by John Norman
"You were kind," I said.
"I was a fool," said Parp. "Always the fool!"
"You could not have known," I said.
Vika's hand went to the folds of the robe and I could feel her squirm to regain her feet.
I set her down and Parp turned away, covering his face with his robe.
I stood at the portal, sword drawn, to defend it against the larls should they attempt to enter.
Vika now stood on her feet, a bit behind me, taking in at a glance the jammed door and the two unchained larls without. Then she saw the figure of Parp and cried out with a tiny gasp, and looked back again at the larls, and then to the figure.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her put out her hand gently and approach Parp. She pulled aside the folds of his robe and I saw her touch his face which seemed filled with tears.
"Father!" she wept.
"My daughter," he said, and took the girl gently in his arms.
"I love you, my Father," she said.
And Parp uttered a great sob, his head falling against the shoulder of his daughter.
One of the larls roared, the hunger roar that precedes the roar of the charge.
This was a sound I knew well.
"Stand aside," said Parp, and I barely knew the voice that spoke.
But I stood aside.
Parp stood framed in the doorway holding that tiny silver lighter with which it seemed I had seen him fumble and light his pipe a thousand times, that small cylinder I had once mistaken for a weapon.
Parp reversed the cylinder and leveled it at the breast of the nearest larl. He turned it suddenly and a jolt of fire that threw him five feet back into the cave leapt from that tiny instrument and the nearest larl suddenly reared, its paws lifted wildly, its fangs bared, its snowy pelt burned black about the hole that had once housed its heart, and then it twisted and fell sprawling from the ledge.
Parp threw the tiny tube away.
He looked at me. "Can you strike through to the heart of a larl?" he asked.
With a sword it would be a great blow.
"If I had the opportunity," I said.
The second larl, enraged, roared and crouched to spring.
"Good," said Parp, not flinching, "follow me!"
Vika screamed and I cried out for him to stop, but Parp dashed forward and threw himself into the jaws of the startled larl and it lifted him in its jaws and began to shake him savagely, and I was at its feet and thrust my sword between its ribs, plunging it deep into its heart.
The body of Parp, half torn apart, neck and limbs broken, fell from the jaws of the larl.
Vika rushed upon it weeping.
I drew out the sword and thrust it again and again into the heart of the larl until at last it lay still.
I went to stand behind Vika.
Kneeling by the body she turned and looked up at me. "He so feared larls," she said.
"I have known many brave men," I said to her, "but none was more brave than Parp of Treve."
She lowered her head to the torn body, its blood staining the silks she wore.
"We will cover the body with stones," I said. "And I will cut robes from the pelt of the larl. We have a long way to go and it will be cold."
She looked up at me and, her eyes filled with tears, nodded her agreement.
33
Out of the Sardar
Vika and I, clad in robes cut from the pelt of the snow larl I had slain, set out for the great black gate in the somber timber palisade that encircles the Sardar. It was a strange but rapid journey, and as we leaped chasms and seemed almost to swim in the cold air I told myself that Misk and his Priest-Kings and the humans that were engineers in the Nest were losing the battle that would decide whether men and Priest-Kings might, working together, save a world or whether in the end it would be the sabotage of Sarm, First Born, that would be triumphant and the world I loved would be scattered into fugitive grains destined for the flaming pyre of the sun.
Whereas it had taken four days for me to climb to the lair of Priest-Kings in the Sardar it was on the morning of the second day that Vika and I sighted the remains of the great gate, fallen, and the palisade, now little more than broken and uprooted timbers.
The speed of our return journey was not due primarily to the fact that we were now on the whole descending, though this helped, but rather to the gravitational reduction which made it possible for me, Vika in my arms, to move with a swift disregard for what, under more normal conditions, would have been at times a dangerous, tortuous trail. Several times, in fact, I had simply leaped from one portion of the trail to float more than a hundred feet downward to land lightly on another portion of the trail, a point which, on foot, might have been separated by more than five pasangs from the point above from which I had leaped. Sometimes I even neglected the trail altogether and leaped from one cliff to another in improvised shortcuts. It was late in the morning of the second day, about the time that we sighted the black gate, that the gravitational reduction reached its maximum.
