This story spans eleven years in the life of a Confederation Interceder who, rather early in the tale, finds himself in the body of a young Bendari slavegirl on the planet of Acteon he has been assigned to investigate. Most of the story, however, concentrates on her first year of enslavement, as I found this the most fun to write about.

The story has relatively graphic sex (depending on your threshold - mine's high), lots of bondage and discipline, bodyswapping, kings, knights, interstellar traders, double-crossing, skullduggery, hypnosis, eugenics, spiritual growth, spies, and (gasp) science fiction. If any of these themes offend you, especially science fiction, you should stop reading now. I should say right off that my priorities in writing this *erotic tale* were weighted more toward the first word (erotic) than the second (tale). Be that as it may, I tried to craft a good story and appreciate any feedback at aly_ssas@yahoo.com.

Any inconsistencies in the storyline are unintentional and should be taken strictly as the sign of an overeager author. If you notice anything jarring (you know, like "I thought Johnny got turned into a girl two chapters ago - why is he a guy again?"), please let me know.

Any resemblance to actual persons is unintentional as well, though if any resemblance exists, please notify me immediately, because I'd love to know how you managed it and how I could replicate it. Anyway, have fun!

 

Slaves of Acteon

by Alyssa S.

 

Prologue

The winds grow heavier as I approach the Tower. I can smell...roses, lavender, and something else: the smell of sweat, and of a woman aroused. It seems to come from above. From Rapunzel.

The wind buffets the willow trees on the knoll. There is only one way up, the trellis of bright red hair, Rapunzel's long braid. I begin to climb, one hand over the other.

The braid begins to unravel beneath me. I am about halfway to the balcony before the loose hair blinds me, entangles me. I would have fallen then, but the hair seems to act like a net, suspending me. It seems to root itself in me, and as I try to free myself, I look for its source, groping with my hands for its origin.

Finally I push back the unruly mass of fiery hair, my hands touching my head, shocked to find that the long ringlets are mine. That I'm naked, in the tower, a beautiful young woman reflected in the mirror opposite the balcony. That my hair, now loose, billows through the archway and into the open. Behind me, in the mirror, I see myself, or rather the man who has taken my manly form. He is laughing as he lowers himself out the window by my hair. I look down and I see a tattoo on my left breast: "Slave".

 

Part One

Chapter I a slavegirl is born on Acteon

I awoke with a start; I opened my eyes, but it was still dark. A light breeze wafted over me, and I realized I was naked, with no coverlet. Instead of the thick cotton filled bedding I'd grown used to, I was lying on what felt and smelled like straw. I also smelled lavender, perfume, and sweat, and it took me a moment to realize that the odor was my own, that even the smell of sex from the dream was mine. It took a moment for this to register in my mind. Then I propped myself up on my pallet, reaching in the dark with my hands to touch the soft, pillowy weight of the breasts that were now a substantial part of my chest. The chain which connected my leather collar to the pallet rattled as I sat up.

"Back to sleep, Alisha!" a man's voice hissed "Thirty lashes in the morning for you." I quickly lay back down, my hands fingering the chain, and my collar, remembering what had happened. All around me I heard the light breathing of the slavegirls on their pallets. With a terrible sinking feeling deep in my heart, I realized I might never escape this life, this body, that I might forever be doomed to serve my new Lords with my mouth, hands and cunt, as I'd been forced to do this night. Booted footsteps approached, and the guard laid his rough hand on my hip, patted it. "Sleep, slave. You need the rest for tomorrow", he whispered. I closed my eyes as his hand caressed my breast. Then the hand disappeared and the guard returned to his post. I suspected then I would never be able to return to Earth. I would be only Alisha, slavegirl to The Council of Lords, on the planet of Acteon. I began to remember, as I drifted back into a slavegirl's slumber, to a world where even in dreams I served a Master, I began to recall how this fate had befallen me.

Acteon was classified in the Confederation Dossiers as an M class planet, colonized by humans in the year 2304, nine hundred years ago. The colonists were Naturals, eschewing technology in favor of an agricultural civilization. They deliberately eradicated all knowledge of the other worlds in their histories, and, not surprisingly, became isolated and regressed to a feudal society. The world was now roughly equivalent to the Dark Ages of Earth in its warlike nature and level of technology. The colonists were assumed in Confederation Intelligence to have perished very soon after their arrival, and the recent rediscovery of the planet and its inhabitants required careful handling. It was decided that no contact should be made, and that its civilization should not be interfered with. We placed watchers on the planet, to record and study its people and guard against outside interference. It's easy to become a powerful figure on a planet with inferior knowledge and technology, and this was precisely what the Societal Conservation Board suspected Lord Baird was up to. They had determined that he was, in fact, Tyron Beale, an intersystem trader who'd apparently stumbled on the world and decided to set himself up pretty well. He'd joined the Council of Lords as an Associate from an undetermined island fiefdom, and with a seemingly unlimited supply of gold and superior weaponry was on his way to controlling the Council. The other Lords were clearly unhappy with this turn of events, and war was breaking out on scales previously unseen on the planet. It was my job, as an Interceder, to take Lord Baird's place and slowly remove myself from the Council, stepping down hostilities. I had landed on the planet some three weeks earlier, and, disguised as a free knight, had worked my way toward New Hope, where the Council of Lords held court. I had the exchanger with me. The device, though undetectable, required that the target and I maintain physical contact for ten minutes, to allow for data transfer. The plan was to drug Lord Baird with a sedative which would act for about a half hour, then drug myself with a stronger sedative. I would awaken first in Lord Baird's body and confine him, now in my body. The watchers would retrieve him.

As a knight, I was invited to the main hall for dinner, and ate with a hundred other knights in a din of entertainers and slaves. One of the slave-wardens approached and begged for my attention.

"Yes, speak," I said. He bowed slightly.

"Esteemed knight, it has been noticed that you are new to New Hope Castle, and the Lords wish to show hospitality..." He gestured to his right, and then I noticed the girl.

She was quite short, perhaps 5'0", or in Acteonese measurements, seven and a half krems. She was utterly beautiful. Her face was small, pixielike, with large red lips and green eyes. Her hair was long, cascading over her shoulders, halfway down her back, and it was fiery red, but she had little of the freckling of the skin associated with her hair color. Her breasts, though not large, seemed full on her diminutive, fragile frame. This slavegirl's hands were behind her, her wrists undoubtedly cuffed together, as is the custom with slaves offered to guests. Her eyes were cast downward, and a short leather leash was fastened to her slender black leather collar. This the slave-warden held in his right hand, which he offered to me. One of the spoils of war, of course, is an abundance of slaves, including pleasure slaves; this is common on all warlike planets. But the slave-wardens of Acteon had developed a drug, which the slaves ingested with their meals, which affected their pleasure centers and made them quite docile and submissive at the same time. Every person of noble birth owned at least one slave, and marriages to slaves were not unheard of, though such marriages in no way nullified the girls' slave status, and a husband would commonly offer his wife- slave for guest's use. Not to offer would be discourteous, to refuse, in turn, was an insult to the host.

Physiologically speaking, the girl was quite typical for a fifth-generation slave (which a slave-mark, freshly tattooed on her left breast in the Acteonese written language, indicated her to be) - indeed, a perfect example. Acteonese women vary in quite predictable patterns, according to whether they are free or slave, and if slave, the nature of their breeding and genealogy. The Watchers had been conducting studies on the genetic evolution of the Acteonese race, and it had been quite clear that through a combination of active husbandry (only the most compliant, contented slaves are allowed to breed) and the genetic effects of the slave's bane, fourth generation or later bred slavegirls committed no acts of defiance whatsoever. Slave's bane permanently altered one's pituitary gland, so that androgens produced were of a kind useful only for the well-being of the body, and produced no aggressive feelings.

Free Acteonese women, as on other planets, are generally only slightly shorter than men, and their body type and weight can vary widely. Some are as broad shouldered as a man, some slender, some fat. Free women tend to be larger breasted than slaves. A free woman must accentuate her features to best effect through many layers of concealing garments. Perhaps this trait evolved through natural selection, rather than the active husbandry that dictates the shape of a slave's flesh.

A slave's body, on the other hand, is bred to appear its best in the nude, and this typically means that a fourth generation slave's breasts are almost always about the size of a mango or coconut, rather than the large grapefruit shape that Acteonese free women pride themselves on. The smaller shape is more pleasing to the eye, and lasts longer before it finally begins to sag (a trait free women can conceal). Generally, slaves average in height about 5'6" (never taller), although there is a less common breed (called Bendari after the region in which they were first bred), which averages about 4'11" - this girl was clearly of this breed, which made her somewhat rare here in the South. A slave's shoulders can sometimes be as narrow as 14" across. Her musculature is extremely underdeveloped, though fit. To the Confederation eye, used to women whose births were the result of random mating, an Acteonese slavegirl of proper breeding appears almost cartoonishly angelic and childlike. It is as if all traces of masculinity have been sucked out of the body, leaving only soft, malleable, manipulable flesh. Different varieties are deliberately bred, of course, but these are mostly based on skin coloration and hair color. Acteonese men have surprisingly consistent taste when it comes to body shape and size in a slave. The only exception appears to be the small-mouth girl of the Western Archipelagoes, whose nether regions are plugged and never used by her master. Instead, her mouth has been bred to be much smaller, so that her lips grip her master's shaft tightly.

I took the leash and offered my thanks.

"Kneel beside me, little one." The girl dropped to her knees immediately.

"What is your name, slave?" I asked.

"Alisha, if you please, my Lord," she answered, half-whispering. I smiled. There are benefits to this world, I thought, only half cross with myself for indulging in the thought of using her. The watchers couldn't see what I didn't want them to see.

"Well, then, Alisha, you will follow me to my quarters, one pace behind; no less." I stood, tugged on the leash, and began to walk back to my room at the inn. She jumped up and fell in step behind me. I judged her to be about fourteen years old, and again wondered at her beauty and abject obedience. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, as the ancient proverb goes, and this wasn't the first time in the past few weeks I'd taken a slavegirl. She was a model of obedience. I spent some time using her mouth while I sat in an armchair. She was rather inexpert, and the tattoo on her left breast, marking her as a slave, was still fresh and healing, so I judged her to have been recently trained.

It was common for a man to raise his slave-birthed daughters as free women until they ripen. The girl understands that her freedom ends as soon as her father determines she is ready to be sold, and for the rest of her life has her brief period of freedom to contrast her abject slavery with. In addition, slaves raised in this manner are quite intelligent, learn more quickly, and are more capable of appreciating more subtle punishments. She sucked me dry when I came, and lay still when I pushed her to the floor. I ignored her for awhile, while I took care of some writing, which would be scanned into my personal log on the ship later. When I'd finished, and began thinking of her again, I turned to find her kneeling upright by my side. I took her to the bed, uncuffed her wrists and attached them to the rings set in the headboard for the purpose. She moaned, eyes closed. I stripped and took her. The effects of the drug were such that, even abused so, the little slave felt pleasure as I bit deeply into her breast. I locked my mouth over hers, and her lips responded pleasingly. I'd been taking my time stroking into her hot cunt, enjoying myself and enjoying her little cries and moans, slapping her face just to hear her moan louder. Now I pumped in earnest. As I grew close to climax, something strange happened. I was looking into her eyes, which, strangely, she did not avert, and something knowing was in them, as if she were smirking. She smiled, and I came involuntarily, shooting into her not just my juices, but...I felt myself slipping into her, my vision greying, mixing. For a moment I saw her face under mine, and my own face hovering above me at the same time. Then her face faded, and I was left staring up at my own visage, in the throes of orgasm. Something large and thick was pushing into me, and I couldn't move my arms; something was holding them down. And I was coming, coming hard, but in a strange way, all over. My eyes clenched shut as I rode the unfamiliar wave of pleasure to its final, dissipating conclusion.

I heard a man laugh, felt his hot breath, smelling of beer and venison, on my face. I opened my eyes and saw my own face grinning down at me. He laughed again, put his mouth over mine and kissed me deeply. To my own surprise I returned the kiss.

"Ah, that's the drug, my little fool," he said as he broke off the kiss. "You can't help yourself. You don't know how hard it was for me to be a slavegirl for the three days I waited for you. It's just about impossible not to submit to your owner's wishes. Which is why this body is the perfect dumping ground for you." He straightened up, got off the bed and began to dress. "Don't look so surprised. I knew you were coming for me. Some of the watchers are easily bribed. It doesn't matter - I suppose this could have been done differently, but I had my reasons, which a slave hardly needs to know about." He released my bonds, rolled me over easily, and reattached the wristcuffs behind my back.

"Kneel by the door, slave," he commanded. Suddenly he seemed frighteningly intimidating; the tone of authority in his voice had a strange effect on me. Though I was exhausted both from the change and from the way I'd been used, I crawled off the bed and obediently knelt in the place he'd prescribed. My heart raced, and I found myself thinking about his cock. My eyes were lowered as he attached the leash to my collar, and my gaze rested on the fresh tattoo, which still felt raw and was beginning to scab over. 'slave,' the first line read in small calligraphics. I certainly felt like a slave. The second line indicated my breed, Bendari, and lineage - fifth generation. Dear God.

He had brought me back to the Castle that night and handed me over, despondent and exhausted, to the slave-warden. I can tell you now, hopefully without revealing too much ahead of time, that I didn't see my male body again until five full years later, at the age of nineteen. I had not thought of my former life then for some years; any hope of reclaiming my lost identity was crushed, however - the possessor of my old body, when he purchased me and added me to his harem, made it clear that - well, that will come later. That first night I still harbored hope that I could escape this abject fate.

The slave-warden that night informed me that the next morning I was to serve Lord Baird in the garden. Apparently it wasn't enough to feminize and enslave me; I was to be Lord Baird's plaything for awhile as well. As my keeper led me by the leash to the slave's harem, I wondered if any of the watchers assigned to the mission were not under Tyron's influence, and if there were any chance of them coming to my aid. Under normal circumstances, I would have felt more optimistic, but the drug seemed to hamper thoughts not associated with servility and humble submission. I had a hard time imagining myself as anything other than this slavegirl.

More dreams. This time I'm still in the tower, a naked slavegirl named Rapunzel. But my hair has been cut short, to waist length, so no rescuer can come for me now. The slave-warden uses my cutoff hair to tie my wrists behind me, and to gag me. I look up at the slave-warden, and I see Lord Baird's face. He slaps me, hard.

Now I'm in my spacecraft. My crewmates are there; they're discussing leaving the planet. I tell them that I'm here, that I've come back, but they ignore me. I begin screaming at Roberto. He looks at me, finally, and I remember that I'm Alisha. A lewd expression crosses his face as he pushes me onto my hands and knees. He shoves his cock into me, telling me I'll make a good housewife back on Mars.

 

Chapter II morning grooming and discipline

A light slap on my hip awakened me. The warden continued down the row, shaking and slapping the girls awake. I propped myself up on my elbows, again surprised at where and who I was. Each girl deftly rolled herself forward over the end of her pallet, so that she was kneeling in front of it, facing the wooden frame. This maneuver pulled the leash attached to her collar taut, pinioning her.

I belatedly followed suit, clumsily mimicking my fellow slaves' motions, and found myself on my knees, my face pressed against an oak board, the surface of which was worn with centuries of use, and smelled of pine oil. I seemed to have crossed my arms behind me without realizing it. I was acutely aware of my body now, in this daylight, and my nakedness and femininity embarrassed me, but I had no defense against the shame I felt when a warden strapped my wrists behind me, took my leash and led me out. I could still feel the dried come on my thighs, and realized that I was wet with desire already. The slave's drug, I concluded distractedly.

I was blushing furiously as he led me through the courtyard to the slave's bath; the knights, footmen and other men of the castle gathered daily in small numbers here for breakfast, mainly for the view, and I could feel their eyes on me as I was led past helplessly. I had realized at once when Lord Baird had changed me that he'd chosen Alisha to be my vessel because she was among the youngest and the most beautiful of the new slaves, and now I bore the burden of a fourteen- year old girl's beauty and freshness, and vulnerability.

We reached the baths. The warden removed my collar and unstrapped my wrists.

"You are due thirty lashes, girl," the warden said softly. "See that ring, slave?" he demanded, pointing at a large steel ring set into a stone column next to the steaming bath. I nodded. "Go to it and put your hands around it. You are to hold it fast, and not let go, while you receive your punishment."

I hesitated, took a step forward.

"No one here will help you, Alisha. You will grasp the ring, and you will be whipped. In your homeland you may have been a princess; here you are a slavegirl. Even if you were to return home today, you know they would abide by the code of honor and keep you enslaved. Once a slavegirl, always a slavegirl. You have been chosen and it is your fate to obey. Now submit to your punishment."

