Outcast of Gor Chapter Thirty Eight

 

This could easily be the Tatrix of Corcyrus standing before me, stripped and ankle braceleted, her hair unbound, and her voluptuous curves garbed only in a gauze like wrap of fabric that hung loosely from her shoulders. 

 

But such a thought was clearly ridiculous. The Tatrix of Corcyrus would not present herself in my chambers late at night, alone, vulnerable, in the guise of a captive woman of Isurium.

 

I walked towards this woman, wishing the light was better. 

 

“You are the Lady Tulia Fava?”

 

“I am.” She folded her arms about her upper body and refused to look at me. She struck a haughty pose that was perhaps intentionally provocative and challenging to a man.

 

“Lower your arms. You are not to cross them again in my presence.”

 

“Very well.” She seemed surprisingly relaxed considering the way she was dressed and the fact she was alone with me. I watched as she uncrossed her arms, revealing her lovely breasts once more. Her skin was pale, like bone china, and softly freckled on the arms. Between her legs was a soft down of rich red pubic hair. The writer, Trakkar, refers to a red haired woman as a Fire Crotch, referencing the apparent touch of flame that her hair between her legs suggests, and the slave heat that lies simmering beneath that hair. He describes such women as mysterious and alluring and makes it clear that they are all, even the technically free, slaves. Not just potential slaves, as are all women, but keenly alive to their slave natures. Their slave fires, even when banked behind a facade of freedom, burn so hot, that the fires glow on the fine hairs of their sex.  

 

He also adds that these hairs, incidentally, are finer and silkier than in others of the slave sex. This is so well known as to be proverbial.

 

I touched her shoulder through the light lace of her wrap and heard a soft gasp from her lips. Those lips were deeply reddened by slave rouge. I then. moved my touch to her nipples and heard her gasp again. 

 

The nipples of a woman are deeply sensitive, but none more so than the nipples of a Fire Crotch. Her eyes were veiled, making it difficult for me to gauge how stimulated she might be by such a casual touch. 

 

“Why are your eyes veiled?” I asked her.

 

“I am a Free Woman. It was perhaps a kindness befitting my status.”

 

“Have you not served on the Pleasure Racks this past week, writhing wildly to the touch and caresses of men?”

 

“No. I was spared such a thing.” 

 

“Really?” I found that hard to believe. “I thought all the captive women of Isurium were secured in the market place.”

 

“Not all. A few of us have remained untouched.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Perhaps because of who we are.”

 

“Do you know why you are here?” I lifted her hair and arranged it about her shoulders. It was very much like the hair of the Tatrix.

 

“I am apparently here for your pleasure.” There was a trace of nervousness to her voice now, but not nearly as much as I might have expected. 

 

“You don’t seem very frightened.” 

 

“I am metaglana. I have known the touch of a man before. I do not fear it so much.”

 

“You have known the touch of a man, only as a Free Woman might. The experience would have been tender, gentle, considerate for your feelings.”

 

“Yes, all those things, Of course! I am still a Free Woman. Nothing has changed.”

 

“I think much has changed.” I regarded her body. The Tatrix of course had been garbed in loose robes and gowns, so it was difficult to truly judge whether the body of this woman was the same, but it could be. She was certainly the same height. “I suppose you are cold and frigid?”

 

“Perhaps.” She held herself still as I walked about her. Only when I touched her again, from behind, did she gasp and quiver. 

 

“Or perhaps not.” Fire Crotch girls are pale skinned with a complexion like porcelain, so they blush easily. It is readily apparent and it is impossible for them to conceal such flushing. She gasped again as I touched her somewhere else. “I think you will be quite responsive in the furs.”

 

“Beast,” she said. 

 

“Remove the veil about your eyes.”

 

“I have been ordered to retain it. I will be whipped if I remove it.”

 

“Why? Why would the Tatrix command such a thing?”

 

“The Tatrix did not command it. One of her men instructed me, so.”

 

I moved my hand and the delicate lace veil was suddenly pulled from her eyes. She gasped in dismay, her features no longer concealed in the poor light. “Now you can tell that man that you obeyed him, and that you did not remove the veil from your eyes. I did.”

 

“Please…” she moved her hands up, but I caught them before she could mask her eyes with her fingers. It was dark in here but I thought her features closely resembled the Tatrix. This was quite the curiosity. 

 

“You seem reluctant for me to see your face unveiled. Do you fear I might perhaps recognise it?”

