extinguishing it. 'You are refused fire,' he said.
There was silence in the court of the Ubar.
'You are herewith, by edict of the Ubar,' said Marlenus, 'commanded from the city of Ar, to depart before sundown of this day, not to return on pain of penalty of torture and impalement.'
Those assembled could not believe their ears or eyes.
'Where is the girl, Vella?' I asked.
'Depart from my presence,' decreed Marlenus.
My hand was at the hilt of my sword. I did not draw my weapon, but my mere gesture had caused a hundred swords to leap from the sheath.
I turned, the room seeming to swirl about me, black and startling, and, scarcely feeling the tiles beneath my feet, departed from the court of the Ubar.
Enraged, I wandered the corridors, black hatred consuming me, my heart pounding with fury.
Why had this been done to me? Was this the reward for my services? And what of Elizabeth? Was it that Marlenus had looked upon her and so pleasing did he find her that he had decreed that she be reserved for the very Pleasure Gardens of the Ubar of Ar himself, to serve him as a silken wench, one of perhaps hundreds waiting perhaps a year for his casual notice or his touch? Men such as Marlenus are wont to take what pleases them, and to hold it, should they wish, at the point of a blade. Had it been that his eye had glanced upon her and he had, by the prerogative of the Ubar, commanded her to his slave ring. But was this honor? My hatred for the Ubar of Ar, whom I had helped restore to his throne, welled up within me, volcanic, molten and black. My hand was clutched on the hilt of my sword.
I threw open the door to my compartment.
The girl turned and faced me suddenly. She wore the briefly skirted gray slave livery of the state slave of Ar, the gray collar, the slender band of gray metal with its five simple bells locked about her left ankle. I heard the bells as she moved toward me. In her eyes there were tears.
I took Elizabeth Cardwell into my arms. I felt that never would I let her go. We wept, our tears meeting in her hair and on our cheeks as we kissed and touched. The tiny, fine golden ring of the Tuchuk woman was in her nose.
'I love you, Tarl,' she said.
'I love you,' I cried. 'I love you, my Elizabeth!'
Unnoticed Hup, the small Fool, had entered the room. He carried with him some papers. There were tears in his eyes.
After a time, he spoke. 'There is only an hour,' said he, 'until sundown.'
Holding Elizabeth I looked at him.
'Thank Marlenus, Ubar of Ar, for me,' said I.
Hup nodded. 'Yesterday evening,' said he, 'Marlenus sent her to you, to tie your sandals, to serve you wine, but you refused even to look upon her.'
Elizabeth laughed and pressed her cheek to my left shoulder.
'I have been refused bread, and fire and salt,' I said to Elizabeth.
She nodded. 'Yes,' she said. She looked at me, bewildered. 'Hup told me yesterday it would be so.'
I looked at Hup.
'But why has this been done to me?' I asked. 'It seems unworthy of the hand of a Ubar.'
'Have you forgotten,' asked he, 'the law of the Home Stone?'
I gasped.
'Better surely banishment than torture and impalement.'
'I do not understand,' said Elizabeth.
'In the year 10,110, more than eight years ago, a tarnsman of Ko-ro-ba purloined the Home Stone of the city.'
'It was I,' I told Elizabeth.
She shuddered, for she knew the penalties that might attach to such a deed.
'As Ubar,' said Hup, 'it would ill become Marlenus to betray the law of the Home Stone of Ar.'
'But he gave no explanation,' I protested.
'An Ubar gives no accounting,' said Hup.
'We fought together,' said I, 'back to back. I helped him to regain his throne. I was once the companion of his daughter.'
'I say because I know him,' said Hup, 'though I might die from the saying of it, Marlenus is grieved. He is much grieved. But he is Ubar. He is Ubar. More than man, more than Marlenus, he is Ubar of my city, of Ar itself.'
I looked at him.
'Would you,' asked Hup, 'betray the Home Stone of Ko-ro-ba?'
My hand leaped to the hilt of my sword.
Hup smiled. 'Then,' said he, 'do not think Marlenus, whatever the price or cost, his grief, his dream, would betray that of Ar.'
'I understand,' I said.
'If a Ubar does not respect the law of the Home Stone, what man shall?'
