Nomads of Gor (52 page)

          
when they were skinned which was not seldom, I trooped

          
away to bed with honor rather than supper.

 
         
"It was an amusement on my part," smiled Saphrar, "to

          
speak your name at that time to see what you would

          
do, to give you something, so to speak, to stir in your

          
wine."

          
It was a Turian saying. They used wines in which, as a

          
matter of fact, things could be and were, upon occasion,

          
stirred mostly spices and sugars.

          
"Let us kill him," said the Paravaci.

          
"No one has spoken to you, Slave," remarked Harold.

          
"Let me have this one," begged the Paravaci of Saphrar,

          
pointing the tip of his quiva at Harold.

          
"Perhaps," said Saphrar. Then the little merchant stood up

          
and clapped his hands twice. From a side, from a portal

          
which had been concealed behind a hanging, two men-at-

          
arms came forth, followed by two others. The first two

          
carried a platform, draped in purple. On this platform, nes-

          
tled in the folds of the purple, I saw the object of my

          
quest what I had come so far to find that for which I had

          
risked and, apparently, lost my Life, the golden sphere.

          
It was clearly an egg. Its longest axis was apparently about

          
eighteen inches. It was, at its widest point, about a foot

          
thick.

          
"You are cruel to show it to him," said Ha-Keel.

          
"But he has come so far and risked so much," said Saphrar

          
kindly. "Surely he is entitled to a glimpse of our precious

          
prize."

          
"Kutaituchik was killed for it," I said.

          
"Many more than he," said Saphrar, "and perhaps in the

          
end even more will die."

"Do you know what it is?" I asked.

"No," said Saphrar, "but I know it is important to Priest-

Kings." He stood up and went to the egg, putting his finger

on it. "Why, though," he said, "I have no idea, it is not truly

of gold."

"It appears to be an egg," said Ha-Keel.

"Yes," said Saphrar, "whatever it is, it has the shape of an

egg."

"Perhaps it is an egg," suggested Ha-Keel.

"Perhaps," admitted Saphrar, "but what would Priest-

Kings wish with such an egg?"

"Who knows?" asked Ha-Keel.

"lt. was this, was it not," asked Saphrar, looking at me,

"that you came to Turia to find?"

"Yes," I admitted. "That is what I came to find."

"See how easy it was!" he laughed.

"Yes," I said, "very easy."

Ha-Keel drew his sword. "Let me slay him as befits a

warrior," he said.

"No," cried the Paravaci, "let me have him as well as the

other."

"No," said Saphrar firmly. "They are both mine."

Ha-Keel angrily rammed his sword back into the sheath.

He had clearly wanted to kill me honorably, swiftly. Clearly

he had little stomach for whatever games the Paravaci or

Saphrar might have in mind. Ha-Keel might have been a

cutthroat and a thief but, too' he was of Ar and a tarns-

man.

"You have secured the object," I inquired, "to give it to

the gray man?"

"Yes," said Saphrar.

"He will then return it to Priest-Kings?" I asked inno-

cently.

"I do not know what he will do with it," said Saphrar. "As

long as I receive my gold and the gold will perhaps make

me the richest man on Gor I do not care."

"If the egg is injured," I said, "the Priest-Kings might be,

angry.,'

"For all I know," said Saphrar, "the man is a Priest-King.

How else would he dare to use the name of Priest-Kings on

the message in the message collar?"

I knew, of course, that the man was not a Priest-King. But

I could now see that Saphrar had no idea who he was or

for whom, if anyone, he was working. 1 was confident that

       
the man was the same as he who had brought Elizabeth

       
Cardwell to this world he who had seen her in New York

       
and decided she would play her role in his perilous sports

       
and that thus he had at his disposal an advanced technology

       
certainly to the level of at least space flight. I did not know,

       
of course, if the technology at his disposal was his own, or

       
that of his kind, or if it were furnished by others unknown

 
      
not seen who had their own stake in these games of two

       
worlds, perhaps more. He might well be, and I supposed it

       
true, merely an agent but for whom, or what? something

       
that would challenge even Priest-Kings blat, it must be, I

       
something that feared Priest-Kings, or it would naturally have I

       
struck this world, or Earth something that wanted Priest-

       
Kings to die that the one world, or two, or perhaps even

       
the system of our sun, would be freed for their taking.

