"Go to sleep now, little slave," he said. "You may again sleep on my bed, but do not presume to practice your newfound feminine wiles on me without my invitation. I have had the favors of courtesans and queens from every corner of the known world. You have nothing that I have not tasted many times before, and your skills are far from honed to the perfection they will be within another fortnight. Do not imagine I would find you irresistible."
With that, he turned from her, and to all appearances, fell almost instantly asleep.
For a moment she glowered at him, boiling with fury. The arrogance! The rudeness of the man! But perhaps he was right. No doubt she did have much to learn--still.
With a soft sigh of defeat, she crept to the foot of the bed and curled up to try to sleep.
* * * *
Over the next nights, Jaelle'n gradually realized the truth of Aguilar's statements as she learned new twists on the complexities of pleasing a master, regardless of his tastes, his virility or his jaded worldliness. She found that Aguilar could enter her from angles and in postures she would never have dreamed possible. She learned how to dance even more sensuously, to arch and turn in the ways that best displayed her body to a master's eyes. Every subtlety of using her hands and mouth to tease and caress, to bring even an unresponsive male to the point of climax, she practiced and polished to perfect execution.
Aguilar was an exacting teacher. At times, he called in Madame Tanith to observe and comment, to phrase in women's words what he could not quite seem to make Jaelle'n understand. At first the presence of another person during the intimacies she shared with her master embarrassed her keenly, made her feel stiff, awkward and shamed, but this, too, passed. The older woman was so calm and matter-of-fact about the entire business that Jaelle'n slowly came to detach her sensibilities enough to treat her duties in the same manner when it was needed.
Although she doubted she could ever truly do so with Aguilar, she came to realize it was possible to perform any act of intimacy and still keep an inner private part of herself remote and separate from it. That knowledge provided a solace she expected she would fall back on many times. If the future, as Aguilar promised, held for her another master, perhaps one far less charismatic and comely than he was, then there would be little joy in the duties she would perform, and even more time for regret and dismay over her fate.
Although she had ceased to count the days, more attuned to the nights that passed so very quickly, Jaelle'n sensed the end of Aguilar's oft-mentioned moon cycle was drawing rapidly nigh. As she waited alone in the suite, as she had most of the days since she had been brought there, her thoughts drifted back over the nights, the lessons, and above all, the teacher.
No matter what the future held for her, she would never forget Aguilar. That much she knew beyond any denial or pretense.
Do I love him?
The query came unbidden and as a surprise.
How could one love...no, I can't, I must not!
But she feared very much that she did. This new awareness lent a special poignancy to the remaining nights, not knowing how many more there would be, which one would be the last. Would she even know when that final night came?
The last few, Aguilar had spoken little, but last night when she finally moved from him to seek her spot at the foot of the bed, he had stopped her. "Nay, you may stay here tonight. Some masters may desire a slave to remain near even after the pleasuring is over. You may as well get used to that as well."
She had stretched out stiffly beside him, afraid to move lest she disturb him or give some hint of how much she longed to curl up against his warm body and wrap her arms around him simply to feel close and secure. One small lamp flickered gently on the table beside the bed where her meal tray had often sat. She stared at the flame, listened to the even rhythm of Aguilar's breathing and imagined him to be asleep.
Thus she jumped when his low voice came, very close to her left ear. "Surely you do not think now that I shall devour you in your sleep or injure you should you accidentally touch me! Why are you lying as stiff as a desert-dried comalo hide?"
"I but feared to disturb your sleep," she answered, shocked to hear the smallness of her voice.
His chuckle came warm and gentle. She felt the bed shift as he moved, coming closer to her, turning onto his side and reaching to draw her back against him. "Nay, it is more likely that I will disturb yours. You are round and soft and pleasant to hold. Even well-sated, most men would find comfort in such a body, in pressing it near and absorbing its feminine warmth and sweetness. Indeed, I am not adverse to such things myself."
He reached across her to take something from the table, a crumpled scrap of fabric, it appeared. When he lifted it, though, she could see it was a small bag, drawn taut at the top with a red satin cord. He deftly freed the knot with one hand and shook something from inside. Whatever it was sparkled in the lamplight, but she could not see it clearly as it spilled onto the coverlet, almost above her head.
Aguilar took her left wrist in his hand and lifted her arm. Reaching around her with his right, he picked up the shiny piece and let it dangle from his fingertips. She saw a bejeweled chain of gold, with brilliant stones of deep green and midnight blue shining among the ornate links. Before she had time to wonder, he clasped the bracelet around her wrist. With a murmured word and a touch, he released the two brass wristlets she had worn since her first moments in this room and tossed them aside. They fell to the floor with a soft tinkle and rolled away.
"I cannot guarantee a future master will not take this bauble from you, but if he has enough wealth, such a trinket would matter little to him. Then you would never be without something of worth should you ever be in dire need."
Jaelle'n drew her breath with a gasp of shock. "Oh, master! It is beautiful. But should a slave have something of such worth?"
She knew well his little shrug when he was not ready or willing to answer a direct question. He did that now, then said, carelessly, "Why not? If her master chooses that she wear a small bauble, she should do so, don't you think?"
