by Lee Duigon
Sunfish shuddered. “It’s unspeakably wicked!” he said.
Uwain patted his arm. “Sir, you know the Scriptures better than anyone I’ve ever known,” he said. “You know that God chooses prophets. They don’t choose themselves. I believe you’ve been given a vision of the Thunder King—or, rather, the man who now calls himself the Thunder King, and hides behind a golden mask. I believe the Lord showed you this to remind us of our danger. It’s peaceful, here in the hills; but war could break out again any day.”
In his old life, when he was Prester Orth, Sunfish counterfeited what was meant to be taken for a long-lost prophecy of Batha the Seer, exhorting God’s people to cross the mountains and slaughter the nations of the Heathen. He did this at the bidding of the First Prester, Lord Reesh, and most of the College of Presters believed the prophecy was genuine; but many of them didn’t. As Sunfish, he had no memory of doing this. Orth’s false prophecy had since fallen into some disrepute. But all the presters and reciters in Obann would have been astonished to learn that the author of a counterfeit prophecy had, much against his will, become a true prophet.
“I would rather this new Thunder King came West,” Hlah said, “and that God would bless some lucky Abnak with a chance to take that golden mask and the scalp that goes with it.”
“That may yet come to pass,” said Uwain.
Chapter 32
A Token from the Past
Kwana and his men had decided to spend only one more day at their campsite, sending smoke signals; but by dint of hard riding, Martis found them while they still lingered over their breakfast. They spotted the dust raised by Dulayl’s hooves and reached for their weapons. When they saw it was only one rider, they relaxed.
“Martis comes!” Kwana said, grinning at Ellayne. The men waved a greeting, and the rider waved back.
Ellayne had never been gladder to see anyone in all her life. Martis’ feet were hardly on the ground when she threw herself into his arms.
“I knew you’d come!” she cried. “I knew you’d find us!”
“Oof! You almost knocked me over,” Martis said. Jack was just as happy to see him—maybe even happier—but he couldn’t bring himself to carry on about it like Ellayne. Martis looked at him over Ellayne’s shoulder, reached out, and pulled him into his embrace; and Jack was glad he did.
“You two never make it easy for me, do you?” he said. Once upon a time Lord Reesh sent him forth to kill these children. Now he loved them—he who had never loved anyone before. His heart was full.
“These be the children you look for, Martis?” Kwana said. The joke raised smiles all around. Martis released the children and grabbed the Wallekki’s hand.
“My thanks, my brother!” he said, in the courtliest Wallekki. “My debt to you is the debt between friends, which has no price.” Here followed an exchange of complicated speeches of the kind much prized by the Wallekki. It took some minutes to conclude.
“Where shall we go now, my brother?” said Kwana. “Shall we ride together, or part?”
“I can’t decide until I talk to the children and find out what they were doing out here in the first place,” Martis said. Kwana nodded, and soon led his men out to hunt for food while Martis rested. He had to have a drink of tea, he said, before he could deal with questions and answers.
“You’d better have a good story for the baron,” he said, after his first few sips of tea. “He was in quite a temper when I left him.”
“We can deal with that,” said Ellayne.
“But there’s something else first!” Jack interrupted. “We’ve found something—”
“Found it?”
“All right!” Jack glared at Ellayne. “A man had it, and we took it from him.”
“It’s a magical item!” said Ellayne.
It took time to get out the story in a way that made any sense to Martis. Jack and Ellayne bickered, but neither could have told the story without the other. Wytt came out of hiding and chattered a greeting to Martis, and more.
“What’s he saying?” Martis asked.
“He thinks we’ve been very silly, lately,” said Ellayne.
“Are you going to show me this magical item? Where is it?”
“It’s in Jack’s pocket.”
“Take it out, Jack,” Martis said.
Jack hadn’t touched it for days, not since he saw the face in it.
“Come on—let me see it,” Martis said, as gently as he could. He knew Jack didn’t scare easily, so he respected the boy’s fear.
With great caution Jack reached into his pocket. The cusset thing was still there; he hadn’t been lucky enough to lose it. He used to like the feel of it, the smooth, hard texture. He didn’t like it anymore.
“Here,” he said, offering it to Martis. “Be careful how you handle it. Don’t let the magic out.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in magic, Jack.”
“I don’t! But this thing’s not natural.”
Martis took the object from Jack’s hand. The moment he touched it, and got a good look at it, he knew.
“This isn’t magic!” he said. “Do you know what this is? It’s a thing—a thing left over from the ancient times. I’ve seen hundreds of things like it. Lord Reesh collected them; he had a whole roomful of them. How do you get it to make light?”
Jack told him. Martis pressed the bump and startled a little when he saw the light.
“Ah! Lord Reesh would have paid his weight in gold for this little bauble!” he said. “He would have killed both men and women to possess it. How he would have loved to clap his eyes on it!”
