Once again she graciously requested that the weapon be lifted in her name, and it was.
One of the blocks of the barricade tumbled into the street. The warriors were dismantling it.
Thorn had disappeared from the wall.
Slowly the rebels, waved ahead by me, approached the wall. They had cast down their weapons and, singing, they marched to the palace.
The soldiers streamed over the barricade and met them in the avenue with joy. The men of Tharna seized one another in their arms and claspled their hands in concord. Rebels and defenders mingled gladly in the street and brother sought brother among those who had minutes before been mortal foes. My arm about Lara, I walked through the barricade, and behind us came the young warrior, others of the defenders of the barricade, and Kron, Andreas, Linna and many of the rebels.
Andreas had brought with him the shield and spear which I had put down in token of truce, and I took these weapons from him. We approached the small iron door that gave access to the palace, I in the lead.
I called for a torch.
The door was loose and I kicked it open, covering myself with the shield. Within there was only silence and darkness.
The rebel who had been first on the chain in the mines thrust a torch in my hands.
I held this in the opening.
The floor seemed solid, but this time I knew the dangers it concealed. A long plank from the scaffolding of the barricade was brought and we laid this from the threshold across the floor.
The torch lifted high, I entered, careful to stay on the plank. This time the trap did not open and I found myself in a narrow unlit hallway opposite the door to the palace.
'Wait here,' I commanded the others.
I did not listen to their protests but saying no more began my torchlit journey through the now darkened labyrinth of the palace corridors. My memory and sense of direction began to carry me unerringly from hall to hall, guiding me swiftly toward the Chamber of the Golden Mask. I encountered no one.
The silence seemed uncanny and the darkness startling after the bright sunlight of the street outside. I could hear nothing but the quiet, almost noiseless sound of my own sandals on the stones of the corridor. The palace was perhaps deserted.
At last I came to the Chamber of the Golden Mask.
I leaned against the heavy doors and swung them open.
Inside there was light. The torches on the walls still burned. Behind the golden throne of the Tatrix loomed the dull gold mask, fashioned in the image of a cold and beautiful woman, the reflection of the torches set in the walls flickering hideously on its polished surface.
On the throne there sat a woman clad in the golden robes and mask of the Tatrix of Tharna. About her neck was a necklace of silver tarn disks. On the steps before the throne there stood a warrior, fully armed, who held in his hands the blue helmet of his city.
Thorn lowered his helmet slowly over his features. He loosened the sword in its scabbard. He unslung his shield and the long, broad-headed spear from his left shoulder.
'I have been waiting for you,' he said.
Chapter Twenty-Five: THE ROOF OF THE PALACE
The war cries of Tharna and Ko-ro-ba mingled as Thorn hurled himself down the stairs toward me and I raced toward him. Both of us cast our spears at the same instant and the two weapons passed one another like tawny blurs of lightning. Both of us had in casting our weapon inclined our shields in such a way as to lessen the impact of a direct hit. Both of us cast well and the jolt of the massive missile thundering on my shield spun me half about.
The bronze head of the spear had cut through the brass loops on the shield and pierced the seven hardened concentric layers of bosk hide which formed it. The shield, so encumbered, was useless. Hardly had my shield been penetrated when my sword leaped from its sheath and slashed through the shoulder straps of the shield, cutting it from my arm.
Only an instant after myself Thorn' s shield too was flung to the stones of the chamber floor. My spear had been driven a yard through it and the head had passed over his left shoulder as he crouched behind it.
His sword too was free of its sheath and we rushed on one another like larls in the Voltai, our weapons meeting with a sharp, free clash of sound, the trembling brilliant ring of well-tempered blades, each tone ringing in the clear, glittering music of swordplay.
Seemingly almost impassive, the golden-robed figure on the throne watched the two warriors moving backward and forward before her, one clad in the blue helmet and grey tunic of Tharna, the other in the universal scarlet of the Gorean Caste of Warriors.
Our reflections fought one another in the shimmering surface of the great golden mask behind the throne.
Our wild shadows like misformed giants locked in combat against the lofty walls of the torchlit chamber.
