Priest-Kings of Gor

Chapter Eight: VIKA LEAVES THE CHAMBER

'Wake up, wench!' I cried, striding into Vika's chamber, clapping my hands sharply twice.

The startled girl cried out and leaped to her feet.She had been lying on the straw mat at the foot of the stone couch. So suddenly had she arisen that she had struck her knee against the couch and this had not much pleased her.I had meant to scare her half to death and I was pleased to see that I had.

She looked at me angrily.'I was not asleep,' she said.

I strode to her and held her head in my hands, looking at her eyes.She had spoken the truth.

'You see!' she said.

I laughed.

She lowered her head, and then looked up shyly.'I am happy,' she said, 'that you have returned.'

I looked at her and sensed that she was.

'I suppose,' I said, 'that in my absence you have been in the pantry.'

'No,' she said, 'I have not,' adding as an acrimonious afterthought, '- Master.'

I had offended her pride.

'Vika,' I said, 'I think it is time that some changes were made around here.'

'Nothing ever changes here,' she said.

I looked around the room.The sensors in the room interested me.I examined them again.I was elated.Then, methodically, I began to search the room.Although the sensors and the mode of their application were fiendish and beyonf my immediate competence to fully understand, they suggested nothing ultimately mysterious, nothing which might not eventually be explained.There was nothing about them to encourage me to believe that the Priest-Kings, or King as it might be, were ultimately unfathomable or incomprehensible beings.

Moreover in the corridor beyond I had sensed the traces, tangible traces, of a Priest-King.I laughed.Yes, I had smelled a Priest-King, or its effects.The thought amused me.

More fully than ever I now understood how much the forces of superstition have depressed and injured men.No wonder the Priest-Kings hid behind their palisade in the Sardar and let the myths of the Initiates build a wall of human terror about them, no wonder they let their nature and ends be secret, no wonder they took such pains to conceal and obscure their plans and purposes, their devices, their instrumentation, their limitations!I laughed aloud.

Vika watched me, puzzled, surely convinced that I must have lost my mind.

I cracked my fist into my open palm.'Where is it?' I cried.

'What?' whispered Vika.

'The Priest-Kings see and the Priest-Kings hear!' I cried, 'But how?'

'By their power,' said Vika, moving back to the wall.

I had examined the entire room as well as I could.It might be possible, of course, to use some type of penetrating beam which if subtly enough adjusted might permit the reception of signals through walls and then relay these to a distant screen, but I doubted that such a device, though perhaps within the capacities of the Priest-Kings, would be used in the relatively trivial domestic surveillance of these chambers.

Then my eye saw, directly in the centre of the ceiling, another energy bulb, like those in the walls, only the bulb was not lit.That was a mistake on the Priest-Kings' part. But of course the device could be in any of the bulbs. Perhaps one of the almost inexhaustible energy bulbs, which can burn for years, had as a simple matter of fact at last burned out.

I leaped to the centre of the stone platform.I cried to the girl, 'Bring me the laver.'

She was convinced I was mad.

'Quickly!' I shouted, and she fairly leapt to fetch the bronze bowl.

I seized the bowl from her hand and hurled it underhanded up against the bulb which, though it had apparently burned out, shattered with a great flash and hiss of smoke and sparks. Vika screamed and crouched behind the stone platform.Down from the cavity where the energy bulb had been there hung, blasted and smoking, a tangle of wire, a ruptured metal diaphragm and a conical receptacle which might once have held a lens.

'Come here,' I said to Vika, but the poor girl cringed beside the platform.Impatient, I seized her by the arm and yanked her to the platform and held her there in my arms.'Look up!' I said.But she kept her face resolutely down.I thrust my fist in her hair and she cried out and looked up. 'See!' I cried.

'What is it?' she whimpered.

'It was an eye,' I said.

'An eye?' she whimpered.

'Yes,' I said, 'something like the "eye" in the door.'I wanted her to understand.

'Whose eye?' she asked.

'The eye of Priest-Kings,' I laughed.'But it is now shut.'

