The dancer turned from the tables and, hands high over her head, approached me.
She swayed to the music before me. “You commanded me to dance my beauty for the
guests of Samos,” said she, “Master. You, too, are such a guest.
I looked upon her, narrow lidded, as she strove to please me.
Then she moaned and turned away, and, as the music swirled to its maddened,
frenzied climax, she spun, whirling, in a jangle of bells and clashing barbaric
ornaments before the guests of Samos. Then, as the music suddenly stopped, she
fell to the floor helpless, vulnerable, a female slave. Her body, under the
torchlight, shone with a sheen of sweat. She gasped for breath; her body was
beautiful, her breasts lifting and falling, as she drank deeply of the air. Her
lips were parted. Now that her dance was finished she could scarcely move. We
had not been gentle with her. She looked up at me and lifted her hand. It was at
my feet she lay.
I gestured her to her knees, head down. She obeyed. Her hair fell to the map
floor.It touched the portion of the map which, together Samos and I had been
contemplating. I regarded the lettering, in Gorean script.
“The secret is there,” said Samos, pointing to the map, “in the Tahari.”
Delicately, timidly the dancer reached out, with her two hands, to touch my
ankle. She looked at me, agonized.
I signaled to the guards. She cried out with misery as she was dragged by the
ankle across the door and thrown over two of the small tables.
I would let others warm her.
The men cried out with pleasure.
Her final yieldings I would force from her later, when it pleased me.
She who had once been Miss Priscilla Blake-Allen, a free Earth girl prior to her
enslavement, struggled to her feet, her eyes wide with horror, trying to
struggle backward but the guards’ hands on her arms, she now only a nameless
slave, for her master had not yet given her a name, held her in place.
She looked at her master, Samos of Port Kar. He gave a sign. She screamed.
She fought the harness.
She too was thrown across the tables.
Ibn Saran, salt merchant of Kasra, did not rise from behind the table behind
which, cross-legged, he sat. His eyes were half closed. He paid no attention to
the raping of the slaves. He, too, it seemed, contemplated the map.
“Either girl’s use is yours, noble Ibn Saran,” said Samos, “if you wish.”
“My thanks,” said he, “Noble Samos. But it will be in my own tent, on the
submission mats, that I will teach a slave to be a slave.”
I turned to Samos. “I will leave in the morning” I said.
“Do I understand,” asked Ibn Saran, “that your path leads you to the Tahari?”
“Yes,” I said.
“That direction, too, is mine,” said Ibn Saran. “I, too, leave in the morning.
Perhaps we might travel together?”
“Good,” I said.
Ibn Saran rose to his feet, and brushed his hand against the right palm of
Samos, twice, and against my right palm, twice. “May your water bags be never
empty. May you always have water.”
“May your water bags be never empty,” I said. “May you always have water.”
He then bowed, turned, and left the room.
“The Kur,” I said. I referred to the beast in the dungeons of Samos.
“Yes?” said Samos.
“Free it,” I said.
“Free it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is it your intention to follow it?”
“No,” I said. Few, if any humans, in my opinion, could long follow an adult Kur.
They are agile, highly intelligent beasts. Their senses are unusually keen. It
would be difficult, if not impossible to trail, perhaps for weeks, such a
keen-sensed, wary, suspicious creature. It would be almost suicidal, in my
opinion, to attempt it. Sooner or later the beast would become aware of the
pursuit. At that point the hunter would become the hunted. The night vision of
the Kur is superb.
“Do you know what you are doing?” asked Samos.
“There are factions among Kurii” I said. “It is my feeling that this Kur may be
our ally.”
“You are mad,” said Samos.
“Perhaps,” I granted.
“I shall release the Kur,” said Samos, “two days after you have departed Port
Kar.”
“Perhaps I shall meet it in the Tahari,” I said.”
“I would not look forward to the meeting,” he said.
I smiled.
“You leave in the morning?” asked Samos.
“I shall leave before morning,” I said.
“Are you not traveling with Ibn Sarah?” asked Samos.
“No,” I said. “I do not trust him.”
Samos nodded. “Nor do I,” he said.
2 The Streets of Tor
“Water! Water!” called the man.
“Water,” I said.
He came to me, bent over, tattered, swarthy, grinning up at me, the verrskin bag
over his shoulder, the brass cups, a dozen of them, attached to shoulder straps
and his belt, rattling and clinking. His shoulder on the left was damp from the
bag. There were sweat marks on his torn shirt, under the straps. One of the
brass cups he unhooked from his belt. Without removing the bag from his
shoulder, he filled the cup. He wore a head scarf, the wrapped turban, wound
about his head. It was of rep-cloth. It protects the head from the sun; its
folds allow beat and perspiration to escape, evaporating, and, of course, air to
enter and circulate. Among lower-class males, too, it provides a soft cushion,
on which boxes, and other burdens, may be conveniently carried on the head,
steadied by the right hand. The water flowed into the cup through a tiny
vent-and-spigot device, which wastes little water, by reducing spillage, which
was tied in and waxed into a hole left in the front left foreleg of the verr
skin. The skins are carefully stripped and any rents in the skin are sewed up,
the seams coated with wax. When the whole skin is thoroughly cleaned of filth
and hair, straps are fastened to it so that it may be conveniently carried on
the shoulder, or over the back, the same straps serving, with adjustment, for
either mode of support. The cup was dirty.
