The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (24 page)

So Ellayne had to lie there and fume in silence until she fell back to sleep. But for Jack there was no chance of sleep that night. He wondered if he would ever sleep again. He couldn’t say whether he’d been scared half to death or just astonished more than he could bear. It was quite a few minutes before his heart stopped fluttering like a moth in a jar. Belatedly he noticed he was drenched in sweat. Sleep was out of the question.

It wasn’t until later in the morning, when the Wallekki had gone out foraging for food prior to sending up more smoke signals, that Jack had a chance to tell Ellayne what had happened. Kwana had decided to remain at this camp for a few days and give Martis a chance to find them. There was a spring at the far end of the gully, and near it a wild plum tree was in fruit—for hungry men, it was better than nothing. The children undertook to fill all the waterskins while the men hunted for food, and so they found themselves alone at last.

“Well?” said Ellayne. “What was all that yelling about last night? What did you do?”

“I only yelled once,” Jack said, “and I didn’t do anything—not on purpose, I mean. I wanted to make the light, just to see it, because I couldn’t get to sleep. And—”

“And what?”

He hardly knew how to continue. There were some things that just didn’t make sense no matter how you tried to say them.

“Come on, Jack!”

“It’s this thing here.” He patted his pocket, careful not to pat too hard and not daring to take the item out again. He didn’t want to touch it. He might not ever touch it again.

“What about it?” Ellayne stamped her foot.

Jack groped for words, couldn’t find any that would serve, and finally just blurted out: “This thing. There’s someone in it!”

“What?” Ellayne shook her head. What in the world would make him say a thing like that? She couldn’t have heard him right. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw her!” Jack said. “A woman. She’s inside this thing. She looked at me!”

Ellayne took his arms in her hands and squeezed. “Talk sense, Jack—if you can,” she said. “Don’t talk nonsense! Are you all right?”

“Oh, sure, I’m all right—except for being scared out of my skin.” He took a deep breath. “I saw a woman’s face. She was inside the cuss’t thing. She was smiling. She had red lips. Great big eyes: too big. And then she blinked. I know what I saw!”

“But Jack—it’s just a little tiny thing that fits in your hand. There can’t be anybody inside it. They wouldn’t fit! It must have been a picture that you saw. Some kind of picture.”

“A picture doesn’t blink at you,” Jack said.

He felt sick. For two spits he’d crush the filthy thing with a rock, if he dared lay hands on it again. He wished it weren’t in his pocket. All he had to do was close his eyes, and he could see that face again. The woman had eyes twice as big as any normal person’s and lips as red as blood.

Ellayne saw by the lack of color in his face that he really was scared and wasn’t joking. A dread crept over her, starting at her scalp and prickling its way down. “This is what comes of messing around with magic!” she thought.

“You’d better let me see it,” she said.

“I don’t want to see it again. I don’t want to touch it. If you want to reach into my pocket and take it, you can have it.”

“I don’t want it! I just want to see.”

At that moment Wytt joined them, jumping out of cover with a piercing chirp; and Jack jumped an inch off the ground.

“Fry your eyes, Wytt, don’t do that!” he cried.

Wytt glared at him and chattered like a scolding squirrel. The meaning he conveyed was, “Why are you so scared? There’s nothing bad here. Not now. Men will be back soon. What has scared you, Jack?”

Jack tried to explain. “It’s that thing I took from Noma, the thing that makes light. There’s a woman inside it.”

He almost screamed when Wytt leaped up on his leg, took a hold on his belt, and stuck his face in the pocket. Wytt sniffed deeply.

He chirped and twittered, “No one there! Nothing living, nothing breathing.” He gave Jack what looked like a reproving glance and hopped back to the ground. Ellayne believed his report and felt deeply relieved.

“It’s not a real person, Jack,” she said. “It’s something magical, and you’d better not fiddle with it anymore.” And she couldn’t help adding, “Do you believe in magic now?”

He was so mad at her for saying that, he forgot to be afraid.

Chapter 28

How Ryons Was Captured

Lintum Forest is a very great forest. Ryons soon realized that you don’t just walk in and “find Helki.” Indeed, unless you know it well—even Helki didn’t know all of it—you are liable not to be able to find anything, and lose yourself while you’re looking for it.

That was what happened to Ryons and Perkin. After two days of pushing into the forest, they found themselves in the middle of an unknown and uninhabited country, with nothing to see but trees and no idea of how to get back to the edge of the forest. There were paths aplenty, but those had been made by animals without a thought for the convenience of humans. Ryons and Perkin had taken many of them to get to where they were now. A woodsman would have blazed his trail so he could pick it up again, but Ryons and Perkin weren’t woodsmen. Perkin had tried to set a straight course east, but too many of the paths led into bogs and briar patches to allow anything at all like a direct route anywhere.

“In short,” said Perkin, “we’re lost.”

Cavall looked up at him expectantly, wagging his tail. He wasn’t lost. Angel perched up in a tree somewhere; she wasn’t lost either. Baby stood beside Perkin, eyes half-closed. He was lost, but he didn’t care. This morning he’d caught and devoured an opossum, and he was beginning to like the forest.

“I guess we ought to find a nice place and make camp,” Ryons said. “Someplace where there’s water and berries, and where we can set traps or make bows and arrows. Helki always said there’s no reason to go hungry in the forest, but I’m getting pretty hungry.”

“A good idea, Your Majesty. My sling doesn’t seem to be of much use in all these trees.” They hadn’t had any fresh meat since entering the forest.