Vika trembled against me and in my joy with my fist still in her hair I bent my face to hers and kissed her full on those magnificent lips and she cried out helpless in my arms and wept but did not resist.

It was the first kiss I had taken from the lips of my slave girl, and it had been a kiss of mad joy, one that astonished her, that she could not understand.

I leaped from the couch and went to the portal.

She remained standing on the stone platform, bewildered, her fingers at her lips.

Her eyes regarded me strangely.

'Vika,' I cried, 'would you like to leave this room?'

'Of course,' she said.Her voice trembled.

'Very well,' I said, 'you shall do so.'

She shrank back.

I laughed and went to the portal.Once again I examined the six red, domed sensors, three on a side, which were fixed there.It would be, in a way, a shame to destroy them, for they were rather beautiful.

I drew my sword.

'Stop!' cried Vika, in terror.

She leaped from the stone couch and ran to me, seizing my sword arm but with my left hand I flung her back and she fell stumbling back against the side of the stone couch.

'Don't!' she cried, kneeling there, her hands outstretched.

Six times the hilt of my sword struck against the sensors and six times there was a hissing pop like the explosion of hot glass and a bright shower of scarlet sparks.The sensors had been shattered, their lenses broken and the wired apertures behind them a tangle of black, fused wire.

I resheathed my sword and wiped my face with the back of my forearm.I could taste a little blood and knew that some of the fragments from the sensors had cut my face.

Vika knelt beside the couch numbly.

I smiled at her.'You may now leave the room,' I said, 'should you wish to do so.'

Slowly she rose to her feet.Her eyes looked to the portal and its shattered sensors.Then she looked at me, something of wonder and fear in her eyes.

She shook herself.

'My master is hurt,' she said.

'I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,' I said to her, telling her my name and city for the first time.

'My city is Treve,' she said, for the first time telling me the name of her city.

I smiled as I watched her go to fetch a towel from one of the chests against the wall.

So Vika was from Treve.

That explained much. Treve was a warlike city somewhere in the trackless magnificence of the Voltai Range.I had never been there but I knew her reputation.Her warriors were said to be fierce and brave, her women proud and beautiful.Her tarnsmen were ranked with those of Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba, even great Ar itself.

Vika returned with the towel and began dabbing at my face.

It was seldom a girl from Treve ascended the auction block. I suppose Vika would have been costly had I purchased her in Ar or Ko-ro-ba.Even when not beautiful, because of their rarity, they are prized by collectors.

Treve was alleged to lie above Ar, some seven hundred pasangs distant, and toward the Sardar.I had never seen the city located on a map but I had seen the territory she claimed so marked.The precise location of Treve was not known to me and was perhaps known to few save its citizens.Trade routes did not lead to the city and those who entered its territory did not often return.

There was said to be no access to Treve save on tarnback and this would suggest that it must be as much a mountain stronghold as a city.

She was said to have no agriculture, and this may be true. Each year in the fall legions of tarnsmen from Treve were said to emerge from the Voltai like locusts and fall on the fields of one city or another, different cities in different years, harvesting what they needed and burning the rest in order that a long, relatiatory winter campaign could not be launched against them.A century ago the tarnsmen of Treve had even managed to stand off the tarnsmen of Ar in a fierce battle fought in the stormy sky over the crags of the Voltai. I had heard poets sing of it.Since that time her depredations had gone unchecked, although perhaps it should be added that never again did the men of Treve despoil the fields of Ar.

'Does it hurt?' asked Vika.

'No,' I said.

'Of course it hurts,' she sniffed.

I wondered if many of Treve's women were as beautiful as Vika.If they were it was surprising that tarnsmen from all the cities of Gor would not have descended on the place, as the saying goes, to try chain luck.

'Are all the women of Treve as beautiful as you?' I asked.

'Of course not,' she said irritably.

'Are you the most beautiful?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she said simply, and then she smiled and added, 'perhaps…'

With a graceful movement she rose and went back again to the chests against the wall.She returned with a small tube of ointment.

'They are deeper than I thought,' she said.

