Chapter 9

On the brief ride home to the castle, Lucie’s new and rather unwilling student made a few sobbing complaints, but a few sharp smacks across her bare ass silenced her until after her new mistress had ridden into the castle courtyard and stabled the borrowed mount. Finding a small empty burlap feed sack, she popped it over the sobbing girl’s head, so that she could still breathe, but yet see nothing. Then, as before, the luscious bounty was hurled back across her shoulders for the short walk down into the dungeon of the north tower, where the rather appreciative shade of the late necromancer eagerly waited to greet the new arrival.

“Oh, you’ve brought me a new plaything,” the spirit giggled with delight! “But I can’t wield a knife in my spirit-hands anymore, so you’ll have to do the skinning for me. Tis a pity, but I can at least savor her pain while you do her for me.”

“Don’t be daft, you insane old 3^rd rate ghost!” Lucia said with a smile, “as I have other, far better uses for her ... not including some night-work. Now let me stretch her out by hanging her up on this hook and then we can have a little bit of fun with her ... but you’re not flaying her, or turning her into zombie fuck-flesh!”

“I never get to have any fun anymore,” the shade moaned in visible despair.

“Entirely because while you were alive, you enjoyed much too much of this nastier sort of fun, and became a wanted fugitive under sentence of death throughout all 27 kingdoms, and probably several other places as well! Your corpse was chopped up and burned to ashes for a damned good reason, as you might recall. Have you no thoughts at all man, about any sort of repentance for your innumerable evil deeds, done while living? Not even shades can endure forever, and there’s certain to be a very harsh judgement awaiting you in the afterlife, someday.”

“Fuck that ... if I can’t become a lich, or even a revenant or ghost, my shade of a soul is staying put right here until the end of time! But I suppose that maybe, perhaps ... a very small amount of repentance might be beneficial, should worse come to worse and I fade away and somehow end up facing eternal judgement. For starters, you have noticed that no one, not even that wicked steward that Lord Egner foisted on us, has laid a finger on your things in the castle, or those of the other late princes as well. Oh, quite a few nimble fingers have tried over the years to steal anything not otherwise nailed down, but a few ghostly howls and moans put a quick end to all of that nimble fingered stuff near your old quarters! So you see, while waiting for your return I did try and make myself at least somewhat useful.”

“A mild benefit, I suppose ... until I find or make enough goblin powder to blow to rubble this tower and dungeon, with all of your necromantic sigils and wards, freeing your soul for its long overdue, and rather unpleasant final judgment!” Lucie snarled, pointing a long finger at the shade’s unhappy face. Another note to self, she then thought, it was time to start growing out her nails just a bit longer, again, so some black cosmetic paint could be applied to them.

“So, keep being useful,” she snarled unhappily, “and start thinking of ways we can help the other poor bastards in this cursed county, for once in your accursed life! Now, focus ... pay attention ... and listen to me! I need a potion that will make my victim, namely this dangling delectable morsel of fuck-meat, very suggestable and easier to manipulate. Something that will reduce her will to resist and make her pliable and extremely obedient to my orders.”

“You accuse me of being hopelessly mired in evil and now you want to do that to her? Ha! Once an evil, wicked Baad ... always thereafter, it seems, my lady of the castle!”

“On the contrary,” Lucie laughed, “I have nothing but the young slut’s very best interests at heart ... and by helping her, I’m also helping myself. Watch and learn, you miserable old dead spirit! Now ... I will need a good spell or potion from you to accomplish this!”

“Simplicity itself,” the wicked late magician chortled with glee, “I have just the very thing to bind the minds of the living to obey thereafter your every command. Vapours of Obedience, the potion is called, and I used to brew the stuff by the vat full, transferring the gasses into great numbers of individual vials for single dose use. Back in your father’s time, most of the dusting wenches of the castle, not to mention your step-mother’s playthings, used to snort the stuff down for fun and then competed to see who could be the nastiest pain-slut afterwards. Oh, the memories! I should have nearly a dozen vials left in a box on the top shelf of that cabinet, over there to your left. It’s a gas in a lead sealed bottle, so it keeps practically forever, so it should be just as potent today as when I brewed it years ago. Look for the purple vials ... yes, that’s the box, but you should only need one bottle, to crush her will and reform it back into your liking!”

“Watch and learn, oh decrepit one. Now, take an especially close look at her face and eyes, once I’ve taken off the hood and pressed the vapours up to her nose.”

