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Overview
When Filene, a former noblewoman masquerading as a slave, attempts to assassinate the ascendant tribal king, Ottonius, she fails and becomes fully enslaved. The story of her education in proper submission is told in counterpoint to the tale of the powerful but primitive warrior who finds himself drawn into intrigues affecting the destiny of a threatened and crumbling empire.
This ambitious novel, written on an interstellar scale, follows the latest adventures of a man who has fought and killed his way out of obscurity to become a newly crowned king. As events unfold, he finds himself on a bloody and violent path that may lead to the imperial throne itself.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497679221 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 03/03/2015 |
| Series: | Telnarian Histories , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | NOOK Book |
| Pages: | 636 |
| Sales rank: | 1,085,364 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
For more information, visit Norman’s website, gorchronicles.com, which has been specially created for his tremendous fan following and where one may read everything there is to know about his work.
John Norman, born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1931, is the creator of the Gorean Saga, the longest-running series of adventure novels in science fiction history. Starting in December 1966 with Tarnsman of Gor, the series was put on hold after its twenty-fifth installment, Magicians of Gor, in 1988, when DAW refused to publish its successor, Witness of Gor. After several unsuccessful attempts to find a trade publishing outlet, the series was brought back into print in 2001. Norman has also produced a separate, three-installment science fiction series, the Telnarian Histories, plus two other fiction works (Ghost Dance and Time Slave), a nonfiction paperback (Imaginative Sex), and a collection of thirty short stories, entitled Norman Invasions. The Totems of Abydos was published in spring 2012.
All of Norman’s work is available both in print and as ebooks. The Internet has proven to be a fertile ground for the imagination of Norman’s ever-growing fan base, and at Gor Chronicles (www.gorchronicles.com), a website specially created for his tremendous fan following, one may read everything there is to know about this unique fictional culture.
Norman is married and has three children.
Read an Excerpt
The Usurper
Telnarian Histories Book Four
By John Norman
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2015 John NormanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7922-1
CHAPTER 1
"Prepare yourself, Cornhair!" snapped the brunette, who was first girl, and carried a switch.
"'Filene'!" said the blonde.
"Why 'Filene'?" said the brunette.
"It is my name!" said the blonde.
"Why is it your name?" laughed the brunette.
The blonde was silent.
"Speak," said the brunette, "or my switch will play a merry melody on your silken hide, and, as you are, you will feel it, and keenly!"
"Because it is the name Masters have given me!" said the blonde, tears in her eyes. Almost without thinking, she lifted her hand to her throat. She wore, as did the brunette, a Telnarian slave necklace, of the sort favored in some of the provinces. It was all she wore.
"Kneel, Cornhair," said the brunette.
The blonde knelt. Instant obedience is expected in a slave, to any free person, and even to another slave, if possessed of authority over her.
The blonde touched the light, small chain locked about her neck, with its pendant metal disk. The disk, in three languages, including a Herul pictograph, identified her as a property of the Telnarian empire, to be returned, if found, to the office of the provincial governor, in Venitzia. In her transportation to the camp, her naked body bundled in a thick fur sack and hood, the chain had been housed in a soft, leather sleeve, which is not uncommon in the cold, or in a situation where the slave might be exposed to cold. Indoors, or in warmer areas, sleeves are removed from such "necklaces." The reason for this is simple. Men like to see the chain on a slave's neck. Metal against female flesh is sexually stimulating. It is even more so when it is understood that the woman is a slave, and the device is, in effect, a slave collar, which she cannot remove. It does not take long for an enslaved woman to gather that she is now, is expected to be, and must be, a stimulating sexual object.
"You look well on your knees, Cornhair," said the brunette, "—as any slave."
The blonde and the brunette were in a rearward portion of a long tent, one of four at the camp, inside the defense perimeter. These four tents were designed for imperial occupants, even of rank; accordingly, they were floored, insulated, and heated. They were small oases of comfort in the wilderness outside Venitzia, even in the month of Igon, even at the edge of a forest, into which not even Heruls would penetrate, a forest rumored to be roamed by Otungs.
"For what am I to prepare myself?" asked the blonde.
"The camp has a visitor," said the brunette.
