The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (27 page)

Far away, in the hills below the mountains, at about the same time as Perkin was cooking the hare, Sunfish came out of his little cabin and rubbed his eyes. The village was already astir, and May was just coming to wake him.

“Oh,” she said, “you’re up already.”

“I’ve seen something, May. It scared me.”

“What was it?”

“A man, I think. A man with a face of shining gold,” he said.

“That must have been a dream, Sunfish.”

“I don’t think so. I think I was awake!”

She couldn’t calm him herself, so she took him to Hlah; and after Hlah heard what Sunfish had to say, he asked his wife to wake Uwain. May came back with the reciter, and Sunfish told his tale again. He took a deep breath and launched into it.

“This is what I saw, Mr. Uwain. I was lying on my bed, and then I was in some place with a crowd of people. They couldn’t see me or hear me, and I couldn’t speak to them. I wanted to, but no words would come out of my mouth. But they were listening to someone who stood above them, on a rock, I think, and preached to them. Only it was bad preaching.

“When I turned to see who it was, it was a man with a bright and shining golden face and a robe of many colors that kept changing so you couldn’t tell what color it really was. And he had a sword in his hand, a big sword, but very old and rusty. And I think somehow the people believed he was a god, because he told them that he was. And he said, ‘All of you who will not worship at my Temple, which I have built for my brother, the God of Obann, this God will cast them into a devouring darkness.’”

Sunfish paused. His face shone with sweat.

“Surely this was a dream,” said Hlah.

“I don’t know,” Sunfish said, and shook his head so hard that beads of sweat flew off. “When the sun first peeked over the mountains, I found myself back inside my cottage. And then I was sick all over the floor.” He lowered his eyes. “What was it, Mr. Uwain?”

“I thought it best to ask you,” Hlah said, “because you’re a learned man.”

Uwain shrugged. “There is, I think, something like it in the Scriptures—”

Sunfish interrupted him, reciting: “Then I, Ryshah, was sick upon my bed three days, and I could eat no food, although my jailer brought it every day. And when the thing was told to the king, he commanded that I should be let out of prison.”

“Yes,” Uwain said, “yes, that’s one of the verses I was thinking of.”

“That’s why I think it was no dream,” said Sunfish. “But why should God’s spirit speak to me or show me anything? Where was that place, and who was that man with the sword?”

“But that’s no mystery,” Hlah said. He put an arm around Sunfish’s shoulders to comfort him. “That was the Thunder King. He bears the sword of the War God—well, some Heathen nation’s war god. They say he wears a mask of gold, and everybody knows he’s built a New Temple at Kara Karram, east of the Great Lakes.”

“But the Thunder King was killed in the avalanche at the Golden Pass!” Uwain said. “His people pretend he didn’t die, but the Thunder King they follow now is just an imposter in a mask.”

“But you know what the mardars are telling the people in Silvertown,” Hlah said. “They say the Thunder King can’t die.”

Sunfish shuddered. “It’s unspeakably wicked!” he said.

Uwain patted his arm. “Sir, you know the Scriptures better than anyone I’ve ever known,” he said. “You know that God chooses prophets. They don’t choose themselves. I believe you’ve been given a vision of the Thunder King—or, rather, the man who now calls himself the Thunder King, and hides behind a golden mask. I believe the Lord showed you this to remind us of our danger. It’s peaceful, here in the hills; but war could break out again any day.”

In his old life, when he was Prester Orth, Sunfish counterfeited what was meant to be taken for a long-lost prophecy of Batha the Seer, exhorting God’s people to cross the mountains and slaughter the nations of the Heathen. He did this at the bidding of the First Prester, Lord Reesh, and most of the College of Presters believed the prophecy was genuine; but many of them didn’t. As Sunfish, he had no memory of doing this. Orth’s false prophecy had since fallen into some disrepute. But all the presters and reciters in Obann would have been astonished to learn that the author of a counterfeit prophecy had, much against his will, become a true prophet.

“I would rather this new Thunder King came West,” Hlah said, “and that God would bless some lucky Abnak with a chance to take that golden mask and the scalp that goes with it.”

“That may yet come to pass,” said Uwain.

Chapter 32

A Token from the Past

Kwana and his men had decided to spend only one more day at their campsite, sending smoke signals; but by dint of hard riding, Martis found them while they still lingered over their breakfast. They spotted the dust raised by Dulayl’s hooves and reached for their weapons. When they saw it was only one rider, they relaxed.

“Martis comes!” Kwana said, grinning at Ellayne. The men waved a greeting, and the rider waved back.

Ellayne had never been gladder to see anyone in all her life. Martis’ feet were hardly on the ground when she threw herself into his arms.

“I knew you’d come!” she cried. “I knew you’d find us!”

“Oof! You almost knocked me over,” Martis said. Jack was just as happy to see him—maybe even happier—but he couldn’t bring himself to carry on about it like Ellayne. Martis looked at him over Ellayne’s shoulder, reached out, and pulled him into his embrace; and Jack was glad he did.

“You two never make it easy for me, do you?” he said. Once upon a time Lord Reesh sent him forth to kill these children. Now he loved them—he who had never loved anyone before. His heart was full.

“These be the children you look for, Martis?” Kwana said. The joke raised smiles all around. Martis released the children and grabbed the Wallekki’s hand.

“My thanks, my brother!” he said, in the courtliest Wallekki. “My debt to you is the debt between friends, which has no price.” Here followed an exchange of complicated speeches of the kind much prized by the Wallekki. It took some minutes to conclude.

