The Black Pearl of Pharazion

by Cobalt Jade (cobaltjade@aol.com)



Chapter 7: The Making of a Slave


The pageant had reached another level. The air in the room felt close and narcotic. I shifted restlessly in my seat, wondering how much more of this I had to endure. The guards still watched the doors. I wondered how alert they were after watching Shezrine's performance.

Meanwhile, the slave girls loosened MarnessaÕs straps, all but for her ankles and wrists. They began to wash her with soft sponges. She moaned as her welts were scrubbed and pushed her hips at them every time the sponge passed between her legs, but they were careful not to touch her sex. The Queen noted her lewd gestures with a smile, lounging on a high stool her servants had brought. From time to time she made a comment that brought forced, nervous laughter from her court. It was clear she was building up to something.

That moment came when the slaves fetched a jeweled casket from the sidelines. They opened it to reveal razors and shears, jars of ointment, flasks of oil.

Marnessa's eyes pleaded and her head bounced, but she was to be barbered by the slaves, and there was nothing she could do about it. With scissors they cut off all her long, thick hair, then trimmed it close to the scalp. I watched in horrified silence as her body hair was removed in the same manner, even her pubic and anal regions being shaved clean. Then she was slathered with a depilatory the fashionable used, so that when they sponged her off again the last bits of hair came away as well, even her eyebrows and eyelashes. She looked even more lost and helpless, as if that was possible. To add to her mortification, the slave girls rubbed her with oil, making her shine. Their oversized breasts jounced like custard as they kneaded, their chained, beringed nipples dancing back and forth. Marnessa's skin would gleam in the torchlight like a burnished idol when they were through.  

Slaves drew back the drapes from between the pillars, exposing a multitude of mirrors. Marnessa sobbed, noting the alien creature she had become. It was clear to me was losing the tenets of her former identity.

"Give her the purge," the Queen commanded.

A slave came up with a skin bag and a length of tubing. It was a device familiar to me from my healer's training, but I had never seen it used to incite sexual pleasure before. She propped Marnessa's hips up with a cushion and inserted the metal nozzle into her anus. Marnessa fought against the invasion, her flesh swelling tightly against the thick straps, but her wild contortions were to no avail. The slave began to pump the water in, and Marnessa's eyes went wide.  

Shezrine regarded her as if she was a recalcitrant child. "Take in the water, my sweet; it is full of healthful herbs. It will clean you and give us some amusement. What's the use of feeling ashamed? My purge is going to happen to you no matter how much you flail about, so you had better resign yourself to it. That's what slaves do. They feel no shame at the things that are done to them, because they have no choice in the matter."

The process went on longer than I thought possible. Marnessa looked very distressed, her face betraying her strain. The slave girl attending her seemed to be counting, and when a certain number was reached, she quickly pulled the nozzle out. 

"Empty your bowels, slave! I command you!" The Queen struck Marnessa sharply with her crop.

Marnessa emptied herself, looking at once relieved and mortified. The slave girl caught the waste in a basin, which she quickly covered with a towel and took away. I saw the glint of tears on Marnessa's face as the Queen wiped her with a damp cloth. "There. That wasn't so bad, was it? It is always easier to obey. Now I command you to release your bladder. Let it loose into the bowl." 

Shezrine pressed down on the girl's bladder, holding a silver bowl between her legs. Scarlet-faced, Marnessa urinated into the bowl. The splash of the urine was very loud, which further added to the her humiliation. All could see the pale stream as it emerged from between her legs and fountained into the bowl. This too was covered and carried away. 

"You think you have lost as much as you can, don't you?" Shezrine asked rhetorically. "First you your freedom and dignity, then your self-control. Now you no longer have any say over what you look like. But you will lose still more. For the next stage you must surrender yourself further. Not just your body, but your will."

The guards unstrapped Marnessa and placed her on her hands and knees. She tried to stand. 

