The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  Obst joined them then, but the important thing first was to find someplace comfortable for the old woman to rest and something nourishing for her to eat. Obst didn’t question her until all this was seen to.

  “You can call me Nanny,” she said, “for I was nanny to Lord Gwyll’s wife, and nanny to her children. Gwyll’s still at Obann, poor soul, trying to defend the city. He wouldn’t listen to the Lord’s prophets. He’ll die there.”

  The details of her own story could come later, Obst thought. He had more urgent questions.

  “Nanny,” he said, “through another prophet the Lord commanded this army to go to Obann. We’ve obeyed and come all the way from Lintum Forest. But has the Lord revealed to you why we are to go to Obann? Has He told you what He wants us to do there? Because we don’t know!”

  She only shrugged. “It’s not like the Lord sits down with me and explains His plans, young man!” she said, and Obst had to smile at that. “I don’t know, any more than you do, what He wants us to do once we get to Obann. I think He means to show us something! But what’s all this about a king? I don’t know anything about a king, other than the kings in Scripture. But they were all a long, long time ago.”

  It was a long story, and long in the telling. Nanny fell asleep before they could answer all her questions.

  “I don’t know about you,” Helki said to Obst, “but all this business is too much for me. It’s worn me out, and we’ve got to march tomorrow. Do you have any idea, now that we’ve talked with Nanny, what’s going to happen to us?”

  Obst looked him in the eye. “I think,” he said, “it’s going to be something wonderful.”

  CHAPTER 32

  How Chillith Became a Mardar

  Walking all day with a rope around your neck, and trying to get to sleep with men constantly watching you, are not things that are easy to get used to. Ellayne found it especially hard, so much so that the Griffs finally put her on Ham’s back for part of the day. But aside from these hardships, which were bad enough, the Griffs didn’t treat their captives badly.

  “Wear your ropes with pride,” said the mardar, Chillith. “We wouldn’t go to so much trouble for any prisoners less valuable than you three. If you escape, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that my head will join the others in the Great Man’s trophy room. But you won’t escape.”

  It seemed to Jack that Chillith and his men treated them with some respect. They didn’t taunt them, didn’t march them harder than the children’s legs could bear, and fed them with the same rations they had for themselves. If he or Ellayne stumbled, there was always a man to help them up. He supposed it was because they’d been to Bell Mountain, and these Heathen understood that that was important.

  The group of a hundred men was called a spaath in the Griffs’ language. The spaath marched all day, and the men on foot were as tireless as horses. If need be, Martis said, they could run all day and fight a battle at the end of it.

  “But they’re going slowly because they know we can’t keep up,” he said. “They want to be sure we’re fit to present to the Thunder King.”

  Marching all day, leaving it to scouts and foragers to keep the spaath fed, there was nothing much to do but talk. A few of the Griffs spoke passable Obannese, but it was most often Chillith himself who rode or walked along with them to talk—especially with Martis.

  “How did your honor come to be a mardar?” Martis asked him, on their third day on the march.

  “I’ll tell you. It will make the time pass,” Chillith said. “You have seen by the marks on my forearm that I was initiated as a shaman. That was after I came home from Obann. I was to be a shaman for the rest of my life, and with that I was content.”

  “But you didn’t stay a shaman, did you?” Jack said. “And what is a shaman?”

  Martis nudged him. “Say ‘your honor,’ Jack—not ‘you.’”

  “Your honor,” Jack repeated. He thought it was a silly way to talk, but Martis knew best.

  “It’s good for children to learn decent manners,” Chillith said. “Boy, a shaman is a man or woman whose business is to commune with our people’s gods. It’s very difficult. Our gods are many, and they dwell in places under the earth and in the depths of rivers, where it’s hard to talk to them. A shaman knows how to do it, but we keep our methods secret. When someone needs to ask a favor of the gods, it is the shaman who must ask. In return, we receive honor and sustenance from the people.”

  He went on for a while about the Griffs’ gods, which to Ellayne seemed like the fairies and pixies in her storybooks. They gave advice on how to cure illness, how to decide whom to marry, hunting and fishing, and other matters—anything you wanted to know about. They could also put hexes on people, even kill them. For that it was necessary to reward the shaman richly. Some of the rewards they received struck her as deeply immoral—things that wouldn’t even be mentioned in a civilized country like Obann. But she reminded herself that these people were Heathen and didn’t know any better.

  “But then, one day, the Great Man’s horsemen came,” Chillith said. “They were strange people called Ghols, from far away in the East. We were no match for their archery—or their numbers!—and they conquered us. And the Thunder King took away our gods.”

  “How did he do that—your honor?” Jack said. “How could he take away your gods?”

  “The mardars compelled us to carve wooden images of all our gods,” said Chillith. “Unlike ignorant people, we did not worship images. But we shamans, who knew the gods, were forced to carve the images. And then the mardars, with the power given to them by the Thunder King, compelled the gods to enter into the wooden images. When that was done, the Ghols carried the images off to Kara Karram, where all the nations’ gods are imprisoned. The mardars challenged us shamans to try to find the gods and speak to them, and we could not. Our gods were gone.”

