The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6)

by Lee Duigon

  The king’s army had annihilated a punitive expedition sent out from Silvertown. Several hundred men of that expedition, black Hosa warriors from a faraway country, swore oaths to the king and joined his army. Their skill at farming made them a welcome addition to the settlement. Meanwhile, the Attakotts and the king’s Wallekki horsemen patrolled the plains around the forest, and the king’s Abnaks, with Helki’s rangers, hunted down the outlaws in the forest. So Carbonek had peace all through the winter, and when spring came, the settlers planted their crops with God’s blessings.

  Obst schooled King Ryons in the Scriptures, while his Ghol bodyguards schooled him in horsemanship, archery, and the finer points of knife-throwing. For the boy king, it was the best time he’d ever had in his life.

  Obst wrote letters to, and received letters from, Preceptor Constan in Obann. Ryons watched him write one.

  “How will he ever be able to read that, Obst?” he asked, peering over the old man’s shoulder. “What you’ve written makes no sense.”

  Obst smiled up at him.

  “That’s because I’m writing to him in a cipher,” he said. “Constan has the key, so he can read it. This way, in case an enemy intercepts the message, he won’t be able to understand it. All the words are in the Book of Sacred Songs, and the numbers say in which song each word is to be found. Constan and I devised this code ourselves. A couple of sly old foxes, eh?”

  “What enemy are you trying to outfox?” Ryons asked.

  “There’s treachery in the city, Ryons. The Thunder King will try to win by treachery what he couldn’t win by force. But there are good men in the city, too—like Constan and the new First Prester, Lord Orth. Someday they may have need of us—and of your army.”

  “I’d like to stay here in the forest from now on,” Ryons said.

  “It’s all in God’s hands,” said Obst.

  Jack had other friends who would have risked their lives to save him, but they were even farther away.

  When Gurun left Obann with the boy, Fnaa, masquerading as the king, and the old Abnak chief, Uduqu, to guard him, they went to Durmurot, Obann’s great city in the west. There Jod, Prester of Durmurot, protected them. And from there—as the spirit often moved her—Gurun could ride a day’s ride and rest her eyes upon the sea.

  Even as Jack was being hauled from his boat, Gurun stood on the crest of a sand dune, admiring the waves that rolled restlessly ashore. Beside her stood Fnaa, and Uduqu holding the reins of their horses. All three, in spite of themselves, had learned to ride. In Uduqu’s case the learning took all fall and winter.

  “I think I must be the first Abnak ever to see this,” he said. He kept his head shaved, Abnak-fashion, except for one thick lock of greying hair. A knobby old scar on his forehead, along with the tattoos around his eyes and on his cheeks, lent him a fierce appearance that had never been belied by his conduct in a fight. But Gurun and Fnaa were used to it.

  “Did you really come to Obann over all that water, Gurun—and in a storm, no less?” said Fnaa. He was a perfect double of the king. As far as most people in Durmurot or Obann City knew, he was King Ryons. “We’d better let it stay that way, for now,” Prester Jod had said, for reasons that Fnaa didn’t fully understand. Gurun and Uduqu agreed with the prester.

  “We Fogo Islanders love the sea,” said Gurun. “That my boat was blown all the way down to Obann, and did not sink until I was close enough to swim to shore, was a miracle.”

  The people of Obann called her Queen, although she wasn’t. There were no titles of nobility among the northern islanders. But as Prester Jod and several others often said, she looked every inch a queen—tall, fair, as straight as a fine ash spear. She would have been married on her sixteenth birthday to one of her father’s neighbors. Now she was seventeen and still unmarried—for a Fogo Island girl, unusual. Almost old enough to be a spinster, she thought.

  “Do you think you’ll ever get another boat and go back home?” Fnaa said.

  “My father would have something to say to me for losing his best skiff!” Gurun smiled wistfully. “And he would marry me off without delay—just as soon as he finished scolding me and kissing me. I would enjoy seeing him try to do both at the same time.”

  “I wonder how long we’ll have to stay out here in Durmurot,” Uduqu said. “The sea is a grand sight, but my heart is in the hills. I guess my two wives reckon I’ve been killed.”

  “But you’re famous, old man!” Fnaa grinned at him. “By now your wives must have heard the song about you killing two men with one blow. Cut them both in half! They’ll be proud of you.”

  “That was a good day,” the chief agreed, “but it’s a silly song.”

  So they stood and gazed upon the sea, at peace. But there was hardly a minute in which either Gurun or Uduqu didn’t think of King Ryons—supposedly safe in Lintum Forest now, but neither of them knew for sure. They weren’t thinking of Jack at all: yet had they known how much he needed them, all three would have set out at once to help him.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Mission for Ellayne

  Enith’s Great-aunt Lanora was the cook for Baron Roshay Bault in Ninneburky. She lived right next door to the baron, in a much smaller house, and Enith and Nywed were to live with her. Grammum would help her sister in the baron’s kitchen and help the baroness with this and that around the house. It had all been arranged by letters.

