I paused before a given stall, where light, walking chains were being sold. They
were strung over racks rather like parrot perches. Without much haggling, I
bought one, which seemed to me pretty. They are adjustable, with rings, from a
length as small as two inches, for security, to a stride length of about twenty
inches. Two keys are provided, each of which fits both ankle-ring locks. I also
purchased a set of slave bells, of the thong as opposed to the lock variety.
They are less expensive than the lock variety; also, they may be tied at various
places on the body, about the neck, the wrist, the ankle, about the thigh, about
the arm, etc.; it is delightful to bell a girl; she may not remove them, of
course, without her master’s permission.
I passed by the door of a slaver’s house. High in the house, through one of the
narrow windows, I saw a girl, looking out. She smiled, and put her arm out
through the window, waving. Her face pressed against the bars. She was collared.
I blew her a kiss in the Gorean fashion, brushing it upward to her with my
fingers.
I looked into a shop where pottery was being turned. To one side of the wheels,
along a wall, sitting among many bowls and vessels, a boy, with his finger, was
carefully applying bluish pigment to a large, two-handled pitcher. When the
pitcher was placed in the kin this pigment would be burned, hardened, into the
glaze. The kilns were in the back of the shop.
“The Kavars, even now, are hiring lances,” I heard.
The rugs of Tor are very beautiful. I paused to look upon several of them,
hanging in stalls, many others, lying on top of one another, in great, shaded
piles. It takes five girls more than a year to make certain of these rugs. The
patterns, memorized by the callers, some of them blind, are intricate, and
passed down through families. They are made on simple looms and the pile is
knotted onto the warp and weft. Some of these rugs have as many as four hundred
knots per square hort. The hort is approximately an inch and a quarter in
length. Each knot, by a girl, a free woman, is tied individually by hand. There
are many varieties of such rugs. Almost all are incredibly beautiful. The dyes
used in the malting of these rugs are, on the whole, natural dyes, vegetable
dyes, some made from barks and leaves, and roots and flowers, others from animal
products, crushed insects, etc. At various places in the bazaar, from a
latticework laid between the buildings, numerous skeins of wool hung, dyed in
various bright colors, drying. The carders and the dyers, incidentally, are
subcastes separate from the weavers. All are subcastes of the rug makers, which,
itself, interestingly, perhaps surprisingly, is accounted generally as a
subcaste of the cloth workers.
Rug makers themselves, however, usually regard themselves, in their various
subcastes, as being independent of the cloth workers. A rug maker would not care
to he confused with a maker of kaftans, turbans or djellabas.
I looked up at skeins of wool hanging from the wooden poles between the flat
roofs. They were quite colorful. The finest wool, however, is sheared in the
spring from the bellies of the verr and hurt, and would, accordingly, not be
available until later in the season. The wool market, as was to be expected, was
now slow.
I passed the door of another slaver’s house. I swung the light walking chain
casually in my hand. It would look well on the slim ankles of the lovely Miss
Blake-Allen.
I passed a fellow inlaying wood, and the shop of a silversmith, and stalls
filled with baskets, some of which, grain baskets, were large enough to hold a
man. In another place tanned, dyed leathers were hanging, purple, red, yellow. I
passed a boy in a shop using a bow lathe. He spins the wood with bow and string,
held in his right hand. He uses his left hand and his right foot to guide the
cutting tool. Djellabas and burnooses, sleeveless, hooded desert cloaks, were
being sold in another stall. The burnoose can, as the djellaba cannot, because
of the sleeves, be thrown back, freeing the arms. One who rides the swift kaiia,
who handles the scimitar and lance, chooses the burnoose.
I passed another stall, in which mats were being sold. These are used for
various purposes, sometimes vertically for screens, more normally, horizontally,
for sitting and sleeping. They can be tightly rolled and occupy little space.
Among them I saw rough-fibered slave mats, and among those, the coarsest of all,
submission mats, on which the female slave may be forced to perform for her
master.
There were sellers of scarves and sashes, veils and haiks, chalwars and tobes,
and slippers and kaftans, and cording for agals. Too, there were cloth
merchants, with their silks and rolls of rep cloth. Cloth is measured in the
ah-il, which is the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and
the ah-ral, which is ten ah-ils. I saw sleeve daggers. I brushed a mat salesman
away.
In another stall a slave girl was being vended. I watched her for a time dance
before me, then I turned away.
I smelled veminium oil.
The petals of veminium, the “Desert Veminium,” purplish, as opposed to the
“Thentis Veminium,” bluish, which flower grows at the edge of the Tahari,
gathered in shallow baskets and carried to a still, are boiled in water. The
vapor, which boils off, is condensed into oil. This oil is used to perfume
water. This water is not drunk but is used in middle and upper-class homes to
rinse the eating hand, before and after the evening meal.
