Silvana's Quest

by Caroline Swift

  As her sweating skin reddened under the abrasive metal scrapers, Silvana stared up at the darkening sky beyond the walls of the hamman, as if in a dream she let herself be primed. Efficiently, the flesh was laved, her vagina and rectum purged, the armpits and crotch checked for regrowth of fleece. There being none, the maids reburnished the flesh rings that had tarnished with incessant perspiration and outpour, and finally added kohl to darken the rims of the eyes and mauve over the glossy areoles and teats, already in full erection. As if to render the superb column of nudity an ultimate favour, the senior of the three maids lubricated the sphincter and rectum - a gesture Silvana had learned to appreciate from earlier experiences when chained bent over a retention bar for her rear end to be entered. Use of that orifice gave her particular exhilaration.

  It was not Damiana but Saletha who finally came for her and, after a fastidious perusal of the result, led her in silence down a flight of steps into the dismal subterraneous abysses. Silvana's heart began to pound faster as she crossed the threshold of Sefket's dungeon of discipline for the first time. It certainly did differ from the Chamber of Gratification above and from the other precincts where, shackled, she had had to entertain countless courtiers.

  Lit by several wavering candelabra, the desolate, vaulted oval seemed to extend into obscurity beyond the granite torture slabs aligned before the entry. An abundance of rusting chains, some terminating in hooks, others in metal fetters, dangled over a central area of grim flagstones, while on either side lay iron grids, canted against the stonework, all crusted with harsh prongs. A row of whipping stakes, equally rife with nails, encircled a massive wooden, cross-barred frame that Silvana had no difficulty in recognizing as yet another of the infamous breast-benches she had already experienced. But the model before her seemed more complex than that in the upper Chamber; indeed, for in addition to the board of tines destined to engage and stretch the throttled breasts, a stud-forested rod, hinged to the platform, lay awaiting to be raised and wedged into a slave's sex. The mere sight of the shaft set her vagina awash.

  Her blue eyes, to which she presumed the kohl gave added beauty, became slowly accustomed to the gloom and suddenly she saw, at the far end of the chamber, what was suspended from a taut length of chain. Barely recognizable in the gloom, Kitana and Britta hung, face to face and immobile, the two pairs of ankles locked together by an iron gyve, thongs strangling the puny breasts, the teat rings weighted. Both were bestially gagged with a leather stopple thrust into the gullet. As if to remind the miserable creatures of their failings, they shared a hefty double-dildo that had been rammed up into each sex. Silvana noticed that not only had the shorn lambs been prodigiously flagellated but also rasped from shoulders to thighs with what she deduced must have been some sort of splayed flesh-rake - an item she had often discerned on various instrument panels, but which she had never experienced.

  Handing the nude over to the lame Sefket, Saletha noticed her astonishment. "Ah, two of your former teammates," the overseer said. "There's nothing we can do to get them to work as they should, the laggards. So, before being disposed of for good, they're going to be relegated to the black hole to keep our prisoners quiet - those captured on the last sortie over the border. It's a shame," she admitted, "for both have quite attractive bodies in a way." It was the first compliment Silvana had heard since making the long march along with the miserable sluts. It served them right, was her verdict. Yet, she shuddered, recalling Odile's description of what befell discarded slaves in the prisons...

  Silvana hastened to obey Sefket as he motioned her to a length of links hanging from the vault, at the same time summoning, as she might have expected, Damiana in her new function. "My new assistant will deal with you as I'm engaged in other work, for I have our Zelda present. Her breasts need attention prior to further crucifixions. They've become flaccid. The slack needs taking up. The pectorals have to recover their tension."

  Saletha bowed, glancing at the golden chains Damiana had laid out on a nearby slab. "Of course, Master. We can handle this." With that assurance, Sefket hobbled off as Silvana was wrist-hung from the chain-and-hook, her toes just grazing the rugged flagstones.

