Dear Reader, there's some sadistic stuff in this one, though nothing too bad. And yes, Yilma and Ulfa are two bawdy, raunchy chicks! The house guard are modelled after Roman soldiers, so I use some of the terms for their uniforms. I will be out of the net next week, so no update next Friday. But hopefully, I'll have a chance to work on the editing while I'm relaxing - making for several quick chapters to go up when I get back. Enjoy! Peace, TK
Chapter 12 Slipping
"Gypsy of a strange and distant time,
Traveling in panic all direction blind
Aching for the warmth of a burning sun.
Freezing in the emptiness of where he'd come.
Left without a hope of coming home."
Gypsy
Justin Hayward
"You still have no idea where you are?"
"None at all. Without your senses, I'm completely cut off."
Ikkaku sat down heavily on one of the rocky outcroppings in the volcanic lair within his inner world. Hoozukimaru stood before him, arms crossed, demeanor placid enough.
"And you—you can't sense Yumichika around you at all?" Ikkaku pressed with a forlorn hope.
"No," the dragon replied. "I can't sense anything. I mean, normally, I can feel it when another powerful spirit energy passes nearby, but I haven't felt anything for days."
"So, either you're not around souls that have any energy, or you're in a place where spirit energy is blocked," Ikkaku said. "And we all know that the lower east is built upon seki-seki. That would seem to indicate that you're somewhere in the lower east."
"It's possible. And if the same people who have me still have Little Pretty, then he'd be in the lower east, too," Hoozukimaru stated. "How many more days until you arrive?"
"We just set sail," Ikkaku replied. "Three to four weeks."
"Three to four weeks? Snail's pace!" the dragon roared.
"I think so, too, but Jubal had good reasoning for us to take it slow," Ikkaku said. "I'm still not sure it's the right decision, but he made sense." He then related Jubal's logic to Hoozukimaru, who grudgingly agreed that prudence was preferable to rashness in this case.
"Little Pretty is smart," Hoozukimaru said assuredly. "He'll find a way to hold on until you get to him."
"What about you?" Ikkaku asked. "Will you be alright?"
"Damn, what choice do I have? It's not like I can manifest without you across so great a distance," the dragon answered. "In fact, I'm hoping you find me first. I feel like I could tear some throats out."
"You and me both."
Yumichika heard a knock at the door. Getting up to answer, he could see the backlit shadowy outline of a woman holding a tray on the other side.
He had ordered a meal earlier, using the pullcord in his room, which had brought a scurrying mouse of a woman to inquire after his needs. He could tell from the silhouette that this was not the same woman.
He got up and opened the door, relieved to see it really was a woman and not a young male prankster again. The woman handed him the tray, bowed and was off without a word.
It was now dark outside, and the courtyard was lit with perfectly trimmed torches, so that not a single wisp of smoke sullied the clear night air. From somewhere out of sight, the dulcet tones of a musical instrument – a woodwind of some kind – wafted across the stillness with the quality of fine crystal.
Yumichika walked over to the low table on one side of the room and dropped carefully to his knees, setting the tray down and taking a moment to gingerly massage his thighs.
The two women who had been sent to bathe him – Ulfa and Yilma – had been nothing, if not thorough, in their task. Yumichika felt as if his skin had been rubbed raw, and no part of his body had been off-limits. In fact, as the women had washed him, they had indulged in a bawdy, lewd running commentary of what they were observing, causing Yumichika to blush more than he had in years.
"Ah, now that just might be big enough to satisfy even the Orator, doncha know!"
"How—how's a little tiny thing like you gonna . . . you got room in there? Bulls and stallions got ta have a place to put it, don't they?"
"Look at this ass—white as snow and smooth as mother's milk . . . "
"Such pretty little man-nipples! Makes me wish I was a baby again!"
"Aiiieee! There's other places as make better sucking, Ulfa!"
"Suck 'im dry!"
"Dry as a bone!"
"Dry as a boner!"
"Boner ain't dry!"
Yumichika wilted under their relentless banter and determined hands.
But by the time they were finished, there was not a dead cell left on his body. His hair was clean and conditioned. His body limp and lotioned. Not a speck of dirt under his fingernails or even his toenails. He was spotless and sore from all the handling. But being sore was preferable to being filthy.
