It was still the Feast of Tola.
Though the time was now past the fourth feeding.
It was almost eight Gorean Ahn, or about ten Earth hours, since I had separated from Misk and Mul-Al-Ka and Mul-Ba-Ta early this morning.
The transportation disk which had originally taken me to the chamber where I had found Misk I had taken to the entrance of the tunnels of the Golden Beetle and I thought it well that it should stay there, as if witnessing my entrance and my supposed failure to return.
I was less pleased to have left the translator with the disk but it seemed the better thing to do, for one would not have taken a translator into the tunnels of the Golden Beetle and if it were found missing from the disk it might occasion speculation not that I had returned from the tunnels of the Golden Beetle but more likely that I had only pretended to enter. The word of the two Muls by the portal might or might not carry weight with their Priest-King Masters.
I had not walked far from the Vivarium before I was able to regather my general directions in the Nest and, as I walked impatiently along, I spied a transportation disk docked, so to speak, hovering on its cushion of gas, outside one of the tall steel portals of the Hall of Commissaries. The disk was, of course, untended, for in the enclosed, regulated life of the Nest theft, save for an occasional handful of salt was unknown.
Therefore I may have been setting something of a precedent when I leaped on the transportation disk and stepped to the accelerator strips.
I was soon gliding rapidly down the hall on my, let us say, considering the significance and urgency of my mission, commandeered vehicle.
I had not gone more than a pasang or so when I spun the disk to a stop before another portal in the Hall of Commissaries. I entered the portal and in a few moments emerged wearing the purple of a Mul. The clerk, at my request writing down the expense to Sarm, informed me that I would promptly have to have the new tunic imprinted with the scent-patterns pertaining to my identity, record-scars, etc. I assured him I would give the matter serious consideration and departed, hearing him congratulate me on my good fortune in having been permitted to become a Mul rather than having to remain a lowly Matok. 'You will now be of the Nest as well as in it,' he beamed.
Outside I thrust the red plastic garment I had worn into the first disposal chute I found whence it would be whisked away pneumatically to the distant incinerators that burned somewhere below the Nest.
I then leaped again on the transportation disk and swept away to Misk's compartment.
There I took a few minutes to replenish my energies from the containers of Mul-Fungus and I took a long welcome draught of water from the inverted jar in my case. As I ate the fungus and sat in the case I considered my future course of action. I must try to find Misk. Probably to die with him, or to die in the attempt to avenge him.
My thoughts wandered to Vika in her own case, though hers, unlike mine, was her prison. I fingered the key to her case which hung on its leather loop about my throat. I found myself hoping that she might not be too distressed by her captivity, and then I scorned myself this weakness and insisted to myself that I welcomed the thought that whatever miseries she endured would be richly deserved. I dropped the metal key back inside my tunic. I considered the heavy, transparent case on the fourth tier of the Vivarium. Yes, the hours would be long and lonely for the caged, shorn Vika of Treve.
I wondered what had become of Mul-Al-Ka and Mul-Ba-Ta. They, like myself, having disobeyed Sarm, were now outlaws in the Nest. I hoped they might be able to hide and find or steal enough food to live. I did not give much for their chances but even a piteous alternative to the dissection chambers was welcome.
I wondered about the young male Priest-King in the secret chamber below Misk's compartment. I supposed my best way of serving Misk might be to abandon him to his death and try to protect the young male, but these were matters in which I had little interest. I did not know the location of the female egg not could I have tended it had I known; and, further, that the race of Priest-Kings should wither and die did not seem the proper business of a human, particularly considering my hatred for them, and my rejection of their mode of regulating in so many important respects the lives of men in this world. Had they not destroyed my city? Had they not scattered its people? Had they not destroyed men by Flame Death and brought them, willing or no, to their own world on the Voyages of Acquisition? Had they not implanted their control nets in human beings and spun the hideous mutations of the Gur Carriers off the stock of which I was a specimen? Did they not regard us as a lower order of animal and one suitably placed at the disposal of their lofty excellence? And what of the Muls and the Chamber Slaves and all those of the human kind who were forced to serve them or die? No, I said to myself, it is good for my kind that Priest-Kings should die. But Misk was different, for he was my friend. There was Nest Trust between us and accordingly, as a warrior and a man, I stood ready to give my life for him.
I checked the sword in its sheath and left Misk's compartment, stepped to the transportation disk and swept silently, rapidly, down the tunnel in the direction in which I knew lay the Chamber of the Mother.
