The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Jak:

When we got back to her estate, she passed the slave quarters and took me straight to the Great House. I was staggering by then, exhausted by the imprisonment and by the way the reality of my own life and thought kept twisting in my hands like a thick-bodied, poisonous snake. We were just at the main door when Jess looked over her shoulder; she had noticed a faint drumming of hooves. When I saw her eyes widen, I looked, too, and saw the Guard galloping toward us, full out. I knew what they had come for; I was surprised that Jess had to ask.

“His surety is revoked,” said the Guard Captain.

“What nonsense!” Jess said. “Once surety is accepted, you can’t re-imprison the accused until twenty-four hours before the hearing.”

“His has been given priority,” the captain said. “It’s tomorrow morning. We have orders to take him, Champion Jess. He will not be mistreated again. He was a soldier, and as a soldier I swear it.” I smiled wryly at Jess. On an impulse, I saluted the captain; at least with her I knew where I stood. She returned the salute gravely. Then I offered my wrists for the manacles.

Four hours after dawn, the next day, I was sitting in a fenced enclosure in the middle of a large hall. The nine Council members sat at their long table, facing me and the spectators behind me.

They began by establishing the immediate facts of the charge, and that didn’t take long. I, a slave, had struck my owner and stolen her sword in the clear view of at least a dozen people, who dutifully and quite consistently reported what they had seen. No one disputed what had occurred in front of the Great Hall on that day. They also brought out the leathermonger, from whom they learned that I had assaulted and robbed a free citizen of Mar while making my escape. Less than five minutes after hearing from the last witness, the Council agreed that I was guilty of assault on my owner and another free citizen of Mar. That left only the matter of the penalty.

The Captain of the Guard, traditionally a temporary Councilor regarding matters that involved the military, made an argument for leniency, as they define it.

“Slavery is a more painful constraint to an elite warrior like him than it would be to an ordinary man,” she said. “I do not believe that he deliberately caused the wound that Champion Jess suffered. He had too much honor. Yet it is true that he stained that honor by running away when his slavery was a condition of the duel’s outcome. Therefore I propose that he receive the brand on his brow identifying him to the world as a fugitive slave, and thus virtually guaranteeing that he will not escape again. In any country with which we trade, someone seeing him with the brand will bring him back to his Owner for the reward. I respectfully say brand him and return him to his Owner, who is most chiefly concerned in all of this.”

Jess stood up and asked the Council for leniency, offering her entire estate as surety that I would not again slip out of control. She added, “And he has already branded himself as a slave, voluntarily. He cut off his own ear, as a gesture of . . . apology.” She sounded ashamed. For me? For her?

“I made the mistake of reframing his memory of the duel’s outcome,” she said. “I should have known that such a radical altering of his mind was too fragile to stand after only a couple of weeks, and that it could lead to instability. This error will not be repeated. I have begun a new course of training with Lady Leila. “I will work with him intensely for the next six months, bind him far more securely, and then resubmit his fate to this Council.”

Lara turned to Leila.

“Councilor, do you endorse this plan?”

Leila looked gravely at Jess, and then turned back to Lara.

“Much as it grieves me to cause my former apprentice this pain,” she said, “I cannot recommend that the Council accept her proposal, nor that of the Captain. I appreciate the impact of the slave’s return to Mar’s territory and his sense of obligation to save his owner from the injury which he caused by his illegal escape, even if we accept the questionable claim that the injury was accidental. Whether his return was evidence of a personal attachment to his owner, of a guilty conscience, or of the realization that he really had nowhere else to go—nowhere that would welcome him—we cannot say. And in any case, the matter has gone far beyond the question of one slave’s future reliability. Champion Jess asks for six months to bind him more securely. We don’t have six months; we may not have one month. All of us must surely see the many dangers we call down upon our own heads if we allow this violent defiance of the law, this public violation of an owner’s person and dignity, to escape, for even a week, the most severe punishment that our society imposes. By being lenient with him, we may find ourselves with no room for leniency to the other slaves among us. We may be driven to more and more severe penalties for the slightest infractions. I reluctantly conclude that the slave must be put down.”

She then turned toward Jess, not toward me of course.

