The Office of Female Transitions 2: The Matter of Prenandamna
Leiselude heard the slave before seeing her. A conspicuous clip-clop, clip-clop sound, as if of hooves striking cement, grew louder and louder outside the Office’s door; and even before the door opened the slave-wizard’s thoughts grew concerned with the potential damage done to her handler’s carpet.
She wasn’t particularly enamored with this carpet, but it was her handler’s carpet nonetheless, and therefore it held weight in Leiselude’s mind. Everything concerning her various and assigned handlers held weight with her.
So as long as she was assigned to Chanihashar, it was her duty to take care of his property. Moreover, being a property herself, a slave, the carpet was not something of which she could be ignorant. Unless spoken to or otherwise ordered, slaves in the Empire habitually kept their gaze to the ground, in neutral surroundings, or upon their handlers’ crotches, while in their company. The first was part of their condition of submissiveness. The second was part of their understanding of their purpose. Because Leiselude spent so much time staring at that carpet, there was an understandable worry for its safety.
The wand-slave reassured herself, however.
If need be, she would reweave each broken strand, one at a time, through magic.
A bald, male slave came in and held the door open. This uncharacteristic act of gallantry was necessary since the female slave accompanying him lacked any means of opening a door herself. Mostly nude, despite accessories, she entered jangling through the entry on the left on all fours, the clip-clop of her gait diminishing as she stepped onto the softer, delicate surface inside.
Leiselude winced.
The jangling, clip-clopping sound, as she had expected, came from a horse-slave.
Rare outside the capital, where the wizardly expertise to create them was hard to come by, horse-slaves were a not infrequent sight along the metal-lined grand avenues of Su’um itself. They were a status symbol. The handling and use of a horse-slave-drawn cart or carriage, whether by a team of pony-sluts or studs, a pair, or even an individual slave, drew attention. The more highly decorated a horse-slave the better. The largest horse-slave stable in the Gleaming Empire, of course, belonged to the Platinum Empress. Some of these trotters were so brightly festooned or idiosyncratically marked that their public appearance became a cause of celebration. Some even had their own fan clubs—passersby would run up to them and gently toss flowers onto their path. Young children would run beside them, laughing joyously, trying to feed them sugar or apples from De.
This slave was not one of these grand stallions or mares, though she was no less ornamented.
In addition to the tattooed rings of her embondment—a Ring of Lust burning over her cunt, a Ring of Love clearly visible above her heart, and, presumably, a Ring of Obedience also about her brow, albeit currently hidden—and the smaller nipple-tattoos which magically augmented her figure, this slave’s blue-white complexion was wreathed in coiling black stripes and designs, skin decorations spread out in delicate patterns along her limbs, around her breasts, her thighs, and especially about her back and buttocks, each line artistically accentuating the female’s supple figure, to show off her lithesome, delectable shape.
These decorative, tattooed lines also served to underscore the dramatic changes that had been made to the slave’s anatomy, in order to make her a horse-slave.
The horse-slave’s hands and feet had been replaced by solid rubber hooves. Her legs had been stretched, particularly around the ankles, the joints lifted significantly higher on her body’s frame until they resembled the digitigrade articulation of animals. Practically speaking, the horse-slave looked as if she had a second pair of knees, bending backward. While walking on all fours like an animal, her tread was no awkward thing, like an ordinary human’s crawling would be. Her steps were graceful, refined, their every motion suggesting a dance. While horse-slaves could never match the speed of the real animals after which they were named, they could easily equal or excel them in sheer poise.
A leather harness wrapped about the slave’s chest, framing her plump breasts at the base.
Metal ornaments pierced her nipples. From these, light chains connected to a complex arrangement of leather straps and yokes, jangling. The nipple studs and chains were of a shiny, yellowish-red metal, and Leiselude’s practiced eye identified their composition as orichalcum, an alloy of gold and copper—an expensive indulgence.
The symbolism of metals was no light thing in Su’um. In the sacred Registry of Metals, the Empire’s caste system, Orichalcum ranked above Electrum and Silver but below shining, purest Gold or Imperial Platinum, the latter, of course, reserved solely for the Empress herself.
The slave’s head was masked: not a magical appurtenance, such as might have come from their Shajjwashanan neighbors to the south, yet all the same a full headpiece in the shape of a horse’s head that had been magically sealed onto her face.
An alteration to the horse-slave’s neck, to the very arrangement of her skeleton, allowed her to face forward without difficulty. The slave was led trotting into the office and before the High Officer’s desk, where she sat on her haunches in an unhorse-like, far more characteristically feline set of movements.
Before Leiselude’s handler could dismiss the male slave, he spoke.
“Excellency, the horse-slave’s owner has made a complaint about the seizing of his property. He claims he needs the slave as half of a matching pair he intends to use in a parade this next Spring Festival.”
“He should read his contracts more closely in future,” the handler said, dryly. “The slave will inform this man he may file a grievance, if such is his wish, with the High Office of Male Transitions. One way or the other, I am sure, his complaint will be resolved.”
