As the first rays of dawn rose over the camp, Caralissa was a shattered mass of need. Her pride surrendered, reduced to grovelling and begging for even the most incidental of touches, she lay at Varik’s feet, his great toe inserted reverently in her mouth as she sought to earn for herself the right to lie once more across his lap, to rub herself lewdly against his knee, to have his hand swatting her mercilessly. Anything, anything at all to fill the terrible emptiness, the burning need to be used.
‘I grow weary,’ Varik said, rolling over to his side, his manhood having drained itself a total of three times in Caralissa’s mouth. ‘Do not disturb me further.’
Caralissa moaned in self-pity. He was going to leave her this way, in a state of utter desperation, unsatisfied. Which is exactly where the night began. It was more of his infernal training, his conditioning of her responses through gradual transference, inducing her to respond evermore passionately and desperately to a series of increasingly mild and innocuous sensations.
Longingly, she looked at him. It was out and out penetration she aspired to, the plunging of his ever-throbbing manhood into her overeager womanhood. She knew this was folly though, a pretentious dream, something infinitely more pleasurable than she, a slave, deserved. She had no right to intercourse with him. It was not her place to choose when he might have her, but his alone, and tonight it was only her mouth he had sought, not her hungry nether opening.
‘Please,’ she begged in his ear, trying to entice him with her lips and tongue, suggesting to him the possibilities of her own ravishing, ‘have mercy on me. My body burns. If you will not have me, will you not give me to one of your men? I will accept whomever you choose; I will crawl, I will make no complaint. Let me be whipped, even. I don’t care.’
Taking a deep breath, Varik began to snore.
Caralissa moved to her haunches. Arrogant dog! He was so utterly certain of her captivity that he’d gone to sleep, having made no effort to bind or restrict her in any way. Desperately she looked down at her swollen nipples, her sex seeping with the juices of her submission.
Did she dare to touch herself?
Hands trembling she reached for her nipples. No! She couldn’t do it. Not without permission. She could wake him, but he would be more likely to punish her than grant her request.
Lost to her own passions she made one last attempt to bargain for his attention with her body, seeking to arouse him in his sleep with her lips, her soft hair, her eager breasts. Perhaps in his dreams he might unwittingly reach for her. Sliding her belly across him she gained access to his sleeping member. Hungrily she took him once more in her mouth. An ordinary man would never stiffen again so soon, but Varik was anything but ordinary. He tasted sweet and powerful. Full of hope she lowered her lips down the length of the shaft, taking him deep.
If only he would awaken and touch her one more time - his finger grazing her earlobe, the back of his thumb brushing across an agonised nipple, making her whimper and beg like a pet. All this he’d done to her already this night, this and much more. And the most awe-inspiring thing was that he accomplished his cruel domination without even putting her body beneath his driving manhood. It was this she needed above all else, even more than the air she breathed, though she knew this act of conquest would likely do her in altogether.
Tears in her eyes, moaning to herself, she felt the spasms in her forbidden sex, glistening and needful. As the warrior’s snores increased she yearned to touch herself, to bring even the imperfect relief of masturbation. And yet those lips and that slick opening were no longer hers. It was Varik who owned her body, owned her pleasure, even her very right to feel.
‘Leave me be,’ he warned at last, pulling her off by means of her sweat-soaked hair. Her head throbbing, forced back to the dirt at his feet, she tried desperately to think of something other than sex. It was then that she recalled her forgotten hunger, the pangs of which returned with a vengeance.
Crawling back to Varik’s ear, being careful not to allow too great a friction between her thighs lest she steal an orgasm for herself, she tried her luck at breakfast.
‘I am hungry,’ she whispered, barely catching herself before she called him ‘master’. ‘Please, Varik, I am hungry.’
‘Fetch water, girl,’ he grumbled, swatting her nuzzling lips from his earlobe as though she were some annoying insect. ‘You will eat later.’
On shaky legs Caralissa rose, doing her best to walk to the inverted spear, over which Varik’s shirts were hung.
‘No covering for you today,’ she heard him say over her shoulder.
Her heart stilled in her chest for the briefest of seconds. Wheeling about on her bare heels, arching her back she confronted him, her hazy slavish feelings vanishing like mist. ‘What did you say?’
Varik rolled onto his stomach, showing her nothing but his shoulder blades and sloping back above the coverings. ‘You will go to the stream as you are,’ he said, his voice largely muffled by the furs. ‘I would have my warriors behold the beauty of my prize.’
Caralissa’s knees were close to buckling. Shame washed over her, and with it a rush of heat and desire. She swallowed hard, her dry throat aching. He considered her beautiful. He considered her a prize.
‘There are thousands of men out there,’ she reminded him, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Do you think it wise to send me out like this?’
‘It would be death to touch the chieftain’s property without his permission,’ Varik noted, his face still buried.
She inclined her chin proudly, defiantly. ‘I am no man’s property, fetch your own water,’ she declared, picking up the jug from the doorway and tossing it across the dirt to a place some inches from his half exposed body.
Varik did not budge. For agonising seconds she waited, her body trembling from unquenched desire mingled with mounting trepidation. As usual he was allowing her to resist, but how and when he responded, putting her back in her place, was up to him.
‘If it is covering you wish,’ he said, opening one eye lazily to behold the jug, ‘then I can offer you some. A lovely shade of red, in fact, the sort appropriate for disobedient girls.’
Caralissa’s cheeks flushed the very colour Varik was invoking. The reference to punishment, to marking her with his hand, or perhaps even the switch - that horrible little device which made her wet and weak just to think of it - was all too clear. How dare he? The man was a despicable beast, a blasphemer to the goddess. Fine, she would do what he wanted, but heaven would make him pay.
‘No decent human being would ever speak so to a queen,’ she said, even as she stormed over and scooped up the jug. ‘Do you think me a common slut that you can bully - disrespecting my womanhood, threatening to beat me? Do you think the goddess won’t punish you for such things?’
Varik seized her ankle, preventing her intended exit, which she meant to be both haughty and blustering.
‘Ow!’ she exclaimed, not hurt so much as shocked by his sudden grip, strong as steel.
‘Do not offer curses,’ he said, his emotions clouded, unreadable. ‘Or I shall have you branded by the iron, that the gods will never again hear your prayers.’
Caralissa felt the blood drain from her face. It was a well-known fact that the gods and goddesses ignored as a practice the entreaties of branded slaves. ‘I understand,’ she stammered. ‘Please forgive me.’
He released her. ‘Bring my water, girl. And quickly.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ she heard herself say, scampering away as though she were his slave.
It was another of his tricks, of course, manipulating her emotions, redrawing the lines between them, lowering her standards so that she’d gone from legitimately protesting her right to clothing and fair treatment to running obediently to do his will, as though it were a privilege to do menial tasks for the man as his naked errand girl.
The fresh sun was warm upon her tender, aroused body. She was painfully aware of the swell and jiggle of her breasts, and of the sway of her hips. She’d not gone about naked since she was a child, and that was under the safe eyes of her nannies. Caralissa was far from a child now. She was a woman, bothered and in heat, a prisoner in a camp filled with sexually starved warriors. Her heart pounded as the eyes began to follow her. Though no one pursued her, she could tell by the sudden silence, the predatory glances that they desired her, all of them.
She clutched the water jug. She was Varik’s property. As demeaning as this fact was, she held to the label as strongly as to his water jug. It was that ownership which was saving her now, an invisible truth which alone prevented her from what she was sure would have otherwise been mass rape at these men’s hands. Trying hard not to arouse them unnecessarily with her exposed flesh, she made her way quickly and efficiently to the stream.
It was eerie, the complete change from their manner of the day before. All along the path warriors stepped back, their muscled bodies a powerful lesson in discipline, controlled power. She did her best to avoid eye contact. At her current level of need she did not trust herself to keep from falling at their feet and begging them to do what they so obviously wanted to in the first place. Was it the sight of her, flush from a night of unquenched arousal that made her so irresistible? Could they smell her need, like a bitch in heat, silently begging the attention of every available male? Or was it what Senelek hinted at - that Varik’s ongoing possession of her was becoming a source of rage and jealousy in the men? She could never resist them, she knew that. Any one of them could overpower her, attaining her easy sexual surrender. It shamed her deeply and yet it aroused her too, to know that she could be made to give herself to any one of them with a mere glance or a snap of fingers.
Would that make Varik jealous? Her mind moved yet again, towards the madness of thinking herself in love with the cruel chieftain. No, she could not think such thoughts. Varik was a sworn enemy, one whom she must now personally repay with torture and death, lest her own reputation as a sovereign, her own place as a queen be lost forever. After she was ransomed, that was when she would plot her revenge. As soon as she was free and the warlord’s back was turned, she would concoct a plan for his demise.
If he let her go, that is. A secret thrill passed through her at the thought that he might not. What if he cared for her too much to free her? Could it be he loved her, even? Yes, he’d been harsh with her, denied her pleasures, subjected her to his hand and to the whistling, stinging switch, but did that not merely reinforce the strength of his desires, his need to control and conquer her completely? He’d warned off Senelek, been prepared to violate the trust of his own men, violate even the very customs of the tribe. What more proof could anyone need that he felt things for her? And the way he disallowed her use by the cord men, too, that was also proof, was it not?
‘Greetings,’ came a voice, sinister and crisp. ‘Majesty.’
A hand clasped her arm. Caralissa looked up from her reverie and gasped. It was the black armoured soldier from the day before, the one who’d blocked her path and whom she later identified as one of Senelek’s so-called warrior priests.
‘I must fetch water,’ she told him. ‘For Lord Varik.’
The soldier gave her a slanted smile. ‘Lord Senelek has your water,’ he said, reaching out to cup her breast.
The sudden contact, as unexpected as it was openly sexual, caused Caralissa to leap backwards, her heart thumping like a threatened doe. ‘I - I must go,’ she stammered, attempting to bypass him.
The soldier collared her, his hand gripping at the back of her neck as he drew her into his embrace. His kiss was wet and offensive, and yet, in her boiling need she found herself moaning, opening, yielding.
‘You will see Lord Senelek,’ the man confirmed, worming his tongue from between her lips. ‘Now.’
The command was punctuated with a stinging blow to her exposed buttocks. It jolted her all the more for its coming from a hand other than that of Varik - her punisher, her one and only lover, her lord. ‘You won’t get away with this,’ she told him, even as she hastened to keep ahead of him so as to avoid any more blows. ‘Varik will find you out.’
‘Just keep moving, wench,’ he advised, his breath hot in her ear, his hand insolently caressing her bottom cheeks. ‘And save your tongue for my prick.’
A chill of fevered weakness passed through Caralissa’s body as she contemplated the man’s threats. She was going to be made to serve him, intimately and with her mouth as she had Varik. And even now she was walking towards that fate, her own degradation awaiting her in Senelek’s tent. Would there be others, she wondered? And what about the high priest himself - would he have her too?
‘Inside,’ he snarled, shoving her through the opening of the black tent striped in red. ‘Time to teach you some respect.’
The man sealed the tent opening behind him. It was dark inside, save for a single glowing light, green and flickering, contained in a glass lantern hung from the centre pole. The ground was soft. A rug of some kind lay over the bare ground. She looked about her. The tent walls were thick and overhung with layers of tapestry. Shining chains of gold and hanging metal bowls were arrayed from the corner poles. It was a damp, misty gloom that pervaded the room, an aura made even more sinister by the smell of burnt incense.
Caralissa sought to adjust her eyes, sought to make sense of the strange shadows that hung across her field of vision preventing her from seeing anything clearly. There seemed no signs of life about her and yet she felt eyes in the blackness, peering at her, probing and poking.
‘Kneel, Orencian slut,’ the soldier barked, snatching the jug from her and pushing her down by her shoulder till she was on her knees, the rug ticklish against her skin. ‘Kneel and pay homage.’
The robed figure emerged from the shadows as though he were one himself. Caralissa was on the verge of looking up to identify the face when she felt a sudden force on her back, compelling her to lower her head till her lips were touching the red slippers, narrow and curved at the toe. Grasping the hint, Caralissa puckered her lips and kissed them, one after the other, rapidly, gingerly.
‘See how naturally the slut abases herself, Gatal,’ she heard Senelek say to her escort.
‘All the world shall kneel to you, Lord Senelek,’ Gatal replied, his voice thick with religious fervour.
‘Varik will have your head for this, Lord Senelek,’ Caralissa retorted, straightening herself to look up at him defiantly as she spat out his title with as much contempt as she could manage. ‘You know he will.’
He was looking deeply into her eyes, but she did not flinch. Kill me, her gaze told him silently. I have nothing more to lose.
She heard the sound of scraping metal coming from beside her. It was a scabbard out of which was being drawn a sword. There was another man now, standing beside the unspeaking Senelek. A second later she felt sharp metal as the lethal blade was placed across the back of her neck.
‘No, pretty little whore,’ came the new man’s voice, slightly nasal as he pressed the sword a tiny bit harder. ‘It is Lord Senelek who will have yours.’
‘Put that away, Birat,’ chided Senelek, sounding for a brief moment as if he sympathised with the prisoner. ‘It is not our place to kill her. The law is very clear on the treatment of whores. They must be dealt with according to their sex and status.’
‘I am not a whore,’ she defied, not caring if they chose to strike her dead. ‘I am a queen.’
‘How dare you?’ growled yet another man, emerging from behind to threaten her with the back of his hand.
‘No, Voorash, do not strike her. Let us use reason instead.’
‘Yes, Lord,’ the new man deferred, lowering his arm at once.
‘Reason?’ Caralissa scoffed. ‘What would you know of such things, barbarian?’
There were growls of indignation from every side.
Senelek calmed them with a single word in Rashal, delivered with clipped intensity. His minions reminded her of snarling dogs, obedient to the one man who was more vicious than they.
