The Prodigal Troll

by Charles Coleman Finlay

  Bran started, dropping the log with a thud. "Claye! I can move that log for you." His head drooped, and then he lifted it. "I was just testing my strength."

  "I saw many, many men on their way to Custalo's village." He thrust out his burden. "Here are the clothes you need."

  "Ah," Bran said, taking them and holding them up. He laughed. "These will fit well enough. I should have mentioned to you that I also wanted new boots and a mount-"

  "Boots?"

  "Boots, to cover my feet."

  "I will go find you boots," Maggot said. "Just let me sleep a little while, and I shall-"

  Bran laughed, then fell serious. "Thank you for coming back. I did not expect it."

  "I didn't think to look for boots."

  "It's all right, my friend. No man can walk in another man's boots. I spent my whole life until I became a soldier barefoot, and went barefoot some time then too, until I became a knight. My feet have healed well enough. I'll have the cobbler fit me for new boots when we return to the city." He discarded the skin garment he had fashioned and pulled on the clothes Maggot had brought him. "But for these, I am indebted to you again. Even plain clothes make me feel like a man and not a beast. Though you made quite an impression on Lady Eleuate without them."

  "Impression?" Maggot asked.

  "I did not tell you the whole story of Portia," Bran said. Then he sighed. "After you left her the lion's pelt, she wanted to search for you. She told everyone she had finally seen a man who might be worthy of her."

  Maggot made a little rumbling growl in his throat.

  "This angered Acrysy and also her father, Eleuate, the dowager consort, and they called an end to the hunt, retreating ahead of the rains. But she made me promise to bring her back up to the valleys to search for you later."

  "And did you?" Maggot asked. All weariness had fled from him, and then, when he thought he understood Bran's reluctance to take him to meet Portia, his legs went weak. His hands squeezed his head. "You did! And she was with you when Sinnglas's warriors-"

  "No," Bran said.

  "No?"

  "No, I speak it true three times."

  Maggot sunk to his knees, leaning on one hand and covering his face. "What-?"

  Bran knelt in the long, damp grass and fallen leaves beside him. "I fell out of favor after the spring hunt. And then I also took some blame for our losses against Squandral at the Battle among the Poplars, and I lost my captaincy."

  "But Portia?"

  "I never had the chance to keep my promise to her. After I was disgraced, my enemies-enemy, in truth, for it was Acrysy-arranged to have me posted at a poorly defended settlement, one the peasants were likely to attack. As they did. They killed all the men there but me and ... and ... the one other knight." He paused and swallowed. "They took us back to-"

  He rubbed at the naked spot on the back of his head, where new pink skin grew over the raw bone where his braid had been.

  "I am glad that nothing happened to Portia-the-Lady-Eleuate," Maggot said, exhaling. Two knives and the wizard's charm swayed from his neck as he bent over. He sorted through the strings and lifted one from his head. "Here, this knife is for you also."

  "My debt to you becomes a flood." Bran accepted it in the manner he always took weapons from Maggot, point first, inspected it briefly, and hung it around his neck. "That reminds me," he said, and ducked into their den.

  Maggot was bending down to the entrance when Bran crawled out again, holding a small leather bag on a cord. He pointed to the ampule at Maggot's throat.

  "You'll have to hide that," he said as he handed Maggot the bag. "Wear it about your neck in this."

  Maggot's hand went to the charm, and he thought of the blue gem on the gold strand around Portia's neck. He had meant to keep this for her interest gift. "Why?"

  "That's wizard's work. If you're seen in the city with it, they'll assume it's stolen and might kill you to recover it."

  He showed Maggot how to work the simple drawstring he'd created for the little bag. As Maggot followed his instructions, Bran continued talking.

  "The braid could mean trouble also. You must take the sword back because of it. At least you have some notion of how to use it now and you carry yourself like a knight. It's too bad I didn't think to wish you might steal clothes for yourself as well."

  "Is there a problem with these?" Maggot tugged at his breechcloth.

  "Those are the clothes of a mountain peasant. But you don't look like one, not much. You'll be fine with me."

