The Prodigal Troll (40 page)

Maggot laughed. "That's not possible."

The old man reached under the blankets and pinched the sole of Maggot's foot. Maggot's leg kicked, scattering his covers and all the cats but the gray one.

"It isn't?" The old man snapped his fingers. "Something this small caused something that big."

"But that wasn't magic!"

"Heh." His mouth twitched down at the corners. "I do not have much talent except for singing and seeing. But you shine with the power like a beacon on a hilltop."

He paused, and Maggot said, "The false flavored nature."

"Yes, true. They call it that also at the Collegis: the false flavored nature. Magic, sorcery. The invisible power. The gods speak to one another with this invisible power. Like lightning in the sky. And just as lightning can be drawn down to the earth to a tall tree or an iron pole, the power of the gods can be drawn down also."

Maggot's head ached. He gave up fighting the cats, and the gray one settled in comfortably around him, its body warm, vibrating against his skin as it purred. "How-?"

Banya rose and went over to the head of the Old One. From the base of it, he gathered several items and returned to Maggot's side. He held up the two necklaces. Maggot's hand touched his chest, realizing they were gone.

"This hammer charm is the sigil of Verlogh," Banya said. "Verlogh is the god of justice and of revenge. This other is a waterdrop, swollen like Bwnte's pregnant belly. Bwnte is the goddess of fertility and death, of water and flood. These sigils were fashioned to smash the spell of an enemy." He placed them over Maggot's neck. "I return them to you now."

Looking at them, Maggot realized that the glow he thought he saw in them was really an inner light like the flames that flickered around Banya's head. He pressed his fingertips against them, wondering if the warmth he felt was the same.

"Used in the absence of a spell, these charms will react with the magic inherent in the earth itself, but how so, who can say. I beg you to take care of them and not to break them." He pushed the cats aside impatiently and pulled the covers back over. "You are weary-you must still rest. Here is your knife; I return it to you now. I'll place it here beside your bed."

His gestures, left hand under the right, seemed formal, required, but Maggot didn't know what it meant. He yawned and rolled over, feeling depleted. "Will you tell me this again?"

The wizard nodded. "I will. You are a man who has walked among the giants and in the land of the dead; you speak the wizard's tongue and carry magic items. When you are better, in another day or two, we will set out for the Collegis. I will take you as far as Lady Culufre's castle and her wizard. Perhaps I will go farther. I must seek absolution for slaying the demon to save you. We will have much time yet for your instruction."

He rose from Maggot's side, walked over to the window, and pulled back the cloth that covered it.

Pale dawn peeked in like a curious child.

"Stay awake a moment longer," Banya said. He picked up a small bag that clicked when it shook. He tugged on the drawstring. "Now that sunrise is upon us, will you ask the bones one question for me?

Maggot burrowed deep into the covers, pulling them up over his head so that only his eyes looked out. He shivered hard. The cat crawled up and sat on his neck. "What is it?"

The door burst open.

The first man through the door slammed his forearm into Banya's chest-the old man grunted as he fell-and the second man swung his warclub at the wizard's upraised arm. The club cracked against his wrist, and he cried out as the bones spilled out of the bag and clattered over the floor.

The cat turned its head, ears peaked. Maggot tried to lift his head, and the cat slipped, sinking its claws through the cover into Maggot's throat. He froze. He wanted to say stop but his throat was a dry riverbed over which no words flowed. He knew these men. Kinnicut, the smith from Sinnglas's village, and another whose name fluttered at the edge of his tongue.

Kinnicut's warclub fell again with another sharp crack, and again with a wetter thud. The first man lifted Banya's smashed head by its silver hair-his jaw hung broke and loose, a disconnected block of sagging flesh that drooped down to the chest-and took out his braidcutting knife.

Kinnicut put a hand up to stop him. "Not the wizard's," he said. It will bring evil spirits to the other side."

But the other man had already stopped. He tossed the head aside and pointed at the Old One sitting in the corner, emitting a wail of grief. "Aiieeeee!"

Kinnicut lifted the scaled visage reverently from its post. "It will make a fitting offering for our grandfather."

"Yes," the first man said. "Let it accompany him."

He kicked the door open. Kinnicut went first, carrying the Old One's head, and then they were gone.

Maggot shivered himself to stillness over a long time, like boiling water in a pot left on the fire while the stones grew cold. His body felt as numb and cold as stone, and as empty as a pot when he was done.

The cat jumped off the pile of skins and went over to sniff at Banya. A white cat had slipped in through the door, then a mix, and others, to gather at his body also.

