hey eventually fell into a routine of sorts; he was kept in a hole carved in the rock on which the keep was built, joined to her apartments by a short passage. Every morning, he would rise just before dawn and fetch her breakfast from the kitchens, which were staffed by Humans and overseen by Viraya, an ancient, smirking Elven crone who was also his instructor in the language of the Elves (when it became apparent that he had no aptitude for languages whatsoever, they augmented his instruction with sorcery; he was speaking accented Elvish within a week, and, when allowed to speak freely, making crude Trollish double-entendres within three). He was required to place Tryssa's meal on the table next to her four-poster bed and kneel at the end until she awoke, at which time he was required to pour her drinks and remove the plates when she had finished. He was allowed to snatch whatever scraps were available from the Humans' meals in the kitchen; the leftovers of Tryssa's meals, being Elven, were too light to serve as nourishment for a Troll.
Depending on what Tryssa was doing that day, he would accompany her, walking three paces behind and closely followed by her Elven guard who, he had been assured, would be quick to slice him in two if he even thought about getting too close to her without her express permission. Sometimes Tryssa would spend the morning in bed, reading; Kulyar was obliged to massage her feet gently (having first had all but one of his ragged fingernails clipped short; he was permitted to keep the nail on his right-hand little finger for the purposes of scratching her back) and fetch drinks for her. If she was reading a heavy book, he would hold it for her and turn the pages, being forced to stand in an awkward position over the side of her bed. He developed the habit of staring at the bedstead while surreptitiously peering peripherally down her decolletage. More than once he arrived with her breakfast, to find her entwined with one or more of her current Elven paramours (the most frequent of these being an Elf from a neighbouring Keep, Prince Sephayr), and once even with a Human male. On these occasions, she ignored him completely; he merely stood in attendance until they had finished, trying (with little success) not to hear their gasps and moans, unable to meet her cool Elven gaze as he served her meal afterwards.
One morning, he entered to find the lank-haired Elven captain – whose name, he had discovered, was Pyraf – sitting on the end of her bed, a black scowl on his face; she was sitting as far as possible from him while still remaining in the bed. As he entered, Pyraf stood, glaring at him, and said tersely, "Get out of here, vyafna."
Kulyar turned as if to leave, but Tryssa called him back; "Troll? Please escort Captain Pyraf from my room." Kulyar noted that her regular guards were absent; dismissed by Pyraf, most likely. After bowing to Tryssa and setting the meal-tray down on a nearby table, he lumbered over to Pyraf and grabbed his arm. The Elf hissed, and with a fluid, catlike motion stuck a long, thin Elven dagger into the back of Kulyar's hand. The Troll didn't bat an eyelid; he lifted Pyraf from the bed and dragged him over to the door, which opened magically as they approached. Kulyar looked back to Tryssa, who was watching with satisfaction; she nodded. Kulyar took this as sanction to do as he thought the situation required; with both hands, he lifted Pyraf over his head and threw him through the doorway. Pyraf's shout of rage faded unevenly as he bounced down the stairs. The door closed, and Tryssa cast a short spell that would deny the Captain entry. Kulyar went over and kneeled at her bedside, eyes closed; presently, he heard the rustle of silks and he detected the faint aroma of her perfume; he opened his eyes and found her sitting right in front of him, staring at him. They remained there, motionless, for half a minute; she gazing into his eyes, he staring unabashedly back at his mistress. She broke the spell with the smallest of smiles, which made Kulyar start back with surprise. "My thanks, slave, for your... enthusiasm in your work." She reached out and tugged the dagger from his hand. Her gaze darted down his imposing bulk, taking in his broad shoulders and chest, then back up to his eyes. "What would you ask in return?" He prepared one of his insolent smirks, and then abruptly realised that she was serious. Nonetheless, being so recently broken to her service, he could not resist having a joke; he let his attention wander down her slim form, resting for what he considered to be an insultingly long time on her breasts, and then back to her eyes, which were glittering with haughty disdain.
He grinned at her and said, "I'd like a decent meal, Mistress." and he noted with satisfaction that a momentary pang of disappointment flashed across her beautiful face.
