John Norman - Gor 03 - Priest - King of Gor

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PRIEST-KINGS OF GOR

Volume three of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth

by John Norman

Chapter One: THE FAIR OF EN'KARA

I, Tarl Cabot, formerly of Earth, am one who is known to the Priest-Kings of Gor.

It came about late in the month of En'Kara in the year 10,117 from the founding of the City of Ar

that I came to the Hall of Priest-Kings in the Sardar Mountains on the planet Gor, our Counter-

Earth.

I had arrived four days before on tarnback at the black palisade that encircles the dreaded

Sardar, those dark mountains, crowned with ice, consecrated to the Priest-Kings, forbidden to me,

to mortals, to all creatures of flesh and blood.

The tarn, my gigantic, hawklike mount, had been unsaddled and freed, for it could not accompany me

into the Sardar. Once it had tried to carry me over the palisade into the mountains, but never

again would I have essayed that flight. It had been caught in the shield of the Priest-Kings,

invisible, not to be evaded, undoubtedly a field of some sort, which had so acted on the bird,

perhaps affecting the mechanism of the inner ear, that the creature had become incapable of

controlling itself and had fallen disoriented and confused to the earth below. None of the

animals of Gor, as far as I knew, could enter the Sardar. Only men could enter, and they did not

return.

I regretted freeing the tarn, for it was a fine bird, powerful, intelligent, fierce, courageous,

loyal. And, strangely, I think it cared for me. At least I cared for it. And only with harsh

words could I drive it away, and when it disappeared in the distance, puzzled, perhaps hurt, I

wept.

It was not far to the fair of En'Kara, one of the four great fairs held in the shadow of the

Sardar during the Gorean year, and I soon walked slowly down the long central avenue between the

tents, the booths and stalls, the pavilions and stockades of the fair, toward the high, brassbound

timber gate, formed of black logs, beyond which lies the Sardar itself, the sanctuary of this

world's gods, known to the men below the mountains, the mortals, only as Priest-Kings.

I would stop briefly at the fair, for I must purchase food for the journey into the Sardar and I

must entrust a leather-bound package to some member of the Caste of Scribes, a package which

contained an account of what had occurred at the City of Tharna in the past months, a short

history of events which I thought should be recorded.

I wished that I had had longer to visit the fair for on another occasion at another time I should

have sought eagerly to examine its wares, drink at its taverns, talk with its merchants and attend

its contests, for these fairs are free ground for the many competitive, hostile Gorean cities, and

provide almost the sole opportunity for the citizens of various cities to meet peaceably with one

another.

It is little wonder that the cities of Gor support and welcome the fairs. Sometimes they provide

a common ground on which territorial and commercial dispute may be amicably resolved without loss

of honour, plenipotentiaries of warring cities having apparently met by accident among the silken

pavilions.

Further, members of castes such as the Physicians and Builders use the fairs for the dissemination

of information and techniques among Caste Brothers, as is prescribed in their codes in spite of

the fact that their respective cities may be hostile. And as might be expected members of the

Caste of Scribes gather here to enter into dispute and examine and trade manuscripts.

My small friend, Torm of Ko-ro-ba, of the Caste of Scribes, had been to the fairs four times in

his life. He informed me that in this time he had refuted seven hundred and eight scribes from

fifty-seven cities, but I will not vouch for the accuracy of this report, as I sometimes suspect

that Torm, like most members of his caste, and mine, tends to be a bit too sanguine in recounting

his numerous victories. Moreover I have never been too clear as to the grounds on which the

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disputes of scribes are to be adjudicated, and it is not too infrequently that both disputants

leave the field each fully convinced that he has the best of the contest. In differences among

member of my own caste, that of the Warriors, it is easier to tell who has carried the day, for

the defeated one often lies wounded or slain at the victor's feet. In the contests of scribes, on

the other hand, the blood that is spilled is invisible and the valiant foemen retire in good

order, reviling their enemies and recouping their forces for the next day's campaign. I do not

hold this against the contests of scribes; rather I commend it to the members of my own caste.

I missed Torm and wondered if I would ever see him again, bounding about excoriating the authors

of dusty scrolls, knocking the inkwell from his desk with an imperial sweep of his blue robe,

leaping on the table in birdlike fury denouncing one scribe or another for independently

rediscovering an idea that had already appeared in a century-old manuscript known to Torm of

course but not to the luckless scribe in question, rubbing his nose, shivering, leaping down to

thrust his feet against the everpresentm overloaded charcoal brazier that invariably burned under

his table, amid the litter of his scraps and parchments, regardless of whatever the outside

temperature might be.

