Assassin of Gor

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, looking 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 needle-like 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!"

"No!" cried Sura. "No!"

"Do not fear," I said. "I will not kill you with your back turned."

Ho-Tu turned to face me, with his arms pushing Sura to one side.

"Pick up your hook knife," I said.

Ho-Tu, not taking his eyes much from me, found the hook knife, and lifted it.

"Do not fight!" screamed Sura.

I crouched down, the killing knife now held by the hilt in my hand.

Ho-Tu and I began to circle one another.

"Stop!" cried Sura. Then she ran to the slave goad and picked it up; it was still incandescent, brilliant; one could not look on it without pain. "The goad," said she, "is at the Kill Point. Put down your weapons!" Her eyes were closed and she was sobbing. The goad was clenched in her two hands, moving toward her throat.

"Stop!" I cried.

Ho-Tu flung away his hook knife and rushed to Sura, tearing the goad away from her. I saw him rotate it to minimum charge, turn it off, and fling it away. He took Sura in his arms weeping. Then he turned to face me. "Kill me," he told me.

I did not wish to kill a man who was unarmed.

"But," said Ho-Tu, "I killed no man-in Ko-ro-ba or elsewhere."

"Kill us both," said Sura, holding the squat, ugly Ho-Tu to her, "but he is innocent."

"He killed," I told her.

"It was not I," said Ho-Tu. "I am not he whom you seek."

"You are he," I said.

"I am not," said he.

"A moment ago," I charged, "you attempted to kill me."

"Yes," said Ho-Tu. "That is true. And I would do so again now."

"You poor fool," said Sura sobbing, to Ho-Tu, kissing him. "You would kill for a simple slave?"

"I love you," cried Ho-Tu. "I love you!"

"I, too," said she, "love you, Ho-Tu."

He stood as though stunned. A strong man, he seemed shaken. His hands trembled on her. In his black eyes I saw tears. "Love," asked he, "for Ho-Tu, less than a man?"

"You are my love," said Sura, "and have been so for many years."

He looked at her, hardly daring to move.

"Yes," she said.

"I am not even a man," said he.

"In you, Ho-Tu," said she, "I have found the heart of a larl and the softness of flowers. You have been to me kindness, and gentleness and strength, and you have loved me." She looked up at him. "No man of Gor," said she, "is more a man than you."

"I killed no one," he said to her.

"I know that," said Sura. "You could not."

"But when I thought of him with you," sobbed the Master Keeper, "I wanted to kill-to kill."

"He did not even touch me," said Sura. "Do you not understand? He wanted to protect me, and so brought me here and freed me."

"Is this true?" asked Ho-Tu.

I did not speak.

"Killer," said Ho-Tu, "forgive me."

"He wears the black tunic," said Sura, "and I do not know who he is, but he is not of the black caste."

"Let us not speak of such matters," I said, sternly.

Ho-Tu looked at me. "Know," said he, "whoever you are, that I killed no one."

"I think I shall return to my compartment," I said, feeling it well to be on my way.

"I wanted to hurt you," said Ho-Tu, looking at me.

"But," said Sura to Ho-Tu, "it was me whom you hurt, Ho-Tu."

There still was a trace of pain in her voice, the memory in her nerves of the strike of the slave goad.

"Forgive me," sobbed Ho-Tu. "Forgive me!"

She laughed. "A Master Keeper begging the forgiveness of a slave for touching her with a slave goad!"

Ho-Tu looked down at the square of silk, the tumbled vials and beads.

"What were you doing here?" he asked.

"He was teaching me to play the game," she laughed, "with such things."

Ho-Tu grinned. "Did you like it?" he asked.

"No, Ho-Tu," laughed Sura. She kissed him. "It is too difficult for me," she said.

Ho-Tu spoke to her. "I will play with you, if you like," he said.

