"2565-81" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warlady 1 - 2565 Ad Book 2)2565 A.D.! A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE SECOND DARK AGE OF MAN By Jerome B. Bigge Book Two Chapter Thirty Eight (Lady Sanda's Version of Events) "Lorraine!" I sobbed, her features blurred before me by my own hot tears of shame. Why, Oh, Why Had I Told HER Such Things! Knowing that she herself had been betrayed back in the 20th Cen- tury by her own faithless husband! The betrayal that had driven her to fly up into an awful storm, perhaps seeking an end to her own mental anguish. It seemed as if the entire world was coming down around my ears! I had destroyed everything with my comment! Lost everything that I had worked for my entire life! I thought briefly of suicide, of plunging my dagger into my heart. Of tak- ing poison. Something more effective than the Lorr medicine that had nearly killed my Queen only a couple days ago! I deserved death. To die for what I had done to Lorraine. Only the thought of the innocent life now growing there within my uterus kept me from whipping out my dagger and plunging it right into my heart!* * The attitude of the woman of the 26th Century towards abortion is considerably different than that of women of Lorraine's time. It is not "Right to Life" as Lorraine once said without thinking about it, but the fact that a woman has to really "want" the child she carries before she is allowed to conceive one. (Sanda) "Can I trust you not to destroy yourself?" my Queen asked, a warrioress of Darlanis' now standing there. I suppose Lorraine had motioned her over. "Remember the life you carry within you." I nodded, standing up, feeling like I had just been condem- ned to death. Darlanis' warrioress, a big muscular brunette, quickly stripping me of my weapons. Taking me by the arm as my Queen motioned for her to pause. I saw Lorraine's eyes burn into mine. She was a Queen. My Queen. The Queen that I almost wor- shiped, although Lorraine is not a proud woman and always laughs when people make her out to be something more that she is not. "See that she comes to no harm nor allow her to harm her- self," Lorraine ordered. It was the order of a Queen. I knew I would be watched, observed like some felon awaiting punishment. "Yes, your highness," the warrioress answered, regarding me from beneath the visor of her helmet. She was a trained fighting woman. Bred down the generations to be just what she was. Such is a result of our caste system. I was a Scribe, not a fighter.* * Sanda is an excellent swordswoman, as good as many warrioresses that I have met. She has, however, her own personal reasons for never becoming one of the "black castes", although her own sister was of the Caste of Warrioresses and she was married to a Warrior and has a son who is also a member of the Warriors. (Lorraine) "Come with me, bitch!" the warrioress snapped, dragging me off. Taking down the stairway to the floor below, pushing open a door, roughly shoving me inside a room, the window being barred. "Put your hands up against the wall and spread those legs," the warrioress snapped, kicking the door shut behind herself. I did so, submitting to the embarrassing humiliation of a body search for concealed weapons. The woman checking the inside of my thighs and the rear portion of my strap for any tiny concealed daggers or picks that a woman might carry as a concealed weapon. "This isn't necessary!" I protested, terribly humiliated. "I heard enough to figure that your own Queen isn't very de- lighted with you right now," the brunette warrioress smiled back. "And she gave me my orders too to see that no harm comes to you." I suspected that she was enjoying herself however humiliating me! "Now you can just peel out of those fancy clothes of yours and put this on," the warrioress snapped as she stepped back, in- dicating a brief robe that would cover little of my thighs. I felt "dirty", terribly humiliated. Like I was a slave girl, not a high born free woman, a member of the Trelandarian aristocracy! "No," I sobbed, backing up against the wall of the room, the tears starting to flow again. The Imperial warrioress laughing at me. No doubt she hated me for what I was, and this was her way of "getting even". The window was barred, the room being one used here in the hospital for the treatment of sick slave girls! "Crybaby, aren't you, `fancy lady'," the warrioress laughed, seizing me by the blouse, lifting me nearly off my feet. She was strong, like Lorraine is, and some others that I have known. "Bet you'll go sobbing and weeping and bawling to your beheading when your Queen decides to lop off that pretty head of yours!" "That will be enough!" I heard a woman's voice say, Lorraine standing there in the doorway dressed in a robe, half supported by another warrioress of Darlanis'. "I gave you no orders to abuse her," my Queen spoke to my tormentor, her voice now as cold as ice. The warrioress shrinking back, no doubt in terror