Title Page
SILVANA'S QUEST
By
Caroline Swift
Publisher Information
Silvana’s Quest published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © Caroline Swift
The right of Caroline Swift to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Selection
Silvana smoothed back her locks of golden hair but let them lie loose as she was no longer working in the silk sheds but confined to the family hovel, for reasons that began to disturb her. She knelt to kindle the twigs on the hearth and prepare her foster parents' frugal meal that had to be ready when they returned from forced labour. She felt she was condemned to family chores that were far from entertaining. Born into slavery in Lower Saronis, she found she missed the relative freedom of being with her colleagues and even the silk worms and mulberry bushes up in the hills. Life in the hovel distressed her.
The only events that broke the monotony were the regular thrashings she received on her guardians' homecoming each evening. There was no reason for the lashes and, strangely, she looked forward to being bent over the chair-back with her shift thrown over her head; the beatings were merely to assuage the dispirited couple's anguish and incessant toil in the copper mines of Bithynia. In fact, the strap across her bare - and, she had to admit, copious - bottom gave her a thrill that was almost erotic. It always led her to masturbate ferociously once she was abed in her wretched sack. Not that she required a beating to induce her to satisfy her voracious clit and still intact vagina; even when, on occasion, she was spared the leather belt, she would caress the earlier welts and always orgasmed deliciously. And her spasms, although she tried to suppress her muffled cries, were of such force as to shake the hovel's wattled walls, often disturbing the snoring couple across the fern-strewn floor - an offence, together with the stains in her bunk, that only resulted in further and fiercer punishment. Such was Silvana's predicament. Meanwhile she waited day after day for whatever was about to come her way.
The poverty-stricken lanes meandering through Lower Saronis, the over-populated vassal quarter lying below the capital, always grew sombre in the late afternoon while the great palace above remained in joyous sunlight. As the birds regained their nests in what meagre trees remained in the area, the stifling heat of declining day seemed to smother the vermin-infested lodgings with the foul odours of open sewers; bones and offal left out to rot were scavenged by dogs and the occasional prowling jackal. Silvana dreamed of leaving the place.
For her the hours of daylight dragged by in an oppressive silence, the workers' hovels deserted of all adult inhabitants who sweated from dawn to dusk in the distant mines and quarries. Like everything else, the slave labourers were the property of the palace authorities in the citadel above.
Well over an hour's trudge was needed to reach Upper Saronis and its august towers. But few of the dispossessed had ever made that trek, special permission being required even to approach the city walls. And that was only accorded on certain feast days, such as the Moon Festival when chosen victims were sacrificed by being put to the whip publicly, to ensure the sacred orb's rebirth. Otherwise, no indentured labourer dared venture near the mighty walls within which the opulent nobles and dissolute courtiers led a life of luxury and voluptuous splendour, served by a multitude of servants and half-naked slaves.
At daybreak, the men of Lower Saronis, like the girl's disconsolate guardian, along with the women, including his bitter, sharp-tongued harridan of a wife, were marched off in straggling lines to the mine shafts and silk sheds. The miserable couple had still years of servitude ahead of them before they could hope to be manumitted and freed; even then, prematurely aged, they would have little energy left to profit from the relative freedom granted them by the palace.
Early retirement under the Bithynian dictates could, however, be envisaged in certain specific cases and just such a chance was about to present itself in Silvana's household.
She had just turned eighteen, the age at which an attractive girl - or by the same token, a handsome youth - could be chosen to serve as a slave chattel up at the palace. However, this was a privilege offered to precious few candidates. It was for this reason that she was among those exempted from slave labour pending the imminent process of inspection of her person by the palace slave masters; thus for several weeks she had been consigned to the hovel, allowed only an occasional outing to bathe in the river, and await the ominous visit of those who would decide on her future.
In the village gossip was rife, Silvana gleaning fragments from elderly washer women at the communal well who gave her strange glances, wondering as to her chances and fate. Sturdy and favoured with a remarkably mature body, she was counted as one of the more attractive virgins still around. True, there were others but few could boast the same qualities: the pale complexion, the fair tresses usually drawn back from the honey-freckled face into the traditional ponytail, her superb thighs, and heavy but well-hung breasts that thrust out almost provocatively under the cotton smock that suited a girl who was still a virgo intacta.
Were she to be selected for the mysterious palace duties, the foster parents held it would be one less mouth the feed, having got rid of a dispensable object. For her part, if chosen, Silvana would leave the hovel without the slightest regret. Anything was better than that and she would be freed from the daily beatings, which however much they excited her, were frankly incompetent. Though the strap did drive her to frig all the more vigorously in her sack, it was the vulgarity and ignominy of being bent over a shoddy chair that riled her. She would have far preferred to be strung up properly by the wrists, stark-naked in all her sensual beauty, and whipped with a passion she could share and enjoy with, say, a winsome flogger who relished a good-looking slave girl. "O, sweet deities of Bithynia," she would moan, sitting by the fire, "save me from this den of dirt. Let me live. Let me show my body to those who know how to give it pleasure. To men who know how to whip a girl to satisfy their lust and mine..." Her prayers were just not getting through.
