Post by adreannaTal{fb} on Jan 4, 2011 16:07:51 GMT -5
~Priest-Kings of Gor~
Written by John Norman
(Copyright 1968 by John Lange)
(Tandem/Hunt Bernard Printing Ltd)
~Back Cover~
Here is the magnificent world of Gor, known also as Counter-Earth, a planet as strangely populated as threatening, as beautiful as any in fiction. Here too is Tarl Cabot, the one picked out of millions to be trained and schooled and disciplined by the best teachers, swordsmen, bowmen on Gor.
Tarl is determined to discover whether his beloved Talena has indeed been destroyed, together with his home city of Ko-ro-ba and all its inhabitants, by the all-powerful Priest-Kings of Gor. Now Tarl Cabot must venture to the Mountains of Sardar where they exercise their merciless rule, and from which feared and impregnable stronghold no one has ever returned.
~Inside~
At the Fair of En-Kara Tarl Cabot made his few farewells. He did not really believe he would return from Sardar, but except for the Tarn, the great wild bird that had winged him over so much of the strange landscape of Gor, there were few he would miss. For his home city Ko-ro-ba had long since been destroyed by the Priest-Kings, his loved ones - friends and family alike - scattered to the four winds, or perhaps, dead.
Nowhere in all of Gor was there anything for Tarl Cabot - except in the Mountains of Sardar. Here were the authors of his loss, the creatures whose purpose and origin were unknown, who controlled Gor with the flame-death, whose displeasure was universally feared.
Here Tarl meant to find his answers - or if not answers, revenge. And if not revenge, then death.
~Quotations from the book, Priest-Kings of Gor~
*******************************************************************************************
"It was not far to the fair of En'Kara, one of the four great fairs held in the shadow of the Sarda during the Gorean year, and I soon walked slowly down the long cental avenue between the tents, the booths and stalls, the pavilions and stockades of the fair toward the high, brassbound timber gate, formed of black logs, beyond which lies the Sardar itself, the sanctuary of this world's gods, known to the men below the mountains, the mortals, only as Priest_Kings.........
I wished that I had had longer to visit the fair for on another occasion at another time I should have sought eagerly to examine its wares, drink at its taverns, talk with its merchants and attend its contests, for these fairs are free ground for the many competitive, hostile Gorean cities, and provide almost the sole opportunity for the citizens of various cities to meet peaceably with one another.
It is little wonder then that the cities of Gor support and welcome the fairs. Sometimes they provide a common ground on which territorial and commercial disputes may be amicable resolved without loss of honor, plenipotentiaries of the warring cities having apparently met by accident among the silken pavilions.
Further, members of castes, such as the Physicians and Builders use the fairs for the dissemination of information and techniques among Caste Brothers, as is prescribed in their codes in spite of the fact that their respective cities may be hostile."
~Priest-Kings fo Gor, pages 8 and 9~
“The fairs incidentally are governed by Merchant Law and supported by booth rents and taxes levied on the items exchanged. The commercial facilities of these fairs, from money changing to general banking, are the finest I know of on Gor, save those in Ar’s Street of Coins, and letters of credit are accepted and loans negotiated, though often at usurious rates, with what seems reckless indifference. Yet perhaps this is not so puzzling, for the Gorean cities will, within their own walls, enforce the Merchant Law when pertinent, even against their own citizens. If they did not, of course, the fairs would be closed to the citizens of that city.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, Page 11~
"Although no one may not be enslaved at the fair, slaves may be bought and sold within its precincts, and slavers do a thriving business, exceeded perhaps only by that of Ar`s Street of Brands. The reason for this is not simply that here is a fine market for such wares, since men from various cities pass freely to and fro at the fair, but that each Gorean, whether male or female, is expected to see the Sardar Mountains, in honor of the Priest-Kings, at least once in his life, prior to his twenty fifth year."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 12~
"They had thought to come to the Sardar as free women, discharging their obligation to the Priest-Kings. They would leave as slave girls."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 13~
"It is said that the Priest-Kings know whatever transpires on their world and that the mere lifting of their hand can summon all the powers of the universe. I myself had seen the power of Priest-Kings and knew such beings existed. I myself had traveled in a ship of the Priest-Kings which had twice carried me to this world; I had seen their power so subtly exercised as to alter the movements of a compass needle, so grossly demonstrated as to destroy a city, leaving behind not even the stones of what had once been a dwelling place of men.