 

“I…” she turned her head to the side and so I simply touched her chin and moved it back to gaze at.

 

“Do not do that again. Why is there not a whip in this room?”

 

“I… I do not know.”

 

“I think someone doesn’t want you whipped.”

 

“I have red hair. I mark easily.”

 

“That is known.” I stroked her lovely breasts and heard her gasp. Her body trembled. The Fire Crotch girl is incredibly responsive to physical stimulation. Moreso than brunettes and blondes, their bodies are primed for slavery. The writer, Trakkar, has in the past commented on the misery a Fire Crotch must feel if she is forced to play the part of a Free Woman. He says it is a kindness to put such a girl a collar. All such women, marked out as they are for slavery by their natures, so aptly proclaimed by their colouring, deserve the collars that they secretly crave. I think there is some truth in this as this girl, this supposed Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium, showed signs of being desperately repressed by her crippling, painful freedom. “Do you know what the writer Trakkar calls a red haired girl?”

 

“I am a woman! Not a girl!”

 

“Do you know what a red haired girl is called?”

 

She blushed again. “It is a vulgar phrase. I hate it.”

 

“Tell me what you are referred to in the writings of Trakkar.”

 

“A Fire Crotch! He would call me a Fire Crotch!” she said, angrily.

 

“Yes.” I touched her intimately and heard her cry out with surprise. Her crotch instinctively pressed itself to my hand. When she realised how her body had reacted, she trembled. “Who are you really?” I asked her.

 

“I have told you! I am the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium!”

 

I took hold of her by her wrist and walked her to the slave ring set into the tiles of the floor. There was a length of chain with an ankle cuff. I locked it upon her left ankle, just above her identifying slave anklet. Captive women who have not yet been enslaved are commonly ankleted. This serves to differentiate them from women who are truly free, without degrading them to the same degree as a slave girl. The anklet, of course, is just as firmly locked on their body as a collar might be. They cannot slip it from their foot.

 

“What are you doing!” she cried as I pushed her to her knees. 

 

“Nadu,” I said.

 

“I am a Free Woman!”

 

I raised my hand and, quickly, she parted her thighs. She glared angrily at me again. She looked so much like the Tatrix. And yet it couldn’t be. It was impossible. The very idea was crazy. This couldn’t be the Tatrix.

 

I walked back to the series of alcoves through which she had entered the room.

 

“Where are you going! You are not permitted through there!”

 

“You seem to be acting as if you are in charge here.” I placed my hand on the sliding panel. “As if you have some authority that you forget to conceal.”

 

“I have been told you mustn’t go through that passage.”

 

“Really? Or perhaps you simply do not want me to go through that passage. What will I find there?”

“Nothing!” She stood up and tried to reach me but the ankle chain brought her up short. She could not approach closer than two feet from the sliding panel. “Please don’t go through there. Please.”

 

“What will I find?”

 

“Just a passage with a locked door. Nothing.”

 

I slid the panel to the side and, picking up the oil lamp, entered the passage, sliding the panel closed behind me. I heard a soft moan from the supposed Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium. True to her word, I found a short narrow passage that had to be a secret construction of the palace. It did lead to a door which, as she said, was locked. I smiled as I recalled the pretence that Chelsea Frick had once arranged in the city of Argentum when she had played at being a slave girl. She had left the key to her own front door on the top of the lintel. There are not many other hiding places for a key, if a girl is garbed as a slave. I reached with my fingers and found a small metal key resting, concealed, on the lintel. How unoriginal. I smiled again as I placed the key in the door lock and opened it silently.

 

Inside was a bed chamber, smaller than mine. Robes of concealment hung from a wooden peg on one wall, and there was a pair of dainty slippers on the floor beneath them. The room was lightly furnished, and I was pleased to see that there was a slave switch in this room, along with a wider variety of shackles than in my own room. I saw a dresser with a variety of slave cosmetics where the so-called Lady had presumably painted her face. I touched the gowns and ran my fingers through the fabrics. Surprisingly they didn’t seem to be the rich garments of the Tatrix. They were good quality, but of a kind possibly worn by an average citizen of a Gorean town or city. 