With that, he settled down, one arm pillowing her head and the other clasped loosely around her waist, keeping her body close against his. After a moment, the warmth and comfort of that nearness stole over her to obliterate the nerves, and she slept, for at least one night, secure in the arms of Aguilar. This one time she might pretend to be loved and cherished, not slave and servitor but beloved, adored, deemed precious beyond all others...
Such a pretty dream, and yet so far from fact.
Chapter 7
In The Slave Market Redux
* * *
As the group left the compound together for the first time since they had entered it, Jaelle'n saw Aguilar had not lied to them that first night, now some five ten-days in the past. Challabadur was little more than a league away. Other than the flagged road, which passed in front of the compound, there was nothing but sand, snow-white sparkling sand. Beyond Aguilar's walled oasis, there was only desert--dunes that changed with every wind, and strange beasts that somehow thrived without water. No place to hide, no way to travel except on the road, back to the city. There, a woman alone would be snatched up almost before she passed the gates.
As the group started for Challabadur the evening before the auction day, the twenty women were no longer chained, although Cragan and two others marched with them, and Aguilar himself walked in the fore. They moved in a loose group, chattering quietly among themselves, each trying to pretend that the morrow would not see them sold again to new masters who might be kind, cruel, or simply uncaring.
Jaelle'n now knew that people here did have horses--but only the very rich, who kept them as pampered pets and raced them at times for high stakes. Probably Aguilar had some, although she had not seen any. Horses did badly with the sand and suffered from the heat, so most people instead used ugly hump-backed beasts they called "comalos," grotesque creatures that looked as if they had been created from the parts the Mother had left over after
She made all the other animals.
The one time Jaelle'n had gone with Madame Tanith to the bazaar a ten-day ago, she had seen a comalo bite its handler. The young man had howled with pain and rolled on the ground, blood gushing from the wound in his upper arm. After that object lesson, she had no desire to go near the hideous, evil-tempered creatures
One caravan of comalos and their drovers had spent a night at Aguilar's compound, five nights past. Three of the women had gone east with them, rumored to be destined for the Kahn Primo of a people who dwelled even deeper in the desert. Challabadur actually sat near the sea. She had heard that from the hills on the north side of the city, one could see the endless blue waters beyond the dunes.
She wondered briefly if Cymryddan vessels ever came to port somewhere nearby. But even if they did, her chances of slipping away to board one were next to none. And that would mean leaving Aguilar...although of course she would do just that. Tomorrow.
Jaelle'n dwelled upon these and other random matters as she walked, closing her thoughts to the other women's chatter and walling off the anguish welling in her heart. In spite of her best efforts to win him over, Aguilar was selling her. At times she had entertained hopes he would grow so fond of her he would elect to keep her, but that dream lay shattered at her feet. How could she have deluded herself into thinking he saw in her something rare and wonderful? She was just another woman, now a well-trained pleasure slave, but nothing more.
Although it had been five ten-days instead of the three he had boasted, she and her former coffle mates were all now prime pleasure slaves. They knew how to wait on groups of men and serve them food and drink, how to pleasure a man in the bath or bedchamber, how to dance, sing or otherwise entertain one man or many. Now, they made the walk to Challabadur late in the afternoon so the sun would not darken their skin, and they would rest the night in another home Aguilar owned there, so as to appear their best on the morrow. Inger and Lathi, Altima and Maydan--a quiet girl, one Jaelle'n had hardly noticed before. And Jayla, the slave Jayla.
Tomorrow they would be shown and sold in a special auction, one that had been widely advertised. Someone had brought one of the parchments back to the compound and they had all seen it. Although Jaelle'n could not read the strange script used in Challabadur, Maydan could, and she read it to the rest of them. To find another woman able to read had surprised Jaelle'n. She had thought that a privilege and prerogative of royalty--such as herself. But the slender dark-haired but pale-eyed Maydan read very competently.
"Great Quarter-Year Sale," Maydan had said, following the lines from top to bottom with one slender finger. "Twenty prime pleasure slaves from exotic locales, all trained in the House of Aguilar of Iskandera to exquisite perfection. Every one fit for the harem of a caliph, the zenana of a sheik, the palace of a pasha. No bids below 10,000 rajans will be accepted. Auction will commence promptly at the Zenith Hour. No early bids will be taken."
The women had giggled and chattered about it for the rest of the day, taking pride in the fact they were described in such glowing terms and priced so high. Jaelle'n had taken little part in this, for still, in her silly dreams, she had thought she would be exempt from this sale. Surely Aquilar would send one of the others who had been there when her group arrived. Three of them were going, taking the places left by the three who had gone with the caravan to fill out the group to twenty again.
She fought the burn of tears behind her eyes, breathed painfully around the throbbing ache in her chest. He was not going to keep her. After tomorrow, she would probably never see him again, dear golden Aguilar who made her body sing, who had treated her with unexpected kindness and given her the run of his compound, who had gifted her with the gems that now adorned her arms, neck and ears. She bit back a wail of pure anguish. How had she allowed herself to come to love him? Yet how could she not have come to love him? He was unique in all the world.
