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slender legs in the brief rence
    skirt; her ankles were so close together that they might have been chained; and
    then she put her wrists together back to back over her head, palms out, and
    though she wore slave bracelets.
    Then she said, “Slave,” and spit in my face, whirling away.
    I wondered if it might be she who was my mistress.
    Then another girl, the tall, blond girl, she who had held the coil of marsh
    vine, stood before me, moving with excruciating slowness, as though the music
    could be reflected only from moment to moment, in her breathing, in the beating
    of the heart.
    “Perhaps it is I,” she said, “who am your mistress.”
    She, like the other, spit then in my face and turned away, now moving fully,
    enveloped in the music’s flame.
    One after another of the girls so danced before me, and about me, taunting me,
    laughing at their power, then spitting upon me and turning away.
    The rencers laughed and shouted, clapping, chering the girls on in the dance.
    But most of the time I was ignored, as much as the pole to which I was bound.
    Mostly these girls, saving for a moment or two to humiliate me, danced their
    beauty for the young men of the cicles, that they might be desired, that they
    might be much sought.
    After a time I saw one girl leave the circles, her head back, hair flowing down
    her back, breathing deeply, and scarcely was she through the circles of rencers,
    but a young man followed her, joining her some yards beyond the circle. They
    stood facing one another in the darkness for an Ehn or two, and then I saw him,
    gently, she not protesting, drop his net over her, and then, by this net, she
    not protesting, he led her away/ Together they disappeared in the darkness,
    going over one of the raft bridges to another island, one far from the
    firelight, the crowd, the noise, the dance.
    Then, after some Ehn I saw another girl leave the circile of the dance, and she,
    too, was joined beyond the firelight by a young man and she, too, felt a net
    dropped over her, and she, too, was led away, his willing prize, to secrecy of
    his hut.
    The dance grew more frenzied.
    The girls whirled and writhed, and the crowd clapped and shouted, and the music
    grew ever more wild, barbaric and fantastic.
    And suddenly Telima danced before me.
    I cried out, so startled was I by her beauty.
    It seemed to me that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and
    before me, only slave, she danced her insolence and scorn. Her hands were over
    her hand and, as she danced, she smiled, regarding me. She cut me with her
    beauty more painfully, more cruelly, than might have the knives of a torturer.
    It was her scorn, her contempt for me she danced. In me she aroused aginies of
    desire but in her eyes I read that I was but the object of her amusement and
    contempt.
    And then she unbound me.
    “Go to the hut,” she said.
    I stood there at the pole.
    Torrents of barbaric music swept about us, and there was the clapping and the
    shouting, and the turning, and the twisting and swirling of the rence girls, the
    passion of the dance burning in their bodies.
    “Yes,” she said. “I own you.”
    She spat up in my face.
    “Go to the hut,” she said.
    I stumbled from the pole, making my way through the buffeting circle of dancers,
    through the laughing circles of rencers, shouting and clapping their hands, and
    made my way to Telima’s hut.
    I stood outside in the darkness.
    I wiped her spittle from my face.
    Then, falling to my hands and knees, lowering my head, I crawed into the hut.
    I sat there in the darkness, my head in my hands.
    Outside I could hear the music, the cries and clapping, the shouts of the rence
    girls dancing under the moons of Gor.
    I sat for a long time in the darkness.
    Then Telima entered, as one who owns the hut, as though I was not there.
    “Light the lamp,” she said to me.
    I did so, fumbling in the darkness, striking together the flint and steel,
    sparks falling into the small bowl of dried