Jabrin Fort was an imposing mudbrick structure five stories high with a tower and round-topped crenelations along the battlements. There was a notice in Arabic nailed to the enormous wooden door, which Zara had to use her whole weight to open, before pushing us in.

Immediately inside it was cool and dark, made more so when Zara closed the door behind us and slid home an enormous timber baulk to secure the entrance. The place smelled of damp earth, dust, and ancient decay.

"We won't be disturbed here - it's the Eid holiday. Nobody works, everyone stays home and fasts until sundown. This place has been undergoing restoration for years, but nobody is in any great hurry. That's the way we work here."

Zara hustled us along a corridor and across a big courtyard, then through a door that led into a small anteroom of some sort. Set in one wall were several small recesses with iron grilles across them. Zara swung one of the grilles open and pushed me backwards into the recess. It was terribly small - barely wider than my body - and shaped roughly like a seat. I found myself sitting on this seat, but the roof was so low I was obliged to bend forward such that my breasts touched my thighs and my shoulders touched the roof. Zara closed the grille and slid a pin in a hole to keep it closed. There was clearly no need to lock it, for I could barely move, much less get my chained hands anywhere near the grille.

"You'll be all right there for a bit. We'll deal with the lovely Megan first," she said with a smile that could almost have been pleasant, had it not been for the situation we were in.

"Nnnmph!" Megan cried, as she was bundled away through a door into the neighbouring room. I could not see what was happening, but I could hear the sound of several male voices speaking mainly in Arabic, interspersed with Zara's husky tones from time to time. Sometimes I thought I heard English words, but could not make them out.

After perhaps ten minutes I heard Megan. The wad of leather strapped in her mouth could not stifle the cries of pain and the periodic whimperings, and I could not help but cry out in response, my garbled utterances achieving nothing, however. I wondered what they were doing in there, and the thought scared me. There was no sound that I might associate with a beating, such as the crack of a whip or the sound of a lash or paddle striking flesh. I thought I could hear what almost sounded like a small tap-tap-tap, but even this was faint, and I could not figure it out.

I stared at my feet protruding from the black robe and tried to ignore the feel of the steel cuffs on my wrists and ankles. I looked around the empty, brown-walled room with the timber beamed ceiling, but this gained me no enlightenment as to where this was all leading, and I felt like a patient in a dentist's waiting room as I listened to the gagged squeals and cries of Megan with sinking heart.

Megan didn't return. Instead, it was Zara alone who came to fetch me, perhaps an hour later, unlocking my cell door and hauling me out. When I entered the adjacent room, I was taken aback to see three men there, two of whom were Mohammed and Rashid, while the third was a small elderly man with a straggly white beard and piercing eyes. He wore a white dishdash and a white headdress in the Omani turban style. 

He was sitting astride a large section of tree trunk about two metres long and perhaps seventy centimetres in diameter. One end of the trunk had been cut at a steep angle such that a board had been screwed to this face, extending to form a sloping seat-back. Or so I found out when my ankle chain was removed and I was made to straddle the log with my back against the reclining board. 

My analogy with the dentist's chair took on a whole new meaning as Mohammed produced some rope, and while Zara lifted my skirts above my waist, the brothers bound me to the board with coils of rope above and below my breasts and at my navel, leaving me naked and exposed from the waist down.

I was determined to be strong and not make any sign of submission or pleading. I did not know what was going on, but I was sure that nothing I did would change what was about to happen to me. The best I could do would be to accept it with whatever dignity I could muster. More ropes were tied to my ankles, pulling my feet back off the earth floor and securing them so that my knees were bent and more weight came on my crotch and the ropes around my torso.

Mohammed picked up a felt pen from beside the log and bent over my crotch. I felt the tip of the pen writing on my flesh just above my little black thatch. Then he leaned forward and smiled at me.

"We Arabs are very possessive of our women. The man to whom you and Megan are being sold wants his property to be identifiable and for anybody trespassing to be aware of what will befall them in such circumstances. You might make a comparison with branding, but that would be very crude. We will instead be making a little tattoo above your pussy, to identify you as the property of Salim bin Aziz. It will hurt a little, so you will remain gagged, for everybody's benefit. Okay?"

