"Now, dear Haroun, hand my sisters the metal clamps, the ones with screws. They're hanging on the panel over there. This bestial sister of ours seems ready for an enlivening bout of flesh torment. Are you not, Mila, my treasure? Surely you remember using the flesh rake and clamps on me one evening in the Courtyard of Fountains while Damiana was busy with Pervez. But we'll skip the flesh rasp this time, although our illustrious guests would, I'm sure, prefer to see you oozing that black blood of yours before we give you a taste of the clamps."
Too embroiled in being serviced by the slaves, the onlookers did not react, nor did Haroun, who never raised an eyebrow or an objection to a slave being striated with a rasp. As to Mila, if she was in no condition to contest the use of flesh vices on her, sparing her the rake was unexpected, an indulgence she felt she would have to pay for sooner or later. Up at the palace she and Simon, at the nobles' request, had used the rasp and vices liberally and without scruple on female breasts and labia, as well as on male genitals, to debilitate slaves prior to the final flagellations. An enfeebled, waning victim was so much more enjoyable to torture.
Deferentially, the eunuch fetched the two pairs of hinged iron claws equipped with short chains from among the accessories Silvana had managed to garner from the palace stores, and handed them to Odile and Carmela. Each woman knew the implements only too well from bleak, if arousing, experiences under the horror, Obisba, when, gagged and hooded in bondage, they hung outstretched from the arched triforium in Precinct Six to be tormented by the dreaded Countess Castriada, who, fiendish as she was, at least let a slave orgasm.
The turbaned servant passed the clanking sex chains to Silvana's two associates.
Mounting the table, Odile leaned over Mila's bloated crotch, wrenched on the outer labia and screwed the tine-sharp clasps firmly into the swollen genital fronds. Disregarding her prey's lurchings and ear-splitting cries, she splayed the cunt until it yawned under the tug of the chains, and then encircled the thigh crease, anchoring the hook to the furthest link. Wrenched wide and disclosing the unrecompensed clitoris pulsating pitifully for attention, the denuded vagina gaped, sodden and scarlet. Mila was thus fully primed to enjoy further pain.
Silvana nodded to Carmela. With what the slave mistress considered remarkable dexterity, the plump, bucolic fingers stretched the sufferer's nipples aloft, one after the other, and screwed the clamps into the scourged areoles. There too, the sharp spines sank into the lymph meat and were left to throb, the chains awaiting distension. The two naked assistants gazed at what they had already inflicted on the body, scarcely able to believe their good fortune to be offered the chance of punishing the bitch they too loathed beyond measure.
Silvana and Haroun found the performance exemplary; truthfully, neither could have done better. But the blonde had not finished with preparing Mila for further pangs and pain.
Deftly, Silvana herself did the rest. Ramming her crotch into the slut's hooded face, she jerked the breast links upwards to hook them to those bifurcating the vulva. The victim's udders elongated, the flabby flesh pulled to its utmost reach to be hitched to the sex clamps.
Not only had she decided, to Haroun's astonishment when she announced it, to have the exposed cunt whipped but also the viper's midriff. He had seen much perpetrated on women in his time but so far never across flesh lying below chains spanning the belly; he just hoped the clamps would not tear out of the tender extremities, for there were limits even Thanon, his great master, observed when flogging a naked slave in chains...
Again he glanced at the welts fanning out over Mila's sex fork like carmine blossoms where Odile had flayed almost raw the slit, pouch and brand mark on the mons; she had used a whip fashioned from the hide of a sumpter mule, an article expressly designed for the palace nobles to punish a female groin. Silvana had acquired it with Damiana's help from among the surplus objects in Sefket's dungeon. Having employed it on Ilka and on one or two of the more sturdy girls she had inherited from Rasetha, she found it marked slave flesh in a particularly gratifying way, bringing up heavy, blood-glutted ridges that took days to subside.
