The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Fogar grimaced and slapped at his neck. The hand came back with a crushed mosquito and another spot of blood.

He groaned and leaned his head out the side of the carriage. Although the brief dry season in the Trasdemere meant that the road was passable, rather than being a river of sucking mud, the ruts and dips were so constant that the carriage ride felt like being trapped below decks in rough seas.

Looking up, he could just spy the glitter of the sun past the highest of the treetops; the sky itself was a thin jagged line running directly above the road. Once it had come down on this side of the Rambreaks, the road ran precisely due west, except in those places where scarpments or river crossings meant switchbacks or bridges.

And what bridges—the crossing over the last river had been a swaying, twisting plank ribbon held aloft by thick-braided vines. The horses had to be unhitched and led across one at a time, and the carriage pushed across by the men of the diplomatic mission, thankfully not including Ambassador Fogar va Uettanti. Rank had its privileges.

With a curse, Fogar smashed another mosquito on his forehead.

A rider drew alongside the carriage. “You need something, your Grace?”

Fogar frowned at the exasperatingly chipper young soldier. “Just bemoaning these blasted insects, Lieutenant Tespar. And you can call me Fogar, this far from Gildor City we don’t need to stand on ceremony.”

“As you say, your Grace. Your Grace will be glad to know that we should reach Vegenen Xuul before sunset, barring mishap; I expect the insects will be less fierce there.”

“Gods bless us,” Fogar muttered. He waved a limp hand at the soldier, who clucked at his mount and rode forward.

Not thirty seconds later, the carriage jerked to a complete stop, throwing Fogar forward off of his seat and sending the carefully stacked books on the seat next to him scattering all over the floor.

“Festering damnation!” Fogar roared. He grabbed for the window and thrust his head out. “Can you not take the tiniest modicum of...”

“Sorry, your Grace,” the carriage driver said. He was already in the process of climbing down from the box. “Wheel went into a hole.” He hawked. “Doesn’t look broken. I’ll just check things and we’ll have you out in a trice.”

A thin whining hurried past Fogar’s ear. Waving his arms and damning everything, he unlatched the carriage door and stepped out onto the running board.

The heat outside was somehow less stifling than the heat inside, although it still felt like he was trapped in a giant’s loincloth. He slapped his neck and hopped down onto the dirt road.

The driver was next to the horses, whispering in a tall ear as the baggage man wedged a dirt-caked plank beneath the wheel, which had almost disappeared into a muddy rut. Behind them, the other members of the diplomatic party dismounted from their horses or sucked on waterskins.

Fogar, waving his hand around his head, walked forward to where Lieutenant Tespar sat on his mount next to an older man with a large moustache; Sergeant Mhern.

The soldiers noticed him and turned in their saddles. “If your Grace would prefer to ride,” Fogar said, “you are welcome to my mount. She’s gentle enough.”

“Pfah,” Fogar said, then shook his head. “My apologies, Lieutenant, it was a kind offer. I am merely in a foul mood.”

“Understandably so,” the sergeant said. “Damnable country. If Vakhuluub city is like this, I’ll be forsworn if I see how we’ll get any sleep.”

Fogar tugged at the collar of his heavy shirt. Jesserit had told him to wear linen, had warned him of the damnable heat, but he’d not listened and packed only the robes of his office and other woolens. What an idiot he could be.

The horses seemed to attract away some amount of the bugs, so he stood between them, staring down the long tunnel of black and green ahead of them. The Ghuuli kept this road—this path, it hardly deserved the moniker ‘road’—clear. He wondered how they managed it without slaves.

Not that slavery was legal in the New Utter Confederacy, not any longer. And good riddance to it, Fogar thought. Damn the Tyrant and all his line to the Hell of Burning Hooks, anyway.

Which probably wasn’t all that different from here; just having more hooks. What in strident damnation was taking them so long with the carriage?

Fogar turned to look. Apparently the sucking rut had been too much for the plank; one of the men walked past with a long rope, which he looped around the trunk of a tree just ahead of where Fogar stood between the horses. The men at the carriage had run the cord through a block, and once the fellow had signaled that the rope was securely tied off, they urged the horses forward as the driver, the baggage man, and two of the guards strained against the cord.

Suddenly there was a tremendous wet cracking sound and Fogar found strong arms lifting him up and dragging him forward, his toes scraping the ground—Tespar had grabbed him under the armpits and kicked his mount forward. The cracking turned into a loud crashing, and the ground suddenly shuddered as the great tree slammed down onto the road where Fogar had been standing a moment ago.