“We do not do this cheerfully,” she said softly, “and we will not do it brutally. I myself, as a Master of Potions, will prepare a draught that will send him gently to an unwaking sleep, bringing to an end a life that has been troubled and violent since his childhood, and has veered between despair and rage ever since his defeat in the Circle. His burial must be anonymous, so that his grave will not become some short of shrine for other deluded slaves. He could not accept his destiny, and what he did because of that inability means that he can no longer live among us.”

This time the Council took ten whole minutes. Lara announced the verdict.

“The slave formerly known as Jak is condemned to death. Lady Leila will be responsible for the details of the execution, with Healer Emerita Bela as expert witness. The execution will be carried out before the Council.” Lara sighed. “The Owner, Jess, has already suffered much. Whether she personally views what has to happen tomorrow is her choice to make. As her sincere admirer and well-wisher, I urge her not to attend. This hearing is concluded.”

A free Marian condemned to death is allowed a final statement at the hearing, but not a slave. Still, what could they do, kill me?

“You are killing me to defend an obscene custom that makes you rich,” I shouted out. “You comfort yourselves with the lie that you can do this and be decent people! If the gods care about justice, they will—“ Something struck behind my right ear and I saw a flash of light. I woke up back in the Keep, with a headache. It was already night. I would die in the morning.

They brought me a better-than-usual meal, a soup with meat in it, but I couldn’t eat much. Compared with how I had pictured dying in the past, this seemed like an anticlimax. They would put me down as tenderly as a favorite dog. I was still staring at my bowl of stew, thinking about the absurdity of putting food into a corpse, when I heard the jailer’s key in the iron door, which opened on the jailer and the woman who had volunteered to kill me. She was wearing her silkseal coat, and under it her legs were bare to a line well above her knees. I wondered if she might be on her way to a celebration of the Sisterhood of Slavers, if there was such a thing.

“Would you go in ahead of me, please?” she asked the jailer with tremors of fear in her voice.

“Of course, Lady,” he said, drawing the truncheon from his belt and scowling at me. If he had tried to hit me with it, I could have fed it to him—but to what end?

He stepped toward me cautiously, until Leila moved to his side, snapped her fingers in his face and said, “Sleepy jailer.” At that moment his eyes closed and his chin dropped to his chest. She put an arm around him to steady him and murmured, “Yes, that’s very good and your legs will hold you up, with perfect balance, even as you go deeper and deeper into trance, perfectly comfortable and perfectly obedient to me.” Then she stepped away from him.

“Jailer, your job is to watch the door. Stand in front of the door and make sure that no one gets in. If anyone comes down the corridor and shows interest in this cell, tell that person, loudly, to go away because the prisoner is being prepared for execution. Now remain in trance but open your eyes, and do your job as I described it. You will hear nothing from inside this cell, and you will not turn to face the interior of the cell until I tell you to. You feel so good when you follow my suggestions, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Go now and keep watch.”

He walked normally to the door and took up his post. “Hello, Sergeant,” she said softly to me, in a voice that sounded wholly unacquainted with fear.

I wondered if they had some notion that killing me before they had told me to expect it was somehow merciful.

“Isn’t it a little early for the show?” I asked. “Or do you have some more farmers to swindle in the morning? I can wait.”

She smiled sadly at me; beyond that, she ignored all my wit.

“Your anger is understandable, but it won’t help you to die with dignity. I thought you might like some help in calming yourself.”

“Calming myself,” I said. “You must think I’m pretty calm already. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come in here with nobody but an out-of-shape, brain-wiped clown like that,” I pointed casually at the jailer, who of course took no notice, “for protection.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said calmly. “You couldn’t.”

“So you planted some more enchanted roadblocks in my head,” I said. “Jess told me you took them away. Did you lie to her?”

“I told her the partial truth. The suggestion that stops you from hurting a woman, even a woman you hate, is barely necessary, just a slight strengthening of what you already feel in your deepest core. That’s one reason why you could never have beaten Jessica in the Circle. If you could have, I would never have allowed her to accept the offer of the Council. I’m very fond of her, you see.”

I shrugged and sat down on my cot, pointedly looking away from her. I think all very beautiful people have some itch to be viewed and admired, and her itch seemed stronger than most.

“I still want to know why you’re here,” I said to the wall.

“Everything that has happened flows, in a way, from decisions I have made, actions I have taken, over the last year.”

She came closer to me, almost to the edge of the cot, and I could smell perfume, either coming off the coat or coming off her.