Okay? No it was bloody not okay and how dare they tattoo me and I was not anybody's damned property! I struggled and mmphed as best I could, forgetting any pretence of dignity at that time, but the ropes held me tight to the board, and my protests were an incomprehensible series of moans and whinings. As my struggles subsided, Mohammed suggested perhaps it would be better if I stayed still for a little while, and the white-bearded man bent to pick up a bowl from where it had been hidden down by his feet. I saw it contained a black inky liquid and some small tools, looking almost like a hammer and an adze, but made out of thin bamboo. I caught a glimpse of what looked like two fine needles protruding from the end of the ads.

A coldness struck my flesh as he wiped it with something, and I caught a whiff of methylated spirits. Then the first pain came, and I learned the meaning of the tapping sound. This was the sound of the small wooden hammer tapping the back of the adze, which drove the needles into my skin. I was still outraged at this treatment, but the outrage became submerged by the fire now spreading from my abdomen as the man concentrated on his work, sending fiery shafts up my nerve endings. I chewed on the gag, determined not to cry out, but could barely suppress further whimpers. I felt the tears running down my face beneath the mask, while Zara and her brothers watched the operation with the critical interest of those ensuring a proper job is done on their asset. I closed my eyes and tried to take myself to another place, but somehow it didn't work, and the fire above my crotch continued to spread.

Even visits to the dentist's chair come to an end, although I had no idea how long I suffered the pain of the needles. Eventually the little man wiped the area clean and said something to his benefactors, and there was much smiling and polite exchanges, before the man packed his stuff into a small canvas bag and departed with Rashid.

"The next part of your preparation will be much less stressful," Mohammed said with the manner of a doctor who has just carried out a rather nasty carbuncle removal. "You will be able to lie back and enjoy things."

"Fummfft!" I said. "Nggmmnst frmmt ohm!"

"Don't be silly, my dear," Mohammed oozed. "A bargain is a bargain. Salim bin Aziz is a very powerful man, and he is looking forward to meeting his new acquisition."

"Iffm nnhm hern erqhhrrn!" I cried.

"Oh but you are an acquisition," he said. "It's too late now. Come, we will prepare you for the next stage."

The ropes were untied, and I was taken to the next room, obviously the route Megan must have followed, since she had not come back past my little grilled niche. In the room I saw a black robe and mask on the floor and that shook me a little. I did not know what they had done to Megan, although I took heart that they would not have gone to this trouble if we were to be somehow disposed of, for that was what was lurking in the back of my mind. Things were way out of control, and I had lost any opportunity to escape, that I knew. 

Moments later I was naked myself, with my headscarf and mask also removed. I looked down and saw the neat Arabic squiggles across my abdomen, just above my pubic hair. Bastards!

Mohammed picked up what I had thought on first glance to be just a board leaning against the wall, but I saw it was a yoke that opened into two halves. It was rectangular, about a metre and a half by half a metre, opening longitudinally through a hole obviously designed for a neck. I did not like the look of this at all, but submitted to having the thing clamped about my own neck. 

The yoke was heavy and awkward, and with my wrists still chained behind me it needed Zara to stand behind me to control one end of the yoke, with the device initially being in the front-to-back position. 

I followed Mohammed through a further door and down a flight of steps, with Zara hanging on to one end of the yoke. The stairs were lit by a chain of dim light bulbs that had been temporarily fixed in place presumably for the restoration work. At the bottom of the stairs the doorway opened out into a large, vaulted cellar where the sound of water dripping could be heard. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I realised this must be some sort of reservoir beneath the castle, although the place smelt strongly of something vaguely cloying that I could not identify. I made out several rectangular pools carved out of stone with water shimmering under the light. Then I saw Megan, and my heart raced. 

She was suspended in a pool about three metres long by half that width. Like me, her neck was trapped in a yoke, which spanned the breadth of the pool. Two large steel spikes were driven through holes in the end of the yoke to prevent the yoke moving. She was submerged up to the top of her breasts, but it was evident that the buoyancy of her body was insufficient to stop some weight being borne on her chin and jaw resting on the yoke. 

I looked closely at the pool and at the pale outline of Megan's naked body beneath the surface. I had the sudden realisation that this was not water but rather, some sort of oil, which perhaps explained the smell. Megan's gagged face looked imploringly at me, and at that point I also noticed the knotted rope that poked through the yoke just in front of her face, matched by a further, longer rope poking out through the wood behind her head. The rope seemed to go down between her legs, but I could not fathom the purpose of it.