“Twelve Gods!” he exclaimed. Tespar set him back on his feet. “Is everyone all right?”

The mounted sergeant peered over the great trunk. “Looks like,” he rumbled. “Hey! Is anyone hurt?”

The others called out that no one had been injured. With a sinking feeling, Fogar stared at the thick trunk that now lay across the road. It would take an hour to clear with saws and axes.

The Feynes and their slaves had cut this road almost eighty years ago; generations of migrants had since trodden it, seeking free land and a better life in the sweltering lowlands to the west.

And it would disappear in a season if the Ghuuli did not constantly keep it clear.

“Huh,” Tespar said, and lightly dismounted from his horse. He walked to the great fat fan of the tree’s roots, a disk twice the height of a man. The entire edifice had pulled up by the roots; a strong trunk but apparently weak beneath the ground.

The toppling of the tree had revealed a pit beneath; Tespar stood at the edge, looking into it. Fogar joined him.

At first it seemed rocky, the dirt studded with small round stones. But just as Fogar was thinking “head-sized”, he saw the eye sockets.

The pit was lined with skulls.

Lieutenant Tespar bent down and hopped into the pit. “What are you doing?” Fogar hissed, taken aback. The lieutenant took a few steps, gingerly, then stooped over to pry something from the dirt. He rose with a flat plate held in both hands.

“This is Uettan-made,” he said in a quiet voice, and only then did Fogar recognize it for what it was—a rusted breastplate. Tespar knocked dirt from the corroded armor. “Only one army has ever entered this forest from the Uttermark. This must be where Devend Feyne met his end.”

Fogar looked around with wide eyes. If that was so, then they stood on... not a battlefield, not precisely. A slaughterhouse.

The loss of the Trasdemere had cost the Feynes—and the crown—one of their greatest sources of revenue. When word returned that a new kingdom had been proclaimed in the Trasdemere, where slavery was illegal and all men were invited to come and receive lands of their own...

What had happened to Perrer Feyne had never been truly understood. Only garbled tales, most too fantastical to be believed, ever returned to Gildor City. Nonetheless, the blot on the family’s honor was clear. Nor would any band of upstarts be allowed to carve off a piece, no matter how insect-ridden, of old Yvend’s kingdom. Perrer’s older brother, now Mark-Lord himself, led the cream of Yvend’s army on the punitive expedition.

Tespar tossed the breastplate aside. “Well,” he said, leaping up out of the pit, “so this is where it happened. Hm. Perhaps there should be a monument.”

The bodies—what Fogar could see of them—were twisted and buried in the mud. He could see four skulls, and now that he knew what he beheld, other bones as well, and the rusted hilts of weapons.

An axe bit into the tree, shaking dirt loose from the roots, and Fogar jumped. Tespar did not laugh.

“How then, Ambassador,” he said. “Should we ask permission to raise a stone here? These were Utter-men, after all.”

Fogar grunted. In truth, he felt little emotion for them. The eradication of Feyne’s army, horrible as it had been, was the rock that set off the avalanche of rebellion, and led ultimately to the Tyrant’s head on a pike. The New Uttar Confederacy owed no reverence to Yvend’s fallen army.

Still. To be eaten by the jungle...

A mynah bird screamed overhead and Fogar shivered.

Were their spirits still here? Rumors spoke of the Ghuuli gods emerging from the jungle to consume not only flesh but soul as well. Were their rent spirits hanging in the humid air?

Fogar wished very much that he were anywhere but here.

Something black and crawling stung him hard on the neck.

The jungle was the worst of it.

It had taken a day and a half to reach Vegenen Xuul, not ‘by sunset’, but once there the settlement had welcomed them as befit the hosts of a prosperous stead. They had eaten well, and although the heat remained oppressive, the Ghuuli had provided them rooms with cunningly crafted pots which used the evaporation of water to cool the air to a not unreasonable temperature.

Ghuuli. It felt odd to call them that, these mongrel people living where no men had dwelt for hundreds of years. The Ghuuli were all dead, an ancient race of boogy-men wiped away by the combined armies of the North and the Middle Realms centuries ago. Yet now these new people, slaves and refugees, had taken up the name.

And prospered, it seemed.

It was five days from Vegenen Xuul to the capital at Vakhuluub. There were substantial patches of jungle between, but none so dense nor nearly so large as the one which they had crossed entering the Trasdemere. And amongst the jungle were farmsteads, large compounds surrounded by neatly ordered fields and orchards. The farmholds all sat behind stockades—but as the diplomatic party passed, the men that came out to meet them carried hoes rather than pikes, with smiles ready to their sun-browned faces, and in the orchards there were children playing.

