Aliciana met them at the gate.
"My dear, you look lovelier than ever. Have you missed me?"
"Of course, dear. Longing to see you. And Karrak, no kiss for me? You look quite fearsome."
"Is Shemba inside? Don't worry I'll find her?" Without waiting for an explanation he dashed off into the house.
"Oh dear, I should explain..."
"Our guest will be along in a minute. We've done very nicely out this new line with his help and I want you to spoil him."
"You really shouldn't spring these surprises on me, dear." Aliciana was having trouble keeping up the front of a dutiful wife. Where was the boy?
The guest was just walking from the carriage, a servant carrying several large cases when Karrak rushed back from the house. "Where is she? Where is Shemba?" His face was flushed and eyes wild.
"Shemba's not here? My dear..."
"Yes, I tried to tell you but I'm afraid she's gone. Run away, we think. I've posted a reward and informed the slave-catchers but..."
"Shemba wouldn't go. She wouldn't leave me!" The young warrior was growing angry. Aliciana did her best to be the concerned stepmother on the surface but within she was gloating at her triumph.
"Well, my dear you know lots of people have slaves run away. It happens..."
"But not to my products!" At the guest's words Aliciana turned to see a small wryly ironic man dressed in the robes of a Master Magician.
"My dear," her husband was saying, "this is our guest Lord Kandolus. My Lord, Aliciana my wife."
"Greetings my dear, now tell me: what is this tale you are telling about one of my magically bound slaves running away? Hmmmm?"
Aliciana went very pale and knew her luck had run out.
**********
Shemba awoke again to find herself bound to an X shaped frame by wrists and ankles. Two huge leather straps held her hips down, which seemed excessive. Looking around she could just make out the stone walls of an underground room. Opposite her was a row of iron bars, the front of prison cells in the shadows of which figures scuttled avoiding the light. Arranged around the room were enough racks, chains and iron maidens to make the place a torturer's wet dream! To one side of her a coal-filled brazier burned, giving the only illumination to the room. Shemba decided she preffered unconsciousness.
From behind her she heard the sounds of feet slapping on stone steps and two men came from behind her. Choro was one and he carried a torch which he placed in a bracket on the wall. Slung over one should he carried a woman, looking fearful and wretched. She wore the slave ring through her nose and was bound hand and foot. Choro dumped her on the floor while the other man came and studied Shemba.
He was a bald, fleshy, almost flabby man, dressed in Master Mage's robes that had seen better days. There was a look of cruelty in his eyes that recalled the near-insanity that Shemba had sometimes seen in Aliciana's. He sniffed at Shemba as if she was something unpleasant.
"So this is Kandolus' latest masterpiece. She doesn't look like much but I suppose no one does with their hair cropped that short and after four days in a trunk."
"No, Master," tittered Choro sycophantically, "But I assure you she's normally just as good-looking as the other barbarian beauties Kandolus is selling."
The bald man sniffed again. "What's your name, slut?"
Shemba swallowed hard: "I am Shemba, sir."
The bald man slapped her hard across the face, hard enough to bring blood to her mouth. "Call me Master! From now on you belong to me for as long as I care to keep you! Don't think you can run back to where Choro found you. And don't expect any help from Kandolus! You're my property now and will stay that way. Understood?"
"Yes, Master! Yes, Master!" Shemba cowered at this lunatic's ravings and resolved to give him no cause to be angry. But in her heart she knew that Karrak was still her Master and her Owner.
"Good. In a moment we'll make your ownership plainer. No doubt you're wondering who you now belong to and why I went to such lengths to obtain you. You are now the property," and Shemba saw him pull himself up self-importantly, "Of Thergo the Mage. Lord Thergo to you. I am one of the pre-eminent, I might say the pre-eminent master of magic in the northern lands."
Somehow Shemba doubted that. She remembered the calm power and self-assurance of Kandolus and saw nothing of that in the man before her.
