The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (14 page)

“What was that?” Ryons said.

“Don’t know. But it won’t come up here while we have a fire, so don’t be afraid. The Lord will get us to Lintum Forest, sure enough.”

Ryons believed, and his fear subsided.

Hiking by night, Ellayne and Jack heard something very similar and froze in their tracks. Wytt stood on tiptoe, sniffing the air.

“Big animal,” he chirped, “with bad smell.”

“What kind of animal?” Jack whispered.

“Don’t know.” That he didn’t know troubled Wytt deeply. “I go see.” And before Ellayne could stop him, he scampered off through the tall grass.

“Fry him!” she said. “What does he think he’s doing?”

He’s doing the same kind of thing we did in coming out here in the first place, Jack thought, but didn’t say so. “He’ll be all right,” he said. “We’d better wait for him.”

They sat down, hoping the grass would hide them from any hunting beast. Ellayne wanted to say more, but Jack convinced her not to: “We’d better be as quiet as we can.”

They listened hard, but the howl was not repeated. Jack looked up and saw a shooting star. After an inordinately long time, Wytt startled them by jumping out of the grass right in front of them.

“Do you have to do that!” Ellayne hissed.

“No fear, animal’s gone,” was his answer.

“What was it? Did you see it?” Jack asked.

“I saw.” According to Wytt, the creature was something like a bear only much bigger, with forelegs much longer than its hind legs and massive, wicked jaws like a badger’s. It smelled like a badger, too, Wytt thought. Jack didn’t like the sound of that.

“I wonder why it howled,” he said.

“Oh, who cares! Let’s get going,” Ellayne said. “We have to find a place where it’ll be safe for us to sleep tomorrow—if we can. I wish we had some weapons!” They had knives and Jack’s slingshot, but they didn’t count, Ellayne thought. She would have preferred something like Abombalbap’s great sword, along with an armored knight to wield it.

Chapter 17

The King’s Procession

“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” Fnaa said.

“Just keep your feet in the stirrups and your legs clamped tightly against its body,” Gurun told him. “And wave at the people and look happy.”

The king had been sick long enough, and it was time his people saw him; so today Fnaa was to make the king’s regular ride around the city. Gurun would be right beside him, and several of his Ghols close by to keep him safe. How they would keep him safe from falling off the horse, Fnaa didn’t know.

Dakl had seen King Ryons on several such occasions. “Don’t worry,” she told her son. “The king himself never looked at ease on horseback. And everyone knows you’ve been sick, so they won’t expect too much.”

At the appointed time in the morning, Gurun took Fnaa down to the royal stables, and old Chagadai practically lifted him onto the horse. Happily for Fnaa, she was a wise old mare who had learned to be patient with the boy king’s clumsiness. Her name was Dandelion, for her yellow mane and tail.

It was a small procession that rode out of the palace. A servant in gorgeous red and silver livery led the way on foot. His job was to call out again and again, “Make way for King Ryons, King of Obann by the grace of God!” Then came one of General Hennen’s men in shining mail, mounted on a great black charger and carrying the royal banner, and after him a pair of knights with gleaming swords.

Fnaa and Gurun followed, side by side, with Chagadai and half a dozen Ghols bringing up the rear. No shining mail for them: they went in worn-out leather leggings and tunics, with their bows in their hands. The people of Obann didn’t like them, but there was no leaving them behind. The boy king was their “father,” and they went with him wherever he went.

“Smile!” Gurun said.

They paraded down the middle of the city’s broadest streets. People stopped to watch and cheer and wave. “Queen Gurun! Long live the queen!” was what Fnaa heard most often. Still, there were more than a few glad cries of “Ryons! Ryons!” And several men and women cried out, “Feeling better, Majesty?” It wasn’t long before Fnaa didn’t have to force his smiles anymore. He almost forgot to worry about falling off the horse.

“They like us—they really do,” he thought. True, it was Ryons that they liked, not him. But they thought he was Ryons. No one seemed to have the slightest doubt of it. The people waved at him and Fnaa waved back. With Gurun and the servants and the chieftains to do all the real work, he thought, being king wasn’t such a bad arrangement. It was better than having to play the fool all day in Vallach Vair’s house.

The little procession had just turned onto Market Street when someone, somewhere, sounded a harshly blaring horn. The people along the street looked up, for the sound seemed to come from above. Fnaa looked up, too—just in time to see a human body flung from the roof of a warehouse.

It never hit the ground. There was a rope around the neck, tied to something on the roof, and the body jerked to a stop and bounced against the wall. Bystanders screamed. Fnaa stared. The procession halted.

“A man has hanged himself!” said Gurun. And the Ghols crowded around Fnaa to shield him with their bodies and nocked arrows to their bowstrings. The two knights with the swords made their horses rear up, which kept the people at a safe distance.

