Nomads of Gor (84 page)

       
egg. From it, wet, wrinkled. rotted, dead for perhaps months

       
or years, he drew forth the body of an unborn tharlarion.

       
"I told you," said Kamchak, kindly, "the egg was worth

       
less."

        
I staggered to my feet, standing now and looking down at

        
the shattered fragments of the egg. I stooped down and

        
picked up one of the stiff shards and rubbed it, seeing the

        
golden stain now left on my fingertips.

        
"It is not the egg of Priest-Kings," said Kamchak. "Do you

        
truly think we would permit enemies to know the wherea-

        
bouts of such a thing?"

         
I looked at Kamchak, tears in my eyes.

        
Suddenly, far off, we heard a weird scream, high, waver-

        
ing, and the shrill howls of frustrated sleen.

         
"It is ended," said Kamchak. "It is ended."

        
He turned in the direction from which the scream had

        
come. Slowly, not hurrying, in his boots he tramped across

        
the rug, toward the sound. He stopped once beside the

        
twisted, hideous body of Tolnw of the Paravaci. "it is too

 
bad," he said, "I would have preferred to stake him out In

 
the path of the bask." Then, saying no more, Kamchak, the

 
rest of us following, left the room, guiding ourselves by the

 
distant, frustrated howls of disappointed Sleen.

 
We came together to the brink of the Yellow Pool of

 
Turia. At its marbled edge, hissing and quivering with rage,

 
throwing their heads now and again upward and howling in

 
frustrated fury were the two, tawny hunting sleen, their

 
maddened round eyes blazing on the pathetic figure of

 
Saphrar of Turia, blubbering and whimpering, sobbing,

 
reaching out, his fingers scratching the air as though he

 
would climb it, for the graceful, decorative vines that hung

 
above the pool, more than twenty feet above his head.

 
He struggled to move in the glistening, resprung, sparkling

 
substance of the Yellow Pool, but could not change his place.

 
The fat hands with the scarlet fingernails seemed suddenly to

 
be drawn and thin, clutching. The merchant was covered

 
with sweat. He was surrounded by the luminous, white

 
spheres that floated under the surface about him, perhaps

 
watching, perhaps somehow recording his position in virtue

 
of pressure waves in the medium. The golden droplets which

 
Saphrar wore in place of eyebrows fed unnoticed into the

 
fluid that humped itself thickening itself about him. Beneath

 
the surface we could see places where his robes had been

 
eaten away and the skin was turning white beneath the

 
surface, the juices of the pool etching their way into his body,

 
taking its protein and nutriment into its own, digesting it.

 
Saphrar took a step deeper into the pool and the pool

 
permitted this, and he now stood with the fluids level with his

 
chest

   
"Lower the vines!" begged Saphrar.

   
No one moved.

 
Saphrar threw back his head like a dog and howled in

 
pain. He began to scratch and tear at his body, as if mad.

 
Len, tears bursting from his eyes, he held out his hands to

 
Kamchak of the Tuchuks.

   
"Please" he cried.

   
"Remember Kutaituchik," said Kamchak.

 
Saphrar screamed in agony and moving beneath the yellow

 
glistening surface of the pool I saw several of the filamentous

 
fibers encircle his legs and begin to draw him deeper into the

 
pool and beneath the surface.

  
Then Saphrar, merchant of Turia, struggled, pounding

  
against the caked material near to him, to prevent his being

      
drawn under. The eyes were bulging perhaps a quarter of an

      
inch from the little round head and the mouth, with its two

      
golden teeth, now emptied of ost venom, seemed to be

      
screaming but there was no sound.

      
"The egg," Kamchak informed him, "was the egg of a

      
tharlarion it was worthless."

      
The fluid now had reached Saphrar's chin and his head was

      
back to try and keep his nose and mouth over the surface.

      
His head shook with horror.

      
"Please!" he cried once more, the syllable lost in the

      
bubbling yellow mass that reached into his mouth.

