Dunes of Gor Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Five: Parlay

“Beloved sister, you grace me with your warm and welcome presence. My heart sings that your journey across the desert sands has been a safe one and that we are reunited once more,” said Laleh Sasani as she crossed the beautiful mosaic floor to clasp Reyhan’s hands softly with her own. “I was so worried, as any older sister should be, when her sibling travels with such a small escort. I myself have travelled with over three hundred lances of various houses of the Landsraad!”

They stood together in the ornamental chambers of Al Jishana; an area that was open to the sky and filled with pleasant sculptures and gently bubbling fountains with water piped in from the natural wells beneath the bedrock of the kasbah.

“It comes as no surprise, sweetest sibling,” said Reyhan as she air kissed around Laleh’s veils. “You look splendid in those shimmering gowns and my heart too rejoices that you are well and safe, though travelling with so many armed men, I could hardly expect otherwise! Why, it is almost as if you are arrayed for war!”

“Oh, Reyhan, how you jest, my beloved sister, and yet my escort does seem ferocious, does it not? Almost as if they are enraged by the actions of a reckless house who has taken the law into its own hands! But, come, how are you, dearest sister? It surprises me that you have come here with a troop of Sardaukar? Where are your own House bannermen? Tch! It is almost as if you hide behind the desert shields of the Emir!”

“Banish such thoughts from your mind, most loving sister,” said Reyhan. “As it happens I wished to see how well ordered our Sardaukar are in the open field, and I have been much impressed by the jingling of their kaiila harnesses and steady thrusting of their spear points towards the sky, as we rode from the impregnable fortress of Al-Quada-A-Dhum.”

“Impregnable, you say, dearest one,” said Laleh with a frown. “Impregnable against what exactly?”

“Why, against three hundred lances, certainly,” laughed Reyhan as she touched her sister’s hands fondly. “And possibly ten times that number if necessary. Sieges are always so very difficult in the desert, are they not? All those long, trailing supply lines that leave a besieging army so vulnerable as it sits camped out in the open?”

Laleh’s brows darkened as she finally released her sister’s hands. She moved with a flurry of expensive skirts around the room and then dispensed with all semblances of courtly pleasantries. “Where is my daughter, you treacherous bitch?! Oh, I can see through your precautions! You come here, hiding behind twenty Sardaukar, hoping their presence means I won’t strip and whip you at my feet! You have a nerve!”

“So then, enough of our soft air kisses,” agreed Reyhan. “Shall we talk as women of the Landsraad always do when the formalities are complete?”

-----------------------------------------

Reyhan woke earlier that morning with a start as she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She had been lost in her pleasant dreams, but the reality of her situation came back to her the moment her eyes opened. She felt the restraint of the ankle chains as she tried to move her legs. 

“You slept well,” said Javad as he withdrew his hand from her shoulder. He was pleased to see that Reyhan managed to compose herself quickly after being roused from slumber. He also noticed that her veil had come loose during the night.

“I can see your lips. Veil yourself, girl. Quickly.”

Reyhan was still dazed from sleep, but the thought that her lips were in plain sight gave her a sudden rush of adrenaline to feel around for the lost veil. Quickly she lifted the gauze like piece of silk to her lower face and held it there. 

“Better,” said Javad as he placed a small cup in the sand beside her. “Tea. You may drink it between cupped hands. Are you hungry?”

“Yes.” Reyhan felt very hungry.

“Do you beg food?”

“What?”

Javad sighed. “I will not repeat the question.”

“Yes. I suppose I beg food.”

“Then do so. You wear a collar.”

“A collared girl begs food,” said Reyhan, softly.

“You have a lot to learn about begging for food,” said Javad with another sigh. “Perhaps going without breakfast will be a good first lesson.” He turned to walk away, leaving Reyhan to simmer in anger.

Fifteen ehn later, Javad returned with a pot of precious water and a piece of clean rag. “You will want to wash before you meet your sister today. The water is scented with veminium oil. I will take you behind the dunes to our right where you will have some privacy to wash. When you undress you are to fold your garments neatly and place them together on the sand. You will not need them again.”

“I am to wear my haik, then?” asked Reyhan as she extended her chained ankles to where Javad crouched with a key.

“No. You will not wear the haik.”

“What will I wear? You’re not going to keep me naked in the kurdah, surely?”

Javad said nothing as he unchained Reyhan. He waited for her to finish her tea and then he led her out towards the sand dunes to the side of the camp. Here he led her away from the gaze of his men.