The last glimpse Fnaa got of the limp body dangling from the rope was of some white things floating away from it, fluttering down to the street, where people ran to pick them up. Then Chagadai laid a hand on his shoulder and spoke something Gholish into his ear, which Fnaa didn’t understand. But Gurun did.

“He says it’s not a real body,” she translated. “He urges you to show no fear at all.”

“I’m not afraid,” Fnaa said. He was confused, not frightened. “But let’s not stay here.”

Gurun signaled to the knights, the banner-bearer, and the crier. They cleared the way and got the procession moving again. Fnaa waved to the people, but knew better than to smile. No one had to tell him that the strange incident at the warehouse had upset the people’s mood.

“What’s it all about?” he wondered.

“We’ll find out later,” Gurun said. “Someone has already hauled the dummy back onto the roof. But don’t let the people see you gawking at it.”

By mid-afternoon Gallgoid’s men had collected some of the white things that had fluttered down from the warehouse roof. They were pieces of white cloth with messages written on them. These he displayed to the chiefs and Gurun at the end of the day. For the benefit of the chiefs who could not read Obannese (most of them), Gallgoid read the messages aloud.

“They are short, my lords, but to the point,” he said. “For instance: ‘No Temple, no God in Obann!’ And ‘The Lord’s New Temple has risen in the East.’ And ‘Your prayers are not heard, Obann.’

“I myself knew of this,” said Gallgoid, “when I was in Lord Reesh’s service. Lord Reesh was to be First Prester at the New Temple, built by the Thunder King at Kara Karram. This was to replace the Temple in Obann. This Temple was to be subservient to the Thunder King. But someday, Lord Reesh said, the Thunder King would die, and then the New Temple would come into its own. It would become the Temple for the whole world, on both sides of the mountains.”

Shaffur, the Wallekki chieftain, scowled. “What do we care for the words of a traitor?” he said.

“My lord, I admit I was a traitor,” Gallgoid answered. “I helped Lord Reesh betray our Temple to the Heathen. Prester Orth was also his confederate. It’s because I was a traitor that I know things that will serve you now.

“Lord Reesh and the Thunder King were killed in the avalanche at the Golden Pass. There is a new Thunder King now, claiming to be the same King Thunder that we knew before, the man at the Golden Pass being but a servant. To the people of Obann he offers his New Temple in the place of the one that was destroyed. You’ll hear much more of this, as time goes by. What effect it will have on the people of this city, no one knows.”

Chief Zekelesh spoke up. “Where is the king? He should be here, if only just to listen and to learn.”

“He is having his supper,” said Gurun.

Uduqu, chief of the Abnaks, rose from his chair. “I’ll go see him,” he said. “It did my heart good to see him go riding today. Anyhow, I don’t know what we can do about those messages. Who can understand city people?”

“My lord, I’ll try to find out who wrote them,” Gallgoid said. “Whatever you decide to do about it then, it would best be done quietly.”

“Call me when the fighting starts,” said Uduqu.

One thing Fnaa liked about being king was that they fed you well. This evening he dined on fresh-caught catfish from the river and honey-cakes and watered wine. He had his meal on a table in his bedchamber with his mother supposedly waiting on him, but, once the door was shut, dining with him to keep him company. He told her about his ride through the city. He knew the matter troubled her, but for his sake she put on a good face. “Just some fool playing a stupid prank,” she said.

They were just about finished with their supper when Gurun came in with Uduqu.

Of all the king’s councilors, Uduqu was the one Fnaa feared the most. They sang a song about him in the city, of how he’d cut two men in half with one sweep of a sword. There were those who swore they saw him do it. Long ago, some enemy warrior had tried to break out Uduqu’s brains with an axe; the wound healed in a way that made the tattooed face even more fearsome to behold. Fnaa’s supper shifted in his stomach when he saw him. But Uduqu sat down on the king’s bed as if it were his own.

“I don’t know about Your Majesty,” he said, “but sometimes I miss my old deer-hide tent, and sitting around the fire with the other chiefs, smoking tree-beans like we did when we were boys. Those were good days, weren’t they?”

Fnaa wished the old Abnak would leave. What was he doing here? But Uduqu didn’t leave.

“I remember how you used to sass us—and you were still a slave!” he said. “Poor Obst, he would just about faint every time you did it. But it always made us laugh, and we all agreed that you were talking like an Abnak. Don’t you remember?”

He had to say something; so Fnaa said, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember anything.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Uduqu. “How could you remember those things? You’re not Ryons.”

Those words made for a perfect stillness in the room. Fnaa could not have answered if his life depended on it. The corners of his mother’s mouth went tight.