During the march back to the palace in a sweltering heat, Thanon, once again, began to weary of his fortune in life. After all, retirement was close at hand and the young Hephaistos had learnt the rules of the game, commanded, flagellated competently enough and could well be promoted, relieving Thanon for other duties - namely, to take over supervision of the nobles' villeggiatura at Zahra on the coast. He thought again of the careful planning that would take with the Elders and, if Silvana was to accompany him there, even greater persuasion.
On return to the foot of the palace steps and following the customary protracted presentation of new slaves, Thanon retired to his chambers. There, at last, he found Silvana, now officially designated by the Elders as his 'personal concubine' and, by the servants, as his 'whipping whore', whose body and presence he found difficult to forgo. After bathing together, Haroun massaging his tired muscles, as well as Silvana's teats and clitoris - not that they required his attention - the two, reunited, enjoyed a sumptuous supper and a discussion. It was during the exchange that Thanon reiterated the possibility of being outposted to Zahra where, he had proposed to the Elders, he would dismiss the current slave mistress, an indolent creature, in charge of the brothel. "If my proposal succeeds, you would help me to run the place," he informed Silvana, "since you're no longer in slavery. But you must learn how to deal with males. We've seized some good specimens but they, alas, will not be sent to Zahra."
A new excitement took hold of Silvana, not at the prospect of being offered a new youth to practice on, but at the thought that she was not going to be separated from Thanon. The supper over, she crossed the carpets to position herself under the chain, while Haroun laid out the flogging leather for his master. But Thanon took her to bed as she was, resplendently naked, and merely fucked her. He was too exhausted to do more.
For Silvana the palace sojourn was becoming stimulating, the term sojourn, of course, implying temporality rather than permanency. And so it was to be. Her owner felt certain the Elders would release her and told her so. Again the girl could not believe her ears.
The Apprenticeship
During her master's absence Silvana had felt lonely and dispirited, almost envying her former colleagues in the Slave Chamber chatting and enjoying sex together. Yet, surprisingly, she had been allowed to walk the palace, at least those areas not reserved for the nobles, and did so uncoupled from her retention chain. She had also, in one of Haroun's rare absences allowing him to sup, wandered into the far room beyond the internal passage; there, to her surprise and delight, she came face to face with what awaited her when her master felt moved to make exceptional use of her body in private; he preferred intimacy when torturing his slave.
The windowless space displayed, by the light of her candle, an array of what to Silvana consisted of appliances much to her liking, even if some made her flesh crawl with wonder. Although accustomed to the weapons and artefacts in the precincts below, the oak plank festooned with whips and metal instruments startled her; some she had never dreamed could exist. They ranged from strips of horsehide to horrendous, knotted leathers, bull's pizzles, bamboo canes hung from iron hooks, some seemingly coated with congealed blood and sweat - both no doubt Greta's - despite Haroun's attention to his master's possessions.
Slowly, she walked round the chamber, admiring the two flogging posts, the lone torture frame, similar to that she had endured so often in Precinct Four below - except that Thanon's boasted a thick, ivory dildo slanted upwards - and, dangling from the vaulted roof, numerous chains, all attached to drums fixed to the far wall. Without difficulty, Silvana imagined her naked body being raised aloft to hang for flagellation. Her senses began to mingle with lust as she caressed the studs on a vaginal rod rearing from a low wooden stump bolted to the paving. Without hesitation, she lowered herself on the shaft, sinking down until it reached her cervix; eyes closed in rapture, she slowly masturbated. For once, she was free to bring herself off without the lash of a whip. Her shriek of orgasm filled the chamber as she made up for her master's absence. Yet, she was careful to wipe the leather penis clear of her downpour; one could never know with Haroun around. His eyes were everywhere and his whip always available. All the same, the shaft had given her one of the most potent climaxes she had ever experienced. Such was the effect of viewing a torture chamber while in solitary confinement. Had Thanon and Haroun been present, the orgasm would have been even fiercer. She could hardly wait to be taken in there by them, when the time eventually came.
