Outlaw of Gor

Chapter Twenty: THE INVISIBLE BARRIER

In my hand I held a sword, taken from one of the guardsmen in the mines. It was the only weapon I carried. Before starting for the mountains, it seemed wise to improve my equipment. Most of the soldiers who had fought the slaves at the top of the shaft had been killed or fled. Those who had been killed had been stripped of clothing and weapons, both of which the ill-clad, unarmed slaves required desperately.

I knew that I didn" t have a great deal of time, for the avenging tarnsmen of Tharna would soon be visible against the three moons.

I examined the low, wooden buildings which dotted the ugly landscape in the vicinity of the mines. Almost all of them had been broken into by slaves, and whatever they held had been taken or scattered. Not a piece of steel remained in the arms shed; not a crust of bread remained in the tubs in the commissary huts.

In the office of the Administrator of the Mines, he who had once given the command, "Drown them all," I found a stripped body, slashed almost beyond recognition. Yet I had seen it once before, when I had been turned over by the soldier to his gentle care. It was the Administrator of the Mines himself. The corpulent, cruel body was now rent in a hundred places. On the wall there was an empty scabbard. I hoped that he had had time to seize its blade before the slaves rushed in and fell upon him. Though I found it easy to hate him I did not wish him to have died unarmed. In the frenetic melee in the darkness, or in the light of the tharlarion lamp, perhaps the slaves had not noticed the scabbard, or wanted it. The sword itself, of course, was gone. I decided I could use the scabbard, and took it from the wall.

In the first streak of light, now gleaming through the dusty hut window, I saw that the scabbard was set with six stones. Emeralds. Perhaps not of great value, but worth taking.

I thrust myweapon into the empty scabbard, buckled the sword belt and, in the Gorean fashion, looped it over my left shoulder.

I left the hut, scanning the skies. There were no tarnsmen yet in sight. The three moons were faint now, like pale white disks in the brightening sky, and the sun was half risen from the throne of the horizon. In the bleak light the ruin of the night stood revealed in stark, brutal lucidity. The ugly grounds of the compound, its lonely wooden huts, its brown soil and bare hard rocks, were deserted save by the dead. Among the litter of pillaging — papers, opened boxes, broken staves, split boards and wire — there lay, sprawled frozen in stiff, grotesque postures, the unsubtle shapes of death, the scattered, contorted, slashed bodies of naked men.

Some wisps of dust swirled past like animals sniffing about the feet of the bodies. A door on one of the sheds, its lock broken, swung loose on its hinges, banging in the wind.

I walked across the compound and picked up a helmet which lay half hidden in the litter. Its straps were broken but they could be knotted together. i wondered if it had been noticed by the slaves.

I had sought equipment, but I had found only a scabbard and a damaged helmet, and soon the tarnsmen of Tharna would arrive. Using the Warrior" s Pace, a slow jog that can be prolonged for hours, I left the Compound of the Mines.

I had only reached the shelter of a line of trees when I saw, some thousand yards behind me, descending on the Compound of the Mines, like clouds of wasps, the tarnsmen of Tharna.

It was in the vicinity of the Pillar of Exchanges, three days later, that I found the tarn. I had seen its shadow and feared it was wild, and had prepared to sell my life dearly, but the great beast, my own plumed giant, who may have haunted the Pillar of Exchanges for weeks, settled on the plains no more than thirty yards from me, its great wings shaking, and stalked to my side.

It was for this reason that I had returned to the Pillar, hoping that perhaps the monster might linger in its vicinity. There was good hunting nearby, and the ridges where I had carried the Tatrix afforded shelter for its nest.

When it approached me and extended its head, I wondered if what I had dared not hope might be true, that the bird might have been waiting for me to return.

He offered no resistance, he showed no anger, when I leaped to his back and cried, as before, "One-strap!" at which signal, with a shrill cry and a mighty spring, those gigantic wings cracked like whips and beat their way aloft in the glory of flight.

As we passed over the Pillar of Exchanges I remembered that it was there I had been betrayed by she who was once Tatrix of Tharna. I wondered what had been her fate. I wondered too at her treachery, her strange hatred of me, for somehow it seemed not to fit well with the lonely girl on the ledge, who had stood quietly gazing at the field of talenders while a warrior had gorged himself on the kill of his tarn. Then, again, my memory blackened with fury at the thought of her imperious gesture, that insolent command, "Seize him!"