I took the water and gave the man a copper tarsk.
I smelled the spices and sweat of Tor. I drank slowly. The sun was high.
Tor, lying at the northwest corner of the Tahari, is the principal supplying
point for the scattered oasis communities of that dry vastness, almost a
continent of rock, and heat, and wind and sand. These communities, sometimes
quite large, numbering in hundreds, sometimes thousands of citizens depending on
the water available, are often hundreds of pasangs apart. They depend on
caravans, usually from Tor, sometimes from Kasra, sometimes even from far Turia,
to supply many of their needs. In turn, of course, caravans export the products
of the oases. To the oases caravans bring various goods, for example, rep-cloth,
embroidered cloths, silks, rugs, silver, gold, jewelries, mirrors, kailiauk
tusk, perfumes, hides, skins, feathers, precious woods, tools, needles, worked
leather goods, salt, nuts and spices, jungle birds, prized as pets, weapons,
rough woods, sheets of tin and copper, the tea of Bazi, wool from the bounding
Hurt, decorated, beaded whips, female slaves, and many other forms of
merchandise. The principal export of the oases is dates and pressed-date bricks.
Some of the date palms grow to more than a hundred feet high. It takes ten years
before they begin to bear fruit. They will then yield fruit for more than a
century. A given tree, annually, yields between one and five Gorean weights of
fruit. A weight is some ten stone, or some forty Earth pounds. A great amount of
farming, or perhaps one should speak of gardening, is done at the oasis, but
little of this is exported. At the oasis will be grown a hybrid, brownish
Sa-Tarna, adapted to the heat of the desert; most Sa-Tarna is yellow; and beans,
berries, onions tuber suls, various sorts of melons, a foliated leaf vegetable,
called Katch, and various root vegetables, such as turnips, carrots, radishes,
of the sphere and cylinder varieties, and korts, a large, brownish-skinned,
thick-skinned, sphere-shaped vegetable, usually some six inches in width, the
interior of which is yellowish, fibrous and heavily seeded. At the oasis,
because of the warm climate, the farmers can grow two or more crops a year.
Larma and tospits are also grown at the oases, in small orchards. Some rep is
grown, for cloth, but most cloth comes to the oases from caravans. Kaiila and
verr are found at the oases, but not in great numbers. The herds of these
animals are found in the desert. They are kept by nomads, who move them from one
area of verr grass to another or from one water hole to another, as the holes,
for the season, go dry. Smaller water sources are used in the spring, for these
are the first to go dry, larger ones later in the year. No grass grows about
these water holes because many animals are brought to them and graze it to the
earth. They are usually muddy ponds, with some stunted trees about, centered in
the midst of an extensive radius of grassless, cracked, dry earth. Meat, hides,
and animal-hair cloth are furnished to the oases by the nomads. In turn, from
the oases the nomads receive, most importantly, Sa-Tarna grain and the Bazi tea.
They receive, as well, of course, other trade goods. Sa-Tarna is the main staple
of the nomads. They, in spite of raising herds, eat very little meat. The
animals are too precious for their trade value, and their hair and milk, to be
often slaughtered for food. A nomad boy of fifteen will often have eaten meat no
more than a dozen times in his life. Raiders, however, feast well on meat. The
animals mean little to them and come to them cheaply. Tea is extremely important
to the nomads. It is served hot and heavily sugared. It gives them strength
then, in virtue of the sugar, and cools them, by making them sweat, as well as
stimulating them. It is drunk three small cups at a time, carefully measured.
I finished the cup of water and handed the cup back to the water carrier. He
bowed, grinning, the bag, swollen and bulging, damp on his shoulder, and.
hooking the cup on his belt, backed away. “Water!” he called. “Water!”
I blinked my eyes against the heat and glare of the sun. The buildings of Tor
are of mud brick, covered with colored, often flaking, plasters. But now, in the
sun, and the dust, raised by the people in the streets, everything seemed
drained of color. I would soon have to buy appropriate garments. In such a city
I was too conspicuous.
I made my way toward the bazaar.
I knew the light lance, and the swift, silken kaiila. I had learned these with
the Wagon Peoples. But I did not know the scimitar. The short sword, now slung
over my left shoulder, in the common fashion, would be of little use on kaiila
back. The men of the Tahari do not fight on foot. A man on foot in the desert,
in warfare, is accounted a dead man.