I supposed Torm might be anywhere, for those of Ko-ro-ba had been scattered by the Priest-Kings.

I would not search the fair for him, nor if he were here would I make my presence known, for by

the will of the Priest-Kings no two men of Ko-ro-ba might stand together, and I had no wish to

jeopardise the little scribe. Gor would be the poorer were it not for his furious eccentricities;

the Counter-Earth would simply not be the same without belligerent, exasperated little Torm. I

smiled to myself. if I should meet him I knew he would thrust himself upon me and insist upon

being taken into the Sardar, though he would known it would mean his death, and I would have to

bundle him in his blue robes, hurl him into a rain barrel and make my escape. Perhaps it would be

safer to drop him into a well. Torm had stumbled into more than one well in his life and no one

who knew him would think it strange to find him sputtering about at the bottom of one.

The fairs incidentally are governed by Merchant Law and supported by booth rents and taxes levied

on the items exchanged. The commercial facilities of these fairs, from money changing to general

banking, are the finest I know of on Gor, save those in Ar's Street of Coins, and letters of

credit are accepted and loans negotiated, though often at usurious rates, with what seems reckless

indifference. Yet perhaps this is not so puzzling, for the Gorean cities will, within their own

walls, enforce the Merchant Law when pertinent, even against their own citizens. If they did not,

of course, the fairs would be closed to the citizens of that city.

The contests I mentioned which take place at the fairs are, as would be expected, peaceable, or I

should say, at least do not involve contests of arms. Indeed it is considered a crime against the

Priest-Kings to bloody one's weapons at the fairs. The Priest-Kings, I might note, seem to be

more tolerant of bloodshed in other localities.

Contests of arms, fought to the death, whereas they may not take place at the fairs are not

unknown on Gor, and are popular in some cities. Contests of this sort, most often involving

criminals and impoverished soldiers of fortune, offer prizes of amnesty or gold and are

customarily sponsored by rich men to win the approval of the populace of their cities. Sometimes

these men are merchants who wish thereby to secure goodwill for their products; sometimes they are

practitioners of law, who hope to sway the votes of jury men; sometimes they are Ubars or High

Initiates who find it in their interests to keep the crowds amused. Such contests, in which life

is lost, used to be popular at Ar, for example, being sponsored in that city by the Caste of

Initiates, who regard themselves as being the intermediaries between Priest-Kings and men, though

I suspect that, at least on the whole, they know as little about the Priest-Kings as do other men.

These contests, it might be mentioned, were banned in Ar when Kazrak of Port Kar became

administrator of that city. It was not an action which was popular with the powerful Caste of

Initiates.

The contests at the fairs, however, I am pleased to say, offer nothing more dangerous than

wrestling, with no holds to the death permitted. Most of the contests involve such things as

racing, feats of strength, and skill with bow and spear. Other contests of interest pit choruses

and poets and players of various cities against one another in the several theatres of the fair.

I had a friend once, Andreas of the desert city of Tor, of the Caste of Poets, who had once sung

at the fair and won a cap filled with gold. And perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that the

streets of the fair abound with jugglers, puppeteers, musicians and acrobats who, far from the

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theatres, compete in their ancient fashions for the copper tarn disks of the broiling, turbulent

crowds.

Many are the objects for sale at the fair. I passed among wines and textiles and raw wool, silks,

and brocades, copperware and glazed pottery, carpets and tapestries, lumber, furs, hides, salt,

arms and arrows, saddles and harness, rings and bracelets and necklaces, belts and sandals, lamps

and oils, medicines and meats and grains, animals such as the fierce tarns, Gor's winged mounts,

and tharlarions, her domesticated lizards, and long chains of miserable slaves, both male and

female.

Although no one may be enslaved at the fair, slaves may be bought and sold within its precincts,

and slavers do a thriving business, exceeded perhaps only by that of Ar's Street of Brands. The

reason for this is not simply that here is a fine market for such wares, since men from various

cities pass freely to and fro at the fair, but that each Gorean, whether male or female, is

expected to see the Sardar Mountains, in honour of the Priest-Kings, at least once in his life,

prior to his twenty-fifth year. Accordingly the pirates and outlaws who beset the trade routes to

ambush and attack the caravans on the way to the fair, if successful, often have more than

inanimate metals and cloths to reward their vicious labours.