Whatever her fate, I insisted to myself that it would have been richly deserved. Yet I found myself hoping that perhaps she had not been destroyed. I wondered what vengeance would have satisfied the hatred borne to Lara, the Tatrix, by Dorna the Proud. I guessed unhappily that she might have had Lara hurled into a pit of osts or watched her boil alive in the foul oil of tharlarions. Perhaps she would have been thrown naked into the clutches of the insidious leech plants of Gor or have had her fed to the giant urts in the dungeons beneath her own palace. I knew the hatred of men is but a feeble thing compared to the hatred of women, and I wondered how much it would take to slake the thirst for vengeance of such a woman as Dorna the Proud. What would have been enough to satisfy her?

It was now the month of the vernal equinox on Gor, called En" Kara, or the First Kara. The full expression is En" Kara- Lar-Torvis, which means, rather literally, The First Turning of the Central Fire. Lar-Torvis is a Gorean expression for the sun. More commonly, though never in the context of time, the sun is referred to a Tor-tu-Gor, or Light Upon the Home Stone. The month of the autumnal equinox is called fully Se" Kara-Lar-Torvis, but usually simply Se" Kara, The Second Kara, or the Second Turning. As might be expected there are related expressions for the months of the solstices, En" Var-Lar-Torvis and Se" Var-Lar- Torvis, or, again rather literally, The First Resting and the Second Resting of the Central Fire. These however, like the other expressions, usually occur in speech only as En" Var and Se" Var, or The First Resting and The Second Resting. Chronology, incidentally, is the despair of scholars on Gor, for each city keeps track of time by virtue of its own Administrator Lists; for example, a year is referred to as the Second Year when so-and-so was Administrator of the City. One might think that some stability would be provided by the Initiates who must keep a caldendar of their feasts and observances, but the Initiates of one city do not always celebrate the same feast on the same day as do those of another city. If the High Initiate of Ar should ever succeed in extending his hegemony over the High Initiates of rival cities, a hegemony which he claims he possesses already incidentally, a unified calendar might be introduced. But so far there has been no military victory of Ar over other cities and, accordingly, free of the sword, the Initiates of each city regard themselves as supreme within their own walls. There are, however, some factors which tend to reduce the hopelessness of the situation. One is the fairs at the Sardar Mountains, which occur four times a year and are numbered chronologically. The other is that sometimes cities are willing to add, in their records, beside their own dating, the dating of Ar, which is Gor" s greatest city.

Chronology in Ar is figured, happily enough, not from its Administrator Lists, but from its mythical foundings by the first man on Gor, a hero whom the Priest-Kings are said to have formed from the mud of the earth and the blood of tarns. Times is reckoned "Constanta Ar", or "from the founding of Ar." The year, according to the calendar of Ar, if it is of interest, is 10,117. Actually I would suppose that Ar may not be a third of that age. Its Home Stone, however, which I have seen, attests to a considerable antiquity.

Some four days after I had recovered the tarn, we sighted in the distance the Sardar Mountains. Had I possessed a Gorean compass, its needle would have pointed invariably to those mountains, as though to indicate the home of the Priest- Kings. Before the mountains, in a panorama of silk and flags, I saw the pavilions of the Fair of En" Kara, or the Fair of the First Turning.

I wheeled the tarm in the sky, not wanting to approach more closely yet. I looked upon those mountains which I now saw for the first time. A chill not of the high winds which buffeted me on tarnback now crept into my body. The mountains of the Sardar were not such a vast, magnificent range as the rugged scarlet crags of the Voltai, that almost impenetrable mountains vastness in which I had once been the prisoner of the outlaw Ubar, Marlenus of Ar, ambitious and warlike father of the fierce and beautiful Talena, she whom I loved, whom I had carried on tarnback to ko-ro-ba years before to be my Free Companion. No, the Sardar Range was not the superb natural wilderness that was the Voltai. Its peaks did not scorn the plains below. Its heights did not taunt the sky nor, in the cold of the night, defy the stars. In it would not be heard the cry of tarns and the roar of larls. It was inferior to the Voltai in both dimension and grandeur. Yet when I looked upon it, more than the gloriously savage, larl-haunted Voltai, I feared it.

I took the tarn closer.

The mountains before me were black, except for the high peaks and passes, which showed white patches and threads of cold, gleaming snow. I looked for the green of vegetation on the lower slopes and saw none. In the Sardar Range nothing grew.