Languid after her master’s first night home, Silvana lay back on the great bed and waited.
Finally, it was the slim-hipped Saroya who came for her.
"Up with you, gorgeous. You're to assist me today - your master's orders - to help me with a peachy new male who's just come in. Wear your boots, gloves and straps and look desirable, which, from the sight of you, shouldn't be difficult. What have you been up to, I wonder? You look like a fucked whore, just out of bed. Anyway, I've been told to show you how to deal with a stiff cock, so pull yourself together. But first, we're going to shave and ring the other newcomers. So, tighten up your body straps and on with the studded gauntlets, and this time you'll need a thin bamboo. Yes, that one will do. But, in Locrana's blessed name, try to look a little more like a fierce dominatrix. Now, sweetie, follow me."
The line of sweating bodies chained to the slabs in the Preparation Cellar gave Silvana a jolt. She wondered if she had looked so vulnerable and erotic when about to be pierced. The six females were quite attractive as peasant stock went, their thigh muscles straining like ropes under tension, the vulvas twitching beneath pubic swathes of differently coloured hair. Even more thrilling were the cocks of the three males shackled at the far end of the line; all three were in full erection, the youngsters having understood what was expected of them. They at least had something solid to display, whereas the girls had to make do with what they had as nipples. Silvana wondered whether their clits were as rigid as hers had been under similar conditions. If not, they had better become so when the tongs grasped the prong for the awl.
Bewildered by the sight of the nudes stretched out on what now to her resembled sacrificial altars, the sumptuous blonde gazed particularly at the pubic humps, recalling something Odile had mentioned in bed one night, following a delicious cunnilingus. Apparently, slaves could for various reasons be branded there with the mark of the Bithynian serpent. However, she had added, searing of the depilated flesh was only applied to slaves leaving the palace limits - whether sold off to slave traders, dispensed with as worthless, overworked material and cast out into the wilds, or relegated for service in the prisons. Whatever the reason, no slave could depart without bearing the mark. Silvana thanked the deities she was now the property of the illustrious Thanon and thus in no danger of being put up for sale, discarded or condemned.
Despite her recent promotion and her enviable role as his 'personal concubine', she would have been less self-assured, had she been able to read the future.
Saroya brought her back to duty by handing her a pair of flat-nosed pincers. "Don't just stand there in dreamland," she chided her apprentice, "you're here to work and learn."
And in the session that followed, she learned a great deal. What gave her particular pleasure was not so much extending one female nipple after another for Saroya to drive through the awl spike, nor threading through the rings into the flesh, but rather being told to grasp the males' solid, pulsing penises and then lengthen the flaccid testicle sacks for the same spike and Saroya's clamping tool. Ah, the feel of a pulsating, rigid cock in her hand...!
The groans of distress from the novices regaled Silvana greatly. After all, they had to be prepared for use, just as she had been. They would get accustomed to the attachments soon enough, indeed sooner than they expected.
Fascinated, she watched the overseer insert and anchor the seven rings in each of the female bodies, and then through the nipples, phallus
head and ball sack of the males. She found herself enjoying the slaves' shock and pain, which, she felt like telling them, was nothing to compare with what lay in store for them when their training began, not to speak of the tortures subsequently ordered or applied by the courtiers they were now to serve.
The chore completed, it was Saroya herself who led Silvana, in almost a sisterly manner, to one of the deeper precincts nearby, taking with them the sturdiest of the three youths, whom Saroya referred to as 'a well-hung buck slave'. The others were left to Rainer.
"You must have practice with the bamboo, blondie," Saroya announced calmly, thrusting the impassive youth against the dark masonry, his butt meeting a hinged rod that she fed into his anus. In silence, she then shackled the bondage leathers that had just been clamped to all four limbs, to the wall rings with chains which she tightened until the pelvis curved outwards; the thick, ringed phallus jerking with the heartbeat. With cool proficiency, she fed a length of chain through the metal circle dangling from the loose skin of the testicle sack and drew that down tight, clipping the ends to the youth's ankle straps. Silvana did what she could to control her emotions as the penis descended with the tension to project parallel with the paving.
