Lallia: The Slave Girl - Dray Prescot Short Story

By

Alanb Burt Akers (aka Kenneth Bulmer)


© 1996 By H. K. Bulmer
(Reprinted from Fantasy Tales)
This is a story told on the world of Kregen, which orbits the twin suns of 
Antares, four hundred light years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpio. 
This is a story sung and mimed in all the great halls of the cities of Loh and 
Turismond and Havilfar of Vallia and Pandahem and sung and danced around the 
campfires of the hosts in Segesthes but it is not told or sung in any smallest 
part of the continent of Gah.
It tells of Lallia a chained slavegirl one of the beauteous chail sheom. Most 
gorgeous of all the women in the city was Lallia, golden-haired and 
emerald-eyed, of a form to dizzy the senses and of a sweetness of touch that 
would not bruise a flower. Every night her master would chain her to the iron 
slave bar at the foot of his couch with iron chains. He would smile on her with 
a smile of very cruel fondness before he reposed himself to sleep among the 
silks and furs, and she stretched upon the marble floor at the foot of the 
couch.
Not by a full arm's length could Lallia reach her sleeping master. Night by 
night she worked beneath the couch, with a broken shard of pottery, a lacquered 
hair pin, a discarded comb.
Lallia laughed in her captivity and lifted her sweet rose-red lips to her 
master, and in her heart she stored her purpose and in her mind she planned her 
course.
Night by night she worked until at last from beneath the hidden inner rail of 
the couch she stripped free a long and sharp splinter. Like the tongue of a 
risslaca, that splinter, like the horn of the mythical brumby in length a full 
two arm's width stretched wide, at one end as thick as Lallia's calf, at the 
other jagged and sharp and cruel.
Night by night with the deadly splinter in her hand she waited for her master to 
turn on his couch, sleeping so indolently with his purple mouth open, his veined 
purple cheeks puffing, waited for him to twist and turn until he was within 
reach and she knew she would make no mistake.
For three waxings and wanings of Kregen's largest moon, which in Gah is not 
called the Maiden with the Many Smiles, Lallia waited patiently on the cold 
marble.
For one hundred and sixty two days rising and setting of the twin suns, the 
crimson and the emerald, which in Gah are not called Zim and Genodras or even 
Far and Havil Lallia waited.
Her master would boast of how much his chained slave girl, his chail sheom 
Lallia loved him and of how she liked to feel the touch of the slave chains upon 
her rose-pink skin. Like his fellows he believed that her nightly sojourn naked 
upon the marble floor of his bedchamber made her love him more.
On the one hundred and sixty second night after she had torn the splinter free, 
Lallia saw her master's bedclothes slide back from his turning body. He had 
suffered an ague during the day and was restless. He lay exposed. More, he 
twisted sluggishly down the bed. She could see the thick white skin over his 
heart moving with a slow and heavy pulsation. Carefully she selected the space 
between two certain ribs. She pointed her wooden splinter between the two ribs 
at the dull white skin where it sagged and puffed, and she kneeled up tall, for 
she could not stand in the chains shackled to the iron slave bar, and she thrust 
with all her strength.
Who can say what emotions coursed through her breast as she struck? Who can say 
what primitive beast-senses were aroused and slaked in that delicate girl-body? 
She struck in silence and the wooden splinter penetrated the thick white skin 
and pierced through and embedded itself in the beating heart.
Only then her breath broke through her clamped lips in a long and shuddering 
revulsion. For a moment, after her master's huge gasp and lapsing gurgle, Lallia 
remained taut, high-strung, trembling. Then, with all her strength once more, 
she dragged free the splinter. Thick blood gushed in a stream onto the 
bedclothes and the couch and the ornate rugs of Walfarg weave upon the floor 
Carefully, Lallia drew off a sheet from the bed, carefully she wiped the gory 
splinter, and the sheet's whiteness turned a lurid crimson. Carefully she made 
sure that not a single spot of blood had splashed her naked body. Who can say 
what feelings of triumph filled her breast as she wadded the sheet and hurled it 
towards the window? Blood speckled a trail between couch and window. The stained 
sheet lay crumpled beneath the curtains. Perhaps Lallia smile as she bent to 
replace the murderous splinter in its secret cavity beneath the couch. And then 
- and then her face lost all its smiles, her eyes glared, her breath came quick, 