‘I am a barbarian, yes,’ Senelek agreed, his voice showing exaggerated calm. ‘It is a fact I am quite proud of. Among the civilised peoples - the so-called civilised, I should say - I saw such horrors and atrocities, all hidden and couched in finery, of course, as to make me vow never to even remotely resemble them in any way. Do you see this mark, majesty?’
Senelek bent to show her his forearm. She attempted to twist her head, to avert her gaze from the mark, deep and red, a groove in the skin, intricate, made of lines, crossed with other lines. It was deep and ugly.
‘Why do you look away, noble queen?’ Senelek asked, grasping her chin to compel her attention. ‘Does it disturb you to see upon me the mark of civilisation?’
‘Orencia practices no such mutilations,’ she said. ‘Nor is there any form of branding in all of the Seven Kingdoms of the valley, not even upon slaves.’
‘How pleased your slaves must be,’ Senelek snorted. ‘To know they are spared any unpleasantness.’ He released her, thrusting back her chin contemptuously.
‘I am not responsible for what happened to you,’ she persisted. ‘Nor are my people.’
‘Then I shall make them responsible!’ Senelek thundered, shaking his fist. ‘I shall make them pay. And I can, you know. Varik controls the army, but I have at my disposal holy warriors. Fewer in number, but highly effective.’ He paused, watching her, gauging the effect of his words, the anticipation of what he said next.
Bending even further forward, he spoke nearly in a whisper. ‘I need only give the order, my queen, and Orencia will cease to exist.’
Caralissa fought to keep her face devoid of expression. To be conquered by the Rashal was one thing. There would be fires, hostages taken tribute to pay. But to face the kind of attack Senelek was hinting at was unthinkable. ‘What do you want?’ she asked, seeking to hide her terror.
He folded his arms inside the thick robe. ‘To begin with,’ he said with deep satisfaction, ‘I wish you to put your hand between your thighs, my little foreign slut. Then I want you to stroke yourself deeply and show me upon your fingers whether you are wet or dry.’
Caralissa heard the words as if from the end of a tunnel. Just as distant seemed her own response, as she put her fingers to her sopping sex, drawing off a thin film of the musky substance. The feel of her own vaginal opening nearly made her swoon. It wasn’t fair, not fair at all to employ such power over her, to invoke in her such feelings, such needs. What was it about being commanded by strong men, about being made to surrender her will that so excited her?
‘Hold up your hand, now,’ Senelek said. ‘Show us the results.’
Caralissa bowed her head, lowering it below her upraised arm as she presented for his inspection the glistening tips of her fingers.
‘It is as I thought,’ he hissed. ‘You are a slut. Even when faced with the extermination of your own people you juice like a whore, a she-slave.’
‘Do what you will to me,’ she declared. ‘But spare my people.’
‘Touch yourself again,’ Senelek demanded. ‘More deeply this time.’
Caralissa looked at him in horror then lowered her eyes. He did not intend to relent; he would never relent. She saw that now. Spreading her legs more widely she gave him what he wanted. A demonstration of her true nature as a slut. Biting her lip, her fingers hot over her clitoris, she resisted the impulse to beg them to take her.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed a moment later as the spasms began to hit her, ‘that is how you must be in my presence. Show me what you truly are. Yes, make yourself flow hotly. There - that is enough. Now put your fingers to your lips; use your tongue, taste your own evil fluid.’
Caralissa trembled, her climax cut off prematurely. She did not know if she could remain upright, if she could manage to move her own arm, to complete the terrible deed. Eyes glued to her fingers, tears brimming, she watched their approach, inexorably moving towards her waiting mouth.
He could not make her do this. It was too shameful!
‘Now!’ hissed Senelek, his cruel command enforced by the resurgent blade of Birat, now pressed pointedly at her left nipple. ‘Lick yourself now!’
Caralissa nearly fainted. Moaning, arching her back, she sucked her fingers till they were clean. Desperately, in the back of her mind, she tried to rationalise the act, even as she performed for them as a captive slut. Repugnant as Senelek was, after all, he was Varik’s brother and deserved her obedience on account of her feelings for him. Besides which, he was male and she was female; how could she do aught but obey one of them after having been dealt with so thoroughly on their behalf by Varik? It was a result of her captivity that was all. And her people - how could she risk their deaths by disobeying?
‘Enough,’ said Senelek to Birat, who withdrew the sword. ‘You may take your hand from your mouth,’ the high priest declared, stepping forward so that his midsection was an inch from her face. ‘You will now put it back between your legs,’ he added, his voice thick with the satisfaction of complete victory of his will over hers. ‘You will continue in this manner as we converse.’
Caralissa returned her fingers to her burning womb. Would Senelek allow her to come? And if he did - given the current circumstances - would it be a blessing or a curse? And what of Varik - would he forgive his brother such liberties, or would he fly into a rage when he found out? She laughed to herself, thinking of the beast. More likely he’d encourage his brother, Caralissa thought, rubbing herself harder, the warlord’s presumed insolence arousing her to fever pitch.
‘Aah,’ she cried, the sound a long hiss as the convulsions began, the preliminary waves.
‘Silence, slut,’ Senelek commanded, showing his utter indifference to whether she pleasured herself to climax or not. ‘And open your ears to listen to my offer. It is an offer I do not think you will dare refuse once you have heard it.’
‘The Rashal are noted for their generosity,’ she observed, the words coming in short stabs of breath as she tried to recover herself.
‘The Rashal are destined to rule the world,’ corrected Senelek, snapping his fingers so that the lantern might be adjusted. Caralissa grimaced, the greenish light having been redirected to her body. Her flushed skin shone with an eerie glow.
‘Varik does not seem to share that ambition,’ she countered boldly, attempting to keep her breathing steady. It was not her intention to climax, to shame herself in such a manner in front of these men, and yet how would she be able to resist, as long as Senelek compelled her to touch herself?
Senelek stepped from his pointed slippers. His toes bore rings and his skin smelt sickly sweet. ‘The will of an individual means nothing among the Rashal,’ he said. ‘Not even that of a chieftain.’
Caralissa bit her lip, needing the pain to keep her focused. It was madness, having to stimulate herself all the while fighting the inevitable release, the craved for conclusion she’d been needing for so long. ‘And yet you seem to place so much stock in your own will,’ she suggested, approaching his blatant megalomania in as subtle a manner as possible.
Senelek shook his head. ‘Not my will,’ he declared, opening his robe and shedding it from his broad shoulders. ‘The will of the gods.’
She beheld his naked body. It was oiled and muscled, but strangely pale in comparison to his brother’s.
‘Praise be the gods of the Rashal,’ repeated the men in unison.
Caralissa regarded Senelek’s limp shaft, which was close enough to touch. Or kiss. ‘I know what you worship,’ she said pointedly. ‘I know what you serve.’
‘Insolent slut,’ he hissed, stroking himself, his eyes slowly closing. ‘You know nothing. But you will be taught.’
There was silence as they all waited for the high priest to bring himself to erection. This achieved, he reopened his eyes, refreshed, as if having just completed a long nap. ‘Let us begin the conversation anew,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘shall we?’
‘I’m a captive audience,’ she shrugged, conveying as much irony as possible.
Senelek began to pace in front of Caralissa, from left to right and back again. ‘We have a problem, you and I, a common problem, one which begs a single solution.’
‘Oh?’ She tried not to laugh at the sight of his erect member, preceding him as though he were a man being walked by a worm. ‘And what problem is that?’
‘Why, Varik’s deep attachment for you, of course,’ he laughed. ‘Isn’t that obvious? So long as my brother craves you, in this most unhealthy, unholy manner, he will never return you to your home - which I assure you, highness, is the outcome we both desire.’
Caralissa braced herself. It was too late; she was going over the top. ‘What do you care if I make it home alive?’ she asked, the first waves of her orgasm closing over her.
Home. What was home any more? It felt now as if she’d been born in this place, in this camp, on the furs of the warlord Varik, and here again, here and now upon the rugs of a wicked, lust-filled priest. Home was the iron will of Varik, his implacable need pressed upon her, his hand, smoothly striking, making her wince and beg. Home was the empty craving in her heart which needed filling by Varik’s arrogance, his wild-eyed lust. How her being a queen fit into this, how the needs of Orencia and her people configured in this new scheme, she did not know. It was a shameful truth, one that dishonoured her in her father’s immortal eyes, and yet she was a female, a girl with needs and she could no longer deny this.
Senelek honed in. Directly in front of her again he absorbed her anxious trembling, the self-yielding. Unable to hold back or hide it, she gave it to him, her passion’s flower, callously beheld by his indifferent eyes. Weeping, she convulsed again and again till the throes of her orgasm passed.
‘The reason I care,’ Senelek said after she subsided and was able to focus on his cruel, contemptuous face once more, ‘is because you and I both know that so long as Varik burns for your unworthy body, he is of no use to the Rashal. We must, therefore, work together to break his attachment.’
How badly she wanted to lay down, to close her eyes and sleep. ‘I have no control over Varik,’ she managed weakly. ‘I did not ask him to want me. I made no effort to seduce him.’
As if she could seduce a man of such splendid power even if she wanted!
‘All whores say the same thing,’ he declared, his organ poking her face. ‘Which is why we must remind him what you truly are.’
‘I - I do not understand,’ she said, her voice conveying the simple truth.
‘Varik thinks you are a gift of the gods, a treasure sent to him, a wonder of the heavens. By lying with you he thinks to find his bliss, to forget the woes of his office. Were he to see in you something else, he would abandon this childish idea. Here then is my plan, my little queen. Tell me when I am done if you do not agree - bearing in mind, of course, that your agreement will markedly increase your people’s chance of survival in my eyes.’
She nodded, admitting ahead of time her inevitable acquiescence.
Senelek smiled smugly, his eyes glowing with love for his own deviousness. ‘You will be returned to Varik, evidence of your lying with others thick upon your person,’ he explained, wasting no time on niceties. ‘He will see you in this state, and will find himself unable to bear the sight of you. You will then be returned to your castle.’
‘Evidence?’ Caralissa singled out the word, so glibly issued from his tongue, yet so crucial to her own life. ‘What evidence do you mean?’
He grinned, exchanging glances with the men behind her. ‘Use your imagination,’ he said, ‘your majesty.’
‘I see. So I shall lie to him and say I have been with others, and by my own will?’
Senelek laughed, encouraging the others to do the same. ‘You will not have to lie, my dear,’ he said to her at last. ‘You will tell him quite honestly.’
Caralissa stiffened. ‘The men that do this thing,’ she said. ‘Varik would have them killed, would he not?’
‘Not if I intervene, to conceal their identity. And if they are men I trust there will be no chance at all of their discovery.’
‘How convenient,’ she conceded. ‘For those particular men.’
Senelek meant he and his deputies, of course. Though there was no point in mentioning the fact.
‘There is one more thing you should consider,’ Senelek offered, stroking her hair, his thick member at the verge of entering her tightened lips. ‘Your prompt removal from this camp and Varik’s equally prompt return to his duty protects him as well. Consider it a guarantee for him, against insurrection.’
Caralissa felt the blood drain from her face. The man was threatening his brother, warning her that if she did not cooperate, Varik himself might be eliminated. Was there no limit to Senelek’s ambition, to his outrageous evil?
‘Varik will never be beaten by you,’ she declared, retracting her face as far from his imperiously outthrust crotch as possible, given her kneeling position. ‘You are not his equal, and that is why you hate him so much.’
Senelek’s eyes glowed a little more hotly. ‘Perhaps I am his equal,’ he crooned suggestively, his hands thick in her hair. ‘In at least one area.’
Caralissa clenched her fists. ‘I yield my body to you, Senelek,’ she said proudly. ‘But my desire is something you will never have.’
‘Ah,’ he said, feeding himself between her lips in a manner most satisfying to himself. ‘But with the taking of your body shall come the possession of your heart, and even your very soul.’
There was no way to respond, the thick manhood of the priest having already pressed itself deep to the back of her throat. As if to enforce the men’s dominance over her, hands came down now from behind, one upon each of her naked shoulders. Not forcefully pressing, but resting, possessively, as though enjoying her vicariously.
Despite his claims the priest appeared to yield little to his passion. His motions were efficient, designed to conquer, to subdue and to control, not to engender his own lust. Caralissa absorbed him, her eyes closed as she imagined Varik in the man’s place, holding her, teaching her, taking her in the fullness of his lust. Varik alone, branding her, heart and soul, spoiling her for any other, ever again.
Senelek shuddered only slightly as he achieved his climax. Methodically, almost dispassionately, he released himself, as if discharging some ritual required by his gods. Caralissa served him well, her mouth forming a tender, resilient pouch. His eyes showed neither gratefulness nor passion as he pulled himself free, his now shrivelled organ hanging lifelessly in front of him.
‘You may take your turns,’ he said to the others. ‘Make her squirm well,’ he added, almost as an afterthought. ‘Leave copious evidence and send for me when you are done.’
Caralissa watched as he donned his robe and walked to the entrance. One of the men - the one she now knew as Garat - opened the tent flap for him, allowing him to leave. How strange, she thought: a cruel despot who did not even stay to see his victim plundered.
‘You heard the high priest,’ said Garat to the others. ‘Let us use this slut in the service of the gods.’
‘In the name of the gods,’ agreed Voorash, grasping her left arm.
‘Glory be to the gods of the Rashal,’ Birat added, taking her right arm.
Caralissa allowed herself to be raised to her feet. It was Garat who made the first move, pulling her into his arms, delivering a kiss, deep and soulful. A piteous moan escaped her throat, her resolve already crumbling. It was true then, what Senelek said - where her body went, so went her soul. The convulsions of a second orgasm passed through her, her untouched sex spasming as Garat’s tongue plundered her open mouth, reclaiming the channel already wrought by the high priest.
‘We shall put her on all fours,’ said Garat, the apparent leader of the group. ‘We shall have her two at a time. Remember, regardless of the orifice you stimulate yourself in, you are to ejaculate externally, on her body.’
‘May our semen be well seen and may it give glory to the gods of the Rashal,’ said Voorash.
‘Their names be everlasting,’ echoed Birat.
