She was very graceful, very lovely.

She rinsed the bowl again and set it against the wall to drain dry.She then rinsed and dried the shaving knife and put it into one of the chests.Then with a motion of her hand, which did not touch the wall, she opened a small, circular panel into which she dropped the two towels which I had used.When they had disappeared the circular panel closed.

She then returned into the vicinity of the stone platform, and knelt again before me, though some feet away.

We studied one another.

Neither spoke.

Her back was very straight and, kneeling, she rested back on her heels.In her eyes there seemed to burn an irritable fury of helpless rage.I smiled at her, but she did not smile back but looked away, angrily.

When she looked again my eyes fixed on hers and we looked into one another's eyes for a long time until her lip trembled and her eyes fell before mine.

When she raised her head again I curtly gestured her nearer.

A look of angry defiance flashed in her eyes, but she rose to her feet and slowly approached me, and knelt beside the stone platform.I, still remaining cross-legged on the platform, reached forward and took her head in my hands, drawing it to mine.She knelt now but no longer on her heels and her face was brought forward and lifted to mine.The sensuous lips parted slightly and I became acutely conscious of her breathing, which seemed to deepen and quicken.I removed my hands from her head but she left it where I had placed it.I slowly unwrapped the white, silken scarf from her throat.

Her eyes seemed to cloud with angry tears.

As I had expected about her white throat there was fastened, graceful and gleaming, the slender, close-fitting collar of a Gorean slave girl.

It was a collar like most others, of steel, secured with a small, heavy lock which closed behind the girl's neck.

'You see,' said the girl, 'I did not lie to you.'

'Your demeanour,' I said, 'does not suggest that of a slave girl.'

She rose to her feet and backed away, her hands at the shoulders of her robe.'Nonetheless,' she said, 'I am a slave girl.'She turned away.'Do you wish to see my brand?' she asked, contemptuously.

'No,' I said.

So she was a slave girl.

But on her collar there was not written the name of her owner and his city, as I would have expected.Instead I had read there only the Gorean numeral which would correspond to '708'.

'You may do with me what you please,' said the girl, turning to face me.'As long as you are in this room I belong to you.'

'I don't understand,' I said.

'I am a Chamber Slave,' she said.

'I don't understand,' I said.

'It means,' she said, irritably, 'that I am confined to this room, and that I am the slave of whoever enters the room.'

'But surely you can leave,' I protested.

I gestured to the massive portal which, empty of a door or gate, led only too clearly into the corridor beyond.

'No,' she said bitterly, 'I cannot leave.'

I arose and walked through the portal and found myself in a long stone passageway beyond it which stretched as far as I could see in either direction.It was lit with energy bulbs. In this passageway, placed regularly but staggered from one another, about fifty yards apart, were numerous portals like the one I had just passed through.From within any given room, one could not look into any other.None of these portals were hung with doors or gates, nor as far as I could see had they ever been hinged.

Standing in the passageway outside the room I extended my hand to the girl.'Come,' I said, 'there is no danger.' She ran to the far wall and crouched against it.'No,' she cried.

I laughed and leaped into the room.

She crawled and stumbled away, for some reason terrified, until she found herself in the stone corner of the chamber.

She shrieked and clawed at the stone.

I gathered her in my arms and she fought like a she-larl, screaming.I wanted to convince her that there was no danger, that her fears were groundless.Her fingernails clawed across my face.

I was angered and I swept her from her feet so that she was helpless in my arms.

I began to carry her toward the portal.

'Please,' she whispered, her voice hoarse with terror. 'Please, Master, no, no, Master!'

She sounded so piteous that I abandoned my plan and released her, though I was irritated by her fear.

She collapsed at my feet, shaking and whimpering, and put her head to my knee.

'Please, no, Master,' she begged.

'Very well,' I said.

'Look!' she said, pointing to the great threshold.

I looked but I saw nothing other than the stone sides of the portal and on each side three rounded red domes, of perhaps four inches width apiece.

'They are harmless,' I said, for I had passed them with safety.To demonstrate this I again left the chamber.

Outside the chamber, carved over the portal, I saw something I had not noted before.In Gorean notation, the numeral '708' was carved above the door.I now understood the meaning of the numeral on the girl's collar.I re-entered the chamber.'You see,' I said, 'they are harmless.'

'For you,' she said, 'not for me.'

'Why not?' I asked.

She turned away.

'Tell me,' I said.

She shook her head.

'Tell me,' I repeated, more sternly.

She looked at me.'Am I commanded?' she asked.

I did not wish to command her.'No,' I said.

'Then,' said she, 'I shall not tell you.'

'Very well,' I said, 'then you are commanded.'

She looked at me through her tears and fear, with sudden defiance.

'Speak, Slave,' I said.

She bit her lip with anger.

'Obey,' I said.

'Perhaps,' she said.

Angrily I strode to her and seized her by the arms.She looked up into my eyes and shivered.She saw that she must speak.She lowered her head in submission.'I obey,' she said, '- Master.'

I released her.

Again she turned away, going to the far wall.

'Long ago,' she said, 'when I first came to the Sardar and found the Hall of Priest-Kings, I was a young and foolish girl.I thought that the Priest-Kings possessed great wealth and that I, with my beauty -' she turned and looked at me and threw back her head - 'for I am beautiful, am I not?'

I looked at her.And though her face was stained with the tears of her recent terror and her hair and robes were disarranged, she was beautiful, perhaps the more so because of her distress, which had at least shattered the icy aloofness with which she had originally regarded me.I knew that she now feared me, but for what reason I was uncertain. It had something to do with the door, with her fear that I might force her from the room.

'Yes,' I said to her, 'you are beautiful.'

She laughed bitterly.

'Yes,' she continued, 'I, armed with my beauty, would come to the Sardar and wrest the riches and power of the Priest-Kings from them, for men had always sought to serve me, to give me what I wanted, and were the Priest-Kings not men?'

People had strange reasons for entering the Sardar, but the reason of the girl who called herself Vika seemed to me one of the most incredible.It was a plot which could have occurred only to a wild, spoiled, ambitious, arrogant girl, and perhaps as she had said, to one who was also young and foolish.

'I would be Ubara of all Gor,' she laughed, 'with Priest-Kings at my beck and call, at my command all their riches and their untold powers!'

I said nothing.

'But when I came to the Sardar -'She shuddered.Her lips moved, but she seemed unable to speak.

I went to her and placed my arms about her shoulders, and she did not resist.

'There,' she said, pointing to the small rounded domes set in the sides of the portal.

'I don't understand,' I said.

She moved from my arms and approached the portal.When she was within perhaps a yard of the exit the small red domes began to glow.