"The sought barbarian, he has been found?" exclaimed the blonde. "He, Ottonius!" "The Master, Ottonius," said the brunette.
"Yes," said the blonde, "the Master, Ottonius!" Slaves do not address free persons by their name. They address free men as "Master" and free women as "Mistress."
"It seems he recalls you from the Narcona," said the brunette.
The blonde felt giddy.
"You served him on the ship," said the brunette.
"He did but interrogate me and use me for a servile task," said the blonde.
"What task?" inquired the brunette.
"Polishing his boots," said the blonde.
"That is all?" said the brunette, skeptically.
Putting the slave to a servile task, particularly if she has recently been free, before putting her to one's pleasure, is often thought to be instructive. It helps them better understand what it is to be a slave. Interestingly, the performance of such small, homely tasks, caring for a Master's quarters, cleaning his garments, preparing his food, expectantly awaiting his return, and the opportunity to welcome him, kneeling before him, and such, can be sexually stimulating to the slave. Many a free woman fails to understand the joys of submission, and the yielding totality and warmth of a woman's bondage, for slavery, for the slave, is a wholeness, a mode of being, a way of life, a life of surrender, of serving, of love, and devotion. In helpless bondage, choiceless, mastered, and owned, she is contented, grateful, and fulfilled; she is as she would have herself.
"Yes, Mistress," said the blonde.
As first girl, the brunette was as Mistress to the blonde.
The blonde recalled how the barbarian had taped her mouth shut and bound her, kneeling, at the foot of his bed, and then slept. How her feelings had wavered, and disturbed her, how she had wanted to hate him, and had, at the same time, helpless at the foot of his bed, longed for his hands upon her body, holding and caressing her, with thoughtless, severe, possessive authority, as a slave may be held and caressed. How well the slave knows herself, nothing, and owned, and trembles with a responsiveness no free woman can understand, save in her dreams, thrashing in bonds, or grasped in the implacable might of her Master's arms.
"Why then would he wish you at the supper?" asked the brunette.
"I do not know," said the blonde.
"Your lineaments are acceptable," said the brunette. "That is probably enough."
"Four will serve," said the brunette, "you amongst them. Perhaps, if you beg prettily enough, he may, after the men are done with their business, as the conclusion of an evening's collation of wine and tarts, bed you for his pleasure."
"What is wrong?" asked the brunette.
"Nothing, Mistress," said the blonde.
The heart and body of the blonde churned with tumult. It was with difficulty that she restrained herself from reaching to the floor, to steady herself. It would be unwise, of course, to break position before a superior.
It was as though she suddenly found herself on a plank, unsteady, frightened, precariously located, a yawning abyss disappearing, leagues below.
The time was at hand, for which she had waited, for so long, enduring such hardships, and humiliations, as though she might be naught but another meaningless slave.
Surely no more than one or two in the camp, those who would supply the tool of assassination, whose identity or identities were unknown to her, knew her true identity, that she was not a slave, at all, but, rather, was a free woman, the Lady Publennia Calasalia, and a free woman not merely of the honestori, but of patrician stock, indeed, one once of the Larial Calasalii, before being disavowed, because of waywardness and debts, even to the obliteration of her name from the relevant rolls of lineage. Long ago, in a private audience, late at night, with sober, cunning Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol in the court of the Emperor Aesilesius, he aware of the miseries and nigh destitution of her lot, she had been recruited to perform a tiny task, in which no more than a single drop of blood need be shed, but a drop on which might ride, so delicately, breaking not even the surface, the fate of worlds, and the winds of power, reaching to the ten thousand sectors of an empire, for small things in a single palace, or court, or audience room, or hallway, an order given, a glance exchanged, a nod, might be eventually felt, borne on the wings of light, and piercing the charted thresholds and passes of space, to the farthest outposts of the limitanei, verging on the remote, threatened perimeters of the empire itself.
"Perhaps he will find you of interest," said the brunette.
"'Of interest'!" exclaimed the blonde, angrily.
The brunette looked at her, puzzled. What an odd cry, she thought, from a slave. "You had best hope so," she said, "lest you be whipped, discarded, sold, or slain."
"Of course, Mistress," said the blonde, lowering her head, humbly.
Soon, she told herself, this dreadful matter, with its humiliations and degradations, would be done. The chain then, with haste and abject apologies, might be removed from her neck.