"Meeeeeeew. "

Maggot pushed off the blankets and rose. He put on the breechcloth and belt, then the knife. He held the two charms around his neck, and stepped over to Banya's corpse. Too many cats swirled around it to count.

He bent to look at the spilled bones. They looked like the finger and hand bones of a troll, a big one. They were marked with symbols Maggot couldn't decipher, except for the two on top-a blank bone under one marked with a skull.

The door hung sideways, broken from its hinges. Leaving everything behind him undisturbed, Maggot stepped outside into the daylight and walked around the corner of the building.

On the hill across the river, past the bridge, three tall poles rose straight from the ground. Three bodies topped the poles.

Maggot walked slowly toward them.

he stones of the bridge were smooth under Maggot's feet. They vibrated slightly, or pulsed, a warmth much like that of the charms around his throat. He looked down.

His gaze rolled off the bridge and into the rippling water. In the clear water beneath the central arch, he saw the headless body of the Old One filling the trench where it must have once lurked. Hundreds of silver shapes darted around it, picking at the flesh. Bones poked through the flesh, gleaming white, smooth and knobby, like stones polished by the flow of water. A new Old One, three or four feet long, settled along the spine, ready to take the other's place.

A crow shrieked three times in quick succession. Maggot lifted his head and continued across the bridge.

He saw the muddy bank covered with footprints where the Old One had attacked him. The road along that shore led upstream toward the big stone lodge where he'd seen the woman. A second stream entered the river just below the bridge. It flowed out of a gap between steep stone walls. Flood debris was tangled among the rocks. Maggot would have called it a river once, before he saw the rivers near Squandral's town. A path led from the bridge beside this stream, up to the hilltop where the three poles stood.

Maggot mounted the hillside. Purple-black grackles and bluejays hopped from branch to branch, making shrill warnings at his approach. Most of the birds perched in the trees were deciding if it was yet safe enough to feed on the feared shapes of the men. Even the vultures in the sky seemed wary.

Three poles, three bodies.

Piles of gifts were heaped up around the base of the first two poles: bowls of corn, offerings of weapons, fresh scalps with red hair and blonde and curly black among the bits of fingers, thumbs. At the bottom of the third post, the head of the Old One leaned backward with its mouth gaping at the sky. Offerings, according to the customs of Sinnglas's people, meant to carry the souls of the dead men down death's river to the eternally fertile land of heaven's valley.

The smell of blood mixed with filth, knotting Maggot's empty stomach.

All three men were naked, hands bound in front, with the sharpened stakes shoved between their buttocks and up through their bodies. The first man was Tanaghri; his face was distorted almost beyond recognition. Damaqua's face, beside him, appeared calm, but sad. There was, in dying, thought Maggot, an erasing of all lost votes and unshared meals. The bound hands of the two men were different; Tanaghri's clutched fistlike, Damaqua's open in supplication.

The thumbs of the third man twitched.

Gelapa. The wizard.

His face was empty, slack. Little beak-shaped bits of flesh were torn away from his cheeks and shoulder, tiny triangular gouges filled with crusts of blood. The point of the pole pressed against the skin of his right shoulder, caught at an odd angle beneath the bone.

The bound hand twitched once again.

Spirits could be willful; this one had lingered here for a purpose. "Grandfather," Maggot said softly. "They should not have done this thing. Do you wish to descend into the good night?"

Gelapa's eyelids fluttered.

"It is over then." Maggot drew his knife and stretched up to press it into Gelapa's heart-a short trickle of thin blood, almost none at all, perhaps none, then nothing.

Two black birds swooped in to peck at Tanaghri's face, screaming shrilly at Maggot, fearing his competition.

Ignoring them, Maggot went behind Gelapa's pole, moved the legs aside, and bent his shoulder against it. It tilted slowly, then stuck in the soil and stopped. He dragged it down far enough to slide the corpse off. It was amazingly light, a mere shell of a man, like the ones left by cicadas after the bug had crawled out and away.

He wasn't sure what to do.

Recalling the skins draped about the village pole, he carried the naked body down to the bridge and dropped it in the water. It sunk, surprisingly to Maggot for such a shell, and the current tugged it into the deep trench alongside the Old One's corpse. The fish scattered, like ripples from a splash, and slowly returned in odd numbers. The smaller Old One slithered across the body and covered it. If their skins had spoken to him, perhaps his skin would speak to them.

He saw three roads: upriver, toward the woman he wanted but did not know how to speak to; downriver, toward the light but everpresent tug in his chest; or through the gap marked by the shells of Damaqua and Tanaghri. That way lay Sinnglas. Sinnglas needed to know what had happened here.