"Until recently my creations, my pleasure slaves were the wonder of the civilised lands. Until that is, that charlatan, that imposter, that conjourer Kandoulous brought out his latest line of slavegirls. His 'Barbarian Beauties' undercut my prices and are flooding me off the market. No one seems to know where he gets his raw materials from. He can't be paying the breeding houses for stock of that quality. Unless I discover his sources, I will go out of business. So when young Choro here told me how he had been unjustly thrown out of his apprenticeship I resolved to use his information to aquire one of the new line. At minimal cost."
He smirked and Choro again laughed like a courtier at his monarch's little joke. "Now my dear, you will tell me where you came from before you arrived at Kandolus' House."
"But...But Master I can't! I was ordered to forget, Kandolus himself ordered it. I haven't thought about for months. I know it's gone completely from my memory!"
"Oh but you will my dear. There is no spell so strong that it will completely wipe a person's memory. I need only appeal to a stronger urge. The urge to self-preservation. Once you understand what I can do to you, your fear will give you your memory back. For instance..."
"Please, Master no..."
"Quiet, slut!" He went and stood over the bound and gagged form of the other slave. "Choro tells me that you have a dislike of having your body altered by magic. Well, it happens that I am something of an expert in that art. This slave has displeased me and I've decided she will look better in another form. Watch!"
The bound slave looked up with pleading eyes and whimpered behind her gag but to no avail. The wizard took up a stance over her and, raising his arms, began to chant. The air around the woman shimmered and, as her bonds fell away, her body rose in the air. For a moment it hung unmoving in the air and then the change began. From all over her body fur, the same colour as her auburn hair, began to sprout!
Within seconds she was covered all over with a thick pelt through which Shemba could see the pink tips of her nipples sprouting. Then her face began to change, lengthening into the snout of a dog or wolf. Her teeth became sharpened and a long pink tounge lolled out of her mouth. Her hands became fused into paws and her legs changed shape, the calfs shortening so that she would never stand upright again.
Worst of all the light of reason faded from her eyes and was replaced with the devotion that one sees in dogs. As the spell faded Shemba saw, with a gathering feeling of nausea, the bitch-woman bounded over and lick the wizard's hand in doggy devotion.
"Isn't she lovely? She'll make someone a lovely guard-dog. And of course I've arranged for her to be always in heat!"
He studied Shemba's nauseated face and turned with surprise to Choro.
"I think your little friend has gained some backbone somewhere. Never mind. We have other possibilities. Perhaps we could use Choro's new spell. Just bury you somewhere, unable to move, unable to breath, but able to think. And wonder when we'd come for you. Does that inspire you enough?"
"I can't! I can't I tell you!" Shemba was almost hysterical. The wizard's face went hard.
"You forgot to call me Master. I'll have to remind you. Choro! The iron! Let me mark her as the property of my House." As the gloating apprentice stirred the fire, Shemba's horror increased. They couldn't mean to...
But then the wizard drew on a thick leather glove and removed from the fire a long white hot rod with a small swirl of metal at the end. He walked around to Shemba's left side and brought it slowly towards her hip.Shemba began to scream as she felt the heat approach her flesh.
"No, Master, no please, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Master please! I remember now. Please no Master!! ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGH!!!!!!"
From where she worried at a bone she'd found, the transformed slave looked up as the woman on the rack screamed and then fainted.
***************
Shemba recovered conciousness when a bucket of cold water splashed over her. The Wizard looked down at her thigh where the design of a bird was branded into her hip. The pain was almost enough to make Shemba faint again.
"A lovely mark if I say so myself. Now, Slave I have other irons in the fire still hot. Other parts of your body could be branded. Do you remember now?"
"I c...c..c..can remember some things, Master. About how I came here. Please don't hurt me, again Master."
"Tell me what you remember. Then we will see."
Shemba began to tell what little she knew. About that strange other world where there were no wizards. About the strange room high above the city street. And about the door. The door that opened the way between the worlds.
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