| The Black Pearl of Pharazionby Cobalt Jade (cobaltjade@aol.com)Chapter 9: The ProcessionNude, I emerged from the chamber into the collective gaze of the rebels. Surprisingly, there was nothing lascivious in their glances. I answered the rest of their questions the best I could, taking messages from them to convey to the Duke. I would have wanted to record them on paper, but as Shadow had said, paper was incriminating. There was no place to hide it, either, for as a slave I was naked...and my orifices would offer no hiding places either, for it was likely all of them would be used before the night was through.Finally it was time to go. "Comion will take you to the gate," J'Wabra said, indicating a younger groom who waited quietly with a leash. "When you return to us, we will find a way to smuggle you out of the palace. Good luck, my Lady."I winced as Comion snapped the leash to my collar. Then the door opened, and I quickly assumed my new role.I kept my eyes down, concentrating on the stone tiles of the floor in front of me...malachite and lapis in diamond patterns, edged with pale aqua jade like the ground milk of glaciers. Slave statues reposed in their niches, looking like fabulous pieces of art. Not a one stirred or looked up at our passing. Comion walked in back of me, plying me along with urgent whispers. He had a small whip with him, almost like a thong, and with this he would tap--lightly--my legs to hurry me along. Not more than that, for he did not want to me.I was not alone in being handled this way. I saw other leashed slaves being hurried through the halls. Some had servants or grooms with them, others were in the custody of noble lords and ladies. Some were naked, others wore mere ribbons of cloth so that they might as well have been naked. In fact, they looked even more naked, as the clothes only called attention to the parts they covered.Aradra hadn't spoken about my conveyance to the Duke's estate, but I assumed I would go in a covered palanquin such as the secretive curtained litters I had seen on the city streets. Although we have no taboos on nudity in my homeland, we did not go into public displayed in this openly sexual way.But as it turned out my deductions, alas, were far off the mark.Through a huge set of iron gates we went. They held two slaves, a and a woman caged within a curling design of serpents and vines. Both were imprisoned with their limbs outstretched in the form of an X, iron bands around their wrists and ankles and holding them upright. As was the custom here, the was gilded with silver, the woman gold. They cast their eyes down when we passed through. The room inside was light and airy, with long windows into many panes that overlooked the gardens. Comion made me stop. I was looking down, yet could see the activity that went on in the room with little sideways glances of my eyes. Around its edges more slaves were stationed, bent over with their faces to the wall and their arms clapsed around their knees. Their buttocks held great arrangements of flowers. Mirrors all around reflected these images, multiplied them. I breathed deeply to calm myself. Would I wind up as a human urn? But Comion led me to a place where eight palanquins, each covered with a scarlet cushion, had been set in a row on the pale marble floor. My transport, I guessed, to the Duke's manse. But they were open!Comion made a little comment to the one in charge and patted me encourgaingly. I was on my own now. At least he had preserved my dignity, neither slapping or pinching me as so many of the other grooms did with their charges. Neither had he made me crawl on the floor. "It roughens the knees, and the skin of the elbows," he had said.I had the chance to study the litter briefly as my new master retrieved some things from a chest. The cushion covered the surface completely, but in the middle were three wooden rods with rounded ends arranged in a circle. They were part of the litter and the cushion was seamed to accomodate them. The litter master turned me around forcefully yet gently so I faced away from the nearest one. I gasped as he bent me over and his fingers lubricated my anus with a cream. The ungeant felt very and cool. I should have fought it, been revulsed, but I remembered my role and passively accepted the touch of a stranger's fingers down there. He murmured pet names to me, sensing my discomfort. "There, there, it's all right, my dark one, my dusky rose." Again he firmly but forcefully made me walk backwards, at a squat, until I was positioned over the middle of the litter. He make me kneel on it, my knees forced wide apart by two of the strange wooden rods, and swiftly tied my ankles together behind me to the third. Not cruelly, but tight enough that it might take me long minutes of wriggling to get free. He pressed down on my shoulders, showing me I was to sit back on my ankles. With a shock, I felt the wooden rod enter me.I cannot convey the sensation. Being stretched, paralyzed, impaled, yet it wasn't exactly painful. I felt fixed to the litter as surely as it was a natural part of my body. I don't think I could have moved off of it even if I felt the will to. Was this the secret of Shezrine's magic? I shuddered. I was a warrior. To be treated like a slave was the ultimate humiliation. But I knew I was yet a warrior still. That made bearing it easier. Intellect after all is with us always.My knees were spread as wide as they could go and my sex was gaping. I felt it grow moist, and I was shocked I had become aroused so quickly.I was further secured to my luxurious conveyance. My hands were bound behind me with more of the silken cord, the rope then secured to the rear of the litter so my arms were stretched. I gasped as my nipples were quickly imprisoned in two tight clasps that were likewise leashed to the front of the litter. Leashed in front and leashed behind, I was held taut and helpess. I could not move in any direction. I could not even bow or turn my head, as the high, gilded color I wore held it quite upright. I could only lower my eyes. For the first time I felt a real fear, as escape from this situation now seemed difficult if not impossible. I flushed furiously at the thought of what I must look like. For a brief