I looked up at the buildings. I was now in the shade, descending a narrow, steep
street, toward the bazaar. The buildings in Tor are seldom more than four
stories high, which is about as high as one may build safely with beams and mud
brick. Because of the irregular topography of Tor, however, which is a hilly,
rocky area, like most of the Tahari terrain, many of the buildings, built on
shelves and rises, seemed considerably higher. These buildings, on the outside
smooth and bleak, save for occasional narrow windows, high, not wide enough to
admit a body, abut directly on the streets, making the streets like deep, walled
alleys. In the center of the street is a gutter. It seldom rains in Tor, but the
gutter serves to collect waste, which is often thrown into it, through open
doors, by slaves. Within these walls, however, so pressing upon the street, I
knew there were often gardens, walled, well-watered, beautiful, and cool, dark
rooms, shielded from the heat and sun, many with superb appointments. Tor was,
as Gorean cities went, rich, trading city. It was headquarters for thousands of
caravan merchants. In it, too, were housed many craftsmen, practicing their
industries, carvers, varnishers, table makers, gem cutters, jewelers, carders,
dyers of cloth, weavers of rugs, tanners, makers of slippers, toolers of
leather, potters, glaziers, makers of cups and kettles, weapon smiths, and many
others. Much of the city, of course, was organized to support the caravan trade.
There were many walled, guarded warehouses, requiring their staffs of scribes
and guards, and, in hundreds of hovels, lived kaiila tenders, drovers, and such,
who would, at the caravan tables, when their moneys had been exhausted, apply,
if accepted, making their mark on the roster, once more for a post with some new
caravan. Guards for these caravans, incidentally, were usually known by, and
retained by, caravan merchants between caravans. They were known men. Tenders
and drovers, on the whole, came and went. Elaborate random selection devices,
utilizing coins and sticks, and formulas, were sometimes used by merchants to
assure that applying tenders and drovers were selected, if they were not known,
by chance. Tenders and drovers were assured that this was to insure fairness.
Actually, of course, as was well known, this was a precaution against the danger
of hiring, en bloc, unwittingly, an organized group of men, who might, prior to
their hiring, have formed a plan to slay the guards and merchants and make off
with the caravan. Tenders and drovers, however, like men generally, were an
honest sort. When they returned to Tor, of course, they had been long in the
desert. At the end of the trip they received their wages. Sometimes, not even a
hundred yards from the warehouses, these men would be met by enterprising cafe
owners, praising the advantages of their respective establishments. The owners
of these cafes, usually, would bring with them a chain of their girls, stripped,
as free women in the Tahari districts may not be, purportedly a typical
selection of the stock available.
“In my house,” he would call, indicating one or another of the girls, “rent the
key to her chains.”
But generally the men would proceed past these enticements, which were, from
what I saw, far from negligible, and hurry toward their favorite cafes and
/> hostels, whose wares, I gathered, did not need such blatant advertisement, whose
worth, and capacities for total and complete satisfaction were apparently well
known. Certain of these cafes I might mention. The Silken Oasis is well known,
even in Ar, but it is extremely expensive; in the middle range of price are the
Golden Collar and the Silver Chain, both under the same management, that of a
Turian named Haran; good, relatively inexpensive cafes are the Thong, which I
would recommend, the Veminium, the Pomegranate, the Red Cages and the Pleasure
Garden. These various establishments, and more than forty others, from the point
of view of tenders and drovers, have one thing in common. They succeed in
separating, with celerity and efficiency, a fellow from his money. I do not feel
this way myself. I think most of them, with the exception of the Silken Oasis,
are reasonable. The drover’s objection, I think, is largely a function of the
fact that he does not have a great deal of money to spend. What there is,
accordingly, seems rapidly diminished. Tenders and drovers often proceed from
one cafe to the other, for several nights. The wages for a caravan trip, which
often takes months, commonly will last the fellow about ten days, or, if nursed
out, some fifteen days. They are, of course, a rather pleasant ten or fifteen
days. At the end of this time, after a day or so of some physiological
discomfort, usually violent nausea and blinding headaches, it is common to find
the man again back at the tables, once more attempting to vend his services to
the master of a caravan.
A fellow walked past me, carrying several vulos, alive, heads down, their feet
tied together. He was followed by another fellow, carrying a basket of eggs.
I followed them, as they would be going to the market streets, near which was
the bazaar.
The water in an oasis is, of course, at its lowest point. Residences, at an
oasis, are built on the higher ground, where nothing will grow. It is the
valley, naturally, which, irrigated, usually by hand, though sometimes with
clumsy wooden machinery, supports the agriculture. Land, at an oasis, which will
grow food, is not wasted on domiciles. Tor, rather similarly, though few crops
were grown within its walls, was built high, about its water, several wells in
the deepest area in the city. The architecture of Tor, in concentric circles,
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