"No, Ho-Tu," said she. "I would not like that." Then she left his arms, to pick up the kalika in the corner of the compartment and sat down, cross-legged, for the instrument is commonly played that way, and bent over it. Her fingers touched the six strings, a note at a time, and then a melody, of the caravans of Tor, a song of love.

They did not notice me as I left the compartment.

I found Flaminius, the Physician, in his quarters, and he, obligingly, though drunk, treated the arm which Ho-Tu had slashed with the hook knife. The wound was not at all serious.

"The games of Kajuralia can be dangerous," remarked Flaminius, swiftly wrapping a white cloth about the wound, securing it with four small metal snap clips.

"It is true," I admitted.

Even from the Physician's quarters we could hear, at various points in the House, the laughing and sporting of drunken slaves in their cells, drunken guards running down one hall or another playing jokes on each other.

"This is the sixth hook knife wound I have treated today," said Flaminius.

"Oh?" I asked.

"Your opponent is, I suppose," said Flaminius, "dead."

"No," I said.

"Oh?" asked Flaminius.

"I received this wound," I said, "in the quarters of Mistress Sura."

"Ha!" laughed Flaminius. "What a wench!" Then he looked at me, grinning. "I trust Mistress Sura was taught something this evening."

I recalled instructing her in the game. "Yes," I said, dourly, "this evening Mistress Sura learned much."

Flaminius laughed delightedly. "That is an arrogant slave," he said. "I would not mind getting my hands on her myself, but Ho-Tu would not permit it. Ho-Tu is insanely jealous of her, and she only a slave! By the way, Ho-Tu was looking for you this evening."

"I know," I said.

"Beware of Ho-Tu," said Flaminius.

"I do not think Ho-Tu will bother Kuurus, of the black caste," said I, rising to my feet.

Flaminius looked at me, with a certain drunken awe. Then he rose in his green quarters tunic and went to a chest in his room, from which he drew forth a large bottle of paga. He opened it and, to my surprise, poured two cups. He took a good mouthful of the fluid from one of the cups, and bolted it down, exhaling with satisfaction.

"You seem to me, from what I have seen and heard," I said, "a skilled Physician."

He handed me the second cup, though I wore the black tunic.

"In the forth and fifth year of the reign of Marlenus," said he, regarding me evenly, "I was first in my caste in Ar."

I took a swallow.

"Then," said I, "you discovered paga?"

"No," said he.

"A girl?" I asked.

"No," said Flaminius, smiling. "No." He took another swallow. "I thought to find," said he, "an immunization against Dar-kosis."

"Dar-kosis is incurable," I said.

"At one time," said he, "centuries ago, men of my caste claimed age was incurable. Others did not accept this and continued to work. The result was the Stabilization Serums."

Dar-Kosis, or the Holy Disease, or Sacred Affliction, is a virulent, wasting disease of Gor. Those afflicted with it, commonly spoken of simply as the Afflicted Ones, may not enter into normal society. They wander the countryside in shroud-like yellow rags, beating a wooden clapping device to warn men from their path; some of them volunteer to be placed in Dar-kosis pits, several of which lay within the vicinity of Ar, where they are fed and given drink, and are, of course, isolated; The disease is extremely contagious. Those who contact the disease are regarded by law as dead.

"Dar-kosis," I said, "is thought to be holy to the Priest-Kings, and those afflicted with it to be consecrated to Priest-Kings."

"A teaching of Initiates," said Flaminius bitterly. "There is nothing holy about the disease, about pain, about death." He took another drink.

"Dar-kosis," I said, "is regarded as an instrument of Priest-Kings, used to smite those who displease them."

"Another myth of Initiates," said Flaminius, unpleasantly.

"But how do you know that?" I queried.

"I do not care," said Flaminius, "if it is true or not. I am a Physician."

"What happened?" I asked.

"For many years," said Flaminius, "and this was even before 10,110, the year of Pa-Kur and his horde, I and others worked secretly in the Cylinder of Physicians. We devoted our time, those Ahn in the day in which we could work, to study, research, test and experiment.

