Warning: This story is rated "MA" for graphic sexuality and mature themes. One of these themes is that of slavery, and in particular sexual slavery. While I do not consider any scenes within to be definitively rape, if you are sensitive to the idea of one person being dominant over another sexually, you may want to skip this one. Read "Fear Her", the companion-piece to this story, instead.
"Now I am become death; the destroyer of worlds." -The Bhagavad Gita, Ancient human text
I am called the Wanderer, but it was not always such. It was a different age then. I have lived an unfathomably long life, and I have been touched by the death around me. A kind father, a would-be lover, an entire race. Their faces swirl together in my mind at night, their voices speak to me in dreams.
Sometimes I feel that he is dead as well—that surely he died when our father's warm blood stained his silk robe, or when the denizens of this earth trembled before the might of his armies. I wonder if he feels echoes of this pain as I do.
Before then, further into the murky past even, I was called Ileah. It meant 'sunshine' in the old tongue—a fanciful summername given to me by my mother, whose face has now almost disappeared from my recollection. My brother was Indira, moonlight. We were of one mind, once, before our father's swordmasters took him away from the fields we played in, shaping him into a warrior. Before the endless war hardened him into a monster. I remember these days sometimes and weep for him, though he will never hear me. Our souls were severed the day this war began.
I-once Ileah, then Nuala, now Wanderer—am well-versed in the ways of magic. And alone atop my mountain I formed a plan, born out of bitterness and despair, and the tiny flicker of hope that still exists foolishly with me.
Men once had cities.
They rose into the air, steel and stone, men honeycombed inside like bees, bending the world to their will.
Then the armies of the Golden Ones came, sweeping away the towers with the magic of the old times. And behind them, the pale warriors, their armor glimmering in the light, tearing down the artifice of men and remaking the world in their image.
She did not see the vanguards of their destruction, as the oldest among them had. She had grown up in the ravenous forest, seeing the pale riders only from a distance. She had never seen the shining towers that men built—so she did not mourn them the way the old ones did.
If men had once had a word for their race, it had been lost. "The Unseen" was the closest thing they had to a name. The few glimpses she'd caught (fleeing their singing blades, hiding with shuddering breath) had stirred something in the most basic part of her mind. Honeyed eyes, rimmed in shadows, white flesh under silver armor, hair the color of new wheat.
The night was cold when they took her: autumn just out of reach, the taste of chill and smoke on the air.
They came as they always did, silently from the woods, sliding out of shadows like ghosts. They were grace in motion, and their beauty made her breath hitch, even as they cut down those she'd traveled with. She'd surpassed fear. Being found was a relief. It would bring an end to the grinding terror, the hunger, the disease. Maybe she would go to their gods.
So it came as a surprise when the kiss of their blades never came. A rider scooped her up, throwing her across the saddle of his horse like a ragdoll.
Suddenly the sounds of death were behind them, the frigid air rushing past her face, her human eyes blind in the darkness. It didn't occur to her to resist, to fight against the cold hand that held her wrist, or to strike at the nameless rider when he pulled a hooded cloak around her, settling her back on his horse and riding on.
They rode for days, speaking intermittently, their language sharp and brittle in her ears. None touched her. At dawn they dismounted, setting her on her side on the ground, wrists still bound, where she fell into a dreamless sleep until they rode again at dusk.
At last they reached the gates of the compound, its grey spires rising up out of virgin forests, against the backdrop of the mountains.
Later, entering the home of the Prince seemed dreamlike and distant—fear obscured observation. She kept her eyes down, her back still pressed into the cold armor of her captor.
Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Women (so they did have women!) with their hands all over her, speaking rapidly in their sibilant tongue. Taking her down off the horse, catching her when her legs went out from under her, their extrinsic scent all around her.
They wound down long darkened hallways, her feet not moving under her, the speech gliding over her but never penetrating her understanding. Finally there was a soft palette under her, and darkness, and silence, and she slept.
The old women led her to a stone chamber with a hot spring, and she submerged herself in hot water for the first time. It was then that she heard the tongue of man spoken for the first time by one of the Unseen.
"Saorlaith. A pretty name for one of your kind, girl." The old woman said. Her white hair hung down her back in a thick braid, golden-tipped from when youth was still with her.
One of the other women was picking knots out of her hair with a comb, while another scrubbed layers of filth from her skin.
"Why am I here?" Saorlaith said, her voice rusty from disuse.
"Because the Prince has no time for a wife." She shrugged.
Saorlaith sat back, shivering, against the side of the spring. She'd assumed she'd be a slave, but to the Prince himself..?
The old woman snorted.
"Better that than dying in filth, with the rest of your race." She said.
Later, they dressed her in silk—black like her hair, blue for her eyes—garments so fine they felt alien against skin used to rough cotton and burlap. Her hair fell to her waist, clean and sweet-smelling.
Then there were more hallways, long winding stone corridors.
"Where is he?" She said, her voice sinking further into a whisper.
"Away at war—but he could be back at any day. Be ready always. Prince Nuada is fearsome in battle, but I've not known him to be cruel to slaves. Obey him, and your life here could be relatively pleasant."
Huge wooden doors, ornately carved, loomed before them. With the slightest push by the old woman, they swung open. Beyond was only darkness, but hands pushed her in, and the doors closed behind her.
Eventually, her human eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she even found an oil-lamp and matches. She struck one, the odor of sulfur coloring the air. She lit the lamp, and explored the rooms, her bare feet silent on cold stone.
The quarters were huge—high ceilinged and expansive. There was a desk, couches before an empty hearth, tapestries on the walls. It was too dark to see what they depicted, but she peered at them for a long time in the darkness anyway, wondering.
The bed was luxurious, canopied, covered in silk. She was exhausted, still aching from the long ride and hollow with fear, and it looked so inviting. Saorlaith was mindful of whose bed it was, however. Prince Nuada haunted the dreams of every surviving man, faceless, wraith-like, leading the Unseen in their reclamation of the earth.
Finally, her hands trembling, she drew back the covers and climbed in, the same extrinsic scent rising up to meet her—like spice and leaves and night. The feeling of silk against her skin overwhelmed fear for a moment, and a sigh escaped her lips as she gathered the covers around her. Warmth crept into her sore limbs as it had when she'd bathed in the spring, but more so. It could have been exhaustion, or more magic from the Unseen. Either way, she was asleep almost instantly.