Outcast of Gor Chapter Thirty Nine

 

I suppose I must have looked surprised.

 

The Tatrix certainly seemed amused by my reaction to her walking into the dining hall this morning. 

 

“You’re staring,” she remarked as she walked idly towards a side table on which an array of breakfast foods were laid out in presentation style. The table was covered with a brightly woven cloth, and on top of it there were golden platters, gleaming bowls, and ornate plates, each one filled with a different delicacy. The centre of the table boasted a platter of freshly baked bread, still warm from the oven, its crust golden and crispy, while next to it I could take my pick from bowls of rich, creamy yoghurt, topped with a swirl of honey and garnished with fresh mint leaves. And besides that, begging to be tasted, a plate of ripe, juicy fruit - figs, dates, and oranges - adding a burst of colour as well as flavour to the table.

 

There were also several small plates of mezze, or appetizers, each one more tempting than the last, with fresh olives, marinated in oil and spices, and a bowl of bright red harissa, the fiery chili paste that adds a kick to any dish, accompanied by various cuts of cured meats and cheeses, each cheese a doorstep wedge of temptation. And beside them, small servings of hummus, and zaalouk, each one made with fresh herbs and spices and bursting with flavour.

 

“I hadn’t expected to see you at the breakfast table this morning, your Grace,” I replied, ignoring the food for the moment. It wouldn’t do to stuff your mouth while conversing with a Tatrix in her home. 

 

“Oh? And why is that?” She turned from the side table to gaze about the room.

 

“I think you possibly know the answer to that question.”

 

“I know the answers to many questions, but that doesn’t stop me from asking them.” 

 

“What is going on?” I asked.

 

“I am sure I do not know what you are referring to. I simply came here to ascertain that your evening last night was pleasant. The girl I sent to your chambers was pleasing?”

 

The Tatrix was fully dressed in sumptuous gowns and robes. The House veils – those lighter fabrics, not appropriate for the streets – concealed her features. I recalled that last night I had subjected the Lady Tulia Fava to what the Goreans refer to as the master’s kiss. I had roughly bruised her lips with the passion of my kisses and had drawn a little blood with the edge of my tooth. It was possible that if I gazed at the lips of the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium this morning, I might discern the markings before they had time to fade.

 

“You are veiled,” I said. Yesterday the Tatrix had unveiled her features, making sure I got a good look at her face before the Lady Tulia was sent to my bed chamber. She had said I was not a stranger to her, which under Gorean custom permits a man to view the features of a Lady. The arrangement assumes a close connection – possibly a family member, or a companion, or, as in my case, a man to whom the Lady owes a debt of honour. 

 

“I am a modest and respectable Free Woman,” said the Tatrix, Aliyyah. “Of course I am veiled as I walk through the palace.”

 

I wondered if her lower lip – that lovely lower lip – might still bear a mark or a soft bruise that she didn’t want me to see.

 

“You said I am not a stranger to you, your Grace.”

 

“That is correct. But I will not be here long. My veils are elaborate and fussy. It would be time consuming to remove them for just a few ehn, only to then have to rearrange them once more.”

 

“I understand.” I drank from a small cup of black wine, which is the Gorean equivalent of coffee. Black wine was once terribly expensive until the monopoly of the beans was broken by imports from Earth. It is said that the recent black trade in coffee beans is far more lucrative than the trade in slave girls abducted from Earth, which begs the question why haven’t the Gorean slavers simply switched to smuggling coffee beans. “Are you familiar with the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium?”

 

“Of course not. Why should I be?”

 

“You have never seen her?”

 

“No.” 

 

“Interesting.” I placed the small coffee cup down on the table. 

 

“Why should that be interesting?”

 

“You will forgive me, your Grace, for I do not truly believe you. I think some game is being played upon me. I think you know that the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium – if that is indeed her name – bears a striking resemblance to yourself.”

 

“I find that hard to believe.”

 

“It would be interesting to see the two of you standing side by side?”

 

“That is obviously not going to happen,” she mocked.

 

“I thought you might say that.” I gazed at the woman’s wrists. The Lady Tulia Fava would still bear the marks on her wrists of the tight slave bracelets that I had locked upon her only half an ahn ago. The marks would not have faded yet, especially as the skin of a Fire Crotch is pale and easily marked. I could not see Aliyyah’s wrists, of course, as the long floppy sleeves of her gown concealed them. 

 

“She performed well? She pleased you? In the furs, I mean?”