  "Let's go now, Bran."

  "It is time." He exhaled hard again, then bent to pick up the shirt he had discarded for the new clothes. They crawled back into the den to take up the dried meat and fruit they had collected and stored. Bran set aside a third and arranged it in a careful pile just inside the hole they used as a door.

  "Why do you do that?" Maggot asked.

  "We used this house without the lady's permission," Bran said. "Even if she's dead, Bwnte watches over her possessions. So we leave a gift and a sign that we visited here."

  When they stood up outside, Maggot pointed to the hole in the roof. "I wonder who visited here that time," he said. "And what they left for a gift."

  Bran looked up silently and frowned. An ominous cloud loomed over the sky.

  As they descended into the valley, the wind took the world in its mouth and shook it with bone-snapping strength. Branches whipped back and forth, snapping as they fell from the trees.

  Maggot fell into the watchful silence of a troll on the move, but Bran talked above the wind, displaying his hands and pointing to the fourth finger on the right one. "Still no nail here, but I'm getting a callus. The rest are sorry-looking, but they've toughened up enough that I can hold a sword. Might even be able to pull a bowstring for a shot or two. Once we're back, I'll have new gloves made."

  Farther on, he said, "All will be well once I talk to m'lady Sebius. She has been my mentor, my provider, since I was a young man come to serve the Baron."

  All day they expected the sky to crack open, but they were still dry when they reached the hill above the bridge. It was near sunset, and clouds covered the land with a thicker darkness than night. The bones that had once been Damaqua and Tanaghri were gone, and the gifts scattered. Only the three stained poles remained on the ground. Bran ignored them, pointing to the house across the river. "We'd best go see Banya."

  "The man who lived there is dead," Maggot said.

  "You know this?"

  "I saw it happen. The same men who did that to you."

  "Ah," Bran said, in much the same way Sinnglas said "Heh," as if it explained everything. He led them down to the bridge and paused in the middle. The water was as clear as a sheet of ice under the dark, swirling sky; the little Old One stirred among the bones, while smaller ones slithered searchingly among the rocks. Bran shook his head. "The demons are restless because a new wizard has not yet been summoned for them."

  "Demons?" Maggot asked.

  Bran swept his hand toward the water.

  "Old Ones, demons," Maggot said. "Demons are always restless until they are fed."

  "We'll stay here tonight," Bran said, crossing the bridge. "But well up the bank, away from the water's edge."

  Bran would not sleep in the dead wizard's house. When Maggot asked him why, he would say only that it belonged to Bwnte now. Maggot did not understand how it was different from the den they had stayed in-someone had died there too. But Bran grew reticent and would not explain.

  They stretched out sheltered by the wall of the house, but the cats swarmed over them, mewing and poking and brushing their cool noses against bare skin. Both men flipped and tossed, unable to rest. The first drops splattered out of the sky sometime before the middle of the night, sending the cats indoors as the two men leaned with their backs to the wall beneath the eaves. Before morning the water was whipping sideways through the air.

  Bran shielded his eyes against the sky. "There are only two times you can leave for a jo
urney in the rain: too early and too late."

  "Which is this?" Maggot shouted back.

  "Don't know yet. But we should go on as far as we can."

  "We used to play in rains like this when I was a child."

  "We did too, my brother and I," Bran said, suddenly smiling. He stood, and gestured for Maggot to do the same. "The sooner we reach the city, the better. There's an old shepherd's path leading out of these meadows down to the lower valley. Sure footing even for weather like this."

  Maggot stepped onto the path that would take them upstream, toward the great stone lodge where he'd seen Portia, but Bran stopped him.

  "Portia, she is this way," Maggot said.

  "No, we must go this way first, before we see Portia."

  Maggot did not question him. Bran led them on a path along a ridge beneath the trees. The wind didn't blow steady, but slammed its fist down here and there, sometimes knocking them off balance. Stunned birds sheltered on the lowest limbs, close to the ground, bedraggled, motionless. Passing within a few feet of them, Maggot could not distinguish a dove from a finch, a bunting from a redbird, except by general size.