It is said that neither the physical intricacies of the cosmos nor the emotions of beings are beyond the scope of their power, that the feelings of men and the motions of atoms and stars are as one to them, that they can control the very forces of gravity and invisibly sway the hearts of human beings, but of this latter claim I wonder, for once on a road to Ko-ro-ba, my city, I met one who had been a messenger of the Priest-Kings, one who had been capable of disobeying them, one from the shards of whose burnt and blasted skull I had removed a handful of golden wire.
He had been destroyed by the Priest-Kings as casually as one might jerk loose the thong of a sandal. He had disobeyed and he had been destroyed, immediately and with grotesque dispatch, but the important thing was, I told myself, that he had disobeyed, that he could disobey, that he had been able to disobey and choose the ignominious death he knew must follow. He had won his freedom though it had, as the Goreans say, led him to the Cities of Dust, where I think, not even the Priest-Kings care to follow. He had, as a man, lifted his fist against the might of the Priest-Kings and so he had died, defiantly, though horribly, with great nobility."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 13 & 14~
"I am of the Caste of Warriors, and it is in our codes that the only death fit for a man is that in battle, but I can no longer believe that this is true, for the man I met once on the road to Ko-ro-ba died well, and taught me that all wisdom and truth does not lie in my own codes."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 14~
"It took not much time to purchase a small bundle of supplies to take into the Sardar, nor was it difficult to find a scribe to whom I might entrust the history of the events at Tharna. I did not ask his name nor he mine. I knew his caste, and he knew mine, and it was enough. He could not read the manuscript as it was written in English, a language as foreign to him as Gorean would be to most of you, but yet he would treasure the manuscript and guard it as though it were a most precious possession, for he was a scribe and it is the way of scribes to love the written word and keep it from harm, and if he could not read the manuscript, what did it matter--perhaps someone could someday, and then the words which had kept their secret for so long would at last enkindle the mystery of communication and what had been written would be heard and understood."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 15~
“You may do with me what you please,” said the girl, turning to face me. “As long as you are in this room I belong to you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I am a Chamber Slave,” she said. It means that I am confined to this room, and that I am the slave of whoever enters the room.
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 36~
"I would be the Ubara of all Gor,” she laughed, “with Priest-Kings at my beck and call, at my command all their riches and their untold powers!”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 38~
"She had not prepared herself a portion, but, after I had been served, had knelt silently to one side, back on her heels in the position of a Tower Slave, a slave to whom largely domestic duties would be allotted."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 45~
"On Gor, incidentally, chairs have special significance, and do not often occur in private dwellings. They tend to be reserved for significant personages, such as administrators and judges. Moreover, although you may find this hard to understand, they are not thought to be comfortable."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 45 & 46~
"The position of the Tower Slave, in which Vika knelt, differs from that of a free woman only in the position of the wrists which are held before her and, when not occupied, crossed as though for binding. A free woman's wrists are never so placed...................The position of the Pleasure Slave, incidentally, differs from the position of both the free woman and the Tower Slave. The hands of a Pleasure Slave normally rest on her thighs but, in some cities, for example, Thentis, I believe, they are crossed behind her. More significantly, for the free woman's hands may also rest on her thighs, there is a difference in the placement of the knees. In all these kneeling positions, incidentally, even that of the Pleasure Slave, the Gorean woman carries herself well; her back is straight and her chin is high. She tends to be vital and beautiful to look upon.
”~Priest Kings of Gor, page 46~
"My Chamber Slave’s accent had been pure High Caste Gorean though I could not place the city. Probably her caste had been that of the Builders or Physicians, for had her people been Scribes I would have expected a greater subtlety of inflections, the use of less common grammatical cases; and had her people been of the Warriors I would have expected a blunter speech, rather belligerently simple, expressed in great reliance on the indicative mood and, habitually, a rather arrogant refusal to venture beyond the most straightforward of sentence structures.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 52~
"I resheathed my sword and wiped my face with the back of my forearm. I could taste a little blood and knew that some of the fragments from the sensors had cut my face.
Vika knelt beside the couch numbly.
I smiled at her. “You may now leave the rom” I said, “should you wish to do so.”
Slowly she rose to her feet. Her eyes looked to the portal and its shattered sensors. Then she looked at me, something of wonder andfear in her eyes.
She shook herself.
“My master is hurt,” she said.
……………
I smiled as I watched her go to fetch a towel fromone of the chests against the wall.
………..
Vika returned with the towel and began dabbing at my face.
…………..
“Does it hurt?” ask Vika.
