Priest-Kings of Gor Read online

  At the gate I was met by one of the Caste of Initiates, a dour, thin-lipped, drawn man with 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?" he asked.

  "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-Kings, a country into which they may be assured no mortal magistrate or vengeful band of human warriors will penetrate. I supposed the Initiate might account me one 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 agonized muscles 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 discolored 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 realization 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 millennia 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 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 than 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 follo
wed 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 do 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 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 claws 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, for 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 favors 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 beginning 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 center 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 cliffs below. It occurred to me that I might retreat, and return when the beasts had gone. It seemed possible 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.

  3

  Parp

  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 the 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 saber-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 allotted 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 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.