Dunes of Gor Chapter Two

Chapter Two: Daan Shahzad

The Khuda, Daan Shahzad, was a tall, lean looking man with short dark hair that was rapidly receding at the temples. He stood quietly by the open window of his office, hands clasped behind his back, apparently deep in thought. His desk was covered in papers and bound volumes of profit statements. Behind the desk stood shelves with more books, and the walls either side continued the theme. There were volumes on history, poetry, metaphysics, agricultural science, astronomy, philosophy and religion, but no fiction – not even a single parchment, for Daan Shahzad, the 53 year old head of the House Shahzad, never read fiction. “Made up stories are simply lies,” he once told Serafina and Jaleesa when they were 8 and 6 respectively, “and I have no desire to read lies to you.”


Serafina, his eldest daughter, was ushered into the room by a slave: Ghadir. Ghadir was unique amongst the slaves in the Shahzad house in that he could be mistaken for a free man by his choice of clothes. He wore simple but elegant white robes in the style of a clerk or learned scholar, and he walked with the pride of a free man. Only the steel collar around his throat, inscribed with a cursive script, indicated that he was in fact simply a piece of property. The relationship between him and his master was unusual in that over the years Daan Shahzad had come to respect the advice and knowledge of this man and had allowed him many privileges unusual to collared slaves. Serafina had never liked the fact that the man enjoyed such privileges. A slave, she always said, should be treated as a slave, with firm discipline. Serafina, as it happened, didn’t really like slaves. She saw them as less than herself.

“Master, your eldest daughter is here.” Ghadir stood politely by the door with his hands clasped together at his waist as Serafina entered, eyeing him with barely concealed disdain. Seeing the Lady’s eyes upon him he immediately lowered his head. Despite his privileges he was still a collared slave.

“Come in, Serafina. Ghadir, stay a moment.” 

Serafina knelt down on the floor in the fashion of the desert peoples, with a soft cushion for support. Chairs were few and far between in this land, though Daan kept one in his office for when he worked on papers at his desk.

“Father, you sent for me?” She felt the eyes of Ghadir at the back of her neck, which was annoying. It was irritating that the slave was privy to so many of her conversations with her father these days. 

“I did. I understand a young man of good breeding called upon you this afternoon.” He didn’t look at his daughter as he turned some pages on his desk. 

“The common merchant’s son,” said Serafina in a bored voice. “He had a squint.”

“The eldest son of House Sharn,” corrected Daan, a slight trace of irritation present as he spoke. “House Sharn dominates the spice trade west of here.” 

“So he’s a shopkeeper as well,” said Serafina. “How lovely, father.”

“I understand you sent him away?”

“I think he grew bored with me, father. Perhaps my conversation proved trivial?”

“Hmm.” Daan placed his personal wax seal on a couple of papers and looked down to where his daughter knelt in tower. “Or perhaps you chose to be deliberately rude?”

“I am never deliberately rude, father. Sometimes though I fear my words may be misconstrued by men with nervous dispositions.”

“Hmm. How old are you, Serafina?”

“I shall soon reach my twenty second year, father, Priest Kings be willing.”

“You are of an age then to be companioned, and to submit with grace to the common sense and firm guidance of a man.”

“Of course.” Serafina smiled sweetly. In her father’s room she wore but a thin, transparent veil over her face. He could see the movement of her lips as she smiled. “I am your dutiful daughter in that regard.”

“What am I to say to the Khuda of House Sharn when he complains how you spoke to his eldest son?”

“I have no idea, father. I am just a woman. My mind is concerned only with embroidery and being demure in the presence of great men.”

“I sometimes wish I had never had you taught to read. Reading has spoilt you. Women should perhaps not read.”

“As you say, father, but alas, for me it is now too late." Serafina smiled again.

“You were also taught to write, were you not?”

“Why, yes, father.”

“Good. Then today you will sit down and compose a heartfelt letter to Faramond, apologising for your earlier moods, and reassuring him of your warm affection and how even now he is in your thoughts and prayers.”

“Of course, father. Who is Faramond?”

“The eldest son of House Sharn! Who do you think he is?!”

“I am sorry father, I did not know the shopkeeper’s name.”

“Go! Write the letter! I want you at your most humble and contrite. Scent the paper with your signature perfume. Place a chaste kiss on the wax seal. Make some effort!”

“I live to serve you, father, in all things,” said Serafina. “Will there be anything else?’

“No. Go. I have a headache.” Daan turned his back and gazed out through his windows at his garden grounds. 

Ghadir followed his Master’s daughter out of the rooms and into the hallway. She walked slowly, pretending not to notice the high ranking slave until she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and gave him a coy, sidewise glance.

