From: dac@prolix.apana.org.au (Andrew Clayton)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Tryssa's Troll. Part 2
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 11:37:42 GMT
Organization: More like Dis~, really.
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This is part 2 of Tryssa's Troll. A story by Nikolai Kingsley.

    Chapter 2


    They 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 replied,

    `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.

to be continued.

Dac
--
dac@prolix.apana.org.au              David Andrew Clayton.           // _| _  _
dac@prolix.sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au      Canberra, Australia           \X/ (_](_](_