  They had not made any particular arrangements for Enith. Her room in her great-aunt’s house was hardly bigger than a closet, and there was nothing much for her to do all day and night. In Obann, Enith had friends, a tutor, and a nice neighborhood full of stately homes. Here she knew no one, and there was nothing worth looking at.

  “You’ll never make any friends if you just sit around and mope,” Grammum said.

  “I want to go back to the city!”

  Grammum tried to get her to go next door and make friends with the baron’s daughter; and there was a boy living there, too, sort of an adopted son. In fact, after a few days of pure tedium, Enith would have loved to do just that. But she didn’t; it would have been giving in.

  But then the boy went off on a trip somewhere, and Aunt Lanora said the girl was really in a sulk about it because she hadn’t been allowed to go, too. “I don’t think she ever wants to settle down and learn how to be a proper lady,” Aunt Lanora said to Grammum. And Nywed said, “She’s polite enough, but I always wonder what she’s thinking.”

  This made the girl sound interesting; so the next morning, Enith went through a hole in the hedge around the baron’s yard, hoping to find Ellayne and see what she was like.

  She found the girl sooner than she expected, in a space between the hedge and the back of the stables, sitting on a wooden crate and playing with—of all things!—a rat. As soon as Enith stepped through the hedge, the rat jumped out of Ellayne’s arms and dove into the shrubbery.

  “What in the world was that!” Enith cried.

  Ellayne looked up at her, far from welcoming. “Who are you?” she said. “The new girl next door?”

  “Nywed is my grandmother, and Lanora is her sister. I live with them. Was that a rat you had on your lap?”

  “No. What are you doing here?” Ellayne said.

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to meet you, that’s all.” Enith was embarrassed. Ellayne softened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You startled me, and I guess my manners aren’t very good today.” Ellayne forced a smile. “Have a seat. Your name’s Enith, I think.”

  Enith sat down on a second overturned crate. “Are you going to tell me what kind of animal it was that you were playing with? I was sure it wasn’t any kind of cat.”

  “He isn’t any kind of animal at all,” said Ellayne. “I’ll get him to come out so you can see him, if you promise not to scream or act silly. He wouldn’t like it, and neither would I.”

  “I promise!” Enith said. She was much too curious to do otherwise.

  “All right.” Ellayne turned to
the hedge. “Come back, Wytt. Let Enith see you.”

  From out of the hedge, on two hind legs, stepped something that most definitely was not a rat, or a cat, or anything else. It was about the size of a squirrel, but without a tail. And it had a face—and little hands! It peered right up at Enith, and all she could think was, “A tiny little man!” But it was a man covered head to foot by glossy, reddish fur.

  “His name is Wytt,” Ellayne said. “He’s one of the little ‘hairy ones’: it’s in the Scriptures. Omah, they’re called. He can’t talk, exactly, but he understands every word I say to him.”

  Enith stared. She knew nothing of the Scriptures, or of the hairy ones that were to inherit the ruins of great cities. What she saw, standing in front of her like a human being, made her speechless. How could such things be?

  The creature chattered like a squirrel.

  “He knows you’re afraid of him,” Ellayne said. “He says you shouldn’t be afraid. He likes you—and he’s never wrong about people.”

  Now Martis and her father had carefully taught Ellayne and Jack never to speak of their adventures on Bell Mountain and under the Old Temple. “Your lives won’t be worth a penny, if you do,” Martis said. He had to say it often because Ellayne wanted to be famous. “The country’s full of men who would sell you to the Thunder King. And some of Lord Reesh’s old agents will still be looking for you.”

  So Ellayne and Enith talked about other things, and by and by Enith noticed that the other girl wasn’t paying full attention to the conversation.

  “What’s the matter, Ellayne? Are you still mad because your father wouldn’t let you go on the trip up the river, the other day? Aunt Lanora said you were very unhappy about it.”

  “Aunt Lanora ought to mind her own cuss’t business,” Ellayne said. “No, it’s not that I’m mad. And it’s not that I’m lonely, either. But I do have a bad feeling that I don’t like! It bothered me all night, so that I could hardly sleep. It just won’t go away.”

  “What do you suppose it is?”

  “I wish I knew—just a feeling that there’s something wrong, somewhere. Something bad. Don’t you ever get that kind of feeling?”

  “Well, yes.” And after a while it came out that Enith’s mother ran away one day, years ago, when Enith was little more than a toddler; and her father ran after his wife, and neither of them ever came back. Enith couldn’t have said why she told Ellayne about it. She never discussed that with anyone. But of course at home, in Obann, the whole neighborhood already knew the story.

  “That’s why I live with my Grammum,” she finished.

  Just then Wytt hopped off Ellayne’s lap and pounced on a beetle, which he proceeded to devour with an unpleasant crunching noise. That distracted both girls from thinking about really more unpleasant things.

  That night, just before bedtime, Ellayne discovered what her bad feeling was all about.

  Herger came pounding at her father’s front door, and when the baroness opened it, he practically fell into the hall. His clothes were streaked with dried, dark mud, his hair was flying out in all directions—and he was alone.

  “Herger, what’s happened?” Vannett cried.