“Why are you following me, slave?”

“A thousand pardons, Mistress, but your father has asked me to observe that you are indeed writing the letter he instructed you to write.”

“I am writing it as we speak, in my head, but I am struggling with a contrite and poetic turn of phrase, and your incessant shuffling about, to the side of me, is not helping matters,” said Serafina with a sniff. “This is a delicate piece of composition and may take time. I am overcome with emotion after all, for my beloved… my beloved… what was his name again?”

“Faramond, Mistress. Faramond, of the House of Sharn.”

“Quite. What rhymes with Faramond?”

“Sadly, I am not a poet, gentle Mistress.”

“Well there you are then. You’re obviously no use to me at all. Now please go away, before I have to fetch my switch.”

Serafina watched the stoic slave retreat back to his offices. With a soft shrug of her shoulders she skipped back out into the gardens to re-join her sister. She found Jaleesa sitting on a low bench, gazing wistfully at some butterflies that were flitting about a display of blue and purple flowers. 

“What did father want?” asked Jaleesa.

“He wants help writing some letters,” said Serafina as she joined Jaleesa. 

“Oh. I thought he might have been angry with you about Faramond.”

“Who?”

“The man with the squint earlier today.”

“Oh, goodness, no, I think the subject came up, but it didn’t seem important. Shall we go and spy on the kajiri in the fields?”

“I thought you’d never ask!”

Twenty five ehn later, Serafina and Jaleesa were hiding together in their shaded tree house overlooking the irrigated fields where twelve, strong, male slaves were working. The girls shared a single telescope between themselves and they took it in turns to focus in on particular men. 

“Who are you looking at?” asked Jaleesa.

“Tamas. He’s working, chained to Nasr. I can see his biceps. Ooh, but he’s a brute. Can you imagine having those hands on you! Groping, feeling you!’

“Ugh,” Jaleesa squirmed but then tried to take the scope of the Builders from her older sister. “It sounds disgusting. Let me look.”

“No. Not yet. The man is practically an animal! I swear he could lift a cart across his shoulders! He could have you on the ground in an instant. He’d press you onto your back and lick your face, Jaleesa! Imagine him licking you!”

“Ugh! I’m glad they’re all chained,” said Jaleesa as she squirmed closer and tried to take the scope again. “Just imagine what they could do to us!”

“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” said Serafina. “Here. Take a look.” She watched her sister study the various slaves from their hiding place. After a while they folded the telescope away and climbed back down from their treehouse, giggling at what they had done and seen.   

“You’ll be free companioned soon,” said Jaleesa “and then you’ll go away from here and live in some man’s house and share his couch. You’ll see him naked every day.”

“Perhaps. But I want a warrior for a companion, not some merchant’s son.”

“Warriors are often poor. Merchants are not,” pointed out Jaleesa. “Besides, you know father, he will arrange matters to suit our House. We both have a duty to do what is right for our family. Be thankful you are permitted to see your companion to be before matters are concluded in that fashion. You can at least get to know him first.”

Serafina laughed as she ran, hitching her skirts up, Jaleesa chasing behind her. “I will NOT be the companion of a squinting poet! I will have a warrior on my arm! A brave warrior of Tor, and he will ride in on a kaiila and scoop me up with one arm while he holds aloft the spear of companionship in his other hand! And I will struggle, as is expected, and we will both laugh as he pretends to kidnap and ride away with me!”

The girls ran across the grass, staining their slippers green, racing past a pair of kajirae who trimmed the flower beds with hand tools and on into the house where they paused to catch their breath and fuss with their veils and hijabs as good daughters of a powerful family in Tor should always do.

“We need to obtain some ka-la-na,” said Serafina after a while. 

“Good luck with that. The cellar master has eyes like a tarn and knows your tricks by now. He’s not going to be distracted again by me crying out piteously when I ‘fell over on the stairs’.”

“It’s so wrong that we can’t drink ka-la-na. The Priest kings do not object in the cities north of here.”

“You know that for sure?” asked Jaleesa.

“I am fairly sure. I spoke to a rug merchant who trades in the north. He says the women in those great cities drink ka-la-na freely.”

“Well, we all know how sinful the women of the north are. They’re not good role models. It is said that some of them even own male silk slaves for…” Jaleesa blushed.

“NO! They do not, do they?” Serafina laughed. 

“I have heard it whispered once in the souq. That is why they are called… silk… slaves.”

“Oh.” Now it was Serafina’s turn to blush as she imagined the possibilities. “And their menfolk allow the women of the north to do his?”

“Well, who knows what goes on in the north. But we live here, in the Tahari, and we must live better lives, my sister.”

“I still want some ka-la-na…” said Serafina defiantly.