Dunes of Gor Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty: The Keep of Shadows

Najina was in a good mood as she made her way through the corridors of the mountain keep of Al-Quada-a-Dhum, on her way to the bed chambers of the younger Shahzad daughter. After almost a week of travelling by kaiila caravan through the hot, burning desert, during which time there had been little to no opportunity to dominate the girl, since she camped with her mother, things would now go back to their familiar routine. Najina had missed being able to train Jaleesa in the mornings. Like any slave frustrated with the way free women treated her, it was fun to be able to control her mistress, making her hurry from her soft bed to kneel on the floor and receive instruction in demeaning slave positions and movements. She enjoyed seeing the girl locked into a collar that she couldn’t remove. Her only regret was that Serafina wasn’t there too, for Serafina was the girl who had ordered Najina to be confined to the Box that day shortly after she had arrived at the estate. How Najina would have loved to torment that particular bitch of a mistress in turn. But no, Serafina was by now in some other man’s collar in Tor, no doubt a genuine slave in every respect, like herself, and Najina consoled herself with the fact that Serafina’s slavery would be far harsher than anything she might implement on Jaleesa. 

In contrast, Najina’s slavery was now really quite comfortable, protected as she was by the favoured high slave of Daan Shahzad. Other slaves were beginning to fear Najina, as they knew she could make their lives miserable with just a word in Ghadir’s ear. She was becoming powerful in the slave pens and she relished the possibility of building upon that power. And now she had the younger Shahzad daughter kneeling nude before her in the mornings before she was permitted some daylight hours to walk around the keep, pretending she was still a free woman.

Najina entered Jaleesa’s rooms without knocking or announcing herself, as she had done routinely back in Tor. The girl would know she was expected to remain naked until Najina arrived, and to quickly kneel in the centre of her room and press her forehead to the tiles until Najina told her she could lift her head. Najina was displeased therefore to see the girl standing by one of the windows, dressed in a wide sleeved morning robe, tied about her waist with a broad sash. Such impudence! Such disrespect! Had the week long journey through the desert given the Shahzad daughter ideas above her station, and that maybe now that she was in Al-Quad-a-Dhum she would be a secret slave no more? Time then to disabuse her of such insolent ideas, with the sharp sting of the switch!

“I see mistress has chosen to be naughty this morning,” said Najina as she closed the door behind her. “Tch. We shall have to do something about that, shan’t we?” It would be the whip for the little Shahzad daughter, that Najina was certain of. How dare she not run to her place on the floor at once!

But then the girl at the window span round, a look of anger on her face, and Najina’s face went pale as she saw the girl was NOT Jaleesa Shahzad!

“How dare you!” said the girl, sharply. She looked very young, maybe sixteen years old, but with the haughty demeanour of a free woman of high caste. “You dare to come in here unannounced and speak to me like that! Whipping position, now, you little slut!” She stabbed her finger towards the tiled floor.

Najina dropped to her knees in terror, pressing herself to the floor. What was this? Who was this other girl? She was obviously a free woman! 

And then she heard Jaleesa’s voice as Jaleesa entered the bedchamber from an adjoining room in this suite. “Is everything all right, Aleah? What is it? Oh…” Jaleesa paused in the doorway, naked except for her hijab, as she saw what she expected to see – the slave girl, Najina, quivering in fear at the feet of Jaleesa’s young cousin.

“This slave slut just marched in here, unannounced!” snapped Aleah as she selected a sharp looking switch from a wall rack. “The slaves in this house need discipline! First that girl who stared at us both yesterday, and now this!” Aleah began to strike Najina harshly with the switch, laying blows on the girl’s bottom and thighs in turn until she began to cry. “Get up!” snarled the young Sasani daughter. “Run to your first girl and tell her what you have done. Tell her that you beg further punishment! Go!”

Najina rose quickly and hurried out of the suite of rooms, terrified by this new development.

“Thank you,” said Jaleesa softly after Najina had gone. “This is why I asked mother if we could share rooms while you lived with us,” she said as she approached her cousin and rested her face against the girl’s shoulder. “I have something I have to confess to you, Aleah. We’ve always been close, haven’t we?”

It was true, the girls had been close cousins, as they were almost the same age. Aleah was seventeen, almost eighteen, and Jaleesa had recently turned nineteen. Their ages were not far apart. As they had done in previous times when Aleah had stayed with the Shahzads, or Jaleesa had stayed with the Sasanis, Aleah and Jaleesa had slept together on the same bed couch, snuggling their slim girlish figures together under the furs, resting chins on shoulders, arms around one another’s waists during the night, giggling together at the novelty of it all. They had always found comfort together in the darkness, whispering to one another with news of what they had seen or heard. As they grew older they began to share secrets and even, blushing furiously, confide in one another of some innocent fantasies they might have had involving men. 

