The story so far: Valerus, Physician of Ar and occasional investigator into matters of murder, is summoned by his childhood friend and caste brother, Icarion, to treat a woman with the disfiguring symptoms of dar-kosis . Trusting his brother, who is also a Physician, Valerus writes a certificate consigning the woman to the dar-kosis pits. Two hands later he is arrested, and it is revealed that the woman, who was actually his old nemesis Ianthe of Ar, did not have dar-kosis at all and was wrongly consigned. Ianthe, a proscribed traitor, was bearing explosive secret information regarding the Cosians, which she had offered to trade to her brother Lycaon, Administrator of Ar, in exchange for a pardon; her death in the pit thus protected the Cosians at the expense of Ar. Condemned for murder and treason, Valerus is imprisoned to await impalement. As he has been shown Ianthe's unmarked body, he deduces that Icarion has developed a means of synthesizing the symptoms of dar-kosis, in much the same manner that the use of gieron and sajel in combination mimics the symptoms of Bazi plague. Using his slave Mindar as a decoy he overpowers a guard; even the unexpected arrival of his friend Titus does not deter him from his resolve to escape and find the truth behind Icarion's deception. Refusing to compromise Titus by allowing him to take possession of Mindar, and refusing also to leave his slave behind to be used as further evidence in his own case, Valerus cuts off her hair as a rough means of disguise and takes her with him...

     "Perhaps you will be useful. I may have need of a lure girl again. And I can always tie a coin box around your neck when I need the price of a meal."

     "Yes, Master."

     "If you fall behind, I will abandon you."

     "Yes, Master."

     He unlocked the cell collar from my neck and tossed it casually into the straw. Then he straightened. "Heel," he said.

     He walked out of the cell.

     I scrambled to my feet and followed him. I did not know where he was going. I did not know if he would make good his escape from the Central Cylinder, from Ar itself, or if he would ever return to the city of his home stone. I did not know if he would ever find his brother, or feel that he had recollected his honor.

     Perhaps he would end, as Lycaon had said, in the Cities of Dust.

     To the Cities of Dust, then, I would follow.

The story continues. Mindar speaks...

     Escaping the Central Cylinder was surprisingly easy. Or perhaps not so surprisingly, considering my Master's ability to dominate lesser men by the sheer force of his will. And of course he had not been stripped of his own clothing, the light green tunic of fine cloth, the rich dark green mantle, so severely cut and yet so clearly the garb of a wealthy man. The colors of the high castes had power on Gor.

     He strode past the guards at door after door without so much as a backward glance, and not one of the gray-clad men with the colors of Ar on their shoulders made any attempt to stop him. In fact, barring a covert glance or two at me, a crop-headed slave on a world where girls' hair is usually cut only as a punishment, the guards did not even look up as we passed. Perhaps they assumed that my Master, a successful and prosperous Physician, had come to the underground holding cells of the Central Cylinder only to retrieve a runaway slave.

     Perhaps when my Master had cut off my hair, he had been thinking of such a ruse. He rarely did anything for one reason alone, and he had a trick of thinking ahead of ordinary men.

     I followed him, my head down, doing my best to look chastened. With the blonde curling mass of my hair gone I felt light and cool. Somehow I was more aware than ever of the steel collar about my throat, with the nape of my neck bare for the first time since I had been brought to Gor.

     We stepped out into the cool fresh air of freedom, in one of the many small courtyards surrounding the Central Cylinder. It was dark. After a year and a half on Gor I was familiar enough with the stars to be able to tell that it was an hour or two before dawn.

     If you win free of the Central Cylinder, go to the Camerian Gate, my Master's friend Titus had said. I will do what I can to gain you freedom of passage there.

     My Master moved like a shadow, silent, almost invisible in the darkness. He paid no attention to whether I was following him or not. I had to run a little, from time to time, to keep up with him.