I had spent but a few Ehn on the disk before I came to the barricade of heavy steel bars which separated those portions of the Nest open to Muls from those which were prohibited to them.
There was a Priest-King on guard whose antennae waved quizzically about as I drew the disk to a stop not twelve feet from him. His head was garlanded by a wreath of green leaves as had been that of Sarm, and also, like Sarm, there was about his neck, as well as his translator, the ceremonial string of tiny metal tools.
It took a moment for me to understand the Priest-King's consternation.
The tunic I wore carried no scent-patterns and for a moment he had thought that the transportation disk I rode was actually without a driver.
I could see the lenses of the compound eyes almost flickering as it strained to see, much as we might have strained to hear some small sound.
His reactions were almost those that a human might have had if he could hear something in the room with him but had not yet been able to see it.
At last his antennae fastened on me but I am sure the Priest- King was annoyed that he did not receive the strong signals he would have if I had been wearing my own scent-infixed tunic. Without the tunic I had worn I probably did not seem much different to him from any other male Mul he had encountered in the Nest. To another human, of course, my hair alone, which is a shaggy, bright red, would have been a clearly recognisable feature, but Priest-Kings, as I may have indicated, tend to have extremely casual visual discrimination and are, moreover, I would gather, colour blind. The colours that are found in the Nest are always in the areas frequented by Muls. The only Priest-King in the Nest who could have recognised me immediately, and perhaps from a distance, was probably Misk, who knew me not as a Mul but as a friend.
'You are undoubtedly the Noble Guard of the Chamber where I may have my tunic fixed with scent-marks,' I called jovially.
The Priest-King seemed relieved to hear me speak.
'No,' he said, 'I guard the entrance to the tunnels of the Mother, and you may not enter.'
Well, I said to myself, this is the right place.
'Where can I have my tunic marked?' I inquired.
'Return to whence you came and inquire,' said the Priest-King.
'Thank you, Noble One!' I cried and turned the transportation disk almost as if it had a vertical central axis and sped off. I glanced ove rmy shoulder and I could see the Priest- King still straining to sense me.
I quickly turned the disk down a side tunnel and began to hunt for a ventilator shaft.
In perhaps two or three Ehn I found one which appeared to be quite suitable. I drove the disk about half a pasang away and stopped it by an open portal within which I could see busy Muls stirring vats of bubbling plastic with huge wooden paddles.
I quickly retraced my steps to the ventilator shaft, pried open the bottom of the grille, squeezed inside and soon found myself making my way rapidly through the ventilating system in the direction of the Chamber of the Mother.
From time to time I would pass an opening in the shaft and peer out. From one of these openings I could see that I was already behind the steel barricade with its Priest-King guard, who was standing as I would have expected, in that almost vertical, slender golden fixity that was so characteristic of his kind.
There was no sound to celebrate the Feast of Tola but I had little difficulty in locating the scene of the celebration for I soon encountered a shaft, one of those through which used air is pumped out of the tunnels, which was rich in unusual and penetrating scents, of a sort which my stay with Misk had taught me were regarded by Priest-Kings as being of great beauty.
I followed these scents and soon found myself peering into an immense chamber. Its ceiling was only perhaps a hundred feet high but its length and width were considerable and it was filled with golden Priest-Kings, garlanded in green and wearing about their necks that shining, jangling circle of tiny, silverish tools.
There were perhaps a thousand Priest-Kings in the Nest, and I supposed that this might be almost all the Priest-Kings in the Nest, save perhaps those that might be essentially placed at a few minimum posts, such as the guard at the steel barricade and perhaps some in the Scanning Chamber or, more likely, the Power Plant.
Much of the business of the Nest, of course, even relatively technical matters, was carried on by trained Muls.
The Priest-Kings stood motionless in great circling, tiered rows which spread concentrically outward as though from a stage in an ancient theatre. To one side I could see four Priest-Kings handling the knobs of a large scent-producer, about the size of a steel room. There were perhaps hundreds of knobs on each side and one Priest-King on each side with great skill and apparent rhythm touched one knob after another in intricate patterns.
I had little doubt but that these Priest-Kings were the most highly regarded musicians of the Nest, that they should be chosen to play together on the great Feast of Tola.
The antennae of the thousand Priest-Kings seemed almost motionless so intent were they on the beauties of the music.
Inching forward I saw, on the raised platform at this end of the room, the Mother.