  He didn’t relish this memory, said the expression on his face. After a few moments, Martis ventured to prompt him to further speech.

  “It would seem to me,” he said, “that your honor and the other shamans would have hated the man who did this to your people; and yet your honor has taken service with that man. It’s difficult to understand why your honor did so.”

  Chillith’s face hardened. “I was young, for a shaman,” he said. “The old shamans made rebellion and were killed.

  “Let me say only that I know power when I see it—and this was power, real power! A man who could conquer all the nations, and carry away their gods as captives, would have to be greater than those gods. He would have to be a god himself.

  “That’s why I became a mardar. Who would serve puny and powerless gods when he could serve the god who conquered them? Especially when he can see that all who defy that god are swallowed up! By the will of the Thunder King, his mardars accepted me into their ranks and taught me many things.

  “Someday I will be a full-fledged mardar. I will stand before the Thunder King himself, and he will endow me with power. That’s why I’m taking you to him.”

  The whole business, Jack thought, was wickedness of a very special kind. What must the real God think of it? But that was not a question it was safe to ask.

  “Your honor has led a most interesting life,” said Martis. “But then this is an interesting time in which to live.”

  “You have tact, Martis!” Chillith barked a laugh at him. “If my master the Thunder King lets you live, we shall be friends. I do like a man who speaks well.” And he spurred his horse ahead of them, to be alone with his thoughts.

  “What a lot of stinking Heathen rubbish!” said Ellayne.

  “There’s a lot of rubbish in the Temple that stinks just as badly,” Martis said. “I think Obst would advise us three to be especially attentive to our prayers from now on.”

  “That’d be good advice,” said Jack.

  That night Lord Reesh met with Mardar Kyo in the secret chamber under the cellars of the Temple.

  He had Orth with him, but only b
ecause there was no time left to find a better man. He now knew Orth for what he was: not a dedicated servant of the Temple, but a self-seeker and a coward. Orth would go along with whatever was presented to him just to save his own skin. The Temple deserved better than that.

  “He doesn’t understand,” Reesh thought. “I mean to sacrifice this building so that the Temple might live on. It doesn’t matter whether the building is here or in the East. It doesn’t matter if we allow the Thunder King to lord it over the Temple for a little while. He is a mortal man and he will die; and when he does, the Temple will go on without him. The Temple will inherit his empire. But it deserves a better First Prester than Orth! How could I have been so wrong about him? I must be getting old.”

  But not too old to do what must be done.

  Once again Gallgoid conducted the mardar to the secret chamber. Once again greetings were exchanged.

  “I have arranged for wagons and an escort to transport you in comfort and safety to Kara Karram,” Kyo said. “Tell me how many persons you need to bring with you, and all shall be arranged for them. You may also wish to bring various books and archives, whatever you’ll need; but you may not bring away any gold or precious stones.”

  Reesh nodded. “I have made a list of twenty men who are indispensable to me,” he said. “Everything else will be packed into chests for quick removal.”

  “You are wise, First Prester.”

  “I understand necessity.”

  They made other arrangements. At a certain hour on a certain night, a few trusted men would reveal secret entrances into the city. The Thunder King’s warriors would come in, set fire to the Temple as a diversion, and a number of them disguised as Obannese militia would throw open two of the lesser gates for the Thunder King’s cavalry, to be followed up by as many foot soldiers as could be thrust into the city suddenly. At the same time, the greater army would massively assault the main gates, wholly occupying the attention of the city’s defenders. All of this, it was expected, would confuse and demoralize the defense; and the city would fall.

  “But by then you will already be on your way to Kara Karram,” said Kyo. “Out of friendship, I would advise you not to look back.”

  “I don’t think I will want to,” Reesh said.

  “It was the same for me, when my master the Thunder King took away my people’s gods and burned their sacred groves,” Kyo said. “But I am like you, Lord Reesh: I understand necessity. Better to serve a powerful god here on earth, than to die with the weak gods he tramples underfoot.”

  “Obann’s God is not a weak god, Mardar Kyo.”

  “This, too, my master understands. That is why he has been building another temple for your god.”

  The night was wearing down, and there being nothing much more to be said, Kyo took his leave. When he’d left the chamber, and Gallgoid shut the door after them, Orth uttered a deep sigh.

  “If you think that I’ve done wrong, Prester, you’ve waited too long to say so,” Reesh said.

  “Not wrong, First Prester—not that!” Orth said. “But the boldness of your vision and the strength of your will do take my breath away.”

  “You will need to grow, Orth—and grow quickly. I can’t live much longer. I may not even survive the journey to the Thunder King. You will be First Prester of the Temple in the East. If there is to be another First Prester after you, you must do your work well. Otherwise all this sacrifice will have been for nothing.”

  Orth felt the weight of the future pressing down on him. He must not let it crush him.

  “Try to live quite a bit longer, Excellency!” he said. “I need your guidance.”