At one place, on a stone shelf, under awnings, several girls, chained naked,
were for sale, interestingly, at set prices. It was a municipal sale, under the
jurisdiction of the courts of Tor. One brown-skinned girl, black-eyed, no more
than fifteen, kneeling, her wrists and ankles tightly chained, looked up at me.
She was being sold to pay her father’s gambling debts. I purchased her, and
freed her.
“Where is your father?” I asked.
“At the gaming tables of the Golden Kaiila,” she wept.
I looked at her. She was comely. I looked to the discarded chains on the stone
shelf. Other girls there held out their hands to me. I looked again at the girl.
“In another year,” I told her, “you will kneel again on the stone shelf, beneath
the awnings.” I regarded her. “Then,” I said, regarding her, “you will be too
beautiful to free.”
“I must hurry home,” she said, “to prepare supper for my father.”
I watched her run, shamed, through the streets. She was lovely. I had little
doubt that, in time, she would wear slave bells. Even if she were not to be sold
by the magistracy of Tor I thought it not unlikely that she would fall to the
noose of a slaver.
“Buy us! Buy us, Master!” cried the other girls on the shelf.
“Be slaves,” I laughed to them, turning away.
They wept. I heard the lash fall among them.
Here and there in the bazaar I made purchases.
Twice I was passed by pairs of guardsmen, in white robes with red sashes and
scimitars, the police of Tor.
&
nbsp; Not five paces behind them I saw a ragged cutpurse cut the wallet of a merchant,
dropping its contents into his hand and, bowing and whining, twist away in the
crowd. The merchant huffed away. The fellow had done it neatly. I recalled a
girl named Tina, once of Lydius, now of Port Kar. She, too, had
been an excellent thief. My own coins I kept in belt pockets, within my robes,
save for a small wallet at my side. I went about Tor now as a traveler from
Turia, a small merchant. I checked the wallet at my side. It was intact.
Some other thieves had not done so well in the bazaar. Several right hands,
severed, were nailed to a board on which salt prices were affixed.
There were no feminine hands on the board. A female thief in Tor, even on the
first offense, is immediately reduced to slavery.
I glanced behind me. For the second time I saw four men, the same four. But they
were only four.
I stood aside as a chain of male slaves was herded by, with spear butts. They
were bound for the brine pits of the Tahari, whence comes most of the caravan
salt. I expected that less than half of them would reach the pits. Heavy
collars, with rings, they wore about their necks. A heavy chain, running through
the rings, linked them together by the throat. Their wrists, manacled, were
behind their backs. They were naked. Men spit at them as they were herded past.
Miss Blake-Allen was no longer in my compartment. She was now in the public pens
of Tor. On the morning of the second day, in the process of my work for
Priest-Kings, I had entered the shaded offices of the municipal slave master of
Tor.
“Stand here,” I told Miss Blake-Allen, indicating a place in the center of the
floor, before the desk of the slave master. She stood where I had indicated.
“Remove your slippers,” I told her. She slipped from the slippers, black with
silver thread. She was now barefoot. The slave master came around to the front
of his desk. He leaned back against it, sitting on its edge. “Remove the haik,”
I told the girl. She removed the garment. She stood between us, nude.
The slave master regarded her. Then he walked about her, slowly. She stood
straight, a female examined by a man. She did not look at him. The slave master
looked at me. I nodded. Her body stiffened, and she shut her eyes, as his hands,
those of a Gorean flesh appraiser, informed, sensitive, professional,
proficient, made swift assessment of the textures of her skin, varying at
different points on the body, the tensilities of her musculature, the varying
softness and firmness of her, the sweet, complex delights of her lines, the
obvious exciting contours of her, the more subtle contours, too, the curve at
her hip, at her shoulder, her instep, the back of her neck; he, too, made test,
to her helpless, recoiling horror, of the latent pleasures of her, swiftly
revealing, then passing over, it noted, the promise of an incredible
responsiveness; there were tears in her eyes; how precious and beautiful, I
thought, is a woman, how unsurprising that a vital man, without compromise;
simply wishes to own such a fantastic, delicious creature, how unsurprising that
he wishes in the full and glorious heat of his blood to overwhelm, devour,
dominate and master her. On Gor, of course, men have their will, at least with
lowly slaves, such as was, against her will, the lovely, unfortunate Miss
Blake-Allen.
The slave master stepped back from the slave.
“Kneel,” I told her. She knelt.
“Blond,” said he, “apparently determined to try to remain frigid, blue-eyed, not
yet tamed, an incredible potential for helpless sexual heat, an incredible
potential for helpless slave submission, excellent. Do you wish to sell her?”
“Straighten your body Slave,” I told her.
Frightened, Miss Blake-Alien straightened her back, and lifted her head. She
knelt back on her heels, knees wide, hands on her thighs. It was the position of
the Pleasure Slave. I had taught her the position. It is one of the first things
a good-looking woman, fallen slave, is taught on Gor.