Unfortunately, for spite and for gold, word of our work was brought to the High Initiate, by a minor Physician discharged from our staff for incompetence. The Cylinder of Initiates demanded that the High Council of the Caste of Physicians put an end to our work, not only that it be discontinued but that our results to that date be destroyed. The Physicians, I am pleased to say, stood with us. There is little love lost between Physicians and Initiates, even as is the case between Scribes and Initiates.

The Cylinder of the High Initiate then petitioned the High Council of the City to stop our work, but they, on the recommendation of Marlenus, who was then Ubar, permitted out work to continue. Flaminius laughed. "I remember Marlenus speaking to the High Initiate. Marlenus told him that either the Priest-Kings approved of our work or they did not; that if they approved, it should continue; if they did not approve, they themselves, as the Masters of Gor, would be quite powerful enough to put an end to it."

I laughed.

Flaminius looked at me, curiously. "It is seldom," he said, "that those of the black caste laugh."

"What happened then?" I asked.

Flaminius took another drink, and then he looked at me, bitterly. "Before the next passage hand," said he, "armed men broke into the Cylinder of Physicians; the floors we worked on were burned; the Cylinder itself was seriously damaged; our work, our records, the animals we used were all destroyed; several of my staff were slain, others driven away." He drew his tunic over his head. I saw that half of his body was scarred. "These I had from the flames," said he, "as I tried to rescue our work. But I was beaten away and our scrolls destroyed." He slipped the tunic back over his head.

"I am sorry," I said.

Flaminius looked at me. He was drunk, and perhaps that is why he was willing to speak to me, only of the black caste. There were tears in his eyes.

"I had," he said, "shortly before the fire developed a strain of urts resistant to the Dar-kosis organism; a serum cultured from their blood was injected in other animals, which subsequently we were unable to infect. It was tentative, only a beginning, but I had hoped-I had hoped very much."

"The men who attacked the Cylinder," I said, "who were they?"

"Doubtless henchmen of Initiates," said Flaminius. Initiates, incidentally, are not permitted by their caste codes to bear arms; nor are they permitted to injure or kill; accordingly, they hire men for these purposes.

"Were the men not seized?" I asked.

"Most escaped," said Flaminius. "Two were seized. These two, following the laws of the city, were taken for their first questioning to the courts of the High Initiate." Flaminius smiled bitterly. "But they escaped," he said.

"Did you try to begin your work again?" I asked.

"Everything was gone," said Flaminius, "the records, our equipment, the animals; several of my staff had been slain; those who survived, in large part, did not wish to continue the work." He threw down another bolt of Paga. "Besides," said he, "the men of the Initiates, did we begin again, would only need bring torches and steel once more."

"So what did you do?" I asked.

Flaminius laughed. "I thought how foolish was Flaminius," he said. "I returned one night to the floors on which we had worked. I stood there, amidst the ruined equipment, the burned walls. And I laughed. I realized then that I could not combat the Initiates. They would in the end conquer."

"I do not think so," I said.

"Superstition," said he, "proclaimed as truth, will always conquer truth, ridiculed as superstition."

"Do not believe it," I said.

"And I laughed," said Flaminius, "and I realized that what moves men is greed, and pleasure, and power and gold, and that I, Flaminius, who had sought fruitlessly in my life to slay one disease, was a fool."

"You are no fool," said I.

"No longer," said he. "I left the Cylinder of Physicians and the next day took service in the House of Cernus, where I have been for many years. I am content here. I am well paid. I have much gold, and some power, and my pick of Red Silk Girls. What man could ask for more?"

"Flaminius," I said.

He looked at me, startled. Then he laughed and shook his head. "No," said he, "I have learned to despise men. That is why this is a good house for me." He looked at me, drunkenly, with hatred. "I despise men!" he said. Then he laughed. "That is why I drink with you."

I nodded curtly, and turned to leave.

