n the days that followed, the general mood in the keep was somewhat hectic as Tryssa's father, the King of the Elves, was going to be visiting later that week. Captain Pyraf was in charge of the security detail; he had decided that Kulyar was an unacceptable risk and should be put back in solitary confinement for the duration of the visit. Tryssa, who had grown far too attached to her new toy, objected strenuously and used her influence to override Pyraf's decision. She refused to speak to Pyraf in person and used Kulyar as an intermediary to convey beautifully handwritten notes, to which Pyraf responded with curtly scribbled battle-reports. When Kulyar didn't return from delivering her most recent ultimatum, Tryssa was obliged to visit the Captain herself.
Pyraf was completely absorbed in examining a scale model of the Keep on which he had placed tiny, animated representations of the important figures currently in residence. He was placing the figures in different configurations when Tryssa swept in. "Where is he?" she asked coldly.
Pyraf didn't look up. "Where is whom?"
"My Troll slave."
"I had it interred again. I can't afford to have a Troll running around the Keep with your father here. I can't take that chance." Furious, Tryssa didn't bother arguing with him; she turned and left. Standing at his model, Pyraf watched the miniature of Tryssa as it left the room to stand outside. He allowed himself a smirk of satisfaction.
Tryssa stood outside Pyraf's room for the space of half a minute while she composed herself. She smiled and gestured with her right hand, casting a cloaking spell over herself; she then left for the prison level. Pyraf's model showed her still standing at the door.
At the very bottom of the Keep's prison was a single corridor which was interrupted at regular intervals by square shafts, one metre wide. She walked around them, glancing down each one in turn, until she came to the last, which had a chain bolted to a ring set into the wall nearby. She called down the shaft: "Kulyar?"
After a few moments, a reply came, weakly: "Mistress?"
She frowned, plucked a crow's feather from her headdress and dropped it down the shaft. "Slave, catch the feather... do you have it?"
"Yes, mistress..."
"Hold it between your hands and close your eyes." She closed her own eyes and murmured a spell. There came the sound of clanking chains and within moments, her magic had lifted Kulyar from the hole, whereupon she received a shock; he had been blinded. Her eyes widened; then her expression settled into a blank mask which, had he been there to see it, would have given Captain Pyraf ample reason to seek employment elsewhere.
Tryssa led Kulyar to Synda's work-rooms and woke the sorceress from one of her frequent cat-naps. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she cast a desultory glance at the Troll's ravaged sockets and then flinched in sympathy. She sat him down in front of an elaborate sundial which had been set in the middle of her apartments for no apparently good reason. Tryssa watched as the sorceress fetched a set of charcoal-black rods, each the width of Kulyar's little finger and half a metre long.
"Hold these," she advised him while drawing a ragged septagram around him in yellow chalk. She placed her hand on his forehead and muttered an incantation; finally, she gestured dramatically and, with a grin, warned him, "Now, this is going to hurt a great deal." He grimaced. She touched her index finger to the middle of his forehead, and he was momentarily outlined in crimson fire which swept around his body in tiny lightning-bolts which finally arced into his wounded eye-sockets. He screamed in agony and clawed at his face; when the magical energy had dissipated, he slowly withdrew his hands. His eyes had been restored. Tryssa crossed the room to stand next to him; he threw his arms around her legs and hugged her in gratitude. She patted his head and absently stroked his course hair, a distant expression in her eyes.
That evening, she made him take another bath just before she retired for the night. His balls still ached somewhat from their previous encounter; as he approached her apartments, he shuddered in anticipation of what she might do to him this time.
The room was darkened; his new eyes adjusted quickly and he saw her, lying naked on her bed. He moved towards his customary position at the foot of the bed, where he kneeled.
"Kiss my feet." she ordered in a whisper. He obeyed, running his rough tongue along the soft soles of her feet, darting it over and between her long Elven toes. He thought of his own toes, which she had ordered scrubbed; his toenails trimmed. He recalled with a grin that the latter had required the Elven equivalent of a bolt-cutter.
He ran his callused hands over the smooth curves of her calves, and she gave a deep, languorous sigh. Encouraged, he dared to kiss her ankles, and when this incurred no protest, he moved up her legs until he was carefully touching his lips to the soft insides of her thighs. She moaned and twisted from side to side as he moved his head, delicately touching first one leg, then the other, moving ever closer to her cunt. With his tongue, he drew a trail from the top of one thigh, lightly brushing over the wisp of pubic hair and to the top of the other leg, back and forth, each time pressing a little more insistently, each time drawing a stronger gasp from his mistress, who was writhing and clutching at his hair desperately. Finally, he paused with his tongue over her; she moaned loudly and pulled his hair wildly. He allowed himself a small grin and then plunged his tongue deep within her. She cried out and lifted her hips up to him, pressing herself hard against his face; he slipped his broad hands underneath her, cupping her behind and supporting her like a bowl. With slow, even strokes, he parted her folds with his tongue, darting around her clitoris, pushing down deep into her, then retreating to nibble at her thighs until she almost screamed with frustration. On hearing her responses, he found that his growing erection was uncomfortably confined within his pants, but did not dare stop and free it. He squirmed from side to side in an attempt to lie more comfortably on his stomach, to no avail; however, he forgot about it as Tryssa wrapped her legs around his head and ground her cunt against his mouth. As he thrust his tongue deeper, he dug his thumbs into her legs, easily grasping her slim thighs in each hand. He slowly drew his tongue up and took her clitoris between his lips, sucking rhythmically; without warning, she arched her back and screamed shrilly, squeezing his head between her legs and bucking madly. She shook violently for almost half a minute, her cries gradually degenerating into a series of desperate gasps until she finally fell back on the bed, sobbing.