She did not know whether to laugh or cry; so absurd were their words, their wooden manners. And yet she needed them, more than she could ever say. Needed their maleness, their harsh ways and attentions.
Caralissa did not wait to be placed, but assumed herself the desired position at their feet. It was for the best, she told herself as the priests unsheathed themselves, forming a semicircle about her. With her degradation would come redemption for Varik, the needed impetus to return him to the ways of his people. And she in turn would be freed of him, freed of a potential life of slavery, as the foreign whore of a warlord, hated by all, held in contempt even by her own people.
It truly was for the best, she repeated, her body on all fours in a foreign camp awaiting her despoilment. It was for the good of all.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ crooned Garat, guiding himself into her mouth. ‘That you should save your breath for me?’
Yes, she nodded, sucking him deeply even as another, either Birat or Voorash mounted her from behind; it was true, she did remember.
‘Hurry,’ she heard a voice complain. ‘I want my turn, too.’
‘There’s plenty to go around,’ Garat said, grasping her hair. ‘You needn’t worry on that score. Isn’t that right, Orencian slut?’
A deep groan issued as her pinioned loins succumbed to another thrust, the greatest one yet. She was going to come again, come like the slut they were calling her. Eagerly she redoubled her ministrations to Garat, though whether to speed the process up to get it over with or else to sweeten it for her own pleasure, she knew not. Such understanding of her own behaviour was beyond her now, as was all form of reason.
‘Arrggh!’ groaned the man at her rear as he withdrew to spurt upon her back. ‘By the gods, I cannot wait!’
‘Please,’ she heard herself wail as Garat withdrew to spray upon her face. ‘Do not leave me like this!’
All at once a new organ was inside her, and she began to weep with joy and shame commingled.
Forgive me, her heart cried, silent and unexpectedly. Forgive me, my Lord Varik.
Caralissa heard the clash of steel just outside Varik’s tent. The warlord was practicing at swords, his bare chest pouring sweat as he parried blow after blow from a pair of blond adversaries, their faces wild with bloodlust. She did not dare look up at him, but kept her head down, her eyes on the ground as the two priests Garat and Birat held her firm. Senelek was talking with his brother, trying to get his attention to tell him of the treachery of the captured queen, the foreign whore now naked before them, her body thick and glistening with the semen of Senelek and his priests.
‘I will not deal with this now,’ she heard Varik say, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. ‘I tend to the affairs of men now, not those of females.’
‘I shall have her put in your tent,’ Senelek replied, bowing quite low before him. ‘Your Lordship.’
Senelek signalled to the two men, who dragged Caralissa inside Varik’s tent, placing her against one of the corner poles. The high priest handed them a long coil of rope, which they wound round and round her reddened flesh, securing her to the centre pole. The faces of Garat and Birat were flush as they worked, flush from their having of her. She imagined their cocks now beneath their holy robes, drained and limp between their legs from their numerous spurtings upon her supple flesh.
They did their work in silence, just as in Senelek’s tent. She’d been a dream of pleasure for them, willing and unresisting, her body leaping before their every touch, pouring forth its passions as though they were her devoted lovers, men to whom she owed her heart. In truth she was a slut, a woman of no shame, no honour.
Each of the priests had taken several turns, trying out all her orifices in a rotational style. Until today Caralissa didn’t know that a man could wish to use her narrower passage, but this too was most thoroughly explored. The priests were enthusiastic and most thorough. They seemed to lose little of their vitality with each passing climax, but managed successively to squeeze forth ever-larger amounts of thick white fluid. Though she suffered much they showed mercy at various points, allowing her to come upon their fingers, as their frequent withdrawals from her starved nether opening tended to leave her frustrated.
On and on it went, and like a whore she gasped, begging their rough attentions. In the end it was she who wore them down, till they were compelled to hold her fast, two of them keeping her still while the third sent for Senelek. It was the priest who finished her off, climbing atop her and bringing her thrice to orgasm as he delved her depths, his turgid pole reanimated, as always in the name of the Rashal gods. Expressionless, eyes closed in an attitude of prayer, he filled her with his fluid, being twice over the only one of the four to climax inside her. Rank has its privileges, she’d thought as he removed himself, not deigning even to look her in the face.
‘Guard the entrance,’ said Senelek to the two when they were finished with the rope. ‘I will wait upon my brother.’
‘Yes, Lord Senelek,’ they said in unison, turning on their heels as if she were not there.
Senelek approached her, touching his finger to her cheek. ‘We will meet again,’ he promised, ‘your highness.’
Caralissa turned her head away from his sneering glare. Fighting back the tears, she tried to think of Varik. How splendid she imagined him looking as he sported with his fellow warriors, their huge swords clashing like lightning, sparkling in the sun as they impacted, one upon the other, over and over, a deafening barrage and yet not one drop of blood drawn.
She heard Senelek laugh and then he was gone. A shiver passed down her spine. By now she ought to be used to this, to being naked and bound, used to having her body abused and left to chill in the crisp daylight air. Upon the battering ram, for example, where she hung like a scarecrow, a figure to be ridiculed by her own people, by the despicable Telos and her own arrogant and sullen sister. And now there were these new ropes to braze her skin as she stood wrapped like a mummy. They could have gagged her too, but there seemed no point. Her own shame kept her silent now. No doubt her well-rested tongue would come in handy when Senelek spilt his lies, demanding her confirmation of them before his unwitting brother.
She was supposed to confirm whatever the high priest might say. No matter what, she was to concur, to agree with Senelek so as to override and destroy Varik’s natural inclination to protect her.
But what exactly was it that would happen to her along the way - once she succeeded in convincing Varik that she was guilty? Senelek had refused to say; his only promise being that by nightfall she would be free, never to be troubled by the Rashal lord again. Senelek was tricking her, she was fairly certain. And yet she did not care. Her life meant little. As for her people, she sensed their best hope lay in Varik, in his maintaining of power over Senelek. It was the leadership of Senelek she feared most, and this, she was certain, could best be avoided by her own despoilment and removal from the camp.
Caralissa’s aching body came to sudden attention, her weary heart soaring as she heard his voice. It was Varik, outside the tent, exchanging words as he so often did with his brother.
‘I wish to hear nothing further from you,’ Varik declared, cutting off the man’s initial explanations. ‘I desire none of your reports or explanations, with regard to this or anything else. I wish only to be left alone.’
Senelek could be heard to dismiss his men. He then began arguing the point for his own involvement, for a proper interrogation of the prisoner, but Varik cut him off now, his voice menacing. ‘I said I wish to be left alone,’ he repeated. ‘Even by you, my brother.’
‘Very well,’ Senelek replied, his voice sounding slightly brittle. ‘I shall await your pleasure.’
Her eyes beheld him as he entered his tent. Varik seemed careful to avoid looking at her as he scooped a towel from off one of the wooden chests and began to dab at the tiny pools of sweat on his chest. He was holding his sword and scabbard in hand, and he laid it down beside the axe. The man’s every motion seemed carefully circumscribed, designed to diffuse the possibility of emotional reaction. Donning a tunic, one of scarlet red that slipped easily over his head, he knelt briefly in the corner, in an attitude of prayer.
After a long time he rose and walked to a place directly in front of her. His face moulded into a most unreadable expression, his eyes lit with a small but discernible glow, he beheld her. Whether it was the prayer or the time with the swords she could not tell, but it was something real and palpable, surely, that possessed him.
How she longed to reach out to him, to understand his pain. He’d refused to hear his brother’s accusations. And yet it must be clear to him by her presence, her condition, that something terrible had occurred. Why was he not screaming? Why was he not demanding explanations, or barring that, seeking to comfort her?
‘I owe my life to my brother,’ Varik began, his eyes connecting with hers, drawing her to that common place, that place beyond pain, beyond explanation. ‘Without him we would not be a people. He has his darkness, deep within, but he serves the people. As you serve yours in your darkness, and I in mine. That is what matters. It is the people that have life above us, you and I and he. We are nothing without our people.’
Caralissa nodded, determined to hold within her, still and unspoken, the truth of the day’s events.
Varik noted her reaction. Running his hands through his hair he looked to the ground. ‘My brother would tell me lies,’ he said. ‘Lies that are truth in the eyes of our gods. In the final scheme, what is a lie and what is truth?’ he asked, beholding the ground.
Caralissa longed to hold him. Curse the ropes that kept her from his arms, which kept her from comforting him.
Varik clenched his fists. ‘The ways of the gods are strange. And yet we mortals cannot oppose them.’ He looked once again into her eyes, his own consumed with unearthly fire. ‘Senelek would tell me that you have betrayed me, and yet I can guess the truth. It was he who violated you - he and his men, was it not? Do not answer me, only listen. There is a deeper truth. Even Senelek is not responsible, but only me. It is I who did this to you. You must learn to hate me, Caralissa. I insist upon it.’
She shook her head violently. ‘I cannot do that,’ she said, finding her dormant tongue.
‘You shall,’ he countered. ‘I will leave you no choice. In a moment I will call Senelek in here and I shall ask him as high priest to mete out your sentence, for betraying my honour. He shall propose to have you flogged and publicly humiliated, in front of the entire army. I shall agree, and allow him personally to carry out the sentence. From that time on I shall not speak to you, will not heed your cries, nor will I even bid you goodbye afterwards when you are returned to your people. From that time on you will never see me again.’ He paused to stroke her cheek with the flat of his hand. ‘Thus will you come to hate me,’ he said, very softly.
‘No!’ she cried, straining against her bonds. ‘I shall never hate you, no matter what you do to me.’
Varik considered her, his lips at last curling into a smile, both sad and ironic. ‘And that,’ he told her, ‘shall be my punishment, Little Flame.’
Turning his head towards the entrance to the tent he called for his brother, whom they both knew was close at hand. ‘Senelek!’ he cried. ‘Come quickly, and bring the gods with you. It is time for them to feed once more on human misery!’
Caralissa was secured to the platform, her arms stretched above her head, her breasts proud in the twilight air, her flat stomach vibrating ever so slightly with her soft breath. She was naked, her body glistening from the cleansing oils applied following her bath. There were also powders, perfumes and chanted prayers, this being a ritual event, her flogging before the assembled troops of the Rashal Empire.
Discipline was high in the ranks and there were no leering eyes this time, no slanted smiles, no licking of lips.
In their ranks they stood, eyes forward, in full battle uniform. Rows a hundred soldiers wide and twenty deep stretching across the plains. Mounted on horseback the cavalry enjoyed a better view, a full panorama of the queen, her arms taut, her calves stretched, standing on tiptoe, doing her best to equalise the pressure on her bound wrists. There was no concealing her predicament, the hardened nipples, swelled with fear and anticipation, the oily smell of her crotch, the seemingly unstoppable flow of her juices.
Only a slut, or worse, a slave, could be so aroused by the prospect of being beaten by a mortal enemy, a man who’d defiled her and then assaulted her character in the bargain.
Only a slut would moisten in front of ten thousand men as they prepared to watch her writhe beneath a whip. And not merely a single stick of leather, but a thick-handled braided device, with five thongs, long and devious.
Senelek’s boots could be heard behind her as he ascended the platform. He would do the whipping, as Varik predicted. All of this, in fact, was precisely as Varik said it would be. True to his promise he had abandoned her and done nothing to prevent her sentence. Caralissa raised her head towards the crowd. She did not wish the men to see her face, her emotions, but she needed to find him. Needed to scan their ranks, the need and loneliness written across her face as she searched in vain for their heartbroken ruler.
Where was Varik? Nowhere to be seen, and yet it was made clear by Senelek that he would watch, that in fact he must watch by Rashal law. The boots were coming closer, narrowing the distance. His every step seemed to take hours. Her heart, more bared than her flesh seemed flayed by every second, by the truth of time’s unfurling. Varik did not care. He could not, would not put any feelings for her above his duty. He would let her be whipped, and for a crime she did not commit, all for the good of his people. Her people, too.
She drew a sharp breath, tried to conceal her naked terror. Senelek was directly behind her. His shadow across her, his breath perilously close to her ear.
‘You are mine now,’ he told her. ‘Queen Caralissa. And not only for the next twenty minutes, but forever. For what I am going to do to you will brand you. I will mark you, and not only on your pretty skin, but in deeper places. Places a man like Varik, with all his ideals and sense of honour could never dream of touching. You see, my dear, I am like you. Civilised.’
Senelek nibbled her ear, subtly and for only the briefest of seconds. At the same time, insolently, almost casually, he let the many-stranded whip brush her hip.
‘Please,’ she breathed, her every thought of defiance dissolving before her eyes, ‘I beg mercy.’
Senelek grabbed her hair. He was standing in front of her now, forcing her to look him in the eye.
‘No,’ he smiled thinly, thrusting the handle of the whip quite unexpectedly between her legs. ‘You shall have no mercy.’
Caralissa jolted as though struck already. Helpless in her bonds she received the leather, her vagina filled completely. Gasping audibly she felt the spasms beginning to mount.
‘Do not look away from me,’ Senelek ordered, his face inches from hers as he began to play with her sex, manoeuvring the whip handle as though it were his shaft. ‘Tell me now that you will obey.’
Caralissa looked at him in awe, her earlier fear mingled with a dreaded desire to submit to this hatefully cruel man. ‘I - I will obey,’ she said, her voice weak with desire.
‘I will obey, my lord,’ he corrected, administering a slight alteration in the angle of her penetration, enough to make her throw back her head and cry out.
‘I - I - will obey, my lord,’ she panted as soon as she regained her power of speech.
Senelek closed the narrow gap between them so that his lips nearly touched her trembling mouth. ‘With this whip I will own you. Because of what I am going to do to you, you will never again see such a device without becoming heated. You will curse my name again and again because you will yearn to submit to it each and every time, to tear the very clothes from your body and fall at the feet of the man who wields it, begging for him to lash you, to brand you with it, publicly and absolutely.’
