"Let him be used in the Amusements of Tharna!" she said.

Chapter Twelve: ANDREAS OF THE CASTE OF POETS

I had been hooded and driven through the streets, stumbling under the weight of the yoke. at last I had entered a building and had descended a long, swirling ramp, through dank passages. When I was unhooded, my yoke had been chained to the wall of a dungeon.

The place was lit by a small, foul tharlarion lamp set in the wall near the ceiling. I had no idea how far below ground it might be. The floor and the walls were of black stone, quarried in giant blocks of perhaps a tone apiece. The lamp dried the stone in its vicinity, but, on the floor and most of the walls, there was a dampness and the smell of mold. Some straw was scattered on the floor. From where I was chained, I could reach a cistern of water. A food pan lay near my foot.

Exhausted, my body aching from the weight of the yoke and the sting of tha lash, I lay on the stones and slept. How long I slept I didn" t know. When I awoke, each of my muscles ached, but now it was a dull, cold ache. I tried to move and my wounds tortured me.

In spite of the yoke I struggled to a cross-legged sitting position, and shook my head. In the food pan I saw half a loaf of coarse bread. Yoked as I was, there was no way to pick it up and get it to my mouth. I might crawl to it on my belly, and if my hunger were great enough, I knew I must, but the thought angered me. The yoke was not simply a device to secure a man, but to humiliate him, to treat him as if he were a beast.

"Let me help you," said a girl" s voice.

I turned, the momentum of the yoke almost carrying me into the wall. Two small hands caught it, and struggling, managed to swing it back, keeping my balance.

I looked at the girl. Perhaps she was plain, but I found her attractive. There was a warmth in her I would not have expected to find in Tharna. Her dark eyes regarded me, filled with concern. Her hair, which was reddish brown, was bound behind her head with a coarse string.

As I gazed on her she lowered her eyes shyly. She wore only a single garment, a long, narrow rectangle of rough, brown material, perhaps eighteen inches in width, drawn over her head like a poncho, falling in front and back a bit above her knees and belted at the waist with a chain. "Yes," she said with shame. "I wear the camisk."

"You are lovely," I said.

She looked at me, startled, yet grateful.

We faced each other in the half darkness of the dungeon, not speaking. There was no sound in that dark, cold place. The shadows of the tiny tharlarion lamp far above flickered on the walls, on the face of the girl. Her hand reached out and touched the silver yoke I wore. "They are cruel," she said.

Then, without speaking more, she picked up the bread from the pan, and held it for me. I bit two or three voracious mouthfuls of the coarse stuff and chewed it and gulped it down.

I noted her throat was encircled by a collar of grey metal. I supposed it indicated that she was a state slave of Tharna.

She reached into the cistern, first scraping the surface of the water to clear it of the green scum that floated there, and then, in the palms of her cupped hands, carried water to my parched lips.

"Thank you," I said.

She smiled at me. "One does not thank a slave," she said.

"I thought women were free in Tharna," I said, gesturing with my head toward the grey metal collar she wore.

"I will not be kept in Tharna," she said. "I will be sent from the city, to the Great Farms, where I will carry water to Field Slaves."

"What is your crime?" I asked.

"I betrayed Tharna," she said.

"You conspired against the throne?" I asked.

"No," said the girl. "I cared for a man."

I was speechless.

"I once wore the silver mask, Warrior," said the girl. "But now I am only a Degraded Woman, for I allowed myself to love."

"That is no crime," I said.

The girl laughed merrily. I love to hear the sudden glad music of a woman" s laughter, that laughter that so delights a man, that acts on his senses like Ka-la-na wine.

Suddenly it seemed I no longer felt the weight of the yoke.

"Tell me about him," I said, "but first tell me your name."

"I am Linna of Tharna," she said. "What is your name?"

"Tarl," I said.

"Of what city?"

"Of no city."

"Ah!" said the girl, smiling, and inquired no further. She would have concluded that she shared her cell with an outlaw. She sat back on her heels, her eyes happy. "He was," she said, "not even of this city." I whistled. That would be a serious matter in Gorean eyes.

"And worse than that," she laughed, clapping her hands, "he was of the Caste of Singers."

It could have been worse, I thought. After all, though the Caste of Singers, or Poets, was not a high caste, it had more prestige than, for example, the Caste of Pot-Makers or Saddle-Makers, with which it was sometimes compared. On Gor, the singer, or poet, is regarded as a craftsman who makes strong sayings, much like a pot-maker makes a good pot or a saddle-maker makes a worthy saddle. He has his role to play in the social structure, celebrating battles and histories, singing of heroes and cities, but also he is expected to sing of living, and of love and joy, not merely of arms and glory; and, too, it is his function to remind the Goreans from time to time of loneliness and death, lest they should forget that they are men.

The singer was thought to have an unusual skill, but so, too, were the tarn-keeper and the woodsman. Poets on Gor, as in my native world, were regarded with some skepticism and thought to be a little foolish, but it had not occurred to anyone that they might suffer from divine madness or be the periodic recipients of the inspiration of the gods. The Priest-Kings of Gor, who served as the divinities of this rude planet, inspired little but awe, and occasionally fear. Men lived in a truce with the Priest-Kings, keeping their laws and festivals, making the required sacrifices and libations, but, on the whole, forgetting about them as much as possible. Had it been suggested to a poet that he had been inspired by a Priest-King the fellow would have been scandalised. "I, So-an-So of Such-and-Such a City, made this song," he would say, "not a Priest-King."

In spite of some reservations the Poet, or Singer, was loved on Gor. It had not occurred to him that he owed misery and torment to his profession, and, on the whole, the Caste of Poets was thought to be a most happy band of men. "A handful of bread for a song," was a common Gorean invitation extended to members of the caste, and it might occur on the lips of a peasant or a Ubar, and the poet took great pride that he would sing the same song in both the hut of the peasant and the halls of the Ubar, though it won for him only a crust of bread in one place and a cap of gold in the other, gold often squandered on a beautiful woman who might leave him nothing but his songs.

Poets, on the whole, did not live well on Gor, but they never starved, were never forced to burn the robes of their caste. Some had even sung their way from city to city, their poverty protecting them from outlaws, and their luck from the predatory beasts of Gor. Nine cities, long after his death, claimed the man who, centuries ago, had called Ko-ro-ba the Towers of the Morning.

"The Caste of Poets is not so bad," I said to Linna.

"Of course not," she said, "but they are outlawed in Tharna."

"Oh," I said.

"Nonetheless," she said, her eyes happy, "this man, Andreas, of the Desert City of Tor, crept into the city — looking for a song he said." She laughed. "But I think he really wanted to look behind the silver masks of our women." She clapped her hands with delight. "It was I," she continued, "who apprehended and challenged him, I who saw the lyre beneath his grey robes and knew him for a singer. In my silver mask I followed him, and determined that he had been within the city for more than ten hours." "What is the significance of that?" I asked, for I had heard something of the sort before.