Not quite the realm of terror whispered of back in the Uttermark.

They saw Vakhuluub well before they arrived, for it sat next to the river, the Tras, which flowed from the lands north of the Firespine mountains, and here flowed through a great trough, hundreds, no, thousands of ells across, as it slowly drained all this land to the Southern Sea. The riverside land was fertile, and as they emerged from the last scrap of jungle, at the edge of the valley, they looked down over ells of neat plantations, descending slowly to the edges of the great block-work grid that was Vakhuluub city.

The city sat in a half-circle of cultivated land. To the north, jungle; to the south, the same. To the east was the great brown Tras, the largest river Fogar had ever seen, fully twelve bow-shots across, flat and brown and glittering in the afternoon sun. He was surprised to see boats on it, not merely fishing vessels and small oared craft, but large trading ships, carrack-size or more. They had said that the northern lands were trading in the Trasdemere, but in such quantity? In such boats?

Fogar wiped sweat from his brow and climbed back into the carriage.

Two hours later they were nearing the city. Nor were they alone; men and women constantly passed the rolling carriage, most on foot but also on horse, mule, or on foot but pulling two-wheeled wagons behind them. Fogar frowned to himself as one elderly man, hauling a great pile of... of... some fruit on one such wagon, one long handle in either hand, jogged by the carriage as though they were a small, ugly building he was passing on his morning constitutional. Fogar refrained from rapping on the roof and wondering why they were not going faster.

He was still sweating, but at least he was no longer insect-bothered. In the field they were passing, a group of women were planting, wearing no more than loincloths and chest bindings. Their shoulders glistened in the sun.

Fogar’s wool shirt itched. He should have listened to Jesserit. Well, once they were arrived, he could find more suitable clothes.

There was a sudden change in the feel of the carriage ride, and in the sounds rattling in through the windows. Fogar leaned out and found to his surprise that they were on a pavement.

Gildor City had pavements—cobblestones, really—as did a few of the nicer districts of Behereth and Oakwood, but... but Vakhuluub was new. Seventy years ago this was merely swamp at the edge of the river. And the pavements—they were almost smooth, large rectangular flat stones fitted together with only the tiniest of gaps—and so wide! Fogar rushed to the other window and saw that the pavement was broad enough for four carriages abreast, and sloped gently to a... Twelve Gods, a covered gutter. He leapt back to the other side.

A covered gutter on either side.

The fields had ended and there were buildings now, wooden and new, painted in white and red ochre. Most of them were two stories tall, free-standing, not leaning drunkenly upon their neighbors as did the buildings in Gildor City. The lower floors held stores—most of the signage was in the common tongue of the Middle Kingdoms, but frequently paired with decorative text in a thick, curved script he did not recognize.

It must be Ghuuli. Were they resurrecting the language?

How?

Traffic grew thicker, most of it pedestrian but with a great many of the two-wheeled carts. They passed a workshop where the carts were being made, and several lots where new houses were being built. All the workers were in loincloths, only rarely with loose white shirts on, the women wearing bindings to hold their breasts.

Then they crossed an intersection, another wide, paved road, and now the buildings on either side of the road were made of stone. They seemed to be a mix of a coarse, grey quarried stone and red brick, artfully arranged so that bands of color ran across the facades and outlined the windows.

Stone buildings. In a city that was only seventy years old.

The city was filled with life; hawkers yelling, people leaning out of windows calling to other people passing below. And they were a mongrel people—one subject where the rumors in Uttermark were quite true. Perhaps the largest group of them were from the Middle Kingdoms, including many Utteri, but there were pale northerners (here not so pale, not with the sun of the Trasdemere beating down on them), tall dark-skinned people from the coast of the Southern Sea, even a scattering of the golden skinned folk from Szezhen.

Fogar also noticed that all of the buildings seemed to have flowers growing on them. Every doorway, every arch, every window, had an urn or a small square of dirt adjacent to it, from which a climbing vine curled its way up the face of the structure. Many were just green but others had bright yellow, red, purple flowers on them.

They passed a school, the yard filled with clamoring children. A stone-cutter’s, the yard piled high with flagstones, the air hazy with dust. A metal shop—Fogar stared at racks stacked with gleaming copper tubes.

Then the buildings fell away and they entered a plaza. Fogar rapped on the carriage, leaned his head out and told the driver to stop.