Senelek froze his pumping hand, holding her fast at the brink of her orgasm. Her fists clenching and unclenching uselessly, Caralissa moaned, knowing herself at this moment to be naught but a tied and exhibited slut, begging with her ripe body to be used, to be taken, to be lashed, to be dominated.
She nearly screamed as he pulled forth the whip handle, leaving her unfulfilled.
‘May I whip you now, your majesty?’ he asked with a flourish, his smile full of one-sided mirth.
Caralissa was in no place to appreciate either humour or irony. ‘Y-yes, my lord,’ she mouthed, not knowing for what she was asking. ‘I beg you to use me as it pleases you.’
Senelek thrust the whip handle to her lips. ‘Clean yourself from it and I will use it on you.’
Caralissa parted her lips, inviting the leather shaft to pierce that opening. The leather was musky, mingled as it was with her juices. She did her best to purify it, judiciously swallowing her sweetened spit. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware of the degradation, the way he was manipulating her in front of Varik’s men, and yet she could not at this moment separate herself out enough to know how to resist.
‘Such an obedient little thing,’ he observed, plucking a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, massaging it idly.
Unable to help herself, feeling her face cloud with shame, she thrust her breasts to him and redoubled her efforts at the whip handle, caressing it in a most blatant manner.
‘Mmmm,’ she moaned when he pulled the whip away, denying her.
‘Varik is a child,’ he said to her, flicking the whip across her hip so as to awaken her every nerve. ‘I am a man. Now you shall learn the difference.’
He gave her a few moments to contemplate these ominous words as he strode to a place behind her, within range of her back. Throwing her long hair forward over her shoulder, removing thusly for himself the only obstacle to her flesh, he bared her, from neck to knee. After a couple of light runs down her spine, the whip cords trailing delicately, teasingly, he reared back his arm and struck her.
Caralissa cried out from the shock, the pain, the sudden burning sensation, not to mention the dramatic change in her status. She, Caralissa, daughter of Lysanis, queen of Orencia, was being whipped.
Senelek paused to replace her hair, which in her writhing had fallen once more over her back. Caralissa moaned as he touched her, igniting the fire that seared across her flesh and would not go away.
‘Your back takes the lash well, majesty, as well as any slave,’ he observed. ‘Would you like the next in the same general vicinity?’
‘No,’ she wept frantically. ‘Not there, please.’
‘I see. Perhaps your lovely arse cheeks instead?’
Caralissa voiced her protest, but it came too late as Senelek landed a blow across her straining buttocks. Her cry of pain was audible, she was quite sure, even to the very last ranks.
‘Had enough, majesty?’ he asked, his voice smug with condescension.
‘Yes, yes, oh please stop,’ she wept, the last of her pride evaporated.
‘Very well, no more lashes. For the time being, at any rate.’
Senelek took her from behind this time, the thick whip handle fitting all too easily into her wet opening. Manipulating her breast with his free hand, and seizing her earlobe with gnawing teeth, he pushed through her flimsy defences working her to a frenzy. In a matter of seconds he broke her open entirely.
Shuddering against him, bound and beaten, she yielded. Her buttocks straining she thrust herself against the whip, against his hand and against his hips in a final thrust, the last of her energy dissipating till she hung limply, like a rag doll in front of Varik’s troops.
‘Now,’ he told her, his voice triumphant as he wiped the stained whip across her belly. ‘We will continue.’
Caralissa twisted in futility as the whip singed her left side, cruelly striping her hip. Senelek countered quickly with a blow to the right hip, so that she knew not in which direction to attempt to turn her rigidly held body. She knew her motions could do little to ease her predicament, and that they likely served only to titillate her exclusively male audience, and yet she could not bring herself to stay still.
Senelek was both thorough and unrelenting, his next blow landing across her thighs, blazing a trail across her soft interior. Now it was her legs, and then her breasts, a vicious slice coming just below her nipples. Like a lover, hard and demanding, the leather braids had their way with her, taking from her all she gave and more, much more.
When at last he stepped back she was a maddening portrait of submissive beauty. Surrendered woman flesh, peaked in its desirability. He let her hang this way, awaiting the final, inevitable surrender.
‘Please...’ she croaked, the word dying upon her open lips.
Seizing his opportunity the wily priest inserted the whip handle back into her mouth, compelling her to take it fully even as he worked her sex with his hand, the fingers contorted into a claw, deceptively gentle and probing.
Caralissa groaned, biting the whip then sucking it with ferocious passion, arching her back as she did, begging his touch upon her stinging breasts. It was the cold metal of his breastplate she encountered.
Lewdly, shamelessly, she rubbed her whip-seared chest against him. She was a bitch in heat now, a beaten slut whose legs would spread for any man strong enough to claim her.
‘Save your ardour,’ Senelek told her, denying her further pleasure with the removal of his hand. ‘For the captains. Respond to them passionately and you will be spared another round of lashes. Show them disrespect by reacting coldly and you and I shall go at it again. Do we have an understanding?’
Caralissa nodded numbly. As if she could refuse him anything!
Senelek continued his iron willed appraisal of her soul. His hard gaze slashed through her, as though it were a second whip. Why was he saying or doing nothing? To be whipped or penetrated would be far preferable to this contest of stares. Any form of force in fact, any action to remove the pretence of her will was what was called for in her mind. He’d conquered her already - why did he not seal his victory? Why was he making her take the initiative, forcing her to declare her status in as shameful a way as possible?
Agonising seconds dragged by, until inevitably Caralissa lowered her eyes, her gaze falling upon his crotch and finally settling on his feet, on his black boots.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged, fathoming what was required. ‘We have an understanding.’
Senelek’s eyes glowed momentarily brighter. A thin smile crossed his lips. ‘Beg for it, your majesty. Beg for your unworthy body to be used by the Rashal, beg to be the receptacle of Rashal seed.’
Her head swam as it dawned on her what was happening. Senelek was breaking her will, trying to turn her into a creature of cringing obedience, like a dog who might be made to lick its master’s hand or lie at his feet, an animal that might be controlled with simple rewards and punishments - the palm of a hand, the blow of a switch or lash. Angrily now, she jerked her head back up, her eyes welling with tears as she sought to convey to him how wrong this was - that she was a person, a free woman with rights to be honoured. To surrender to Varik, the man she loved was one thing, but to be humiliated by this man to whom she owed nothing was a violation of everything sacred.
Senelek’s jaw tensed. Moving his lips almost imperceptibly he met the challenge, meeting her glare with a look of his own, cunning, infinitely patient, like that of an untamed tiger. She swallowed hard as he conveyed to her in a single heartbeat the unbridled truth: that in him she had found a man who would not be swayed, would not allow himself to be controlled by any woman, least of all a pretty little barbarian plaything who so plainly belonged at his feet.
Lips trembling, Caralissa conceded, her head dropping of its own accord, her dreams of resistance dissolving once again before the iron will of the high priest, brother of the man whom she adored. ‘I beg to be used by the Rashal,’ she began, a wave of shameful pleasure overtaking her. ‘I beg for my unworthy body to be the receptacle of Rashal seed.’
Senelek seized her chin between his fingers, forcing her head back. ‘Speak up.’
Thrice more Caralissa repeated the formula, the third time shouting the words so that a cheer rose from the ranks.
‘That’s better,’ he nodded. ‘Now tell me, what are you?’
A tear formed in the corner of her eye. She knew what he wanted from her now and though she fought it with every fibre of her being she could not hold back the words. ‘I am your slave,’ she told him.
It was a decisive event, the marking of a permanent change in their relationship. Never again would she look Senelek in the eye, never again would she dare presume herself the man’s equal. Caralissa’s skin flushed crimson as she stood before him, in the fullness of what she had become: his conquered female property.
‘Kiss me,’ Senelek commanded, his body firm against her.
Caralissa’s lips parted obediently. There was nothing Senelek could demand now that she would not give freely. It was not love, but lust, or rather her own stolen passion, wrenched from her and placed upon parade, as enticement to the men, the aforementioned captains who were going to have her and also to those who would merely watch. How she wished her hands were free from above her head so that she might collapse, falling appropriately to Senelek’s feet upon her knees, or better still, upon her belly. Let her be hidden in this way, let her disappear inside his orbit; let her be truly a toy, only a toy.
Senelek pressed his still sheathed cock against her. ‘Listen closely, Caralissa, to what I am to say,’ he warned. ‘Much depends upon it.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, eyes begging for another kiss. ‘Master.’
‘You will orgasm for them,’ Senelek instructed, specifying more fully his earlier demand. ‘For each one who has you. You will show them that you are honoured to be had. You will show them that you are tamed, humbled, and appreciative. Within your bonds, you will writhe and show your gratitude for your usage at the hands of true men, at the hands of the Rashal. Consider each cock to be a godhead, which you serve with your miserable flesh.’
He leaned down to clench her nipple with his teeth. ‘Do not trifle with me or fail me, Queen Caralissa,’ he said when he had taken his fill or her teat. ‘I am not as my brother; your tears will not sway me. You are to me a means to an end, a sacrifice. What is done to you - your plundering, your abject submission shall symbolise your people’s conquest. Give me enough here and now, and they will be spared. Attempt to withhold any scrap of dignity, of your own identity, and I will transfer my wrath to them.’
Caralissa lunged with her hips. She begged with her body to be taken, by him, by anyone. ‘I am ready,’ she breathed. ‘Let them take me, master.’
‘Begin with the First Horde,’ Senelek proclaimed, to some unknown listener or listeners. ‘And work through to the last.’
The chosen soldiers were not permitted the whip. Nor were they allowed to unbind Caralissa, to reposition her in any way. There sole option, given her placement, was to take her from behind. The first few were content to limit themselves to the more natural hole, spilling themselves prodigiously as they squeezed her breasts, grunting and drooling, their hands clenched painfully on her breasts.
At first, Caralissa feared she might fail in her need to orgasm with each of them, especially given their utter lack of concern for her pleasure. And yet it was this very disregard, this total contempt for her well-being that proved the most erotic stimulant of all. To be reduced to an object of pleasure, to be a mere body to use and spill into was the most delicious of sensations, one that created in her a savage flood of submissive juicing. The men seemed almost amazed, as though they’d never experienced such before. Even in her bonded state, the marks of Senelek’s whip fresh upon her skin, she was a free offering unto them, a fully cooperative vessel, as if she were their own mate or at very least a hired prostitute.
Although in truth, not even a whore would betray herself to abuse, begging for kisses, rubbing herself heatedly and wildly at their slightest touches. She’d no idea it could feel so sweet! There was a rhythm, it seemed, and she was nearly lulled into a routine when she heard, somewhere between the eighth and ninth man, a question quite novel to the proceedings.
‘Are we permitted the use of the narrower channel?’ she heard a new man say, even as the old one was finishing noisily, his sweat dripping down her back, stinging the lacerations.
‘Yes,’ replied the chief priest, his voice discretely unemotional. ‘You may use the slut as you wish.’
Caralissa nearly forgot to come as she heard the words. At the last second, their implications still ringing in her ears, she gave the man the orgasm due him.
The new man grunted his thanks to Senelek as he positioned himself behind the hapless queen. By his voice he was a big man, and his ham-like hands upon her hips only confirmed the matter. Caralissa was not a large girl, and it took him several huge thrusts, with frequent rests between, during which she hung there, her partially filled rectum throbbing.
There seemed to be no time limit, as he was allowed to bury himself at leisure. She occupied herself looking for Varik, and then when she could not find him, imagining among the faces she saw which ones might make the best lovers. Or rather, masters, for who would have her now as anything but the slave she was?
In the end the presence of the man’s shaft inside her tight and tender bottom was less invasive than the smell of him, the feel of his hairy chest on her whip-bitten back. Worse still, he was speaking to her as well, or perhaps to his gods, coaxing them to aid in his ploughing of her captive body. The thrusts grew heavier and faster and a line of drool rained upon her shoulders, ebbing from his fetid mouth as he readied himself. Her body shook with his, cascading towards climax. Her untouched womb burning, she yielded herself, shuddering and crumpling under the assault. The flow of his seed went deep, up into that opening so unsuited by nature for the function.
The man’s ejaculation extended for what felt like forever, until finally he began to affect his withdrawal. This too took several stages, his shaft having been nearly fused to her tunnel. Caralissa gasped audibly as she was vacated, the man’s seed dribbling out behind the retreating organ.
She’d barely recovered when she heard Senelek call for the next man to come and to be quick about it, thus indicating that the use of her must not be allowed to falter in any way. And so it went, on and on. The men presenting themselves in all shapes and sizes. Small and large, some hard and fast pumping, others slower, their breath issuing in terse contractions. Some sought only to make nether contact, others allowed their hands to linger upon her, straying over her belly, gripping her aching breasts, clutching her undulating hips. Not one, though, was denied the fruit of her surrender. She came for each, under penalty of Senelek’s whip. No doubt the priest would be pleased at his exercise of power, and yet the truth was, it was Varik to whom she yielded, Varik to whom she gave her every thought.
She squirmed, accustoming herself to a new man. Where was he? She had yet to see him, nor could she even imagine where he might be. Was he practicing with swords again? Meditating in his tent, cross-legged as she’d seen him do between sessions of lovemaking, the tiny image of the raven god held between his outstretched fingers as he uttered the ancient chants of the Rashal? These were for her, moments of great tenderness, instances when she’d seen into his soul. Pretending to be asleep, lying in whatever position of ravishment he’d left her, she’d watched, wondering at his infinitely serious yet strangely playful expressions.
It made her jealous of that raven, and of the divinity behind it that so held his rapture. For a man with no use for gods, she thought, he’d seemed strangely pietistic. Ironically, it was a look of devotion she’d seen neither on Senelek’s face nor those of his men. Their passion was of quite a different order, their god, pain and suffering. Most particularly that of suffering, captive females. It was the whip that Senelek adored, not the raven. And who was to say that the whip was not the supreme power in the heavens? Could even the sweet goddess endure its sting - more to the point would she not, having been once bitten, come to crave it again and again, to beg for it upon her knees, or even on her belly? Could there be a place even in heaven for masters and slaves?
