Lallia The Slave Girl

This is a story I found before, this story is reprinted from Fantasy Tales. I do not own any other copyrights. Please enjoy! Thanks! --KatDon 

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 slave girl 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 --