Then there was but one reflection and but one gigantic, grotesque shadow cast upon the walls of the Chamber of the Golden Mask.
Thorn lay at my feet.
I kicked the sword from the hand and turned over the body with my foot. Its chest shook under the stained tunic; its mouth bit at the air as if trying to catch it as it escaped its throat. The head rolled sideways on the stones.
'You fought well,' I said.
'I have won,' he said, the words spit out in a sort of whisper, a contorted grin on his face.
I wondered what he might mean.
I stepped back from the body and looked to the woman upon the throne. Slowly, numbly, she descended the throne, step by step, and then to my amazement she fell to her knees beside Thorn and lowered her head to his bloody chest weeping.
I wiped the blade on my tunic and replaced it in the sheath.
'I am sorry,' I said.
The figure seemed not to hear me.
I stepped back, to leave her with her grief. I could hear the sounds of approaching men in the corridors. It was the soldiers and rebels, and the halls of the palace echoed the anthem of the ploughing song.
The girl lifted her head and the golden mask faced me.
I had not known that a woman such as Dorna the Proud could have cared for a man.
The voice, for the first time, spoke through the mask.
'Thorn,' she said, 'has defeated you.'
'I think not,' I said, wondering, 'and you Dorna the Proud are now my prisoner.'
A mirthless laugh sounded through the mask and the hands in their gloves of gold took the mask and, to my astonishment, removed it.
At the side of Thorn knelt not Dorna the Proud, but the girl Vera of Ko-ro-ba, who had been his slave.
'You see,' she said, 'my master has defeated you, as he knew he could, not by the sword but by the purchase of time. Dorna the Proud has made good her eascape.'
'Why have you done this!' I challenged. She smiled. 'Thorn was kind to me,' she said.
'You are now free,' I said.
Once again her head fell to the stained chest of the Captain of Tharna and her body shook with sobs.
At that moment into the room burst the soldiers and rebels, Kron and Lara in the lead.
I pointed to the girl on the floor. 'Do not harm her!' I commanded. 'This is not Dorna the Proud but Vera of Ko-ro- ba, who was the slave of Thorn.' 'Where is Dorna?' demanded Kron.
'Escaped,' I said glumly.
Lara looked at me. 'But the palace is surrounded,' she said.
'The roof!' I cried, remembering the tarns. 'Quick!'
Lara raced ahead of me and I followed as she led the way to the roof of the palace. Through the darkened hallways she sped with the familiarity of long acquaintance. At last we reached a spiral stairwell.
'Here!' she cried.
I thrust her behind me and, my hand on the wall, climbed the dark stairs as rapidly as I could. At the top of the stairs I pressed against a trap and flung it open. Outside I could see the bright blue rectangle of the open sky. The light blinded me for a moment.
I caught the scent of a large furred animal and the odour of tarn spoor. I emerged onto the roof, my eyes half shut against the intense light. There were three men on the roof, two guardsmen and the man with the wrist straps, who had served as the master of the dungeons of Tharna. He held, leashed, the large, sleek white urt which I had encountered in the pit inside the palace door.
The two guardsmen were fixing a carrying basket to the harness of a large brown-plumaged tarn. The reins of the tarn were fixed to a ring in the front of the basket. Inside the basket was a woman whose carriage and figure I knew to be that of Dorna the Proud, though she now wore only a simple silver mask of Tharna.
'Stop!' I cried, rushing forward.
'Kill!' cried the man in wrist straps, pointing the whip in my direction, and unleashing the urt, which charged viciously toward me.
Its ratlike scamper was incomprehensibly swift and almost before I could set myself for its charge it had crossed the cylinder roof in two or three bounds and pounced to seize me in its bared fangs.
My blade enetered the roof of its mouth pushing its head up and away from my throat. The squeal must have carried to the walls of Tharna. Its neck twisted and the blade was wrenched from my grasp. My arms encircled its neck and my face was pressed into its glossy white fur. The blade was shaken from its mouth and clattered on the roof. I clung to the neck to avoid the snapping jaws, those three rows of sharp, frenzied white lacerating teeth that sought to bury themselves in my flesh.
