The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (10 page)

As horrified as Ellayne was to see Wytt fighting a duel with a giant bird to keep it from devouring Martis, she might have fainted if she could have seen King Ryons.

Many miles away in Lintum Forest, just as Kadmel’s men were chasing off the bird, Ryons knelt over a little spring-fed pool to take a drink of water. No man stood beside him to protect him, but he was not alone. His great dog, Cavall, was drinking, too, noisily lapping water from the pool.

Towering over them stood one of the gigantic killer birds. It watched the boy and the dog for a moment, then dipped its massive hooked beak—

And sipped the water.

This bird, unlike all the others of its kind, had a name: Baby. It had that name because Perkin the wanderer had raised it from a tiny, fuzzy chick that could sit in the palm of one hand. Perkin and Baby protected Ryons on his journey from Obann to the forest, and now they lived with him at Carbonek.

“This bird would give his life for me,” Perkin said, “and he’ll learn to feel the same about you, if you give him time.” So Perkin and Helki had decided that Ryons ought to make friends with Baby and spend time with him alone in the forest. Baby slept at night in a corral, but it was now safe to let him out during the day: he never threatened any of the settlers.

“A king can’t have too much protection,” Helki said. “This forest is your home now, and you have to learn to be at home in it. Who knows? There may come a time when I won’t be able to watch over you. Maybe your Ghols won’t be there, either.”

“Not while any of us live!” said Chagadai, the Ghols’ captain. “Where our father goes, we go.” He said nothing about Ryons having slipped away from them on two separate occasions. Chagadai himself was old enough to be the boy’s grandfather, but it was the custom of the Ghols to call Ryons their father.

“It won’t hurt your father to learn how to be on his own in the woods,” Helki said. Chagadai admitted that this was good sense. From then on, it was decided, Ryons should spend a certain amount of time in the forest by himself, learning the lessons Helki taught him.

They were many lessons—what you could eat, and what you couldn’t, and how to find it; how to move silently and leave no trail to follow, and how to leave a trail your friends could follow; and how to understand what the birds and beasts were saying when they called. The Ghols taught him horsemanship and archery and the art of knife-throwing, and Obst and Perkin taught him how to read and write, using Obst’s book of Scripture as the text. Most importantly, Obst taught him the meaning of the Scriptures.

“In these books,” Obst said, “God speaks to us. To know Him, you must know the Scriptures.”

It was a lot to take in, for a boy—especially for a former slave who hadn’t even had a name until Obst had given him one. But Ryons applied himself to learning, because he knew it would all be useful to him—and besides, he found it interesting. The more he learned, the easier it was to learn still more.

“You have the spirit of a king,” Obst said, “but you’ll need to have the mind of a king, too. You won’t always have advisers you can count on, but God’s word never changes. Remember that.”

As much as he had come to love his teachers and protectors, Ryons also came to love his time alone in the woods. He loved the quiet and the feast that God’s creation laid out daily for his eyes and ears. You could never, however hard you tried, see or hear any more than a tiny fraction of it at a time, and it was different every day. He loved this little pool, with its lush growth of ferns around it and the nearby patch of blackberries; turtles ate there, Helki said, until they got too fat for their shells. He loved being able, now, to find his way there and back alone. Cavall’s quiet companionship delighted him, and he’d long since lost all fear of Baby.

“There are animals in this forest who can hurt you,” Helki said, “but with both Cavall and Baby around, they’ll stay out of your way.”

Above the pool rose an old oak tree, and on it perched Ryons’ hawk, Angel. The Ghols were great hawkers, and they’d taught him how to hunt with Angel, and how to restrain her from hunting except at his command. Helki taught him how to stroke her feathers in the way that she liked best, and Ryons knew the hawk loved him, in her savage little way.

When he was alone in the forest with his hawk, his hound, and Baby, Ryons felt like King Ozias, his ancestor, whose life he was learning from the Scriptures.

These were by far the happiest days of his life.

While Ryons explored the woods, Obst and Helki tried to find the meaning of Jandra’s latest prophecy.

“The Lord wants us to go to Silvertown—that’s clear,” Helki said. “Goryk Gillow holds it for the Thunder King, so I reckon that means a battle. I’d rather do without that! I’ve already seen enough of battles to last me all my days.”

They sat together outdoors at a hand-hewn table, just outside the ruined castle at Carbonek. There wasn’t much the settlers could do with the ancient pile of stone and masonry, although parts of it were usable, but all around the castle, they’d done plenty—planted acres of crops, built cabins by the score, and wooden towers and stockades for defense. The Abnaks in the king’s army ranged throughout the forest, scouting for enemies and bringing home meat, while the king’s Wallekki horsemen and wild Attakotts spent most of their time on the plains, guarding the approaches to the forest. The black men from the Hosa country farmed with a will—it was the occupation they loved best—while the king’s Dahai, Fazzan, and Griffs hunted down and battled gangs of outlaws. And every five days, they assembled for Obst to lead them in prayer and teach them from the Scriptures.

“Now that everything’s going so smoothly,” Helki said, “it seems a shame to march us out to fight a battle. I want to crawl off into a cave and go to sleep for a year!”