To his great satisfaction, the two women had taken immediately to Sweetie, dumping her in the tub after finishing with Yumichika and, with much gentler hands, cleaned her up to the point where she looked like a little girl instead of an urchin.
As they had been cleaning, another woman had come by with some clothes. Very simple drape-like garments of white linen and pale blue cotton, gold-colored chain belts and pashmina-style wraps.
Yilma had dressed Yumichika in a sleeveless white tunic that draped down to his knees, tying it off with one of the gold belts. She had set him down on the edge of the magnificent floor-level bed, and told him not to lie down until his hair dried or he would ruin the fall of it. Yumichika had not dared disobey her.
Until she was out of the room.
That was when he had immediately called for room service, for he was starving, and then after placing his order, he'd flopped back on the bed and almost fallen asleep with Sweetie at his side, dressed in an oversized garment of similar design to the one Yumichika was wearing.
Then his meal had arrived, and now, he sat down to eat while Sweetie continued to sleep on the bed.
All things considered, the circumstances at the moment were quite good. He had been purchased into a house of means, and his living conditions could only be described as luxuriant. He might be a prisoner—a slave—but he was a comfortable one. For the moment.
But he had no illusions about what awaited him.
Bed-mate left little doubt as to its meaning.
He was only left to wonder what sort of man the Orator was and to what kinds of men he would be made available. He imagined he would find out soon enough.
But in the meantime, he had to get acquainted with his surroundings, look for weaknesses, become accustomed to the routines, find the cracks in what was clearly a well-organized, well-protected operation.
And he could start by being just a little disobedient.
Damir had told him to remain in his room until someone came for him.
Yumichika decided that a man of his value would not wait. The rules that applied to others would not apply to him. At least, not all the rules and not to the same extent. And here was his first attempt at testing that extent. What limit would be set to his rebellious actions? How much did one million dema buy in terms of disregarding house rules?
He checked to see Sweetie still sleeping, then stepped quietly out onto the marble floor of the cloister walk. He headed to his left, where the walkway made a ninety degree left turn at the end of the building and continued along the rear wing, comprised of at least a dozen more rooms. These rooms looked out across a thirty-foot wide green lawn on the other side of the walkway. On the far side of the lawn, a stone wall rose to the height of four men. Beyond it, the desert reflected under the rising moon, and slightly off the right, the edge of the mesa could be seen angling away in the near distance.
Yumichika walked the length of the wing. At its end, it made another left turn onto yet another row of rooms, and directly opposite those rooms, on the far side of a tinkling ornamental water garden, was another wing.
The place was much larger than Yumichika had realized, and he began to wonder just how many bedmates the Orator owned.
Where the walkway joined back up with the main structure through a short arched hallway, Yumichika took the hallway, and here he ran face-to-face into a man who clearly had to be a member of the house guard.
He was tall—compared to Yumichika, anyway—and broad. Broad in a muscular sense. He wore a uniform every bit as grand as the house he served. The chiton, which hung down to just above his knees, was of a pliable soft suede, dyed deep blue but appearing black in the torchlight. Over it, he wore a sort of metallic vest of gleaming silver-colored linklets that allowed for unimpeded movement. His legs were covered with light-weight gauze braccae the color of desert sand, and his boots were of fine leather, etched with intricate designs of running horses. He wore a brilliant green sagum across his chest, and a cintus at his waist, which held a short-bladed sword. His black hair was short and perfectly symmetrical. His face, clean-shaven and pleasant, was that of a man in his mid-twenties and already well-disciplined.
The man looked down at Yumichika with an utterly neutral expression, but his mere size was intimidating, even if his manner was not.
"I think someone is looking for you," he said. Then abruptly raising his gaze and looking past Yumichika, he said in a slightly louder voice. "Is this the one?"
Yumichika turned to see Damir approaching.
"Yes, this is him. Good work, Supha."
Supha's voice was as even as his look. "He ran into me. I didn't find him."
"Yes, yes, well . . . you may go. I have it from here."
Supha regarded Yumichika once more, briefly, in the flickering torchlight, then he turned smartly on his heel and left.
