Chapter 84 The Bondage of the Seven Cords
Ming-tsu watched nervously, as Dao strode toward the wall of implements and
removed a long coil of narrow-gauge rope. He studied it briefly, making sure
that it's length and thickness was suitable for his sinister purpose, and then
made his way back toward the girl on the pedestal.
Ming-tsu still wriggled around on the pedestal, frantically trying to pull
her slender arms free from the Scorpions' grasp. But against their superior
strength, her efforts were to of little avail. In fact, Chiang Chan found her
seductive gyrations stimulating in the extreme. So much so that for a moment he
almost decided to forgo the bondage altogether and bury his manly prick between
her velvety thighs. But, he reasoned, he had extolled patience to Dao only a
moment ago; he would look foolish if he were to be overhasty in prosecuting his
lust now. Time, surely, he consoled himself, was not on the side of the
luscious, dark-haired courtesan.
Dao began by cutting a short length of rope and then taking the left ankle
of the kneeling concubine, and wrapping it three times with the cord before
affixing the rope to a sturdy metal anchor that projected from the side of the
pedestal.
Ming-tsu grimaced in pain as Dao proceeded to repeat the process on her
right foot. Her knees and shins now bore her entire weight, with her feet
extended behind her, soles upturned.
"Lovely," Chiang Chan whispered as the shapely courtesan continued to try
to escape the grasp of Dao and Lin. But now that her ankles were firmly
secured, both she and they knew that her struggles were no more than an exercise
in futility.
Dao then cut a much longer length of the narrow gauge cord and looped it
around Ming-tsu's right upper thigh twice.
He was just about to tighten the cord when Chiang's voice stopped him.
"No, Dao; about half an inch higher. I think you will find that there is a
most sensitive cluster of nerves right there."
Ming-tsu held her breath as Dao adjusted the rope slightly.
"Close, but just a hair higher, I think, Dao," Chiang Chan instructed. "My
uncle Richard has studied the female body with great care for many years,
Ming-tsu. It would be a great shame to waste the product of his researches,
would it not?" Chiang Chan smiled with cruel amusement before addressing Dao
again. "Yes, right there, I should say. Now, pull the rope tight, and we shall
see if we have guessed correctly."
"Agghhh!" Ming-tsu gasped in pain as the crooked-toothed Scorpion pulled
half the slack out of the binding cord with one swift movement. She looked up
to see Dao staring fixedly at her while he continued to tighten the thigh-cord.
"Tighter, Dao, pull it tighter," Lin chirped.
As Dao tightened the rope he searched Ming-tsu's lovely face for signs of
anguish. She glared back at him, but there was no mistaking the sparkle of
half-formed tears in her eyes -- Chiang Chan had chosen the binding spot well.
The almond-eyed concubine winced in pain as she watched the flesh-gripping
black rope sink ever deeper into her honey-gold thigh-flesh.
Chiang Chan smiled at Ming-tsu's groan. "I see that my uncle's labors were
not in vain."
Ming-tsu continued to wrestle with the wrist-holders while Dao muscled her
thigh toward the edge of the U-arm by pulling on the thigh-rope. Once her leg
had been pulled wide, so that it rested against the outer edge of the pedestal,
Dao tied the taut cord off around a hook that extended outward from the front of
the pillar on Ming-tsu's right.
Then he repeated the process on her left leg, taking the fourth cord and
cinching Ming-tsu's other thigh in the same manner, encircling it, as he had
her other leg, some six or eight inches below the alluring juncture of her
parted legs, and then lashing that rope to the front of the pillar on her left.
The thigh-ropes, lashed to the front of the pillars as they were, pulled
Ming-tsu's lower body forward slightly. Ming-tsu heard Lin, who was standing
obliquely behind her holding her left wrist, whistle softly, obviously pleased
with the way the leg-ropes accentuated the curves of her delicious derriere.
When we was done with the thigh-ropes, Dao took the wrist that Lin had been
holding, and encircled it fourt times with the fifth cord, before stretching her
arm up and out as far as it could possibly go, and then lashing the wrist rope
to a ring on the back side of the pillar; he quickly took a sixth cord and did
the same to her other wrist, after Zheng had released it to his care, and in
moments Ming-tsu's upper body formed a graceful Y with her wrists securely bound
to the highest points on the pillars that she was capable of reaching.
"Yeah, that oughta hold the wench," Lin said with youthful enthusiasm.
"C'mon, boss. Let us at her! We'll make her talk!"
Having finished the sixth cord, Dao wiped his brow and stepped back to
admire his handiwork. The torches mounted high on the circular columns bathed
Ming-tsu's flesh in a warm sea of red-orange light. Dao stood behind her,
marveling at Feng's ingenious conception of binding a young woman's legs to the
front of the pillar, while binding her arms to the rear. That posture had given
Chah-lin's slender body an attractive double curve; in Ming-tsu's case the
effect was breathtaking. Every muscle and sinew in her arms was pulled taut;
the planes and hollows of her tapering back alternated gracefully, and the
sensuous arch of her spine above her slim waist accentuated the eye-catching
curves of her heart-shaped bottom.
