Dunes of Gor Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Six: Apprehension

“Inside, kajira,” snarled Javad Mohsen as he unclipped the short leash from Reyhan’s collar. She stumbled slightly, for her wrists were braceleted behind the small of her back. She looked round at him, alarmed, for the reality of this was far more frightening than the mere possibility earlier when they had discussed the matter high up on the terrace, beside the ornate balustrade.

“My wrists,” she said, turning slightly. She stood in the threshold of Hassan’s private guest suite of rooms within the Keep. Very soon he would return from the strategical planning with Daan. He would expect to find a curvaceous slut chained to the slave ring on the floor.

Javad wound the leash back into a coil and tucked it in his belt. “I should whip you,” he said, angrily.

“My wrists!” said Reyhan again. She turned them towards him. She was barefoot, clad in red pleasure silk; light, revealing and gossamer against her skin. She was perfumed, her face made up with slave cosmetics, and she was belled. That last touch had been added by Javad when he had come to collect her from the derelict room in which she had changed. It would not do to come and go like this from her own bed chamber where guards stood watchful and alert, and so Reyhan had arranged to use an empty room within the Keep in order to prepare herself. In this room too she arranged to hide the key to her collar, not trusting herself to carry it in her hand and conceal it somewhere in Hassan’s room. What if she had no chance to retrieve it when he was done with her? What if he simply hurried her on her way with a slap to her ass, giving her no chance to reach the drawer or shelf in which she had hidden the key? It would be much safer to place the key, concealed, in the room where she left her clothes. 

The touch of the pleasure silk was intoxicating against her skin when she first drew the scandalous garment about her naked body. Did women really wear this? Just the touch of the silk stimulated her senses in a way she wasn’t used to.

I am a free woman, she thought to herself, as she waited for Javad to collect her. I am a free woman. This is only silk.

But no, it was pleasure silk. 

And it was so brief. It barely covered her sex, and with its translucence, did nothing to hide the shape of her body. Her nipples strained through the silk. 

Javad had added the bells to her left ankle against her strident protests. 

“I despise you for doing this,” he said. He was angry. “If you will wear a collar then you will be belled.” He had ordered her to her back, and then ordered her to raise her ankle. He had snapped the anklet about that ankle and sneered at her. “Slave slut!” he said. 

He had expected better of her perhaps. And then he had told her to stand and he had snapped slave bracelets about her wrists, behind her back.

“Where is the key to the bells?” asked Reyhan. She was afraid now, even though there was no way Javad could march a pleasure slave out of the keep, past the many guards who were forbidden to allow a pleasure slave outside the walls of the inner structure.

“I have it. Does that worry you?”

“Yes…”

“Good. I am angry with you. You deserve to be belled.”

“You will remove them when I am done.”

“Perhaps.” He turned Reyhan roughly around and checked that she was not wearing anything under the silk. Layers of undergarments for example, though they could no be hidden in such thin, translucent silk.

“Your hand!” She wriggled helplessly to his touch. 

“I told you I would not be gentle if you chose to go through with this. Have you drunk slave wine?” he snarled.

“I have drunk the wine of the noble free woman many years ago,” said Reyhan. “I cannot therefore breed without the releaser.” One day she would bear Daan more children, but they would be planned. 

“I asked have you had slave wine?” He clipped a leash to Reyhan’s collar.

“I do not need it. Did you not hear me? I have drunk the wine of the noble free woman many years ago.”

“Kneel.” He pushed her to her knees and then he produced a stoppered bottle. “Open your mouth.”

“What is that?” cried Reyhan.

“Slave wine. Slaves drink it before they are put to use for the first time. A slave may not conceive without her master’s permission.”

“I don’t need that!”

Javad ignored her protests. Calmly, efficiently, he prised her mouth open, closed her nostrils, and emptied the bottle into her mouth. Presently she choked and swallowed the liquid. Javad closed her mouth and ensured she drank it all. When he released her again she was gagging at the foul taste.

“You made me drink slave wine!”

“Yes. I am angry with you. You will be treated as a slave. Stand up.” He pulled her to her feet.

“There is no need for this! Just conduct me to…”

“Do you wish to be gagged?” he tugged at the leash.

“No..”

“Then be quiet.”

Ten ehn later, he led her to the slave ring in Hassan’s chamber. “You will wait here in nadu for his arrival. Bow your head when he enters and call him master.”

“I hate you!” said Reyhan as she glared at him. 

“That is your choice.” He picked up the neck chain attached to the iron ring and locked it to Reyhan’s collar.

“At least free my wrists!”

“No.” He threw the keys on to the couch, where Reyhan could not reach them. “Knees apart.”

Reyhan spread her knees, blushing at how that made her feel.

Javad growled with hunger as he saw her like that. “You were made for pleasure silk it seems.”

“I have changed my mind,” said Reyhan as the enormity of the situation hit her. “I have changed my mind!”

She said those words again as Javad turned his back and left the room, locking the door behind him. 

