by John Norman
Perhaps I could return it to you, if you were serious about its recovery.”
“I have recovered it myself,” said he.
“Then I have little with which to bargain,” admitted Hassan. “What was it I took, in which you were interested?”
“A trifle,” said the man.
“Perhaps it was another bandit,” suggested Hassan. “Many of us, veiled, resemble one another.”
“I witnessed the theft,” said he. “You did not deign to conceal your features.”
“Perhaps that was unwise on my part,” volunteered Hassan. He was clearly curious. “Yet I do not recollect purloining anything upon an occasion on which you were present. Indeed, this is my first visit to your kasbah.”
“You did not recognize me,” said the man.
“I did not mean to be uncivil,” said Hassan.
“You were in reasonable haste,” said the man.
“My business must often be conducted with dispatch,” admitted Hassan. “What was it I took?” he asked.
“A bauble,” said the man.
“I hope that you will forgive me,” said Hassan. “Further, in the light of the fact that you have recovered that in which you were interested, whatever it is, I trust that you will be willing to let bygones be bygones, and permit myself and my friend to depart, returning to us our kaiila, garments and accouterments, and perhaps bestowing upon us some water and supplies. We will then be on our way, commending your generosity and hospitality at the campfires, and will bother you no longer.”
“I am afraid that will not be possible,” said the man.
“I was not optimistic,” admitted Hassan.
“You are a bandit,” pointed out the figure on the dais.
“Doubtless each of us has our own business,” said Hassan. “Being a bandit is my business. Surely you would not hold one’s business against him.”
“No,” said the man, “but 1, too, have my business, and part of my business is to apprehend and punish bandits. You would surely not hold my business against me.”
“Of course not,” said Hassan. “That would be riot only irrational, but discourteous.” He indicated me with his head. “I have been traveling with this fellow,” he said, “a clumsy, but well-meaning oaf, a boorish date merchant, Hakim of Tor, not overly bright, but good hearted. We fell together by accident.
Should you free him, your generosity and hospitality would be commended at the campfires.”
I did not care greatly for Hassan’s description. I am not boorish.
“They must find other things of which to speak at the campfires,” said the man.
He looked about himself. On the dais, with him, were several men, low tables of food, fruit, stews, tidbits of roast verr, assorted breads. He and the males were veiled. About the dais, kneeling, waiting to serve, were slave girls, some in high collars, clad in strands of slave silk. They were not veiled. Among the upper classes in the Tahari, it is scandalously erotic, generally, that a female’s mouth should not be concealed. To see a girl’s lips and teeth is a charged experience. To touch a girl’s teeth with your teeth is prelude to the seizure of her body, an act that one would engage in only with a bold, brazen mate, or with one’s shameless slave girl, with whom one can do with, to her joy, precisely as one pleases.
“I have waited long to have you at my feet,” said the man. Then he lifted his finger. Four of the girls, with a jangle of slave bells, fled to Hassan and myself. They regarded the figure on the dais, veiled, sitting cross-legged.
“Please them,” he said. We struggled. With lips, and tongue, and small fingers, the girls addressed themselves to our pleasures. The binding fiber cut into our wrists. The ropes on our neck held us in place. We could not free ourselves.
Again the veiled man lifted his finger. Other girls, with bits of food, gave us to feed, with their tiny fingers placing tidbits, delicacies, into our months.
One girl held back our head, and others, from goblets, gave us of wines, Turian wine, sweet and thick, Ta wine, from the famed Ta grapes, from the terraces of Cos, wines even, Ka-la-nas, sweets and drys, from distant Ar. Our heads swirled.