second, it was all I could do not to go into wild struggles to free myself. And in the next, I might have begged the Queen to make this mortification a permanent one, so and delicious it was.Other slaves to my right and left were being mounted the same way. Some cooperated, some struggled, some bore it with tears. And one or two took an obvious pleasure in it. The men's cocks were stretched and leashed to the front of the litter, but they were otherwise bound as I was. Four men, four women, all of us in row, as if we were tents pegged up for a festival.As a final touch the litter master applied a tiny gold clamp to my clit. The small nipping sensation was extraordinary. It was like I had come to life below the waist. My limbs tingled. The mouth of my sex seemed to strain, open wider. Then teams of four muscular male slaves then took hold of our litters, one for each corner. The procession was about to begin. My bearers worked in unison to lift the litter smoothly, yet even that motion made the phallus move inside me. My nipples were stretched on their leashes, then the tension slackened as we moved down a ramp to the garden and proceeded at a brisk trot down the path. From the garden we would pass through the wall of thorns and then enter the city.All on the streets would see us, know we had been sent as slave gifts from the Queen.I closed my eyes as the iron thorns drew back. Every footfall of the muscular slaves who bore me jolted the phallus up and down, moving it in a rhythm. It would have been more enjoyable had it been inserted in my sex. It seemed horribly piquant suddenly, this ceremonious degradation. How correct the Queen was in her jealousy of us. She had real grounds for her envy!In a heartbeat we were in the middle of the busy city. The common people stared up at us as we passed, wonder in their eyes, perhaps scorn or pity. We moved at a quick pace through the crowds. A horseman proceeded us, beating on a drum to call attention to us and show the crowds they were to part. Our litters were covered on the bottom with dozens of silver bells which contributed a lively music.Some of my fellow slaves swooned as I had. Others kept their eyes down in shame or fear. Some looked inward, expressions serene and impenetrable. Would any in the crowds note our swooning, and guess at why we did so? I realized we could have just as easily been transported in curtained wagons, but Shezrine was not selfish. She enjoyed sharing her creatures with the public. We were ornaments as expensive and rich as the litters we were sealed to; and such a display of wealth was only proper.My hips rode the rhythm back and forth. The bells rang, the litter master shouted.The normal activities of the city continued around us...frybread cooking, the scent of horses and the clop of their hooves. Clay pots for sale in the marketplace, a cascade of honeysuckle, the sight of a woman's bright dress and the flash of a bangle at her ankle. Curtains blew out the open windows of the townhomes we passed. It was almost evening, the air soft and warm. As the sky grew darker torches were lit and fastened to the fore and aft of our litters. The resinous smoke added yet another element of sensuality. How our oiled bodies would gleam under it, our ornaments shine and sparkle. Our route, I realized, had led us from Syonhoddaz to the marketplace, then to the commercial districts of the city and the homes of the artisans and craftspeople. We passed over a bridge that spanned the river and came to the cliffside district where the estates of the rich and powerful were. The city perched like a sentinel on the edge of the Great Rift and poured partly over, and only they had access to its vistas. Had it been daylight, the jagged scar would have stretched forever into the distance, so vast one could not even hope to see the opposite side. It was a view that never failed to spark wanderlust in me, both for what lay inside the Rift and what lay across it. But it was night and the expanse was the same black-purple as the sky. We made our way down the cliff face in deeply cut switchbacks that wove between the mansions. Water seeped constantly from the rocks in swift waterfalls that we crossed on arched wooden bridges. The air here was cool and damp, redolent with the scents of green growing things, the tall trees and ferns and berry thickets that grew in places like this.It had become darker since we went over the edge of the cliff, and torchlight flickered on the muscular naked back of the male slave in front of me. The cord securing the my nipple clamps shivered with my bearer's strides, making my sing with bittersweet pain. The jingling of the litters seemed very loud, almost sacrosanct, as if we were all participants in some ritual.Which, in a way, we were.Finally, a wooden gateway loomed ahead of us, tall torches to either side. Sounds of disportation came from within. Lantana spilled over the walls and I saw the outlines of figs and palms. J'Wabra had not been exagerrated when he said the Duke was under arrest, for the estate was ringed tightly by Shezrine's men. Our horseman dismounted to announce himself. "Queen Shezrine sends the Duke some gifts. Eight pleasure slaves to entertain him this night."The gateman looked at the long row of us. There was no surprise or lust or even curiosity in his gaze. Here we were, exposed and bound in the most humiliating of ways, and he had seen it all before."I hope Shezrine does not expect the Duke's favor from this," he said disapprovingly. "Because she won't get it!""Do I care?" the littermaster rhetorically. "I am simply following her orders. It is not my concern what the Duke does with them. Shall I take them back?"He did not care. *It is not my concern what the Duke does with them.* A tingling came over my body, then a trembling which jarred every clamped and impaled part of me. Was he a of sadistic tastes, this Duke? I felt fluid drip from my sex. Perhaps it formed a damp spot on the velvet cushion, though I could not lower my head to see.The two had been arguing and now called a truce. "Écan't see it would make any difference," the gateman said. "You've made your point, then. Take them in."The wooden gate opened like a dark mouth, and I was carried inside.
|
|