For a moment I could not believe that it was real or alive.
It was undoubtedly of the Priest-King kind, and it now was unwinged, but the most incredible feature was the fantastic extent of the abdomen. Its head was little larger than that of an ordinary Priest-King, or its thorax, but its trunk was conjoined to an abdomen which if swollen with eggs might have been scarcely smaller than a city bus. But now this monstrous abdomen, depleted and wrinkled, no longer possessing whatever tensility it might once have had, lay collapsed behind the creature like a flattened sack of brownly tarnished golden ancient leather.
Even with the abdomen empty her legs could not support its weight and she lay on the dais with her jointed legs folded beside her.
Her colouring was not that of a normal Priest-King but darker, more brownish, and her and there black stains discoloured her thorax and abdomen.
Her antennae seemed unalert and lacked resilience. They lay back over her head.
Her eyes seemed dull and brown.
I wondered if she were blind.
It was a most ancient creature on which I gazed, the Mother of the Nest.
It was hard to imagine her, uncounted generations ago, with wings of gold in the open air, in the blue sky of Gor, glistening and turning with her lover borne on the high, glorious, swift winds of this distant, savage world. How golden she would have been.
There was no male, no Father of the Nest, and I supposed the male had died, or had not lived long after her mating. I wondered if, among Priest-Kings, he would have helped her, or if there would have been others from the former Nest, or if she alone would have fallen to earth, to eath the wings that had borne her, and to burrow beneath the mountains to begin the lonely work of the Mother, the creation of the new Nest.
I wondered why there had not been more females.
If Sarm had killed them, how was it that the Mother had not learned of this and had him destroyed?
Or was it her wish that there should be no others?
But if so why was she, if it were true, in league with Misk to perpetuate the race of Priest-Kings?
I looked again through the grille on the shaft. It opened about thirty feet over the floor of the chamber and a bit to one side of the Platform of the Mother. I surmised there might be a similar shaft on the other side of her platform, knowing the symmetry that tends to mark the engineering aesthetics of Priest-Kings.
As the musicians continued to produce their rhapsodic, involute, rhythms of aroma on the scent-producer, one Priest- King at a time, one after the other, would slowly stalk forward and approach the Platform of the Mother.
There, from a great golden bowl, about five feet deep and with a diameter of perhaps twenty feet, setting on a heavy tripod, he would take a bit of whitish liquid, undoubtedly Gur, in his mouth.
He took no more than a taste and the bowl, though the Feast of Tola was well advanced, was still almost brimming. He would then approach the Mother very slowly and lower his head to hers. With great gentleness he would then touch her head with his antennae. She would extend her head to him and then with a delicacy hard to imagine in so large a creature he would transfer a tiny drop of the precious fluid from his mouth to hers. He would then back away and return to his place where he would stand as immobile as before.
He had given Gur to the Mother.
I did not know at the time but Gur is a product originally secreted by large, grey, domesticated, hemispheric arthropods which are, in the morning, taken out to pasture where they feed on special Sim plants, extensive, rambling, tangled vine-like plants with huge, rolling leaves raised under square energy lamps fixed in the ceilings of the broad pasture chambers, and at night are returned to their stable cells where they are milked by Muls. The special Gur used on the Feast of Tola is, in the ancient fashion, kept for weeks in the social stomachs of specially chosen Priest-Kings to mellow and reach the exact flavour and consistency desired, which Priest-Kings are then spoken of as retaining Gur.
I watched as one Priest-King and then another approached the Mother and repeated the Gur Ceremony.
I was perhaps the first human who had ever beheld this ceremony.
Considering the number of Priest-Kings and the time it took for each to give Gur to the Mother, I conjectured that the ceremony must have begun hours ago. Indeed, it did not seem incredible to me at all that the giving of Gur might well last an entire day.
I was already familiar with the astounding patience of Priest-Kings and so I was not surprised at the almost total lack of movement in the lines of that golden pattern, formed of Priest-Kings, which radiated out from the Platform of the Mother. But I now understood as I observed the slight, lmost enraptured tremour of their antennae responding to the scent- music of the musicians that this was not a simple demonstration of their patience but a time of exaltation for them, of gathering, of bringing the Nest together, of reminding them of their common, remote origins and their long, shared history, of reminding them of their very being and nature, of what they perhaps alone in all the universe were - Priest-Kings.