  Together, the slave mistress and Damiana in her new role, went to work on the nude. A length of short ankle links attached, the nipple rings were secured to chains that hauled the ponderous breasts upwards, crossed twice behind the nape of the strapped neck and led down the back to split the anal divide. There the links, after being joined with cord, encircled the thighs, again twice. Thence they passed through Silvana's labia rings, the women wrenching the gleaming flesh fronds apart to ensure the oval was splayed wide like spread wings of some crimson, spread-eagled bird. The spare links were then tied off.

  "That's how the Lord Menthif always likes his victims," Damiana informed the length of readied flesh. "It's the sort of bondage that probably appeals to you too, no?"

  Entirely new to such attentions, Silvana found the courage to nod. In fact, the bondage thrilled her to a degree she had never known; her sole regret was that the twist of chain passing between her abundant rump cheeks covered her sphincter which meant that, as she was, she could be arse-whipped but not sodomized. As for the yawning sex and the milk-white underside of her uphauled mammaries, she feared the worst.

  "It's his two concubines who will slash you," Damiana informed her, "not His Lordship. He'll just watch. So, do your best, sweet slag." Then Saletha added a word of her own which encouraged the one weighed down in chain. "She looks simply divine, doesn't she, Damiana? I wish I had a body like that."

  The body in question was lowered, the wrists being linked to the crossed chains behind the neck. Slowly, to allow her to gauge the restriction imposed by the ankle links, the nude was led out of the cavern into the passageway. Despite the awkward progress, neither woman whipped her, for which Silvana was grateful, having enough to contend with as it was, each distressing step torturing her labia. Yet she was not displeased with the array.

  The Ninth Precinct, which she entered for the first time, benumbed her. Not only was the round chamber lit with candles and burning cressets suspended above a wide arena of sand, but they revealed a line of thrones set beyond the periphery of the circle; the seats were already occupied by half-dressed courtiers engaged in desultory conversation. From the apex of the vault hung a heavy, hooked chain, descending to a point just above Silvana's head. To her surprise, there were no apparatuses of torture visible and no flogging posts - only the vast sand-strewn ring and nothing else, bar the iron links. Astonished, she realized she was to be flagellated wrist-bound to the chain above her. It struck her as a strange arrangement but one that would permit her to twist and shift her stance, at least as far as the overhead shackling allowed, thus probably escaping the more vicious lashes - a poignant delusion neither of the two experienced overseers would have cared to dispel.

  A silence fell upon the chamber as the two women led the victim to the centre of the ring, freed her arms and attached the manacles to the hook dangling above her face. She tried to relax her superb body but a strange tension had seized her, despite the erotic thrill building up in her loins. Though the sand beneath her feet frightened her - sand and sawdust in a precinct, more often than not, presaged the shedding of blood - and yet she was determined to show them, slouching in their chairs over there, what a simple slave girl from Lower Saronis was capable of in terms of courage. Fully aware of her dazzling beauty, it was almost intoxicating to be watched by so many lascivious eyes, and her exposed vagina, beyond the shining clit ring, began to liquefy and throb in expectation. She just hoped the whipping - if that was all they had in mind - would be more voluptuous than that botch inflicted on her by that repulsive animal, Mila. Tight-lipped, Silvana vowed she would one day, if Lady Luck would lend an ear, get her own back on that rat and reduce her to a puddle of piss.

  The silence in the precinct began to perturb her. She could no longer locate eit
her Damiana or Saletha. The prolonged abeyance became trying. She began to sweat with a new kind of fear. Why did they not proceed? Was she not in her most tempting state - kohled, oiled, naked and wrenched open? What did they want? For her to masturbate and shriek? Had her hands been free, she would have done so. But why did they let her dawdle there with her sex dripping precious nectar into the sand? Nervousness, Odile always said, could ruin a slave...

  The answer came very suddenly. From a white-curtained doorway three figures appeared: the exalted Equerry and two females, no doubt his profligate drabs. Their apparel startled her. In the precincts she had never seen a male other than bollock-naked, phallus erect, but this ass Menthif was turbaned and enveloped in silks, the folds billowing after him like a Turkish man-of-war. His concubines strode forward, clad from head to foot in tight black shimmering leather, their crotches, buttocks and breasts bared like offal on a butcher's stall. But what startled the lingering victim was not so much their second hide but the enormous, upraised dildo protruding from each crotch, the other half apparently embedded in the vagina, recalling the two miseries suspended in Sefket's cellar.

