The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

When the Captain’s body was found, Cian felt that everyone in the world went mad but him.

The news was delivered by the Captain’s senior Lieutenant. The group who received this news was a mish-mash of folk from across the city who considered themselves key to the kingdom’s success: The Council (including Percy Runier; the Captain’s suggestion to the queen that Runier could not be found had been a bald-faced lie, based in his misguided thought that she’d had a romance with him), various nobles and masters of certain trades, and the Seers.

Cian had commanded this room effortlessly: he could describe the queen’s “illness” in terms they could understand, and he’d been wise enough to obtain a signed proclamation from the Captain saying that he had agreed with Cian’s assessment. Cu and Cethe backed him up as they always had, with just enough mentalism to make the problem appear beyond the reach of most men, but not so much mysticism that the skeptics would scoff.

But then the Lieutenant, with the Portuguese-sounding name de Leon, had come to them with helmet tucked under his arm to make an announcement. The reaction was as bad as Cian could have imagined.

“Murdered?” Cethe exclaimed, too loudly for someone who was supposed to be subordinate to Cian in this conversation. “The queen murdered him?”

“Surely not,” an older noble in the back scoffed. Cian could not remember what trade or land this man represented; he only remembered the ornate blue eagle on his crest. “He’s forgotten more about war than she ever knew.”

“The blade was rather ornate,” Lieutenant de Leon said. “Fit for a queen.”

“Should we not have expected this?” said a woman who represented the legion of seamstresses and tailors who sold their wares in the city. “He was going to remove her from the throne. Royalty will always fight to keep their crowns.”

“She could not have killed the Captain alone,” Blue Eagle insisted. “We should be asking how large is her army.”

“Her army is our army, you blithering dolt!” a woman shouted in the back of the crowd. “She’s the bloody queen!”

Cian looked at Cu, hoping his aggressive nature could be put to use in subduing the growing argument. Cu’s eyes were as wide as silver pieces, and his jaw hung slightly ajar. Cian was dismayed: he’d expected Cethe to panic, but if Cu lost his composure as well, achieving victory would be an immense challenge.

Cian raised his hands above his head, palms outward, a gesture designed to gather the room’s attention while placating them at the same time. “Quiet, everyone! We must calm down and focus our efforts on the problems we can solve!”

“And what problems do you think you can solve here, Seer?” Percy Runier said. “Solved many murders, have you? Arrested many monarchs?”

Cian stared him down. “I have seen a great many allies turn on each other and collapse, for lack of speaking with one voice,” he said. “We must focus, or else we are lost.”

“Let the Seer speak!” A voice cried out in the back of the room. “He’s the only one who knows what the problem is!”

Percy set his jaw, but said nothing. That’s right, Cian thought. Sit there and watch the master work.

“We can’t know for certain what happened in that hallway until we find the queen,” he said. “Is it not so, Lieutenant?”

de Leon nodded, saying nothing.

“Now the queen may have allies,” Cian went on, “But we have the Handmaiden Angela and the performer Prudence in custody. No one was closer to the queen than these two women. They should lead us to any allies that may exist. Does anyone disagree?”

No one did. Cian had that gift, for making his chosen course of action sound like the only reasonable option.

“Above all,” Cian said, “We must understand that the Queen is ill, as a result of Prudence’s vile manipulations. Even if Gabrielle somehow killed the Captain alone, she did it because she is losing her grip on reality. We must approach her with kindness, and a plan to return the Crown to her brow as soon as we can return her to health. Is it not so, Lord Runier?”

Percy looked away. Cian saw that he wanted to argue, and also saw that Percy knew such an argument could not be won. He marked Percy for future study; though he did not have as much supply of the mind-altering drug as he’d led Prudence to believe, he might have to devote a large amount of it toward ending the Finance Minster’s resistance.

The short supply of the drug was the entire problem. In speaking with Prudence, Cian had made his supply of the drug sound quite large, but he only wished it were so. Cian had started with two full vials when he had returned from the East, years ago. The first vial had gone into Gabrielle, over the course of months, until she had been properly conditioned. A large portion of the second vial had gone into the servant girl, Rose. As a result, Cian was nervous about how much of the drug would have to be used on Angela, especially if Percy Runier might require a few doses as well.