Now there was a thought most blasphemous and wonderful! Could that lovely, too-sweet-to-be-named female Orencian deity, the one so often depicted with red hair like hers, yearn even in her immortal soul to yield to the raven or the dragon or perhaps the monster gods of the Forest of Night? Did they conspire for her possession, manipulating events and working towards some final end in which she would be brought before them to be humbled? Would she then dance for them, under the rain of golden cords, unbreakable, swift as lightning? Would thunder be crashed upon her back, like the blow of a whip? Would she be knelt and mounted by the beasts of the stars, her silent tears falling forth as prodigiously as the drenching rains, the birth flood of spring?
Were such myths true but somehow lost in the shrouded origins of time? And did the gods and goddesses themselves lie to conceal such things and did they even now play upon the raw lusts of men and women to recapitulate such stories of surrender and betrayal?
Was that why Varik claimed to have no use for the family of heaven? Did he see writ large the same corruption as on earth? Did he find religion as tedious then as the politics that forced him ever onward, towards greater and greater conquests?
Would he change his mind? Would he stop the proceedings, as he did in the tent, after the Dance of Cords? Would he risk the loss of his office, unleashing the fury of his men against him? Would he surrender his life’s work, the honour of his tribe or even his very life? Could she have come to mean so much to him, in so short a time? Could there be anything between them, or was it merely the seductive charm of her temporary slavery, the indelible link of captor to captive?
Caralissa groaned to the sky, throwing back her head. It was her own sky, her people’s sky and yet she was no longer free - would never again be free, in fact, so long as he walked the earth: Varik, the lonely chieftain owned her now. Varik with the haunting eyes and the thousand subtle smiles and his boundless imagination, with the thousand upon thousand promises and threats behind his clouded brow.
She shifted accommodatingly as another expelled himself, relinquishing his place to the leader of the next lower unit. There was a cloying stickiness between her thighs now. Almost certainly she was dripping not only her juices, but those of her lovers as well. If such a term might be employed for the parade of stiff shafts that came for her, penetrating her under orders, draining themselves as a martial exercise. It was almost enough to make her laugh to think what certain others would think of her current predicament. How many at home, she speculated, would line themselves up to administer their own form of discipline upon her available hindquarters? Telos, to be certain, and others besides, Alinor, slim waist, sweet golden curls and Remik, the brooding swordsman with his straight line of black hair and harsh cheeks whom she’d once bested at fencing, embarrassing him publicly then spurning him.
And what of Romila? Would she raise a finger to help or would she turn away, smugly shaking her head, hiding her cowardice, her jealousy from the world? Only her father would have saved her, the great king, that man of a bygone era when heroes defended the honour of ladies, when tyrants dared not raise their heads to men, when swords were wielded by the just and a maiden’s honour was a thing to be treasured, a trust inviolate. In her father’s day the very earth would have cried out were a virgin despoiled, let alone one who was queen. The sound of that injustice would have grated on every ear, like a knife blade dragged across an iron shield.
‘It is done,’ she heard Senelek say as this latest man withdrew himself, a feeble, thin fellow, apparently he of the lowest ranking horde. ‘She has shown obedience to our gods. Her punishment is complete. We shall leave her now, till her ransom arrives.’
‘Forgive me, Lord Senelek,’ said a man, hastily arrived upon the platform, bowing low before the high priest. ‘But Lord Varik has commanded that she is to be taken down now.’
‘Indeed. And does the chieftain no longer deign to speak directly to the high priest of our gods?’
‘Forgive me, Lord Senelek,’ he repeated, bowing all the lower for his continued effrontery. ‘But Lord Varik has ordered the prisoner to be cleansed and wrapped in a robe so that she might be sent home, as is.’
‘As is?’ Senelek was clearly playing to the listening crowd now. ‘But what of the great treasure of gold which we were to receive for all our trouble?’
‘Lord Varik will take no gold. She is to be released without price, to symbolise her complete lack of value to the Rashal. It is to be a symbol of our conquest.’
‘A symbol, you say? But surely my brother has ordered us to ride down upon the Orencians and achieve the actual victory for which we have worked so hard?’
Caralissa longed to slap the man for his snide, manipulative remarks. It was obvious that Varik would not order the attack, and Senelek knew that. He was trying to make his brother look weak and selfish; that was the only purpose.
‘No, sir,’ the man explained, any irony in the situation apparently exceeding his comprehension. ‘We are to leave Orencia, never to return. It is never to be entered, or even spoken of again. At first break of dawn we march from the Valley of Seven Kingdoms, returning across the plains to our home.’
‘I see,’ Senelek seethed. ‘Well, there you have it then; our victory is complete.’
‘We are to blindfold her, sir,’ the man continued, ignoring the remarks. ‘No man who has possessed her may tend to her bathing. When she is cleaned she is to be wrapped in a robe of state and taken by horseback within sight of the walls of the Orencian castle by a single rider. She will then ride the last portion of the journey herself. I am to tell this rider whom Lord Varik will designate, that when he has turned your back upon her, this will be the last gaze he will have of this accursed valley. For we Rashal shall inhabit it no longer. All these things, the Lord Varik has told me to tell you are the products of a vision, bestowed upon him by the raven god.’
‘Of course,’ Senelek said acidly. ‘My brother is well known for his visions, and for his devotion to the worship of our gods.’
Caralissa wanted to spit upon the man for his cowardly assault upon his brother. What hurt far worse than this thinly veiled contempt for Varik, however, was the chieftain’s own failure to deal with her face to face, as a human being. It was true then, how he intended for her to hate him, and how he would not ever see her again, even to say goodbye. Such was the discipline of a warrior, she supposed. She herself, she imagined, would be no less stubborn were she a man. And perhaps they were not so different as it was. He would return to his kingdom, she to hers; duty before pleasure, all personal good sacrificed to the good of the state. Even now she was contemplating her own return, and the sweet revenge, the great victory over her enemies she would enjoy. It was enough to take the sting out of her whipped flesh, and the soreness from her well ploughed loins and hindquarters. Only her heart remained an open wound, but it too would be resealed in time.
The blindfold the man brought was a welcome cloak, a protector of her senses. Dimly now she recalled how as a child she would hide her eyes and imagine herself to be invisible. The pretence amused her father greatly and he would often command the servants to play along with her, to the dereliction of their regular duties. Romila, who was forced to study all day, held this game against her baby sister, along with a host of other supposed favouritisms of her father. As if she could have helped matters, as if she or anyone else could have done a thing to change the mind or opinions of Lysanis, the Lion of Orencia.
Caralissa was conveyed to a stream. She knew it by its sounds, and by the feel of the water upon her skin. Like a baby she was led into the depths, up to her waist. A magic cleansing was taking place, a delicious embrace of wrapping wetness. Her guides were silent as stones and rigorously gentle. She was quite certain she did not know them. Without her vision she was free to imagine these new men as she wished. Strong and noble warriors, men of great honour or saintly old men, priests of some more enlightened god.
What alone she could not conjure was any feminine image. Not only because she was quite certain there were no women in the Rashal camp, but also because it would not have seemed right after all she’d been through for any female to behold her current state. Better for a thousand hostile warriors to see her degradation than a single woman, especially not one she knew. This would be true shame, she realised, of a sort she’d never want to face.
When the bath was done there were ointments, similar to the ones Varik first used on her, along with other kinds as well. They were stolen, no doubt from exotic lands, plunder of the Rashal juggernaut. The smells were mixed: peppermint and jasmine, the extract of the leet plant, subtle and musky. With each application she felt the aromas blend, till there was about her a delicious enveloping sweetness.
This was a strangely refined art for barbarians, she thought. Perhaps these men were slaves, captured from some fallen city to the south. With infinitely gentle hands, reverently attentive, they completed the work, combing her hair and readying her for the robe. It felt rich and warm upon her skin. Its magnificent size cloaked her fully, and she imagined that it belonged to him, perhaps having been worn by him only recently.
Still barefoot and with no actual covering beneath the thick material, Caralissa was conveyed across the grass to a silent, open place. She heard only the most distant of echoes, the laughter of soldiers, the omnipresent clash of practice steel. They must be awaiting here for her escort, she realised. It would be late afternoon by now. Would she arrive home before dark? It might be preferable if she didn’t, given her state of dress. As a captive she could hardly be expected to arrive by state chariot in full regalia, and yet it was hardly in keeping with her position to be naked, in a foreigner’s robe.
‘I shall take her from here,’ came the voice, punctuated with the nasal whine of a horse. She cocked her head, thinking it must be her imagination. This man, the one who’d galloped up to fetch her unexpectedly - it could not be him.
‘Go now,’ the voice insisted. ‘Your work is done.’
The men must have been hesitating. Something appeared to have been altered from the original plan.
‘Take my hand,’ said the voice, placing an arm close enough for her to touch it. She clenched onto him for dear life, her heart beating wildly. It was Varik, lifting her upon his horse! Was he taking her, then, to some secret place, to live forever? The Forest of Night, perhaps, that one place where no one would dare follow - Orencian or Rashal?
‘Say nothing,’ Varik told her, swinging her behind him, allowing her to tuck her arms around his waist. ‘I am your escort, nothing more.’
His words, his presence confused her, but she held on fiercely nonetheless, tears of joy staining the inside of her blindfold. His horse was swift as the wind, the hoof beats like thunder. Her pulse was racing wildly; she was aroused again, the result being unavoidable, sitting as she was, her naked loins pressed to the hide of the horse, the cloak warmly cocooning her wet thighs, her throbbing breasts. Her pains and sorrows forgotten, she let herself fly and dream. There must be some way, some possible hope for them to be together.
The road was bumpy and he did not relinquish his speed. He seemed hell bent on getting her home as fast as possible. Was it too much to bear for him to be so close; was it too great a temptation after all? Why then was he doing this, violating his own word, his promise never to see her again? Or had he found a compromise, a way to keep his word by sealing her own eyes? Impulsively she reached round his shoulders, to feel his face.
It was as she suspected. The Rashal chieftain wore a mask, a cloth across his face to hide him from his own warriors.
They were climbing a hill now, an incline that Caralissa did not recognise as part of the royal highway. The ground was softer too, dirt and grass having replaced the smooth cobblestones. Here and there, too, he was having them duck for tree branches. She was certain of it now; they were no longer on the road. What trick did he have up his sleeve this time, this man of seemingly endless surprises?
‘Whoa!’ she heard him cry as he pulled back the reins. They were stopping. Surely he wasn’t thinking of...
Her thoughts were curtailed by his sudden tugging at her waist. He’d dismounted and was pulling her down. In a moment she was in his arms, her bare feet upon soft earth. Without a word he pressed his lips to hers, his face still masked by her blindfold and his cloak of cloth. She moaned a soft invitation, bidding him drink more deeply of her lips and of her mouth within. His hands were firm but softly caressing as he slid them down her shoulders to the small of her back. She was in danger of collapsing, and it was up to him to hold them both up.
The kiss was like a dream, a sacred union of two persons at such a tiny point of contact as to seem scarcely real. A gasp of wonder escaped her enraptured mouth as the cloak slid from her shoulders. She was naked before him, naked against him, utterly vulnerable and yet protected, safe and secure in the grip of his maleness.
Very gently he lowered her to the ground, his own body following seamlessly. Their mouths coupled once again, he pulled away the mask but not her blindfold as he began to work at the fastening of his own clothes till he too was naked. Her own unseeing hands conspired, desperately and ineffectively tearing at the complicated layers of mail and cloth and leather. He smelled of musk and sweat, the sweet draught of honest struggle, of a king labouring for his people.
Would her father have liked him? she wondered idly, even as he parted her thighs, pouring himself into her in a single fluid motion. She hoped he would. They were much alike. Strong, proud, stubborn. Intractable, complicated, their greatest strengths being easily twisted into weakness. The ground was like a pillow beneath her. She felt the imprint of grass and of flowers. As if by magic she felt no pain from her lashings, nor did her insides yearn in any way to reject this latest suitor.
Varik was different, that was the only possible explanation. Different in himself and different in her mind, in the way she knew him and touched him and loved him. Yes, she did love him. She’d said it to herself often enough, and her body now confirmed it. She loved Varik. In as much as any one person could love another, she supposed. As far as it could go between a man and a woman in a world such as this. A world of swords and whips and of dark, forbidden forests full of monsters.
Varik’s lovemaking was like a healing, from the inside out. She’d never see him again, she knew that, and yet this would be enough, would have to be enough. Actually, she wasn’t seeing him even now, but was only feeling him, making a memory with every part of her, burning the lines of his flesh into hers at every point so that they would never be apart again, not truly. It would be a secret thing, that none would ever speak of. Even they themselves would likely never utter the words or think the thoughts to go with these sensations. It would have to stay that way, a secret within secrets, the deepest guarded treasure of the hearts of two lonely monarchs.
Would he ever marry? Bitterly she prayed he would not. For herself she wished the same thing. A cry escaped her lips - her unguarded lips as he increased his pace moving up and down with a familiarity that startled her. How did their bodies come to work so well together, as if they were only one flesh, as if the whole of their prior existences were mere preliminary whose whole purpose was to lead them to their real birth together at this moment?
Varik was breathing heavily. His possession of her seemed to be taking something out of him this time, something painful. How she longed to see his face, to read the emotions she knew were writ there now, uncovered from their stony depths. And yet she knew the very reason he was showing forth his feelings was because she could not see him. Just as the sounds he made were falling upon ears which would never hear his voice again, so too were his features safe from betrayal by her eyes.
Such a sad notion: that she would never hear his voice again. How much more devastating in its particularity than the more general notion of separation. She loved his voice, loved its richness, the many tones and pitches, the growls and grumbles, the laughter, the sound he made when he’d won an argument, the smug cackle accompanying his getting the best of her. How could it be they’d been together only a few days? Was this some trick being played on her mind? Did she lie sleeping still in her own bed, all of this being only a dream?