I took a deep breath, walked forward, reached up and wrapped my fingers around the cold steel ring. The washerwoman, sitting on a bench nearby, watched silently as she ate her morning meal. The ring was polished around its lower curve from frequent use. I rested my head against the column, felt its sun- warmed marble roughness against my bare breasts. "Spread your legs, Alisha." Trembling a little now, I complied. Steam from the hot bath wafted across my legs. "Wider." I repositioned my feet, splaying myself out as far as I could and still hold the ring. I thought of what it had been like, to be a man. I'd enjoyed myself, had a good life, a good job, and it had all been taken from me. Now, instead of the hard, well-muscled chest I'd worked for, I had a set of soft, pert, pliant, gorgeous tits. Instead of receiving respect, I now had to respect, and obey, everyone who felt entitled to command me. Poems were written on this planet about the three orifices of a slavegirl, and how best to fill them. The villain in all the tales was always overcome, and magically transformed into a slavegirl, where she could serve her victims happily, a fully integrated (if helpless) member of society. Romances were often threesomes between a Lord, a Lady, and her slavegirl (and, of course, they often switched roles). The slavewarden approached from the right. "If you cry out, that is acceptable. But you must not, under any circumstances, plead for mercy, ask me to stop, or protest your punishment in any way. And you must continue to hold onto the ring."

The first blow fell hard and evenly across my buttocks, searing both cheeks. I clenched my teeth, stifling a cry, as the pain, at first sharp and stinging, turned to a dull, deep bruising pain, spreading upwards and out, making my legs weak. I held onto the ring with my clenched hands, determined not to succumb. I felt tears welling up. One left a wet trail as it streaked over my cheek, stopping at my upper lip.

The second blow fell slightly higher, so as not to hit an already desensitized patch of flesh. I bit my lip. Already I was crying, my hot face pressed against the stone. My flesh was burning. Three strokes. Four. Five. Eight. Fifteen. I was sobbing at this point.

"Turn around, slave Alisha. Continue to grasp the ring."

I remained motionless, terrified.

"You're owed fifteen blows across the breasts with a cat o'nine tails. Now it's twenty. Turn around, slave." I reluctantly obeyed, my arms still overhead, clutching the ring.

"Spread your legs wide, you dumb cunt!" He snarled, and stepped forward and kicked my legs apart. I began to sob anew; I couldn't even see. I heard the first hiss before I felt the many strands of the cat cut into my delicate breast flesh. One. Two. My eyes cleared; I saw the third blow, and watched in a haze, as the endorphins finally kicked in, watched my flesh turn red and streaked under the administered blows. Eight. Fourteen. I began to feel faint.

The final blow was not with the cat but with a birch switch; this cut into my flesh so hard and deeply that, I saw before I fainted, my right breast was bleeding.

 

The slavewarden helped my up to my knees. "Move slowly, slave. Apparently you are even more raw than I suspected. You will be dizzy for a few moments. When your head is clear you will continue your duties as required. Wait until you are sure you won't faint again. Do not wait long, however. If I suspect you are misusing this reprieve you will be punished twice as hard. "When you are ready, crawl into the baths. I will take your collar and cuffs, and will place them on you when you are sent back to the harem. Lord Baird wishes you unrestrained.

"The washerwoman will bathe you. When she dismisses you, you will walk straight up this path and kneel beside your Master." The slavewarden gathered up his gear and walked leisurely back to the harem. I knelt on the grass, still dizzy. My right side was damp with blood, although the cut now looked shallow. My breasts were throbbing in pain, and seemed bloated. I felt the eyes on a few onlookers on me as they ate their morning bread. One knight's words carried over the babbling of the baths: "A fine sight, that. Exquisite. Look how the blood seeps into her navel, spreads in her sweat? Blood is sacred, my friend, whether it spills from a vanquished enemy or a delicate young flower like that one, there." I looked down at my breasts, my belly. The knight was right. The stain was pretty.

Suddenly I was lifted by my arm and hauled over to the bath. "Come on, girl, I don't have all day." I felt light-headed, and began to protest:

"But the slavewarden -" my protest was cut off by a sharp, agonizing pain in my left breast - the washerwoman held its bruised meat in her hand and was twisting it.

"You do not protest. You are a slave. If you protest again you will merit another beating after you serve Lord Baird. If you're dizzy the steam from the bath will awaken you." She picked me up and lowered me into a stone tub carved into the side of the natural spring. The water was stingingly hot, and burned my injured flesh, but after a moment the burning passed, and the heat loosened my muscles tensed from the stresses of the punishment. "Kneel on the straw pad at the base of the bath." I complied, my hands again naturally finding resting places on the soles of my feet. The big woman used a loofah sponge to scour my flesh and remove the grime of a days' slave work; the dried semen on my face and between my legs, my blood, dirt from kneeling or otherwise abasing myself. She washed my hair and combed it expertly. When she had dried it she braided it into a single long braid. She braided a leather thong with a handle at the end into the weave of my hair, forming a leash from my own hair.

Her hands were large and rough, and she was a broad, plain woman in her mid thirties; there was nothing attractive about her. But in a strange way her expert handling of me aroused me. She seemed to know my slave's body better than I did myself, and her hands were sure and firm as she bent me forward to cleanse my back, or lifted my arm to expose my pit and breast better to her sponge. She brushed my teeth with a crude horsehair toothbrush. She took care with my buttocks and breasts, which were by now crisscrossed with angry pink lines. She scrubbed my hands and cleaned the dirt from under my nails. I grew so quietly heated that when she cleaned my pubic region I choked back a low moan. To my mortification, she laughed. She put her large hand under my chin and lifted my head.

"Look at me, slave." I obeyed, and looked up into her eyes. "Don't be ashamed that you feel pleasure when I touch you. It is your nature. You are trained and conditioned to respond the way you just did. A week ago you were a princess, I'm told, and a week ago you would have been disgusted, perhaps appalled at your present predicament. I doubt it, since you are a bred Bendari. In any case, things are different now: now you are a slavegirl, and it is right for you to moan when touched.

"My name is Marion. You may call address me as Madam. I will wash you twice daily, now and before the evening feast, so you will see quite a lot of me, and I of you. You will grow used to my administrations. Lean back and give me your right leg." She began to shave my leg with a very sharp razor and thick suds. The hot spring swirled the soiled water away as she lathered and shaved. "Now the other." I closed my eyes and let Madam Marion work. After a few minutes she slapped my knee. "Now you have to sit on the flat of the rock, here, with your legs still in the water. Like this," she said, as she guided me up onto the rock and onto my back. She spread my legs wide, so that my nether regions were facing her and thoroughly exposed. "We'll do this daily. Your beautiful red hair is considered a treasure in this part of the world, but red hair in the cleft of a woman is considered unlucky. So you will have to be shaved every morning," she added as she first trimmed, then shaved my pubis mound. "There. Just like a baby," she chuckled. "Don't be ashamed. You're the only fire-haired slave in New Hope Castle, so your bare condition will make you a novelty and more in demand." Madam Marion sat me up and pulled me out of the bath. She rinsed me and towelled me dry. Then she applied a daub of scented oil behind my ears, between my breasts and on my neck. She pulled on the braid leash, as if to test it, and I found myself helplessly looking up into the sky. "Very good. Well, you're a little too short for most men's tastes; Bendari girls are out of fashion and leggy girls are more in demand in these times. But I must say you're quite fetching. In any case the King, at least, seems to have a thing for the short ones these days." She looked at me with an appraising eye. "You would have made a good princess, given the chance." Or Interceder, I thought to myself ruefully. That life, taken from me just ten short hours ago, was still fresh in my mind, as much as my hormones and circumstances might try to repress it.

"Now say 'Thank you, Madam', and you may go perform your duties." "Thank you, Madam," I half-whispered. They were the first words I'd been given permission to speak since I'd awakened in the harem, chained to my sleeping pallet. I hesitated for a moment.

"Go on! Or do you want another beating?" I quickly turned and walked up the path, my hands clasped behind me at the small of my back, through the thick low hedges flanking the cobblestone entryway to the western wing of the castle. I stole a few glances at my surroundings for the first time, and noted quickly that there were walls on all sides of the courtyard, with sentries on the walkways above.

 

Chapter III secrets laid bare

I recognized Lord Baird instantly. He was sitting in an upholstered armchair by the hearth, alone. I briefly wondered what he had done with my body. I quickly lowered my gaze as I padded in my bare feet to his side. I knelt, knees splayed wide, before him, fixing my gaze on the flagstones. I felt my face blush, and the embarrassment spread tellingly as my chest flushed. "Good morning, slave Alisha. I trust you are becoming accustomed to your new duties. I know they are hard; I lived through them three long days." He took me by my forearm and pulled me between his spread pantlegs. "But then, I had the luxury of knowing I would be free. You must harbor no hope of that, my dear."

He took my right wrist and brought it forward to the right arm of his chair. There was a leather strap attached to the back of the chair, and he fastened my wrist to it. He repeated the procedure with my left wrist, in effect forcing me to embrace his waist. I found myself staring at his broad chest; he wore a robe over his torso, which was now parted, and I was acutely aware of his well- developed musculature. I wondered briefly if they'd been enhanced, then started as something huge graced my belly. I glanced down worriedly, and saw that his pants were unfastened, and his cock pressed up against my naked abdomen, the tip between my exposed breasts. It was huge, at least 14" long in earth measurements, and as thick as my admittedly slender wrists. Dear God. I swallowed hard, and tried to avoid looking at it. I stared instead at his rockhard pectorals, angry at myself that I was already wet as a lake and breathing raggedly.

"Certain personalities are more suited for the tasks a slavegirl must endure. You may be surprised to know I have had complete access to your personal records, young lady." I forgot myself and stared up at my captor. He slapped my face and forced my head down again. "Tsk. Another beating for you. Don't forget your place, slavegirl." He began to caress my right breast. The slap he had given me hurt; my face was red and I could taste blood, but God, it had turned me on.

My personal records. Shit. The last thing I needed Lord Baird to know. I hung my head in shame as he continued, realizing he had known from the beginning. "Those trips to the holosuites? I have transcripts bursting with tales of your helplessness, your feminization, your enslavement. Whether or not this is against your will, it is entirely appropriate that you inhabit this frail young slavegirl's body. More so than the original Alisha, you can be certain. You belong on this godforsaken planet, my little fuckslave, in this little cunt's body, and when I make you suck my member, remember I've done you a service, putting you in your rightful place."

I was unable to speak; I turned crimson with embarrassment. He spoke well, and he guided my mouth over his cock with the casual assurance that I, slavegirl that I was and had become, would do my best to please him. As I took his thick, hot member into my mouth, I wondered at his ingenuity. How had he gotten my personal logs? How had he decrypted them? Who was his ally? His hands were in my red hair, one hand held the braided leash and controlled my movements. His cock was hot and throbbing, and he lifted his pelvis to thrust it into the back of my throat, which could only take four inches of his huge member. I was distractedly aware of the fact I had not eaten yet, and that his come would be my first nutrition of the day. His knees gripped my waist, pressing my tender, soft, whipstreaked breasts against the insides of his muscular thighs.

Oh how it was true, and I had tried to suppress it! In my fear of being trapped here, in this young girl's duty-bound body, and out of a sense of my own duty to the Confederation and my job, I had tried desperately to ignore how well my present predicament paralleled the fantasies I had programmed into my holodeck back on the ship. The most current one, which I ran many times on the trip to Acteon, involved my being in this very position, a slavegirl on this medieval planet! The only differences were, perhaps, that in the program I was a brunette, and that instead of Lord Baird subjugating me, I had willingly become a slave in order to spy on him. In the program, he found me out and stripped me of identification and communications, rendering me indistinguishable from the other slavegirls. But the wonderful thing about a fantasy is that it ends, and you are returned to reality at its completion. I gagged on Lord Baird's enormous cock, and it hurt, and I could not escape it, and he clearly enjoyed my discomfort. There was nothing I could do about it, and the effects of the slave's drug, breakfast or no, still swam in my blood, intensifying what I now admitted was my natural inclination to submit. My cunt, still unfamiliar to me, still untouched by my own hands, was sopping wet. At least in the holodeck I was allowed to relieve my need for pleasure by my (programmed) knight masters. The men here, however, didn't adhere to the programmed behavior I had given their virtual proxies; they had their own desires, their own agendas, and my needs were, at best, entertaining and not to be fulfilled. I was beginning to realize that my pleasure was merely a method of controlling me. In the instant that he came, as I swallowed his hot, viscous juices, I realized that I was now more enslaved Princess Alisha than I was ever Laurence Joo, Interceder, and that as time passed I would become even more so, until I was only an enslaved Princess of Acteon. The thought terrified me, and I think Lord Baird (Tyron Beale, I tried to remind myself) knew I was afraid, for he laughed as he spurted into my mouth, forcing my head down over his engorged cock.

 

Chapter IV a slavegirl's epiphany

I lay on my side, on the cold flagstone floor, my wrists tied behind me with a leather strap, my heart slowing, as I recovered from my Master's mouth-fucking. His come had been hot and thick, with a strange, pungent sweet taste and odor, and I could still smell it on my lips. Lord Baird had his bare foot between my legs, idly caressing my shorn pubic mound, as he read the scrolls brought before him by an advisor.

My hair was beginning to come loose in wild strands from its tight braid, and a lock of newly freed red curls fell in my face. I didn't try to blow it away; I was beginning to realize I didn't have a right to make even simple decisions like whether or not my face should be obscured by my own hair. My jaw ached anyway.

My nipples were rock hard, like little stone pebbles. Strange, I thought, and gazed at them, protruding like thick knobs from my heavy, soft breasts; my right breast pressed into the flagstone, the other rested lightly on the first, compressing it. Strange to have such malleable, soft, tender things riding so prominently on my body, as if meant for display and use. The holosuite did a very good job of simulating these things, but I'd always known the body wasn't mine; there was no sense of permanence, of reality. Now this body, these soft, beautiful tits, this shaved cunt were the extent and full description of my world. A free citizen's world extends to his or her possessions, activities, and associates. I had my body, and by whip, restraint and drug I was to be continually reminded that my world revolved around the uses and abuses of my body. I was a slave, my body my world, and I didn't even own myself. The very form I was confined to, this young slave princess's beautiful, tiny jewel of a body, was the possession of another. I felt hungry, and was beginning to tremble. It frightened me. I felt a little weak, and in need of something, I did not know what. "Ha! The Council is granting me the lands east of Ermyl, 20,000 gerds, and all of the slavegirls owned by nobility therein. That's 300! Well, I hardly need so many. Put a phrase in here reducing the debt of the noblemen to one slave each, the most highly valued slave. Exclude wives. If they have a sister, however, who partakes of the slaves' drug, she must be sent to me. They are to be delivered to my castle by spring. I'll keep, oh, maybe ten, and with the rest buy the loyalty of the barbarians to the north. "Counter with this and a request of 30,000 gerds. There, that's done. Genaro, get a valet to take this little plaything away. I understand the King has need of her in the afternoon. Wouldn't want to upset the King, you know." A moment later a valet approached. "Kneel at attention, slave," he commanded;

I quickly rose to my knees, careful to spread them wide. "Bend forward and give me your wrists." I obeyed, pressed my face to the flagstone. I was acutely aware of the way this position exposed my newly shaved, smooth cunt. He removed the strap and replaced it with the leather cuffs, which he attached to each other. He pulled me upright and buckled my collar around my neck.

"Stand, slave." I rose gingerly to my feet. He unbraided my hair, removed the leash. He turned me around to face him and attached a leather leash to my collar. His hands, I noticed, were rather smooth, well manicured, and smelled of soap.

He turned on his heel and began to march toward a large arched hallway. He jerked the leash, hard, and I was dragged behind him, forced to match his rapid pace with my shorter step, almost a jog for me. He ignored my discomfort, and the hall echoed with the sharp thuds of his boots and the softer, much quicker padding of my bare feet.