Cian turned his attention to the other two Seers. The plan had been for the Captain to deliver Gabrielle into the Seers’ tower, where Cian could have a long and deeply soothing conversation with her before presenting evidence of her “illness” to the Council. Prudence would “escape” at his convenience, to serve as a boogey-woman for frightening the Council in those fragile early days, giving Angela reason to leave the castle for months on end.

But with the Captain’s failure, Cian was now needed in too many places at once: he needed to capture and entrance the queen, continue the hypnosis with Angela, deal with Prudence, and manage these Council meetings as well. Neither Cethe nor Cu seemed ready to take on any of those tasks by himself.

“My brothers!” he called. Cethe and Cu both swung their heads to look at him right away, which was the lone good sign in this whole affair. Neither of them was yet in shock at the sudden turns of events. “You must return to Angela and redouble our interrogations! Anything she knows about the queen that could lead to her discovery, we must know!”

“And what of the entertainer?” the Minster of Agriculture said. “Is she not still dangerous?”

“We have her safely imprisoned,” Cian said. “Of all my worries right now, she is the one who can hurt us the least.”

Prudence wondered if it was possible to freeze to death even when, strictly speaking, the temperatures were above freezing.

There was a draft in the cell somewhere, and on some level Prudence was thankful for it; she’d once heard that prisoners could be poisoned by the bad air in dungeons which had no airshafts. But the temperature outside was just barely above freezing, and the shaft focused the drafty air such that a gentle breeze outside hit her with the speed of a cantering horse. Shortly after Cian left, Prudence was able to see her breath in the cell.

The water on her face and breasts never turned to ice, but it chilled her to the very bone. Every now and then a near-freezing rivulet would run between her breasts and down her belly, and each time she had to force herself not to scream; the sensation was like being scratched with the jagged tip of an icicle. Her clothes, uncomfortable in any case because she’d been wearing them for well over twenty-four hours, were like a heavy and clammy second skin that surrendered almost all of their protective ability once wet. Her body shuddered uncontrollably, toes to shoulders, though the chattering of her teeth was not as bad as she’d feared.

This was what Gabrielle saw when she came to the last cell in the dungeon: her lover, trying to slump in the chair but tied too tightly to do so, shaking like a leaf, with disheveled black hair hanging in her face, her skin carrying the porcelain pallor of the grave. She had cried, “My God, Prudence!” before it occurred to her that her voice might echo deeper into the castle.

Prudence lifted her head, wearily. “G-Gabby,” she said through trembling lips. She saw that the queen didn’t look much better; she was dressed as a servant, walking unevenly, her face flecked with blood, dark bags under her eyes.

Gabrielle caught herself from saying Are you all right?, because even a blind person could tell that Prudence was not in any way all right. Instead she said, “What can I do?”

“Key,” Prudence rasped.

“I looked,” Gabrielle said. “The key rack is empty.”

“G-guards might answer to you,” Prudence said.

“There are no guards,” Gabrielle said. In that moment, it occurred to both of them that this was a brilliant way to hold Prudence, not bothering to take the risk of her hypnotizing whatever hapless fools received the duty of guarding her.

There was a moment’s pause, after which Prudence said, “Wuh-What happened to you?”

“The Captain of the Guard is dead,” Gabrielle said. In the torchlight Prudence could see the streaks on her face made by dried tears. “He tried to remove me from the throne, and I killed him. I was a mess afterward. I don’t know much more than that.”

“The Seers are moving against you,” Prudence said. “He must have been their secret weapon.”

“Rubbish,” Gabrielle said, then winced. She put a hand to her head, as though feeling pain there. “I’m sorry. There is a part of me, somewhere, that knows you’re right. But it’s as if that part of me is in a cell, just as you are. And when I push up against the bars ... Rubbish.”

“The Seers have been hypnotizing you,” Prudence said, as quickly as she could. “For years. They tricked you by planting the idea in your head—“

“Rubbish,” Gabrielle said, too loudly, cutting Prudence off. She closed her eyes and hit her head against the bars of the cell, not hard enough to hurt but with enough force to produce a hollow ringing sound.

“You’ve got to help me, Prudence,” the queen said in a small voice. “I’ve been pushing against it for hours, and ... nothing. I can’t stop myself. The Captain told me that they were behind him, but—“

Gabrielle broke off whatever she had been about to say. Her face contorted. She made a whining sound, like a horse pulling in the opposite direction from the tug of the reins. Prudence, unable to set aside her scientific curiosity in hypnotic phenomena, stared in sick fascination: she’d never before seen someone want so badly to resist a suggestion.