 

“You seem remarkably interested in her performance, on her back, on the tiles,” I said. Slaves are often taken on the tiles. Free Women may be enjoyed respectfully in the furs of a soft couch. That is a difference worth noting. 

 

“I am interested in the comfort and satisfaction of my guest. Does that surprise you?”

 

“There are many things that surprise me, your Grace.” I felt like returning quickly to the secret room to see if a beautiful Fire Crotch girl might be found still helplessly chained there. I suspected she might not be.

 

“I was hoping that in your gratitude for my gift last night, you might be moved to reconsider my offer. I can be very generous. What do you want?”

 

I smiled again. “You are asking me to name my price?”

 

“I suppose I am.”

 

“Would you grant me the ownership of the girl from last night? As a down payment? Would you have her brought to me, clad in a brief slave tunic, then stripped on the tiles and routinely branded with a white hot kef, before being rendered into my legal ownership?”

 

There was silence in the room for a moment. Nothing was said.

 

“Why her?” asked Aliyyah, after a while. 

 

“She pleased me.” I gazed directly at the Tatrix in her fine robes and veils. Were there rough marks on her slim wrists, concealed by the sleeves of her rich clothes? Was there bruising to be found on those ripe lips, beneath the layers of veiling? 

 

“There are other girls. More beautiful girls than her.”

 

“Perhaps. But I have not asked for other girls. I think I would enjoy owning the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium. I think she would look good at my feet, kissing them, begging slave rape.” I gazed still at the Tatrix, and wished I could see her expression from behind the security of the veils. Those veils offer a Free Woman considerable protection from a man discerning her true emotions.

 

“I can parade twenty girls before you – each one a girl of high price. You may choose as many as you wish to own.”

 

“Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium. As a down payment. Branded in this hall before me and given into my legal ownership.”

 

The Tatrix looked away for a moment. She seemed to regard the dining table and the food laid out upon it. “The Lady Tulia Fava is spoken for. She is not available.”

 

The smile on my face curled slightly. “Oh?”

 

“I can offer you the finest slaves money can buy.”

 

“But not the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium?”

 

“Not her, no. Never her.”

 

“Interesting. Why are you veiled before me?”

 

“I told you, I move about my palace so veiled. It is time consuming to remove and fix the veils in place again. Easier to keep the veils until I retire for the night.”

 

“Did you sleep well last night, your Grace?”

 

“I suppose I did.”

 

I rose from where I sat. We were alone at present. I could speak freely without others overhearing us. “And did you dream of the slave shackle that I locked about your left ankle?”

 

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

 

“Your body flushed when I placed you on your knees before me, and locked you in slave steel.”

 

“I think you are mistaken.”

 

“You have a beautiful body, your Grace. If that was you last night. And I think it was. You have slave curves.”

 

She said nothing.

 

“But then you know that, don’t you? You are very familiar with the curves of your own body. You know what those curves mean and how they inflame the desires of a man.”

 

Still she said nothing. 

 

“You orgasmed quickly. You came before I thought you were even ready. You must have been desperately needy and aroused when you entered my rooms.”

 

“You are talking of the girl I sent to your chambers? The Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium? You talk of her?”

 

“Do we really need to play this game?”

 

“She is obviously a slut. She sounds like a slut.”

 

“Obviously,” I agreed. “But then she is a female. She cannot help herself.”

 

“I am a female,” she protested.

 

“Yes, you are.”

 

“Consider my offer,” she said, turning away from the dining table. “Ask for anything other than the Lady Tulia Fava of Isurium. She is not for you.”

 

“I see.” I regarded her figure, shrouded and concealed in her toe length gowns of loosely worn satins and silks. 

 

“There are other slaves, more wanton, needy and desirable.”

 

“I see.”

 

“They will satisfy you in ways she cannot, I am sure.”

 

And then she left the room.

 

I finished my breakfast, taking my time, savouring the food, as I pondered this perplexing situation. Why had I asked for the Lady Tulia Fava? It had been a whim on my part; hardly premeditated. I didn’t really desire her, after all, or did I? I thought back at how the red haired beauty had looked, so surprised, startled, dismayed, even, as I had chained her. She wasn’t used to being chained – that much was clear. And yet it had also excited her. She had become heated. It had perhaps been a fantasy she had long harboured in secret. I smiled as I dipped some fresh bread in the olive oil and placed it between my lips. So many Gorean women seemed to become aroused and heated when placed in bondage. They were very different from the women of Earth. It couldn’t just be coincidence, could it? Perhaps I did want her. Perhaps I did want her, purely because I suspected she was the Tatrix. What man wouldn’t want to discover that a Tatrix, beneath her smoky robes and aloof demeanour, was in secret a hot needy slave girl, yearning for the touch of a man, desperate to be stripped and taken, but also terrified to admit it to herself? Yes, such a girl, hot with passion and already awakening inside to her deeply repressed sexual appetites, would make for a hot and delightful slave. 