Varik released himself, and as he did so she followed suit, matching his razor-sharp dance with oblivion. Let them perish together, she thought. Let the gods discover them, slain in the moment of ecstasy, shattered upon the ground as though cast down from the very pinnacle of passion. Perhaps it would even be the gods themselves who would throw them down, for daring to linger in that place of immortality that no mortal should ever touch. It wasn’t mere earthly lust between them - that was for certain. No, this was much more: something ancient, inexplicable. As though they’d always been together in different guises, perhaps, clothed in different skin, and yet the same two people over and over.
Caralissa held him wordlessly, doing nothing to denounce his action; neither his name nor his person would be revealed. His secret was safe with her; safe as the deposit of his essence he’d left deep in her womb. Besides, what could mere words do now, except destroy the moment, revealing its absurdity in the larger scheme of things? Better to lie low, to evade the world as long as possible, even if only for a few more minutes, a glorious hour, perhaps.
Anyhow, they said their goodbyes already, such as they might be - him with his ultimatums, her with the softness of her surrender to his soldiers.
Varik seemed content with the arrangement as well - this conspiracy of silence. Rolling himself onto his back he allowed her to lay upon his chest, her fingers twisted comfortably in the thick mat of hair. How warm his body felt, how full of promise. She could easily fall asleep like this, and dream perhaps of never having to wake again. Meanwhile, his hand trailed idly up and down her spine, touching, skimming, but never fully resting. Was his mind already otherwise engaged? Was he moving on in his mind to new conquests, yet unclaimed? Or was it something else - some part of him holding back, some strong emotion in himself he could not yet face?
‘The hour grows late,’ he said at last, as though this were the answer to everything, the solution to the puzzle of her life and his.
She felt him shift beneath her, and knew it was her signal to rise, to break the bond of intimacy. The pain she now felt was far greater than anything done to her with the whip, much more cruel than all of Senelek’s heartless words combined. There was in him no sign of similar anguish, though she’d learned from certain quarters that men were like this, given to sudden shifts and proclamations of readiness for cataclysmic change.
Best to bear up, then. Varik was right, the hour was late and there was much to be done at home. By her calculations, if she guessed correctly the time they’d travelled so far, the ride would be a short one, a half hour at most. The only difficulty would be in having to touch him, to feel his heat against her, as though they were still lovers. Anxiously she waited while he dressed, so he could lift her back upon the horse.
It occurred to her now that the animal would have seen everything between them. What an odd thing to think! Although everything seemed odd now to her still benighted eyes: the buzzing of the mosquitoes, the call of a hawk in the sky. Real, and yet somehow not real. Varik dug his booted heels into the sides of the horse and they were off again. The wind was picking up and it blew her hair, tugging the roots from her scalp ever so slightly.
Clamping her eyes shut, guarding against the risk of even a tiny bit of light which might break into her dark horizon spoiling her reverie, she willed herself home, not relying upon the steed, but upon her own wits. Under her own power, unto her own fate she would go. Alone. Strong. Invincible, in fact.
The cobblestones were tinier, sharper now. By the clomping of the horse she knew she was quite close, in full view of the castle. Varik slowed accordingly. It was an act of tremendous daring for him to come so close to an enemy, a people as yet un-subdued. And to do so alone, that enemy’s queen upon the back of his horse was even more amazing. Was it bravery or foolishness? Perhaps even some mad death wish? It chilled her when ideas of this sort popped into her head. Almost as if she could read things in him no one else knew, things he himself would prefer not to view in the light of day.
The horse stopped, giving a wary nay. Perhaps her guards were surrounding them by now. If there were trouble she would issue the order for him to be released. He’d conducted her safely thus far and she would return the favour, insuring his security back across her frontiers. The hands that helped her down this time were not Varik’s. They were armoured hands, and the chinks of the riveted links sent tingles up and down her spine. It was not till she was on her feet, her hand clutching the cloak tightly, possessively, that her blindfold was removed.
Varik was behind her, already galloping away. She wanted to turn and call out to him, but she knew that would be a betrayal of what they’d gone through, a betrayal of the carefully orchestrated journey home. Besides, there was another matter in front of her, more pressing.
Caralissa looked at the two men, their unfamiliar uniforms and faces. She frowned. These guards were not her own personal soldiers, nor even those of the kingdom’s army. They were foreigners, with the colours of two distinct kingdoms, neighbours in the valley.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, straightening confidently even as they drew their swords. ‘And why do you bear arms in this land?’
‘We are authorised, royal majesty,’ said the taller of the two. ‘By the League of Seven Kingdoms.’
‘What league is this? I know nothing of it.’
The men cast a glance at one another. ‘The League exists to secure the peace of the Valley,’ said the shorter one. ‘We have come to determine the rightful ruler of Orencia.’
Caralissa’s jaw locked fiercely, though she dared not show any emotion at this juncture. ‘Take me to my sister,’ she commanded. ‘And we shall see about this. In the meantime, assemble the council.’
‘Perhaps her majesty would prefer to bathe first and dress,’ suggested the taller of the two, clean-shaven, his disturbing eyes set at cross angles.
‘Yes,’ agreed the other, relaxing visibly at the possibility of a non-confrontational solution. ‘That might be best.’
Caralissa shook out her hair. ‘Very well,’ she conceded. ‘Take me to my room. I shall prepare myself, and then you shall summon my sister. And my guards, as well. I demand to see my own palace guards.’
The taller man bowed, neither confirming nor denying the bulk of her request. ‘A bath shall be drawn,’ he said. ‘At once.’
Caralissa slammed her fists in fury against the thick oaken door. It was her own door, the portal to her bedroom where she’d just finished her bath and been dressed by one of the servants in a gown of exquisite green silk. At present the fool of a woman - a stranger, like the guards who’d brought her here - was standing behind her, hands clasped at her waist.
‘Who has dared to lock my door?’ she demanded, whirling around to confront her. ‘I shall have their head. And yours, too, if you presume to detain me!’
The woman, who was old enough to be her mother, turned very pale. ‘Forgive me,’ she said gravely, falling to her knees. ‘I only do as I am told.’
Caralissa reddened, realising the brutality of her words. ‘Rise,’ she said, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘It is not your fault. I too have known what it is like to be under the command of others. Forgive me.’
There were tears in her blue eyes as she stood. ‘No one has ever asked my forgiveness,’ she marvelled.
Caralissa smiled. ‘I am honoured to be the first. So tell me, who is in command here?’
‘I do not know, majesty. I am only Deelia, the servant of King Norod of Relacia.’
Norod of Relacia. Of course. Orencia’s chief rival in the valley and a miserable old busybody to boot. No doubt he was seeking to capitalise on the turmoil introduced by the now pre-empted Rashal invasion. Perhaps it was he who was behind the most unexpected treason of Romila and the coward Telos, although it was hard to imagine the old fool ever hatching so grand a plot. More likely he was a dupe himself, for Telos or Romila, or some other parties within the nobility.
‘I see,’ she nodded. ‘So it seems my enemies are gathering close at hand. Just as well. Better to have them in plain sight, don’t you think?’ She winked.
‘As you say,’ the woman agreed meekly.
Caralissa snapped her fingers, sudden insight flashing into her tired mind. ‘The bed sheets! Of course! We can fashion a rope and escape out the window. It’s only three stories down. Help me, Deelia; we must gather as many sheets as we can.’
‘Yes, majesty,’ she bowed, though it was clear she thought the plan folly.
In short order Caralissa made a pile, consisting of nearly a dozen sheets in all, from the bed and from her linen closet. She was thick into the knotting process when a key was heard in the lock. A moment later the door opened revealing Telos, dressed in a gold-buttoned uniform of red and green, a sash across his chest.
Caralissa resisted the urge to lunge at him outright. ‘How dare you enter my chambers,’ she hissed. ‘You sorry excuse for a human being! You despicable cowardly traitor! Leave at once! Leave this room, this castle, this kingdom!’
Telos bent at the waist. ‘May I simply say,’ he offered glibly, ‘that you look most radiant tonight, my dear Caralissa?’
She looked at him with daggers in her eyes. He’d dared to use her name, as though she were a commoner. Recovering from the momentary shock, she searched for a suitable weapon. Quickly she settled upon a fluted vase from off her dresser. Telos ducked, barely avoiding having his skull impacted. ‘You may say nothing to me!’ she fumed. ‘Unless it be an abject apology upon your knees. Although, I promise even that would do nothing to take the edge off my rage!’
Telos sat on the edge of her bed. ‘I can see you are upset,’ he noted. ‘Perhaps if you allowed me to explain?’
‘Explain?’ she laughed contemptuously. ‘What is there to explain? You denounced me to our enemy as a tyrant and you have the nerve to want to explain it?’
‘I did it to spare you, Caralissa.’ He held up his hands beseechingly. ‘Is it not obvious? If the Rashal thought you of great value to us, they would have slain you, or extorted ransom. As it was, they sent you home free of charge. Intact, too - relatively speaking.’
Caralissa smacked him across his sallow, pockmarked face, leaving a bright red palm mark. ‘Do not cast innuendoes, Telos, nor should you presume to speak to the details of my captivity. Not now, not ever.’
Telos touched his cheek, a sickly smile on his face. ‘Of course,’ he agreed, ‘Caralissa.’
‘And stop using my name!’ she cried. ‘Address me properly or not at all!’
He pursed his lips, saying nothing.
‘Give me the key,’ she demanded, grabbing him by the collar with her clenched fists. ‘I will get out of here now!’
‘I haven’t a key,’ he said, offering no resistance. ‘The guards let me in.’
She released him. There was no point in dealing with this man, or even acknowledging his existence for that matter. He was a worm, and that was that. She thought of throwing him to the floor, but that would only give him the satisfaction of revealing how disgusted she was to have him on her very bed, and that was something she would never allow him. Leaving him be, she turned to her pile of sheets.
‘Help me with these,’ she bid Deelia, tossing the cowering maid several of the silk sheets.
As Caralissa worked she tried to ignore the interloper. Unfortunately Telos could still be heard breathing - a sound that filled her with nearly as much disgust as the hoof beats of foreign troops that she could hear even now outside her window.
‘Telos, is there some reason you are still here?’ she demanded at last, not bothering to look up from her accumulated pile of knots.
‘Not really,’ he sighed, reclining his miserable body on her bed as though he were her lover. ‘It merely occurred to me, your majesty, that you might wish to share with someone the story of what you have been through. With the Rashal, I mean.’ He folded his hands behind his head, crushing her pillows beneath him. ‘Surely it was quite an ordeal.’
‘No, Telos,’ she snapped, ‘it was a jolly picnic.’
‘They tell me you have marks,’ he said, crossing his legs, his head turning towards her nightstand from which he picked up a glass ornament, a swan. ‘Were you whipped, then?’ he enquired, turning the object over and over in his hands.
‘I was a prisoner, Telos. What do you think? And stop touching my things.’
He examined the swan a minute longer. ‘Sorry,’ he said, putting it back, ‘highness.’
Caralissa left off her growing rope of sheets to consider the face of her tormentor. With each mention of her title Telos seemed to be employing still higher levels of sarcasm. ‘If you are that curious about whips, Lord Telos, I can arrange for you to experience one for yourself.’
He laughed politely. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ A moment later he added, ‘Did it hurt very much, to be whipped? I would assume you were naked at the time.’
She chose to ignore him. The far corner of her four-poster bed seemed like the best anchor for her escape rope. Taking one end of the collection of sheets, she affixed it with a triple knot.
‘Is it true, then,’ he went on as though they were having an actual conversation, ‘that you were in no way compromised?’
‘Do you mean raped, Telos?’ she shot back. ‘Is that the word you cannot bring yourself to say, for all your obvious manliness?’
He covered his hands over his ears. ‘I shall not hear such language, your majesty. Not in the royal bedchambers.’
With almost gleeful spite, Caralissa strode to the side of the bed and said the word again and again, shouting it into his ears. When she was satisfied she’d made an ass of him, she said, ‘There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? And to answer your question, little man, I wasn’t raped at all. Everything that happened was consensual. How does that sound in your prim and proper little ears?’
She was pulling on his sleeve, forcing him to look into her eyes. Leaning over him, her silk-covered breasts dangling in his face, she let him have it with full force, unleashing the sum of her turgid emotions - the despair, the misery of losing the man she loved, of finding traitors in her own castle, of being sentenced to a life of loneliness without the impetuous Rashal chieftain by her side.
‘Do you want to hear more, Telos? You’d like the sordid details, is that it? Would you like a vicarious thrill from someone else’s sex life to make up for your own pathetic lack of even an iota of manhood? Very well, Lord Telos, I shall tell you what you are dying to know. To begin with, I laid for them. For their leader and a large number of his officers. They compelled me to, though not by force. They are men, Telos, which is something you will never understand. They needed only to lay hands upon me, to command me with their stern voices, to fix me in their searing gazes and I was left no option but to surrender. They made me wet and helpless between my legs with their merest glances, Telos. Can you imagine such a thing? I, a queen, reduced to naked servitude like a common slave, and at the hands of barbarians, no less. And I would probably do so again if forced to choose between them or some of our own men; for the ugliest most pathetic of their warriors possessed twice the masculinity of anyone in our land.
‘What’s the matter, Telos? Too much information for you? Then I guess I shouldn’t tell you the rest - what it felt like to be tied naked between two poles and beaten in front of thousands of soldiers, the stripes of the whip being interspersed with unspeakable intrusions into my intimate openings with the thick leather handle. Nor should I share with you the story of how your queen danced naked for a barbarian warlord, touching herself under the influence of stinging cords while the men whipping her competed to have her body. No, Telos, have no fear. I shall spare you those things, for they represent experiences of me which you shall never have, nor will you ever even have the courage to dream of them.’
Telos’ bland face contorted into a smirk. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said, looking up at her, her breath ragged from her long harangue. ‘Don’t be so sure.’
