The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (40 page)

Fnaa and Prester Jod, Gurun and Uduqu, would travel to the palace in the prester’s coach. Jod’s grooms were busy now attaching bright red plumes to the two black horses that would draw the coach, and his brawniest footmen would go before it to clear the way.

Jod put on his formal prester’s robes and had Fnaa and Gurun attired as brilliantly as his ample wardrobe would allow. But Uduqu flatly refused to wear anything but his own stained deerskin leggings. It was only with difficulty that they could get him to don a plain white cotton shirt.

“An Abnak in those fancy clothes?” he said. “Everyone would laugh at me! Besides, I don’t want to be stuck in tight clothes if I have to swing this sword.” He meant the huge sword once owned by Shogg the giant. With it Uduqu had famously cut in half two Heathen warriors with a single blow.

“Let me hold it!” Fnaa said, as one of Jod’s maids dressed him in a black silk doublet.

“Go on,” said Uduqu, “this blade weighs more than you do. And it’s taller, too.”

“I sincerely pray that sword will have no occasion to leave its sheath,” Jod said.

“That would be best,” Uduqu agreed, “but all the same, I’d like to keep it handy.”

“It’s getting on toward noon,” Gurun said. She wore now a shimmering white dress, with a girdle of interlaced golden leaves and a sky-blue wrap around her shoulders. A delicate silver tiara confined her fair hair, braided down the back with a scarlet ribbon. “I suppose, Fnaa, that you have had no change of heart?”

“Not me. I’m going to tell the truth and see how they like it.”

Behind him Dakl, still masquerading as his handmaid, shook her head. “You’ll grow up to be a strong-willed man, my son,” she said. It was not necessary to add, “if those people at the palace let you live.”

“My lord, your coach is ready,” announced a servant.

“Bring it around to the front door,” Jod said, “and we’ll all go to the coronation.” That made Uduqu laugh.

Slowly, through the crowded streets, Jod’s coach proceeded to the palace. People cheered them as they passed.

Up on the palace porch, Mardar Zo gingerly set his wrapped box on a little table near the throne. In his ceremonial First Prester’s robes, Goryk Gillow watched silently.

It was to be presented to the king as a coronation gift from Goryk’s overlord, the Thunder King. If all went well, there would be no need to loose its power. But if there was any trouble, Zo would turn that power on the crowd; and all the people of Obann, those who weren’t killed outright, would know their country had a master.

The square was packed with people waiting for their king. Goryk was curious to see him again. He’d met King Ryons twice before—once at the walls of the city, and once inside the palace—when he came to Obann as a herald for the Thunder King. The second time, Ryons’ advisers promised to hang him if he ever came again.

“Well, I’ve come again,” he thought, “and now I’m their First Prester. There’ll be some hangings here, before I’m done.”

The crowd began to rumble. Over the sea of turning heads, Goryk saw the roof of an elegant hardwood coach, a driver in bright livery, and the plumed heads of its horses. Slowly the people edged back to make a path for it.

“Here they are!” said Merffin Mord. “I do wish it’d stop raining.”

Guards backed the crowd away from the palace steps to clear a wide space for the coach. There it clattered to a halt. The driver climbed down and held open the doors.

Jod descended first, in his gold-trimmed robes, and then the savage Abnak with the sword. It cheered Goryk to reflect that his master the Thunder King would wipe the Abnak tribes off the face of the earth.

Gurun came out next. And at the sight of her, Goryk Gillow’s heart seemed suddenly inadequate to keep him on his feet.

He couldn’t breathe. He’d seen her once before, on the walls above the East Gate. That time he’d been afraid of her, not knowing why. But this time he was frozen.

She was no natural creature. Her white garments and her long hair blazed, whiter than any white he’d ever seen. The rain seemed not to touch her. Goryk ground his eyes shut, lest her eyes should meet them, but still her white light thrust against the darkness. Deep, deep, deep inside his soul there was a scream.

The God he had betrayed, defied, and mocked: that God had sent her here to take His vengeance on him. She was His messenger. Goryk trembled from head to toe. Mardar Zo looked up and stared at him, alarmed.

Because his eyes were clenched shut, Goryk didn’t see the daft king hop out of the coach and scramble like a monkey to the roof. But he heard him. Oh, yes—he heard him. The crowd gasped, and then fell silent.

