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him.
    He looked into my eyes. “Throw yourself upon your sword,” he begged.
    “Would that not frustrate the will of the Priest-Kings?” I asked.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “Why do you tell me this?” I demanded.
    “I followed you at the siege of Ar,” he said. “On the Cylinder of Justice I fought with you against Pa-Kur and his assassins.”
    “An Initiate?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I was one of the guards of Ar, and I fought to save my city.”
    “Ar the Glorious,” I said, speaking gently.
    He was dying.
    “Ar the Glorious,” he said, weak, but with pride. He looked at me again. “Die now, Tarl of Ko-ro-ba,” he said, “Hero of Ar.” His eyes seemed to begin to burn in his head. “Do not shame yourself.”
    Suddenly he howled like a tortured dog, and what happened then I cannot bring myself to describe in detail. It seemed as though the entire inside of his head began to burst and burn, to bubble like some horrid vicious lava inside the crater of his skull.
    It was an ugly death–his for having tried to speak to me, for having tried to tell me what was in his heart.
    It was becoming light now, and dawn was breaking across the gentle hills that had sheltered Ko-ro-ba. I removed the hated robes of the Initiates from the body of the man and carried the naked body far from the road.
    As I began to cover it with rocks, I noted the remains of the skull, now little more than a handful of shards. The brain had been literally boiled away. The morning light flashed briefly on something golden among the white shards. I lifted it. It was a webbing of fine golden wire. I could make nothing of it, and threw it aside.
    I piled rocks on the body, enough to mark the grave and keep predators away.
    I placed a large flat rock near the head of the cairn and, with the tip of my spear, scratched this legend on it. “I am a man of Glorious Ar.” It was all I knew about him.
    I stood beside the grave, and drew my sword. He had told me to throw myself upon it, to avoid my shame, to frustrate for once the will of the might Priest-Kings of Gor.
    “No, Friend,” I said to the remains of the former warrior of Ar. “No, I shall not throw myself upon my sword. Nor shall I grovel to the Priest-Kings nor live the life of shame they have allotted me.”
    I lifted the sword toward the valley where Ko-ro-ba had stood. “Long ago,” I said, “I pledged this sword to the service of Ko-ro-ba. It remains so pledged.”
    Like every man of Gor I knew the direction of the Sardar Mountains, home of the Priest-Kings, forbidden vastness into which no man below the mountains, no mortal, may penetrate. It was said that the Supreme Home Stone of all Gor lay within those mountains, that no man had looked upon a Priest-King and lived.
    I resheathed my sword, fastened my helmet over my shoulder, lifted my shield and spear and set out in the direction of the Sardar Mountains.

Chapter Six:
VERA
    The Sardar Mountains, which I had never seen, lay more than a thousand pasangs from Ko-ro-ba. Whereas the Men Below the Mountains, as the mortals are called, seldom enter the mountains, and do not return when they do, many often venture to their brink, if only to stand within the shadows of those cliffs that hide the secrets of the Priest-Kings. Indeed, at least once in his life every Gorean is expected to make this journey.
    Four times a year, correlated with the solstices and equinoxes, there are fairs held in the plains below the mountains, presided over by committees of Initiates, fairs in which men of many cities mingle without bloodshed, times of truce, times of contests and games, of bargaining and marketing.
    Torm, my friend of the Caste of Scribes, had been to such fairs to trade scrolls with scholars from other cities, men he would never have seen were it not for the fairs, men of hostile cities who yet loved ideas more than they hated their enemies, men like Torm who so loved learning that they would risk the perilous