       
"How did the gray man know where the golden sphere

       
was?" I asked.
   

       
"He said once," said Saphrar, "that he was told"

       
"By whom?" I asked.

       
"I do not know," said Saphrar.

       
"You know no more?"

        
"No," said Saphrar.
   

       
I speculated. The Others those of power, not Priest-

       
Kings, must, to some extent, understand or sense the politics,

       
the needs and policies of the remote denizens of the SardarÄ

       
they were probably not altogether unaware of the business of

       
Priest-Kings, particularly not now, following the recent

       
War of Priest-Kings, after which many humans had es-

       
caped the Place of Priest-Kings and now wandered free, if

       
scoffed at and scorned for the tales they might bear pos-

       
sibly from these, or from spies or traitors in the Nest itself,

       
the Others had learned the Others, I was sure, would neither

       
jeer nor scoff at the stories told by vagabonds of Priest-Kings.

       
They could have learned of the destruction of much of the

       
surveillance equipment of the Sardar, of the substantial re-

       
duction in the technological capabilities of Priest-Kings, at

       
least for a short time and, most importantly, that the War

       
had been fought, in a way, over the succession of dynasties

       
thus learning that generations of Priest-Kings might be in the

       
offing. If there had been rebels those wanting a new gener-

       
ation there must have been the seeds of that generation.

       
But in a Place of Priest-Kings there is only one bearer of

       
young, the Mother, and she had died shortly before the War.

       
Thus, the Others might well infer that there was one, or

 
more, concealed eggs, hidden away, which must now be

 
secured that the new generation might be inaugurated, but

 
hidden away quite possibly not in the Place of Priest-Kings

 
itself, but elsewhere, out of the home of Priest-Kings, beyond

 
even the black Sardar itself. And they might have learned, as

 
well, that I had been in the War of Priest-Kings a lieutenant

 
to Misk, the Fifth Born, Chief of the Rebels, and that I had

 
now made my way to the southern plains, to the land of the

 
Wagon Peoples. It would not then have required great intelli-

 
gence to suspect that I might have come to fetch the egg or

 
eggs of Priest-Kings.

 
If they had reasoned thus, then their strategy would seem

 
likely to have been, first, to see that I did not find the egg,

 
and, secondly, to secure it for themselves. They could

 
guarantee their first objective, of course, by slaying me. The

 
matter of the message collar had been a clever way of
    

 
attempting to gain that end but, because of the shrewdness of
 
!

 
Tuchuks, who seldom take anything at its face value, it had

failed; they had then attempted to bring me down among the
 

 
wagons with a Paravaci quiva, but that, too, had failed; I

 
grimly reminded myself, however, that I was now in the

 
power of Saphrar of Turia. The second objective, that of

 
obtaining the egg for themselves, was already almost accom

 
plished; Kutaituchik had been killed and it had been stolen

 
from his wagon; there was left only to deliver it to the gray

 
man, who would, in turn, deliver it to the Others whoever

 
or whatever they might be. Saphrar, of course, had been in

 
Turia for years. This suggested to me that possibly the Others

 
had even followed the movements of the two men 'who had'

 
brought the egg from the Sardar to the Wagon Peoples.

 
Perhaps they had now struck more openly and quickly

 
employing Gorean tarnsmen fearing that I might myself

 
seize the egg first and return it to the Sardar. The attempt on

 
my life took place one night and the raid on Kutaituchik's

 
wagon the next. Saphrar, too, I reminded myself, had known

 
that the golden sphere was in the wagon of Kutaituchik. I

 
was puzzled a bit that he had had this information. Tuchuks

 
do not make good spies, for they tend to be, albeit fierce and

 
cruel, intensely loyal; and there are few strangers allowed in

 
the wagon of a Tuchuk Ubar. It occurred to me that perhaps

 
the Tuchuks had made no secret of the presence of the

 
'golden sphere in Kutaituchik's wagon. That puzzled me. On

 
the other hand they may well not have understood its true