In another moment she was prone in her chains upon the floor, aghast and helpless, clinging disbelievingly to one of the rings with her small, chained hands.
“Please stop!” she cried.
Instantly, at a sign from Orak, the beating stopped.
Dira gasped for breath, shuddering, aflame with pain.
“You see, you received your way,” said Orak.
“Yes!” gasped Dira, sobbing.
Then, at a sign from Orak, Andrak, the artisan god and the builder of ships, put again the cunningly braided leather to the back of the startled, chained beauty.
“Stop!” she cried. “Please, please stop!”
But this time the lash continued to fall and Dira, in consternation, bewildered, helpless, writhed under it, tangled in her chains, crying out for mercy.
Then Orak indicated that Andrak should desist, and Andrak stepped back, coiling the whip.
“You see,” said Orak, “this time you did not receive your way.”
“No!” gasped Dira.
“Kneel!” roared Orak, and Dira scrambled to her knees.
“Thus it is shown to you,” said Orak, “that, from this moment on, though you are a goddess, what is done to you, and what you must do, are no longer dependent upon your will, but upon the will of others.”
Dira shuddered.
“Do you prefer to be fed alive to the dragons of Tylethius?” asked Orak.
“No!” said Dira. “No!”
“No longer will it be men alone who have slave girls,” said Orak.
The gods in the hall acclaimed this wisdom, and shouted, and clashed weapons.
“You will be the first of the slave girls of the gods,” said Orak.
“I pronounce you slave,” said Orak, “and give you the name ‘Dira.’ “
And it was thusly done that the goddess, Dira, became the first of the many slave girls of the gods, and received, too, the name “Dira,” though then, of course, as a mere slave name.
Many, of course, are the stories and legends of Dira, how she served, how she learned to dance, how it was that she invented cosmetics, and jewelry, utilized even by free women, how it came about, in disputes concerning her ownership, that she was branded, how Andrak first forged a slave anklet, and later bracelets and collars, and such things, but we have time to note but a particle of these things.
Among such stories, of course, is that of the sexual conquest of Dira by Orak, in which she learns her slavery, and rejoices in it, and thrives in it, living to love and serve selflessly, finding her meaning and ecstasy in her own subordination, her own ravishment and conquest.
Her relationship to male gods would always be unique, and special. But her relationship to the female gods would be quite different. By them she would be held in contempt, and hated, and mistreated.
Orak, as we may recall, as the stories have it, hid a slave girl within each woman. Indeed, it seems to have been Dira’s predictable criticism of, or reservation concerning, this act which led finally to her own enslavement. Naturally the hidden slave girl seeks to come forth, and be accepted, that she may rejoice and serve, and become openly the woman which she secretly is, just as, from the other perspective, the woman longs to become and manifest the secret self which is her innermost reality. In the end, then, the slave girl is the woman, and the woman is the slave girl. As this is commonly understood, though seldom so baldly put, women are by nature the natural slaves of men. Free women, of course, are culturally encouraged, for a number of reasons, to deny and suppress their slavery. This is usually regarded as in the best interests of society, though it does play havoc with the psychology and mental health of the free woman, tending to manifest itself in various psychosomatic complaints, hostilities, neuroses, and other such ills. In many parts of the empire, of course, slavery is legal, and this tends to relieve the pain of an otherwise intolerable situation, giving a public role to, and an outlet for the needs of, slaves.
As a last remark, then, which ties much of this together, we can understand the devotion to Dira among many female slaves. Indeed, sometimes even free maidens, and older free women, pray to Dira, that she may help them attract a desired male, that she may teach them something of the wiles of the slave, that she may consent to imbue them with at least a little of the softness, the vulnerability, the sensuousness, and the subtle sexual magnetism, of the female slave. But the devotion to Dira, of course, is most profound among female slaves.
It is said that for a time, you see, most of the occupations and professions of men had their particular tutelary deities, their supervising gods, who took a special interest in certain vocations, trades, crafts, and such. An obvious example would be the devotion to Andrak of smiths and shipbuilders. But slave girls had, for a time, it was said, no such god or goddess. Dira, who was herself a slave, of course, saw this, and one morning, after, on all fours, bringing Orak his sandals in her teeth, she brought his attention to the matter. “They have no special god,” she pointed out, “to enlighten them, to inspire them, to bring joy to them, to bring them special graces, to aid them, to instruct and comfort them.”
“But they are slaves,” said Orak, “and are unimportant, and worthless.”
“I, too, am a slave, Master,” said Dira, “and am unimportant, and worthless.”
“True!” laughed Orak, striking his knee in amusement. “Be then their goddess.”
“Yes, Master!” said Dira, and that is how, according to the stories, Dira, the enslaved goddess, became the goddess of slave girls.
“Does she live or die?” called Abrogastes to the tables.
“How can one tell, milord?” laughed a man.
“It seems she will die,” said another.
“Kill her!” cried men.
Two creatures approached the scales, hybrids, creatures of exotic enzymes and catalysts, whose origins were lost in history, their ancestors perhaps the creations of a destroyed, pathological culture, one which might have been dying when the empire itself was but a set of villages on a single world, a handful of huts at the edge of a muddy, yellow river, each three-eyed, their skin sheathed with scales of bark, some scales darkish green, others brown, or black, coming, creeping forward, scratching at the rush-strewn floor, with their steel-jacketed roots, each then, with one leafy, tendriled appendage lifting and dropping, a lead pellet into the pan of the skull.
“Master, let them not participate!” wept Huta. “To them I am meaningless.”
“You are meaningless to all of us, slut!” called a man.
“You are a slave!” called another.
Huta put back her head and howled with misery.
Next came two insectoidal organisms, stalking forward, their wings folded, and sheathed behind them in leather. They regarded Huta with their compound eyes. Chitinous, pincerlike jaws clicked. Two more pellets struck down, into the pan of the skull. Then came two arachnoidal creatures, eight-legged, with accoutrements of leather, whose narrow, crooked legs, four of which might serve as grasping appendages, were festooned with ribbons, whose horizontally oriented bodies were sashed with silk, scurrying forward, depositing pellets in the pan of the skull, then hurrying backward, crablike, to their places.
Huta wept, kneeling in the dirt.
Abrogastes looked about the tables, seeking out, in particular, other creatures there, many of them mammalian, other than men.
Abrogastes looked to one of them, to one of those sorts, Granath, of the Long-Toothed People.
“What think you, brother?” inquired Abrogastes.
The large eyes of Granath gleamed, and the jaws opened, revealing white bone-cleaned fangs. “It is hard to tell, milord,” said Granath.
It was not unknown for the shambling, shaggy scions of the Long-Toothed People to keep human females as slaves. They were useful, for example, for grooming fur, smoothing it with their small, soft tongues, and, with their tiny fingers, and fine teeth, removing parasites. Too, they were often used to do work regarded as beneath, or unfit for, their own females. It was rumored they were put to other purposes, as well.