Finally the queen’s face went slack and she muttered, “Rubbish.” She slumped from the effort, grabbing the cell’s bars to keep from collapsing in the dirt. Prudence saw that her left hand was covered, fingertip to wrist, with drying blood.

For a long time, neither of them said anything. Gabrielle was afraid of running up against the wall in her mind; Prudence was stunned silent by what she had just seen. This is my fault, Prudence thought. Trying to send her as deep as I could, never considering that she could’ve been under someone else’s thumb. She has been broken. I helped break her.

“Angela and I were given a sleeping potion,” Prudence said at last, not because she thought the queen needed to know this, but because she could think of nothing else to say. “A servant girl named Rose. Cian claimed that she was under his control as well.”

“Rubbish,” Gabrielle said automatically, and bumped her head against the bars again. She opened her eyes weakly. “Rose is dead. Fell from the castle wall. I’m sorry.”

“Whoever did this,” Prudence said slowly, trying to skirt around the edges of the forbidden territory in Gabrielle’s mind, “used a drug. I saw a vial of it. They drugged you early on, small amounts, so that you would go under easier. They used much more of it on Rose. She probably didn’t even know what was happening to her.”

“You have to help me,” Gabrielle said again. “It’s in my head. I can’t get away. I need you to hypnotize me.”

Prudence was trembling like a leaf. In that moment she became aware that all feeling was gone from her nipples and the tip of her nose. Though she had some distance to go before her life would be in danger, it was also true that she had never been as close to death as she was in that moment.

There was no fucking chance in the world of hypnotizing Gabrielle.

“Maybe Angela will get loose,” Prudence said instead. “She would kill every able-bodied man in the kingdom to find you.”

(Angela sat in the oval-shaped drawing on the top floor of the Seers’ tower. She was at the same table at which Gabrielle had often sat, but the crystal that Gabrielle had often stared into was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a large, round candle burned on the center of the table.)

(Angela watched the candle flame. In her current state, she could not remember a time when she had not watched the candle flame.)

Gabby needs me.

(“Let yourself relax, Angela,” the voice said. Angela could recall that there had been a few different voices, each of them familiar, but she did not know who they belonged to. She did not need to know. “Watch the candle flame. It burns so gently. Its warmth is so gentle. Let the candle flame guide you, gently, deeper and deeper.”)

(The candle flame was warm, its warmth the slightest, gentlest touch on Angela’s skin. It reminded her of early spring, when people would stand in the courtyard and simply bask in that gentle warmth, so pleased they were to be free of winter’s yoke. But they could afford to take that time, and she could not, could never do, because)

Gabby needs me.

(Angela said this in a flat, distant voice. The words may have seemed urgent, but her tone was not, which caused no end of confusion in the other people in the room.)

(Finally one of the voices said, “Let yourself relax, Angela. So easy to let the flame guide your eyes. So easy to let your eyes relax, and feel that relaxation throughout your entire body.”)

(Angela blinked. There was some heaviness in her eyes afterward, the sort of heaviness that one felt before taking a nap. She missed the days when she could find a chair next to window, curl up in the gentle warmth, and take a nice, long nap. But she sensed those days were gone, years ago, replaced with a time when)

Gabby needs me.

“We can’t count on Angela,” Gabrielle said in her weak voice. “The ... people who did this ... found the perfect way to imprison you. They may have the perfect way to imprison her. And if they had a drug for me, I’m sure they’ve already given it to her.”

“We have only you,” Prudence murmured. “We’re doomed.”

“What?” Gabrielle’s body still sagged against the bars, but the slightest edge had crept into her voice. “What did you say?”

“We’re doomed,” Prudence said. “Gabby, I can’t hypnotize you, the state that I’m in. Hypnosis is about relaxation — not just yours, but mine too. D-d-do I look relaxed to you?”

“But you took me under so quickly before,” Gabrielle said. “Like lightning.”

“You’re not in any shape to go into t-trance, either,” Prudence said. “Look at you: you look like you s-slept outside last night. You’re s-spent. Exhaustion is not relaxation.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t help me,” Gabrielle said. There was a note of despair in her voice, but a note of something else as well. Frustration? “The next time I see the people behind this, they’re going to put me into a trance. I know they will. They won’t give a damn whether I’m relaxed or not. You have to do it, before they do.”

