by Lee Duigon
“Marabba kay or!”
A man spoke to them. He and a few others peered down at them from horseback—unwashed, bearded faces.
“You know Martis?” said the rider. “He ask us to look for you.”
These were Wallekki. The man’s Obannese was hard to understand.
“Martis?” Jack repeated.
“Yes, yes—Martis. You know him? He seeks two children, cannot find them. I am Kwana.” The rider touched his heart and dipped his head. “Martis is our friend.”
Ellayne scrambled to her feet. “He’s our friend, too!” she cried. “Where is he? Can you take us to him?”
Kwana shrugged. “Where he is, we know not. Two days since we see him. But maybe we can find him. We try.”
Martis knew how to make friends of the Wallekki. The children had seen him do it more than once. He’d taught them that these Heathen’s friendship, once given, could be trusted. Jack stood up beside Ellayne and said, “Yes, please try! We want to see Martis.”
Kwana turned to the others and rattled off something in their language. They dismounted and began to pluck up bushes.
“We make big smoke, and maybe Martis see,” he said. He grinned at Jack. “We see your little-bit smoke! If Martis see mine, he will read.”
It took them a little while to get their fire going. They were using waxbushes with green leaves. Those would produce a terrific amount of smoke, once they got burning properly. When at last the smoke was rising in a thick, grey column, Kwana and another man took a blanket and used it to make the smoke go up in disconnected puffs.
“If Martis sees that, he’ll be able to understand the message?” Ellayne said.
“He will.”
She nudged Jack. “Isn’t that something!” It was one of the cleverest things she’d ever seen. “How far away can Martis be,” she asked Kwana, “and still be able to see that?”
Kwana glanced up at the sky. “This weather, maybe two days’ ride.”
Jack whispered to Ellayne. “Can we trust these fellows?”
“They’re Martis’ friends,” she whispered back. “But if they turn bad on us, flash the light on them at night and scare their eyeballs out!”
Her suggestion left Jack flabbergasted.
Chapter 27
A Terror for Jack
Fnaa was getting odd and dangerous ideas—dangerous to himself, probably, he thought. But how dangerous? Hadn’t the little girl, Jandra, told him to do whatever came into his heart to do, and God would protect him? And didn’t everybody say she was a prophet? Fnaa didn’t know much about religion, but he supposed it was best to listen to a prophet.
And so one day, at supper with his chiefs and some of the more important citizens of Obann, he started giggling with a mouthful of soup so that it dribbled out all over, and rolled his eyes every which way, and finally laughed out loud; and everybody at the table stared at him.
“Your Majesty, what’s the matter?” cried Gurun, sitting next to him. “You’ve spilled soup all over your nice clean shirt.”
“I can’t help it!” Fnaa said. “It’s so funny, that man’s beard.” He pointed across the table to Obann’s richest lumber merchant. “It’s got all those bread crumbs in it!” He broke into a peal of high-pitched, quavering laughter that echoed up and down the banquet hall like the wailing of a ghost. He couldn’t see his mother, who was standing somewhere behind him to wait on the banqueters, but he could imagine the look on her face. Meanwhile the wealthy merchant hurriedly applied a napkin to his beard; but he couldn’t dab out the blush of embarrassment that reddened his cheeks.
“I think perhaps we’ve kept His Majesty too long at the table,” said a man whose work crews were repairing the damage to the city’s walls. Fnaa grinned at him and tried to make his eyes roll in opposite directions, and the man looked the other way.
“Yes—I’m sure you must be tired, Sire,” said Gurun.
One by one the prominent citizens rose from the table—they were losing out on a good supper—bowed politely to the king, excused themselves with flowery words, and left. The chiefs remained at the table, still staring at Fnaa.
“I think I ought to put His Majesty to bed,” Gurun said. “Come along, King Ryons.”
“I will go with you,” said Chagadai. Uduqu got up, too. “I think I’ll tell the king a bedtime story,” he said.
“Do you think that wise, Chief Uduqu?”
“Very wise, O Queen.”
So four of them went off to the royal bedchamber, with Dakl hurrying after. “Oh, I’m going to catch it now!” Fnaa thought.
Chagadai commanded Dakl to stay outside and not let anyone stop by the door to listen. She wrung her apron in her hands, and he patted her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “We won’t hurt him.”
With the door shut and bolted, Fnaa had to deal with three pairs of grown-up eyes all trying to bore holes in him at once. For courage he turned to God’s promise to protect him.
“Are you well, Fnaa?” Gurun asked. “Please tell the truth! Your mother has told me that you always used to play the fool in your old master’s house, so that they wouldn’t sell you. But why play the fool with us?”
“If he’s playing!” Uduqu added.
Fnaa shrugged. “It’s the thing I do best,” he said. He told them what Jandra had said to him. Chagadai nodded: Abgayl had already told him of the incident. But this was the first time Fnaa told anyone what Jandra had actually said.