of Lorraine, whose temper when aroused can be truly awesome to see! Edging around the Queen like a whipped cur as Lorraine half fell into a chair there by the barred window. The paleness of her face and the set of her thin unrouged lips speaking much of the weakness she still felt from the poison that had nearly taken her life there in the air before Darlanis managed to somehow amazing- ly land her airplane and get medical help for my beloved Queen. "Leave us!" Lorraine snapped, her eyes hard. The women do- ing so. Closing the door behind themselves as they went out. I looked into Lorraine's eyes, saw little there that gave me hope. "Take off your clothing, Sanda," she said to me, much to my surprise. "Everything." Her eyes were hard as they burned into mine. I did so, sobbing, the tears now rolling down my cheeks. Naked now, I stood before her, bare crotched, bare nippled. I did not attempt to conceal myself from her as I blushed with the embarrassment of being so seen by her. The shame of being as naked as a slave girl there before my beloved Queen of Trelandar! "Look at yourself in the mirror, Sanda, and appraise your- self as a slave girl." I did so, weeping, hardly able to see. "And what you would bring in a market?" Lorraine asked. "Fifteen-twenty gold crowns," I sobbed back in reply. "You're worth `more' than that to me," Lorraine answered, a grim smile curving her thin lips. She looked up at me, regarded me as I stood there before her. I remembered seeing her doing the same with slave girls back on her estates before buying one. "You are going to enslave me and then keep me?" I sobbed. Lorraine would no doubt take her full revenge upon me then. She would be able to torment me, to humiliate me as long as she want- ed too! Take my children away, turn me into some rightless fe- male animal! Some slut to pleasure our men at arms, any visitor! "If you ever give yourself to my husband," Lorraine warned. "I-I don't understand," I breathed, standing there, naked. "I am willing to permit my husband slave girls," she smiled. Such was something most wives have to put up with if there are slave girls available. I had done so with my first two husbands. Although when my last husband started in after Maris Marn, a "Darlanis-look-alike" if there ever was one, I did have "enough"! "I think I understand now," I answered. I had been warned very effectively of what would happen should I ever try to ex- press my feelings for Jon physically. I had no doubt either that Lorraine would carry out her threat to enslave me. She had the power, the moral authority if need be to do it. I would have to look for love elsewhere. Not that I would have ever done it, I assure you, but I suppose that Lorraine wanted to make sure that I understood exactly just what would happen to me if I ever did! "Put your clothes back on," Lorraine smiled. "You do have a very attractive figure, Sanda, but one never knows when someone will come in here and perhaps get the wrong ideas about us two." "What I'm trying to figure out is why someone tried to poi- son you with Lorr medicine instead of a more common poison," Queen Darlanis commented to Lorraine as the three of us ate din- ner together. I wondered how much her warrioresses had told her. "I marked the bottle `poison' a week ago as no one can read what it says on it and I was afraid someone would mistake it for something else," I interjected with a smile, the writing on the bottle having been in a language unknown to me or anyone else save for someone like An'na who could read the strange writing of the Lorr. "I suppose whoever poisoned your orange juice thought that it was just some new sort of poison and didn't realize what it actually was." Lorraine giving me a look that made a chill go down my spine as her dark eyes burned into mine for an instant! "Well, now we know," Darlanis commented as she sipped at her wine. The slave girl serving us one of hers, the wench called "Lynn". Lorraine nodding, her eyes still holding my own. I felt the terror rise in my throat. Did she think that I poisoned her? "I'm sorry, Sanda, I should have known better," she said to me, taking my hand. Her words for a brief instant were meaning- less before I suddenly realized what thoughts had been in her mind. Now suddenly everything was clear! And I would have been the logical person to "suspect" too, I realized to my horror! There was a chain of circumstantial evidence that could have got- ten me convicted of attempted regicide in any court in Trelandar! I was in love with Jon, I hated Darlanis, and had Lorraine died I would have "inherited" everything as Prime Minister of Trelandar! All because I had marked that bottle of Lorr medicine "poison"!