The movement had already begun when the feeling broke through my awareness. I moved to the urging of Kednin’s fingers, my body fighting the hands and leather that held me, but not to escape. I needed to get closer to the man before me, needed more than the scant touch he allowed me, needed to do something about the growing fire inside me. The fire was spreading, forcing me to writhe in its flames, building a moan that could not escape my lips. My breathing had grown so heavy I felt suffocated by the gag, but not even a whimper would come through.
“You appear to be aroused, lovely bedin,” Kednin murmured, his eyes boring into me, his free hand coming to my breast. “Can it mean that you, the shyest of flowers, wish to serve me here, before all these others? Will the shame not touch you more deeply to do such a thing?”
His words rang in my head, showing me all the eyes intent on my degradation, their owners waiting like birds of carrion to feast on their victim. I didn’t want to be their victim, I only wanted escape, but want usually comes in a poor second to need. My need had been brought to the surface and was destroying me, but before I died I had to make a final effort. Still writhing, still straining toward him, I shook my head fiercely to show that I preferred death to degradation.
“Ah, you will not feel shamed!” He laughed, deliberately misinterpreting my gesture. His mind knew the truth, and I knew he was punishing me for it. “What a lovely, obedient bedin you are, to think only of the service due me. Very well, my lovely, you may serve me here.”
He gestured to the two veiled women, and suddenly I was thrust to my side and then to my back. My knees and legs hurt from having been knelt so long, but the ache became insignificant. The hizah Kednin rose to his feet and stood above me, towering to the tent top, looking down at me from behind his veil. The two robed females held my ankles, one on each side of him, their hands keeping my struggles to a minimum, and then he was bending over me, his hands on my thighs, his body getting closer. I would have screamed as he entered me, from fury if nothing else; the shame was so great I thought I couldn’t bear it, but it was destined to grow greater. He not only took me, he forced me to respond, and through the waves of weakness I could feel the laughter of derision from all the men who watched. I cried as Kednin made himself indisputable hizah to me, but the tears were as useless as tears always are.
After that the other women were used, but my horrible example served them well. They submitted to binding with total deference, then did their best to seem cooperative and enthusiastic. Most of the men chose bedinn who were already broken in, and the balance of the new bedinn were allowed the comfort of being one among many. I lay on the floor where I had been left, my ankles bound after my service, my body placed at the feet of the hizah who had taken me. I finally knew that the entire episode had been contrived to make the other women more pliable, but the knowledge didn’t do anything to ease the wretchedness I felt. I lay on a silken floor at the feet of a stranger who had shamed me utterly, bound helplessly at his direction, gagged and used, endlessly reluctant to do more than breathe for fear of attracting attention to myself. The veil covering my face felt more than ludicrous, considering the nakedness of the rest of me; the chain around my brow had grown in weight, taking me down to the ground with the massiveness of its symbolism. I had been taught I was no more than one of the herd, marked with symbols of possession impossible to deny: the veil and head chain might be easily removed—if the wearer dared. But I wouldn’t have dared, even if I’d been free to do so, for fear of another lesson of the sort which I’d been given. Death itself was fearsome enough and painful death even more so, but far worse than those was the possibility of unending shame and humiliation, heaped upon me before the eyes of others. I wanted to withdraw myself from everything around me, the soft cries of bedinn and the louder misery of their minds, the satisfied grunts of hizahh and the smirking pleasure of their inner selves, but I simply didn’t dare. Another lack of proper response would bring further punishment, and I couldn’t face that. So I lay there and watched the women of Tammad’s city being used by strangers, their minds crying piteously for rescue, my own mind as distant as possible while still being near. I couldn’t bring myself to cry to anyone the way they were doing, and that made it all unbelievably worse.
11
I was kept tied and gagged all the rest of that night and halfway through the next morning. I alone was left untouched the rest of the night, but not out of consideration for what I had gone through. Very few of the hizahh left the festivities early and all of those who remained, each at least once and sometimes twice, visited me where I lay on the silk and demanded some indication of subservience from me. Once I had squirmed an inch or two in their direction and had put my head to their sandaled feet and had done my best to kiss those feet through my gag, I was rewarded—with the partial attention of a hizah. Their hands touched me everywhere, over and over again, but none of them even tried to use me. The night became an endless hell filled with forced humiliation and raging need, my punishment for having dared to think I might defy hizahh. in the early hours of the morning, before they were either sent back to their tent or taken away by individual hizahh, the bedinn were ranged around me and made witness to the final humiliation of the night. Hizah Kednin himself did the honors, crouched beside me, his mind completely aware of how well I’d been prepared. He graciously granted me the relief I’d been denied so long, making sure everyone in the tent witnessed how easily his hands reached my soul, then he called a male bedin to carry me back to the female bedin tent. As soon as I was put down in a corner of the tent I withdrew deep inside my shield, disassociating the entire outer world and allowing myself to feel nothing of the emotions clawing red streaks on the inside of my mind. No one came near me, and exhausted sleep found me with no trouble at all.
I was awakened in the early afternoon of the new day when the leather was removed from my wrists and ankles and the gag from my mouth. The bedin who untied me helped me drink from a water skin before informing me that I’d been forbidden to speak under any circumstances until the hizahh decided otherwise. I was then left alone to try to remember how my arms and legs worked, a painful process no matter how careful I tried to be. My limbs went from leaden lumps to blazing, stabbing foci of agony, but it wasn’t something that could be avoided by lying still. I’d also been told to be summoned later, and if I wasn’t able to answer that summons I’d be punished. Balancing between the agony of reawakening muscles and the sort of punishment given by hizahh, I found the agony a better bargain.
I lay struggling on the brown cloth for a few minutes before the thought occurred to me that I was being stupid. I had to relax the shield protecting me from the ravage of emotions, but that let me cope with the more immediate demands of pain. Pain control, not being a shield, is difficult to explain; it’s more a deep relaxation bringing about the forced dissipation of pain signals, an emotionally linked attitude-experience coupling refusal-to-admit and actual nonexistence where pain is concerned. It requires a certain amount of calm on the part of the practitioner, a calm that isn’t always easy to attain. By ignoring everything around me—especially memories—I was able to force the calm, then established the pain control. After that, moving around was considerably less difficult.