Quite sensibly, the captive girl Mathilde didn’t want her brain, or what little there was of it, turned into pliable mush and she began squirming as hard as she could, to avoid breathing in the contents of the vial. Not to be thwarted so easily, Lucie punched the helpless girl hard in the diaphragm, knocking all of the wind (and fight) out of her. Then fighting for air, the helpless girl deeply breathed in all of the magic fumes without protest. Nearly at once her eyes began to lose all signs of rational thought and her head began to droop.

“Oh ... I think I see!” The shade exclaimed as he examined her listless face from every angle, “and frankly I’m astonished that you made the connection! Perhaps all of my tedious lectures about the importance of keen observation have paid off at long last.”

“True, I was just a small boy, about six or seven I think when my father murdered his brother, my uncle Tilo, but I remembered him just well enough to recall that a small portrait of him used to hang in the main guardroom for many years afterwards. A rather good likeness, I so thought until it disappeared one day, about a year before we were all taken into captivity. Anyway, this girl ... her name is Mathilde by the way, shows every small feature of his face ... and she’s about the right age, to have been conceived just before his death. As for her mouth and jaw, they are much a match for mine as well. She has her mother’s eyes, quite a different shade than mine, but under a dark-grey veil no one would mark much difference between us. Now tell me, oh dead one who supposedly possesses all of the knowledge of the world denied to the living, is she or not his daughter ... and thus my cousin?”

“Well, I suppose it’s no one’s fault but my own, teaching you to be more observant of everything in the world around you ... but yes, she is indeed Tilo’s daughter, a Baad by blood ... and also your cousin. Screwing your cousins, and even closer relations, was always a Baad tradition of long-standing, especially in your grandfather’s time, or so I’ve heard. It’s a wonder your line wasn’t completely inbred! I well understand why you want her for night-work, except there’s not much there for child-bearing hips, so when you inevitably get yourself stupidly killed there will be at least one blood survivor of the Baad lineage left to pick up the pieces. Oh, yes ... Tilo and Dietta used to have a secret thing for each other, back in the day, but I’m a bit surprised that the wise old thief was careless enough to bear his child ... that’s probably why your father killed him, pure jealousy. But what is your intention? To knock her up and then make her the next countess so that you can return to your life dancing on the stage and living thereafter as a woman sell-sword with few, if any, moral qualms?”

“Not saying that that thought didn’t briefly cross my mind, because it did for perhaps a ha’second or two ... but no. This county is Count Benjamin’s birthright and I’m going to preserve it for him and kill anyone who says otherwise. Also, mentally she’s entirely unsuited to the job. But then again, so was Ben six years ago when he was first thrown into prison. No ... instead I marked upon the closeness of many of the Baad family features on her general body shape and face and decided, rather quickly, that with a bit shorter hair and months of physical training that she could serve as an ideal body-double for me ... if I had tits. Sometime, probably much too soon, an occasion will occur when Lady Lucie and Count Benjamin will need to be seen together in the same room, or out riding side by side hunting the horde of bandits that is about to descend on us. Once the baby fat has been burned off of her and she has earned a little muscle, I’d wager that she could wear my costume, or one similar, and with the veil down no one could tell us apart. She’d need to learn at least the basics of the arts of the blade, and remember to keep her mouth shut when there isn’t a cock in it, and learn how to scowl a lot, but that can all be taught ... especially with a bit of mental coercion ... like this.”

Lucie then took out a small silver pendant from one of her innumerable internal pockets and dangled it in front of Mathilde’s closed eyes. The gemstone at the end was nothing special or particularly valuable at all, just a quail egg sized bit of cut quartz crystal with some random tiny gold flakes inside, but it caught the candlelight nicely and reflected a colorful spectrum of light onto the drugged girl’s face.

“Not all of the performances at the Fabuleux Beaux nightclub were by samer men dressing and acting as women, as Ben can confirm to you. The usual program was often quite varied with assorted comediennes and stage magicians, and even the odd dog and pony act. One of the more irregular performers was an old mesmerist, a quite otherwise normal fellow who hypnotized willing members of the audience to do harmless, but rather embarrassing things on stage. We got to become friendly backstage and he willingly taught me the basics of his art, as his own performing days were quite nearly done, due to his very poor health. He even gifted me his favorite focus, this pendant, and taught me how to best use it. Now, let us see what we can now achieve here, to improve this poor girl’s rather unremarkable mind.”