She led him down to the kitchen, which was still in the throes of the after-breakfast clean-up; harried Humans scuttled in all directions, bearing platters, plates and armsful of cutlery. Kulyar stood there, surveying the scene; Viraya hobbled over and curtseyed to Tryssa, who somehow conveyed her wishes with a single glance. Viraya smiled and turned to Kulyar, who had found what he had been looking for.
She asked, "What would you? Name it and I will have it prepared for you." Kulyar raised one side of his mouth in his best mirthless smirk, revealing one long incisor. He pointed across the kitchen in the direction of a nine-year-old human scullery maid, who was struggling to remove four days' worth of baked-on porridge from a huge dish. Viraya raised an eyebrow with surprise. "You want porridge?"
Kulyar glanced down at her. "No. I want her. Roasted." Tryssa's nose wrinkled with distaste.
Kulyar grinned and licked his lips.
As he started on his meal, Kulyar waved to Viraya, inviting her over. She gave him a don't-try-to-be-funny look when he offered her a bite of the nine-year-old's roasted haunch; he grinned and beckoned for her to sit down at the table. Keeping a politic distance from the greasy platter and its foul-smelling contents, she joined him. Around a mouthful of human flesh, Kulyar asked her, "What's "vyafna" mean?"
She gave him a contemptuous look, as if to say, `I'm talking to one right now' and answered, "A number of things; foul-smelling, loathsome to the touch... the sort of thing you find at the bottom of the Keep's cesspool in winter." The Troll nodded sagely, thoughtfully gnawing on the girl's thighbone.
Later that morning, when Kulyar returned to Tryssa's rooms (wiping grease from his mouth on his sleeve), he found her comfortably sprawled on her bed, perusing a volume of exquisitely abstruse Elven erotica. He kneeled at his usual position and waited. After a few minutes, broken only by the faint susurration as her fingers turned the pages, she said quietly, "You still view this as some sort of competition." Kulyar didn't respond. "You have lost. You lost on the day that you were captured." He dared to narrow his eyes in a surly expression, just as she looked up from her book. She smiled sweetly and then swiftly lashed out with a thin riding crop which she'd held concealed by her side, catching him across the face with a stinging blow. His only reaction was to stiffen slightly and wince. A trickle of blood ran down his face.
Kulyar waited until the worst of the pain had passed, and then glanced at his mistress. To his interest, he noted a faint flush of excitement on her face; a number of thoughts passed through his mind, and after a few moments' contemplation, he made his next move: he stuck his tongue out at her. Her eyes widened with a mixture of anger and indignant surprise; she struck at the other side of his face with the riding crop, slashing another cut into his face which also bled freely. She was breathing deeply now; seeing this, Kulyar found a deep-seated impulse to back away, out of her reach. Almost as if she could read his mind, she tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing in a warning glance; he saw the fingers of her left hand twitch, and he froze. She smiled with terrifying languor, and the usually impassive Troll found himself frozen with fear. "Take your tunic off," she said, a hoarse throatiness betraying the depth of emotion that she was experiencing. He did so, never taking his eyes from hers. "Down," she whispered, pointing at the rug with the riding crop. Without a moment's hesitation, he bent over, pressing his forehead to the floor, his hands at either side of his head. There was a pause, during which time Kulyar nervously contemplated his situation and his mistress' mood; then, without warning, the riding crop slashed down, striking diagonally between his shoulder blades with a whack! which broke the silence like a thunderclap. He winced. She struck again, hitting a spot just below the first, and again, in a line that crossed the first two.
She proceeded to lay a criss-cross pattern down his back, paying special attention to the area which started just below his shoulders and ended just above his buttocks. Every time she hit a bone in his protruding spine, he flinched involuntarily. As the beating proceeded, a searing warmth spread across his back, fuelled by the strokes; the originally sharp sound of the riding crop began to give way to a wet-sounding slap, and warmth began to trickle down his sides. His back was now one single consolidation of fire; the individual blows began to run together, until each one seemed to strike every part of him. Just when it seemed that he couldn't take any more and he was about to risk the wrath of her magic by pulling away, the punishment stopped. He crouched beside her, breathing heavily; she put her bare foot underneath his chin and lifted his head to meet her gaze. She was breathing harder than he; from exertion? Contemplating the flushed face, the wildly glittering eyes, he knew: this excited her. She lifted the riding crop to her mouth and licked the encrimsoned shaft. She gasped with unrestrained lust, and he knew.