“This slave will do so, excellency. He is pleased to serve.”
“The slave is dismissed.”
The door closed, and the High Officer Chanihashar addressed the horse-slave sitting on her haunches in his office, after examining her a moment. “The slave will stand.”
With much ungainliness, she slowly climbed to her hindquarters. The maneuver was not as graceful as her movements had been on all fours, the flexing of the slave’s elongated ankles being particularly disconcerting, even to Leiselude, whose long experience in the possession of High Office handlers and others had inured her to most modifications of the flesh. Standing on the rubber-soled hooves that had enveloped her feet, the sigmoid shape the horse-slave’s legs had assumed bent her forward, then back, then forward again in a manner that, in almost anyone else, would have suggested severely broken and then badly set limbs.
The way the horse-slave could only partially lift her equally hoof-covered hands, and the way they dangled loosely at the ends of her arms, proved cumbersome as well. The horse-head itself which she wore was expressionless. One thing was immediately clear: this was a creature refashioned to stand prone. Anything else was an affront to style.
Leiselude inched closer to her handler. Soon enough, she felt his hand press upon her bald scalp, as she had anticipated. She was soon to do magic.
She was already squirming.
She heard him speak a formula, a spell; and she, panting with arousal, repeated his words, word for word, intonation for intonation, almost before the sound had passed completely from his gold-tinted lips.
Although the experience was metaphorical, the wand-slave thrilled to feel a handler’s power manifest through her. She lived for this, as much as she lived for being fucked, for serving a handler’s pleasure like the abject slut she was. Her handlers exerted their dominion upon her whenever they raped her, whenever they made her their sex-slave. Similarly, they exerted their dominion upon her whenever they cast a spell through her, making her their wand-slave.
Either way, it was a glorious fucking.
Either way, she was reduced to being a mere tool for another’s pleasure. Being so ruthlessly controlled, so utterly dominated, always gave Leiselude such glorious, euphoric freedom.
This was a paradox, no doubt. Nonetheless, that was the extent of it.
Leiselude never felt so free as when she was being fucked. When she was casting a spell. Being a tool . . . being a toy . . . whether being a wand or a fuckdoll . . . whether her ravishment involved having a cock inside her or a handler’s will imposed, an orgasmic feeling of unrestricted power was always sent coursing through her nerve endings. This power—and it was a sexual power either way—made her feel so wonderfully, blissfully female, riding its wave like riding a cock inside her.
On a more basic note, Leiselude just liked the taste of men’s cum. She relished the feel of hard dicks inside her. The touch of a handler’s hands holding her possessively.
This arousal inspired strengthened her powers. On Ramanananan, sex was magic. Orgasms were power. They were as addictive as cum and just as tasty.
Her handler spoke the words. She generated the magic slut-heat. Seams appeared in the unlined rubber of the horse-head mask and the four hooves. The thick rubber encasing the horse-slave’s balled fists parted and fell to the floor, bouncing. The slave stumbled as the hooves about her feet similarly fell apart. A low moan emerged from behind the mask, which billowed with sudden air and looseness.
In front of the desk, the slave started shivering. The harness about her upper body parted with sharp, whip-like cracks and were cast aside. Stripped, the slave fell to the floor, on her ass, whinnying loudly.
“The slave will remove the mask,” Leiselude’s handler ordered the distressed female. A moment later, when it was apparent that this would be impossible for the horse-slave to do on her own, Leiselude felt her diminutive handler climb down beside her and take her cuffs in hand.
He unlocked her.
“The slave will assist the slave,” he whispered to Leiselude. His huge nose brushed up against her cheek. His hands hovered over her enormous tits, brushing them, making her hot.
“Yes, Excellency,” Leiselude said, adoring him. She rubbed her wrists. “This slave is pleased to serve.” Leiselude got to her feet and padded to the suffering former horse-slave. The poor dear’s fingers were all but crushed, having been cramped inside thick street-rubber so long. The slave was completely unable to flex them herself. When Leiselude helped to straighten them, she cried out in pain.
They weren’t broken, exactly, just incredibly stiff.
Her feet were in actually worse shape. They were curled inward, crescent-shaped from disuse and pressure, the toes and heels practically touching, the flesh green-black with bruises. Leiselude’s massage was as gentle as she could make it. Even so, she inflicted unintended pain in removing the remnants of the hooves. Leiselude rubbed the slave’s skin, drawing in long unfelt circulation. Magic had kept the extremities alive despite their lack of use, but it would take an even greater magic to restore their function now. Delicate magic, too. Leiselude had her work cut out for her. Yet she looked forward to the challenge of it.
She squirmed again, her pussy growing even more hot and wet just thinking about it.
She adored transformational magic.
