The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (22 page)

“He knows how to find food and water, and he’s learned how to make a fire,” Helki said, “and Cavall and Baby are with him to protect him. Besides, he’s already camped a few nights by himself.”

“Yes,” said Chagadai, “but you always knew where he was!” On those occasions Helki had followed Ryons without the boy knowing it, and made sure that he was safe. “He’s only a little boy,” said Chagadai.

Helki looked at the old Ghol’s face, scarred in many battles, and grinned at him. “You’re getting as sentimental as an old grandmother, aren’t you?” he said. “In times like these, some little boys have to grow up in a hurry—especially if they happen to be kings. But I tell you our boy is perfectly safe out there.”

“He is our father,” Chagadai said. “We live to protect him.”

“If he’s not back by noon tomorrow, I’ll track him down. But he’s already more at home in this forest than you horse-archers will ever be.”

Chagadai didn’t like it, but the bond of friendship between him and Helki was too strong to allow an argument.

“I’m a little bit worried about him, too,” Obst confided in Helki, as the afternoon gave way to twilight.

“You of all people!” Helki said. “Haven’t you always told me the king is under God’s protection?”

“And so he is,” said Obst. “But I’m an old man, and I worry.”

“Save your worries for when we stand before the walls of Silvertown,” Helki said. “That’s when I plan to start worrying.”

Ryons had never run so far in all his life. But before he was too tired to run another step, he was suddenly aware that night had fallen and it was too dark to run.

Baby stood beside him, panting. More to reassure himself than Baby, he patted the rough plumage. The giant bird lowered its head to be petted.

“Where are we?” Ryons wondered. “It’s going to be mighty hard to make a proper camp, it’s so dark.”

Cavall came back, head hung low, tongue lolling, which could only mean he’d lost the doe. Ryons gave the loose skin on the nape of his neck a friendly squeeze.

“It’s all right,” he told the dog. “We did our best. If you couldn’t catch that doe, then no dog could have caught her.”

He whistled for Angel. The hawk came down immediately and landed on his outstretched arm. He stroked her breast with a finger, as Helki had taught him to do.

“If only you could talk, you could tell us how the doe got away.” But he wouldn’t have believed what Angel would have said, if she could answer.

“We have to find a place to settle down for the night,” Ryons said. “We’ll go back home tomorrow.” He wasn’t worried about being lost. Cavall would find the way to Carbonek.

He wished now that he’d given up the chase while there was still light enough to gather firewood and find some water. But something told him he couldn’t have given it up, even if he’d wanted to.

Cavall stopped panting and turned back to face the way he’d come. Ryons saw his ears go up and was surprised that he could see it. Something had happened to the darkness, and it was less than it had been a moment ago. And he thought he heard men’s voices.

“Is that a campfire over there?” he wondered. Yes, it must be. He saw it flickering among the trees.

If those voices belonged to a band of outlaws that Helki hadn’t quelled yet, this was a dangerous place to be. They would have to get away from there. But before Ryons could decide how to retreat, the voices broke into a song.

“Praise God who maketh kings and lords

“To rule by His decree,

“Whose righteousness, in heaven and earth,

“Is plain for all to see!”

That was a hymn, a Sacred Song. He recognized it from Obst’s teachings. Outlaws wouldn’t sing a Sacred Song. Would they?

“King Ryons!” A man’s voice rang out. “Have no fear of us! Come near, come here!”

Ryons was afraid, no doubt of it. How could the man know who he was? But his feet were already taking him slowly toward the fire. He couldn’t help himself. Besides, he felt he would burst if he didn’t see who the man was. Cavall and Baby followed, the hound oddly silent.

Ryons emerged from the woods into a wide clearing, and before him rose a great hall of timbers, with its whole front open to the air and an enormous fire burning somewhere inside it. Where the roof came to a peak, over the exact center of the entrance, was mounted a great set of flaring antlers that gleamed as if dipped in molten gold.

Men were in the hall, maybe two dozen of them, all seated around a wooden table heaped with gold and silver drinking vessels and roasted joints of venison piled high on silver trays. Ryons’ mouth watered at the aroma, and his empty stomach rumbled. Beyond the men, at the far end of the hall, burned a roaring fire in a stone fireplace as big as a house.

One man stood below the antlers, waiting for him—a red-haired, red-bearded man, a stocky, sturdy man who wore a plain woodsman’s tunic, but a fillet of bright gold around his brow.

“King Ryons, welcome!” he said. Ryons had never seen such a bright, beaming smile in all his life. “Join us, come in and rest. Take food and drink with us, the kings of Obann.”