I had, for a short while, begun to think that I could serve as a slave with some dignity, some gracefulness at least, but, in forcing me to run behind him, the valet renewed my profound embarrassment: my breasts, already so unfamiliar, bounced and jiggled ridiculously on my slender frame, my hair fell around my face in absurd ringlets. I squeaked little yelps of discomfort, or astonishment, or some mixture of both, and I was ashamed to have done it. A young boy, maybe sixteen, laughed at me as I was marched past him, and made a comment about plowing my shorn furrow later. He probably had as much right to fuck me as the King, I realized; I was part of the common harem, available to all who needed satisfaction. And though he was only sixteen, he was now biologically my elder; in addition he was a great deal taller and stronger than me, so diminutive and fragile was my build. It was hard to concentrate, I was feeling so strongly this need, this hunger. There was another hall. More slavegirls. We stopped at one man's request, and he played with my cunt, teasing me. A courtyard. I was lost. Then I was kneeling in a long line of kneeling, naked slavegirls. There was a bowl in front of me. It contained some sort of gruel. Someone gave the signal to eat, and I bent forward and lapped up the gruel, which tasted sweet, like applesauce. I began to feel clearheaded, and ate more vigorously, dispatching my meal as fast as I could. It was a few moments later, as I was bent forward over my bowl, sweet, sticky bits coating my mouth, as I drifted into a sort of blissful, very compliant state, that I realized the nature of my hunger was addiction to the slave's drug. An addiction so compelling that I knew that so long as I remained Alisha, I would need the drug, and so remain a slave. A knight loomed over me; I instantly knelt at attention, head lowered. He bade me stand. I found myself on my feet, legs spread wide, dizzy. I couldn't help noticing the way the man smelled, musky and deep, and I found myself staring at his crotch. Good God, I was practically coming, and all he'd done was order me to stand!

He laughed as he guided me by my leash out of the slaves' dining room. "Young princess, I am Sir Begnir, a knight of the King's Court." he said, patting me on the head as he pulled me alongside him, "And you are just about the cutest, horniest little piece of royal meat to come through here in a long, long time. You're a natural. Just the King's type." I winced as he pulled the leash closer to him, and wrapped his well-muscled arm around my shoulder. "Which is why we're going to my chamber first - what's good enough for the King is good enough for me - and besides, a little warm-up for this evening is in order." Suddenly he steered me down into the outer courtyard. He dragged me behind him, past the smithy and the stables, to the Inn. He led me through the tavern, where early evening drinking had already begun, and up the stairs to the guest rooms.

I recognized the knights' room. It had been mine the night before. This was the room in which I had been channeled, forced into this collared, cuffed and leashed little redhead's body. By Tyron Beale. By Lord Baird. By my own weakness, my own desire.

Soon enough I found myself in the same predicament young Alisha/Beale had found herself in with me: As I worked my mouth inexpertly over the valet's thick cock, he traced with his finger the tattoo on my left breast which marked me as a fresh slave.

I spent some time with my collar attached to a ring set in the corner or the room at kneeling height, while Sir Begnir left to attend to other duties. I was, of course, a model of obedience.

Later, when he returned, he threw me on the bed, detached my wrist cuffs and attached them to the ring set in the headboard. He pulled his now naked, massive frame over me, put his mouth on my breast, bit hard. I moaned, and clenched shut my eyes. His cock rammed into me moments later. This time I found myself again looking into the eyes of a man as he hovered over me, in the last throes of his orgasm. He reached up with his left hand and forced my mouth open with his fingers. I stared up at him, wide eyed. "When I spit, little one, you will come," he whispered, his semen still seeping into me. "One, two....three," and he spit into my open mouth and laughed gently. I came instantly, screaming open-mouthed, his spit curling back to the base of my throat. I remembered, half blind with tears, that at this point Alisha/Beale had been freed; I harbored no hope of escaping from this delicious but terrible torment. I shuddered and bucked under the valet's weight, unable to close my mouth because of his intruding fingers. He sank his teeth into my breast, and bit again as I helplessly rode the throes of my long-awaited orgasm.

As he was buckling up his breeches, humming to himself, I lay panting on the bed, my flesh hot and sweaty, utterly limp. I knew that in a moment I would be brought to attention again, but for now I savored the rest, the aftermath of the intense pleasure I'd felt with the knight's cock in me. I watched him as he buckled his mail over his broad chest. I felt deep gratitude to him for letting me come.

That was my little epiphany: I was grateful to my Master, in spite of, or perhaps because of, my mistreatment. And oddly I felt the first twinges of loyalty to this household, and its King, and began to feel that Acteonese men were some special, Godlike breed.

 

Chapter V The King's chambermaid

It was late afternoon when I was delivered to the King's quarters, which overlooked the ocean. The valet led me onto the cobblestone patio and wrapped my leash around a wooden hitching post, like a horse. He pushed me to my knees.

Over the stone rail of the patio I could see the bright ocean, which crashed against the cliffs on which the castle foundations were laid. A three-masted ship was coming into harbor, with the dark blue standard of Lord Baird's emblems flying.

My wrists were free, but I had been instructed to keep my arms folded behind me, so that my hands touched my elbows, and I kept them there, as commanded. The washerwoman, Madame Marion, had washed me again, and attended to my toilet (an embarrassing affair for me), and I could smell the perfume which had been daubed on my neck and breasts.

I heard footsteps behind me, and stiffened slightly.

"We, on this planet, are not so ignorant as you might assume, young Alisha." I recognized the King's voice. His hand touched my shoulder. "I know who you were, slave, and I know what Lord Baird did to you. I don't know what name you have for him, but I have an understanding of what he wants here, and intend to stop him. You can rest easy on that score. "It is a secret known only to a few that we have been visited by humans from another world. We keep it a secret because the truth would be...troublesome, to say the least, to the common folk." He knelt beside the hitching post, to my right, and looked down at me.

"But...but if you know, then you must help me, please," I whispered. "I was not meant to be...this," I finished, lowering my head, blushing, and not knowing what else to say.

"No. No, actually, I don't feel any obligation to help you. By all reports you are shaping up to be a fine slavegirl, and slavegirl is what you are now, from this world or not. Your comrades found your body by the ocean at dawn." I started at that. "They will attempt to remove Lord Baird from this world again, I'm sure, but in their eyes you are dead. So you are stuck in this young princesses' body, and this body happens to be my property. You belong to me, and will obey me.

"You are distressed. The news of your own death shocks you? It matters not. You know as well as I that you would never have escaped this fate anyway." He stood up again. He removed my leash, and bade me stand. I rose to my feet, head hung low. "Come. You will massage and tend to me as I meet with my staff." He turned on his heel and walked back inside his chambers. I hesitated, then followed, my arms still crossed behind me. I couldn't help but notice how tall and muscular he was, and how handsome, as I fell in step behind him obediently. I began to think about my fantasies of my capture and subjugation, and how closely my life had come to paralleling them. Here I was, a beautiful young slavegirl, servant to a King! I began to think of my body as it used to be; my more heavily muscled frame, my strength, my cock. I suddenly felt keenly the absence of my member, once so integral a part of me, a friend which I'd been quite happy with, and which had served me well in my sexual life.

I'd spent my entire life as a man, after all, and, barring what my fantasies may have entailed, I would have been content to live as a man. Now my body was, well...more passive. I had no cock with which to conquer another. Instead I had these folds of skin, soft and malleable, with a hard nub I'd felt but never touched with my own hands, and a soft mouth at the center of it all, inviting and open, though still somewhat virgin. And hips, and the bone structure that comes with them. And breasts, these strange, soft things on my chest, that men seemed fascinated with, and were supersensitized, it seemed, to the slightest touch or abuse, and which I found bewildering and comforting at the same time, now an integral part of me. And these brown, now stiffly wrinkled and erect nipples jutting from their translucent warm cocoa-colored aereolae, such an odd color for me, since my skin was so pale and pink, so thin I could see my bluish veins running through my breasts, just under the surface. I remembered young Alisha's body as I had used it, and recalled that her cleft had been darker as well, earthy but delicate. Now my sex was clean-shaven, and so I was sure my brown cleft was even more evident.

And to the King my discomfort and unfamiliarity with my own body must seem a welcome novelty, I thought. He took off his robe, it was hot still anyway, and sat on a backless chair. He bade me kneel at his feet, and planted one bare foot squarely between my breasts for me to massage. I took his calf in my hands, and began to knead it. He is surrounded by willing slavegirls, and I am the only one who has known the pleasure of being a man. Or is it that taking me as a slave is like conquering a warrior in battle? I imagined, as I massaged his thick muscles, that, if technology like the exchanger were widely available on Acteon, all wars would end with the conquered as slavegirls, in chains. That war, like sex, is a form of exerting one's will over another.

He wore breeches of golden weave, intertwined with red rubies and crimson thread. The calves were wide, and as I began to knead his upper leg, I saw that they were thick as my head. There was a scar along the back of one. The leg was hairy, although, sneaking a peek up, I saw that his torso was hairless.

I heard a voice announce the arrival of his advisors. They walked in, and stood behind me.

"My Lord," each said, in deference.

"Welcome. What news? Asger, you first." The King gave me his other leg. "Your Highness, reports from our fleet indicate that Lord Baird is making his presence known around the Tirnese Archipelago. There are approximately three thousand warriors ready to land, mostly footmen, but they estimate two or three dozen of those cannon as well. The Tirnese have not built fortifications to withstand these new weapons, though they are laboring mightily, and have taken your advice about the trenches and fort design, especially with bastions. It is difficult because each island must be fortified individually, and each cannot support the other; their fleet is no match for his. They ask for your advice. I am leaving tomorrow. If Your Highness were to offer considered words for me to bring back, in the way of committed support or otherwise, I would be most grateful." "I will think on it. The Tirnese are important to me, make no mistake. But I will give you word tomorrow morning.

"Fornith, what say you?" the King enquiried. I couldn't look up at at the advisors, slavegirl that I was, but I listened closely. "All goes well in the central provinces. The only setback is in the making of steel. The smithies are having a hard time keeping up with the demand, and the coke operations are minimal at best. Our best engineers are working on the steam engine, but they are philosophically opposed. You know, My Lord, that the code has forbidden mass production, and though through the Watchers we have gained insight as to its benefits there is still much prejudice to overcome.

"We have produced thirty cannon, and eight hundred balls for the defense of New Hope. They are in place as we speak."

"Thank you, Fornith. Aeowulf?"

"Your Highness, New Nippon and York are behind us, reluctantly. They fear Baird's new weapons, and got a taste of their flying machines last year. New Boston is siding with Baird, out of fear or opportunism I cannot say yet, but I think we can count them as foes. They are nearer to his territory, so feel his pressure more. My advice would be to conquer New Boston before it is reinforced."

"Merlin?"

"Lord Baird is here, now, under the pretence of peace talks. I would advise killing him now, even as he is using your delectable slaves and drinking your wine. He is well defended with those uncanny fireshooters, as he calls them, although amongst themselves his guard calls them 'lasers', but he thinks himself invincible, which is his weakness. They number twelve, but they are human.

"And there is another way, as well. He still has the body-changer, which he used to entrap this young slave." I reddened. I hadn't known my fate was so well known. "If this were to be spirited away, it could be used to similarly entrap him. I already have a slave in mind, an olive skinned beauty with a very accommodating mouth. And I'm sure young Alisha will provide instructions as to its use..."

"Thank you. Thank you, all. We will meet in tomorrow morn. You are dismissed." The advisors filed out. The door shut. "You see, young slave? You are too valuable to allow you to regain manhood. I will use your body, and later, your mind.

"But for now, I will use your body." He pulled me up and forced me to straddle his lap. My groin pressed against the bulge in his breeches. "Cross your arms behind you, little one." I complied, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, his tongue in my mouth, probing. I returned the kiss clumsily. I hadn't been kissed by a man before, and was unused to the forcefulness, the authority of his mouth. His left hand was at the back of my head, guiding me, the other held my ass. My breasts were crushed against his pectoral muscles, my legs were splayed wide, and convulsed involuntarily. He broke off the kiss; he pushed me off his lap and stood. He towered over me. "Lord Baird is not the only one who knows of your 'fantasies', little one. The watchers are in my employ as well. And you had better serve me as well as the Watchers say you served my simulacrum. On the bed, on all fours, ass in the air, slut." He slapped my ass, prodding me toward the oak posted bed. I hurried to it, climbed on, and assumed the position he desired. "Grasp your ankles, slave; I want to see your face buried in the sheets." I obeyed. The sheets were smooth red silk, soft and sensuous. I didn't want to think about the spectacle I presented to him, my cunt so openly exposed. He was on me then, and it took only a moment for his cock to bury itself inside me. I gasped as he pushed my face into the silk. I could smell the odor of sex in the fabric; doubtless I was not his first diversion of the day. I felt so tight, and it hurt a little, his spreading me so. I could feel him deep inside me, pushing my insides apart. I grasped my ankles as tightly as I could, to keep from sliding onto my stomach. He fucked me slowly, and I realized he was going to be thorough.

I remembered the holosuite program. It had been on my mind since the King placed his foot between my bare breasts; from that moment until now he had mimicked the plot of the program. And the program touched all my hotspots: being forced to perform menial, but very intimate tasks, humiliation before my peers (though my crewmates were the company in the program), a good, thorough, rough fucking. And then I remembered what happened next, the stage at which I always halted the program because I didn't have the courage to see it through.

Suddenly I panicked; I brought my arms up and tried to crawl forward on the bed, I wasn't sure where. The King swiftly and deftly grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind me. He yanked me back to the position he wanted me in, my ass in the air, easy to fuck. He took the sash from his robe and bound my wrists with it.

"Did you remember something, little Alisha?" my Master whispered, chuckling as he resumed leisurely ramming what I was sure was an absolutely huge cock into me. "This isn't a theatrical presentation any longer, slave. You must play your part through to the end. And after, for that matter. There is no epilogue to your story now, and no intermission. I found the transcription of your fantasies so compelling that it pleases me to follow them through to their logical conclusion. A room has been prepared for your punishment. I assure you it will be very painful." Oh God, I thought, and I felt the panic feed my arousal almost immediately, partly because I knew that, in my heart of hearts, what was about to happen would push me over the edge in so many ways, would make me truly a slavegirl in a way that the holosuite program could never have done simply because I still had power to stop it; partly also because the drug still coursed through me, intensifying my already deeply submissive inclinations.

And so a thirty seven year old man became even more, in heart and in mind, a submissive fourteen year-old princess. Slave Alisha. Dear Jesus. I felt my cunt begin to convulse around my Lord's thick cock as I rose slowly and inexorably into an orgasm so tremendous that I felt faint. My eyes greyed over. He twisted my breast meat in his hand. I hardly felt it, but screamed anyway.

 

Chapter VI The Punishment and an enslaved Queen

I came to on a soft fur rug. A valet was fitting a sort of bridle over my head. He slipped a cock-shaped gag into my mouth and fastened it there so that I couldn't dislodge it. I felt it take up the whole interior of my mouth. My breasts felt sore, compressed; I realized with chagrin that, in keeping with my fantasy, he'd clamped them between two horizontal bars, which were brought together with bolts and butterfly nuts. And I felt filled below, too. A harness kept a large plug in my anus. My pussy was left free. I knew why.

My wrists were cuffed to the harness at the back of my waist, so the valet had to help me to my feet. He led me out of the King's chamber and to a small alcove at the end of the hall, dimly lit but exposed to the rest of the hall. There was a thick stone phallus, about sixteen inches long, on a stone pedestal. He lifted me up, positioned me, and lowered me onto the spike. My own weight drove the shaft into me. I moaned in anguish. He wasted no time, but hobbled my ankles, fastening them to a ring set in the back of the narrow column, which effectively denied me use of them, and brought my whole weight down on the phallus. There was a wide flare at the end of it which kept me from sliding further, but it was clear I would be impaled on this horrid thing until someone chose to free me. The perfect Acteonese slavegirl, with all orifices filled.

There was another pedestal, with an identical phallus, which I was unsure about, until the King arrived with another slavegirl in tow. Her restraints were identical to mine, and he positioned her on the shaft in the same way, so that she faced me. Her knees, in fact, just grazed mine, and her pained face was only a foot away. The King rectified this. "By all rights you should both be fully plugged; but I think we will make do with the two of you being forced to kiss." He removed my gag and the other woman's (for she was perhaps twenty five). He strapped our head harnesses together in such a way that I couldn't turn my head from her, nor hers from mine. We were both forced to lean slightly forward, lips inches from each other. She was distraught. "Alisha, meet my Queen, slave Elene. Elene and I married six months ago; she was free then. She chose two nights ago to eat of the slave's drug, however, perhaps because she was jealous. Now, of course, she is my slave, as well as my Queen, although she no longer is allowed her Royal garb or privileges. Though, of course, she is quite submissive now, she is having a hard time getting used to her new duties. I thought the two of you would serve your punishment well together. Malcolm here will watch you to make sure you kiss passionately and continuously until the sun sets, which is in about an hour. If you stop he will whip you. He will whip you anyway, at sunset, and quite brutally, but you would do well to avoid his lash until then. "Elene, tonight you will sleep in the common slave's quarters. Alisha, you will sleep in my chamber tonight, though not on the bed. That is the only privilege left to my dear fallen Queen Elene. Malcolm, take care to keep them in line. They are unruly and disobedient little slaves." With that he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving the young Queen and I staring at each other. She was very beautiful, a brunette with long straight hair, and because she was quite tall, she was forced to bend down further to meet my gaze.