I looked at the golden rows of Priest-Kings, alert, immobile, their heads wreathed in green leaves, about their necks dangling the tiny, primitive, silverish tools telling of a distant, simpler time before the Scanning Chamber, the Power Plant and the Flame Death.
I could not to my emotional satisfaction conjecture the ancientness of this people on which I gazed, and I could but dimly understand their powers, what they might feel, what they might hope of dream, supposing that so old and wise a people were still akin to the simple dream, the vagrant, insuppressible perhaps, folly of hope.
The Nest, had said Sarm, is eternal.
But on the platform before which these golden creatures stood there lay the Mother, perhaps blind, almost insensate, the large, feeble thing they revered, weak, brownish, withered, the huge worn body at last wrinkled and empty.
You are dying, Priest-Kings, I said to myself.
I strained my eyes to see if I could pick out either Sarm or Misk in those golden rows.
I had watched for perhaps an hour and then it seemed that the ceremony might be over, for some minutes passed and no further Priest-Kings approached the Mother.
Then almost at the same time I saw Sarm and Misk together.
The rows of the Priest-Kings separated forming an aisle down the middle of the chamber and the Priest-Kings now stood facing this aisle, and down the aisle together came Sarm and Misk.
I gathered that perhaps this was the culmination of the Feast of Tola, the giving of Gur by the greatest of the Priest- Kings, the First Five Born, save that of that number there were only two left, the First Born and the Fifth, Sarm and Misk. As it turned out later I was correct in this surmise and the moment of the ceremony is known as the March of the First Five Born, in which these five march abreast to the Mother and give her Gur in inverse order of their priority.
Misk of course lacked the wreath of green leaves and the chain of tools about his neck.
If Sarm were disturbed at finding Misk, whom he thought to have had killed, at his side, he gave no sign to this effect.
Together, in silence to human ears but to the swelling intensities of scent-music, in stately, stalking procession the two Priest-Kings approached the Mother, and I saw Misk, first, dip his mouth to the great golden bowl on its tripod and then approach her.
As his antennae touched her head her antennae lifted and seemed to tremble and the ancient, brownish creature lifted her head and on her ready tongue from his own mouth Misk, her child, delicately and with supreme gentleness placed a glistening drop of Gur.
He backed away from her.
Now did Sarm, the First Born, approach the Mother and dip his jaws too to the golden bowl and stalk to the Mother and place his antennae gently on her head, and once again the old creature's antennae lifted but this time they seemed to retract.
Sarm placed his jaws to the mouth of the Mother but she did not lift her head to him.
She turned her face away.
The scent-music suddenly stopped and the Priest-Kings seemed to rustle as though an unseen wind had suddenly stirred the leaves of autumn and I heard even the surprised jangling of those tiny metal tools.
Well could I now read the signs of consternation in the rows of Priest-Kings, the startled antennae, the shifting of the supporting appendages, the sudden intense inclination of the head and body, the straining of the antennae toward the Platform of the Mother.
Once again Sarm thrust his jaws at the face of the Mother and once again she moved her head away from him.
She had refused to accept Gur.
Misk stood by, immobile.
Sarm pranced backwards from the Mother. He stood as though stunned. His antennae seemed to move almost randomly. His entire frame, that long, slender golden blade, seemed to shudder.
Trembling, with none of that delicate grace that so typically characterises the movements of Priest-Kings, he once again tried to approach the Mother. His movements were awkward, uncertain, clumsy, halting.
This time even before he was near her she again turned aside that ancient, brownish, discoloured head.
Once again Sarm retreated.
Now there was no movement among the rows of Priest-Kings and they stood in that uncanny frozen stance regarding Sarm.
Slowly Sarm turned toward Misk.
No longer was Sarm trembling or shaken but he had drawn his frame to its full and golden height.
Before the Platform of the Mother, facing Misk, rearing perhaps two feet over him, Sarm stood with what, even for a Priest-King, seemed a most terrible quietude.
For a long moment the antennae of the two Priest-Kings regarded one another and then Sarm's antennae flattened themselves over his head and so, too, did Misk's.
Almost at the same time the bladelike projections on their forelegs snapped into view.
Slowly the Priest-Kings began to circle one another in a ritual more ancient perhaps even than the Feast of Tola, a ritual perhaps older than even the days and objects celebrated by the string of metal tools that hung jangling about the neck of Sarm.
With a speed that I still find hard to comprehend Sarm rushed upon Misk and after a blurring moment I saw them on their posterior supporting appendages locked together rocking slowly back and forth, trying to bring those great golden, laterally chopping jaws into play.