This pilgrimage to the Sardar, enjoyed by the Priest-Kings according to the Caste of the

Initiates, undoubtedly plays its role in the distribution of beauty among the hostile cities of

Gor. Whereas the males who accompany a caravan are often killed in its defence or driven off,

this fate, fortunate or not, is seldom that of the caravan's women. It will be their sad lot to

be stripped and fitted with the collars and chains of slave girls and forced to follow the wagons

on foot to the fair, or if the caravan's tharlarions have been killed or driven off, they will

carry its goods on their backs. Thus one practical effect of the edict of the Priest-Kings is

that each Gorean girl must, at least once in her life, leave her walls and take the very serious

risk of becoming a slave girl, perhaps the prize of a pirate or outlaw.

The expeditions sent out from the cities are of course extremely well guarded, but pirates and

outlaws too can band together in large numbers and sometimes, even more dangerously, one city's

warriors, in force, will prey upon another city's caravans. This, incidentally, is one of the

more frequent causes of war among these cities. The fact that warriors of one city sometimes wear

the insignia of cities hostile to their own when they make these attacks further compounds the

suspicions and internecine strife which afflicts the Gorean cities.

This chain of reflections was occasioned in my mind by sight of some men of Port Kar, a savage,

coastal city on the Tamber Gulf, who were displaying a sullen chain of twenty freshly branded

girls, many of them beautiful. They were from the island city of Cos and had undoubtedly been

captured at sea, their vessel burned and sunk. Their considerable charms were fully revealed to

the eye of appraising buyers who passed down the line. The girls were chained throat to throat,

their wrists locked behind the small of their backs with slave bracelets, and the knelt in the

customary position of Pleasure Slaves. When a possible buyer would stop in front of one, one of

the bearded scoundrels from Port Kar would poke her with a slave whip and she would lift her head

and numbly repeat the ritual phrase of the inspected slave girl, Buy Me, Master. They had thought

to come to the Sardar as free women, discharging their obligation to the Priest-Kings. They would

leave as slave girls. I turned away.

My business was with the Priest-Kings of Gor.

Indeed, I had come to the Sardar to encounter the fabled Priest-Kings, whose incomparable power so

inextricably influences the destinies of the cities and men of the Counter-Earth.

It is said that the Priest-Kings know whatever transpires on their world and that the mere lifting

of their hand can summon all the powers of the universe. I myself had seen the power of Priest-

Kings and knew that such beings existed. I myself had traveled in a ship of the Priest-Kings

which had twice carried me to this world; I had seen their power so subtly exercised as to alter

the movements of a compass needle, so grossly demonstrated as to destroy a city, leaving behind

not even the stones of what had once been a dwelling place of men.

It is said that neither the physical intricacies of the cosmos nor the emotions of human beings

are beyond the scope of their power, that the feelings of men and the motions of atoms and stars

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are as one to them, that they can control the very forces of gravity and invisibly sway the hearts

of human beings, but of this latter claim I wonder, for once on a road to Ko-ro-ba, my city, I met

one who had been a messenger of Priest-Kings, one who had been capable of disobeying them, one

from the shards of whose burnt and blasted skull I had removed a handful of golden wire.

He had been destroyed by Priest-Kings as casually as one might jerk loose the thong of a sandal.

He had disobeyed and he had been destroyed, immediately and with grotesque dispatch, but the

important thing was, I told myself, that he had disobeyed, that he could disobey, that he had been

able to disobey and choose the ignominious death he knew must follow. He had won his freedom

though it had, as the Goreans say, led him to the Cities of Dust, where, I think, not even Priest-

Kings care to follow. He had, as a man, lifted his fist against the might of Priest-Kings and so

he had died, defiantly, though horribly, with great nobility.

I am of the Caste of Warriors, and it is in our codes that the only death fit for a man is that in

battle, but I can no longer believe that this is true, for the man I met once on the road to Ko-ro-

ba died well, and taught me that all wisdom and truth does not lie in my own codes.

My business with the Priest-Kings is simple, as are most matters of honour and blood. For some

reason unbeknown to me they have destroyed my city, Ko-ro-ba, and scattered its peoples. I have

been unable to learn the fate of my father, my friends, my warrior companions, and my beloved

Talena, she who was the daughter of Marlenus, who had once been Ubar of Ar - my sweet, fierce,

wild, gentle, savage, beautiful love, she who is my Free Companion, my Talena, forever the Ubara

of my heart, she who burns forever in the sweet, lonely darkness of my dreams. Yes, I have

business with the Priest-Kings.