She could not remove it herself, of course. It was on her, as much as on the neck of any slave. How fearful it would be, she thought, to truly be a slave! How she might then pull at that chain, helplessly, wildly, fearfully, and know it truly on her, signifying to all who might look upon her what then she would be, a property, as much as a pig or dog!
Happily it would soon be removed, when her task was done.
Again she touched the necklace.
How fearful to think of being truly a slave, a helpless, lovely, purchasable object, one no stranger to thongs and chains, to gags and blindfolds, to hoods and harnesses, to cells, kennels, and cages, a creature which must kneel, submit, obey, and strive to please, something to be ranked as loot, something to be listed as cargo, something which might be routinely vended from a thousand, indifferent platforms on a thousand, indifferent worlds.
But she would soon be rich, and once more highly placed, with position, and power.
How she would enjoy a hundred vengeances. How she might then buy the brunette, and others, who had slighted or abused her, and teach them then what it might be to be the slaves of a free woman!
But who would supply the delicate knife, light and slender, needlelike, so finely ground, with its transparently coated blade?
Might it be blond Corelius, so handsome, and ironically polite, who had so often treated her as though she might be free, perhaps knowing she was truly free? Or had he been merely mocking one he deemed a helpless slave? Might it be severe Ronisius, who treated her no differently than he did others, assumed slaves, or was this part of a subterfuge on his part, that little attention be brought to her? Or it might be a higher officer, say, Lysis, supply officer of the Narcona. The knife would not be entrusted to a lesser figure, surely. It must be he, then, a higher officer! Certainly it could not be short, ugly Qualius, with his shuffling gait, his porcine countenance and porcine manners, a tender of livestock on the Narcona, that being brought to Venitzia, who had occasionally brought her her gruel, and feasted his eyes upon her as she crouched hungry, wishing to be fed, in her cage. But Phidias, himself, the captain of the Narcona, was in the camp! How anomalous that was! Why should one such as he brave the long trek to the forest, a dangerous journey through frozen terrain, perhaps under the eyes of furtive, lurking Heruls? His post was surely on the ship.
It must be he, then, she thought.
How could wise, cunning Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, who, it was said, was depended upon by the empress mother herself, and was perhaps the mind and will behind the throne, have chosen a better agent to transport a small, black, flat leather case between worlds, thence to bring it from a rude provincial capital to a mysterious rendezvous at the edge of a dark forest?
It must be he, she thought.
But perhaps not!
He may know nothing of the knife.
She did know matters of moment were afoot, as perhaps many in the camp did not, recruitments and alliances, matters supposedly of political and military consequence.
Would not an agent less conspicuous be more judicious?
"Clean and groom yourself, Cornhair," said the brunette. "You are to sparkle."
"Yes, Mistress," said the blonde.
"Slave cosmetics, and slave perfume," said the brunette.
"Such?" inquired the blonde. They were, after all, in a wilderness camp, far even from the modest comforts and amenities of a provincial capital.
"Surely," said the brunette. "You are not a free woman."
Little did the brunette know, thought the blonde. How she would pale, and cringe, if she knew she were free.
We would then see in whose hand the switch reposed!
The blonde thought of the subtleties of the dressing table, before which she might kneel, and avail herself of the assorted pencils and brushes, disks and vials, on its surface, and in its tiny, shallow drawers. How different those articles and supplies were from those with which she had once been familiar, ordered at great expense from a dozen worlds, long ago, before she had fallen on straitened times. How little she had thought of such things then, the darins slipping through her small fingers like water, before the glistening, spinning wheels and the tiny plates on the marked tables had turned against her. She had fled creditors on more than one world, only on another to once more drain family resources and accounts.
How she despised that miscellany, suitable for slaves, on the low table.
Even the mirror was small, and cheap, mounted in its unpainted frame. How different it was from the large, broad, ornate, expensive mirrors she had had installed in her various boudoirs, particularly before falling upon her straitened times.
"How are we to garb ourselves?" asked the blonde. "In serving gowns, as at the captain's table, on the Narcona?"
They were ample, flowing, long, tasteful, and modest.
"You are no longer on the Narcona," said the brunette.
"How, then?" said the blonde.
