The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6)
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“We’ll get there, Giant-killer,” said the Griff. A day of trampling through thick underbrush had badly disarranged his hair—the pride of every Griff—but Tiliqua had learned not to mind it too much. “Also, we’ll greatly outnumber the defenders, if our scouts are not mistaken. The battle will be ours to win, if only we can get there.”
“God wants us to go there, so we’ll go,” Helki said. “He wants His name to be known to all those Heathen in the East who never knew it. I think we’re going to be away from home for a long time.”
CHAPTER 17
How Ellayne Received a Secret Message
When you are old, two years seems like not much time. But when you are as young as Ellayne was when she and Jack set out to climb Bell Mountain, two years is a sizable portion of your life.
For two years Ellayne had been with Jack up and down mountains, back and forth across Obann, day and night, winter and summer, seeing things and going places that were more wonderful, or more terrible, than anything she’d read in storybooks. Many times, for days on end, they’d had no one but each other to see or talk to. Those years, to Ellayne, seemed like a lifetime, and now, without Jack, she hardly knew what to do with herself. His not being there made her feel like a different person—almost a stranger to herself.
So she did a thing she never would have done if he were with her.
Under her bed in a little wooden box—Jack didn’t want it under his bed: he was afraid of it—was something that only she, Jack, and Martis knew she had. They had agreed to keep it a secret, even from Ellayne’s mother and father. “It would be best if no one at all had ever seen this thing,” Martis said.
To obtain it, they’d committed a crime—brained a man with a stone while he was sleeping, and stolen it from him. The fact that the man was an agent of the Thunder King, and up to no good purpose, did not entirely pacify their consciences. “This is a thing that Lord Reesh would have killed you to possess,” Martis said. “Indeed, there’s nothing he wouldn’t have done to get it. And what Lord Reesh would have done, others would be glad to do. So keep it secret.”
Ellayne removed it from the box and took to carrying it with her at all times: not to speak of it, not to show it to anyone, just to have it with her. At least until both Jack and Martis—and Wytt, too—came home again, she promised herself. Then she’d put it away. She knew it was superstitious rot to believe in lucky charms or amulets, but that wasn’t why she wanted it. Somehow, keeping the item in her pocket—or tucked into a stocking, if she had to wear a dress—made Jack seem a tiny bit less absent, and her a tiny bit less lonely.
What was it? Just a little piece of something-or-other left over from the distant past. No one had a name for it. No one could even figure out what it was made of—some strange kind of material that the ancients had, scraps and shards of which could still be found in ruins or dug up in gardens. Modern people had nothing like it. It weighed almost nothing and looked as fragile as glass; but it was much stronger than glass, even though you could see through it like glass—except for a little, shiny knob in the center of it that looked like metal, but wasn’t.
It was a small thing, smaller than the palm of Ellayne’s hand, and of an oval shape. It didn’t look like much. But if you rubbed it a certain way, it gave off light—a good, strong, white light. And if you rubbed it another way, and pressed the little knob in the middle, it would break out in a stream of weird, tinny music—“ant music,” Ellayne called it—and also, strangest of all, it would display a woman’s face: a woman with unnaturally large eyes. No woman really looked like that. But that was how they used to depict women’s faces in those ancient days, Martis said; no one knew why. Nor could he even guess at whom the woman might have been.
“She could be anyone,” he said. “A princess, some rich man’s wife or daughter, or even a pagan goddess. Maybe the music was once a song about her. There’s no way to find out.”
He knew about those things because Lord Reesh used to collect them, and Martis had seen that collection many times. But of all the items Lord Reesh had collected over many years, not one of them could make light or music, or do anything at all.
“This little trinket’s harmless,” Martis said, “but the ancients had many devices that could do great harm indeed. I don’t blame Jack for being afraid of it. The age that produced it was an evil age that God wiped out in one day, in the Day of Fire.” The low, isolated hills that dotted the plains of Obann were all that remained of the Empire’s many cities. Only Omah lived there now.
So Ellayne knew that what she fetched from under her bed and carried on her person was not a toy, not a trinket, but something much more valuable than diamonds. If Martis were here, she knew he’d scold her severely for carrying it around with her.
“I’ll take a scolding any day,” she said to herself, “as long as he and Jack and Wytt come home!”
It drove her nearly wild to be fatzing about in Ninneburky while Jack was in danger, somewhere far away, and Martis hardly less so. What was there to do all day?
“Don’t sulk,” said her father. “If I’d sent you out on the river with Jack, I would have lost both of you. There’s nothing we can do, just now, except to put our trust in Martis.”
“Pray, Ellayne,” said her mother. “Pray hard for both of them.”
Enith came to see her every day and spent most of the day with her—much of the evening, too. She was better than nobody, Ellayne decided. She didn’t much care for Enith taking Jack’s place in their Scripture lessons, but Mother seemed to want it that way, and it would have seemed ungracious to complain. If Obst were here, she’d get another scolding.
