Silvana tended to agree, remembering the flogging horse with its chains and stopples.
"Then, as I said, there are the lower regions where things tend to become serious and where you risk meeting up with our one-eyed Sefket the Lame. He's in charge of the cells devoted to sex torture, and you'd better be wet and ready." She paused, feeling the novices had sufficient to go on with and that Silvie, or rather Silvana, was approaching orgasm. "Well, all this chat may help as a start. Now eat and drink and tell us where you come from."
The newcomers told them while Andreas talked to the two youths. Suddenly, Kitana cried out, hoarse and nervous, on the verge of panic. "Isn't that enough? I can't stand all this talk. I just hate you all..."
A host of startled eyes turned towards the tear-stained face, only to hear the nymph blurt out a question of her own. "Anyway, what's a precinct? A holy place where one can hide away and pray?"
No one reacted until Silvana came to the rescue. "Oh, ye gods, you'd better tell her, Odile, otherwise the wretched kitten'll gripe and pester us for hours."
It was Ortalana who volunteered. "Well, you see, poppet, they have a whole row of punishment cells down there in what are called the precincts - just a step away from old Sefket's dungeon. No windows, nothing, just a few guttering tapers or rusty lanterns. And that's where the really gifted and spunky courtiers enjoy what we described, if you were listening instead of blubbering and covering your teats. But if you really want to know, they hook your wrists loosely to an overhead chain so that you stagger around, writhing and contorting while they thrash the life out of you with long whips. Understand? Or are you too stupid? And it's not your overseer who prepares you for the breast and cunt skewers, but old Sefket and he knows just how the courtiers want you when they tell him they want to pierce you. You get about twenty bodkins threaded into you - breasts, nipples and sex folds. They do it slowly and, if you're not hooded up, you watch it, needle by needle. It's all terribly erotic - as long as you enjoy that sort of torture as we do. It's absolutely thrilling."
Ortalana was cut short by further laments from Kitana, bursting into tears again. Silvana would have welcomed hearing more, for her teats had become rigid with excitement.
Suddenly, a shrill scream rose from the dishevelled bed to the rear, drowning the discussion and turning all the heads. Unbelievably, Britta had climaxed on the mound of entangled limbs, throwing her otter-brown mane back, her eyes tight shut, her mouth gaping like a landed fish. The company watched her spend over Ayesha's face. After a short pause, she came again and collapsed. As the spasms subsided, she now seemed to flutter off like a sparrow into the void beyond the barred lancets, out into the blue. Then, after a succession of groans, the older girl below followed suit, her face flattened against the youngster's vulva. It seemed a perfect duo, the first Silvana had witnessed and matched what Vreni had told her.
The others at table became uneasy at the noise. Clearly, neither of the slaves was able to control her orgasms or her shrieks, Britta especially. The cries rang through the vaulting.
"Your cinnamon-topped apprentice certainly has a voice and a half, doesn't she?" Odile glanced at Silvana with an expression that told her she was probably expected to enjoy the same that night, with or without Pervez present. The prospect of being tongued by Odile and ram-rodded by the well-hung youth sent her into a maelstrom of lust that almost, but not entirely, obliterated the combined dream of Thanon, beard, cock and scourge. She was ravenous for something other than a hand under the table, sweetmeats, figs and jasmine tea.
Abruptly, the chatter round the meal ceased in the middle of Elfra's description of well-bitten stopples used as gags by such courtiers who preferred silence to yells while thrashing a naked slave. Odile and the seasoned others had suddenly paled, scrambling to their feet, almost overturning the bench and Silvana with it. Why the panic? As she too got up, a quick look told her everything. The lot were petrified.
As well they might be. The great door had been flung back open, slamming against the masonry with a thud that boded no good.
Her silver spurs chinking, Damiana strode into the sunlit chamber, the two acolytes in her wake. Silvana wondered at the apparition, for the training session was not due to commence until the morning repast was over. Was something amiss?
"And what, in the name of Phranis and our sacred Locrana, is going on here, during a meal?" The timbre of the voice made Silvana grateful that Odile had not gone further and tempted her to bed in the midst of a meal when all were required to be seated on the benches.
Fury distorted the overseer's features. Apart from the thigh-high boots, she was practically naked but everyone noticed she had swept her sequined veil off her eyes as if to view the scene more clearly. Silvana saw the bright sapphire flashing in the navel, as if it were an additional, accusing eye, and the golden chain looping round her hips. The pubis gleamed above the heart-shaped swathe of sex hair. When angered, the woman looked doubly lovely.