That evening, Kulyar was escorting her from the Hall of Tapestries to the dining rooms, when they happened across Pyraf, who passed them on the spiral staircase, pretending not to see them. Kulyar felt a tickling feeling at the nape of his neck (completely disassociated from the sharp tang of the wounds on his back), and acting entirely on instinct, whirled about with one arm outstretched. He caught Pyraf's hand, which was in the act of thrusting a knife at Tryssa, and smashed it against the stone wall. Pyraf dropped the knife and gave a hoarse cry of dismay as he regarded his broken arm. Kulyar glared at him and, baring his fangs, lifted Pyraf's awkwardly-twisted hand towards his mouth with the eager, express intention of biting it off. The Elven captain struggled violently, to no avail; Pyraf felt the Troll's hot breath on his fingers when Tryssa said, calmly: "Kulyar! manners, please!" Holding Pyraf a foot off the ground, Kulyar turned to her, a querying expression on his coarse features.
Suddenly seeming to comprehend her meaning, his face lit up. "Oh? But of course. Raw meat." he murmured, shaking his head in mock disapproval. He tugged a crackling torch from the wall and held it under Pyraf's broken wrist, searing the skin and causing the captain to shout again and renew his struggles.
"Kulyar!" Tryssa snapped. He glanced up, and she gave him a look of reproach. Pushing out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout, Kulyar released Pyraf, dropping him to the ground. "But, mistress... he's a murderous, mannerless bastard."
She slapped the Troll lightly across the face. "Slave! I want you to apologise to Captain Pyraf, right now!"
Kulyar dolefully regarded the whimpering Elf as he crouched on the steps, nursing his abused arm, and after a pause, muttered sullenly, "I'm sorry that you're a murderous, mannerless bastard." With a look of naked hatred that could be felt at twenty paces, Pyraf staggered to his feet and stalked off down the stairs. Kulyar and Tryssa watched him go; the Troll turned to face his mistress, and gave her a solemn look.
She maintained her composure for all of ten seconds, and then burst into a peal of giggles. "Troll humour!" she sighed. He smiled proudly, exposing his incisors. "I'm going to have to punish you for that, you realise."
His eyes narrowed with anticipation.
Synda, the Keep's Healer, examined Pyraf's injury with practised caution, knowing of the Elf Captain's temper. She pursed her lips and reached for her grimoire, muttering to herself. Within five minutes, the broken limb was whole again, with only a series of faint, pale tooth-marks and a residual ache to mark the injury's passing. He spread his fingers, flexed them; satisfied, he nodded tersely to the Healer and then left.
"Try to be more careful in future, huh?" she called out after him. He turned and gave her a look designed to forestall any similar comments, which worked. He slammed the door on the way out; his subaltern, a battle-scarred Elf named Jacyn, was waiting for him.
"What are you staring at, lieutenant?" Pyraf hissed.
"Nothing sir." Jacyn snapped, at attention.
"Good."
"This, my dear Troll slave, is a Music Crystal. It has, magically stored within its lattices, many hundreds of hours of recorded music. Do the Trolls enjoy music?"
Kulyar suppressed a surge of anger over the ease at which she completely dismissed three thousand years of what passed for cultural development by the Trolls, and replied meekly, "Yes, Mistress..."
Tryssa set the crystal down on her table and activated it, passing her fingers over the pyramidal point; exquisitely beautiful, sweeping chimes and tinkling sounds issued forth from a spot about a hand's-span above the crystal. Kulyar kneeled before her, entranced, his attention returning only when she stopped the sounds with a further wave of her fingers. She indicated that he should try to operate the device, but when he did so, nothing happened. He tried again, Tryssa checking to see that he performed the finger motions correctly, but it was as if he had no command of magic at all. "Never mind," she sighed, "I'll set it to play repeatedly, while you scrub the floors."
"Thank you, Mistress," he replied; gratefully, as he found that he quite liked the sounds, a welcome change from the heavy, drum-laden martial noise that Trolls ordinarily favoured.
She returned some hours later, to find him on his knees, still hard at work, humming the tune and occasionally singing along with some of the more familiar lyrics, with basso Troll intonations:
So what am I to do?
What am I supposed to say?
I can't change the world
But I can change the world in me...
Tryssa smiled fondly.
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