With the tip of her finger she began to work the ointment into the cuts.It burned quite a bit.

'Does it hurt?' she asked.

'No,' I said.

She laughed, and it pleased me to hear her laugh.

'I hope you know what you are doing,' I said.

'My father,' she said, 'was of the Caste of Physicians.'

So, I thought to myself, I had placed her accent rather well, either Builders or Physicians, and had I thought carefully enough about it, I might have recognised her accent as being a bit too refined for the Builders.I chuckled to myself. In effect, I had probably merely scored a lucky hit.

'I didn't know they had physicians in Treve,' I said.

'We have all the High Castes in Treve,' she said, angrily.

The only two cities, other than Ar, which I knew that Treve did not periodically attack were mountainous Thentis, famed for its tarn flocks, and Ko-ro-ba, my own city.

If the issue was grain, of course, there would be little point in going to Thentis, for she imports her own, but her primary wealth, her tarn flocks, is not negligible, and she also possesses silver, though her mines are not as rich as those of Tharna.Perhaps Treve has never attacked Thentis because she, too, is a mountain city, lying in the Mountains of Thentis, or more likely because the men of Treve respect her tarnsmen almost as much as they do their own.

The cessation of attacks on Ko-ro-ba began during the time my father, Matthew Cabot, was Ubar of that city.

He organised a system of far-flung beacons, set in fortified towers, which would give the alarm when unwelcome forces entered the territory of Ko-ro-ba.At the sight of raiders one tower would set its beacons aflame, glittering by night, or dampen it with green branches by day to produce a white smoke, and this signal would be relayed from tower to tower. Thus when the tarnsmen of Treve came to the grain fields of Ko-ro-ba, which lie for the most part some pasangs from the city, toward the Vosk and Tamber Gulf, they would find her tarnsmen arrayed against them.Having come for grain and not war, the men of Treve would then turn back, and seek out the fields of a less well-defended city.

There was also a system of signals whereby the towers could communicate with one another and the city.Thus if one tower failed to report when expected the alarm bars of Ko-ro-ba would soon ring and her tarnsmen would saddle and be aflight.

Cities, of course, would pursue the raiders from Treve, and carry the pursuit vigorously as far as the foothills of the Voltai, but there they would surrender the chase, turning back, not caring to risk their tarnsmen in the rugged, formidable territory of their rival, whose legendary ferocity among her own crags once gave pause long ago even to the mighty forces of Ar.

Treve's other needs seemd to be satisfied much in the same way as her agricultural ones, for her raiders were known from the borders of the Fair of En'Kara, in the very shadow of the Sardar, to the delta of the Vosk and the islands beyond, such as Tyros and Cos.The results of these raids might be returned to Treve or sold, perhaps even at the Fair of En'Kara, or another of the four great Sardar Fairs, or if not, they could always be disposed of easily without question in distant, crowded, malignant Port Kar.

'How do the people of Treve live?' I asked Vika.

'We raise the verr,' she said.

I smiled.

The verr was a mountain goat indigenous to the Voltai.It was a wild, agile, ill-tempered beast, long-haired and spiral-horned.Among the Voltai crags it would be worth one's life to come within twenty yards of one.

'Then you are a simple, domestic folk,' I said.

'Yes,' said Vika.

'Mountain herdsmen,' I said.

'Yes,' said Vika.

And then we laughed together, neither of us able to restrain ourselves.

Yes, I knew the reputation of Treve.It was a city rich in plunder, probably as lofty, inaccessible and impregnable as a tarn's nest.Indeed, Treve was known as the Tarn of the Voltai.It was an arrogant, never-conquered citadel, a stronghold of men whose way of life was banditry, whose women lived on the spoils of a hundred cities.

And it was the city from which Vika had come.

I believed it.

But yet tonight she had been gentle, and I had been kind to her.

Tonight we had been friends.

She went to the chest against the wall, to replace the tube of ointment.

'The ointment will soon be absorbed,' she said.'In a few minutes there will be no trace of it, nor of the cuts.'

I whistled.