      
"Remember Kutaituchik," said Kamchak, and the filament-

      
tous fibers about the merchant's legs and ankles drew him

      
slowly downward. Some bubbles broke the surface. Then the

      
merchant's hands, still extended as though to grasp the vines

      
overhead, with their scarlet fingernails, the robes eaten away

      
from the flesh, disappeared beneath the sparkling, glistening

      
surface.

      
We stood silently there for a time, until Kamchak saw

      
small, white bones, like bleached driftwood, rocking on the

      
sparkling, now watery surface, being moved bit by bit, almost

      
as if by tides, to the edge of the pool, where I gathered

      
attendants would normally collect and discard them.

        
"Bring a torch," said Kamchak.

      
He looked down into the sparkling, glistening living fluid of

      
the Yellow Pool of Turia.

      
"It was Saphrar of Turia," said Kamchak to me, "who first

      
introduced Kutaituchik to the strings of kanda." He added,

      
'it was twice he killed my father."

      
The torch was brought, and the pool seemed to discharge

      
its vapor more rapidly, and the fluids began to churn, and

      
draw away from our edge of the pool. The yellows of the

      
pool began to flicker and the filamentous fibers began to

      
writhe, and the spheres of different colors beneath the sur-

      
face began to turn and oscillate, and dart in one direction

      
and then the other.

      
Kamchak took the torch and with his right hand, in a long

      
arc, flung it to the center of the pool.

      
Suddenly like an explosion and conflagration the pool

      
erupted into flames and Kamchak and I and Harold and the

      
others shielded our faces and eyes and withdrew before the

      
fury of the fire. The pool began to roar and hiss and bubble

      
and scatter parts of itself, flaming, into the air and again to

      
the walls. Even the vines caught fire. The pool then at

      
drawn under. The eyes were bulging perhaps a quarter of an

      
inch from the little round head and the mouth, with its two

      
golden teeth, now emptied of ost venom, seemed to be

      
screaming but there was no sound.

             
It tempted to desiccate itself and retreat into its hardened

 
shell-like condition but the fire within the closing shell burst it

 
apart and open and then it was again like a lake of burning

 
oil, with portions of the shell tossed like flaming chips upon it

 
For better than an hour it burned and then the basin of

 
the pool, now black, in places the marble fused and melted,

 
was empty, save for smears of carbon and grease, and some

 
cracked, blackened bones, and some drops of melted gold,

 
what had been left perhaps of the golden drops which

 
Saphrar of Turia had worn over his eyes, and the two golden

 
teeth, which hall once held the venom of an ost.

 
"Kutaituchik is avenged," said Kamchak, and turned from

 
the room.

 
Harold and I, and the others followed him.

 
Outside the compound of Saphrar, which was now burn-

 
ing, we mounted kaiila to return to the wagons outside the

 
walls.
    

 
A man approached Kamchak. "The tarnsman," he said,

 
"escaped." He added, "As you said, we did not fire on him

 
for he did not have with him the merchant, Saphrar of

 
Turia."

 
Kamchak nodded. "I have no quarrel with Ha-Reel, the

 
mercenary," he said. Then Kamchak looked at me. "You,

 
however," he said, "now that he knows of the stakes in these

 
games, may meet him again. He draws his sword only in the

 
name of gold, but I expect that now, Saphrar dead, those

 
who employed the merchant may need new agents for their

 
work and that they will pay the price of a sword such as

 
that of Ha-keel" Kamchak grinned at me, the first time

 
since the death of Kutaituchik. "It is said," remarked

 
Kamchak, "that the sword of Ha-Keel is scarcely less swift

 
and cunning than that of Pa-Kur, the Master of Assassin"

  
"Pa-Kur is dead," I said. "He died in the siege of Ar."

  
"Was the body recovered?" asked Kamchak.

  
"No," I said.

 
Kamchak smiled. "I think, Tart Cabot," he said. "you

 
would never make a Tuchuk."

   
'Why is that?" I asked.

  
"You are too innocent," he said, "too trusting."

 
"Long ago," said Harold, nearby, "I gave up expecting

 
more of a Koroban."

  
I smiled. "Pa-Kur," I said, "defeated in personal combat

    
on the high roof of the Cylinder of Justice in Ar, turned and

    
to avoid capture threw himself over the ledge. I do not think