The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6)

by Lee Duigon

  “That was something!” Fnaa said, and almost fell off his horse in his excitement. “No wonder nobody likes to go down there anymore!”

  But Gurun wasn’t listening. Striding up the grassy slope, straight toward her, was a tall, fair, blue-eyed man in sealskin boots and a brightly colored woolen jacket. He stopped halfway up the hill and spoke to her—spoke in the language of the northern isles.

  “Why do you dally here, Gurun,” he said, “when your place is with the king of Obann? He is in Lintum Forest, but you are here, gazing with longing at the sea. But the sea will always be here so you can find it again.”

  “Oh, filgya,” answered Gurun, for she knew what the man was, “I will do as you say.” She’d seen him before. Indeed, she was surprised he’d waited so long to show himself again. “I will go to the king.”

  “That would be best.”

  And then Fnaa reached out and jerked her arm, and there was no more filgya to be seen or heard.

  “Gurun, what are you talking about?” the boy said. “Why do you have such a funny look on your face? What do you mean, ‘I will do as you say’? I never said anything!”

  She smiled at him. The real King Ryons would have seen the filgya. He’d seen it before. But Fnaa was only Fnaa, and hadn’t seen a thing. The way he stared at her was quite amusing.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It was just my filgya, which I haven’t seen in a long time. He was reminding me that my place is with the king.”

  “What are you saying? There’s no one here but you and me!”

  “Sometimes we islanders receive messages that we could receive no other way,” Gurun said. “That’s when the filgya speaks. An old man in a place called Jocah’s Creek once told me that the filgya must be much the same thing as an angel—a messenger from God. I think he was right. No one can see or hear the filgya except the one for whom the message is intended. But King Ryons saw the filgya once, when I was with him.”

  Fnaa shook his head. “Well, whatever you do,” he said, “don’t tell my mother about this! She’ll think you saw a ghost.”

  “You can be perfectly sure a filgya is not a ghost,” Gurun said. “And you must not speak of this to anyone, except Uduqu. He will understand.”

  “That’s because he’s a barbarian,” Fnaa said, and shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t understand, but being Fnaa, he just accepted it.

  Ellayne and Enith didn’t sleep a wink all night. Enith whimpered for a while until Ellayne made her stop.

  “But this is awful!” Enith said. And Ellayne thought, “Jack and I have been in a lot worse scrapes than this!” but didn’t say so.

  “Shut up and let me sleep!” one of the outlaws growled. “Or we’ll gag you.”

  “What are we going to do?” Enith whispered.

  “With our hands tied behind us and all these men around? Not much! But you can be sure my father has the militia out looking for us.”

  When daylight finally came, Ellayne could hear the river flowing by but couldn’t see it. A barrier of tall reeds hid it from her sight. For breakfast there was nothing but a little dried meat and water, and Enith was sick. By and by, Ysbott came and squatted in front of them.

  “Are you ready to write a letter to your father, girl?” he said.

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?” Ellayne answered.

  “None at all, miss—none at all.”

  Ysbott untied the girls’ hands and made them swing their arms around until they felt right again. Instead of paper and ink, he had a shingle and a stick of charcoal. “Write what I tell you to write, and things will turn out fine for all of us,” he said.

  Under his direction, the message Ellayne wrote went something like this:

  “Dear Father, Enith and I are all right, and if you pay these men what they ask for, they’ll send us home and not hurt us. But if you try to catch them, or if anyone comes too close, then you’ll never see me again. If you agree, tie a white cloth to a spot over the main gate and wait for the next message. Love, Ellayne.” And on her own, without instruction, she wrote, “There are eight of them, on foot, somewhere beside the river, a night’s journey from the gate.”

  “There,” she said.

  “Hand it to your friend,” Ysbott said. She gave it to Enith, expecting Enith would be asked to sign it. But Ysbott said, “Read to me what she wrote, missy.” “Oh, no,” Ellayne thought.

  But Enith cried, “Please, mister! I—well, I mean—I don’t know how to read,” she lied. It was beautifully done: Ellayne almost believed it herself.

  Ysbott shrugged. There were many people in Obann who never learned to read. Ellayne had gambled that none of these outlaws had. Ysbott took the shingle from Enith and stood up again. He glanced at the message, but obviously couldn’t read it and didn’t even try.

  “Nelligg,” he said, “take this to the town and see that the baron gets it. But be careful. They’ll be on the lookout for strangers and inclined to be suspicious. Try to leave it near the baron’s door without anyone noticing you.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Nelligg said.

  “If they do catch you,” Ysbott said, “demand to see the baron, tell them you have a message from his daughter. And that if they don’t let you go unharmed before sundown, she’ll suffer for it. I’m sure they’ll believe you.”

  “And the price?”

  “The nice, round number we’ve already decided on, of course—one hundred gold pieces.”

  “My father doesn’t have that kind of money!” Ellayne cried. She couldn’t help it—the sum was impossible. These fools didn’t know what they were saying.

