The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  Reesh nodded. His own people told him that the prophets had fallen silent. Not that they were truly prophets—he doubted true prophets had ever existed, Scripture notwithstanding.

  Even so, Tombo had been jailing them and hanging them for months, and that hadn’t stopped them. Yet now they’d stopped. It troubled Reesh. Why should they stop? He didn’t know, and he didn’t like not knowing.

  “Your men have done a very thorough job,” he said.

  “It took us long enough. I can tell you now, my lord First Prester, those prophets were my biggest worry for this city. They might have easily destroyed morale. I wonder what ever got them started.”

  “Delusion,” Reesh said. “Everybody knows the stories from the Scriptures. The lives of the prophets are dramatic. It would appeal to an unbalanced mind to emulate the prophets.”

  “Maybe some of the old prophets had unbalanced minds themselves,” said the judge. “But that’s heresy.”

  Reesh just shrugged.

  “Something’s on your mind, old friend,” said Tombo. “You ought to be feeling cheerful, but you’re not. Your mind is miles away. Is it the bell? Are you still gnawing on that old bone?”

  Yes—that thrust hit close to home. He knows me too well, Reesh thought. I must be careful.

  “You’ve never been easy in your mind about that,” Tombo said. “We all heard it, but very few knew what it was. You knew, or thought you knew. But you didn’t, really, did you? Even now you don’t know what it was, or what it meant.”

  That was true; but it wasn’t the tolling of an unseen bell, so many months ago, that tormented Reesh today. It was the thought that this good friend of his would be killed when he and Prester Orth let the Heathen into the city.

  “They said the bell was ringing in the end of the world,” Tombo said. “Maybe that’s what got the prophets started. But the world hasn’t ended, has it? And soon enough will come the winter; the enemy will run out of food and go back East, and all will be the way it was.”

  Reesh let him talk, while he thought. He’d sent out his best man, Martis, to stop the bell from being rung. But it had been rung, and he’d never heard from Martis ever again.

  What would have happened had Martis succeeded in his mission? Was it the bell that called the Thunder King and brought his hosts across the mountains?

  I’m weary, Reesh thought. So very weary. But now is not the time for rest. He wondered if that time would ever come.

  CHAPTER 22

  Jack and Ellayne Rebel

  The army marched on, following the river. Five hundred of the men from Caryllick stayed with Helki, and three hundred Heathen prisoners swore allegiance to him. All told, he had now nearly four thousand men. He didn’t even know how to count that high, but it was nowhere near enough to lift the siege of Obann, or even disturb it.

  “First we have to get there,” he said to Obst. “After that, who knows? If this is God’s plan, He’ll have to make it work. I don’t even know how we’re going to cross the river.”

  They marched past the ruins of Cardigal. None of its people had come back. There was nothing for them to come back to.

  “I’ve lost count of how many years it’s been since I was in a city,” Obst said. “I studied in the seminary in Obann, you know. I wonder how much it’s changed.”

  “The way you’re going through those scrolls,” Helki said, “it doesn’t look like you’ve forgotten much of what you learned.”

  Obst shook his head. “Oh, no! It’s no great scholarship of mine that permits me to read these ancient writings. Not my doing, but the Lord’s.

  “When I tried to climb Bell Mountain, my strength failed me and I lay down to die. I made Jack and Ellayne go on without me because I knew they had to go on to the top. But I didn’t have the strength to go any farther. Sometimes I think that maybe I did die up there, for a little while.

  “But the bell rang and I woke, and all the strength I ever had was back in me, and I went down the mountain with my heart singing and dancing in my breast. The Heathen found me, and I discovered I could talk to them and understand them when they spoke to me. I speak in Obannese, but they hear my words in their own language!”

  “They think you’re a magician,” Helki said.

  “That’s what they thought at first, but not anymore. Now they understand it’s God’s doing. And by the same miracle I am able to read these scrolls as if I’d written them myself. Don’t ask me to explain it.”

