The Shadow Doctor Ch. 05

"I did send it. I have no particular feeling one way or another about your hopes for your father, though one question does occur to me. Do you think he will try to find you?"

Yelena sighed. "I don't know. He's always been good to me, but his first loyalty is to the cartel. He adopted me because he saw that I could be a good asset for the cartel, and trained me for that purpose. Since him rescuing me is my best hope for freedom, I hope that he'll come for me. But I can't lie, so I have to say that I don't know."

"What do you think he is most likely to do?"

"If I tried to put myself in his position, I think I'd send a message home and then focus on staying alive and hurting the Tong however I could. If he's together with Irina, the two of them could make a dangerous small strike team, hitting the Tong where they're weak. Many of the cartel members who switched sides will probably still be willing to feed him information, just in case the cartel wins the second phase of the war when our reinforcements come."

"How long will it take for these reinforcements to come?"

"The message would be sent by a magically trained messenger bird, assuming the Tong didn't destroy the coop. That will take almost a week to reach home. Then the cartel will need to decide on a response and gather forces. After that, probably nine or ten months of travel; it's a long journey. So, nine months at the earliest, maybe a year or a little more. It will be hard for father and Irina to hide out for that long." Yelena sighed.

Tam leaned back and pondered, trying to picture the power flow in the underworld over the next year. Yelena coughed slightly.

"Master?"

"Yes?"

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you create your control spell? I've been mostly focused on trying to survive it, but now that I'm thinking about it, it doesn't make sense that you'd create it just for someone like me. You could buy a normal slave girl and get most of the same benefit you get from me. Are you plotting to take over the Tong or something like that?"

Tam frowned. "Part of it was just to see if I could. I've been fascinated by the way chi interacts with the human mind since I first started studying medicine. It was a journey of discovery, a test of my abilities. But yes, I do have grander dreams. I want power and wealth; I want to never have to worry about my future, to be in a position where I'm impregnable, where no one can ever threaten me. I haven't told you much about my past -- I wasn't born educated and well-off. My father is a farmer -- I was the seventh child, and small and frail as a child, not much use on a farm with several older brothers already in line ahead of me to inherit it."

"That seems like a long way from here." Yelena gestured with a manacled hand at the elegantly furnished room they sat in.

"A travelling healer took me on as an apprentice, luckily for me. My teacher could have lived like I do; he was extremely skilled in medicine and chi use. But he was a fool despite all his knowledge -- he believed that the gods had given him his gifts so that he could help others, and he travelled the countryside healing those who could not normally afford a healer of his skills. We would stop for times at monasteries, to rest and exchange lore, but most of my apprenticeship was spent on the road between different peasant villages. I never told my master he was a fool, of course. I needed his knowledge if I didn't want to spend my life planting rice for one of my older brothers, so I pretended to absorb his outlook as well as his knowledge. Eventually he declared that I had learned all I could from him, blessed me and sent me on my way, so that he could take on another disciple. I came here and started a practice. It was small at first, but my master had taught me enough that I was soon in demand as one of the best healers in the city. I worked, and saved, and gradually my skills brought me to the position you see me in today."

Yelena was staring at him with a wistful look in her green eyes, but she didn't interrupt. Tam felt a momentary sense of oddness -- he'd never shared this much of his history with anyone, unwilling to give anyone a possible advantage over him. But Yelena couldn't betray him unless he let her. He continued.

"I'm making a small alteration to your rule about secrecy -- you will keep any and all personal details about me like what I'm sharing now a secret in the same way that you keep the control spell secret. Anyway, I've come a long way from the little boy in the rice fields who didn't even know how to read or write. But I'm not secure yet -- everything I have can still be taken away from me by someone truly powerful. I think I won't be content until no one can touch me. I can't make enough money to be truly secure; no one can unless they're a noble with true wealth. I've come as far as I can with medicine; the spell is the next step. Now that I have you, experimenting with the spell is my focus at the moment; once I'm sure of the strengths and weaknesses of the spell, I'll focus on finding new subjects to enchant."

"The spell has weaknesses? All your tests seem to indicate you have perfect control over me." Yelena watched his face closely for clues.