“Do you wish to sell her?” again inquired the slave master of Tor.
I knew I would not obtain the best price from this office, for the municipal
pens usually buy cheaply and sell cheaply. They exist primarily as a service for
caravan masters, buying unsold girls, later retailing them to other merchants,
who may be short of flesh for the oasis traffic. The municipal pens exist
primarily to perform a service, not to make profit.
“What would you offer?” I asked.
“Eleven silver tarsks,” he said.
I knew I could get twice that much from a private house.
“Fifteen?” he inquired.
“No,” I smiled, “but your bids are reassuring.”
He smiled. “I did not think you wished to sell her,” he said. “That is why I was
as honest with you as I was. Now that I know you do not wish to sell her, I will
tell you that, in my opinion,” he looked down at the kneeling girl, “her
potentiality is fantastic.”
“I am glad to hear it,” I said. Miss Blake-Allen, in the position of the
Pleasure Slave, was looking about the room. She could not understand us, for we
spoke in Gorean. It is perhaps just as well.
The usual buying price of the municipal office was two or three silver tarsks
per wench. I had learned that Miss Blake-Allen was valuable in the Tahari. This
pleased me.
I looked at her. She was beautiful. I agreed with the slave master. Doubtless,
someday, for someone, she would make an excellent slave.
“I wish,” I said, “to board her, and purchase her some training.”
“We cage a wench for a copper tarsk per day,” he said. “Training is extra, but,
I think, reasonable.”
“She does not speak Gorean,” I told him.
He smiled. “She will learn swiftly,” he said.
Then the officer and I discussed details of training. He would include in her
training the regime of the stimulation cage. For the first five nights,
following my recommendation, she would wear the rope harness. After that it
would be used, if necessary, for discipline.
“Let her, however,” I said, “meet the eyes of her trainer, and of other males. I
do not wish her to become the love slave of the first man into whose eyes she is
permitted to gaze.”
“I understand,” said the man.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
“Do we have complete food and whip rights over her?” he asked.
“Certainly, “I said.
I then turned to the girl. “What is your name?” I asked her in English.
“Priscilla Blake-Allen,” she said.
I looked at her. Her face went white. “I have no name, Master,” she whispered.
“I am only a nameless slave,” she whispered.
I thought to myself. Priscilla Blake-Allen. Blake-Allen. Allen. Allen. Allena.
Ah-leh-na. Then I had it. An excellent name, not unknown in the Gorean Tahari.
“I will give you a name,” I said.
She looked at me.
“Alyena,” I told her. The ‘l’ sound in this name is rolled, one of two common
“l” sounds in Gorean. An English transliteration, though not a
perfect one,
would be rather along the lines of ‘Ahl-yieh-ain-nah,’ where the ‘ain’ is
pronounced such that it would rhyme with the English expression ‘rain.’ The
accent falls on the first and third syllable. It is a melodic name. I thought it
would improve her price. Names are often used by auctioneers. “Here, Noble
Gentlemen, for your consideration, is the slave girl called Alyena. Regard her!
Does she please you? Move for the noble gentlemen, Alyena. Display your beauty.
Do not such masters excite you? Do you not long to serve them? Behold,
Gentlemen, Alyena dances her beauty for you! How much am I bid for the fair
Alyena?”
“Alyena.” whispered the girl.
“Alyena,” I said to her. “Yes, Master.” she said.
“I am not selling you,” I said. “These are the public pens of Tor. You are here
for boarding and training. You will begin to learn Gorean. You will learn as a
child learns, without the benefit of translation. You will learn swiftly. You
will also he exercised and receive slave instruction.”
“Slave instruction?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Is this clear, Alyena?”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
“If you are uncooperative, or slow in your lessons, you may be starved or
beaten--lashed--you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” said the girl, her eyes wide.
I threw a silver tarsk to the official. He clapped his hands. Through a silver
curtain, of silver strings, came a large, powerful slave girl. She wore a plain
iron collar, with ring. She wore a halter of leather: she wore a belt of
leather; two strips of leather girded her, falling to her knees: about her
calves, crossing, leather straps bound heavy sandals on her feet. In her hand
she carried a long supple kaiila quirt of leather, about a half inch in width
and a yard long.
The large female slave feasted her eyes on the slender, lovely Alyena. Then she
gestured with her quirt toward the threshold of silver strings. “Hurry, Pretty
One,” she said to Alyena, in Gorean, harshly.
Miserably, Alyena, understanding what was required of her, fled to the
threshold.
There she turned to regard me. The quirt fell, viciously, across her shoulder.
Crying out with pain, the lovely Alyena turned, and, weeping, stumbling, fled
Norman, John - Gor 10 - Tribesmen of Gor.txt Page 7