Leiselude removed the girl’s red-gold chains and then her horse-mask. This was an ingenious construct, especially around the jaw line, allowing food and water to pass but otherwise capable of staying permanently in place. The face was in better shape than the limbs, yet still there were lines in unaccustomed places and some bruising. The unfiltered light hurt the slave’s eyes, and she whinnied, her voice having been altered along with the rest of her whenever she had been made a horse-slave originally. Revealed at last, a tattooed Ring of Obedience did run around her exposed head, just above the slave’s eyes. On the horse-slave’s forehead was a name, a denotatum: “Apelindhri.”
This name was . . . familiar to Leiselude.
She had heard it before, she knew, vaguely. She frowned, disquiet coming over her. She didn’t like to be reminded of that part of her life.
Leiselude laid the hobbled slave on her back, straightening as well as she could the oddly-shaped legs (she noted in passing the carpet appeared fine, no worries). Despite her pain, the slave, this Apelindhri, was still bound by her Ring of Obedience: she didn’t struggle, merely whimpered a little as her body was arranged. As quickly as she could, already yearning for Chanihashar’s touch, and the feel of bonds about her wrists, Leiselude returned to her assigned handler. Resting unaccustomedly free hands on her shapely thighs, the slave-wizard knelt beside the short man with the big nose, lowering her head submissively. The handler touched her hairless scalp, his fingers caressing the golden lattice tattooed there, and Leiselude shivered in delight, growing heated and wet and magical.
This particular handler was her current favorite. He used her well. Despite his small size, she was glad he had been selected for her.
Together, they recited the ritual that invoked that magic. The words themselves spoken weren’t magical. They were symbolic, merely representative of ideas and the interrelation of forces. Leiselude’s psychic sensorium could detect the energy; but it was her mind and imagination that shaped it, harnessed it for purpose. The tattoos inscribed on Leiselude’s skin, on the other hand, were magical, but that was only because they had been infused with power, the purely symbolic made the energetically literal.
The ring of arcane letters surrounding the transfer circle glowed, enveloping her handler’s hand atop them in radiance.
He spoke, she repeated. Their voices echoed, nearly becoming one. Such close recitation took much practice and skill. The relationship between an Imperial, non-psychic caster and his spell-wand was not easy to form. The words were one thing; their imaginations also had to be coordinated; they both had to understand the symbolism behind the words in order to draw upon the forces they represented.
This by no means meant that they had to be partners. The handler had the harder job, not being able to discern psychic phenomena whatsoever, just what he imagined in his mind’s eye.
Leiselude was an instrument, nothing more, and wanted to be nothing more.
Yet a fine musician knows every curve, every inch of the musical instrument he plays, knows even in the darkness how to evoke the beauty of its sound. So a fine user of a wand-slave likewise knows the mind of his plaything, knows how best to evoke the power of her magic. The words were spoken. The spells were cast. The magical energies of Ramanananan were again directed upon the Apelindhri.
A glow erupted around the horse-slave’s misshapen feet. The radiance was identical to that enveloping Leiselude’s transfer circle, identical to that which enveloped her handler’s hand.
The Apelindhri’s feet began to straighten. The bruises disappeared. Healthy new skin emerged. The toes sprang once again to life. The feet assumed a more normal shape. The glowing traveled up her elongated ankles then, the dual focus of Chanihashar and Leiselude’s attentions also traveling there. For about a minute, the bones in the Apelindhri’s legs actually lit up, the fire inside them visible through the surrounding flesh. There was no pain, however. If anything, the Apelindhri started to squirm and moan in utmost pleasure as her limbs were straightened. The force of Leiselude’s telekinesis kept the slave reasonably flat on her back, despite her sluttish exertions to the contrary and need to touch herself.
Meanwhile, the slave’s ankles swelled, then compressed, aligning with the restored beauty of her feet.
Her legs overall shrank, assumed human proportions, though no less supple and attractive. As the healing, restorative glow swept upwards along her figure, a secondary effect was the removal of the distinctive horse-slave markings from the Apelindhri’s skin. Under Leiselude’s handler-directed telekinesis, these skin-sigils would incandesce, then as their inner light faded, so would their existence.
Forces converged on the Apelindhri’s hips. The illium and pubis were briefly outlined beneath the slave’s pale-blue skin, simultaneously glowing clearer, and the joints realigning. Though the changes occurred quickly, the spellwork was not easy. Leiselude’s handler sweated profusely. The ceremonies that transformed a person, whether male or female, into a horse-slave were, like most transformational magics, not designed to be undone. Every magical transformation was supposed to be permanent. And even then, unless done well, the results would be ungainly, crippling.
There was a reason few horse-slaves were seen outside the capital. Leiselude could count but on both hands the denotatums of all the wand-slaves in the Gleaming Empire capable of such a working, herself among them. And their restoration but on one hand alone.
The efforts to restore this Apelindhri would be ungainly if not performed well. A slight telekinetic slip, a failure to correctly conceptualize her skeletal structure, even a simple misspoken word, and the Apelindhri would be injured, perhaps permanently. Fortunately, the body knew itself. The cells held a natural rhythm within themselves, and much of the energy directed upon the carpeted slave just went into coaxing her body back into the human shape it wanted to be in anyway.