"I see you're going to cause me trouble," Damir stated, with an irritating poutiness in his voice. "I do so hate it when slaves cause trouble."
"I was only out taking a look around," Yumichika replied.
"Looking for a way to escape?" Damir challenged.
"Not really." Yumichika allowed a provocative grin to show for a moment. "Not yet."
"Do you think you're clever? Of course, you do. I can see it in you," Damir lamented with suitable dramatic emphasis. "You think you're something special, don't you? Former Shinigami. Pah! You wouldn't stand a chance of outwitting or outrunning Campion."
"Campion?"
"The head of the house guard. Captain Campion." Damir almost seemed to be overcome at the mention of his name, taking a moment to run his hand through his hair and draw in an audible, swooning breath. "I despise the bastard, you know. But he is a force to contend with, and he has all the skills of a Shinigami. You'll come just at the sight of him."
"If he's so incredible, why do you despise him?"
The question unleashed a bombastic display of overacting. "Unnnhhhh! Ohhhhh! Because he's such an immovable . . . he has no . . . appetite at all! What would I give to have that man! I'd eat him all day and all night and . . . ohhh, the things I'd do to him!"
Inwardly, Yumichika cringed at the grotesque display of wanton sexual desperation. But on the surface, he was like glass. "So, why don't you?"
"He has no interest!" Damir replied. "None at all! Can you even imagine! No interest! No interest at all!"
"Maybe not in you," Yumichika taunted coyly.
"Not in any man," Damir shot back. "Not even a daffodil like you."
"We'll see," Yumichika shrugged.
"Oh, we'll see," Damir agreed. "And sooner than you think. The Orator wants to see you right away. He found out how much that fool, Zibell, paid for you, and now he wants to see if you're worth it. So, really, there's no time to waste. We've already thrown away precious minutes. Come." He began leading Yumichika back towards his room.
"I thought we were going to see the Orator," Yumichika said.
"You have to be made presentable first," Damir replied curtly. "The Orator would die if you walked in looking like that."
"I don't need help being beautiful," Yumichika snipped. "Believe me, there's nothing you could do to make me more attractive."
"You're the type who likes to test me, aren't you? Leaving your room against my orders. Discarding my own beauty out of jealousy. Assuming you know better how to please the Orator than his own long-time favorites? Yes, well, I will deal with your brashness and disobedience later. Right now, you will do as I say or pay the consequences." They arrived at the room. "And the first consequence will be that I take your little princess and kick her out into the desert."
Yumichika was not fooled. "Zibell would have you skinned."
"You think you know Zibell? You're in for a surprise. Now, get in there and sit down while I do something with your face. Ugh, how could someone so plain have cost so much money? Well, leave it to me to make sure the Orator doesn't consider you a waste of his riches." He looked at the mess of opened containers and spilled pigments. "What is this?! Did you do this?!"
Yumichika smirked. "My little princess wanted to play dressup."
"Beastly thing! Do you have any idea how much these colors cost? This is the most expensive makeup in the province! It's all hand-ground and specially mixed and only available to the Orator's household! And look at it! It's all over the place—"
"That's alright, because I'm not going to wear it anyway," Yumichika interrupted.
"Oh yes, you are," Damir warned. "This is what the Orator likes, and he always gets his way."
"When he sees me, he'll change his mind," Yumichika replied confidently. "I'm perfect without it."
"Do you really want to defy me?" Damir asked, equally confident.
"I'll go with you, but I won't put any of that . . . garbage on my face," Yumichika replied.
Damir only nodded once with a smug glint in his eye. "I'll be back for you in less than thirty seconds." He stepped out of the room.
Yumichika sat down on the bed as Sweetie stirred but did not wake up.
True to his word, Damir returned within thirty seconds, and he had two other men with him, as well as Ulfa and Yilma. Yilma was carrying a long flat wooden box, painted black and fastened shut with metal buckles.
Yumichika's self-assuredness drained away somewhat. He started to his feet, but immediately, four of the five were upon him, with only Damir remaining just inside the doorway, looking on with gleeful impatience.
