Desire's Sirocco

Desire’s Sirocco

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Chapter One

Jameela sat with her hands clenched in her lap, eyes on the floor, knees pressed tightly together. Every movement, every sound intensified the fear invading her body and renewed the trembling she could not control. With her heart beating wildly and sweat forming in her armpits, she was one shallow breath from fainting.

“You signed the consent form, did you not?” the Master’s chancellor asked. His words were spoken in a monotone, falling out of his mouth as though by memory.

Without lifting her gaze from the sleek hardwood floor, Jameela nodded silently.

Papers rattled. “And you brought the proper documentation from the physician?”

Another slow nod came from the young woman who knew better than to make eye contact with the chancellor or speak unless given express permission to do so.

The door at the far end of the sparsely furnished room opened and Jameela flinched. She desperately wanted to look up, but exercising every ounce of restraint she possessed she managed to keep her head down. Dagan had trained her well over the last few weeks.

“They are ready for her now,” a man with an oddly inflected, deep, bass voice said.

“Very well,” the chancellor acknowledged. His staccato words scraping like a rasp across Jameela’s nerves.

Scraping his chair back from the ornate desk behind which he had been sitting, Brother Qutaybah came to stand in front of Jameela. “Rise and follow me,” he ordered.

A small whimper she could not prevent escaped Jameela’s throat as she quickly came to her feet. She clutched her hands demurely at her waist as she had been instructed to do. Her gaze transferred from the plank flooring to the heels of Brother Qutaybah’s highly polished boot heels as she kept the required five-foot distance between them as she followed. From the corner of her eye, she saw the toes of another pair of dark brown boots as they passed the man with the deep voice.

“The room will be dark when we enter,” Brother Qutaybah stated as he continued through the opened doorway and into the chill corridor. “You remember what is required?”

Jameela knew a moment of sheer panic as she wondered if he would see her nod. Was he looking back over his shoulder or was his back still to her as he walked briskly along? She dared not risk looking up to find out.

“Well?” Brother Qutaybah snapped. He stopped so suddenly she almost plowed into his thin as a rail body.

Jameela jumped back, her clenched hands tightening painfully around one another. Had she accidentally touched the person of the Master’s chancellor, she would surely have fainted dead away. As it was her heart was beating so fast, she feared it would explode in her chest.

“Answer me, woman!”

“Yes, Sir,” she answered quickly, quaking like a leaf in the storm of his annoyance.

“Yes, Sir, what?” Brother Qutaybah asked impatiently.

“Yes, Sir, I know what is expected of me in the Chamber,” she said, her voice breaking.

For a long moment, Brother Qutaybah stood there, staring at her. She could feel the disapproval in his silent gaze; hear the harsh expulsion of breath before he clucked his tongue in what sounded like disgust to her ears.

“I see nothing at all in you that will suit the needs of the Conclave,” Brother Qutaybah said, “but I suppose Lord Dagan is privy to attributes he feels warrant your admission.”

Tears formed in Jameela’s eyes and her lower lip quivered. Though Dagan had berated her often during training he had not used insults.

“Even hags have some use, I suppose,” Brother Qutaybah said with a snort. He turned around and continued down the corridor.

Her throat clogging with hurt, Jameela was having a hard time keeping up with his long-legged stride. Keeping her attention locked on those shiny boot heels, she tried to ignore the fear his words had caused. With a self-esteem that was as fragile as a snowflake, she wondered if the Conclave would reject her and cast her back to the Outside world. The thought of such a thing happening sent the tears down her ashen cheeks.

The corridor grew colder the farther they traversed its length. The bare floor began to slant downward and the walls to narrow, seeming to close in around her. Where there had been brightly burning torches every ten feet or so, the lights now were ranged further apart and were dimmer, sputtering in the ever-increasing cold that had set Jameela’s teeth to chattering. Growing claustrophobic in the narrowing tunnel, unnerved by the decreasing warmth and illumination, the young woman moaned when the wooden plank flooring turned to thinly crushed gravel for she was barefoot and the stones were uncomfortable—if not actually painful—beneath the soles of her feet.

“Useless,” Brother Qutaybah proclaimed. “No stamina whatsoever, more timid than a mouse and far less attractive.”

Jameela bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from whimpering. Her fear of the Master’s chancellor had turned her spine to jelly. Yet, had she been able to see his face, her terror would have increased threefold for the brutal gleam in his slanted eyes and the sneer on his cadaverously thin face might well have stopped her pounding heart.

What seemed like an hour passed before Brother Qutaybah slacked his rapid pace. The tunnel had narrowed to a thin sliver of rock-hewn wall, glistening damply within the light cast from a lone torch.

Lifting her gaze a few inches, Jameela could see a narrow wooden door banded with rusted metal framed in the fieldstone. When Brother Qutaybah knocked sharply upon the door, Jameela squeezed her eyes shut, her terror escalating with every shallow breath.

From behind the door a command was barked, giving them permission to enter. Jameela opened her eyes, recognizing that authoritative voice. She did not know whether to be relieved or heartsick that Dagan would be privy to her examination by the Conclave.