"No!" Shezrine commanded, hitting her sharply in the back with her rod. It left a red mark. "You will crawl on your hands and knees. Later you may walk upright again but only if I permit it. Follow me now to the back of the room. Don't try to run. I have hundreds of guards in the palace, and I have *this.*" Shezrine gave her another smack with the rod, on the buttocks this time. "So crawl, and be quick about it."

Marnessa crawled, breaking into fresh sobs as Shezrine prodded her along with the rod. She even inserted it into her sex at one point, laughing wickedly when this brought a loud muffled cry. 

At the back of the stage was a large chest with leather straps tumbled together on top of it. "The slave harness," Shezrine said to her audience, poking the straps with the rod. "Slightly different versions are used to train male and female pleasure-slaves. Harness her." Marnessa mewled as the guards grabbed her, but it didn't take much effort to overpower her. 

First, a wide leather belt was buckled firmly around her hips and a strap fastened under her breasts to lift them in a pair of shallow cups. A high, thick leather collar then went around her neck, and her wrists were cuffed and fastened to the belt at the small of her back. All of the clasps and buckles were fastened very tight.

There were several phalluses on the chest. Shezrine looked them over with deliberation, then chose one. "This," she said, holding the tool up so the audience could see, "is the best teacher there is. Inserted in the *proper* place it causes either great pleasure or great pain. Pain at defiance and willfulness, pleasure at submission." 

Marnessa whimpered as the Queen thrust the phallus inside her. It was much thicker than any of the others and had a round eyelet on the end of it. Shezrine ran two thin leather straps through the eyelet and drew them up through the crack of Marnessa's buttocks, then secured the straps to the belt below her strapped wrists. She then drew the straps to the front of Marnessa's crotch, holding them taut in her teeth as she fastened two tight clamps to the girl's nipples. Marnessa cried out, the gag having been abandoned at the table.

"Quiet," Shezrine said. "Or would you like one on your tongue?"

Marnessa broke off her cry. The Queen continued her work, running each strap through an eyelet on the front of the belt over Marnessa's hipbones, then ran the straps through an eyelet on each of the nipple clamps before buckling them to the collar.

Swiftly, the rest of the harnessing proceeded: Marnessa's ankles were buckled together, and two more straps above and below her knees held her legs tightly bound. Her face was covered with tears again by the time the Queen was done. 

Shezrine bent to apply her final touch. She moved the two tight, thin straps at the Marnessa's crotch so they held back her labia, exposing the raised pink button of her clit. To this she applied a tiny gold clamp. From it hung a teardrop-shaped weight. No pubic hair remained to hide the humiliating decoration; the flash of gold would show all exactly where the tiny jaws had been clamped. 

On the stiff leather collar was a metal ring, and to this Shezrine snapped a leash. Fresh tears of indignity poured down Marnessa's face. "Come along," she said. "You're mine now."

Marnessa could stand, but that was all she could do. She couldn't move, except in a series of little hops.

"When I say move, you move," Shezrine said angrily. Discarding her rod, she grabbed a short whip. She snapped it at Marnessa's legs. We in the audience gasped. Marnessa sagged, her legs going out from under her, but Shezrine held her yet by the leash, berating her as she dangling from the collar. "What lack of form! What laziness! When I say move, you will crawl, as befits a slave, the lowliest pleasure slave the palace has to offer. So low you do not even have a proper name or your head of pretty curls. Now crawl!" 

She let the Marnessa drop; she hit the tiles with a wet smack. Shezrine tugged sharply on the leash. Marnessa was forced to squirm after her like a caterpillar, moving at the slowest of paces because of how she had been bound. Shezrine continued to whip her as she struggled. Not raw, for one did not risk scarring one's pleasure slaves, but the welts were large and very red.  

I squirmed in my seat. Yes, I was very wet, the demonstration stimulating me against my better judgment. I prayed J'Wabra would not sense my agitation, but he was in a world of his own. What did a eunuch think of such things?

Marnessa's pace picked up under the whip. Her expression slackened, the fearful tears giving way to a frantic desire to obey, the phallus no doubt contributing a degrading pleasure as she crawled.