I knew the unusual strength of Priest-Kings and I could well imagine the stresses and pressures that throbbed in the frames of those locked creatures as they rocked back and forth, to one side and another, each pressing and seeking for the advantage that would mean death to the other.
Sarm broke away and began to circle again, and Misk turned slowly, watching him, his antennae still flattened.
I could now hear the sucking in of air through the breathing- tubes of both creatures.
Suddenly Sarm charged at Misk and slashed down at him with one of those bladelike projections on his forelegs and leaped away even before I saw the green-filled wound opening on the left side of one of those great, compound luminous disks on Misk's head.
Again Sarm charged and again I saw a long greenish-wet opening appear as if by magic on the side of Misk's huge golden head, and again Sarm, whose speed was almost unbelievable, leaped away before Misk could touch him and was again circling and watching.
Once more Sarm leaped to attack and this time a green-flowing wound sprang into view on the right side of Misk's thorax in the neighbourhood of one of the brain-nodes.
I wondered how long it would take to kill a Priest-King.
Misk seemed stunned and slow, his head dropped and the antennae seemed to flutter, exposing themselves.
I noted that already the green exudate which flowed from Misk's wounds was turning into a green, frozen sludge on his body, stanching the flow from the wounds.
The thought crossed my mind that Misk, in spite of his apparently broken and helpless condition, had actually lost very little body fluid.
I told myself that perhaps the stroke in the vicinity of the brain-nodes had been his undoing.
Cautiously Sarm watched Misk's fluttering, piteous, exposed antennae.
Then slowly one of Misk's legs seemed to give way beneath him and he tilted crazily to one side.
In the frenzy of the battle I had apparently failed to note the injury to the leg.
Perhaps so too had Sarm.
I wondered if Sarm, considering Misk's desparate condition and plight, would offer quarter.
Once again Sarm leaped in, his bladed projection lifted to strike, but this time Misk suddenly straightened himself promptly on the leg which had seemed to fail him and whipped his antennae back behind his head an instant before the stroke of Sarm's blade and when Sarm struck he found his appendage gripped in the hooklike projections on the end of Misk's foreleg.
Sarm seemed to tremble and he struck with his other foreleg but this one too Misk seized with his other foreleg and once again they stood rocking on their posterior appendages for Misk, having learned their strengths in the first grappling, and lacking the swiftness of Sarm, had decided to close with his antagonist.
Their jaws locked together, the great heads twisting.
Then with a force that might have been that of clashing, golden glaciers Misk's jaws tightened and turned and suddenly Sarm was thrown to his back beneath him and in the instant Sarm struck the floor Misk's jaws had slipped their grip to the thick tube about which hung the string of Tola's silverish tools, that tube that separated the head from the thorax of Sarm, what on a human would have been the throat, and Misk's jaws began to close.
In that instant I saw the bladelike projections disappear from the tips of Sarm's forelegs and he folded his forelegs against his body and ceased resistance, even lifting his head in order to further expose the crucial tube that linked thorax with head.
Misk's jaws no longer closed but he stood as if undecided.
Sarm was his to kill.
Though the translator which still hung about Sarm's neck with the string of silverish tools was not turned on I would not have needed it to interpret the desperate odour-signal emitted by the First Born. It was, indeed, though shorter and more intense, the first odour-signal that had ever been addressed to me, only then it had come from Misk's translator in the chamber of Vika. Had the translator been turned on, I would have heard 'Lo Sardar' - 'I am a Priest-King'.
Misk removed his jaws from the throat of Sarm and stepped back.
He could not slay a Priest-King.
Misk slowly turned away from Sarm and with slow, delicate steps approached the Mother, before whom he stood, great chunks of greenish coagulated body fluid marking the wounds on his body.
If he spoke to her or she to him I did not detect the signals.
Perhaps they merely regarded one another.
My interest was more with Sarm, whom I saw lift himself with delicate menace to his four posterior appendages. Then to my horror I saw him remove the translator on its chain from his throat and wielding this like a mace and chain he rushed upon Misk and struck him viciously from behind.
Misk's legs slowly bent beneath him and his body lay on the floor of the chamber.
Whether he was dead or stunned I could not tell.
Sarm had drawn himself up again to his full height and like a golden blade he stood behind Misk and before the Mother. He looped the translator again about his throat.
I sensed a signal from the Mother, the first I had sensed, and it was scarcely detectable. It was, 'No'.