“I’m not going to undress in front of you. I would rather not wash.”

“I will turn my back. I have already seen you naked, anyway. To do so again would be too much of a temptation.”

“Think of your honour,” said Reyhan. Javad had turned round and so Reyhan began to remove her hooded jacket.

“Sometimes I feel my honour is like a prison.”

“No, your honour is what makes men strong,” said Reyhan. With the jacket folded and placed on the sand, she then pulled loose the drawstring of her long red fringed skirt and drew it down her shapely legs. “Honour is what makes a man a man.”

“Perhaps. But I need no lectures from a slave on the matter.”

“What would you do to me if you did not have your oath?”

“I would thrust you on to your back and make use of you here and now,” growled Javad. “I have been thinking of you all night as I lay close beside you.”

“Oh. Then I commend you on your self-control.” Reyhan removed her thin rep cloth blouse and placed it, folded, with the other garments. “Are you really going to keep me naked inside my kurdah?”

“No.”

“So I will be given fresh garments?”

“Yes.”

Reyhan knelt in the sand and placed the rag in the pot of scented water. Keeping her eyes on Javad’s back, to ensure he didn’t perhaps try to take a quick peep, she began to wash her body with the precious water. The hot morning sun dried her as quickly as she washed, and so there was no need for a towel. After a while she straightened and stretched her limbs. Javad had remained facing the other way, though she saw his hands were flexed into tense fists. She smiled to herself. This was obviously hard for him. 

“There is a pack in the sand, close to a large flat stone. Your clothes for today are in that bag,” said Javad.

Reyhan said nothing as she knelt by the bag and opened it. Inside was a pair of rep cloth chalwar pants, low waisted and baggy. They were garments typical of a tribal slave who might be put to work during the day. The pants would be more appropriate and hard wearing than the diaphanous silk of a pampered pleasure slave. With it was a low cut vest top with a bare midriff. There were also some bangles and a long series of lengths of binding fibre cord.

“The binding fibre is to be worn wrapped around your belly. It signifies, along with your collar, that you are a slave. There is also a long scarf for your head and to protect the back of your neck.”

Reyhan wound the scarf about her head and, without being given permission, wound one end about her lower face in the fashion of a desert veil. She then slipped the ornamental bangles on her wrists and ankles and tied the lengths of binding fibre appropriately around her waist. 

“Why am I wearing chalwar pants?” she asked.

“Because you will not be riding in the kurdah for the final journey to Al Janish. You will ride behind me on my kaiila as a trophy slave.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you might like to see the desert for the few ahn remaining. It is beautiful in the morning. Better than being shut away in the kurdah.”

“I do not know how to ride a kaiila.”

“It is simple enough. You sit behind me with your arms about my waist for support. If this proves too much for you, you may ride in your stuffy kurdah instead.”

“No. I will ride behind you, Javad,” said Reyhan as she pulled the chalwar pants over her legs and settled them at her hips. She then pulled the vest top over her head and adjusted it to her bare midriff. 

-----------------------------------

“And what exactly are you wearing?” snarled Laleh. “You look like some barefoot desert girl.” Reyhan still work the opaque rep cloth chalwar pants, gathered at the ankles, and the midriff baring vest top, but over this she wore a tribal girl’s djellaba, with long sleeves and a knee length hem and a high neck. It was cheap and poorly made, but concealed her body for it was loose. Around her head and neck she still wore the colourful scarf that Javad had given her, which was just as well since Javad had refused to unlock the slave collar around her throat, despite her urgent entreaties as he had escorted her to the chambers set aside for the meeting.

“I can’t meet my sister while I wear a collar!” Reyhan had said.

“Keep your scarf in place and she will not see it.”

“You have no right to make me wear a collar in Al Janish!” Reyhan had spun round to face him, her hands balled into angry small fists.

“And yet collared you will remain until I decide otherwise. Now hurry along. You are already late, and I suspect your sister will not be in a good mood.”

“You are a shame to our family,” said Laleh as she gestured at the cheap rep cloth djellaba. 

“These garments were practical for the desert and I wished to travel without arousing suspicion,” said Reyhan. “My escort was small. I didn’t want to present myself as a valuable target. Who knows who might have been looking for me en-route to here?”

“Where is Aleah? What have you done with my daughter?!”

“She is safe, Laleh. I would never harm her. This was all a mistake.”

