Priest-Kings of Gor coc-3

by John Norman

  Sarm seemed to tremble and he struck with his other foreleg but this one too Misk seized with his other foreleg and once again they stood rocking on their posterior appendages for Misk, having learned their strengths in the first grappling, and lacking the swiftness of Sarm, had decided to close with his antagonist.

  Their jaws locked together, the great heads twisting.

  Then with a force that might have been that of clashing, golden glaciers Misk’s jaws tightened and turned and suddenly Sarm was thrown to his back beneath him and in the instant Sarm struck the floor Misk’s jaws had slipped their grip to the thick tube about which hung the string of Tola’s silverish tools, that tube that separated the head from the thorax of Sarm, what on a human would have been the throat, and Misk’s jaws began to close.

  In that instant I saw the bladelike projections disappear from the tips of Sarm’s forelegs and he folded his forelegs against his body and ceased resistance, even lifting his head in order to further expose the crucial tube that linked thorax with head.

  Misk’s jaws no longer closed but he stood as if undecided.

  Sarm was his to kill.

  Though the translator which still hung about Sarm’s neck with the string of silverish tools was not turned on I would not have needed it to interpret the desperate odour-signal emitted by the First Born. It was, indeed, though shorter and more intense, the first odour-signal that had ever been addressed to me, only then it had come from Misk’s translator in the chamber of Vika. Had the translator been turned on, I would have heard “Lo Sardar” – “I am a Priest-King”.

  Misk removed his jaws from the throat of Sarm and stepped back.

  He could not slay a Priest-King.

  Misk slowly turned away from Sarm and with slow, delicate steps approached the Mother, before whom he stood, great chunks of greenish coagulated body fluid marking the wounds on his body.

  If he spoke to her or she to him I did not detect the signals.

  Perhaps they merely regarded one another.

  My interest was more with Sarm, whom I saw lift himself with delicate menace to his four posterior appendages. Then to my horror I saw him remove the translator on its chain from his throat and wielding this like a mace and chain he rushed upon Misk and struck him viciously from behind.

  Misk’s legs slowly bent beneath him and his body lay on the floor of the chamber.

  Whether he was dead or stunned I could not tell.

  Sarm had drawn himself up again to his full height and like a golden blade he stood behind Misk and before the Mother. He looped the translator again about his throat.

  I sensed a signal from the Mother, the first I had sensed, and it was scarcely detectable. It was, “No”.

  But Sarm looked about himself to the golden rows of immobile Priest-Kings who watched him and then, satisfied, he opened those great, laterally moving jaws and advanced slowly on Misk.

  At that instant I kicked loose the grille on the ventilator shaft and uttering the war cry of Ko-ro-ba sprang to the Platform of the Mother and in another instant had leaped between Sarm and Misk, my sword drawn.

  “Hold, Priest-King!” I cried.

  Never before had a human set foot in this chamber and I knew not if I had committed sacrilege but I did not care, for my friend was in danger.

  Horror coursed through the ranks of the assembled Priest – Kings and their antennae waved wildly and their golden frames shook with rage, and hundreds of them must have simultaneously turned on their translators for I heard almost immediately from everywhere before me the contrastingly calm translation of their threats and protests. Among the words I heard were “He must die,” “Kill him,” “Death to the Mul”. I almost had to smile in spite of myself for the unmoved, unemotional emissions of the translators seemed so much at odds with the visible agitation of the Priest-Kings and the dire import of their messages.

  But then, from the Mother herself, behind me, I sensed once again the transmission of negation, and I heard on the thousand translators that faced me, the single expression “No”. It was not their message, but that of she who lay brown and wrinkled behind me. “No.”

  The rows of Priest-Kings seemed to rustle in confusion and anguish but in a moment, incredibly enough, they were as immobile as ever, standing as if statues of golden stone, regarding me.

  Only from Sarm’s translator came a message. “It will die,” he said.

  “No,” said the Mother, her message being caught and transmitted by Sarm’s own translator.

  “Yes,” said Sarm, “it will die.”

  “No,” said the Mother, the message coming again from Sarm’s translator.

  “I am the First Born,” said Sarm.

  “I am the Mother,” said she who lay behind me.

  “I do what I wish,” said Sarm.

  He looked around him at the rows of silent, immobile Priest – Kings and found none to challenge him. Now the Mother herself was silent.

  “I do what I wish,” came again from Sarm’s translator.

  His antennae peered down at me as though trying to recognise me. They examined my tunic but found on it no scent-markings.

  “Use your eyes,” I said to him.

  The golden disks on his great globular head seemed to flicker and they fastened themselves upon me.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,” I said.

  Sarm’s bladelike projections snapped viciously into view and remained exposed.

  I had seen Sarm in action and I knew that his speed was incredible. I hoped I would be able to see his attack. I told myself it would probably come for the head or the throat, if only because these were, from his height, easier to reach and he would wish to kill me quickly and with little difficulty, for he would surely regard his main business as the slaying of Misk, who still lay, either dead or unconscious, behind me.

  “How is it,” asked Sarm, “that you have dared to come here?”

  “I do what I wish,” I told him.