  Then Silvana saw what each strumpet held in her hand. The long lengths of flogging leather, knotted and spliced at the extremity, Silvana knew from experience were of plaited horsehide - weapons to be avoided if one valued one's skin. The whips slithered in the sand behind the she-devils like adders as the pair strode into the arena, licking their lips as if fangs had replaced their tongues. Slavering to begin, they walked slowly round the victim, uttering obscene comments on the nude's body.

  While the scrutiny proceeded, Saletha reappeared, placing a throne on the rim of the arena and bowing Menthif into it. The mass of lard and silk sprawled indolently upon the seat, parting its legs. When at last the noble voice came, it sounded more like a woman's than that of a male. Weird, was Silvana's comment to herself, wishing she could tell him how long she had been made to wait for this already wearying session. If only they would begin...

  "So this, my cherubs, is the thing I've had to haggle over for you. What d'you think of my intuition? I knew it. Whenever our cunning Thanon covets something, one can be sure there's a fine length of whipping flesh involved. Now, she's all yours, my dears. And take your time. Although we have her for only this once, there's no hurry. I intend to enjoy it. So, give me some real pleasure for once. I'm truly tired of watching you beating each other."

  Silvana had hardly time to ready herself. As one scourge sliced across her coccyx and, curling, bit the belly, the other slashed into the midriff, almost cutting her in half. The lashes came in turn and then in unison, the slave striving to hold back her cries. But not for long. Each whip hissed through the dense air of the precinct, landed and raised purple welts, the blonde writhing, out of control, with unbelievable pain, making her rise to her toes. One shackled leg jerked up as far as the chain allowed, then the other. She was hopping round the arena in panic, the golden hair sweeping over her face and then backwards between the arms like swathes of rye in a windswept field. Having striated and darkened the back, thighs and belly, each snake-scaled pythoness doubled her whip into a murderous compactness, one flogging the slave's cheeks of buttock meat, the other, hissing with fury, lashing the blanched underside of the breasts - exposed on Menthif's express order. Silvana convulsed and, for the first time so early in a thrashing, yelled.

  Rarely honoured with a spectacle of such ferocity, Menthif's carefully selected guests gasped with delight. There in the remote vastness of the ninth precinct, they had never seen a chained nude caper so, nor shriek with such outlandish force, for none had been thrashed as brutally as now. It was a real repast of pure pain. The equerry's private establishment, it was known, housed females talented with the long horsehide and bullwhip but what the onlookers were witnessing surpassed belief. Indeed, rumours had it that maids or valets chosen to serve the Menthifs and naturally kept naked, did not last long when these vipers lashed out at them. But this was the first time, to the court's recollection, His Lordship had rewarded a common slave girl from the cohorts with his attention. And, by Phranis, was the blonde getting it!

  Silvana's yells had commenced somewhere after the first thirty lashes - which surprised both slave mistresses but then the girl during and after her training had only received a single whip. What equally tormented Silvana, as she writhed under the twin lengths of rawhide, was the fearful tugging on her drawn-out labia of the chains wrenching her open; the lashes across the hoisted breasts also made her howl, for not only were the undersides still unprepared for such direct flogging but so far, under the rules, only the quirt had been used for dug-beating. Damiana sympathized but could not help. However much her former trainee tried to avoid receiving the plaited thong across the milky surface, at least one of the two truculent flagellatrices managed to mark it. For once, Silvana wondered in her dazed brain how much more she could take, as she heard herself crying for help from Damiana, from the gods and then calling on Thanon - none of whom seemed prepared to risk raising a finger to assist her. He who might have prevailed on the trio to conclude, the new, self-appointed owner of the beautiful, suffering body, was nowhere to be seen; Thanon in fact had told Damiana he had no wish to witness the product of what he admitted to be a scurrilous compromise. Saletha, however, had even less sympathy, for what was a naked slave for, if not to be beaten? In fact, she rather admired the vixens' handling of such long whips, but for nothing in Bithynia would she take them on as assistants. They lacked the finesse of her faithful Saroya. The two concubines were lethal, pitiless, but good to watch.

