John Norman - Gor 03 - Priest - King of Gor.pdf - John Norman - waldek.adams

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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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