“No, master!” came a chorus of female answers, all sounding eager to please.
“Very well, then,” said the second voice. “See to this slave.”
I was put down on something very soft, and it seemed as though a number of presences left. I couldn’t seem to focus on the faces of anyone around me, and even the walls and furniture turned wavery when I tried to concentrate on them. None of that bothered me, of course, only my need to be seen to. My body moved of its own accord on whatever I lay on, and I whimpered again.
“The slave child asks to be touched,” came a sleek, superior-sounding female voice. “I believe I will be the one to touch her.”
“Now?” asked another, sounding a good deal younger. “The master may not arrive for some time, and the child is already in need.”
“When the master arrives, she will be screaming to please him,” the sleek-voice answered. “The master will be pleased, and it will have been I who assured his pleasure. Take yourself elsewhere, slaves, and seek in vain to please him as much as I will have done.”
Sleek-voice laughed then, and after a minute I knew she had moved nearer to me. I had no idea what would happen until she touched me, and then I gasped and nearly choked.
“All slaves know that the master’s touch is ever most welcome,”
sleek-voice purred in my ear. “And yet it needs a woman to know best the weaknesses of another woman. To be touched in this manner is more than I am able to bear, slave child. How do you find it?”
If I’d been able to speak, I wouldn’t have been able to speak; the woman’s logic was faultless. I spent a timeless time writhing and trying to escape, helpless to help myself, and then a new voice interrupted.
“What do you do here, slave?” the male voice demanded, a voice I seemed to know. “For what reason do you concern yourself with the new slave?”
“Master, I am merely engaged in preparing her for’ you,” sleek-voice answered, sounding a good deal less self-satisfied. “She will beg for the least attention from you, the smallest glance, the briefest touch.”
“This was not the reason for her purchase,” the male voice answered, sounding annoyed. “Those fools at the slave market tell me they are unable to train her as I wish her trained, and have sent her sooner than she was to have come. They gave no reason for such hasty delivery, yet the reason is clear enough: they fear to face what for them would be failure. I, myself, will not allow such failure.” The voice paused for a second and then said, “She seems unaware of my presence. What has been done to her?”
“Master, she has been given a potion,” sleek voice quavered, for some reason more frightened than she had been. “We are to continue with the potion, so that she will be….”
“Unaware of her true fate!” the male voice snapped, wild with rage.
“My enemies seek to take my victory from me, to turn its sweetness bitter! How is she to be properly trained if she is unaware of my existence? The potion is not to be given to her again, and I am to be informed when its hold begins to loosen upon her. See to it, slave.”
“Yes, master,” sleek-voice whispered, and then I was alone in my wavery, need-filled world. It seemed to take a very long while, but slowly I began to be aware of the fur I lay on, the furniture and decorations around me, and occasionally passing people, a lessening in the need forced on me. I lay still with my eyes unfocused, resisting the urge to take a deep breath, coaxing my mind into working again. The thought that I’d been drugged came through for the second time, but now I thought I knew how it had been done. That sticking pain I’d felt in my shoulder when I’d struck the vair’s saddle; a needle set into the stirrup pad could have done the work, and would have been in the perfect position todown anyone foolish enough to climb into the saddle. In order to put your foot into the stirrup you’d have to set your leg against the pad, and that would be it as far as staying conscious went. I’d been right in thinking there was a trap and in deciding against the vair; I just should have stayed farther away from them.
My mind wandered for the next couple of minutes, and then it came back to something the male voice had said. Those slavers hadn’t told anyone about what I’d done to their people, and they hadn’t kept me for further training. I had a funny feeling that it was the goldenshirt I hadn’t killed who had gotten me out of that training program.
The dead guard could have been killed by accident as far as anyone knew, but there was no doubt about what had happened to the goldenshirt. The slavers wanted nothing more to do with me, but they didn’t have the stomach to tell my present owner what I was really like. As paranoid as he was, he’d be sure they were lying in some sort of attempt to trick him out of what was his and then he’d take steps to get even. No, the slavers couldn’t tell their good patron Prince Clero the unlikely truth, and if I had any luck at all, that omission would be my ticket out of there.