Tam thought for a moment. He decided against discussing the way she had surprised him with her small deception of Su Wen; there were other weaknesses he could discuss more safely. "Range is one of the major weaknesses. I can't control you unless you're near me. When you're not in my presence, I have to rely on rules, which don't have as much flexibility and fine control. Though to be honest we haven't really experimented with rules too extensively yet."

He continued. "The other huge weakness at the moment is that the spell requires the subject to be helpless for several hours while I cast it. Now that I've found the technique from Sian Fei, I can remove the weakness where the subject is shaved bald as part of the process, but I don't think there's any way to avoid the need to subdue the subject and keep them locked away for a few hours. The process is too complicated and intensive."

Yelena nodded. "That makes sense. It's not like you can go up to the Governor or someone like that and ask him to take a nap in your lab, and then he wakes up and he's your slave."

"Exactly. I have had some ideas, but they're all risky. For the moment I prefer taking things slowly and experimenting with you. Speaking of which, we've spent a large portion of the day teaching you healing and letting Su Wen question you. I have to reopen my practice tomorrow, and soon I'll be losing some portion of your time to tutor Grace. Let's make the most of the rest of the afternoon and do some experiments."

Yelena sighed. "Yes Master. What do you have in mind first?"

"I'm curious about something a little more esoteric today. Let's go to the lab."

Tam had Yelena take the tea tray back to the kitchen, and told her to prepare a fresh pot and bring it to the lab. While she was gone, he collected the items he wanted, along with a scroll to use in taking notes on the experiment. When Yelena joined him, she found him seated on a stool next to the lab table, with a length of rope and a strip of black cloth to his left, and another larger cloth covering several objects to his right. Tam unlocked her from her sirik and had her sit across from him to join him in a cup of tea.

"Before we get started, Yelena, how are you feeling? Physical and emotional status check."

"Yes Master. I'm in the best physical state I've been in since the Tong kidnapped me, after the healing this morning. My throat is a bit dry, and the healing left me a little tired, but the tea is helping. Emotionally, I'm a wreck, both from the constant trauma of being your slave and the shock of hearing that woman talk about killing my friends. But I can put that aside; I'm discovering I have the capacity to wall away the terror, rage and grief and focus on what's in front of me. I'm ready for the next round of experiments, and hoping they won't involve pain."

"I can't promise a complete avoidance of pain, but it should be much less traumatic than the push-ups. What I have in mind is experimenting on my control over your physical sensations. We've already determined that I can remove the pain of a migraine from you with a command; I want to see what else we can do. Numbing the subject to pain has obvious utility if I enchant a warrior at some point, but we're going to do some experiments and see what else we can do. Go ahead and finish your tea before we start though."

"Yes Master." Yelena swallowed nervously, her eyes darting occasionally to the various shapes under the cloth, but refrained from making any futile objections.

Once she had finished her cup of tea and nervously declared herself ready, Tam had Yelena stand and strip. Since he hadn't given her sandals to wear indoors, this simply involved three quick tugs at the knots holding her slave silks in place. She folded both pieces of black silk and set them on the table, then stood before him wearing only her collar and jewelry. Tam felt an immediate urge to fuck the gorgeous woman standing nude before him, but that would distract from what he wanted to do. A mild chi manipulation killed his erection before it could rise and force Yelena into an aroused state.

Tam had the naked girl climb onto her stool and tie one end of the rope through a hook set into one of the ceiling beams. It had originally been placed there to support a pulley for hoisting animals onto the lab table for experiments, but it served his current purposes well enough.

Once the rope was secure, Tam had Yelena stand beneath it and lift her hands over her head. Then he bound her wrists together, keeping her arms fully extended. He could have commanded her to keep her hands raised, but he planned to have her in this position for some time, and he thought the rope's support would help ease the strain on her arms. He left her feet free, comfortably planted on the lacquered wood floor.

Once Yelena was secured, Tam tied a blindfold over her eyes and confirmed that she couldn't see anything. He stepped back and grinned at his helpless experiment subject for a moment.