her breast rose and fell in spasmodic horror.
For from the end of the splinter its tip, a full three inches long, was broken 
off, was gone, was nowhere to be seen--instantly her eyes turned back to the 
sheet and she saw with deadly anguish what she had done. In that sheet, proof 
positive and damning evidence, neatly wrapped and waiting to be found, lay the 
broken splinter tip.
She dragged at the chains and shackles, she tugged at the slave bar; but she 
could not break free. No slender slave girl could break the chains that bound 
her to the foot of her master's couch.
All that night as the seven moons of Kregen passed overhead against the 
constellations, and the samphron oil lamps burned low, Lallia lay huddled in her 
chains and her nakedness at the foot of the couch, shackled to the slave bar, 
helpless, waiting for the morning and the discovery and the wrenching away of 
the splinter from its cavity and the matching of the blood-soaked tip. The heady 
scent of moon blooms dizzied her. Then would follow the instant call for the 
torturers, and then if she still lived, the executioner.
Who can say what agonies passed through her mind all that long night?
With the first light of the green sun falling through the window past the thick 
drapes and painting an evil patina upon that blood-bedappled sheet, Lallia 
roused herself. Her fate lay blood-soaked and wrapped in a gory shroud. She 
prepared to play her part to the end, as she had planned, even this late. She 
set up a wailing and a screaming.
The retainers and household servants and slaves rushed in and fell to shrieking 
and moaning at sight of their master lying dead in a rimed crust of his own 
blood.
The trail of blood stains was found. The window was tightly shut--an assassin! A 
master stikitche, it must be, who had entered here, for the closed window proved 
that no ordinary criminal could have done the deed. The sheet was snatched up.
The smell of blood overpowered Lallia. She could not close her eyes and look 
away. The steward lifted the stained bundle, calling that the assassin had wiped 
his blade before he left, as a master stikitche would do, another proof, if any 
was needed. The steward took the upper edge of the sheet, where the golden 
threads and the scarlet and blue embroidery shone with a more sinister lustre. 
He lifted it high.
Lallia's heart must have beaten faster. How she must have dug her teeth into her 
lip, her breath coming fierce and short. Now they would find the wooden splinter 
tip and guess, at once, what she had accomplished. The steward lifted the sheet 
high, and shook it out, and--lo!--it was empty.
Lallia was sold to a more kindly master, who by his lights pampered and petted 
her, allowing her to wear robes during the night and who did not always chain 
her to the slave bar at the foot of his bed. And when he did so he used silver 
chains. Her beauty and allure were so great that any man would dare much for her 
sake. As for her old master, he who had perished because he believed a folk 
myth, after a magnificent funeral and much officious weeping, he was buried in 
the family's ornate tomb, laid to rest with three inches of wood buried in his 
heart.
I have also heard a further ending to this story. In some places of Kregen it is 
often the custom among the high born, who are superstitious in these matters, to 
be embalmed after death, in the fashion of the Ancient Egyptians. As you will 
understand, the allure of Lallia was so great any man would risk much to gain 
her. It was the embalmer of her late master who bought Lallia the Slave Girl.

-- THE END --
  Dray Prescot, like Alan Burt Akers, is the well-known pseudonym of the equally 
  well-known Kenneth Bulmer. The Prescot saga is, according to its author, not 
  really a series as such, but one single story. Each book is written to be read 
  as a complete volume and missing one will not ultimately detract from the 
  pleasure of reading; however, Ken tells us that following the plot-threads is 
  best! In December, DAW Books are to publish the 28th novel in the series, 
  Delia of Vallia a variation in the Prescot saga. Meanwhile Sphere have 
  published seven volumes in his popular The Professionals series under the name 
  of Ken Blake and his Bruno Krauss Sea Wolf books, published by Sphere and 
  Severn House, will have added a further three volumes by the time you read 
  this: They are Shark Raid, Shark America and Shark Trap. Although outside the 
  fantasy field, the author tells us that he is very happy to have been able to 
  make a German U-boat skipper a sympathetic character to English readers. The 
  tale you have just read is Ken's second appearance in Fantasy Tales--he had 
  the cover story way back in our first issue in 1977.