"One thing more to this little story," said Flaminius. He lifted the bottle to me.

"What is that?" I asked.

"At the games on the second of En'Kara, in the Stadium of Blades," said he, "I saw the High Initiate, Complicius Serenus."

"So?" said I.

"He does not know it," said Flaminius, "nor will he learn for perhaps a year."

"Learn what?" I asked.

Flaminius laughed and poured himself another drink. "That he is dying of Dar-kosis," he said.

I wandered about the house. It was now past the twentieth hour, the midnight of the Gorean day, yet still, here and there, I could hear the revels of Kajuralia, which are often celebrated until dawn.

My steps, as I was lost in thought, brought me back to the hall of Cernus, in which we had sat table. Curious, I opened the door off the hall, through which the slave taken to the beast had been led. I found a long set of stairs, and I followed them. I came to a landing, and there was a long corridor. At the end I saw two guards. They immediately sprang up, seeing me. Neither was drunk. Both were apparently perfectly sober, rested and alert.

"Kajuralia," I said to them.

Both men drew their weapons. "Do not pass this point," said they, "Killer."

"Very well," I said. I looked at the heavy beamed door behind them. It was not locked on this side, which interested me. I would have thought it would have been bolted shut, for fear of the beast locked within. There were, however, the means for shutting it at hand, two large beams which might be placed in iron brackets.

Suddenly I heard an enraged roar from somewhere behind the door.

"I was wounded," I said to them, "in the sport of hook knife."

I shoved back the sleeve of my tunic, revealing the bandage. Some blood had soaked through it.

"Leave!" cried one of the guards.

"I will show you," I said, drawing down the white cloth, revealing the wound.

Suddenly there was a wild cry from behind the door, of almost maniacal intensity, and I thought I heard something moving on the stones behind it, uncontrollable, clawed.

"Go!" cried the second guard. "Go!"

"But it is not a serious wound," I said, pinching it a bit, letting some blood move from it, trickling down my forearm.

To my horror I heard something behind the door fumbling with a bolt. It seemed to draw it open, and then, wildly, to thrust it back, keeping the door locked; and then I heard the bolt rattling in its brackets as though something had seized it and trembling was trying to hold it in place. The door I then realized had been locked on the inside, and could be opened from the inside.

There was another wild, eerie cry, an uncanny almost demented roaring noise, and the bolt on the other side was dashed free of the door, and the two guards, with a cry of fear, hurled the beams in the two brackets, fastening the door, which was made to swing outward, shut. The two guards leaned against the door. Behind it I heard an enraged, frustrated roaring, weird and terrible; I heard clawing at the wood; I saw the heavy door, as if struck with great force, buckle out against the beams.

"Go!" screamed the first guard. "Go!"

"Very well," I said, and turned and walked away down the corridor.

I could hear the guards cursing, and hear the door being thrust against the heavy beams. Then, when I was far down the corridor, I fixed the bandage again in place, shoved down my sleeve, and looked back. The thing behind the door was no longer making noise, and the door was no longer pressing against the beams; from where I stood I could hear the bolt on the inside being thrust back in place, locking it from the inside. Then, after a minute or two, I saw the guards remove the beams. What was inside was then apparently quiet.

I continued to wander about the House, here and there bumping into inebriated guards or staff members, who would invariably hail me with "Kajuralia!" to which greeting I would respond in turn.

A given thought kept going through my mind, for no reason that I was clearly aware of. It seemed unrelated to anything. It was Caprus saying to me, outside the Cell for Special Captures, "You, Killer, would not make a Player." His remark kept burning its way through my brain.

