Prize of Gor (34 page)

“Yes, Master.”

“Second obeisance position,” he said.

Ellen went prone, before him, her hands at the sides of her head.

“You may now speak, and speak clearly, slave girl,” he said.

“I am Ellen, the slave girl,” she said. “I belong to Mirus of Ar. I belly before him, my master. I beg to please him —
sexually
.”

“But you are a virgin,” he said. “That would lower your price.”

“Master?” said Ellen, startled.

“To be sure,” he said. “It does seem a bit silly. Why should some men want to be the first to open a slave? What difference does it make? The slave will probably have very little feeling the first time. It may even cause her pain. Later she may jump and juice, and scratch, and beg for the least caress. Why should one not pay more for that, since it is the enjoyment of a much more delicious, more helpless, more eager pudding, and yet when one locks one’s chains on such a one and thrusts her back to the furs, one simply takes her responses for granted, giving it not another thought. It is all very strange.”

“Master?” asked Ellen.

“To be sure,” he said, “I have already lost money on you, for had I had you returned to, say, your early twenties, you would doubtless bring a better price. You would be taken more seriously as block-meat.”

“Please do not speak of a slave as such,” she wept.

“But, as it is, you are something like eighteen. Who could take you seriously? You are no more than a pretty girl.”

“But even so, perhaps master finds me of interest,” she said.

“Oh you are learning to be a slave,” he growled.

“Forgive me, Master,” said Ellen. She feared something in his voice. The work-master’s voice had occasionally taken on such a tone, usually shortly before he had rudely seized, and tubbed, or put to his pleasure, one of his charges, often the now-abducted Nelsa.

“No, no,” he said. “You are learning. It is perfect.”

“Thank you, Master,” she said, hesitantly. She knew that she had aroused men in her training, but they had not been, she gathered, authorized to seize her, and make use of her, to assuage the passions and tensions she may have aroused in them. They must seek out other slaves. The other slaves had not seemed to mind. She wondered if she might ever become like that, so grateful for the touch of a man, even if it were not she in the first place who had aroused his passions. It was said that young men enamored of free women, perhaps having glimpsed an ankle, or a bit of throat or chin as the wind indiscreetly lifted a veil, sometimes sought out the girls in the paga taverns to lessen the pangs of love, to lessen their miseries. Many times clutching, grateful, gasping slaves heard the names of women they did not know cried out as free men used them to climax their pleasures. Briefly there flashed through her mind the tarnsman from Brundisium who, apparently enamored of a free woman, had taken a different action, seizing the woman, to make her his slave, she then to be herself perhaps no more to him than a paga girl. And later she, Ellen, had even been put in the iron belt, probably as she had progressed in her lessons and had become, if only unconsciously and inadvertently, far more desirable, far more provocative, feminine, and sensuous. She was pleased, of course, but a little frightened, to know that she had this effect on men. But now she was alone with her master. No longer was he her defense and shield. And there is none to defend or shield the slave, you see, from the master. She was utterly vulnerable. Anything might be done to her. She was his.

“But it pleased me,” he said, “to have had you made as young as you are, to give you such a meaningless, trivial age, a mere lovely eighteen, though I cost myself some coins in the business. It was a delicious part of my vengeance upon you.”

“Vengeance, Master?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Master?” she asked.

“And so,” said he, thoughtfully, as though pondering some matter, “what would be the loss of a coin or two more?”

“I do not understand what you are saying, Master,” whispered the slave.

“Yes,” he said, apparently having come to some decision. “Why not? Yes, what is a coin or two, measured against the pleasure of teaching you what you now are, a worthless slave, of instructively demeaning you even further, of reducing your value yet again, even in a market, and thus exacting an even sweeter, richer, more delicious vengeance upon you?”

“Master?” cried the slave, frightened.

“Turn about,” he said. “Face away from me, kneeling. Put your head to the rug. Clasp your hands behind the back of your neck!”

“Please, no, Master!” she wept.

