“I think they’re under a curse to remain like that until they sleep with a certain man. Probably the sorcerer who put the curse on them, or his patron — but something went wrong and they never did sleep with the guy, and they’ve been like that for decades, maybe centuries.”

The Manumission Game

Part 5 of 6

by Trismegistus Shandy

It was two months more before Ftymsar told Tyngsen he had made a breakthrough in figuring out the data he got from the diagnostic spell on the five remaining ensorcelled women. “But I’m afraid it’s bad news,” he said. “I’m not quite sure, but I think they’re under a curse to remain like that until they sleep with a certain man. Probably the sorcerer who put the curse on them, or his patron — but something went wrong and they never did sleep with the guy, and they’ve been like that for decades, maybe centuries.”

“Who...?”

“I don’t know, that’s the problem. And unless he’s immortal too, he’s probably been dead for a while. Odds are that’s what went wrong, he dropped dead of a heart attack before he got to enjoy his curse on them. But there are other possibilities: the man they need to sleep with might be defined in terms of his role or status, not his specific identity.”

“What kind of role or status?”

“Not their owner or master, obviously, because Madam Fparadra said your uncle and your grandfather slept with them more than once. Not a ruler, because they’ve slept with the mayor and some of his predecessors. — Actually, no, they haven’t slept with anybody. They don’t sleep, as far as Madam Fparadra knows — that’s probably why my sleep spell didn’t work on them. I’m going to need to go back in to study the spell again and see if I can figure out more.”

“Have you already cast the impotence curse?”

“No, I wanted to check with you first, and see when it would suit you to be under the curse for a few days.”

Tyngsen thought. He’d had a narrow escape last time, with the women talking about not being able to find his penis and so forth... And he ran the organization that owned them, but being their master hadn’t really let him help with Ftymsar’s magic last time.

“I’m pretty busy these days,” he said, which was true. “Let me know if you have a ritual that really needs me as their master. But we already know I can’t order them around. Ask Madam Fparadra to assign you a couple of the taller, stronger free girls to force one of the ensorcelled women into the circle while you do your diagnostic spell. If that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll come with you next time.”

“That makes sense,” Ftymsar said. “I’ll try that.”

Ftymsar was back a couple of days later, grinning ecstatically. “I’ve figured it out!”

“Great!” Tyngsen said. “How soon can we disenchant them?”

“Well, maybe not quite figured it out,” Ftymsar amended. “I know a lot more than I did before, but there’s still a couple of things I’m not sure about, that we’ll need to know to free them. And it’s going to be risky, boss, a lot like the spell on Kefpidra — if the worst happens, you’ll end up like them, permanently, or until somebody else comes along willing to risk slavery to free all of you. And even if not, the odds are better than even that you’ll end up like them temporarily in the process of freeing them. You might want to let this one go.”

“I’ll decide when you tell me everything,” Tyngsen said. “What did you figure out and what do you still need to know? And when you say ‘like them,’ you mean obsessed with sex and unable to think of anything else?” He wondered how that would affect him, with his sexless, vaguely feminine body under this illusion spell. Could he possibly be immune to the side-effects Ftymsar was warning him about?

“Yes, and worse — you’d be a woman, for the rest of your life in the worst case, and probably for a few hours. It turns out that at least some and probably all of those women were originally men, and sorcerers. They worked this spell together, and played a game — that’s the part I’m not sure of, what game they were playing, but it was a gambling card game, involving a little more luck than skill. And the winner of the game was supposed to get the losers as his sex slaves until the next dawn — but it ended in a tie, and there was no winner for them to fulfill the conditions of the spell with. I’m not sure if the immortality was a side-effect of the unfulfilled condition, or if they were already immortal because of other spells they’d used. This was a long time ago, Boss — I got some hints of the materials they used for the spell, and there were things in it that haven’t been available for love or money in three hundred years or more.”

“Things like black dragon teeth?”

“A female black dragon’s ovaries, actually, but the point is, this spell must have been cast when black dragons were still around, or hadn’t been extinct long. I wouldn’t dare try to work a counterspell — there’s not enough magic left in the world to do that. The only way out for them is to fulfill the conditions.”

“So... we need to get them to play another round of that game, whatever it was? How do we do that if they’re so obsessed with sex?”

“I think if we can identify the game, there won’t be any problem getting them to play another round of it. It’s the only thing that can divert them from their obsession. But you’ll need to sit down and play with them — and take the risk that if one of them wins, they’ll turn back into the man they were centuries ago, while you become a woman under that same curse, until dawn comes and he’s had his way with you and the rest. Or if there’s another tie...” He left the rest unspoken.

“I think I can avoid a tie, if I understand the rules of the game well enough,” Tyngsen said. “Avoiding a tie matters a lot more than winning.” What he didn’t say was that he was planning to throw the game, and let one of the women win — because there was no way he could free them by having sex with them, even if he won. “Now, do you have a plan to identify the game?”

