"I wish you well, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba," he said.
"I wish you well, Kron of Tharna," I said.
"We are of the same chain," he said.
"Yes," I said.
Then he turned away, abruptly I thought, and moved rapidly into the shadows.
Now only Andreas of Tor remained at my side.
He mopped back that mane of black hair like a larl" s and grinned at me. "Well," said he, "I have tried the Mines of Tharna, and now I think I shall try the Great Farms."
"Good luck," I said.
I fervently hoped that he would find the auburn-haired girl in the camisk, gentle Linna of Tharna.
"And where are you off to?" asked Andreas lightly.
"I have business with the Priest-Kings," I said.
"Ah!" said Andreas, and was silent.
We faced one another under the three moons. He seemed sad, one of the few times I had seen him so.
"I" m coming with you," he said.
I smiled. Andreas knew as well as I that men did not return from the Sardar Mountains.
"No," I said. "I think you would find few songs in the mountains." "A poet," said he, "will look for songs anywhere."
"I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot allow you to accompany me." Andreas clapped his hands on my shoulders. "Hear, dull- witted scion of the Caste of Warriors," he said, "my friends are more important to me than even my songs."
I tried to be light. I feigned skepticism. "Are you truly of the Caste of Poets?"
"Never more truly than now," said Andreas, "for how could my songs be more important than the things they celebrate?"
I marveled that he had said this, for I knew that the young Andreas of Tor might have given his arm or years of his life for what might have been a true song, one worthy of what he had seen and felt and cared for. "Linna needs you," I said. "Seek her out."
Andreas of the Caste of Poets stood in torment before me, agony in his eyes.
"I wish you well," I said, "- Poet."
He nodded. "I wish you well," he said, "- Warrior."
Perhaps both of us wondered that friendship should exist between members of such different castes, but perhaps both of us knew, though we did not say so, that in the hearts of men arms and song are never far distant. Andreas had turned to go, but he hesitated, and faced me once more. "The Priest-Kings," he said, "will be expecting you."
"Of course," I said.
Andreas lifted his arm. "Tal," he said, sadly. I wondered why he had said this, for it is a word of greeting.
"Tal," I said, returning the salute.
I think perhaps he wanted to greet me once more, that he did not believe he would ever again have the opportunity.
Andreas had turned and was gone.
I must begin my journey to the Sardar Mountains.
As Andreas had said, I would be expected. I knew that little passed on Gor that was not somehow known in the Sardar Mountains. The power and knowledge of the Priest-Kings is perhaps beyond the comprehension of mortal men, or as it is said on Gor, the Men Below the Mountains.
It is said that as we are to the amoeba and the paramecium so are the Priest-Kings to us, that the highest and most lyric flights of our intellect are, when compared to the thought of the Priest-Kings, but the chemical tropisms of the unicellular organism. I thought of such an organism, blindly extending its pseudopodia to encircle a particle of food, an organism complacent in its world — perhaps only an agar plate on the desk of some higher being.
I had seen the power of the Priest-Kings at work — in the mountains of New Hampshire years ago when it was so delicately exercised as to affect the needle of a compass, in the valley of Ko-ro-ba where I had found a city devastated as casually as one might crush a hill of ants.
Yet, I knew that the power of the Priest-Kings — rumoured even to extend to the control of gravity — could lay waste cities, scatter populations, separate friends, tear lovers from one another" s arms, bring hideous death to whomsoever it might choose. As all men of Gor I knew that their power inspired terror throughout a world and that it could not be withstood. The words of the man of Ar, he who had worn the robes of the Initiates, he who had brought me the message of the Priest- Kings on the road to Ko-ro-ba that violent night months before, rang in my ears, "Throw yourself upon your sword, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba!"
But I knew then that I would not throw myself upon my sword, and that I would not now. I knew then as I knew now that I would go instead to the Sardar Mountains, that I would enter them and seek the Priest-Kings themselves.
I would find them.
Somewhere in the midst of those icy escarpments inaccessible even to the wild tarn they waited for me, those fit gods of this harsh world.
Chapter Twenty: THE INVISIBLE BARRIER
In my hand I held a sword, taken from one of the guardsmen in the mines. It was the only weapon I carried. Before starting for the mountains, it seemed wise to improve my equipment. Most of the soldiers who had fought the slaves at the top of the shaft had been killed or fled. Those who had been killed had been stripped of clothing and weapons, both of which the ill-clad, unarmed slaves required desperately.
I knew that I didn" t have a great deal of time, for the avenging tarnsmen of Tharna would soon be visible against the three moons.
I examined the low, wooden buildings which dotted the ugly landscape in the vicinity of the mines. Almost all of them had been broken into by slaves, and whatever they held had been taken or scattered. Not a piece of steel remained in the arms shed; not a crust of bread remained in the tubs in the commissary huts.
In the office of the Administrator of the Mines, he who had once given the command, "Drown them all," I found a stripped body, slashed almost beyond recognition. Yet I had seen it once before, when I had been turned over by the soldier to his gentle care. It was the Administrator of the Mines himself. The corpulent, cruel body was now rent in a hundred places. On the wall there was an empty scabbard. I hoped that he had had time to seize its blade before the slaves rushed in and fell upon him. Though I found it easy to hate him I did not wish him to have died unarmed. In the frenetic melee in the darkness, or in the light of the tharlarion lamp, perhaps the slaves had not noticed the scabbard, or wanted it. The sword itself, of course, was gone. I decided I could use the scabbard, and took it from the wall.
In the first streak of light, now gleaming through the dusty hut window, I saw that the scabbard was set with six stones. Emeralds. Perhaps not of great value, but worth taking.
I thrust myweapon into the empty scabbard, buckled the sword belt and, in the Gorean fashion, looped it over my left shoulder.
I left the hut, scanning the skies. There were no tarnsmen yet in sight. The three moons were faint now, like pale white disks in the brightening sky, and the sun was half risen from the throne of the horizon. In the bleak light the ruin of the night stood revealed in stark, brutal lucidity. The ugly grounds of the compound, its lonely wooden huts, its brown soil and bare hard rocks, were deserted save by the dead. Among the litter of pillaging — papers, opened boxes, broken staves, split boards and wire — there lay, sprawled frozen in stiff, grotesque postures, the unsubtle shapes of death, the scattered, contorted, slashed bodies of naked men.