The healing glow passed down the Apelindhri’s arms. The slave’s orichalcum studs disconnected, fell to the floor. The piercings healed. The light enveloped her twisted hands, restoring them, too. The fingers flexed smoothly. Up her shoulders next, her neck, and finally the magical radiance settled upon the slave’s head and face. Again, bruises disappeared. Unsightly lines caused by a mask crimping flesh for untold years faded. A natural, healthy (figurative) glow emerged upon features. The actual light at length concentrated on the Apelindhri’s brain. Leiselude’s handler, through his instrument Leiselude, spoke the words that then forced the former horse-slave to forget she had ever been a horse-slave.
Years of memories were wiped in their entirety.
When the rituals were finished, both Leiselude’s head and that of her handler slumped. He was tired; she was thoroughly energized but sexually submissive. The wand-slave was quivering, in fact, waiting to orgasm, hoping for permission. For minutes the office lay quiet but for her whimpers.
It was the Apelindhri who spoke first. The slave rose to her feet, on legs that were shapely, feminine, and, most of all, now, human; and assumed an attractive pose before the desk.
“This slave is here to serve you, excellency,” she said, smiling and heated, eager and wet. There was no hint of a whinny. “How may this slave see to your pleasure?”
She waited with the infinite patience of a slave until the diminutive High Officer lifted his face.
The slave was no longer a horse-slave. Her restored appearance basically resembled Leiselude’s.
Nude and hairless, the tattoos she wore were mostly the same ones the slave-wizard had: Rings of Lust, Love, and Obedience. The restoration had left these intact, along with the pair of breast-enhancing, waist-trimming, ass-shaping tattoo-rings around her nipples, burning away the horse-slave marks and leaving the rest of her skin pristine. While she missed the distinguishing golden transfer circle of a wand-slave atop her bare scalp, like Leiselude her forehead did equally bear a denotatum.
The Apelindhri was, therefore, a named slave, unique, not an interchangeable unit, like a rubber-slave.
A “she,” not an “it.”
Eventually, Leiselude’s handler rang his desk bell again and summoned an attendant, to whom he gave instructions. As she eavesdropped, for the first time in many months, his words surprised Leiselude.
She tried not to let the emotion show. That moment of disquiet came back to her, diminishing a little of her joy at being a slave. With effort, she pushed an awful feeling of responsibility beneath her.
Contrary to the expectations of some outside the High Office, Leiselude’s handlers—and she had had many, many over the years—did not confide their intentions with her. They did not share with her what the particulars were of any matter brought before them. That most of the time Leiselude knew anyway spoke much of the dominator-dominated dynamic. Yet while she could usually anticipate any of her current handlers’ needs and words with great accuracy, she could not actually read their minds; and every once in a great while one of them did something unexpected. This was one such instance.
The wand-slave had thought she was finished. But she had only just begun.
Two male slaves returned carrying a large, full-length looking glass with them. They set it down in the wide space between the desk and the wall. The sides of the mirror were inwrought with metal. The back was engraved with intricate arcane sigils. Leiselude studiously avoided her own reflection, more disquiet and reminiscence coming upon her.
“The slave will gaze upon herself,” Leiselude’s handler ordered the other nude female slave. For a moment, Leiselude had thought Chanihashar meant her. That would have been truly terrible.
“Yes, excellency,” the Apelindhri replied. She stood in front of the glass.
Like Leiselude, this mirror was a magical appliance. Like the wand-slave, it too could bind magical energies together and deliver an enchantment. Unlike Leiselude, though, whose intelligence, while currently enslaved, extended her range and abilities, as a tool the mirror had but one function, though it performed that function well.
The former horse-slave looked upon her reflection.
From the side, it was possible to see what she saw; and what the Apelindhri saw, of course, was herself. Yet there was a significant difference between this image and the perceived reality.
The figure in the mirror was that of a much older Su’uman woman, a female in her late sixties or early seventies, not pretty, naked as the slave was naked, yet without the vibrant youth, without a sex slave’s fuckable body. She had none of the lovely curves, the deep valleys, or the long legs that would cross behind a user’s back as she was raped. This image even had hair, long flowing hair of dirty gray.
Personally, Leiselude found it disgusting.
Despite the Third Ring wrapped around her brain, the slave, the Apelindhri, also gasped a little. Then the ordinary state of calm customary to slaves of her caliber returned. Meanwhile, Leiselude inched closer to her handler and dared to glance up at him beseechingly. She needed a reminder of her place.
“Of course,” he said, absentmindedly, knowing her so well. He took up the cloth-lined cuffs he had cast aside previously, carelessly upon his desk, and replaced them on Leiselude’s wrists, binding her hands behind her.
“The slave gives thanks, Excellency,” she said, once more inflamed by her helplessness. She knelt beside him, fully aware now of what would be required. The renewal of her servility calmed her.
