Norman, John - Gor 19 - Kajira of Gor.txt

by Kajira of Gor [lit]

  there, before him. It was not far from the couch, behind him. The couch was a

  large, square one, with, in its foot, the slave ring, an almost inevitable

  feature, it seemed, in Gorean domiciles. There was a small mat, and blanket,

  both rolled up, beneath the slave ring. They would doubtless be used there by a

  chained slave, if the master permitted it.

  I glanced about the room. It was spacious, well-lit, comfortable and private. I

  wondered if free men and free women ever met in such places, for affairs. But

  then I glanced again at the slave ring. It seemed more likely that a man might

  bring a slave here, perhaps one rented for the afternoon or evening. I looked at

  Drusus Rencius. How could a free woman, I thought, ever compete with a slave?

  “Drink this,” said Drusus Rencius.

  What is it?” I asked, startled. It seemed be had produced this almost by magic.

  It was a soft, leather botalike flask drawn from within his tunic.

  “Slave wine,” he said.

  “Need I drink that?” I asked, apprehensively.

  “Unless you have had slave wine,” he said, “I have no intention of taking you

  through the streets clad as you are. Suppose you are raped.”

  I put the flask, which he had opened, to my lips. Its opening was large enough

  to drink freely from. “It is bitter!” I said, touching my lips to it.

  “It is the standard concentration, and dosage,” be said, “plus a little more,

  for assurance. Its effect is indefinite, but it is normally renewed annually,

  primarily for symbolic purposes.

  I could not believe how bitter it was. I had learned from Susan, whom I had once

  questioned on the matter, the object. It is prepared from a derivative of sip

  root. The formula, too, I had learned, at the insistence of masters and slavers,

  had been improved by the caste of physicians within the last few years. It was

  now, for most practical purposes, universally effective. Too, as Drusus Rencius

  bad mentioned, its effects, at least for most practical purposes, lasted

  indefinitely.

  “Have no fear,” said Drusus Rencius. “Me abatement of its effects is reliably

  achieved by the ingestion of a releaser.”

  “Oh,” I said. I knew this, of course. Susan had told me.

  When*a female slave is given the releaser she knows that she may soon expect to

  be hooded, and bred.

  “Could it not be sweetened?” I asked.

  “I have chosen that you drink it as it is,” be said, “as it is normally drunk.”

  “You would have the Tatrix of Corcyrus drink unsweetened slave wind?” I asked.

  “Shall we return to the palace?” he asked.

  “I will drink it,” I said. I was a bit irritated with Drusus Rencius. Clad as I

  was before him, he had seemed to become much more domineering, much more

  aggressive with me, than he had before. Something in me resented this, but I

  felt something else, something deeper within me, how deep I did not know,

  excited and deeply moved, responding to it.

  “Do you wish help in drinking it?” he asked.

  “How could you help me drink it?” I asked, puzzled.

  “The female is put on her knees,” he said. “The man crouches behind her. Her

  head and body are bent back. Her nostrils are pinched shut. The liquid is then

  poured into her mouth. Before she can breathe, she must swallow. In this way

  even a frightened or stubborn girl, early in her bondage, learns that she must,

  if her master wishes it, accept nourishment.”

  “What if she keeps her mouth closed, her teeth clenchedT” I asked. “What if she

  chooses to expel the nourishment later?”

  “A mouth may be forced open,” he said. “Too, it is difficult to induce gagging

  if the hands are tied behind one.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “To be sure,” he said, “this method, for its best results, requires two men. Do

  you wish help?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I shall manage very nicely by myself.”

  I then, grimacing, forcing myself, a little at a time, and then, desperately,

  tears in my eyes, hurrying, in great swallows, downed the foul beverage.

  “Very good,” be said.

  I thrust the soft leather flask back to him. Gasping, half choking, I wiped my

  mouth with the back of my forearm.

  “Go stand there,” he said, pointing to a place near the door, “facing me.”

  I went to where he had indicated and turned, then, facing him.

  He tossed the soft flask to the top of the chest, atop his cloak, which I,

  earlier, bidden, had folded and placed there.

  “Why did you make me drink unsweetened slave wine?” I asked.

  “Stand straighter,” he said.

  I stood straighter.

  “Why did you make me drink unsweetened slave wine?” I asked.

  He looked me over, casually, not hurrying, from my head to my toes, and then,

  slowly, back.

  “It was fitting,” he said.

  I gasped. The arrogance of himl

  “What do you have therel” I said.

  He had removed a pair of light bracelets, joined by about five inches of light

  chain, from his pouch.

  “Slave bracelets,” be said. “Turn around, facing the door, your hands behind

  your back.”

