The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain)

BOOK: The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain)
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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

 

1.
Ellayne Has a Visitor

 

2.
Fnaa

 

3.
How They Set Out for Obann

 

4.
How Martis Sought for Tidings

 

5.
How Their Journey Began

 

6.
How King Ryons Met a Man of God

 

7.
How Gurun Received a Throne

 

8.
A Sermon in Cardigal

 

9.
How They Came to Obann

 

10.
Fnaa’s Story

 

11.
How Wytt Inquired for the King

 

12.
A Wanderer and His Baby

 

13.
How Dakl Came to the Palace

 

14.
How Jack Showed Bold Again

 

15.
How Ryons Escaped the Bandits

 

16.
A Night on the Plain

 

17.
The King’s Procession

 

18.
“By Commandment of the First Prester”

 

19.
An Appearance of Magic

 

20.
Sunfish Has a Dream

 

21.
A Change in Plan

 

22.
How Fnaa Received a Prophecy

 

23.
Back to Lintum Forest

 

24.
How Jack Stole Noma’s Magic

 

25.
An Ancient Vision and a New One

 

26.
A Message for Martis

 

27.
A Terror for Jack

 

28.
How Ryons Was Captured

 

29.
A Demon in His Pocket

 

30.
How the Army Left the City

 

31.
What Sunfish Saw

 

32.
A Token from the Past

 

33.
For the Welfare of the City

 

34.
Concerning Prophets

 

35.
Fools Can Be Dangerous

 

36.
Wytt Takes Command

 

37.
A Message to the Oligarchs

 

38.
How Fnaa Spent the King’s Money

 

39.
The Mad Preacher

 

40.
Tidings of the King

 

41.
The Baron Has Visitors

 

42.
The Invasion of Lintum Forest

 

43.
When You Tread Among Fools

 

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

 

48.
In Forest and in City

 

49.
How the King Was Captured

 

50.
How Orth Regained His Memory

 

51.
A Great and Terrible Light

 

52.
A Confession to the Conclave

 

53.
How Orth Was Judged and Punished

 

 

Chapter 1

Ellayne Has a Visitor

 

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.”

BOOK: The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain)
3.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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