work in progress 1997. donne copyright
Started on Sun May 18 06:09:48 1997
Ok, So I'm a slow writer! Its now 2007. This is the time I have opened this story in years.
It s more or less finished. Like anything else, just needs a clean up, revision, fine details seen to....A story of love, lust, betrayal, reality and illusion. Much like life actually.
The references and seting: Arabian Nights and the locale, if you like, of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat.
"And lo,the Hunter of the East has caught, the Sultan's turret in a noose of light."
"And those who stood before the tavern cried: Open then the door. You know how little while we have to stay, and once departed may return no more."
After carefully indenting paragraphs, blogspot posts it as solid text. Go figure!!
The soft sweet smile that he loved so much touched the corners of her lips. She had captured his heart, this lovely slave. Purchased from the tavern only a few weeks before, she had completely changed his life.
He no longer wandered the streets after his day’s labours seeking solace in the taverns with their wine and in the alcoves with the red silk serving girls when he had extra coin.
Looking down on her now, as she knelt before him with her long blond hair flowing over her full breasts he remembered, as he always did this moment at day’s end, how he had first met her. How in a few short, intense weeks, she had changed his life. Changed it, he hoped, forever. There was no one else he desired, would ever desire, no one else he would ever want to purchase. She fulfilled his every need, and uncovered desires, that until now, he never knew had existed within him.
It was in one of the more obscure taverns that he had first seen her. Going from table to table she was friendly, open, seemingly enjoying the quick and always ribald banter with the mixed crowd of the tavern. Masters and labourers, merchants and artisans all drank and ate together within the large room of the tavern. At least as much as conventions allowed, with each to their own table seated with their own brethren. Often a Master would call over an artisan to ask about some project, or discuss a design, away from the openness of the street. As much business was conducted in the tavern at dusk as some did all day in their shops, which were often mere holes set into the walls of the city.
She moved with a simple grace, her soft hips swaying, slave bells gently tinkling. He noted that her hips were perhaps too small for the tastes of some, but her full firm breasts thrusting against her white serving silks more than compensated.
Her face was pleasant, well formed. Not remarkable, not enough to bring undue attention from the procurers for the palace, but when she smiled, her whole face became alight with a fierce primitive joy. All except her eyes. He wondered why no one else noticed the sadness about her eyes, for within his heart he could feel her unshed tears.
From then on he began to frequent this particular tavern. Often coming in during the day when he could instead of looking for work just to see her. In quieter times like this she was able to stop and sit upon his knee, share his goblet of wine, often kissing a spilt drop of it away from his mouth, laughing, teasing as she did so, and he noticed then that her eyes were now smiling into his.
It was as if they had known each other a thousand lifetimes. There was a closeness between them that was felt more than spoken, an easy rapport that went beyond the confines of tavern banter. When she teased him and kissed his cheek, laughing as she spun away from his hand that reached out to slap at her buttocks, in her glance he felt, rather than saw the warmth of her love for him. There were times when, for some unknown reason she disappeared from the tavern. She never explained when he asked. Just smiled and asked if she could serve him. The smile in her eyes offering more than just wine.
The sadness had left her eyes when she was with him, but when she served others or worked in the kitchen, he saw it return. And more so after her times away. It was as if she sought to hide from some memory or carried some great burden that was always with her.
It was this that decided him to ask the tavern owners her purchase price.
Others often bought tavern slaves, sometimes selling them back to the tavern, or to another when they tired of them. Most patrons however, preferred to enjoy their company at the tavern without incurring the extra expense of maintaining a slave.
Wine was cheap, the red silk pleasure slaves cheaper. Most patrons just rented an alcove and took their enjoyment there.
She sat on his lap sharing his goblet of wine with him as she often did now. Several days before he had stated his intention to purchase her. She had made no comment, just put her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. He held her close then, his wine forgotten. This had been the main problem in purchasing her. The tavern made extra coin from the sale of its slaves. If she had been an experienced red silk pleasure slave he may never had been able to afford her price. Even as a common serving slave, her price was beyond his immediate means.