Chapter Two: IN THE SARDAR

I looked down the long, broad avenue to the huge timber gate at its end, and beyond the gate to

the black crags of the inhospitable Sardar Range.

It took not much time to purchase a small bundle of supplies to take into the Sardar, nor was it

difficult to find a scribe to whom I might entrust the history of the events at Tharna. I did not

ask his name nor he mine. I knew his caste, and he knew mine, and it was enough. He could not

read the manuscript as it was written in English, a language as foreign to him as Gorean would be

to most of you, but yet he would treasure the manuscript and guard it as though it were a most

precious possession, for he was a scribe and it is the way of scribes to love the written word and

keep it from harm, and if he could not read the manuscript, what did it matter - perhaps someone

could someday, and then the words which had kept their secret for so long would at last enkindle

the mystery of communication and what had been written would be heard and understood.

At last I stood before the towering gate of black logs, bound with its wide bands of brass. The

fair lay behind me and the Sardar before. My garments and my shield bore no insignia, for my city

had been destroyed. I wore my helmet. None would know who entered the Sardar.

At the gate I was met by one of the Caste of Initiates, a dour, thin-lipped, drawn man woth deep

sunken eyes, clad in the pure white robes of his caste.

'Do you wish to speak to Priest-Kings?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'Do you know what you do?'

'Yes,' I said.

The Initiate and I gazed evenly at one another, and then he stepped aside, as he must have done

many times. I would not be the first, of course, to enter the Sardar. Many men and sometimes

women had entered these mountains but it is not known what they found. Sometimes these

individuals are young idealists, rebels and champions of lost causes, who wish to protest to

Priest-Kings; sometimes they are individuals who are old or diseased and are tired of life and

wish to die; sometimes they are piteous or cunning or frightened wretches who think to find the

secret of immortality in those barren crags; and sometimes they are outlaws fleeing from Gor's

harsh justice, hoping to find at least brief sanctuary in the cruel, mysterious domain of Priest-

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Kings, a country into which they may be assured no mortal magistrate or vengeful band of human

warriors will penetrate. I suppose the Initiate might account me noe of the latter, for my

habiliments bore no insignia.

He turned away from me and went to a small pedestal at one side. On the pedestal there was a

silver bowl, filled with water, a vial of oil and a towel. He dipped his fingers in the bowl,

poured a bit of oil on his hands, dipped his fingers again and then wiped his hands dry.

On each side of the huge gate there stood a great windlass and chain, and to each windlass a gang

of blinded slaves was manacled.

The Initiate folded the towel carefully and replaced it on the pedestal.

'Let the gate be opened,' he said.

The slaves obediently pressed their weight against the timber spokes of the two windlasses and

they creaked and the chains tightened. Their naked feet slipped in the dirt and they pressed ever

more tightly against the heavy, obdurate bars. Now their bodies humped with pain, clenching

themselves against the spokes. Their blind eyes were fixed on nothing. The blood vessels in their

necks and legs and arms began to distend until I feared they might burst open through the tortured

flesh; the agonised miscles of their straining knotted bodies, like swollen leather, seemed to

fill with pain as if pain were a fluid; their flesh seemed to fuse with the wood of the bars; the

backs of their garments discoloured with a scarlet sweat. Men had broken their own bones on the

timber spokes of the Sardar windlasses.

At last there was a great creak and the vast portal parted a hand's breadth and then the width of

a shoulder and the width of a man's body.

'It is enough,' I said.

I entered immediately.

As I entered I heard the mournful tolling of the huge, hollow metal bar which stands some way from

the gate. I had heard the tolling before, and knew that it signified that yet another mortal had

entered the Sardar. It was a depressing sound, and not made less so by my realisation that in

this case it was I who had entered the mountains. As I listened it occurred to me that the

purpose of the bar might not be simply to inform the men of the fair that the Sardar had been

entered but to inform the Priest-Kings as well.

I looked behind myself in time to see the great gate close. It shut without a sound.

The journey to the Hall of Priest-Kings was not as difficult as I had anticipated. At places

there were well-worn paths, at others even stairs had been cut in the sides of mountains, stairs

worn smooth in the millenia by the passage of countless feet.

Here and there bones littered the path, human bones. Whether these were the remains of men who

had starved or frozen in the barren Sardar, or had been destroyed by Priest-Kings, I did not know.

Upon occasion some message would be found scratched in the cliffs along the path. Some of these

were obscene, cursing the Priest-Kings; others were paeans in their praise; some were cheerful, if

in a rather pessimistic way. One I remember was: 'Eat, drink and be happy. The rest is nothing.'

