Legends of Belariath

Ubique et Hic

A Gift of Pain

Her things were piled in the snow, just to one side of the bridge that lead into the nobleman’s home. Riding up ever so slowly on her black charger, Ubique stopped at the pile of fine furnishings, clothing trunks and other private ‘room’ items.

Behind her was a wagon drawn by a heavy horse and a dark elf with strange bat wings. Whatever, she had told herself, she wasn’t going to question the help, hadn’t even asked the blacksmith his name. She’d wanted to buy a wagon from him and he had said he would build her one.

“I need one tonight,” she had quipped.

“I have one you can rent if you like. I can drive it myself.”

“Can you move my things in and out of the wagon?” she had asked.

He had nodded, far too amiable to be a pure dark elf. But she didn’t question it. A custom wagon wouldn’t be ready for a week or so. Her things were waiting in the snow now.

Behind her, she could hear the man getting out of the wagon, his wings flapping in the cool dusk air.

“Shall I use spells or shall I use my hands?”

She waved her hand dismissively, not caring. Her pale blue eyes were glued to that family crest etched into the wrought iron of the gate.

He’d bragged about it, her noble had. How he’d had the gates specially made with the family crest of which he was so proud. She’d hated those gates. They had closed on her two times too many for her to love them. That didn’t change the fact that some part of her cried at being on the outside just now. And would do anything to be back within.

The guards on the other side of the gate were looking at her, their faces almost torn with emotions. That made her smile, just a bit, with more than a little bitterness to the twist of her dark lips. They’d hated her, all this while, because of their lord’s hatred for Moriel. Because of how very angry she could make the man, so angry that one night he even broke the jaw of a guard trying to keep him from leaving angry. The guard and the rest of the household blamed her for that, for her lord’s passionate outbursts. She’d been happy to anger him, rile him to the greatest heights his temper could go. For afterwards, their lovemaking had drained it all away.

She sighed, adjusting in her saddle painfully. The whip marks on her back that ran from above her shoulders, down her spine, across her ass, the backs of her legs, all the way down to her ankles, were healing. The noble lord she had once served beyond that gate had demonstrated to one and all within how very powerful he was. How masterful with his whip. She cringed now, remembering the sound. How it had been oiled, slick, ready to draw away her skin as readily as it was to kiss it in the first place.

The man helping her move her things looked at her when she cringed, almost with concern. Then he looked at the gate.

“The pretender, huh?”

Ubique turned her pale blue gaze to the man, quizzically.

“Bah, you’re better off with the lady.”

The dark elf frowned and looked to the gates again. As if willing him to come out right now and ask her, beg her back.

He didn’t. And he wouldn’t. No matter how long she sat there on her horse. No matter how long she stared at that gate. It would never open for her again.

“I served a purpose being placed in his household,” she finally responds, hating the half-truth as it slid like a serpent from her lips. “Now, well.”

The man paused in his movements, holding one of her trunks in his strong arms. But then he continued on his route, going back and forth between the wagon and her pile, which was readily shrinking. Soon, everything of hers would be in the wagon.

“Careful with that mirror,” she warned the man as he picked up the elegant long silver glass. Heeding her warning, he set it to the side, opting to leave it til the last.

She turned her eyes to the gates again. The warrior wanted to put the day behind her, even as the sun was stealing the last of its light from the sky and leaving a blanket of darkness full of white pinpricks. As if the night were ragged and torn and not whole at all.

The memory of what had happened wouldn’t fade though. It was as clear as the sun in a cloudless sky, burning above her despite the snow and the chill and the twilight.

She had been waiting, as he had commanded her to, or so she had taken it, his words telling her to wait for him to call her seemed like a command. Finally, two days after the ‘incident’, he had indeed called for her, sending a guard to fetch her to his rooms. She had made sure her hair was just so, piled in loose curls atop her head. Her dress she had chosen with much care, a pretty and simple gown with a full skirt to the ankle, and a bodice that had a low neckline, showing off her brassiere cinched cleavage. It had been just perfect, an ideal outfit to match an ideal apology. Now if he would accept it, all would be well.