Shezrine let her rest in the middle of the floor. Her strapped buttocks bulged, now red and smartly welted. They were so deeply cleft by the leather straps they looked like a pair of ripe, rosy apricots. She moaned, in relief, I thought.

"That's it. Moan louder." Shezrine snapped her whip. It hit the floor only inches beyond Marnessa's shaved head. She moaned louder. "Good. Let me know with the sound how much you suffer, how much you deserve it, how much you enjoy it. You do enjoy it, don't you?" Another crack. "Look at you, crawling on the floor like an animal, every inch of you exposed." 

I felt beyond stimulation now. I felt nauseated. "When is it over?" I whispered to J'Wabra.

"Pay attention," he said urgently. "You must see the rest. You must."

A new game developed. The Queen rolled a golden ball across the floor. "Be an animal and fetch that, and push it back to me. Now!" The whip snapped.

Marnessa went humping after the ball, pushing it back with her nose. Shezrine laughed and threw it again. The whip continued to snap, striking her back, her thighs, her buttocks. On the fifth or sixth round she nudged it back to Shezrine' s ankle with her chin, crying unashamedly. She rested her cheek against the smooth leather instep of the Queen's boot. She seemed to be begging for mercy. Again and again her face helplessly bumped the leather.

"Good girl," Shezrine said with pleasure. "You've developed a sense of your station. To your knees." She jerked Marnessa's head up with the leash. Marnessa made an even more abject picture this way, buttocks spread over her heels, hands curled helplessly over them, her head and shoulders bowed. Her shoulders shook with sobs, setting the cruelly clamped and outhrust breasts jiggling, which pulled at all other parts of the harness. Torchlight danced across her hairless skull, her oiled, denuded flesh. Her pink welts glowed like a sunrise.

"I see you wish to please me. Do you truly? Look up at me." Marnessa raised her eyes, her mottled face streaked with tears, and vigorously shook her head up and down. "Will you tell me that with your own voice? Will you say, 'My Queen, I wish to please you?' " Marnessa gave another shake. Shezrine lowered her whip, her left hand still holding the leash.

"My Queen, I wish to please you," Marnessa said in a low, shaking voice.

"Louder." Shezrine gave a taut pull on the leash."

"My Queen, I wish to please you."

"Show it." 

Marnessa covered the Queen's boots with kisses.

She had bent low so her buttocks were high, and Shezrine touched the whip to them lightly. They lifted to accept the caress as if it was silk. "What are you?"

"I'm a slave," Marnessa said clearly.

"What am I to you?"

"You are my world. I want to serve you, make you happy." Conscious of the whip still resting against her, she kissed Shezrine's ankles, rubbing the sides of her face against her legs as if she was an affectionate cat. 

Shezrine suddenly raised the whip. Marnessa flinched, and Shezrine jerked the leash sharply. "You must never flinch from the whip or strap or phallus. You please me by bearing my punishment and my whims. Is that understood?:

"Yes, my Queen." And the whip whalloped hard across her buttocks, raising a welt that bled along the edges.

It must have hurt a great deal, but Marnessa had only gasped. "Now turn," Shezrine said. "Face away from me, with your head down and buttocks up. Show me how much you liked that by showing me how much you want another."

An agony of emotion passed across Marnessa's face. Then something resolved itself, for she turned slowly on her knees and raised her backside to the Queen. She laid her cheek against the cool tiles and closed her eyes. Her hands twitched a little.

Shezrine smiled. Did she smile at every slave she subjugated so, the many thousands she must have lovingly trained and discarded as if they were fruit rinds or candy-papers? She touched the whip to the bleeding welt, then withdrew it. 

"Excellent. What form." She reached between Marnessa's buttocks, playing with the straps and the eyelet on the end of the phallus, and brought her hand up. She smearing the moisture between her fingers in a captivated way. "Quite wet...*quite* appropriate for a pleasure slave." She took up the leash again. "And now you will pleasure *me.* Follow me on your knees."

