The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (21 page)

“Yes—they did act like they were good and scared,” Ellayne said. Her thought raced ahead of her words; she had to pause a moment. “That stuff about him being the adopted son of a chief—that wasn’t what he really said. He told us a lie. Those men were afraid of him—and we probably should be, too.”

“I’d like to know what he had in his pocket.”

Ellayne couldn’t imagine how anything you might have in your pocket could make light stream out of your hand. But there were magical implements in stories—things like wands and swords and cauldrons—so she supposed Noma might have something like that, only smaller. Something that would make six armed men afraid of one little fat man; and she didn’t like the thought of that.

Wytt traveled under Noma’s wagon, catching and eating some of the many insects stirred up by the ox’s hooves and the wheels. Sometimes he rode, but only for the novelty of it. To him it was no hardship to scamper all day in the shade beneath the wagon.

Wytt knew Noma was a bad man and a liar. He couldn’t speak Wallekki any more than the children could, but he understood the sense of things that people said, regardless of what language they spoke. When Noma spoke to the bandits, he told them he was a big man, bigger than the six of them, and he could kill them if he liked; and fear seeped out of their pores so Wytt could smell it. Wytt understood the questions asked by Jack and Ellayne and knew that Noma’s answers were lies. Why the two of them wished to travel with such a man was more than Wytt could fathom.

That night after Noma was finally sound asleep, Wytt woke the children. At his urging they stole away some distance from the dying campfire.

“What is it, Wytt?” asked Ellayne.

He made fierce jabbing motions with his sharpened stick and chattered furiously, struggling with himself not to make too much noise. “The man sleeps—now we kill him!” was his message. “We don’t, then sometime he kill you. Big men on horses ran away from him, but you stay. Not safe.” That was what he said, without the use of speech as we know it.

“We don’t want to kill him!” Ellayne answered—almost too loud. “We don’t want to kill anybody!”

“No, we don’t,” Jack agreed. “But we do want to find out what he has in his pockets! Maybe now’s as good a time as any to conk him on the head and search his things.”

“What do you mean, conk him on the head? What if you conk him just a little bit too hard—or not hard enough? What are you thinking?”

“Well, how else are we going to get into his pockets?”

“Jack, we can’t just rob the man!” Ellayne felt like shaking him.

Wytt interrupted. “Too much talk!” he growled.

“Wytt’s right,” Jack said. “And so are you, but I can’t help it. What else can we do? Noma is a servant of the Thunder King. He preaches lies. He’s either a magician or he pretends to be, to fool people and to stir them up against King Ryons. You can wait here if you don’t want any part of this. But I’m going back to do what has to be done.”

Jack’s pulse raced, and something in his stomach curdled. He’d never done a thing like this before: never even thought of it. He remembered stories in which one glance from a wizard’s eye turned someone into stone, or worse. What if Noma suddenly opened his eyes and put a spell on him? Jack didn’t believe in magic, but at the moment, he had his doubts.

Noma lay sleeping by the campfire, on his back, with his head pillowed on his bedroll. “Martis or Helki or Baron Bault could do this,” Jack thought. “And so can I!”

He had a rounded stone in his hand. If it were any bigger, he’d need two hands to hold it. He was concentrating so hard on what he had to do that he didn’t know Ellayne had followed him back to the campsite and was standing close by, watching him.

“Lord,” he prayed silently, as Obst had taught him to, “if what I do is wrong, forgive me! I’m trying to do right.”

He sank slowly to his knees, raised the stone, and with both hands drove it into Noma’s forehead.

The “thunk!” it made when it hit almost made him faint. Noma jerked up and fell back down, gurgling deep in his throat. Blood flowed from his broken skin. Jack’s hands lost their grip on the stone and dropped it. He found it hard to breathe.

“Did you kill him?”

Ellayne’s voice startled him back to his senses, but Wytt answered first: “No, not dead. Listen—he breathes. I hear his heart still beating.”

“Search his pockets, and let’s get out of here!” said Ellayne.

“Climb into the wagon and empty out his bags,” Jack answered. “See what you can find.”

Noma had two pockets in his britches, one on either side. They were deep pockets. Fighting off a pang of nausea, Jack reached into one. The body was warm. Noma made a horrible snoring noise. Jack found some matches and a broken comb in one pocket; but in the other his fingers made contact with something round and hard and flat. He pulled it out.

What was it? About the size of a gold coin—the coin called a “spear” because it was stamped with the image of a spearman—it was much lighter. It weighed almost nothing. Jack had never seen anything like it; and the fire was all but out, and the moon wasn’t much help, so he couldn’t get a good look at it. But it felt very strange to the touch: too light for any kind of metal, perfectly stiff, and perfectly smooth all over except for some tiny round projection in the middle. It fit easily into the palm of one’s hand, and Jack was sure this was the object he’d been looking for.

“I think I’ve got it!” he called to Ellayne. She climbed out of the wagon.

“Nothing in his bags but spare clothes and things,” she said. “What have you got?”