“No,” I said.
“Of course it hurts,” she sniffed.
……………….
With a graceful movement she rose and went back again to the chests against the wall. She returned with a small tube of ointment.
“They are deeper than I thought,” she said.
With the tip of her finger she began to work the ointment into the cuts. It burned quite a bit.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She laughed, and it pleased me to hear her laugh.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” I said.
“My father,” she said, “was of the Caste of Physicians.”
So I thought to myself, I had placed her accent rather well, either Builders or Physicians, and had I thought carefully enough about it, I might have recognized her accent as being a bit too refined for the Builders. I chuckled to myself. In effect, I had probably merely scored a lucky hit.
~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 61 and 62~
"The ointment will soon be absorbed," she said. "In a few minutes there will be no trace of it, nor of the cuts."
I whistled.
"The Physicians of Treve," I said, "have marvelous medicines."
"It is an ointment of Priest-Kings," she said"
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 64~
“If she has not pleased her master of late, she may be, of course, as a disciplinary measure, simply chained nude to the slave ring in the bottom of the couch, sans both blanket and mat. The stones of the floor are hard and the Gorean nights are cold and it is a rare girl who, when unchained in the morning, does not seek more dutifully to serve her master."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 67~
"This harsh treatment, incidentally, when she is thought to deserve it, may even be inflicted on a Free Companion, in spite of the fact that she is free and usually much loved. According to the Gorean way of looking at things a taste of the slave ring is thought to be occasionally beneficial to all women, even the exalted Free Companions.
Thus when she has been irritable or otherwise troublesome even a Free Companion may find herself at the foot of the couch looking forward to a pleasant night on the stones, stripped, with neither mat nor blanket, chained to a slave ring precisely as though she were a lowly slave girl.
It is the Gorean way of reminding her, should she need to be reminded, that she, too, is a woman, and thus to be dominated, to be subject to men. Should she be tempted to forget this basic fact of Gorean life the slave ring set in the bottom of each Gorean couch is there to refresh her memory. Gor is a man’s world.
And yet on this world I have seen great numbers of women who were both beautiful and splendid.
The Gorean woman, for reasons that are not altogether clear to me, considering the culture, rejoices in being a woman. She is often an exciting, magnificent, glorious creature, outspoken, talkative, vital, active, spirited. On the whole I find her more joyful than many of her earth-inhabiting sisters who, theoretically at least, enjoy a more lofty status, although it is surely true that on my old world I have met several women with something of the Gorean zest for acknowledging the radiant truth of their sex, the gifts of joy, grace and beauty, tenderness, and fathoms of love that we poor men, I suspect, may sometimes and tragically fail to understand, to comprehend.
Yet with all due respect and regard for the most astounding and marvelous sex, I suspect that, perhaps partly because of my Gorean training, it is true that a touch of the slave ring is occasionally beneficial.
Of custom, a slave girl may not even ascend the couch to serve her master’s pleasure. The point of this restriction, I suppose, is to draw a clearer distinction between her status and that of a Free Companion. At any rate the dignities of the couch are, by custom, reserved for the Free Companion."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 67 & 68~
“Lo Sadar,” it said. “I am a Priest-King.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 76~
"It walked on four extremely long, slender, four-jointed stalks that were its supporting legs, and carried its far more muscular, four-jointed grasping legs, or appendages, extremely high almost at the level with its jaw, and in front of its body. Each of these grasping appendages terminated in four much smaller delicate hooklike prehensile appendages, the tips of which normally touched one another. I would later learn that the ball at the end of its forelegs from which the smaller prehensile appendages extended, there was a curved, bladed, hornlike structure that could spring forward; this happens spontaneously when the leg's tip is inverted, a motion which at once exposes the hornlike blade and withdraws the four prehensile appendages into the protected area beneath it." ~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 80 & 81~
"In the next the expression “Mul” is used to designate a human slave."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 94~
"We had not walked far when we passed a long, worm like animal, eyeless, with a small red mouth, that inched its way along the corridor, hugging the angle between the wall and the floor…………..
“What do you call it?” I asked.
“Oh,” said one of the slaves, “it is a Slime Worm.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“Long ago it functioned in the Nest,” said one of the slaves, “ as a sewerage device, but it has not served that function in many thousands of years.”
“But yet it remains in the Nest.”
“Of course, said one of the slaves, “ the Priest-Kings are tolerant.”
“Yes,” said the other, “ and they are fond of it, and are themselves creatures of great reverence for tradition.”