There seemed to be a menace, and intangible fearful effect about those angular shapes in the distance. I took the tarn as high as I could, until his wings beat frantically against the thin air, but could see nothing in the Sardar Mountains that might be the habitation of Priest-Kings. I wondered — an eerie suspicion that suddenly swept through me — if the Sardar Mountains might actually be empty — if there might be nothing, simply nothing but the wind and the snow in those gloomy mountains, and if me worshipped, unknowingly, nothing. What of the interminable prayers of the Initiates, the sacrifices, the observances, the rituals, the innumerable shrines, altars and temples to the Priest- Kings? Could it be that the smoke of the burning sacrifices, the fragrance of the incense, the mumbling of the Initiates, their prostrations and grovellings were all addressed to nothing but the empty peaks of the Sardar, to the snow, and the cold and the wind that howled among those black crags?

Suddenly the tarn screamed and shuddered in the air!

The thought of the emptiness of the Sardar Range was banished from my mind, for here was evidence of the Priest-Kings!

It was almost as if the bird had been seized by an invisible fist. I could sense nothing.

The bird" s eyes, perhaps for the first time in his life, were filled with terror, blind uncomprehending terror.

I could see nothing.

Protesting, screaming, the great bird began to reel helplessly downward. Its vast wings, futilely, wildly, struck out, uncoordinated and frenetic, like the limbs of a drowning swimmer. It seemed the very air itself refused any longer to bear his weight. In drunken, dizzy circles, screaming, bewildered, helpless, the bird fell, while I, for my life, desperately clung to the thick quills of his neck.

When we had reached an altitude of perhaps a hundred yards from the ground, as suddenly as it had come, the strange effect passed. The bird regained his strength and senses, except for the fact that it remained agitated, almost unmanageable.

Then to my wonder, the valiant creature began once more to climb, determined to regain the altitude he had lost.

Again and again he tried to rise and again and again he was forced down. Through the beast" s back I could feel the straining of his muscles, sense the mad pounding of that unconquerable heart. But each time we attained a certain altitude, the eyes of the tarn would seem to lose their focus, and the unerring balance and coordination of the sable monster would be disrupted. It was no longer frightened, only angry. Once again it would attempt to climb, ever faster, ever more fiercely.

Then mercifully I called "Four-strap!"

I feared the courageous beast would kill himself before surrendering to the unseen force that blocked his path.

Unwillingly the bird alighted on the grassy plains about a league from the Fair of En" Kara. I thought those great eyes looked at me reproachfully. Why did I not leap again to his back and once more cry "One-strap!" Why did we not try once more?

I slapped his beak affectionately and, digging among his neck feathers with my fingers, scratched out some of the lice, about the size of marbles, that infest wild tarns. I slapped them on his long tongue. After a moment of impatient, feather-ruffling protest, the tarn succumbed, if reluctantly, to this delicacy, and the parasites disappeared into the curved scimitar of a beak.

What had happened would have been regarded by the untrained Gorean mind, particularly that of a low caste individual, as evidence of some supernatural force, as some magical effect of the will of the Priest-Kings. I myself did not willingly entertain such hypotheses.

The tarn had struck a field of some sort, which perhaps acted on the mechanism of the inner ear, resulting in the loss of balance and coordination. A similar device, I supposed, might prevent the entry of high tharlarions, the saddle lizards of Gor, into the mountains. In spite of myself I admired the Priest-Kings. I knew now that it was true, what I had been told, that those who entered the mountains would do so on foot. I regretted having to leave the tarn, but he could not accompany me. I talked to him for perhaps an hour, a foolish thing to do perhaps, and then gave his beak a hardy slap and shoved it from me. I pointed out over the fields, away from the mountains. "Tabuk!" I said.

The beast did not stir.

"Tabuk!" I repeated.

I think, though it may be absurd, that the beast felt that he might have failed me, that he had not carried me into the mountains. I think, too, though it is perhaps still more absurd, that he knew that I would not be waiting for him when he returned from his hunt.

The great head moved quizzically and dipped to the ground, rubbing against my leg.

Had it failed me? Was I now rejecting it?

"Go, Ubar of the Skies," I said. "Go."

When I had said Ubar of the Skies, the bird had lifted its head, now more than a yard above my own. I had called him that when I recognised him in the arena of Tharna, when we had been aloft as one creature in the sky. The great bird stalked away from me, about fifteen yards, and then turned, looking at me again.

I gestured to the fields away from the mountains.

It shook its wings and screamed, and hurled itself against the wind. I watched it until, a tiny speck against the blue sky, it disappeared in the distance.

I felt unaccountably sad, and turned to face the mountains of the Sardar. Before them, resting on the grassy plains beneath, was the Fair of En" Kara. I had not walked more than a pasang when, from a cluster of trees to my right, on the other side of a thin, swift stream that flowed from the Sardar, I heard the terrified scream of a girl.