The male slaves tidied up and left briefly. They returned with a chair.
“The slave will kneel and lift her arms,” Leiselude’s handler told the Apelindhri. “Yes, excellency,” the former horse-slave replied and did so, holding her arms out in front of her. The mirror’s ancient image did so as well. On her knees, the Apelindhri’s thighs were already spread. Leiselude felt her handler grasp her transfer circle, fingers spread upon her scalp, holding the slave-wand down.
Leiselude was, of course, thrilled to the core to be dominated again. She dismissed her disquiet.
He spoke. She spoke. More words in no common language of Ramanananan, only by wizards and those who used wizards, first by Leiselude’s handler, then by Leiselude herself. Given fire and form by the slave-wizard’s magic, these arcane syllables took on actual life, pushed out by her perfect, blowjob lips to float like oddly-shaped smoke rings toward the nude figure of the Apelindhri.
Words exchanging, infused with her sexual energy and delight in being his instrument, Leiselude extended an invisible telekinetic branch of her handler’s will onto the kneeling slave before them.
Technically speaking, it was her willpower; but since slaves supposedly had no will, truly it must be called his: another paradox. Leiselude was the source of power, but the High Officer was the source of direction, the guiding force behind her force. No surprises now. The spell flowed easily, without interruption, his well-anticipated intent being her only well-intentioned thought. The floating, fiery words touched the tattoos present upon the Apelindhri’s pale skin. Syllable sparking syllable, the spoken words landed on the Apelindhri’s forehead, obliterating the written in bright bursts of momentary flame.
The denotatum went first.
Leiselude’s math was excellent. Yet even those with basic skills knew that positive and negative integers of equal value canceled each other out. This ceremony was not quite so simple an operation as “1” and “—1” added together (or, really, “10” and “—10”); but the effect was close to the same. She spoke the word “Apelindhri.” And the word “Apelindhri” on the slave’s forehead was burned away.
The sudden, subsequent lack of a name or number on her forehead placed the former horse-slave in the same temporary status as a newly made slave: she could, at this moment, strictly speaking, no longer be referred to as an “Apelindhri.”
Usually, at this juncture, one or the other, a denotatum or a designatum, would be applied, marking this slave either as an individual, albeit an enslaved one, or a robot, interchangeable with others of the same class. Instead, knowing fully now what was expected of her, at Chanihashar’s direction Leiselude focused her beloved handler’s next spells at the slave’s remaining tattoos.
These were not so easy to affect as the denotatum had been. Though similarly drawn by magic, and infused with magic, a denotatum’s potency was little compared to the two body-shaping nipple circles sported on the former horse-slave’s breasts. And in turn, their enchantment was less mighty than the three body-girding rings binding that slave to lust, love, and obedience. It would take a truly superior magic to remove them all, without trace.
For a moment . . . a bare moment . . . Leiselude’s pride surfaced: she knew herself to be the most powerful magic-user in the Empire. Then, with a shudder, she dismissed this dreadful reminder.
More fiery words floated between Leiselude and the now-unnamed slave. Soon enough, the five rings of tattoos—one per breast, then the three surrounding, respectively, cunt, heart, and brain—were each painlessly aflame. Their fire seemed to dig inward, new flesh forming atop the glowing arcane letters.
They did not disappear at once; they faded only gradually, in stages. Within minutes, only this glow remained, and once that faded so finally did the marks. In their absence, the woman’s formerly ensorcelled flesh rippled, changed, shrank . . . then wrinkled.
Large, expansive tits became the modest, exhausted breasts of an elder, unenhanced female. The woman’s waist filled out. Her trim thighs became flabby. The body hunched over, smitten with age.
After a few minutes, Leiselude’s handler rose from his chair, crossing the room to drape the now aged woman on her knees with a chiffon one of the male slaves handed him. Without the tattoos, her figure had collapsed upon itself, assuming the normal proportions of an ordinary, unmodified woman in her sixties or seventies. Her hair had grown back, gray and dirty. Throughout this entire procedure, the image in the mirror had remained the same; now, however, that reflection now finally reflected reality.
Leiselude put her head to the floor, balancing carefully because she had no freedom with her arms.
Partially, she did this in rest. Mostly, she did this in respect. Her handler requested the chair be brought, and one of the male slaves performed this task. The now elderly woman was carefully helped into it, much care being paid to her in their movements and handling.
The former horse-slave was still in a daze and remained so for many minutes. Leiselude’s handler waited, as did Leiselude herself, in deference. At length, the woman woke with a start. She blinked and looked around her. “I thought . . . when is the ceremony to take place?” Despite her age, her voice was melodious, indicative of High Registry.
“Your part of the burden is complete,” Chanihashar said. “You are free.”
“Free?” The woman looked around her. Leiselude knew she held no memory of arriving as a horse-slave. She likewise possessed no recollection of her life even as an ordinary female slave. As far as she was concerned, the years between the ceremony that had made her a slave and that which had just now been performed might never have taken place.