“All these decisions were necessary. All led to certain . . . events, some of which, I can admit, are sad. These events have led to your being here, on the last night of your life at twenty-four,” she whispered. “You are an extraordinary man, Sergeant. I freely concede the point. But laws cannot be defined to suit the extraordinary; they must suit the many. Perhaps you were not born to be a slave, but many are, especially men. It is best for them if the rules and the penalties are clear and inescapable—no exceptions. I think it was your honor that brought your back, not just your love for Jess, though I know that this love feels real to you. In a strange but equally real way, you will die tomorrow for your people—your fellow Marian slaves. Your death will save many of them from a grimmer fate; therefore, you will die with honor. I also know what your body is feeling now, with a desirable woman standing inches away. It is instinct: Breed before you die.” She put a booted foot firmly on the cot; one long, slender thigh slid from behind the silkseal fur. As she inclined her head toward the side of mine, a wash of soft blond hair spilled against my neck and jaw.

“You have a fine body, Sergeant,” she murmured in my ear. “I can flood it with pleasure such as you have never dreamed. Your life is forfeit in any case, but for what I am offering you, men have willingly thrown away their lives.”

One hand stole softly inside my tunic and its nails glided over the ridges of my belly. At the same time, the tongue that had whispered slipped, moist and warm, into my ear. Then both her arms stole around my neck, the caress of fur, the scent that it carried, her tongue laving at the hollow above my collarbone, then one arm unwinding again to let a smooth hand slide over my member, and down to my sack.

I clenched my teeth, and screwed my eyes shut. “You’re going to kill me tomorrow; you know that will hurt Jess, and you don’t care. I’m not going to be your sex slave for the last night of my life. Get off me.”

I was already aware that every sentence I had just spoken had less force than the one before, that “Get off me,” was something like a hopeless whimper. She must have enchanted me.

“Sssshh,” she whispered in my ear, “ You don’t really want me to leave, do you?” She drew down the loincloth under my tunic. “No. The evidence speaks for itself,” she smiled.

“Why are you doing this?” I demanded, unable to demand anything else.

“I want your seed, Sergeant. I want a child who will develop your strength, your cleverness, your bravery.”

She glided the fur sleeve of her coat between my legs, stroking my balls.

“You want to get a son by me?” I said, trying not to moan. She laughed softly.

“Typical of a Teran, I must say. A daughter, Sergeant.”

“Just one more way for you to own me.”

In front of my face, she held up her hand and langorously licked her palm. Then that hand stole back to my stiff cock and found the clear bead of a passion drop on its head.

“A part of you will live, Sergeant. And you don’t really want to lie comfortless on your last night. You know you don’t.”

I felt her smooth palm twist and slide, spreading the slippery mixture over half my cock. I groaned.

“You want me,” she crooned, “and I want you, and this concerns no one else.”

I couldn’t get quite enough air; I was panting like a dog, with little groans on outbreaths.

“Jess,” I gasped.

“How will Jess know? she said gently. And then, just as gently. “In any case, she’s not here, on your last night, is she?”

My throat closed with grief and a sudden anger, and she sensed it.

“Turn your back on sadness and anger, Sergeant, while you watch me turn my back on them.”

She stood up and whirled around, the coat swirling wide around her and showing the smooth globes of her perfect buttocks, which rotated in a slow, grinding dance, the muscles flexing and releasing rhythmically.

“Plunge your anger into me, Sergeant.” She looked over her own shoulder at me, her hands resting on the cot so that her buttocks rose higher, their firm muscles still flexing and churning. Her feet were widely apart; I saw that her coat had tails, a slit with buttons along it that ran all the way to the slit between her buttocks. The buttons were undone already. I found myself already standing close to her, and I could not remember how I got there. She squirmed her fur-covered ass against me, and my cock changed from firm to throbbing. She made a hungry, humming sound deep in her throat. “Soothe your sadness inside me. Tha-a-a-t’s right,” she cooed. “Come into me; I’m so hot and wet for you. Thrust into me.”