Brother Qutaybah turned to face her. “Look at me,” he ordered.

Jameela lifted her head. Staring into the cadaverous face of the Master’s chancellor brought hot bile to the young woman’s throat. She feared the one who would purchase her—if, indeed, one of the men did—would look like this horrid, ugly man. She dared not hope he would resemble in any way her trainer, Dagan Kiel, for fear the disappointment would be more than she could bear.

Brother Qutaybah pursed his lips tightly as his hawk-like gaze roamed over Jameela’s trembling form. The look on his face gave mute evidence that he found her lacking in some important way for his eyes rolled before he spoke.

“Explain to me what happens from this moment on,” he said.

Jameela had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could speak. Though she held his stony stare, she longed to look away, to rid her sight of his dreadful countenance.

“You will open the door,” she said, paraphrasing Dagan’s tutorial, “and I will enter alone. I am to walk straightforward fifteen standard paces into the room and stop. I will lower my hands to my sides and wait until I am bidden to remove m…my robe.”

“Thank Zi Dingir I shall not be there to witness that repulsive sight,” Brother Qutaybah muttered. “What then?”

The shaft of hurt his words caused brought more tears down her pale cheeks. Her chin trembled but she managed to reply, “I will do as I am bid by the members of the Conclave.”

The Master’s chancellor clucked his tongue. “The only thing they will bid you do is cover your revolting nakedness and vacate the Chamber.” He shook his head. “What was Dagan thinking?” With a derisive snort, he turned and opened the door.

The room beyond was pitch-black and the air from the opening was like a frigid blast of arctic wind from the frozen Northlands. It took every scrap of Jameela’s strength to enter that ebony space, feeling the chill from the stone flooring beneath her feet all the way to her calves. When the door closed quickly, sharply behind her, she jumped, terror widening her eyes though there was nothing she could see in the darkness surrounding her.

Feeling lost, disoriented in the stygian space pressing in upon her, she began to breathe quickly, terrified of taking another step. She stood there quaking violently, her teeth clicking together.

“Come forward.”

It was Dagan who commanded her and she took comfort in the fact that the two words had been spoken in his normal, well-modulated voice and not thrown at her like a dagger. Knowing he was nearby—for his voice was just off to her right—took the edge off the fear roiling within her.

Stilling the desire to turn and run back toward the place where she’d entered, she stiffened her spine, dug her fingers into the silk rope that circled her waist and served as a belt to the coarse robe covering her, and stepped forward fifteen paces, counting them off in her head.

With a suddenness that brought a gasp of panic from the young woman, a bright light flared high above her. She looked up at the burning torch and blinked as another then another and still another flared to life. Within in the space of a few heartbeats, the Chamber was ringed with fierce, bright light.

Blinking against the intrusion of the intense illumination, Jameela became aware of the high wooden balcony that encircled the Chamber. Twenty feet or more above her, the balcony was peopled with the dark silhouettes of robed men. The glare, making it impossible to see the features of the hooded men positioned in front of the torches, hurt her eyes and she looked away, only to find herself staring at a lone man at the far end of the Chamber, stationed below the sweep of the balcony.

Dagan stood there with arms crossed over his wide chest, booted feet planted apart. His uniform of the black silk shirt and tight leather britches of a Trainer reflected the harsh overhead light.

Jameela smiled timidly at him but when he gave no indication he even knew her, she looked down at the rough stone beneath her bare feet.

There was no sound within the Chamber. Though she was keenly aware of the men ranged above her along the balcony, she heard no movement, discerned no audible breaths. The Brothers were as still as statues and generating as much warmth and welcome as their stone counterparts. It was the silence, the stillness that increased Jameela’s terror and threatened to buckle her knees. It was all she could do to remember to lower her arms to her sides to await the pleasure of the Conclave.

From high above her—perhaps the ceiling directly over her head—a deep gong sounded. The sound was ominous and she looked up, searching Dagan’s still face. From the distance at which he stood—fifteen feet or so—she could not see his eyes clearly but when he dipped his head in a slow nod, she knew he was giving her permission to remove her robe.

The thought of disrobing before the soundless, forbidding men circled around her gave her pause. She kept her attention riveted to Dagan’s expressionless face, wishing he would come to her, take her arm and escort her from this horrid place. But Dagan continued to stare at her, making no move to comfort her in any way. Pleading with her eyes, begging him mentally to rescue her, she was devastated when he looked away, seeming to dismiss her as being of no value. Through the silence, she heard his low, aggravated release of breath.

Though over the last three weeks of her training she had wished—prayed, actually—that Dagan would keep her for his own, she now knew he was but an employee of the Conclave, a Trainer whose duty it was to instruct the women of the Conclave’s seraglio. Trainers did not have women of their own for Dagan had explained to her that such men were surgically altered so they would not be tempted to taste the forbidden favors of the Conclave’s womenfolk. Learning such devastating news about the handsome man for whom she had begun to entertain lustful fantasies, had been a blow.