I watched as the Queen led her trembling captive to the high stool where she sat, facing her audience. "Straighten up," she commanded, tapping Marnessa with the whip. Marnessa raised her head. Shezrine spread her legs like a whore, the black leather of her high boots highlighting the pale pink organs between her legs, the silvery triangle of pubic hair. "Now pleasure me, with your tongue and your mouth."

Marnessa whimpered, and Shezrine hit her again with the whip. "Didn't you hear? Pleasure me." She pulled the leash so the girl's head was brought up between her thighs. Another lash, and Marnessa began to lick.

It was the most vile--and stimulating--thing I had ever witnessed, the helpless struggling of the girl as she suckled, the whip that struck her back, the obvious pleasure of the Queen. 

Shezrine threw her head back, her silver-blonde hair rippling behind her. Nearly naked as a slave, she began to moan a slave's pleasure. Her hand tightened on the leash, sealing her prisoner's shaven skull to her crotch. Her whip rose and fell as Marnessa tongued her sex, her well-strapped buttocks rising and falling in a parody of the sex she was not permitted to have. 

Shezrine groaned, her eyes slitted in pleasure. Her heavy breasts jutted forward, blunt nipples pointing toward the ceiling like stiff fingers. She lifted her legs from the rungs of the stool and crossed them on Marnessa's back, drawing her closer. The spiked heel of one boot dug cruelly into her buttocks. 

Smack. Smack. Sweat appeared on Marnessa's naked scalp. We could not see her face, of course, but her head bobbed rapidly. The Queen's body heaved. Her mouth opened, gasping wordless cries in an arcane language.

I closed my eyes as she shuddered in orgasm. I seemed to feel it myself, a vile sensation I didn't want to acknowledge.

The leash went slack as Shezrine regained her balance on the stool. Marnessa dropped her head submissively. The Queen's fluids shone wetly on her mouth and cheeks. 

"That was good, very good," Shezrine said.  "Kiss me now." She held out her hands. Marnessa kissed them, front and back, with enthusiasm, then kissed the handle of the whip that had marked her. 

At last, we will be able to go, I thought.

Without provocation, Shezrine suddenly pushed Marnessa over backward with her boot. She fell on her back, betrayed and astonished, as Shezrine straddled her. "My Queen, what have I done?" she sobbed.

"Nothing," Shezrine said. "I merely wished to do that. You must not become vain or think too much of yourself because you have momentarily pleased me." She squatted, positioning her sex so it was now over the girl's face. "Clean me with your tongue, then pleasure me some more."

All could see the helpless shock on Marnessa's face as she strained upward with her tongue. But she let out a cry of surprise as the Queen suddenly urinated in her face.

"I did that because I wish to," Shezrine hissed. She stood and jerked Marnessa around by the leash so that she now lay on her stomach. "And I do this now because I wish to." She commenced to lash her, and Marnessa quivered helplessly under the blows. She screamed. 

"Quiet! As a pleasure slave you make noise only when I permit you to." Marnessa cut off her cries. She rolled and bounced miserably, wincing from the blows. They weren't deep enough to cut, but they left pink stripes. Shezrine stalked from side to side, whipping her from all angles. Her buttocks switched with the deep, masculine, strides, her firmly toned flesh jiggling only slightly. It was then, while she was in motion, that I saw clearly the tattoo on her own buttock. It was twin to her slaves', the Caramaithzes basilisk, for she too was a slaveÑ-a slave to power and her own depraved appetites.

Just when we thought the girl would lose consciousness the Queen let off her whipping. The girl immediately knelt before her, head bowed, forehead touching her knees. 

The silence in the room was total.

"Look at yourself." The Queen's laughter broke the silence. "Turn and look at yourself in the mirror. See how you kneel here trussed up like a piece of game for the spit, your asscheeks raw, your sex plugged and widened, as you beg me for more." She gripped Marnessa's chin, forcing her head up. "Look at yourself, rebel!"

Marnessa regarded herself in the mirrors. Her breasts shivered in the leather cups that held them erect. "A rebel no more, my Queen," she said breathlessly.

