Silvana's Quest

by Caroline Swift

  "But, noble master, this is indeed a surprise, and a delightful one. Had you sent a rider ahead, I'd have had one of these indolent sluts made ready for your Lordship. I know how you like a naked lass stretched from the hook..." She paused, puzzled by the man's frown and by the lack of response from under the flap of leather covering her superior's crotch. "Perhaps Your Grace would prefer to rest while some supper's prepared, and then I'll have a bed made up and wash down a couple of my whores for you and your companion..."

  Thanon controlled his temper. "The Elders and I are far from content with the state of things here, you squalid slag, We realize you have to make do with coarse, common flesh but complaints have been multiplying from visiting nobles. The conditions here are unacceptable, woman. There I have to agree with the Elders. Disease could well be rife in such a shambles. " He called to mind the sweet, fragrant halls of Saronis, and the equally immaculate Silvana.

  The mass of bawd-meat began to tremble. "But, master, my shackled subordinates are all healthy, well-fed and obedient under the lash. And none of the bitches is pregnant. I've had no grumbles from the courtiers so far." The vast, swaggering load of grease gestured broadly.

  "Perhaps but grievances are circulating up at the palace. Fewer of the nobles are tempted to come and relax here. No, your slaves are in a piteous state - just look at them! They are undernourished and kept indoors. My orders were that you should use the outside posts to display your inmates, let them bathe and have a taste of sunlight and run them along the beach to exercise, if necessary under the whip to keep them alert."

  "But, mighty master, sun ruins their flesh and, after shedding blood, salt water drives them crazy. So I have to gag and hood them up and..."

  "No, this will not do, slag." The words turned the rolls of suet into quivering jelly, as the decision came. "Therefore, you will be replaced."

  The hulk fell to its knees in horror. "Replaced! Sent back to the palace and...Oh, no!"

  "Such is my decision, Rasetha, you putrid wineskin, and Sefket will see to it those gross mounds of lard are reduced to proper proportions." Mention of Sefket numbed the bawd. The man let a moment pass for the threat to sink in. "So, you will accompany me and my guard up to the palace, and on foot. That will be a start to slimming you off. Prepare for departure tomorrow, when the sun is at its zenith, so you can sweat." Then Thanon asked: "Which of these miserable ones is the senior?"

  A trembling hand pointed to a starveling of a brunette. Terrified, the nude lurched to her feet and bowed, displaying what she had to offer. "She's called Ilka," Rasetha muttered.

  Thanon looked at the over-whipped breasts and tortured teats; though quaking with fear, they stood out well. The resolute look in the eyes, despite the dark pouches of suffering underlying them, satisfied him. "That slag will do," he agreed, wondering how she would take to Silvana as Rasetha's successor. "She will run the place until your replacement arrives to take over. Release her and equip her with a riding crop as her badge of office."

  Astounded, the bawd did as she was told, the promoted one staring in disbelief at her sudden advancement. Rasetha chanced a murmur. "Yes, master, that hot harlot has guts. But I give her no lenience. Takes the nipple-screws well when gagged and chained. But, if I may ask, my Lordship, who's to replace me and run this place?"

  She received no reply as the guard hustled her out of her realm where she had been so content. Then, as the man tied her wrists to the long rope behind his mount, she realized she was to pass the night with the horses in the hyssop grass until the departure. Terror and grief invading her, she admitted the march would certainly slim her off - as long as she survived it.

  The Branding

  Up at the palace and now sensing what awaited her, Silvana found herself invited to Damiana's florid quarters; she had never seen such luxury nor imagined passing such a night as that her former overseer reserved for her. The session proved even more thrilling than that with Saroya. By the light of a solitary cresset, the blonde tried to satisfy the slave mistress as best she could, recalling the impassioned flagellations and tortures she had received from those inventive hands. Unfurling the woman's throbbing, half-shaved crotch, she licked and sucked her through one orgasm after another, Damiana's nails clawing at the sweating flesh smothering her face, as she responded likewise, she liked the girl's dangling labia. Rarely, even with Odile, had Silvana been given such pleasure. Both lost count of the climaxes until the pale dawn brought sleep, the two bodies glued together, surfeited.