Our mutual fear of the whip brought our lips together almost instantly. She tasted of come; I suspected she'd been used by someone recently, but her lips were willing. I had to admit that, though a girl myself now, I found her closeness, her forced intimacy, and her vulnerable shuddering arousing. Her lips melted under mine, as Alisha's had, and the dozens of other girls I had used in my weeks as a man on Acteon; it was an almost involuntary reaction in a slavegirl. But mine parted willingly, eagerly as well, and I let her tongue dart over mine as our soft mouths caressed each other. Her hair smelled of incense, and her breasts grazed against mine, their stiff points tickling my own sensitive flesh.

The head harnesses did not allow us much mobility, and our noses pressed against each other as we tried to overcome our mutual restraints to lock our mouths together. She tasted sweet, even with the leftover jism, and she was trembling out of fear.

I wondered at our mutual predicament: I, once a man, was condemned to this slavegirl's slim body and its duty by another's machinations. She had been born female, and had lived all her life on a world where free women, though accorded the respect and privileges of society, were not the focus of the male gaze in the same way that women on earth were, and in a way were secondary to their enslaved counterparts. On Acteon mothers often encouraged their daughters, once they turned fifteen, to take the drug and so be desirable to a man. True, there were the Amazons to the South, a culture of free women to which females of Acteon who could find no rightful place would flock. But this slavegirl, this Queen, had waited until she was twenty-five, and already married, before she finally succumbed. Her king must have made it clear that he found slavegirls like me much more palatable in bed. Forced to kiss, we found ourselves hungry for each other's taste. Her lips were full and soft, and her breath was rapid. I loved the way her eyes clenched shut as my tongue probed her mouth, and felt for an instant a man's pleasure at seeing a girl succumb to his advances. But as I leaned forward against her the thick stone phallus shifted inside me painfully, and my legs involuntarily jerked against their restraints as I tried to right myself. The valet pushed me back, and my face flushed as he pushed our faces together again. I could see in her eyes that she saw what I had felt then: a momentary sense of freedom, tightly encapsulated, held in check by my circumstances. She kissed me more tenderly then, compassionately, and I realized that I couldn't look at her the same way again. I couldn't view her in the possessive way a man does, because I was physically incapable of possessing her. She was still beautiful, and her skin aromatic and soft, and I still desired her, but the desire was now a more diffuse, elusive thing, perhaps even more powerful than before but hard to focus. By sunset I felt worked up into a lather, hot, sweaty, and distracted. My companion was panting, her cheek resting against mine. The harness came off first. Then the valet began to remove slave Elene's restraints, starting with her ankles. He lifted her off the phallus and stood her on her feet. She was shaky and weak. He detached her wrists and reattached them in front.

She stared down at his hands as they worked, breasts rising and falling. Though she was tall, the valet towered over her, and she looked terribly frail in his shadow, naked, pink and helpless. He dragged her by her cuffed wrists to a ring set high in the wall. He raised her arms over her head and fastened her cuffs to the ring with a steel lock. He kicked her legs apart and pushed her face into the stone wall.

"Don't move, slave," he commanded. Then he turned to me. In a few moments I, too was splayed out against the wall. My cunt felt loose, distended from its abuse. I looked down at the morning's whipmarks on my breasts, still tender, and knew my ass still bore the same marks. I was exhausted. I'd already been whipped once today, and three men had used me. I'd been shaved. My hair had been fashioned into a leash. A sixteen year-old whelp of a boy, even, had proven himself my superior, in the hallway. I was tired, and scared.

He used a bullwhip. The force that a man can put behind a bullwhip is tremendous, I discovered.

He didn't draw blood. But I was led, later, after a meal in the slave's dining quarters, to the baths again, and my groom, a new man named Johan, allowed me to twist around to look at the deep purple welts the whip had raised on my buttocks and the backs of my thighs. After I was cleaned and perfumed again I was sent to the King's Chamber once more. My keeper and I passed Elena in the hall. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the flagstones with a sponge and a steel pan filled with suds. A valet was whipping her lightly. I could hear her sobbing as I was led past, my head lowered.

 

Part Two

Chapter VII

The King held audience from his bath. He stood in the center of the spring fed, steaming pool, lined with stone, while his visitors stood to one side, facing the window. The water came up to his waist. I, on the other hand, knelt in the bath up to my shoulders, directly beside him, holding a golden chalice of red wine above the churning water. My wrists were shackled to my collar, which forced me to hold the chalice directly in front of me, the rim just at eye level. Another slavegirl, whom I recognized as the girl whose pallet had been next to mine this morning, stood behind the King, her slim legs spread wide, her hands moving slowly across the King's broad, muscled back. She was swaddled in leather restraints. She was quite short, and her nose was level with the middle of the King's back. Her jet black hair was rolled into a bun, and though clearly her tribe was originally of pan-Asian stock, with some French thrown in (almost certainly she was born in New Tokyo), her build was almost identical to mine: we were exactly the same height and weight, with narrow, sloping shoulders, wide hips, narrow waisted, heavy breasted, with large, sensuous lips. It was clear to me by now that this was the King's favored shape in a slavegirl. Sirini massaged his royal person, reaching up to knead his shoulders with her tiny fingers. She alternated this therapeutic touch with sponging and hot krissi - a musky smelling nut-based oil reserved for men. Free women used slith, which was an oil made from fruit; slavegirls used esclava, a pungent perfume which was extracted from pressed flowers and designed to spread rapidly and last for days, so that the slavegirl, if she ran, would be given away by her odor. Both Sirini and I smelled sweetly of esclava.

I was relieved, at least, that my body, now marked on breasts, buttocks and thighs with the bluish-black welts of a thorough whipping, was concealed by the soothing, swirling spring water. But strangely I found I was jealous of my fellow slave, Sirini, though her mouth was gagged, though her cunt and anus were filled with polished stone phalli, strapped in with a harness, though her cuntlips were weighted with clamps and she was blindfolded, and had to perform her work unseeing, I was now beginning to understand that this kind of punishment was a form of attention, of favoritism, and I was jealous of the attention that she received, and of the privilege she enjoyed, of touching the King's flesh.

The King's advisors each spoke in turn. It is the King's privilege to receive his advisors at all hours of the night, in any manner, when they are called by him; so the advisors come to him in his bedchamber, or while he takes his bath, or while whipping a girl.

It is customary to ignore any slaves if they are present, for slavegirls are more or less incapable of betraying their masters of their own volition, while they are in their owners' custody. If it is decided that a slavegirl is to be sold, the girl is brought to her owner's magician, who, through a combination of drugs and hypnosis, selectively edits the girl's memory. She leaves the household in a state that makes her completely incapable of providing any useful information to a potential enemy. And so though all in the room knew of my original status as an Interceder, who could potentially make much more of the information they imparted than an ordinary slavegirl, if he ever escaped his feminine prison, they nevertheless spoke candidly, as if I were no more a piece of furniture, a little receptacle into which the King had placed his wine goblet. I understood the mentality, and as a man had found myself adopting Acteonese male behavior and custom quite naturally. Slavegirls were to be used and ignored, no matter how clever or stupid. One looked for intelligence in a slave, because an intelligent girl understands more fully her helplessness, and responds to it more acutely, abandons herself to it despairingly. But beyond that her intelligence was irrelevant to her function, and wasn't really even thought about by Acteonese men.

In my few weeks on Acteon as a man, in my Knight's guise, I had found that slavegirls were by and large as intelligent as their male counterparts, and had at first wondered how they had gotten themselves into the situation they were currently in. But after a few days I simply fucked them, as any Acteonese Knight would.

"How did he escape?" the King demanded.

Asger spoke. "We had put guards at every escape route, and had assuredly had him trapped, your Highness. Indeed, when we had subdued his guard we had run his body through, even as he slept, we had naturally assumed that we had killed him. This was the good news that I was to bring to you tonight. "Alas, I cannot bring you the good news I had hoped to. "There was a slavegirl in the room, the little blonde Bostonian, Helen, chained to the headboard of the bed. I didn't think much of it, and I had her returned to the harem. I only realized my mistake later, when Begnir didn't show up for his night watch. My suspicions aroused, I checked with the harem valets. He had taken Helen to his bedchamber.

"We found the girl in Begnir's bedchamber, hanging by her wrists, in the spread wings position. She was sobbing, and claimed to be Begnir. I assured her that I didn't believe her. I had her whipped and returned to the harem; the valets are under instructions to disabuse her of the notion that anyone will believe her. It seemed the best thing to do. That was four hours ago; she has ceased her protestations, so I think she will adjust rapidly. "But it's clear that Lord Baird escaped in Begnir's body. How he will convince his people that he is their leader, we don't know. Perhaps that will prove impossible, so maybe we have succeeded in stopping him temporarily. The fact remains that he has escaped."

Fornith next spoke. "We have sent out search parties to the neighboring towns, and have hope that we will at least pick up his trail - he has had several hours to make his escape."

"Very well," said the King. "We will next assemble a host near New Boston. I intend to quell that threat, no matter what body our enemy inhabits. You are all dismissed."

The advisors took their leave.

"Adam. Take Sirini to the harem. She bores me." He thought for a moment, as Adam dragged the blindfolded girl out of the bath. He laughed quietly. "Bring the slavegirl Helen to my bedchamber. She will serve me alongside young Alisha here.

"Yes. That will prove entertaining." He took the goblet from my bound hands, drank deeply, and put it aside. "All right, little bitch, get thee to the bedchamber. When I come, I want you bent over on your knees, in the center of my bed."

I obeyed, and stepped out of the bath. I made my down the hall, dripping wet, and ducked through the servant's archway into my Master's bedchamber. I climbed onto the bed and fell forward, unable to brace my fall into the mattress with my hands, which were still chained to my collar. I spread my knees wide, my face and breasts pressed into the red silk. The King's valet, Adam, spent some time arranging my hair around my head. He also inserted a red wax-stemmed rose into my anus - a sign that I had already been broken in. Once he was satisfied, he left. And so I waited.

I waited for a very long time - it was impossible for me to tell time even by the moon's position, since I must keep my head buried in the silk bedspread. The King may have had other matters to attend to; no one bothered to inform me. Adam brought in Helen after about a half hour and pushed her down beside me on the bed, bound identically. She gave no protest; I could only assume that the effect of the slave's drug had overwhelmed her, as it had me. I could hear the young girl sobbing softly, whispering to herself piteous cries of denial: "this cannot be happening to me, I am NOT a slave. I am a MAN!" She was quickly reduced to dejected, piteous cries as Adam brought ten quick strokes of his crop down on her exposed buttocks. She didn't speak after that, and I knew how she felt - stripped of her manhood, and not even having her former status acknowledged by her former colleagues - it was almost unfathomable. And yet I knew she must understand that it was impossible for her former colleagues to treat her any differently, that the only honorable way for them to deal with her misfortune was to behave as if the man who had been wronged no longer existed.

I lay beside the young girl in silence, knowing that only a few hours earlier, she had been a young Knight by the name of Sir Begnir, and had deigned to allow me to come in his inn chamber. I snuck a peek at the young girl, knowing I might be whipped if Adam noticed. Now the little slave knelt forward, her face buried in the silken sheets, her wrists bound to her collar like mine, her life as suddenly abject and helpless as mine. Her long blonde hair had been carefully arranged by Adam around her head, and I saw that her breasts, pressed against her elbows, had been rouged. Apparently Adam had decided that Helen's sudden transformation constituted a sort of pristine virginity, for he had inserted a white stemmed rose, the stem waxed to blunt it, into her anus. It was the common symbol for virginity; when slaves are bent over on the trading block, intact girls are marked so with the white rose, while those who have been taken but once are marked with a pink rose. The little slave's chest rose and fell rapidly as her tiny ribcage was racked with sobbing. No one comforted her. I found it remarkable that the men of Acteon could so thoroughly become engrossed in the aesthetic positioning of a slavegirl, her posture, her decoration, and completely ignore her cries of misery. Adam had carefully brushed Helen's hair out and spread the glossy mane about her head as she dampened the bedsheets with her tears. He scattered black rose petals over the bed and our bent bodies, over the carpeted floor, and out the door, which he shut behind him. Helen swore softly, lifted her head and looked about her. Reassured that no valets were present, she looked over at me. She sat up, back on her haunches, her hands still pressed against her sternum, chained to her collar. "I don't know how you can stand it," she whispered. "This damned slave drug has nearly unmanned me, or what's left of me. I know twenty ways to incapacitate that insufferable dandy Adam, but couldn't bring myself to lift a finger. I'll admit the valets have admirable skill with the slaves, but I've always thought them a unfortunate necessity. That bastard forced his cock down my throat before bringing me here. The cretin told me I must come when he unloaded himself in me, and this terrible drug fairly compels me to obey such mandates." She shuddered.

I still knelt forward obediently, but spoke softly, "You did the same to me, Helen."

She winced at my use of her name, and glared at me. "Though I may answer to that name, under threat of punishment, yet I am still Begnir. You, my little one, are not a man, and never have been. You forget I know as much about you as our King. Your conduct while inhabiting a man's body was hardly honorable; to secretly wish to be divested of your manhood is to forfeit all claim to the rights of men. You are in your rightful place, slave Alisha. Were I not so unmanned I would show you your duty. You will address me as Sir, slave. "I am a warrior, slave, no matter how I may appear, and no matter how I may cry and bleat as any slavegirl. Those are only the forcible effects of being drugged, and being feminized. This was not to be my fate, and I will not succumb to it. I will escape, and you will help me." There was a fresh tear tracing a wet trail over her cheek. She was a tall, willowy girl, with a boyish face and small breasts, and her smooth, high and melodic soprano voice belied her defiant words.

"I intend to track down Lord Baird and regain my body. I will imprison him in this form, and keep him as a latrine slave. I am confident that I can find him. But I need your help to operate the changing device. You will help me, slave." She gazed down at me, awaiting an answer. "I...I meant no offense...Sir." It felt odd to use such an honorific for such a fetching young blonde, but her imperious manner, however incongruous, seemed to be affecting me; I felt wet. "But if you want me to help you, you have to help me too. I want to get back to my ship. Once back among my people I can regain my former sex. I know you find it hard to believe, but I do want my manhood back, and since my former body is dead, I will need to return to my civilization to effect the change."

Helen stared at me. "You ask much, slave." She lowered her eyes. "And yet I'm in no position to dictate the terms of our agreement. I promise to help you back to your natural state at the end of this.

"I have a plan. Much as though I dread the prospect, we will have to wait until after the King has used us, and gone to his midnight audience - they're still planning the assault on New Boston.

"There's a secret passage in the lower dungeon that leads to the woods north of the castle. I know where master keys to the slave bracelets are kept. I will steal clothing from the washer rooms. I can pass for a boy - we'll have to bind my breasts close to my chest, but I'm sure I can pass - oh, yes, and crop this damned hair," she muttered, exasperated with hair that she was incapable or brushing back. "I will claim to be Sir Begnir's squire, sent to fetch him.

"You, however - well, there's no way to conceal your shape, you're too obviously a Bendari female. You must remain a slave." I knew she spoke the truth - only a blind man would mistake me for anything other than a slavegirl.

"There are caves in the hills that the woodland to the north runs up to. We will spend three days there, purging ourselves of our addiction to the slave's bane. I can't be encumbered by it, and your natural...inclinations will mask the fact that you're no longer under the influence. I must warn you that this will be painful. But it will pass.

"Then, my little one," Helen smiled as she whispered, "we begin the hunt!"

 

Chapter VIII The King proves a girl most able

Rapidly approaching footsteps brought our discussion to a sudden end. Helen quickly dropped forward a moment before Adam returned, breathing heavily and shaking a little. For all her masculine bluster, I could see she was as cowed by the valet's presence as I was.

"You've moved, Helen," Adam said simply. There was a high whistling sound, and Helen cried out as the first of a round dozen crop strokes fell on her buttocks and on the back of her thighs.

A slavegirl's hair is arranged, after all, not only for aesthetic effect, but so it can be proved whether the girl has obediently maintained the position she has been commanded to assume in the valet's absence. If the hair is askew, then she has disobeyed.

The King arrived shortly after. He pushed me off the bed, commanding that I crawl to the corner. I obeyed, a little hurt, and found myself staring at the stonework of the chamber wall while the King made quick work of brutalizing Helen. After a long period of screaming on her part, and many slaps and cries, I heard a long moan come from the King. Then a loud thump and cry: the King had thrown the wretch to the floor.

I was next. I was a little amazed that the King was ready so soon, but then didn't have time to think, as he seemed to want to use my mouth, pushing back into the corner, my head wedged between two stones, his cock ramming into me. His juice flowed into my open mouth some time later, and he violently threw me onto my side.