But Sarm looked about himself to the golden rows of immobile Priest-Kings who watched him and then, satisfied, he opened those great, laterally moving jaws and advanced slowly on Misk.
At that instant I kicked loose the grille on the ventilator shaft and uttering the war cry of Ko-ro-ba sprang to the Platform of the Mother and in another instant had leaped between Sarm and Misk, my sword drawn.
'Hold, Priest-King!' I cried.
Never before had a human set foot in this chamber and I knew not if I had committed sacrilege but I did not care, for my friend was in danger.
Horror coursed through the ranks of the assembled Priest- Kings and their antennae waved wildly and their golden frames shook with rage, and hundreds of them must have simultaneously turned on their translators for I heard almost immediately from everywhere before me the contrastingly calm translation of their threats and protests. Among the words I heard were 'He must die,' 'Kill him,' 'Death to the Mul'. I almost had to smile in spite of myself for the unmoved, unemotional emissions of the translators seemed so much at odds with the visible agitation of the Priest-Kings and the dire import of their messages.
But then, from the Mother herself, behind me, I sensed once again the transmission of negation, and I heard on the thousand translators that faced me, the single expression 'No'. It was not their message, but that of she who lay brown and wrinkled behind me. 'No.'
The rows of Priest-Kings seemed to rustle in confusion and anguish but in a moment, incredibly enough, they were as immobile as ever, standing as if statues of golden stone, regarding me.
Only from Sarm's translator came a message. 'It will die,' he said.
'No,' said the Mother, her message being caught and transmitted by Sarm's own translator.
'Yes,' said Sarm, 'it will die.'
'No,' said the Mother, the message coming again from Sarm's translator.
'I am the First Born,' said Sarm.
'I am the Mother,' said she who lay behind me.
'I do what I wish,' said Sarm.
He looked around him at the rows of silent, immobile Priest- Kings and found none to challenge him. Now the Mother herself was silent.
'I do what I wish,' came again from Sarm's translator.
His antennae peered down at me as though trying to recognise me. They examined my tunic but found on it no scent-markings.
'Use your eyes,' I said to him.
The golden disks on his great globular head seemed to flicker and they fastened themselves upon me.
'Who are you?' he asked.
'I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,' I said.
Sarm's bladelike projections snapped viciously into view and remained exposed.
I had seen Sarm in action and I knew that his speed was incredible. I hoped I would be able to see his attack. I told myself it would probably come for the head or the throat, if only because these were, from his height, easier to reach and he would wish to kill me quickly and with little difficulty, for he would surely regard his main business as the slaying of Misk, who still lay, either dead or unconscious, behind me.
'How is it,' asked Sarm, 'that you have dared to come here?'
'I do what I wish,' I told him.
Sarm straightened. The bladelike projections had never been withdrawn. His antennae flattened themselves over his head.
'It seems that one of us must die,' said Sarm.
'Perhaps,' I agreed.
'What of the Golden Beetle?' asked Sarm.
'I killed it,' I said. I gestured to him with my sword. 'Come,' I said, 'let us make war.'
Sarm moved back a step.
'It is not done,' he said, echoing words I had heard once from Misk. 'It is a great crime to kill one.'
'It is dead,' I said. 'Come, let us make war.'
Sarm moved back another step.
He turned to one of the closest Priest-Kings. 'Bring me a silver tube,' he said.
'A silver tube to kill only a Mul?' asked the Priest-King.
I saw the antennae of several of the Priest-Kings curling.
'I spoke in jest,' said Sarm to the other Priest-King, who made no response but, unmoving, regarded him.
Sarm approached me again. He turned his translator down.
‘It is a great crime to threaten a Priest-King.’ He said.
‘Let me kill you quickly or I will have a thousand Muls sent to the dissection chambers.’
I thought about this of a moment. ‘If you are dead,’ I asked, ‘How, will you have them sent to the dissection chambers?’
‘It is a great crime to kill a Priest-King,’ said Sarm.
‘Yet you would slay Misk,’ I said.
‘He is a traitor to the nest,’ said Sarm.
I lifted my voice, hoping that the sound waves would carry to those transducers that were the translators of the Priest-Kings.
‘It is Sarm,’ I called, ‘who is a traitor to the Nest, for this Nest will die, and he has not permitted the founding of a new nest.’
‘The Nest is eternal,’ said Sarm.
