Suddenly the tarn screamed and shuddered in the air!
The thought of the emptiness of the Sardar Range was banished from my mind, for here was evidence of the Priest-Kings!
It was almost as if the bird had been seized by an invisible fist. I could sense nothing.
The bird" s eyes, perhaps for the first time in his life, were filled with terror, blind uncomprehending terror.
I could see nothing.
Protesting, screaming, the great bird began to reel helplessly downward. Its vast wings, futilely, wildly, struck out, uncoordinated and frenetic, like the limbs of a drowning swimmer. It seemed the very air itself refused any longer to bear his weight. In drunken, dizzy circles, screaming, bewildered, helpless, the bird fell, while I, for my life, desperately clung to the thick quills of his neck.
When we had reached an altitude of perhaps a hundred yards from the ground, as suddenly as it had come, the strange effect passed. The bird regained his strength and senses, except for the fact that it remained agitated, almost unmanageable.
Then to my wonder, the valiant creature began once more to climb, determined to regain the altitude he had lost.
Again and again he tried to rise and again and again he was forced down. Through the beast" s back I could feel the straining of his muscles, sense the mad pounding of that unconquerable heart. But each time we attained a certain altitude, the eyes of the tarn would seem to lose their focus, and the unerring balance and coordination of the sable monster would be disrupted. It was no longer frightened, only angry. Once again it would attempt to climb, ever faster, ever more fiercely.
Then mercifully I called "Four-strap!"
I feared the courageous beast would kill himself before surrendering to the unseen force that blocked his path.
Unwillingly the bird alighted on the grassy plains about a league from the Fair of En" Kara. I thought those great eyes looked at me reproachfully. Why did I not leap again to his back and once more cry "One-strap!" Why did we not try once more?
I slapped his beak affectionately and, digging among his neck feathers with my fingers, scratched out some of the lice, about the size of marbles, that infest wild tarns. I slapped them on his long tongue. After a moment of impatient, feather-ruffling protest, the tarn succumbed, if reluctantly, to this delicacy, and the parasites disappeared into the curved scimitar of a beak.
What had happened would have been regarded by the untrained Gorean mind, particularly that of a low caste individual, as evidence of some supernatural force, as some magical effect of the will of the Priest-Kings. I myself did not willingly entertain such hypotheses.
The tarn had struck a field of some sort, which perhaps acted on the mechanism of the inner ear, resulting in the loss of balance and coordination. A similar device, I supposed, might prevent the entry of high tharlarions, the saddle lizards of Gor, into the mountains. In spite of myself I admired the Priest-Kings. I knew now that it was true, what I had been told, that those who entered the mountains would do so on foot. I regretted having to leave the tarn, but he could not accompany me. I talked to him for perhaps an hour, a foolish thing to do perhaps, and then gave his beak a hardy slap and shoved it from me. I pointed out over the fields, away from the mountains. "Tabuk!" I said.
The beast did not stir.
"Tabuk!" I repeated.
I think, though it may be absurd, that the beast felt that he might have failed me, that he had not carried me into the mountains. I think, too, though it is perhaps still more absurd, that he knew that I would not be waiting for him when he returned from his hunt.
The great head moved quizzically and dipped to the ground, rubbing against my leg.
Had it failed me? Was I now rejecting it?
"Go, Ubar of the Skies," I said. "Go."
When I had said Ubar of the Skies, the bird had lifted its head, now more than a yard above my own. I had called him that when I recognised him in the arena of Tharna, when we had been aloft as one creature in the sky. The great bird stalked away from me, about fifteen yards, and then turned, looking at me again.
I gestured to the fields away from the mountains.
It shook its wings and screamed, and hurled itself against the wind. I watched it until, a tiny speck against the blue sky, it disappeared in the distance.
I felt unaccountably sad, and turned to face the mountains of the Sardar. Before them, resting on the grassy plains beneath, was the Fair of En" Kara. I had not walked more than a pasang when, from a cluster of trees to my right, on the other side of a thin, swift stream that flowed from the Sardar, I heard the terrified scream of a girl.
Chapter Twenty-One: I BUY A GIRL
Out from my scabbard leaped the sword and I splashed across the cold stream, making for the grove of trees across the way.
Once more the terrified scream rang out.
Now I was among the trees, moving rapidly, but cautiously.
Then the smell of a cooking fire came to my nostrils. I heard the hum of unhurried conversation. Through the trees I could see tent canvas, a tharlarion wagon, the strap-masters unharnessing a brace of low tharlarions, the huge, herbivorous draft lizards of Gor. For all I could tell neither of them had heard the scream, or paid it any attention. I slowed to a walk and entered the clearing among the tents. One or two guardsmen eyed me curiously. One arose and went to check the woods behind me, to see if I were alone. I glanced about myself. It was a peaceful scene, the cooking fires, the domed tents, the unharnessing of the animals, one I remembered from the caravan of Mintar, of the Merchant Caste. But this was a small camp, not like the pasangs of wagons that constituted the entourage of the wealthy Mintar. I heard the scream once again. I saw that the cover of the tharlarion wagon, which had been rolled back, was of blue and yellow silk.
It was the camp of a slaver.
I thrust my sword back in the scabbard and took off my helmet. "Tal," I said to two guardsmen who crouched at the side of a fire, playing Stones, a guessing game in which one person must guess whether the number of stones held in the fist of another is odd or even.
"Tal," said one guardsman. The other, attempting to guess the stones, did not even look up.
I walked between the tents and saw the girl.
She was a blond girl with golden hair that fell behind her to the small of her back. Her eyes were blue. She was of dazzling beauty. She trembled like a frantic animal. She knelt, her back against a slender, white birchlike tree to which she was chained naked. Her hands were joined over her head and behind the tree by slave bracelets. Her ankles were similarly fastened by a short slave chain which encircled the tree.