The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (11 page)

Gurun was in Gallgoid’s office when one of his men brought Dakl there. Gallgoid dismissed him.

“You are Dakl, the slave?” he said. She nodded. He gestured to Gurun. “Do you know who this is?”

“My lady, the queen,” said Dakl, and curtseyed. Fnaa looked like her, Gurun thought.

“Queen Gurun has asked for you to be her personal attendant,” Gallgoid said. “I have not asked her why. But I will ask you something.

“We believe your master, Vallach Vair, planned treason against the king. We are sure he had partners in his scheme. Can you tell me their names and anything else about them? Take your time, and don’t be afraid. The queen is your protector here, and no harm will come to you.”

Dakl took a moment to think. Gurun admired her coolness. If she was afraid, it didn’t show.

“My lord,” she said at last, “there were men who came to my master’s house to see him, and they talked about how they might remove the king and bring back the Oligarchy. I never heard how they meant to do it. They were careful not to be overheard, even by us slaves. But there were two men who once were oligarchs, named Lord Blamor and Lord Gower, and also Prester Gweyr, and a rich man, a merchant, Folo Oych. They were the ones who came most often. There were others who came once or twice, whose names I never knew. That’s all I know, my lord.”

Gallgoid took some notes, then looked up and nodded at her.

“You’re free to go now, Dakl—with Queen Gurun. You’d be wise to serve her faithfully.”

“I will, my lord.”

When they were gone, Gallgoid sat and reviewed a longer list he’d already made. The names Dakl had given him were on it.

She hadn’t told him everything she knew: he was sure of that. Gurun was hiding something, too, and had a reason for protecting her. What that reason might be, Gallgoid didn’t know; nor did he want to know. Safer for Gurun if he didn’t know, he thought. He could always find it out later, if he had to.

Meanwhile, he mused, Obann City was rotten with treason. It was only to be expected. The former oligarchs wanted to be oligarchs again. Many presters and lesser clergy wanted to rebuild the Temple.

All of this lay just below the surface of life in the city. Deeper down, Gallgoid knew, was worse—much worse. Lord Reesh was dead, and there was no new First Prester; but the evil that he’d hatched lived on after him, and grew. No one knew that better than Gallgoid, who’d served Reesh almost to the end. Vallach Vair and his confederates were insects to be stepped on. Gallgoid would take care of them. But the deeper treason, Lord Reesh’s legacy, now being fed and fostered by the new Thunder King far away in Kara Karram—

Gallgoid shook his head.

Gurun took Dakl first to her room, and when they were alone, told her, “Your son, Fnaa, is alive and well, and he has done what he set out to do.”

Dakl had a firm mastery over herself. Even so, Gurun thought she saw every muscle in Dakl’s body relax when she heard that news.

“My lady, I’m glad we’ve been of service!” she said.

“Don’t be too glad, yet. More service has been asked of you.” And Gurun told her that her son was even now living in the palace, impersonating the king—because the king had disappeared and no one knew what to do. “You will pretend to be his new handmaid; that way you can be with him. And you will both be safe, here in the palace.”

Dakl dropped suddenly to one knee, seized Gurun’s hand, and kissed it.

“Please don’t!” Gurun said. “They call me a queen, but I’m not one. Not unless King Ryons marries me when he grows up—if we ever see him again. You are a slave no more, Dakl, and I am not your mistress. I’m a plain girl from Fogo Island, which is so far from Obann, it might as well be an island in a dream. So you and I must help one another.”

“We shall!” said Dakl. Her face lit up when she was happy, and it stopped being a slave face. “But noble is as noble does, as people say in Obann—my lady!”

“Come now and see your son. He has missed you.”

Gurun didn’t like to stand there, intruding, as mother and son rejoiced in one another in the king’s bedchamber. She let herself out and did duty as a guard outside the door, sending the Ghol bodyguard away on some unnecessary errand.

“Well, that’s that,” she thought. “Gallgoid will catch all the villains, and the throne is saved—and no king to sit on it! All-Father,” she prayed silently, “protect King Ryons and restore him to us, who love him. But for as long as it must be, let Fnaa be a convincing substitute.”

Chapter 14

How Jack Showed Bold Again

With Gurun spending every possible minute with Fnaa, teaching him how to imitate King Ryons and keeping him away from the chiefs, who knew their king so well, Ellayne and Jack found themselves neglected.

“We might as well go home—not that anyone would notice if we did,” Ellayne said. It was the morning after they’d told Obst all of Fnaa’s secret. Obst hadn’t been back to see them since; they had no idea of what he might be doing. “Anyone would think we were just ordinary stupid kids,” she grumbled.

Jack pretended that that didn’t bother him. It didn’t irk him as much as it irked Ellayne, but it did get under his skin; and it troubled him more than it had irked him yesterday.