  Meanwhile, the leather-sheathed strumpets drove their victim inexorably and repeatedly round the arena until she stumbled and fell, stretched from the chain, only to be scourged where she hung. That alone, the spectators considered, was worth the invitation, as was the way the well-fleshed slut, decked in golden chains, staggered back to her feet and recommenced her gyrations and suffering until, after another half-hourglass of time, she was again outstretched, half-conscious, the head bowed. If the two flagellatrices felt the breasts merited more of the whips' tail-end, Damiana, on the other hand - and to a lesser degree, Saletha - believed the session had gone on long enough; they had no desire to have her damaged beyond repair. Both felt it just as well Thanon had resolved not to attend the session. The slave girl, gifted as she was and well-endowed - that is, in terms of flesh, was evidently weakening; to Menthif's delight. Both slave mistresses believed a further hourglass's period of such punishment would damage her and that no one could risk or afford. But the flagellation continued amidst the familiar breathless cries and slushings from the circle of spectators. At least someone, apart from Menthif and his whores, was enjoying it...

  Finally Silvana gave up, slumped to the full length of the chain, her scourged body glittering with sweat, dribbles of blood and purple welts. She, even she, had reached her limit.

  Spry again, Saletha had the delicacy and good sense to congratulate her colleague. "I must say, Damiana dear, you trained her well. I only regret I won't have her now in my cohort nor, alas, in my bed. Let's hope where she's headed, she'll be able to fill Greta's role..."

  "I'm sure she will. She might even," Damiana smiled, "fill yours one of these days."

  Wiping off their scourges, Menthif's she-wolves bathed in their master's adulation, while refreshments were served by a couple of naked handmaids from the Equerry's household, Damiana noticing they carried the Equerry's coat of arms branded squarely over the navel. Offhand, she wondered what would become of such pathetic youngsters were His Lordship to fall from power one day. The same question applied to his concubines. Most probably such females would be served up as offerings at some future Moon Festival or sold.

  But one thing was clear. The young beauty Damiana had tutored so diligently and with erotic pleasure, would now be bound - and in more ways than one - to serve Thanon exclusively and thus elude the High Priests and sacrific
e. What would become of her and her splendid body in the Slave Master's rooms was another matter. But the slave was ascending the rungs of the Bithynian ladder. That was for sure.

  The pause over and thirsts quenched, except for Silvana's, Damiana wondered what was to follow, for the palace gong in the great halls above had sounded midnight, when Menthif always retired, apparently to have his whores tortured in private. Disturbed by the clang of bronze, the mastiffs howled a moment on the battlements before returning to rest.

  Soaked in sweat, the concubines strode back to the exhausted slave hanging by the wrists, knees grazing the sand, and revived her with stinging slaps across the face and several jabs of the whip hafts into the thrashed breasts. Silvana groaned as she staggered to her feet to ready herself for further lashes, most probably, she expected, up into the distended labia. That was a sequel she would not argue with, for the state of the clitoris in her yawning sex cleft had become unbearable. The punishment had brought her to a point where it hovered on the brink, craving for relief - from the whip, the lunge of a dildo, leave alone a stiff cock...

  Unexpectedly, she was released. After the ankle links had been removed, the torso chain, contorting the breasts, neck, anal cleft and especially the wrenched sex fronds, fell away. As the labia splattered back into place over the flooded hole, she gave a hoarse cry of pain, yet astonished how the cunt-flesh had resisted the tug on the rings for so long without tearing - as had happened to poor Elfra, who had to be pierced anew at a point higher up on the sex fold. Stranger still was the fact that, so far, Silvana had not yet been crotch-whipped, the delay being probably a significant part of the prolonged slave-torture.