“Everybody says God speaks through her,” he went on. “So I thought it was God telling me what to do.”
The adults exchanged puzzled looks. They’d all had experience of Jandra’s prophecies: there could be no doubting her. She was far too young to invent the messages that came out of her mouth. Besides, her prophecies came true.
“Why should God want the people of this city to think their king has lost his wits?” Gurun wondered.
“She said I should do anything that came into my heart to do,” Fnaa said. He paused for a moment to concentrate. “She said God wants me to provoke folly in the minds of men who will not hear His voice. That’s just want she said. ‘Folly’ means really stupid foolishness—doesn’t it?”
Uduqu chuckled. “That it does!” he said. “But it might get ticklish for us, when all the people get to thinking we chiefs have unloaded a simpleton on them for a king. They might get nasty about it.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Fnaa said. “The next thing I’m going to do is to send the army away—to Lintum Forest, I mean. Maybe that’s where King Ryons is. Maybe you’ll be able to find him there.”
Chagadai’s jaw dropped open. “What will people think of us,” he said, “if we Ghols desert our father? My men will think I’m crazy! Except for the three of us in this room, and Obst, all the chieftains believe this boy is King Ryons. And all the warriors believe it, too.”
“Well, God said He would protect me,” said Fnaa. “He didn’t promise to protect anybody else, so all of you had better go. Then you’ll be safe. I wouldn’t want the real King Ryons to blame me for getting his army killed.”
“There is wisdom in this,” Gurun said. “The city is rotten with treason. If the people rise against us, better the king’s army have no Obannese blood on its hands. But I do not think they will rise, if the chiefs and their warriors leave the city. I will stay here with Fnaa: I am told the people are very far from hating me.”
“You are brave, honeysuckle,” said Chagadai. “And you, too, Fnaa, are a very brave boy—just like King Ryons himself. I don’t like to leave you! Even so, we have never gone wrong by obeying God. He has saved us out of worse troubles than this.”
“Lintum Forest is almost like home, to Abnaks,” Uduqu said. “But I’m getting too old to march so far, and I don’t care to bounce all those miles on a horse’s back. I think I’ll stay, too. My men can choose a younger man to be their chief.”
“It’s dangerous to stay,” said Fnaa.
“That’s all right,�
�� Uduqu said. “I’m dangerous, myself. Anyone who wants my scalp will have a hard time earning it.”
The five Wallekki made camp by the gully. All afternoon they sent up smoke signals. Ellayne was curious, and watched them closely. “Can you really send messages by puffs of smoke?” she asked.
“Oh, yes—not difficult,” Kwana said. He was the only one who could speak any Obannese. “This smoke means, ‘Two—friends—found—come.’ If Martis sees, he will know what it means.”
With five armed men around them the children felt safe, although Wytt kept himself out of the men’s sight. Supper was short rations, for the Wallekkis’ hunting hadn’t prospered lately. Kwana said they would do better tomorrow.
By and by everyone was sound asleep but Jack. Some restless impulse led him to take the light-giver from his pocket and hold it in his hands. He rolled onto his side, facing away from the others, and wondered if he dared coax any light out of the object without the Wallekki seeing it and demanding an explanation—or maybe even hopping onto their horses in a panic and deserting. He supposed it would do no harm if he kept the object cupped tightly in his hands and held it close. After all, it made no noise.
He squeezed the bump in the middle of the disc and light leaped out. He held it close to the ground, close to his body, so it wouldn’t wake the sleepers. He fondled the smooth, round rim of it—
And then something happened that made him yelp aloud, very loud indeed; and he almost threw the disc away; and men woke up with grunts and mutterings. He heard them fumble for their weapons. Ellayne sat up next to him and said, “Jack? Jack?” But he had the presence of mind to pinch the nubbin and snuff out the light, and jam the disc back into his pocket before anyone saw anything.
“It’s all right!” he answered Ellayne. That was a lie: it was not all right, but he had to say something. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all. Sorry!”
Kwana overheard, translated for his men, and they lay back down, grumbling. Kwana crawled closer to Jack and asked, “What did you dream?”
“Just a silly dream,” Jack said. “I was climbing a tree and I fell.”
“Stay out of trees,” said Kwana, and crept back to his blanket.
After a few minutes Ellayne moved closer and whispered harshly, “Liar! You were playing with that cusset thing, weren’t you? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“You let out a yell like someone burned you.”
“I didn’t get hurt!” Jack said. “Everything’s all right. Now be quiet so the men can sleep!”
So Ellayne had to lie there and fume in silence until she fell back to sleep. But for Jack there was no chance of sleep that night. He wondered if he would ever sleep again. He couldn’t say whether he’d been scared half to death or just astonished more than he could bear. It was quite a few minutes before his heart stopped fluttering like a moth in a jar. Belatedly he noticed he was drenched in sweat. Sleep was out of the question.