Yumichika could tell right away that he was experiencing a common occurrence, for his assailants knew precisely what to do. Each had his or her own task. The two men bound his wrists together as the two women sat on his legs, then he was hustled across the room to where a gold-colored post was fixed in the corner. He hadn't even noticed it until now. It looked, for all intents and purposes, like a hitching post, about waist high and conspicuously the girth of man's penis at the top, growing wider in circumference closer to the floor. It was smooth all the way around, and at the base were two gold rings.
He was forced down on his back and his wrists affixed to one of the gold rings. The two men spread his legs and held him down, while Ulfa knelt between his legs. Behind her, Yilma knelt down with the wooden box.
Sweetie, awakened by the commotion, was screaming and pulling at whomever she could get her tiny hands on.
Yumichika, knowing something terrible—unknown, but terrible—was about to happen, pleaded for her to be taken away so she would not see whatever was coming in short order.
"Take her out, please!" he implored, struggling in vain against those holding him down. "Damir, please! She shouldn't see this—"
"Hmph!" Damir snorted with a toss of his head. "You should have thought about that before you decided to defy me. If she sees anything vile, it will be your own fault."
"Maybe so," Ulfa grunted, "But you'd better do something to keep her off me while I'm doing this, or we could end up with a real fuck-mire on our hands."
Clearly put off, yet Damir took a step forward, grabbed the little girl by the hair and pulled her back to stand with him, where she squirmed and screamed and cried every inch of the way.
Yumichika raised his head to see Ulfa holding withdraw a thin, rigid needle-like device from the open box. One end of the device which was smoothly rounded; the other, Ulfa was inserting into a small malleable sack.
"Use a bigger one," Damir ordered, but Ulfa resisted.
"It's his first time, Damir," she barked. "Don't be a shit. This'll be torture 'nuff to teach him a lesson."
"He'll have to get used to it eventually—"
"Then let it be eventually." This time it was Yilma who replied. "We all know you can fit a fucking stylus up yours, but if you ruin him because you're in a snit, and all that money goes to waste, the Orator will be fit to be tied—"
"How do you know how much he cost?" Damir demanded.
"We all fucking know!" Ulfa burst out. "Now, let me do this!" She was smearing a clear substance over the rounded end of the device. She glanced up to see Yumichika looking down at her, and although he was calm, there was fear in his eyes. "You just lay your head back, pretty bird. You won't want to see this." She spoke back over her shoulder. "Yilma . . . "
Yilma left her spot and dropped on her knees at Yumichika's waist. She placed her hands on his hips and used her considerable weight to press him down.
Until the moment he felt the pressure at the tip of his penis, Yumichika had not fully comprehended what Ulfa was intending to do to him. Now, he knew; and it was something that he'd never experienced before.
His entire body tensed.
"You'd better relax or it's going to hurt even more," Ulfa warned. With that, she slid the rigid catheter into the urethral opening and stopped.
The sound of Yumichika's screams were no different than the screams of the many other men she had heard before. She had initiated countless thousands of bedmates into the practice, both as punishment and later as part the pantheon of what pleased the Orator. She was skilled in knowing precisely how much any given bedmate could endure and how to increase that endurance. She knew how to inflict pain without damage; and she was a master at inveigling her patients – or victims – into desiring and relishing such pain.
Yet, she also knew that, although she was dealing with a young man who had the aura of previous sexual experience on him, it was clear that in this area, he was a virgin. And she so loved the indoctrination of virgins . . .
And this one . . . the way his entire body rattled with tension, the way his screams now gave way to gasping whimpers . . . the tears leaking from the corner of his closed eyes, leaving shiny trails across his temples . . . the feel of his manhood quivering in her hand . . .
Oh, this one she would take her time with. She had already established a certain fondness for him, and her perverse sense of affection would find its expression in prolonging the lowest levels of agony.
"Ohh, now, now, we've only just started," she chastised, turning the catheter ever so slightly and bringing forth another cry of pain.
"T-take it out!" Yumichika begged. "Please, take it out!"
Instead, she inserted it a little deeper, eliciting a choked burst of torment as Yumichika instinctively tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go, and he was being held fast by onlookers who were more than enjoying the whole scene.