"That remains to be seen." Shezrine unharnessed her, leaving only the collar and leash, and wiped her face. "Now you shall be presented to your peers. Excuse me, your former peers. You are a slave to them now as much as any other slave in this palace is, and you will please them the same way you have pleased me. You will obey their commands with the finest form and enthusiasm, showing them exactly what you are and exactly what you wish to be."

The girl shivered as the Queen said these words, but she gave no reaction other than to kiss her boot again. Shezrine gave a tug on the leash, showing her she was to follow her to the edge of the stage. "Now come meet your new masters and mistresses." 

The young nobles were made to line up by the guards. None could escape this, but they kept their true feelings hidden. All of them knew the same thing could happen to them. Marnessa knelt beside the Queen with her arms folded behind her back, her naked head bowed. Shezrine made conversation with each young lord or lady as they came up, making them give some command or ask some request of her new slave. 

"She has no name," she said lightly to the first. "What would you suggest I call her? Shameless? Insatiable? How about Perky Buttocks? Turn around, dear, show them to the young man." Marnessa quickly turned around and pressed her forehead to the floor as the nobles laughed thinly at the display. One or two looked absolutely horrified.

To the next, a girl, Shezrine handed a large phallus, exhorting her to dip it deep into a container of cream and then into her new slave's backside.

The third girl wanted to smack her with a strap, which the Queen allowed, not too hard, then came a youth who pinched her nipples, then another who suckled her as Marnessa cupped her breasts and gave exagerrated moans. On and on it went. All the nobles, even the most hardened and decadent, soon had a glazed look, a numbness. *Could this have happened to me?* they might have been thinking. *Praise be to the gods that it did not!* 

It was a lesson to them, too. *Do not cross me,* the Queen's black, slightly slanted eyes seemed to say. *I have the same power over all of you.*

When the last of the line had cleared, and the nobles stood watching, the Queen led her pet to the center of the floor. She fed her pieces of fruit from her hand, a reward for a job well done. The girl's tongue lapped roughly at the juice left on her fingers. The Queen smiled, then looked sharply over at the nobles. 

"Do you see those young men and women over there?" she said, her voice steely. Marnessa glanced over, obedient. There was no recognition on her face. She acted like she had never seen them before. Then her eyes went back to the Queen. Nothing but devotion was in them now. 

"Do you want to go back to them, wear clothing, talk with them? I've made you a slave, and an accomplished one, in the course of these hours. But my demonstration is over now. You can go back to your friends and become what you were. I shall even make your hair grow again. Or you can remain with me and be my slave. What do you want?"

A horrible indecision crept over Marnessa's face. She might resume her place in the world, but she would never forget what happened here. Neither would her peers. 

With great decorum she bent and kissed the Queen's boots. 

How could she? How could she surrender to the endless humiliation, the endless ill-use? A pall settled over the nobles as they realized what they had just witnessed, that the Queen could make one of their own choose this degradation of her own free will. 

But the choice had been made, whether Shezrine had forced it through magic or the strength of her will, and from a door between the pillars the guards rolled up a brazier. Thin curls of smoke rose from the coals, the smell of burning metal strong. Marnessa quaked at the sight of it, but did not move from her abject position on the floor. 

"You will branded, of course," Shezrine said. "All my slaves are. You receive the special seal of the Caramaithzes basilisk showing you serve in the palace. The slaves I train are very much in demand in the outside world. They bring prices four and five times the norm on the auction block. Are you sure you want to be my slave?" 

Marnessa hesitated. 

"Understand that by this act you will be completely, irrecoverably, a slave. You will live the rest of your life as a slave, and die as a slave. No slave is manumitted in Obn-Dhregni. No slave escapes. You are mine and I shall do whatever I want with you. I may never look at you again. You may go to my concupiscerium. Or you may go the kitchens. I may sell you if I wish, or make of you a present to a new master or mistress. I may even kill you if I choose, for my own whims or the whims of a guest. It could be very painful. Perhaps I should feed you to the carnivorous plants in my garden. Or I may do none of those things. You will serve in my chambers as my plaything and I will take my pleasure of you, and perhaps give you to others so that they will take their pleasure also. 