“A mistake?! Oh, it is far more than a mere mistake, sister! You have broken the unspoken rules of the Landsraad. No House can ever take action against children of the Landsraad! That law has been the bedrock of our behaviour for centuries! Once one House breaks that rule, anarchy is sure to follow.”

“Then let us stop this before it can escalate to that. I am here to offer apologies, to offer reparations and to beg your forgiveness. We honestly believed that you had abducted Serafina.”

“Serafina is missing?” Laleh narrowed her eyes.

“Yes, she is. And like you, I am a mother who is heartbroken for her child. Aleah at least is safe and unharmed, but I fear what may have happened to Serafina. I almost felt reassured that it was House Sasani that had taken her, for then civility might remain in place while we dealt with you. But if you do not have her…”

“Of course we don’t have her! I would never have taken my niece! What do you take me for, Reyhan! How could you even think that?”

“I am sorry, Laleh.” Reyhan knelt on the floor and pressed her forehead to Laleh’s sequinned slippers. “I crave your forgiveness for even thinking you might be capable of such a thing.” Reyhan placed the palms of her hands flat on the mosaic floor, either side of Laleh’s feet. “I am ashamed I could ever consider such a thing. You are my sister, my older sister, and I offer you obeisance as my superior in our family.”

“Get up!” snarled Laleh as she brushed Reyhan’s face aside with her left foot. “It is too late for that.”

“Please, Laleh, I offer the safe return of Aleah, and a sum of five hundred gold tarsks in reparation.”

“Not enough. That barely even begins to address the enormity of what you have done!”

“I know,” said Reyhan softly. “But we must settle this, Laleh. We cannot let his go on to armed conflict.”

“Oh? Are you afraid then, Reyhan? Do you fear the combined might of the Landsraad banners riding to Al-Quada-A Dhum in force? Do you fear for your…” she edged her voice now with dripping sarcasm, “impregnable fortress?”

“It will cost many, many lives to storm that fortress. You know that to be true, Laleh.”

“Less than you might think. Most of your recently recruited men will not stand with you. You can depend only on your original one hundred and fifty lances. The other recent recruits will not fight when they see the banners of the Landsraad circling your high walls.”

“We have the Emir’s Sardaukar. Will you attack them, Laleh? Really? You will attack the Sardaukar?”

“You have them for now, and that is why you do not yet see thousands of Landsraad soldiers massing around your walls! But the Emir will bow to our demands. He is scared, in his great palace. He is scared now of the mighty Landsraad standing together as one. His power comes through setting our petty ambitions against one another, but now we have a rallying cause and that scares him. We have made demands on his authority. Calls for justice! The Landsraad will not be denied! If he refuses us, his position becomes precarious. He will leave you to your fate.”

“What do you want, Laleh? Tell me your terms?”

“My terms are simple and there is no place for negotiation. You abducted my daughter. No mother can ever allow that to pass without the direst of retribution. A lesson must be made of your House so that the Landsraad understands that your actions must never be repeated. We have all agreed on this. Every House of the Landsraad has agreed to back my terms to you. One of your daughters will be enslaved and you will sell her to me for a copper tarsk. You may choose which daughter suffers this fate. She will live her days as a serving slave in my House. She will be treated no better or no worse than any other girl in our holding. And I promise you we will not sell her on to another man or woman, for she is my niece. But she will be a slave, and when you visit me you will see your daughter in a slave collar, scrubbing floors and serving drinks and you will know what happens to a House of the Landsraad that dares to break the most sacred rule of all. One of your daughters in a slave collar, Reyhan. Those are our terms for peace.”

-----------------------------------------

The steady plodding gait of the kaiila produced a rhythm that made Reyhan drowsy as she clung with her arms around Javad’s waist. With her face so close to the man’s shoulder, she could smell the tooled leather of his sword belt, the coarse woven strands of his tunic and the salty perspiration from his neck. She was able to sit astride the high saddle now that she wore chalwar pants. The long skirt from last night would have made that impossible. Soon the small column of armed men would reach Al Janish and this bizarre episode in her life would be over, other than the subsequent return journey of a further six hours. Reyhan felt like the last day had been a dream of sorts, some wild desert fantasy that had taken her from the comforts and solitude of her day to day existence. In Al-Quada-A-Dhum she was a Lady in smoky robes of high state, but out here she was a flesh and blood girl who saw the world first hand rather than at a distance through frosted glass and gilded bars. 