Aguilar's house in Challabadur was not as large as the sprawling structure that comprised the greater part of his compound, but it was elegant and comfortable. In the style of most homes in the city, it was built in a square, two stories high. Most of the windows and doors opened not to the outside, but to the central courtyard, a veritable paradise full of exotic flowers and sweet-scented herbs. The whole rear side was a bathing area with a long pool and a whole room full of cosmetics and adornments.
There, the women washed away the dust and perspiration of the walk and tried out hairstyles and enhancements of their beauty to see which would show them at their best. Jaelle'n had no heart for this game, but took part in it since she felt she must. She saw that Lathi also was downhearted, although the others seemed cheerful and not at all dismayed by the prospect of new masters on the morrow.
Right up until bedtime, Jaelle'n held the faint hope that Aguilar would send for her, give her this one last night, but he did not. At last she sought her bed in one of the cool quiet chambers and wept herself to sleep, ignoring the gentle perfume from flowers in the courtyard that drifted into her window on the soft breeze.
* * * *
Dawn came too soon. Under the watchful eye of Madame Tanith, the women ate their morning meal in a smaller hall than at the compound. Afterward, she gathered them together and gave them a final lecture, put them through their paces of graceful movement and genteel decorum, then sent them off to their rooms to prepare themselves for the sale.
Dispirited, Jaelle'n braided her hair. She selected and donned the gauzy green robe she had acquired her first night in Aguilar's ownership, but then impulsively slipped it off to repaint the intertwined designs. Now she added a band on each wrist and each ankle, and a circle around each breast in a variation of her first effort on her belly. When she again donned the robe, she saw the patterns peeked erotically through the filmy fabric, drawing the viewer's attention to her body, to her feminine attributes and grace.
She debated about wearing Aguilar's jewelry. Should she leave the beautiful pieces behind to show she rejected him as he had rejected her? Would not her new master seize them anyway, and add their value to his own coffers? If she wore them, might Aguilar actually take them from her so they would not fall in the hands of another? The shining sea-hued stones and the exquisite gold settings were surely worth a good slave's price. Perhaps not that of a prime pleasure slave, but surely a laborer or a warrior.
She sat before the cosmetic table in her chamber and looked at the pieces, recalling the nights on which he had gifted her with each one, beginning with the first golden chain and its blue and green gems. Then the matched pair of bracelets--delicate bands with golden leaves and flowers, dewdrops represented by tiny white stones and two of the green gems on each band, carved as leaves. Her body heated as she remembered the way he had touched her that night, the loving care she had lavished on him.
The necklace was wrought to compliment the bracelets--a complex chain of tiny gold links holding a pendant in the form of a lotus flower, the flower itself graven from a single milky white stone and the two largest leaves fashioned from green ones. That night, he had caressed her with his mouth until she had flown into a thousand ecstatic pieces, then allowed her to do the same for him. She could almost taste the salty moisture that flowed when he reached his climax, the heady sense of power she felt in knowing she could bring a man of his stature to that moment of uncontrolled passion.
The earrings were delicate, beads of the green, white and clear stones strung on circlets of gold wire, a fine piece of which went through her earlobe, thus. She put them on and thought of that night, the one night she had spent in his arms after they had pleasured each other not once but several times...until they were both limp in satiated exhaustion. He had gently fed the wires through her ear lobes and kissed them as he fastened the gems in place. Then he had gathered her close in his arms and held her as they slept, only the second time he had done so.
No, she could not leave them. If cold stones and gold were all of him that she could keep, at least she would have them, and th
e memories they represented. She put them all on and went down to the courtyard to join the rest of the women.
Once again they were shackled, but with delicate chains of gold instead of crude and heavy iron bonds. They were placed in the coffle in a specific order, alternating the taller and shorter, the dark and the fair so that the contrasts enhanced the unique beauty of each woman. Jaelle'n--nay, Jayla--had a place near the end with only two women behind her. She was not sure if the placement had any significance so did not know whether to be pleased or dismayed. Perhaps it did not matter.
This house of Aguilar's was but a short distance from the slave market square. Cragan and two others led them from the house not long before the Zenith Hour. When they entered the square, they found it crowded with men, many of whom had clearly come only to watch the spectacle, for they surely did not have a hundred rajans to command, much less the ten thousand for the initial bids.
Again, the gross man was carried to the site in his elaborate sedan chair and his assistants set everything up to his liking. But today not a simple bag and bucket for coins would suffice. Two powerful Nojans lugged in a brass-bound coffer fastened with an elaborate lock. They placed the trunk on the dais beside the portly auctioneer. Finally he rapped on his table and the sale was officially underway.
One by one, Cragan or one of the other men escorted the women to the block. Although they were not stripped, the sheer robes left little to the imagination. The onlookers at first cheered and catcalled, but the auctioneer glared around, then sent the Nojans to keep order among the crowd. After that it became almost eerily silent, hardly a sound, save the voices of the bidders, as they vied with one another to purchase the slave that caught their fancy.
THE TAMING OF JAELLE'N Page 7