Javad found Reyhan easily enough, earlier that evening, following the meal, following the dismissal of the dancer Liselle, following the request by Hassan to couch with a slave girl called Sarissa. She stood at the balustrade of an overhead terrace that looked down into a garden illuminated by the glow from the three moons of Gor. Scented flowers and plants below produced a pleasant environment for meditation and quiet contemplation. Inside the Keep, the men were talking seriously of troops and objectives, tactical dispositions and long term strategy. They would talk for another couple of hours before Hassan might retire for the night.

“Lady,” said Javad, as he leaned against the balustrade. He carried two goblets of ka-la-na and offered one to Reyhan. She took it, her right hand trembling slightly as she lifted the wine to her veil. “An interesting turn of events,” said Javad as he regarded her. “I assume you will not comply with Hassan’s wishes?”

Reyhan lifted her veil just enough that she might sip the wine. It was dark, with a nose redolent of sweet blueberry, cherry, and savoury black olives. “Did you engineer this?” she asked softly.

“Me?” Javad seemed genuinely surprised, but Reyhan knew that he was not to be trusted. Reyhan knew that he had secret orders from the Emir. It was not beyond her intuition that Javad might have engineered this request on Hassan’s part to threaten the stability of the Shahzads in some fashion. “Is this your plan?” she asked. “Do you wish to send me to Hassan as a slave, so that you might embarrass me? Am I to be discovered in silks and a collar at an opportune moment? Am I to be discovered by Daan, as I seem to masquerade as a slave girl?”

“Where is this coming from?” asked Javad. “I have not spoken of your journey to Al Janish. Why would I try to humiliate you now?”

Why indeed, thought Reyhan to herself. Perhaps because you don’t know I know your planned treachery. “You made it clear in the desert that part of you wanted to ride away with me that night. You spoke of taking me into the desert, ravishing me and making me your slave. Is this your plan? Am I to dress as a slave tonight and be discovered, disowned, and branded for real?”

“You have a vivid imagination, Reyhan,” said Javad angrily. “I serve your House at the behest of the Emir.”

“Do not call me Reyhan. I am ‘Lady’ to you. You are far too familiar with me these days.”

“Perhaps that is because it is hard for a man not to be familiar with a woman who has worn a collar and displayed herself naked before that man,” said Javad, angrier still. “You question my honour after I brought you safely back from Al Janish? I am insulted… Lady.” He snarled the last word.

His act is good, thought Reyhan as she considered his words. He is believable. Except he has orders to betray me. Perhaps he does not like those orders. Perhaps what I see is a man who has grown to like me and feels torn between his duty to the Emir and his loyalty to a woman who held on to his waist as she travelled through the burning sands of the Tahari on his kaiila.

Or perhaps he simply has a silver tongue well suited to treachery.

“Do what you will, Lady,” said Javad. “I will leave you to your unfounded suspicions.” He turned to go but then felt Reyhan’s hand touch his left arm.

“What?” he said, turning back. “Now it is you who are very familiar with me.”

“I do not know whether I can trust you tonight, Javad Mohsen, commander of men. If you were a woman faced with the choice I now face, you would understand my concern. If I do this, I risk much.”

“Then don’t do it,” said Javad. “I never suggested you should. In fact, I will respect you less if you do present yourself to Hassan as a slave girl.”

“Is it a sense of shame you feel for me, that I would do that, or is it perhaps jealousy, that another man would lay his hands on me while I am dressed in slave silks?”

“I have no claim to you, Lady,” said Javad.

“In your mind perhaps you do. You made that clear that night in the desert. And in the morning you carried me deep into the dunes. You spoke of me tending your verr.”

“Perhaps one day you will. Perhaps one day I will save you from this grand folly, and your life in turn will be mine. Do you understand the codes of warriors that pertains to saving the life of a woman?”

“Tell me, Javad Mohsen. Tell me of your codes.” Reyhan leaned closer to him, close enough that her veil fluttered inches before his face.

“If I save your life, then you belong to me. You are mine to do with as I wish.”

“I belong to Daan.” 

“Then Daan can challenge me for you. Kajira canjellne. You are familiar with it?”

“Of a sort.” It was the ritual challenge a warrior might make when he desired another man’s slave girl. The challenged party would have the right to choose weapons. The fight would usually be to the death, with the victor having legal possession of the slave in question. 

“Go to your room, woman. Bolt the door. Forget all of this.”

“No.” Reyhan touched Javad’s arm again. “You are a contradiction, I think. I am not sure about you. I feel you are not sure about yourself. I do not know which way you will turn in the coming days.”

“I told you, I serve your House at the behest of the Emir.”

“And if the Emir changes his mind?” Again, Reyhan knew of his secret orders. “If he withdrew his support? I know the Landsraad petition him day and night to take a stance against us. What would you do then, Javad?”

“I have received no such communication, Lady.”

“But if you did? If he told you to kill me?”

Javad clenched his hands into fists at the thought of that.

“Could you kill me? Or could you perhaps deliver me up for impalement? Could you watch me stripped naked and lowered onto an impaling spear, mounted to the great walls of Al-Quada-a-Dhum? Could you watch as I screamed, as the spear slid into me, as the weight of my body dragged me slowly down its shaft? I might live in agony, impaled on the wall, for many hours, if those were your orders?”