And I did. Again, and again, faster and faster, while I hung onto her breasts from under her arms, stroking, kneading, pinching the nipples, softly biting the nape of her neck, doing the things I had learned to do with Jess, to bring Jess pleasure. Now I gave it away to Leila. Every time I thrust into her, I felt the fur of the coat against my thighs and belly, and every time I pulled away, the slippery clench of her sheath seemed to suck more and more of my blood into my cock. When I thought I had to spill, she eased up and kept me balanced on a knife-edge, above an abyss of pleasure that would end everything, kept me on that edge until she cried out and I felt a silken lightning shoot up from my sack, the blood fizzed in my veins, and I came and came, gasping, until I fell onto the cot and pulled her on top of me with my last strength.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I remember, she was standing up, drawing up her undergarment and rearranging her coat. She was looking down at me as my eyes opened.

“So strong,” she murmured. “I had commanded that you continue that peaceful sleep a while longer; it would have been a mercy . . . I must be going. It wouldn’t do for the graveyard watch to arrive and find me here. Besides, I need to be getting over to Jessica’s house.”

My stomach fell.

“What? You said she wouldn’t know!”

She shook her head. “I asked how she would know. Of course, I did know the answer to the question.”

And then I begged.

“Please!” was all I could manage. She smiled, gently, dismissing me as one does a child who foolishly objects to what the adults know is best.

Suddenly all of her reassurances before the act showed themselves, now that we had done it, as delusions. She had always been manipulating me, from the beginning, to make Jess hate me. In fact . . .

“You enchanted me again,” I hissed at her. “So that I couldn’t deny you. You filthy witch.”

She stared at me for a long moment without answering. Then she said, “No, slave.”

I noted the change in address, now that she had gotten what she wanted.

“I didn’t enchant you. No magic compelled you to give in to your fear of death, your hunger for pleasure, and your resentment of Jessica for not being here. That was just you, doing what men do. That’s why, if we are wise, we never let you get close to us without controlling you. We learned centuries ago what men are, and how to protect ourselves and our children from your lies, from your selfish, bone-deep infidelity.”

“I pray to the gods you don’t conceive,” I said. “If you do, I hope they grant you your wish for a daughter, and spare my son the corruption you carry.”

“I won’t conceive,” she said.

“How do you know? You weren’t . . . in flow when we . . .” I wanted to throw up.

“I won’t conceive by anyone, ever,” she said flatly. Our healers have ways to ensure that, and I . . . availed myself of them.”

Her tone was so chilling that it put me off my anger; I was more bewildered than anything else.

“Why did you do that to yourself? And then . . . Why . . . all this?

“Jessica is the closest thing I have—will ever have—to a daughter” she said. “I doubt that she thinks of me as anything like her mother, but if your return from across the border means that you learned some grain of truth about love, perhaps you know: it does not always demand that the beloved return it.”

“Why did you come here tonight, instead of Jess?” I shouted.

“Not truly instead of her, just before her,” she answered coolly. “She should be here in an hour or two. I arranged to have her delayed.”

I launched myself off the cot, reaching out for her throat and—

“Limp,” she said quickly, raising a finger at me, and I fell in a boneless heap on the floor. I couldn’t even lift up my head.

“Our lies,” I whispered at her. “You didn’t enchant me?”

“Not into fucking me,” she said.

“Liar.”

“No,” she said, “I’m telling the truth. I did seduce you, but I did not enchant you to stick your thing in me. And you were seduced quite easily, as so many of you are.”

“Why? You’re a Marian ice queen, not the type to be carried away by passion. And I’m not the type to inspire it. What . . .? Just to make Jess hate me? Because you couldn’t stand the idea—”

“—That one of you would hurt her in her deepest heart.”

She turned her back and walked away from me, as if I were a contagion source. With her back still turned, she said,

“When I go to her house, I won’t tell her. I want to see if you will.”

“Tell her? A couple of hours before my death—throw away the only thing in the world that I have left? Watch the love die in her eyes while I’m talking, and the hate take root?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Your hatred of men is—”

“This is not about you,” she said calmly, “or about what you call my hatred of men. Will she hate you? Perhaps. I hope so, because that hate will be like the splint she put on your broken arm. The pain will be worse at first, but the healing will come faster. Your “Jess” might be happy again, some day, probably a little sooner by your telling her. . . . So decide: do you love her, or do you love the idea of her loving you?”

She stared straight into my face. It wasn’t the fear of being enchanted again that made me look away.

“Decide, Sergeant,” she said. And then added, as the jailer let her out, “Or slave.”