“Mathilde, open your eyes and look at the crystal in front of you and see the pretty colors that the crystal creates, watch those lights and feel them enter the insides of your eyes and go deeply into your mind, flashing and penetrating everywhere inside you. Now you will see nothing but those little tiny lights and hear nothing but my voice. When I count slowly to three you will have forgotten everything that has occurred earlier this evening until now and your mind will be at rest, absent of thought. Your mind will be lost in the stars, seeing nothing but the lights and listening to nothing except my voice ... or that of Count Baad. Do you understand me?”

‘Yes’, a very tiny quiet voice whispered as the teenaged girl’s eyes were fixed open, unblinking and seeing nothing but the lights of the candle shining through the crystal onto her face. Smiling, Lucie counted out loud to three.

“I am Lucie de Mont, and beside me is your master, Count Benjamin. We are your friends Mathilde, probably the very closest and nicest friends that you have ever known. Unlike everyone else, we want what is best for you and we want to help you find a path in life that will someday make you happy. We know you’ve been very unhappy for quite a long time, but now that is all going to change. You are going to find now a purpose and meaning for your life. You’ve wanted for many years to learn how to fight, to ride a horse on a raid of plunder, to learn to read books, study and learn everything possible to prove to your mother that you were not stupid and fit only to suck cocks ... and could, with a great deal of very hard work, prove to be worthy as her successor. But in truth, you were always too lazy to ever start doing that hard work. Isn’t that so Mathilde?”

“Yes, mother says that I’m far too lazy and unfit to be her heir ... but I know that I can be just like her, someday,” the girl whispered in her trance.

“You can ... and you will, because now you’re going to work hard every single day from now, harder than you’ve ever worked before in your life. First you will learn to use weapons, training with the guards at the castle every day, up working before the crack of dawn and the last to take a rest at night. They will laugh at you, knock you down and sometimes beat you hard if you don’t learn fast enough, but you will not cry. Every time you fall down you will grit your teeth and tell yourself to work even harder as you stand up again. You will never cry or feel that you are ever useless ever again! You will learn to be hard, to endure every pain, to run until your feet and lungs hurt but still keep going. You will learn that pain is just your old lazy weakness leaving your body, leaving nothing but strength behind. When you are not exercising you will be studying, reading books and learning how to write and do basic sums at first, and then later advanced problems, any skill you can think of that your mother possessed that you will need to supplant her someday ... maybe soon. This is what you want, more than anything ... to please your mother, to please me, and to also please the count, doing anything and everything we ever ask of you, so that you might be found worthy of our praise and affection. You will also let no other boy or man touch you, as your body belongs entirely to myself and the count. Other’s might desire you, but you will laugh at their advances and spurn them. Let other foolish girls spread their legs and give blowjobs instead, because you ... Mathilde, are destined for far greater things serving the count and myself. Isn’t this so?”

It was. For a full half hour, until the first signs of the magical potion was about to wear off became noted, Lucie drilled instructions into the grateful but empty mind of her teenaged protégée, before giving her a code-phrase to be used to easily enter the girl into this same impressionable mental state, at any future time, if needed.

“Now my dear girl,” Lucie said while very slowly rubbing her gloved fingers across the helpless girl’s breasts and clit first slowly and then faster, “you will remember your code words, ‘Mathilde, have you ever seen a little white mouse with green eyes’ and when you hear these words, you will then immediately enter this mental state again to await my important orders that you must never forget or disobey. Now, as a little final reward for your obedience to your mistress, I’m going to make you cum for me, as I count to three once more. When I say three you will take your release and then fall into a deep restful sleep, and you will remember every single instruction you’ve been given as if they were entirely your own thoughts and desires for the future, and your heart filled with gratitude for us. Now to your rest, to be prepared for your very first day tomorrow training as an armswoman ... one ... two ... three ... cum!”

And she did. Even the shade of the necromancer had to admit that the girl had been perfectly mind controlled, her past memories suitably altered as she had now been given a burning desire to excel at any task given to her, to best please every whim of her beloved mistress, her hero and idol the Lady Lucie ... and her supreme lord, Count Ben.

Wrapping the sleeping teenaged girl up in an old cloak of the warlock’s, Lucie gathered up the girl again in her arms and carried her upstairs outside towards the main guard hall where the night watchman held post, near the barracks. Lucie didn’t know the name of the young guardsman who held the duty tonight, but her business was not with him in any case.

“Get Cynehard, the new guard sergeant,” she ordered and she didn’t have to wait long as his quarters were in the next room. “Cynehard, here is a new recruit I have found for you to train. Get her a cot in the barracks and see that appropriate clothing and gear are found for her use in the morning.”

“That can be done as you wish,” the new head sergeant agreed, but clearly quite at a loss as why Lucie was foisting this teenaged girl upon him.