“The Slime Worm has earned its place in the Nest,” said the other.
“How does it live?” I asked.
“It scavenges on the kills of the Golden Beetle,” said the first slave.
“What does the Golden Beetle kill?” I asked.
“Priest-Kings,” said the second slave."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 104 & 105~
"The washing-booth was remarkably like the showers with which we are familiar except that one may not regulate the flow of fluid. One turns on the fluid by stepping into the booth and its amount and temperature are controlled, automatically. I had naturally supposed the fluid to be simply water which it closely resembled in appearance, and once had tried to fill my bowl for the morning meal there, rather than ladling the water out of the water pan. Choking, my mouth burning, I spat it out in the booth. “It is fortunate,” said Misk, “that you did not swallow it for the washing fluid contains a cleansing additive that is highly toxic to human physiology.”
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 111~
"Occasionally on Gor we destroy a city, selecting it by means of a random selection device. This teaches the lower orders the might of the Priest Kings and encourages them to keep our laws."
"But what if the city has done no wrong?" I asked.
"So much the better," said Misk, "for the men below the Mountains are then confused and fear us even more--but the members of the Caste of Initiates, we have found, will produce an explanation of why the city was destroyed. They invent one and if it seems plausible they soon believe it. For example, we allowed them to suppose that it was through some fault of yours--disrespect for Priest Kings as I recall--that your city was destroyed."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 123~
"Of course," said Misk, "but we have allowed them to develop in many areas--in medicine, for example, where something approximating the Stabilization Serums has been independently developed."
"What is that?" I asked
"You have surely not failed to notice," said Misk, "that though you came to the Counter-Earth more than seven years ago you have undergone no significant physical alteration in that time."
"I have noticed," I said, "and I wondered on this."
"Of course." said Misk, "their serums are not as effective as ours and sometimes do not function, and sometimes the effect wears off after only a few hundred years."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 124~
“I knew before,” she said, “that I was truly your slave but I did not know until now that you were truly my master.” She looked up at me through the plastic, shaken. “It is a strange feeling,” she said, “ to know that someone--truly--is your master, to know that not only has he the right to do with you as he pleases but that he will, that your will is nothing to him, that it is your will and not his that must bend, that you are helpless and must--and will--do what he says, that you must obey.”
It made me a bit sad to hear Vika recount the woes of female slavery.
Then to my astonishment she smiled up at me.
“It is good to belong to you Tarl Cabot,” she said. “I love belonging to you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I am a woman,” she said, “and you are a man, and stronger than I and I am yours and this you knew and now I have learned it too.”
I was puzzled.
Vika looked up at smiled. “Every woman in her heart,” said Vika, “wants to wear the chains of a man.”
This seemed to me quite doubtful.
Vika looked up and smiled. “Of course,” she said, “we would like to choose the man.”
This seemed to me only a bit less doubtful.
“I would choose you, Cabot,” she said.
“Women wish to be free,” I told her
“Yes,” she said, “ we also wish to be free.” She smiled.
“In every woman,” she said, “ there is something of the Free Companion and something of the Slave Girl.” ~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 203 & 204~
“She knelt in the position of the Pleasure Slave but her hands on her thighs had unconsciously, pleadingly, turned their palms to me, and she no longer knelt quite back on her heels. It was as though she begged to be allowed to lift and open her arms and rise and come to my arms. But as I looked upon her sternly she turned her palms again to her thighs, knelt back on her heels and dropped her head, holding her eyes as if by force of will fixed on the plastic beneath my sandals.
Her entire body trembled with the ache of desire.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 234~
"One of the humans by the wall, a girl knelt by him, holding a cloth, trying to stanch the bleeding. It was Vika! I rushed to her side. "Quick Cabot! " she cried, "I must make a tourniquet! " I seized the limb of the man and pressing the flesh together managed to retard the bleeding. Vika took the cloth from his wound and, ripping it, and using a small steel bar from the sheared wall, quickly fashioned a tourniquet, wrapping it securely about the remains of the mans arm. The Physicians daughter did the work swiftly, expertly."