“Javad…” she said softly after the first two ahn of the final journey. “Are you an ambitious man?”

“All men are ambitious, Sarissa,” he said as he held the single rein of his mount. “It is in our blood. Life is a challenge and an opportunity. Why?”

“What do you want most in life?”

“The same things most men do. Wine, women and adventure.”

“Not money?”

“Money is trivial. When a man wants money he goes out and he takes it, through either his deeds and actions, or through more cunning endeavours. Money is a means to greater pleasures, such as wine and women. But even those can be had cheaply. Women for instance. Take you for example. I could abandon my codes, and ride out now with you into the desert. I could begin a new life, with you as my slave.”

“You wouldn’t do that.” Reyhan rested her face against his shoulder. She liked the way the scent of polished leather mingled with his salty fresh sweat. She placed the palms of her hands against his broad back. 

“I have been tempted. A new life far from the festering politics of court, away from the silent knives in the darkened chambers of state. A small holding perhaps, out near an oasis where we would keep a herd of verr. You would tend the animals by day and give me pleasure at night. You would be happy, I think, with such a simple life.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I think I am beginning to know you, Reyhan.”

“That is not my name.”

“Yes it is. You are Reyhan. You are not playing a role anymore. There is no Sarissa. All you have been these last twenty four hours is what you have always been. You are not like the other women of the Landsraad. You are strong, and you can adapt. It would not be such a shock for you if I carried you away into the desert and kept you as a slave.”

“I think it would be.”

“You say that now, and yes, it would be a shock at first, but you would adapt better than most. Soon you would find a sense of freedom in the hard work, and the simple but fulfilling life of a cherished slave. You would not miss your smoky gowns and your heavy embroidered veils. You would exchange the boredom of your days with the vibrant life of a slave girl. And you would come alive at night in my arms. You would greet each day as if life was to be savoured. The senses of slave girls are very acute. What they taste, feel, see and hear is so much more than the dulled senses of a free woman.”

“You would grow bored of me in time, Javad. One day you would sell me in a dusty market somewhere. I would wear another man’s collar and you would pick up your sword again and return to foreign wars that pay well in gold.”

“Perhaps you are right, Reyhan. I am easily distracted. I always have been.”

“So no, Javad. You will not carry me off into the desert and put me to work with your verr. I will not churn butter and lay out straw in your barn. I will not run, laughing, barefoot, in a slave djellaba, to greet you, when you come riding home to your homestead. I will not cook your food and wait on you on my knees. I will not kiss and lick your hand as the sun sets, begging to be used. These are fantasies in your mind that will pass as dreams always do, once we return to Al-Quada-A-Dhum, and I am once again dressed in my smoky gowns and veils.”

“Unless I do carry you into the desert?”

“That is not our fate. Our lives are not joined as such.”

Javad was silent for a few ihn and then, with a sudden cry of exhilaration, he pulled on the kaiila's rein and span his mount to the side and then, as Reyhan screamed in surprise and clung to him for dear life, he charged his kaiila out from the line of cavalry and raced it headlong into the dunes.

“What are you doing?” screamed Reyhan. She hung on to his waist in desperation as the desert sped by on either side. A few of Javad’s men broke away from the line to follow their commander at first, until he waved them back.

“I’m kidnapping you, girl!” said Javad with laughter. “The Emir be damned! You will be my barefoot slave and tend my verr! You will strip naked in the evenings when the sun goes down and part your thighs for me in my simple bed chamber! To a new life!”

“JAVAD! NO! Go back! You can’t do this!” Reyhan cried out some more as Javad took them both deep into the dunes. They rode for maybe fifteen ehn before Javad drew his kaiila to a stop and, turning to Reyhan, plucked her from the saddle and dropped her onto the sand to his left.

“Javad! This is insane! You don’t have any verr! There is nowhere to ride to!”

“You wear my collar,” he said, laughing, dropping to his feet. “I must be insane thinking I would give you up.”

“Javad! No! You serve the Emir! You can’t do this! You swore an oath to him!” Reyhan backed away, flustered, her hands stretched out in front of her, palms set to push him away.

And then Javad was on her, brushing her small fists aside, clutching her body to his, pulling down the scarf veil and kissing her hard on the lips. Reyhan struggled at first, beating at him with her fists, crying out in muffled tones, kicking at his shins, but then as Javad pressed her onto her back on the sand, her futile flailing grew shorter, even more ineffectual until then when he seized both her wrists and pulled them back over her head, she lay there, squirming gently as he continued to take his pleasure of her lips. After a time he withdrew and gazed down at her flushed face.

