“Have you not lied?” I asked.
“Forgive me, Master!” she said.
“The whip,” I said, “is an excellent device for encouraging dutifulness in a slave, and a desire to please, a zealous desire to please. Surely you noted that in your own slaves.”
“Please do not whip me, Master,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“I do not want to be whipped,” she said.
“What is that to me?” I asked.
Tears suddenly sprang into her eyes, and her small, lovely hands clutched the bars, through which, pathetically, she peered up at me.
“You would have me whipped, would you not?” she said.
“More likely I would bind you, and do it myself,” I said.
“Surely not!” she said.
“Know yourself recognized, slut,” I said, “once Talena of Ar.”
“No!” she wept. “No!”
“You are in need of correction, girl,” I said. “I go now, to fetch the slave lash.”
“Please, no, Master!” she said.
I turned back.
“Slave,” I said.
“-Yes, Master.”
“Who am I?” I asked.
“Callias,” she whispered, “Callias of Jad, Cosian, spearman, first of nine, guardsman, the occupation, the Central Cylinder.”
“Better,” I said.
In her terror, and misery, she tried to rise up, but could not do so, as the kennel does not allow that. Then again she was on her knees. Tears now ran down her cheeks. She grasped the bars, tightly, desperately. She pressed her face, as she could, against the bars.
“And who are you?” I asked.
“You know!” she said.
“Speak it,” I said.
“Once Talena, of Ar,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
“Dear Callias,” she said. “Please do not tell anyone!”
“‘Master’,” I said.
“Please, Master,” she said. “Do not tell anyone!”
“You know the bounty on you?” I said.
“Yes,” she whispered, frightened.
“Here is my hand,” I said, extending it to the close-set, narrow, but sturdy bars, adequate to hold a female. “Kiss it, and lick it, first the palm, and then the back, reverently.”
She put her face, as she could, through the bars, and carefully, with her small tongue, kissed it and licked it, first the palm, and then the back, reverently, and then drew back in the kennel, looking at me, but continued to grasp the bars. “Please do not tell anyone who I am,” she said.
“Were I to do so,” I said, “I would doubtless be killed, and others would fight over you, and there would be much bloodshed.”
“We are far from Ar,” she said.
“That, too,” I said.
“As long as I am only Adraste,” she said, “we are both more safe.”
“How came you into the keeping of the Pani?” I asked.
“You, of Cos, well know of the insurrection,” she said, “and its success.”
“Indeed,” I said, ruefully.
“I was betrayed in Ar,” she said, “by the traitor, Seremides, by the hateful Flavia of Ar, traitress whom I had befriended, and others, who would turn me over to the forces of revolt, to bargain for their own amnesty or escape.”
I knew something of this from Alcinoe.
“But on the roof of the Central Cylinder,” she said, “there was sudden confusion, and darkness, and I was seized, and rendered unconscious. When I regained consciousness I found myself stripped and chained, with others, in a wooden stockade, somewhere in the northern forests, in the power of these strange, inexplicable men, Pani. I was collared, and enslaved, no different from the others, as though I might be no more than they.”
“There is much in this that I do not understand,” I said.
“Nor I,” she said.
“I gather from keepers,” I said, “that you bear in your left thigh, high, under the hip, not the common
She reddened.
“This is not the first time you have been a slave,” I said.
“I was captured by Rask of Treve,” she said, “a warrior amongst warriors, a man amongst men. I must wear a Trevan collar. I was tented with his women. Well did he humble me, and teach me how spasmodically helpless might be a slave in the arms of her master. I bathed him. He made me dance for him. I wore his silk, what he would give me of it.”
“It is my understanding that women do not escape the chains of Rask of Treve,” I said.
“He thought little of me,” she said, “as I suppose is appropriate for a slave. And his interest in me, I gather, was primarily that I was the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, his mortal enemy, and the mortal enemy of Treve. It was doubtless primarily for that reason that he captured me, bound me naked before him, supine, over the saddle of his tarn, caressed me into need, and took me to his camp. It amused him, doubtless, to have the daughter of his worst enemy in his collar, an obedient, silked slave in his tent.”
“You escaped?” I said.
“No, Master,” she said. “As you noted, women do not escape the chains of Rask of Treve. I was given away, and, to show his scorn, to a woman, Verna, a Panther Girl of the northern forests.”
“You would seem to be a prize,” I said. “How is it that he would let you go so cheaply?”
“To humiliate me, of course,” she said. “I, the daughter of a Ubar, given away like a pot girl!”
“Still,” I said, “it seems surprising.”
“There was another woman,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“It was a young, blond barbarian,” she said, “blue-eyed, and shapely, who could not even speak Gorean properly, a meaningless slut, one named El-in-or.”
“That is, I think,” I said, “a barbarian name.”
“I think so,” she said. “Certainly she was a barbarian.”
“She must have been very beautiful,” I said.
“You can buy ten of them off any chain in a market,” she said.
“You were then, it seems, deemed inferior to a girl, ten of whom might be bought off any chain in a market.”
Her hands turned white on the bars.
How furious she was.
“She is now doubtless his companion,” she said.
“Rask of Treve,” I said, “does not free women. She is probably being kept as the most perfect of slaves.”
Men desire slaves, women desire masters.
“I was taken to the northern forests,” she said, “the slave of Panther Girls. Later I was sold, and eventually returned to Ar.”
“It is my understanding,” I said, “that you begged to be purchased.”