The newly freed, thoroughly mindwiped woman looked around. From her perspective, she might well have just appeared in this room, transitioning from wherever she had been before, without duration.
At length, her eyes fell upon her reflection, old and sallow.
“What . . . what have you done to me!” she gasped. She touched her face in disgust. “I’m . . . old,” she whispered. Leiselude’s handler nodded to the male slaves. They left the room discreetly.
The newly freed woman barely acknowledged. Her eyes were so wide that Leiselude, head still to the floor, viewing the woman as best she could from that awkward angle, felt they must surely soon pop out. For as the woman looked down upon herself . . . gazed upon her mismatched and wrinkled arms . . . her unlithe, untaut body . . . her weakened legs . . . as she felt her sagging skin, probably for the first time in decades, blemished, marked, undone by time . . . as she felt the weight of, and caressed the firm mass of, her sinking breasts, her bosoms, through the thin chiffon, comparing them as they had been when she was young . . . as she recognized the pain and fatigue and dullness in her body . . . as she felt her heart slow with an unfamiliar lack of vigor, blood trickling through her veins without strength or speed . . . the high caste looked (justifiably so) on the verge of faintness.
“What . . . what have you done to me?” She seemed startled even at the sound of her own voice. It probably had never sounded to her quite so . . . old.
“You have been set free, Prenandamna of the Orichalcum caste,” Leiselude’s handler said to her, stating the obvious. “This is the High Office of Female Transitions. This final transition was your freedom.”
“Free? But I was to be made a slave.” She spoke but could not stop gazing upon herself, either.
The High Officer nodded his head.
“Yes, Prenandamna. And so you were. It’s been fifteen years since your voluntary enslavement.” He made a polite cough. “I am Chanihashar, High Officer for the Empress. I have to ask you certain questions now. Please excuse me. For instance, do you recall the terms of your burden? It’s important, please.” He spoke slowly, obviously anticipating some difficulty with her understanding.
The woman, Prenandamna, put out a hand to steady herself. She frowned, thinking. It took her a few moments to speak. Because she was free, she was afforded this indulgence. “Yes,” she said, though she sounded uncertain still. “It’s as if it happened only . . . yesterday. Have I truly been a slave these last fifteen . . . years?” Her hands gripped each other. “It’s really been . . . only fifteen years?”
“Yes, Orichalcum.” She looked more than just fifteen years older, though.
Prenandamna clutched at the long, gray hair cascading about her shoulders. “It’s not fair,” she said, with the utter simplicity of a child. “I was to be the last. Only fifteen years.” She still looked confused.
There were tears in her eyes. She stared at her hands, which were wrinkled and spotted. She felt them. Her skin would feel old, dead, spoilt to her. “Who took my place?” she asked. “Who?”
“Your daughter, Orichalcum,” the High Officer said. “Your daughter, Amarmarja. She volunteered.”
The elderly woman shrieked. She moaned. Unnerved, Leiselude pressed her face to the floor, and it was several minutes before anything further could be said. Eventually, the High Officer spoke again. Though his words were not warm, neither were they unkind. They were merely businesslike.
“Orichalcum Prenandamna, please, you must answer my questions. Do you recall the terms of your burden? Please, tell me. I must judge whether you are fit to be released.”
“I do not want to be released. I . . my poor daughter . . .” She held her hands to her face and said nothing for a long while. Then, without lifting away her hands, she spoke. “Why am I so . . . old? I was to be a slave for the duration. The whole duration, all that was left. Why have you freed me?”
“It was not your choice to make,” Chanihashar said. “You were a slave. As for the other, in freeing your mind and body, all enchantments had to be removed, including the spells of perpetual youth you have enjoyed as a member of the Orichalcum caste since the age of twenty.” The High Officer directed his hand at the mirror, revealing the effects of those spells’ removal. “The cost of easy youth is accelerated age. At what age did you take up your burden?”
Prenandamna examined herself in the mirror for another minute. Unconsciously, she flexed her limbs, clearly not enjoying the weight of her body again. Though without conscious recollection of the youth that had just been removed from her, the knowledge of it would still reside in her cells. Suddenly burdened by a long-delayed infirmity, her entire body must have felt worn, baggy, and loose.
She frowned. She turned to Leiselude’s handler. “I was twenty-nine.”
Chanihashar nodded. He made a notation in his documents on the desk before him. “Correct. Your mind would appear to be clear on that. And that would make you, physically then, about seventy.”
Prenandamna nodded, understanding. So did Leiselude. Again, the maths were easy to calculate.
Everyone that was anyone, even an Outer Barbarian, even an Islander from the Southern Republics, knew that the ruler of the Gleaming Empire of Su’um was the immortal Platinum Empress. Everyone knew that. Su’um’s ruler was a shining vision of perpetual youth, her nation’s standard of beauty, of permanence, of utter stability. And because it pleased their Beloved One to be surrounded by youth, a measure of their benign despot’s beauty, permanence, and stability was deliberately shared amongst her closest servants, the Shining Castes of the Registry of Metals.
