by Heath Pfaff
My mornings were filled with strength, stamina, and balance exercises. The hours from sunrise until noon, every day, were a difficult struggle to improve my body that often times left me gasping for breath on the ground with the ever bleak Malice, her head shaking in disappointment, standing over me. After lunch, which I generally ate alone in my room, I would return to the training field and prepare for a long afternoon of intensive combat training.
"Your left elbow is too low, keep it up." Malice warned, her voice, as usual, full of ire. I did as she said, raising the elbow and noticing the way that my balance seemed to level out after I brought it up just a scant inch. Hand to hand combat was all about form. The patterns were drilled into my body every day, and as I grew more accustomed to them, I could sense the raw logic behind the motions. I had been improving, though I didn't know all the forms and I still had trouble with a few of the more advanced moves I'd been shown. My balance was far from satisfactory to Malice, and that hindered my quick adoption of the more difficult hand-to-hand moves.
"Silent," I heard Malice's voice after I'd been frozen in my position long enough for her satisfaction. "I want you to spar with Lowin. Keep going until he scores a hit or is no longer conscious." I came out of the position I'd been holding and turned to face Silent. I'd grown to loathe the sparring sessions I sometimes had with Silent and Malice. They always served to put into perspective just how far I was from the completion of my training. Silent was far gentler than Malice but even he was several times stronger than myself, his form perfect, and speed, blistering. My fights with Malice were an education in pain and brutality. I knew that she pulled her punches but I never walked away from her without some significant cuts and bruises. If I had a weakness in my form, she exploited it with unerring precision. I saw the benefit; though I was loathe to admit it. The various injuries she gave me served as staunch reminders of the places I'd been weak in form or execution.
Silent and I squared off, coming to just beyond arms reach and circling cautiously. He let me make the first move, as was his way, and I struck at him with a fury, knowing that I needn't pull my punches where my black-eyed superiors were concerned. He turned every blow I attempted to land away with little apparent effort, his hands moving always a fraction of a second faster than my own. After he'd accepted a few of my attempts through his defenses, he turned the table and went on the offensive. His hands were fast and I was hard pressed to keep them from landing blows. What was worse, I knew that he was holding himself back. He could go faster, but for my sake he withheld the full fury of his speed. Of course, if he hadn't, he might have killed me. I held off his attacks for what seemed forever, my arms burning with the effort of knocking his punches aside. When he finally slowed and fell back into defense, it was all I could do to push an attack. I forced myself to go forward with a vengeance, giving everything I had to landing even one blow. I had never successfully hit either Malice of Silent during our sparring. They were simply too fast, but this wasn't the first time I'd been put in a situation where I must either do so or keep trying until I collapsed.
Malice had, a few weeks before, made such a stipulation in a match against her. She had proceeded to pound me into the ground until I had finally blacked out entirely and only awoke later the next day in my bed. I didn't know if Silent would take the fight that far, but I had no intention of finding out. I forced myself to focus my blows and concentrate on my form, pushing my body as hard as I could without breaking something. Each strike I sent towards my opponent's body was weighted with all the velocity and precision I could muster. I was breathing heavily, and sweat was pouring from my brow, clouding my vision, but I kept the punches flying. My stamina training had shown me my limits and I could feel the point of no return coming. I willed myself to move faster, strike harder, and that invisible point of exhaustion loomed ever nearer. Silent's arms deflected some of my hits, the twists of his body making others miss entirely but I sensed that he was finally straining to keep pace with me. That was all the encouragement I needed. I gathered myself and prepared for one last volley. It burst from me like a blast of lightening. One fist was turned aside, one was dodged, the next one came within a fraction of an inch of Silent's shifting cloak, but suddenly my opponent was faster. He seemed to blur as he moved, and his defensive position became an attacking one. I blocked one fist, another, turned aside from a kick, barely missed a foot sweep, and tumbled face first into a surprisingly powerful right hook. I left the ground, spinning through the air and landed with a thud nearly a body-span from where I'd been before.
I got back to my feet, my head spinning from the blow, but I knew that I had it in me to fight on. Silent, however, had his back to me. I put my guard down. Malice, who had crept up behind me at some point, cuffed me hard in the shoulder and I nearly toppled to the ground once more.
"You underestimated your opponent and put too much energy out, too quickly. With your level of stamina, that is akin to stabbing yourself in the foot." Her voice was abrasive, but there may have been something close to satisfaction in it. I had learned over the four months I'd spent training that sometimes Malice was less angry than she normally was, and that was as close as she ever approached to offering a kind word. "You're done for the evening, but after you've gotten cleaned up and fed yourself, report to my chambers."
I nodded my head in assent, and turned to depart, my heart racing from more than the vigor of my exercise. Last time Malice had called me to her chamber some weeks before, it had been to berate me for failing to improve in my balance test from one week to the next. She had forced me to take off my shirt and stand on one foot, on an overturned bucket, while holding books on my outstretched arms for the entire night while she watched me. Any time my arms had dipped she had used her vicious claws to carve a line on my chest. She had not cut deeply enough to scar me, but the fear had been there. The next day I had been unable to lift my arms high enough to replace my shirt. I didn't know what she had in mind for that night but I dreaded whatever it might be. I wearily thought her lack of anger was simply a place holder until she could take her full frustrations out on me later.