'None,' said I. 'It is hard to be Ubar.'
'It is less than an hour to sundown,' said Hup.
I held Elizabeth to me.
'I have brought you papers,' said Hup. 'They have been endorsed to you. The slave is yours.'
Elizabeth looked at Hup. He was Gorean. To him she was that, simply, a slave.
To me she seemed the world.
'Write on the papers,' said I, 'that on this first day of the restoration of Marlenus of Ar, the slave Vella was by her master, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba, granted her freedom.'
Hup shrugged, and so endorsed the papers. I signed them, my name in Gorean script, followed by the sign of the city of Ko-ro-ba.
Hup gave me the key to Elizabeth's collar and anklet and I freed her of the steel that marked her slave.
'I will file the papers in the cylinder of documents,' said Hup.
I took the free woman, Vella of Gor, Elizabeth Cardwell of Earth, in my arms.
Together we ascended the stairs to the roof of Ar's central cylinder and looked across the many towers of the city, at the bright clouds, the blue sky, the ridges of the scarlet Voltai in the distance.
The saddle packs of the tarn had been provisioned. But only I could saddle the sable monster.
I lifted Elizabeth to the saddle and, with binding fiber, tired her to its high pommel.
Hup stood there on the roof of the cylinder, the wind blowing his hair, his eyes, of uneven size and color, looking up at us.
Then we saw Relius and Virginia and, to my surprise, Ho-Sorl, followed by Phyllis, emerging to the roof.
Virginia was clad in garments cut from the beautiful, many colored robes of concealment of the free woman. But, proud of her beauty and glorious in her joy, she had boldly shortened the garments almost to the length of slave livery, and a light, diaphanous orange veil loosely held her hair and lay about her throat. She wore the robes of concealment in such a way as not to conceal but enhance her great loveliness. She had discovered herself and her beauty on this harsh world, and was as proud of her body as the most brazen of slave girls, and would not permit its being shut away from the wind and the sunlight.
The garments suggested the slave girl and yet insisted, almost demurely, on the reserve, the pride and dignity of the free woman. The combination was devastating, tormentingly attractive, an achievement so tantalizing and astoundingly exciting that I would not be surprised if it were adopted throughout Ar by the city's free women, rebellious, proud of their bodies, at last determined to throw off centuries of restriction, of confinement and sequestration, at last determined to stand forth as individuals, female individuals, sensuous as slave girls but yet rich in their own persons, intelligent, bold, beautiful, free. I mused to myself that slave raids on Ar might grow more frequent.
Elizabeth and I wished Relius and his Companion, Virginia Kent, well.
Phyllis, standing a bit behind Ho-Sorl and to his left, looked at us, tears in her eyes.
'Greetings, Slave,' said Elizabeth.
Phyllis smiled. 'Greetings, Mistress,' she said.
Ho-Sorl permitted Phyllis to hold his left arm, and she did so, standing close to him, her cheek against his left sleeve.
She wore dancing silk. It was scarlet.
I looked boldly upon her, for a Warrior does not avert his eyes from the beauty of a woman, particularly that of a mere slave.
'Your slave is beautiful,' said I, 'Ho-Sorl.'
'She will do,' said Ho-Sorl.
'Your master is a beast, slave,' Virginia informed Phyllis.
'I know,' smiled Phyllis, 'Mistress.' She took the cloth of Ho-Sorl's sleeve between her teeth, delicately, pulling at it.
'I wish you well,' said Ho-Sorl.
'We, too,' said Elizabeth, 'wish you all well.'
'I wish you well,' said Hup, raising his hand.
'I wish you well, Small Friend,' said I. I raised my hand to the others. 'I wish you all well.'
I drew on the one-strap and the tarn, wings beating, lifted itself beautifully from the cylinder. We circled the cylinder once.
'Look!' cried Elizabeth.
I looked down and saw now that another figure stood on the roof of the central cylinder of Ar, a giant figure, one who wore the purple of the Ubar.
Marlenus lifted his hand in farewell.
I, too, lifted my hand, saluting him, and turned the tarn from Ar.
The sun was sinking behind the great gate of Ar as the tarn streaked over the walls, departing from the city.