  Almost numbly I did so. I heard him approach me. Then he stood behind me,

  quietly, not moving. Perhaps be was looking at me. Then, suddenly, I felt the

  two bracelets flung about my wrists, striking them, encircling them and snapping

  shut.

  I was suddenly very frightened.

  I tried, tentatively, behind my back, to separate my bands.

  They could move only to the ends of their short chain.

  “You are braceleted,” he said.

  I leaned against the door, terrified, almost fainting, using it for support. I

  was breathing deeply. My heart was pounding.

  I was braceletedl He was busying himself elsewhere in the room. I do not think

  he noted my condition.

  How helpless I felt, braceleted.

  In a moment he had returned to my vicinity, by the door. I now straightened my

  body. I was struggling to regain my composure.

  “You braceleted me easily,” I observed, lightly.

  It, is not hard to bracelet a woman,” he said.

  It had been done so casually, so expertly, with apparently so little thought.

  Too, it had seemed to me to happen very suddenly, very decisively. In one

  instant I was free, and in the next I was held helplessly, the prisoner of bands

  and a chain. I was still shaken, perhaps even visibly so, with the enormity, of

  what had been done to me. I had been made helpless.

  “You have braceleted other women, haven’t you?” I askedL

  He had done it so easily, so nonchalantly.

  “Yes,” he said. I hated those other women. I tried again to separate my wrists.

  I could not do so, of course. How short, how strong, seemed the chain that held

  them in proximity to one another. Suddenly I felt very weak. I, like the other

  women before
me, perhaps women who were mere slaveas, wore the steel of Drusus

  Rencius.

  “We shall leave now,” he said.

  “Yes, Master,” I said. “Oh!” I said. “I did not mean that Forgive me! It slipped

  out. I did not mean it.”

  “Do not worry about it,” he said. “It is difficult for a woman clad as you are,

  and braceleted, not to think of a man as her master.”

  “Thank you, Drusus,” I said. “You are very kind. Such a mistake, as you might

  imagine, is very embarrassing.”

  “Doubtless,” he granted me, indulgently.

  I wondered what it would be like to be owned, and to have to call a man

  “Master.” But, of course, owned, it would be quite suitable and proper for one

  to do so, for he would be, in fact, in such a situation, one’s Master. My mind

  was racing. How could it be that I had called Drusus Rencius “Master”? How

  inadvertently, how naturally, it had slipped out. I wondered if I were actually

  a proud, free woman, as I thought, or was something else, perhaps only a slave.

  “If Lady Sheila is ready,” he said, “perhaps we should leave now.”

  I put up my head.

  I reminded myself that I was not really, in a sense, braceleted. Oh, I wore the

  steel. It was locked on me, and well, but I was the Tatrix of Corcyrus. I could

  order Drusus Rencius to remove it from me at any moment I wished, and he would.

  Thus, in that sense, it was not truly on me. I did shudder, for a moment, at the

  thought of what it would be to be truly in such bonds, but then I hastily

  dismissed such fearful and unsettling thoughts from my mind.

  “Lady Sheila?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let us go.”

  He then opened the door and, holding me by the left arm, conducted me from the

  room.

  8 I Have Been in the House of Kliomenes; The Room in the Inn of Lysias; War

  “Perhaps now,” said Drusus Rencius, “you have a better idea of the nature of the

  pens.”

  I could not even answer him, accompanying him back through the alleys to the inn

  of Lysias. I feared that my bead might begin to swirl, that I might lose

  consciousness. I was scarcely aware of my surroundings, of where I was or what I

  was doing, or even of my feet touching the ground. I felt ligbt-headed. I was

  trembling. I was filled with wild, turbulent emotions I would never have

  believed that women could be subjected to such domination. I hoped that Drusus

  Rencius could not smell my arousal.

  “Leading position,” said Drusus Rencius.

  I put my head down to his waist and he fastened his left hand in my hair.

  “Tal, Citizen,” said Drusus Rencius to the fellow passing us in the Hall. He

  soon released my hair and I again straightened up. I was following him,

  generally, a little behind and on his left. It seemed appropriate that I, in my

  disguise, might seem to heel him, as though I might be a mere slave. It seemed

  to me that he had held my hair more tightly than be had needed to, when we had

  passed the stranger. I still wore the slave bracelets. He had declined to remove

  them when we had left the house of Kliomenes. In his steel, heeling him,

  occasionally being put into leading position by him, I felt much in his power.

  “Did you enjoy the pens?” asked Drusus.

  “Please do not make me speak,” I whimpered. I was terribly conscious of the heat

  in my body, and the absence of a nether closure in my garment. Had Drusus

  Rencius so much as snapped his fingers I think I might have thrown myself to my

  back in the alley, begging for his touch.