"In tavern tunics," said the brunette.
"Surely not!" said the blonde.
"Why not?" inquired the brunette.
"They are so tiny, so short, there is so little to them, they are too revealing."
"They are fit for slaves," said the brunette.
"One might as well be naked," said the blonde, petulantly.
"If the men grow drunk, you may well be," said the brunette.
The blonde shuddered.
"Accustom yourself to what you are," said the brunette. "You are a slave, a property, to be exhibited, or displayed, in any way Masters might wish."
"Still!" protested the blonde.
"Do not fear," said the brunette, "there will be no free women present, to beat you, because you are beautiful and owned by men."
"Such tunics are disgraceful," said the blonde.
"Not on a slave," said the brunette.
"They are too tiny, too short, too revealing," said the blonde.
"You will wear them," said the brunette.
"As Mistress wishes," said the blonde.
"Men like them," said the brunette, "and do they not excite you, as well, the display, the revealing to all who look upon you what you are; do they not well impress upon you your helplessness and vulnerability; do they not mark you as a mere property, an object whose very raison d'être is to delight. Have not women been bred over millennia for the pleasure of men? And what is an enslaving but putting the confirmation and seal of legality, of implacable law, on the decree of nature? And surely the touch of such things on your skin, a rag, a rope, a leather strap, a collar, heats your limbs and belly."
"Please do not speak so!" cried the blonde.
"And is there not a reciprocity here, between women and men, between slaves, and Masters?" A tiny cry of anguish escaped the blonde.
"Have I dismayed Cornhair?" said the brunette.
"Of course not," said the blonde, looking away, adding, "—Mistress."
"You are a slave," said the brunette, "a plaything for men. Make them cry out for the having of you. What other power do we have?"
"Where are the others?" asked the blonde.
"They prepare themselves elsewhere," said the brunette.
"I am then different, special?" said the blonde.
"Apparently," said the brunette.
"How so?" asked the blonde.
"I do not know," said the brunette. "But I do not think you are surprised."
"Mistress?"
"There are subtleties here," said the brunette, "things I do not understand."
"What sorts of things, Mistress?" said the blonde.
"Do not concern yourself," said the brunette.
"Has it to do with a Master, or Masters?" asked the blonde.
"Do not concern yourself," said the brunette.
"Perhaps I have been spoken of, or you have noted my behavior being unusually observed or monitored?"
"The things are subtle, hard to place," said the brunette.
"Perhaps you have seen one with a closed package, a small, flat box, one storing it, one who might have glanced at me?" said the blonde.
The brunette regarded her, puzzled.
"Perhaps I am to be given something, a gift?"
"A gift?" said the brunette.
"Yes," said the blonde, "a gift, in a small, flat, black, leather case, perhaps an anklet, a strand of beads, a bracelet."
"What are you talking about?" asked the brunette.
"Nothing," said the blonde.
"Are you mad?"
"No, Mistress."
"You smile?" said the brunette.
"Forgive me," said the blonde.
"Consider our group," said the brunette, "shipped from Lisle on the Narcona, brought to Venitzia on Tangara, and then carried here, into the wilderness."
"Mistress?" said the blonde, uncertainly.
"Are we not a very unusual group, an anomalous group?"
"How so?" asked the blonde.
"There are twenty of us, twenty," she said.
"Mistress?"
"Surely you are aware of what we all have in common?"
"We are all slaves," said the blonde.
"Other than that," said the brunette.
"What?" asked the blonde.
"Not one of us is branded," she said.
"So?" said the blonde.
"An unbranded slave is extremely rare," said the brunette. "Many markets will not handle an unbranded slave. Many ships will not transport them between worlds. You can understand the commercial and societal wisdom of marking slaves. It is an almost universal practice. On many worlds, it is required by law."
The blonde smiled to herself. She was not a slave, of course, but, if she were the only unmarked girl in the group, that would have surely excited undue speculation and interest. Accordingly, brilliant Iaachus, in his cunning, had arranged that she would not be conspicuous in her group on account of the absence of an expected slave mark, perhaps the tiny, tasteful "slave rose." If she was not to be marked, for she was free, then let the others, true slaves, lowly and owned, be unmarked, as well.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Usurper by John Norman. Copyright © 2015 John Norman. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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