  By night he preached from the scrolls, for now that they were come to light, they must not be allowed to be forgotten. He’d read enough by now to have learned some lessons that amazed him.

  “Many of you have seen strange beasts of late,” he said that night. “They have appeared in all the countries on the earth. Giant birds, too big to fly, stalk the plains of Obann. In Lintum Forest there are animals with the limbs and claws of bears and the heads of horses. I’ve seen them in the early morning and by twilight. There are other creatures, many of them, that don’t have names because no man has ever seen or hunted them before.

  “But hear the Word of God, as He spoke to King Ozias: ‘Think you that I made the beasts in vain? I have many beasts that you know not, neither have you imagined them. For man’s sake I removed them from the lands where man would live, to countries where the sons of men will never dwell. But in the day when I shall show My power, then I shall let man see My beasts, so that he might know the earth is Mine.’”

  Helki thought of the terrible birds, and nodded. Abnaks recalled rare sightings of giant otters in the mountain lakes. More than one of the Wallekki had seen strange creatures in the arid lands, some that ran on four legs, some on two. And a few Fazzan had seen a beast that haunted the fens along the Green Snake River, bulky, huge, with horns and knobs sprouting from its head and great tusks from its jaws. None of these had ever been seen until very recently.

  “I used to believe Ozias’ bell rang to usher in the destruction of the world,” Obst preached. “But now I understand that God is doing new things in the world.

  “It may be, still, that much will be destroyed. But remember what the Lord told Prophet Ika: ‘I shake the earth, and pull down and destroy, so that the things that cannot be shaken nor pulled down shall be known to you.’ Let us rejoice and pray.”

  In Gilmy the townspeople lent Martis and the children a house whose rightful owners had fled into the west. To Jack it seemed as good as, and maybe a little better than, Van’s house, where he lived in Ninneburky. To Ellayne it seemed not much better than a tool shed. Martis went to work with the town’s men, digging a moat around the town. When it was finished, they would be able to fill it almost instantly with water from the river.

  “Remember,” Martis cautioned the children, “not a word about who we are or what we’ve done! The Temple’s spies are everywhere, and Lord Reesh has not forgotten you. I’m just a humble refugee from the hill country, and you’re my grandsons.” He kept Ellayne’s hair cut short to disguise her as a boy, and called her Layne.

  That first day he went off to work and left them alone was tedious, and the second even more so. Most of the children in the town had been evacuated, and there was nothing much to see or do.

  “If we stay here for the rest of the summer, I’ll go crazy,” Ellayne said. “After all we’ve done, you’d think we deserved better.”

  “Well, we don’t have anything more to do,” Jack said. “It was my dreams that sent us to Bell Mountain, and the little girl who sent us to Obann for the scrolls. I guess we’ve done everything God wanted us to do.”

  “So we just do nothing for the rest of our lives?”

  Jack shrugged. “Life is not a storybook,” he said. “People don’t just go around having one adventure after another. I bet most people never have any adventures at all.”

  “I’d still rather be with Obst,” Ellayne said. “I want to see what happens! Staying here would be like being in a story and then getting dropped out of it before it’s over.

/>   “And what about poor Wytt? Do you think he likes having to hang around inside this hut all day? Have you thought about him?”

  Well, no, Jack hadn’t. Actually Wytt stole out at night and had his own adventures, whatever they might be. Of course there were none of the little hairy people living in Gilmy, inhabited as it was by human beings. But Wytt hadn’t complained.

  “What we ought to do,” Ellayne said, “is sneak out of here while Martis is at work and see if we can find the army. I don’t think they’ll send us back, once they realize we’ve made up our minds to stay with them.”

  “The army’s on the other side of the river, pea-brain.”

  “So? It’s going to Obann, isn’t it? Sooner or later they’ll have to cross to this side. They might’ve even done that already.”