But as I walked the halls it seemed to me that, on the whole, things were not proceeding badly, though I regretted the amount of time lost, apparently necessarily, in the House of Cernus. Elizabeth, and Virginia and Phyllis, by tomorrow at this time, would be free. And Caprus, now that Cernus was often in the Central Cylinder, attending to the numerous duties of Ubar of the city, had more time for his work. By Se'Var he hoped to be finished. Caprus, I said to myself, a good man. Caprus. Thought well of by Priest-Kings. Trusted. He himself had arranged for an agent of Priest-Kings to purchase the girls. Caprus who seldom left the house. Brave Caprus. You, Killer, would not make a Player. Brave Caprus.

I turned suddenly into the kitchen in which the food for the hall of Cernus is prepared. Some startled slaves leaped up, each chained by one ankle to her ring; but most slept, drunk; one or two, too drunk to notice me, were sitting against the wall, their left ankles chained to their slave rings, a bottle of Ka-la-na in their grasp, their hair falling forward.

"Where is the Paga?" I demanded of one of the girls. Startled, I saw, now that she stood forth from the shadows, that she had no nose.

"There, Master!" said she, pointing to a basket of bottles under the large cutting table in the center of the room.

I went to the basket and took out a bottle, a large one.

I looked about myself.

There was the odor of food in the kitchen, and of spilled drink. There were several yards of sausages hung on hooks; numerous cannisters of flour, sugars and salts; many smaller containers of spices and condiments. Two large wine jugs stood in one corner of the room. There were many closed pantries lining the walls, and a number of pumps and tubs on one side. Some boxes and baskets of hard fruit were stored there. I could see the bread ovens in one wall; the long fire pit over which could be put cooking racks, the mountings for spits and kettle hooks; the fire pit was mostly black now, but here and there, I could see a few broken sticks of glowing charcoal; aside from this, the light in the room came from one small tharlarion oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, near the side where the kitchen slaves were chained, presumably to facilitate the guard check which, during the night, took place each second Ahn; the other lamps in the room were now extinguished.

I took another bottle of paga from the basket and tossed it to the girl without a nose, who had directed me to the paga.

"Thank you, Master," said she, smiling, going back to her ring. I saw her nudge the girls on the left and right of her. "Paga," I heard her whisper.

"Kajuralia," I said to her.

"Kajuralia," she said.

Again the thought went through me. You, Killer, would never make a Player. You, Killer, would never make a Player. Grimly, the Paga bottle in my hand, I went back into the corridor and found the stairs that took one to lower floors in the cylinder, and eventually to its depths.

Lower and lower I went into the cylinder, the thought pounding in my brain: You, Killer, would never make a Player.

I was beginning to feel sick with fear, with anger. A realization that horrified me seemed to claw at the back of my brain, as the beast had torn at the door, unseen, in the corridor far above. You, Killer, would never make a Player.

Now, paga bottle in hand, I was passing guards and found myself walking down the narrow iron runways over the pens below, now filled with drunken slaves, some sleeping, some sitting stupefied in the center of their pen, some singing brokenly to themselves, some trying to crawl again to the trough to lap there at the paga mixed with their water. I saw one girl, drunk, putting her hands through the bars which separated the cage which she shared with other female slaves, from the cage adjacent to it, filled with male slaves. "Touch me," she begged. "Touch me!" But the males lay in drunken sleep on the stones.

I passed through the level on which interrogations take place, the level of the kennels, and went lower in the cylinder, now far below ground, past even more iron pens and levels. When I would pass a guard I would hail him with "Kajuralia!" and pass by.

Always the thought burned through me, You, Killer, would never make a player, and always I seemed driven by the black fear that would not speak itself but whose presence I could clearly sense.

Descending a last spiral of iron stairs I came to the lowest level of the cylinder.

"Who goes there?" cried a startled guard.

"It is I, Kuurus, of the black caste," said I, "on the orders of Cernus bringing paga to prisoners on Kajuralia!"

"But there is only one prisoner here," said he, puzzled.

"The more for both of us then," I said.

He grinned and put out his hand and I bit the cork from the bottle, which was a very large bottle, and handed it to him.

"I have spent Kajuralia," he grumbled, between guzzles, "sitting here without paga-they did not even send a girl down to me."