It wasn’t until later in the morning, when the Wallekki had gone out foraging for food prior to sending up more smoke signals, that Jack had a chance to tell Ellayne what had happened. Kwana had decided to remain at this camp for a few days and give Martis a chance to find them. There was a spring at the far end of the gully, and near it a wild plum tree was in fruit—for hungry men, it was better than nothing. The children undertook to fill all the waterskins while the men hunted for food, and so they found themselves alone at last.
“Well?” said Ellayne. “What was all that yelling about last night? What did you do?”
“I only yelled once,” Jack said, “and I didn’t do anything—not on purpose, I mean. I wanted to make the light, just to see it, because I couldn’t get to sleep. And—”
“And what?”
He hardly knew how to continue. There were some things that just didn’t make sense no matter how you tried to say them.
“Come on, Jack!”
“It’s this thing here.” He patted his pocket, careful not to pat too hard and not daring to take the item out again. He didn’t want to touch it. He might not ever touch it again.
“What about it?” Ellayne stamped her foot.
Jack groped for words, couldn’t find any that would serve, and finally just blurted out: “This thing. There’s someone in it!”
“What?” Ellayne shook her head. What in the world would make him say a thing like that? She couldn’t have heard him right. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw her!” Jack said. “A woman. She’s inside this thing. She looked at me!”
Ellayne took his arms in her hands and squeezed. “Talk sense, Jack—if you can,” she said. “Don’t talk nonsense! Are you all right?”
“Oh, sure, I’m all right—except for being scared out of my skin.” He took a deep breath. “I saw a woman’s face. She was inside the cuss’t thing. She was smiling. She had red lips. Great big eyes: too big. And then she blinked. I know what I saw!”
“But Jack—it’s just a little tiny thing that fits in your hand. There can’t be anybody inside it. They wouldn’t fit! It must have been a picture that you saw. Some kind of picture.”
“A picture doesn’t blink at you,” Jack said.
He felt sick. For two spits he’d crush the filthy thing with a rock, if he dared lay hands on it again. He wished it weren’t in his pocket. All he had to do was close his eyes, and he could see that face again. The woman had eyes twice as big as any normal person’s and lips as red as blood.
Ellayne saw by the lack of color in his face that he really was scared and wasn’t joking. A dread crept over her, starting at her scalp and prickling its way down. “This is what comes of messing around with magic!” she thought.
“You’d better let me see it,” she said.
“I don’t want to see it again. I don’t want to touch it. If you want to reach into my pocket and take it, you can have it.”
“I don’t want it! I just want to see.”
At that moment Wytt joined them, jumping out of cover with a piercing chirp; and Jack jumped an inch off the ground.
“Fry your eyes, Wytt, don’t do that!” he cried.
Wytt glared at him and chattered like a scolding squirrel. The meaning he conveyed was, “Why are you so scared? There’s nothing bad here. Not now. Men will be back soon. What has scared you, Jack?”
Jack tried to explain. “It’s that thing I took from Noma, the thing that makes light. There’s a woman inside it.”
He almost screamed when Wytt leaped up on his leg, took a hold on his belt, and stuck his face in the pocket. Wytt sniffed deeply.
He chirped and twittered, “No one there! Nothing living, nothing breathing.” He gave Jack what looked like a reproving glance and hopped back to the ground. Ellayne believed his report and felt deeply relieved.
“It’s not a real person, Jack,” she said. “It’s something magical, and you’d better not fiddle with it anymore.” And she couldn’t help adding, “Do you believe in magic now?”
He was so mad at her for saying that, he forgot to be afraid.
Chapter 28
How Ryons Was Captured
Lintum Forest is a very great forest. Ryons soon realized that you don’t just walk in and “find Helki.” Indeed, unless you know it well—even Helki didn’t know all of it—you are liable not to be able to find anything, and lose yourself while you’re looking for it.
That was what happened to Ryons and Perkin. After two days of pushing into the forest, they found themselves in the middle of an unknown and uninhabited country, with nothing to see but trees and no idea of how to get back to the edge of the forest. There were paths aplenty, but those had been made by animals without a thought for the convenience of humans. Ryons and Perkin had taken many of them to get to where they were now. A woodsman would have blazed his trail so he could pick it up again, but Ryons and Perkin weren’t woodsmen. Perkin had tried to set a straight course east, but too many of the paths led into bogs and
briar patches to allow anything at all like a direct route anywhere.
“In short,” said Perkin, “we’re lost.”
Cavall looked up at him expectantly, wagging his tail. He wasn’t lost. Angel perched up in a tree somewhere; she wasn’t lost either. Baby stood beside Perkin, eyes half-closed. He was lost, but he didn’t care. This morning he’d caught and devoured an opossum, and he was beginning to like the forest.
“I guess we ought to find a nice place and make camp,” Ryons said. “Someplace where there’s water and berries, and where we can set traps or make bows and arrows. Helki always said there’s no reason to go hungry in the forest, but I’m getting pretty hungry.”