Others were rather simple, and sometimes sad, such as 'No food,' 'I'm cold,' 'I'm afraid.' One

such read, 'The mountains are empty. Rena I love you.' I wondered who had written it, and when.

The inscription was worn. It had been scratched out in the old Gorean script. It had weathered

for perhaps better than a thousand years. But I knew that the mountains were not empty, for I had

evidence of Priest-Kings. I continued my journey.

I encountered no animals, nor any growing thing, nothing save the endless black rocks, the black

cliffs, and the path cut before me in the dark stone. Gradually the air grew more chill and wisps

of snow blew about me; frost began to appear on the steps and I trudged past crevices filled with

ice, deposits which had perhaps lain as they were without melting for hundreds of years. I

wrapped my cloak more firmly about myself and using my spear as a staff I forced my way upward.

Some four days into the mountains I heard for the first time in my journey the sound of a thing

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other than the wind, the sighing of snow and the groaning of ice; it was the sound of a living

thing; the sound of a mountain larl.

The larl is a predator, clawed and fanged, quite large, often standing seven feet at the shoulder.

I think it would be fair to say that it is substantially feline; at any rate its grace and sinuous

power remind me of the smaller but similarly fearsome jungle cats of my old world.

The resemblance is, I suppose, due to the mechanics of convergent evolution, both animals having

been shaped by the exigencies of the chase, the stealth of the approach and the sudden charge, and

by the requirement of the swift and devastating kill. If there is an optimum configuration for a

land predator, I suppose on my old world the palm must go to the Bengal tiger; but on Gor the

prize belongs indisputably to the mountain larl; and I cannot but believe that the structural

similarities between the two animals, though of different worlds, are more than a matter of

accident.

The larl's head is broad, sometimes more than two feet across, and shaped roughly like a triangle,

giving its skull something of the cast of a viper's save that of course it is furred and the

pupils of the eyes like the cat's and unlike the viper's, can range from knifelike slits in the

broad daylight to dark, inquisitive moons in the night.

The pelt of the larl is normally a tawny red or a sable black. The black larl, which is

predominantly nocturnal, is maned, both male and female. The red larl, which hunts whenever

hungry, regardless of the hour, and is the more common variety, possesses no mane. Females of

both varieties tend generally to be slightly smaller than the males, but are quite as aggressive

and sometimes even more dangerous, particularly in the late fall and winter of the year when they

are likely to be hunting for their cubs. I had once killed a male red larl in the Voltai Range

within pasangs of the city of Ar.

Now hearing the growl of such a beast I threw back my cloak, lifted my shield and held my spear

ready. I was puzzled that I might encounter a larl in the Sardar. How could it have entered the

mountains? Perhaps it was native. But on what could it live among these barren crags? For I had

seen nothing on which it might prey, unless one might count the men who had entered the mountains,

but their bones, scattered, white and frozen, were unsplintered and unfurrowed; they showed no

evidence of having suffered the molestation of a larl's gnawing jaws. I then understood that the

larl I had heard must be a larl of Priest-Kings, for no animal and no man enters or exists in the

Sardar without the consent of Priest-Kings and if it was fed it must be at the hand of Priest-

Kings or their servants.

In spite of my hatred of Priest-Kings I could not help but admire them. None of the men below the

mountains, the mortals, had ever succeeded in taming a larl. Even larl cubs when found and raised

by men would, on reaching their majority, on some night, in a sudden burst of atavistic fury slay

their masters and under the three hurtling moons of Gor lope from the dwellings of men, driven by

what instincts I know not, to seek the mountains where they were born. A case is known of a larl

who traveled more then twenty-five hundred pasangs to seek a certain shallow crevice in the Voltai

in which he had been whelped. He was slain at its mouth. Hunters had followed him. One among

them, an old man who had originally been one of the party that had captured the animal, identified

the place.

I advanced, my spear ready for its cast, my shield ready to be thrown over my body to protect it

from the death throes of the thrashing beast should the cast be successful. My life was in my own

hands and I was content that this should be so. I would have it no other way.

I smiled to myself. I was First Spear, for there were no others.

In the Voltai Range bands of hunters, usually from Ar, stalk the larl with the mighty Gorean

spear. Normally they so this in single file and he who leads the file is called First Spear, for

his will be the first spear cast. As soon as he casts his weapon he throws himself to the ground

and covers his body with his shield, as does each man successively behind him. This allows each

man to have a clean cast at the beast and provides some protection once the spear is thrown.