“You’ve seen something like this before?” Ellayne marveled.
“Not exactly like this one—but many things similar to it. They’re so old, of course, and almost always damaged in some way, so I’ve never seen one that can really do anything, as this one does.” Martis caressed it with his thumb. “Lord Reesh had a thing that made a kind of a clicking noise, if you shook it, and another one that buzzed. That was all they did. But that they did anything at all made them the gems of his collection.”
“So they’re just things?” Jack said. “What were they for?”
“Nobody knows,” Martis said. “But tell me—how do you get it to show you that image of a woman?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t do it on purpose. Just fooling around with it. I didn’t know what was going to happen!” Jack said. Martis so obviously had no fear of it that Jack was quickly losing his. It wasn’t magic, after all! The thought made him feel like dancing a jig. “I think I was sort of rubbing it around the edge.”
“Are you sure it can’t hurt us?” Ellayne asked.
“That it can do anything at all, after passing through the Day of Fire, is a miracle,” said Martis. “It’s a thousand years old, at least. No, I very much doubt it can hurt us. But let me see …”
His fingers massaged the item, rubbing the rim; and suddenly the woman’s face emerged in the midst of it, with the light shining through.
“There it is!” he said. “Someone’s face, who lived during the Age of Empire. I wonder who she was.”
“You mean it’s just a picture? Really?” Jack said.
“But she looks so strange!” Ellayne said. “Her eyes are so enormous, and her mouth’s so small. Did people look like that in ancient times?”
“Yes, it’s just a picture. No, they didn’t really look like this,” Martis said. “Sometimes that’s how they drew faces. No one knows why. You can see faces like this one on some of the other things, or even painted on a wall. Not many of those paintings have survived. Lord Reesh used to study them. He always said that if we studied these remnants long enough, we might learn how to do some of the wonderful things the ancients used to do.”
“The kinds of things that got them wiped out in the Day of Fire?” Ellayne said. “No thanks!”
Martis experimented with rubbing the object in the opposite direction. The woman’s picture disappeared. He pressed the knob in t
he middle and the light went out.
“The ancients were like gods, Lord Reesh said.” Martis seemed to be talking to himself. “They could do things that men can’t do anymore. Talk to each other while they were miles apart. Travel through the sky like birds and in the sea like fish. Kill their enemies across great distances. Lord Reesh dreamed of being able to do such things again.” He paused. The children waited for more. He continued: “But in their power they were proud and sinful, wicked beyond anything ever seen in the world since then. That’s why God destroyed them, and all their great works with them.” He bounced the little item in the palm of his hand. “Unimportant little things like this are all that’s left. I suppose God left them so that we would know that the writings preserved in the Commentaries are true.”
Jack and Ellayne both nodded. Obst had told them about the Commentaries, which most people called the New Books. They weren’t Scripture, but the presters used them to teach people to honor the Temple, and how to pray in unison and under direction. But there were also Commentaries that were rarely read and poorly understood, even by scholars, because they spoke of events and things whose like could no longer be found in the world, Obst said. The glory of the Empire, and its instant destruction in the Day of Fire, was one of those things.
“Now,” said Martis, “tell me exactly how you came by this treasure.”
Jack felt ashamed of himself when he told of hitting Noma with the stone while the man slept, but Martis had no reaction to it. Well, he’d done a lot worse things than that, Jack reflected, many times over. The children knew those actions troubled Martis sometimes. He’d told them so.
“We were going to steal it all along,” Ellayne said, “as soon as we got the chance. We were going to take it back to Obann and tell Obst all about it. We thought he’d better know.”
“You should have seen how all those people looked at Noma when he shone the light at them. They thought it was magic,” Jack said. He turned to Ellayne. “So did she.”
“And so did you, Mr. Bucket!” She knew Jack didn’t like that nickname. “Well, who wouldn’t think so?”
Martis turned the light on and off a few more times and sat there looking at it, and thinking.
“They’re trying to awe the people into submitting to the Thunder King. That’s obvious,” he said. Then he fell silent for so long that it made Ellayne fidget.
“What are you thinking, Martis?” she said. “Have you decided what we ought to do?”
“Oh, we have to take this back to Obann,” he said. “The people have to be taught not to be afraid of something like this, not to think it’s magic. They have to understand that things like this are nothing, really—just odds and ends left over from the past. There must be other agents of the Thunder King traveling the countryside, with other pretty baubles in their keeping. His army couldn’t conquer Obann, but maybe he can use lies to overthrow it.”
He didn’t tell the children everything that was in his heart. He didn’t reveal the extent of his fear.
If the Thunder King had found little things left over from the Age of Empire, might he not also have found big things? Maybe more had survived in the East than in the West: Lord Reesh used to think that might be so. What if the Thunder King had found something that could slaughter people at a distance? What if the sinful pride of those ancient days had found a new servant in the Thunder King?