  “The baron—I have to see the baron, ma’am—right away!”

  She led him into the parlor, where Roshay Bault had already risen from his chair. Ellayne remained huddled in a corner of the couch, suddenly queasy. Where were Jack and Martis? Why had Herger come alone?

  “What are you doing here, man?” the baron said. “Where’s Jack? Where’s Martis?”

  “I don’t know, my lord!” Herger panted. He had trouble catching his breath, but his news wouldn’t wait. “We were set upon, the first night out, just as we were about to make camp. A gang of men with clubs and knives—they came at us from out of the woods. We never had a chance. I don’t know what they did to Martis, nor Jack. I don’t know!”

  “But you escaped.”

  “Had to, sir! There were too many of them, and they took us by surprise. All I could do was to dive out of the boat and swim for it.”

  “You coward!” Ellayne thought. But her father said, “Well done, Herger. Otherwise we wouldn’t have known.”

  “I came straight back to you, my lord. It seemed the only thing to do.”

  Roshay nodded. “Could you find the place again?” he asked. “And lead militia to it?”

  “Oh, aye, sir—I know it well.”

  “Sit down, Herger. We’ll get some food into you and some good, strong drink.”

  “I’m ready to go right back there now, my lord.”

  “Let me get you something to eat first,” Vannett said, and hurried off to the kitchen.

  “Ellayne, fetch me Dorek—now. Hurry!”

  This was no time to ask questions. Ellayne, grateful for something to do, rushed out to the stables and came back with Dorek, the groom. Roshay hardly looked at him.

  “Dorek, bring the sergeant here right away. Tell him I need a patrol, a dozen men. Will a dozen be enough?” He threw a glance at Herger, who nodded. “Go, Dorek!” And Dorek went.

  Vannett came back with a heel of fresh-baked bread and a serving of the baron’s best ale. There was nothing to do, for the moment, but wait for the sergeant to organize a patrol. Roshay Bault paced the floor.

  But, no, there was certainly one more thing that could be done.

  “Father!”

  “Yes, Ellayne.”

  “Let me go with the patrol!” she said. “Me and Wytt, I mean. Wherever those men went, Wytt will find them. He’s better than a dog.”

  “No!” Vannett cried. “I mean—” she didn’t finish. Once upon a time, she would have.

  “I suppose that little beggar is better than a dog,” Roshay mused. And to his wife, “And I suppose Ellayne will be safe with twelve armed men around her—provided she obeys me. And obeys the sergeant!” He turned to Ellayne. “Pack your things and be quick about it.”

  Still sick to her stomach, but already feeling better, Ellayne hurried to her room. She understood, instantly, what it meant to her mother and father to risk a daughter for the sake of a son. Truly Jack had become a son to them: they weren’t taking care of him just to please her.

  She lifted a floorboard to retrieve a certain item that no one but Jack and Martis knew she had, and stuffed it into the bottom of her sack. Then she raced back to the parlor.

  “She’s not just an ordinary girl, is she?” Ellayne heard her mother say.

  “No, my dear—that she is not. But it still takes some getting used to.”

  “I’m ready,” Ellayne said. The sergeant had not yet arrived.

  “No matter what,” Roshay said, “you are to stay with the patrol. I mean that, Ellayne. And you are to obey the sergeant, whatever he tells you to do.”

  “And bring that boy back to us,” Vannett added.

  “I will,” said Ellayne. “Don’t worry. Wherever Jack is, Wytt will find him.”

  “Poor Martis!” said Vannett, under her breath so you could barely hear her. Ellayne noticed a tear shining on her mother’s cheek, a tear for Martis, for which she kissed her.

  She also realized something else: her father would give just about anything he had to go on this mission himself. But he couldn’t. He was the baron, responsible for the defense of everyone living by the river from Ninneburky all the way up to the foothills of the mountains. So he had to stay.

  It slowly began to dawn on Ellayne that her father was a great man, worthy of the honor that the king had bestowed on him.

  Sergeant Kadmel came at a run. “The lads’ll be here presently, my lord,” he said, “just as soon as they can saddle up.” It was an innovation introduced by Roshay Bault that the militia should be mounted whenever they had to go any distance. It would be some time yet before Obann produced horsemen who could fight as cavalry, but they’d at least made a start.

  Kadmel was a stout, grey man who’d been a soldier all his life. Ellayne was glad that he would command the patrol. He listened g
ravely as the baron explained the mission to him.

  “If they’re on foot, we ought to catch up to them soon,” he said. “But, sir, your daughter—are you sure?”

  “I think it’s necessary,” Roshay said, and then he told Ellayne to fetch Wytt. “If he won’t go, you don’t go,” he added.

  Wytt lived under the back porch, having dispossessed a large rat. He heard people clumping around in the house overhead and didn’t want to come out.

  “You have to, Wytt!” She told him what had happened and why she needed him. He came out, then, with a sharp stick and a red glint in his eye. Once he’d killed a full-sized man with such a stick; Ellayne remembered that vividly. She held him closely in her arms as she brought him back to the parlor. The sergeant’s eyes went wide.