 

But then I remembered what the Lady Herminia had told me: the Tatrix often claimed to walk the city anonymously, to mingle with her citizens. No doubt when she did so she wore simple garments such as these. Yes, I could well imagine these robes and veils would mark her not as the formidable ruler of the city, but rather just a Free Woman of no consequence – one of many who passed through the market squares and municipal parks of the city. Did she perhaps walk through her palace dressed this way when she grew frustrated with the stifling conventions that her First Minister insisted upon? For she would rarely know any privacy outside of her personal chambers, as the Tatrix. There would be guards with her all the time. She would always be watched, for her own safety. Dressed inconspicuously she might enjoy more freedom to roam unhindered. 

 

It seemed impossible though that the Tatrix would slip through the palace tonight with the express intention of changing in this room and then stealing through a secret passageway to present herself to me for use. Why would she do such a thing? Why would she take such a terrible risk?

 

And yet… the Lady Tulia Fava resembled the Tatrix, at least insofar as I had seen her before. What was the probability that one of the red haired captives of Isurium might bear such an uncanny resemblance to the Tatrix? 

 

I recalled the locked anklet about her left foot. It would only open to a specific key. Obviously the girl did not carry the key on her person. If she was a true captive of Isurium, sent to my chambers for my pleasure, then I would find no sign of a key in this room. She could not possibly have been given it. But on the other hand, if there was a key to her shackle in this room, that might suggest intriguing possibilities, that she was capable of removing the slave like ring from her body whenever she liked. I knelt down beside the dresser and reached underneath it with my fingers, probing, searching. I found another key taped to the underside of the furniture. A moment later I had it in my hand and I could see it resembled a key that might unlock a slave anklet. Interesting. Interesting both in the sense that it was in this room, and that it had been concealed, albeit in an obvious location for anyone who might choose to search for it. 

 

I think I would keep this key. I slipped it into an inner pocket in my tunic. Let her realise in the morning with a mixture of shock and dismay, that she no longer had the means to remove a slave anklet from her left leg. It would remain locked upon her. 

 

At the far end of the room was another door. I was sure it led out into the main corridor, but I didn’t wish to try the door for fear of alerting a guard. There would be at least one guard – the one standing outside my own door – and it wouldn’t do for him to witness me emerging from another room that I shouldn’t in theory have any access to. 

 

And so I left the room the way I had come, re-locking the secret door and replacing the key on the lintel, before heading back down the short, narrow passageway to where the so-called Lady Tulia of Isurium would be helpless, chained to a slave ring by her ankle. 

 

“It seems you were telling the truth,” I said as I slid the panel back in place behind me. She looked anxious. She was no doubt concerned that I may have discovered her secret room with the gowns and veils and slippers. “It was a narrow passageway with a locked door at the end of it.”

 

“I told you so.” She watched me as I walked towards her. “The door is locked. I was sent through it.”

 

“So it seems. Are you going to serve my pleasure, willingly, to the best of your ability?”

 

“I am a Free Woman.” She shrank back from me with a slither of chain. She could not retreat very far of course before the chain drew taut. 

 

“I suppose you take comfort from the fact this room lacks a slave whip?”

 

“Free Women are never whipped!” she declared.

 

“That is not completely true. But in a sense you are right – they are rarely whipped, and even when they are, the whipping is never as severe as with a slave.”

 

“You do not have a whip,” she declared.

 

“I have my hand. Do you wish to feel it on your bottom and thighs?”

 

“No.” 

 

“Remove your lace wrap, pretty as it is, and lie down on the floor, on your back.”

 

“I cannot reach the couch bed!” She shook her chained foot, angrily.

 

“You do not need to. You will have to work hard to earn the privilege of lying on the couch bed.”

 

What else does Trakkar have to say about a Fire Crotch girl?

 

Training a Fire Crotch to the furs is such an easy task that one is almost embarrassed to accept tarsks for it. Their natural fires burn so fiercely that their natures respond quickly to the touch, in almost an atavistic and genetic manner. An untrained Fire Crotch is easily the equal of a brunette with a couple of weeks of the second level training.

 

He goes on to remark in comparison that, Blondes have natural instincts, but are slower to pick things up. Some ascribe this to lesser intelligence, but that cannot be assumed among the golden-haired. Let us just say that there is a greater variability of intelligence among the golden crotched.

 

The archetype of the dumb blonde, it seems, is common on Gor as well as Earth. 

 

“Ohhh!” She bucked and responded with wild abandon as I thrust deep inside of her and rode her fast and hard. I felt her grip my arms, crying out in a way that even Kelsee could not match. From the look in her eyes she seemed surprised that her feelings were quite as intense as this, and so I lingered a little on her body, drawing out more of these splendid responses, testing in turn the observations that Trakkar had often made on her breed. 

