If it seems somewhat curious to my reader that an oligarchy can pass as an empire, all I can say is that I was puzzled by this myself. Upon questioning old Kanelon, I learned that the great merchant houses had long ago combined into urban centers for mutual protection. Eight or ten of the great families were dominant in each of the Perushtarian cities. Here in Narouk, for example, the Houses of Iskelion, Ashlamun, Chemed, Ildth, and Sarpelio held the majority of power, while three or four minor houses scrabbled and quarreled for secondary status.
Obviously, a city as divided as Narouk would long ago have been torn asunder by civil war had not some compromise government system been worked out. The system was an admirably simple one. Each of the Perushtarian cities was ostensibly ruled by an hereditary prince called a Seraan. While the ultimate administrative authority was vested in the Seraan, he was actually powerless, for the Seraan was denied any opportunity to amass wealth, and in the Bright Empire, wealth alone was the source of power.
While the Seraan of Narouk held the Ruby Seal, whose affixture to every law or decree made each such a legal instrument, it was also denied to the Seraan to initiate legislation of any kind. All of the laws which came before the Seraan to be sealed into law originated in a sort of parliament of judges who were the representatives of the great merchant families of Narouk and whose influence, and the weight of whose vote, was reckoned in direct proportion to the wealth and prominence of the family each judge represented.
I must admit I was both astonished and amused that so blatantly oligarchic a system of government could actually work. It was like late nineteenth-century capitalism run wild. However, it did work, and, in fact, under the oligarchy, the Bright Empire of Perushtar flourished. The cities―if I may judge the whole of the empire by what I observed in the city of Narouk―were clean, handsome, gorgeously decorated with monumental art. There were no reeking slums and no beggars, because there was no poverty at all. Those who were not rich were owned or patronized by the rich, as, for example, the artisan class. And for a civilization whose energies were devoted almost entirely to the acquisition of wealth, there was a surprisingly brilliant culture. Theaters, sports arenas, and literary salons abounded. Poets, dramatists, magicians, actors, sculptors, and artists of all kinds made the intellectual and aesthetic life of the empire brilliant. At first this seeming contradiction―a mercantile culture possessing great art works―puzzled me. Eventually, I realized that the great merchant families constituted the upper class and were in fact the only aristocracy permitted in the empire. And the aristocracy is essentially a leisure class, with both the spare time and the wealth to encourage the arts.
As soon as my injuries were healed I was bathed, carefully groomed, and herded into an enormous room with a large number of other slaves, both male and female, of every age and condition of health.
Seated on raised benches against the walls of this room, richly dressed men and women lolled. This was either a slave auction or an interrogation session, in which the talents and capabilities of newly acquired slaves would be ascertained. I soon discovered it was both at once.
In turn, each slave was brought before an examining committee which consisted of a physician, who swiftly estimated the slave’s condition of bodily health, and interrogators who inquired pointedly into his or her background, training, experience, and education, if any. This data was then loudly announced by a fat, perspiring auctioneer to the assembled gentry, who discussed among themselves appropriate positions the slave might best fill. Sums of money were bandied back and forth, arguments occasionally broke out, and, on the whole, I found the occasion singularly boring. I must admit I had come to the slave block with my mind filled with preconceptions gained from observing imaginative reconstructions of such scenes in historical movies of the late Cecil B. DeMille. Mr. DeMille had an instinct for showmanship that must, occasionally, have shouted down his urge toward authenticity; for similar scenes in his films generally ran to brutal slave-handlers stripping beautiful girls before leering crowds of giggling perverts, or helpless slaves groveling under the lash of growling, heavy-handed guards much in need of a shave.
The scene, however, in which I myself now partook was nothing like the cinematic version. The slaves were handled brusquely but impersonally, like cattle; I observed no brutalities nor indecencies. As for the audience, they were businessmen occupied with practical interests, not tittering perverts gathered for a show of sex and torture. They were a richly overdressed lot―for wealth in Narouk lends itself to ostentation-garbed in many-layered robes or gowns of gorgeous silks, in many colors, with peach, magenta, apple-green, and royal purple predominating. The robes were ornamented with gold fringe, tassels, gemmed belts and pectorals, dangling sashes, scraps of rare furs, and so on.
Both men and women wore an amazing amount of jewelry, rings sparkled on every finger, to say nothing of earrings, necklaces, brooches, pins, bracelets, gorgets, armlets, jeweled greaves, tiaras, and items of jewelry to which I could put no name. Some of the jewelry nearest me was truly spectacular: one woman, a proud matron of about fifty, turned to observe the slaves in my group and I suppressed a gasp at the immense gem she wore dangling from her forehead. It was the size of a child’s fist, a rich purple jewel with an elusive flicker of scarlet flame in its heart―a jewel the Thanatorians call a korome and for which I can think of no precise terrene equivalent.
What made this gem so unusual was its incredible rarity. Only a score such gems had ever been found, and this one, from its size, must have been worth a truly fabulous sum. You could have bought a kingdom with what this one Perushtarian woman wore on her hairless brow!
At length it was my turn to be interrogated. The questions were blunt and to the point. While the physician peered at my teeth, thumped my chest, slapped my biceps and thighs, scrutinized the condition of my now-healed lacerations, a team of questioners brusquely inquired as to my age, homeland, and areas of expertise. They had never heard of the United States of America, of course, but dutifully copied the term down, transliterated into the Thanatorian characters. They did not ask me why I had been aboard the Jalathadar seeming to have already formed the opinion that I was either a mercenary who had enlisted in the sky navy of Zanadar, or a slave pressed into service aboard the aerial galleon of the Sky Pirates.
Nor did I volunteer information to the contrary. It did not seem advisable for me to reveal my connections with Shondakor until I could gain a more accurate estimate of the political situation here. I was content, for the moment, to pass as merely another unimportant slave. And when asked my name, I replied that it was Darjan―a simple transposition of the syllables of the name the Thanatorians call me. This also seemed wise, and I resolved to conceal my true identity until I knew more of the situation in Narouk. It was not at all impossible that the Perushtarians were aware that one Jandar had been instrumental in wresting the city of Shondakor the Golden free of the detested yoke of the Black Legion. But they could know nothing of Darjan, as he had no history, having been invented on the spur of the moment.
“Now then, fellow, what training have you had?” demanded my chief interrogator.
“I am an excellent swordsman,” I replied.
He fixed me with a sharp eye.
“As a slave, you will prefix all remarks to free men with the word ‘master,”’ he said curtly. I nodded acquiescence and rephrased the answer I had already given.
My questioner seemed unimpressed with further data on my abilities as a swordsman, which rather surprised me. I was, in fact, a master-swordsman, thanks to the advanced theoretical knowledge and practical experience of the art acquired at the Academy Lukor. Swordsmanship is a rare and difficult skill, which virtually every Thanatorian gentleman had to study.