He composed himself, and then left for his council. Though Helen was quite rattled by her rape, she seemed ready to move forward with her plan.

 

Chapter IX Escape

I followed Helen silently down the stone spiral staircase, a little-used entrance to the lower chambers of the castle. The dungeons were rarely used for the punishment of slaves; Acteonese men preferred the administration of punishment to occur in the normal course of daily life, rather than bring it inconveniently below ground. The cells of most Acteonese castles were used for prisoners of war.

Our wrists were still chained to our collars.

Helen led me toward a storeroom. She held a finger to her lips, warning me to silence, as she lifted a keyring from a rack of rings. Slavegirls never disobeyed, so there was no reason to guard or hide these keys to freedom. She picked out a key and handed it to me. I reached up (she was much taller than me) and unlocked her restraints. She removed the cuffs and collar. She unlocked the lock binding my wrists to each other and to my collar, but shook her head when I held my wrists out for her to unlock the mechanisms fastening my cuffs around my wrists.

Instead she led me to the washer room. At this hour of the night it was abandoned. She handed me the end of a bolt of white muslin and gestured to me, indicating that I was to wrap her in it. I held the fabric aloft as she wound her torso tightly into the muslin.

A few moments later the fabric was cinched tight with wooden pins, and Helen's chest looked as flat as a young boy's.

She found breeches that fit, and a shirt and shoes. She had me cut her hair short, in the style of an Acteonese squire. A cap and a little dirt on her face, and a cape with a hood completed the ensemble. My disguise consisted of washer's dye, to blacken my ostentatiously red hair. My shorn pubic mound meant less to dye. Helen reattached my wrists behind my back, and buckled a leash to my collar. She put slave's travelling slippers on my feet, to facilitate our flight.

I was uncomfortable with the fact that she had decided that this was the role that I must play in our charade, but I could see no way around it. My classic slave's silhouette - the extremely narrow shoulders, tight waist and flared hips - was impossible to conceal, with tightly wound muslin or loose-fitting cloth, and since free women are periodically checked by King's men for slave's marks, we couldn't risk me posing as anything but what I was. We stole away, finally, late in the night, Helen in squire's garb, a sack of foodstuffs over one shoulder, holding my leash in her delicate right hand as I followed her down the secret hallway, naked, helpless even in the hands of another slave.

The moon was high in the sky, and Helen seemed nervous about this, but we continued on through the night deep into the woods, the sounds of Acteonese night birds and insects in the air, and the smell of loamy soil underfoot. Without my hands to steady me, I tired quickly, and begged Helen to at least allow me use of them, but she refused, telling me I mustn't assume that I was free yet: such behavior would give lie to us in the wrong circumstances - a slave doesn't ask such things. She bent me over and gave me a quick ten swats with the palm of her hand to emphasize the point. She then drove me on, until, at dawn, we reached the hills and found a cave in which to hide. Though I had pleaded to stop earlier, we were in fact both exhausted, and we fell together in a heap on the dusty floor. Helen unchained my wrists. She joined my ankle cuffs, brought my right wrist under my right thigh and attached my left wrist to it, so that I could lie on my left side comfortably, bent fetal, my left arm thrust between my thighs. I was disappointed that Helen felt this necessary, but she laid down behind me, still clothed, and draped her arm over my waist, her hand trembling on my belly, her knees tucked into the backs of mine, her hips rocking slightly, involuntarily, and I decided that her feelings about it were complex as well - though her mental makeup was that of an Acteonese man, the drug still made her feelings those of a slave's, no matter what she had been able to accomplish this night by dint of sheer willpower. She pulled a small blanket over us and I fell asleep almost immediately.

We had escaped New Hope.

 

Chapter X Withdrawal

Helen was gone when I awoke. I rolled forward onto my knees gingerly, my left forearm still wedged against my pubic mound. I noted that she had wrapped my leash around a large root protruding from the earth at the mouth of the cave. The sun was high over the trees - it must be close to midday, I thought. One thing I was glad of was Acteonese weather: the planet lacked seasons, and the mean temperature was roughly four degrees hotter than earth. New Hope lay in the subtropical belt; the noon temperature hovered around 93 degrees, while at night it dipped to a balmy 78 degrees. Additionally, Acteon had no flying insects - no mosquitoes or flies to pester a helpless slave. In the northern reaches, slavegirls wore fur parkas which had no armholes when they were transported from keep to keep. Indoors they tended to wear shifts in the livery colors of the family they belonged to. Here in the south, slaves spent their whole lives never knowing the comfort and privacy clothing affords. They were as naked as animals. I looked down at my now sun-dappled body. The bruises on my breasts and buttocks had begun to turn purple, but in this light, I supposed, they would look pretty to the disinterested eye of a knight or slave trader. My legs were covered with little scratches from our midnight flight through the dense wood. I smelled of sweat, no scent of perfume lingered, and my blackened hair hung limp and tangled over my shoulders. My skin was covered in a light film of dust. Hardly the primped, painted slavegirl of a King's harem, I thought ruefully.

I had now been slave Alisha for a day and a half, and it looked like I would remain so for at least another few days, but at least there was hope now that I might be freed. This had so far been an overwhelming experience, and I was beginning to feel like I was losing myself. The longest I had subjected myself to such abuse was two hours in a holosuite with the governors turned off. I had only done it once.

Presently Helen returned. She held a bundle of herbs in one hand, a crude stone knife in the other, and had a small kreth, or tree rodent, slung over her shoulder. She unloaded her materials on a flat rock at the edge of the cage. She knelt before me, produced a key from a cord hanging between her small breasts, and unlocked the catch joining my wrists. She unlatched the leash as well.

"Where would I have gone?" I asked her, looking up at her. "I'm naked, and lost, for that matter."

"It's the principle of the thing, slave. In three days, after we purge ourselves of the slave's bane, we will be heading into the villages, and then the towns, wherever our search for my body thief takes us. It will be hard enough for me to act the part of squire in this form. I want one of us, at least, to be incapable of arousing suspicion. Therefore, you will continue to think, and act, the part of slave, and I will continue to restrict and punish you, to reinforce your behavior." She pushed my head down roughly. "Case in point, pretty one. I am weaning you from the slave's bane only because I need a clear head working with me. Don't mistake it for empathy. I will hold to my promise, but until then you will obey me in every respect." She brought the kreth and the stone knife from the rocks and handed them to me.

"Prepare our meal, slave. There is tinder and wood in the clearing. Start a fire, skin the animal and wrap the meat in the herbs. The herb is called Skrii, and helps to nullify slave's bane - a secret known among makers of the drug, who occasionally poison themselves in the process of manufacturing the substance. It grows wild everywhere."

I held the carcass in my hands, unsure if she was serious. She pulled me upright by my hair and dragged me over to the clearing outside the cave. "Heed me, slave! You are no longer in the pampered clutches of the harem - a slavegirl in a travelling troupe has many chores to perform. You will learn them all, starting with the cooking of meals." It seemed a odd thing for her to say, since she had come from the harems herself, and was most likely a scant Acteonese year older than me, and therefore more or less a child. Yet I complied; I remembered the distinction she had made between us the night before, that she was a warrior, no matter her form, and that I was a slavegirl born. It certainly seemed accurate. She gave me a quick lesson in the skinning of a kreth and the principles of a spit roast. "Most properly this is taught by an experienced slave, but it seems I'll have to train you as best I can," she said. "I must admit this isn't through first hand experience; I've always had a camp slave attend to such housekeeping. But you must learn this. If we must share camp with other travellers, you will have to tend chores communally with the other slavegirls, and must seem trained at least in the rudimentaries." I slit the kreth with the stone knife. More accurately, I hacked. My hands were slick with fat and blood by the time I had cut off the head, removed the skin, and spitted the little creature. I started a fire, using the flint and stone method Helen showed to me, and began to turn the carcass over the flames.

"Master," I asked, mindful that Sir Begnir was sensitive to his current gender, "The custom when sharing camp is to share slaves. Will you loan me out?"

She chuckled as she whittled a yerk branch. She was fashioning a bow. "Of course. And I will accept the offer of another's slave, although I will beg off her services in private, claiming illness, and will blindfold her to hide my lamentable condition. You have nothing to hide, however, and will only improve with a little extra use."

I continued to turn the carcass, kneeling before the fire. "Master," I asked, "you act very much like a man. Do you not feel the effects of the slave's bane?"

She frowned. "Yes. I fight it. Such feelings are not honorable. But, yes, I feel the same way you do - I wish nothing more than to be told by a man what to do - given the deleterious effects of the slave's bane, I can feel but little else; it is what I crave." She shuddered. "I fight it, because all meaning in my life has been wrapped up in knighthood, not maidenhood. This form, the feelings that it induces in me, are extremely difficult to subdue. In some ways this is why I am glad I brought you with me - your abject acceptance of your fate, your willingness, give me something to - well, to renounce. Looking at you reminds me what I do not want to be. "Yet I see in you how natural it is to submit, and how naturally you take to it, whether or not it was your choice to be this way. You appear to have been born in the wrong body, and have only now found your true calling. I know you wish to return to your homeworld, regain your former manhood. But I tell you this: I believe this is your proper and true purpose in this world, and although I intend to keep my promise, in the meantime I intend to do my best to convince you that you are already the slavegirl you were always meant to be."

I considered this. Certainly I protested my fate very little, but I had thought that mainly to be a product of being drugged. But now I considered how quickly, how readily I had adapted to this strange body, with its curves and softness, its weakness and urges, and how even now, as I leaned forward on my haunches as I turned the spit, my breasts dangling under my delicate frame, my pussy visible from behind, I felt at home. I was afraid, afraid of myself, of Helen, of what might be done to me by her or by anyone, but I was also thrilled by this fear. Nevertheless, I felt I must protest:

"It is true that I - I am well-suited to this form, Master," I began, slowly turning the spit as I spoke, "But I came to this planet to fulfill a task, not to satisfy my urges."

"We are, in essence, the sum of our actions," she replied. "There is a saying in the Lower Reaches of New Hope: 'as one does, one shall be treated'. You behave like a slave, and so you are treated like one. Were I not privy to your circumstances I would not know the difference." "I am thirty-five years old, Sir. I have a duty to perform for my land." "You act as if you're fourteen, slave. Which is only proper, since that is your age."

She finished her dressing of the bow shaft, and began spinning a bowstring from lengths of her own hair, which she had packed after hacking it from her head. I looked at her. She looked like nothing so much as a young boy, perhaps sixteen, intent on his task. She was frowning; she was beginning to feel withdrawal symptoms from lack of slave's bane, as was I. It felt like a flu; my muscles were beginning to ache all over, and my head hurt.

"We will eat, and then sleep," Helen said. "It is the best we can do. The worst will be over by tomorrow; without the herb it would take weeks to overcome it, but since we have ample supply to mix in with our meal, I think we will be ready to travel by midday tomorrow.

"If I am correct, I will return more or less to my normal composure. You, I think, will no longer feel compelled to obey, but if I'm right about you, and I believe I am, you will still feel the desire to. That will prove useful." In another ten minutes the kreth was ready, and after removing it from the spit I knelt before Helen. She pulled my wrists behind me and locked them together, and pulled me to her side. She then began to dine on the flesh of the cooked meat, pulling the hot muscle from the bone. In the manner of travelling warriors, she fed me, her slave, by hand. I was dependent on her for food. I opened my mouth like a babe and she gave me morsels to eat. It felt natural to me, even satisfying, to have my helplessness demonstrated to me yet again, and though I knew that this woman, if confronted by a true man now, would break and succumb to the needs of her bodily passions, would show herself to be as responsive to direction as I; even though I knew her domination of me was relative and forced, a coping mechanism of hers, I responded with open thighs and open mouth as I would for any true master.

She fed me only enough to curb my hunger; the proper care of a slavegirl usually dictates the girl's wants are never quite satisfied - she never quite gets enough to eat; kneeling for hours at a time, she is never comfortable; certainly the methodical arousal of a slavegirl isn't so much to please her as to frustrate her, for she is rarely permitted to bring her arousal to fruition.

After allowing me to relieve myself at the edge of the clearing, Helen again tethered me to my fastening place, the protruding root at the mouth of the cave, and left to acquire more necessities. I spent the remainder of the afternoon hitched to the root, kneeling in the dirt. She returned at dusk riding a horse. Saddlebags bulged with gear, and behind the saddle was a slent, a kind of saddle for the transport of a slave. One threw the slavegirl over the horse's back, face down, and bound her wrists with straps built into the leather apparatus. Her ankles were bound as well, so that she straddled the horse's spine, bent double, arms and legs pulled down over the sides of the horse's ribcage. The singular innovation of the device, which was intended to inflict increasing discomfort on long journeys, was that the slave's crotch was pressed up against a horn, keeping her from sliding off one side, and that her hands were afforded some purchase, if not freedom, by means of an iron bar. With these supports a slave girl could prevent the roughness of the ride from transferring directly to her stomach, and could cushion the ride with a little effort, but at great cost to her tender crotch.

I had seen them in use before. Girls taken from the slent after a long ride were shaky, their nether regions sore and pained, and needed help walking. It was a convenient way to transport a slave girl, but fatigued the girl so much that she often needed a full night's rest before one could make demands upon her injured form. Since the girl's pain, however intense, was irrelevant to her owner, this was no large matter, but usually it was worth the effort of transporting the girl in a cage or wagon, and these were more common, as the point of having a slave was to make use of her. But it was tradition to pack a slent for a journey. The gear dated back to a time, three or four centuries ago, before the current monarchial system, when the Acteonese were nomadic, and slave's bane wasn't yet concocted. It was an excellent means of subduing a rebellious slavegirl. Now such traditional devices were used primarily because they satisfied the aesthetic concerns or whim of a master. There was hardly such a thing as a rebellious slave these days - slavegirls were entirely willing and eager to perform their duties, and the thought of disobedience came to them only with great difficulty. I knew it did for me, and I was unsure how I felt about this, or how Helen was handling me.

As Helen tethered her steed to a tree, I thought about my how my own breeding must be aggravating my passivity. The King's wife, his Queen, was a first generation slave, and it had been clear that she was having a difficult time of it. Helen must be first generation as well, I surmised - she certainly had no trouble forcing herself to be assertive. My Princesses' body, as I had noticed from the slave's mark on my breast, was fifth generation prime slave stock, bred from a long line of much admired royal slaves, and her father had sold her as soon as she turned fourteen.

I was, then, as much a domesticated animal as Helen's horse, bred as much for my docility as my physical makeup, my loveliness and shapeliness. And, judging how compliant I still felt, almost a day without the slave's bane, it seemed clear to me that absence of the drug would make no difference. Between my natural desires, my lifelong fantasies which seemed to be manifested wholesale now, and the bred characteristics of my body, docile as a cow (though much more feline in composure), no Acteonese man examining me would be able to judge that I was free of the drug's influence. My nether regions were as damp as ever.

And though I knew that the hardship I would suffer in the slent would be overwhelming, and hardly necessary, I found I had no will to protest - I simply accepted that Helen would choose this punishment for me. I had to believe that, in other circumstances, I would have rejected this decision of hers. But I was, after all, a slave. I was bred to obey.

That evening we slept little - the pain of withdrawal was too intense. Bound as I was the previous night, my wrists chained under my right leg, I was bent double, sweating and feverish, my brain buzzing. In my misery, I tried to imagine two weeks of such pain, and understood why slaves never freed themselves of their addiction. I thanked the Acteonese Gods (I was surprised to find myself doing so) for providing the herbal remedy that eventually pushed the pain away, so that by daylight we were well again, though sleep-deprived.

 

Chapter XI The Hunt Begins

Helen was in much better spirits. She was momentarily frustrated by her body's frailty when she had difficulty getting me onto the slent; finally she had to command me to climb onto it under my own power. She cinched my restraints tight, and I felt the leather-covered bone press against my bare, hairless crotch. I moaned.

Her expression softened as she looked down at my upturned face. "It's necessary. I want to make sure no one guesses you're not drug-enfeebled. By the end of the day you'll be too beaten to give any indication that you're anything but docile." She covered me with a sheet and tied it down loosely, to protect my flesh from the sun. She mounted.

"By tonight, our King's men will be in Tormuth. It is the most likely town Lord Baird would head for, since his henchmen make their base there. But I think I know where he is bound; I overheard him speaking to a comrade before he left me. The cretin thought I was delirious from the beating he'd given me, but I am made of tougher stuff than that.

"I believe he has gone to New Tuscany. The monster plans to steal the Tuscan King's body, and begin his conquest anew. We will get to him first." She spurred her steed on, and we began to move.