Once, they even kissed, but decided in the morning it wasn’t something that either of them wanted to repeat. 

“We have been and are close,” said Aleah. “Since we were very young girls. What is wrong?”

Jaleesa was in tears as she took her cousin’s hands. “I will show you, and then I will tell you everything. Please do not judge me until you have heard the full story. I have to tell someone or I will go mad! I can’t tell mother. I would be terrified to tell father. You’re the only person I know who will not hate me on sight.”

“You’re scaring me now, cousin,” said Aleah as she gazed at Jaleesa. “What have you done?”

And then Jaleesa unwound her hijab and revealed the slave collar of Gorean steel locked around her throat. She broke down in tears as Aleah’s startled expression was plain to see.

Twenty ehn later, Jaleesa had told her cousin everything: about the girlish lark that had turned horribly wrong in the market district, and how they had found themselves separated, placed on an auction block and sold at the Mazad plaza, and how then when Jaleesa had thought she had been saved by Ghadir, he had inflicted a secret state of slavery upon her, with the threat of ruining her family’s reputation as an inducement for her to behave. 

“You must hate and despise me now,” she wept. “I never meant for any of this to happen. It was just… we didn’t understand what we were doing. Do you hate me? I would simply die if you hate me now, Aleah. I have no one else to turn to.”

“It is a shock,” said the girl, “but no, I don’t hate you. You’re my cousin. We have grown up together and looked out for one another. We are blood. I will not despise you for this.” Aleah frowned as she touched the steel collar. She had never actually touched one before. “You really can’t remove it?”

“I don’t have the key,” said Jaleesa. “Ghadir has it. He won’t give it to me. I have to hide the collar under my hijab. I am constantly aware of it during the day…” she squeezed her little fingers into futile fists. “And during the night, too…”

“How horrible,” said Aleah in fascination, “to have to wear a slave collar at the will of a man. How does it make you feel? Please tell me!”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Jaleesa, as she wiped away a tear. “Sometimes, when I’m aware of it around my neck, I can’t think clearly. It drives me to distraction.”

Aleah nodded. “How do girls remove slave collars if they don’t have the key?”

“I don’t know,” wailed Jaleesa. “Panther girls in the northern forests are said to manage it, but no one has ever said how they do so.”

“Maybe Panther girls have magic keys that can open the collar of any girl who joins them?” suggested Aleah. “That might explain it.” 

“Possibly. Oh, Aleah, this is a nightmare for me on so many levels. I don’t even know where to begin. Serafina has been enslaved in Tor and suffers far worse than I, as we speak. My father and mother blame your family for her abduction and have kidnapped you in return, but I know your family is innocent. Ghadir can ruin me any time he wishes to with the bill of sale that he holds on me. I am forced to do unspeakable things that shame me deeply when the kajira, Najina, comes to my chambers. And I dare not talk to mother or father of any of this, for fear of what they might do. I feel so helpless!”

Aleah hugged her cousin and the girls held one another for a time as the sun rose high in the sky outside the stone keep. After some time, Aleah released her cousin and wiped away her tears, “You are right. You cannot speak of this to your father. I dread to think what he might say and do. But you cannot go on like this either, Jaleesa. You cannot let a slave blackmail you!”

“But he has my auction papers hidden somewhere! He could send them to another House! My family would be shamed and ruined.”

“True. But think, Jaleesa, if he did, your father would exact such revenge upon him. He would be tortured to death slowly, his death being prolonged over a matter of weeks. He has a weapon against you that he dares not use, or rather; he would use it only as a last resort. It would never be used if you simply refused to obey his slave girl.”

Jaleesa sniffed and blew her nose on a piece of silk. “You think?”

“I do. You have a clever and resourceful cousin in me, dear Jaleesa. I may be the youngest of us, but I read and I learn.” She scampered up onto the soft bed beside Jaleesa and held her cousin’s hands, kissing them. “That slave will not trouble you while we share a room. If she comes back I will whip her! In fact, if I see her in the keep, I’ll whip her! I would do even worse if I owned her. So, she won’t humiliate you again.”

“But if I don’t obey her, she might…”

“She might what?” asked Aleah. “Tell everyone that you wear a collar? And what would happen to her then, when your secret was out? Her treatment of you would be public knowledge and she would be skinned alive.”

“You think my father would skin her alive?” asked Jaleesa in horror.

“I think he would,” said Aleah firmly. “So, that slut has no power over you if you stand your ground. I think Ghadir is intelligent enough to know his power over you can only be used once, and if he uses it, he too will suffer. So it is a last resort.”

“But what about Serafina? Ghadir says he is looking for her? He is my only hope to find my sister.”

