Free Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Mike Resnick, Robert T. Garcia

hall were window slits through which the silvery-gray glow of an Amtorian afternoon penetrated.
    Duare and I followed our guides up magnificent stairways and down another hall lined with alcoves and side-passages leading to left and right. With a gesture by the male and female guides, we were directed to separate chambers. As I entered mine, I thought to leave and rejoin Duare, but my way was blocked by my male guide. On the other side of the hallway, illuminated by cressets of burning oil as had been the great hall below, I could see the female guide standing outside the opening to Duare’s chamber.
    Were these two black-garbed strangers our guides, our protectors, or our captors? Were we visitors to the Amtorian Potala, guests, or prisoners?
    I found in my chambers a comfortable bed and a clear bath drawn in an obsidian pool. Only after lowering my tired limbs and aching torso into the refreshing waters did I realize what a sad state I had reached.
    There was no way of knowing what fate awaited me now, but these facilities were at least encouraging. With my body cleansed and refreshed, I searched my new quarters further. There was an area of perfectly polished stone wall that would serve admirably as a mirror, and a piece of sharpened stone that I found served as a razor.
    I returned to my bedchamber, where I found awaiting me an outfit of comfortable soft trousers and a blouse and footwear. No sooner had I donned these than my keeper, as I had come to think of him, appeared in the entryway to my bedchamber and spoke once more in his dull, almost lifeless voice.
    “You will follow me.”
    Well, I figured, why not? What had I to lose by complying? What had I to gain by refusing to do so?
    There were no doors as such in this Venusian Potala. Rather, each suite of chambers was entered through a series of turns and baffles that effectively sealed it from the main corridor, permitting neither sound nor light to penetrate.
    We retraced our steps to the lower level of the Potala, then crossed the great hall to another grand chamber. The ceiling was beamed and towered high overhead. The stone floor was covered with some substance I could not identify but which made walking most pleasant. A fireplace had been built into one wall, and a great blaze sent multicolored shadows dancing and cavorting around the room as if they were living beings with wills of their own.
    As in the grand hall of statuary, window slits set into the walls near the high, beamed ceiling of this room let in additional light from the mountainous realm outside while drawing the smoke from the fireplace and maintaining the quality of the air within.
    A table had been set for a meal, but it was deserted.
    Most startling of all, at the far end of the great room an elaborately carved chair, almost a throne, stood on a low dais. Seated upon it I beheld a tiny, wizened human being.
    It was not easy to calculate his height, as he was seated and I was standing, but I inferred that he could not have been as tall as five feet. His head was completely hairless, and his almost abnormally large cranium and bulging brow bespoke a brain of exceptional capabilities.
    His face was triangular in configuration, narrowing precipitously from the width of his brow to the point of his chin. His eyes appeared huge behind thick lenses. In the midst of all this day’s strangeness, I almost laughed at myself for being impressed by the fact that he wore spectacles—the first such that I had seen since arriving on this weird planet.
    He was garbed entirely in white, a high-collared tunic closed at the throat, sleeves reaching to his wrists, spotless white trousers, and even white shoes.
    I stood speechless.
    The apparition in white spoke in a high, shrill, almost effeminate voice, yet one that gave the impression that it could also embody unspeakable cruelty.
    “Come,” he commanded.
    I complied, halting a few feet away from the dais upon which he was seated.
    He said, “I have awaited