When she looked back on it now, she had been so ignorant then. She had known that he was hurt, was angry, and was more than a little pushed beyond his limits. How could she have misjudged him so? A simple apology would never have sufficed. And when that became clear, Ubique offered him the next best thing. Her flesh. It was the dark elf way. He could take her flesh, take from her a fair ‘gift of pain’ as she had been taught was his right. She didn’t agree that she had wronged him, but she knew she had been indiscrete. She had shamed him, and he had felt awful, betrayed, as if she had been lieing to him all this while.

She hadn’t. But that wouldn’t matter to the man. And she knew that, knew men well enough. Especially men of power and who had not been raised in the dark depths of a culture made for living in caves, in underground tunnels and hidden wizard-made cities. His sense of right and wrong was different from her own. All that while he had seemed to understand, to comprehend. To know what she was about. He had professed to understand her people, having spent time with them. But when it came down to it, he hadn’t believed her at all.

She had curtseyed low and apologized for everything she could. She had almost begged him, come as close to begging as someone with her spirit could. And he had laughed. Mocked her words. Then commanded her to take off her clothing.

She hadn’t hesitated. She had gladly taken the dress not, not because he had threatened to rip it from her body but because she wanted in that moment only to please him. The ‘gift of pain’ seemed appropriate, seemed his by right. She had committed to him her flesh, her spirit. Entwined herself with him willingly. What should it matter that she also desired another, almost as strongly? She had never offered herself to the other; the other had taken her, happy to find her weak with confusion over the feelings she was unaccustomed to, caused by the lord she served. The other, a wolven, had found her weak too and it was too easy to crawl into his bed. He was a fellow warrior, and he wanted nothing from her at first. Had called her a bitch when they first met. She hadn’t been prepared for how deep their kinship would go, two warriors sharing fight stories and sharing fuck stories, competing in both it seemed. A kinship, almost a friendship. Having him take her and command her and own her for a few hours on several different occasions made her feel far away from her lord’s castle. It had felt for those brief periods as if she were someone’s equal, and not a mistress, not a sex toy, not enthralled to someone so much more powerful. The wolven was her equal, at least on the surface world. Her lord, forever and always, lived in a castle, had servants and guards and money. And had a heart guarded by stone and barbs. The wolven gave of his passion and even his love freely. He meant to fight her but in the end, he never had. He had wanted someone to love, to fight next to, to appreciate him. He was easy to please, because her mere presence excited and aroused him, always. Her lord, she had to work hard to please. Still, she had stayed in his castle, determined to remain a part of both their lives.

Until that fateful day, when the two met. She was sure that was no accident. Someone had said something, goaded her lord, made him feel a cuckold or a fool for her affair with the wolven. And where the wolven was perfectly content to share her, knew he could not chain her…Her lord had become wrathful indeed.

Naked before him, he had commanded her to stand at the foot of his massive bed in his castle, and spread her feet, spread her arms, bare her back for him. And she had, knowing full well what was coming. Knowing it was that gift of pain she would be giving after all.

She had offered the wolven the same thing, the first time she had seen him after hearing he had talked to her lord. She had stripped her armor and tunic off and had handed the man beast a dagger, telling him to go ahead and kill her. Hurt her.

He had refused. Scoffed at the idea.

He was not of the dark and the dreary caves below the earth, not of the dark skinned race she came from. She was grateful. Confused but grateful.

Her lord, however, wanted every inch of her pain he could tear from her flesh. And he was determined to take it all in one shot. An entire chest of toys had been emptied for his use, though in the end he used only his well oiled whip.

Again and again it came down on her. Eventually she thought he would never stop. She chose before it began to push her warrior training away, and let him hear her experience every single lash, every instantly burning wound he inflicted.

He was masterful, that was what he was. His whip licked every inch of ebony his eyes could see. From the top of her shoulders, along the back of her neck, he used his whip to parade around her skin. When he had gone down her body one way, he switched and went the other. Criss-cross, criss-cross, until the whip was doing nothing new, only tearing the corners of the old wounds and lifting up already damaged hide.

Only then did he stop, calling a healer. His maids and servants had rushed in at his command, quickly bringing hot water and clean cloths, trying desperately to dab and comfort the wounds. She had been beyond feeling then, unaware of most of what she was saying. Stretched in a gruesome tableau, an X of bleeding flesh at the end of his bed, she remembered feeling the cold blustery wind suddenly striking her back when he opened his balcony doors. Having to be away from her. Hating her, she was sure.