  That was the first intelligent thing Orth had said since the beginning of the siege, Reesh thought. “Maybe I wasn’t altogether wrong about him, after all.”

  CHAPTER 33

  The Bell Tower

  Late in the day, Ryons passed through a whole town that was entirely deserted. He’d never seen a real town before, with streets, and shops along the streets, and stables and a smithy, and houses, and in the center of the town, the chamber house. He didn’t know what most of these things were, but they were all marvelous.

  He spent some time exploring. Cavall chased rats. The townspeople must have packed up everything and taken it with them: there was precious little left behind. He wondered where they went. Could there possibly be room for so many people in Obann? How big could the city be?

  Many of the houses and shops had their doors broken. People must have knocked down the doors to go inside and take things. Ryons found some odd items left behind, like scraps of girls’ and women’s clothing, old boots, and a great many broken jars and bottles. If there had been any food left behind, the rats must have eaten it. He’d never seen so many rats.

  The Wallekki didn’t live in towns. When they made war on each other, it was with a great deal of fuss and ceremony and very little fighting. The clans had little fear of one another. It was only the blood feuds that got really nasty.

  “But the people who lived here were afraid,” Ryons thought. “They didn’t even stay to fight for their town.”

  He thought of the Thunder King brooding on his throne, away out East, and granted that the people of this town had something to be afraid of. The terror of the Thunder King’s name had been enough to conquer most of the Wallekki. “We can fight men,” they said, “but we cannot fight a god.” The mardars came and issued commands, and the Wallekki obeyed—clan elders who spoke against it died suddenly. The people were afraid the Thunder King would dry up their wells and make their herds of sheep and goats die off. They were afraid of the vast armies he already had. They spoke in hushed tones of a people called the Quadi-Quai, a cattle-raising people who existed no more because they defied the Thunder King and perished—every last one of them and all their cattle.

  Cavall seemed impatient to move on, but Ryons was drawn to the chamber house. He didn’t know what it was, but it was the only building with a bell tower, and the bell was still there.

  Ryons went inside to look for a way up to the tower. He passed through the assembly hall, where the whole town used to stand in prayer, led by the prester from his pulpit. He peeked into the various chambers, once used for lessons, study, accounting, and other purposes, but now of interest only to spiders. At last he found a steep spiral stairway that could only be the way up to the tower. Ryons started up, but Cavall wouldn’t follow.

  From up in the tower he could see out all over town and the surrounding countryside. No people, no horses, no cattle, no carts—it was all deserted, very dreary.

  Above him hung the bell, with the rope still attached to it. Obst had told him of the ancient bell atop Bell Mountain, the one that everybody in the world heard when Jack and Ellayne rang it. He remembered the excitement it had caused among the Thunder King’s army—and fear, too. But that army was now his army, King Ryons’ army.

  “King Ryons—that’s rich!” he said to himself. “I don’t know where my army is, and I can’t even find the biggest city in the world.” But in case God was listening, he didn’t say more.

  His hand strayed to the bell rope. In the west the sun was setting over the deserted land. He wondered if God would hear this bell if he rang it. Well, why not?

  Ryons tugged on the rope—once, twice, three times. The bell was heavy, and it took some doing to build up enough momentum to set it ringing.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  He rang it three times, then stopped. There was no one in the town to hear it, and it made the loneliest sound you could imagine. He let go of the rope and caught his breath. He was sweating.

  And then over the plains, up from the south as if in answer to the tolling of the bell, floated the deep, musical bellow of the unseen creature—if creature it was, and not a spirit. How far that call carried before it reached his ears, Ryons couldn’t guess. He suspected it was miles and miles. He peered out of the tower, into the south, but there was nothing to see. The call was repeated four more times�
�then silence.

  Suddenly lonely, Ryons hurried down the spiral stairs. Cavall was waiting for him. Ryons bent over and hugged him.

  “I don’t think I like this place, after all,” he said. “It’d be different if there were people in it. I was going to sleep in one of the houses, but now I don’t want to. I don’t suppose you want to, either.”

  Cavall barked once, and they went outside. It was quickly getting dark, but Ryons didn’t stop to make camp until they were out of sight of the town.

  Jack had never seen a map, but Ellayne’s father, the chief councilor, had a kind of chart of the Imperial River, useful in his logging business. It wasn’t a proper map, but it had taught Ellayne a few things. So she knew that eventually the Griffs would come to where the Chariot River flowed into the Imperial. If they didn’t cross, they would have to turn northeast. But if they did cross the Chariot, and continue along the Imperial, they would pass right by Ninneburky, just across the river.

  “Home!” she thought: where her father and her mother and her brothers lived; where she had her own room in a fine, big house, and her own books, her clothes, her bed. To come so close to it, and yet not be able to go there, was bitter. “And where we’re going,” she thought, “there’ll never be another chance to go home.”

  How easy it would be for her father to lead out the militia and save her and Jack and Martis—if only he knew! But he didn’t know. There was no way he could know.

  And it was all her fault, she thought. If she hadn’t been so pigheaded about running away from Gilmy, none of this would be happening now.