The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain)
Read The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) Online
Authors: Lee Duigon
VALLECITO, CALIFORNIA
Published by Storehouse Press
P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, CA95251
Storehouse Press is the registered trademark of Chalcedon, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 by Lee Duigon
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Kirk Dou Ponce (
www.DogEaredDesign.com
)
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013934850
ISBN-13: 978-1-891375-61-3
ISBN-10: 1-891375-61-X
Table of Contents
2.
Fnaa
4.
How Martis Sought for Tidings
6.
How King Ryons Met a Man of God
10.
Fnaa’s Story
11.
How Wytt Inquired for the King
13.
How Dakl Came to the Palace
15.
How Ryons Escaped the Bandits
18.
“By Commandment of the First Prester”
22.
How Fnaa Received a Prophecy
24.
How Jack Stole Noma’s Magic
25.
An Ancient Vision and a New One
33.
For the Welfare of the City
38.
How Fnaa Spent the King’s Money
42.
The Invasion of Lintum Forest
44.
How to Pack a Chamber House
45.
How Jack Became a King Almost
46.
How Fnaa Remained a King, for Now
47.
How Gorm Blacktooth Was Routed
50.
How Orth Regained His Memory
52.
A Confession to the Conclave
53.
How Orth Was Judged and Punished
If you have read the books that come before this, you have already met Ellayne. But on this particular summer night, you might not have recognized her.
More than a year had gone by since she and Jack had come home from their adventures. Her hair had grown long again, and she wore it with a thick braid down the back: no need, anymore, to disguise herself as a boy. Instead of her brothers’ hand-me-downs, she had on a nice blue dress and new shoes. By the light of a lantern, she was softly reading aloud from an enormous book that lay on the grass before her.
“‘And then Abombalbap, thinking he might yet save the damsel, leaped lightly from his horse and drew his sword. But the dwarf in the cart cried out as if he were a madman and immediately came galloping forth from the Castle Odious the Black Knight of the Dark Tower—’ Wytt, you’re not listening!” she said.
This she addressed to a little hairy manlike creature no bigger than a squirrel, with no tail and reddish-brown fur over every inch of him. Instead of paying any heed to the story, he kept jumping up and down, trying to catch fairy-flies that were attracted to the light. You or I would call them lacewings, but people in Obann called them fairy-flies because with their silvery wings and delicate way of flying, they looked like fairies. Wytt liked to eat them.
Ellayne’s father, Roshay Bault—once the chief councilor of the town of Ninneburky, but since then created baron of the realm by His Grace the King—lived in the finest house in Ninneburky. He had a stable for his carriage and horses. Between the back of the stable and a dense, high hedge that ran around three sides of his property was a quiet grassy space where Ellayne and Jack liked to sit and talk. Ellayne came there often to play with Wytt. Her mother the baroness didn’t like the sight of him; somehow he made her think of a large rat. But her father understood that the little Omah had more than once saved his daughter’s life, and was glad to have him there. Wytt preferred not to be seen by too many Big People at once and seldom came into the house.
“We can’t treat her like she was made of fine china, Vannett, not after where she’s been. Let her play with the creature whenever she likes,” the baron would say to his wife. And Ellayne’s mother, who was much better about things like that than she used to be, would say, “Well, of course you’re right.”
You know already, if you have read the books, that it was Ellayne and Jack who climbed Bell Mountain and rang the bell—the bell that King Ozias hung there thousands of years ago, so that God would hear it when the time came for it to be rung. This was a great and noble feat; but the baron and the baroness agreed that the children ought to stay home from now on and not live like famous persons.
So they lived a quiet life, Jack having moved in to live as a member of the family. He was probably playing chess right now with the baron in the parlor, Ellayne thought. (Obannese chess is just like ours, only the bishops are called presters and are allowed to make a special move to a different-colored square than the one they started on.) Ellayne’s mother taught them their numbers and their letters, and every evening the baron read to them from the New Books. “Someday,” he said, “we’ll have the Scriptures themselves, the Old Books, in language we can understand. The queen has promised it.”