He stepped down out of the carriage and stared. The plaza was vast, well over a bowshot across in both directions. Large fountains, six in all, sprayed water into the air. Near each fountain small blocks of canopies had been erected, simple wooden frames with canvas stretched across the top to provide shade; beneath the canopies, vendors sold drinks and fruit to the people who gathered in the shade. A breeze blew from the river; were Fogar not standing like a fool in the direct sun, it might have been downright pleasant.

The fountains and the canopies were carefully situated not to block the lines of sight across the plaza. Seven roads intersected here, from north, east, and west, as well as from the four intercardinal directions. To the north a park bordered the square, giant trees standing among low grassy hills and carefully tended beds of flowering bushes, the road passing straight through the center. A few stone monuments were barely visible, engulfed by creepers and flowering vines.

To the south stood the ziggurat.

Fogar stared, mouth open.

It had been visible from the edge of the river plain, but at that distance one did not truly understand the monument’s size. It was astounding. Ascending the stairs to the temple at the crest would take a quarter hour or more. Fogar realized that the corners of each of the seven levels were actually buildings in their own right, with windows looking out; each tier of the step-pyramid was a set of four buildings with the giant staircase dividing them. Atop the buildings were verdant gardens, dripping with vines and flowers.

It must have been built atop a hill, but still.

Seventy years.

All around the plaza were handsome three and four story buildings. All of the structures, including the ziggurat, were constructed from the same red brick and grey stone as the lesser buildings of the city.

Fogar felt very small.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” came a jovial voice.

Fogar turned around to find a middle-aged man approaching him, dressed in fashionable clothes suited to a cooler climate, with a wide-brimmed hat adorned with a large white feather.

“Unless I miss my guess,” the man said, stopping before him, “you are an Utteri diplomat newly arrived in fair Vakhuluub.”

Fogar blinked. “I... yes. I am Fogar va Uettanti, Ambassador of the New Uttar Confederacy.”

The man smiled and gave a bow that was simultaneously decorous and a touch flippant. “Marvelous, marvelous. Is that what they are calling it now? I am Rhoda vash Dorudd, representative of the Court of Quinyr. Welcome to Vakhuluub.”

He smiled at Fogar, who stared at him. “Quinyr? You’re far from your home, my friend.”

The man smiled again. “Farther than you, indeed, but it turns out the Heart has a soft spot for Quinyri and we get all sorts of lucrative trade privileges, so it pays us well to be here. Come, friend va Uettanti, if you are truly just arrived allow me to escort you to the diplomatic quarter. The Third Hand grants us an audience every fourth and sixth day at sundown, so I daresay you need to make yourself presentable if you wish to present your credentials this ev’n.”

Fogar frowned. “The Third Hand? This evening?”

“Yes, yes, exactly.” vash Dorudd replied, “Oh my. I see you have not been well-briefed. Has the court at Gildor City truly not gazetted you on the way things are done here?”

Fogar realized that he was adrift, and this light-hearted northerner could well be his best means to find his feet. “Sadly, it is true,” he admitted. “The Confederacy has... only recently returned to peace, and much of the prior leadership found their way to the end of a rope. My predecessor included.”

“Ah,” the Quinyri replied. “Well. You had a King, no?”

“The Autarch. He was executed last third month.”

“Ah. But he was preceded by a King?”

“Mm. A Regent. King Fyr died when his son was only four. The Autarch did away with the Regent... and the entire royal family.”

Vash Dorudd shook his head. “It seems we have had an easier time than you since the overthrow of the Tyrant,” he said. “or at least less bloody. But come, we stand in the sun like addle-pates when we should be proceeding towards the cool of your quarters. I know where your building is, and am happy to guide you there.” He put a hand on the edge of the carriage and turned to Fogar. “May I, friend va Uettanti?”

Fogar nodded. “Please, be my guest. And do call me ‘Fogar’.”

“And you shall call me ‘Rhodey’,” the Quinyri replied, but rather than opening the door he vaulted to the top of the carriage, seating himself upon the baggage. “Come up, come up—I shall point out the various sights to you and we shall enjoy the breeze. Do you have a hat?”

A hat was fetched from the baggage, and the two of them swayed as the carriage crossed the square and traveled down the wide road towards the river. Lieutenant Tespar and Sergeant Mhern rode ahead; the rest of the retinue followed behind.

“A handsome city, is it not?” Rhoda asked.

“Truly impressive,” Fogar replied honestly.

“The brick is made here,” the Quinyri said. “The stone—you will enjoy this, I think—the stone is quarried from old Kaz Ghuul. If you are here for a while, I recommend taking a boat downriver to the quarry site. They have thousands working down there, scraping the hills off to reveal the old buildings, then disassembling them for the stone.”