"Alright, Yelena. You remember that I don't have to speak to give you commands -- I can do so mentally, and you won't find out what the command was until your body obeys it, like this."

Yelena made a small sound of surprise as her right leg suddenly left the ground and bent upward, leaving her in a standing split. She wobbled for a moment then recovered.

"Yes Master."

"Good. We're experimenting with control over your senses today, specifically your sense of touch. I'm going to touch you with various objects. I want you to tell me what you're feeling as we go -- tell me what's touching you and where, how it feels. I'll also be mixing in a few mental commands, but I won't tell you what they are. Just focus on what you feel, and describe it to me as it happens. Oh, and you can go ahead and put your leg down."

"Yes Master." She lowered her leg with relief and shifted slightly, trying to stand comfortably despite her nervous anticipation.

"Alright, we're starting now. Just keep describing what you feel."

"Yes Master. Um, you're touching my side very lightly with something. It feels like . . . a feather, maybe?"

"That's correct."

"Ah, and now you're running the feather slowly up my side towards my armpit. Ah, shit, that tickles! Hahaha, please, stop it, Master!"

Tam grinned and continued to tickle her as she squirmed, while giving his first mental command.

"Oh! Ah, this is strange. I can still feel the feather, but it doesn't tickle anymore. Did you make me stop being ticklish? How on earth does that work? This spell of yours is insane."

"What are you feeling now?"

Yelena shifted her head, trying to look at him in her blindness. "Um . . . you're not touching me, I think? But I'm very sensitive to touch right now with the blindfold, and I think my armpit feels just a little numb maybe? Did you take away my sensation of touch completely just on my armpit? I can still feel the air on my body and the floor beneath my feet."

She gasped for breath. "That answers that question. I'm numb all over now. I can't feel anything. Please, Master, make it stop, this is frightening. Oh, God, thank you. Ahahaha, shit, you've been tickling me this entire time? You sadist! Ah, hahaha, oh thank God you stopped. Oh shit that felt strange."

Tam stepped back and gave Yelena a moment to recover. He put the feather down and picked up the next object from the table.

"Okay, you're touching me again. It's on my hip this time -- it's something hard and cold, with a couple of small ridges. It feels familiar but I can't place it."

"Perhaps this will help you remember."

"Aaagh! Fuck, it's the shock stick. Ow, ow, ow. Um, you just gave me the first level shock, like you did when I was doing push-ups. I remember now Master, you don't need to do it anymore."

Tam held the enchanted rod to her hip again, but didn't activate it. He watched closely as he gave Yelena the next mental command.

"Shiiit! Agh, fuck, ow! Damn it, you just shocked me again. I thought you were supposed to be testing things, not just hurting me randomly to get off."

"We are testing things, Yelena. I didn't actually shock you, I just mentally commanded you to feel the sensation of being shocked."

Tam was impressed with the spell's work -- as far as he could tell from watching, Yelena's reaction had been exactly the same to the induced shock and the real one -- involuntary muscle spasm, flinching away from the rod, yelps of pain -- if he hadn't made sure his finger was nowhere near the control rune, he would have thought that he had accidentally activated the rod again.

Yelena shivered in her bonds. "Really? That was just the spell, the second time? That's terrifying. I couldn't tell any difference at all."

"I know the shocks are uncomfortable, but the first level isn't so bad. I've tested it on myself, so I know you can handle a few more. We're going to do five more shocks -- tell me where they are, and whether you can tell if they're real or the result of mental commands."

Yelena groaned. "Yes Master. Ah, fuck! My right arm, felt real."

She tensed in anticipation. "Aaaa! Shit, shit, shit. Um, sorry, stomach. Agh! Small of my back, ow. They all feel real."

Tam stepped back for a moment to let her catch her breath then resumed.

"Aiii! Oh Jesu, you shocked me right on my nipple you sick fuck. Ow, ow, ow. Um, real? Aaaagh! Ah, ah, ah, shit that hurts. I want to shove that up your ass and make you feel what this feels like."

Tam set the rod down and helped her get her feet under her; Yelena had lost her footing on the final shock and momentarily hung from the rope, all her weight on her wrists before he steadied her. Once she was upright again he stepped back and waited.