* * I have no doubt that Sanda's action actually saved my life as otherwise Tara's poisoner would have used something much more ef- fective on me! In any case it was a very close call! (Lorraine) "What still amazes me is how easy it was to believe that you might be the one responsible," Lorraine said to me as we shared drinks later on. Such having become our nightly custom over the short period of a couple months that I had known her. These talks meant a great deal to me, especially as I was always fasci- nated by her tales of a time now only legend to us of the 26th Century. Tales of how men flew in great silver metal birds, and even traveled out into space like the Lorr do. She also spoke of the "dark side" of life then. Of the poverty she had seen, the racism, the sexual prejudices against women such as ourselves. Of streets "unsafe" at night except to those illegally "armed". I have always considered Trella "bad", but "LA" was a lot worse! "I can only hope were our positions reversed that I would have shown the wisdom that you did about the affair," I answered. "What terrifies me is how `easy' it was for me to suspect you," Lorraine replied, studying the wine there in her glass. I nodded, studying her as she sat there. She is in her way an at- tractive woman. Extremely competent. The greatest swordswoman of all time perhaps, although she will deny that if you ask her. "I can hardly blame you considering what happened," I said. The train of "circumstantial evidence" against me was overwhelm- ing. My feelings for Jon, my hatred for Darlanis, all had com- bined together to make it appear as if I had been the one guilty of attempted regicide. A Queen less "just" than Lorraine would have probably have had me killed on the spot without further ado. "I now fear, Sanda, that you will always `remember' the time that I suspected you and what I could have `done' to you had I wished," Lorraine answered. "There will always be that between us now. We have both lost something that was very precious." I saw the tears growing in those dark eyes as she looked up at me. "Steel and friendships both need to be `tempered'," I said. "That is a `saying' of Warrioresses," Lorraine smiled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, "Not one of Scribes." "I once studied the Caste Codes," I told her, remembering. "But you became a Scribe instead of a Warrioress," Lorraine smiled, her eyes glowing once again into mine. She has a way of questioning you that probes your deepest secrets without you be- ing aware of it. In so many ways she reminds me of a Priestess. "I found the ideals of the caste not to my taste," I spoke. "I do," Lorraine answered. I had no doubt of that either. "I do not believe in the killing of innocents," I said. "Neither do I," Lorraine answered back with a smile. 2565 A.D.! A TALE OF ADVENTURE IN THE SECOND DARK AGE OF MAN By Jerome B. Bigge Book Two Chapter Thirty Eight (Lady Sanda's Version of Events) "Lorraine!" I sobbed, her features blurred before me by my own hot tears of shame. Why, Oh, Why Had I Told HER Such Things! Knowing that she herself had been betrayed back in the 20th Cen- tury by her own faithless husband! The betrayal that had driven her to fly up into an awful storm, perhaps seeking an end to her own mental anguish. It seemed as if the entire world was coming down around my ears! I had destroyed everything with my comment! Lost everything that I had worked for my entire life! I thought briefly of suicide, of plunging my dagger into my heart. Of tak- ing poison. Something more effective than the Lorr medicine that had nearly killed my Queen only a couple days ago! I deserved death. To die for what I had done to Lorraine. Only the thought of the innocent life now growing there within my uterus kept me from whipping out my dagger and plunging it right into my heart!* * The attitude of the woman of the 26th Century towards abortion is considerably different than that of women of Lorraine's time. It is not "Right to Life" as Lorraine once said without thinking about it, but the fact that a woman has to really "want" the child she carries before she is allowed to conceive one. (Sanda) "Can I trust you not to destroy yourself?" my Queen asked, a warrioress of Darlanis' now standing there. I suppose Lorraine had motioned her over. "Remember the life you carry within you." I nodded, standing up, feeling like I had just been condem- ned to death. Darlanis' warrioress, a big muscular brunette, quickly stripping me of my weapons. Taking me by the arm as my Queen motioned for her to pause. I saw Lorraine's eyes burn into mine. She was a Queen. My Queen. The Queen that I almost wor- shiped, although Lorraine is not a proud woman and always laughs when people make her out to be something more that she is not. "See that she comes to no harm nor allow her to harm her- self," Lorraine ordered. It was the order of a Queen. I knew I would be watched, observed like some felon awaiting punishment. "Yes, your highness," the warrioress answered, regarding me from beneath the visor of her helmet. She was a trained fighting woman. Bred down the generations to be just what she was. Such is a result of our caste system. I was a Scribe, not a fighter.