  Jack didn’t know how to explain why he didn’t want to chase the army, after Helki had ordered them to stay in Gilmy. He’d already run away from home, and Gilmy wasn’t home. It wasn’t because he was afraid of making Helki angry, or Obst. There was something about the idea that didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt quite wrong—but not wrong in the way that disobeying Helki would be wrong.

  “What about Martis?” he said. “Have you thought about him?”

  “Oh, I know he’ll come after us,” Ellayne answered, “and probably catch us, too. But then what? I don’t think he’ll make us come back here. He’d have to tie me up and carry me, and I don’t think he’d do that. If we leave right after he goes to work in the morning, we’ll have a whole day’s start on him. By the time he catches up to us, we might be too far to go back. It’s worth a try. Anything is better than staying here doing nothing.”

  “I just don’t think we should,” Jack said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared! I’m a girl, and I’m not scared. But if you are, you can just stay here, then. I’m going.”

  She worked on him for hours, and before the afternoon was over, he gave in.

  “Fine!” she said. “And now let’s pack our things.”

  Ryons and Cavall wandered the plain south of Obann—how far south, Ryons didn’t know. The city might be hundreds of miles distant, or it might be just over the horizon. He met no one who would tell him which.

  Cavall found water for them, caught rabbits, and once chased off a couple of undersized wolves. Ryons talked to him all day long, and also practiced praying. Just talk to God, Obst said: He’ll hear you. But where in the immensity of green and yellow grass God might be, or in the rolling hills, or the limitless blue sky, Ryons couldn’t imagine. He felt like a tiny beetle crawling across acres and acres of ground. No matter how much of it he crossed, there was always more ahead of him.

  The night, which Ellayne and Jack meant to be their last in Gilmy, found Ryons sleeping beside Cavall under a pair of young birch trees, with a little campfire that had long since gone out and a bellyful of plump partridge. Wearied by the day’s trek, he slept soundly, undisturbed by any dreams worth mentioning—slept until something woke him up.

  He didn’t know what it was; but Cavall was sitting up with his ears cocked, listening. Moonlight gently bathed the plain, revealing no movement by man or beast.

  Then he heard it again, the noise that must have wakened him. It was that same bellow that had driven off the death-dog a few days ago. It seemed to come from very far away. And tonight there was a hint of music in it, almost as if it were some kind of enchanted horn blown by a lonely giant.

  Cavall whined. His tail quivered a little. He made some soft sounds in his throat as if he were trying to say something. He didn’t seem frightened: puzzled, maybe, intensely interested, and just a little wistful.

  “What is it, boy?” Ryons said, putting an arm around the furry shoulders. “What could it be? But I think it’s far away from us, whatever it is.”

  Again the deep, musical call floated over the deserted plain. Cavall responded with a louder whine, another string of unintelligible dog words.

  That last call was the end of it. There was nothing to be heard now but the chorus of assorted crickets, all seeking mates before the summer ended. And it would be ending soon, Ryons thought: all the berries that were going to be ripe this year had ripened, the birds had gotten most of them, and there was a strong hint of yellow in the grass. Maybe what he’d heard was summer calling to the fall.

  “Well,” he said to Cavall, “that’s that, whatever it was. I wonder if we’ll ever know. I would have liked to hear more of it. Wouldn’t you?”

  Cavall lay back down with his chin across his paws. You’d swear he was thinking it over, Ryons thought. Did dogs think? He supposed they must, in their own way. He stroked the thick, curly fur.

  “I do wish we could see whatever made that sound—if it even was the kind of thing that can be seen,” he said to the dog. “It’s getting mighty lonesome out here, with just the two of us. Whatever kind of animal it was, I don’t think it can be bad. Do you?”

  Cavall shut his eyes and sighed.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Badger and the Bear

  Against all good generalship the Heathen did try to assault Obann by the River Gate, where the walls came almost to the water. It could only be done by crowding men into boats and trying to land them at the gate.