     The gates of the city were always guarded, and other than the night gate, the gate specifically designated for legitimate comings and goings of citizens after dark, they were always closed at night. The Camerian Gate was not the night gate of Ar. Perhaps that was why Titus had chosen it. It would be deserted but for its guards, and so there would be fewer eyes to see whatever happened there.

     My Master drifted soundlessly along the inner wall of the city. Suddenly, ahead, I saw a single flickering lantern and the humped shape of a gatehouse built close against the wall. I heard voices. My Master froze and flattened himself against the stonework. I, behind him, stopped mid-step and did the same.

     "I am Titus, of the City Guardsmen." It was a blessedly familiar voice, cutting arrogantly through the darkness. "I have reason to suspect that a prisoner will to attempt to escape the city tonight."

     I sucked in my breath. Was it Titus's intent to betray my Master after all? But in the darkness I heard my Master chuckle very softly.

     "Did you expect Titus to lie, foolish slut?" he whispered. "Particularly when the truth will suffice so well?"

     I heard footsteps, the creak of leather, the bright metallic sibilance of swords being loosened in their scabbards. "We will be on the alert, Guardsman," a voice said. "No one will pass this gate tonight."

     The heavy double gate was closed and barred. It would take at least two men to open it. It would be impossible to open it without making enough noise to rend the night in two. Above the gate the magnificent white walls of the city soared a hundred Gorean feet or more into the darkness. In spite of Titus' presence, and my Master's assurance, I felt my heart quail at the apparent impossibility of getting out of the city.

     "Good man," Titus was saying. "I must warn the men at the outposts as well, in case the guards at other gates are not as vigilant as you are. Open the gate now, quickly, so that I can pass through, and then be sure to keep it well-barred until I myself return."

     "Yes, sir," the guard's voice said smartly.

     I saw the indistinct shapes of the gate guards move toward the gate. Straining, they lifted the heavy bar and pushed the gate open with a screech of metal against metal.

     Titus did not move to the gate immediately, but stepped to one side, under the lantern. "Look at this, and remember it," he said. "It is the arrest warrant, with a description of the fugitive. He is a Physician, a man of high caste and considerable... presence. He is said to have a slave with him, a blonde barbarian girl he has taught to read and write. Because of that, she knows things that the Administrator is also... most interested in pursuing."

     A snigger or two answered him, and a graphic suggestion as to what skills might be better taught to slave girls. Titus laughed. For a few ihn all of them were entirely focused on what they themselves might demand of a girl who belonged to them as chattel property. In that moment, with the quickness and grace of a hunting sleen, my Master leapt for the gate and vanished.

     I followed him. I was not quick and I was not graceful, and my knees were shaking, my heart thundering with terror. I heard Titus's voice again, and another round of laughter from the guards. And then I was on the other side. My Master's hand closed around my wrist like steel.

     We were outside the city.

     We were free.

     On the inside of the wall, the guards were still laughing and promising Titus that they would not open the gate for anyone else, no matter how much such a person might attempt to coerce them with his illustrious name or Physician's caste. From where we were pressed against the outside surface of the wall, we could see Titus silhouetted against the flickering light of the lantern. He strode through the gate with just a hint of a swagger, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Behind him the guards swung the massive gate shut and slammed the bar into place.

     Titus disappeared into the darkness, whistling. Presumably he would genuinely go and warn the outpost guards.

     "Come, girl," my Master said softly. "We are going to Port Kar."

     Isabetta of Port Kar, Icarion had called her.

      There was, of course, no way to know if the "Port Kar" designation he had used for the Lady Ianthe had been as fictitious as the "Isabetta" had been, just as there was no way to know if the Lady Ianthe had been a captive, a dupe, or a willing confederate secretly betrayed. But there was no other clue. And so it was to Port Kar, the city of pirates and exiles, the Tarn of the Sea, the glittering jewel of Thassa, that my Master turned his steps.

