I have seen private apartments with tapestries from the mills of Ar upon the walls; and my sandals have sometimes found underfoot richly coloured, deeply woven rugs from distant Tor.
It is perhaps a small thing to see on the belt of an artisan a silver buckle of the style worn in mountainous Thentis or to note the delicacy of dried eels from Port Kar in the marketplace, but these things, small though they are, speak to me of a new Tharna.
In the streets I hear the shouting, the song and clamour that is typically Gorean. The marketplace is no longer simply some acres of tile on which business must be dourly conducted. It is a place where friends meet, arrange dinners, exchange invitations, discuss politics, the weather, strategy, philosophy and the management of slave girls.
One change that I find of interest, though I cannot heartily approve, is that the rails have been removed from the high bridges of Tharna. I had thought this pointless, and perhaps dangerous, but Kron had said simply, "Let those who fear to walk the high bridges not walk the high bridges." One might also mention that the men of Tharna have formed the custom of wearing in he belt of their tunic two yellow cords, each about eighteen inches in length. By this sign alone men of other cities can now recognise a man of Tharna.
On the twentieth day following peace in Tharna the fate of the silver masks was determined.
They were herded, roped throat to throat, unveiled, wrists bound behind their backs, in long lines to the arena of the Amusements of Tharna. There they would hear the judgement of Lara, their Tatrix. They knelt before her — once proud silver masks, now terrified and helpless captives — on the same sparkling sand that had so often been stained with the blood of the men of Tharna.
Lara had thought long on these matters and had discussed them with many, including myself. In the end her decision was her own. I do not know that my own decision would have been so harsh, but I admit that Lara knew her city and its silver masks better than I.
I recognised that it was not possible to restore the old order of Tharna, nor was it desirable. Too I recognised that there was no longer any adequate provision — given the destruction of Tharna" s institutions — for the indefinite shelter of large numbers of free women within her walls. The family, for example, had not existed in Tharna for generations, having been replaced by the division of the sexes and the segregated public nurseries. And too it must be remembered that the men of Tharna who had tasted her women in the revolt now demanded them as their right. No man who has seen a woman in Pleasure Silk, or watched her dance, or heard the sound of a belled ankle or watched a woman" s hair, unbound, fall to her waist can long live without the possession of such a delicious creature.
Also it should be noted that it was not realistic to offer the silver masks the alternative of exile, for that would simply have been to condemn them to violent death or foreign enslavement.
In its way, under the circumstances, the judgement of Lara was merciful — though it was greeted with wails offrom the roped captives.
Each silver mask would have six months in which she would be free to live within the city and be fed at the common tables, much as before the revolt. But within that six months she is expected to find a man of Tharna to whom she will propose herself as a Free Companion.
If he does not accept her as a Free Companion — and few men of Tharna will be in a mood to extend the priveleges of Free Companionship to a silver mask — he may then, without further ado, simply collar her as his slave, or if he wishes he may reject her completely. If she is rejected she may propose herself similarly to yet another of the men of Tharna, and perhaps yet another and another.
After the six months, howver — perhaps she has been reluctant to seek a master? — her initiative in these matters is lost and she belongs to the first man who encircles her throat with the graceful, gleaming badge of servitude. In such a case she is considered no differently, and treated no differently than if she were a girl brought in on tarnback from a distant city.
I effect, considering the temper of the men of Tharna, Lara" s judgement gives the silver masks the opportunity, for a time, to choose a master, or after that time to be themselves chosen as a slave girl. Thus each silver mask will in time belong to a beast, though at first she is given some opportunity to determine whose yellow cords she will feel, on whose rug the ceremony of submission will take place.
Perhaps Lara understood, as I did not, that women such as silver masks must be taught love, and can learn it only from a master. It was not her intention to condemn her sisters of Tharna into interminable and miserable bondage but to force them to take this strange first step on the road she herself has traveled, one of the unusual roads that may lead to love. When I had questioned her, Lara had said to me that only when true love is learned is the Free Companionship possible, and that some women can learn love only in chains. I wondered at her words.
There is little more to tell.
Kron remains in Tharna, where he stands high in the Council of the Tatrix Lara.
Andreas and Linna will leave the city, for he tells me there are many roads on Gor he has not wandered and thinks that on some of these he may find the song for which he has always searched. I hope with all my heart that he will find it.
The girl Vera of Ko-ro-ba, at least for the time, will reside in Tharna, where she will live as a free woman. Not being of the city she is exempted from the strictures imposed on the silver masks.
Whether or not she will choose to remain in the city I do not know. She, like myself, and all of Ko-ro-ba, is an exile, and exiles sometimes find it hard to call a foreign city home; sometimes they regard the risks of the wilderness as preferable to the shelter of alien walls. And, too, in Tharna would be found the memory of Thorn, a captain.
This morning I said good-bye to the Tatrix, the noble and beautiful Lara. I know that we have cared for one another, but that our destinies are not the same.
In parting we kissed.
"Rule well," I said.
"I shall try," she said.
Her head was against my shoulder.
"And should I ever again be tempted to be proud or cruel," she said, a smile in her voice, "I shall merely remind myself that I was once sold for fifty silver tarn disks — and that a warrior once purchased me for only a scabbard and a helmet."
"Six emeralds," I corrected her, smiling.
"And a helmet," she laughed.
I could feel the dampness of her tears through my tunic.
"I wish you well, Beautiful Lara," I said.
"And I wish you well, Warrior," said the girl.
She looked at me, her eyes filled with tears, yet smiling. She laughed a little. "And if the time should come, Warrior, when you should desire a slave girl, some girl to wear your silk and your collar, your brand if you wish — remember Lara, who is Tatrix of Tharna."
"I shall," I said. "I shall."
And I kissed her and we parted.
She will rule in Tharna and rule well, and I will begin the journey to the Sardar.
What I shall find there I do not know.
For more than seven years I have wondered at the mysteries concealed in those dark recesses. I have wondered about the Priest-Kings and their power, their ships and agents, their plans for their world and mine; but most importantly I must learn why my city was destroyed and its people scattered, why it is that no stone may stand upon another stone; and I must learn the fate of my friends, my father and of Talena, my love. But I go to the Sardar for more than truth; foremost in my brain there burns, like an imperative of steel, the cry for blood-vengeance, mine by sword-right, mine by the affinities of blood and caste and city, mine for I am one pledged to avenge a vanished people, fallen walls and towers, a city frowned upon by Priest-Kings, for I am a Warrior of Ko-ro-ba! I seek more than truth in the Sardar; I seek the blood of Priest-Kings!