 

If this girl was the Tatrix, then the Tatrix was incredibly hot, responsive, and desperate to please when penetrated. But she couldn’t be the Tatrix. The possibility was beyond belief.  

 

After using her for the first time, after seeing her gasp and quiver from her possibly first slave orgasm, I freed her ankle from the slave ring and tied her wrists to the ring with some binding fibre instead. 

 

“What are you doing?!”

 

She felt herself turned on to her belly. She pulled and struggled at her bindings as I walked towards a table where the bottle of wine stood. I drank some of the wine as I watched her press her belly down onto the tiles and wriggle there. She couldn’t see me now. She was very apprehensive, but also flushed with pleasure from her orgasm. 

 

“You seemed to enjoy that as much as I did,” I remarked.

 

“Beast!”

 

I drank some more of the wine. “Who are you really?”

 

“I am the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium! Please free me!”

 

“I think you are lying to me. With your lace mask gone, you remind me very much of a woman I have seen previously.”

 

She trembled as I said that. She pulled at her wrists again.

 

“You have had your pleasure,” she said. “I should go now.”

 

“You are not going anywhere, girl. At least, not tonight.”

“You obviously think I am someone I am not! You are wrong! Please let me go. I should return to the kennels.”

 

I smiled. The experience had perhaps been more profound and moving than she had expected. Perhaps she felt terrified at the intensity of her feelings – she being a red haired girl – a Fire Crotch. Perhaps she wanted nothing more now but to run back to her opulent chambers, take a long lingering bath and then bury herself fearfully between silken sheets on her own couch, to try and forget what she had discovered about her body.

 

“I think you are playing some sort of game with me,” I remarked. “I think you set out to deceive me. But I don’t know why.”

 

There was more frantic wriggling at the slave ring. Her wrists remained helplessly bound. If I had a whip, she would now be in a perfect position to feel it. 

 

“I am not… I’m just a captive Free Woman of Isurium. You must believe me!” When I said nothing, she quickly added, “You are to allow me to return back through the passageway. You must do that!”

 

“Shall I call a guard then to escort you to the kennels? I believe there is one outside my quarters?”

 

“There is no need!” she said quickly. “I am to return through the passageway.”

 

“I think I shall call the guard and inform him I have a girl who needs to be returned to the kennels. He will then take you there directly.”

 

She said nothing, but her body trembled. If she was the Tatrix, this might prove more than awkward to be escorted by a guard, his hand in her hair, to the basement kennels in which genuine ladies of Isurium were caged. Unless she revealed her identity, she would be kennelled with the other captives. But if she revealed her identity, what then might her fate be? Would she even be believed, at first? 

 

“Guard,” I said, standing by the door. I didn’t really intend handing her over to the kennel keeper, but I wanted to see how this red haired girl might act if it seemed I was about to do so. To my surprise she did and said very little. “Guard!” I called again, through the door, but again there was no response. It seems the guard had been instructed to ignore anything I might say this night. I turned back to regard the so-called Lady Tulia. Had she known this was the case? Is this why she seemed unconcerned?

 

Of course. She wouldn’t have entertained the possibility of me calling a guardsman into the room to take her away. And possibly that was why the door was locked, so I couldn’t take her from this room myself. 

 

Or was I inventing scenarios in my head that were overly elaborate?

 

“You will sleep on the tiles tonight. I am a light sleeper and am likely to wake at various points and wish to use you again.”

 

“Oh!” she gasped. 

 

Sometime about the third ahn in the morning she awoke suddenly with a cry of alarm as I parted her thighs and took her without any foreplay. I pressed her down on her back on the tiles and was surprised how quickly she oiled once she was penetrated. Her wrists were still tied to the slave ring, and she cried out, her body quivering from each thrust. I ravished her lips and took my pleasure quickly, fiercely, and without consideration for her feelings.

 

If she was the Tatrix, perhaps this is what she craved to experience. The rough, uncompromising domination of a man. And yet, this seemed wrong. The explanation couldn’t be that simple. Even if she had such fantasies, it just didn’t add up. 

 

“Who are you?” I said.