Reyhan lay there on her back, scared, gazing back at him.

“That is what it would be like to begin with. The excitement of being carried away into the desert by a master. The ravishment at his hands. The joy and ecstasy at knowing that in slavery you would truly be free.” He brushed her lips with the fingers of his left hand, seeing where he had bruised them with his kiss. “Part of you wants this. Part of you knows you would ultimately be happier than you are now.”

“I must do my duty and try to save my family and prevent a war that will turn the desert red with blood,” Reyhan replied. 

“I know. Fate binds us all, girl.” He lifted her up by her arms. 

“You rode all this way just to say that and kiss me?”

“The kiss was the payment you owed me to bring you to Al Janish. You said you would pay any price, remember? That was the price I collected.” With a laugh, Javad suddenly slapped Reyhan’s’ bottom hard. She squealed and jumped but then laughed in resignation as he lifted her chin with his hand.

“You will not be able to do that when this collar is gone from my throat,” she said, chiding him.

“No, I suppose I will not. But that collar will not leave your throat until you are back in the granite halls of Al-Quada-A-Dhum. Until then you are my slave girl! Kiss me, slave girl!”

“No.” Reyhan shook her head. “Never!” she laughed. “I will never kiss you! You may steal kisses from me, for I am at your mercy, I suppose, but I will never give them to you freely and of my own will.”

“In time that will change. In time you will come running to my feet, desperate for my touch. I know that now. You are meant to wear my collar. One day you will tend my verr. One day you will be happy and you will long for the sun to go down so that I will take and use you again.”

“You are insane!” laughed Reyhan. “You carry me into the dunes on a whim and you profess all of this! Now take me back. We have a journey to complete, and I do not want to camp a second night in the desert. The ankle chains were uncomfortable last night.”

Javad nodded. He hoisted Reyhan back onto the high saddle and climbed in front of her. “Arms around my waist, slave,” he said. Reyhan did so, and as Javad turned his kaiila’s back, she pressed her face once more against the pillow of his shoulder. Slowly, taking their time, they rode back towards the troop of cavalry and then on to Al Janish. 

--------------------------------------

“Laleh, please be reasonable. You know Daan will never accept those terms. You know I, a mother, could never accept those terms. I could never give one of my babies over to the collar.”

“Oh but you will, because the alternative will be so much worse. All three of the Shahzad women in collars, and your man crucified in the desert to die of thirst and exposure. Your House erased from history. You will agree to my terms when you reach that moment when you stare into the black abyss with no way out. But by then it may be too late.”

“Laleh! No! I came here so that we could discuss this rationally. I will humiliate myself in reparations, if I must, but not my daughters! You cannot have them.”

“One, Reyhan - one tearful daughter, dragged away and branded, locked in a Sasani collar, living her life in the slave pens; that is the price for your other daughter to live. And don’t even bother to offer yourself in her place. We do not want you. We want you to know your daughter has paid the price for your stupidity. Soon the assembled banners of the Landsraad will reach the high walls of Al-Quada-A-Dhum. Half your men will desert you, and those that remain will face extinction. And we will drag you and your precious daughters by your hair, dragged through the great halls, and thrown to the courtyard where you will all be stripped and branded with the hot iron. And Daan, if he still lives, will be whipped until he cannot stand, and then dragged out onto the burning plane of the desert, there to be nailed to a cross. He will scream for death, but it will be a long time coming. So think very carefully before you decline my terms.”

The sisters faced one another for a while.

“I bid you farewell then, dearest, most beloved sister,” said Reyhan sadly. “I wish you the safest of journeys back to Tor, and pray that the desert sprits will watch over you and keep you safe.” She moved slightly to air kiss the veils of her sister once again.

“And my blessings to you too, beloved Reyhan,” said Laleh as she returned the air kisses and touched the hands of her sister gently. “You are dearest to my heart, and my prayers will follow you safely home to your desert fortress. May the Priest Kings watch safely over you and Daan.”

Reyhan drew away slowly, touching the tips of her sister’s fingers with her own lingering grasp as they drifted apart. “Thank you, Laleh. But it will not be to the Priest Kings that we turn to for aid. We have far more savage and brutal allies than they. I wish, my dear sister, you had proven reasonable today, for now you have left me with no choice but to turn to dark forces better not summoned. What happens now is because of you.”