I took a resigned breath and made my way back to my room, hoping that I might find Kyeia - or Kye as I now generally called her - waiting there for me. It wasn't to be though. When I reached my room it was as empty as it ever had been. Kye wasn't able to come see me often, and it had been worse since a procession of her own people had arrived a few weeks before. I had only seen her once since then, and she had not been herself. I worried very about her. My feeling of unease was growing as the months passed, though I knew not why. I wondered if things would be different between us once I became a Knight. I hoped that the taboo would be lifted, so that we might fully explore the feelings that had grown between us.
It didn't do me any good to dwell, though, and I forced my concentration back to the meal on my desk. It was a simple supper of stew and bread. Seeing it made me realize that I rarely saw Merrywin anymore, either. Training took up most of my days, and even now the sun was falling below the horizon. I ate my meal quickly, and readied myself to get a quick bath before going off to Malice's apartment. She had a room in a building similar to my own, near the practice yard. The entire building had been used for equipment storage, but she had cleared out one of the rooms to use as a living quarters and another as a formal meeting room. That is where I'd gone last time, when I'd received my private lesson on balance. My arms ached in remembered agony as I thought of that. I bathed quickly, rushing not for the sake of my meeting but for the sake of saving myself the wrath of Malice, should she be angered by my late arrival.
By the time I was outside again, the night had come and the stars shown clearly above me, far brighter for the lack of the moon that evening. Silent did not follow me across the yard, probably having been told by Malice that he would not be needed. That, I felt, boded ill for me.
The exterior door to Malice's building was unlocked, and so I let myself in, making my way down the dimly
lit corridor to the door I knew housed her private office. My unease mounted with every step I took, and I had to force myself to remain calm. My four months at Fell Rock had given me the opportunity to meet many of the different Knights at the post and though most of them were intimidating, Malice still inspired the most fear in me. Had I been forced to wager why that was, I thought it might be because I had never seen her smile, and there was something inherently inhuman about a person who never smiled. I knocked lightly on the door to her room, hoping that she would not be there or that she might tell me to go away, having changed her mind about wanting to see me. It was not to be so.
"Enter." Her cold voice intoned. I took a brief moment to steady myself, and then turned the handle and stepped into my trainer's office. The room was much as I remembered it. It was nearly the same size as my own. There was a desk in the center, larger than the one in my room, but nothing extravagant. The surface of the desk contained a neatly stacked pile of scrolls, a quill, and an inkwell. There were a couple chairs about the room and a shelf featuring a few large texts that I recognized from my time as a loremaster. I tried not to let my eyes linger on that shelf too long. The next thing I noticed was a rack in the corner of the room near the door I'd just come through. Hanging from the rack was a Lucidil Cloak and a chain mail vest of the type I'd seen many Knights wearing. My eyes shifted to the woman at the opposite side of the desk, and I was more than passingly surprised to see that the cloak and armor on the hook was her own. She was dressed in a simple shirt of black that laced up the front and her deep auburn hair was not tied back as it normally was. It hung in waves about her face. I had never seen her in less than her full gear. Her face seemed calm, almost serene, as though she had shed her anger with the trappings of her job. With the look of rage gone from her features, the beauty of her face, generally hidden by her scowl, shown through brightly.
"Sit down, Lowin." She instructed me, holding her hand out to indicate the two unoccupied chairs in the room. I took the one across the desk from her and sat down, not sure what to make of the events to that point. I had come into the dragon's den expecting to be eaten, but it appeared I was to have a conversation instead. I was unsure whether to be relieved or suspicious. I chose the latter, preparing myself for a sudden change of fortunes.
"You have been here nearly four months now, and you have pushed hard to better yourself during that time." She began, and I could hardly believe the words, even as I heard them. "I have made things as difficult for you as I was able, but you have persevered and never offered me a complaint. I have trained many, and that is a rare thing. You are still weak of stamina and your balance is not what it should be, but these are problems that I believe you are capable of overcoming." I didn't know what had inspired this talk, but I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This was a side of Malice I had never seen before and hadn't even expected to exist. Compliments were a language I didn't think she could speak.
She stood up, and I noticed that the shirt she was wearing was all that she was wearing. It hung long, about a quarter of the way down her thigh, but below that level I could see the fur of her wolf-like legs protruding. I felt my pulse quicken, a mixed feeling of fear and physical excitement enveloping me. She approached me with a silky grace, walking around her desk, and as she did she slipped one of her clawed fingers beneath the laced knot holding her shirt closed and severed the cable with a single deft movement. Her shirt fell open, exposing her large, well-formed breasts, the nipples coming erect in the cooler air of the room. Her upper torso was crossed with scars, including one particularly nasty, purple scar that ran from the top of her chest, between her breasts, down to a point still covered by her shirt.