As to Carmela, she had thrashed the bitch's back, as though beating a recalcitrant dromedary to make it rise - except that, chained as she was, Mila was denied the slightest movement, apart from her lurches of pain. Carmela had put all her weight into the strokes, amazed how much rear hide was available to a flogger between the collar strap and the coccyx; she recalled her own punishments in the torture precincts up at the palace and how the flagellations seemed to last an unending age for the back, from neck to arse, to be fully welted. Though far less hefty than Carmela, Mila, the whore, had a fine area of dorsal muscle that needed, as Silvana said, 'to be laid out in lavender' and the farm girl had flogged it hard.
As compensation, Silvana gave her assistants the long-awaited opportunity they felt was their right. After Fahdel had lowered the shuddering body a shade, each girl in turn mounted the table and rammed her dildo into Mila's rectum. If it did not delight the evening's victim, the dutiful slaves' orgasms, stimulated by the clit prong on the artifices, provided a pleasure beyond belief. At least the slut had been of some use.
Mila's yells of anguish had enchanted all three sweating avengers, as well as the visitors, until the slave mistress felt the time had come to whip the whore's midriff and belly, that zone stretching under the chains linking the sex to the teats. Haroun drew a line at that, warning her of the consequences. There were limits, he felt. Even his exalted Master of Slaves and Sefket had not risked punishing a whore-slave thus, even one condemned to the darkest cellars of the palace for insubordination. However, Silvana was not to be deterred but, all the same, harkened and, with a thin cane, gave Mila only a few strokes. Mild as it was, the result proved enough to send the nude to the verge of passing out. At the same time, Silvana had no wish to ruin her victim - at least not yet. Desisting finally, the sweating blonde mopped her brow and addressed the visitors.
"Honoured guests, this whore-slave, whom some of you will probably have recognized, despite the hood covering her despicable features, this whore of a slave," she repeated, "is now yours to use as you wish. However, only her throat and rump are available and with one proviso," - Haroun was again amazed at her command of high Bithynian diction, "she must not be allowed to orgasm and so, her vagina is out of bounds. But not so her mouth and anus. For the other orifice, all our female slaves are at your disposal."
The guests, particularly the men, protested but only briefly. To be curtly denied a flagellated slave's cunt seemed preposterous. Grudgingly, the nobles concurred, whereupon a sprightly young noblewoman, wearing multiple jewels in her ear lobes, on her nipples and scintillating in her navel, wiped sperm from her labia and pointed to Carmela.
"Very well, mistress. The session was satisfactory, although I would have preferred to see a cock-hard male on that table of yours. But, tell us, are you and your two assistants, especially the well-fleshed piece over there, available for thrashing and unrestricted penetration? That is, if you'd kindly remove that cumbersome dildo clogging her vagina."
"Ah, Carmela, you mean? She's not available to be flogged, your Grace, but both girls will be glad to be used. They have worked hard and deserve to be fucked or licked. As for me, I am not, alas, at your disposal."
The deserving females bowed, Odile's septum ring glinting over a smile of gratitude and, at a sign from their mistress, both suctioned out their double dildos. Odile, for one, desperately needed further orgasms but, if anyone was to bring her off, she trusted it would be Silvana, her goddess. Carmela too hoped to share Silvana's bed later, in recognition for services rendered. But their flaxen-haired overseer had a more important tryst to keep; Thanon again awaited her in his residence, the six-thonged whip, her own property, already greased. And, after the hours of pure luxury, she was only too ready for whatever her master demanded of her superb body. By Bracon the sacred, how his fierce flagell
ations exalted her!
About to leave the steaming brothel to the guests, already disrobing and selecting their whips and victims, Silvana drew the guard aside and pointed towards Mila.
"When they've finished, Fahdel, see to it that the trollop is returned to the stake outside. Remove her hood and fasten her by the neck strap to the chain. Douse her with sea brine to revive her and wash off the blood. Salt water will sting nicely."
Delighted to be left in charge, the man nodded as she departed. She could not last longer in the condition she was; she needed to be attached and thrashed.