“Where shall we go now, my brother?” said Kwana. “Shall we ride together, or part?”

“I can’t decide until I talk to the children and find out what they were doing out here in the first place,” Martis said. Kwana nodded, and soon led his men out to hunt for food while Martis rested. He had to have a drink of tea, he said, before he could deal with questions and answers.

“You’d better have a good story for the baron,” he said, after his first few sips of tea. “He was in quite a temper when I left him.”

“We can deal with that,” said Ellayne.

“But there’s something else first!” Jack interrupted. “We’ve found something—”

“Found it?”

“All right!” Jack glared at Ellayne. “A man had it, and we took it from him.”

“It’s a magical item!” said Ellayne.

It took time to get out the story in a way that made any sense to Martis. Jack and Ellayne bickered, but neither could have told the story without the other. Wytt came out of hiding and chattered a greeting to Martis, and more.

“What’s he saying?” Martis asked.

“He thinks we’ve been very silly, lately,” said Ellayne.

“Are you going to show me this magical item? Where is it?”

“It’s in Jack’s pocket.”

“Take it out, Jack,” Martis said.

Jack hadn’t touched it for days, not since he saw the face in it.

“Come on—let me see it,” Martis said, as gently as he could. He knew Jack didn’t scare easily, so he respected the boy’s fear.

With great caution Jack reached into his pocket. The cusset thing was still there; he hadn’t been lucky enough to lose it. He used to like the feel of it, the smooth, hard texture. He didn’t like it anymore.

“Here,” he said, offering it to Martis. “Be careful how you handle it. Don’t let the magic out.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic, Jack.”

“I don’t! But this thing’s not natural.”

Martis took the object from Jack’s hand. The moment he touched it, and got a good look at it, he knew.

“This isn’t magic!” he said. “Do you know what this is? It’s a thing—a thing left over from the ancient times. I’ve seen hundreds of things like it. Lord Reesh collected them; he had a whole roomful of them. How do you get it to make light?”

Jack told him. Martis pressed the bump and startled a little when he saw the light.

“Ah! Lord Reesh would have paid his weight in gold for this little bauble!” he said. “He would have killed both men and women to possess it. How he would have loved to clap his eyes on it!”

“You’ve seen something like this before?” Ellayne marveled.

“Not exactly like this one—but many things similar to it. They’re so old, of course, and almost always damaged in some way, so I’ve never seen one that can really do anything, as this one does.” Martis caressed it with his thumb. “Lord Reesh had a thing that made a kind of a clicking noise, if you shook it, and another one that buzzed. That was all they did. But that they did anything at all made them the gems of his collection.”

“So they’re just things?” Jack said. “What were they for?”

“Nobody knows,” Martis said. “But tell me—how do you get it to show you that image of a woman?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t do it on purpose. Just fooling around with it. I didn’t know what was going to happen!” Jack said. Martis so obviously had no fear of it that Jack was quickly losing his. It wasn’t magic, after all! The thought made him feel like dancing a jig. “I think I was sort of rubbing it around the edge.”

“Are you sure it can’t hurt us?” Ellayne asked.

“That it can do anything at all, after passing through the Day of Fire, is a miracle,” said Martis. “It’s a thousand years old, at least. No, I very much doubt it can hurt us. But let me see …”

His fingers massaged the item, rubbing the rim; and suddenly the woman’s face emerged in the midst of it, with the light shining through.

“There it is!” he said. “Someone’s face, who lived during the Age of Empire. I wonder who she was.”

“You mean it’s just a picture? Really?” Jack said.

“But she looks so strange!” Ellayne said. “Her eyes are so enormous, and her mouth’s so small. Did people look like that in ancient times?”

“Yes, it’s just a picture. No, they didn’t really look like this,” Martis said. “Sometimes that’s how they drew faces. No one knows why. You can see faces like this one on some of the other things, or even painted on a wall. Not many of those paintings have survived. Lord Reesh used to study them. He always said that if we studied these remnants long enough, we might learn how to do some of the wonderful things the ancients used to do.”

“The kinds of things that got them wiped out in the Day of Fire?” Ellayne said. “No thanks!”

Martis experimented with rubbing the object in the opposite direction. The woman’s picture disappeared. He pressed the knob in the middle and the light went out.

“The ancients were like gods, Lord Reesh said.” Martis seemed to be talking to himself. “They could do things that men can’t do anymore. Talk to each other while they were miles apart. Travel through the sky like birds and in the sea like fish. Kill their enemies across great distances. Lord Reesh dreamed of being able to do such things again.” He paused. The children waited for more. He continued: “But in their power they were proud and sinful, wicked beyond anything ever seen in the world since then. That’s why God destroyed them, and all their great works with them.” He bounced the little item in the palm of his hand. “Unimportant little things like this are all that’s left. I suppose God left them so that we would know that the writings preserved in the Commentaries are true.”

Jack and Ellayne both nodded. Obst had told them about the Commentaries, which most people called the New Books. They weren’t Scripture, but the presters used them to teach people to honor the Temple, and how to pray in unison and under direction. But there were also Commentaries that were rarely read and poorly understood, even by scholars, because they spoke of events and things whose like could no longer be found in the world, Obst said. The glory of the Empire, and its instant destruction in the Day of Fire, was one of those things.

“Now,” said Martis, “tell me exactly how you came by this treasure.”