The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (34 page)

Martis silently recalled his own first visit to the forest. A giant bird killed and ate his horse. The encounter had almost unmanned him, but he was over it now.

Soon they were on a path leading into the forest, and then inside the forest itself, with blackberry bushes all around them and the trees growing higher and thicker with every step they took. Orange flame-butterflies escorted them, and jays scolded from the treetops. They completely lost sight of Wytt. The children plucked sweet berries as they walked. Behind them, Martis led Dulayl.

“It’s so sunny and peaceful,” Ellayne said. “No wonder Obst liked it so much.”

Half a mile ahead, Wytt would not have agreed with her observation. There were disturbances in this region of the forest, and the birds were all complaining. Here and there he caught the scent of unwashed humans still clinging to the ferns and bushes. He didn’t like their scent.

He hadn’t picked up any trace of Ryons and Cavall. The Forest Omah would know where Ryons was, but there didn’t seem to be many of them in this neighborhood. It was in Wytt’s mind that there were only a few of them living around here and that they were in hiding. They might know he was in the area, but they weren’t letting him find them.

Mardar Wusu had painted the bottom of his face black and the top half red, with a wide white band across his eyes and nose. It was a bad sign, and Goryk Gillow didn’t know what to do about it.

“I will leave you the Wallekki and the Griffs—that’s half the army,” the mardar said. “I’m going to take the Zamzu and most of the Hosa with me and bring our master’s wrath to Lintum Forest.”

“That’s been tried before,” said Goryk. “Half the army! Have you received a command from our lord King Thunder?”

Wusu grinned, a fearful sight. “Of course!”

There was no arguing with that. Goryk, of course, knew the secret of the Thunder King—the same secret Gallgoid discovered just before the last Thunder King was buried in the avalanche. The mardars claimed to do all they did under the instructions of their master, conveyed to them magically over great distances; and such was their skill at pretending, that all the subject peoples believed it and looked on the mardars as little less than gods, or devils. But it was all a lie. Mardars simply did as they thought best and ascribed their actions to the commandments of the Thunder King. Goryk himself did the same.

“It’s late in the season to start a campaign,” he couldn’t help saying. “And meanwhile, what becomes of my campaign to make peace with Obann and quietly draw them into servitude?”

They were alone in Goryk’s house. Outside, the work of rebuilding Silvertown went on, with a few recalcitrant slaves dangling from a gallows as a warning to the others. Goryk did not like the idea of having only half the army left in Silvertown to enforce his will.

“Call it what it is,” said Wusu, “an expedition to punish bandits who are no good to Obann or to us. Besides, I’ll return before the leaves begin to fall.”

“But surely it would be better to wait—”

“I’ve run out of patience,” Wusu said. “I want to see Helki’s head rotting on a spear. But even more than that, we have need of swift action. We have a chance that might not come again.”

“A chance? What chance?”

Wusu paused a moment, obviously pleased with himself and building up to something. Goryk knew him well enough to wait.

Finally Wusu said, “Some of my Wallekki rode in last night. They brought a man to see me, one of Helki’s enemies. They picked him up just as he was fleeing out of the forest, and he asked them to take him to Silvertown without delay. They rode hard.

“I spoke with that man last night, and he brought me news.” He paused again, then smiled. “The king of Obann,” he said slowly, “is now in Lintum Forest. And I am going to capture him.”

The fugitive captured by Wusu’s scouts was Hwyddo, the outlaw. In his flight through Lintum Forest, he met and spoke to other outlaws and learned that the boy who’d traveled with the giant bird, and claimed to be a friend of Helki’s, was none other than King Ryons himself. A man who’d deserted from Helki recognized the king from Hwyddo’s description of him.

In hope of earning a reward, Hwyddo made all the haste he could to the east end of the forest, on his way to Silvertown. Maelghin, his companion, snapped his ankle on a twisted root and had to be left behind.

Now Hwyddo was to ride back to Lintum Forest as a guide. “If I take the king alive and kill Helki,” the mardar said, “I’ll make you Prince of Lintum Forest.” Too late, Hwyddo wondered what would happen to him if the mardar didn’t take the king and Helki.

With many qualms, Goryk watched the troops march out of Silvertown the next day. He didn’t like the half of the army that Wusu had left with him. The people feared the Zamzu, who were cannibals, and now he’d have to do without them. Why couldn’t the mardar have waited for Obann to fall into their hands without a fight? As for the boy king being in Lintum Forest at all, Goryk had his doubts about that. As far as his own spies knew, the king was still in Obann City where he belonged.

So Goryk composed another letter to the new oligarchs in the city, to be delivered as fast as his relay-riders could gallop.

The First Prester to Lord Merffin Mord, High Oligarch: Greetings.