Meanwhile the Ox had circled around the kneeling beauty to join Chiang Chan
in admiring the frontal view of the bound concubine. Ming-tsu's face was
flushed with humiliation; her tightly-cinched thighs were spread brazenly, and
the luscious petals of her sex were shamelessly displayed. And, just as the
ropes that held her pulled-back arms accentuated the shape of her bottom, the
position also served to forced Ming-tsu's delicious breasts both up and out.
Chiang Chan felt his heart race faster as he watched the gentle rise and
fall of her dark-nippled treasures, their three shiny needle-hilts sparkling in
the torchlight. Ming-tsu's marvelous breasts were tilted upwards, like
prayerful hands in supplication to a forgiving god. Chiang Chan smiled
enigmatically as he considered that imagery with a Professor Leung-like
thoroughness: there were no forgiving gods in the Black Pagoda. There were no
forgiving gods in Shanghai. The only gods in Shanghai, as he had often remarked
to himself, were those of cruelty, vengeance, and lust.
For a long moment Chiang Chan looked down at his father's voluptuous
concubine, picturing himself as an omnipotent deity to whom this exquisite
creature had offered up her magnificent young body in sacrifice. But soon the
mood passed and there were once again no symbols in the dungeon of the Black
Pagoda. He was just a man, with three lust-hardened henchmen, and Ming-tsu was
just a woman. She was not merely an image of woman, such as poets and painters
imagine. She was a woman of flesh and blood, this woman whose fate he held in
his hands. She was a courtesan who had tasted the sweetest pleasures a woman's
body could know, but whose turn it was now to experience the most dreadful
suffering....
Yin and yang.
Chiang Chan smiled grimly down at Ming-tsu's nude body and congratulated
himself on choosing the Pillars and the Pedestal as a most exciting sequel to
the Whipping Pit.
********
Dao had just finished cutting the lengthy seventh cord when Chiang Chan
stopped him with a raised hand. "Not yet; we shall continue without it for the
moment."
Taking advantage of this momentary hiatus, Ming-tsu once again tried her
wiles on the leader of the Scorpions. Moving her pelvis in a slow suggestive
circle, she whispered, "You don't have to hurt me, you know."
Chiang Chan licked his lips as he watched Ming-tsu's gentle undulations.
"You do us an injustice, my dear," he said with a thin smile. "We don't 'have'
to hurt you. We don't even 'need' to hurt you." The heir to the House of Chan
glanced quickly at his three minions in turn, as his lips widened into a vulpine
sneer. "We want to hurt you."
The Ox grunted loudly in approbation, while Lin snickered his assent.
Meanwhile Ming-tsu felt hands, big, powerful hands, on her bottom. Dao's hands.
Chiang Chan's stern gaze slid down the front of her body with the cold
implacability of a glacier. "And we shall hurt you very badly indeed unless you
tell us what we want to know."
Ming-tsu's eyes brown eyes welled with tears of frustration and despair.
"But I have told you everything."
"All you've told us, so far, whore," Dao growled, as he stood in the open
end of the U while his hands continued to fondle the warmth of Ming-tsu's
splendid asscheeks, "is that we're liars, thieves, and scum!"
As if by some mysterious hand, the torchlight seemed to have waned in the
last few minutes. Ming-tsu felt as if she were on a circular stage, her nude
body illuminated by chandeliers on either side of her, while around her an eager
audience watched from the darkness. She could make out Chiang Chan's figure in
front of her, but could hardly see his face; she felt Dao press his body -- and
his virile erection -- firmly against her hips and buttocks as he had earlier
in the day. The other two Scorpions seemed to have melted into the shadows.
Chiang Chan's voice cut through the murky dimness of the dungeon with the
sharp authority of a caliph's scimitar. "Where are the jewels, Ming-tsu? Where
can we find Luk-Yee? Speak and you may yet redeem yourself in the eyes of my
father. The path of silence is the path of suffering."
Ming-tsu took a deep breath, only too conscious of how that simplest of
actions must have drawn her captor's cruel eyes to her defenseless breasts.
"Please ... I have told you ... I don't know. I have only met Luk Yee a few
times..."
"And yet you admit him into your home in the raiment of a whore, and we
find you moments later kneeling on the floor?" Chiang snorted derisively. "You
may have deceived my father, woman; you shall not deceive me!"
Then he turned to his three henchmen. "Flog her! Flog her well, my friends
-- the first man to make her talk or make her scream shall have the pleasure of
the fourth needle!"
Chiang Chan met Ming-tsu's pitiful, protesting gaze with an imperious glare
that was as icily unfeeling as a Tibetan mountaintop. "It is only a matter of
time before we loosen your pretty tongue!"