She only smiled when he confessed his lack of coin, but his willingness to still purchase her, if she would come with him; it was no use buying an unwilling slave. The tavern owners would not permit it in any case.
“If you really want to purchase me, I can tell you how, it won’t be hard my love.
There is a caravan going to Azia next full moon and another to Belail. Oram’s caravan, the one to Belail will be attacked, the other will be safe.”
“Ah, then I can sign on as a guard on the one to Belail, but will it earn me enough for your purchase price?”
“No it wont, but if you tell Kalim that his caravan wont be attacked, he can take on more goods and thus increase his profits. You will take a share of those profits, as well as your guard payment, for he will insist that you accompany him".
He looked at her. “An interesting arrangement my love, but how do you know what caravan will be attacked, and why should Kalim believe me?”
She smiled, a different smile this time, one full of knowing and dark designs.
‘You forget my ‘Master-to-be’, I am just a simple serving girl, of no worth or intelligence. People talk, especially when they have had stronger wine than what they ordered. Also, you will give Kalim this amulet, he will know the you are to be trusted.”
She handed to him a small gold box on a golden chain that she took from the cloths bound around her waist. It was of the type that held a prayer or a verse from the Scriptures of Wisdom. Many wore them, but not as ornate as the carved and jewel studded one she gave to him. This had belonged to an owner of wealth, perhaps the wife of a rich merchant or an official.
‘And why would he know that, just on the strength of this piece of jewellery.”
“Because he gave it to me several years ago. He himself stole it from a caravan. Yes my love, why look so startled. How do you think the esteemed trader and merchant Kalim began his respectable career? This I tell you because of the trust between us, and my love for you. With this Kalim is in your power”
There was fierceness to her when she said these last words. He had experienced the passion residing within her kisses before but her words now had an intensity that went beyond passion into a realm unknown to him.
He looked at her, at this new revealed aspect of her, before he said,
‘It is also dangerous, this ‘power’. If he sees me as a threat to his enterprises he may have me killed. This is a dangerous path my love, dangerous knowledge.”
“He wont have you killed. Indeed he will see that no harm comes to you. It is more than his life if any harm befalls you while in his employ. He will know that amulet comes from me. That is sufficient. You must learn to use your power my love. Take what is yours.
And she smiled at him and held out her arms, breasts upthrust to his gaze,
“Take what is yours, will always be yours”.
The first time they made love, it was like being with a virgin bride.
She was soft and shy in his arms, but opened slowly beneath his kisses as a rose opens to the morning sun, unfolding moment by moment as the warmth increased until she clung to him with a fierce passion, her tears hot against his shoulder.
Her cries of passion, cries of pain, still in his ears, entering his mind, lead him down into the place of ecstasy, where he wandered, dreamlike, into caverns of riches, soft silks, foods and wine from which he slowly woke to find her bending over him, kissing his eyelids, his lips, face, neck. She moved slowly down his stomach with kisses and nips at his skin til she took him still soft, still wet with her juices, into her mouth. His hands reached down to her, stroking her hips and hair as she lay half across him. He kissed her again, on her buttocks, and thighs, kissed deep into her hidden recesses as she made him hard again, filled him with passion for her.
‘All of you I love, every inch of you. All of your body, all of your mind and all of your Soul.
I will have it all, to love you forever.”
Days of peace and contentment were theirs. Day flowed into day, night into passionate night. One time, looking up from between the thighs of his love, sprawled in abandonment before him he noticed a glow in the sky and thought some fire had broken out in the city.
Then he realized it was but the dawn, “The Hunter of the east casting his noose of light about the turrets and spires of the city, setting them aflame.”
They had been making love all night., in a timeless space. It was as if a moment had passed. A moment of ecstasy stretched out over their flesh, measured by their moans, time punctuated by their sighs and kisses, and her sharp cries of release.
He enjoyed watching her before the fire at night brushing out her long hair which reached now, down past her waist. Taking clay, he made small figurines of her, capturing the fullness of her breasts, her parted thighs, parted for his pleasure, always for his pleasure. These figurines he fired, baked hard in a primitive kiln and sold at the market place.