“Good,” he said. She heard him, she now facing away from him, head down, hands clasped behind the back of her neck, rise from the curule chair. She heard, too, the fall of garments upon the chair, dropped to the side, the robes heavier, the tunic almost inaudible.

He crouched behind her.

She felt the tunic pulled up and thrust forward, and down, until it was about her head and clasped wrists.

“Please, no, Master!” she begged.

“So,” said he, “here we have our little feminist, poised for the penetration of her master.”

“I am no longer a feminist!” she wept. “I have learned that I am a woman!”

“A girl?” he asked.

“Yes, Master, a girl! A girl! You have done that to me!”

“So here we have my former teacher then,” he mused, “prettily positioned. You look well, former teacher. I like you like this. What former student would not like you like this?”

“Please be kind, Master!”

“And, too, of course, here we have our little Ph.D., with her doctorate in gender studies, kneeling down obediently, facing away, awaiting the penetration of her master. Did they teach you of this in your gender studies?”

“No, Master.”

“Such studies were then incomplete, were they not?”

“Yes, Master,” she sobbed.

“And, of course,” he said, “we have here, too, our pretty little slave girl.”

She felt his hands seize her, about her narrow waist. He was extremely strong, and she did not doubt but what there would be marks on her body, from where he held her.

“Please, no, Master!” she begged. “Not like this, not like this, Master! I beg you! Not like this, my Master!”

“Who begs?” he asked.

“Ellen, Ellen, the slave, begs!” she wept.

“Whose are you?”

“Yours, Master!”

“Speak more clearly,” he said.

“Ellen, the slave, your slave, the slave of Mirus of Ar, begs her master, begs you, her master, Mirus of Ar, for mercy!” she wept.

“You have a pretty ass, slave girl,” he said.

“Please do not speak so, Master!”

“You have been complimented,” he said.

“Thank you, Master,” she wept.

Strangely she had never really thought of herself in such a way. She was, of course, pleased, perhaps inordinately so, with the fresh, lissome contours of her new figure. But how vulgar had seemed his compliment. To be sure, the young, slim, sweet curvatures of her body were of a piece, of a whole, an indissoluble, coherent delight, from her small feet and ankles, to her calves and thighs, her hips, her love cradle, her narrow waist, and sweet bosom, to her soft, white shoulders and lovely throat, all a melody of softness, texture and line, and surely no part of her was without its role and portion in the new and exquisite she of her. She recalled, briefly, fashions of centuries in which clothing itself had been designed to call attention to, and emphasize, just such features. She recalled the pleasure with which she had regarded herself in the mirror, her trimness, her excitements.

But how vulgar had been his compliment!

Yet could she deny that she was pleased?

But in what a shameful position she had been placed!

She thought of the rude, efficient, coital positions of many animals. Was it so different?

And, she realized, too, she was now an animal, a slave, and an attractive one.

But he could not be serious!

What could he have in mind!

Surely he could not be doing this to her, not to her, not to her!

Had he no respect for her? What of her dignity?

Was he not of Earth?

Could he not remember Earth?

“Please, Master!” she wept. “Not like this! Not like this!”

“Please, no!” she cried.

“We are of Earth,” she cried, “we are both of Earth!”

“No longer,” he said.

“Mercy, Master!” she begged.

“You are going to be red-silked, girl,” he said.

“Not like this, Master,” she begged. “Please, no! No! Not like this, not like this! Please, Master, not like this!”

“Oh!” she cried, suddenly.

“You are now “red silk,” he informed her.

“Do not break position,” he growled. His hands were on her like iron.

In a few moments she lay on her right side on the rug, at the foot of the dais, sobbing.

He had drawn on his tunic, but not his robes, and was sitting in the curule chair, looking down upon her.

“You are a tight, cold little thing,” he said.

Her body was wracked with sobs.

“Remove your garment,” he said.

Crying, she half sat up, and pulled her slave garment, the tiny, cut tunic, over her head, from where it was, about her neck and shoulders, and put it beside her. Then again she lay on the rug, on her side, trying to control her tears. There was a bit of blood upon her, and a smeared stain of blood on the interior of her left thigh.