'The physicians of Treve,' I said, 'have marvellous medicines.'

'It is an ointment of Priest-Kings,' she said.

I was pleased to hear this, for it suggested vulnerability. 'Then Priest-Kings can be injured?' I asked.

'Their slaves can,' said Vika.

'I see,' I said.

'Let us not speak of Priest-Kings,' said the girl.

I looked at her, standing across the room, lovely, facing me in the dim light.

'Vika,' I asked, 'was your father truly of the Caste of Physicians?'

'Yes,' she said, 'why do you ask?'

'It does not matter,' I said.

'But why?' she insisted.

'Because,' I said, 'I thought you might have been a bred Pleasure Slave.'

It was a foolish thing to say, and I regretted it immediately.She stiffened.'You flatter me,' she said, and turned away.I had hurt her.

I made a move to approach her but without turning, she said, 'Please do not touch me.'

And then she seemed to straighten and turned to face me, once again the old and scornful Vika, challenging, hostile.'But of course you may touch me,' she said, 'for you are my master.'

'Forgive me,' I said.

She laughed bitterly, scornfully.

It was truly a woman of Treve who stood before me now.

I saw her as I had never seen her before.

Vika was a bandit princess, accustomed to be clad in silk and jewels from a thousand looted caravans, to sleep on the richest furs and sup on the most delicate viands, all purloined from galleys, beached and burnt, from the ravished storerooms of outlying, smoking cylinders, from the tables and treasure chests of homes whose men were slain, whose daughters wore the chains of slave girls, only now she herself, Vika, this bandit princess, proud Vika, a woman of lofty, opulent Treve, had fallen spoils herself in the harsh games of Gor, and felt on her own throat the same encircling band of steel with which the men of her city had so often graced the throats of their fair, weeping captives.

Vika was now property.

My property.

Her eyes regarded me with fury.

Insolently she approached me, slowly, gracefully, as silken in her menace as the she-larl, and then to my astonishment when she stood before me, she knelt, her hands on her thighs, her knees in the position of the Pleasure Slave, and dropped her head in scornful submission.

She raised her head and her taunting blue eyes regarded me boldly.'Here, Master,' she said, 'is your Pleasure Slave.'

'Rise,' I said.

She rose gracefully and put her arms about my neck and moved her lips close to mine.'You kissed me before,' she said. 'Now I shall kiss you.'

I looked into those blue eyes and they looked into mine, and I wondered how many men had been burned, and had died, in that smouldering, sullen fire.

Those magnificent lips brushed mine.

'Here,' she said softly, imperiously, 'is the kiss of your Pleasure Slave.'

I disengaged her arms from my neck.

She looked at me in bewilderment.

I walked from the room into the dimly lit hall.In the passageway, I extended my hand to her, that she might come and take it.

'Do I not please you?' she asked.

'Vika,' I said, 'come here and take the hand of a fool.'

When she saw what I intended she shook head slowly, numbly. 'No,' she said.'I cannot leave the chamber.'

'Please,' I said.

She shook with fear.

'Come,' I said, 'take my hand.'

Slowly, trembling, moving as though in a dream, the girl approached the portal, and this time the sensors could not glow.

She looked at me.

'Please,' I said.

She looked again at the sensors, which stared out of the wall like black, gutted metal eyes.They were burned and still, shattered, and even the wall in their vicinity showed the seared, scarlet stain of their abrupt termination.

'They can hurt you no longer,' I said.

Vika took another step and then it seemed her legs would fail her and she might swoon.She put out her hand to me.Her eyes were wide with fear.

'The women of Treve,' I said, 'are brave, as well as beautiful and proud.'

She stepped through the portal and fell fainting in my arms.

I lifted her and carried her to the stone couch.

I regarded the ruined sensors in the portal and the wreckage of the surveillance device which had been concealed in the energy bulb.

Perhaps now I would not have so long to wait for the Priest-Kings of Gor.

Vika had said that when they wished me, they would come for me.

I chuckled.

Perhaps now they would be encouraged to hasten their appointment.

I gently placed Vika on the great stone couch.