  That night, they sheltered under a rock ledge that had been used by the shepherds Bran mentioned. He could not get a fire started in the charred pit of stones, but Maggot did not notice the cold. The rain finally let up.

  "This is bad," Bran said. "Spring floods destroyed the early planting. The valley won't have had its first frost yet, but now these storms could keep the farmers from getting the harvest in."

  "Why does it happen?" Maggot asked.

  "Some years are like that. Others, the fields overflow with gold. You have to take the bad with the good."

  The sun glowed weakly through the clouds the next morning, one coal surviving a doused fire. It seemed like it might flicker out at any moment.

  A cold drizzle began to fall as they continued on their way and the coal of the sun expired behind the gray clouds. At times the drizzle turned to sleet. Maggot spied houses and farms in the hollows below the trail. Once they spied a bald, old man with stooped shoulders moving through an orchard, wrapping the bases of the trees, but aside from that, nothing stirred across the landscape all day but the two of them.

  So Maggot, rapt in his stride across the slick, rock-strewn path, was not prepared when they came to the top of a hill and the city spread out below them through the dismal, gray haze. But then nothing in his experience could have prepared him for the size of it. A great stone bridge arched over a broad and turbulent river. A stone wall enclosed the length of the far shore, and beyond it a massive edifice rose whose top was round and smooth like a gourd, but glossed gold like the back of a giant beetle. Another building bulked behind that, surrounded by a round lake of water as dark as the sky. Jumbled around these two structures were other buildings, stretching as far as Maggot could see, upstream and down, too many to count. They were grouped around narrow paths like islands in a marsh, their browns and reds and tans all dulled by damp.

  On this side of the river, partially obscured by the hills, Maggot saw fewer buildings. They were set back on higher ground much farther from the river's unwalled bank. One large building without a roof rose above the others, surrounded by a spider's web of wooden frames that bent and swayed in the wind. The few people that he saw moving were as small as ants in an anthill.

  Maggot forgot to breathe until he said very quietly, "I had no idea there were so many people in all the world."

  "Only fifteen thousand or so here," Bran said. "Maybe forty thousand in the province. It's grown quickly in the last decade, with the Baron's reputation and the Baroness's prosperity. A disastrous crop this year will set things back."

  "Is this the Imperial City?" Maggot asked, recalling Bran's descriptions of the great city.

  Bran laughed at him. "Not hardly. I've been there, to take my oath as a knight in the Empress's service. This is to the Imperial City what Damaqua's village is to this."

  That village seemed a small and paltry thing to Maggot now, and he'd thought it huge. "A range of mountains, as to a single mountain, as to a hill."

  "Yes," said Bran. "There's no one place you can stand to see the whole Imperial City, at least approaching it as I did from the east. The Baron has modeled this city on the Imperial City; m'lady Sebius more so as she builds the new official structures and her personal palace on this near bank."

  Maggot squinted into the rain, drops running down his cheeks and dripping from his forehead. Lightning flickered, rippling through the clouds. Thunder clapped and chased it across the sky.

  "Come," Bran said. "Let's go see the city at hand's length and find a decent roof."

  He took them along a narrow, twisting path that descended quickly through steep walls on either side, making abrupt turns. The sky, dark all day, grew darker by the second, and the wind kicked up again, whistling in the passages around them. Bran picked up his pace until they were nearly jogging forward.

  They rounded a sheer-faced hillside into the midst of a copse of trees and found themselves surrounded by a dozen startled soldiers who nevertheless had the wits to raise a hedge of spears around them. Bran reached out his hand, telling Maggot to stay calm.

  "Two gods, I don't believe it," one man said.

  A tall, lean boy, with soft brown skin and hair as black and thick as Maggot's, strutted outside the circle of spears-the boy that Maggot remembered from the hunt, the one who'd thrown the spear. "See!" he said, grinning. "The peasants do know this way into-wait!" He folded his hands behind his back. "Why this is the estimable Bran, come back from the dead."

  Bran bent his head. "It is good to see you again also, Acrysy, m'lord."

  "Did I give you permission to speak?"