I gathered from what he said that the guard was intended to remain sober, and from this that he had valuable materials under his care, and gathered also that the guard, from his disgruntlement, was ignorant of their value. It could of course be that he had merely been forgotten, overlooked in the general revels of Kajuralia.

Then the guard sat down heavily, not willing to try to remain upright longer.

"It is good paga," said he. He took two or three more swallows, and then simply held the bottle, looking at it.

I left him and looked about. There were several corridors lined with small cells with iron doors, each with an observation panel. The corridors were damp. Here and there some water had gathered in recesses in the flooring. They were dark, save that each, at intervals of some thirty yards, was lit with a small tharlarion oil lamp. I picked up a torch and lit it in the light of a lamp near the swirling iron stairs.

I heard the guard take another swallow of the paga, a long swallow, and then he sat there again, holding the bottle.

I walked down a corridor or two. The cells were locked but, by sliding back the panel, and holding the torch behind me I could see dimly into the cells. Each seemed piled with boxes; I recognized the boxes as being of the general sort which I had seen unloaded from the Slaver's ship in the Voltai. I gathered that most, or a great many of the cells, on this level, might be filled with such merchandise, whatever it might be. Each of the cells was locked.

I heard the guard calling out from near the stairs. "The prisoner is in Nine Corridor."

I strode back to him, stepping aside not to brush against a wet, silken, blazing-eyed urt scampering along the edge of the corridor wall.

"My thanks," said I to the guard. I put my hand on the bottle but he retained it long enough to take yet another swallow, and then two more, and then he reluctantly surrendered it.

"I will bring it back," I assured him.

"There is too much paga there for one prisoner," mumbled the guard, rather groggily.

"True," I said. "I will return the bottle to you."

I saw him close his eyes and slump a bit against the wall.

"The Forty Cell," he said.

"Where is the key?" I asked. The other cells had all been locked.

"Near the door," he said.

"The other keys," I said, "were not near the doors."

"The other keys," he mumbled, "are kept somewhere above. I do not know where."

"My thanks," said I.

I began moving down the Nine Corridor. Soon, in the flickering light of the torch, I could read the Forty on the tiny metal plate over one of the cells.

I slid back the observation panel. It, like the others, was about six inches in width and about an inch high. A man could do little more than thrust his fingers through. Inside, very dimly, I could see a slumped, dark figure lying near the back wall, chained.

The key box was about a yard to the left of the keyhole; and about four feet from the observation panel; it is a small, heavy metal box bolted to the stone of the wall; it opens and shuts to the left, by means of a round-knobbed screw, which must be turned several times before the small metal door opens. I rotated the screw and opened the box, and removed the key. I inserted the key into the keyhole and swung back the door. Lifting the torch I entered.

Startled by the light an urt scurried from my path disappearing through a small crevice in the wall. It had been nibbling at the scrapings of dried gruel caked in a tin pan near the prisoner's foot.

I could smell wet straw in the place, and the excrement of urts and a human being.

The slumped figure, that of a small man, naked, white-haired, stinking, skeletal, haggard, covered with sores, awakening, cried out in misery, whimpering. He crawled to his knees, squinting against the torch, trying to shelter his eyes with manacled claw-like hands from the sudden, fierce, painful blaze of fire that his world must have then been for him.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

I saw that he was not actually an old man, though his hair was white. One ear had been partly bitten away. The white hair was long, white, yellowish.

"My name is Kuurus," said I, speaking to him from the light of the torch.

Each of his limbs, and his throat, was separately confined, each chained individually to the wall, each chain running to a separate ring bolted in the stone; any one of the chains would have been sufficient to hold a man; I gathered that this prisoner must be unusual indeed; I observed, further, that the chains gave him some run, though not much, just enough to permit him to feed himself, to scratch his body, to defend himself to some extent against the attacks of urts; I gathered it was intended that this prisoner should, at least for a time, survive. Indeed, it seemed probable that he had lived under these miserable conditions for a long time.

