The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (23 page)

“Ozias is dead,” Helki said. “The dead don’t come back to feast in halls and play tricks with a boy’s hair.”

“I haven’t said they do,” Obst answered. “But God may give a boy a special vision—and change the color of a few hairs on his head.”

Helki went out with Cavall and tracked Ryons’ trail back to the clearing where the kings’ hall once stood. He returned the next morning.

“There’s nothing there,” he said. “But that’s where Ryons went, and that’s where he stopped. So I guess those stories of the white doe were true—at least in a way. But I don’t see why God should do a thing like that,” he said to Obst. “We already knew our king was of the blood of King Ozias.”

“We did,” said Obst, “but now King Ryons knows it, too—for a certainty. And he’ll never forget it.”

“May it help us somehow,” Helki said, “when we go to Silvertown.”

CHAPTER 23

At Rest in a Gully

Ellayne and Enith fled without knowing where they were going—away from the outlaws’ campsite, that was all that mattered.

In a matter of minutes they were out of the woods and into the open. They couldn’t find a road. Ellayne had a vague idea of where the river lay, but no way to know the right way back to Ninneburky. It couldn’t be far: Nelligg had been there and back within a single day. But even more important than finding Ninneburky was to find a place to hide before Ysbott’s men recovered from their panic and came looking for them.

Enith was just about worn out when they came upon a gully, at the bottom of which flowed a lazy trickle of a stream.

“We’ll have to stay here for the night,” Ellayne said. “Go on, Enith, down you go. I’ll help you.”

At last they were at rest, catching their breath. The gully was deep enough so that no one would see them from the level ground above. In the morning they could at least follow the stream back to the river, Ellayne thought. If all else failed, they would still find the river.

“Ellayne!” said Enith, when she could finally speak. “What was it? Was it really witchcraft? Are you a witch?”

“No! Of course not.” Ellayne couldn’t help laughing a little. “No, Enith, it wasn’t magic. It was just a thing—some little thing left over from the ancient times. There are lots of things like it, but this one was special because it worked. At least it used to work; I don’t know what happened to it tonight. It never did anything like that before. It just went wild and destroyed itself. Scared the pants off me!” It seemed incredible, now, that the relic hadn’t burned off her hand or made her deaf or blind for life. It seemed to her that she’d had an extremely narrow escape. She wondered what Martis would have to say about it, if she ever got the chance to talk to him.

“Where did you ever get a thing like that?” Enith said.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Ellayne! You can’t just go on keeping all these secrets from me! Now I’m in trouble with you, and I don’t even know what it’s about. It’s not fair!”

She was quite upset—not that you could blame her, Ellayne thought. And it was unfair not to tell her anything at all.

“Look, Enith,” she said, “it’s dangerous to know about these things and even more dangerous to have one. You saw what that little thing I had could do, before it went crazy. There are some people who know about these things and who will kill to get them. Me, I don’t even know what to call them.”

“You’re not telling me the half of it,” Enith said. “If I’m going to have to sleep in a gully all night instead of in my bed, I’d at least like to know why.”

“Oh, mercy, Enith—it’s a blistering long story!”

“I don’t have anything else to do but listen to it.”

Ellayne struggled with herself. She couldn’t tell Enith the story of Bell Mountain—how she and Jack climbed it and rang the bell and everyone in Obann heard it. She couldn’t tell her about King Ozias’ scrolls, which she and Jack and Martis found in the cellar beneath the cellar of the ruined Temple. Those secrets had to be kept, no matter what. Her father and Obst and Martis said so, and Ellayne believed them. She couldn’t blab it all to Enith. And yet she owed Enith something: for a city girl suddenly snatched up by bandits, she hadn’t done too badly.

“Enith,” she asked, “do you believe in God?”

Enith shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know—I guess so. Doesn’t everybody? But what’s God got to do with it?”

“Everything,” said Ellayne.

Jack and Martis were on their way to Obann City. Goryk Gillow’s carriages made good time on the great road that paralleled the river. Flying the flag of truce, they made no attempt to conceal themselves—which puzzled Martis.

“I’m sure King Ryons’ scouts are watching us,” he said. “Soon the baron will have heard about us, too. Either of them could easily capture these two wagons and put an end to Goryk Gillow. He seems to have no fear of that, but he hasn’t said why.” The Dahai guards spoke no Obannese, so Martis could speak freely in front of them.

“If anyone tries to stop them,” Jack said, “they’ll just do to them whatever they did to those Zephites who came to Silvertown. Have you found out how they did that?”

