by John Benson
"Not a punishment, exactly," her teacher said. "More along the lines of a training exercise. Though it will afford you ample time to meditate on your imperfections."
Lurileth sighed and brushed a stubborn strand of hair out of her face. "Inattentiveness," she said. "Arrogance. Haste."
"Indeed," her teacher said. "I've said it so many times. Power comes too easily to us. Wisdom does not. So we must overcompensate by erring on the side of caution."
Caution did not come naturally to Lurileth. Her youthful instincts shouted that Doing Something was always better than letting Fate take its course. "I know," she said. Trouble is, the old teacher had probably said it too many times, and the lesson's edge had been dulled by repetition.
"And just what do you think this exercise will be teaching, child?"
A month of slavery? Too easy. "Humility," said Lurileth.
"Of course," her teacher said. She could hear the dripping sarcasm. Damn. She had answered quickly and chosen the obvious. Wasn't he always telling her to look beyond the obvious?
"You're suggesting that I'm missing something," she said. "I confess I don't know what."
"Empathy," he said.
She stood aghast. "You want me to feel for them? Compromise my objectivity?"
"Of course," he said. "We're nearly the same species, after all. You have every need to feel for them. But yet you must..."
"Yes, I know," she said. "Err on the side of caution. Can we go over the rules of the exercise just one more time?"
"Of course. For thirty days you will pose as a slave and suffer whatever they choose to do, and not use your power to mitigate your lot."
"But I can use it to continue the deception? Heal threatening injury? Things like that?"
"Listen to what I have said," her teacher admonished. "And to what I have not said."
Ah, yes. He didn't even say she was forbidden to meddle in their affairs. She carefully avoided asking for further clarification, which could only narrow her scope. "Just pay attention," she said. "Don't assume I know everything. Don't be hasty. And err on the side of caution."
"Exactly," her teacher said. It seemed that he almost smiled.
The man looked her up and down. She returned his stare, which was far from wise. "We'll call you Leah," he said. "Because you remind me of the first rich bitch I ever tamed. You have that same bearing. As if you're as good as everybody else. You'll learn."
"Yes sir," said Lurileth. They led her to a room already full of girls. Girls as young as she looked. As young as she felt. Some girls were crying. Some were rocking back and forth, encased in some self-made Hell. One was praying. That one drew her, nearly against her will.
"Hello. They call me Leah. What's your name? What are you doing?"
"Bet," the girl said. "I'm praying to the Goddess of Slaves, trying to lighten my load."
"Slaves have a Goddess? New one on me. So what, you're praying your Master gets stricken with palsy? Or maybe remorse?"
"Oh, that wouldn't work," Bet said. "The Gods almost never take one person's side against another. I'm just asking for the gift of mercy. Make it easier for me to be what I must be."
"Of course," said Lurileth. "I get it. Ask for lack of feeling. So you won't care what they do."
"Mercy, no." Bet smiled. "Ask Her to change me so I like it."
"So you like it?"
"Yes. To most girls, rape is a horror. To a few, it is exciting. If She would change me so helplessness is sexy, so punishment is foreplay, my fate will become nearly a Blessing. What do you think?"
A worthy prayer. One a Power could indulge without interfering with any soul but the one of the petitioner. It felt righteous. A minimalist approach, unlikely to produce collateral damage. "Take my hand," said Lurileth. "Quick. Before I change my mind."
Bet's hand was a little cold and sweaty. Lurileth jumped inside the other girl, whose soul was so open, so vulnerable, yet every bit as subtle as her own. Ah. Here. Fear. Desire. Shame. Already almost in the right proportion, or this outcome would not have occurred to her. A little more of one, less of another, and it was done. Lurileth withdrew, knowing stability when she felt it. The Work would hold.
Bet trembled. "It's happening," she said. "I know I deserve this life now. I almost want it. What did you do?"
"Maybe I'm a bit of a Dreamer," Lurileth said. "Maybe They heard me. I don't know. It's just as likely that your prayer was answered, and when it happened, I just happened to be holding your hand."
"You dream in the Land of the Gods," Bet said. "And I thank you, in Her Name."
"The Goddess of slaves? Could you say the Name for me, or are you forbidden to speak it?"
Bet blinked. "No," she said. "I can say it. Her Name is Lurileth. I thought everybody knew."
The so-called Leah sank to her knees, and emptied her mind, ready to do a little praying of her own. She pictured the features of her sardonic teacher. "Vorlon," she whispered into the Dreamspace. "You crafty old piece of shit."
She may have heard the Old God's gentle laughter deep in some crevice of her mind. Or her hasty preparation and inattention may simply have given her the sound she thought to hear.
A Dreamer and a Priest and a Potentate sat séance in a stuffy room stuffed with the cloying scent of incense, which didn't help too much. What did help for their purposes was that the Dreamer had been poisoned precisely half to death, permitting him to see and hear into the sacred realm of Spirit, whilst his voice functioned somewhat properly in the Mundane, a state otherwise attained only by major Saints, and a few of the criminally insane.