We heard music. Musicians had entered the room. “Feast,” said the man on the dais. He clapped his hands. We shook our heads, trying to clear the wines from them. We struggled. I pulled with my head away from the eager lips and hands of the slave girl who sought to hold and kiss me. “Tafa loves you, “ she whispered, kissing me. A guard’s hand held my hair, keeping my head in place. I felt the ropes burn on my neck. I closed my eyes. I felt her lips beneath my left ear, biting and kissing. “Tafa loves you. Master,” she whispered. “Let Tafa please you.” I was startled. Suddenly I realized that this was the same girl who had been one of the pair captured by Hassan in the desert, shortly before I had first made his acquaintance. She had been the proud free woman, sold at Two Scimitars, with Zina, the traitress. It was difficult now to see in this lascivious, delicious slave, who seemed born to the collar, the proud free woman whom Hassan had earlier captured, and who had been later sold at the Bakah oasis of Two Scimitars. Some Goreans maintain that all women are born to the collar, and require only to find that man strong enough to put it on them.
I tried to pull away, but was held. “Tafa loves you,” she whispered. “Let Tafa give you pleasure.” I felt the lips of another girl at my leg and waist.
The men, veiled, observed complacently.
Again the man on the dais clapped his hands. Before us now on the tiles, in the basic position of the slave dance, too, her hands lifted over her head, wrists back to back, stood a chained girl.
Hassan’s eyes were hard.
It was Alyena.
“Do you remember this one?” asked the veiled man, of Hassan.
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“This is that of which,” said the man, “I spoke earlier. This is that in which I was once interested. This is that which you once took from me. This is the trifle, the bauble. I have now recovered it.”
Alyena trembled under the eyes of Hassan. She wore graceful, golden chains.
“It was recovered,” he said, “in the vicinity of Red Rock.”
There were tears in Alyena’s eyes. She stood in the position of the slave dance, a girl waiting to be commanded to please men.
“She was with several men,” said the man on the dais. “They fought well, with skill and savagery, and broke through to the desert beyond Red Rock.”
How was it then, I wondered, that lovely Alyena stood here, on these tiles, slave? “Then, most peculiarly,” said the man, “when apparently safe, escaped with her escort, she, suddenly, turned her kaiila about, returning, fleeing back to Red Rock.”
The oasis, or much of it, I knew, would have been in flames at that time.
“She was, of course, almost immediately captured,” said the man.
“She was crying the name ‘Hasan’.”
I could see that this did not please Hassan at all. His will had been disobeyed.
Further, I recalled that the girl had, in Red Rock, under stress, cried his name, speaking it, though she was only a girl in bondage.
“I love you, master,” cried the girl. “I wanted to be with you! At your side!”
“You are a runaway slave girl,” he said.
She wept, but did not break the position of the slave dance. “Too,” said he, “at the oasis you cried my name.” These were serious offenses.
“Forgive me, Master,” she cried. “I love you!” She had risked her life to return to Hassan. She loved him. Yet a slave girl owes her master absolute obedience.
She had violated his will in two particulars. I did not think it would go easily with her. Love on Gor does not purchase a girl lenience; it does not mitigate her bondage, nor compromise her servitude, but rather renders it the more complete, the more helpless and abject.
“Master,” wept the girl.
What a beautiful piece of slave flesh Alyena was, so vulnerable, so feminine, but how could she ha
ve been otherwise when owned by Gorean men? The man on the dais languidly lifted his finger. The musicians readied themselves. Alyena looked upon Hassan, agonized.
“What shall I do, Master?” she begged. She wore a golden metal dancing collar about her throat, golden chains looped from her wrists, gracefully to the collar ring, then fell to her ankles; there are varieties of Tahari dancing chains; she wore the oval and collar; briefly, in readying a girl, after she has been belled and silked, and bangled, and has been made up, and touched with slave perfume, she kneels, head down in a large oval of light gleaming chain, extending her wrists before her; fastened at the sides of the top of the oval are two wrist rings, at the sides of the lower loop of the oval two ankle rings; the oval is then pulled inward and the wrist and ankle rings fastened on the slave; her throat is then locked in the dancing collar, which has, under the chin, an open snap ring: with the left hand the oval is then gathered together, so the two strands of chain lie in the palm of the left hand, whence, lifted, they are placed inside the snap ring, which is then snapped shut, and locked; the two strands of chain flow freely in the snap ring; accordingly, though the girl’s wrists and ankles are fastened at generous, though inflexible limits from one another, usually about a yard for the wrists and about eighteen inches for the ankles, much of the chain may be played through, and back through, the collar ring; this permits a skillful girl a great deal of beautiful chain work: the oval and collar is traditional in the Tahari; it enhances a girl’s beauty; it interferes little with her dance, though it imposes subtle, sensuous limits upon it; a good dancer uses these limits, exploiting them deliciously; for example, she may extend a wrist, subtly holding the chain at her waist with her other hand; the chain slides through the ring, yet short of the expected movement; the chain stops her wrist; her wrist rebels, but is helpless; it must yield; her head falls; she is a chained slave girl.