Accordingly, at the age of twenty, members of that High Registry could petition the Empress’ Officers and their wand-slaves to have their youth arrested.
Once the proper spells were cast, and with periodic maintenance thereafter, the Golds, Orichalcums, Electrums, and Silvers of her Empire stopped cosmetically aging and could remain at their best, physical prime for the rest of their lives, living in youth and splendor whilst obeying their divine Empress’ will.
The Middle and Base Castes of the Gleaming Empire were not afforded this rich luxury. They lived and died according to the rhythms of their natural bodies. However, a form of perpetual youth could still be acquired, albeit at a cost few were willing to pay. The irony was an oft-mentioned one: both the highest and the lowest of the Empire enjoyed an eternal springtime, the former as a grant of privilege from their Empress, the latter as but a rightless condition of their embonded existence as slaves.
Sex slaves were also naturally given a magical youth treatment. It pleased owners to fuck rejuvenated, young-looking bodies. So, their bodies too had to be made young-looking, for as long as they lasted.
Prenandamna sobbed. Eventually, the High Officer spoke again.
“Tell me of your enslavement. Why did you voluntarily accept slavery?”
“Because it was expected of me,” she said through her fingers. “I had hoped to be the last, to spare my own daughter the cost of Searassune’s burden.” She continued to sob.
“I was to be the last. I was to be the last!”
Chanihashar leaned back. “Evidently not. It is an admirable thing, this loyalty of the women in your family. Go on.”
Prenandamna pulled her hands away and stared at the floor. “My great-grandfather, Darariden . . . he tried to stir insurrection among the Outer Barbarians. He accused the Empress of . . .” Leiselude’s handler put a finger to his gold lips, made a noise in his throat, stopping her.
“Choose your next words carefully, Prenandamna,” he advised. He glanced at Leiselude. “Your ancestor had a reputation for not heeding his. And I remind you: you are still in the High Office of Female Transitions.”
Prenandamna hesitated, then nodded.
“My great-grandfather . . . slandered the Platinum Empress,” she said slowly, carefully. “Darariden accused the Empress of that which is not, nor ever has been, nor ever could be, true.”
The High Officer gave the newly freed woman a rare smile of encouragement. “He tried to start a rebellion against her, based on this . . role . . he claimed that the Empress had taken.” Chanihashar nodded approval. “He failed, rightfully so, and was justly punished for his crimes.”
Prenandamna lowered her head. “His children, too, could have been similarly punished. But the Empress chose to show an extraordinary mercy upon our family.”
“And what was the nature of this mercy?” Chanihashar made another notation for his records.
“A choice. Permanent exile . . . or voluntary enslavement.” Again, her head sank to her chest. “Fifty years of enslavement each,” she clarified, “followed by a full pardon and reinstatement of caste, with all privileges. All of Darariden’s sons and daughters made their respective choices. My grandmother, Apelindhri, chose enslavement.”
“And Searassune?”
“He was Apelindhri’s husband. Because of their marriage, he too fell under Darariden’s penalty. But it was the Empress’ express wish that a punishment of this nature could be shared by married partners, each of them taking half the expected burden.”
Understandable: no mortal could take fifty years of enslavement. He or she would never survive it.
Whether afforded to the highest of the Registry or the lowest of robot slaves, the Empire’s youth treatment had one great disadvantage: the magics that emulated their Empress’ true immortality were just that, only an emulation. The body ceased aging on the outside, but inside . . . . General health was maintained, but the life-force burned hotter—in rough estimate, at least twice as hot.
By her own words, Prenandamna had been twenty-nine when she had become a slave. That meant she had lived nine years free but hot, enjoying continued youth as an effective twenty-year-old while burning away about eighteen years of her total lifespan. And as a slave for fifteen years, she had burned away thirty more. Chronologically, the newly freed woman was forty-four. Physically, however, with all spells now removed from her, she looked and probably felt sixty-eight.
Few were the slaves or Shining Castes who lived much beyond their fiftieth or sixtieth year.
“What happened?” the High Officer asked Prenandamna.
“He cheated!” Prenandamna rose up, color coming to her sallow cheeks. “Searassune persuaded his wife to take the burden of slavery with him instead of exile.” She grit her teeth. “It was a further part of the Empress’ mercy. The enslavement of Darariden’s children could be shared among their offspring and their spouses.”
Leiselude recalled, smiling at this recovered memory, yet keeping her face down to avoid the expression from offending the free woman.
Romantically, Searassune and his wife had agreed to take twenty-five years of slavery apiece, to satisfy her inherited burden. The Empress had liked this. It fit her sensibilities. Their intent, apparently, had been to reunite and live on as before with their grandchildren, respectable once more.
But, as Prenandamna had said, Searassune had indeed cheated his responsibility, and his spouse.