  The sun had risen when Damiana decided to impart what she had gleaned concerning Thanon's meeting with the priesthood. The information had come to her during a previous night spent with one of the younger prelates who regularly honoured her couch and anus when she was not otherwise occupied. Not only did she extract sperm in plenty from the man but valuable information and gossip.

  "It seems, precious," she murmured in Silvana's ear, "that the Elders have agreed to your accompanying your master to Zahra. And, by Bracon, aren't you fortunate! The only condition is that you have to be branded. But, as you're determined to follow him, you'll take that in your stride. You see, no slave can leave the palace unmarked with the holy serpent...."

  Roused from lethargy, the spent beauty disentangled herself to stare at the woman in disbelief and consternation, the bruised, mauled nipples puckering with fear.

  "Now, calm down, delicious," Damiana went on. "That's the rule here. Even discarded slaves, sent to the prisons, or sold off, have to be branded. Don't look so alarmed, my sweet. They all live through it perfectly well. And anyway you've had the cunt tongs and nipple pincers, haven't you? Well, the brand isn't much more than that. Except that the mark's there forever. In a way, it can be considered as an emblem of recognition."

  The blonde had paled, the forget-me-not eyes widening, as the older woman kissed her. "The Elders require it and it only lasts a bat of an eyelid." Damiana's hand descended to the wet mons to console her. "It's here the iron burns you but you'll come through sweet as honey, knowing you. And, by the way, your mons is flogged first to prepare this hump of gorgeous flesh." The hand squeezed the bulge, still moist with saliva and outpour.

  "But why, mistress? Why?" The voice had become a whisper.

  "Well, just in case you try to escape, treasure."

  "But I'm my master's sex slave. Why, in the name of the gods, would I think of leaving him? My body belongs to him..."

  "Maybe, but such is the rule. He's taking you to Zahra - beyond these great walls - and you constitute a risk for the palace. It's as simple as that."

  "Does my master know of this?" came the despairing murmur. "He would never consent to such a thing." Looking into the violet eyes, she realized Damiana was sincere and not lying in order to excite her further. The real lie, Silvana knew, was not what one tells others but what one tells oneself. The woman was not one who indulged in self-deception; self-indulgence, yes, at the expense of a mere slave girl but certainly did not descend to guile.

  "So, I'm to be branded. Is that it?" Damiana nodded and both fell silent, the girl staring at the rays of sunlight slanting across Zahra and over the neighbouring province of Mestria to the east - that troublesome realm always in revolt against the Bithynian attempts to annex it. Damiana had already lost a lover in the guards participating in the local battles aimed at curtailing the sudden attacks on outlying strongposts and villages. The Mestrians took the men they could lay hands on to serve as labourers, the women as brothel fodder. An uneasy peace, fortunately, prevailed for the time being but for how long, only the gods could tell. Moreover, the two provinces owed allegiance to different deities, which complicated matters.

  Only Haroun was there to meet her when she returned to the south tower. In silence he stripped her of her straps and boots and chained her wrists high to the bedposts, as if to ready her for her master. But the day went by in solitude and vigil, Silvana falling into
a sombre trance. Damiana had exhausted her, sexually and emotionally. A scalding iron was something the blonde treasure could well do without. Inwardly, she prayed to Locrana and to as many gods she could recall but when the evening meal arrived, she asked Haroun as to the whereabouts of her master, only to receive a shrug from the eunuch. Time had lost its meaning; it drifted by like the clouds beyond the transoms.

  When the Numidian came for her, he was even of less help, being bereft of a tongue. He merely sponged down her body, attached golden fetters to her wrists and ankles, and bound her arms behind, elbow to elbow; almost tenderly, he then fastened a choke-chain tightly round her neck - the thing reminding Silvana of a similar one that had nearly throttled her one night in Precinct Five during a vicious flagellation from two young male courtiers who had then filled her to the brim with august jets of spunk.