“Taste your virgin blood,” he said.

She looked at him, red-eyed, not comprehending.

From within his tunic, from what may have been an interior enclosure there, he drew forth a ribbon and what seemed to be a length or two of binding fiber. He came down from the dais and crouched beside her.

She shrank back a little.

“Oh!” she said.

“Here,” he said, putting two fingers to her mouth. “Taste it, the blood of a virgin slave.”

Obediently, sobbing, she did as she was told. It was thick, sticky, warm from her body, a little salty, and bore more than a tiny hint of the oils of her nether intimacies. It was not a moment she would ever forget.

“Sit up,” he said. And so she sat up on the rug, before him. He was now kneeling beside her.

He held up the ribbon before her. It was about eight or ten inches long, an inch wide, and of red silk.

“You have been had,” he said, in English. And then he added, in Gorean, “You have now been opened for the uses of men, for the pleasures of men.”

“You are now a red-silk girl,” he said.

He then doubled the ribbon, looped it about her collar, and jerked it tight. There seemed something definitive about that, the way he did it.

“Bara!” he said.

She instantly responded to his command, as she had been trained to do. She was now on her belly, her wrists crossed behind her, her ankles, too, crossed.

She felt her wrists tied with one length of the binding fiber, and then, a moment later, her ankles bound with a second length. The pieces of binding fiber might have been each eighteen inches in length. Each, thusly, could be looped more than once about her wrists and ankles.

She was then lying before him, prone, a naked, bound, red-silk girl.

He then turned her to her side. Could it have been to give himself pleasure? Certainly he scrutinized her with care, and seemingly appreciatively. Doubtless he noted how she drew up her knees, and pointed her toes, accentuating the curve of her calf. Perhaps he wondered if she even knew she had done that. She had not even thought of it, at least not in the sense of carefully planning it, but had rather done it naturally, naturally, as a slave. He smiled. Her eyes stung afresh with tears. But she knew how she must be before a man, and wanted to be before a man. She was slave.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the height of the dais, where he put her down, gently, on her knees, to the left of the curule chair, as one might look out from it, to the right of the curule chair, as one would face it.

One may recall that on the small table to his right there reposed a decanter of colored glass with its small, matching glass.

He took the stopper from the decanter, and poured a tiny bit of its contained liquid into the glass.

“You may speak,” he said.

“What you did to me!” she wept.

“You may not complain,” he said. “You are a slave.”

“Yes, Master.”

“You may now thank me for using you,” he said.

“Thank you, Master,” she said.

“For what?” he asked.

“For using me, Master.”

“As what?” he asked.

“As a slave, Master,” she said.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“Forgive me, Master.”

“Perhaps you understand a little better now what it is to be a slave?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Later,” said he, “when you have discovered more of yourself, and of your sexuality, you will beg such usages.”

“I doubt that,” she said.

“No,” he said. “The time will come when you will crawl backward to a master, naked, whimpering, elevating your lovely posterior, begging.”

She regarded him, aghast. Could she ever have such depths within her? It seemed impossible. Yet, to be sure, she had heard some of the girls in the cells and cages, and kennels, crying out, and moaning, and scratching. She had heard of the depths of, and intensity of, “slave needs.”

He held the glass toward her lips, and she shrank back, in her bonds.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“That is not a “releaser,” is it?” she asked.

“No,” he smiled. “It is ka-la-na.”

“Slave wine,” which, as administered to slaves, is terribly bitter, from the sip root, found in the Barrens, precluded conception. The “releaser,” which is commonly syrupy, and sweet, nullifies the effects of the “slave wine.” It is commonly administered to a slave after masters have agreed upon a crossing, and she is to be bred.

“Ka-la-na?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “A wine.”

There are many ka-la-nas, but the one in the colored glass, if it had been in a clear glass, would have been golden in color. The reddish color of the glass infused its contents with something of its own hue.