"It's a shame I am cursed with this body and not yours," she said over the steady hoofbeats of the horse. I barely paid attention; I was too alarmed by the steady, rhythmic pounding of the slent's pubic horn against my clitoris and pussy.

"It would be more fitting to imprison the criminal in a body like yours, to maximize his subsequent torment. No, this form will have to do. It can be quite fetching, when perfumed and cleaned, although the breasts aren't quite so satisfying as yours to whip.

"Besides, I've grown attached to you." She patted my upturned rump through the coarse white covering cloth.

The horse's muscular gait, back and forth, meant that my body weight was thrown forward, or to the right, as the beast rocked its pelvis, then back to the left, slamming my crotch against the horn. I could do nothing about this, and silently cursed Helen, wishing she were in my place. But I knew that she probably wouldn't fit; she was too tall and it would be too difficult to strap her in. Helen was born a free woman, and the slent was designed for a typical bred slave. The slent was built to have maximum effect on a slave with exactly my proportions, and it was doing its job quite well.

Some interminable time later, Helen took a break in our journey to take me down from my tortuous perch. I was still crying softly as she helped me gain my footing. She gave me water and a few mouthfuls of meat, then led me to relieve myself. I was half laughing in relief at the respite, but winced as I squatted in the weeds to pee, my urine burning my sore crotch. By the sun it appeared to be mid-afternoon.

As she strapped me back into the slent, I begged her to let me walk beside her, chained. Anything, I thought, was better than this. "A slave who begs has not yet been broken," she replied simply, and cinched tight my restraints. She covered me and mounted. I began to sob anew as the evil knob pounded against my clitoris again - destroying me, destroying conscious thought.

The process of breaking a slave to your will, as the Acteonese knights practice it, bears a strong resemblance to the torture and brainwashing techniques of all primitive cultures: you begin by demonstrating to the slave that she has no power over what happens to her, and you do this by putting her through unthinkable pain. You then allow her respite, arranging her reprieve in such a way that she feels gratitude towards you, her torturer, for granting her temporary surcease.

You do this repeatedly, and without real pattern. It is important to inflict punishment without any connection to her actual behavior, so that she understands that it is random.

This is supposed to engender a sense of abandonment and despair in the slave. This is important even in a slave addicted to slave's bane, as it accelerates the slave's eventual acceptance of her predicament, and helps her live up to her potential as an instrument of pleasure for her Master. I understood that this is what Helen was doing to me, and while I was angry at her for doing it, furious, in fact, for I thought it a breach of our understanding that I was to be returned to my natural state at the end of this journey, I also understood that from a trainer's point of view the kind of thoughts I was having justified systematically breaking me. In any case, the whole point of breaking a slave is to temporarily loosen her grip on rationality, and I could feel this slipping away in my continuing agony. My training as an Interceder prepared me for torture; it did not prepare me for a body designed to respond to it erotically, submissively. For even now, bruised and beaten, sobbing exhaustedly, I could feel my over-sensitized clitoris was a rock-hard nub nestled in the slick juices of my nether regions, and the continual pounding of the knob against it both agonized me and kept me on the razor's edge of arousal.

At dusk Helen took me from the slent. I couldn't walk; she carried me into the room she'd rented in the inn and threw me at the foot of the bed. She chained my wrists under my thigh once more, wrapped my leash around the footboard post, and sat down in a chair beside me. She began to interrogate me as to the exact workings of the changer. I wearily explained to her how the device worked.

First one places the device, which is the size of a coin, on the skin, then one touches the red stud, which causes the slim mechanism to shift under the skin, where it remains hidden.

Then, when one has been in contact with the host body one wishes to exchange with for at least ten minutes, there remains only to 'think' oneself into the other body.

The device is based on quantum mechanics, and travels with you to the host body, abandoning the victim in the body you've discarded. Satisfied, Helen blew out the lamp and left me to rest.

"I go now to pick up the trail. Rest, slave."

I fell asleep instantly.

 

Chapter XII The Prey is Found

I awoke to Helen's hissed command to rise. I opened my eyes and rolled forward onto my knees, my wrists still pinioned under my leg. "Quickly! You have to join my wrists," she hissed. I looked up and was startled to find Helen kneeling in front of me, facing away from me, her face pressed against the floor. She was completely naked, and her wrists were encased in leather cuffs. Her right wrist was thrust between her thighs, pointing directly at me. Her left wrist was resting on the outside of her left thigh.

Slave restraints are quite easy to join and release, provided you're not the one wearing them. For the wearer, they're quite difficult to join, and impossible to release. I paused to admire the view she was offering me - although Helen was much too tall to be truly attractive to an Acteonese man, by my own society's standards she was quite beautiful, and the sight of her little breasts dangling underneath her was quite fetching. I had almost forgotten she was female, so cowed I had become by her. "There's not much time, slave. Do as I say!" she hissed. I rolled onto my side to better reach her wrists, and found that it was quite simple to latch them together. Removing them, however would be just as impossible for me now as it was for her: to unlatch them, one needs to operate the mechanism in way that requires more flexibility than cuffed hands can muster. "Now - back onto your side and pretend that you are sleeping." I obeyed, and she fell to her side beside me on the floor. I noted that she had already wrapped her leash in the same fashion as mine.

"What's going on - Sir?" I added belatedly, whispering. "I found him. I found him, and what's more, I found the exchanger. It's resting neatly under my flesh on the inside of my armpit. "This is what I have done: I made acquaintance with one of Lord Baird's henchmen, and let it be known that I had in my possession two slaves that the Lord would take much pleasure in using. I explained that after the king discovered the true nature of these two creatures, he sold them as soon as possible, not wanting such abominations in his household. I had purchased them, I explained, and had been planning to put them up for auction when I had heard that Lord Baird was in this town. I therefore wished to offer the two slaves for sale directly to the Lord, thinking he might derive some further pleasure from slaves he had some responsibility in creating. "Lord Baird was greatly pleased, and through the henchman paid me handsomely. It has come to light that his interstellar craft was destroyed by your people; I surmise that he has decided to settle in for good, and will take any opportunity to eliminate threats, however slight, even from slaves. "A slave wagon is due shortly to pick us up and deliver us to the Lord's chambers."

As soon as she spoke these last words, I heard footsteps coming up the Inn stairs. I closed my eyes just before the door flew open. "On your knees, slaves!" the wagon tender barked, and we both rolled onto our haunches, our leashes arcing toward the headboard. "You've been bought. Your new Master is Lord Baird." One of the tenders pushed my head to the right, exposing my left ear. He produced a tool from his waist coat, which I immediately recognized as an ear piercing tool, used to tag slaves.

I screamed as he punctured my left lobe and roughly inserted a long gold earring, crimping the end to fasten it in place. Helen received the same treatment, and responded as I did. It's common practice on Acteon to mark a slave somehow, the better to prove ownership in legal disputes. Slaves in the southern regions are simply tattooed, since in hotter climes a slave wears nothing, and to attempt to hide a tattooed breast in conventional southern female garb is more or less impossible. But in the North, where furs are common in the winter, a long golden hoop earring is used. Set into the face of an inset at the bottom of the earring is the mark of the owner. The hoop is large enough to rest against the slavegirl's left shoulder, and is crimped with a tool that fuses the metal by sheer pressure, making the earring impossible to remove without shears. Thus slaves in the North have no way of disguising their status. Now newly marked, we were led, forcibly hunched over by our bound wrists, to the awaiting slave wagon, which was a wooden cage on cartwheels. Blood stained my left shoulder and breast. The cart began to move. New Tuscany is one of the largest cities on the Acteonese mainland, and though it has a King, much of the power lies in the hands of the traders, especially spicers and slavers. It is a port city, and Acteonese of all varieties congregate here.

I had always wanted to see this city, I remembered. After my mission I had planned a little vacation, a trip to New Tuscany, where I would go to the coffee huts, perhaps rent a slave, or see the Monument to Ludd. I had not planned on seeing it through the hardwood bars of a slave wagon, naked and chained, but still the journey was fascinating. And, in a way, validating. As Laurence Joo, I had been a visitor to this world, a sight-seer. As slave Alisha, however, I viewed this city from the perspective of a full participant. I was Acteonese now; I had no choice. Though it meant that I was occasionally fondled in my cage, when the wagon stopped; though it meant I would never set foot in a coffee hut or Tuscan meeting house (slaves were forbidden in both); though it meant I was on the absolute lowest rung in the social hierarchy, with no rights - still, I was a part of it, part of the majesty and wonder of Acteonese culture. I had my place on Acteon, I realized. My place was dictated by custom: it was on my knees, but I happened to have the mindset to find that strangely appealing, even ennobling. Perhaps this was a curse, my curse. But why, then, as I was transported through the city streets, chained, naked, captive, utterly debased, why did I find myself so calm, so at peace with my predicament?

An hour later we reached the opposite end of the city, and were dragged out onto the flagstone which tiled the sidewalk in front of the building. We were separated almost immediately.

I was brought to a bathing pool, where a washerwoman tended to my wounded earlobe, cleansed my body, washed the black inks from my hair to let my red mane shine, and shaved my pubic mound bare of the stubble which had grown there. She lightly perfumed my breasts, belly, neck and pussy with esclava, the scent of which had finally dissipated over the past two days. The pungent, flowery odor was unmistakably a slavegirl's. The Acteonese have a keen sense of smell; were I swaddled in a freewoman's fur cape and dress, covered head to toe, my earring prized free, any Acteonese man within a few yards would immediately recognize my scent, know me a runaway slave and strip me bare, claiming finder's rights. Well, I amended my previous thought as the woman rouged my nipples, even without the telltale scent of slave's perfume, my body was so clearly a bred slavegirl's that no clothing would hide the fact - bred slaves were just physiologically so obvious. I looked my hands as the woman massaged oil into my forearms - they were tiny, bred to be less useful, the fingers delicate - appropriate for cradling a man's cock, perhaps, but without any real gripping power. A free woman's hands come in many shapes and sizes, but I was bred with this kind of hand in mind, and it showed.

I was forced to dine with the other slaves, and found the slave's bane once more coursing through my veins. It mattered little, I now realized - a was a slavegirl through and through.

By now it was evening, and a valet led me to Lord Baird's harem. I lay down on the straw pallet assigned to me, in a smallish hall with perhaps ten other girls, my collar chained to the pallet's head. I noted that Helen was conspicuously absent, and took it as a good sign. I slept deeply, having gotten little real rest in the past few days.

I awoke to the prodding of a whip handle.

"Arise, slave Alisha. Your Master has need of you." I rolled forward easily, smoothly, to my knees at the front of my sleeping pallet, my collar pulled tight against the worn headboard. The valet threaded a delicate silver chain through the ring set in the front of my collar. He took the free ends and pulled them under my armpits, joining them to my wrists high on my back, which he locked together as well, so that my hands rested just under my shoulder blades.

Satisfied with the arrangement, the tall, muscular Northerner led me by my leash up the staircase to the Master's chambers. I padded barefoot up the marble steps behind him, aware of his bulk. I had spent the recent past in the custody of a woman, and had almost forgotten just how large, how imposing a man can be.

He led me down the carpeted hall to a large wooden door and knocked. I fell in to his right. His hand, which was wrapped around the handle of my leash, was meaty and thick; it could wrap just as easily around both my wrists, I thought to myself. I didn't dare look up to see his face, to see if he were handsome or ugly; I was getting used to the idea that so long as I remained Alisha I would have to forgo the pleasure of gazing freely at others. Muffled footsteps grew louder behind the chamber door. My heart began to race; did Helen's plan work? I reminded myself that even if she succeeded, I must continue to play the slave in the valet's presence, or arouse his suspicion.

The door opened, and I studiously focused my gaze on a point somewhere on the floor a yard in front of me, as a good slave does. "Thank you. That'll be all," Begnir dismissed the valet, taking my leash in his hand. He guided me in and shut the door behind him. I noted immediately a slavegirl's limp form hanging by her wrists near the bay window. She was Helen. She was clearly conscious, but exhausted, her body streaked with whip marks. She was tightly blindfolded and gagged. "Two things, slave," Begnir said, as he led me to the bed. "First, we have succeeded. The vermin is safely imprisoned in Helen's body; and without her exchanger she'll be trapped there for the remainder of her life. "Second, we must move carefully. I don't know whether or not Lord Baird's henchmen suspect anything, but I'm sure he briefed them to be on the watch for errant behavior." He knelt me down beside the bed and sat down before me. "I am ready to repay my debt to you now, and bring you to your ship. But I'm afraid that I won't be able to go without my bodyguards, and I can't be seen taking directions from you. You're going to have to be brought in a slave cage, along with the rest of my entourage.

"I must confess that I am reluctant to free you," Begnir said. "I've said it before, and I'll say it now: you are in your proper place. But I am a man of my word, and I will keep my promise.

"Now, kneel and suck me. I wish to finally feel your mouth on me." I obeyed without hesitation.

 

Chapter XIII Emancipation Denied

In the afternoon we set out: Lord Begnir and his bodyguard (still under the impression that Begnir was Lord Baird) riding in column in front, while the slavegirls brought up the rear in three slave cages. I thought of my rapidly approaching emancipation with some ambivalence. I had, in all honesty, grown used to my role here on Acteon, had recognized my accidental feminization and enslavement as the inadvertent fulfillment of a fantasy so complete that I couldn't have orchestrated it myself. Here I was, a pleasure slave of Acteon, beautiful, diminutive, powerless, thoroughly in the control of another - it was what I had always fantasized. And yet I had a duty, a responsibility to my people, that I could not in good conscience cast aside.

I knew that I must once more become a man, and take my place among the Interceders of the Confederation.

The journey to the secret location where I had stashed my craft took three days. At sunset the entourage set up camp. Or, more accurately, the men ordered the slavegirls to set up camp, and drank wine while I and the other girls pitched tents, prepared the meal and fed the pack animals. Lord Begnir had said that he would treat me no differently than the other girls, lest suspicion be aroused, and, to my delight, he proved true to his word. I was beginning to worry that I would return to the world of men without once more experiencing the pleasure of, well, of being roughly fucked by a powerful man.

I began to remember, by the third day, as I yet again was forced to polish my Master's saddle, that being a man had its pleasures too. There was always the holosuite.

At sunset we reached the clearing where the craft lay hidden. Lord Begnir ordered camp to be made, and led me into the underbrush by my leash. To our surprise, there were two men standing in front of the ship. I recognized them as Watchers.

The taller man spoke a few words, and Lord Begnir halted. I looked up at him and realized he had been hypnotized - a skill Watchers cultivate. "Greetings, slave Alisha. Or would you prefer Mr. Joo?" said the smaller Watcher, smiling. He was in his fifties, and though bald, was quite handsome. "I am, in some measure, both," I admitted. I felt vulnerable, since my wrists were still bound behind me, and Lord Begnir, though mesmerized, held my leash tightly. "Are you here to bring me back?" I asked. "We have watched with great interest your trials and tribulations, slave Alisha. It has been the subject of much discussion and debate. It was first decided that some attempt must be made to rescue you, but when it proved clear that you were adapting so easily to your enforced slavery, we reconvened and changed our determination. We decided we couldn't throw away a rare opportunity to have a Watcher among the slaves. "We are here to notify you that you have been transferred. You are now in the Watcher division." The taller Watcher injected me with a hypo. "Nanobots will set up a transmitter in your brain, and will monitor everything you hear and see."

"As you know, a Watcher holds his or her position for life. You will carry on as Lord Begnir's property, until such time as he chooses to sell you. "Lord Baird has been liquidated. The crisis is over. There is no more reason for anyone to know who you once were, so we have taken measures to ensure that no one recalls what has transpired. Lord Begnir no longer remembers his brief sojourn as a slavegirl, and believes you simply to be a slave he purchased a few days ago.

"Analysis of your files reassure us that you will prove most appropriate for your assignment. You have to understand that we have never been able to obtain volunteers to put themselves in your position. "All information sensitive to our mission has been erased from your memory, especially passcodes, names, and locations. You will find you know nothing useful to divulge to natives of the planet."

I watched as my craft disappeared, the shielding warping it out of this dimension. The Watchers calmly walked away down a wooded path.

Lord Begnir came to with a start.

"Where was I?" he asked himself. "Oh yes. Drape yourself over that log, slave. I intend to use your ass."

 

Chapter XIV A Family Reunion

That was five years ago. I am now nineteen, and so am legally allowed some freedoms, although Lord Begnir still takes pleasure in using me, aged though I am. For the first time in five long years, I can transcribe the unusual circumstances which led to my transformation from Interceder to Acteonese slavegirl. In the many seasons between the events which placed me in this body and my putting pen to paper, the Watchers have never contacted me, although every whipping, every misuse of me has, I am sure, been completely documented. I am a Watcher as well as a slavegirl, but being a Watcher by definition means to immerse oneself so thoroughly in the culture under observation as to almost forget one has any other identity. In this sense I have been quite successful.