  Whatever now was to follow, circumstances boded ill and if she believed she was ready, she was mistaken.

  Clipping a lead of glittering links to the throat-throttler, the Numidian led her down the stairs to the great hall. In spite of her other fears, she rendered thanks to the deities, whom she presumed still guarded her, that it was not her freed clitoris that was being wrenched as on past occasions when she was hauled down for those interminable sessions of breast caning.

  To her relief, she passed by the huge crucifix, unoccupied for once, and was halted before an alcove set in the wall of the passage leading to the terrace. There the man handed her over to two masked females, creatures she had never set eyes upon before; they were neither slave handlers nor precinct domestics, but they dealt with her efficiently enough. The arms were chained to an overhead hook, her legs drawn apart to the base of the recess and locked, whereupon her body was prepared. It was done in total silence.

  As if for a religious festival, her naked flesh was oiled from head to foot, the eyes rimmed with kohl, the lips painted scarlet and, once the females had chafed them into full erection, the areoles and teats given a coating of purple pigment, the friction bringing her clitoris out of its sheath. The same dark dye was smeared over the drooping sex labia, up to the apex of the cunt, which only exacerbated her sensation of sexual deprivation. Then, with extreme care, the remaining pair of sex rings was burnished and, as Silvana half-expected, the pubic mound was given a liberal greasing, evidently to ready it for the branding iron. Finally, a dark ribbon gathered the blonde locks back behind the nape. The entire performance was executed with punctilious precision, under the eye of the faithful Haroun, whose presence lent her a crumb of comfort. If only Thanon were there to add a word of encouragement...

  "The body is ready for the flagellation and... the rest," the tensed eunuch informed the Numidian. "Once the courtiers and duty slaves are settled in, you can hand it over to the slave master on duty and accompany him out on to the terrace for the chaining and readying."

  Silvana had, in fact, anticipated being dragged to Sefket's dungeon, where the braziers were always glowing. But the sudden realization that the ordeal was to take place on the terrace, apparently before a host of nobles, dismayed her even more. Normally accustomed to the precincts for whipping, sex torture, penetration and yelling herself hoarse in the presence of an overseer and one or two courtiers, the prospect of a public staging scared her.

  Stumbling towards the passageway alongside the terrace, she wondered what was meant by 'readying' and feared the worst. As to the preparatory flagellation, that she felt she could take without too much concern or screaming; yet she wondered who would deliver it. If, quite apart from the branding, it were Sefket himself, she could only pray to the gods she would survive.

  With the sound of distant gongs and dulcimers, she reached the end of the causeway leading on to the moonlit space beyond, flickering under the flambeaux. She was met by a masked, leather-clad youth, and recognized Simon, as handsome as ever, by the size of his erection jutting out from the tight breeches. The slit in the glans eyed her lecherously, reminding her of that same phallus and the atrocious, unwarranted beating she had suffered in the Overseers' Quarters. Evidently, the bastard had eluded reprimand and, to her horror, appeared to be in charge of her body for the session. Nothing could have perturbed her more. The prospect of being flagellated by him, prior to the hot iron, petrified her, and obviously there was no point in trying to curry favour - as Odile had taught her to do - by tempting his cock into what was a ready throat. Silvana hardly knew whom she loathed more, that presumptuous dunghill with the big penis or the dreadful Mila - whose only joy was to see a female, more attractive than herself, writhing under her whip. Silvana felt relieved that the unspeakable hellcat was confined to Sefket's dungeons. Simon was quite enough.

  What she did not yet know was that the one designated to flog her into readiness for the brand was not he but someone far more senior and ruthless - someone who was out to prove herself in her new capacity as the mighty Sefket's assistant.

  The scene unfolding before her startled Silvana even more. The moonlit terrace was crammed with spectators lounging in chairs and being serviced by her former colleagues, all naked, some crouching over open crotches, others straddling thighs, already at work.