Searassune had allowed his wife to be enslaved first, then, suddenly fearful to take up that justified burden himself, had fled the Gleaming Empire. He had never been seen again. And so, because someone had to, Apelindhri took all fifty of those years of voluntary slavery herself.
An unintentional death sentence, it could have been.
Her offspring, however, had had other plans.
“She had just wanted to go into exile, with him,” Prenandamna recounted. “Now, my grandmother faced the whole burden herself. She was made a slave. But fifteen years later my mother, Deeshyamol, petitioned the Empress to take the burden from her. She allowed this. And fifteen years ago I took the burden from her.” And that is why the slave she had been bore the denotatum “Apelindhri,” Leiselude realized, slow to recover this memory. The original “Apelindhri” had been Apelindhri herself. Having spent fifteen years as a slave, and aged thirty behind her slave beauty, she would have been an old woman indeed when she had been manumitted.
The second “Apelindhri” would then have been Deeshyamol. And Prenandamna the third.
And now, somewhere within the Empire, there was a fourth “Apelindhri,” formerly the Orichalcum Amarmarja, Prenandamna’s daughter. A loyal family of women indeed, as had been said.
“My grandmother raised me after mother took up the burden,” Prenandamna said to Leiselude’s handler. “She did not live long, but long enough. After ten years, I replaced my mother in the burden.”
Prenandamna shuddered. “I was to be the last. I wanted to be the last, until my death, if necessary. I forbade my sons and daughters to continue this burden.” She lowered her head for a long time. Then she stared the High Officer in the eyes, with strength and purpose.
“Why did you free me?” Prenandamna asked. “I was to be the last. I was supposed to be the last!”
“Because your family is a great one, and they love you,” Chanihashar said, and Prenandamna started crying again, helplessly. “Inspired by your sacrifice, and ancestral guilt, your sons and daughters have dedicated their lives to Imperial service. They live, still, awaiting you.”
There were tears in Prenandamna’s eyes. “They . . they still remember me?”
“They love you,” Leiselude’s handler told her, and Prenandamna continued crying. “At least, so far as I could observe. They have sent a coach to fetch you. I believe your youngest daughter, Oleduva, is in the palace now awaiting your disposition. At least, I think. She did not feel comfortable speaking to me.” This was understandable, given the position held by Leiselude’s handler.
He handed the restored high caste Orichalcum one of the envelopes from his desk.
After a moment, Prenandamna took it. “These are your papers of manumission. You’ll need to show them to claim your old property.”
“Where is my daughter?” Prenandamna demanded. “Where is Amarmarja?”
The High Officer’s eyes hardened. “There is no Amarmarja. There is only another female slave called “Apelindhri,” and I am far too busy a man to ascertain where she might be.”
Prenandamna drew the chiffon around her, burying her head once more.
“You served fifteen years as a slave. Your mother served ten, and your grandmother served the first fifteen. Ask me again in ten years.”
“Damn you,” Prenandamna said weakly. “Damn you.”
“You have earned that privilege,” Leiselude’s handler told her. “You have already paid its high price.”
He rang the little bell on his desk. The door to the right before his desk opened, and a male slave, nude and bald, stood there waiting. Prenandamna did not rise. The room was still for several minutes.
“My freedom means nothing to me,” the old woman said at length. “I cannot go back to my family. I am unworthy of them.” She sobbed. No hand was held out to her. No comfort was given. Leiselude was only a slave and therefore could not speak. Her handler was the High Officer of Female Transitions and would not speak a comfort.
Once more, however, he glanced at the slave beside him.
He said: “The Empress has no message for you. But you might wish to think on this. Your ancestor, Darariden, spoke an accusation to his friends. He later sought to prove his words true and ended up the leader of an insurrection.” He breathed deeply, and though she did not look up somehow Leiselude could feel her handler’s eyes upon her kneeling body, brushing upon her.
She felt warm, though not with sexual arousal this time. “Let us speculate for a moment upon what he said, though we shall not speak its irreverence here, nor ever. But let us speculate that it was true, what he said.”
Leiselude’s hands began to shake within their cuffs.
“If so, the Empress may have made a decision based on that truth. She may have wished for the family of Darariden to know that it was true. She may have wished for another to have experienced that truth, at least in part.”
“Then the Empress is truly a . . .” Leiselude’s handler tilted his head at Prenandamna, and she stopped.
“You will go back to your family,” he said to her. “You will let them comfort you. You will let them love you, as the Empress loves you.” Leiselude nodded, and the High Officer tilted his head. “Will you have your youth restored, Orichalcum? I am curious. If you wish, this can be easily arranged.”
“I might not live long enough to kiss my daughter when she comes home,” Prenandamna said. “My grandmother did not. I suspect my mother did not, either.” She stood, finally. “I will wait for her.”
And without another word, Prenandamna left with the escorting slave. Leiselude closed her eyes and wept. Chanihashar shuffled his papers, disapproving.
Still and all, the Matter, for the time being, was finished.