Preparing the frugal supper that had to be ready for the vindictive toilers' return at sundown, she thought back to the whispered exchanges with her colleagues in the work sheds and down at the river where they bathed joyous and naked. The memories returned. How Vreni and Memona, who had long since mounted to the palace, not to be heard of again, had admired the ripe teats on her breasts and the golden swathe of fleece gleaming over her pubis. How they had expressed surprise at her dangling labial flaps bordering her vulva, while theirs were merely neat mounds on either side. And she remembered how they had carped at the need to preserve their maidenhood to qualify for the slave masters' inspection, while there were scores of females and brazen whores around, equally alluring as Vreni, all of whom would give anything to serve as palace domestics instead of fucking around openly and heedlessly under the palms. But no, they had to guard their virginity and Silvana, like her two friends, remained innocent when it came to a male cock - although Memona had mentioned one evening that there was no harm in sucking a penis or a clitoris. By the hol
y goddess Locrana, how they had enjoyed those talks!
Stirring the broth, Silvana remembered the rumours of the glorious life of plenty up at the mighty citadel. Even servants, it was said, were clothed in flowing silks and shod with embroidered slippers fashioned by master craftsmen from Constantinople. But no one, least of all Silvana, really knew what palace service entailed. If she were to be selected, would she help to bathe gentlewomen and high-born patricians in ass's milk, massaging the indolent with sweet-smelling oils? Serve hydromel and sherbet in jewelled goblets amid orchids and agapanthus to dignitaries lounging by cool fountains playing in courtyards ringed with gleaming colonnades of marble and onyx? Without doubt she would be taught to bow low to passing courtiers who would smile and compliment her on her sapphire eyes, darkened with kohl, and on her dimpled cheeks and corn-bright tresses. And, yes, there would be soft melodies played on harps and dulcimers; she would learn how to dance in veils, how to curtsey when serving at table, and kiss ethereal hands and feet loaded with precious gems. Her young presence would be admired as she sashayed gracefully across halls of malachite. Above all they would rid her of that peasant accent that plagued her. She might even be privileged to attend the Bithynian ceremonies organized to hasten the birth of the new moon, and there she would stand behind the robed nobles and their gorgeous womenfolk, who loved and cared for their servants, peering down from the battlements on the sacred rites below without having to mingle with the common horde. Indeed she might well fall in love with some charming page or equerry - for surely all men up there must be gentle and handsome - and she would be adorned for marriage in sequined silks and... O, happiness!
The fire suddenly hissed as the stew of rabbit bones and nettles boiled over. With one hand she removed the pot from the hob, letting the other slide down to her thighs to raise the tattered hem for her to gaze at the swathe of fleece gleaming over the sweet bulge of her pubis. As yearning seized her, the fingers took hold of the drooping sex fronds, the impatient nub emerging dutifully from its sheath and calling for help. And help she gave it, knowing well that, if found out, she would receive a really fierce thrashing that evening. Somehow the exhausted home-comers always smelled out her crimes. Yet, the slithering stalk needed attention and, after all, it had only been used twice, following the strapping of the previous night. Poor thing, it was calling for a helping hand and urgently.
She punished it hard, for sex without some castigation could not for Silvana count as sex. As the thumb and forefinger squelched the little bounder, she felt it grow like a teat on the goat's udder behind the shack. The sensation sent her other hand to her nipples that were pouting with envy. At the same time she stared from under half-closed lids - they always descended as her orgasm constructed - at the leather belt and buckle hanging on the doornail. The sight of the strap along with the frantic abrasions applied to her clit sent her up and up steadily until she knew she was coming. Her innards flooding, she careered deliriously into oblivion, the loins arching from the floor, the blonde head thumping against the wattled wall. Her flared nostrils caught the pungent odour she knew so well, the mouth agape as if she were drowning in the Saronis brook where Vreni one sweltering evening had for the first time sucked Memona off, leaving Silvana to the devices of her middle finger. Neither of those joys threatened the sacred hymen.
She left the engorged nipples to fend for themselves as her hand felt for the ridged welts on her buttocks. The marks where the edge of the man's belt had struck and drawn blood had healed but still sent thrills into her womb. The body slumped, resting a moment.
The second climax was even stronger and brought out a shrill scream which had no need to be choked back as at night, for there was only the goat to hear a sweating blonde plundering herself. That, along with the fantasies of the palace on the hill, was all Silvana sought - for the time being. The slippery prong subsided and, satisfied, withdrew like a snail retiring into its shell, the drooling slit being left to leak. The juices trickled down over the perineum - one of Vreni's terms - to slide into the anal cleft, staining the rear of the one and only garment she possessed. The returning toilers would not fail to espy that dark stigma of guilt and, for once, the thrashing would be justified. She wondered if Vreni was right in saying that some females liked to be whipped across the breasts although she had never had it herself. The girl who had told her had been taken to the palace a year back and apparently, so the gossip went, sold to a noble couple who lived by the sea shore and whipped her nightly before retiring. Of course, no one could confirm Vreni's stories but they always thrilled Silvana and kept her awake at night as she played with her overlong, drooping labia.