“No.” Javad seized Reyhan’s wrists and pulled them down to her sides. “No, I would not give you up for impalement.”

“But the Emir…” Reyhan struggled a little in his grip, for she knew it might excite him and add fire to his emotions now.

“I would not see you dead. If it came to that, I would steal you myself and take you into the desert.”

“To be your slave?”

“Better that then leave you to die on an impaling spear.” He gazed deep into her eyes. “I would surrender my commission.”

“You would be outlaw then in the Tahari. Your own men would hunt you down. And all for the kisses and caresses of a woman?”

“I could live as an outlaw if it meant I had you in my chains. And the Emir be damned.”

“Kiss me,” said Reyhan suddenly. And so Javad did. He tore away her veil and cast it to the flagstone floor. He ravished her lips and then drew back, realising what he had done. The woman had granted him permission, but he had sworn an oath of allegiance to her companion, so long as the Emir expected it. “You are a witch! You drive men to distraction! The Landsraad women beguile their men with honeyed tongues! You are dangerous while you are free. You should all be in collars, where you would have to obey men, not play with their emotions!”

“I command you to release my wrists,” said Reyhan. “Now.” She gazed at him, face stripped. For a long drawn out moment, Javad gripped her wrists even tighter than before, but then he released them as she said.

“You hurt me,” she said. She reached down to the floor and caught her veils before the desert breeze threatened to blow the fabrics away into the dark garden below. “You face stripped me. I only offered you a kiss on my hand.” She lifted her left hand and presented the back of her wrist to him. “Everything else was in your imagination.”

“You have tormented me since we first met," said Javad. “You are in my dreams and my desires. I wish for all this to end soon so that I may leave this place and never see you again.”

“But still I will haunt your dreams for months to come, Javad Mohsen. And every time you will think of the desert dunes, you will remember how I wrapped my arms around your waist and pressed my face to your shoulders as we rode away together. Do you still remember the scent of the perfume I wore that day?”

“Yes.” He said the word through gritted teeth.

“Can I truly trust you?”

“No.” he said. “For I would have you in a collar and pleasure silks now.” 

“Oh. You are certain of that?”

“I am now.”

“Then why do you hesitate? I stand here on this open balustrade, alone, with no guards close enough to stop you?” She glanced down into the garden. “In the bushes there you could strip, gag and bind me. It would be a simple matter to ride out tonight on a kaiila with me tied across its saddle.”

“You know why. I have sworn an oath.”

“So you have. But can I trust you?” 

“That is for you to decide, Lady. What are you going to do now? The Kavar will expect the slave girl Sarissa in his rooms in two ahn.”

“I have a duty to my family. I will do what is necessary,” said Reyhan.

“Even to the collar? And to the couch?” Javad grew angry. “You will present yourself as a pleasure slave? I despise you.”

“You are right to do so. But the greatest risk to me is not what I may endure tonight, but that the bandit may then ask my beloved to gift him the slave, Sarissa. My beloved will give the slave to him without a second thought, if asked.”

“Hassan would ride away with you in the morning then, if you were presented to him as a gift. You would just be a naked and helpless slave bound over his kaiila.”

“Yes. I am not stupid. That is the likely outcome. He would enjoy me and while I was tied to his couch he would ask for me as a final gift in the morning. My beloved would perhaps wonder why I hadn’t turned up for breakfast, but would assume I may be nursing a sore head from the wine I had drunk. Hassan would ride out from Al-Quada-a-Dhum with my beloved’s blessing and with a plump bottomed slave girl gagged and bound to his kaiila.”

Javad smiled. “I had considered the possibility, but I hadn’t expected you to. Free women can be stupid.”

“I am not stupid. I do not want to find myself tied to a kaiila saddle, squirming helplessly.”

“And so?”

“And so I will suggest to my beloved that he promises to give this slave girl to Hassan when the Landsraad are defeated. That offer will pre-empt any request from him. It will seem reasonable under the circumstances. Hassan is wily enough to understand that a thing that he wants would be offered as a final prize to ensure his loyalty and dedication to our cause. For this final prize he will wait, and therefore I will not run the risk of being tied to his saddle in the morning.”

“And after the Landsraad is defeated? He will come to claim his prize.”

“Who knows what might have happened to the slave girl, Sarissa, in the meantime. We live in dangerous times. You yourself have lost a slave girl recently. You still haven’t found her, I understand? These things happen. Runaways, or abductions. We will have to compensate Hassan greatly for the loss of course, but we cannot magic up a corpse. Such a shame the girl dies during the siege.”

“He will desire you at the nineteenth ahn. I shall conduct you through the corridors myself for your safety and anonymity. You will be perfumed, silked and barefoot. I will not be gentle with you. I will treat you the way I would treat a kajira. So I will ask you one last time - do you truly understand what you are doing”

“I am securing us an ally.”

And as she said that, Reyhan pondered again, whether this man, this Javad Mohsen, really would carry out his secret orders from the Emir when the time came. Or whether, in a way, she had indeed bewitched him.