The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (17 page)

“He’s preaching a lie!” Ellayne said, but didn’t raise her voice.

“And these folks are worked up, good and proper!” Jack whispered into her ear. “Don’t make it worse.”

“I’m not stupid!” she protested.

“Turn to the New Temple!” boomed the little man. “Already the Lord has chosen a new First Prester, and raised him up in Silvertown. There’s no more enmity between the Lord God and the Thunder King. But there is destruction and disaster for those who will not return to their allegiance to the Temple.

“So that you may know I speak the truth, and believe in the New Temple and in the Thunder King, I show you this sign. See it and believe!”

And he raised his right hand over his head, and rays of light shot out of his palm.

The people gasped, and jostled each other as they shrank away from him. You could hear their bodies thumping against each other.

“Magic! Magic! Dear Lord, it’s magic!”

That’s what they thought, all of them—everyone but Jack. Startled and amazed he was, like everybody else. But Jack did not believe.

“A trick!” he said through clenched teeth.

But it sure as sunshine didn’t look like a trick, thought Ellayne. You couldn’t make light shoot out of someone’s hand! Not unless that someone were a witch, like Raddamallicom, whom Abombalbap slew, cutting off her head before she could cast a spell that would have burned him to cinders on the spot—and certainly, she thought, there used to be witches. Maybe the Thunder King had brought them back.

“For two pennies,” Jack said, “I’d march right back to the city and tell Obst all about this.”

“But didn’t you see—?”

“Foo! It’s like when that juggler came to town and pulled potatoes out of everybody’s ears.”

Ellayne tugged on his arm. “We’re much closer to Lintum Forest now than we are to Obann,” she said, “and we’re the only ones who are following the king. If we don’t stay on his trail, no one will ever know what happened to him. We can’t quit now!”

“You’re right about that,” he conceded. “But it makes me mad to see them get away with tricks and lies, and make people think it’s magic!”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it!” Ellayne thought, but didn’t say so. All she wanted was to be away from there, quick as could be. If Jack thought this was like a juggler’s trick, he was crazy. Maybe he’d listen to reason, by and by. “Let’s just get out of here!” she hissed into his ear. The man had light pouring out of his empty hand, and she didn’t want to see any more.

Still grumbling, Jack climbed down from the wagon. Ellayne jumped down after him. And the people were still carrying on and making a great to-do as Jack and Ellayne marched off into the night.

Chapter 20

Sunfish Has a Dream

You may remember, as Gallgoid remembered, that Prester Orth was Lord Reesh’s partner in treason and his choice to succeed him as First Prester. On their way to the mountains, Orth lost his nerve and ran away, and Gallgoid never saw him again and didn’t know what became of him: starved to death somewhere in the wilderness, he thought most likely.

And so Orth would have, had Hlah not found him—a dirty, bedraggled, mindless madman who couldn’t remember his own name.

He had a new name now—Sunfish. And he ministered to the growing community of refugees, Obannese and Abnak, living in the forest on the western slopes.

He remembered nothing of his life in Obann. His career, his power, his wealth, and all his luxuries: it was as if none of these had ever existed. God had also blotted out the memory of all his treasons, leaving him with nothing but this: a word-perfect recall of every verse of the Holy Scriptures, and the power to preach it and teach it to people who had long been ignorant of God’s word. Everything else was lost to him; and he was content that it should be so.

He lived in a little cabin that the people built for him. Hlah’s wife, May, and some of the other women, took care of him. In many ways he was like a child. He didn’t know how to cook for himself or mend his clothing. No one minded doing these things for him. Sunfish recited to them the Old Books, fascicle by fascicle, a little bit every night, around a cozy fire. And he answered all their questions.

As Hlah hiked homeward, leading Uwain’s little band from Silvertown, Sunfish one morning had something unusual to tell May when she brought his porridge.

“I’ve had a dream,” he said, “and I don’t know what it means. But maybe you can tell me.”

He was a big man, with a great black beard shot full of silver. May, young enough to be his daughter, thought of him as a little boy who would never get any older. Her baby son, Wulf, babbled delightedly whenever Sunfish held him in his arms: something that he loved to do. That would have astounded anyone in Obann who’d known Prester Orth.

“Now, how can I tell you anything about your dream, you silly man?” May said.

“All men dream, but the interpretation is of God,” he quoted from the Book of Beginnings. “I dreamed I stood inside a great dark space, jam-packed full of people, all looking up at me; and I was preaching to them. I don’t know who they were, or where I was. I’ve never seen so many people.”

“Nor have I,” May said. “But I suppose you could preach to a great crowd of people in the city of Obann in the Temple. Only, the Temple was destroyed.” She shook her head. “I’ve never been to Obann. Hlah says you never saw so many people in one place or such great buildings—with walls like cliffs, he says. I’d love to see it, someday.”

“I didn’t know there were so many people in the whole world,” Sunfish said. Prester Orth had preached in the great Temple many times, to overflowing crowds, but Sunfish had no memory of that. “I wish I knew the meaning of that dream. It may be that the Lord was trying to tell me something.”