“Oh, I think I know. That’s why we’ll have to escape as soon as we reach Obann,” Martis said. “If we can only get loose in the city, they’ll never find us. I can promise you that.”

Jack nodded. Nobody knew the city like Martis knew it.

No one, that is, but Gallgoid.

Martis knew the streets and alleys of Obann, but under those streets, Gallgoid was superior.

His preparation for the coronation was to explore the cellars and passages under the palace, to find and map the ones that led out of the city, and to what places they led.

Over the centuries, as it grew upward and outward, the palace also put out roots. Most of these were used for some time and then forgotten. Some connected the palace to the Temple, now in ruins. Some ran out to the riverbank. Quite a few of them led only to dead ends. Gallgoid concentrated on those that took you completely out of the city.

He confided in Constan, letting himself into the preceptor’s bedchamber the same night Ellayne and Enith slept in a gully.

“I doubt my servant let you in,” said the preceptor. He was sitting up in bed, with a lamp burning on a nightstand and a little book of prayers in his hand. Most men would have jumped up in alarm when someone opened their chamber door without knocking, in the middle of the night. Constan’s reaction was to pause in reading his nightly devotional.

“I dealt with your locked door without troubling your servant, who is sleeping soundly,” Gallgoid said. “I wish to hide the First Prester in a safe place before Goryk Gillow arrives here.”

“He won’t go,” Constan said. “He has promised to officiate at the coronation.”

Gallgoid chuckled. “A make-believe crown for a make-believe king!” he said. “And if I rightly discern Merffin Mord’s plans, there’ll be a make-believe First Prester, too. We may as well get the real First Prester out of harm’s way.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Gallgoid explained his plan. Constan listened silently, taking it all in.

“You’ll ruin the coronation,” he said, after he’d heard all the details.

“I hope to ruin them all, before I’m done,” said Gallgoid.

CHAPTER 24

How the Army Set Out for Silvertown

“I don’t know which way is Ninneburky,” Ellayne said.

It was the morning after an uncomfortable night in the gully, and no breakfast.

“It can’t be very far away,” Enith said.

“I know. But which way? That’s the question. We don’t know whether the outlaws’ camp was upriver or downriver from the town.”

“So let’s find someone and ask! There must be somebody, somewhere. And I’m hungry.”

“We can at least go back to the river,” Ellayne said. “All we have to do is go north. We can’t miss it.”

They began their trek in search of the river. There was really nothing else to do. It couldn’t be more than a mile or two distant.

“Have you really been to all those faraway places?” Enith asked, harking back to their talk during the long night in the gully. “And did God really send you on those journeys?”

“How else do you think I got back in one piece?” Ellayne said.

“It’s just so strange!” Enith shook her head. “I mean, to think God does things! That He might do anything … I’ve never heard anybody say things like that. Although Grammum says them, sometimes—and she didn’t used to. I mean, to think that God is real! A person—” She shook her head again, unable to complete the thought.

“Jack and I know a hermit, a holy man, who can explain it a lot better than I can.” Ellayne claimed for Obst something he wouldn’t have dared to claim for himself. “He taught us. We were surprised the first time we saw him pray without a prester. He taught us how to do it too—and a lot of other things. And Ashrof, the prester in Ninneburky, says he was right, that it’s all in the Old Books.”

By and by, Enith changed the subject. Talking kept her mind off how hungry she was. “I hope your father hangs that bandit chief!” she said. “I thought he dropped dead when that thing of yours burned itself up, but we didn’t die, so I guess he didn’t either.”

“It wouldn’t be very nice to meet him again,” Ellayne said.

Eventually they reached the strip of wooded land that ran beside the water, except where it was broken up by villages, farms, or cattle fords. They would have dearly loved to find a village or a farm, but they seemed to be in an area where no one lived. They arrived at the river a bit before noon and drank the water.

“If we stay close to the river, sooner or later we’re bound to meet somebody,” Ellayne said. “In the meantime, we can eat. Do you see those weeds, the ones floating just over there? We can pick them and eat the stalks. They don’t have much of a taste, but they won’t make us sick. Later maybe we can find some blackberries.”

Enith was dubious about the water-weeds, but after she saw Ellayne eat a handful of them, she was too hungry not to join in. At least these filled your belly, she thought.

Enith happened to look up. “Here comes someone now,” she said, pointing. Some hundred yards away, a man was walking rather erratically along the riverbank.

“Oh! It’s him!” Ellayne grabbed Enith’s arm and yanked her up. She pulled Enith after her into the shelter of the trees and forced her down behind some bushes.