* * Sanda is an excellent swordswoman, as good as many warrioresses that I have met. She has, however, her own personal reasons for never becoming one of the "black castes", although her own sister was of the Caste of Warrioresses and she was married to a Warrior and has a son who is also a member of the Warriors. (Lorraine) "Come with me, bitch!" the warrioress snapped, dragging me off. Taking down the stairway to the floor below, pushing open a door, roughly shoving me inside a room, the window being barred. "Put your hands up against the wall and spread those legs," the warrioress snapped, kicking the door shut behind herself. I did so, submitting to the embarrassing humiliation of a body search for concealed weapons. The woman checking the inside of my thighs and the rear portion of my strap for any tiny concealed daggers or picks that a woman might carry as a concealed weapon. "This isn't necessary!" I protested, terribly humiliated. "I heard enough to figure that your own Queen isn't very de- lighted with you right now," the brunette warrioress smiled back. "And she gave me my orders too to see that no harm comes to you." I suspected that she was enjoying herself however humiliating me! "Now you can just peel out of those fancy clothes of yours and put this on," the warrioress snapped as she stepped back, in- dicating a brief robe that would cover little of my thighs. I felt "dirty", terribly humiliated. Like I was a slave girl, not a high born free woman, a member of the Trelandarian aristocracy! "No," I sobbed, backing up against the wall of the room, the tears starting to flow again. The Imperial warrioress laughing at me. No doubt she hated me for what I was, and this was her way of "getting even". The window was barred, the room being one used here in the hospital for the treatment of sick slave girls! "Crybaby, aren't you, `fancy lady'," the warrioress laughed, seizing me by the blouse, lifting me nearly off my feet. She was strong, like Lorraine is, and some others that I have known. "Bet you'll go sobbing and weeping and bawling to your beheading when your Queen decides to lop off that pretty head of yours!" "That will be enough!" I heard a woman's voice say, Lorraine standing there in the doorway dressed in a robe, half supported by another warrioress of Darlanis'. "I gave you no orders to abuse her," my Queen spoke to my tormentor, her voice now as cold as ice. The warrioress shrinking back, no doubt in terror of Lorraine, whose temper when aroused can be truly awesome to see! Edging around the Queen like a whipped cur as Lorraine half fell into a chair there by the barred window. The paleness of her face and the set of her thin unrouged lips speaking much of the weakness she still felt from the poison that had nearly taken her life there in the air before Darlanis managed to somehow amazing- ly land her airplane and get medical help for my beloved Queen. "Leave us!" Lorraine snapped, her eyes hard. The women do- ing so. Closing the door behind themselves as they went out. I looked into Lorraine's eyes, saw little there that gave me hope. "Take off your clothing, Sanda," she said to me, much to my surprise. "Everything." Her eyes were hard as they burned into mine. I did so, sobbing, the tears now rolling down my cheeks. Naked now, I stood before her, bare crotched, bare nippled. I did not attempt to conceal myself from her as I blushed with the embarrassment of being so seen by her. The shame of being as naked as a slave girl there before my beloved Queen of Trelandar! "Look at yourself in the mirror, Sanda, and appraise your- self as a slave girl." I did so, weeping, hardly able to see. "And what you would bring in a market?" Lorraine asked. "Fifteen-twenty gold crowns," I sobbed back in reply. "You're worth `more' than that to me," Lorraine answered, a grim smile curving her thin lips. She looked up at me, regarded me as I stood there before her. I remembered seeing her doing the same with slave girls back on her estates before buying one. "You are going to enslave me and then keep me?" I sobbed. Lorraine would no doubt take her full revenge upon me then. She would be able to torment me, to humiliate me as long as she want- ed too! Take my children away, turn me into some rightless fe- male animal! Some slut to pleasure our men at arms, any visitor! "If you ever give yourself to my husband," Lorraine warned. "I-I don't understand," I breathed, standing there, naked. "I am willing to permit my husband slave girls," she smiled. Such was something most wives have to put up with if there are slave girls available. I had done so with my first two husbands. Although when my last husband started in after Maris Marn, a "Darlanis-look-alike" if there ever was one, I did have "enough"! "I think I understand now," I answered. I had been warned very effectively of what would happen should I ever try to ex- press my feelings for Jon physically. I had no doubt either that Lorraine would carry out her threat to enslave me. She had the power, the moral authority if