  Bran opened his mouth to answer, then slowly closed it.

  "Of course, a traitor never asks permission," Acrysy said, swaggering over to Bran. "And here we have proof of your treason, sneaking back into the city with a peasant warrior."

  Maggot's nostrils flared.

  Acrysy paused in front of Maggot, his eyes widening. He stepped back, gripped the shaft of a spear, and jerked it toward Maggot's throat. "And this is the murderer who visited our hunting camp! This is the murderer who assaulted m'lady Eleuate, my bride-to-be! So the two of you were working together, even then. Now you reveal yourself truly, Bran, sneaking into the city to do murder again. This is even greater proof. Who did you come to murder this time? My mother? M'lady Sebius? Did you come to kill me this time?"

  "I came to kill no-"

  His hand shot out and slapped Bran's face. "Quiet! Traitors may not speak!" His breath came very quickly. He slapped Bran again.

  Only Bran's lack of reaction prevented Maggot from striking back, despite the ring of spears.

  "It is good you cut off your braid," Acrysy said. "It saves me the trouble of having it done. A base-born shepherd's son like you should never have been a knight."

  One of the men lifted his knife to cut off Maggot's braid, and Maggot spun on him.

  Acrysy let go of the spear shaft and jumped back. "Wait! Wait until we display them in public. I warned Sebius that an attack might come from this direction. Now she'll have to listen to me. Bind them!"

  Maggot looked at Bran, puzzled. Bran thrust his hands out in front of him. A guard stepped forward and started wrapping them with rope. Overhead, lightning split the sky. The rain, only briefly in abeyance, resumed its slow fall.

  "That's a nice knot there, Romy," Bran said. "Who taught you how to tie knots like that?"

  "Enough of that," the guard said. He tied off the knot and flicked his eyes nervously toward Maggot. "Tell your friend to stick his hands out too."

  "Hurry up," Acrysy said. He had a small, mushroom-shaped tent that he raised above his head to keep off the rain.

  "Be careful-he won't like it, Romy," Bran said quietly. He looked over to Maggot. "Just stick out your hands. It'll be fine. Sebius will set things aright."

  His half-smile and voice both g
ave away the lie. Or at least his uncertainty.

  Maggot stuck out his hands, knotted into fists. When Romy stepped up to wrap the rope around them, Maggot rammed his fists into Romy's chin. As Romy flipped backward, Maggot ran.

  He dodged the first butt-end of a spear, but the second slammed into the side of his head, and the next swept his feet out from under him. After that he lost track, curling up in a ball, with his elbows in front of his face while spear-butts and boots fell upon his ribs and back and head like hailstones. Someone tied his hands together between the kicks, and Maggot did his best to keep his wrists flexed, bent out, against the pressure of the ropes. Someone twisted the rope, so that the fibers bit into his skin, yanking Maggot to his feet. They took his knife and sword. Rain and wind lashed at them. Romy reached out to take the sack strung around Maggot's neck.

  "I wouldn't do that," Bran said. "And I did warn you he wouldn't like being tied."

  "Why not?" Romy said.

  "It holds his father's foreskin. The lining of the bag is made from his grandfather's scrotum."

  Romy's hand twitched back. "Gods of war and justice. Does that really do-"

  "What did he say?" Acrysy shouted above the storm.

  His words were cut off by two ferocious bolts of lightning, striking so close that the thunder sounded at once, shaking the air around them. The clouds ruptured, spilling a deluge so thick it was hard to see through.

  "Forget it! Let's go!" Romy shouted.

  The soldiers, heads down against the storm, prodded Bran and Maggot with their spears. The sharp tips did not annoy Maggot as much as the restraints, and the cold rain rolling off his skin did nothing to steal away the heat of his temper.

  aggot's feet dragged in the mud as the soldiers shoved them down to the building covered by the spider's web of scaffolding.

  "Put them in the cells," Acrysy said at the stone arch of the entrance. The rain drummed its fingertips on the toadstool that covered his head.

  "We can't," Romy replied. "We still haven't repaired the damage the earthquake did to that wing."