When the healer came, Ubique had been lowered to the bed itself, drawing her aching arms in to her chest. She couldn’t stand, her feet and legs were weak beneath her. And her lord had paid well to have her wounds healed. Despite the woman’s every effort, the marks would heal slowly, their fading would not be a glorious and instantaneous thing. Three hours in that bed, she was told. Then another day of rest. Only then would they become as nothing. She was to eat, to be fed and watered well so her blood would become healthy, so much had been lost, trickling down her legs to the floor. The healer woman had tried to explain to the lord, someone she knew well, what it was Ubique was feeling, what she had been offering. But he couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t see it.

His hate had not ebbed a single bit. His wrath had not dissipated in what she had given him. And he still thought he was sorely wronged, terribly mistreated, and utterly, completely betrayed.

Laying in his bed, Ubique had been so confused. He wanted her cowed, and so she wept, felt the fear of his touch when he came to her later. In response, he yelled at her, told her she was weak and was not the woman he wanted. It was then that she had climbed from his bed, stumbling to the door.

He had asked her, before beating her with his whip, if she would consent to giving up her slaves, and take a collar for him. Be his slave.

A shudder went through her while she sat atop the horse, hearing the dark elf male moving the last of her things into his wagon. She had hated herself because she had stuttered. She had almost been swayed into saying yes, to giving up her entire heritage, her culture, everything she was and had been. She’d worked hard to become something, to start a new career in this world and create for herself a glorious and bright future full of opportunities, wicked and powerful chances and choices.

And this one human man had asked her if she would throw it all away for him. Being collared herself, she would lose everything. Nothing would have been hers.

She had finally said no. And he had been so disgusted with the honesty of her answer. Had declared she must not feel for him as she said she did, that she trusted him so little.

It had nothing to do with trust. Maybe she should have known then that he was beyond his wit’s end, and that she had pushed his temper too far. She would not stop being a powerful dark elf woman because he asked her to. Never. It was not something she foresaw doing or ever wished to do.

Behind her, the man was summoning a floating disc, and carefully lifting her precious mirror up on top of it. The disc he pushed up to rest next to his seat on the wagon. All of her things were loaded now. The only thing left was one small chest that she had quietly declared was not hers and must have belonged to some whore before her.

He had confessed that he would never be what she wanted, in his eyes at least. But when he had hit her, beaten her, she had not hated him. It was his behaviour afterwards that had frightened her. How he wasn’t relieved, didn’t appreciate what she had willingly given him with her blood, her rendered flesh, and the screams that had echoed off the stone walls of his bedroom. He had simply patted her on the head and told her to sleep.

Sleep? After being beaten so? And not taken sexually? Not claimed? Left to wonder what the purpose of all of it was?

He had been wicked mean to her in the past, had shown a cruelty to her she was barely able to match. But not until that moment had she felt alone in the pathetic feeling her heart was trying to express to him. Alone and unheard. And unclaimed.

“Miss, everything’s pack,” the male dark elf said quietly, disturbing her from her reverie.

Ubique nodded. Everything was. She thought for a moment she heard a small yip from the puppy she was leaving behind. Or maybe her horse became extra fidgety as they moved away from the gate, hating how he had to leave his new friends behind. The horses her lord had bought her could not come with her. His gifts she had to leave behind.

Slowly she began to lead her own horse and the wagon following down the road. It was not a far journey, and the moon had not yet risen beyond the treetops by the time they pulled up in front of the guard quarters on the road between the keep and the castle. The man obediently unloaded all of Ubique’s precious items and set them just inside the barracks. The mirror was positioned carefully among some curtains or blankets or other soft material. And he was happy to accept payment for his help, as well as the money for the wagon that was to come.

She knew she could stay in her lady’s castle, but some part of her would always feel competition with another dark elf woman. A job, and power, those things she could take. But to sup with a woman’s house and staff, to rely on another woman’s servants to fix her bedding and prepare her clothing for the next day… she couldn’t do that.

She wasn’t sure she would ever have what she had just lost, ever again. Her wolven lover would be there for her, their kinship was restored at least to some extent. She dare not let him see what damage was done to her. Not until it was healed. And there was the temple and the cleansing to tend to, now more important than ever would her visit to the priest be.

Her dark abyssal heart was heavy. And for the life of her, Ubique couldn’t tell why.

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