“What then,” I asked, “was the fate of the Ubara?”
“I do not know,” said the slave. “The rising came suddenly, and there was terror in the streets for many. I and some others were taken in hand by mercenaries and, stripped, and self-pronounced as slaves, and neck-roped, were used by them as a ruse to approach the walls, they pretending to be citizens of Ar conducting us to impaling stakes. At the wall they managed to fight their way free to the outer country, and join Cosians in retreat. Our hair was shortened, that we not appear free women to flighted tarnsmen, and we were soon chained by the neck, and conducted from camp to camp, until we reached the vicinity of Brundisium, from which port, subsequently, we, cargoed, were shipped by sea to the north, where we made landfall.”
“Do you recognize me?” I asked.
“It is dark, Master,” she said. “The light is tiny, and poor. There are shadows. Do I know you?”
“Not really,” I said. “But we have met. I met your party on the beach.”
“You are he?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I thought perhaps,” she said. “But I dared not speak.”
“You impressed me,” I said, “as a slut well collared.”
“Master!” she protested.
“Just now,” I said, “you displayed yourself well.”
She put down her head. “Yes,” she said, “I am a slut well collared.”
“Talena,” said I, “must somehow have escaped.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but it seems impossible. The Central Cylinder was surrounded even before the bars sounded the rising.”
“I have heard no word,” I said, “of the capture, the torture, or impalement of the Ubara.”
“No,” agreed the slave.
I was sure the Central Cylinder would have been examined with care, each chamber, even to measurements of the thickness of walls, and such, being considered.
“She must have escaped,” I said.
“Perhaps the crowds found her, tore her to pieces, and fed the scraps to sleen,” she said.
“By tarnflight, from the Central Cylinder,” I suggested.
“Perhaps, Master,” she said.
To be sure, this was highly unlikely, for a careful watch would have been kept. As this would be a most obvious possibility, a most likely route for escape, it would have been guarded against with zealous care.
“If she escaped, Master,” said the slave, “I think it unlikely she will long remain at large.”
I nodded. Her conjecture seemed to me plausible.
“I heard the masters speaking,” she said, “in the camps. A price of ten thousand tarn disks, of double weight, has been placed on the Ubara’s head.”
I nodded, again. I had heard that, too, from Torgus, on the beach. Every bounty hunter on Gor, professional or amateur, would seek the Ubara. Too, it was unlikely that she would be long shielded from discovery, given the price on her head, and the hostility with which she was so generally regarded. Her vanity, her arrogance, the insolence with which she had abused power, her betrayal of her Home Stone, and such, militated against her concealment. Perhaps, as Torgus had suggested, she had already been captured, and her captors were negotiating for an even higher remuneration.
“You have been helpful,” I told the slave.
“You are not going to take me back to Ar?”
“No,” I said. “Such things are behind you.”
I turned to go.
“Master,” she called, softly.
I turned back.
“What are slave fires?” she asked.
“Put your knees apart,” I told her.
She gasped, but obeyed.
She seemed pathetic, in the darkness, kneeling on the small, striped straw mat, her skin so white, illuminated in the light of the taper.
The light reflected from the chain, dangling from her neck.
“Can you not sense what slave fires might be?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I think so.”
“Fear them,” I said. “Resist them mightily. For once they burn in your belly, you can never again be truly free. You will always be a man’s slave.”
“I am not permitted to resist them,” she said, “for I am a slave.”
“That is true,” I granted her.
“Master,” she whispered.
“Yes?” I said.
“I can sense what they can be,” she said. “I do not want to resist them.”
“They will change you,” I said, “forever.”
“I want to be changed,” she whispered.
“Put your knees together, and go to first obeisance position,” I told her.
With a rustle of chain, she obeyed.
“You are a mat girl,” I told her. “You may now beg as one.”
“Master?” she said.
“You may kiss the free man’s feet, and beg to be found pleasing,” I said.
I then felt her lips at my feet.
“You may both kiss, and lick, lovingly, deferentially,” I said. “It is a great honor for a slave girl to do this, for he is a free man, and she is a mere slave.”
This was true, for some masters will not permit a slave to perform this simple act, even when she begs for the privilege. From the point of view of a free woman this act may seem humiliating, and perhaps it is, for a free woman, but, for the slave, it is a beautiful act of submission, even of love, in which she testifies to her joy in bondage, and expresses, humbly, and symbolically, her gratitude to her master, that he has consented to have her, one such as she, only a slave, in his collar.
Many free women cannot even begin to understand the love of a slave for her master, but it may be the deepest and most profound love possible between a human female and a human male. Indeed, in the view of many, it is exactly that, the deepest and most profound love possible between the human female and the human male, that of slave for master, and of master for slave.
What else can so fulfill the natures of both?
She knelt at my feet, her head down, her neck in the chain. There was a rustle of chain as she trembled, understanding where she was and what she was doing, and then she, again, bent to her task.
“What are you?” I inquired.
“A slave,” she whispered, “a mat girl.”
I considered her hair. It had not been well shortened. It was ragged, and uneven.
“It is enough,” I said. “Keep your head down.”
She was quite beautiful. That had been clear when she had knelt at the beach, the cold surf coming and going, washing up, now and again, about her thighs, feet, and calves. She was beautiful now, too, in the flickering light of the taper.
“You may beg,” I said.
“I beg to be found pleasing, Master,” she whispered.
Torgus and his fellows, in my opinion, had shown her, and her chain sisters, too little respect. They had regarded the chain as raw, poor stuff, as largely worthless slut merchandise, little better than free women. Could they not see the females as what they might become? Washed, combed, brushed, trained a bit, silked or tunicked, their slave fires ignited, taught to fear the whip, they might prove exemplary merchandise. I wondered again if Pertinax might like her. He had never owned a slave. How then could he know what it was to be a whole man?