Chapter 10

It will come as no surprise to you that the dilemma before me was perfect: I was being asked to choose between continuing my life (as yet unknown in the service of Ruben the Earth-male Mage but no doubt with some pain along the way) and bringing the love of my life, Natalie to the planet Sevir. Even though I would be reunited with her after more than two years away, the woman would be condemned to the same desperate life as me of being a humanhorse.

As always, the best dilemmas are exquisitely balanced. On the one hand I might, if Ruben could be persuaded, be allowed to make love to Natalie. That would be like heaven. Even lying on straw and in chains it would be a joy beyond belief. With her as a comfort I had a good chance of being as happy as possible here on this alien planet. Weighed against that was the fact that if I loved Natalie as I surely did I would be consigning her to a life of brutality and pain. I could not see how she would thank me for her being like me, naked, shaved and often whipped as I had been. My former lover would lose everything she had worked so hard to build in London. Money, comfort and no doubt now a new lover to enjoy in bed, and even as with me, natalie would bind her toy to pleasure-punish her. After all, two years away is a long time and even if the woman will have long wondered how I slipped the handcuffs without a key, shed my clothes and fled naked from a locked apartment, Natalie would have puzzled over not only why I did it but why I had never got in touch.

She would not expect to find that I was untold light years away with the continual spectre of disfigurement if not death hanging over me.

I was a realist, whatever my emotions. I could not expect Natalie to still pine for me after so long. She was older than me but I could guarantee she more than able to keep her good-looks enhanced with a wonderful taste in clothes. Her desire to live well would have increased, not diminished. There would be more than enough women in her life who would be just like I was, attracted to her and she to them. The chances were that even as I turned these thoughts over in my mind she had already resigned herself to never seeing me again, possibly thinking I must have gone mad. If she hadn’t quite forgotten about me it would be only a matter of time before she threw away all the pictures of me bound and gagged on her large, satin sheet bed if she had not done so already.

How could I tear Natalie away from so much to give her so little, and even then with no guarantee we wouldn’t lose each other again? Sevir did not care for what its slaves had on Earth; it cared only for what they could do on Sevir. Indeed, separation was always the lot of the humanhorse either from home or lovers. I was all too aware I had lost first Davina and then Cerys and the chances are I would sooner or later lose Natalie if she was plucked from Earth.

But even if I agreed to Ruben’s idea—and as he said all things come at a price and he had not yet told me what it would be—would she survive the ordeal of transit? Ruben had already hinted on our journey from the Closer that some women do not. The headaches I experienced could be crippling—literally. The journey to the planet of Sevir did claim lives, if only from the shock let alone the work and torture that swiftly followed arrival.

Maybe I had been lucky, just as Davina and Cerys had been, and soon found a way to cope and survive. There was no need to lament any losses from all this, because the Mages would bring others to replace those they lost ‘in transit’ as it were. I had no way of knowing if Natalie would survive and then, how she could cope with the hardships. Trust me, it is hard finding yourself chained and bit-gagged and being whipped: I had some readiness for it with the way I was treated in London by her. Natalie was a Domme and I doubted as such she would have the preparation that I was given.

Above all she might hate me for ruining her good life, and never forgive me. Love would be no nearer for me than if she had been left alone.

But I was here to decide from all this what I wanted. I sat in the Mage’s prison stable with my hands chained above me to the wall, somewhat sneered at by the elegant humanhorses Ruben had gathered to serve him. It made sense that in being one of the all-powerful Mages on this planet he should have the best of the females he brought through. I thought I recognised one of them as a model, and very much could recognise another as an actress I had seen on television. These plumed humanhorses regarded themselves as the elite among the damned. They were well housed (this was a far better prison-stable than any I had seen; they did not sleep on piss-stained straw but on low beds) and well fed. They were even ungagged at night so they could talk and if they chose —and it seemed they did— to make love as much as their neck chains allowed.

They scowled in my direction when they deigned to look my way though it did not worry me. Apart from Davina when I first arrived at the farm as a humanhorse, other humanhorses had ignored me. I think there is always a fear that the newcomer turns out to be stronger, more able to cope and the established, perhaps ageing humanhorses already there would be shuttled off to a smaller, poorer farm or maybe sold to haul wagons in the mines.

I doubt if these very good-looking, firm bodied humanhorses had been told why I was here, and as the custom is for humanhorses to work and not ask questions, they would not know why Ruben was doing this for me, or why he was leaving me alone to make up my mind about Natalie.

The truth was I could have no real idea why Ruben had taken to me. He had heard a story or two about the displaced warrior Akrith having her two humanhorses being fucked in public by a young Egri male and may have dismissed it as irrelevant to his life as a Mage, but even if he had been curious about the tale—probably exaggerated as these things gather volume as they transmit—why would he seek me out? Why talk to me in the comfort of his carriage: he could have tied me behind and had me walk here. If he needed another humanhorse he could have arranged to summon any number from Earth, and taken his pick of them. But then I recalled something he said on our long journey about being a Mage. He himself could not do the act of taking—fireballs and the manipulation of fire was his speciality, not summoning—and he would need to meet with other Mages. I got the impression this taking was a collective action, and he would need to gather those who would help.

But if anything this made me wonder more. If he wanted me to be one of his humanhorses why was he leaving me to ponder whether I wanted Natalie here? Why had he not put me to work with the rest of his private transport team, or employed me in another humanhorse capacity? Earth women are on Sevir to work, not spend time thinking.

Perhaps I am not blessed with many things, but I can work some things out if I allow myself time to think, and I had that now. Then a possibility—an answer if I dared think of it that way— struck me and I gasped.

When Ruben came to see me shortly he drew a low stool up so he could sit in front of me. He asked had I made up my mind about Natalie. He appeared concerned, which bolstered my theory.

“I have had time to think,” I said, staring into his pale eyes from where I sat. “I thank you for that, sir. I have never known anyone on Sevir to care for my feelings or needs before, beyond urging me to work harder or carry them further on my back. But yes, I have made a decision, hard though it is. But first, I would beg to ask a question.”

“Go on,” the man said.

“It is not about the price, for as you said all things have a cost, but why should you care about me? I am as I explained to you I was a mere would-be actor. I have not been famous as I think some of your existing humanhorses were once. While I believe my former lover Natalie has status among bankers and financial houses, I do not believe that the only criteria for selection by yourself. No, I do not think it is. This is not about me, is it? Allow me to go further and ask the real question here: I think you want something else. I am just the hook to catch someone. Someone like Natalie. Natalie Dawn, as I told you her full name. Am I not correct that she is the interest?”

Ruben contemplated me, before he spoke quietly. “I would not have made any such offer if you hadn’t said her name. In so doing you confirmed what I began to suspect when the first rumours of you and your so-called performances came to my attention. You are known to me not because you squat and spread your legs for cock, but because I had heard the name Isabella from a spy. Do not look surprised: Mages may have position and power so the Egri and Tankic fear us, but we need spies to tell us if danger to us is brewing, just as it did on Earth years ago. We do not wish to endure that again and must be prepared.”

“But why me?” I demanded.

“I am getting to that. As I said, horse, we have spies. We have spies on Earth too. I may not have been to my old planet for 600 years but others of our belief communicate with us from there. Again, do not be shocked: Mages have many powers, and mine are not all of them. Our mages on Earth had signalled there is a potential danger to us, and names were discovered. I would not have taken much interest in you other than your name Isabella. Not an unusual name, but less common in London. Thus I had to find you. I recalled an agent saying that you were the lover of Natalie Dawn. Not her old name as it happens, but a good approximation of what she promised once, and I fear will be.”