"You have been alone so much of the time you've been here." She said, and her voice held compassion, such a deep welling of it, in fact, that I wondered momentarily if I was really experiencing what was transpiring, or if I had fallen asleep in the bath earlier. The warm flush in my cheeks was far too much for me to pass off as a mere dream. "It must be difficult for you, but you don't have to be alone all the time." Then she was next to me, seeming to have closed the distance in a flash, and then she was on my lap, her breasts, warm and inviting, just a whisper from my face. I had never been with a woman. In fact, despite the closeness that Kye and I had shared, I had never seen a woman naked. I had certainly never had one approach me in such a forward manner. I was stunned, stuck between shock and fear. My body was responding positively to the advance but I knew, with certainty, that I had no right to what was being offered.
"I know that I'm different from other women, Lowin, but I'm still human. I've never been..." She said, apparently noticing my hesitation.
I stood up, pushing her from my lap. I did so as gently as possible, but I couldn't let things go any further. Such a resistance was far beyond me. I spoke, though I know not how I managed the words. "I can't, Malice, and I assure you it is not for your body." I probably didn't need to state that, for my own body indicated quite beyond my control, that hers had been very appealing to me. I made a vain attempt to cover up just how much the offer had tempted me, but there was only so much I could do while her shirt hung open and inviting, her pink crested breasts one of the most inviting temptations I had ever encountered. I worried that she would be sad, or worse, angry, but she did not seem surprised at all.
"It's Kyeia, isn't it?" She said, and to my surprise, the emotion I encountered on her face was sympathy. I didn't know what to say. I suddenly felt as though I'd been backed into a corner and there was no way out. She moved nearer to me, her arms going out around me. Standing, she was only a few inches taller than me, but that was enough to put her breasts tantalizingly close to my face. "Please, Lowin, don't go down that road. Don't let yourself feel for her." Her words raised my ire and I pushed her back, hard this time. She stepped back, though I realized later, with her strength it was only because she allowed me to do so.
"I don't understand the great taboo!" I shouted at her. Now that the truth was at the surface, I wanted to vent all of my frustrations. "I love her, Malice. She loves me. Where is the harm in that? We make each other happy, why are we forbidden from getting closer?"
Malice pulled her shirt closed with one hand and sat down in the second chair on the same side of the desk as I, though the strange way her legs hinged made it so she had to sit the chair in an unusual manner. She gestured towards the chair I'd recently left, indicating I should sit down as well. I did so, hesitantly. I was still in a position of terrible temptation, maybe even more so for now I could see the point where Malice's fur covered legs ceased to be fur covered, and reverted to the flesh of a normal woman. Only the slightest dipping of her shirt covered that most sacred portion of her female anatomy and, angry as I was, it was difficult to keep my mind from that fact.
"The rule does not exist to make life difficult for you, Lowin. It exists to protect you, and to protect Kyeia, and to keep you both from suffering more than you need to." Malice said, and again I could sense her sympathy for me. "I know you feel for her, and what's worse, I know she feels for you. She comes to me every other day, at least, to check on your progress. The Bound Ones do not normally do that. I suspected that things might be escalating between the two of you..."
"Will Kyeia be in trouble?" I asked, suddenly realizing I had no idea what the penalty was for our relationship.
"There will be no trouble, at least not the way you mean, for Kyeia. I won't tell anyone, Lowin." Malice answered.
"Why must the rule exist, Malice? What suffering do we face?"
Malice surprised me than, she smiled, but I saw that she was not exactly looking at me. She was looking through me, her mind in a memory. A tear crept down her face, falling like a single drop of rain, from her right eye. She leaned towards me, coming close enough that I could see every nuance of her beautiful face, reminding me that she seemed only a year or two older than me. Her strange black eyes looked deep into my own. "Where do you think these eyes come from? We are
not born with them. They do not grow on trees."
At this my mind seized up, and I repeated that in my head over and over again. "Where do you think these eyes come from?" I had never thought about it. I had never let myself think about it. I had wanted to believe that they were some form of magic, but I don't believe I'd ever really convinced myself of that fact. The truth, I realized, was so terrible that I'd refused to look at it.
"...they come from Kye's people." I whispered, my voice wavering with the horror I had just realized.
Another tear crept from Malice's eye. "They do, Lowin. For each of us, one of Kyeia's people must be sacrificed."
I shook my head, unwilling to accept a truth that terrible. Did that mean Kyeia would have to die for me to become a Knight of Ethan? I would never allow such a thing. I looked at Malice. She was sobbing now, her face flushed, and the tears flowing freely.
"I loved him so much..." She said, and the look in her eyes tore me apart. I realized, then, that she had been one of those few other Knights to have had a Bound One of the opposite sex. She didn't need to say more. I understood in just those five words all that she meant.
I went to her, and put my arms around her, for I knew nothing else to do. Her arms encircled me, and she sobbed into my shoulder. It was a full minute or more before I realized that I was crying as well. I found myself completely lost in emotion, but I now knew that in Malice at least there was one I could take solace. After a while, Malice stopped crying, though she stayed close to me. Her voice was soft when she spoke, not the authoritative rumble I was so used to.
