The Prodigal Troll (2 page)

For Cole and Fin, my own two little trolls.

ran entered the great hall still wearing the stolen wolf costume, battered mask tucked beneath his arm. The curtains were thrust aside from the tall windows, which were open to the last halfhearted revelry of the party outside and the first finger-poking light of dawn.

He dropped the mask on the long table in the center of the hall. A servant set a chalice down and poured chilled wine into it. Bran reached for it without thinking and winced. The first knuckles had been cut from the thumb and forefinger of his sword hand. The fight outside had torn the new calluses. Nor had the nails pulled from his other fingers healed yet as well as he had thought.

Lifting the cup with his left hand, he paused to inhale the sweet fragrance of plums. Then he pressed the cool metal to his bruised forehead.

Ah. Relief.

The relief was short-lived. His lord, still attired in an extravagant lion's costume of gold armor and emerald silk, stepped out of the shadows and paced around the table until he came to rest directly behind Bran's shoulder. The weight of the golden mask pressed on his back.

"Who was he?"

Bran twitched as the deep voice filled the empty room. Who was he? Who was the dark-haired man, the giant who had come down out of the mountains and into the castle in disguise with Bran? "I don't know," he replied. "I tell you three times, I truly don't know."

"But he saved your life twice, first from the guards and then a second time by trading his life for yours."

Was he reminding Bran that he might change his mind and not spare Bran's life after all? "That wasn't even the first time. The first time he saved my life, I was a prisoner of the mountain peasants, tied to a stake in a bonfire pile."

That was the night he'd lost his fingers and nails, the night he'd lost all hope, until the stranger appeared. He lowered the cup to his mouth. Swallowed in a single long gulp, the wine was too sweet and too strong, though it brought him a different kind of relief. He thrust out the cup for more wine, but the servant did not refill it.

"So he thought he could do that and just walk away?"

"You saw him," Bran said.

"I did. And that is why you are standing here speaking to me now. Wine."

The servant glided over silently to refill Bran's cup. His head still throbbed-his whole body ached, exhausted by the ordeal of the past few days. He took a small sip. The footsteps around the table were light and deliberate for such a large man wearing over one hundred pounds of costume. Bran lowered the cup and stared into inscrutable eyes peering from a stylized mask, carved from gold and framed by two huge ivory teeth taken from the jaw of a dagger-toothed lion.

"So you know nothing about this man? Nothing of his home, his mother, his obligations?"

"No more than he gave in answer to you," Bran replied.

"Yes, but those answers were mocking."

Bran was not so sure. "Perhaps. He did not speak our language when I first met him, but even after he learned it, he did not explain much."

"How do you explain him?"

"I do not know," Bran said. "I do not know how to explain him. He went where he wanted, and did what he chose."

"Did he name himself?" Fingers drummed on the table, a deliberate act, signalling impatience.

Bran considered carefully before answering. A man's name was one of the few things he owned, and was his alone to give. But did it matter what he said now? It mattered very much to the man who stood beside him.

"He told me that his name was Claye," he answered at last.

Outside, cheers greeted the sunrise. Light poured into the room, illuminating the shabby, empty-eyed mess of his wolf's mask. Soon, the revelers would begin to make their ways home. Bran already knew that he would not join them. He did not expect to leave the confines of the castle for a very long time.

"Did the name mean anything to him?" The voice was hard now, dangerous, as it had been outside a short time before.

"No."

"That," said the man behind the mask, "explains even less. I have no idea why he chose what he chose."

He lifted one finger casually, and the servant brought him a cup of wine. Perhaps, thought Bran, his head also ached. And he wondered if he should mention the stranger's other name, the difficult one he had given first.