‘No,’ said the Mother, and the message again came from Sarm’s own translator, and was echoed a thousand times by those of the other Prises-Kings in the great chamber.
Suddenly with a vicious, almost incalculable speed Sarm’s right bladed projection flashed toward my head, I hardly saw it coming but an instant before its flight began I had seen the tremor of a fiber in his shoulder and I knew the signal for its strike had been transmitted.
I counterslashed.
And when the swift living blade of Sarm was still a full yard from my throat it met the lightning steel of a Gorean blade that had once been carried at the siege of Ar, that had met and withstood and conquered the steel of Pa-Kur, gor’s Master Assassin, until that time said to be the most skilled swordsman on the planet.
A hideous splash of greenish fluid struck me in the face and I leaped aside, in the same movement shaking my head and wiping the back of my fist across my eyes.
In an instant I was again on guard, my vision cleared, but I saw that Sarm was now some fifteen yards or more away and was slowly turning and turning in what must have been some primitive, involuntary dance of agony. I could sense the intense, weird odors of pain uncarried by his translator, which now filled the chamber.
I returned to the place where I had struck the blow.
To one side I saw the bladed projection lying at the foot of one of the low stone tiers on which Priest-Kings stood.
Sarm had thrust the stub of his foreleg beneath his shoulder and it seemed frozen there in the coagulating green slush that emanated from the wound.
Shaking with pain, his entire frame quivering, he turned to face me, but he did not approach.
I saw that several Priest-Kings who stood behind him began to edge forward.
I raised my blade, resolved to die well.
Behind me I sensed something.
Glancing over my shoulder I saw the welcome, now standing golden form of Misk.
He placed one foreleg on my shoulder.
He regarded Sarm and his cohorts, and his great laterally chopping jaws opened and closed once.
The golden Priest-Kings behind Sarm did not advance further.
Misk’s message to Sarm was carried on Sarm’s own translator. ‘You have disobeyed the Mother,’ said Misk.
Sarm said nothing.
‘Your Gur has been refused,’ said Misk. ‘Go.’
Sarm seemed to tremble and so, too, did those Priest-Kings who stood behind him.
‘We will bring silver tubes,’ said Sarm.
‘Go,’ said Misk.
Suddenly, strangely carried on the many translators in the room, were the words, ‘I remember him—I have never forgotten him—in the sky—in the sky—he with wings like showers of gold.’
I could not understand this but Misk, paying no attention to Sarm, or his cohorts or the other Priest-Kings, rushed to the Platform of the Mother.
Another Priest-King and then another pressed more closely and I went with them to the platform.
‘Like Showers of gold,’ she said.
I heard the message on the translators of Priest-Kings who, like Misk, approached the platform.
The ancient creature on the platform, brown and wrinkled, lifted her antennae, and surveyed the chamber and her children. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he had wings like showers of gold.’
The Mother is dying,’ said Misk.
This message was echoed by every translator in the room and a thousand times again and again as the Priest-Kings repeated it in disbelief to one another.
‘It cannot be,’ said one.
‘The Nest is eternal,’ said another.
The feeble antennae trembled. ‘I would speak,’ she said, ‘with him who saved y child.’
It was strange to me to hear her speak of the powerful, golden creature Misk in such a way.
I went to the ancient creature.
‘I am he,’ I said.
‘Are you a Mul?’ she asked,
‘No,’ I said, ‘I am free,’
‘Good,’ she said.
At this moment two Priest-Kings carrying syringes pressed through their brethren to approach the platform.
When they made as though to inject her ancient body in what must have been yet another in a thousand times, she shook her antennae and warned them off.
‘No,’ she said.
One of the Priest-Kings prepared to inject the serum despite her refusal to accept it but Misk’s foreleg rested on his and he did not do so.
The other Priest-King who had come with a syringe examined her antennae and the brown, dull eyes.
He motioned his companion away. ‘It would make a difference of only a few Ehn,’ he said.
Behind me I heard one of the Priest-Kings repeat over and over, ‘The Nest is eternal,’
Misk placed a translator on the platform beside the dying creature.
‘Only he,’ said the Mother.
Misk motioned away the physicians and the other Priest-Kings and set the translator on the platform at its lowest volume. I wondered how long the scent-message, whatever it was to be, would linger in the air before fading into an unrecognisable blue of scent to be drawn through the ventilator system and dispelled somewhere far above among the black crags of the treeless, frozen Sardar.
I bent my ear to the translator.