“No... we can narrow it down some, it won’t be anything invented in the last three hundred years. And it has to be something that works with five players. But beyond that, well. Maybe if a sorcerer who knew more about games did a diagnostic spell on them... but I’m not sure who to call on, or who’d be willing to make himself impotent for a week at any price.”

“I have an idea,” Tyngsen said. “I’ll get back to you.”

It was late in the day, and he knew the man he needed to talk to was always busy in the evenings, so he waited until the next day to call him. Skopansen was the manager of the highest-class gaming house in Tyngsen’s territory. He knew all the games played in Kosyndar or the other cities of the League. And what was more important, now, he knew the history of games better than most historians, who were mostly interested in battles and kings being crowned or deposed, rather than what old-time people did when they were enjoying themselves. Tyngsen had heard him talk about old-time games and complain that no one wanted to play them anymore; he figured Skopansen might be able to figure out what game those poor women had been playing, or at least narrow things down and shorten the period of trial and error.

He met Skopansen for lunch at a restaurant he owned; they sat in a private room in back. While they waited for their food to arrive, Tyngsen told him about the women and what Ftymsar had figured out about them.

“Three hundred years old or more, a card game involving a little more luck than skill... Can we pin down the date or the place any more?”

“Not that I know of... Wait. Maybe we can. The women speak kind of an old-fashioned way. If somebody who knows language like you know games were to listen to them, he might be able to figure out when they got ensorcelled.”

“That would help. But, well, I can give you a list of the games fitting that criterion that were popular here in Kosyndar three to five hundred years ago. The cards were different in those days, you know; there were five suits in the deck rather than four, they had Shoes as well, and what we call Skulls now was Bones then — instead of different numbers of skulls on each card, they all had different bones, a skull on the Ace and a pelvis on the Two and so forth. We’ll need to get an old deck to start with. There’s a company that prints old-style decks, and I’ve got a couple of theirs, but if I were you, I’d try to acquire a really old deck in decent condition. I don’t have a complete deck myself, my oldest deck is missing the Seven of Trumpets, the Five of Bones and the Eleven of Shoes. A complete antique deck that’s not so fragile it will fall apart when you start playing will cost you two or three thousand marks.”

“All right. If you know where to get one, buy it and send me a bill. If you need cash up front, come by the office later today or tomorrow. Now, what games did people play with them in those days...?”

While he was waiting on Skopansen to find and buy a suitable deck, Tyngsen had Pengram pay a visit to the university. When Pengram returned, he told his boss that the Drypasengen Chair of Philology would be willing to help Tyngsen with his arcane researches. They set up a meeting, and Tyngsen invited Ftymsar to join them in the parlor of Madam Fparadra’s house the following evening.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to monopolize your most lucrative assets again tonight, Madam,” Tyngsen told her when he arrived.

“Ah, it’s not every night that someone shows up who can afford them, Boss. More sorcery?”

“Nothing much tonight. We just want to have this professor listen to them talk.”

“Is he doing research on pillow talk?”

Tyngsen just smiled.

The Drypasengen Chair of Philology, when he arrived, turned out to be middle-aged and balding, but to judge from his demeanor toward the girls lounging in the parlor, still pretty healthy. Tyngsen and Ftymsar explained the situation to him.

“So... you have a set of immortal slave prostitutes upstairs? And you want me to listen to them talk, and figure out from their speech how old they are?”

“That was the idea,” Tyngsen said. “They talk pretty old-fashioned, and I thought you might be able to figure out exactly how old-fashioned. We know the spell was probably cast at least three hundred years ago; if you can pin it down to, say, between four hundred and fifty and five hundred years ago, that would help us.”

“It’s possible they’ve picked up newer words and turns of phrase over the centuries,” the Drypasengen Chair said. “I’ve never met an immortal; there don’t seem to be many of them left... but in Nidrasen’s monograph on the speech of immortals, he notes that usually half a percent of their vocabulary is made up of words coined after they turned one hundred. Still, I’ll do what I can, of course.” He looked around and licked his lips. “What am I offered for this service?”

“I figure we’ll give you two nights with the girls upstairs,” Tyngsen said. “That will give you plenty of opportunity to gather linguistic data, or whatever you call it.”

“Ah... yes, I suppose it would.” The Drypasengen Chair’s eyes were wide, and his collar seemed to be uncomfortably tight, judging from how frequently he was adjusting it.

“Thing is,” Tyngsen said, “those girls can be pretty demanding. Ftymsar, the first time you were with them, how much talking did you do? You remember much of what they said?”

“Very little, and no,” Ftymsar said.

“So I think you’ll need to listen to them talk under two different sets of conditions,” Tyngsen said. “Once, as you are now — just go upstairs and enjoy yourself, and if you can get them to talk some while you’re having fun, good; try to remember what they say and figure out later what it means. But tomorrow night — or whenever in the next week fits your schedule best — I’ll have Ftymsar here put a spell on you, and send you in again. You won’t be having sex with them that night — or with any other woman for a week afterward, I’m afraid. You’ll get a lot of cuddling and fondling before the girls figure that out, and maybe this time you’ll be able to get them to talk more — if nothing else they’ll complain about your performance and talk about how bored they are, and you won’t be so distracted so you’ll probably be able to take notes on what they say. Sound good?”