“Master, what shall I do?” begged Alyena. How beautiful she was.
All eyes were upon her. Aside from her jewelries, her bells, the oval and collar, the cosmetics, the heady slave perfume, she wore six ribbons of silk, yellow, three before and three behind, some four feet in length, depending from her collar. I had always admired her brand. It was deep and delicate, and beautifully done.
“Master!” cried Alyena.
The finger of the man on the dais, he veiled in red, prepared to fall.
“Dance, Slave,” said Hassan. The man’s finger fell languidly, the musicians began to play. Alyena, before us, in the chains of the Tahari, danced. She was a most beautiful trifle, a most lovely bauble.
We feasted late, and were much pleased by the beauties of the Salt Ubar.
Finally, he said, “It is late. And you must retire, for you must rise before dawn.”
Hours before, Alyena had been dismissed from the audience chamber of the Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar.
“Take her to the guard room,” he said. “There let her give pleasure to the men.”
Alyena, still in her chains, was pulled by the hair from the room.
“You veil yourself in the manner of the Char,” I said, “but I do not think you of the Char.”
“No,” said the man on the dais.
“I had not known you were the Salt Ubar,” said 1.
“Many do not know that,” said the man.
“Why are you and your men veiled?” I asked.
“It is customary for the men of the Guard of the Dunes to veil themselves,” said he. “Their allegiance is to no tribe, but to the protection of the salt. In anonymity is a disguise for them. Freely may they move about when unveiled, none knowing they are in my fee. Veiled, their actions cannot be well traced to an individual, but only to an institution, my Ubarate.”
“You speak highly of your office,” I said.
“Few know the men of the Salt Ubar,” said he. “And, veiled, anonymous, all fear them.”
“I do not fear them,” said Hassan. “Free me, and give me a Scimitar, and we shall make test of the matter.”
“Are there others here, too, I know?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” said the man. Then he turned to the others. Unveil yourselves,” he said.
The men removed the scarlet veils. “Hamid,” said I, “lieutenant to Shakar, captain of the Aretai.” I nodded.
The man looked at me with hatred. His hand was at a dagger in his sash. “Let me slay him now,” he said.
“Perhaps you would have better fortune than when you in stealth struck Suleiman Pasha,” I said.
The man cried out in rage.
The leader, the Salt Ubar, lifted his finger and the man subsided, his eyes blazing.
“There is another here I know,” I said, nodding toward a small fellow, sitting beside the Salt Ubar, “though he is now more richly robed than when last I saw him.”
“He is my eyes and ears in Tor,” said the Salt Ubar.
“Abdul the water carrier,” said I. “I once mistook you for someone else,” I said.
“Oh?” he said.