  Ysbott grinned at her. “The bargaining has to start somewhere, miss,” he said. “By heaven, though—you don’t seem to value yourself too highly.”

  “I know what things cost,” Ellayne said.

  “Let’s hope your father does, too.”

  The guards at the gate snapped up Nelligg as soon as he showed his face. He’d been hoping his recent visits to the alehouse as a thirsty trapper would smooth his path, but the baron had given strict orders to arrest and question anyone who wasn’t known to be a citizen of Ninneburky.

  Baron Roshay Bault had been up all night, ransacking the town and its environs for his daughter. “I’ll skin her when I find her!” he stormed. “This is the last straw! Every time I turn my back, she runs away on some harebrained adventure. From now on I’ll shackle her to her bedpost.”

  Vannett was busy trying to console Nywed and Lanora. Enith, after all, was missing, too.

  “How can you be so calm, Baroness?” wondered the cook, after a bout of weeping that had left her red-eyed with moist patches on her apron. Nywed took it better, although she looked so pale that Vannett worried she might suddenly faint.

  “Ellayne is under God’s protection, Lanora—and I know it,” Vannett said. “Besides, one hysterical woman in this kitchen is enough. But we would do better to pray together.” She made the women follow her into the parlor, where she and Nywed prayed. Lanora tried to, but said it was no good without a prester to lead them. So old Prester Ashrof was sent for, and he was a comfort to them.

  Nelligg and his message were presented to the baron at the guardhouse by the gate. Roshay read the writing on the shingle while two militiamen held the outlaw without taking any trouble to be gentle.

  “Did you see my daughter write this?” Roshay, of course, recognized Ellayne’s handwriting.

  “Yes, sir,” Nelligg said. Ysbott had cautioned him not to say too much.

  “Do you know what the message says?”

  “More or less. But I can’t read.”

  “I’ll hang you here and now,” said the baron, “if you don’t tell me where my daughter is.”

  “Well, sir, if anything like that happens to me, that’ll be the end for the girls. But for a hundred gold spearmen you can have them back, both of ’em, safe and sound. Let me go, and I’ll take your answer back to my mates. There ain’t nothing else you can do, and I guess
you know it.”

  Kidnapping was not unknown in Obann. It was a hanging offense. But most people preferred to pay a ransom.

  “One hundred gold,” Roshay said—“it’s out of the question.”

  “You can try to hunt us down,” said Nelligg, “but that won’t help your daughter any. Just pay up, and you’ll get her back.”

  “How many of you are there?” Roshay already knew from Ellayne’s note that there were eight, but he wanted to prod this man, if he could, into making a slip and revealing something more.

  Nelligg shrugged. “I’m not going to tell you anything, so why ask? I’m just the messenger—see? I’ve given you the message, and I’ll take back your answer.”

  Roshay knew he was powerless, and hated it. But he’d burned off most of his rage hours ago and was thinking clearly now.

  “Twenty-five gold pieces,” he said, “and Ellayne and the other girl returned to me unharmed by mid-afternoon tomorrow—and you have my oath that I’ll take no further action. Anything else, and I’ll have a thousand men hunting you up and down the river and from here to Lintum Forest. You won’t escape, and I won’t stop until I’ve hanged you all. But for twenty-five gold, you’ll all go free. I’ll wager that’s more money than you’ve ever seen in all your worthless lives.”

  “That’s your answer, then?”

  “I don’t bargain with criminals,” the baron said. “You have my answer. Bring the girls by no later than tomorrow, under a white flag of truce, and you’ll get your money. That’s all.”

  The guards scowled when Roshay ordered them to release the man. The baron kept a face of stone, but inwardly he rejoiced over his daughter’s resourcefulness. “Only eight of them,” he thought, “and all on foot! They’ll never get away from all my horsemen, and they can only hide for so long before I find them. And unless they’re complete fools, they know it.” This made him sure the snatchers would accept his terms and that he’d have Ellayne back in time for the next day’s supper. But even that, he supposed, would be a long time to wait.

  “I wish you’d have let us follow him, my lord,” Sergeant Kadmel said, after Nelligg had been sent on his way.

  “Never mind that now,” Roshay said. “Round up all the boats and canoes you can find, and don’t let anyone cross the river—twenty miles upstream, twenty miles down.”

  “I wish we had that little whatsit on hand,” Kadmel said, “the one that tracked Jack for us. They’d never get away!”

  “Dogs will have to do for now,” the baron said, and prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

  And Ellayne, with no way to know what her father would do, had to make her own plan.

  CHAPTER 21

  How Ellayne Played Music for the Outlaws

  Goryk Gillow traveled lightly—a pair of wagons converted into coaches by carpenters who’d not had the time to do it artistically, and an escort of ten Wallekki horsemen recommended by Iolo as desperate characters not likely to be recruited by tribesmen in the king’s service. The wagons flew white flags of truce. The Wallekki were there to deal with any bandits who wouldn’t honor a truce.

  “We want to get to Obann well before the coronation,” Goryk said. “There’s much work to be done.”