And all the men around the table rose to greet him. Indeed they must be kings, Ryons thought—what else could they be? They were all lordly men, but a few stood out among the others: a giant of a man, with a curling, coal-black beard and a mighty chest sheathed in a coat of shiny brass scales; a lean man, ancient, with hair and beard whiter than the whitest wool, bent under the burden of his years, but with merry blue eyes that twinkled at Ryons; a little man in a scarlet cape and tunic, with a high crown on his head that flashed with rubies. Jewels of every brilliant kind you could imagine studded their belts and the scabbards of their swords.

But the red-haired king had no jewels on his person, his only weapon a serviceable woodsman’s knife like Helki’s—no jewels, but a pair of bright green eyes that were better than jewels, and a smile that made Ryons want to run into his arms and embrace him. And that was just what he did.

“There! There’s my boy!” The man scooped him up and whirled him round to face the others. Cavall barked—but with excitement, not alarm. “See, you kings, my brothers—this is my son, King Ryons!”

“All hail King Ryons!” cried the kings, and the forest rang with it.

The night passed in blissful confusion. Angel perched on the hall’s antlers. Baby stalked back and forth outside the hall and wouldn’t come in. But Ryons was given space at the table, and draughts of cold water that set the roots of his hair and the soles of his feet to tingling, and juicy meat. They fed Cavall, too. And the kings introduced themselves by name, but Ryons had never heard those names before and couldn’t keep track of them. It hardly mattered. He, who had never had a house or family, now seemed to have both. The red-bearded king called him his son, and in some way Ryons couldn’t begin to understand, it was so.

Nothing could have been more confusing. Ryons’ head swam. He was immersed in joy. There were no words for it; there weren’t even thoughts for it.

And in the middle of it all, he fell asleep.

The next thing he knew, the sun was beating on his face and Cavall was nudging him with his cold nose to make him wake up.

Ryons sat up with a gasp.

He was in the middle of a clearing, alone except for Cavall and Baby. There was no great hall, nor any sign of one, no hint of wood smoke in the air. And no kings.

Ryons looked all around. Had they carried him to this place while he slept and left him? He couldn’t believe the red-haired man would have done that. But where was the hall? Where were the kings? Men who wore whole treasuries’ worth of jewels on their persons wouldn’t go wandering around the forest.

Angel cried from a tree and swooped down to make sure Ryons was unharmed. Gripping Cavall’s fur with one hand, Ryons stood up, and was surprised because he wasn’t stiff at all and was perfectly steady on his feet.

“We’d better get home,” he said, “or they’ll all worry about us.”

He knew what it was to wake from a vivid dream, half-unsure whether it had really happened. This was different. He should have been ravenously hungry, but he wasn’t. He remembered all the kings’ faces and their voices and their song. He couldn’t remember their names, but he remembered what they wore.

“It really happened, Cavall,” he said. “But what became of the hall, that beats me.”

It was early in the morning, and Cavall knew the way to Carbonek. It wasn’t nearly so far as it seemed it ought to be. The white doe must have led them around in circles all the afternoon. Shortly after the noon hour, Ryons and his companions returned to Carbonek.

The Ghols swarmed around him, their questions as thick as a volley of arrows. He couldn’t understand a word they said when they spoke that fast. Helki and Obst and Chief Shaffur came up before he could answer any of them.

“What’s all the fuss?” Helki said. “The boy’s been camping in the woods and now he’s back. You Ghols carry on too much.”

Chagadai grinned. “Our father likes to give his children fits!” he said. “If you were my grandson, Father, you’d get a whipping.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Ryons said, finally getting a chance to get a word in. “Something happened.”

“So have a bite to eat and tell us all about it,” Helki said. He always wanted to know everything that happened in his forest.

So Ryons told them about the hunt of the white doe and the great hall in the forest and the kings. Helki laughed.

“Ha! So you chased the white doe, eh?” he said. “Well, something strange is bound to happen to anyone who does that! Or so my mommy told me, when I was a tyke.”

“But a great hall where kings feasted?” Obst said. “The kings of Obann, dead and gone these countless years? I’ve never heard that story.”

“What’s that in your hair?” Shaffur demanded, pointing. Ryons reached up, expecting to find burrs or half a wasps’ nest, but couldn’t feel anything but hair. The men all stared at him.

“Let me see,” said Obst. “Hold still, my lord.”

Gingerly he ran his fingers through Ryons’ hair. Everyone could see what he was doing, except for Ryons himself.

“It’s a red streak in his hair,” Obst said at last. Ryons’ hair was dark brown, almost black.

“Which means,” said Chagadai, “that this adventure really happened? The king’s story is true?”

“King Ozias was a red-haired man,” Obst said, so softly you could hardly hear him. “I think,” he mused, and hesitated. “I think, my lord, that by the special grace of God, you have acquired the mark of King Ozias, your ancestor.”