The Drypasengen Chair of Philology considered that. “A week afterward?”

“The impotence curse wears off in no more than eight days, no less than four,” Ftymsar said. “But after a night with those girls, you won’t have much appetite for two or three days anyway, so it’s really only one to five days you’re losing.”

“All right,” the Drypasengen Chair said. “I’ll do it. The odds are against my wife being in the mood any time in the next week.”

Tyngsen and Madam Fparadra led him upstairs and told him about the vestibule and the puzzle on the inside door. “Leave your clothes in the vestibule, or they’ll just get torn off. You can bring in your paper and pencils, but I doubt you’ll get much chance to use them tonight.”

“We shall see,” the Drypasengen Chair said, a broad smile on his face.

Three days later, the Drypasengen Chair sent Tyngsen a detailed report. He listed the archaic words the women had used, and gave definitions (two of them made even Tyngsen, with his whorehouse upbringing, blush — a thing that hadn’t happened in a decade or more), and dates when those words were first attested in writing and last commonly used. He also analyzed the archaic verb forms and inversions of word order, and noted the native cities of the classical writers who had predilections for certain of those words. Finally, he concluded that the women’s formative years had probably been passed between four hundred and four hundred and fifty years ago, almost certainly in one of the northernmost cities of the League, and quite likely in Sderamyn. Tyngsen had Pengram send copies of the report to Skopansen and Ftymsar, and waited for them to get back to him.

Skopansen telephoned him the next day, excitedly saying, “I’ve got your deck, Boss, and it’s a beaut. It only cost eighteen hundred marks, and it’s a genuine hand-painted Fpigansen! There’s real gold on the Archon of Shoes' belt buckle...”

“Great,” Tyngsen said, having no idea what a Fpigansen was. “Have you seen that report on the women’s speech?”

“Yes, I’m looking over it right now. The most popular gambling game in ninth-century Sderamyn was Six-Card Pitch. Tentstakes and Spiral Wheel were also fairly popular.”

“Let’s meet soon, and you can teach me those games.”

Tyngsen went to see Suryndra again, for the first time in several days, and told her of the latest developments in the case of the five ageless women.

“I’m really worried about you,” she said. “What if the same thing that happened to them before happens when you play this game with them?”

“That could only happen if there’s a tie in the game. And — I’ll discuss this with Skopansen, but if ties in those game were at all likely, they would never have been so popular as Skopansen says they were.”

“But even if there’s no tie... you’ll have to lie with a man! You always used to hate that, you got away from it as soon as you could. Now you’re going to do it again...”

“The alchemist left me with nothing to enjoy it with,” he said. “They made me look like a woman, but left me still feeling like a boy, like I ought to be a man somehow. Didn’t you and the other natural women enjoy it sometimes? Not always, of course, but when you had a customer who was — well, not a mean bastard like Sgadrim.”

“Once in a while... But usually it’s not that much fun. I mean, we’re not numb down there like you, but if a guy’s in a hurry and doesn’t care about us — and that’s nineteen men out of twenty, in a bordello — it’s no fun for us either. When it’s not, it’s usually horrible. We got used to it, when it happened every day, and we pretended to shrug it off as though it was no big deal, but now that I’ve got some distance from it I see how horrible it was, almost all the time. I can’t stand thinking of you suffering like that. From what Ftymsar said, those sorcerers did this to themselves — let them go on suffering, if they’ve got enough mind left to suffer with. You’ve broken the enchantments on all the innocents who got enslaved for no fault of their own, and in a few years most of them will be free — let that be enough for you.”

He was silent, thinking. Then: “I’ll talk it over with Ftymsar and Skopansen. Figure out if there’s a strategy I can use to prevent ties, or if there are magical ways to protect me from a backfire like that. I won’t do it if the risk is much higher than it was with Kefpidra. But I won’t rule it out yet, either.”

“I wish you’d reconsider.” She turned her face toward the window, and they didn’t speak for a while.

“The only way they could have gotten a tie in Six-Card Pitch,” Skopansen said when Tyngsen met him for lunch a couple of days later, “is if they were using two or more decks mixed together. Then there’d be a vanishingly small chance that two players are tied with two exact copies of the same best hand. But with a single deck, like you’ll be using, not a chance.”

“Good. What about Tentstakes or Spiral Wheel?”

“Same with Tentstakes. Spiral Wheel is less precise, with all the wildcards, but even there the chances of a tie are pretty slim... less than one in fifty thousand.”

I'll probably post part six and the afterword in about a week.

A Notional Treason, a transgender fantasy of manners in the same setting as Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes and When Wasps Make Honey, is now available from Smashwords in EPUB format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

"The Manumission Game" is inspired by (though not exactly a sequel to) an old story from the Transformation Stories Archive. I'll identify that story and its author in an afterword to part six, but you're welcome to speculate about it in the comments. Probably it's obvious by now to those who remember the story in question.