"And what do those two tarts think they're doing when they should be at table? And one of them a novice under training!" She strode over to the bunk and slapped Ayesha's face. "You should know better than to be caught sucking a novice's cunt. Over to the place of punishment with you and tighten your sinews, whore that you are."
Leaving Britta moaning with pleasure, still unaware of her criminal role, Ayesha slid off the sweat-damp sheets and walked calmly towards the curtains that sealed off the far end of the chamber. She knew what awaited her but considered what she had enjoyed was well worth what was now to come. She just hoped the moaning youngster would not have to atone for what was nothing more than a routine cunnilingus. Anyway, both had orgasmed and that for Ayesha was a reward in itself. The timid novice had taken to it like a bird to the wing.
Damiana decided the situation provided an excellent illustration of what recalcitrance deserved and a lesson for her novices, even if Ayesha was not directly under her jurisdiction but Saletha's. In any case, Saletha was not on duty, probably fucking hard with her Rainer.
"To the punishment stakes with you, Ayesha," she ordered. "I'm ashamed of you. You must try to control yourself."
The voluptuous slave walked serenely to where she knew she was to be whipped, and it was not the first time she had seen those curtains drawn apart by that hated bitch, Mila.
What the drapes revealed gave the newcomers their first view of the local punishment area. Beyond the step, four stakes rose to the apse, one pair standing behind the other, each equipped with chains that Silvana saw ran through runnels at each summit.
Without being told, Ayesha laid herself out, belly down, on the paving, a position that presented the whole of her back, buttocks and thighs, as well as her three holes - the two forward ones awash with discharge - and dangling breasts; it was a classical posture, Odile whispered, much favoured by floggers. The lithe limbs stretched outwards to each upright for Damiana's assistants to attach chained hooks to her wrist and ankle straps. Working together, Mila and Yannis hauled up each set of links in turn until the body was slung tight from all four pillars. Although sorry for the sinner, Silvana could not help admiring the body's beauty.
"Now, Ayesha, I'm going to have your hanging breasts caned and, as you know from the last time when you offended, that rump and insatiable quim of yours whipped. Mila, you deal with her rear end and Yannis, slice into her dugs from each side. I think a couple of dozen lashes from each of you should suffice." The jangling spurs approached the spread body. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, whore that you are?"
To Silvana's astoundment, the slave girl murmured: "One more, one less flogging makes no difference to me. You make me suck I don't know how many cunts and pricks at each session and yet you object to one I happen to find attractive. I think that's unfair."
"Flog the bitch," Damiana shouted. And the two handlers brought their floggers down, Damiana watching the effect on the newcomers. Si
lvana almost came as she watched the bamboo cutting into the breasts, the leathers burying themselves in the arse flesh and flailing into the ringed vulva, still wet with its downpour and Britta's saliva. As only soft moans came from the victim, Damiana halted the punishment to have cords threaded through the labial rings to open up the offending slot. Standing to one side and then to the other, Yannis whacked the drooping udders that jolted with each slash as they swung and reddened. The slung length of the helpless slave arched upwards with each blow, the cane seeming to Silvana to have more effect than the scourge. Yet the slave girl only groaned, rearing her head at each stroke. Being watched by her partner in crime and by the other novices, she seemed determined to exhibit her stamina. The thought that the gullible Britta, wet behind the ears as well as elsewhere, was to receive the same reprimand, distressed her but at least the poor thing seemed to have enjoyed a healthy cunnilingus. A flogging would help her on her way.
Meanwhile Mila's thongs bit with professional accuracy into the crotch, Silvana watching with sensual pleasure, studying the bitch's technique. Nothing in her wildest phantasmagoric dreams had ever given her such pleasure while Ayesha's groans became more audible, the bruises flowering into purple roses. Yet she did not resist. She was used to it. The blonde onlooker recalled her fantasies at home, in which she was seized by vagabonds, stripped, whipped and raped in a forest clearing... Yet, she wondered how she would take such treatment when the time came, and without an offence to requite.
The beating lasted a long time and was thorough enough. Finally, the yells came.
