Assassin of Gor

by Norman, John;

  “It is in the last chest,” she whispered.

  I went to the last chest along the wall and opened it, finding a bottle and some bowls. “You are a fortunate slave,” I said, “to have Ka-la-na in your quarters.”

  “I will serve you,” she whispered.

  “Is it not Kajuralia?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said she, “Master.”

  “Then,” said I, “if Sura will permit, I shall serve her.”

  She looked at me blankly, and then, still clutching the doll, put out one hand, trembling, to take the bowl of wine from me. It began to spill, and I steadied it, lifting it with her hand to her lips.

  She drank, as had the black-haired girl, the leader of the girls of the Street of Pots.

  Then, when she had lowered the bowl, I took my drink, that she should have drunk first.

  “Kajuralia,” said I to her.

  “Kajuralia,” she whispered, “—Master.”

  “Kuurus,” I said.

  “Kajuralia,” said she, whispering, “Kuurus.”

  I turned about and went back to the center of the room, where I sat down cross-legged. I had taken the bottle with me, of course.

  She placed her bowl on the floor near me and then went back to the chest where the doll had been kept.

  “How is it,” I asked, “that you have such a doll?”

  She said nothing, but returned the doll to its hiding place, beneath some silks and jewelry, at the back of the chest, in the right corner.

  “Do not answer if you do not wish,” I said.

  She returned to where I sat and knelt there across from me. She lifted her bowl again to her lips and drank. Then she looked at me. “It was given to me,” she said, “by my mother.”

  “I did not know Pleasure Slaves had mothers,” I said. I was sorry I had said this, immediately, for she did not smile.

  “She was sold when I was five,” she said. “It is all that I have left from her.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She looked down.

  “My father,” she said, “I never knew, though I suppose he was a handsome slave. My mother knew little of him, for they were both hooded when mated.”

  “I see,” I said.

  She lifted her cup again to her lips.

  “Ho-Tu,” I said, “loves you.”

  She looked across to me. “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you often victimized on Kajuralia?” I asked.

  “When Cernus remembers,” she said. “May I clothe myself?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Sura went to one of the chests and drew forth a long cloak of red silk, which she drew on. She tied the string at the neck, closing the high collar.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I refilled her bowl.

  “Once,” she said, “for Kajuralia, many years ago, I was mated.”

  “Do you know with whom?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I was hooded.” She shuddered. “He was brought in from the streets,” she said. “I remember him. The tiny body, swollen. The small, clumsy hands. His whining and giggling. The men at table laughed very loudly. It was doubtless quite amusing.”

  “What of the child?” I asked.

  “I bore it,” she said, “but, once more hooded, I never saw it. It was surely, considering its sire, a monster.” She shuddered.

  “Perhaps not,” I said.

  She laughed sadly.

  “Does Ho-Tu visit you often?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said she. “I play the kalika for him. He cares for its sound.”

  “You are Red Silk,” I said.

  “Long ago,” said she, “Ho-Tu was mutilated, and forced to drink acid.”

  “I did not know,” I said.

  “He was once a slave,” said Sura, “but he won his freedom at hook knife. He was devoted to the father of Cernus. When the father of Cernus was poisoned and Cernus, then the lesser, placed upon his neck the medallion of the House, Ho-Tu protested. For that he was mutilated, and forced to drink acid. He has remained in the house these many years.”

  “Why should he remain here?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “because it is in this house that Sura is slave.”

  “I would not doubt it,” I said.

  She looked down, smiling.

  I looked about the room. “I am not anxious to return immediately to my compartment,” I said. “Further, I am confident that the men of the house will expect me to remain some time here.”

  “I will serve your pleasure,” she said.

  “Do you love Ho-Tu?” I asked.

  She looked at me, thoughtfully. “Yes,” she said.

  “Then,” I said, “let us find something else to do.”

  She laughed.

  “Your room,” I said, “seems to offer little in the way of diversions.”

  She leaned back, and smiled. “Little save Sura,” she admitted.

  I, glancing about once again, saw the kalika in the corner.

  “Would you like me to play for you?” asked Sura.

  “What would you like to do?” I asked.

  “I?” she asked, amused.

  “Yes,” I said, “you—you Sura.”

  “Is Kuurus serious?” she asked skeptically.

  “Yes,” I affirmed. “Kuurus is serious.”

  “I know what I would like,” she said, “but it is very silly.”

  “Well,” I said, “it is, after all, Kajuralia.”

  She looked down, flustered. “No,” she said. “It is too absurd.”

  “What?” I asked. “Would you like me to try and stand on my head, or what? I warn you I would do it very poorly.”

  “No,” she said. Then she looked at me very timidly. “Would you,” she asked, “teach me to play the game?”

  I looked at her, flabbergasted.

  She looked down, immediately. “I know,” she said. “I am sorry. I am a woman. I am slave.”

  “Have you a board and pieces?” I asked.

  She looked up, happily. “Will you teach me?” she asked, delighted.

  “Have you a board and pieces?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, miserably.

  “Do you have paper?” I asked. “A pen, ink?”

  “I have silk,” she said, “and rouge, and bottles of cosmetics!”

