Humbly she held the cords up for me to accept, her eyes bright, entreating, raised to mine.
'I am not of Tharna,' I said.
'But I am,' she said.
I saw that she knelt upon a scarlet rug.
'I am going to free you,' I said.
'I am not yet free,' she said.
I was silent.
'Please,' she begged, '- Master.'
And so it was that I took the cords from her hand, and in the same night Lara who had once been the proud Tatrix of Tharna became according to the ancient rites of her city my slave girl — and a free woman.
Chapter Twenty-Three: RETURN TO THARNA
Outside the camp of Targo, Lara and I climbed a small hill and stood on its crest. I could see before me, some pasangs away, the pavilions of tha Fair of En' Kara, and beyond those the looming ridges of the Sardar, ominous, black, sheer. Beyond the Fair and before the mountains, which rose suddenly from the plains, I could see the timber wall of black logs, sharpened at the top, which separated the Fair from the mountains.
Men seeking the mountains, men tired of life, young idealists, opportunists eager to learn the secret of immortality in its recesses, would use the gate at the end of the central avenue of the Fair, a double gate of black logs mounted on giant wooden hinges, a gate that would swing open from the centre, revealing the Sardar beyond.
Even as we stood on the hill I could hear the slow ringing of a heavy, hollow tube of metal, which betokened that the black gate had opened. The sad, slow sound reached the hillock on which we stood.
Lara stood beside me, clad as a free woman but not in the Robes of Concealment. She had shortened and trimmed one of the gracious Gorean garments, cutting it to the length of her knees and cutting away the sleeves so that they fell only to her elbows. It was a bright yellow and she had belted it with a scarlet sash. Her feet wore plain sandals of red leather. About her shoulders, at my suggestion, she had wrapped a cloak of heavy wool. It was scarlet. I had thought she might require this for warmth. I think she thought she might require it to match her sash. I smiled to myself. She was free.
I was pleased that she seemed happy.
She had refused the customary Robes of Concealment. She maintained that she would be more of a hindrance to me so clad. I had not argued, for she was right. As I watched her yellow hair swept behind her in the wind and regarded the joyful lineaments of her beauty, I was glad that she had not chosen, whatever might be her reason, to clothe herself in the traditional manner.
Yet though I could not repress my admiration of this girl and the transformation which had been wrought in her from the cold Tatrix of Tharna to the humiliated slave to the glorious creature who now stood beside me my thoughts were mostly in tha Sardar, for I knew that I had not yet kept my appointment with the Priest- Kings.
I listened to the slow, gloomy tolling of the hollow bar.
'Someone has entered the mountains,' said Lara.
'Yes,' I said.
'He will die,' she said.
I nodded.
I had spoken to her of my work in the mountains, of my destiny which lay therein. She had said, simply, 'I will go with you.'
She knew as well as I that those who entered the mountains did not return. She knew as well as I, perhaps better, the fearful power of the Priest-Kings.
Yet she had said she would come with me.
'You are free,' I had said.
'When I was your slave,' she had said, 'you could have ordered me to follow you. Now that I am free I will accompany you of my own accord.' I looked at the girl. How proudly and yet how marvelously she stood beside me. I saw that she had picked a talender on the hill, and that she had placed it in her hair.
I shook my head.
Though the full force of my will drove me to the mountains, though in the mountains the Priest-Kings waited for me, I could not yet go. It was unthinkable that I should take this girl into the Sardar to be destroyed as I would be destroyed, that I should devastate this young life so recently initiated into the glories of the senses, which had just awakened into the victories of life and feeling.
What could I balance against her — my honour, my thirst for vengeance, my curiosity, my frustration, my fury?
I put my arm about her shoulder and led her down from the hillock. She looked at me questioningly.
'The Priest-Kings must wait,' I said.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Return you to the throne of Tharna,' I said.
She pulled away from me, her eyes clouding with tears. I gathered her to my arms and kissed her gently.
She looked up at me, her eyes wet with tears.
'Yes,' I said, 'I wish it.'
She put her head against my shoulder.
'Beautiful Lara,' I said, 'forgive me.' I held her more closely. 'I cannot take you to the Sardar. I cannot leave you here. You would be destroyed by beasts or returned to slavery.'
'Must you return me to Tharna?' she asked. 'I hate Tharna.'
'I have no city to which I might take you,' I said. 'And I believe you can make Tharna such that you will hate it no longer.'
'What must I do?' she asked.
'That you must decide yourself,' I said.
I kissed her.
Holding her head in my hands I looked into her eyes.
'Yes,' I said proudly, 'you are fit to rule.'
I wiped the tears from her eyes.
'No tears,' I said, 'for you are Tatrix of Tharna.'
She looked up at me and smiled, a sad smile. 'Of course, Warrior,' she said, 'there must be no tears — for I am Tatrix of Tharna and a Tatrix does not cry.'
She pulled the talender from her hair.
I reached to her feet and repleced it.
'I love you,' she said.
'It is hard to be first in Tharna,' I said, and led her down the hillock, away from the Sardar Mountains.
The fires which had begun to burn in the Mines of Tharna had not been quenched. The revolt of the slaves had spread from the mines to the Great Farms. Shackles had been struck off and weapons seized. Angry men, armed with whatever tools of destruction they might find, prowled the land, evading the sorties of Tharna' s soldiers, hunting for granaries to rob, for buildings to burn, for slaves to free. From farm to farm spread the rebellion and the shipments to the city from the farms became sporadic and then ceased. What the slaves could not use or hide, they cut down or burned.
Not more than two hours from the hillock where I had made the decision to return Lara to her native city the tarn had found us, as I had thought he would. As at the Pillar of Exchanges the bird had haunted the vicinity and now, for the second time, its patience was rewarded. It lit some fifty yards from us and we ran to its side, I first and Lara after me, she still apprehensive of the beast.
My pleasure was such that I hugged the neck of that sable monster. Those round blazing eyes regarded me, those great wings lifted and shook, his beak was lifted to the sky and he screamed the shrill cry of the tarn. Lara cried out in terror as the monster reached for me with his beak. I did not move and that great terrible beak closed gently on my arm. Had the tarn wished, with a wrench of its glorious head, it might have torn the limb from my body. Yet its touch was almost tender. I slapped its beak and tossed Lara to its broad back and leaped up beside her.
Again the indescribable thrill possessed me and I think this time that even Lara shared my feelings. 'One-strap!' I cried, and the tarn' s monstrous frame addressed itself once more to the skies.
As we flew, many were the fields of charred Sa-Tarna we saw below us. The tarn' s shadow glided over the blackened frames of buildings, over broken pens from which livestock had been driven, over orchards that were now no more than felled trees, their leaves and fruit brown and withered. On the back of the tarn Lara wept to see the desolation that had come to her country.
'It is cruel what they have done,' she said.
'It is also cruel what had been done to them,' I said.
She was silent.
The army of Tharna had struck here and there, at reported hiding places of slaves, but almost invariably they had found nothing. Perhaps some broken untensils, the ashes of campfires. The slaves, forewarned of their approach by other slaves or by impoverished peasants, supplanted by the Great Farms, would have made good their departure, only to strike when ready, when unexpected and in strength.
The sorties of tarnsmen were more successful, but on the whole the slave bands, now almost regiments, moved only at night and concealed themselves during the day. In time it became dangerous for the small cavalries of Tharna to assault them, to brave the storm of missile weapons which would seem to rise almost from the very