‘Why not cast in silver my love, or in gold?’ she often asked him. “Surely yr slave’s beauty should be captured in more noble substances?”
When he told her that such as he had no access to gold or silver, she smiled at him.
“Give me two of the figurines, there, that one of me with my hair falling down over my breasts and my back, and that one, with thighs parted, back arched, breasts thrust out as I hold up to you your goblet of wine. Give me those two and I will return with gold and silver. But, I ask only one thing, for yr love and regard to me, ask me not how I gain this metal. Agreed?”
Puzzled, curious, excited, he agreed and she wrapped them carefully in a piece of her white silk and carried then away with her.
That afternoon, after the evenings call to prayer, she returned. She had both the clay figurines, and a second bundle. A heavier bundle. There was gold and silver both. Enough silver for three, enough gold for one.
There will be gold left over from the first, with that we will buy more silver and cast another two. I only have to return with two silver and one gold figure. The rest is ours. Those I will exchange for coin for ourselves and for more silver for other figurines. Others can be cast, both of silver and of gold. There are rich Masters who delight in such things, slaves of flesh, slaves of precious metal.
He never asked who these ‘rich Masters ‘ were, or bow she knew them. She saw the questions in his eyes and smiled at him. From the tavern love, from the tavern. I know who have wealth, real wealth, and those who only have the outer show of wealth. Fat peacocks, preening and displaying themselves before al, but when stripped of their finery, are but scrawny, thin gristle. Unlike yr ‘gristle’ my sweet.
And she smiled at him and caressed him, and nothing further was said that evening, except words of love and soft sighs of contentment.
Plot Development: She is in thrall to her 'Dark Master', which he has suspected, but not confirmed. He follows her:
He followed her into the cavern. She was going to meet her Dark Master. She, who had lain in his arms, had promised her self to him, ‘body mind and soul’, had given herself to another.
If she saw him following her it would be the end for them. Although he had purchased her, there was love and trust between them. If she suspected that he followed her, before the final proof, he would lose her.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted ‘final proof’. Would it be better to return to their dwelling? (He still thought of it as ‘theirs’) And pretend that he knew nothing? Still live out the illusion that she loved him, and only he? Reality and illusion. The reality of her footsteps, still clear in the floor of the cavern before him was pain. The illusion of her love, great joy. As he descended deeper into the cavern following the flickering glow of her torch, he knew he could not return, not before knowing her secret, if her love was just another lie.
He remembered what she had said in those far off days when she had given him power over Kalim with the stolen amulet.
“All knowledge has its price my love, just be prepared to pay what it demands.”
He remembered now the flash of bitterness that had swiftly passed through her expression, before she had smiled and kissed him promising her self to him as soon as he returned with her purchase price. He was afraid that the price for this knowledge about her would be too high.
Losing any loved friend is too high a price.
Ill bring more into the story about reality and illusion, deception and trust. (She uses her arts to disguise herself, acquire other Masters, learn their secrets, etc, all in service for her Dark Lord, something like that,) This is revealed in her converstaion with the Dark Lord. And when he uses his energy to restore/ maintain her youth.
There is a confrontation, a majical fight, 'He faced the Dark Master, a column of blackness against the light', and the Dark Lord absorbs the artist into its being.
We think the fight is lost, evil has triumphed once more..and then......
The Dark Lord faced her and laughed at her as he had done so many times before. A harsh laugh of power and triumph.
The darkness swirled around him, engulfed him til it seemed that only his laughter, triumphant and powerful issued forth from a blood red dark swirling mass. Except for the point of light within that evil mass which slowly grew, expanded, until his laughter faltered and turned to a roar of rage. A roar that faltered choked and faded in a cry of rage, of despair and then fear and horror.
Slowly, so slowly, as if some great internal struggle was still taking place within the swirling mass, the light grew. The dark red mass began to fade, its aura of ancient evil seeming to be transformed by the light that steadily grew and changed within it. The dark blood red mass, like the congealed blood of countless human sacrifices changed to a rich pink, the colour of new flesh.