“But we must go farther east than Silvertown,” said Obst. “It’s quite clear to me that the Lord wishes His word to be carried across the mountains and into the heart of Heathen country.”

“And how far east would that be?” Helki wondered. “If we’re going to go at all, we’d better get a move on soon. I don’t like it.”

Obst smiled at him. “I don’t think I’ll like it much, either, Helki—it’s no life for a hermit. I was happy in my hermit’s life, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to return to it. As to how far into the East we’ll have to go, the Lord Himself will show us that. But I think our journey won’t end until we stand before the gates of Kara Karram.”

“King Thunder’s castle!” Helki whistled softly. Kara Karram, on the far shore of the Great Lakes, where the Thunder King had built his New Temple! “Does anybody even know how to get there?” he asked.

“The Ghols will know,” said Obst. Their country lay much farther in the East, beyond Kara Karram.

“And what do we do along the way? Fight battles or preach sermons?”

“Both, I would imagine.”

“And at the end of it all,” said Helki, “we’ll see something with our own eyes that we’re never going to forget—that is, if we live to tell of it.”

“Some of us will surely live,” said Obst. And Helki thought, “Which ones?” But he didn’t say it.

Martis was right: Kadmel and his men didn’t catch the snatchers.

“This is the way to Silvertown. That must be where they’ve taken the boy,” Kadmel said, when they came upon the rutted cart-road that Ysbott had followed up to Silvertown. “There’s a Heathen army there, and they’ll have scouts. We’ve gone as far as we can go.”

“You’re going to leave Jack there? You’re going to just leave him?” Ellayne cried. “You can’t! You can’t!”

“This is a patrol, miss, not an army. We’re too few to fight and too many to get past the scouts. We’d only get caught.”

That was true. Ellayne knew it, but wouldn’t accept it. At that moment she would have marched straight up to death, if it would get Jack out of Silvertown. But when she opened her mouth to say more, no words would come out of it. She felt as if she’d just fallen out of a tree and had all the breath knocked out of her.

Martis swung himself down from the back of a trooper’s horse.

“I’ll go,” he said. “One man on foot can get through where twelve on horseback can’t.”

“You’re not fit for it, Martis,” Kadmel said, as kindly as he could. “That blow on the head—”

“From which I have recovered!” Martis finished for him. “I’ve rested all I need to rest, and eaten enough of your rations to get back my strength. I’ll go to Silvertown.”

“And what about me?” Ellayne’s voice broke. “Do you think I can just say ‘Oh, well,’ and go home?”

“You’ll obey your father’s orders, miss,” said Kadmel. “And mine!”

Martis walked up to Aswyll’s horse and held Ellayne’s hand.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll pose as an outlaw and get into Silvertown. There’s always a welcome there for traitors to Obann. I’ll find Jack and get him out. I’ve had harder missions than this. You know that, Ellayne.”

Wytt watched and listened. In his own way, he understood what all these Big People were saying. But when he started chattering, only Ellayne understood him. That was a gift that she and Jack had received at the top of Bell Mountain.

“I go with Whiteface,” he chirped to Ellayne. “We find Boy.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Wytt!” Ellayne said. “Martis can’t understand you when you talk.”

“That’s true,” Martis said. “But I can understand enough so that Wytt could help me get there safely.”

“Then take me, too!”

“I promised your father I wouldn’t let you face any danger,” Kadmel said. “You stay with us, Ellayne.”

“I’ll run away!”

“I’ll tie you up, if I have to.”

“The sergeant’s right, Ellayne,” Martis said. “My best chance is to go alone, with Wytt to help me get there—no scouts will be able to sneak up on him. It’s our only chance. If you went, too, it’d be twice as dangerous, with only half the chance of success—a chance that’s small enough already.”

They were all so right! And it was all so wrong, Ellayne thought.

“Give me a kiss for good luck,” Martis said, “and pray for me.”

In the end he had his way. He and Wytt went off together. No Jack, no Martis, and now no Wytt! When the troop turned to ride back to Ninneburky, Ellayne rode with them, feeling lonelier and more forsaken than she’d ever felt in her life.

CHAPTER 11

How Jack Was Offered a Crown

The morning after the day they first met, Enith went next door to see Ellayne and was told by a maid that Ellayne wasn’t home: “She’s had to go somewhere,” with no further explanation. But in the evening she got the story out of Aunt Lanora, who didn’t always know when to keep things to herself.

“The poor baroness!” And here Grammum would have stopped her, but Grammum wasn’t there, she’d gone out to visit someone, so Aunt Lanora just went on. “First the boy taken by river pirates, or some such—and now Ellayne gone off with soldiers, trying to rescue him! The poor lady can hardly see straight, she’s so upset. And in the middle of the night! To let a young girl like Ellayne go riding with a bunch of troopers, when she ought to be in bed … Honestly, I don’t understand it! I don’t know what the baron could have been thinking, to allow it.”

It certainly was very strange, Enith thought. She couldn’t imagine any girl being allowed to do a thing like that. How could Ellayne rescue anybody? But Aunt Lanora didn’t know about Wytt—he was always careful not to be seen by any of the baron’s household staff—so there was no way she could understand the situation.