"Let that be a lesson to the lot of you, too," the slave mistress announced and, as she said it, Silvana realized her own fingers had taken hold of her clit ring that Odile had thought best to release. At the same moment, she felt Odile's hand sliding down her buttock cleft, fumbling over the perineum. "You like watching that, don't you?" the woman said. "Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you hung and whipped. You're the most beautiful creature we've ever seen here." Silvana stared at her a moment before whispering: "You probably say that to all the newcomers." Odile shook her head. "No, I mean it. I can hardly wait until tonight. Those lavish breasts of yours, my pet, even if they've not been quirted, almost make me spend. And tonight I want you to bite my clit like a grape while you suck me."
The chosen one nodded, entranced. The palace was proving far more than she had ever envisioned. More unexpected still was Odile's hand caressing her rear entry...
Finally, the group saw Ayesha being lowered but left prostrate, still chained out like a star of flesh as Damiana turned to Britta, who had sobbed throughout the punishment of the only person who had showed her a grain of compassion and some sort of love.
"As for you," the overseer said, pointing her whip at the second culprit, "you'd better watch your step and that lapping tongue of yours. Another fault and I'll send you to the precincts, even before you're trained." The poor slut froze. Guilt was contagious and she knew it; she had not the slightest wish to share Ayesha's fate. Still raw from her own previous beatings, she felt she had had enough for a lifetime. But, somewhere in the dark depths of her immature body, a spark of courage glowed; thanks to Ayesha's agile tongue and lips, she had experienced her first real orgasm. Proffered by a well-trained tongue rather than her own hand, it had been divine but, all the same, not worth risking a flogging such as she had just witnessed.
The curtains were closed over the apse, Ayesha becoming a thing of the past.
"Thank you, Mila and you too, Yannis," the overseer said. "They could all do with a thrashing like that, the shiftless wretches. Now, to work. Let us lose no more time." She glowered at her group of nudes. "And no more whims and eating quims from now on when you're meant to be feeding your faces."
The journey to the Chamber of Gratification proved painful, on account of the shortened ankle chains. On entering again the ghastly room, the six slaves were aligned along the side wall, an iron bar being passed through the series of neck rings. Satisfied with the postures, Damiana consulted with her assistants in undertones, apparently deciding on the order of tutoring. Pervez was designated first.
The handsome, stolid youth was led to the far wall beyond the whipping stakes to be chained outstretched to rings cemented in the masonry, Mila feeding a stout rod into his anus. The insertion arched out the body into a curve of muscle that gave Silvana pleasure to watch, a thrill that was doubled when a chain was hooked into the ring piercing the glans and tightened to a column several paces away. The erect phallus levelled, parallel to the flagstones as Silvana imagined what was to come.
"You males must get used to this," their slave mistress declared. "It's a position many of our more experienced lady courtiers require. And that goes for you females as well, as you'll see in due course. Now, Mila, my dear, use the cock cane - the one you wield so well."
The booted horror did so, thrashing the length with lethal aim, starting at the root, until Pervez was cursing her out loud - a reaction Silvana found foolhardy but which neither the overseer nor Mila seemed to take amiss. What a slave uttered under the whip, Silvana was to learn, merely added to the flogger's pleasure; otherwise, the gag was employed, the visual effect outweighing the vocal. If Pervez suffered pain to begin with, it quickly changed into lust and pleasure. It required only a dozen or two strokes to bring a different sound out of the slave; he groaned loudly as his head craned back, the crimson shaft stiffening. The spunk jetted out like a chaplet of cultured pearls, to dribble down the pillar beyond.
"Splendid!" Damiana conceded. "Leave him where he is until he stiffens again. He has to grow accustomed to multiple spurtings if he hopes to please the Countess Alicia."
Her whip swung round to point at Carmela. "Now, you and your blubber. String her up, Yannis, and wide, so the others can learn."
Released from the wall, the plenitude of slack flesh waddled forward and was told to prostrate herself on the flagstones. The overhead chains rattled down to be coupled to the ankle straps. The ratchet wheel ground its teeth as the huge body was cranked up to the revolving axle; once clear of the ground, the peasant girl hung like a carcass of beef. Yannis selected a thin lash and gave the bottom, crotch and belly a beating that would have felled a mule. Like Ayesha, the mass merely groaned and was left to revive; whether she was brought to fruition, Silvana could not guess but it prepared her own overcharged mounds as she readied herself for her turn for trouncing, her heart thumping like the waterwheel near home.
Then Nisos was given his piece of training, over a trestle. The lad was hopeless, proving nothing other than that he required a great deal of whipping if he was to entertain the nobles. Silvana began to despise the youth. How it was he had been selected defeated her.