The most significant reason, however, becomes clear when the role of the last man on the file, who

is spoken of as Last Spear, is understood. Once Last Spear casts his weapon he may not throw

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himself to the ground. If he should, and any of his comrades survive, they will slay him. But

this seldom occurs for the Gorean hunters fear cowardice more than the clwas and fangs of larls.

Last Spear must remain standing, and if the beast still lives, receive its charge with only his

drawn sword. He does not hurl himself to the ground in order that he will remain conspicuously in

the larl's field of vision and thus be the object of its wounded, maddened onslaught. It is thus

that, should the spears miss their mark, he sacrifices his life for his companions who will, while

the larl attacks him, make good their escape. This may seem cruel but in the long run it tends to

be conservative of human life; it is better, as the Goreans say, fro one man to die than many.

First Spear is normally the best of the spearmen because if the larl is not slain or seriously

wounded with the first strike, the lives of all, and not simply that of Last Spear, stand in

considerable jeopardy. Paradoxically, perhaps, Last Spear is normally the weakest of the

spearmen, the least skilled. Whether this is because Gorean hunting tradition favours the weak,

protecting him with the stronger spears, or tradition scorns the weak, regarding him as the most

expendable member of the party, I do not know. The origin of this hunting practice is lost in

antiquity, being as old perhaps as men and weapons and larls.

I once asked a Gorean hunter whom I met in Ar why the larl was hunted at all. I have never

forgotten his reply. 'Because it is beautiful,' he said, 'and dangerous, and because we are

Goreans.'

I had not yet seen the beast whose growl I had heard. The path on which I trod turned a few yards

ahead. It was about a yard wide and hugged the side of a cliff, and to my left there was a sheer

precipice. The drop to its base must have been at least a full pasang. I remembered that the

boulders below were huge but from my present height they looked like grains of black sand. I

wished the cliff were on my left rather than my right in order to have a freer cast of my spear.

The path was steep but its ascent, here and there, was lightened by high steps. I have never

cared to have an enemy above me, nor did I now, but I told myself that my spear might more easily

find a vulnerable spot if the larl leapt downwards toward me than if I were above and had only the

base of its neck as my best target. From above I would try to sever the vertebrae. The larl's

skull is an even more difficult cast, for its head is almost continually in motion. Moreover, it

possesses an unobtrusive bony ridge which runs from its four nasal slits to the beginnings of the

backbone. This ridge can be penetrated by the spear but anything less than a perfect cast will

result in the weapon's being deflected through the cheek of the animal, inflicting a cruel but

unimportant wound. On the other hand if I were under the larl I would have a brief but clean

strike at the great, pounding, eight-valved heart that lies in the centre of its breast.

My heart sank for I heard another growl, that of a second beast.

I had but one spear.

I might kill one larl, but then I should almost certainly die under the jaws of its mate.

For some reason I did not fear death but felt only anger that these beasts might prevent me from

keeping my rendezvous with the Priest-Kings of Gor.

I wondered how many men might have turned back at this point, and I remembered the innumerable

white, frozen bones on the cliff below. It occurred to me that I might retreat, and return when

the beasts had gone. It seemed possible that they might not yet have discovered me. I smiled as

I thought of the foolishness of this, for these beasts before me must be the larls of Priest-

Kings, guardians of the stronghold of Gor's gods.

I loosened my sword in its sheath and continued upwards.

At last I came to the bend in the path and braced myself for the sudden bolt about that corner in

which I must cry aloud to startle them and in the same instant cast my spear at the nearest larl

and set upon the other with my drawn sword.

I hesitated for a moment and then the fierce war cry of Ko-ro-ba burst from my lips in the clear,

chill air of the Sardar and I threw myself into the open, my spear arm back, my shield high.

Chapter Three: PARP

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There was a sudden startled rattle of chains and I saw two huge, white larls frozen in the

momentary paralysis of registering my presence, and then with but an instant's fleeting passage

both beasts turned upon me and hurled themselves enraged to the lengths of their chains.

My spear had not left my hand.

Both animals were jerked up short as mighty chains, fastened to steel and bejeweled collars,

terminated their vicious charge. One was thrown on its back, so violent was its rush, and the

other stood wildly for a moment towering over me like a rearing giant stallion, its huge claws

slashing the air, fighting the collar that held it from me.

Then at the length of their chains they crouched, snarling, regarding me balefully, occasionally

lashing out with a clawed paw as if to sweep me into range of their fearsome jaws.