  “This is the house of Kliomenes,” had said Drusus Rencius, climbing the stairs

  to the narrow, heavy iron portal, recessed some feet back, at the end of a

  narrow tunnel, in the wall. It was on the street of Milo. Above the entrance to

  the tunnel, and on its right, in the wall, hanging from an iron projection, was

  a narrow, blue-and-yellow banner. I followed Drusus Rencius carefully, that I

  might not fall. ‘This is one of the better, and more respectable of the slave

  houses in Corcyrus,” he said. “That is one of the reasons that I have selected

  it for your visit, that your sensibilities, those of a free woman, not be

  excessively offended.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “On the other hand, do not expect it to compromise overly much with its women.

  Such would be a violation of the ethics of the slavers. Its women, you will

  find, all things considered, are held rather close to the standards of slave

  perfection.”

  “I see,” I said.

  He beckoned and I joined him in the narrow tunnel leading to the door. I

  regarded the iron door, apprehensively.

  “There are truly slaves in there?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “If you enter, you will be, probably, the only free woman

  in the house, unless there is a new girl in there, in chains, awaiting, say, the

  iron and the collar.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Do you wish to enter?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You are a woman, and it is the house of a slaver,” he said.

  “I will enter,” I said.

  He then struck on the iron door. He then thrust me in front of him, so that I,

  in the tunnel, was between him and the door.

  There was a small, rectangular, ‘iron observation panel, now shut, in the door.

  I felt the stone of the tunnel beneath my feet, the steel holding my wrists

  helplessly behind me.

  The observation panel slid back. I saw eyes looking at me, and then, beyond me,

  at Drusus Rencius.

  The panel slid shut with a click.

  I wanted to turn and run. I could not do so, of course, because of the walls of

  the tunnel, and Drusus Rencius behind me.

  “They are expecting us,” said Drusus Rencius, sensing my sudden terror.

  I heard chains and bars behind the door, bolts being freed.

  Then the door swung open. “Enter,” said a pleasant enough looking young man in

  the threshold. I entered, followed by Drusus. Beside the young man there was a

  guard, too, within. I heard the door, with its various devices, being refastened

  behind me. We were in a tiny torchlit room. Only a few feet before us was

  another door, also iron, similar to the outside door.

  “Bracelet check,” said the young man to me, pleasantly.

  “Turn your back to him, and lift your wrists,” said Drusus Rencius.

  I did this and the young man quickly, expertly, checked the bracelets. They were

  locked on me. I was helpless.

  I then turned again, to face the interior door.

  I cried out, startled.

  The guard, crouching beside me, had taken my left ankle in his left hand and run

  his right hand beneath my foot.

  “No,” said Drusus Rencius, deterring the guard, “there is nothing taped to her

  instep, nor is there anything else of the sort for which you might be searching

  concealed about or in her body or hair. She is to be exempted from sla
ve

  search.” I then realized, shuddering, just how thorough slave search might be.

  The guard looked at the young man, who nodded. The guard then stood up.

  The young. man then tapped a complex signal on the inner iron door. In a moment

  I heard it being freed of its fastenings. It then swung open and we, the young

  man, Drusus Rencius and myself, were admitted to the corridor beyond.

  The guard there refastened the door and then took his place on a stool behind a

  small table.

  “We need a pass and a license,” said the young man to the guard.

  I looked at Drusus Rencius.

  “The license is only a formality,” he said. “No free woman, unless a capture,

  may proceed beyond this point unless she is in the charge of a free man who is

  responsible for her and has a current license for her. This is a device to

  control the movements of free women in the house and a precaution against the

  attempted escape of slave girls pretending to be free women.”

  “Here is your pass,” said the young man, handing a small disk to Drusus Rencius.

  It was not unlike one of the ostraka used as tickets or tokens for admission at

  the theater or other such events. The guard, meanwhile, was writing something

  down on a small, rectangular form. I had little doubt what it “And here,” said

  the young man, taking the form from s, the guard and handing it to Drusus

  Rencius. confirming my speculations, “is your license for the female.” I was a

  woman.

  Accordingly, I had to be licensed in the house of Kliomenes.

  How humiliatingl The Goreans have a saying, “There are only two kinds of women,

  slaves, and slaves.” I pulled at my wrists. They were well held in the

  bracelets.

  “Is she really free?” asked the young man.

  “Yes,” said Drusus Rencius, putting the pass and license in his pouch.

  “Interesting,” said the young man.

  “Do you find it surprising?” asked Drusus Rencius.

  “Yes,” said the young man.

  The guard then stood up and came about the table. I backed away a foot or tHe

  crouched down near me, and then stood up, regarding

  I blushed, helpless.

  “Such curves,” he said, “should not be wasted on a free woman.”

  “I do not think Publius will believe she is free,” laughed the young man.