~Priest Kings of Gor, pages 244 and 245~
"I was pleased that she would go to Ar, where she, though a woman, might learn the craft of medicine under the masters appointed by Kazrak."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 306~
"These men....had come for the autumn fair, the Fair of Se'Var, which was just being set up at the time of the gravitational lessening. I remained with them, accepting their hospitality, while going out to meet various delegations from different cities, as they came to the Sardar for the fair."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 309~
Written by John Norman
(Copyright 1968 by John Lange)
(Tandem/Hunt Bernard Printing Ltd)
~Back Cover~
Here is the magnificent world of Gor, known also as Counter-Earth, a planet as strangely populated as threatening, as beautiful as any in fiction. Here too is Tarl Cabot, the one picked out of millions to be trained and schooled and disciplined by the best teachers, swordsmen, bowmen on Gor.
Tarl is determined to discover whether his beloved Talena has indeed been destroyed, together with his home city of Ko-ro-ba and all its inhabitants, by the all-powerful Priest-Kings of Gor. Now Tarl Cabot must venture to the Mountains of Sardar where they exercise their merciless rule, and from which feared and impregnable stronghold no one has ever returned.
~Inside~
At the Fair of En-Kara Tarl Cabot made his few farewells. He did not really believe he would return from Sardar, but except for the Tarn, the great wild bird that had winged him over so much of the strange landscape of Gor, there were few he would miss. For his home city Ko-ro-ba had long since been destroyed by the Priest-Kings, his loved ones - friends and family alike - scattered to the four winds, or perhaps, dead.
Nowhere in all of Gor was there anything for Tarl Cabot - except in the Mountains of Sardar. Here were the authors of his loss, the creatures whose purpose and origin were unknown, who controlled Gor with the flame-death, whose displeasure was universally feared.
Here Tarl meant to find his answers - or if not answers, revenge. And if not revenge, then death.
~Quotations from the book, Priest-Kings of Gor~
*******************************************************************************************
"It was not far to the fair of En'Kara, one of the four great fairs held in the shadow of the Sarda during the Gorean year, and I soon walked slowly down the long cental avenue between the tents, the booths and stalls, the pavilions and stockades of the fair toward the high, brassbound timber gate, formed of black logs, beyond which lies the Sardar itself, the sanctuary of this world's gods, known to the men below the mountains, the mortals, only as Priest_Kings.........
I wished that I had had longer to visit the fair for on another occasion at another time I should have sought eagerly to examine its wares, drink at its taverns, talk with its merchants and attend its contests, for these fairs are free ground for the many competitive, hostile Gorean cities, and provide almost the sole opportunity for the citizens of various cities to meet peaceably with one another.
It is little wonder then that the cities of Gor support and welcome the fairs. Sometimes they provide a common ground on which territorial and commercial disputes may be amicable resolved without loss of honor, plenipotentiaries of the warring cities having apparently met by accident among the silken pavilions.
Further, members of castes, such as the Physicians and Builders use the fairs for the dissemination of information and techniques among Caste Brothers, as is prescribed in their codes in spite of the fact that their respective cities may be hostile."
~Priest-Kings fo Gor, pages 8 and 9~
“The fairs incidentally are governed by Merchant Law and supported by booth rents and taxes levied on the items exchanged. The commercial facilities of these fairs, from money changing to general banking, are the finest I know of on Gor, save those in Ar’s Street of Coins, and letters of credit are accepted and loans negotiated, though often at usurious rates, with what seems reckless indifference. Yet perhaps this is not so puzzling, for the Gorean cities will, within their own walls, enforce the Merchant Law when pertinent, even against their own citizens. If they did not, of course, the fairs would be closed to the citizens of that city.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, Page 11~
"Although no one may not be enslaved at the fair, slaves may be bought and sold within its precincts, and slavers do a thriving business, exceeded perhaps only by that of Ar`s Street of Brands. The reason for this is not simply that here is a fine market for such wares, since men from various cities pass freely to and fro at the fair, but that each Gorean, whether male or female, is expected to see the Sardar Mountains, in honor of the Priest-Kings, at least once in his life, prior to his twenty fifth year."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 12~
"They had thought to come to the Sardar as free women, discharging their obligation to the Priest-Kings. They would leave as slave girls."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 13~
"It is said that the Priest-Kings know whatever transpires on their world and that the mere lifting of their hand can summon all the powers of the universe. I myself had seen the power of Priest-Kings and knew such beings existed. I myself had traveled in a ship of the Priest-Kings which had twice carried me to this world; I had seen their power so subtly exercised as to alter the movements of a compass needle, so grossly demonstrated as to destroy a city, leaving behind not even the stones of what had once been a dwelling place of men.
