“What is it?” asked Mirus.
“You do not know?”
“No.”
“After we left our camp, of some days ago, Bosk of Port Kar, and his friend, visited the site of our camp, thinking we might still be there. Subsequently they followed us.”
“What of your fellow, Tersius Major?” asked Mirus.
“No fellow of mine, he,” said Portus Canio. “But Bosk and his friend found there only bones, pieces of bones, splintered, gnawed, shreds of clothing, torn, cast about.”
“Sleen,” said Mirus.
“It would seem so,” said Portus Canio.
“Apparently sleen do not respect circles of forbidden weapons,” said Mirus. “They, at least, are not prone to baseless superstition. They, at least, do not share your concern with Priest-Kings.”
“Hold this,” said Portus Canio, extending his hand, the weighty, shapeless object within it.
Mirus took the object, and regarded it. “It is a strange thing,” he said, “possibly a meteorite, a star stone.”
“Feel the weight,” said Portus Canio. “Does it not remind you of something?”
Mirus turned white.
“Yes,” said Portus Canio. “It is the remains of one of the forbidden weapons. The others were similarly destroyed. Bosk cast them away, into the grass. He kept this one to show me.” So saying, Portus Canio took back the bit of fused, shapeless metal.
“Do you not fear to touch it?” asked Mirus.
“Not now,” said Portus Canio. “It is no longer a weapon. Now it is nothing, only what was once a weapon.”
“What force or heat could do this, and here, in the prairie?” asked Mirus, wonderingly.
“Surely the Priest-Kings have spoken,” said Fel Doron.
“Do not be absurd, my friend,” said Mirus. “There are no such things. You must overcome such beliefs.”
“There is this,” said Portus Canio, lifting the shapeless mass of fused, melted metal.
“There was a storm last night, to the north,” said Mirus. “Lightning. Lightning struck the weapons. It destroyed them. It is an obvious explanation. They were metal, they were on a high place, on a knoll.”
“That is certainly possible,” agreed Portus Canio. Then he cast the piece of metal far from him, away, out into the grass.
“Priest-Kings do not exist,” said Mirus.
“Even so,” smiled Portus Canio, “I would advise you to keep their laws.”
“They do not exist,” said Mirus.
“I do not know,” said Portus Canio. “But do not be afraid.”
“I do not understand,” said Mirus.
“If they do exist, perhaps in the Sardar Mountains, as many claim,” said Portus Canio, “I think it is clear that we have little to fear from them, indeed far less to fear from them than from the caste of Initiates, which claims to speak in their name. The Priest-Kings, it seems to me, have little or no interest in us, in our kind, in our form of life, little or no concern with the doings of men, other than that their laws be kept.”
“You suggest that they are rational? That they fear human technology?”
“Perhaps,” said Portus Canio.
“They are real then?” asked Mirus.
“One does not suppose otherwise,” said Portus Canio. “Perhaps as real as mountains and storms, as real as flowers, as tarns and sleen.”
“They do not exist,” said Mirus, again.
“I do not know,” said Portus Canio.
“No,” said Mirus. “It is lightning, lightning.”
“Perhaps,” said Portus Canio.
“Lightning,” repeated Mirus. “Obviously lightning.”
“That is quite possible,” said Portus Canio.
“It looks like a pleasant day for trekking,” said Mirus.
“Yes,” said Fel Doron.
“In eight or ten days,” said Portus Canio to Mirus, “you might reach the coast, and Brundisium.”
“In some twenty days,” said Fel Doron, “it is our hope to reach the Viktel Aria, near Venna.”
At hearing the name of this city, the slave thought, naturally, of the slave, Melanie, whom she had met at the festival camp. Melanie, she recalled, had been sold to a man from Venna. She thought of the hundreds of cities and towns merely in known Gor, in which thousands of women such as she, tunicked and collared, served masters. Interestingly, it gave her a warm, deep, rich sense of identity, and belonging. Gone now were the uncertainties, the castings about, the miseries, the pain, the confusions, the ambiguities, the rootlessness, the anomie, of her former existence. She was now, at last, something societally meaningful, something actual, something understood, something accepted and real, something prized, something with an actual, clear value, a slave girl. The Viktel Aria is one of the great roads of known Gor, extending north and south of Ar for thousands of pasangs.
Mirus then adjusted the travois ropes about his shoulders.
“Bid him farewell,” said Selius Arconious.
Ellen went to Mirus and knelt before him. “Farewell, Master,” she said. Then, at a gesture from Selius Arconious, she put down her head and humbly kissed his feet. Then she lifted her head and looked at him. Tears brimmed in her eyes. It was he who had brought her to Gor. “Thank you, Master,” she whispered, so that Selius Arconious, who was standing to one side, could not hear. “Thank you for bringing me here, thank you for putting me in a collar, thank you making me a slave.”
“It is nothing,” he said, a Gorean remark.
Perhaps, she thought to herself, to you it is nothing, Master, but to me it is everything!
Then she again lowered her head and, gratefully, kissed his feet, again.
He moved back a little.
The men then exchanged farewells.
“You have taught me something of this world,” said Mirus to Selius Arconious. “It is my hope that I may one day be worthy of a Home Stone.”
“It is nothing,” said Selius Arconious.
The two men clasped hands, and then embraced, and Mirus put his shoulders into the ropes. At the edge of the small camp he paused and turned, regarding Ellen. He smiled. “Farewell,” said he, “slave girl.”
“Farewell,” said she, “Master.”
Chapter 29
WHAT OCCURRED NEAR THE VIKTEL ARIA,
In the Vicinity of Venna
The slave had run on ahead.
“Masters!” she called, delightedly, emerging from between the trees. Never before had she seen such a road. It was seated with large, fitted stones. She knew that these went down to a depth of several feet. In making such a road, a great trench is dug, and then the stones are laid, wall-like, within the trench. The road is, in effect, a sunken wall, and such a road will last for hundreds, even thousands, of years, with little repair. How old the road might be she had no idea, but she could see ruts worn in the stone, presumably by the continuing passage of carts and wagons, season in and season out, decade in and decade out.
She stepped back a little, as a caravan was passing, and there was a ringing of the bells on a kaiila harness. Guards flanked the caravan, and regarded her idly, appraisingly, as they rode past, conjecturing, as she wore a collar, her lineaments. She stood straighter, but did not dare smile, for fear one of the riders might, on an impulse, loosening his rope, spur toward her and in a moment, as she fled, have his cast, tightening loop upon her. But she did stand straight, and beautifully. She was no longer ashamed of her body, or embarrassed by it, now that it was owned. She loved it, and prized it, and was proud of it. But she knew that it was not only her body that was owned, but the whole of her. All of her was slave, and belonged to her master. There were pack kaiila aplenty with the caravan, in files, most roped together, but, too, there was a long train of wagons, behind, some open and some closed. A caravan this size, she conjectured, would not be the property of a single merchant, but doubtless of a number of merchants leagued together, traveling thusly for purposes of safety in what were doubtless unsettled, dangerous, troubled times.