 

“The Lady… oh!” She gasped and responded with excitement to my further thrusts, “the Lady… Lady Tulia! Oh, Priest Kings, oh, oh, oh…”

 

“You are lying.” I hadn’t intended to give her an orgasm, but it seems that Fire Crotch girls are capable of climaxing sooner than a blonde or a brunette might. She writhed on the tiles, unexpectedly, surrendering and yielding with exquisite passion. I then climaxed, myself, marking her lips with the kiss of a master. 

 

I left her there on the tiles and returned to my couch bed. 

 

“Please…” she gasped., lying on her belly. “Hold me,” she whimpered. “Hold me, please.”

 

“No.” I lay down and closed my eyes. This was a deception. The fact annoyed me, particularly since I felt there was a hidden purpose to it, but one I couldn’t see. 

 

I found her awake, gazing up at my couch bed when I myself woke early in the morning.  I heard her flexing her bound wrists against the slave ring. 

 

“I should be back in my kennel,” she said, desperately. “I should have returned many ahn ago.”

 

“That is not my concern.” I rose from my bed, regarded her for a moment, and then slipped the tunic over my body. 

 

“You must let me go. I have to return to my kennel!”

 

I suspected that the guard outside my door would not respond to my voice until this girl had indeed left. If she was the Tatrix, she would have arranged matters that way. But I had the means to change the nature of this arrangement in a way that might be quite distressing to her. 

 

“Thank you,” she said as I knelt down and untied her wrists. She was in for something of a surprise. “Aie!” she cried, in pain, as I pulled her to her feet and then, seizing her hair, pushed her head down to the height of my hip. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

 

I began to lead her to the sliding panel. 

 

“I must go through there alone!” she cried. 

 

I said nothing as I slid the panel open and led her through the narrow passageway. 

 

“The door is locked! They will not open it to you!”

 

She cried out again as she saw with dismay that I knew where the key was, concealed on top of the lintel.

 

“No! No, you mustn’t! You mustn’t!”

 

She could not stop me from unlocking the door in the secret passageway, nor could she stop me from entering the concealed room with her at my side.

 

“This is where you changed?” I said.

 

“Please. You’re not supposed to be here!”

 

“Who are you really, girl?”

 

“I am the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium!” she wept. “Aie!” she cried out as I forced her flat onto her belly. I picked up a set of slave bracelets and, pulling her arms behind her body, locked her wrist together behind her back. I then took a pair of ankle shackles and did the same with her ankles. Finally, I drew her ankles back and secured both manacles together with a padlock. I turned her then onto her side for comfort. 

 

“No!” she cried. 

 

“I am going to breakfast now,” I said. “You will remain here. It will be interesting to discover if I will be permitted to speak to the Tatrix after I have dined. I suspect I will be informed that she is unavailable. What do you think?”

 

“Please, remove these bonds!”

 

“I suspect the guards in the palace do not know you are here. I suspect it may be very awkward for you if they discovered you in this state. If you cry out they will no doubt come to investigate the sound, and finding a captive of Isurium, you will be roughly taken down to the kennel pens. If you are who I think you are, that may prove worse than embarrassing for you. But you have the option to cry out after I’m gone. Alternatively, you can wait here until I return later in the day. That may be the safer option. We will then have an honest and frank conversation and you will explain certain matters to me before I release you and permit you to dress yourself.”

 

“I am Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium!”

 

“We shall see.”

 

And with that, I rose back to my feet and left the secret room through the outer door that led out into the palace corridor. To my surprise there was no guard positioned outside my door, some distance down the corridor. In fact, the corridor seemed empty.

 

I walked for a time through the palace, soon passing servants, slaves and guardsmen as I searched for where I might find breakfast. 

 

Ten ehn later I sat at a large table as slaves brought me my breakfast. After I had eaten I would ask whether I might speak to the Tatrix on the matter she had proposed to me yesterday. I felt sure I would be granted an audience if I said that, unless of course the Tatrix was unavailable at the moment. I smiled to myself. It would be interesting, indeed, if it turned out the Tatrix was unavailable. It might lend weight to certain possibilities.

 

I took my time with my breakfast, for it was very good. I still had some way to go when I suddenly heard her voice.

 

“Good morning, Roland of Corcyrus.” A woman entered the hall. She wore robes and gowns and a house veil about her lower face. Her mane of red hair was unmistakable. “I hope you slept well, and found the girl I sent to your rooms last night, pleasing.”

 

Her eyes sparkled above her house veil, as she regarded me with amused interest.