Breathless from the exertions, she could hardly wait for the strap - and probably a further splashing of blood this time. But the lashes would merely stoke her up again, as she now hastily stoked the fire under the pot; they would ready her for further jubilation in the sack, frigging recklessly. But there she would stifle her yells. There was no point in awaking the living dead there across the room, sleeping off the fatigue of beating her. In one way, she would not care if those two never rose again to see the light of day.
Unsteadily, she returned to the potage which, like herself, had gone off the boil. She wished she could poison it. But then, since it was difficult to whip oneself, who would be around to thrash her? Deprived of the hiss and thud of leather, she would just waste away.
The last rays of the sun faded over the great Bithynian fortress, darkening the hovel.
She sat by the window, the only opening, apart from the decrepit doorway, and tried to think. Although she had never set eyes on the Elders or High Priests serving Phranis, the deity of Time and Seasons, and Locrana, the much feared Moon Goddess, she had heard they were responsible for the formal entry of chosen slaves into the confines of the palace. Apparently the holy ones were perched on lofty sabots, as befitted their rank, long cloaks enshrouding their gaunt figures. But it was rather the exalted slave masters and mistresses that fascinated Silvana. One sultry evening as the storm clouds gathered over the northern hills towards Zahra and the sea, she had by chance caught sight of a couple of those awe-inspiring masters entering hovels to select likely slaves. Their rich, henna-brown cloaks, glittering spurs and weird body straps had instilled a terror in her heart she found difficult to allay or forget. It was best, Vreni had warned, not to look at them, for their power and cruelty were great.
She had gathered that such descents into the lower townships were sometimes carried out not by men but by slave mistresses who, if superbly beautiful, could be even more demanding. Such officials carried thick scourges of horsehide hooked to their studded loin belts, some terminating in metal lugs. But so far she had seen only male officers and even more terrifying for an ingenuous virgin had been the sight of their swinging genitals that seemed to be encompassed with spiked thongs. Since local youths did not frequent the river, that occasion had been Silvana's first vision of a phallus and its flaccid sack of balls cradled beneath. From that moment on, she found men of the same sort featuring in her nightly dreams; the visions crowded round her in her corner as she masturbated and spent. Their eyes appeared to watch her fingers spreading her dangling labia as she stirred the descending sap, and in one fantasy she even imagined she heard one of them, a handsome bearded fellow with a fine, rigid cock, actually speak: "Fine mammary meat this beauty has, colleague, a treat to throttle and whip," at which another seemed to remark: "Such succulent flesh should take the spikes and nipple tongs admirably. Promising material for the torture precincts, no?" And his veiled partner had nodded in the darkness of the hovel. Then the visions were swept away like wreaths of smoke as she sped into a maelstrom of orgasm. They faded thereafter, however hard she frigged and tugged on her cunt leaves, calling the spectres back to admire her body bathed in moonlight. But then, as Memona said, having put such ideas into her head, fantasies can be perfidious and vaporous at the best of times. Dear Memona, how wicked she could b
e! Memona, with her hazel eyes and those upturned teats she used to let Silvana suck and bite...
Silvana began to tidy up the room, wondering what her pitiable foster parents would say if they knew her strange desires, and their reaction if ever the palace emissaries were to visit the hut and ponder whether she merited the comfort of the Bithynian heights. Given the privileges at stake - she liked that word - the pair would be only too glad to see her go. Not that they would have any say in the matter.
She thought deeply. If the visit took place and she were rejected after being sized up, why then, she would take her fine arse and flapping cunt lips back to the silk sheds, fully resigned to her disappointment. In fact she would gladly tread the waterwheel, when ordered, under the foremen's whips. And possibly marry someone like the peachy Pervez in the next lane and fuck him to exhaustion every night. And to hell with the palace and all its fineries.
Suddenly she took off her shift and looked down at her body. True, the breasts were cumbersome but the lymph swung firmly enough, the pectoral muscle from the armpits holding them nicely aloft. As for the areoles and teats, by the holy Locrana, she had seen far worse down by the river; after all, they swelled into erection promptly and, given the size of the mammaries, she could even lift them to her mouth and suck them, something the others were quite unable to do. And more than that, the areoles were smooth as silk, devoid of those atrocious pimples some of the other girls had. Then she spread her knees to admire what nestled there down between the thighs, pulling on the long, pendant labia and again coaxing out of its sheath the stalwart prong Vreni had admired so much. Oh, yes, she was a load of treasures and she was going to make full use of those treasures when the time came.
She peered over at her rump. If it was substantial, the mounds were by no means as ponderous as Memona's, whose rear seemed there to be whipped, if nothing else.
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