It is said that neither the physical intricacies of the cosmos nor the emotions of beings are beyond the scope of their power, that the feelings of men and the motions of atoms and stars are as one to them, that they can control the very forces of gravity and invisibly sway the hearts of human beings, but of this latter claim I wonder, for once on a road to Ko-ro-ba, my city, I met one who had been a messenger of the Priest-Kings, one who had been capable of disobeying them, one from the shards of whose burnt and blasted skull I had removed a handful of golden wire.
He had been destroyed by the Priest-Kings as casually as one might jerk loose the thong of a sandal. He had disobeyed and he had been destroyed, immediately and with grotesque dispatch, but the important thing was, I told myself, that he had disobeyed, that he could disobey, that he had been able to disobey and choose the ignominious death he knew must follow. He had won his freedom though it had, as the Goreans say, led him to the Cities of Dust, where I think, not even the Priest-Kings care to follow. He had, as a man, lifted his fist against the might of the Priest-Kings and so he had died, defiantly, though horribly, with great nobility."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 13 & 14~
"I am of the Caste of Warriors, and it is in our codes that the only death fit for a man is that in battle, but I can no longer believe that this is true, for the man I met once on the road to Ko-ro-ba died well, and taught me that all wisdom and truth does not lie in my own codes."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 14~
"It took not much time to purchase a small bundle of supplies to take into the Sardar, nor was it difficult to find a scribe to whom I might entrust the history of the events at Tharna. I did not ask his name nor he mine. I knew his caste, and he knew mine, and it was enough. He could not read the manuscript as it was written in English, a language as foreign to him as Gorean would be to most of you, but yet he would treasure the manuscript and guard it as though it were a most precious possession, for he was a scribe and it is the way of scribes to love the written word and keep it from harm, and if he could not read the manuscript, what did it matter--perhaps someone could someday, and then the words which had kept their secret for so long would at last enkindle the mystery of communication and what had been written would be heard and understood."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 15~
“You may do with me what you please,” said the girl, turning to face me. “As long as you are in this room I belong to you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I am a Chamber Slave,” she said. It means that I am confined to this room, and that I am the slave of whoever enters the room.
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 36~
"I would be the Ubara of all Gor,” she laughed, “with Priest-Kings at my beck and call, at my command all their riches and their untold powers!”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 38~
"She had not prepared herself a portion, but, after I had been served, had knelt silently to one side, back on her heels in the position of a Tower Slave, a slave to whom largely domestic duties would be allotted."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 45~
"On Gor, incidentally, chairs have special significance, and do not often occur in private dwellings. They tend to be reserved for significant personages, such as administrators and judges. Moreover, although you may find this hard to understand, they are not thought to be comfortable."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 45 & 46~
"The position of the Tower Slave, in which Vika knelt, differs from that of a free woman only in the position of the wrists which are held before her and, when not occupied, crossed as though for binding. A free woman's wrists are never so placed...................The position of the Pleasure Slave, incidentally, differs from the position of both the free woman and the Tower Slave. The hands of a Pleasure Slave normally rest on her thighs but, in some cities, for example, Thentis, I believe, they are crossed behind her. More significantly, for the free woman's hands may also rest on her thighs, there is a difference in the placement of the knees. In all these kneeling positions, incidentally, even that of the Pleasure Slave, the Gorean woman carries herself well; her back is straight and her chin is high. She tends to be vital and beautiful to look upon.
”~Priest Kings of Gor, page 46~
"My Chamber Slave’s accent had been pure High Caste Gorean though I could not place the city. Probably her caste had been that of the Builders or Physicians, for had her people been Scribes I would have expected a greater subtlety of inflections, the use of less common grammatical cases; and had her people been of the Warriors I would have expected a blunter speech, rather belligerently simple, expressed in great reliance on the indicative mood and, habitually, a rather arrogant refusal to venture beyond the most straightforward of sentence structures.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 52~
"I resheathed my sword and wiped my face with the back of my forearm. I could taste a little blood and knew that some of the fragments from the sensors had cut my face.
Vika knelt beside the couch numbly.
I smiled at her. “You may now leave the rom” I said, “should you wish to do so.”
Slowly she rose to her feet. Her eyes looked to the portal and its shattered sensors. Then she looked at me, something of wonder andfear in her eyes.
She shook herself.
“My master is hurt,” she said.
……………
I smiled as I watched her go to fetch a towel fromone of the chests against the wall.
………..
Vika returned with the towel and began dabbing at my face.
…………..
“Does it hurt?” ask Vika.
“No,” I said.
“Of course it hurts,” she sniffed.
……………….