 

But in truth I didn’t know what I wanted. It had been a test, of course, and as I made my way from the dining room, back towards the secret room, adjacent to my own, I knew what I would find. The chamber was empty. Of course it was empty. I kicked gently with my foot at the loose ankle shackles, still chained to the slave ring. They had been about the ankles of Lady Tulia Fava. How good they had looked, locked on her ankles. The shackling of a woman’s ankles is an aesthetically pleasing sight, after all. Beside the chain, discarded at a whim, lay the slave bracelets, the cuffs also open. What wasn’t clear was whether a man had come for Lady Tulia, or whether she had somehow freed herself. The second possibility was unlikely. A naked girl did not easily free herself from secure shackling. But if a man had come for her, then that meant the man must have had strict orders to return her safely without question to some other safe part of the palace. Did he know her true identity? Surely not. It was a mystery for which I had no immediate answer.

 

“Who are you, truly, Lady Tulia?” I mused as I knelt and picked up the slave bracelets. I felt sure I was being played in some fashion, but it wasn’t clear to me what the purpose might be. I was clearly meant to notice the resemblance to the Tatrix. I was clearly meant to ponder whether this girl was indeed her. But then why? I rose to my feet and turned the slave shackles in my hand. I felt a stirring in my loins as I first thought of Lady Tulia, then considered Lady Tulia in torn scraps of the Tatrix’s robes, and then as the Tatrix herself. I wanted the truth to be that Lady Tulia and the Tatrix were one and the same, but that didn’t mean my assumption was true. Could there be a woman who resembled the Tatrix, but if so, that itself couldn’t be a coincidence. And the Tatrix had claimed she had never seen Lady Tulia, so, that would make the resemblance even more of a coincidence. 

 

The resemblance had to be pre-meditated. Either she was the Tatrix, or it had been arranged deliberately. A coincidence was so randomly improbable as to be dismissed out of hand. 

 

I thought back to an old story I had once read as a child – a story adapted in many forms before – of a Prince and a Pauper exchanging places for a day upon discovering they resembled one another. And then the thought of a lofty Tatrix and a lowly slave exchanging places for a girlish lark crossed my mind. In my fantasy it of course turned out badly for the Tatrix when she thought to simply skip back to her chambers, unlock the collar about her throat, and shrug off the whimsical role of a palace slave. 

 

I left the chambers and walked through the halls of the palace, treading ancient floors that were paved with smooth marble and terracotta tiles, heading out to the central courtyard gardens that I had spied before. These were screened by tarn wire on high and considered safe, for I had seen the Tatrix’s daughter herself walking such gardens in the company of her friends. I passed through an enclosure of arched doorways lined with intricate frescoes depicting scenes from Gorean mythology, history, and nature and then through to a carefully cultivated square, perhaps the size of a British football pitch, filled with vibrant flowers blooming in every direction. Bougainvillea and jasmine vines spilled over the inner walls, their delicate petals and intoxicating fragrance perfuming the air as I paused to admire a series of exotic velvet textured crimson roses, and a canopy of dainty orange blossoms, swaying in the gentle breeze.

 

As I strolled further, the sound of trickling water drew me towards a fountain. Goreans love their water features, and no garden is complete without at least one of them. Cool, crystal-clear water cascaded down various tiers of marble, glistening in the direct sunlight. The sound was soothing and hypnotic, and I felt something of an inner calm as I gazed at the slow moving stream trickling across a series of pebble strewn waterways.  

 

The sound of the water contrasted with the soft cooing of doves and the warbling of long tailed  birds with a soft purple plumage that probably did not have counterparts on Earth. The garden seemed to be a haven for exotic birds, attracting them from across the many divisions of the walled city. 

 

The opulent fruit trees close to the fountain provided much-needed shade from the late morning sun, and I found myself drawn towards their cool, inviting embrace and sense of tranquillity. The scent of citrus wafted towards me, as I walked between the trunks, reaching up to the leafy branches to  casually pluck a juicy orange that I juggled self-consciously in my right hand. 