"It is the end, Cabot," said Vika.
"Yes," I said. "I believe so."
From where Vika and I stood together on the rocky trail, now scarcely able to keep our feet on the path, we could see vast crowds, robed in all the caste colors of Gor, clustered outside the remains of the palisade, looking fearfully within. I supposed there might have been men from almost all of Gor's cities in that frightened, teeming throng. In the front, several deep, in lines that extended as far as I could see in both directions, were the white robes of the Initiates. Even from where we stood I could smell the innumerable fires of their sacrifices, the burning flesh of bosks, smell the heady fumes of the incense they burned in brass censers swinging on chains, hear the repetitious litanies of their pleas, observe their continual prostrations and grovelings by which they sought to make themselves and their petitions pleasing to Priest-Kings.
I swept Vika again to my arms and, half walking, half floating, made my way downward toward the ruins of the gate. There was a great shout from the crowd when they saw us, and then there was enormous quiet and every pair of eyes in that teeming throng was fixed upon us.
It suddenly seemed to me that Vika was a bit heavier than she had been and I told myself that I must be tiring.
I descended with Vika from the trail and, as I floated down to the bottom of a small crevice between the trail and the gate, the bottoms of my sandals stung when I hit the rock. I had apparently slightly misjudged the distance.
The top of the crevice was only about thirty feet away. It should take one leap and a step to clear it, but when I leaped my leap carried me only about fifteen feet and where my foot scraped the side a pebble, dislodged, bounded downward and I could hear it strike the floor of the crevice. I took another leap, this time putting some effort into it, and cleared the top of the crevice by some ten feet to land between it and the gate.
In my heart something seemed to be speaking, but I could not dare to listen.
Then I looked through the ruins of the palisade and over the fallen gate, at the smoke from the countless sacrificial fires that burned there, at the smoke from the swinging censers. No longer did it seem to pop apart and dissipate. Now it seemed to lift in slender strands toward the sky.
A cry of joy escaped my lips.
"What is it, Cabot?" cried Vika.
"Misk has won!" I cried. "We have won!"
Not stopping even to set her on her feet, I now raced in long, soft bounds toward the gate.
As soon as I reached the gate I placed Vika on her feet.
Before the gate, facing me, I saw the astonished throng.
I knew that never before in the history of the planet had a man been seen to return from the Sardar.
The Initiates, hundreds of them, knelt in long lines to the crags of the Sardar, to the Priest-Kings. I saw their shaven heads, their faces distraught in the bleak white of their robes, their eyes wide and filled with fear, their bodies trembling in the robes of their caste
.
Perhaps they expected me to be cut down by the Flame Death before their very eyes.
Behind the Initiates, standing, as befits the men of other castes, I saw men of a hundred cities, joined here in their common fear and plea to the denizens of the Sardar. Well could I suppose the terror and upheavals that had brought these men, normally so divided against one another in the strife of their warring cities, to the palisade, to the dark shadows of the Sardar—the earthquakes, the tidal waves, the hurricanes and atmospheric disturbances, and the uncanny lessening of the gravitational attraction, the lessening of the bonding that held the very earth together beneath their feet.
I looked upon the frightened faces of the Initiates. I wondered if the shaven heads, traditional for centuries with Initiates, held some distant connection, lost now in time, with the hygienic practices of the Nest.
I was pleased to see that the men of other castes, unlike the Initiates, did not grovel. There were men in that crowd from Ar, from Thentis, from Tharna, recognized by the two yellow cords in their belt; from Port Kar; from Tor, Cos, Tyros; perhaps from Treve, Vika's home city; perhaps even from fallen, vanished Ko-ro-ba; and the men in that crowd were of all castes, and even of castes as low as the Peasants, the Saddle Makers, the Weavers, the Goat Keepers, the Poets and Merchants, but none of them groveled as did the Initiates; how strange, I thought—the Initiates claimed to be most like Priest-Kings, even to be formed in their image, and yet I knew that a Priest-King would never grovel; it seemed the Initiates, in their efforts to be like gods, behaved like slaves.