     I had traveled with him before, when he had taken me to the stricken village of Ma'rau on the plains southwest of Ar, and when he had attended the Sardar Fair of the last Se'Var. On those journeys he had ridden his sleek high-bred saddle tharlarion, openly, in daylight, with me leashed to his stirrup; both of his beasts, Katar and I, had been laden with packs containing food and clothing and his pharmacopoeia and medical equipment. Now he and I both walked in the dust of lesser-traveled pathways, at night, hungry, fugitives. My Master sold his fine green mantle and tunic the first day, for a few silver tarsks which had gone to purchase food and less identifiable clothing.

     By fleeing from Ar my Master had sacrificed his caste standing and become an outlaw. He did not seem to care. He was ferociously, pitilessly focused on finding his brother Icarion, who had betrayed him. What he intended to do when he found Icarion, I did not even wish to contemplate.

     Caste was nothing to my Master, it seemed, next to honor. By writing the orders of consignment for Icarion and his woman without conducting an examination rigorous enough to detect that the woman's symptoms of dar-kosis were spurious, my Master felt that he had lost some essential part of himself. I did not understand. I genuinely did not grasp how he could blame himself. He had been tricked, deliberately deceived, by a man he had every reason to love and trust. It was not his fault.

     Once on the journey I tried to argue the matter with him. It earned me a beating, the worst I have ever endured, barring only that one afternoon at the whipping post of Ma'rau when I had feared for a while that he would kill me. This time my Master did not have a slave whip to hand, but a long thick switch of supple young ka-la-na wood served his purpose.

     I did not speak of the subject again.

     Port Kar is situated at the mouth of the Vosk River, protected to landward by the Vosk Delta, a million treacherous shifting channels in a vast morass of tidal marshes. No one was safe in the Vosk Delta, save the rence growers who lived and grew their crops there, and even they warred with one another, and were occasionally attacked by pirates and slavers from Port Kar itself. The only safe way to approach Port Kar -- if there could be said to be a safe way to approach Port Kar -- was by sea, or at least along the seacoast.

     Slowly, painfully slowly, a day at a time, we made our way west to the coast of Thassa, then north along the meandering, serpentine coastline of the Tamber Gulf. By the time we came to Brundisium I knew what it was that my Master wanted.

     The pits. The pits of Port Kar.

     Somewhere in the dar-kosis pits maintained by the city of Port Kar, my Master hoped to find those upon whom Icarion had experimented, while he was developing his pseudo-dar-kosis. The symptoms that the Lady Ianthe had displayed had been too perfect, too all-encompassing, to be the result of chance, or even the result of a first or second attempt. Therefore, logically, there would be others whose symptoms were not so perfect. Others whose symptoms might not have vanished so completely after three days.

     Perhaps Icarion had killed them all. But perhaps not. There might be one, at least, who still lived, trapped in the pits. Such a person would perhaps be able to tell my Master what name Icarion used in Port Kar, where he lived, what his connections were, where else he might have gone if he had fled from Port Kar by the time we reached the city.

     It was a slim chance. But it was better than nothing.

     My Master's first objective, then, was to find out where the city of Port Kar had situated its dar-kosis pits. There was virtually no solid ground within the immediate environs of the city, which was built on pilings in the delta marshes and criss-crossed by hundreds of canals. But somewhere, somewhere, the city had to have a place where it disposed of those with the dreaded, incurable disease.

     With the last of his hoarded copper tarsk bits, my Master -- my Master, wealthy, fastidious Valerus of Ar, who had tossed a glittering silver tarsk so casually to an urchin of the streets, one lazy afternoon, in exchange for a message from an old and trusted friend -- my Master purchased passage at Brundisium, on one of the barges that plied the short trade routes between Brundisium and Port Kar. I was tagged for identification and chained in the lower level with the other livestock... a coffle of work slaves, a few bosk bound for slaughter, a nervous, snappish saddle tharlarion which reminded me of my Master's Katar. Thus I saw nothing of Port Kar until the barge docked, and I was brought back up on deck.