“I don’t know. It’s too dark to see,” Jack said. “Maybe there’s writing on it, or a sign. Wish I had some light.”

He was feeling the object all over with his thumbs and fingers; and just as he finished speaking, light burst from it.

Ellayne squealed and jumped a step back. Jack dropped the item. It lay on the ground and a white beam of light poured out of it.

Jack felt as if he’d accidently grabbed a rattlesnake. He didn’t dare touch the thing again. But Wytt wasn’t afraid. He stood over it and sniffed it—then, before Ellayne could stop him, picked it up.

“Don’t touch it, Wytt!” she cried.

“Not afraid. Nothing to hurt,” he answered. To him the light-giving talisman was fascinating, nothing more: a very nice thing, he thought. “Very pretty light,” he said.

Seeing Wytt take no hurt from it, Jack finally reached out and cautiously took it from him. The light was too strong to be allowed to shine right into one’s eyes for more than a moment or two, but the object hadn’t gotten very hot. How could all that light be coming out of such a little thing, and why wasn’t it burning hot?

“Be careful!” Ellayne said.

“I don’t think it can hurt us,” Jack said. And then, without meaning to do anything in particular, he pressed the tiny projection in the center of the object—and instantly the light vanished. Without a sound, without a puff of smoke, it just went out.

“What happened? Why did it go dark?”

“I don’t know!”

Noma groaned, and tried to roll onto his side. He didn’t succeed, but that was enough to remind the children of their danger.

“We can’t stay here,” Ellayne said.

“So who wants to?” Jack turned to Wytt. “Lead us away from here, Wytt—to someplace where he can’t find it.”

Wytt peered closely at the prone body. “He will hunt you sometime. Not dead yet.”

“We aren’t going to kill him, Wytt,” Ellayne said. “Just find us someplace safe.”

The Omah whistled loudly. “Come—this way!”

As they followed him into the night, Jack carefully put the light-giver into his own side pocket and wadded his handkerchief on top of it so that it couldn’t fall out.

“Aren’t you afraid it’ll burn a hole in your leg?” Ellayne asked. “Trust me, Jack—there’s no telling what a magical thing like that might do.”

“There’s no such thing as magic,” Jack said, and tried very, very hard to keep believing it.

Chapter 25

An Ancient Vision, and a New One

Back in Obann, in his private chamber within the seminary library, Preceptor Constan sat as still as stone. Occasionally one of his eyelids flickered. He hardly seemed to breathe.

On his desk before him, half-unrolled, lay one of the Lost Scrolls discovered by those children from Ninneburky in the ruins of the First Temple, in Old Obann across the river. Constan and his scholars were copying these: first an exact copy, in the original paleography and language, and then another copy in the script in use today. After that, the seminary planned to translate the text into modern Obannese. The language had changed much since King Ozias’ time, ages ago.

According to what was written in the scrolls, Ozias returned to Obann as an old man, made his dwelling in the ruins, and there received the Word of God, which he wrote down in his own hand. Many of the scholars didn’t believe that. Many were their theories as to who else might have written them and why. But Constan believed. He hadn’t, at first.

A student came into the room and spoke to him. Constan didn’t answer. Used to his master’s ways, the young man gently but firmly jogged his shoulder.

“Preceptor, it’s almost dinnertime.”

Constan looked up.

“Go to the palace,” he said, “and find Obst. Tell him to come here at once. I need him.”

“But your dinner—”

“At once,” Constan said. The young man shrugged and went to do his bidding.

How long he waited for Obst, Constan didn’t know. It might have been some minutes, or it might have been hours. The preceptor had his mind on more important things, and however long he waited, he never stirred from his chair. Nor did he hear Obst when he came in and spoke his name.

“You sent for me, Preceptor. What is it?” Obst said. He found a stool and sat down. The noise it made scraping the floor caused Constan to look up at him.

“I have read something in this scroll,” said Constan, “and I want you to hear it. Listen:

“‘On the fourth day of the fifth month the word of the Lord came to me. And He said, Ozias; and I said, Here I am. And the Lord said, Behold, I have ordained destructions for this people of Obann, the Tribes of the Law, which law they break and treat as nothing; but the time will come when they will have learned all they can from chastisement and destruction. And the wise will keep this wisdom in their hearts, but my people will not hear them, nor cease from their iniquities. Nevertheless, when I have satisfied my wrath, I will save them.

“‘In those days I shall raise up my righteous servant, and he shall grow up as a branch from the root of Ozias the king; and he shall bear the iniquities of all the sons and daughters of men, and all the nations. For their sake he shall be broken like a reed and poured out like water, so that the law might be fulfilled; but I shall raise him again, and he shall reign over all my people forever. By him shall the children of men be reconciled to me, and I will be their God in the midst of them forever.

“‘And I said, When, O Lord? And the Lord said, I have determined the time from the beginning of the world, before I made the heavens and the earth; but it is not for any man to know the time. And I swooned in my bed, and was as a dead man for three nights and three days: for the spirit of the Lord exhausted my flesh.’”

Constan looked up from the scroll. “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”