Gor - Witness Of Gor Part 109

"Fetch her," said the officer. "The keys are in the chamber. Hurry. You know where he will be."

"Yes sir," said the man, turning about, hurrying away.

"Master!" I cried, gasping, trying to keep up.

"Be silent," he said.

In a few moments we were outside the tower and hurrying through the streets. It was gray, and cold, and there was a fog about. We began to ascend winding stairs, and were soon traversing high bridges. I did not look down, save at the narrow pa.s.sages I trod. I am frightened on the higher bridges. We heard the first bar sound.

FORTY

I knew the place. I had been here once before, on the height of this windy, lofty tower.

It was here that I had received the state collar of Treve. It was here that the great chair had been set on the dais. It was here I had first stood before the officer of Treve. It was here I had been suitably humbled, and whipped. It was here I had learned that it was not the practice of this city to compromise with its slaves.

Too, it was here that I had trod, hooded, a plank, one extending out, unbeknownst to me, over a terrible drop, hundreds of feet down, to jagged rocks below. I had removed the hood, and seen, to my horror, my situation. The jailer, the warden of the cliff cells, Tenrik, in whose care I had first been in this city, had come out upon the plank and brought me back to safety, before I might fall. Later, bound hand and foot, I had been carried to the wall again, that I might realize what could be done with me, that I might be cast down from that terrible height. I had been informed, too, that sleen came to the rocks below, at night, to look for bodies.

"Hold," said Terence, softly. He put out his hand, arresting the advance of the guard, who was to his right. I, behind them, stopped, too.

It was dark at so early an hour, but not absolutely so. We could see a figure, a large figure, a grotesque, monstrous figure, seemingly part human, seemingly part animal, bent over, near the wall, before us and to our left. It was at the place where the plank had been run out, near the place where I, bound hand and foot, had been once held in the arms of the jailer, Tenrik, he standing on the wall itself, the winds blowing against us. Something dark lay at its feet. I supposed it to be a cloak and hood, discarded.

The figure, as it could, was standing, just within the retaining wall.

I did not know if it were praying, perhaps to the Priest-Kings. perhaps to other, stranger G.o.ds, or not.

Goreans pray standing.

Fog swirled about it, like smoke, or clouds, wind-twisted, about a dark rock.

Perhaps it was not praying.

Perhaps it was only offering its homage to the world, to the environing mystery, that immensity from which we derive, one which sp.a.w.ns us and then abandons us, the unfathomable, uncaring immensity, leaving us conscious in the loneliness, in the knowledge that our laughter and our tears are of no importance, that our sorrow and pain is, in the end, when all is said and done, meaningless, that we are a joke told by accident, a cruel but touching, infinitely precious joke, told by no one to no one.

The officer of Treve, Terence, quietly removed the sword belt, the sheath and sword, from about his left shoulder, handing it to the guard, to his right.

He would, I gathered, attempt to approach the figure.

I saw nothing near the figure, but I did not think it was totally alone. I supposed that many thoughts, or memories, were with it. At such times perhaps one stands in crowds, the crowds of oneself, together with one's infancy, one's childhood, one's youth, one's past, one's present, one's weakness, one's strength, in the lonely, crowded, empty silence. At such times who knows what whispers to one. Too, perhaps honor, or duty, stood at its side, invisible to others.

Suddenly the figure spun about. "Do not approach," it warned us.

The officer of Treve stepped back.

"Tal," said the officer of Treve.

"Tal," said the figure. "Do not approach." It seemed a strange time and place for such greetings.

"Reports are to be made, on the depths," said the officer of Treve.

"They have been prepared," said the figure. "Other dispositions, too, have been made. You will find all is in order."

"Come back with us," said the officer.

"You have had me watched," said the figure, angrily, accusingly.

"Come back with us," said the officer.

"Sir?" asked the guard, to the officer's right.

"No," said the officer to him.

"Do not approach," warned the figure. From its tunic it drew forth its stiletto.

"Back," said the officer to the guard, who stepped back.

"You, too!" said the figure.

The officer, reluctantly, for I suspect he had planned to rush forward, stood back.

"Leave," said the figure.

"No," said the officer.

"I would be alone," said the figure.

"You are not alone," said the officer.

"Go!" said the figure.

"I have authorization to this surface," said the officer.

"Stay back!"

The officer stopped.

"Who is with you?" asked the figure.

"Demetrion," said the officer.

"It is Janice, too, is it not?" asked the figure.

"Yes," said the officer.

"Was your service satisfactory, Janice?" asked the figure.

"It is my hope it was, Master," I said, frightened.

"If it was not, you must expect to be severely punished, or slain," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"You are standing," he observed.

"Forgive me, Master!" I said, falling to my knees. Had I been trained for nothing? "You will stand back,"

said the figure to the men.

"We are back," the officer a.s.sured him.

The figure then returned the stiletto to his tunic. He then stepped up, to the wall about the surface of the tower. It was there that Tenrik had once held me. I had been ordered to look down. I had seen the rocks hundreds of feet below.

This was a place not only for the discomfiture of slaves.

It was also a place of execution.

From this place criminals and traitors were sometimes cast down, to the rocks below.

It was for that reason, doubtless, that he had come here.

"Hold!" cried the officer, Terence.

The figure paused on the height of the wall, and turned to face us.

There was no way, now, in which we could reach him before he would have time to act.

I wondered if the officer should have come to the surface of the tower.

Perhaps he should not have come.

Our presence here, I feared, was cruel, and intrusive.

"We have not yet concluded our Kaissa match," said the officer.

Most Gorean matches, as I understand it, consist of an odd number of games, for example, eleven or twenty-one. Needless to say, the matches sometimes take days to finish. Their current match had been set at eleven games. Each had, if I had not lost count, won five games.

"I wish you well," said the figure.

"Hold!" cried Terence. For the figure had turned to the outside, standing on the wall, that unlikely brick-and-mortar margin, that brink of forever.

"I have lost a prisoner," said the figure.

"It is nothing," said the officer. "So, too, have others, thousands of others!"

"I have betrayed my trust, my post. I have betrayed my oath. That is not nothing."

"Come down," said the officer.

"I am a traitor to my word, and to the city. I have shamed the Home Stone."

"No," said the officer.

"It has been defiled."

"No!" protested the officer.

"Such a stain can be cleansed only with blood."

The figure turned again toward the mountains.

"Hold!" cried the officer.

"Master!" cried a voice, that of Fina, running across the surface of the tower. Yards behind her came the guard who had been sent to fetch her.

The pit master came down from the wall, in fury. He grasped Fina in his arms, who was weeping, who clung to him.

The pit master turned a baleful glance upon the officer. "I left her chained!" he said, in anger.

"That she could not follow you, of course," said the officer of Treve.

"But she has been freed."

"I will die with you, Master!" she wept. "We shall die together, in one another's arms!"

"No," cried the pit master, in fury, thrusting her from him. She fell to the stones, and grasped him about the leg.

He shook himself free and glared down at her. "Return to the depths, now!" he said.

"No," said the officer. "Do not do so!"

"You have no right to do this!" cried the pit master.

"I have every right," said the officer. "You do not own her. She is the property of the state of Treve. We are not in the depths now. And my rank, I remind you, considerably exceeds yours.

Who do you obey, Fina?"

"You, Master!" she cried, defiantly.

"Very well," said the pit master, regarding the officer. "For the moment, you win."

He could, of course, come again to this place sometime, unbeknownst to us, or to another.

Indeed, he might thrust himself upon that slim blade concealed within his tunic.