Ar, defeated, shamed, systematically looted, is occupied by Cosian forces. Perhaps Marlenus of Ar, alone, the great ubar, could recall the men of Ar to the recollection of their Home Stone and its meaning. But it is thought that he perished in the Voltai. Young women from Earth brought to Gor are commonly brought for the markets, to be branded and collared, and sold as the delicious, lovely livestock they are. Naturally Goreans regard these women as barbarians, for they do not speak Gorean, and know little of civilization, Gorean civilization. They have little in common save their beauty, and their newly acquired fear of their masters. Their naivety and ignorance, while sometimes troublesome, are occasionally of considerable value to a master. An instance of such a case is the young woman whom we shall call Janice, for that name was put on her as a Gorean slave name. In the prison pits of piratical Treve, a bandit city in the Voltai mountains, there exists a large man, a chained prisoner, an amnesiac who believes himself to be of the Gorean peasantry. The nature and even the existence of this prisoner, strangely enough, is a closely guarded secret. In order to better keep this secret, it is decided that his servant and warder had best be no native Gorean, but, ideally, one muchly ignorant of the history and politics of Gor. For this purpose, Janice is purchased and brought to Treve. Of her charge she knows only what she has been told, but even that may prove to be too much.