“It does not matter now,” I said. I smiled to myself. I had thought him to be the “Abdul” of the message, that which had been placed in the scalp of the message girt, Veema, who had been sent mysteriously to the house of Samos in Port Kar. I still did not know who had sent the message. As now seemed clear to me, the message must have referred to Abdul, the Salt Ubar. He who had sent the message had doubtless been of the Tahari. It had doubtless not occurred to him that the message might have been misconstrued. In the historic sense, the planetary sense, there would have been only one likely “Abdul” in the Tahari at this time, the potent, powerful, dreaded Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar. He would be a most formidable minion of Kurii. Neither Samos nor myself, however, though we had heard of the Salt Ubar, had known his name. Further, his name is not often casually mentioned in the Tahari. It is difficult to know who are and who are not his spies. His men belong to various tribes. I might have behaved differently in the Tahari had I earlier known the name of the Salt Ubar. I wondered who had sent the message, “Beware Abdul.” How complacent I had been, how sure that I bad earlier penetrated that mystery.
“May I cut his throat?” asked the water carrier.
“We have other plans for our friend,” said the Salt Ubar. He had not yet unveiled himself, though his men, at his command, had done so.
“Have you long been known as Abdul?” I asked the Salt Ubar.
“For some five years,” said be, “since I infiltrated the kasbah and deposed my predecessor.”
“You serve Kurii,” I said.
The man shrugged. “You serve Priest-Kings,” said he. “We two have much in common, for we both are mercenaries. Only you are less wise than I, for you do not serve upon that side which will taste the salt of victory.”
“Priest-Kings are formidable enemies,” said I.
“Not so formidable as Kurii,” said he. “The Kur,” said he, “is persistent, It is tenacious. It is fierce. It will have its way. The Priest-Kings will fall. They will fail.”
I thought that what he said might be true. The Kur is determined, aggressive, merciless. It is highly intelligent, it lusts for blood, it will kill for territory and meat. The Priest-King is a relatively gentle organism, delicate and stately. It has little interest in conflict, its military posture is almost invariably defensive; it asks little more than to be left alone. I did not know if Priest-Kings, with all their brilliance, and all their great stores of knowledge on their scent-tapes, had a glandular and neurological system with which the motivations and nature of Kurii could be understood. The true nature of the Kurii might elude them, almost physiologically, like a menacing color they could not see, a terrible sound to which their sensors were almost inert. A man, I felt, could know a Kur, but Priest-Kings, I suspected, could only know about a Kur. They could know about them, but they could not know them. To know a Kur one must, perhaps, in the moonlight, face it with an ax, smell the musk of its murderous rage, see the eyes, the intelligence, the sinuo
us, hunched might of it, the blood black at its jaws, hear the blood cry, stand against its charge. A creature, who had not known hatred, lust and terror, I suspected, would be ill fitted to understand the Kur, or men.
“What you say is quite possibly true,” I said.
“I shall not ask you to serve Kurii,” said the man.
“You honor me,” I said.
“You are of the Warriors,” he said.
“It is true,” I said. Never had I been divested of the scarlet. Let who would, with steel, dispute my caste with me.
“Well,” said the man on the dais. “It is late, and we must all retire. You must be up before dawn.”
“Where is Vella?” I asked.
“I have confined her to quarters,” he said.
“Must I address you,” I asked. “As Abdul?”
The man lowered his veil. “No,” he said, “not if you do not wish to do so.”
“I know you better under another name,” I said.
“That is true,” said the man.
Hassan began to struggle. He could not part the fiber on his wrists. The ropes burned on his throat. He was held by the guards on his knees. The blade of a scimitar stood at his throat He was quiet.
“Are we to be slain at dawn?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I looked at him puzzled. Hassan, too, seemed shocked.
“You will begin a journey, with others, at dawn,” said the man. “It will be a long journey, afoot. It is my hope that you will both arrive safely.”
“What are you doing with us?” demanded Hassan.
“I herewith,” said Ibn Saran, “sentence you to the brine pits of Klima.”
We struggled to our feet, but each of us, by two guards, was held.
“Tafa, Riza,” said Ibn Saran, to two of the girls, “strip.”
They did so, to collar and brand. “You will be taken below, to the dungeons,” said Ibn Saran to us. “There you will be chained by the neck in separate cells.
In the cell of each, we will place a naked slave girl, she, too, chained by the neck, her chain within your reach, that you may, if you wish, pull her to you.”