With a graceful movement she rose and went back again to the chests against the wall. She returned with a small tube of ointment.
“They are deeper than I thought,” she said.
With the tip of her finger she began to work the ointment into the cuts. It burned quite a bit.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She laughed, and it pleased me to hear her laugh.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” I said.
“My father,” she said, “was of the Caste of Physicians.”
So I thought to myself, I had placed her accent rather well, either Builders or Physicians, and had I thought carefully enough about it, I might have recognized her accent as being a bit too refined for the Builders. I chuckled to myself. In effect, I had probably merely scored a lucky hit.
~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 61 and 62~
"The ointment will soon be absorbed," she said. "In a few minutes there will be no trace of it, nor of the cuts."
I whistled.
"The Physicians of Treve," I said, "have marvelous medicines."
"It is an ointment of Priest-Kings," she said"
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 64~
“If she has not pleased her master of late, she may be, of course, as a disciplinary measure, simply chained nude to the slave ring in the bottom of the couch, sans both blanket and mat. The stones of the floor are hard and the Gorean nights are cold and it is a rare girl who, when unchained in the morning, does not seek more dutifully to serve her master."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 67~
"This harsh treatment, incidentally, when she is thought to deserve it, may even be inflicted on a Free Companion, in spite of the fact that she is free and usually much loved. According to the Gorean way of looking at things a taste of the slave ring is thought to be occasionally beneficial to all women, even the exalted Free Companions.
Thus when she has been irritable or otherwise troublesome even a Free Companion may find herself at the foot of the couch looking forward to a pleasant night on the stones, stripped, with neither mat nor blanket, chained to a slave ring precisely as though she were a lowly slave girl.
It is the Gorean way of reminding her, should she need to be reminded, that she, too, is a woman, and thus to be dominated, to be subject to men. Should she be tempted to forget this basic fact of Gorean life the slave ring set in the bottom of each Gorean couch is there to refresh her memory. Gor is a man’s world.
And yet on this world I have seen great numbers of women who were both beautiful and splendid.
The Gorean woman, for reasons that are not altogether clear to me, considering the culture, rejoices in being a woman. She is often an exciting, magnificent, glorious creature, outspoken, talkative, vital, active, spirited. On the whole I find her more joyful than many of her earth-inhabiting sisters who, theoretically at least, enjoy a more lofty status, although it is surely true that on my old world I have met several women with something of the Gorean zest for acknowledging the radiant truth of their sex, the gifts of joy, grace and beauty, tenderness, and fathoms of love that we poor men, I suspect, may sometimes and tragically fail to understand, to comprehend.
Yet with all due respect and regard for the most astounding and marvelous sex, I suspect that, perhaps partly because of my Gorean training, it is true that a touch of the slave ring is occasionally beneficial.
Of custom, a slave girl may not even ascend the couch to serve her master’s pleasure. The point of this restriction, I suppose, is to draw a clearer distinction between her status and that of a Free Companion. At any rate the dignities of the couch are, by custom, reserved for the Free Companion."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 67 & 68~
“Lo Sadar,” it said. “I am a Priest-King.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 76~
"It walked on four extremely long, slender, four-jointed stalks that were its supporting legs, and carried its far more muscular, four-jointed grasping legs, or appendages, extremely high almost at the level with its jaw, and in front of its body. Each of these grasping appendages terminated in four much smaller delicate hooklike prehensile appendages, the tips of which normally touched one another. I would later learn that the ball at the end of its forelegs from which the smaller prehensile appendages extended, there was a curved, bladed, hornlike structure that could spring forward; this happens spontaneously when the leg's tip is inverted, a motion which at once exposes the hornlike blade and withdraws the four prehensile appendages into the protected area beneath it." ~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 80 & 81~
"In the next the expression “Mul” is used to designate a human slave."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 94~
"We had not walked far when we passed a long, worm like animal, eyeless, with a small red mouth, that inched its way along the corridor, hugging the angle between the wall and the floor…………..
“What do you call it?” I asked.
“Oh,” said one of the slaves, “it is a Slime Worm.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“Long ago it functioned in the Nest,” said one of the slaves, “ as a sewerage device, but it has not served that function in many thousands of years.”
“But yet it remains in the Nest.”
“Of course, said one of the slaves, “ the Priest-Kings are tolerant.”
“Yes,” said the other, “ and they are fond of it, and are themselves creatures of great reverence for tradition.”
“The Slime Worm has earned its place in the Nest,” said the other.
“How does it live?” I asked.