need be to do it. I would have to look for love elsewhere. Not that I would have ever done it, I assure you, but I suppose that Lorraine wanted to make sure that I understood exactly just what would happen to me if I ever did! "Put your clothes back on," Lorraine smiled. "You do have a very attractive figure, Sanda, but one never knows when someone will come in here and perhaps get the wrong ideas about us two." "What I'm trying to figure out is why someone tried to poi- son you with Lorr medicine instead of a more common poison," Queen Darlanis commented to Lorraine as the three of us ate din- ner together. I wondered how much her warrioresses had told her. "I marked the bottle `poison' a week ago as no one can read what it says on it and I was afraid someone would mistake it for something else," I interjected with a smile, the writing on the bottle having been in a language unknown to me or anyone else save for someone like An'na who could read the strange writing of the Lorr. "I suppose whoever poisoned your orange juice thought that it was just some new sort of poison and didn't realize what it actually was." Lorraine giving me a look that made a chill go down my spine as her dark eyes burned into mine for an instant! "Well, now we know," Darlanis commented as she sipped at her wine. The slave girl serving us one of hers, the wench called "Lynn". Lorraine nodding, her eyes still holding my own. I felt the terror rise in my throat. Did she think that I poisoned her? "I'm sorry, Sanda, I should have known better," she said to me, taking my hand. Her words for a brief instant were meaning- less before I suddenly realized what thoughts had been in her mind. Now suddenly everything was clear! And I would have been the logical person to "suspect" too, I realized to my horror! There was a chain of circumstantial evidence that could have got- ten me convicted of attempted regicide in any court in Trelandar! I was in love with Jon, I hated Darlanis, and had Lorraine died I would have "inherited" everything as Prime Minister of Trelandar! All because I had marked that bottle of Lorr medicine "poison"!* * I have no doubt that Sanda's action actually saved my life as otherwise Tara's poisoner would have used something much more ef- fective on me! In any case it was a very close call! (Lorraine) "What still amazes me is how easy it was to believe that you might be the one responsible," Lorraine said to me as we shared drinks later on. Such having become our nightly custom over the short period of a couple months that I had known her. These talks meant a great deal to me, especially as I was always fasci- nated by her tales of a time now only legend to us of the 26th Century. Tales of how men flew in great silver metal birds, and even traveled out into space like the Lorr do. She also spoke of the "dark side" of life then. Of the poverty she had seen, the racism, the sexual prejudices against women such as ourselves. Of streets "unsafe" at night except to those illegally "armed". I have always considered Trella "bad", but "LA" was a lot worse! "I can only hope were our positions reversed that I would have shown the wisdom that you did about the affair," I answered. "What terrifies me is how `easy' it was for me to suspect you," Lorraine replied, studying the wine there in her glass. I nodded, studying her as she sat there. She is in her way an at- tractive woman. Extremely competent. The greatest swordswoman of all time perhaps, although she will deny that if you ask her. "I can hardly blame you considering what happened," I said. The train of "circumstantial evidence" against me was overwhelm- ing. My feelings for Jon, my hatred for Darlanis, all had com- bined together to make it appear as if I had been the one guilty of attempted regicide. A Queen less "just" than Lorraine would have probably have had me killed on the spot without further ado. "I now fear, Sanda, that you will always `remember' the time that I suspected you and what I could have `done' to you had I wished," Lorraine answered. "There will always be that between us now. We have both lost something that was very precious." I saw the tears growing in those dark eyes as she looked up at me. "Steel and friendships both need to be `tempered'," I said. "That is a `saying' of Warrioresses," Lorraine smiled back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, "Not one of Scribes." "I once studied the Caste Codes," I told her, remembering. "But you became a Scribe instead of a Warrioress," Lorraine smiled, her eyes glowing once again into mine. She has a way of questioning you that probes your deepest secrets without you be- ing aware of it. In so many ways she reminds me of a Priestess. "I found the ideals of the caste not to my taste," I spoke. "I do," Lorraine answered. I had no doubt of that either. "I do not believe in the killing of innocents," I said. "Neither do I," Lorraine answered back with a smile. |
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