  In a short time we had spread a large square of silk on the floor between us, and, carefully, finger in and out of a rouge pot, I had drawn the squares of the board. I put a dot in the center of the squares that would normally be red on a board, leaving those squares that would normally be yellow blank. Then, between us, we managed to find tiny vials, and brooches, and beads, to use as the pieces. In less than an Ahn we had set up our board and pieces, and I had shown Sura the placing of the pieces and their moves, and had explained some of the elementary techniques of the game to her; in the second Ahn she was actually negotiating the board with alertness, always moving with an objective in mind; her moves were seldom the strongest, but they were always intelligent; I would explain moves to her, discussing them, and she would often cry out “I see!” and a lesson never needed to be repeated.

  “It is not often,” I said, “that one finds a woman who is pleased with the game.”

  “But it is so beautiful!” she cried.

  We played yet another Ahn and, even in that short amount of time, her moves had become more exact, more subtle, more powerful. I became now less concerned to suggest improvements in her play and more concerned to protect my own Home Stone.

  “Are you sure you have never played before?” I asked.

  She looked at me, genuinely delighted. “Am I doing acceptably?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I began to marvel at her. I truly believe, also, that she had never played before. I realized, to my pleasure, if danger, that I had come upon one of those rare persons who possesses a remarkable aptitude for the game. There was a rawness in her play, a lack of polish, bu
t I sensed myself in the presence of one for whom the game might have been created.

  Her eyes sparkled.

  “Capture of Home Stone!” she cried.

  “I do not suppose you would care to play the kalika,” I proposed.

  “No! No!” she cried. “The game! The game!”

  “You are only a woman,” I reminded her.

  “Please, Kuurus!” she said. “The game! The game!”

  Reluctantly I began to put out the pieces again.

  This time she had yellow.

  To my astonishment, this time I began to see the Centian Opening unfold, developed years ago by Centius of Cos, one of the strongest openings known in the game, one in which the problems of development for red are particularly acute, especially the development of his Ubar’s Scribe.

  “Are you sure you have never played before?” I asked, thinking it well to recheck the point.

  “No,” she said, studying the board like a child confronting something never seen before, something wonderful, something mysterious and challenging, a red ball, some squares of brightly colored, folded orange cloth.

  When it came to the fourteenth move for red, my color, I glanced up at her.

  “What do you think I should do now?” I asked.

  I noted that her lovely brow had already been wrinkled with distress, considering the possibilities.

  “Some authorities,” I told her, “favor Ubar’s Initiate to Scribe Three at this point, others recommend the withdrawal of Ubara’s Spearman to cover Ubar Two.”

  She studied the board closely for a few Ihn. “Ubar’s Initiate to Scribe Three is the better move,” she said.

  “I agree,” I said.

  I placed my Ubar’s Initiate, a perfume vial, on Scribe Three.

  “Yes,” she said, “it is clearly superior.”

  It was indeed a superior move but, as it turned out, it did not do me a great deal of good.

  Six moves later Sura, as I had feared, boldly dropped her Ubar itself, a small rouge pot, on Ubar Five.

  “Now,” she said, “you will find it difficult to bring your Ubar’s Scribe into play.” She frowned for a moment. “Yes,” she mused, “very difficult.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know!”

  “Your best alternative at this point,” she explained, “would be, would it not, to attempt to free your position by exchanges?”

  I glared at her. “Yes,” I admitted. “It would.”

  She laughed.

  I, too, laughed.

  “You are marvelous,” I told her. I had played the game often and was considered, even among skilled Goreans, an excellent player; yet I found myself fighting for my life with my beautiful, excited opponent. “You are simply incredible,” I said.

  “I have always wanted to play,” she said. “I sensed I might do it well.”

  “You are superb,” I said. I knew her, of course, to be an extremely intelligent, capable woman. This I had sensed in her from the first. Also, of course, had I not even known her I would have supposed her a remarkable person, for she was said to be the finest trainer of girls in the city of Ar, and that honor, dubious though it might be, would not be likely to have been achieved without considerable gifts, and among them most certainly those of unusual intelligence. Yet here I knew there was much more involved than simple intelligence; I sensed here a native aptitude of astonishing dimension.

  “Don’t move there,” she told me, “or you will lose your Home Stone in seven.”

  I studied the board. “Yes,” I said at last, “you are right.”

  “Your strongest move,” she said, “is First Tarnsman to Ubar One.”

  I restudied the board. “Yes,” I said, “you are right.”

  “But then,” she said, “I shall place my Ubara’s Scribe at Ubar’s Initiate Three.”

  I tipped my Ubar, resigning.

  She clapped her hands delightedly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to play the kalika?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Oh Kuurus!” she cried.

  “Very well,” I said, resetting the pieces.

  While I was setting them up I thought it well to change the subject, and perhaps to interest her in some less exacting pastime, something more suitable to her feminine mind.

  “You mentioned,” I said, “that Ho-Tu comes here often.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking up. “He is a very kind man.”

  “The Master Keeper in the House of Cernus?” I asked, smiling.

  “Yes,” she said. “And he is actually very gentle.”