"What is your reply?"

The girl's heart must have been knocking in her chest after hearing those horrible things, but her reply was clear though pitched low. "I hear, and I accept. Brand me."

She knelt with her forehead to the floor, her buttocks high and slightly spread. She clasped her hands behind her neck. Shezrine donned a gilded leather glove and grasped the hot iron. She pressed the smoking brand into Marnessa's flesh.

Marnessa flinched but did not scream. There must have been magic in it to take away the pain. The magic too must have caused a rapid recovery, for when the Queen lifted the iron the design was revealed in sinuous splendor on the pearly canvas of her buttock, with no scabbing or reddening of the skin.

"You may stand," the Queen said. The girl struggled to her feet. Though she had not screamed, her legs were unsteady. "Show my court what you are." 

Marnessa turned her back to the audience and thrust her buttocks out, displaying her brand.

"Show them more, slave."

Marnessa bent lower. She reached behind her with her hands and spread her labia, making sure everyone had a good view of the wet, shiny mouth of her sex, then she spread her buttocks and exposed her anus.

The Queen laughed. Her laughter seemed to go on forever...as her new slave would serve her, forever.

"A new pleasure slave has come to the palace," she announced. "She shall be changed to conform to our tastes, of course, to be as fair and lovely as the other pleasure slaves who serve us." Shezrine glanced out at her court. "Let me hear some suggestions."

The watching nobles called. "Red hair!"  "No, straight and blonde."  "Smaller waist."  "Bigger tits." 

The last brought a loud, collective laugh, as Marnessa's breasts were on the small side. The Queen pondered the suggestions, then began an incantation in sibilant words, weaving the air between her hands. It was the first time I had seen her use magic. I blinked as Marnessa seemed to ripple and blur. Was it painful? Pleasurable? Only one who has had the transformation can speak of it, and slaves are not permitted to tell. As I watched her eyes tilted in their sockets and her lips reformed into a pout; a mass of curly black hair covered her scalp and cascaded over her shoulders, and her breasts ballooned into oversized globes with enlarged, protuberant nipples. Her light skin darkened to a rosy bronze. Her welts and scratches vanished. Her skin was whole now, without flaw, and hairless as a babe's.

The transformation was complete. Marnessa staggered forward, holding a hand to her head. She seemed surprised to find hair there. She caught a look at herself in the mirror, and gasped. Her fingers covered her mouth. She was now as sexualized as, and as blandly indistinguishable from, the hundreds of other female pleasure slaves in the palace.

Shezrine turned her around to face the nobles. "Isn't she lovely?" Murmurs of assent answered her, only slightly forced.  

"You *are* lovely, my dear," Shezrine said, playing with a lock of the girl's freshly grown hair. She gently tweaked her nipples. "My precious slave, I could keep you here always as a reminder of my generosity and cruelty." 

Her eyes glinted. "But I will not." 

She roughly pushed Marnessa away from her. "Guards! Take this slave immediately to Ajaskafari Market and see that she is prepared for auction."

Marnessa's eyes went wide. She had been duped. She was leaving the palace to be sold at auction the same way as any other slave, to a fate her former life knew quite well, and one that the Queen was quite unconcerned with. She flung herself at Shezrine's heels. "No, my Queen, please, I beg youÑ"

"Slaves do not beg," Shezrine said. 

And the guards grabbed her and bound her again into the harness. Her wild struggle now caused the phallus inside her to rock her with pain. Gagged, clamped, and struggling, she was lifted and thrown over the shoulder of the tallest guard. They took her swiftly from the room, her bound legs and ankles thumping impotently against his back. 

"Take note," Shezrine said quietly to the audience. "She was mine to deal with, and mine to dispose of...exactly as I please. The same goes for all other subjects in my kingdom."

She walked off the stage between the pillars. The show was over. 