 

What now? I had been promised citizenship, and with that I now had a Home Stone, it seemed. Gor was to be my home for the rest of my life, for I saw no way of returning to Earth. No doubt there were starships somewhere, but I had no idea how to find one or even persuade the pilots to allow me on board. So, what was I going to do with my life? All things considered, I had adapted well to a low technology world. I had proven I wasn’t incapable of surviving, and now I had a life that might well be considered comfortable. Fate had made me a slaver, for now at least. I had a chain of girls and a tacit acceptance by the caste of Slavers that operated within the city. I had some money, and the theoretical favour of the Tatrix, despite my refusal of her offer. Leaving aside the threat of war, I was reasonably safe for the first time since I had been abducted to this planet. Provided Corcyrus didn’t fall and go the way of Troy or Constantinople, I might now thrive and prosper. 

 

And was Gorean culture really so bad? If you were a man, strong and healthy, there were perks. Slaves, for one. beautiful, luscious, exciting slaves. The culture of this world was built on the concept slavery and its people considered it a normal, even good thing. Even the slaves themselves had supported the institution when they had been free. Many probably did still, even as they now wore collars. Who was I to argue otherwise? 

 

I thought of my chain coffle of slave girls and smiled to myself. They were mine. I owned them. I could have any one of them, any time I wished. They were there to serve me. And they were all so beautiful. 

 

A motion through the trees distracted me. I turned quickly and saw her standing ten feet to my left, flanked at a discrete distance by two watchful hand maids. 

 

The young woman wore a dazzling, colourful series of overlapping gowns and robes, the layers of her soft fabrics flowing about her person in waves, catching the light and shimmering with every step she took. The outer gown itself was a kaleidoscope of bright pinks, greens, and yellows, all intricately woven together in a pattern that suggested youth and innocence. These were the colours of a young maiden, not a mature, worldly-wise woman. 

 

Rather daringly for a Gorean city, the young woman's dress was fitted at the bodice, accentuating her curves, while the flowing skirts of the gown swirled around her ankles as she moved. The fabric seemed soft and light, aa it rippled in the warm breeze, like the flow of a river.

 

Her rich garments were accessorized with tastefully expensive jewellery; a mixture of vibrant stones and precious metals set in broaches and rings. Her red hair was swept back into a low decorous bun, exposing the delicate curve of her neck where the layers of modest veils permitted the briefest of glimpses.

 

“Excuse me, Lady,” I said, as I flipped the orange fruit between my open palms. “I didn’t know this garden was occupied.” I offered the girl a slight bow of my head. “I shall take my leave.”

 

“Please don’t,” she said, softly. 

 

“You’re the Tatrix’s daughter?” I was fairly certain it was the Lady Laetitia of the House of Mercator.

 

“I am. You saved my life.” She took two small steps towards me and I caught a whiff of a sweet, soft, perfume suitable for a Free Woman. “And you asked nothing in return.”

 

I nodded. “I am glad you are safe, Lady.”

 

“I had expected to be claimed. Another man might have done so. He could have sold me in Argentum for a high price.”

 

“I am not such a man,” I remarked. “I did not save your life to simply enslave you.”

 

“And yet, fate has now bound us together. The Priest Kings say that when a man saves a woman, her fate now lies in his hands.”

 

“I am not sure the Priest Kings have ever said that, or indeed anything at all. Men say that on behalf of the Priest Kings. Men say a lot of things on behalf of the Priest Kings. You are not in my debt, Lady. I claim no obligations from you.”

 

She laughed softly and talk another step towards me that caused her two hand maidens to look surprised. “It is not that simple, Sir. Mother tells me you are a barbarian?”

 

“I am, yes.”

 

“From Earth? I know of Earth.”

 

I nodded. 

 

“Then you do not truly understand, do you? When a man saves a woman, the Priest Kings take their life threads and wind them closely together. Their fates are now bound, whether they wish it or not.”

 

“My world is a little bit more rational about such things.”

 

“Priest Kings are real. Ask any man or woman of Ko-Ro-Ba. We are bound now by an invisible thread. You can only cut that thread by taking my life. Do you wish to kill me, Roland of Corcyrus?”

 

“No, of course not.”

 

She smiled softly beneath her veils. “Then my fate lies in your hands. The Priest Kings have decreed it. Will you walk with me?”

 

“Lady, I was about to take my leave of the palace. I have a coffle of slaves that I must reclaim. I have been away for some time. I have business to attend to.”

 

“I only ask a few ehn of your time.”

 

“Of course.” I nodded. It would be impolite to refuse such a simple request. “What is it you wish to say?”

 

“I want to do what my mother could not do. You saved my life once. I will beg if necessary, for you to save me a second time. My life is bound to you by a golden thread. And destiny is all.”

 

To be concluded