  Sarm straightened. The bladelike projections had never been withdrawn. His antennae flattened themselves over his head.

  “It seems that one of us must die,” said Sarm.

  “Perhaps,” I agreed.

  “What of the Golden Beetle?” asked Sarm.

  “I killed it,” I said. I gestured to him with my sword. “Come,” I said, “let us make war.”

  Sarm moved back a step.

  “It is not done,” he said, echoing words I had heard once from Misk. “It is a great crime to kill one.”

  “It is dead,” I said. “Come, let us make war.”

  Sarm moved back another step.

  He turned to one of the closest Priest-Kings. “Bring me a silver tube,” he said.

  “A silver tube to kill only a Mul?” asked the Priest-King.

  I saw the antennae of several of the Priest-Kings curling.

  “I spoke in jest,” said Sarm to the other Priest-King, who made no response but, unmoving, regarded him.

  Sarm approached me again. He turned his translator down.

  “It is a great crime to threaten a Priest-King.” He said.

  “Let me kill you quickly or I will have a thousand Muls sent to the dissection chambers.”

  I thought about this of a moment. “If you are dead,” I asked, “How, will you have them sent to the dissection chambers?”

  “It is a great crime to kill a Priest-King,” said Sarm.

  “Yet you would slay Misk,” I said.

  “He is a traitor to the nest,” said Sarm.

  I lifted my voice, hoping that the sound waves would carry to those transducers that were the translators of the Priest-Kings.

  “It is Sarm,” I called, “who is a traitor to the Nest, for this Nest will die, and he has not permitted the founding of a new nest.”

  “The Nest is eternal,” said Sarm.

  “No,” said the Mother, and the message again came from Sarm’s own translator, and was echoed a thousand tim
es by those of the other Prises-Kings in the great chamber.

  Suddenly with a vicious, almost incalculable speed Sarm’s right bladed projection flashed toward my head, I hardly saw it coming but an instant before its flight began I had seen the tremor of a fiber in his shoulder and I knew the signal for its strike had been transmitted.

  I counterslashed.

  And when the swift living blade of Sarm was still a full yard from my throat it met the lightning steel of a Gorean blade that had once been carried at the siege of Ar, that had met and withstood and conquered the steel of Pa-Kur, gor’s Master Assassin, until that time said to be the most skilled swordsman on the planet.

  A hideous splash of greenish fluid struck me in the face and I leaped aside, in the same movement shaking my head and wiping the back of my fist across my eyes.

  In an instant I was again on guard, my vision cleared, but I saw that Sarm was now some fifteen yards or more away and was slowly turning and turning in what must have been some primitive, involuntary dance of agony. I could sense the intense, weird odors of pain uncarried by his translator, which now filled the chamber.

  I returned to the place where I had struck the blow.

  To one side I saw the bladed projection lying at the foot of one of the low stone tiers on which Priest-Kings stood.

  Sarm had thrust the stub of his foreleg beneath his shoulder and it seemed frozen there in the coagulating green slush that emanated from the wound.

  Shaking with pain, his entire frame quivering, he turned to face me, but he did not approach.

  I saw that several Priest-Kings who stood behind him began to edge forward.

  I raised my blade, resolved to die well.

  Behind me I sensed something.

  Glancing over my shoulder I saw the welcome, now standing golden form of Misk.

  He placed one foreleg on my shoulder.

  He regarded Sarm and his cohorts, and his great laterally chopping jaws opened and closed once.

  The golden Priest-Kings behind Sarm did not advance further.

  Misk’s message to Sarm was carried on Sarm’s own translator. “You have disobeyed the Mother,” said Misk.

  Sarm said nothing.

  “Your Gur has been refused,” said Misk. “Go.”

  Sarm seemed to tremble and so, too, did those Priest-Kings who stood behind him.

  “We will bring silver tubes,” said Sarm.

  “Go,” said Misk.

  Suddenly, strangely carried on the many translators in the room, were the words, “I remember him — I have never forgotten him — in the sky — in the sky — he with wings like showers of gold.”

  I could not understand this but Misk, paying no attention to Sarm, or his cohorts or the other Priest-Kings, rushed to the Platform of the Mother.

  Another Priest-King and then another pressed more closely and I went with them to the platform.

  “Like Showers of gold,” she said.

  I heard the message on the translators of Priest-Kings who, like Misk, approached the platform.

  The ancient creature on the platform, brown and wrinkled, lifted her antennae, and surveyed the chamber and her children. “Yes,” she said, “he had wings like showers of gold.”

  The Mother is dying,” said Misk.

  This message was echoed by every translator in the room and a thousand times again and again as the Priest-Kings repeated it in disbelief to one another.

  “It cannot be,” said one.

  “The Nest is eternal,” said another.

  The feeble antennae trembled. “I would speak,” she said, “with him who saved y child.”

  It was strange to me to hear her speak of the powerful, golden creature Misk in such a way.

  I went to the ancient creature.

  “I am he,” I said.

  “Are you a Mul?” she asked,

  “No,” I said, “I am free,”

  “Good,” she said.

  At this moment two Priest-Kings carrying syringes pressed through their brethren to approach the platform.