Slowly, she unwound her legs from around his neck, and he sank back gratefully, his jaw aching with the unaccustomed effort. As her breathing slowly returned to normal, he suddenly realised what he'd done – he'd exerted control over her, diminished her power over him. No matter that it was by such a fractional degree; such transgressions had, in the past, been severely punished, and he saw no reason why this occasion should be an exception.
Captain Pyraf was idly inspecting the prisons (one of his favourite pastimes), when shouts from the other end of the corridor drew his attention. He walked faster, and then started running as he saw a stream of golden-red light issuing forth from a tiny cell window, lighting the whole passageway. He got to within three cells of the light when he felt the heat; the door was smoking and, as he watched, it fell out into the corridor and burst into flames. Humans fetched buckets to assist the fire-retardant spells that Lieutenant Jacyn was employing to contain the blaze which had, by now, completely consumed the room's contents. Pyraf stood by, watching; he sensed that this conflagration had been caused by sorcery. He could smell it.
Later, he examined the charred remains of the cell, the brittle, blackened bones which were all that remained of its occupant; the taint of sorcery was even more pronounced.
Jacyn reported, reading from a scroll. "The occupant was a Troll, from the Westmarch region. His name wasn't recorded."
Pyraf asked, "Do we have any other Westmarch Trolls staying with us?"
Jacyn looked through the records, and replied, "Three others, two of them in the next block, and, er, Princess Tryssa's slave..." He stepped back involuntarily when he saw the expression on Pyraf's face.
"Inter the others. I will see to the slave myself."
Tryssa and her Troll were not in her apartments, and his scale model still showed her standing outside his room, which she definitely wasn't. He scowled, and had to content himself with visiting the other two Westmarch Trolls, which had been dragged down to the lowest level of the dungeon and dropped down the shafts. Standing over the first oubliette, his highly-attuned Elven senses caught a faint trace of the sorcery which had caused the blaze in the cells. His eyes narrowed; his pointed Elven ears twitched and caught a faint stirring sound far below; then he briefly saw red light glinting from the Troll's eyes. He stepped back, just as a column of golden-red fire shot up the shaft, splaying out against the roof. He hastily retreated a few steps, shielding his face with one arm, all the while probing with his magical senses. After five seconds, the blaze receded, leaving a black scorch-mark on the ceiling two metres across. Pyraf warily approached the hole, probing the blackened edges with the toe of his boot. A fragment of rock broke off and tumbled into the darkness. He stood there for a moment, deep in thought, and then, momentarily forgetting about Kulyar, turned his attention to the other Troll prisoner.
The next morning, Kulyar was allowed to take his breakfast in the dining hall after Tryssa had dismissed him. He sat alone at one end of a mostly unoccupied table with a large bowl of gruel before him, occasionally swilling liquid from an earthenware mug full of particularly sour wine (which no-one else would touch) and taking bites from the end of a loaf of stale bread. He thoughtfully regarded the green mould growing on one end of the loaf, and (disdaining the use of a spoon) lifted another handful of cold gruel to his mouth.
Pengan entered the hall, crossed to join Kulyar and slapped him on the back jovially. The Troll winced, and Pengan hastily withdrew his hand; he seemed to recall something, nodded to himself and drew up a chair to sit down.
"How goes it, Troll?" he asked with a smile which (he fervently hoped) conveyed a sense of camaraderie. Kulyar closed his eyes, dipped a piece of bread into the wine (in the hope that it might kill the worst of the mould), slowly ate it, and then allowed a faint smile to expose the tips of his incisors. Pengan almost fainted with relief.
"It goes well, Human." He paused, and then added, "My Mistress has this idea: Trolls are disagreeable because we don't eat regularly. Ordinarily, a Troll will only eat when he's hungry, or when he realises that he hasn't eaten for a week or so." Pengan nodded enthusiastically, and kept nodding as Kulyar finished off the wine in the jug, his nods gradually diminishing to vague motions of his chin.
"Uh-huh... indeed..." Kulyar, who was an unusually perceptive Troll, realised that Pengan wasn't there to share breakfast; he stuffed the last of the mouldy bread into his mouth, and spoke around it, "Say what you came here to say, Human."
Pengan started, dropping a crust of bread that he'd been playing with, and said in a low voice, "Working in the Laundry, you know, I get to see, ah, well, clothes, pillowcases... sheets," he added significantly. Kulyar's smile widened by a millimetre. "Now, this is probably none of my business, well, I suppose that it is, indirectly, because, ah, I have to wash them, so it is, really, but, um –"
Kulyar sighed, "Get on with it, Human."
Pengan concluded, in a rush of whispered words that almost fell over each other, "Do you have to get so much blood over the sheets? You can't imagine how hard that stuff is to clean!"
Kulyar's smile widened again, threatening to become a grin. "Can't I?" He spotted Tryssa at the hall's entrance, and continued, "Perhaps you should take it up with my Mistress. It's her doing, after all." Pengan seemed mystified for a moment, until Tryssa whacked the table with her riding crop, a finger's-width from Pengan's clasped hands, making him jump up and fall backwards over his chair. She smiled coldly as the terrified Human scrambled out from underneath the chair and scurried from the hall. She gestured to Kulyar, who rose from his seat, wiping his hands on the front of his tunic. Tryssa regarded this ruefully.
"Pig." she accused.
He bowed, grinning, and corrected her: "Troll." She allowed this minor infraction of manners to go unpunished, and they left.
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated.