“Soon,” he said, “we will have work to do.”
“Might Master not use another girl?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
“Go to your cage,” he said “and draw shut the gate.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
I must remove my clothing before entering the cage. I would then draw shut the gate. It would lock automatically.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Provender, Masters,” I said, “and ka-la-na.”
I set down the tray on the table-like shelf to the right of the great portal, as one looks out, toward the Voltai. There is a small, open guard station there.
“How red your body is,” said one of the two guards.
This was so, even though I knew myself collared kajira.
“Some of the ka-la-na is spilled,” said one of the two guards.
“It was difficult coming through the corridors,” I said. “The masters, their hands!”
“Shall we beat her?” asked one of the guards to the other.
“Let us have a kiss instead,” said the other.
He opened his arms, and I hurried to him, and I was enfolded in his arms, and our lips met. I was held very tightly, and the kiss was a typical claiming kiss of a master. He then thrust me away, I half turning, into the arms of his fellow, and I found myself again handled as what I was, a slave girl.
“Shall we mark her thigh?” asked the first guard.
“It is early,” said the other. “There may be others. We can search her out later.”
“She may then be marked for another,” said the first guard.
“Then another day,” said the second guard.
The guards then turned to the tray.
I stood before the wide, double-gated portal, looking out onto the sunlit mountains. It was very beautiful.
It was doubtless through this portal that Mina, weeks ago, unnoted, had slipped from the Cave.
Through this same portal, too, weeks ago, the Lady Bina had been welcomed to the Cave, together with her party.
Through this portal, too, recently, Tiresias had been driven from the Cave, to wander sightless amongst the escarpments, the peaks, and crags.
It was chilly by the portal, but I dallied, for the bright, sharp air, and the vista. I did not, of course, cross the threshold.
It was now early in the fall, the second week in Se’Kara. We were aware that the wagons of Pausanias, now substantially emptied, were being refitted for a return journey, possibly to Ar. I did not know when they would depart. He would certainly wish to leave, however, before the late fall, and the commencement of the first snows. In the winter the Voltai is, for most practical purposes, impassable. I supposed he would not return, if he were to return, until the spring. I was not clear, nor was Master Desmond, as to the role the unusual cargo which had been borne by the wagons was to play in the affairs of the Cave. It did seem obvious that most of these goods, or supplies, had been transferred to the more restricted zones of the Cave, where there lay, supposedly, various laboratories and workshops. I speculated that the cargo, which I had gathered from Master Desmond seemed curious and exotic, might be expensive. This suggested substantial economic resources at the disposal of the Cave. Too, of course, it would be expensive to transport any cargo over long distances through dangerous, uninhabited areas, over perilous routes. I supposed it was unlikely that large quantities of gold or silver, for obtaining goods, would be carried in the wagons, as such an indiscretion, difficult to conceal, would be likely to attract the attention not only of outlaw bands but of some of the less savory “free companies,” assemblages of mercenaries, usually under a captain, who fought for fee, whose services were usually available to the highest bidder. Sometimes sides were changed in the midst of a single war. Who knew what clandestine gold might now have found its home in a new purse? Might the fellow beside you suddenly turn on you? Accordingly, much of the financing involved in such matters would doubtless be accomplished by means of drafts, notes, letters, and such, things mysterious, even unreal, to many Goreans, but familiar to the Merchants of the coin streets, pieces of paper which, like birds of the air, might only occasionally light upon a silver branch or rock of gold.
“Masters!” I cried, pointing.
The two guards came to my side, shading their eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is a big one,” said the first guard.
“Masters?” I said.
“It is far off, kajira,” said the second guard. “It is much larger than it appears.”
“It is a larl,” said the first guard.
It was the first larl I had seen, though I had heard much of them. It is a much larger animal than the sleen, and it has four, not six, legs. It lairs in dens, and does not burrow like the sleen in the wild. It is carnivorous, and it most commonly hunts in the day. The sleen, in the wild, is predominantly nocturnal. The larl is probably the most fearsome land predator on Gor. The sleen, on the other hand, is Gor’s finest tracker. Domesticated sleen, tracking sleen, hunting sleen, herding sleen, guard sleen, war sleen, are relatively common on Gor. Domesticated larls are rare. Few people have seen one.
I stepped back a bit, behind the threshold.
“Do not be afraid, kajira,” said the first guard. “There is little to interest a larl here.”
“Except perhaps a tasty kajira,” said the second guard.
They laughed.
“They do not approach the portal,” said the first guard. “They do not understand it. It is different, unfamiliar, to them. Perhaps they fear being trapped. It is aversive to them.”
“Perhaps one will be more curious than another,” I said.
“Or more hungry,” said the first guard.
I shivered. I put my arms about my body.
“Do not be afraid,” said the first guard.
“I am not afraid,” I said. “I am cold.”
“You may withdraw,” said the first guard.
“You may return later for the tray, the utensils,” said the second guard.
“Or send another for them,” said the first guard.
“A pretty one,” said the second guard.
“I shall stand back a bit, if I may,” I said.
“As you wish,” said the first guard.
They then went again to the shelf to the right, where reposed their small meal.
I had been cold near the entrance, as it was a brisk day in Se’Kara, and I was camisked. Later in the year a camisked girl in the Voltai would presumably die of exposure, if she were not first devoured by beasts which, in the late fall, winter, or early spring, being half-starved, become unusually aggressive. I was not uncomfortable, back from the portal. The temperature in the Cave is kept equable by the Kurii, largely for the sake of their human allies, as Kurii, given their pelting, can easily sustain temperatures which, to a human, would be not only uncomfortable, but dangerous. In any event the Kurii, who seemed to tolerate a wide variety of atmospheric conditions with equanimity, had apparently arranged the Cave’s temperature and humidity with the comfort of humans in mind. Indeed, I thought the temperature in the Cave, if anything, might be a bit warm. But what do Kurii know of humans, or care to know of humans? In any event, one would think nothing of encountering half-naked kajirae in the Cave even should the outside temperatures be freezing and the cold winds moan and roar about the peaks. The girls, of