  When they made as though to inject her ancient body in what must have been yet another in a thousand times, she shook her antennae and warned them off.

  “No,” she said.

  One of the Priest-Kings prepared to inject the serum despite her refusal to accept it but Misk’s foreleg rested on his and he did not do so.

  The other Priest-King who had come with a syringe examined her antennae and the brown, dull eyes.

  He motioned his companion away. “It would make a difference of only a few Ehn,” he said.

  Behind me I heard one of the Priest-Kings repeat over and over, “The Nest is eternal,”

  Misk placed a translator on the platform beside the dying creature.

  “Only he,” said the Mother.

  Misk motioned away the physicians and the other Priest-Kings and set the translator on the platform at its lowest volume. I wondered how long the scent-message, whatever it was to be, would linger in the air before fading into an unrecognisable blue of scent to be drawn through the ventilator system and dispelled somewhere far above among the black crags of the treeless, frozen Sardar.

  I bent my ear to the translator.

  At the low volume I received the message the other translators in the room would not be likely to pick it up and transduce the sounds into odor – signals.

  “I was evil,” said she.

  I was astounded.

  “I wanted to be,” said the brown, dying creature, “the only Mother of Priest-Kings, and I listened to my First Born who wanted to be the only First Born of a Mother of Priest-Kings.”

  The old frame shook, though whether with pain or sorrow, or both, I could not tell.

  “Now,” she said, “I die and the race of Priest-Kings must not die with me.”

  I could barely hear the words from the translator.

  “Long ago,” she said, “Misk, my child, stole the egg of a male and now he has hidden it from Sarm and others who do not wish for there to be another Nest.”

  “I know,” I said softly.

  “Not long ago,” said she, “perhaps no more than four of your centuries, he told me of what he had done and of his reasons for doing so.” The withered antennae trembled, and the thin brown threads on them lifted as though stirred by a chill wind, the passing foot of mortality. “I said nothing to him but I considered what he had said, and I thought on this matter, and at last — in league with the Second Born, who has since succumbed to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle, I set aside a female egg to be concealed from Sarm beyond the Nest.”

  “Where is this egg?” I asked.

  She seemed not to understand my question and I was afraid for her as I saw her ancient brown carcass begin to shake with spasmodic tremors, which I feared might herald the close of that vast life.

  One of the physicians rushed forward and thrust the long syringe deep through her exoskeleton into the fluids of her thorax. He drew out the syringe and held his antennae to hers for a moment. The tremors subsided

  He withdrew and stood watching us from some distance away, not moving, as still as the others, like a thousand statues of tortured gold.

  Once again a sound came from my translator. “The egg was taken from the Nest by two humans,” she said, “men who were free – like yourself – not Muls – and hidden.”

  “Where was it hidden?” I asked.

  “These men,” she said, “returned to their own cities speaking to no one as they had been commanded. In this undertaking on behalf of Priest-Kings they had been united and together had suffered many dangers and privations and had done their work well as brothers.”

  “Where is the egg?” I repeated.

  “But their cities fell to warring,” said the withered ancient one, “and these men in battle slew one another and with them died the secret as far as it was known among men.” The huge, tarnished head lying on the stone platform tried to lift itself but could not. “Strange is your king,” she said. �
��Half larl, half Priest-King.”

  “No,” I said, “half larl, half man.”

  She said nothing for a time. Then once again the voice of the translator was heard.

  “You are Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I like you,” she said.

  I knew not how to respond to this and so I said nothing.

  The old antennae stretched froward, inching themselves toward me and I took them gently in my hands and held them.

  “Give me Gur,” she said.

  Amazed, I stepped away from her and went to the great golden bowl on its heavy tripod and took out a few drops of the precious liquid in the palm of my hand and returned to her.

  She tried to lift her head but still could not do so. Her great jaws moved slowly apart and I saw the long, soft tongue that lay behind them.

  “You wish to know of the egg,” she said.

  “If you wish to tell me,” I said.

  “Would you destroy it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Gently I placed my hand between those huge ancient jaws and with my palm I touched her tongue that she might taste what adhered to it.

  “Go to the Wagon Peoples, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba,” she said. “Go to the Wagon Peoples.”

  “But where is it?” I asked.

  Then before my horrified eyes the carcass of that ancient she began to shiver and tremble and I stood back as she struggled to my amazement to her feet and reared herself to the height of a Priest-King, her antennae extended to their very lengths as though grasping, clutching, trying to sense something, though what she sought I did not know, but in her sudden fantastic strength, the gasp of her delirium and power, she seemed suddenly the Mother of a great race, very beautiful and very strong and splendid.

  And from a thousand translators rang the message she cried out over those golden heads to the blank stone ceiling and walls of her chamber and I shall never forget it as it was in all the sorrow and the joy of her trembling dying magnificence; I and all could read it in the attitude of her body, the alertness of the forelegs, the suddenly sensing antennae, even in those dull brown disks which had been eyes and now seemed to be for that one last moment luminous again. The voice of the translators were simple and quiet and mechanical. The message was given to my ears, as would have been any message. It said: “I see him, I see him, and his wings are like showers of gold.”