Passion SlaveHere are relevant references from the Books where a Passion Slave is mentioned. I make no pronouncements on these matters, but report them as I find them. Arrive at your own conclusions. I wish you well, Fogaban I remembered, too, the girls in the last tavern, if it was a tavern, lascivious in their dancing silks, pleasure slaves bred like animals for passion. the lips of Vika were maddening; I recalled those lips, full and red, pouting, defiant, scornful, scarlet with a slave girl's challenge to my blood; I wondered if Vika might be a bred slave, a Passion Slave, one of those girls bred for beauty and passion over generations by the zealous owners of the great Slave Houses of Ar, for lips such as Vika's were a feature often bred into Passion Slaves; they were lips formed for the kiss of a master. "You thought I was a Passion Slave," she chided. I shrugged. She looked away from me, toward the wall. "You were right in a way, Tarl Cabot." "How is that?" I asked. She looked at me directly. "My mother," she said bitterly, "- was a Passion Slave - bred in the pens of Ar." "She must have been very beautiful," I said. Vika looked at me strangely. "Yes," she said, "I suppose she was." "Do you not remember her?" I asked. "No," she said, "for she died when I was very young." "I'm sorry," I said. "It doesn't matter," said Vika, "for she was only an animal bred in the pens of Ar." "Do you despise her so?" I asked. "She was a bred slave," said Vika. "Why would anyone be kind to a Passion Slave?" asked Vika. I shrugged. "For the Passion Slave," she said, "it is the belled ankle, perfume, the whip and the furs of love." "In my veins," she said, "flows the blood of such an animal. In my veins flows the blood of a Passion Slave." She laughed. "And you, Tarl Cabot," she said, "are its master. You, Tarl Cabot, are my master." "No," I said. Amused, tauntingly, she approached me. "I will serve you as a Passion Slave," she said. "No," I said. "Yes," she said, "for you I will be an obedient Passion Slave." She lifted her lips to mine. The women I had owned, Sana, Talena, Lara, and others of whom I have not written, Passion Slaves rented for the hour in the Paga Taverns of Ko-ro-ba and Ar, Pleasure Slaves bestowed on me in token of hospitality for a night spent in a friend's compartments, had known that I was master and that had been sufficient. I looked to one side and was startled. Watching us was a woman in Pleasure Silk, of remarkable beauty, yet with a certain subtle hardness and contempt about her. She wore a yellow collar, that of the House of Cernus, and yellow Pleasure Silk. The slave bells, a double row, were locked on her left ankle. About her throat there hung a slave whistle. From her right hand, looped about the wrist, there dangled a slave goad. She was fairly complected but had extremely dark hair and dark eyes, very red lips; the movement of her exquisite body was a torment to observe; she looked at me with a slight smile, regarding the black of the tunic, the mark of the dagger; her lips were full and magnificently turned, probably a characteristic bred into her; I had no doubt this black-haired, cruelly beautiful woman was a bred Passion Slave. She was one of the most rawly sensuous creatures on which I had ever looked. "And you," she said to Phyllis, "you with the body of a Passion Slave, what of you?" Sura then took the slave goad, which was off, and moved it along the left side of Phyllis' body, touching her with the cold metal. Instinctively, even in her pain from the branding and with her aching limbs, Phyllis made a small noise and pulled away from the cold metal. The movement of her shoulders and belly was noted by Sura. the House of Cernus now, altogether, had better than one hundred and fifty barbarians in training, under the tutelage of various Passion Slaves; One was slender, a fragile girl, with deep gray eyes; the other had dark eyes and hair, a body that might have been that of a bred passion slave. There are various types of "exotics" bred by Gorean slavers, all of whom are to be distinguished from more normal varieties of bred slaves, such as Passion Slaves and Draft Slaves. The most valuable general category of slaves, however, much to the chagrin of some male silk slaves, is that of the particularly desirable female. These are usually extraordinarily beautiful Gorean girls, once of high caste. Sometimes they are dancers. Commonly they are highly trained. Sometimes they are even passion slaves, girls literary bred for the pleasure of men. "She is a dancer," said a fellow. I considered the girl. She now stood in the circle, relaxed, yet supple and vital, her wrists, back to back, over her head, her knees flexed. "She is a bred passion slave," I said, "with papers and a lineage going back a thousand years." "No," said a man. "Where did he pick her up," I asked, "at the Curulean?" "I do not know," said a fellow. I supposed she was perhaps a capture. I did not know if a fellow such as this Teibar, who did not seem of the merchants, or rich, could have afforded a slave of such obvious value. A fellow, for example, who cannot afford a certain kaiila might be able to capture it, and then, once he has his rope on its neck, and manages to make away with it, it is his mount. "Aii!" cried a fellow. "Aii!" said I, too. Dancing was the slave! "She is surely a bred passion slave," I said. "Surely the blood lines of such an animal go back a thousand years!" "No! No!" said a man, rapt, not taking his eyes from the slave. I regarded her, in awe. "She is trained, of course," said a man. Only too obviously was this a trained dancer, and yet, too, there was far more than training involved. Too, I speak not of such relatively insignificant matters as the mere excellence of her figure for slave dance, as suitable and fitting as it might be for such an art form, for women with many figures can be superb in slave dance, or that she must possess a great natural talent for such a mode of expression, but something much deeper. In the nature of her dance I saw more than training, her figure, and her talent. Within this woman, revealing itself in the dance, in its rhythm, its joy, its spontaneity, its wonders, were untold depths of femaleness, a deep and radical femininity, unabashed and unapologetic, a rejoicing in her sex, a respect of it, a love of it, an acceptance of it and a celebration of it, a wanting of it, and of what she was, a woman, a slave, in all of its marvelousness. "The paga slave quickly becomes a passion slut," said Menon. "Yes, Master," I said. I already had sensed that such things might be possible. But my body, too, had assured me that not all passion sluts would be in the taverns or brothels. Surely often enough, at night I had lain uneasily in my chains. |
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