I started writing this account three months ago, after my Master permitted me use of the library for one hour a day, between washing duty and dinner service. I have left it untouched for the past few weeks because I realized that I had nothing more to say on the matter. I had thought the account was complete. I love Lord Begnir for reasons even he doesn't know, since he doesn't remember his brief period of enslavement, his vulnerability, when he first trained me. He doesn't know that I continue to be amazed and cowed by his self-assured masculinity and confidence, and his practised and thorough control of me. Yet I felt there was no reason to write an account of these past five years. There's nothing to report, really. A slave's daily routine varies little.

I am taking up this journal again, however, to note a startling and emotional visit, that for the first time in five years caused me to regret my enslavement.

The valet had informed me this morning that a nobleman was to dine with the Master this evening, and that after I finished with my washing duties, I was to report for a bath, as I would be called to dance after the meal. Such pronouncements have long become routine to me; Lord Begnir taught me early on that I was first and foremost an instrument of pleasure, and put me through a rigorous training regime with a dancing instructor, to train me in the ways of the Shimi dance, and a Tea Master, to learn the Tea Ceremony. So I knew what was to be expected. I would dance the Shimi dance, which, at the end of the drumming, would leave me kneeling, naked, wrists and ankles joined behind me with self-locking hasps, between the spread thighs of our illustrious guest. My owner would then offer my body to him. A tall figure appeared next to me a few moments later. I continued my washing, heedful of my duty.

"Alisha, look up at me," the stranger commanded. I obeyed, turned to face the stranger, still holding my master's dyed cape, which I had been scrubbing. I lifted my eyes to his.

And saw Laurence Joo gazing mildly down at me.

I was speechless, and put down my wet laundry. I didn't know whether to cover my naked body in my surprise, then remembered that my hands were chained to a waist-belt, and so I was helpless to hide myself. An ankle bracelet kept me from approaching him or retreating, so I must stand there, exposed before the stranger.

He wore traditional Nobleman's garb. Five years had treated him well; even at forty-two he was handsome. He smiled. It was a wicked, mean smile, and I was taken aback.

"Kneel before your superior, slave." I immediately obeyed. After five years of slavery I no longer questioned orders.

"I happen to have some business with your owner, slave, some wool to trade," he said after a moment. He lifted my breast in his hand, dropped it. "Quite fetching. It suits you." He sat down on the bench beside the wooden washing trough.

"You - you are the true Alisha," I whispered, suddenly realizing who this was.

"Yes, my little one. Or rather, 'was'." He chuckled as he fingered my cunt, which, as usual, became awash with dampness at his touch. "You are the true Alisha now."

"After Lord Baird had stolen my body, he knocked me unconscious and must have thrown me in the river, assuming he had thus disposed of me. But I awoke to find myself a man, lying at the riverside some miles away. "I was overjoyed. You surely must understand now what it means to be a slave, to be completely controlled by your masters. I could move at will, with no one to command me to stop! I could wear clothes! And how unusual that was - even though I had been enslaved only a few weeks by the time my body was stolen, I had been prepared for my fate since I first flowered by being kept naked in my father's household. Clothing, to me, even the rough cotton garb I had awakened in, was something I had been taught to consider myself not deserving of, something free people were entitled to - something unreachable and almost godly to me - and now I strode freely about, fully clothed! What pleasure!

"These were my first joys - motility, freedom to say and do as I pleased. I entered the nearest village and found that, with the ready cash Lord Baird had carelessly left on my body, I could rent a room at an inn and begin to decide what to do with my life.

"After satiating myself on all the pleasures forbidden a slave - wine, roasted meats, coffee, and yes, even the comfort of a rented slave at my beck and call, I had some time to reflect on my situation. I decided to discover what exactly had happened, discreetly, so that I would not be forced to become a slavegirl again. I learned that Lord Baird had used my body to steal yours, then switched yours with his, which I had been kept in while unconscious. I discovered that you were being kept a slave in my stead, and that no one was concerned with my whereabouts, since it was assumed I was dead. This suited me.

"It reassured me even more when I discovered how clearly well suited your temperament was to take my place, and felt secure that our role reversals would be permanent, since it was unlikely you would try to escape an enslavement for which your mental weaknesses were an iron trap. "I worried considerably, then, when I discovered that you had disappeared, but a few well-placed bribes among the Watchers assured that if you ever surfaced, you would be put back in your proper place. "I came to tell you that what happened to us was, in my opinion, just. I no more deserved the life of a slavegirl than you deserved to be free. I am a successful businessman now, as I would always have been had I been born male. I have my own house, and my own slaves. I am happy, as I well deserve to be. "As, I believe, are you, incredibly. But I am glad for that. It will make things easier. I need your services, slave, and am going to offer to purchase you from your Master in order to obtain your compliance. The fact that you've taken so well to your enslavement pleases me; I imagine you haven't been able to disobey an order in five years."

"No, Sir, I haven't," I admitted. "May a slave ask a question?" I asked.

"Certainly, girl," he replied.

"Why me, Sir? Why not another slave?" I asked.

"I will explain later, my pretty one. But for now, simply know that one reason is that you were a victim of Lord Baird. "You have been isolated here, and your people, until recently did not know you lived. Lord Baird had bribed the Watchers to conceal your identity and bury you so far within Acteonese society that you would be impossible to find. He then killed his collaborators, so that no one would even know what you looked like, if by some chance they discovered you existed. "Your people, however, managed to track me down, and hired me to recover you. They were quite pleased to find me, since few of Lord Baird's victims lived and still were aware of their abuse. Your master, for instance, remembers nothing of his misuse. I agreed to help find you on the condition that they not attempt to force me back into your body.

"You see, Lord Baird lives. Your people are not sure exactly where or who he is, but they are certain of one thing: he let you live on purpose. They believe he is using you as a 'fail-safe'. I understand it's a term from your culture, but I get the gist. He has established some kind of special link to your body, so that he can transfer himself to it instantaneously, without devices. In the event he, finally, is captured or killed, he will overwrite your consciousness and become you. Presumably he has an escape plan going forward from there.

"It's quite clever. You are an Acteonese slavegirl with an impeccable pedigree and a history of complete obedience. In addition, any scan would show no exchange devices. There would be no question of your authenticity. "Indeed, that's all you really need to know. But I will tell you more later. After you have danced for me." He chuckled, patted my ass and headed off toward the castle.

I cried as I scrubbed my Master's bedsheets in hot sudsy water. I didn't know why I was crying. I only knew that Laurence Joo was going to buy me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew that it is the fate of a slavegirl to occasionally despair at her helplessness. It passes. It was only that I had been happy here, serving my Master. I was skilled now, in my prime. Over the past five years I had lost the babyfat of my early adolescence and had almost fully grown into the classic Bendari slavegirl's weak, womanly shape. It had only taken two months before I had finally, fully broken; at first I submitted with my body and my desire, but my mind seemed separate from the life I was required to live. My Master, of course, had sensed this, and for two months he devoted much time to breaking me. What he did amounted to daily concentrated torture combined with sleep deprivation - I was only allowed one hour of sleep per day - and the results were most efficacious.

Even so, fully broken, several years passed before, one day, I caught myself in the middle of a thought and realized that, for a moment, I had forgotten that I was ever male. I had been remembering my father, who had sold me when I was fourteen; I was thinking about how he had had his most highly regarded slavegirl spend an hour with me every day to show me the rudimentaries of slave posture, etiquette, and so on. I was in the middle of recalling this memory when I suddenly became aware that it wasn't mine. After Alisha's memories began to surface (a well documented long-term effect of body exchange is that the original inhabitant's memories, and to a lesser extent personality, become available), it became easier for me. It helped me to stop thinking of myself as a man in a girl's body. And by now I had even forgotten what I had looked like as a man, so there was a long moment before I had, with a dull shock, recognized Laurence.

As I rinsed the linens in warm water, I thought of his cock and tried to remember what it had been like to be on the giving end of that wholly foreign, bizarre and fascinating piece of equipment, that part of a man's body that my Master had spent many long hours training me to pleasure. I was deeply intimate with the way a cock felt in my hands, in my mouth, or in my cunt or ass, but I couldn't imagine what I would do if I had one. I wondered if Laurence planned on using me, or selling me, when whatever he wanted me for was over and done with. My Master's secondary occupation, his hobby, was the training of slaves; he was known in the region for the exceptional results he provided. As his personal slave, and a Bendari with an impeccable pedigree, exceptionally beautiful, I would command a high price at market. I knew that my Master would have no problem parting with me, however; once my Master had fully trained me, I became his favorite for several years. But now there was a new girl, Shalli, that he seemed to dote over. Once again my fate was being decided for me by Acteonese men. I momentarily longed for a civilized, complicated, neurotic Confederation man, one who would open doors for me, treat me with dignity. To an Acteonese man, I was chattel. Supernally beautiful, hypersensitized, cowed, obedient chattel. Strange now, I thought, how even in my fantasies, my longings for freedom, I was still female. I only wished to be free. Being a man no longer interested me. I no longer knew what it meant, any more than I knew what it was to be free.

I danced for my Master and his guest that night. I danced the slow, sinuous slii dance, which is done with one's ankles and wrists bound in silver chains. As the dance progressed, the stylized dance movements incrementally restricted me; the dance is a form of self-bondage in which the dance steps are designed to loop the chains many times around the girl's limbs. Toward the end of the dance, my wrists tightly bound behind me in ten loops of chain, with the chain's wrist hasp falling with the aid of a hip thrust into place and locking, I took three short steps toward the guest, knelt before him, knees spread wide. I lifted my crossed ankles off the ground and twirled slightly, once. The last length of chain swung hard around my right ankle and fell neatly into the hasp, locking finally, tight enough to keep my thighs forced apart.

Mouth open. Laurence's cock at the back of my throat. My heart pounding.

Laurence bought me the next day.

 

Chapter XV New Tuscany

I was grateful for the canopy over the hitching post. The sun was baking hot, and I had been hitched here for well over an hour, kneeling on the dirty carpet rolled out onto the dirt street. The tender kept watch over me and another girl from his bench. The other girl was hooded. For my part, my new Master had positioned me over a pony block, a sort of miniature sawhorse with a tapered edge rail on top. The tender had adjusted the height of the instrument so that it lifted me slightly off my knees, and my whole weight bore down on my clitoris, which was rammed up hard against the wooden rail. He had then chained my ankles to the top of the rail in back, so that my heels were face up, well behind my ass. A wide leather strap went around my shoulders, above my breasts, and back to the ring where my ankles were fastened. This prevented me from falling forward. My wrists were chained to my collar. Twin daubs of honey had been placed, one on each nipple, and spread, so now flies tickled my breasts.

I had done nothing wrong. This was simply to please Laurence. I had found my new Master to be surprisingly sadistic for a former slave. Perhaps buying me and abusing me thoroughly was his way of punishing me for having ever been in possession of his body.

Laurence was inside the coffee hut, meeting with business partners. Women were permitted in such places, but slaves were not, and so here I was. I had been watching passersby, out of the corner of my eye, to pass the time, and to take my mind off the excruciating pain in my crotch, which I could do nothing about.

It was like any busy street on any planet; there were messenger boys, gentlemen merchants, knights, bakers, wives and so on. The free women interested me. I had been isolated in Lord Begnir's castle, and had only seen slavegirls for five years, so the physical differences were considerable. For one thing, some were quite ugly. The pretty ones were dressed smartly in what must be the latest fashions. They tended to lift their breasts and expose their cleavage, which in general was more ample than my apple-sized mounds. What was most remarkable to me is that the free women seemed to feel no affinity for the slave girls; it was if we constituted a third sex unrelated to, and in competition with, their own. Possibly it was due to the jealousy I thought they must feel, that we slaves, for whom the skills of lovemaking are a professional duty and our only real purpose, naturally are more appealing to a man than a free woman. There was genuine anger as well, that in order to truly compete for men's affection you had to renounce your freedom and become the thing you hate: a slave.

I, in turn, envied them their right to speak and do as they pleased, more or less, and for their clothing. I thought bemusedly that even if I were permitted to wear clothing I doubted I would find anything my size. Women's clothing was cut to emphasize a woman's non slave-like assets, such as broad shoulders and large breasts. If one had a slave-like body one ended up being a slave anyway, so tailors ignored this body type. In addition, as a preventative measure tailors who make women's fashions treated their fabrics with an herbal concoction, related to slave's bane, which is harmless to free women, but which causes an allergic reaction in those who have taken slave's bane. The first time a girl eats slave's bane, if she was free before, her new Master commands her to wear the dress she came to him in, to demonstrate to her her changed condition. Her throat tightens, her eyes water. Her limbs grow weak, and she collapses to the ground, temporarily paralyzed.

This essentially meant that there wasn't an article of women's clothing on this planet that I could wear. People generally didn't think much about this; a slave wearing clothing cut to her size and shape was as incongruous and bizarre as, say, making a dress for a doe. A naked slave was as natural as a naked wild animal.

My Master had explained that if Lord Baird had been keeping me as a fail-safe, then he must also be keeping tabs on my location. One could do this rather easily, since slavegirls are registered and their ownership documented. All he needed to do is pay the clerk in the village where my former Master's castle was to notify him of any sale and the identity of the buyer. My Master assumed that Lord Baird would at least check on his secret escape route, and he hoped to catch him then. So I was essentially bait. I hoped it worked. As much as I sometimes despaired at the abjectness of my situation, I hardly wanted to be "overwritten". Although my life was the property of Laurence Joo, still, it was a life. I was alive, a living, breathing, thinking human being, albeit not in the body I was born with. Laurence seemed happy with the trade in any case, and, to be honest with myself, I was happy too. Inhabiting a body bred so carefully that you find yourself constantly riding the keen edge of arousal can make thinking coherently a chore, and I had been slave long enough that it was hard for me to imagine acting of my own free will, independent of any command. Still, this body, this life, with all its inhumanly crippling restrictions, was now me, and I more or less enjoyed being used.

I had been bound in this position long enough to have lost all self restraint, and sobbed softly as I tried vainly to shift the bulk of my weight from my compressed clitoris. It is the usual problem, I thought to myself, my cunt getting me into trouble.

So it was a surprise when, after a sickening bout of dizziness, I found myself seated in a comfortable chair of Confederation design, in what was clearly a Confederation Scout Ship's general quarters. In a man's body.

For a moment I was too shocked to move. I registered a number of things simultaneously: I was wearing clothing for the first time in five years. I was strangely flat-chested. It felt so strange not to have the comforting weight of my breasts on my ribcage.

Most astounding was the fact that I was thinking freely, without influence from the slaves' bane. I experimentally stood up, walked to the edge of the conference table. I did it without permission, and strangely didn't feel I needed any!

Still unfamiliar with this male body, I clumsily walked to the mirror hanging over the entertainment console and examined myself. The proportions seemed all wrong. The room seemed too small around me, and I felt unbelievably bulky, as if I was taking up too much space. I understood intellectually that this was simply my mind adjusting from inhabiting a tiny form to one more physically imposing, but it still felt strange. "You're free only at Tyron's sufferance, you understand. You know that, don't you?" a voice asked from the doorway. I turned and saw a middle aged man dressed in Confederation Trader's garb. He started, as if afraid I might advance on him, but regained his composure quickly. "There's a governor imbedded in that body. If your brain signature isn't Tyron's, the body won't respond to brain signals which are violent in intent. I think we needn't worry about you piloting this ship out of here, because we both know whatever technical knowledge you once had was wiped clean from your mind five years ago.

"You're to have free rein of the ship. You can't really do any harm, after all. Tyron will be coming back in a few hours, or however long it takes for him to accomplish his mission, assuming your body doesn't completely emasculate him." He snickered.

"Who are you?" I finally asked. My voice felt rough and deep. "You can call me Simon. I'm a colleague of Tyron's. Would you like some coffee?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure." He gestured toward the kitchenette. I moved toward the food dispenser and ordered some Antarean Roast. It came in a little plastic cup, hot and steaming. I took the cup and moved to the conference table, sat and took a sip. It tasted wonderful. I had, after all, been eating slave's gruel for five years.

Simon poured a cup for himself and sat down in the chair adjacent to mine. This was a little overwhelming for me. You have to understand that for five full years I had assumed that I would never sit in a chair again, never eat a man's food or drink again. And here I was, sitting on the edge of a padded chair, sipping coffee. I sat back into the chair. It was wonderfully comfortable.

It also was disconcerting that Simon's very presence didn't make my adrenaline rush, make me feel compelled to drop to my knees and attend him. He was just a man, and not a very impressive one. What kind of a man he was wouldn't have mattered when I was Alisha; for to a slave girl a man was a godlike creature to be obeyed. Now he didn't seem so tough. He was slightly built and balding.