One Initiate stood on his feet.
I was pleased to see that.
"Do you come from Priest-Kings?" he asked.
He was a tall man, rather heavy, with bland soft features, but his voice was very deep and would have been quite impressive in one of the temples of the Initiates, constructed to maximize the acoustical effects of such a voice. His eyes, I noted, in contrast with his bland features, his almost pudgy softness, were very sharp and shrewd. He was no man's fool. His left hand, fat and soft, wore a heavy ring set with a large, white stone, carved with the sign of Ar. He was, I gathered, correctly as it turned out, the High Initiate of Ar, he who had been appointed to fill the post of the former High Initiate whom I had seen destroyed by the Flame Death years earlier.
"I come from the place of the Priest-Kings," I said, raising my voice so that as many could hear as possible. I wanted to carry on no private conversation with this fellow, which he might later report as he saw fit.
I saw his eye furtively flit to the smoke of one of the sacrificial fires.
It was now ascending in a gentle swirl to the blue sky of Gor.
He knew!
He knew as well as I that the gravitational field of the planet was being reestablished.
"I wish to speak!" I cried.
"Wait," he said, "O welcome messenger of Priest-Kings!"
I kept silent, waiting to see what he wanted.
The man gestured with his fat hand and a white bosk, beautiful with its long, shaggy coat and its curved, polished horns, was led forward. Its shaggy coat had been oiled and groomed and colored beads were hung about its horns.
Drawing a small knife from his pouch, the Initiate cut a strand of hair from the animal and threw it into a nearby fire. Then he gestured to a subordinate, and the man, with a sword, opened the throat of the animal and it sank to its knees, the blood from its throat being caught in a golden laver held by a third man.
While I waited impatiently two more men cut a thigh from the slain beast and this, dripping with grease and blood, was ordered cast upon the fire.
"All else has failed!" cried the Initiate, weaving back and forth, his hands in the air. Then he began to mumble prayers very quickly in archaic Gorean, a language in which the Initiates converse among themselves and conduct their various ceremonies. At the end of this long but speedily delivered prayer, refrains to which were rapidly furnished by the Initiates massed about him, he cried, "Oh Priest-Kings, let this our last sacrifice turn aside your wrath. Let this sacrifice please your nostrils and now consent to hear our pleas! It is offered by Om, Chief among all the High Initiates of Gor!"
"No!" cried a number of other Initiates, the High Initiates of various other cities. I knew that the High Initiate of Ar, following the policies of the High Initiate before him, wished to claim hegemony over all other Initiates, and claimed to possess this already, but his claim, of course, was denied by the other High Initiates who regarded themselves as supreme in their own cities. I surmised that, pending some form of military victory of Ar over the other cities or some form of large-scale political reordering of the planet, the Initiate of Ar's claims would remain a matter of dispute.
"It is the sacrifice of all of us!" cried one of the other High Initiates.
"Yes!" cried several of the others.
"Look!" cried the High Initiate of Ar. He pointed to the smoke which was now rising in an almost natural pattern. He jumped up once and came down, as though to illustrate a point. "My sacrifice has been pleasing to the nostrils of Priest-Kings!" he cried.
"Our sacrifice!" cried the other Initiates, joyfully.
A wild, glad shout broke from the throats of the assembled multitude as the men suddenly began to understand that their world was returning to its normal order. There were thousands of cheers and cries of gratitude to the Priest-Kings.
"See!" cried the High Initiate of Ar. He pointed to the smoke which, as the wind had changed somewhat, was now drifting toward the Sardar. "The Priest-Kings inhale the smoke of my sacrifice!"