"Fucking asshole. Um, report: the fifth shock was on my nipple again, and it felt way worse. I think that the fourth one was fake, and the fifth one was real. The shock hurts a lot more on a sensitive spot like that, and the first time you shocked my tit it only felt as bad as when you hit my leg or my back."

"Interesting. Your deduction is correct; in case you're curious, only the fifth one was real. It seems the spell can't perfectly predict a sensation you haven't received, but it can reproduce a remembered response even if it is on a different spot on your body."

"Fascinating." Yelena's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"It really is. Two more shocks, then I promise we're done. Are you ready?"

"No, but go ahead. Fucker."

Tam grinned and gave her a mental command.

"Fuuuuuck! Shit, ow, right in the tit again. Let me guess, that one was fake, but now that I know what it feels like to get shocked in the tit my body can reproduce it?"

"Exactly right. One more -- this one should be interesting."

Yelena gulped and pressed her legs together, instinctively trying to shield her vagina. Tam thought it was interesting that she expected him to shock her there next, but he had something else in mind.

Yelena jerked as he pressed the enchanted rod to her shoulder. "Hugh. Sorry, my arm spasmed. Repeated shocks seem to be a trauma, if you're taking notes. Are you going to give me that one last 'interesting' one, or just let me kill myself with anticipation?"

"That was the last one. I numbed your arm, like with the feather. It seems your muscles still automatically react to the electric shock, even with the sensation reserved."

"Huh. Is that supposed to happen?"

"I wasn't sure what to expect. That's why we're experimenting. You can relax now; we're done with the shocks. Most of what's to come will be less intense. Would you like another cup of tea before we move on?"

"Yes please. Are you going to untie me?"

"Too much trouble. Here, tilt your head back a little."

Tam held the fresh cup to Yelena's lips and let her slowly sip about half of it. When he took the cup away she sighed and rolled her shoulders as best as she could with her arms tied above her head, then told him to bring on the next test.

Tam filled most of the rest of the afternoon with variations on the same test. He used a piece of cloth, a twig, a candle, and one of his acupuncture needles to test her sensations, alternating heightening and numbing her sensitivity to touch. Despite Yelena's fears, he didn't burn her with the candle, just holding the flame close to her or dripping a few drops of hot wax onto her exposed skin. Overall, the results were consistent with the initial experiment. If Yelena had never experienced something (like having hot wax dripped on her pussy), the initial attempt with the spell resulted in something that felt like she would imagine it to feel, though she could tell the difference once he replaced it with the real sensation. Once she'd experienced something, Tam could reproduce it anywhere on her body.

When he'd run out of ideas on different things to poke or prod her with, Tam untied Yelena's arms and gave her a quick shoulder rub, but left the blindfold on. He set up a small obstacle course for her with the stools, and used commands to have her navigate it blind.

Interestingly enough, she was clumsier when he used verbal commands instead of mental ones. Even with the spell backing them, her response to a verbal command like "two steps left, one forward" was similar to a blindfolded person listening to directions. But when he gave her mental commands she placed her feet exactly where he imagined them moving. After a few test runs, Tam was confident enough that he had her sprint from one side of the room to the other blindfolded, her body moving like a marionette at his command, easily dodging the stools and even ducking and rolling under the table on her final transversal.

He let Yelena sit down and catch her breath after that final run. She reached for the blindfold then hesitated. "Please, Master, may I take this off? I haven't been able to see for hours and it's getting to me. And even though I didn't hit anything, it was still terrifying to be running full speed while blind."

"Go ahead and take it off. I think we're done for now, it's getting close to dinner time."

"Thank you Master." Yelena let out a sigh of relief as she took the blindfold off, holding a hand in front of her eyes as she adjusted to the light.

Tam had a sudden idea as he looked at her. He got up from the stool he was sitting on and walked over to her, taking her hands in his. She looked up at him warily.

"Yes Master?"

"One last test for today. This is going to be uncomfortable for you, but it shouldn't be painful. I've done this test on animals before, so I know it won't harm you, but I'd like to see the effect on a human subject."