I was very hungry, and thirsty, and cold.
Sometimes, I knew, the medicine helper does not come. Sometimes men wait in vain. Sometimes they must go back to camp without a vision. Sometimes they try again, another time. Sometimes they stay longer at the vision place. Sometimes they die there.
Perhaps the medicine helper will not come, I said to myself. Then I laughed, but with little mirth, for I was Tarl Cabot. I was not of the Kaiila. How absurd that I lay here, on these stones, daubed with white clay, in a vision place, alone with the trees and stars. I was not of the Kaiila.
I was terribly weak.
I wondered if the smoke of sweet-brush and needles, if the rubbing with white clay, might not have its effect not so much in encouraging the approach of medicine helpers but in lessening the probability of the approach of sleen. Similarly, the lack of activity on the part of the vision seeker may not be stimulatory to the sleen's attack response, Akihoka tells a story about his own vision seeking. A sleen came and lay down quite near to him, and watched him, until morning, and then rose up and went away. Some vision seekers, on the other hand, are torn to pieces by sleen. Akihoka's medicine helper is the urt. He recieved his vision on the second night.
I fell asleep.
It was gray and cold, a bit after dawn, when I awakened. It was still muchly dark.
How is it that these people can have visions, I asked myself.
Perhaps, in time, the tortured body has had enough. Perhaps it then petitions the brain for a relieving vision.
It helps, of course, to believe in such visions, and to take them as indications of the medicine world.
Unnatrual states of consciousness occur, surely, in the vision place. It is somthing about the hunger and thirst, the loneliness, I suppose. It is difficult, sometimes to distinguish between dreams and visions, and realities.
One does not really need a vision. A dream will do.
But some men are not good at having visions, and some men cannot remember what they did in the dream country, only that they were there.
But, in such cases, the red savages are merciful. They know that not all men are alike. It is enough to try to dream, to seek the vision, or who cannot obtain a suitable dream, may purchase one from another, who is more furtunate, one who will share his vision or dream with him, or sell him one he does not need. Similaraly, one may make a gift of a dream or vision to someone who needs it, or would like to have it. Such gifts, to the red savages, are very precious.
No more can be expected of a man than that he go to the vision place. That is his part. What more can he do?
The medicine helper is not coming, I said to myself. The medicine helper will not come.
I have come to the vision place. I have done my part. I am finished with it.
I then heard a noise.
I feared it might be a sleen.
I struggled to sit up, cross-legged. I could not stand. I heard small stones slipping and falling backward, down the slope. I put my hand on the hilt of my knife. It was the only weapon I had in the vision place. But my fingers could scarcely close on the beaded hilt. I could not grasp it tightly. I was too weak.
I saw the head first, then the body of the creature. It crouched down, a few feet from me.
It was very large, larger than a sleen. I put my hands on my knees.
It lifted the object, wrapped in hide, which I had placed before me. Then, with its teeth, it tore off the leather.
In the half darkness, it was not easy to see its lineaments or features.
It approached me, and took me in its arms. It pressed its great jaws against my face and, from its storage stomach, brought up water into its oral cavity, from which, holding it there, and rationing it out, bit by bit, it gave me of drink. It gave me then, similarly, a soft curd of meat, brought up, too, from the storage stomach. I fought to swallow it, and did.
'Are you the medicine helper of Kahintokapa?' I asked, in Kaiila. 'Are you the medicine helper of One-Who- Walks-Before?' I asked, in Gorean.
'I am Zarendargar,' came from the translator, in Gorean, 'war general of the Kurii.'
Chapter 36
THE PIT
I scanned the skies.
'Hurry!' I ordered the girl.
'Yes, Master!' she said, cutting at the grass with a turf knife.
One covers the framework of branches and poles, over the pit, with plates of sod, with living grass. In this way, the grass does not discolor in a matter of hours. Sometimes one must wait for two or three days in the pit.
The pit is some ten feet in length, some five feet in width and some four feet in height. It must be long enough to accommodate the hobbling log, the hunter and, at times, the bait.
We heard a cry, as of a fleer. Cuwignaka had seen it first. 'Down!' I said, seizing the girl, pulling her down into the high grass.
I cursed, looking upward. A solitary rider, one of the Kinyanpi, was taking his way northwestward.
This was an area in which they, too, did this sort of hunting.
'Get back to work,' I told the girl.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
The hobbling log had been dragged to this place, by two kaiila, in the night. The dirt from the pit is hidden under brush or scattered in the grass.
'It is finished,' said the girl, putting the last plate of sod in place.
'Put the turf knife in the pit,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
She placed the turf knife in the pit, through the hold which we had left as its entrance. The turf knife is a wooden-bladed, saw-edged, paddlelike tool. It is used to cut and saw sod and, when the handle is held in the right hand and the right blade is supported with the left, it may be used, also, rather like a shovel, to move dirt.
I then tied one end of a rawhide rope about her right ankle. The rope was about fifteen feet in length.
'Get into the pit,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I then followed her into the pit and, within it, we sat down, facing one another. The hobbling log was on my left and on her right. I looped the rope on her right ankle twice about the hobbling log. A much stouter rope was already tied about it, with its loose end, several feet in length, coiled atop it. Other ropes lay near us in the pit.
I looked up, through the opening in the pit. It was about eighteen inches square. A similar opening, somewhat smaller, was at the other end of the pit. It had its purpose. I could see the sky through the opening, and the clouds.
'We now wait,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
Chapter 37
WHAT OCCURRED IN THE PIT
'You are a pretty she-property,' I said.