But the light within its centre continued to grow till becoming a golden hue and then so bright, so rich in intensity she was unable to look anymore, her eyes blinded, dazzled …………
She opened her eyes to the sound of retching, sobbing, choking. A form lay on the ground, trying to get to his hands and knees. Eventually he stood and she could see that it was the face and form, or was it, of her Master. He rose on one knee, trying to stand, and she hesitated to go to his aid. Eventually he stood and took a few slow staggering steps towards her, like that of a child, trying to walk for the first time.
“I do not want this.” he cried aloud and in rage to the inverted bowl of the sky, but whether to the universe, his God, or Life itself, she could not say.
“I do not want this!!! I have no need of power, no need, no desire for this!!”
For the first time he looked at her, tears streaming down his face his body still trembling with the energy and force of his transformation, trying to regain form, trying to regain control over his life, his emotions, his very being.
She stod quietly, watching him. In time he was able to speak to her.
“I was happy, happy, you understand? For the first time in ages, happy with my books, my art and my love. I did not, do not wish to use my power, to remember who I have been, who I am”. And he sank to his knees once more, as if to die and sink into the earth, never to rise and walk the earth again.
Eventually, he was able to look up a ther, gaze once more upon the face he loved so much, but was now so distant. She knelt before him as she had done so many times before, head bowed to listen to his words. (ok, the blog does its own spacing here)
"There is a saying my love, from an ancient and beautiful race. I was fortunate, honoured, to be able to walk their path for a short span of lives before they were destroyed by the evil that abides in the hearts of lesser minds and souls.
"Your ten thousand Gods and Demons, embrace them all, for they are of you." And he held out to her, a black pearl, all that remained of her Dark Lord, all that remained of his own evil.
"You have often said to me, my beloved virgin slave, that my love for you meant more than I will ever know. That love you have betrayed. I say this to you now”, he paused, “ in truth, in truth I say this to you: You have caused me more pain, than you will ever know. But the real pain is the knowledge that you have harmed only yourself, in losing more than you will ever know. There was so much that I had to give you. Was giving to you, freely from my heart. I gave to you from the depths of my heart, deeper than any other expecting nothing in return for I already thought I had your love and your trust. That was all I ever needed. These past 20 months we have spent together have been but a tender caress in what was to be a lifetime of love. There are worlds, worlds within worlds, within my heart, my being that are now denied to you. And power’, he laughed, ‘sad, bitter power! You know nothing of power, real power. All you ever had was but an illusion of power. The scheming, the, deception, the deaths, were the illusions and deception. Your Dark Master only allowed you the illusion of power and like a child, no, a child is more knowledgeable, like a monkey with a pretty bauble, you strutted, schemed, deceived, played with this illusion, played with the minds, the lives and the honest emotions of those who came to love you. You cannot go on, betraying, lying, deceiving, and weaving illusions for your own pleasure at the expense of others. What you have sown, created will come back to you, and I fear for you that it will return as hatred and destroy you. As for myself, I cannot hate you. When I collared you as my slave, it was for life, or until you asked for your freedom. You are still my slave, despite having many Masters, still my responsibility. But the trust between us you have destroyed, maybe it will never be regained. Not in this lifetime.
No longer will I trust you because of my love for you, as you have used it to betray and deceive me, and have always done so, from when we first met."
"And what of me, what will become of me"? she asked looking at him, still trying to perceive his new form, which was almost like his last, except the memory of his transformation was burned into her mind for all eternity.
"What will I do with you? Is that what you are asking? Why what I have been doing since I first met you. Trying to love you. Trying to know you. I have been making love to you since I first met you, I dont intend to stop now. Do you want me to stop loving you?"
And he walked away, without even waiting for her answer, back to their home that had been a haven for their love from the lies and the hypocrisy of the world around them.
In the night, as the moonlight streamed into their room, she thought she felt the presence of her Dark Lord in the cruel bite of the whip upon her skin. And in the darkness, and in the light, between her pain and her ecstasy, she smiled.
Dedication: vixen{Svn}
