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

'Do you wish to speak to Priest-Kings?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'Do you know what you do?'

'Yes,' I said.

The Initiate and I gazed evenly at one another, and then he stepped aside, as he must have done
many times. I would not be the first, of course, to enter the Sardar. Many men and sometimes
women had entered these mountains but it is not known what they found. Sometimes these
individuals are young idealists, rebels and champions of lost causes, who wish to protest to
Priest-Kings; sometimes they are individuals who are old or diseased and are tired of life and
wish to die; sometimes they are piteous or cunning or frightened wretches who think to find the
secret of immortality in those barren crags; and sometimes they are outlaws fleeing from Gor's
harsh justice, hoping to find at least brief sanctuary in the cruel, mysterious domain of Priest-


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Kings, a country into which they may be assured no mortal magistrate or vengeful band of human
warriors will penetrate. I suppose the Initiate might account me noe of the latter, for my
habiliments bore no insignia.

He turned away from me and went to a small pedestal at one side. On the pedestal there was a
silver bowl, filled with water, a vial of oil and a towel. He dipped his fingers in the bowl,
poured a bit of oil on his hands, dipped his fingers again and then wiped his hands dry.

On each side of the huge gate there stood a great windlass and chain, and to each windlass a gang
of blinded slaves was manacled.

The Initiate folded the towel carefully and replaced it on the pedestal.

'Let the gate be opened,' he said.

The slaves obediently pressed their weight against the timber spokes of the two windlasses and
they creaked and the chains tightened. Their naked feet slipped in the dirt and they pressed ever
more tightly against the heavy, obdurate bars. Now their bodies humped with pain, clenching
themselves against the spokes. Their blind eyes were fixed on nothing. The blood vessels in their
necks and legs and arms began to distend until I feared they might burst open through the tortured
flesh; the agonised miscles of their straining knotted bodies, like swollen leather, seemed to
fill with pain as if pain were a fluid; their flesh seemed to fuse with the wood of the bars; the
backs of their garments discoloured with a scarlet sweat. Men had broken their own bones on the
timber spokes of the Sardar windlasses.

At last there was a great creak and the vast portal parted a hand's breadth and then the width of
a shoulder and the width of a man's body.