Chain Dance

"The figure of the woman, swathed in black, heavily veiled, descended the steps of the slave wagon. Once at the foot of the stairs she stopped and stood for a long moment. Then the musicians began, the hand-drums first, a rhythm of heartbeat and flight.
To the music, beautifully, it seemed the frightened figure ran first here and then there, occasionally avoiding imaginary objects or throwing up her arms, ran as though through the crowds of a burning city-alone, yet somehow suggesting the presence about her of hunted others. Now, in the background, scarcely to be seen, was the figure of a warrior in scarlet cape. He, too, in his way, though hardly seeming to move, approached, and it seemed that wherever the girl might flee there was found the warrior. And then at last his hand was upon her shoulder and she threw back her head and lifted her hands and it seemed her entire body was wretchedness and despair. He turned the figure to him and, with both hands, brushed away hood and veil.
There was a cry of delight from the crowd.
The girl's face was fixed in the dancer's stylized moan of terror, but she was beautiful. I had seen her before, of course, as had Kamchak, but it was startling still to see her thus in the firelight - her hair was long and silken black, her eyes dark, the color of her skin tannish.
She seemed to plead with the warrior but he did not move. She seemed to writhe in misery and try to escape his grip but she did not.
Then he removed his hands from her shoulders and, as the crowd cried out, she sank in abject misery at his feet and performed the ceremony of submission, kneeling, lowering the head and lifting and extending the arms, wrists crossed.
The warrior then turned from her and held out one hand.
Someone from the darkness threw him, coiled, the chain and collar.
He gestured for the woman to rise and she did so and stood before him, head lowered.
He pushed up her head and then, with a click that could be heard throughout the enclosure, closed the collar - a Turian collar - about her throat. The chain to which the collar was attached was a good deal longer than that of the Sirik, containing perhaps twenty feet of length.
Then, to the music, the girl seemed to twist and turn and move away from him, as he played out the chain, until she stood wretched some twenty feet from him at the chain's length. She did not move then for a moment, but stood crouched down, her hands on the chain.
...
The music had stopped.
Then with a suddenness that almost made me jump and the crowd cry out with delight the music began again but this time as a barbaric cry of rebellion and rage and the wench from Port Kar was suddenly a chained she-larl biting and tearing at the chain and she had cast her black robes from her and stood savage revealed in diaphanous, swirling yellow Pleasure Silk. There was now a frenzy and hatred in the dance, a fury even to the baring of teeth and snarling. She turned within the collar, as the Turian collar is designed to permit. She circled the warrior like a captive moon to his imprisoning scarlet sun, always at the length of the chain. Then he would take up a fist of chain, drawing her each time inches closer. At times he would permit her to draw back again, but never to the full length of the chain, and each time he permitted her to withdraw, it was less than the last. The dance consists of serveral phases, depending on the general orbit allowed the girl by the chain. Certain of these phases are very slow, in which there is almost no movement, save perhaps the turning of a head or the movement of a hand; others are defiant and swift; some are graceful and pleading; each time, as the common thread, she is drawn closer to the caped warrior. At last his fist was within the Turian collar itself and he drew the girl, piteous and exhausted, to his lips, subduing her with his kiss, and then her arms were about his neck and unresisting, obedient, her head to his chest, she was lifted lightly in his arms and carried from the firelight."

Book 4, Nomads of Gor, pages 159 - 161 ~¤~



"The drummer and the flautist prepared once more to play. The girl in the long, light chain smiled at me. She, at any rate, was pleased by my response.
A wrist ring was fastened on her right wrist. The long, slender, gleaming chain was fastened to this and, looping down and up, ascended gracefully to a wide chain ring on her collar, through which it freely passed, thence descending, looping down, and ascending, looping up, gracefully, to the left wrist ring. If she were to stand quietly, the palms of her hands on her thighs, the lower portions of the chain, those two dangling loops, would have been about at the level of her knees, just a little higher. The higher portion of the chain, of course, would be at the collar loop.
The musicians began again to play. There is much that can be done with such a chain. It was a dancing chain. Its purpose was not to confine the girl but to allow her to incorporate it in her dance, enhancing the dance with its movements and beauty. It is, of course, symbolic of her bondage, this adding fantastic dimensions of significance to the dance. It is not merely a beautiful woman who dances, but one who can be bought and sold, one who is subject to male ownership. Too, of course, the wrist rings, and the collar, are truly locked on her. There is no doubt about it. It is a slave, with all that that means, who is dancing."

Book 19, Kajira of Gor, pages 142 - 143

4 Chains
"His girls served nude and chained. Each ankle and wrist ring had two staples. Each girl's wrists were joined by about eighteen inches of chain and similarly for her ankles. Further each girl's left wrist was chained to her ankle and her right wrist to her right ankle. This arrangement, lovely on a girl, produces the "four chains," from which the establishment took its name. The four-chain chaining arrangement, of course, and variations upon it, is well known upon gor. Four other paga taverns in Port Kar alone used it. They could not, of course, given the registration of the name by Procopius Minor with the league of taverners, use a reference to it in designating their own places of business. These four taverns, if it is of interest, are the Veminium, the Kailiauk, the Slaves of Ar and the Silver of Tharna."

Book 13, Explorers of Gor, page 42 ~¤~

Dance Page