I was struck with wonder, though I was careful to keep beyond the range of their chains, for I had

never seen white larls before.

They were gigantic beasts, superb specimens, perhaps eight feet at the shoulder.

Their upper canine fangs, like daggers mounted in their jaws, must have been at least a foot in

length and extended well below their jaws in the manner of ancient sabre-toothed tigers. The four

nostril slits of each animal were flared and their great chests lifted and fell with the intensity

of their excitement. Their tails, long and tufted at the end, lashed back and forth.

The larger of them unaccountably seemed to lose interest in me. He rose to his feet and sniffed

the air, turning his side to me, and seemed ready to abandon any intentions of doing me harm.

Only an instant later did I understand what was happening for suddenly turning he threw himself on

his side and his head facing in the other direction hurled his hind legs at me. I lifted the

shield for to my horror in reversing his position on the chain he had suddenly added some twenty

feet to the fearful perimeter of the space alotted to him by that hated impediment. Two great

clawed paws smote my shield and hurled me twenty feet against the cliff. I rolled and scrambled

back further for the stroke of the larl had dashed me into the radius of its mate. My cloak and

garments were torn from my back by the stroke of the second larl's claws.

I struggled to my feet.

'Well done,' I said to the larl.

I had barely escaped with my life.

Now the two beasts were filled with a rage which dwarfed their previous fury, for they sensed that

I would not again approach closely enough to permit them a repetition of their primitive

stratagem. I admired the larls, for they seemed to me intelligent beasts. Yes, I said to myself,

it was well done.

I examined my shield and saw ten wide furrows torn across its brassbound hide surface. My back

felt wet with the blood from the second larl's claws. It should have felt warm, but it felt cold.

I knew it was freezing on my back. There was no choice now but to go on, somehow, if I could.

Without the small homely necessities of a needle and thread I should probably freeze. There was

no wood in the Sardar with which to build a fire.

Yes, I repeated grimly to myself, glaring at the larls, though smiling, it was well done, too well

done.

Then I heard the movement of chains and I saw that the two chains which fastened the larls were

not hooked to rings in the stone but vanished within circular apertures. Now the chains were

being slowly drawn in, much to the obvious frustration of the beasts.

The place in which I found myself was considerably wider than the path on which I had trod, for

the path had given suddenly onto a fairly large circular area in which I had found the chained

larls. One side of this area was formed by the sheer cliff which had been on my right and now

curved about making a sort of cup of stone; the other side, on my left, lay partly open to the

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frightful drop below, but was partly enclosed by another cliff, the side of a second mountain,

which impinged on the one I had been climbing. The circular apertures into which the larls'

chains were being drawn were located in these two cliffs. As the chains were drawn back, the

protesting larls were dragged to different sides. Thus a passage of sorts was cleared between

them, but the passage led only, as far as I could see, to a blank wall of stone. Yet I supposed

this seemingly impervious wall must house the portal of the Hall of Priest-Kings.

As the beasts had felt the tug of the chains they had slunk snarling back against the cliffs, and

now they crouched down, their chains little more than massive leashes. I thought the snowy

whiteness of their pelts was beautiful. Throaty growls menaced me, and an occasional paw, the

claws extended, was lifted, but the beasts made no effort now to pull against the grim, jewel-set

collars which bound them.

I had not long to wait for only a few moments later, perhaps no more than ten Gorean Ihn, a

section of stone rolled silently back and upward revealing a rock passage beyond of perhaps some

eight feet square.

I hesitated, for how did I know but that the chains of the larls might be loosed once I was

between them. How did I know what might lie before me in that dark, quiet passage? As I hesitated

that moment, I became aware of a motion inside the passage, which gradually became a white-clad

rather short, rotund figure.

To my amazement a man stepped from the passage, blinking in the sun. He was clad in a white robe,

somewhat resembling those of the Initiates. He wore sandals. His cheeks were red and his head

bald. He had long whiskery sideburns which flared merrily from his muffinlike face. Small bright

eyes twinkled under heavy white eyebrows. Most was I surprised to find him holding a tiny, round

pipe from which curled a bright wisp of smoke. Tobacco is unknown on Gor, though there are

certain vices or habits to take its place, in particular the stimulation afforded by chewing on

the leaves of the Kanda plant, the roots of which, oddly enough, when ground and dried, constitute

an extremely deadly poison.