My curiosity was soon appeased, as my own yoke was twisted into the cross-shoulder position, and a rope was threaded upwards through a hole just in front of my face and knotted by Mohammed. 

"Let me explain this to you, " he said pleasantly, as though about to extol the virtues of a mud facial. "Salim bin Aziz is... how should we say...well proportioned. He is, to use your western terminology, hung like a donkey, and like many Arabs, prefers the rear entrance. In fact we have a saying in Oman, that boys are for pleasure, women are for babies, and goats are for necessity." He chuckled at his own joke. "We are not all like that, of course, but do not forget that the Arab history of sexual experimentation goes back to Omar Khayyam, at a time when Europe was still in the Dark Ages.

"The point of all this is that some western women find a big dick up their arse a little difficult to accommodate, and we feel it only proper that you are prepared adequately for this. Which is what this is for." He flourished a wooden cone in from of my face. It had a base of maybe six inches, narrowing to a short shaft with a rounded head of perhaps a one-inch diameter. The base was slightly squished, and under it I saw a wooden protrusion with a hole, through which Mohammed now threaded the rope.

"Over a day or two, this rope will be tightened, gradually enlarging your entry hole," he continued. "You will be immersed in this vat of palm oil, which has remarkable properties in hydrating your skin and making it extremely pliable. It is a technique which originated in Persia, where they used to train young boys by making them sleep with plugs inserted and to grow up with an enlarged capacity, shall we say. Once you have accepted the plug and learned to relax, you will find it very pleasant, just like one of those floatation tanks."

Somehow, I didn't rate having a big wooden plug up my arse while suspended in a vat of palm oil a very life-enriching experience, but I couldn't expound on my theory at that moment as a smooth, slippery invader searched out my rectum.

"Spread your legs," he commanded, and I had no choice but to obey.

"Mmmph!" I grunted as the shaft slid inside a couple of inches. I could feel my sphincter muscles stretching and could not suppress a whine of pain. The rope was pulled tight up my back and passed through the yoke hole behind my head where it was knotted by Zara.

"Now, into the pool with you."

With Zara and Mohammed each gripping one end of the yoke I could do nothing but go where I was directed, which was to the head of the pool where there were some steps into the shiny liquid. It was pleasantly warm to the touch as I stepped down to the next level. The palm oil rose to my thighs, then my navel, and then below my breasts. Suddenly there were no more steps and for a brief panicky moment I was held dangling by Mohammed and Zara, now both bent to hold the yoke at knee level. With a deliberate movement they pulled me away from the steps and laid the yoke on the stone at the edge of the pool. Now I too, like Megan, was suspended in the oil, its rich smell filling my nostrils. Mohammed hammered a spike through a hole at each end of the yoke to leave it immovable.

With the immersion of my body in the pool the oil level had risen higher, and I saw that the pressure had been taken off Megan's neck and jaw. I, too, found myself with almost a neutral buoyancy, but not quite, having just enough weight to rest my chin on the yoke, with the weight of the chains on my ankles and wrists keeping me vertical. I was level with Megan's apparently disembodied head only a metre or so away from me. She had a look of quiet despair in her eyes.

The buoyancy of the wooden cone in my arse seemed to now come into play and it shifted itself upwards slightly, greased further by the lubricating oil in which I found myself.

"Just relax those muscles," said Zara soothingly, as she squatted down on the yoke and tugged the rope tighter behind my head, pulling the cone further up inside me and drawing forth a protesting whine. "Oh shush," she said, smoothing my matted hair away from my forehead in an almost tender manner.

"As a final little incentive to focus on your new future, you will be contained under these pots," said Mohammed, appearing with a large earthenware pot that he inverted and lowered over Megan's head until the rim sat on the wood of the yoke. I guessed there was plenty of room such that Megan's head could not touch it at any point.

I was right, for moments later it was my turn, and I found myself in darkness with only the sound of my own breathing echoing hollowly inside the pot as I hung weightless in the oil, conscious only of the great wedge upon which I was being slowly impaled. It was a moment in which I now understood Megan's despair.