I rose and found a torch rack in the room and set the torch in the rack. As I did so I saw four or five urts run for various small crevices in the stone.

I returned to the prisoner.

"You are of the black caste," he whispered. "At last they are done with me."

"Perhaps not," I said.

"Am I to be tortured again?" he asked, piteously.

"I do not know," I said.

"Kill me," he whispered.

"No," I said.

He moaned.

I looked on that small, trembling, skeletal body, the straggly hair, the sores; the mutilated ear; angrily I rose to my feet and searched about, finding some loose stone which, with my foot, I wedged into the several crevices through which the urts had darted.

Unbelievingly the prisoner with his sunken eyes, now accustoming themselves to the light of the torch, regarded me.

I returned to him; beneath the iron on his ankles and wrists, and on his throat, there were scars, like white bands, pale shadows of the dark metal; it would take months to form such scars, superseding the fearful sores that must first have been inflicted.

"Why have you come?" he asked.

"It is Kajuralia," I said to him, simply.

I held the bottle to him.

"Kajuralia?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

He began to laugh, softly, hoarsely. "I was right," he said. "I was right."

"I do not understand," I said.

He began to suck at the bottle. There were few teeth left in his mouth; most had rotted and, apparently, snapped away, or had been broken off by him and discarded.

I forcibly drew the bottle from his mouth. I had no wish that he killed himself on the paga. I did not know what its shock would be to his system, after apparently months of torture, confinement, fear, poor food, the water, the urts.

"I was right," he said, nodding his head.

"About what?" I asked.

"That today was Kajuralia," said he.

He then indicated behind himself, on the wall, a large number of tiny, regularly formed scratches in the stone, perhaps cut there by a pebble or the edge of the tin drinking dish. He indicated the last of the scratches. "That is Kajuralia," he said.

"Oh," I said, regarding his crude calendar. There were a very large number of scratches.

"Like any other day," he laughed.

I let him have another small swig at the paga bottle.

"Somedays," he said, "I was not sure that I marked the wall, and then I would forget; sometimes I feared I had marked it twice."

"You were accurate," I said, regarding the carefully drawn scratches, the rows methodically laid out, the months, the five-day weeks, the passage hands.

I counted back the rows. Then I said, pointing to the first scratch. "This is the first day of En'Kara before the last En'Kara."

The toothless mouth twisted into a grin, the sunken eyes wrinkled with pleasure. "Yes," he said, "the first day of En'Kara, 10,118, more than a year ago."

"It was before I came to the House of Cernus," I said, my voice trembling.

I gave him another drink of the paga.

"Your calendar is well kept," I said. "Worthy of a Scribe."

"I am a Scribe," said the man. He reached under himself to hold forth for my inspection a shred of damp, rotted blue cloth, the remains of what had once been his robes.

"I know," I said.

"My name is Caprus," he said.

"I know," I said.

I heard a laugh behind me, and spun. Standing in the doorway, four guards armed with crossbows with him, stood Cernus, of the House of Cernus. With him also was the guard to whom I had given the paga. In the background I could see the lean Scribe whom I had thought for these many months to be Caprus. He was grinning.

The men stepped within the room.

"Do not draw your weapon," said Cernus.

I smiled. It would have been foolish to do so. The four men with crossbows leveled their weapons on me. At his distance the bolts would pass through my body, shattering against the stones behind me.

The guard to whom I had first given paga came over to Caprus and tore the bottle from his hand. Then, with the sleeve of his tunic, the guard distastefully wiped the rim of the bottle. "You were to have returned this paga to me," said the guard, "were you not?"

"It is yours," I said, "you have earned it."

The man laughed and drank.

"You, Killer," said Cernus, mocking, "would never make a Player."

"Apparently it is true," I said.

"Chain him," said Cernus.