When he was here last, Ryons held court at a ruined castle where Helki had resettled people who’d been driven off their homesteads by outlaws. It was probably a regular village by now, Ryons thought. He’d love to go back there, but didn’t know how to find us. “Someone in Lintum Forest must know where it is and how to get there,” he thought. But there didn’t seem to be anyone at all in this region of the forest.

By the end of the day they found a place where a spring bubbled up into a pool and a little rill went running off deeper into the woods. Around the pool was well-churned mud: many animals came here to drink. “So the hunting ought to be good, if we can manage it,” Perkin said. There was enough of a clearing for a lean-to and a fire. A blackberry patch grew nearby.

Ryons went to pick some berries. There was nothing else for supper. Cavall followed him, and in a moment or two, began to growl.

“What is it?” Ryons said. Cavall stood stiff-legged, with his nose pointed at skewed and flattened canes with tufts of black hair clinging to the brambles. Ryons called Perkin to come and see.

“I think a bear was here,” the king said. He was sure he’d heard, somewhere, that bears ate berries.

“Whatever has been here, Cavall doesn’t like it,” Perkin said.

“Maybe it isn’t safe for us to camp here?”

The man shrugged. “We’ll have a fire,” he said, “and most animals won’t want to come near it. And I don’t think even a bear would want to tangle with Cavall and Baby together.”

That was true. But there were other predators in this part of the forest, and they were watching.

Not all of the outlaws had been tamed by Helki. Quite a few simply moved beyond his reach. This meant slim pickings for them, having to keep to regions where there were no settlers to be their prey. Like spiders, they preyed on one another.

One of these was Hwyddo, who with his brother and two friends escaped Helki’s rod and fled to the west end of the forest. The spring and the berry patch, where Ryons and Perkin now camped, Hwyddo considered to be his property, in the middle of his territory.

“We can take them now,” whispered Culluch, his brother.

“We can take them whenever we please, as long as the dog hasn’t caught our scent,” Hwyddo whispered back. “I prefer to watch them for a while. The big bird will make a fine feast for us.”

Culluch nodded; he was an expert archer. All four had bows and arrows, but only Culluch could be relied on to hit anything.

The wind was blowing the wrong way, so Cavall couldn’t smell the men in hiding. But Angel saw them. She whistled an alarm. Cavall barked, and Baby crashed through the berry patch and disappeared among the trees.

The outlaws could have shot down Ryons and Perkin in their tracks, but there was no money in corpses. Captured alive, people could always be sold to the Heathen. One of the lads let fly an arrow at Cavall, but missed. It thunked into a tree. Cavall knew all about arrows and made himself scarce, now barking frantically. Hwyddo would have clouted the man who loosed the arrow, but he was out of reach.

“Down!” Perkin said, and pushed the king face-first to the ground. He dove right after him.

No more arrows followed. Disgusted, Hwyddo gave a signal and he and his men stepped into the open. Culluch had an arrow on the string, ready to shoot the dog if it attacked. But Cavall didn’t show himself.

“Stay down, you two, and give up quietly,” Hwyddo said. “We won’t hurt you if you don’t resist.”

“We won’t!” said Perkin. “But we haven’t anything worth stealing.”

One of the outlaws laughed. “Then we’ll just steal you!” he said.

Ryons thought fast. “Sell us to Helki the Rod,” he said. “He’s a friend of ours. He’ll give you a good price! Better than anyone else would give.” Perkin stared at him but didn’t speak.

The one who’d laughed started to say something, but Hwyddo silenced him with a wave of a hand.

“Helki’s sworn to string us up, if he can catch us,” Hwyddo said. “Who might you be, that he’d ransom you and let us go free?”

“They’re a couple of his spies,” said the other man. “I say we ought to hang them from a tree—teach Helki a lesson!”

“Shut up, Hass. You talk too much.” Hwyddo nodded at Ryons. “Stand up, both of you, and tell me exactly who you are.”

In his days as a slave Ryons had learned to lie as naturally as the grass grows. It saved him many a beating. This skill came back to him now.

“I used to live with Helki,” he said. “He was like a father to me. He sent me to Obann City because he thought it’d be a better place for me to grow up, but I didn’t like it so I decided to come back.

“This is Perkin. He helped me to travel safely across the plain country. He wanted to see me safely to Helki and claim a reward, but we got lost.”

“What about the hound,” asked Culluch, “and the giant bird?”

“The hound is mine,” Ryons said, “and Perkin raised the bird from a chick. They won’t give you any trouble. All we want is to get to Helki. I promise he’ll pay you for us and not hang you.”

“You haven’t told me your name, boy,” Hwyddo said.

“It’s Ryons—same as the king.”

“What king?”

Perkin spoke up. “Sir, there is a king in Obann now. Don’t ask me how that came to be, because I don’t know. I suppose it’s because of the war; that’s thrown everything out of kilter. Last summer the Heathen almost took the city. They burned down the Temple. There’s no First Prester now, and the oligarchs have all been killed or run away.”

“We’ve heard nothing of any of this,” Hwyddo said. Looking at the bearded, dirty faces and the ragged, unwashed clothes, Ryons could easily believe that.

“Nevertheless, it’s true,” Perkin said.

The fourth bandit spoke. “So what are we going to do, Hwyddo? Are we going to sell these birds to Helki and take our chances with him? I don’t like it!”

Hwyddo didn’t answer right away. He rubbed his fingers through his beard.

“It’s late in the day,” he said. “Let’s sleep on it and decide tomorrow morning.”