Caralissa bared her teeth. He’d managed to push her over the edge. Leaping onto the bed she straddled him, commencing to pummel him with her balled fists. Keeping to his character Telos did not fight back, but only sought to cover his face.
Her fists fell like rain, doing little damage but easing her tensions nonetheless. She was on the verge of releasing him when she heard the door opening for a second time. It was her sister Romila with several guards, along with none other than King Norod, who looked much more feeble than ever, with his long beard and stooped shoulders, his robes covering him like a scarecrow. It was just five years since she’d seen him, yet the man seemed to have aged fifty.
‘Caralissa, what on earth?’ Romila cried, even as the guards moved unbidden to seize her by both arms, pulling her off the passive Telos.
‘This isn’t what it seems,’ Caralissa said, unable to comprehend how anyone could think this little weasel to be the victim. ‘He attacked me.’
‘Noble Telos,’ King Norod intoned sharply, ‘is this true?’
Telos was busying himself attending to non-existent bruises. ‘I never laid a finger upon her,’ he told them quite truthfully.
Norod looked at Romila, who shook her head. ‘I do not understand her current behaviour, King Norod. Nor have I understood much of anything she’s done since our father’s death. First she put us all in grave danger running off to kill Varik, and then she comes home dressed in his cloak. And now look at these sheets, and look at Telos’ face. What are we supposed to think?’
Caralissa protested noisily to her sister, drawing an immediate rebuke from the king. ‘Young lady, that is quite enough. This is a matter to be taken up at the trial.’
‘What trial?’ she demanded, having finally succeeded in shaking the two guards off her.
‘An inquiry, I should say,’ he corrected himself, gesturing with his withered hand for the guards to leave. ‘To determine the true ruler of Orencia.’
‘I am the true ruler,’ she said, straightening her back and thrusting out her chin. ‘I am the one who saved us all from the Rashal.’
‘Not all,’ Romila said. ‘Or have you forgotten the three lost kingdoms?’
‘I have not. As a matter of fact, I was present when the Rashal chieftain decided to pull out of the valley entirely, thereby restoring their freedoms.’
‘Yes,’ Romila observed dryly, stooping to retrieve the tangle of ruined sheets so she could hand them to Norod. ‘We are well aware of your presence amongst the Rashal. The question is, are you fit now to be queen.’
Norod took the sheets and looked at them with deep distress, as though her actions were some personal offence against him. ‘Caralissa, I do not understand. Why were you trying to escape from your own room?’
‘It was the only way I could think of to get out,’ she said, feeling like a child being chastised by her elders. ‘They locked me in here.’
‘For your protection,’ Norod said. ‘There have been threats against you. Some say you collaborated with the enemy.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Lies, all lies!’
Norod handed Romila the sheets, inclining his head to indicate his desire to speak privately with her. No sooner did the two of them turn their backs on Caralissa then she felt Telos behind her, his hand snaking up the back of her leg, under her dress. When he reached her buttocks he squeezed. Shrieking in horror, Caralissa darted forward.
‘Caralissa?’ Norod asked, his wrinkled brow even more furrowed than usual. ‘What is wrong now?’
‘It’s Telos,’ she complained. ‘He - he touched me!’
Telos exchanged a glance with the king, shrugging helplessly as if to indicate to him Caralissa’s instability. From the look on Norod’s face, he needed little convincing.
Caralissa scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. Blast these men, and Romila too, she thought. They’d put her in a no-win situation. If she pressed the point she’d sound like a hysterical female, one given to flights of fancy, or maybe even bouts of treason in the bed of her people’s enemy. On the other hand, if she let Telos win now, what would stop him from demanding of her more and more till she became little more than the man’s slave?
Then again she was still queen, at least in name. Taking a deep breath she reminded herself that the overriding concern was to survive the inquiry, trial or whatever else might be thrown at her. She must keep her wits about her; hold her cards as close as possible to her chest.
‘Let us drop the matter,’ she decided. ‘Perhaps Lord Telos’ contact with me was inadvertent,’ she suggested, offering the man an easy out.
Telos bowed his head, smiling that sickening smile of his. ‘My apologies,’ he offered, ‘for any offence, majesty.’
She managed a forced smile. ‘Your true intentions are well known to me, Telos,’ she said to him pointedly. ‘Of that you may rest assured.’
‘The matter is settled then,’ declared Norod, obviously relieved to be free of any responsibility in the matter. ‘Come, let us go down and enjoy a feast. To welcome home the queen.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Caralissa. ‘I shall join you presently.’
‘I will wait with you,’ declared a new man, stepping in from the doorway.
Caralissa regarded him. Her eyes widened at once; her heart increased its speed. He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in silver breastplate and dark leather breeches, tight and rough. His boots were thick and high, his hair wild and blond. He looked for all the world like a Rashal warrior with his calm, deadly eyes and his confident swagger. There was no way such a man was born of the valley.
‘Who is this?’ she demanded of her sister, lacking the patience to enter into yet another discussion with the befuddled Norod.
‘He is your new bodyguard,’ Telos said, answering for Romila, taking obviously glee in bearing irritating news. ‘We have entrusted your royal safety to his person.’ He paused for effect. ‘Not to mention your virtue.’
The words hung in the air until Caralissa could bear it no more. Foreign troops, Telos on her bed, and now a barbarian for a jailor - it was more than she could stand. ‘I want the lot of you out of my room at once!’ she cried. ‘Out of my room and out of my castle, too!’
‘But our banquet,’ Norod protested.
She poked a finger at his shrunken chest. ‘You may take your banquet, King Norod, and you may stick it where the sun will not shine.’
Norod looked at Telos, then at Romila.
‘We only have your best interest at heart,’ Telos said, demonstrating his utter lack of shame. ‘If you present yourself well tonight it will surely look better come tomorrow.’
‘For the inquiry, yes,’ Norod agreed.
‘For the trial, don’t you mean, majesty?’ prompted Telos.
Sweat appeared on Norod’s brow. He cleared his throat, clearly at a loss for words.
‘It does not matter what you call it, Norod. I will present myself tomorrow, and not before,’ Caralissa declared, putting her hands to her hips. ‘And that is final.’
‘Leave her now,’ said Romila. ‘Let her be alone with her wounded pride.’
‘My wounded pride?’ she laughed. ‘How about my character - which you and your little fool of a boyfriend have assassinated? Really, Romila, wasn’t it enough you betrayed me to the Rashal; must you now do so to our own neighbours as well?’
Romila’s eyes flashed. ‘You speak high and mighty words, Caralissa, as always. How quick you are to judge. Consider this though, my sister. Your actions have consequences for others, which you never consider. You run off on a whim to steal all the glory, but it is I who must maintain our livelihood. You win easy favour among the peasants but who is it that must scrape together the gold to run our country? It hurts to be called a tyrant, doesn’t it? Well now you know how I feel - now you know what it is like to bear nothing but wrath for your best efforts. Who do you think it was, Caralissa, who kept our affairs in order the last years of father’s life, hmm? Who do you think covered for him when the treasury was bare; who collected the taxes, and levied the troops?’
Caralissa stared in open-mouthed shock.
‘Cat got your tongue, sister? Let me help you then. It was I, all alone. Just me. And now Telos helps me because I need him. Not everyone can play the hero like you do - some of us have to walk and not fly, some of us have to do the dirty work. So don’t come back now on your high horse and accuse me. Not till you’ve walked the path I have, not till you’ve faced what I have. You want your precious kingdom back? Fine by me. I don’t want it any more!’
Caralissa watched dumbfounded as her sister stormed from the room. Quiet, ever dependable Romila. Could it be there was something to her words? Did Romila really suffer so much all these years?
‘Perhaps we should go,’ Telos declared, showing his penchant for perceiving the obvious. ‘Her majesty seems fatigued.’
She did not like the way he said that word, fatigued; then again, every word from the mouth of the man was anathema to her. Could it be that Romila really needed help so badly as to turn to such a man, a cruel and treacherous lout? It was a sobering thought, a troubling one for all its many implications, not least of which was admitting negligence on her own part and that of their father, the one and only man she ever dared to love.
Before she met Varik, that is.
‘Yes,’ Norod concurred, smiling stupidly. ‘We should leave our royal colleague, the gracious Queen of Orencia. Till tomorrow then, good Caralissa?’
She inclined her head, doing her best to imitate his prattle. ‘Good night, my royal colleague, and sleep you well in my castle as a guest this night.’
‘I shall remain outside the door,’ declared the blond giant, to no one in particular.
‘We shall send food,’ Norod offered as the door was opened for their departure.
‘I shall not eat it,’ she replied, wanting nothing more than to be left alone for the night.
‘Shall I stay?’ Deelia asked softly, having emerged from the background.
She turned and touched her hand to the woman’s shoulder. ‘No, thank you. You may go and get some sleep for yourself.’
Deelia bowed and walked to the door. The blond warrior let her out then shut it behind him, giving Caralissa one last glance as he did.
Caralissa stood firm under his gaze, determined to show no emotion. It was only when the door was closed and locked again from the outside that she fell upon her bed, balling her fists and throwing her face into her pillows. Her voice sufficiently muffled to avoid outside detection, she yielded herself to the flood of tears that had been building just behind her eyes, kept at bay by dint of tremendous effort these past long minutes.
It was like a hot rain, cleansing her cheeks; the release of so much emotion, so many feelings, all of it pent-up in her heart for days, months even, ever since her father’s death and maybe long before that as well. She never meant to hurt Romila, never thought it possible she could hurt her stoic older sister. And yet what if Romila was right? What if she and her father both pushed her too far, eventually making her into a humourless shrew, a scheming penny pincher?
It did no good to speculate, she knew that. But how could she help but feel these things? If nothing else it was a response to the stress, to her capture, to the brutality she’d endured in Rashal custody.
Brutality. Was that the proper word? She hardly knew what to think any more. For the first little while after coming home she fooled herself into thinking she could lock away her painful memories of the last few days. And then she’d seen the blond barbarian, a man who could easily have been one of Varik’s lieutenants.
Was it her imagination, or did the fellow look straight through her, past her queenly garb, her stately demeanour, straight into her heart, reading her memories, her emotions? What if the fellow pressed that advantage? What if he appealed to the part of her that still dwelt in the Rashal camp; what if he sought to stake a claim on that part of her, bending her to his will? They’d obviously given him power over her, and perhaps it was even a trap, concocted by Telos or Romila or both. At any rate, she regarded Telos as her real enemy. For while her sister despised her, she was not certain the woman would ever commit treason on her own. As for the little man with all the new uniforms, he was like a vicious dog at her heels. She’d have to be careful with him. He would use her emotions against her; perhaps try to convince Norod and his court of fools that she was unfit, that she was a slut in royal guise. She’d have to be crafty with that one. No more emotion in his presence, no more tears, no more weakness.
Caralissa said a prayer to the nameless red-haired goddess, silent and precious, designed to give her courage and resolve in the face of male aggression. At once she felt a flood of peace, as if the dear lady were caressing her temples with her fingertips, soothing her wounds, commiserating with her female heart. She was on the verge of believing the prayer was actually working when she heard the voice at her window ledge, hushed and packed with emotion.
‘Caralissa, help me up!’
She cocked her head. It sounded so familiar, and yet there was no way it could be him. Could it?
‘Caralissa, help me! It is I, Alinor, from days of yore.’
She gasped. It really was Alinor; there was no mistaking the voice, the intonations. But how could he climb so high, a thin and sparsely muscled poet such as he?
Caralissa ran to the ledge, planted her hands on the cold marble. ‘Alinor, how on earth did you get up here?’
‘A ladder,’ he huffed. ‘I spirited myself to the ledge below, then grappled myself ever higher with this metal hook.’
She noted the curved piece of metal, hooked to the edge of the balcony. It looked to have been swung from below. It was improbable Alinor should have the athletic prowess for such a feat, not to mention the gumption to sneak into the courtyard in the presence of foreign guards, but she was not in the state of mind to ask such questions. She was lonely and curious, which seemed at the moment enough reason to let him in.
‘Grab my hand,’ she told him, extending her reach.
‘My thanks, dear lady,’ Alinor grunted as she pulled him to safety. ‘That was a close call indeed.’
She put her hands to her hips, observing him as he swung his legs over the ledge to stand before her. The immediate crisis passed, she felt her natural suspicions rising, preparing to equal or surpass her desperate need for male companionship. ‘Why have you come here?’ she demanded. ‘Have you not heard I am under house arrest? Don’t you care if you are caught with an accused traitor?’
‘I have feelings for you,’ he said, shaking out his long pale locks, far lighter than the barbarian’s, more white than yellow. ‘Is that not enough?’
She studied his soft lips, the very ones from which rolled the most seductive of poems. ‘No,’ she declared. ‘It is not enough. Either you have developed some scheme to capitalise on my condition, or else someone has put you up to this.’
His sea-green eyes twinkled merrily. ‘And why would anyone do that?’ he offered, his voice betraying not a trace of guile. ‘What could possibly be gained?’
She ran her eyes up and down his lean body, revealingly covered in a leotard of black. ‘You could seduce me,’ she speculated. ‘Then testify against me, denounce my lack of morals. Affirming thereby my unfitness to govern.’
Alinor moved towards her, gliding like a cat. She clenched her fists, mad at herself for the appeal he still held in her eyes. An appeal, that seemed to be all the more intense, for her recent emotional opening at the hands of the Rashal.
‘That is the first time I have ever heard you admit that I might one day be able to seduce you,’ Alinor said, his delicate fingers reaching for her cheek.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said unconvincingly, her breath quickening.
‘I have written you a new poem,’ he said, his voice a sweet whisper directed at her left earlobe, which had magically found its way between his gently nibbling lips.
She smiled, in spite of herself. ‘Is it something I shall have to spank you for?’
He brushed a finger across her lips, stilling any future argument, both literally and symbolically. ‘I was hoping this new poem might induce you to allow yourself to be spanked by me for a change.’