     "A silver tarsk for your tariff," a dark man with an oddly scarred face was saying to my Master. "And a copper tarsk bit for the slut. Or you will not set foot upon the wharf."

     "Since when," my Master demanded, "is there a fee for a peaceful man to enter the city?"

     The scarred man laughed. "Since I say so," he said. "This is my wharf."

     "And you are?"

     "I am Cad."

     My Master nodded. "Of the Caste of Thieves," he said. "And what you are practicing is thievery."

     Of course. The scar on the man's face was a brand, three-pronged, burned just below the outer corner of his right eye. It had been badly done, and the shape of it was blurred, the skin around it puckered. Involuntarily I ran my fingers over the brand on my own thigh, the graceful cursive kef of the Gorean slave girl. It was deeply, cleanly incised. The flesh around it was smooth. My Master had seen to it that I was branded well. It had increased my value.

     Cad laughed again. "So it is," he said. "What else would you expect me to practice, peaceful man? Peaceful man with the speech of the High Castes, and the garb of a workman or a peasant?"

     My Master stood silent for a moment, looking at him. Then he shrugged. "My business is my own," he said. "I have no money. Perhaps I will simply go to another wharf."

     "As you can see," Cad said, "the barge is tied up here. It is one of mine, and it will go to no other wharf. In a few ehn, when all the merchandise is unloaded, it will return to the sea, to Brundisium for another consignment. If you truly have no money, you will go with it, unless you wish to pit yourself against the urts and tharlarion of the canals."

     My Master said nothing.

     "Or you can sell your slave," Cad said, "here on the wharf. Perhaps she will bring enough to pay your tariff."

     My heart stopped. I knew how determined, how ruthless my Master could be. I knew how much he wanted to enter Port Kar. I knew that the expense of time, in being taken back to Brundisium and finding another barge, could mean that he might never find Icarion, never have the chance to redress the balance of his honor. But surely he would not... surely he could not...

     "She is well-trained," my Master said, "and dirty as she may be at the moment, she can be quite lovely when she is properly groomed. She is hardly a girl to be sold on a wharf for a single silver tarsk."

     Cad grinned. "Such an exchange," he agreed, "would be theft, pure and simple."

     My Master nodded. There was a faint sardonic curl to one corner of his mouth. "Ten silver tarsks," he said.

     "Three."

     "Eight."

     "Five."

     My Master hesitated for an ihn. I will never forget that. At least he hesitated. And then he said, "Done."

     Everything seemed very bright and clear to me. The sun beat down against my skin, from a sky of impossible blue. The deck where I knelt was wet and dirty, with splinters pressing against my shins. The smells of the sea, of the bosk being unloaded, of the other goods which were almost certainly smuggled, were all around me. My Master's hand lay relaxed at his side, his long fine surgeon's fingers slightly curled. The sound of his voice... my Master's crisp voice, which I loved so much... the sound of my Master's voice, of just one word...

     Done.

     I did not move. I could not move. I could not even breathe.

     Cad nodded. He reached in a pouch at his belt and took out five silver tarsks. With a flourish he put one of them back, paying himself his thief's tariff. The other four he handed to my Master.

     My Master nodded and tucked them into his own pouch. It was riches, more money than he had had since he left Ar. Out of the same pouch he took a small key, the key to my collar. I knew what it was because he had unlocked and removed my collar once before, at the Sardar Fair of Se'Var.

     He flipped the key to Cad.

     "You are a credit to your caste," he said. His voice was hard and steady. "I wish you well."

     He stepped off the barge and walked away up the wharf, without looking back.

To be continued...

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For "prequels" to this story, (clickable links) see "The Confession of a Kajira," The Gorean Voice, October 1998; and "The Gift of a Kajira," The Gorean Voice, December 1998. For Part One, see The Gorean Voice, July 1999. For Part Two, see The Gorean Voice, August 1999.

For the story of Valerus and Mindar's visit to Ma'rau, see "The Silence of a Kajira," The Gorean Voice, September 1998.
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