She would soon, I was sure, as a slave, aside from fear, take great pleasure in being found pleasing, and be genuinely grateful for having been found so, and, if not, there was always the leather.
How desperate, I thought, are slaves, once they understand their condition, to be found pleasing. Surely the switch, the lash, are unpleasant. Saru was new to her bondage, but, thanks to the grooms, she was already well aware of the consequences of failing, in any particular, to be pleasing to free men.
But most desirably the slave should eventually desire to be found pleasing, should strive to be so, for the joy of being found pleasing by her master, and not from dread of the boot or leather.
“To whom do you belong?” I asked.
“To Lord Nishida,” she said.
I had supposed that that would be the case. On the other hand, if a different slave were being sought, with her coloring, and such, it was quite possible that she might have been given to another.
I examined the collar. “I cannot read the collar,” I said. I supposed it was in Gorean, but it was not in a common Gorean script. I had encountered something similar, long ago, in the Tahari, where Gorean was written in a quite different script, a flowing, beautiful script common in the Tahari.
“It was shown to me,” she said, “but I, too, could not read it.”
“Can you read Gorean?” I asked.
“It was not thought necessary that I learn it,” she said.
“Many Earth-girl slaves are kept illiterate in Gorean,” I said. “Why should a slave be taught to read?”
“I was not a slave!” she said.
“In the view of some, it seems, you were,” I said. “But, in any event, illiteracy would seem a suitable aspect of your disguise.”
“And I understand,” she said, bitterly, “they had a collar in mind for me, even from the beginning.”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Yes, certainly,” she wept.
“I assume your collar was read to you,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“‘I am the property of Nishida of Nara’,” she said.
This was doubtless Lord Nishida.
“What is Nara?” I asked.
“I do not know,” she said.
On the common Gorean collar it might be a city, a district, even a cylinder. On her collar, for all I knew, it might be a place, a port, a caste, a family, a clan, or something else. I did not know what. I would later learn it was a citadel, a lofty fortress castle.
“Were you given slave wine?” I asked. I recalled she had had “the wine of the noble free woman.”
She closed her eyes and, involuntarily, shuddered with misery. Then she looked at me, shaken. “My hands were tied behind my back,” she said, “and then I was knelt and my head yanked back by the hair, and held in place, and the spout forced between my teeth, and my nostrils pinched shut, and it was poured into me, and I must imbibe the beverage or suffocate. It was most bitter, most foul. And then, unable to disgorge the brew, even later, for the tying of my hands, I must endure to have my head shaved.”
“The shaving of the head was doubtless to help you understand better your bondage,” I said, “but, too, it is perhaps not entirely regrettable considering the applications to which you have been put. Your hair was very beautiful, as well you knew, in your vanity, and it would have been a sorry thing for it to have been fouled in the ordure of tharlarion.”
“I protested my work, and as they would have me attend to it,” she said, “and my face was forced down, into the dung of tharlarion. I protested no more.”
Whereas, as suggested earlier, the effects of slave wine and “the wine of the noble free woman” are identical, the common ingredient being sip root, there is a considerable difference in the two drinks. Slave wine makes no attempt to conceal the bitterness of ground, raw sip root, whereas “the wine of the noble free woman” is flavored, spiced, and sweetened in such a way that it offers no offense to the delicate and more refined sensibility of the free woman. A slave, of course, as any domestic animal, is to be bred only if and when, and how, the master wishes. A releaser, interestingly, deliciously palatable, is administered to the slave prior to her mating. In the mating, which is supervised by masters, she will be crossed with a male slave. Both slaves will be hooded, and are forbidden to speak, that neither will later, should they meet, know the other.
“As I recall,” I said, “on the beach, several days ago, you informed me that you were, at that time, a virgin.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down.
“Why?” I asked.
“I hated men,” she said. “I despised them. I could not bear the thought of one of them doing that to me. How vulgar it would be, and how helpless I would be! I would be in their arms no better than a slave.”
“Are you still a virgin?” I asked.
Saru cast a swift, distressed glance at Cecily, who was standing behind me, a bit to my left.
“Must I speak?” she asked,
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” she said, looking down to the straw, “I am no longer a virgin.”
“Lord Nishida opened you,” I said.
She looked up.
“‘Opened’?” she said.
“Yes, to have you more ready, for the pleasure of men,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It was not he who opened me.”
“I am surprised,” I said.
“After the pavilion,” she said, “he had no more interest in harvesting the virginity of one such as I than of harvesting that of a she-tarsk. I was hooded, and given to grooms.”
“Are you different now?” I asked.
“They use me as they wish,” she said.
“Are you different now?” I asked.
“But not so much as before,” she whispered. “Now, often, they make me wait.”
“Doubtless at Lord Nishida’s command,” I suggested.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I do not know.”
“I see you are different now,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “I am different now.”
“They have put squirmings in your belly,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, lowering her eyes. “They have put squirmings in my belly.”
“I see,” I said.
She looked up, agonized. “Can you not understand me?” she cried. “I can no longer help myself!”
“Nor should you,” I said. “You are becoming vital. You are coming to a state of health scarcely suspected by a free woman. You are being redeemed as a female.”
“I find myself, again and again, in heat, like a she-tarsk!” she cried.
“As a slave,” I suggested.
“Yes,” she said, “as a slave!”
“Excellent,” I said. “To be sure, there are often miseries in such things.”
“For the first time in my life,” she said, “I now want the touch of men! Nay! I must have the touch of men! I now need, desperately, helplessly, piteously need, the touch of men!”
“Of course,” I said, “you are a woman.”
“I was a woman before!” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “but not a slave.”
“No,” she said, “not a slave.”
“You have work to do,” I said. “Tharlarion will soon be returning to the stable.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Where are you housed?” I asked.
“In the corner, over there,” she said, pointing toward the back of the stable, to the right, as we faced the back of the stable. “At night I am chained there, by the neck, to a ring on the floor. I have two pans there, one for water, one for gruel. I must feed as a she-tarsk, head down, my mouth to the food and water, forbidden the use of my hands.”
“That is not all that unusual,” I said, “with a girl who is first being taught that she is at the total mercy of men, one who is beginning to learn her collar.”