"A new God wakes," the Dreamer intoned in a hoarse monotone, the hoarseness owing to the smoke, and the monotone to his drug trance. In the corner unnoticed the disembodied spirit of Lurileth lurked, ready to see if she could do some mischief.
"Is that good?" the Potentate asked.
"No, Your Beneficence," the Priest replied. "A new God is always troublesome. He will be less powerful than the more established Deities, but more likely to meddle in our affairs. This is definitely not good. Not good at all."
"Maybe we can appease it with worship and sacrifice," the Potentate mused. "Once we have established its preferences."
"He, not it," the Priest scolded. "We don't know if they have sex, per se, but they certainly have gender."
Little Lurileth saw her chance to wreak mischief, and whispered where only the Dreamer could hear. "Maybe it's a girl."
"Maybe it's a Goddess," the Dreamer translated.
"Is that good?" the Potentate asked.
"No, your Beneficence," the Priest admitted. "That could be ever so much worse."
"Shall I live or die?" the Dreamer asked. He looked right at her. His sensitivity to the Arcane really was quite good. Too bad about the poison.
"I'm feeling quite generous," she told him. "So I'll let you decide."
"But in my current state, I am unable to care," the Dreamer said.
"If you don't care, then why in the world should I?" the young Power said. She swam away into the Realms Plausible and into the Realms Implausible, and woke up refreshed and hungry.
They ate thin gruel from wooden bowls and listened to the sound of a girl get whipped in the next room. The slow, rhythmic slap as flesh met leather, punctuated by thin, high cries. It would be a new experience. Pain. If she'd so much as stubbed a toe, she'd straightway healed herself, and now she'd promised not to, and must feel everything. Everything.
Come to think of it, sex would be brand new too. The other Powers were all so much older, and treated her with a sort of fond neglect, and the mortals were way too shy. Lack of opportunity had pretty much led to lack of desire, and anyway there had been Vorlon and the Universe and so damn much to learn. What would it be like? Sex. Pain. The little slave Bet had juxtaposed them in her mind, and yearned for both. Might be nice, if she were allowed to play the same trick on her own self.
But wait. Was that excitement when she thought of being whipped and raped, or was it only trepidation? Future helplessness made her tremble, but was it anticipation, or was it only dread? She who lived so much in mind and spirit must live only in her body now, as a certain knowledge was forced upon it. Adulthood through the medium of adultery. Truth through rape. It was not only for humility that Vorlon had sent her to this place. It was for carnality as well, and if Lurileth could put a name on fear, it was that she might learn to like it.
The sounds from the next room changed. Cries became low grunts, and the sound of slapping was softer and more rapid. The couple were rutting. "That's the good news," one of the older girls said. "When they whip you it makes them horny. And in order to prong you, they have to stop."
Young Lurileth sat and waited for her turn, shaking and drenched in sweat. And the part of her below the waist was wide awake, and its messages sent her squirming.
All heads turned. The nasty smile and the coiled, braided supple leather each told what he was. His eyes rested on each girl in turn, and each one shuddered.
"You," he said. Lurileth nearly jumped out of her skin.
She rose. Slight, slender, timid. She followed him past the others and out into a corridor that stank of must and piss and fear. The whip was a snake, coiled, ready to strike. Ready to teach her the reality of pain. At this point, the sex part had pretty much skipped her mind.
A small room with a dirty window, a chair, a bed. He stripped her simple garment off. "Hands on your head," he said. "Keep them there or you'll be sorry."
She'd never learned body shame, so she stood there calmly. But she had no body vanity either. A short girl with small high breasts and a rather pretty face, but hardly one that would raise an army or inspire a poet. She found his breathless examination a bit odd.
"So perfect," he breathed. "Not one single flaw."
So that was it. Mere lack of the symptoms of hard living was what passed for beauty here. No pox. No rickets. No crooked or missing teeth.
"Turn around," he said. "Keep your hands where they are."
Obedient, she turned. Whack! "Oww!" White-hot pain. Her hands grabbed for her rump. Oh oh.
"What did I tell you?" he said. He smiled, pleased that she had disobeyed.
She'd been inattentive, one of her big flaws. The sin of arrogance was easy to avoid here, but she had been inattentive, and now she would pay in coin more base than Vorlon's sarcasm and disappointment. She had been inattentive, and now she would pay, just like anybody else.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It was a mistake." She was. It was.
"You will be," he said.
He tied her wrists behind her back. He threw her face down across the chair. She heard the whip before she felt it. Her butt! The pain, the pain. "Oww oww oww oww oww oww oww!"
Her rump was a mass of weals. It ached, but she deserved it. Maybe now she would learn to listen. He picked her up and threw her face up on the bed. A dirty blanket over a sagging mattress stuffed with straw.
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