“I know what you’re up to, Enith,” she said, while they were playing by the riverbank one afternoon, trying unsuccessfully to skip stones on the water. “You think I’ve got a lot of secrets I could tell, if only you can get them out of me.”
“Well, I won’t lie about it,” Enith said. She paused to throw a stone that sank immediately, just like the last one. “Everybody knows that you and Jack ran away from home one day and didn’t come back for the longest time, and then Jack came to live with you. Who could help wondering about that? Where did you and Jack go, Ellayne?”
She could almost feel Enith’s curiosity reach out and try to wrap itself around her. Enith must have questioned her a thousand times by now. Thanks to that, and to being distracted with worry, and to frustration over not being able to do anything about it, Ellayne slipped.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” she said, “and it wouldn’t be safe for you to know about it!” It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to discourage curiosity.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Enith thought. For some days in a row she’d hardly left Ellayne’s side and plied her with as many questions as she dared. Enith knew many girls in the city who liked to keep secrets, usually about boys. She’d learned to excel at worming secrets out of them. The main thing, she came to understand, is that people are dying to talk about their secrets. They really can’t help themselves. Ellayne was no different.
Any day now she’d give up the struggle to hold on to her secrets. Enith had learned to judge this like an expert, and not to push too hard.
That evening, before going next door to see Ellayne, she went to a shop to buy some honey-drops. She would share these with Ellayne and, by just that little bit, wear down her resistance.
“It’s not like I’m going to do her a bad turn or anything,” she told herself. “After all, we’re friends! She’s the only friend I’ve got in this dull little town. She’d be bound to feel better if she has a friend to share her secrets with. It’ll be good for her.” Besides which, something told her Ellayne’s secrets would be anything but dull.
Having obtained a small sack of candy, she was about to head home when a man spoke to her.
“Pardon me, miss! You be friends with the baron’s daughter, ain’t you?”
He was a scruffy-looking man, with ragged clothes and a droopin
g, colorless mustache. Badly in need of a bath, Enith thought.
“And who are you?” she said.
“Just a hunter and a trapper passing through,” he said, “and a man who knows a thing that your friend would want to know. Nelligg’s my name. I don’t get into town much, but I see what there is to see, outside. I’ve seen that boy what lives in her house, you see. Spoken to him, too. And he says I was to give a message to the baron’s daughter. Maybe you might help me.”
“Well, that’s easy enough,” Enith said. “Come on, I’ll take you to her house.”
“Foo!” He shook his head. “Turn up at the baron’s house, and me looking like this? They wouldn’t let me in! Besides, the message is a secret. I was to give it only to the baron’s daughter. I was hoping you could bring her to me, see, and then I can tell her what it is, with no one else to hear. Because it’s a secret.”
“Bring her to you where?”
“Oh, it’s no place far. There’s a little patch of woods outside the town, opposite the big oak tree by the front gate. We’ll be all right in those woods,” he said. “Tell her to come and see me there, as soon as it gets dark. Make sure she comes alone, or I’ll just sneak off and she’ll never get her message. Because I don’t want any trouble for myself, see—and I can’t feel at ease when I’m in town. I’m not used to it. So I’ll be waiting for her in the woods. You tell her that—all right?”
“I’ll tell her,” Enith said. The man nodded to her, muttered something she didn’t catch, and walked away.
Enith, after all, was new to Ninneburky and didn’t know who belonged there and who didn’t. She saw nothing suspicious in Nelligg’s story. In the city of Obann, people were mostly well-behaved and law-abiding, at least as far as Enith knew—which wasn’t very far. And a secret message was exciting—you couldn’t just ignore it.
She raced to Ellayne’s house, and soon had her friend to herself behind the stables. She gave her a honey-drop and then delivered her message. “Are you going to go?” she asked.
Of course Ellayne wanted to go. A message from Jack! How could she not go? But Ellayne had seen much more of the world than Enith had and had learned that people aren’t always what they seem. You had to be cautious. Still—if only Wytt were here!
“Who knows if that man was telling the truth?” she said. “He might snatch me, like they snatched Jack.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” Enith said. “He won’t be able to grab the two of us! One will get away and call out the alarm, and men will come running.”
“But he said I have to come alone.”
“True, but I don’t think it’d matter if I come, too. I’m just another kid. Besides which, I’ve already seen the man. I could’ve told the whole town about him, but he didn’t seem worried about that.”
Ellayne thought that made good sense. One man would be hard put to overpower two struggling girls. If they cried out, the little woods was not far from the gate: the guard would surely hear them. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.” If there was any word from Jack, she simply had to hear it.
“Not so fast,” Enith said. “We have to wait till it gets dark.”
“Yes, but we want to get out before they close the gate. We can wait somewhere else, after we’re out.”