  So he left his army with Iolo in command, to hold Silvertown against the slim chance of its people rising up against their conquerors, and set out for Obann with as small a party as he could without seeming to be a person of no importance. He and Mardar Zo rode in the first coach, with their ancient weapon stowed in a locked box covered by a quilt. It would not see light unless they needed it in self-defense, just in case King Ryons’ army came out of Lintum Forest after them. In addition to the wagoner, who would tend the horses, they rode with two bodyguards, tough Dahai warriors in Obannese mail-shirts.

  Jack and Martis occupied the second coach, Martis knowing that the Dahai and the Wallekki would be ready in case the passengers tried to escape.

  Martis, alias Jayce, was supposed to be teaching Jack all about Obann. In the evenings Goryk questioned him about the traditions and procedures of the Temple, so that he would be able to put up a show of being fit to be First Prester. “Not that I need anything more than my master’s decree,” Goryk said, “but I do wish to play the part convincingly. I want to make it easy for them to accept me as First Prester—the easier, the better. I must show myself a worthy successor to Lord Reesh.”

  “Which you are,” thought Martis, “but not for the reasons you imagine.” But he said, “Of that I have no doubt, my lord.”

  No one, not even Martis, knew that Wytt was riding with them, having found a comfortable place on the underside of the wagon. He lived on the insects stirred up by the horses’ hooves and wagon wheels, coming out at night to steal drinking water.

  Because of what was carried in the first wagon, Wytt deemed it too dangerous even to let Jack know he was there.

  Sometimes, in the mounds that were all that was left of Obann’s ancient cities, poisonous snakes would congregate in a warm, snug hole and den together for the winter, sleeping their cold-blooded sleep that would keep them till the spring. When the winter passed and the days grew ever warmer, the mass of snakes would stir and taste the air with their forked tongues, and slowly realize they were hungry, oh, so hungry. And at such a time, no Omah would go anywhere near that place, because they knew that at any moment the snakes would all come out and hunt. If you were an Omah, you could smell the change in the snakes as their blood warmed and quickened in their veins. And you would be afraid.

  So it was with Wytt. Something in that wagon was like a den of snakes stirring, but it was more dangerous than any nest of hungry vipers. Wytt only stayed with the wagons because Jack and Martis were there, and he would not desert them.

  He missed Ellayne, and all he wanted to do was to bring Jack home to her.

  While Jack and Martis journeyed to Obann and Nelligg took the ransom note to Ninneburky, Ellayne tried to drum up the courage to execute a risky plan—a half-baked plan, Jack would have called it—to foil the kidnappers.

  The gang had nothing to do all day but wait for Nelligg to come back with a message from the baron. They were safe in their present hiding place, Ysbott reassured them. “No one can see us from the river, on account of the tall reeds,” he said, “and we have a thick growth of trees and underbrush on all the other sides, with no one living in the neighborhood.” For good measure, he kept a man on guard where a narrow path led to the campsite. No roads passed nearby; no shepherds nor herdsmen came this way. “We’ll be safe here for a while,” he said.

  With so many men to guard them, he didn’t bother to tie the girls’ hands or stuff their mouths with gags. “No need for unpleasantness, so long as you behave yourselves,” he said.

  Ellayne knew Ysbott’s men for a cowardly and superstitious lot, but she didn’t know Ysbott. His men were afraid of him, she sensed. They probably had good reason. Helki could have told her that Ysbott was feared among the outlaw chiefs of Lintum Forest “because he can smile at you like a brother, and at the same moment, stick a knife between your ribs. He’s done it often enough.” But she had neither Helki nor anyone else to give her good advice.

  Ysbott couldn’t read, but that didn’t mean he was a fool. Asking for a ransom of a hundred gold spears meant he was ignorant about money and hadn’t had much experience with it, and he was greedy, too. But was he so rock-solid ignorant that even superstition was above him? He had to have some wits about him, or he wouldn’t be a bandit chief.

  “What if your father won’t pay?” Enith said, jarring her out of her thoughts.

  “He’ll know what to do. He always knows.”

  “But if he doesn’t pay—”

  “Shh! I don’t feel like talking now,” Ellayne answered.

  “Might as well talk,” said one of the men. “Nothing else to do.” But Enith didn’t speak again.

  The men’s boredom worked in her favor, Ellayne thought. Ysbott sat against a tree and fell asleep. Slowly, slo
wly, pretending to be scratching an itch, Ellayne reached for the leather-knife in her boot. If she could just cut the bonds around her ankles without anyone noticing, she’d be ready for the most dangerous step of her plan.

  It took all afternoon, a second here, a moment there, whenever the men weren’t looking. Enith saw her, though; her eyes went wide when she realized what Ellayne was doing. Ellayne glared at her and Enith looked away. She had more sense than Ellayne had expected.

  The trick was to cut the rope almost through, but not quite. It had to look like it was still intact, but be cut enough so that it would snap as soon as Ellayne kicked her legs hard. It wasn’t easy to do.

  Enith stole another peek at her.