At the low volume I received the message the other translators in the room would not be likely to pick it up and transduce the sounds into odor –signals.
‘I was evil,’ said she.
I was astounded.
‘I wanted to be,’ said the brown, dying creature, ‘the only Mother of Priest-Kings, and I listened to my First Born who wanted to be the only First Born of a Mother of Priest-Kings’
The old frame shook, though whether with pain or sorrow, or both, I could not tell.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I die and the race of Priest-Kings must not die with me.’
I could barely hear the words from the translator.
‘Long ago,’ she said, ‘Misk, my child, stole the egg of a male and now he has hidden it from Sarm and others who do not wish for there to be another Nest.’
‘I know,’ I said softly.
‘Not long ago,’ said she, ‘perhaps no more than four of your centuries, he told me of what he had done and of his reasons for doing so.’ The withered antennae trembled, and the thin brown threads on them lifted as though stirred by a chill wind, the passing foot of mortality. ‘I said nothing to him but I considered what he had said, and I thought on this matter, and at last—in league with the Second Born, who has since succumbed to the Pleasures of the Golden Beetle, I set aside a female egg to be concealed from Sarm beyond the Nest.’
‘Where is this egg?’ I asked.
She seemed not to understand my question and I was afraid for her as I saw her ancient brown carcass begin to shake with spasmodic tremors, which I feared might herald the close of that vast life.
One of the physicians rushed forward and thrust the long syringe deep through her exoskeleton into the fluids of her thorax. He drew out the syringe and held his antennae to hers for a moment. The tremors subsided
He withdrew and stood watching us from some distance away, not moving, as still as the others, like a thousand statues of tortured gold.
Once again a sound came from my translator. ‘The egg was taken from the Nest by two humans,’ she said, ‘men who were free--like yourself--not Muls--and hidden.’
‘Where was it hidden?’ I asked.
‘These men,’ she said, ‘returned to their own cities speaking to no one as they had been commanded. In this undertaking on behalf of Priest-Kings they had been united and together had suffered many dangers and privations and had done their work well as brothers.’
‘Where is the egg?’ I repeated.
‘But their cities fell to warring,’ said the withered ancient one, ‘and these men in battle slew one another and with them died the secret as far as it was known among men.’ The huge, tarnished head lying on the stone platform tried to lift itself but could not. ‘Strange is your king,’ she said. ‘Half larl, half Priest-King.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘half larl, half man.’
She said nothing for a time. Then once again the voice of the translator was heard.
‘You are Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I like you,’ she said.
I knew not how to respond to this and so I said nothing.
The old antennae stretched froward, inching themselves toward me and I took them gently in my hands and held them.
‘Give me Gur,’ she said.
Amazed, I stepped away from her and went to the great golden bowl on its heavy tripod and took out a few drops of the precious liquid in the palm of my hand and returned to her.
She tried to lift her head but still could not do so. Her great jaws moved slowly apart and I saw the long, soft tongue that lay behind them.
‘You wish to know of the egg,’ she said.
‘If you wish to tell me,’ I said.
‘Would you destroy it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Gently I placed my hand between those huge ancient jaws and with my palm I touched her tongue that she might taste what adhered to it.
‘Go to the Wagon Peoples, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba,’ she said. ‘Go to the Wagon Peoples.’
‘But where is it?’ I asked.
Then before my horrified eyes the carcass of that ancient she began to shiver and tremble and I stood back as she struggled to my amazement to her feet and reared herself to the height of a Priest-King, her antennae extended to their very lengths as though grasping, clutching, trying to sense something, though what she sought I did not know, but in her sudden fantastic strength, the gasp of her delirium and power, she seemed suddenly the Mother of a great race, very beautiful and very strong and splendid.
And from a thousand translators rang the message she cried out over those golden heads to the blank stone ceiling and walls of her chamber and I shall never forget it as it was in all the sorrow and the joy of her trembling dying magnificence; I and all could read it in the attitude of her body, the alertness of the forelegs, the suddenly sensing antennae, even in those dull brown disks which had been eyes and now seemed to be for that one last moment luminous again. The voice of the translators were simple and quiet and mechanical. The message was given to my ears, as would have been any message. It said: ‘I see him, I see him, and his wings are like showers of gold.’
Then slowly the great form sank to the platform and the body no longer trembled and the antennae lay limp on the stone.
Misk approached her and touched her gently with his antennae.
He turned to the Priest-Kings.
‘The Mother is dead,’ he said.