"I don't know about you," the overseer said, running a hand over the youth's incurved belly, "but I'm particularly partial to strong cocks like this slave's. Of course, you can bend it down by the helm ring but I prefer to use the sack. It's more exciting for the phallus, Silvana, and it capers better. Now, he's all yours. Slick back the foreskin to bare the head. Go on!"
Silvana could hardly believe what she was hearing. "You mean I'm to beat it?"
"Well, of course. That's why you're here. Take that thin bamboo and get to work."
Trembling, the blonde closed her grasp round the hot flesh shaft and, a strange thrill coursing through her, peeled the prepuce off the bulb. As she did so, a stream of clear liquid oozed from the slit and descended. The heart-shaped knob bulged, far larger than Pervez's.
Gathering her courage, she slashed down with the pliant rod, watching it curve over the erection, and the cock bend under the blow. "Beat the whole length, sweetheart," her tutor told her. And so she did, astonished at the pleasure building in her entrails, until the youth began to groan and then, after some dozen strokes, the cries came, hoarse at first until he was yelling. The novice had never during her training seen an erection bounce as this one, not even those in her cohort when Mila had Pervez and Nisos to herself. She flogged the rebounding shaft from head to root until the organ became bloated with purple veins, the glans bright crimson. Completely lost as to when to stop, she gave Saroya a worried glance. The response was almost welcome. "That's the way, poppet. But use the end of the rod... Yes, that will do as an introduction. By the way, we never strike the sperm sack for obvious reasons. And you'll see why. But first, give him a pause to get his breath back. He's a fine piece of slave meat and tough. Now, stroke him with the whip... that's it, up and down his body. He deserves a caress after that, although the anal rod must be deep by now, giving him some joy."
Sweating as copiously as her victim, the girl ran her gloved fingers over the loins, flat belly and then the ribs. The youth's head had fallen back against the wall, gasping with lust.
"Now you can give him his reward." As the overseer spoke, Silvana turned to her with a baffled look, only to hear: "Go on. He deserves it. Frig him off. Let's see the spunk spurt!"
Silvana tentatively closed her hand round the swollen prick and masturbated the length, Saroya prompting her to keep the prepuce clear of the head. "It's the ridge that counts, honey, and the ring we've put in him. Of course, he's still sore from the piercing, not to speak of what you've just done to him, but he'll throw up just the same. They always do. Churn up his arse at the same time. It helps, you know."
The apprentice closed up on the stretched body, grabbing the rear rod in one hand and the straining cock in the other and did as she was told. The sweating curve of slave muscle came to life again as the two hands pleasured it. It did not take long. After not even a dozen frictions up and down the hard penis, the youth went rigid very suddenly, Silvana feeling the sex shaft tense still tauter. The thick sperm shot out across the paving in creamy jets, the cudgel still pulsing in her grip well after it had spewed the last wad.
To the blonde's surprise, Saroya left the groaning youth where he was, as his sex pole dwindled, the scrotum still chained. "He'll need to rest before being whipped up again into readiness. The Countess Ethereal, as we call her, has her eye on him and that obelisk of his, ever since he was presented on the Great Steps on arrival."
"But he's done for now, isn't he?" Silvana said, ingenuously, rather pleased with her achievement.
"If that's what you think, my beauty, ask your Thanon or Haroun if you can come down here around midnight. You'll see how a really hardened woman can enjoy a slave, time after time. She'll have him stiff as a whip haft before he knows it."
As they left the precinct, Saroya raised a gloved hand to her new colleague's nipples that were still in splendid erection. "Just let me say," she added a little hoarsely, "that you have about the finest pair of breasts we've had here for many moons. True, there was one real beauty from your Lower Saronis - Vreni, I think she was called - who had a balcony like yours but, unfortunately, she was sold off to some Venetians. With the proceeds - she wasn't cheap - the Elders built the present sacrificial sanctuary dedicated to the divine Bracon. I think, personally, that selling her was a mistake. Her tits were worth ten sanctuaries. But your body with those stunning milk churns" - again the simile - "certainly rivals hers."
