"03 - Priest-Kings of Gor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

For some reason I laughed and my laugh was the laugh of a warrior of Gor, full and mighty, unafraid, and it roared in the dark and lonely Hall of Priest-Kings.

Chapter Five: VIKA

I awakened to the soothing touch of a small sponge that bathed my forehead.

I grasped the hand that held the sponge and found that I held a girl's wrist.

'Who are you?' I asked.

I lay on my back on a large stone platform, some twelve feet square. Beneath me, twisted and tangled, lay heavy sleeping pelts, thick robes of fur, numerous sheets of scarlet silk. A cushion or two of yellow silk lay randomly on the platform.

The room in which I lay was large, perhaps forty feet square, and the sleeping platform lay at one end of the room but not touching the wall. The walls were of plain dark stone with energy bulbs fixed in them; the furnishings seemed to consist mostly of two or three large chests against one wall. There were now windows. The entire aspect was one of severity. There was no doo on the room but there was a great portal, perhaps twelve feet wide and eighteen feet high. I could see a large passageway beyond.

'Please,' said the girl.

I released her wrist.

She was comely to look on. Her hair was very light, the colour of summer straw; it was straight and bound simply behind the back of her neck with a small fillet of white wool. Her eyes were blue, and sullen. Her full, red lips, which could have torn the heart of a man, seemed to pout; they were sensuous, unobtrusively rebellious, perhaps subtly contemptuous.

She knelt beside the platform.

Beside her, on the floor, rested a laver of polished bronze, filled with water, a towel and a straight-bladed Gorean shaving knife.

I rubbed my chin.

She had shaved me as I slept.

I shivered, thinking of the blade and my throat. 'Your touch is light,' I said.

She bowed her head.

She wore a long, simple sleeveless white robe, which fell gracefully about her in dignified classic folds. About her throat she had gracefully wrapped a scarf of white silk.

'I am Vika,' she responded, 'your slave.'

I sat upright, cross-legged in the Gorean fashion, on the stone platform. I shook my head to clear it of sleep.

The girl rose and carried the bronze laver to a drain in one corner of the room and emptied it.

She walked well.

She then moved her hand past a glass disk in the wall and water emerged from a concealed aperture and curved into the shallow bowl. She rinsed the bowl and refilled it, and then took another towel of soft linen from a carved chest against the wall. She then again approached the stone platform and knwlt before me, lifting the bowl. I took it and first drank from it and then set it on the stone platform before me, and washed. I wiped my face with the towel. She then gathered up the shaving knife, the towels I had used, and the bowl and went again to one side of the room.

She was very graceful, very lovely.

She rinsed the bowl again and set it against the wall to drain dry. She then rinsed and dried the shaving knife and put it into one of the chests. Then with a motion of her hand, which did not touch the wall, she opened a small, circular panel into which she dropped the two towels which I had used. When they had disappeared the circular panel closed.

She then returned into the vicinity of the stone platform, and knelt again before me, though some feet away.