I did a quick mental inventory and decided that my slave girl's body had deeply affected my psyche, both the slave's bane and the breeding of the physical form, bred to submit. The thought of this caused my cock (Jesus, I had a penis now) to stir a little. Well, I thought, my fantasies are the same as ever, whatever the body. It's just that at the moment I'm not compelled to inhabit them.

I put the cup on the table, feeling the longer reach of my arm as I did so. "So," I said, "in a few hours Tyron will return me to my former self. Not that I mind too much, although it's nice to be able to talk and act freely. What, exactly, is the point?"

Simon paused, reflected, then shrugged. "You'll be forbidden to speak of it anyway."

"Tyron came here originally to take over the planet. He's a pretty ambitious guy, as you've guessed. The Confederation has pretty much stymied his efforts that way, at least for the short term. But in the process of attempting to capture him, you guys gave him some pretty clever ideas on how to turn a buck on this primitive planet. You, in particular.

"We're setting up a sort of vacation resort, you see. There are millions of people in the Confederation who would love to live the life of an Acteonese knight, or even of a slavegirl. Conversely, there are many on this planet who would give up everything to see the stars, explore all the Confederation has to offer.

"So we're setting up a kind of matchmaking service, very discreetly, of course. It's very lucrative. The Knight's bodies are quite pricey, since those guys generally want to return to their old lives after a few weeks. You can't blame them - they've got it made. We've had maybe a hundred or so permanent placements, and a few thousand two week exchanges. "The slavegirls tend to run cheaper, but there is high traffic there as well.

Slaves are sometimes quite happy to be free of their masters, but not always. They are, after all, bred. There is no shortage of takers in the Confederation, however. Generally speaking we don't offer limited stays for the slavegirl bodies, because it's almost impossible to get a slave to return to her body. So there are maybe fifty or so slavegirls on Acteon now who were born citizens of the Confederation. They will never return. Shalli, your old Master's new favorite, is one such customer. She paid 10,000 credits to be put into that exquisitely wretched life, and her counterpart is quite happy back on Earth, paying us 10% off his 100,000 credit yearly salary. "We keep track of you not because Tyron has built a fail-safe into you, although that's quite true, but because you've been our postergirl for your respective half of business. We get women and men who jack into recorded memories of yours and immediately write checks. You're incredibly good advertising, not just because of your body, but because of the speed with which you adapted to your life."

I sat forward, appalled. "You've been watching?" I demanded. "Of course," he replied smoothly. "You and the King of New Hope, who gets a handsome sum for his invasion of privacy. We can't watch you all the time; the transmitter embedded in your fifth rib only has enough power to send a one-hour burst, and recharges with ambient body electrical current, so the bursts are sent once a month or so. We only wanted to keep track of you; the fact that the transmissions sometimes made for excellent advertising became evident only later.

"You weren't in a position to complain, or even know, my friend. "If your transmitter were more consistent," he continued, "We wouldn't have need to perform this exchange. But we need to know what your Master is planning, and your body makes the perfect repository for a spy." Suddenly I leaned forward, dizzy, nauseous.

"Ah," Simon was saying, as I began to drift away, "I guess Tyron's had enough of playing the fuckpet. It was nice talking to you..." A moment later I rushed back into my body like a hand slamming into a tight-fitting glove. I was kneeling in front of my Master, who was busy fucking my mouth. Not having any real opportunity to really take the transition in stride, I had to take him in, letting him push his cockhead into my throat, down my esophagus. My wrists were bound tightly behind me with what felt like rough hemp rope, and I noted with alarm that the relative sense of independence, of individual freedom, that I had felt before was utterly gone. I thought of Simon, and the feeling I had had earlier that he was, perhaps, not so much of a man, seemed now incomprehensible to me. How had I thought that? Men were men. They came in many shapes and sizes, and some were handsome and some were not, but all had a right to fuck me, if my Master gave me to them. Had I really been sitting in a chair, drinking coffee? I skillfully played my lips, to the degree that I could with his member so deep, over my Master's shaft, breathing very shallowly through my nose, while another part of my mind reflected.

I had had some difficulty inhabiting Tyron's body. It had seemed ungainly, and hard to control. I had felt a stranger inside it. This seemed natural enough, I thought; it had been quite a while since I had been a man.

But when I had been first placed in this, Alisha's body, made to become her, my difficulties had only to do with the fact that I had suddenly become a slave. Thinking back on it, I recalled that it had felt as if my body were telling me how to inhabit it, made me feel welcome, so that within a day, if I had not yet acquiesced to being a slave girl in mind, I had adjusted completely in body, to the point that if one lined me up with a dozen other slaves and used us, he would not be able to pick me out as the one not born slave. I recalled that both the King and Lord Begnir, who had both known my true identity, had remarked on my natural suitability for the role that had been thrust upon me.

And here I was, back in the body I had almost instantly accepted as my natural state, as if my brief moment of freedom were but a dream, serving my Master with my mouth, as I had been scrupulously, unerringly trained, on pain of the whip, my naked breasts twisted painfully in his hands, a bred pleasure toy. It was what I had always dreamed of. I could well imagine that many would pay for this ignominy.

My Master came deep in my throat, moaning as he forced his cock down into me, leaning forward, his hands on the small of my back, using my mouth as a second cunt. I had been taught from the beginning to think of my lips as labial substitutes, my throat as secondary vaginal walls which, unlike the inner folds of my nether regions, which by now required no preparation and gave easily and smoothly before a thrusting cock, remained permanently virginal and tight. A slave is taught that she has three orifices, and that each is pleasurable to a man in slightly different ways. But even more pleasing to a man is when a slave convinces herself that each of these openings should be and feel as warm, giving, muscular and supple as her pussy itself. A slave is taught that the primary function of her mouth is not for speaking but for the accommodation of a penis, to give her master a good tight fuck; she is also taught that her anus is made similarly for this purpose, but that the sensations that a man feels when inside a slave's rear orifice were quite different.

I could no longer remember what that felt like. The momentary hardening of my cock while in Tyron's body had reminded me what it had been like to have all one's sensation concentrated in one place, but I could not now imagine what I would have done with the thing.

My Master pushed me away, and I fell onto my side on the red patterned carpet that was spread across the wood planked floor. Where were we? I looked through slitted eyes (an old slavegirl trick; if I looked about inquisitively I would likely be whipped) and saw that this was a bedroom, probably in an inn. My ankles were crossed and tightly bound as well, so my left knee pointed upwards, leaving my crotch exposed. I felt soaking wet, as I invariably did when a man fucked my mouth; for some reason it got me even hotter than vaginal sex, perhaps because I knew my climax was an impossibility. My Master stood and walked out of the bedroom into an adjoining chamber, leaving the door open, and sat at a table with his companions. I knew I would be ignored now until it was time for me to be bathed and fed by the Inn staff.

How strange, that he could walk away after such an intense experience, I thought. Was that what it was like, as a man? I tried to remember. It had been quite awhile since I had really thought about the life I had led before I had been abandoned in this body.

I had been quite sexually active as a man; I had been thirty seven, after all, when Beale had stolen my body, leaving me to live this slave's life, and I had been married and divorced twice. Like any citizen of the Confederation, I had had many partners in my life, perhaps over two hundred. Although I had never had the courage to follow through with my secret fantasies and undergo sex reassignment, nevertheless I had a rich sexual lifestyle, and fucked girls of every type and description, with every fetish you could imagine. For all that experience, however, when I had become a slavegirl it was as if I were a virgin again, completely inexperienced and nervous. None of my prior experiences seemed to have any bearing on my current predicament. The Watchers had blocked the recollection of any particular facts which a slavegirl might not have, so the knowledge and technical expertises I had once had were unknown to me. My knowledge, my mind, essentially, stretched no further than a slavegirl's should. My body was female. My desire was female. It had been five years since I had had any thoughts which would not pass through a clever young slave girl's head. It was strange now, with my brief sojourn as a male still fresh in my memory, to be second-guessing my true nature.

I peered through my lowered lids through the open doorway at the four men gathered at the table. Ten minutes ago I had again been one of them - my body had had none of the inbuilt restrictions that I felt keenly now - my female form's biochemical balance that made it difficult for me to act against the wishes of my Master, the ingrained allergy to Acteonese clothing, the enfeebling, arousing effects of the slaves' bane - and I had been free to do as I pleased, for the space of a half-hour.

And now - what? Because my body was female, because of the chemistry my body produced, because of the pleasing form I possessed, I was simply an instrument of pleasure.

I gazed at the men in the adjoining room. The man sitting to the left of my Master looked familiar. Not familiar in the sense that I perhaps had been used by him, or served him at the dinner table recently. No. He was...he was from before...

My Master spoke to him and, after a moment, pointed in my direction. The stranger peered at me with a bemused expression on his face. Then I recognized him.

It was the King of New Hope.

 

Chapter XVI Return to New Hope

I washed the King's legs and feet with a cotton washcloth, dipping the fine fabric in a basin of boiled, scented water. Another girl, a curly New Brazilian brunette, knelt between his thighs, inexpertly pleasuring him. Her wrists were bound behind her. She sobbed quietly as the King used her mouth. Like me she was of Bendari stock, small boned, tiny, weak, but her breasts were rather larger than mine, and her skin more healthily tropical than mine, which was thin, pale, translucent to the point that bluish veins were visible around my aureloae. She was also younger, as young as I had been when I first found myself within the walls of this castle.

Her predicament was clearly getting the better of her, judging by her racking sobs. It made me feel quite the veteran.

"You'd think she'd get better at it. She's been here six months." Merlin commented dryly. "Oh - she's not another one of our paying customers, is she?"

I didn't dare look up at him, but I heard the King chuckle. "She was jacked in just an hour ago." It dawned on me that the girl was one of my own people, and through slitted eyes I eyed her jealously. In a month, perhaps, or six, or maybe a year, she would in all likelihood return to her former life, none the worse for wear, many credits poorer but a free citizen of the Confederation. No such fate was in store for me. He stood suddenly, pushing the young brunette back onto her haunches. She panted for breath, her lips wet and trembling. "Time for evening Council, my friend. Alisha, do you remember the first punishment I gave you?" I nodded, eyes downcast.

The valet led both of us out into the hallway. He brought us down to the end, where the same restraints that had confined the young Queen and I some five years before still stood. They had been a new innovation of the King's when I had first seen them, based on my holofantasies; now they looked well used and worn.

Once we were restrained, face to face, impaled on our respective columns, our ankles dangling helplessly, the command was given to kiss or be whipped, and I gently pressed my tongue to the trembling young girl's lips. Her eyes were wide as a terrified child's as she stared at me. She returned the kiss, then let her mouth drift close to my ear. "I have been you countless times, Alisha," she whispered, then, to appease the valet, brought her lips to mine once more before braving another communication.

"But those were holoprograms," she continued, her voice cracking in distress but still barely audible. "I have been Eileen for hardly an hour and I fear it is too much for me."

"When will you be freed?" I whispered, after a long, passionate kiss that left us both breathless.

"Never," she choked. "My contract was for permanent exchange. How did you stay sane?" she managed after a quick sob that earned her a swift lash of the whip. The valet seemingly couldn't hear us, but could tell when we slacked in our duty.

"I - I'm not sure I did," I replied, after ten more minutes of intense kissing. "But - but you are a Bendari slave girl. Go with your instinct. It will tell you what to do."

The whip fell again on Eileen's buttocks, and her racking sobs began anew. I wondered why he spared me.

That evening, as we lay on our pallets in the harem, our wrists bound to the iron rings set in the headboards, Eileen whispered quiet words in the dark, shedding light on the mystery. Her wide New Brazilian cheekbones caught the moonlight, framed by her jet black curled mane of hair. Her large breasts, almost as large as a free woman's, nestled against each other as she lay on her side facing me, three feet away and untouchable. Even now she was trembling, her new body seeming to trouble her. She kept looking down at her ample breasts with her large, liquid brown eyes, a deeply troubled expression on her pretty little face.

"The valet who whipped us - me, I mean - was - was my wife. It was her idea to begin with. I mean, I agreed willingly, but she's the one who pushed for a permanent exchange. She chose a valet who's due to be Knighted soon, and she - I mean, he, will purchase me from the King. If he sells me. Oh, God, I didn't know it would be like this," she pleaded breathlessly. "She was always the ambitious one. I -" The harem guard gave her a swift swat with his riding crop, and she immediately fell silent. He rolled her onto her back. I heard her suck in her breath he pushed the fingers of his right hand into her mouth, forcing it wide, as he fingered her cunt with his other hand. He looked at me. "You know better, Alisha. Ten lashes in the morning." Abashed, I quickly rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, listening to Eileen's piteous moans as the guard played with her leisurely.

I wondered if my senses were even now being transmitted on Beale's little porn network. I thought of the thirty-odd girls in the harem. I had recognized only two yesterday afternoon, when I was brought into the castle in the King's royal train, in a wagon cage. The rest of the girls were new, and I was probably, at nineteen, among the oldest. Strange to be old at nineteen, but at least I was still the most beautiful, I told myself. And the King still desired me more than the others.

I wondered how many of the girls were born on Acteon, and how many were Confederation citizens. I stole a glance to my right, where an Archipelago small-mouth girl lay crying softly in her restraints. She returned my gaze, recognizing me, I thought, and began to cry a little harder, breathing heavily through her little O-shaped mouth. Small-mouth girls have no voiceboxes (the extra room is needed for the cocks that are shoved down their throats), and so are mute. But I thought I could tell from her gaze that she was not from this world.

Dear Jesus, I thought. Is every girl in this room of my people? And the men of this castle? Are we all Masters or slaves?

The harem guard gave me the same treatment he gave Eileen, forcing my jaws wide with his fingers smelling of Eileen's saliva and of tobacco, shoving his balled fist into my wet cunt. After five years of daily fucking, my lips parted easily. Perhaps, I thought, this guard had been a colleague of mine some time ago. Perhaps he knew who I was and relished my helpless condition. Or perhaps I was being paranoid, and he was as he appeared, a trained harem guard born in New Hope. Who knows?

It doesn't matter, I realized. I amended my earlier question to myself, making it a statement of fact.

We are all Masters and slaves. There are those who rule and those who serve. What difference was there between Acteon and the Confederation, save the sheen of civilization and the sublimation of one's true nature? I was always a slave, as was Eileen, though neither of us could admit as much freely on a Confederation planet. Here on Acteon neither of us could hide the fact. I wished the poor young thing luck. She would need to be strong, strong enough to realize she was as she was meant to be. It took me almost five years to fully accept the fact that my place was on my knees, no matter what my body told me. I hoped these girls would learn faster than me.

Epilogue

The King has read with interest my journal, written mostly some years ago with Lord Begnir's permission, and has granted me quill and ink to write of the events between my sale to my former body's inhabitant and my arrival here, and a brief closing statement, which I now transcribe. It's my understanding Beale has offered him a fee for publication rights, so I suppose these writings will eventually be for the eyes of the citizens of the Confederation.

I haven't much to say now that the tale has been told. I'm twenty five now. I'm no longer the King's favorite in bed, though I am now married to him, and am the first to be offered to visiting guests, since I am the most skilled in dance and lovemaking, and still attend to him in the bedchamber after he has spent himself on younger girls. I always manage to get one last rise out of him, which is why, I suppose, he keeps me on. The pretty young things don't know enough to do it right. The King's engineers have re-invented rifles, cannon, steamships and so on, though these innovations are hidden discreetly, and the King's guard continue to wear armor and sword. The same with his rivals, and yet there is no war. The Confederation's peacekeeping troops have put a halt to that. Acteon isn't yet ready for membership in the Confederation, but the body trade has proved too lucrative on both sides to allow the chaos of war. True to its initial mandate, Acteon has refused to embrace technology. I suspect the reasons have as much to do with the picturesque surroundings a medieval Acteon provides the renter of a Knight's or slavegirl's body as with the moral compunction's of the original colonists of the planet. Think of it as a theme park. It's one I cannot leave, but if you are reading this, know that you can visit. If you choose to do so, introduce yourself to me, whether by pulling my mouth over your cock or by whispers in the moonlight of the harem. Give me a sign, a wink or gesture, to let me know who you really are. Confederation visitors are getting to be such good actors that I'm having a hard time telling the difference anymore. Or perhaps the Confederation is my own fantasy, a figment of my subconscious to alleviate my suffering. Perhaps I have always been Alisha, Bendari slavegirl. How will I know for certain if you don't give me a sign?

I close with affectionate and utter obedience,

your slave and servant,

Alisha

The End

 

 

 

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© 2001 by Alyssa S. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.