Prudence’s head sunk down. She was having trouble holding it up. She mumbled something at the floor that Gabrielle could not hear, and Gabrielle said sharply, “Prudence, I can’t—“

“I never did anything!” Prudence said, lifting her head just high enough that Gabrielle could see the despair on her face. “Do you fucking hear that? They were in your head for years before I ever dreamed I’d visit this overgrown chicken coop!”

Prudence’s head began to sag again. “I thought I was taking you so deep, learning so much, playing your mind like a wizard of the violin. But it was always them. You were their puppet all along. I was never anything but a hack. Just as Cian said.”

“Rubbish,” Gabrielle said. She no longer said the word automatically; frustration animated her voice. She had stopped sagging against the bars; her feet were solidly under her. “I didn’t have the dream until you got here. I needed you to be in that dream!”

“Fucking dream,” Prudence said, exhaustion lending her voice a dismissive tone. “What does that dream even mean?”

“Help!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “The cat in my dream, with your eyes and your voice, was supposed to help me against the people who are doing this.”

“God damn it, listen to yourself,” Prudence said to the floor, disgusted. “You can’t even say who did it.”

“Seers!” Gabrielle shouted. “The Seers are nothing but harmless rubbish, yet they think the have the right to take my love and throw it into my own fucking dungeon!”

Prudence still aimed her eyes at the floor, her voice sarcastic and sullen, like a teenager’s. “And just what do you think you can do about it, Gabby?”

“Gabby will do nothing,” Gabrielle said. Without even realizing it, she had drawn herself up to her full height. She still looked shaky on her feet, but the gray eyes of de Vess shone with righteous fury. “Queen Gabrielle, the Daughter of the Fire, is going to find those bastard Seers and make them wish they had been born dead!”

Gabrielle turned on her heels and stalked away, toward the stairs leading upward into the castle.

Listening to the distant footfalls, still too exhausted to lift her eyes from the floor, Prudence Savigne smiled.

She’d spoken true earlier; in her current state, it would have been impossible to hypnotize Gabby. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t find the right suggestions to make.

“Hack, am I?” Prudence said quietly. “We’ll see soon enough.”

Cian played the Council so effectively that he wished history could somehow record his accomplishments.

The most difficult thing, that required the most skill on his part, was keeping the Council on the track that they wanted whilst letting them speak. Like all nobles, each member of the Council thought that his opinion carried the most weight and should be taken most seriously, and hated to be interrupted. Plus there were a large number of nobles and powerful tradespeople in the room who did not normally sit on the Council, and they would demand to be heard as well.

Cian had to bide his time, bite his tongue, and wait while these various stuffed tunics got in their words. Only when the conversation seemed to be spiraling out of control — such as when the Blacksmithy’s representative raised the possibility of Angela being next in line for the throne — did Cian step in, with a perfectly crafted phrase, not too long and not too aggressive, to keep them headed in the direction that he wanted.

The direction he wanted was very simple: take Gabrielle alive and blame everything on Prudence, with an eye toward one day restoring Gabrielle as queen. Prudence would not die, however, as the Council could much easier to manipulate if she were known to be alive. Prudence would “escape,” and by the time her sessions were done, Angela would be willing to hunt the dusky-haired hypnotist to the end of the earth. Gabrielle would require months of treatment, which Cian intended to conduct himself, in a dark room with only a single candle flame for illumination, with Angela far away ending her blood feud.

The Council accepted all of the tenets of Cian’s plan without question. Prudence was a mind-altering villain, Gabrielle her hapless victim, the possibility of Gabrielle being “cured” not only possible but vital to the very survival of the kingdom. Even Lieutenant de Leon, who should have been conducting a blood feud of his own after the death of his Captain, was willing to allow that Gabrielle should be taken alive.

Cian felt this to be the greatest mastery that any mystic had ever accomplished. Hypnotizing a crowd was, in a way, just like hypnotizing a person: there was always the possibility of distraction, of internal objection, and thus you had to guide them downward gently, and even slower than a person could walk into a lake. He brought the Council down with them so gradually that, later, none would even admit that he had assumed command by the end.

The one problem was Percy Runier. Cian had heard rumors that the treasurer had intended to woo the queen, and indeed his attitude for most of the meeting matched that of a smitten teenager. Finally, Percy interrupted a debate about how the kingdom should be run during the queen’s interim by saying, “what proof have we that Queen Gabrielle is even ill?”