"Stop it! S-stop it!" he wailed. "P-please . . . stop it . . . "
And still deeper.
By this time, Yumichika had already been reduced to a blubbering heap. It had taken only a matter of seconds to knock the arrogance right out of him, and he was ready to do anything to make the pain stop.
"Shhh, now. Stop all that carrying-on," Ulfa insisted, her voice filled with a twisted anticipation. "This is barely the size of a spider's strand." She slid it in further until Yumichika felt as if an incredible pressure were bearing down on him, and he feared he would urinate right there in front of all of them.
"Warm you up a little bit," Ulfa said. She gently squeezed the sack at the other end of the catheter.
Yumichika felt a warmth in that part of his body, and then to his horror, he was doing exactly what he had feared. He'd lost control of his own bodily function and found himself unable to stop the urge to urinate. Only he could not do it. The catheter prevented him; and the pressure, coupled with the inability, drove him to a whole new level of debasement as he sobbed like a child, unable to even form the words to beg for mercy.
"By all the Fates, what the hell are you doing?!"
Yumichika was only vaguely aware of Zibell's voice.
"Damn you, Damir! I told you the Orator wanted to see him, and you decide now is the time to slip him? Idiot!"
Yumichika cried out loud again as the catheter was quickly withdrawn, followed by the flow of urine which he was now unable to stop. The pain now gone, his tears turned to those of humiliation as it ran out of him where he lay on the floor.
"He would not obey me!" Damir shot back. "He could not make himself up for the Orator, and what kind of fool would I be to bring him before his Lordship looking so plain—"
"Untie him! Get him on his feet and clean him up!" Zibell ordered. He then turned to Supha, who had arrived with him. "Make sure he brings him in the next five minutes."
"Yes, Ki-Zibell."
Zibell was halfway across the courtyard, ignoring Damir's shouts after him; but the Master of the Bedmates caught him up. "What would you have me do when he won't do as he's told? He needs to learn obedience! He already feels his own eliteness, give what you paid for him—"
"You can do as you please to discipline him, Damir," Zibell replied stonily. "But not when I've sent for him to be brought before the Orator. You, of all people, should know how Nelphune hates to be kept waiting. And you, of all people, should know that no matter how jealous you are of new arrivals—"
"I'm not jealous!"
Zibell ignored him. "No matter how jealous you are of new arrivals, if the Orator suspects you for one second of denying him what is rightfully his own property, purchased with his own funds, he will do much worse than slip you. You're not so invaluable to him anymore that he wouldn't hesitate to cut your balls off and stick a plug in you." He drew close and glared at him. "You see? I know how to be crude, as well. Now get back there and have him in the grand hall in five minutes!"
Damir stood trembling with rage as he watched Zibell stride angrily across the courtyard.
"These are my slaves," he seethed under his breath. "You stick with what you know best, Zibell. Lying and spending Nelphune's money. Leave these ones to me. I know what the Orator likes better than anyone else."
He spun around and returned to Yumichika's room.
Five minutes later, Yumichika—shaken and sore, though not seriously injured from the torture he'd endured—was on his way to the grand hall. He was accompanied by Damir and Supho. Sweetie had been left in the care of Ulfa and Yilma, against Yumichika's protests; and now as he was marched from the Hyacinth House through the trees of the botanical garden and to the main house, he had other things to occupy his thoughts at the moment.
The slipping, as they so euphemistically called it, had taken much of the wind out of his sails and subdued him. As a punishment, it had been highly effective; and from what little he recalled of the words that had been spoken, it was something he would be exposed to again in the future – and not merely as punishment.
How quickly and completely he'd been subjugated. He was not dealing with amateurs here. No, of course not. Everyone he was up against had vastly more experience at this sort of thing than he did. They were slavers in their own sense, and he was just another piece of property. Granted, a beautiful and expensive one, but property none the less.
He was not off to a good start. And yet, his hatred for Damir was already so strong, he was not sure he could mask it.
But upon entering the grand hall, Damir was swept from his thoughts like a broom sweeps dust under a rug.
For there, sitting on the far end of the room on a raised dais, unclearly seen across the distance yet dominating the very air in the hall . . .
Orator Nelphune.