Good old Prince Clero. My memory told me that it was his voice I’d tagged as the male voice; I’d just been in no shape to identify it sooner. He’d stopped his sleek-voice female slave from continuing to torture me, but I knew damned well that he hadn’t done it out of the goodness of his heart. He had something special in mind for me and for the Princess Bellna knowing approximately where the slavers’
training program had been going gave me some idea as to his bottom line expectations. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, especially when you added in the hinting Dameron had done. The room I lay in was somewhat on the warm side, but I still felt a shiver touch me.
“So you have come back to yourself at last,” a female voice said from behind me, the woman I thought of as sleek-voice. I’d been aware of someone sitting behind me, and there was no sense in trying to pretend I was still under. I still felt sluggish, but hoped the feeling would pass quickly enough to keep from being a problem. I pushed myself into sitting with a small amount of difficulty, then turned to look at the woman.
“I am indeed recovered,” I answered, making sure I sounded frightened and uncertain, then spent a minute or two staring at the woman. She was a very beautiful blonde with gray eyes she wore the clothing of a woman of the upper classes. No chains, no skimpy little slave shift; a real, dark red dress and shoes, with plain jewelry and her hair put up. I let my expression show the confusion I felt and added, “What is this place? What is to be done with me?”
“You will learn that in due time,” the woman answered, rising gracefully to her feet. “For the moment you will do more than obey without question … she is prepared to depart, master.”
The last was directed to the man who was approaching us, a man dressed in thigh-length red tunic, heavy, lace-up sandals, thick leather wrist bracers and a sheathed sword. I might have considered his get-up laughable if he hadn’t also worn the casually uncaring look of a paid sword and bully. It seemed highly probable that he was a guard, and when he reached down and hauled me to my feet by one arm, the probability became a certainty.
“The Prince awaits this one with impatience,” the man growled, looking me over with what seemed to be a practiced eye. “There are guests, therefore are you to follow as well.”
“Yes, master,” the woman responded in a low, unhappy voice as the guard began hauling me along. The room we were in was relatively small, but it was also paneled in dark wood with touches of silver decoration and silk-seated items of furniture. The carpeting on the floor was thick and soft, and it led through a doorway to another room of about the same size, which was decorated just as richly. We passed through three or four rooms of that sort, but I didn’t have the time for sightseeing the guard was in a hurry, and if he hadn’t been holding my arm I would have been flat on my face any number of times. We finally reached a room smaller and barer than the rest, with two beautifully carved wooden doors standing closed in front of us, another armed, tunic-dressed guard standing in front of the doors. The guard gripping my arm pulled me to a halt, then nodded to the other guard.
“The Prince awaits this one, Ryskor,” he said, raising my arm a couple of inches. “The other has been summoned for the guests.”
“Then she must be prepared,” the guard called Ryskor answered, showing a faint grin as he looked at the blonde behind us. “Come to me quickly, little one. The Prince’s guests must not be kept waiting.
“Master, I am already prepared,” the blonde quavered, fingers tugging nervously at each other as her eyes pleaded with the guard. “Rarely is a latecomer chosen to tend a guest, yet should I be chosen despite this, I will give such pleasure as has never…”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Ryskor interrupted with a wider grin, waving a finger at her as he walked toward a heavy wooden chair. “The Prince has decreed that no slave shall pass those doors without first having been. You will then strive that much harder for the privilege of giving pleasure. Come here!”
The snap in the last two words made the woman jump, then started her toward the guard, who was sitting himself in the chair. When she reached him he took her by the waist and sat her down on his left knee, then put his left arm around her waist. One of her hands went to his shoulder and the other to the arm around her, but bracing herself did no good at all. As soon as his free and began rising under her long skirts, she shut her eyes and threw her head back.