“Odd that a Ghuuli goddess would direct the pulling apart of her own ancient city,” Fogar observed.

Rhoda shrugged. “It is a new era, my friend. Guessing at the motivations of these people, well...” He waved at the buildings they were passing. “You’ve noticed the flowers? All the buildings have them. Apparently, if you don’t plant flowering vines on your house, you don’t love Khuluub.”

“She has a lot of devotees, then.”

Rhoda chuckled. “Oh yes. Everyone.” He gave Fogar a serious look. “Look, Fogar. You will see soon enough, but let me warn you—their goddess is close. She ascended only seventy-five years ago now, and there are those still alive who witnessed it. Miracles happen here. Good and bad. And the people here... they love her. Truly. Always keep that in mind.“

“Miracles?” Fogar asked. “You’ve seen them?”

The Quinyri cleared his throat and looked away. “We will be at the Street of Ambassadors soon,” he said, in an entirely different tone of voice. “And you will need to order your residence. Since your predecessor was so impolite as to die before bringing you up to speed, let me give you a thumbnail sketch of the modern Trasdemere.

“The Trasdemere is ruled by Khuluub,” Rhoda said, gesturing at the ziggurat. “The Goddess Herself. All property is owned by the church, and granted to the inhabitants, for free, for a fixed period. I understand homes can be inherited, but you can learn the legal minutia later. Much of the land is granted to ‘fists’, what you and I would think of as a venturesome company, composed of a small group of share-men to whom all the profits of the venture accrue, minus the portion that is always granted to Khuluub. Thus do they run the farms and plantations.”

“And the stone cutters and the smitheries and the wrights,” Fogar replied. The wind was very light but felt wonderful on his face. “Truly their industry is astounding.”

“It is because whatever a man makes, he may keep,” the Quinyri replied. “A man’s first responsibility is to Khuluub, his second is to his fellows, and all that remains is his own. No monarch, no nobility, no landlords,” and Rhoda leaned over and lowered his voice, “other than the church, and you should make that observation only in a quiet voice.”

“But what can a man do with his wealth, if he can own nothing?” Fogar objected.

“Glorify Khuluub, I suppose,” Rhoda replied. “Though from what I have seen the Ghuuli are all far too concerned with amassing additional wealth to worry about it much. But that discussion is for later, in comfortable chairs with chilled wine. Look—here is the Street of Ambassadors, and there are the diplomatic residences. Quickly, I shall finish telling you how the land lies.”

He pointed at the ziggurat again. “As I say, Khuluub rules all, which means that her church rules all. The head of the church is known as the Heart of Khuluub. The current Heart has been such since the ascension of the goddess. Beneath the Heart are the four Hands of Khuluub—I daresay you have seen the carvings of the goddess, they’re everywhere, she’s got four hands...” Rhoda leaned in again “...and six tits, and if the sculptors are right they are some marvelous tits indeed...” he leaned back “... and thus, four human officials to represent her will. The Heart does the deciding, the Hands put Her will into action.”

They passed a tall, well-appointed building, hung with blue and grey bunting, and lacking the climbing vines which marked the rest of the city. “That’s our embassy, by the way,” Rhoda said. “Please drop by any time. As I was saying, the Third Hand handles most of the diplomatic stuff. Fourth Hand is the military leader, First Hand runs the church, Second Hand guides the workforces, allocates property, that sort of stuff. Oh, and the Third Hand is also the head of the courts—she’s a sharp one, she is, so if you need to bluff her you’d better be damned good at it.”

The carriage stopped. Lieutenant Tespar and Sargent Mhern had drawn up their horses in front of a large building. It was unadorned and the windows—although glassed—were closed and dark.

“Yes,” Rhoda said, “I believe this one is yours.”

Tespar dismounted and rapped on the door. He waited a moment, then rapped again.

The door opened. A small woman, Utteri, stood in the door and looked up fearfully.

“They are probably wondering if you are here to execute them,” Rhoda said. He slid down from the luggage and landed lightly on the carriage’s running board. “As I say, the Third Hand receives any and all envoys in her reception hall—that’s on the bottom tier of the ziggurat, south-west corner of the square—each fourth and sixth day, at sundown. Since today is the sixth, I suspect you will want to be there. I certainly shall be—and I am also entirely at your service, dear Fogar. If you have any needs, do send to me at our residence, we’re only, let’s see, thirty ells away.” He looked over at Lieutenant Tespar, who was looking back at Fogar for guidance. “You are clearly needed. Best of luck. Be seeing you.”

Rhoda hopped to the street and strolled away.

With a groan, Fogar climbed down off the carriage.