“I have a better idea than going home,” he said. “As long as no one’s paying any attention to us, why don’t we go out and find the king? Wytt might be able to follow his trail.”

That was about the boldest thing Ellayne had heard Jack say in quite some time, and she hardly knew how to answer him. She’d been afraid he was getting stodgy. Normally he would object that if God hadn’t called them to do something—in a dream, say, or by the word of a prophet—then they were better off not doing it.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Well, someone has to find him, and nobody here seems to be trying to do it,” Jack answered. “Anyhow, we’ve done what we came here to do. I think you ought to write a letter to your father. Ask him to send Martis after us as soon as he can. We might need him.”

That last remark clinched it. Jack was serious.

“I’ll do it right away,” Ellayne said. “Don’t you think, maybe, we ought to get one of the Ghols to go with us? Or two of them?”

“We can’t. We’d have to tell them all about Fnaa, and it’d ruin everything.”

“I’ll get that letter written now,” said Ellayne.

Obst had not forgotten them. In fact, he was acting on something that they’d told him. As Jack and Ellayne made ready to leave Obann, Obst was conferring with Preceptor Constan, the scholar in charge of making true copies of the long-lost Ozias Scrolls from the cellar of Ozias’ Temple. Constan had been slow to believe in the scrolls; but by now, after careful study, he did believe.

“Prester Lodivar, eh?” Constan had a stern but fleshy face, and he took his time about thinking things through. Obst waited patiently. “No,” he said at last, “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Are there any like him here in the city?” Obst asked.

“No. Not yet. But there will be.” Constan sat like an ox chewing his cud; but he was chewing ideas. “There are men who want the Temple more than they want God,” he said. “If they can’t have the Temple in Obann, maybe they’ll turn to this New Temple in the East. You know the Scriptures, Obst. Prophet Ika, 40th fascicle: ‘Oh, my people! Unstable as water, as dead leaves blowing in the wind!’ They haven’t changed since then.”

“But what shall we do?” Obst said. “I’d hoped to have the preaching of the Scriptures well under way in all the chamber houses by now. The people need instruction—not by us, but by the Word of God. Everything is taking so much more time than I thought it would.”

“It always does,” said Constan. “And now false preachers are rising up among us.” He paused for at least a minute, maybe more. “I can’t hurry the translation of the scrolls. True copies of the Old Books are being made as fast as humanly possible. Maybe the king should summon all the presters to the city for a conclave. They might be encouraged to get on with the preaching.”

Obst’s plan was to get a faithful copy of the Old Books into every chamber house in the land and have the presters preach and teach from these every time the people gathered for assembly. And the work of making copies would go on and on, until someday many people could have them in their homes.

But now, of course, the king was missing. An imposter held his place for him, and the people weren’t any the wiser.

Obst sighed. “This is a matter requiring prayer,” he said, “and plenty of it.”

“I’ll join you,” Preceptor Constan said; and the two men bowed their heads together.

Jack and Ellayne knew nothing of Obst’s labors. Wytt said he could follow Ryons and probably find him, and that was good enough.

Ellayne insisted on seeing Gurun first, and finally she had her way, although they had to wait all day—which made Jack fume about lost time. An hour after supper, a servant conducted them to the king’s bedchamber and the Ghol outside let them in. Gurun made sure the door was firmly shut before she would allow anyone to say anything. Supposedly none of the Ghols spoke Obannese, but Gurun preferred to take no chances.

Fnaa sat up in bed and grinned at them. On the edge of the bed, close to him, sat a pretty, dark-haired woman.

“My mother!” he explained. “Queen Gurun rescued her, just like she said she would.” Fnaa’s mother got up and curtseyed to them. “Thank you for bringing my son into the palace,” she said. “Although I never thought it would turn out like this!”

“I’m sorry you’ve been left so much alone, these two days,” Gurun said. “It could not be helped. The chiefs have been told the king was sick, and they believe I’m taking care of him.”

“Well, we just came to say good-bye,” Ellayne said. “And I have a letter for my father, which I hope you’ll send to him by special messenger so that it’ll get to him before we do.”

“Are you going home?” Fnaa asked. “I thought you were going to stay.”

Here they would have been wise to confide in Gurun, who would have seen to it that they had horses, equipment, and maybe a Ghol archer or a Blay slinger to protect them. But they’d decided for secrecy. After all, the search might not amount to anything. Ryons’ trail might peter out. But of course the real reason was that they hadn’t liked being ignored: that was no way to treat the two chosen ones who’d climbed Bell Mountain. Obst would have warned them that such pride was ungodly and liable to be a snare to them and dangerous; but they hadn’t confided in him, either.