Silvana felt a pang of nostalgia, remembering how Vreni's breasts used to float when she bathed in the river by the village. But she had no time to waste on reminiscences as the two began to mount the stairway.
"Now, what was I saying?" Saroya went on. "Yes, about breasts. You know, of course, that your noble master wants you to become really competent with the breast quirt" - the girl felt she had heard this litany before - "and so I've asked Rainer to select a good pair of young breasts from among the newly arrived which included that handsome fellow, whose cock you've just worked on. Maybe you know how to receive the quirt, but delivering a breast flogging is not as easy as you may think, like lashing an arse or a cock. The areoles and teats naturally are the main targets but, given breasts like your own," - at that, Silvana remembered the endless beatings Mila had given her - "the flesh below and above deserves equal attention. If the breasts are throttled tight at the root or stretched out by chain hooked through the nipple ring, there's no problem" - the sweating beauty sighed as the woman went on - "but if they hang flaccid, the quirt must delve into the crease and then beat the upper slope of flesh. But this you probably know." Saroya paused as they approached an iron door. "And remember, never use a thonged whip on the breasts or an erect cock. It merely wrecks them and entails tiresome days of balsam and recuperation. It's the quirt that's designed to punish the female mammaries," - Silvana was becoming accustomed to the palace terms - "even if, at times, we do use the thin bamboo rod, which, as you've just learnt, is obligatory for a stalwart penis. But, Silvana, you must learn how to punish a pair of erect teats. So, if you want to become a competent slave mistress - quite apart from whatever your noble master wants you to be, by way of bed-flesh and whipping meat - learn, above all, how to deal with a pair of breasts. Cunt and cock come later. Breasts are sought after, not only by the nobles but by us overseers. It's no great secret, sweetie, that both Damiana and I have our breasts whipped and tortured now and then, to please a guest or foreign dignitary. That's because we're magnificently equipped, like you and in much the same way as Greta was. She had bulges of soft meat that could serve as cushions, they were so huge. It's only natural your great master chose you as his concubine."
Saroya again paused in her peroration that had surprised the girl by its length and detail. Then quiet
ly she asked: "Has he tortured these two beauties of yours yet?" Her hand glided over the superabundant globes of flesh and smooth areoles, admiring the thrust of the still ringed teats; with a lascivious look, she hefted the volume of meat, her tongue flicking between her lips. "If he has, he's right, for straight sex is so insipid and so unimaginative. Well, has he? I mean with breast-throttlers, nipple cords, cunt-chains, clit-grips, and all that?"
"Well, not yet, Saroya, but Damiana did, when training me. He whips or quirts me."
"Really? Is that all? You surprise me. With Greta, he used to nail her nipples through her former ring holes to a stake, arms manacled high. On tiptoe! She'd chafe her pinched clit on the post and come like the simoon. And did he torture her! I only saw it once. It was fantastic what he did to her! Yes, Greta wallowed in everything he thought of. Well, we all learn with time, sweetheart. Why don't you get him to nail those loose labia to a post one day?"
Disturbed by the references to her talented predecessor, Silvana simply nodded, hoping she would be able to measure up to her. Then suddenly, she found herself facing the precinct door, Saroya unlocking it with her pass key. The area beyond the opening was dark and stifling, redolent of those odours she knew so well - stale perfumes left by female courtiers, the smell of leather and stench of naked bodies. A lone candle flickered on an oaken table amid a clutter of chains and shackles. To the right reared the instrument rack, some items still caked with congealed sweat and blood - for which some maid would have to pay.
Then, with a shock, Silvana saw what was hanging by the wrists. As she had never set eyes on the plump body before, she guessed it belonged to one of the newcomers, brought down from the fresh cohort, along with the youth they had enjoyed.
Silvana's Quest Page 14