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I knew that if justice were done in Tharna I would be acquitted, yet I was uneasy—for how was I to know if my case would be fairly heard and decided? That I had been in possession of Ost's sack of coins would surely seem good prima-facie evidence of guilt, and this might well sway the decision of the Tatrix. How would my word, the word of a stranger, weigh against the words of Ost, a citizen of Tharna and perhaps one of significance? Yet, incredibly perhaps, I looked forward to seeing the palace and the Tatrix, to meeting face to face the unusual woman who could rule, and rule well, a city of Gor. Had I not been arrested I guessed I might, of my own free will, have called upon the Tatrix of Tharna, and, as one citizen had expressed it, spent my night in her palace. After we had walked for perhaps some twenty minutes through the drab, graveled, twisted streets of Tharna, its gray citizens parting to make way for us and to stare expressionlessly at the scarlet-clad prisoner, we came to a broad winding avenue, steep and paved with black cobblestones, still shiny from the rains of the night. On each side of the avenue was a gradually ascending brick wall, and as we trudged upward the walls on each side became higher and the avenue more narrow. At last, a hundred yards ahead, cold in the morning light, I saw the palace, actually a rounded fortress of brick, black, heavy, unadorned, formidable. At the entrance to the palace the somber, wet avenue shrunk to a passage large enough only for a single man, and the walls at the same time rose to a height of perhaps thirty feet. - (Outlaw of Gor, Chapter )