“Oh, well—eat your porridge,” May said. “Sometimes a dream is just a dream.”

But in this case she was wrong.

In Obann, Martis had an audience with Gurun and Obst together. “We can trust the Knight Protector,” Obst said; and they told him how Jack and Ellayne brought Fnaa to be a substitute for the king. But of the king himself they had no news.

“I sent his hawk, Angel, to seek him,” said Gurun, “but she has not returned. I sent two of my Blays to watch over Jack and Ellayne, but they have not returned, either.”

Before he left the city, Martis received a message from the Chief Spy to come and see him. He knew Gallgoid from when they were both in Lord Reesh’s service. He tried to forget the things he knew about him. “He was no worse than I was,” Martis said to himself. But he couldn’t warm to the man.

“You can be here for no other reason than to seek the two children from Ninneburky,” Gallgoid said, when they were alone in his office. “I believe they went to Lintum Forest in search of King Ryons. They were seen to cross the river on the ferry. Shortly afterward two Blays took the ferry, too, sent by the queen, of course.”

“Do you think the king has gone to Lintum Forest?” Martis asked. “Why?”

“South of the river, there’s nowhere else to go. But I don’t know why he went. He went of his own free will, taking his dog with him, and no one saw them go. The queen doesn’t know that I know the boy in the palace is a double. Where he came from, I don’t know! Jack and Ellayne brought him, and that’s all I know. It’s a perplexing situation.”

Lintum Forest, Martis thought: Ryons had come to Obann from there. He might have been happy to go back.

“The king is better off, out of the city,” Gallgoid said. “Obann is full of treason. To what depth, I haven’t yet discovered.”

Martis nodded. “There is a sham prester in Cardigal,” he said, “preaching the Thunder King’s New Temple.”

“Of which Lord Reesh was meant to be First Prester.”

“This is a treason with deep roots,” Martis said.

“The people want the Temple,” Gallgoid said. “That was what they knew. They’re afraid to carry on without it—never mind what Obst says about a temple to the Lord made without human hands, inside the human heart. The people want a building they can see.”

“And the Thunder King has built them one,” said Martis, “which he will give them, if only they submit to him. Very clever. Nasty.”

“The city might have risen against the king by now,” Gallgoid said, “only the people are restrained by their love for Gurun. She prays for them. She’s young. She stands for the new temple in the heart—when they see her and hear her, then they’re more willing to believe in it. She’s the great obstacle between the plotters and their ambition.”

“Then guard her well, Gallgoid.”

The spy smiled coldly. “With my life and the lives of all my agents, Martis! She is guarded better than she knows.”

It struck Martis as ironic that the queen’s safety should depend on such a man as Gallgoid—once upon a time, the slimiest of Lord Reesh’s servants. “But was I any better?” he asked himself. He had to admit he wasn’t.

Late that morning, with Lintum Forest plainly in sight in all its green vastness, Angel the hawk decided to come down. The man and the giant bird were no threat to her master. The dog’s acceptance of them proved it, and Angel trusted the dog.

She flew a little ways ahead of them and then circled down, crying out to tell Ryons she was coming. She landed on an inkbush and called to him. The dog barked, but only once; he recognized her right away.

“There’s that hawk—” Perkin started to say. But Ryons cried, “Angel!” And just like Gurun and Chagadai—keen hawkers from opposite ends of the world—taught him, he held up his forearm and whistled. Angel came to him and settled on his arm.

“This is my hawk!” he beamed at Perkin. “Angel, have you followed me all this way from Obann? How did you know where to find me?”

In the language of hawks she tried to tell him that Gurun had sent her, but of course Ryons couldn’t understand that language. Nor did Perkin.

“That’s a wise bird you’ve got there, Majesty,” said Perkin. “She probably recognized you days ago, but didn’t come down because of me and Baby. Well, it’s fitting that a king should have a hawk, along with his hound. But you should also have a noble steed.”

“I’m not much of a rider,” Ryons said. He stroked Angel’s breast with a finger, which she liked. “But I’m so glad Angel’s here! I missed her, Perkin. I always fed her by hand, every day.” Indeed, he missed all the true friends he’d left behind in Obann, and only just now realized how much.

“Another day, and we’ll enter Lintum Forest,” Perkin said. “King Ozias was born and raised there. It ought to be a friendly place to you.”

As a slave of the Wallekki, who liked to stay on the move, Ryons had never been in any one place for long. He’d been in Obann for a year, which was the longest he’d been anywhere, but the city didn’t feel like home to him. He’d stayed in the forest for just a matter of weeks, and he’d been happy there. He expected to be happy there again.

“Let’s get going,” he said. “I can hardly wait to see Helki!”

Chapter 21

A Change in Plan

As they rested during the heat of the day, in a dry gully that Wytt had found for them, Jack and Ellayne were having a theological argument. It was hard for them because neither had ever studied theology. Nor were they aware that prophets and wise men had had the same argument centuries ago.

“We saw what we saw,” Ellayne said, and not for the first time. “And all those people saw it, too. You have to believe your own eyes.”