There was a brittle silence. Cian ended it by saying, “We have several stories from servants in and about the castle.”

“Servants,” Percy said, waving a hand dismissively. Angela might have remembered his arrogance, from the conversation where he’d said What other man in that circle is her equal, if not I? “The servants knew her not. Not even I know her well enough to judge her mad.”

“We met with her every day,” the Minister of Agriculture said. “And she did seem out of sorts.”

“No one ever said she was out of sorts after a Council meeting,” Percy said. “We say it now, because he is saying it.” This last with a gesture in Cian’s direction.

“The Captain knew something is wrong,” Cian said calmly. “He signed a document to that effect.”

“Aye, and is it not convenient that the Captain is dead?” Percy said.

“Convenient to whom?” A man in the back called out.

“Convenient for the one man who can cure Gabrielle’s ills,” Percy said, fixing his stare on Cian. “Any person who can challenge his claims is either in his custody, or dead.”

There were shouts of discord, both from other Council members and from the assorted nobles in the back. Cian basked in the sound; they were already so convinced of his story that they would fight the second-most-powerful man in the kingdom over it. Cian let those shouts speak for him, at first. Finally, he raised a hand for quiet. “Do you agree that Queen Gabrielle must be found, Lord Runier?”

“Yes, but—“

“Do you agree that Queen Gabrielle would have no obvious reason to kill the Captain of the Guard, a man who knew her from childhood?”

“Yes, but—“

“Do you agree that Queen Gabrielle has seemed a different person since the arrival of the woman Prudence?”

“Yes, but—“

“Do you agree that—“

“Let me speak, god damn you,” Percy snarled. Cian kept his face still, but inwardly he was smiling. Rage would not win this argument.

“Peace, Lord Runier,” de Leon said. “We must find the queen, first above all. Only then can further questions be asked.”

Cian’s inward smile widened. It had always been a rule of his father’s, in conducting the fortune-teller fraud: put the client’s toughest questions off until later. Because later will be a time and place of your choosing. Now other people were saying it for him, unprompted. God, he would be a legend for this.

“Lord Runier, I understand your concerns,” Cian said. “Would you accompany me to the Seers’ tower, where my brothers are speaking with Angela? I think you’ll find our process quite illuminating.”

Percy stood. “Yes, I’d quite like to see what questions are being asked of the Handmaiden.”

“Of course,” Cian said, thinking of the vial secreted in his robe. “Nothing would go better with your guidance than a warm cup of tea.”

From an alcove high above, a place that only two women in the entire kingdom knew about, Gabrielle watched Cian leave with Percy Runier.

Angela had discovered the alcove, had pointed it out to a pre-teen Gabrielle as a place where they could watch the Council meetings and other business of the crown. Gabrielle supposed that Angela had, even then, thought of the alcove as a place that could be used for escape, for hiding, just the way that it was being used now.

Gabrielle did not know exactly what the treasurer was walking into — with no memory of what had been done to her, how could she know? However, she guessed that Percy was not in any immediate danger. They wouldn’t kill him as they had with Rose; too many deaths of highly prominent people would cause a panic. Plus, her own drugging and hypnosis had gone on for years, according to Prudence, which probably meant they couldn’t take full control of someone in a single day.

The Council continued to squabble amongst themselves with Cian gone. Gabrielle had only been meeting with them for a week, but even so, she knew that none of them would be able to assert power. Runier was the only one among them with enough charisma and influence to do so, and soon he would be taking a long nap. They would not be able to get past whatever ideas Cian had planted in their heads on their own.

She pictured herself striding right down into the middle of their meeting and telling her side of the story.

And then she pictured Lieutenant de Leon calling for the Guardsmen to seize her before she even got a chance to open her mouth. The Lieutenant kept cool in front of the Council, but she assumed that he was inflamed about the Captain, and she thought he was right to be inflamed. She had to get to the Lieutenant first, without violence. Explain the Seers’ treachery while Cian was not present.

“Rubbish,” she murmured aloud. She laid her head against the cool stone wall.

How exactly could she stop this? Alone, her mother’s knife still stuck in the Captain’s corpse, her body weakened along with her reeling mind? How could she stop this, when she was unsure about what was happening inside her own head?

“Start with the Lieutenant,” she whispered aloud. “If I can’t make good with him and his men, the hypnosis part won’t even matter.”