“Master, I beg pity!” she whimpered, moving slightly against the restraining arm around her. “I have not been used since last I was prepared, and I cannot resist your touch! Please do not- Oh! Oh, no!”
I turned my head away so as not to have to watch the woman being
“prepared,” but I couldn’t keep from hearing her pleading, gasping and struggling. They wanted her hot for the Prince’s guests and hot she was made, none of them giving a damn how much she would suffer until she was taken care of-if she was taken care of. The guard holding my arm watched the proceedings with a faintly amused look on his face, which was a damned good thing for me; my hands had curled into fists below the wrist cuffs, and if he hadn’t been watching the show he would have seen it. I just stood there staring at the beautifully carved doors, fighting to calm down enough to open my hands, aware of the trembling silence coming from the Bellna presence. She knew where we were as well as I did and the thought frightened her, but she could feel the fury inside me and was somehow comforted by it. If she’d had any sense, comfort would have been the last thing she felt; losing your temper in a dangerous situation is a good way of getting yourself killed, but I wasn’t far from doing exactly that. I was out of patience with these big, strong manly men, and was waiting for nothing more than a couple of minutes alone to dump those chains. After that we’d see how big and strong they were.
It didn’t take long to get the blonde woman properly primed; the harder part was getting her calmed down enough to pretend that nothing had been done to her. It seemed to be part of the twisted game that she show nothing of the need forced on her, but it took both of the guard males to hold her until she stopped trying to reach herself. The thing that really bothered me was the fact that she hadn’t once screamed or raised her voice to a shout during the entire incident, even though she had panted, mewled, struggled and sobbed without tears. Quiet hysterics were fine, but noise was out. That high a degree of conditioning made me sick, but it also began to disturb me. If that was what Clero did to female slaves as a matter of course, what did he have in mind for me?
I was willing to consider the question academically on a cold winter’s night some place far from there, but that sort of willingness didn’t help me much. I tried fading past the guards while they were involved with the blonde, but they weren’t involved enough to have forgotten about me. I was just beginning to believe it might be clear when a sandaled foot hooked the chain between my ankles and pulled hard, sending me down to the floor with a crash and a clank of chain. I broke the fall with my hands to keep anything else from breaking, but it still hurt to land on the wrist chains with my body.
My guard came over and hauled me to my feet again, pushed me back toward the doors with a shove, then laughed when I tripped and went down again. I was pulled to my feet and then shoved two more times, finally being allowed to just lie there while the blonde straightened her clothing and hair so that she would be presentable. The carpeting was soft but the flooring under it was hard, and I’d been shown what trying to slip away had bought me. I hurt where the chains had repeatedly slammed into me, but that wasn’t the reason I kept my head down. I felt so close to snarling it frightened me; what the hell had happened to the self-control I had started out with?
I winced inwardly when I was pulled erect for the last time, then went along quietly in the grip of the guard. The second guard opened one of the doors for us and the blonde followed, walking stiffly with a ghastly smile on her face. She hurried as fast as she could, peering anxiously ahead to get a glimpse of the guest situation, then choked softly when she saw. There were four men with Clero and seven women dressed the way she was.
If I hadn’t been in the middle of that insane situation, the scene would have looked normal if not downright dull. Prince Clero stood in the center of the group, dressed in dark red and white, his sword and swordbelt and those of his guests clearly expensive and made for the upper classes. They spoke in light tones to each other and the women, who laughed appreciatively at the jokes and urged the men to try the dozens of dishes standing on a side table. Sight of all that food made me realize how hungry I was, but I was also able to see that none of the women were eating unless they were fed something by one of the men. Clero turned away from the others to see me, and his face suddenly creased into a warm, beautiful smile that made him look even more friendly and trustworthy than he normally looked. He continued smiling beatifically while I was dragged right up to him, then he half-turned and gestured for the attention of the others.
“Come, my friends, and give me your opinion of my newest acquisition,” he said in a smugly pleased voice, his eyes still on me. “Is she not worth the price I paid?”