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The Sardar fairs are organized, regulated and administered by the Merchant Caste and the Gorean Council of Talmont.
I heard a girl screaming, being lashed. She was on her knees, to one side, between two tents; she was chained at a short stake, about which she had wrapped her arms, holding it for support. The side of her cheek was against the stake. The prohibition against violence at the Sardar, of course, does not extend to slaves. They may there, as elsewhere, be lashed, or tortured or slain, as it should please the master. They are slaves.
I turned down one of the muddy streets, making my way between booths featuring the wares of potters and weavers. It seemed to me that if I could find the fair's street of coins, that the makers of odds might well have set their tables there. It was, at any rate, a sensible thought.
"Where is the street of coins?" I asked a fellow, in the tunic of the tarnkeepers.
"Of which city?" he asked.
"My thanks," I said, and continued on. The fairs are large, covering several square pasangs.
I hoped the fellow from Torvaldsland would be able to buy a good piece of meat at the market.
"Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches?" I asked a small fellow, in the garb of the leather workers. He wore the colors of Tabor on his cap.
"I would ask you that," he said.
"Do you favor Scormus of Ar?" I inquired.
"Assuredly," he said.
I nodded. I decided it would be best to search for a merchant who was on the fair's staff, or find one of their booths or praetor stations, where such information might be found.
Beasts of Gor Book 12 Pages 45 - 46
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The contests at the fairs, however, I am pleased to say, offer nothing more dangerous than wrestling, with no holds to the death permitted. Most of the contests involve such things as racing, feats of strength, and skill with bow and spear. Other contests of interest pit choruses and poets and players of various cities against one another in the several theaters of the fair. I had a friend once, Andreas of the desert city of Tor, of the Caste of Poets, who had once sung at the fair and won a cap filled with gold. And perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that the streets of the fair abound with jugglers, puppeteers, musicians and acrobats who, far from the theaters, compete in their ancient fashions for the copper tarn disks of the broiling, turbulent crowds.
Many are the objects for sale at the fair. I passed among wines and textiles and raw wool, silks, and brocades, copperware and glazed pottery, carpets and tapestries, lumber, furs, hides, salt, arms and arrows, saddles and harness, rings and bracelets and necklaces, belts and sandals, lamps and oils, medicines and meats and grains, animals such as the fierce tarns, Gor's winged mounts, and tharlarions, her domesticated lizards, and long chains of miserable slaves, both male and female.
Although no one may 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. Accordingly the pirates and outlaws who beset the trade routes to ambush and attack the caravans on the way to the fair, if successful, often have more than inanimate metals and cloths to reward their vicious labors.
Priest-Kings of Gor Book 3 Pages 11 - 12
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The man of Torvaldsland bit a large chunk from his hock of roast tarsk. "Where are the slave markets?" he asked.
"There are many," I said. Indeed, one might buy slaves here and there, publicly and privately, at many places in the Fair of Talmont, one of the five great annual fairs at the Sardar. It is not permitted to fight, or kill, or enslave within the perimeters of the fairs, but there is no prohibition against the buying and selling of merchandise within those precincts; indeed, one of the main functions of the fairs, if not their main function, was to facilitate the buying and selling of goods; the slave, of course, is goods. The fairs, too, however, have many other functions. For example, they serve as a scene of caste conventions, and as loci for the sharing of discoveries and research. It is here, for example, that physicians, and builders and artisans may meet and exchange ideas and techniques. It is here that Merchant Law is drafted and stabilized. It is here that songs are performed, and song dramas. Poets and musicians, and jugglers and magicians, vie for the attention of the crowds. Here one finds peddlers and great merchants. Some sell trinkets and others the notes of cities. It is here that the Gorean language tends to become standardized. These fairs constitute truce grounds. Men of warring cities may meet here without fear. Political negotiation and intrigue are rampant, too, generally secretly so, at the fairs. Peace and war, and arrangements and treaties, are not unoften determined in a pavilion within the precincts of the fairs. "The nearest," I told the fellow from Torvaldsland, pointing down a corridor between pavilions and booths, "lies some quarter of a pasang in that direction, beyond the booths of the rug merchants. The largest, on the other hand, the platforms of slave exhibition and the great sales pavilion, lie to your left, two pasangs away, beyond the smithies and the chain shops."
Beasts of Gor Book 12 Page 44
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The Sardar fairs are organized, regulated and administered by the Merchant Caste.
I heard a girl screaming, being lashed. She was on her knees, to one side, between two tents; she was chained at a short stake, about which she had wrapped her arms, holding it for support. The side of her cheek was against the stake. The prohibition against violence at the Sardar, of course, does not extend to slaves. They may there, as elsewhere, be lashed, or tortured or slain, as it should please the master. They are slaves.
I turned down one of the muddy streets, making my way between booths featuring the wares of potters and weavers. It seemed to me that if I could find the fair's street of coins, that the makers of odds might well have set their tables there. It was, at any rate, a sensible thought.
"Where is the street of coins?" I asked a fellow, in the tunic of the tarnkeepers.
"Of which city?" he asked.
"My thanks," I said, and continued on. The fairs are large, covering several square pasangs.
I hoped the fellow from Torvaldsland would be able to buy a good piece of meat at the market.
"Where are odds made on the Kaissa matches?" I asked a small fellow, in the garb of the leather workers. He wore the colors of Tabor on his cap.
"I would ask you that," he said.
"Do you favor Scormus of Ar?" I inquired.
"Assuredly," he said.
I nodded. I decided it would be best to search for a merchant who was on the fair's staff, or find one of their booths or praetor stations, where such information might be found.
Beasts of Gor Book 12 Pages 45 - 46