“It scavenges on the kills of the Golden Beetle,” said the first slave.
“What does the Golden Beetle kill?” I asked.
“Priest-Kings,” said the second slave."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 104 & 105~
"The washing-booth was remarkably like the showers with which we are familiar except that one may not regulate the flow of fluid. One turns on the fluid by stepping into the booth and its amount and temperature are controlled, automatically. I had naturally supposed the fluid to be simply water which it closely resembled in appearance, and once had tried to fill my bowl for the morning meal there, rather than ladling the water out of the water pan. Choking, my mouth burning, I spat it out in the booth. “It is fortunate,” said Misk, “that you did not swallow it for the washing fluid contains a cleansing additive that is highly toxic to human physiology.”
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 111~
"Occasionally on Gor we destroy a city, selecting it by means of a random selection device. This teaches the lower orders the might of the Priest Kings and encourages them to keep our laws."
"But what if the city has done no wrong?" I asked.
"So much the better," said Misk, "for the men below the Mountains are then confused and fear us even more--but the members of the Caste of Initiates, we have found, will produce an explanation of why the city was destroyed. They invent one and if it seems plausible they soon believe it. For example, we allowed them to suppose that it was through some fault of yours--disrespect for Priest Kings as I recall--that your city was destroyed."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 123~
"Of course," said Misk, "but we have allowed them to develop in many areas--in medicine, for example, where something approximating the Stabilization Serums has been independently developed."
"What is that?" I asked
"You have surely not failed to notice," said Misk, "that though you came to the Counter-Earth more than seven years ago you have undergone no significant physical alteration in that time."
"I have noticed," I said, "and I wondered on this."
"Of course." said Misk, "their serums are not as effective as ours and sometimes do not function, and sometimes the effect wears off after only a few hundred years."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 124~
“I knew before,” she said, “that I was truly your slave but I did not know until now that you were truly my master.” She looked up at me through the plastic, shaken. “It is a strange feeling,” she said, “ to know that someone--truly--is your master, to know that not only has he the right to do with you as he pleases but that he will, that your will is nothing to him, that it is your will and not his that must bend, that you are helpless and must--and will--do what he says, that you must obey.”
It made me a bit sad to hear Vika recount the woes of female slavery.
Then to my astonishment she smiled up at me.
“It is good to belong to you Tarl Cabot,” she said. “I love belonging to you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I am a woman,” she said, “and you are a man, and stronger than I and I am yours and this you knew and now I have learned it too.”
I was puzzled.
Vika looked up at smiled. “Every woman in her heart,” said Vika, “wants to wear the chains of a man.”
This seemed to me quite doubtful.
Vika looked up and smiled. “Of course,” she said, “we would like to choose the man.”
This seemed to me only a bit less doubtful.
“I would choose you, Cabot,” she said.
“Women wish to be free,” I told her
“Yes,” she said, “ we also wish to be free.” She smiled.
“In every woman,” she said, “ there is something of the Free Companion and something of the Slave Girl.” ~Priest-Kings of Gor, pages 203 & 204~
“She knelt in the position of the Pleasure Slave but her hands on her thighs had unconsciously, pleadingly, turned their palms to me, and she no longer knelt quite back on her heels. It was as though she begged to be allowed to lift and open her arms and rise and come to my arms. But as I looked upon her sternly she turned her palms again to her thighs, knelt back on her heels and dropped her head, holding her eyes as if by force of will fixed on the plastic beneath my sandals.
Her entire body trembled with the ache of desire.”
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 234~
"One of the humans by the wall, a girl knelt by him, holding a cloth, trying to stanch the bleeding. It was Vika! I rushed to her side. "Quick Cabot! " she cried, "I must make a tourniquet! " I seized the limb of the man and pressing the flesh together managed to retard the bleeding. Vika took the cloth from his wound and, ripping it, and using a small steel bar from the sheared wall, quickly fashioned a tourniquet, wrapping it securely about the remains of the mans arm. The Physicians daughter did the work swiftly, expertly."
~Priest Kings of Gor, pages 244 and 245~
"I was pleased that she would go to Ar, where she, though a woman, might learn the craft of medicine under the masters appointed by Kazrak."
~Priest Kings of Gor, page 306~
"These men....had come for the autumn fair, the Fair of Se'Var, which was just being set up at the time of the gravitational lessening. I remained with them, accepting their hospitality, while going out to meet various delegations from different cities, as they came to the Sardar for the fair."
~Priest-Kings of Gor, page 309~