One of the guards, putting his crossbow in the hall, brought forth heavy steel manacles. My hands were thrown behind my back. I felt the heavy steel close on my wrists.

"May I introduce to you, Caprus," said Cernus, looking down at the piteous chained figure by the wall, "Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba?"

I stood stunned.

"Tarl Cabot," I said, numbly, "was slain in Ko-ro-ba."

"No," said Cernus, "the Warrior Sandros of Thentis was slain in Ko-ro-ba."

I looked at him.

"Sandros thought he was to be your Assassin," said Cernus. "It was for that purpose he thought himself sent to Ko-ro-ba. Actually he was sent there to die himself by the knife of a killer. His resemblance to a certain Koroban Warrior, perhaps Tarl Cabot, would make it seem clear, in the darkness of the night, that the knife had been intended for that Warrior, and a convenient clue, a patch of green, would lead to Ar, and doubtless then to the House of Cernus."

I could not speak.

"Sandros was a fool," said Cernus. "He was sent to Ko-ro-ba only to be slain, that you would be lured to this house, where in effect you have been my prisoner for more than a year."

"There must be some reason why you would want me here?" I said.

"Let us not jest, Tarl Cabot," said Cernus. "We knew that Priest-Kings would suspect our House, as we intended that they should; so simple a ruse, and profitable a one, as selling barbarian Earth girls under the auspices of the House, would guarantee their investigation. For this investigation, they would need men. Surely they would wish, if possible, to choose a man such as Tarl Cabot."

"You play well," I said.

Cernus smiled. "And to guarantee that it should be Tarl Cabot, whom we know, and with whom we, so to speak, have an old score to settle, the matter of the egg of Priest-Kings, we sent Sandros of Thentis to Ko-ro-ba where he, poor fool, was to be slain in your stead, that you should be brought here."

"You play brilliantly," said I.

Cernus laughed. "And so we arranged to have you arrive in our house, the trusted spy and agent of Priest-Kings, who would thus think themselves moving secretly and intelligently against us. And here, while we have through the months advanced our cause you have stood by, patiently and cooperatively, a dupe and a fool, our guarantee that Priest-Kings would not send another."

Cernus threw back his head and laughed.

"You speak of 'we' and 'our cause'," I said.

Cernus looked on me, unpleasantly. "Do not mock me," said he, "Warrior." He looked at me then and smiled. "I serve those who are not Priest-Kings."

I nodded.

"It is war, Tarl Cabot," said he. "And there will be no quarter given." He smiled. "Not then, nor now."

I nodded once more, accepting his words. I had fought. I had lost.

"Will you kill me?" I asked.

"I have an amusing fate in store for you," said Cernus, "which I have considered these many months."

"What?" I asked.

"But first," said Cernus, "we must not forget the little beauty."

I stiffened.

"Sura reports that she has trained superbly, that she is now capable of giving the most exquisite of pleasures to a master."

I tensed in the manacles.

"I understand she expects, with the other two barbarians, to be purchased by an agent of Priest-Kings, and carried to safety and freedom."

I looked at him angrily.

"I expect," said Cernus, "that she will put on an excellent performance."

I wished that I might break the steel from my wrists and seize his throat.

"It should be worth seeing," said Cernus. "I will see that you have a chance to see it."

I choked with rage.

"What is the matter?" asked Cernus, concerned. "Do you not wish to see the little beauty presenting herself on the block. I expect she, with the others, will bring much gold to the House of Cernus, which we may then invest in our cause." He laughed. "It will be time enough, afterward," said he, "for her to learn that she has been truly sold."

"You sleen!" I cried. I hurled myself at Cernus but two men seized me, threw me back, then held my arms.

"You, Tarl Cabot," said Cernus, "would never make a Player."

"Sleen! Sleen!" I cried.

"Kajuralia," said Cernus, smiling, and turned and left the cell.

I stared after him. My wrists fought the steel. Two of the guards laughed.

"Kajuralia," I said bitterly. "Kajuralia."