Vika returned with the towel and began dabbing at my face.
It was seldom a girl from Treve ascended the auction block. I suppose Vika would have been costly had I purchase
d her in Ar or Ko-ro-ba. Even when not beautiful, because of their rarity, they are prized by collectors.
Treve was alleged to lie above Ar, some seven hundred pasangs distant, and toward the Sardar. I had never seen the city located on a map but I had seen the territory she claimed so marked. The precise location of Treve was not known to me and was perhaps known to few save its citizens. Trade routes did not lead to the city and those who entered its territory did not often return.
There was said to be no access to Treve save on tarnback and this would suggest that it must be as much a mountain stronghold as a city.
She was said to have no agriculture, and this may be true. Each year in the fall legions of tarnsmen from Treve were said to emerge from the Voltai like locusts and fall on the fields of one city or another, different cities in different years, harvesting what they needed and burning the rest in order that a long, relatiatory winter campaign could not be launched against them. A century ago the tarnsmen of Treve had even managed to stand off the tarnsmen of Ar in a fierce battle fought in the stormy sky over the crags of the Voltai.
I had heard poets sing of it. Since that time her depredations had gone unchecked, although perhaps it should be added that never again did the men of Treve despoil the fields of Ar.
“Does it hurt?” asked Vika.
“No,” I said.
“Of course it hurts,” she sniffed.
I wondered if many of Treve’s women were as beautiful as Vika. If they were it was surprising that tarnsmen from all the cities of Gor would not have descended on the place, as the saying goes, to try chain luck.
“Are all the women of Treve as beautiful as you?” I asked.