Be advised that the army of my master King Thunder has sent a punitive expedition to Lintum Forest to destroy bands of lawless men who break the peace and commit every kind of crime & violence. No threat to Obann is intended. In truth, these outlaws are your enemies as well as ours. Our mission is one of pacification only.

We have not asked you to send troops, as our own are able to quell the outlaws without assistance, & we understand that your first concern is to restore good order in your city & elsewhere.

Meanwhile, my lord the Thunder King has confidence that your desire for peace is equal to his own & awaits your acknowledgement of his New Temple as the means of a lasting & honorable peace between our two countries.

Goryk sighed. Kara Karram was a very long way from Silvertown, and like the mardars themselves, in this matter he was acting on his own. The Thunder King had indeed named him First Prester for the New Temple, and someday Goryk would go there. But if his plans miscarried in the meantime, he knew the Thunder King would have him put to death in some remarkably unpleasant way. A mutiny among the troops left in Silvertown would surely be his undoing.

“I have dared much,” Goryk said to himself, “but there’s no backing out of it now.”

Or so he thought.

Chapter 41

The Baron Has Visitors

One thing continued to trouble Martis as they advanced deeper into the forest. He didn’t want to talk about it with the children, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Lord Reesh had nothing in his whole collection like the little item Martis now carried in his saddlebag. Indeed, Reesh might have traded everything he had for it. And yet the Thunder King had entrusted this rarity to a single agent working in a sparsely populated region of Obann, to overawe the folk of towns and villages.

“He has more,” Martis brooded. “He must have more. And he must have things that are greater than this.” For the Commentaries spoke of weapons of the ancients that could turn a whole city into rubble in the blink of an eye. Reesh had often wondered about what kinds of ancient relics might be found in other parts of the world, where perhaps the Day of Fire hadn’t burned so hot as it had in Obann.

Ah—but if he had them, Martis argued with himself, why hadn’t he used them?

Maybe it took time to learn, he thought.

“Hey, look at that!” Jack said, pointing to the ground.

In a muddy patch surrounding a little pool of stagnant water, Martis saw a footprint. “It’s still got water in it, and the edges are soft,” he said. “Someone passed this way just an hour or two ago. But if he were close by, I think Wytt would have warned us. No telling whether it was a hunter, an outlaw, or one of Helki’s scouts.”

“I thought Helki cleaned all the outlaws out of this forest,” said Ellayne.

“I don’t think even Helki could put down all the outlaws in Lintum Forest,” Martis said.

Roshay Bault and Vannett had guests for luncheon—Hlah and his wife and child, and a strange sort of man called Sunfish. They’d come down the river, swiftly, by canoe. Had he known Hlah was coming, Roshay would have waited one more day before sending the prisoner, Lodevar, down to Obann.

May had never before been inside a house as grand as the baron’s, and marveled at everything she saw. Beside her at the dinner table, Sunfish poked at his food while his eyes darted nervously back and forth. Roshay noticed the dexterity and grace with which Sunfish handled his utensils, and his flawless table manners; and yet he looked like the wildest kind of hermit. Surely there was a mystery about him.

“I’m told there are quite a few of these so-called presters wandering about the country, making mischief,” Roshay said. “Do you think they’ve all come from Silvertown?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Hlah. “Silvertown’s a very busy place these days. Everybody who does Goryk Gillow’s bidding is rewarded. Those who resist him are forced into slavery, or hanged. So there are many who do his bidding.”

“So your reports have told me.

“I wish we could drive that Heathen army out of Silvertown,” Vannett said. “Our men haven’t been properly trained yet, so we can’t. But the waiting, waiting for the war to break out again and not knowing when it will—I hate it!”

“The Thunder King is raising new armies in the East,” Hlah said, “but that takes time. He lost so many in Obann! And now he’ll have to reconquer the Abnaks. My people are in open revolt against him. To save their lives, they’ll have to fight him when he comes. If only Obann could send an army across the mountains to help them!”

“No army of Obann has crossed the mountains for a thousand years,” the baron said. “It would make quite a few of my ancestors sit up in their graves, if we finally crossed as allies of the Abnaks.”

“Quite a few of mine, too!” Hlah said; and everybody laughed but Sunfish.

Sunfish hardly ever laughed, these days. He was at peace only when he held Hlah’s baby in his arms.

In his dreams he kept seeing great buildings and crowds of people, and something—he didn’t know what—made him certain that all of this had to do with the city of Obann. He’d never been there in his life, and yet in the dreams he seemed to know his way around. All the people in the dreams seemed to know him: or rather, they behaved as if they thought he was someone they knew and to whom they showed great respect. “Who do they think I am?” Sunfish wondered. He spoke with these people, but when he woke, he could remember nothing of the conversation. Trying and trying to remember and to make some sense of it, and failing every time he tried, occupied most of his waking moments. He lived now only to reach Obann and consult a prophet. Nothing else mattered.