“Listen, all you people! I’m not King Ryons, and I will not wear his crown!

“My name is Fnaa. I look like Ryons, but the real King Ryons is safe in Lintum Forest where these wicked men can’t hurt him. It’s all a trick, and now it’s over!”

You could hear the raindrops fall, each one.

“It’s true!” Jod added, with his voice that could fill the greatest chamber house. “Hear the truth, Obann—this boy is not King Ryons. And those men who would crown him as such are traitors to our God and country!”

A man in the crowd bellowed. “Traitors! Creatures of the Thunder King! Our true First Prester, Lord Orth, lives! He escaped before these men could murder him!” That was Gallgoid, seizing the moment. He’d hardly shouted his last word when his people in the square took up the cry. “Traitors! Murderers!” Others began to take it up, too.

Goryk didn’t hear them. His only impulse was to escape the terrible white lady: to escape from God. With a strangled scream that finally worked its way out, he freed his feet from the stone and fled, moaning, into the palace.

“You’ve said your piece, and it’s time to go!” Uduqu said. He held up his hands and Fnaa jumped down from the coach. Uduqu caught him and swung him safely to the street. “Come on, Gurun, Prester—time to go!”

The crowd milled confusedly. “Traitors! Murderers!” it roared. Uduqu put his shoulder down and headed for the seminary, forcing people out of his way. It was just across the plaza, if only they could get there.

Hand in hand, Fnaa and his mother, Gurun and Jod, followed him. People dropped back when they saw Uduqu’s ferocious tattooed face. Gallgoid and his agents tore men and women out of their way.

“Stop them! Stop them!” cried Merffin Mord, dancing in frustration. The other councilors stood around the empty throne like scarecrows, unable to collect their wits.

And Mardar Zo, seeing the ruin of all their plans, and only one last chance to save them, whisked the cover off his box and opened it.

He lifted the Thunder King’s weapon. It seemed to vibrate in his hands. It had never done that before, but he had no time to wonder about it now.

He aimed it at the roaring mob in the plaza and depressed the lever, as far as it would go, that would unleash the demon that slayed with blinding light and noise that drove men to kill themselves to escape from it. He let the demon loose.

Fnaa heard a sudden hissing sound, like that of a whole lake instantaneously turned to steam, and a blast of furnace-heat smote him in the back.

The Thunder King’s relic, ages old, and never in centuries called upon to function at its full capacity, engulfed the palace in a storm of flame.

Those in the front ranks of the crowd fell dead, the breath seared out of their bodies before they even fell. But the main thrust of the blast blew inward, obliterating the tapestries, devouring the men on the porch without a trace, dissolving the heavy oaken doors. Hellfire in a great gout poured straight into the palace, consuming everything it touched, burning through the walls and ceilings—right down to the cellars, right up to the roofs. Rivers of fire raced into the sky.

The palace burned.

CHAPTER 45

Tidings from the City

Much of Obann burned: most notably the palace, whose very stones burned down to powder. But the fire never crossed the rain-soaked plaza, and the humbler quarters of the city were altogether spared. Before the afternoon was done, the blaze had spent itself. And then it stopped raining.

Gallgoid found Fnaa and the others in the seminary, under Preceptor Constan’s protection. Gurun’s Blays, on guard, were on the point of spearing him before he convinced them otherwise; then they let him in.

“There will never be a better time for all of you to leave for Lintum Forest,” he said. “The city’s in confusion. No one knows what to do. No one is guarding the gates, and people are leaving in droves. I can send a few of my own people with you, and Queen Gurun has her bodyguard.”

“My place is with King Ryons,” Gurun said. “I am ready to go now, Gallgoid.”

“I’ll stay,” said Prester Jod. “Maybe I can help restore some kind of order.”

“We’ll be needed here,” Constan said.

“I want to meet King Ryons—it’s about time I did!” Fnaa said. “I want to go with Gurun.” Dakl, of course, would go with her son.

“I’ve had enough of city life,” Uduqu said. “It’s back to Lintum Forest for me! But what happened to the palace, Gallgoid? All of a sudden the whole place was on fire! What was it?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Gallgoid said; but Jod said, “It was the hand of God, stretched forth in judgment. But I think His mercy has spared much of the city.”