  I thought of the powerful, squat Ho-Tu, with his hook knife and slave goad.

  “He won his freedom at hook knife,” I reminded her.

  “But in the time of the father of Cernus,” she said, “when hook knives were sheathed.”

  “The fights with hook knife I saw,” I said, “were contests with sheathed blade.”

  “That is since the beast came to the house,” she said, looking down. “The knives are sheathed now that the loser will survive to be fed to the beast.”

  “What manner of beast is it?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  I had heard it cry out and knew that it was not a sleen, nor a larl. I could not place the roar, the noise.

  “I have seen the remains of its feeds,” she said, shuddering. “There is little left. Even the bones are broken open and splintered, the marrow sucked out.”

  “Is it only those who lose at hook knife who are fed to the beast?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Anyone who displeases Cernus might be given to the beast. Sometimes it is a guard even, but normally a slave. Generally it is a male slave from the pens. But sometimes a girl is bloodied and fed to it.”

  I remembered that the slave who had lost in hook knife had been wounded slightly before being taken to the beast.

  “Why bloodied?” I asked.

  “I do not know,” she said. Then she looked down again at the board, that square of silk marked with rouge. “But let us forget the beast,” she said. She smiled looking at the silk, the vials and beads. “The game is so beautiful,” she said.

  “Ho-Tu,” I observed, “seldom leaves the house.”

  “In the last year,” said Sura, “he left it only once for an extended period.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “In last year’s En’Var,” she said, “when he was gone from the city on the business of the house.”

  “What business?” I asked.

  “Purchases of slaves,” she said.

  “To what city did he go?” I asked.

  “Ko-ro-ba,” she said.

  I stiffened.

  She looked up at me. “What is wrong, Kuurus?” she asked. Then suddenly her eyes widened and she threw out her hand. “No, Ho-Tu!” she screamed.

  18

  The End of Kajuralia

  I leaped across the rouged square of silk, scattering the vials and beads that were the pieces of our game, flinging Sura to the floor, pressing myself across her body that she might be protected. In the same instant the hurled knife struck a chest behind us and I had rolled over throwing my legs under me, trying to draw the sword from my sheath, when Ho-Tu, running, hook knife in hand, leaped upon me, the curved blade streaking for my throat; I threw my left hand between the knife and my throat and felt the sudden hot flash of pain in my cut sleeve, the sudden splash of blood in my eyes, but then I had my hands on Ho-Tu’s wrist, trying to force the knife back, and he, with his two hands, leaning his weight on his hands, his feet slipping on the floor, stepping on the square of silk, pressed down again toward my throat.

  “Stop it!” cried Sura. “Ho-Tu, stop!”

  I pressed up and then, knowing his full weight was on the knife, I suddenly ceased resistance, removing my counter-pressure, and rolled from under him. Ho-Tu fell heavily on the floor and I slipped free, rolled and had the sword from my sheath, standing.

  He scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of hate
, looked about, saw the slave goad, ran to it and whipped it from the wall.

  I did not pursue him, not wanting to kill him.

  He turned and I saw, in almost one motion of his finger, the goad switch to on, the dial rotate to the Kill Point. Then crouching, the goad blazing in his hand, he approached me warily.

  But Sura stood between us. “Do not hurt him,” said Sura.

  “Stand aside,” said Ho-Tu.

  “No!” cried Sura.

  I saw the dial rotate back from the Kill Point and Ho-Tu swept the goad toward her, angrily. There was an intense eruption of needlelike sparks and Sura screamed in pain and fell stumbling to one side, weeping, crying out on the stones of the floor.

  For an instant the face of Ho-Tu seemed in agony, and then he turned again to me. Again I saw the dial rotate and the goad now seemed a jet of fire in his hand.

  I had backed to the chest, resheathed my sword, and drawn forth the knife which had been thrown. It was a killing knife, short, well-balanced for throwing, tapered on one side.

  It reversed itself in my hand.

  With a cry of rage and anger Ho-Tu hurled the goad at me. It passed to the left of my head, struck the wall with an explosion of sparks and lay burning on the stones.

  “Throw!” ordered Ho-Tu.

  I looked at the knife, and the man. “It was with a knife such as this,” I said, “that you slew a Warrior of Thentis on a bridge in Ko-ro-ba, in En’Var, near the tower of Warriors.”

  Ho-Tu looked puzzled.

  “You struck him from behind,” I said, “the blow of a coward.”

  “I killed no one,” said Ho-Tu. “You are mad.”

  I felt a cold fury moving through me. “Turn around,” I told him, “your back to me.”

  Woodenly, Ho-Tu did so.

  I let him stand that way for a moment. Sura had now, shaken, still feeling the pain of the goad, risen to her hands and knees.

  “Do not kill him!” she whispered.

  “When will it strike, Ho-Tu?” I asked.

  He said nothing.

  “And where?” I probed. “Where?”

  “Please do not kill him!” cried Sura.

  “Throw!” cried Ho-Tu.

  Sura leaped between us, standing with her back to Ho-Tu. “Kill Sura first!” she screamed.

  “Stand aside!” cried Ho-Tu, not turning, his fists clenched. “Stand aside, Slave!”