"Our sacrifice!" insisted the other High Initiates.
I smiled to myself. I could well imagine the antennae of the Priest-Kings shuddering with horror at the very thought of that greasy smoke.
Then somewhat to his momentary embarrassment the wind shifted again and the smoke began to blow away from the Sardar and out towards the crowd.
Perhaps the Priest-Kings are exhaling now, I thought to myself, but the High Initiate had had more practice in the interpretation of signs than myself.
"See!" he cried. "Now the Priest-Kings blow the breath of my sacrifice as a blessing upon you, letting it travel to the ends of Gor to speak of their wisdom and mercy!"
There was a great cry of joy from the crowd and shouts of gratitude to the Priest-Kings.
I had hoped that I might have used those moments, that priceless opportunity, before the men of Gor realized the restoration of gravity and normal conditions was occurring, to command them to give up their warlike ways and turn to the pursuit of peace and brotherhood, but the moment, before I realized it, had been stolen from me by the High Initiate of Ar, and used for his own purposes.
Now, as the crowd rejoiced and began to disband, I knew that I was no longer important, that I was only another indication of the mercy of Priest-Kings, that someone—who had it been?—had returned from the Sardar.
At that moment I suddenly realized I was ringed by Initiates.
Their codes forbade them to kill but I knew that they hired men of other castes for this purpose.
I faced the High Initiate of Ar.
"Who are you, Stranger?" he asked.
The words for "stranger" and "enemy" in Gorean, incidentally, are the same word.
"I am no one," I said.
I would not reveal to him my name, my caste, nor city.
"It is well," said the High Initiate.
His brethren pressed more closely about me.
"He did not truly come from the Sardar," said another Initiate.
I looked at him, puzzled.
"No," said another. "I saw him. He came from the crowd and only went within the ring of the palisade and wandered towards us. He was terrified. He did not come from the mountains."
"Do you understand?" asked the High Initiate.
"Perfectly," I said.
"But it is not true," cried Vika. "We were in the Sardar. We have seen Priest-Kings!"
"She blasphe
mes," said one of the Initiates.
I cautioned Vika to silence.
Suddenly I was very sad, and I wondered what would be the fate of humans from the Nest, if they should attempt to return to their cities or the world above. Perhaps, if they were silent, they might return to the surface, but even then, probably not to their own cities, for the Initiates of their cities would undoubtedly recall that they had left for, and perhaps entered, the Sardar.
With great suddenness I realized that what I knew, and what others knew, would make no difference to the world of Gor.
The Initiates had their way of life, their ancient traditions, their given livelihood, the prestige of their caste, which they claimed to be the highest on the planet, their teachings, their holy books, their services, their role to play in the culture. Suppose that even now if they knew the truth—what would change? Would I really expect them—at least on the whole—to burn their robes, to surrender their claims to secret knowledge and powers, to pick up the hoes of Peasants, the needles of the Cloth Workers, to bend their energies to the humble tasks of honest work?
"He is an impostor," said one of the Initiates.
"He must die," said another.
I hoped that those humans who returned from the Nest would not be hunted by Initiates and burned or impaled as heretics and blasphemers.
Perhaps they would simply be treated as fanatics, as daft homeless wanderers, innocent in the madness of their delusions. Who would believe them? Who would take the word of scattered vagrants against the word of the mighty Caste of Initiates? And, if he did believe them, who would dare to speak out that he did so?
The Initiates, it seemed, had conquered.
I supposed many of the humans might even return to the Nest, where they could live and love and be happy. Others, perhaps, to keep the skies of Gor over their head, might confess to deceit; but I suspected there would be few of those; yet I was sure that there would indeed be confessions and admissions of guilt, from individuals never within the Sardar, but hired by Initiates to discredit the tales of those who had returned. Most who had returned from the Sardar would, eventually at least, I was sure, try to gain admittance in new cities, where they were not known, and attempt to work out new lives, as though they did not keep in their hearts the secret of the Sardar.