John Norman - Priest-Kings of Gor

Vika still lay unconscious in my arms and I had folded her robes about her in order to protect her face and eyes and throat from the rock dust below.

I walked before the throne of Priest-Kings.

“Greetings, Cabot,” said a voice.

I looked up and saw Parp, puffing on his pipe, sitting calmly on the throne.

“You must not stay here,” I said to him, uneasily looking up at the remnants of the dome.

“There is nowhere to go,” said Parp, puffing contentedly on the pipe. He leaned back. A puff of smoke emerged from the pipe but instead of drifting up seemed instead almost immediately to pop apart. “I would have liked to enjoy a last, proper smoke,” said Parp. He looked down at me kindly and in a step or two seemed to float down the steps and stood beside me. He lifted aside the fold of Vika’s robes which I had drawn about her face.

“She is very beautiful,” said Parp, “much like her mother.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I wished that I could have known her better,” said Parp. He smiled at me. “But then I was an unworthy father for such a girl.”

“You are a very good and brave man,” I said.

“I am small and ugly and weak,” he said, “and fit to be despised by such a daughter.”

“I think now,” I said, “she would not despise you.”

He smiled and replaced the fold of the garment over her face.

“Do not tell her that I saw her,” he said. “Let her forget Parp, the fool.”

In a bound, almost like a small balloon, he floated up, and twisting about, reseated himself in the throne. He pounded on the arms once and the movement almost thrust him up off the throne.

“Why have you returned here?” I asked.

“To sit once more upon the throne of Priest-Kings,” said Parp, chuckling.

“But way?” I asked.

“Perhaps vanity,” said Parp. “Perhaps memory.” Then he chuckled again and his eyes, twinkling, looked down at me.

“But I also like to think,” he said, “it may be because this is the most comfortable chair in the entire Sardar.”

I laughed.

I looked up at him. “You are from Earth, are you not?” I asked.

“Long, long ago,” he said. “I never did get used to that business of sitting on the floor.” He chuckled again. “My knees were too stiff.”

“You were English,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, smiling.

“Brought here on one of the voyages of Acquisition?”

“Of course,” he said.

Parp regarded his pipe with annoyance. It had gone out. He began to pinch some tobacco from the pouch he wore at his belt.

“How long ago?” I asked.

He began to try to stuff the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. Given the gravitational alteration this was no easy task. “Do you know of these things?” asked Parp, without looking up.

“I know of the Stabilisation Serums,” I said.

Parp glanced up from the pipe, holding his thumb over the bowl to prevent the tobacco from floating out of it, and smiled. “Three centuries,” he said, and then returned his attention to the pipe.

He was trying to thrust more tobacco into it but was having difficulty because the tiny brown particles tended to lie loosely about a quarter of an inch above the bowl. At last he wadded enough in for the pressure to hold it tight and, using the silver lighter, sucked a stream of flame into the bowl.

“Where did you get tobacco and a pipe?” I asked, for I knew of none such on Gor.

“As you might imagine,” said Parp, “I have acquired the habit originally on Earth and, since, I have returned to Earth several times as an Agent of the Priest-Kings, I have had the opportunity to indulge it. On the other hand, in the last few years, I have grown my own tobacco below in the Nest under lamps.”

The floor buckled under my feet and I changed my position. The throne tilted and then fell back into place again.

Parp seemed more concerned with his pipe, which seemed again in danger of going out, than he did with the world that was crumbling about him.

At last he seemed to get the pipe under control.

“Did you know,” he asked, “that Vika was the female Mul who drove away the Golden Beetles when Sarm sent them against the forces of Misk?”

“No,” I said, “I did not know.”

“A fine, brave girl,” said Parp.

“I know,” I said. “She is truly a great and beautiful woman.”

It seemed to please Parp that I had said this.

“Yes,” he said, “I believe she is.” And he added, rather sadly I thought, “And such was her mother.”

Vika stirred in my arms.

“Quick,” said Parp, who seemed suddenly afraid, “take her from the chamber before she regains consciousness. She must not see me!”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” said Parp, “she despises me and I could not endure her contempt.”

“I think not,” I said.

“Go,” he begged, “go!”

“Show me the way,” I said.

Hurriedly Parp knocked the ashes and sparks from his pipe against the arm of the throne. The ashes and unused tobacco seemed to hang in the air like smoke and then drift apart. Parp thrust the pipe in his pouch. He seemed to float down to the floor and, touching one sandalled foot to the ground only every twenty yards or so, began to leave the chamber in slow dreamlike bounds. “Follow me,” he called after him.

Vika in my arms I followed the bounding body of Parp, whose robes seemed to lift and flutter softly about him as he almost floated down the tunnel before me.

Soon we had reached a steel portal and Parp threw back a switch and it rolled upward.

Outside I saw the two snow larls turn to face the portal. They were unchained.

Parp’s eyes widened in horror. “I thought they would be gone,” he said. “Earlier I freed them from the inside in order that they might not die chained.”

He threw the switch again and the portal began to roll down but one of the larls with a wild roar threw himself towards it and got half his body and one long, raking clawed paw under it. We leaped back as the clawed paw swept towards us. the portal struck the animal’s back and, frightened it reared up, forcing the portal up, twisting it in the frame. The larl backed away but the portal, in spite of Parp’s efforts, now refused to close.

“You were kind,” I said.

“I was a fool,” said Parp. “Always the fool!”

“You could not have know,” I said.

Vika’s hang went to the folds of the robe and I could feel her squirm to regain her feet.

I set her down and Parp turned away, covering his face with his robe.

I stood at the portal, sword drawn, to defend it against the larls should they attempt to enter.

Vika now stood on her feet, a bit behind me, taking in at a glance the jammed door and the two unchained larls without. Then she saw the figure of Parp and cried out with a tiny gasp, and looked back again at the larls, and then to the figure.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her put out her hand gently and approach Parp. She pulled aside the folds of his robe and I saw her touch his face which seemed filled with tears.

“Father!” she wept.

“My daughter,” he said, and took the girl gently in his arms.

“I love you Father,” she said.

And Parp uttered a great sob, his head falling against the shoulder of his daughter.

One of the larls roared, the hunger roar that precedes the roar of the charge.

This was the sound I knew well.

“Stand aside,” said Parp, and I barely knew the voice that spoke.

But I stood aside.

Parp stood framed in the doorway holding that tiny silver lighter with which it seemed I had seen him fumble and light his pipe a thousand times, that small cylinder I had once mistaken for a weapon.

Parp reversed the cylinder and leveled it at the breast of the nearest larl. He turned it suddenly and a jolt of fire that threw him five feet back into the cave leapt from that tiny instrument and the nearest larl suddenly reared, its paws lifted wildly, its fangs bared, its snowy pelt burned black about the hole that had once housed its heart, and then it twisted and fell sprawling from the ledge.