Caralissa felt a warm tingle up and down her arms. As it travelled to her belly it attained a deeper power, transcribing itself into a kind of weakness, so that as she beheld him she felt as if she were looking through someone else’s eyes, as if she herself were some supernatural servant, awaiting his commands, ready to do to her own body whatever he might command. ‘I am not the same woman,’ she said, the words ringing hollow in her own ears. ‘I think it would be best if you left now, quickly, before you get yourself into trouble. I have a guard, you know, at the door.’
Alinor moved swiftly, placing the kiss upon her lips before she could even begin to think of resisting. He always was a splendid lover, at least to the point he allowed her to progress. With a small moan she allowed him access to her mouth, her jaw yielding before his tongue.
‘I wish to read you my poem, Caralissa,’ he breathed into her ear, his hand laying claim to her left breast through the fabric of her dress. ‘Won’t you sit at my feet and hear it?’
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say, her voice a soft surrender as she let herself be led to the bed so that he might sit upon the edge and pull her to him, down to the floor. ‘Read it to me, Alinor, please.’
He gave her a moment to settle, her legs tucked underneath her. When she was comfortable, her chin resting on his knee, her eyes looking expectantly into his, he pulled from the pouch at his waist a single piece of parchment on which were scrawled in letters tight and narrow a large number of lines, straight and closely spaced, like the furrows of a farmer’s spring field.
Heart pounding, wicked thoughts cramming her skull, she waited, hot and fevered, her every reserve cast aside. ‘What is it called, Alinor?’ she asked him impatiently. ‘Tell me now.’
‘I call it The She-Beast,’ he said.
‘That is a good title, Alinor.’
‘It begins like so: “Come, croons the overseer, the keeper of beasts; come unto me, she-beast, crawling low upon your belly, come and beg for the lash. Wicked little thing, tits tempting, crotch teasing, licking, begging, jaws snapping at the weak, the unsuspecting; come unto me, and feel the discipline of fire. Born to my lash, your sex shaped for my hardness, my endless demands that echo through the long cold night of your captivity. Come”.’
Alinor looked over the top of the parchment. ‘I am not done,’ he told her. ‘It is but halfway. Strip off your clothes for me, Caralissa, and I will tell you the rest.’
She shook her head, though she was breathing heavily. ‘I cannot do that. I am your queen.’
He rose to his feet. ‘Then I shall go.’
She clutched at his ankles, prostrating herself. ‘Please,’ she said, scarcely believing the words were coming from her throat, ‘do not leave me. I am so alone. You do not know what it is like - what it has been like for me since I got home. I need you, I need your words of comfort.’
Alinor looked down at his feet, making no immediate effort to dislodge her. ‘As I have needed you, many times before, and yet always you refused me. My queen.’
‘Forgive me,’ she trembled. ‘I did not know what I was doing.’
‘Oh, I think you knew very well. But I am not an entirely cruel man. If you wish so badly to hear the rest of my poem, you may do so. But you will listen to me naked, or not at all.’
Caralissa sighed. ‘Oh, Alinor, must you ask this of me? Have you no pity?’
‘Poets can’t afford pity,’ he declared, stepping over her.
‘Wait!’ she cried, forgetting for a moment the guard at the door who might overhear them. ‘I will do as you say.’
He watched her scramble to her feet, her fingers commencing to fly over the buttons and hooks, nearly two dozen of them held her green velvet dress together, both at her bosom and at her waist. ‘Do not open those,’ he commanded. ‘I would have it that you are never again able to wear this dress. Approach me and I will tear it from your skin, and your undergarments as well, till you are naked before me, naked and shamed.’
‘This is one of my favourites,’ she protested, though she was already on her way to him. ‘I could not bear to be without it.’
‘Put out your arms,’ said the slender Alinor, ‘and still your tongue.’
Caralissa obeyed. To her horror she discovered he was not bluffing. The dress was difficult to remove, but he was persistent. To begin he pulled from the collar straight down the middle. The laces that covered the white silk bodice yielded first then the green velvet below. He continued to tear and pull till she was bared to the waist. Yanking the now useless sleeves from her hands, he completed the first part of his work.
Next he put his hands at her waist, tugging the narrow waistline down over her hips, so that the material was free to slide down her legs. When he’d finished this task, her dress and silk slip lying round her ankles like a pool of material, he told her to step from it, so that she was totally naked.
‘Put your hands behind you,’ he said, his eyes glowing as he began to feel himself growing drunk with his own power. ‘Caress your arse. Flex your knees, thrust out your sex to me.’
She did her best to comply; the acrobatics involved being rather new to her. It was a difficult pose and humiliating, but its effect on Alinor seemed profound.
‘That’s it,’ he said, his hand reaching for his swollen leotard-covered crotch. ‘Now put your hands to your nipples. Pinch them hard. Harder.’
Caralissa winced, a teardrop forming in the corner of her eye. It was like being her own torturer, all for his pleasure.
‘Keep one hand on your nipple,’ he said, his voice thickening audibly. ‘Squeeze it. Slap your arse with the other. Again. Harder.’
Caralissa felt the sting, doubly sharp as it reverberated from her soft buttocks to her equally soft palm. ‘Alinor, please, that’s enough.’
He slapped her face; lazily, just hard enough to get her attention. ‘Did I say to stop?’
‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘You didn’t.’
‘Alternate the cheeks of your arse with your right hand,’ he instructed, giving her no quarter. ‘At the same time, with your left, pass back and forth continuously between your nipples and with every third stroke work yourself between your legs.’
She looked at him pitifully.
‘Go on,’ he said harshly. ‘Do it or I shall scream for your gaolers. What will they do, seeing you like this, your majesty? Will they do to you what you deserve - making you a slave?’
Caralissa struck herself, the sound of her palm coming like the crack of a tree branch. Lurching forward she pressed her breast into her own cruelly pinching fingers. She could not allow him to denounce her because they would get the wrong idea. They would think her less than a queen, less even than a woman.
‘How does this feel, little Caralissa?’ he taunted, his eyes moving hungrily back and forth as she persisted in her self-abuse. ‘Is it as enjoyable for you as torturing me with your teasing, unavailable little body, giving me little glimpses and sighs, making me hard and throbbing and leaving me with nothing but a sore arse for my troubles?’
Caralissa bit her lip. ‘Mercy,’ she begged. ‘Please.’
‘Mercy?’ he snickered. ‘For a naked slut? That is what you are, isn’t it?’
She made no response. Quite honestly, at this juncture she did not know what she was or who.
‘Tell me you’re a naked slut,’ he coaxed. ‘Say the words.’
‘I am,’ she said, her voice coming in hot stabs, ‘a naked slut.’
‘Open your eyes, naked slut. Read the rest of my poem. Though under no circumstances will you leave off what I have commanded of you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, twisting her nipple till she yelped, ‘I understand.’
‘Call me master.’
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would pass, this latest assault, this most impossible of demands. ‘Alinor, you don’t know what you’re asking,’ she said to him when she realised he was serious.
He pinched her cheeks, compelling her to make eye contact. ‘Do not disobey me again,’ he warned, ‘slave.’
She beheld the fire in his eyes. Where did it come from, this sudden power to make her do things, to make her lose her will so easily? And how did it come to be that he and nearly everyone else was treating her so differently? Was there something in her appearance now, in her manner of speech that gave them the clues to her new identity?
‘I’m sorry,’ she heard herself say, her eyes lowering before his, ‘master.’
Caralissa told herself this was a mere expression, a temporary glitch in her life, that it could have no meaning in the light of day, not for her or him or anyone else. It would pass, just as when she’d said the word to Senelek on the whipping platform. It meant nothing. She continued to tell herself that as she maintained her ongoing response to his gruff command to touch and strike herself, all the while attending to the task of reading the rest of his wicked words.
‘“Come and beg”,’ she recited, her voice cracking under the strain, the syllables echoing with the sound of her self-flagellation. ‘“Borrow and steal; pieces of your broken pride, your co-opted womanhood which I will give back to thee on loan at terms I set myself. Come, my she-beast, to be caged and tamed. Come, my she-beast, to be whipped and named. What do I call thee? Whore, temptress, animal, willing slut to my whims; it is my desires you live for, bend for, spread for; Come to me, come and come and come”.’
The words were an invitation as she moved against her own hand, nipples screaming, vagina trembling. There was no holding back now. Letting the poem flutter from her hand she clenched her thighs, riding to her own climax, her own self-abasement, blatant and sordid under the cynical gaze of the poet.
‘Go and fetch me a hairbrush, slave,’ he commanded when she subsided. ‘And be quick about it.’
Caralissa ran to her dresser. She could not help herself; the need to obey was too strong now. Finding the brush among her bottles of perfume she gave a little sigh of joy. ‘Here, master,’ she cried, placing the rounded silver device in his hands, blithely oblivious to the intentions he might have for it upon her person.
‘Bend over, slave. Grasp your ankles, your arse facing me.’
Caralissa put herself as he ordered. It was a position of maximum exposure and humiliation, and therefore one of great arousal - or at least she found it to be such in her current state of abandon.
Alinor touched the cold metal to her posterior, initiating a deep shiver of sexual need. ‘You will count the blows, slave. And after each you will beg for the next. This is to be your punishment for the times you dared strike me, making me abase myself to you, my arse bare to your wicked spankings.’
The first blow nearly knocked her from her feet. It was not so terribly harsh as the whip but she’d been unprepared and the impact nearly cost her balance with its sensuous impact. ‘One,’ she pronounced. ‘May I have another?’
Alinor obliged, choosing a place slightly above and to the right.
‘Two,’ she asserted. ‘May I have another?’
The third made her cry out, though she’d promised herself she would not do so in front of such an insignificant man. What Alinor did not know and could never understand, was that after being dominated by powerful men such as the Rashal it was a distinct disgrace, a sign of her overwhelming weakness that she could now be controlled by men who possessed not even a tenth of their strength. It would be as if a lioness, having expected to be tamed by a huge whip-wielding man, his hand wrapped round an outstretched chair, found herself instead about to be trained by a circus clown.
‘Six,’ she said now, absorbing the newest impact. ‘May I have another?’
‘You may,’ he said magnanimously. ‘And afterward, when I am done, you may take my cock inside you, hard between your reddened buttock cheeks.’
Caralissa groaned, the words crashing into her like the brush. ‘Yes, master,’ she replied, counting the seventh. ‘May I have another?’
‘You will remember this night, won’t you, my queen? The night I tore the clothes from your body and did with you exactly as I pleased. The night I made you my slave, a title you shall bear in your heart forever, for my sake, whether or not you regain your throne.’
‘Yes, master. Eight. I will remember. May I have another?’
‘No,’ he declared, tossing the brush to the floor and pawing at the opening of his leotards. ‘You may not.’
Caralissa felt his prick poking at her anal opening. Bracing herself as best she could she endured his assault, bittersweet on account of his fingers, which were tantalising her sex, producing juice enough to provide him lubrication. With only moderate effort Alinor managed to sheath himself, stuffing her fully with his throbbing member.
Clasping her ankles as tightly as she could she yielded to his incessant pumping, allowing him to thrust freely as if he were in her other opening, the more common one. Alinor was breathing fast, his breath coming in low hisses. She was expecting his imminent release but at the last second he pulled out so he could spurt across her back and bottom. His jism was surprisingly thick and abundant, as much as a Rashal warrior’s, in fact.
Denying her permission to rise, Alinor attended to his cleansing needs, using her torn dress to wipe his glistening organ. When he was finished he took the green velvet, thrusting as much of it as he could manage into Caralissa’s mouth.
‘Do not move from this position,’ he told her as he tucked himself back into his leotards. ‘Till you have counted to a thousand. And in case you are interested, that number is an approximation of the number of times I took myself in hand seeking my own pleasure in lieu of what you steadfastly refused me all those months.’
Caralissa glared at her own feet. She was drooling through the makeshift gag, feeling nauseous from the smell of his semen. It wasn’t that it was so malodorous as much as that it represented for her the flavour of her own abasement, the scent of her domination.
One thousand proved to be a very large number. More than large enough for her to think through in her mind all the nasty implications of her being there, exposed and used, a waiting victim, ready to be caught by the spying eyes of her gaoler. Or maybe it would not only be his eyes he laid upon her, but other things as well, other experiences.
Alinor was devious, that was for certain. To make a queen do such things, to take her in so bestial a manner, giving her shameful pleasure in the bargain, this was an evil thing, a thing that could lead only to their mutual ruin. And yet she sensed in her heart that this was only the beginning; that a road was opening for her, a way unto submission that would take her both to the depths of her dark desires and to the soaring heights of her fantasies.
It was a road few dared travel and yet one that she could not now avoid. In many ways she’d traversed a line, a line of decency and order upon which all kingdoms and cities rested. Her name would soon be a curse to her people; of this much she was certain. Keeping herself as quiet as possible, whispering her endless count, she persisted, proving to herself and to the long gone Alinor that she was his slave, if not in perpetuity, at least for the time being.
Let us hope he keeps his silence, she thought, not daring to face the implications of having the events of this night made known to all, known to those men who might exploit the fact, making her their permanent prisoner, their abject slave. Let us hope Alinor has at least some small scrap of loyalty, some sense of discretion, she told herself.
When at last Caralissa crawled wearily into bed, the sheets were cool, though the leftover knots from her earlier escape attempt rode across her flesh in disturbing ways. She collapsed at once upon the pillows, her mind taking her to a place of deep and instant numbness. Her final prayer to the goddess was that she would have no dreams, no disturbing fantasies. She needed her reason; she needed to have her wits about her. In the morning she must awaken as a picture of a sober, chaste queen, a disciplined monarch prepared to deal with her detractors, her critics and her enemies.
Giving a small sigh, barely conscious, she turned, one of the knots gripping between her legs. Inadvertently, as she sought to free herself another coil wrapped round her ankle. It felt like a bond, and that made her think once more of Alinor and his poorly written yet potent poem. Moaning softly, seeking her release, she plunged her hands to her tortured sex then fell asleep.