  Here Lord Gwyll had placed his short-range catapults. They sank and overturned the boats as if it were target practice. Here the current was strong, and the warriors who fell into the river were swept away by it. The few who survived to set foot on dry land died before the gate, mowed down by the archers. It was a foolish and costly attack, and soon abandoned.

  “What possessed them?” the Governor-general wondered. “What made them think they had any chance at all?”

  “They had to try it once,” Gwyll said. “Now they won’t try it again.”

  The presters held a service of thanksgiving in the Temple, and Prester Orth preached victory. But two nights later found him in the secret chamber with Lord Reesh, waiting to talk to the enemy.

  “We are to have our answer tonight,” Reesh said. “It but remains to be seen what the answer is.”

  Orth nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. If there is a God, he thought, He will surely strike us down. But they were not stricken, and soon enough Gallgoid conducted the Thunder King’s emissary into the chamber. It was Mardar Kyo, whom they had met before.

  “Greetings!” Lord Reesh said. “I’m glad to see you’re in good health.”

  “And I you,” said the mardar, in his snaky Obannese. Orth tried not to stare at his elongated earlobes and the strip of dyed hair on his scalp. For some reason the man’s appearance repulsed him tonight.

  “You have seen how strong the city’s defenses are,” said Reesh. “Surely your master, the Thunder King, has seen the good sense in our proposal. Why destroy what you can possess intact?”

  The mardar shrugged his broad shoulders. “You must learn to understand that my master, the Thunder King, lord of all the world, is not like other kings,” he said. “If he were, he would have accepted your proposal.

  “But it is not his way, when he has decided on a course, to turn from it either to the right or to the left a single step. When he stretches out his hand for something, he takes it. What he says he will do, he does. Nor will he bargain like a trader in the marketplace.

  “My master has spoken, and all the world has heard. He has said he will take this city and destroy it; and the Temple of the God of Obann he will burn with fire and then batter down its bare walls. Nothing can turn him aside, for he has said that he will do these things.”

  To Orth, these words, harsh and imperious, came as a relief. “So that’s how it is!” he thought. “Very well, then—it leaves us no reason to betray our country, and we might as well stand or fall with the city.” Only the idea of falling with the city was not one he wanted to examine too closely.

  But Lord Reesh’s face went pale, and his fingers clenched into a pair of trembling fists. Gallgoid sprang to his side to support him,
lest he fall.

  “Madness!” hissed Lord Reesh. “Utter madness!” His lips kept moving, but he couldn’t say anything more.

  “Wait, my friend!” Kyo held up his hand. “I have only told you the worst. Now hear the best!

  “My master the Thunder King is wise, and he appreciates your wisdom. He will not spare this temple. But he will build another temple, a grander one: not here, but in the East, within sight of his own castle at Kara Karram.

  “He will not spare this temple, nor this city, but he will spare your lives. He desires that you carry on in your office as First Prester at his new temple, along with such members of your priesthood as you deem worthy to be saved along with you. All shall be there as it was here. For my master understands that if he would own the God of Obann, he must own the God’s Temple.

  “You will let us into the city, as arranged; and we will take it and destroy it, as my master has commanded. But it will be my business to rescue you and your companions and conduct you safely to Kara Karram, where you will be installed as my master’s servants in a new temple to the God of Obann. There, under my master and yours, you will enjoy such authority, and safety, and luxury as you are accustomed to. Do you accept?”

  Orth’s mind reeled. What would Reesh say? To refuse the offer meant death; but to accept it meant death for everyone else in the city. And yet those people would die whether Reesh accepted it or not—so which was worse? Orth was overwhelmed, he couldn’t think. But Reesh could.

  “Mardar Kyo,” said the First Prester, “you must give me time to think about your master’s offer! This is not something to be decided on the spot! It has taken me very much by surprise.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kyo said. “My master understands, and grants you all the time you need, within reason. But he will not bargain with you! Accept his offer, and live; or reject it, and die.” He smiled; not a pleasant smile, Orth thought. “But I am hoping that you will accept it. My master values wisdom in his servants. You will prosper, serving him.”