  "Is this the slag to be flogged and branded?" the youth with the rigid cock asked casually, Silvana wondering, under the circumstances, who else it could possible be but she. Haroun confirmed the fact, making her kneel, as the man added: "The slut will wait there until we are ready. Move the bitch forward to the threshold for her formal entry."

  The girl caught the eunuch's conciliatory remark. "Go easy on her, master. She has important connections.... She's no longer a mere flogging slave." The leather-clad one dismissed the plea with contempt.

  In the pause that followed, Silvana received a further shock. In a broad space to the side of the passage, a stark-naked female hung by the wrists. The paltry body twisted slowly from its chain in the aftermath of what must have been repeated whippings. The youngster was comatose, the weals ripening like sombre, mauve blossoms stifling under the skin.

  Silvana was allowed to gaze a moment at the emaciated figure that was none other than Britta's. The chit seemed to have become old before being given a chance to live out her teens. Poor, wretched Britta, unable to rise to the occasion, was in a state that frightened Silvana; clearly, the breasts had been tortured, no doubt in an attempt to enlarge them, but still lay flat, despite the traction exerted by the puny muscles straining from the shoulders; but at least the thrust of the nipples did appear more substantial than before. The artery in the neck, congested behind the strap, throbbed mauve, the belly bulged far too much, considering that slaves were expected at all times to hollow the midriff below the ribs. The slave's hands had blanched from prolonged suspension in the leather manacles, the face as pallid as the sperm congealed around the mouth. In a sisterly way, Silvana felt for the slut and hoped some trader would strike a bargain for the useless wretch and thus save her from being consigned to the palace's subterranean vaults where she would not last long in the state she was.

  "That strumpet's done for," Simon barked, confirming Silvana's fears. "She's for the dark hole of hell below unless a buyer comes along. Now, on your feet, my blue-eyed beauty." His whip shrilled through the empty air but unaccountably spared the blonde - her flesh, she realized, was wanted pristine for the ceremony or at least until it was under way. "Let's have those tits well to the fore. And suck in that belly, so the mons bulges instead. It's going to suffer beyond belief. And we all want to watch how a sturdy, broad-bottomed nude writhes. That's all you sluts are worth - thick, greased rawhide." Then he added: "Now I remember you, yes, in our Quarters - and, by Locrana, didn't you yell your guts out as I lashed you. What's your name, gorgeous?" Goose-flesh snaring her, she told him.

  "Well, our brawny Silvana, your butt's in for something other than what Sefket's going to do to your belly. Let's hope you're tougher than yon skinny one." He gestured towards the body hanging
nearby. Then he told the Numidian: "Right, take this baron of beef in to be broiled, Bulto. You like the smell of grilled meat, eh? This'll give you an appetite."

  The black grinned and, fondling her rump, did as he was told, Silvana choking as the collar tightened, a whip-haft gouging her anus. Once on the terrace, she stared at the dreaded array: the semicircle of lofty stone columns, loaded with chains; a table strewn with ominous items; in the shadows, the brazier smouldering, a branding iron slanting upwards, awaiting a gloved hand and her greased mount of Venus; and beyond, the sweating sex slaves, slurping among the courtiers. Never had she felt so vulnerably naked in all her palace life - apart from that night with the Countess of the Marches, a bitch if ever there was one; the ogress, she recalled with a shudder, had had her impaled on a slave-stump, her body veered back, the limbs parted and chained to four paving bolts. The whip, together with the stake up her sex and distending the belly, had deprived her of intercourse and sleep for days. Silvana was not one to give in easily but she feared what awaited her would certainly delight the Countess, who was already lounging expectantly, her gloved hands frigging Andreas's cock while tugging on the balls in the ringed scrotum. The lad's face showed his fear of spending too soon.

  What courage Silvana could still summon up began to dwindle when, positioned between the central pair of pillars, she was told to raise her arms and part the legs. Feeling her ankles being locked to the granite plinths, she began to quiver with fear, her erotic emotions frittering away as Simon, helped by the huge Numidian, completed the bondage, tautening her naked body to the limit of the articulations. Then he commented on the volume of the rump.