“I hate to leave King Ryons wandering around alone,” he said at last. “But we might search all our lives and never find him; and meanwhile the king’s counselors and chieftains must be warned, and we’re the only ones who can warn them. We can make good time, straight back to Obann, and we’ll be reasonably safe if Kwana and his men ride with us. Do you agree?”
“We hoped to find King Ryons,” Ellayne said. “Wytt kept picking up his trail. But this business with Noma changed everything.”
“We always wind up sorry for it, if we don’t listen to you,” Jack said. “I guess I’ve learned that lesson.”
But of course they didn’t know that Obst and all the chieftains had just left Obann, and there would be no one in the city to advise them.
Wytt listened quietly to the humans’ talk, understanding it in his own fashion. Besides which, he’d already made his own plan.
He would find King Ryons.
Chapter 33
For the Welfare of the City
In the city of Obann, with the chieftains and their warriors gone, there were only Hennen’s spearmen to guard the palace and the city gates, and eighteen Blays (two were lost) to guard the queen. There were two thousand militia now in Obann, but these were new recruits who’d not yet been tested in battle. All in all, there were nowhere near enough troops to defend so great a city; but no one expected there would be a need to defend it—not from any enemy on the outside.
On the evening of the same day that the chiefs departed, a group of prominent citizens invited themselves to the palace and politely demanded an audience with the queen and General Hennen.
“We are concerned for the welfare of our city and for the welfare of our good King Ryons, too,” said their spokesman, a rich wool merchant named Merffin Mord. “Every king, especially a king of such tender years as Ryons, must have a council to advise him and show him what ought to be done. Not a council of Heathen warlords—some of them never saw a city before they came here!—but a true council of Obann’s loyal citizens. I have been chosen by the people of Obann—”
Here he was interrupted by a series of rude noises coming from just outside the doorway of the audience chamber. They were the kind of noises that important people least expect to hear when they are talking business.
“Your Majesty, please!” cried Gurun; for she guessed at once who was making the noises. And into the hall strutted Fnaa, with his mother trailing after him like the poor helpless servant of a distracted king. Fnaa let his eyes rest for a moment on Merffin Mord, then turned to Gurun.
“What does this fat man want? What’s he doing here?” Fnaa said—quite loudly, too. “I didn’t ask him to come!”
Merffin bowed to the supposed king, and his fellow delegates bowed, too.
“Sire,” Gurun said, “these are very important men in the city. They want to be your councilors.”
“I don’t need any councilors. Tell them to go away.”
Gurun shrugged. “Good sirs, I think we should talk of this some other time. I have no right to make decisions that belong properly to King Ryons, and he is not in a mood for it. Please come back another day.”
With more bowing, and some inadequately suppressed grumbling, the prominent citizens began to leave. But none had reached the door when Fnaa cried out, “Wait! Don’t go!” And they halted.
“Do these men,” Fnaa asked, “want to come here and do dull work? All that foolery about taxes and roads and fixing up this or that building? You know I hate sitting around and listening to all that rot! If Mr. Fatty-fat wants to bother with it, why shouldn’t he?”
Merffin, whose reddening face showed what he thought of the nickname Fnaa had given him, said, “Sire, we know the city, and we will give you good advice. You don’t want the city’s business to miscarry, after all. But it can indeed be dull business, as you so rightly say. There’s no need for you to be troubled with it.”
Gurun wanted to answer, but Fnaa didn’t let her.
“Very well, then, that’s settled!” he said. “These men will come to the palace every day, and if there’s anything to do that’s dull and costs money, let them do it. I, the king, command it!” Fnaa had gotten rather fond of that phrase lately.
When at last they got a chance to talk to him alone, just before bedtime, Gurun and Dakl wanted to know what Fnaa thought he was doing.
“Anything that comes into my heart to do—just like the prophetess said,” he answered.
“Those men who were here this evening did not mean well,” said Gurun. “They think you have become a simpleton.”
“The whole city thinks that
,” Dakl said.
“They will steal the city out from under us,” Gurun said. “They wouldn’t have dared to try, while the chieftains were here.”
“Uduqu’s still here,” Fnaa said. But Dakl said, “Pish! He’s a fierce old man who is as helpless as a babe, in a place like this. Men like Merffin Mord will have no fear of him.”
“Well, the prophetess said I was to lead them into folly,” Fnaa said. “That’s what God wants, and she says He’ll protect me.”
Dakl looked at Gurun. “There’s wisdom in it, my lady,” she said. “As long as they think the king’s a fool, to be blown this way and that as it suits them, and will never turn on them as long as they give him a hobbyhorse to ride, they’ll be happy to have him on the throne. They won’t murder him.”