“I expect he is looking for her,” said Aleah, pondering the matter. “And he is good at that sort of thing, apparently. My father always said as much. We wished we owned a resourceful slave like Ghadir, but perhaps not now, in hindsight. But don’t think that if he finds Serafina your problems will be over. He will want to exert control over her as well. And by now she will be branded.”

“No!” Jaleesa clapped her hand to her mouth in dismay.

“I think so.” Aleah knelt primly on the edge of the bed and counted off some more thoughts on the fingers of her right hand. “It is what happens to slaves. Of course it is. We both know that. Why would any man not brand his new slave? Slaves should be branded. So, Serafina is branded, and may no longer be…” Aleah blushed now, “intact…”

“No!” again Jaleesa was horrified by the thought. “You mean a man may have…”

“Almost certainly. Serafina is pretty. Men would want her. They would touch her at the very least. I think they would. They would do other things too. They would undress her and get excited enough to want to push their thing inside her.”

Jaleesa cried out at the very thought of that. “I can’t even begin to imagine…”

“Nor I,” agreed Aleah. “It is an alarming thought. My mother sat me down and told me about such things after my first robing. Men can’t control themselves if they see our lips, let alone our bodies. Did you know…” she came closer, because even though they were alone, Aleah naturally wanted to whisper for fear of being overheard, “and I was told this by Parisa of House Khartum - so it must be true - that when a man gets excited, his thing gets so hard that it cannot go down unless it squirts some cream! Imagine that! And that if the cream falls onto the ground, instead of inside a girl, where it makes a beautiful baby, rare orchids will sprout on that ground, and that in Anango the magicians there make male slaves get excited so that they will squirt on the ground and special orchids used in powerful magic can be cultivated from their spilt cream?”

“I don’t think that’s true,” frowned Jaleesa. “I really don’t. Parisa says some very stupid things.”

“Well, Parisa has a cousin who lives in Anango, and she says it’s true as well.”

“Oh. Maybe it is then,” said Jaleesa. “I do know it’s a baby making cream when it is inside of us. So I suppose it might do other things on fertile soil.”

“Come. Let us put on our hijabs and veils and explore the keep together. Let us have an adventure today while we still can. Until they seal the keep, we can run around anywhere we like! And we will talk some more about what to do to find Serafina.”

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Najina was furious as she ran across the battlements of the keep that overlooked the small town built around its high walls. Between the town and the formidable desert was another, lower, set of walls visible in the distance. She was livid that she had been whipped about her thighs and ass. She was livid that the marks would be on her for several days, and that other slaves in the Keep would see them and know that the ambitious Najina had been punished. How dare that sixteen year old girl whip her! Report to a first girl? No, Najina would report to Ghadir and tell the high slave what had happened. Ghadir would not be happy that some free girl was standing in the way of his future pleasure with the little mistress.

She found Ghadir on a raised tower talking to various artisans. In his hands were a series of defensive plans and he was pointing out imperfections in the keep’s defences that he had noted during the night. Each weak point was clearly indicated with a red pencil and now he politely explained to the artisans what needed to be done to secure the fortress adequately.

“Master,” Najina said as she dropped to her knees before him and pressed her forehead to his feet.

“Ah, sweet Najina” said Ghadir as he felt her kiss his feet. “With your pardon, kind masters, I shall see to some minor business concerning the kajirae.” Ghadir bowed before the free men and motioned for Najina to follow him as he walked to the other side of the tower where they might not be overheard.

“You come scampering to me with urgent news, I suspect?”

“Yes, Master. Our little sparrow has a protector. I was whipped and sent away when I visited her bedrooms this morning, to teach her more useful things on your behalf.”

“Has she now.” Ghadir stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I did anticipate this. There is a girl here who has been abducted from her family. It is really quite amusing. My dear Master blames the Sasanis for what has happened to Serafina. The bold Khuda believes he is simply retaliating when he made an unprovoked strike against House Sasani by abducting their eldest daughter. I suspect she is the girl you ran across this morning. Our petty slave girl seems to think that she can shield herself from you if this Aleah beds down with her each night. Well, we can’t be having that now, can we?”

“No, Master! The insolence of the little slave! And I was whipped by this young girl! Look at my thighs! “

“Such pretty thighs they are too,” said Ghadir, thoughtfully. “Part them if you will, while we speak.”

“Of course, Master,” said Najina as she parted her thighs widely in nadu before Ghadir. “I obey your every command.”

“Of course you do. You are an intelligent kajira. You will go far.” Ghadir crouched down and, seeing they were all alone now on the tower, as the artisans had descended the stairs, Ghadir stoked Najina’s inner thighs and touched her sex, making the girl gasp with delight. “You are mine, aren’t you, Najina?”

“I’m your girl, Master. Command me.”

“Good.” He straightened up. “You did well to come to me right away. I will obviously have to do something about this troublesome Aleah Sasani. We really can’t have her running around, disturbing my fun, now, can we…”