Leaving the two equally weak sisters to the last, Damiana ordered the blonde forward. For a moment she believed she was to be stretched over the iron grid with the breasts gouged through the bars. But her overseer had decided on the most classical posture of all, one that never failed to despatch Silvana into ecstasy when it flickered through her hovel dreams.
Led to the centre of the chamber, the unbelievably erotic nude was made to mount a stool and raise her arms. In silence, Yannis hooked her leather wrist manacles to links hanging from the vaulted roof and, kicking away the mounting block, splayed her magnificent legs out to U-bolts protruding from the paving. Extended to the utmost reach of her tendons, what in Damiana's opinion had to be, along with gorgeous Zelda, the most erotic column of whipping flesh the palace had ever possessed drew in her belly to exhibit her rib cage and pelvis points. She knew that both sides of her body were ready for the bullwhip her overseer had already taken up, and hoped her seeping vulva with its fluttering fronds pleased her custodians.
Her own sexual extremities equally awash, Damiana gave a further order to her man.
"I want this one fully stressed, Yannis. So, jam her head back with the cock cane across her mouth and
behind the biceps. Let her bite on that."
Silvana appreciated the gesture for it dulled her cries as the whip slashed her back. But, although the pain was great, the shoulder blades and what lay between them and the true target - the inordinate prominence of the hindquarters - hardly excited her. Then the plaited leather belaboured the globes that Mila, dismayed she had been replaced, also considered were about the best she had seen in her time as assistant to a palace slave mistress.
"This," the overseer said, as the welts ripened to the hue of sliced papaya, "is the sort of sex-nude our courtiers will really enjoy. A fine body that responds without unnecessary noise". She dragged the blonde head back still further. "You'll make a commendable slave."
Through her tears, the exemplary one tried to smile. "Thank you, dear mistress. My body only seeks to serve you and the palace." What her flogger did not catch, for they were added under the slave's breath, were two other words: "And Thanon..." Even if she had heard them, the overseer would not have slit the girl's nipples in a rage of jealousy for she knew the great man was only using her, Damiana, as a replacement for his former mistress, Greta - the lovely Greta who had departed hence, worn to the bone. Damiana's promotion lay elsewhere.
Two hours of practice, with various changes of postures, came finally to an end.
"I think that will do," the woman announced, resettling the golden chains that always encircled a slave mistress's belly and were attached to the emerald set in the navel. "Take them back to the slave compound. Tomorrow we'll show them the torture precincts where more can be learnt." She smiled, addressing Mila: "All in all, we've had worse novices. The blonde especially seems promising but must be handled with the utmost severity. See to it."
The blonde in question had developed a visceral loathing not for Damiana but for the presumptuous, malicious Mila who, once the slave mistress had retired to dine, took up her whip again and thrashed Silvana with bestial force, swearing vociferously: "Loosen those huge arse cheeks, slave, and suck in that belly. Let that hump of pubic meat get its share. By the holy Locrana, I'll discipline you!" Silvana found not only fierce pain mounting in her body but also bitter waves of revenge. Yet, being helpless, the chance of retaliation remained totally unimaginable in the state she was - stretched naked and bound. The very sight of Mila, sweating as she flogged, riled her, muted vengeance smouldering in her resignation. One day maybe, retaliation would come... What she could not know was that Thanon was still present, fuming at the sight of his chosen one writhing under the damn slag's thongs, and that his previous decision - to have the cheap bitch demoted to slave level again - had surfaced anew. His loathing of Mila matched Silvana's and he was sure, given the influence he wielded with the Elders, his resolution, final this time, to break her would be endorsed, along with his other wishes, namely to negotiate his early retirement. If agreed, Hephaistos would assume the role of Master of Slaves, while he would take charge of the court's villeggiatura down at Zahra on the sea coast with ultimately this beauty replacing Rasetha as slave mistress. Meanwhile, he was determined to have Silvana promoted to the rank of personal slave, dwelling in his private quarters in the southern tower, in lieu of the regretted Greta, now exhausted and about to be sold off as trash. As to Damiana, he felt she also deserved advancement and could well fill the position of Sefket's assistant in the place of Obisba, recently chosen to tend the sacred bowls of incense in the temple and be responsible for the selection of slaves for the Moon Festival. His projects were complex but well conceived and Damiana would certainly propose a viable replacement for Mila - possibly one of her or Saletha's assistants who whipped well.
Silvana's Quest Page 6