I carefully regarded the small, rotund gentleman who stood framed so incongruously in the massive

stone portal. I found it impossible to believe that he could be dangerous, that he could in any

way be associated with the dreaded Priest-Kings of Gor. He was simply too cheerful, too open and

ingenious, too frank, and only too obviously pleased to see and welcome me. It was impossible not

to be drawn to him; I found that I liked him, though I had just met him; and that I wanted him to

like me, and that I felt he did, and that this pleased me.

If I had seen this man in my own world, this small, rotund, merry gentleman with his florid

colouring and cheerful manner I would have thought him necessarily English, and of a sort one

seldom encounters nowadays. If one had encountered him in the Eighteenth Century one might take

him for a jolly, snuff-sniffing, roisterous country squire, knowing himself the salt of the earth,

not above twitting the parson nor pinching the serving girls; in the Nineteenth Century he would

have owned an old book shop and worked at a high desk, quite outdated, kept his money in a sock,

distributed it indiscriminately to all who asked him for it, and publicly read Chaucer and Darwin

to scandalise lady customers and the local clergy; in my own time such a man could only be a

college professor, for there are few other refuges save wealth left in my world for men such as

he; one could imagine him ensconced in a university chair, perhaps affluent enough for gout,

reposing in his tenure, puffing on his pipe, a connoisseur of ales and castles, a gusty

afficionado of bawdy Elizabethan drinking songs, which he would feel it his duty to bequeath,

piously, as a portion of their rich literary heritage, to generations of recent, proper graduates

of Eton and Harrow. The small eyes regarded me, twinkling.

With a start I noticed that the pupils of his eyes were red.

When I started a momentary flicker of annoyance crossed his features, but in an instant he was

again his chuckling, affable, bubbling self.

'Come, come,' he said. 'Come along, Cabot. We have been waiting for you.'

He knew my name.

Who was waiting?

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But of course he would know my name, and those who would be waiting would be the Priest-Kings of

Gor.

I forgot about his eyes, for it did not seem important at the time, for some reason. I suppose

that I thought that I had been mistaken. I had not been. He now stepped back into the shadows of

the passage.

'You are coming, aren't you?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'My name is Parp,' he said, standing back in the passage. He puffed once on his pipe. 'Parp,' he

repeated, puffing once again.

He had not extended his hand.

I looked at him without speaking.

It seemed a strange name for a Priest-King. I do not know what I expected. He seemed to sense my

puzzlement.

'Yes,' said the man, 'Parp.' He shrugged. 'It's not much of a name for a Priest-King, but then

I'm not much of a Priest-King.' He chuckled.

'Are you a Priest-King?' I asked.

Again a momentary flicker of annoyance crossed his features. 'Of course,' he said.

It seemed that my heart stopped beating.

At that moment one of the larls gave a sudden roar. I shivered, but to my surprise the man who

called himself Parp clutched his pipe in his white hand and seemed to give a start of terror. In

a moment he was quite recovered. I found it strange that a Priest-King should fear a larl.

Without waiting to see if I would follow him he turned suddenly and went back down the passage.

I gathered my weapons and followed him. Only the rumbling growl of the now sullen mountain larls

as I passed between them convinced me that I could not be dreaming, that I had come at last to the

Hall of Priest-Kings.

Chapter Four: THE HALL OF PRIEST-KINGS

As I followed the man who called himself Parp down the stone passage the portal behind me closed.

I remember one last glimpse of the Sardar Range, the path I had climbed, the cold, blue sky and

two snowy larls, one chained on either side of the entrance.

My host did not speak but led the way with a merry stride, an almost constant curl of smoke from

his little round pipe encircling his bald pate and muttonchop whiskers and drifting back down the

passage.

The passage was lit with energy bulbs, of the sort which I had encountered in the tunnel of

Marlenus which led beneath the walls of Ar. There was nothing in the lighting of the passage, or

its construction, to suggest that the Priest-Kings' Caste of Builders, if they had one, was any

more advanced than that of the men below the mountains. Too, the passage was devoid of ornament,

lacking the mosaics and tapestries with which the beauty-loving Goreans below the mountains are

wont to glorify the places of their own habitation. The Priest-Kings, as far as I could tell, had

no art. Perhaps they would regard it as a useless excrescence detracting from the more sobre

values of life, such as, I supposed, study, meditation and the manipulation of the lives of men.

I noted that the passage which I trod was well worn. It had been polished by the sandals of

countless men and women who had walked before where I now walked, perhaps thousands of years ago,

perhaps yesterday, perhaps this morning.

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