The session with Thanon began gently as he licked her up and down, moistening the areas where her skin was dusted with golden down. Her shallow gasps became groans of yearning, then of pleading. Suddenly, her owner whipped her until he was ready and then took her savagely to orgasm. Finally unchained and lost to the world, she lay next to him, satiated, on the silken bed, sweat, beads of blood and their discharges sealing them together. The cries from the brothel finally fading, they sensed the nobles returning, unnoticed, to their lodgings, passing by the residence of the pair listening to the surf's susurrus on the darkened beach.
Equally unnoticed - except by the nightingales and watchful owls, the gulls already asleep - was the shadowy figure, hours later, severing the metal throat band that held the scourged Mila to the stake. Nor could the silent flight along the eastern beach, towards the distant towers of Mestria, have woken a single soul. The scullion did her best to keep up with Mila who, despite her condition, ran as if her bruised ankles had sprouted feathered wings.
When the sun rose behind the placid clouds of dawn, the tide had turned, creeping up the sands towards the imprints of two pairs of fleeing feet - those of a slender, welted woman, striding ahead of an ugly scullion who, too, had no wish to remain in Zahra.
It was Haroun, awakened by Ilka's cries, who discovered the escape. Silvana's favourite slave girl had returned, beaten and famished, after spending what remained of the night with a titled couple in their lodging. Staggering back in the morning light, she had noticed that Mila's stump stood untenanted and had summoned the eunuch from his bed, where he was dreaming the deities had given him his balls back. Searching the brothel, he found the scullion had also disappeared from among the sperm-clotted nudes sprawled over the floor. Silvana was alerted and Fahdel sent to enquire among the guests' lodgings - as if a Bithynian noble would stoop to bedding a squalid maid! But it was clear that the two, the maid and Mila, had taken off. Forthwith, Silvana blamed Haroun and Haroun blamed Fahdel.
Then they saw the prints of running feet still visible in the drying sand. The tracks led towards Mestria. It could not be true, Silvana cried, staring out into the distance where the local enemy's towers shimmered in the dispassionate sun that recognized neither boundaries nor the provincial dramas affronting humble humans. The seagulls parodied her shrill shrieks.
"What will our master say, and I in charge of that slut Mila?" Silvana was distraught. "Oh, Haroun, help me, in the holy name of Bithynia and our gods. Now I come to think of it, I saw that damn scullion talking to Mila one day while feeding her. Could they be in league?"
"Good riddance, mistress," the eunuch sighed. "Let them go."
"But an absconding slave, Haroun! You know what happened to that overseer some time back in the palace who let a slave escape, selling her to a band of ruffians. And you recall surely what Sefket did to her in the cellars. Oh, Haroun, help me, before the Master gets to know of it. Wasn't that fool Fahdel meant to keep an eye on her?"
"Fahdel! At night, all he's interested in is sex, not supervision. He sees only with the one eye, that at the top of his cock and that's usually deep in some cunt or other. But what's troublesome, I admit, is that our Mila's a Mestrian by birth. She could well have some idea of revenge in her devious brain. That might lead to trouble. The Mestrians are wild ones."
"Maybe I should have left her chained to the table. Laid down stricter rules, Haroun."
"Only the weak need rules, my dear," he replied. "No, you're not to blame. So don't fret. Our Master is magnanimous and forgiving, a tolerant and gentle person," - those were about the last epithets she would have chosen for her owner - "and you are his treasure."
Silvana suddenly wished she were back in chains at the palace, without responsibility, like Ortalana, Elfra and the others who sought nothing other than the whip and sex. She felt as if her authority was slipping like sand between her fingers. Terrified by what Thanon would say, she relied on this benign castrated spado who seemed to esteem her.
Gradually, she regained enough confidence in herself to control her anguish. It was essential that the escape did not come to Thanon's ears too soon. So, she returned to running the brothel even more rigorously than before, thrashing the inmates for the slightest error and even without cause; it helped to relieve her of the burden of Mila's escape. Yet the getaway weighed on her - like those lumps of lead Sefket had once attached to her nipples, prior to torturing her breasts following a countess's complaint over her lethargy.
Thanon learned of the episode only too promptly. About to summon her for punishment, he felt obliged to report the incident to the palace authorities, aware that its consequences might create difficulties for him as responsible for the outpost. Almost immediately, both he and the slave mistress were summoned to the Presence.