Martis wouldn’t have let her do it. He’d insist that she tell her father all about it, while he went ahead and caught the man, and brought him to the baron. But of course Martis wasn’t there, and if she told her father, Roshay Bault would send out soldiers to capture Nelligg, and the man would either get away or just not talk. There was only Enith’s word for what he’d said—easy for him to deny it.
Ellayne suspected she was about to do something foolish, but just about anything was better than doing nothing. Before they left, she crept into the stables and filched a little knife the groom had for trimming leather. She hid it in her boot. She was wearing boys’ clothes, hand-me-downs from her brother, Dib. The man in the woods wouldn’t expect her to be carrying a knife.
The two girls stole out of the gate while the man on guard was talking to someone else, and found a hiding place behind some shrubbery. In another half an hour it was dark enough for them to venture forth without being seen from the gate. Two men were just pulling the gate shut for the night, but a guard would be posted because these were dangerous times. Meanwhile, Ellayne thought, her mother would be coming out to the back porch to call her to come inside. Ellayne was sorry for that, but it couldn’t be helped.
Ellayne led the way to the little stand of woods. Once upon a time she’d met Jack there to start their journey to Bell Mountain. It was one of Wytt’s favorite places. If only he were with them now, he’d be able to warn them of any danger.
“I don’t like it here!” Enith whispered. She was a city girl, and not used to the kind of darkness you found under the trees at night.
“Shh!”
Halfway into the little woods, Ellayne stopped to wait for the man who brought Jack’s message. She took hold of Enith’s hand, and found it cold.
“How can you be so brave?” Enith asked.
“I’ll tell you someday. But we’d better be quiet now.”
Something stirred in the underbrush. Enith shivered, although she wore a light wool jacket over her dress. Not unkindly, Ellayne thought, “Maybe this will be a good lesson to her.”
And then suddenly she couldn’t see. Enith’s hand was torn from her grasp. She smelled a pungent odor of sheep and couldn’t fight because rough, strong hands had seized her arms, pinning them to her sides. Coarse cloth shrouded her face—someone had pulled a big burlap bag over her head, the kind shepherds use for carrying wool to the merchants. A hand clamped the burlap over her mouth. She could hardly breathe.
She heard a man say, “Two for the price of one! Well, we can sort it out later. Let’s get out of here!”
CHAPTER 18
How Martis Entered Silvertown
It seemed to Ellayne that she was carried on someone’s shoulders all night long, with the sack over her head and upper body. She lost track of time. It was hard to breathe, and the intense sheep-smell sickened her. They’d also bound her ankles with ropes.
Stupid! What a stupid fool she was! If two grown men, Martis and that fellow Herger, hadn’t been able to protect Jack, how could she have expected Enith to protect her? This was exactly the sort of thing that Martis always said would happen, and now it had. How could she have been so flaming stupid?
Just when it seemed this part of the nightmare would go on forever, the men stopped, someone tugged the sack off her, and the lout who’d been carrying her dumped her to the ground. Beside her sat Enith.
Eight men surrounded them. They were in a little clearing ringed by trees on three sides. Above them shone the stars.
“So far, so good!” said the man who seemed to be the leader. Ellayne had never seen him before, but she would have known his name: Ysbott the Snake. In Lintum Forest last year, a few of Ysbott’s men had captured her and Jack and Martis. But it was the outlaws who’d wound up being prisoners, and Ysbott never saw or heard from them again. It would have cheered Ellayne to know that this was the same gang. The ruse she’d used against them once, she might use again. As the fresh air cleared her head, she found herself already thinking along that line. But Ysbott had given his men strict orders not to speak any names in front of the prisoners, so Ellayne didn’t know who they were.
Enith recognized the man she’d met in town. “Nelligg!” she cried. “You said you’d be alone!”
“He lied,” said the leader, grinning. “Indeed, Nelligg is not really his name. And if you’re as wise girls as I think you are, you won’t ask any questions. Really, it’s much safer for you not to know who we are.
“Now, if all goes well, you’ll come to no harm and soon be back in Ninneburky. We’re only interested in money—your father’s money. If he has any sense, he’ll pay to get you back, and back you’ll go.”
“My father will hunt you dow
n and hang you, every one,” Ellayne said.
“Not if he wants you back alive,” Ysbott said. “Meanwhile, we may as well get down to business. Can you read and write?”
“Of course I can!”
“Good. In the morning, you will write a little note to Roshay Bault. Who’s the other girl, by the way?”
“My friend. Her mother works for us.”
“Two ransoms, chief!” spoke up one of the men.
“Don’t be greedy,” Ysbott said. “I doubt a servant would have much money for us. But perhaps the baron will be noble enough to pay a little something for this one, too. For now, tie their hands and gag them, and let’s get some rest.” He pointed at two of his men. “You and you,” he added, “keep watch. I don’t think I need to tell you not to fall asleep!”