Unwilling to travel alongside his mistress, he set out alone, leaving Silvana to follow with Haroun and Fahdel. The interview took place, as usual, in the august, casement-lined reception chambers reserved for the priesthood that reminded Thanon vividly of an earlier séance in the same surroundings when he had requested the release of his concubine. But this hearing dealt not with the promotion of a blonde girl but the escape of a palace whore-slave.
While Thanon sat enthroned before the Elders, Silvana stood to the side, naked and trembling under the guard of two palace officers. The confrontation lasted only a moment, Thanon, to Silvana's astonishment, exculpating himself and allowing the blame to fall on her. She was not permitted to speak but clearly heard the verdict pronounced by the High Priest.
"As the Moon Festival approaches, noble Thanon, your woman, being guilty of failure to safeguard her slaves, will take the place of the one we had selected for sacrifice on that occasion. We see no clear reason to consign her to the virtuous Lord Sefket for punishment. Therefore, she will be taken to the platform two nights hence, spread naked and flagellated, as is the custom whereby the holy moon can be born anew."
Silvana gasped at the sentence, expecting Thanon to protest. He merely bowed.
"However, we see no objection," the dignitary added, "to her being reinstated as mistress of Zahra, since for the moment we have no one else, and she has apparently improved the place and controls her inmates with admirable severity, of which we approve."
The following two days and nights, chained in an oubliette, the condemned one felt tormented by conflicting feelings: the injustice of the sentence and, at the same time, the challenge it implied. Above all, she was distraught by her master's cold-blooded relinquishment of her body; she had expected him to defend her, even to plead her innocence. But he had ignored her, to a degree that made her suspect the man of callous selfishness.
When the fatal evening came, she wondered if she could ever make real love with him again. Overcome with bitterness and disdain, she meditated on the duplicity of mankind.
Oiled, her armpits and crotch shaved anew, and her beautiful body loaded with chains, she was led out to the platform, along with the male offering - a young stalwart, a recent addition to the palace slaves, whom she had not come across before. Enticingly good-looking, he was particularly well-membered and, to maintain his erection in tumescence, a leather thong had been tightened round the cock root and scrotum; frequently used on male slaves, Silvana recalled, the constriction accentuated agreeably the size of the shaft and the
purple veins throbbing along its length. He seemed pleased to be chosen for the moon ceremony and had the sort of physique Silvana would have welcomed as part of her batch down at Zahra.
Amid flaming torches and the baying mob, the two naked offerings mounted the platform towering above the crowds in the city square. There they were stretched and chained face to face between the posts, Silvana thrusting out her crotch and catching her breath as the cock slid up into her sheath, her body already hot and liquid with excitement.
Her murmurs covered by the clamour and the priests' incantations, she cautioned the lad. "Don't move. Keep still until the beating starts. And stop biting your lip, for pity's sake! The ritual's just fifty lashes and only across the back and arse, so relax." With her vaginal muscle she gave the phallus an encouraging squeeze. "If those neat buttocks of yours can't take it and you feel like hollering, kiss and tongue me. But, above all, hold your spunk. I'll tell you when to come." The youth gave her a shy smile and a cock-twitch of gratitude.
If the droves of onlookers were meant to be imploring the heavens to grant them a new moon, they seemed far more excited by the sight of the expiatory victims - when suddenly the noise subsided as two masked floggers crossed the planks and took up their positions. The male displayed a truly massive erection, the woman an equally powerful tool in the form of a black dildo strapped to her groin. Each overseer held a bull whip.
The beating proved no worse, if more lengthy, that anything Silvana had received - and given - in the precincts. If the new moon warranted fifty lashes, she felt the youngster inert inside her, would in future, contrary to herself, look upon the orb with misgiving, for he weathered the whip distressfully. It was the combined orgasms, when Silvana gave the word, which finally consoled him. What pleased her most, apart from the whip and cock, was to be on show before the High Priests, the nobles and the rabble. She had proved to them what a real woman could take, even if it was unjust and uncalled for. No one could match her beauty.
Silvana's Quest Page 21
