The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  When all were present, the mardars and Reesh stood and made their prayer to the Thunder King. The ritual no longer troubled Reesh quite as much as it had at first. “He’s no less a god than any other god,” the First Prester thought, “and certainly more than these silly wooden idols he displays around the hall.”

  The prayer being said, they all sat down; and slaves brought out steaming tureens of thick, dark soup.

  “I hope you don’t object to mule meat in your soup, First Prester,” Kyo said. “It’s been hard to get wagons up to the pass these last few days, so we’ve run a little short of provisions.”

  “Mule meat is fine,” said Reesh, who had little appetite for anything these days.

  “In the old days,” said Kyo, “it used to be man’s flesh that we ate, when there was nothing better. Our master has discontinued this custom, reserving it to himself alone. I cannot say I miss it. Mule is better.”

  Reesh only nodded. The Thunder King could do as he pleased—who could stop him? He was a law unto himself. The God of Obann caused His laws to be written down, long ago, so that all the world would know them. But King Thunder’s law was whatever word came out of his mouth that day. No wonder all the people feared him, Reesh thought.

  The soup cloyed in his mouth. The cat paced to and fro, as much as the chain would allow. Why was it so restless? Usually the filthy thing just crouched on the floor and glared.

  But then a slave opened one of the doors that separated the banquet from the winter night outside; and the cat stopped pacing.

  Chillith couldn’t see that night had fallen, nor did he see the wall that rose in front of him with its gate stuck open in the snow. His face by now was numb, so he didn’t feel that it was colder. But he smelled smoke, and the aroma of cooked flesh, and he knew he’d arrived at the hall.

  A hoarse voice challenged him. “Halt! Who are you, out there?”

  “Mardar Chillith. I’ve been blinded by the snow and cannot see,” he answered. He raised his free hand and made the sign of the mardars. “Take me into the Thunder King’s hall. I’m cold.”

  Someone took him by the arm and led him. He could not know that this was the only sentry at the gates. The guards had cast lots to see who would have to keep watch in the cold, and this man lost. He led Chillith over an expanse of hard-packed snow. Chillith sensed the unnatural stillness of that night. He sensed the presence of God.

  Warmth flowed out to him when the guard let him into the hall. It seemed to him an unwholesome warmth; he preferred the cold. He heard the murmur of men’s voices in many different languages; but silence fell when he came in. He heard his own staff thump against the floor. He took just a few steps, then stopped.

  “Now what’s this?” Reesh wondered. “A frozen wanderer!” Why should he wish to intrude on the feast? Who was he? But if what everyone said about him was true, the Thunder King already knew. Judging by the way they turned and stared, none of the mardars knew anything.

  King Thunder only sat. Were those his eyes glittering through the eye-holes in the golden mask, or just a trick of lamplight?

  “Hear the Word of God!” said Chillith. His voice boomed in the hall. “The true God knew that I was blind, so He took away the sight of my eyes and gave me understanding.

  “He has seen the evil that you do, in the name of a god who is no god. He has heard your boasting against Him. So that all the nations of men shall know that He is God, you are delivered into judgment. His hand is stretched out over you: He will take you away, and none shall find you. No man in this place shall see tomorrow morning.”

  “Belabor my soul—the last of the mad prophets!” thought Reesh. “And this one a Heathen, by the look of him.” In the city of Obann they had hanged such prophets. What would King Thunder do to this one?

  But the mardars sat frozen in their seats, stunned into silence. Soup dribbled from Kyo’s open mouth.

  The Thunder King rose slowly from his throne. One by one he descended the stone steps of his dais. The prophet continued to proclaim.

  “I was one of you, once. I would have been a party to the lies with which you deceive the nations. You who go clad in lies, God has torn off your robes and exposed your nakedness. The Lord has spoken.”

  Having delivered his mad message, the prophet lapsed into silence. King Thunder stood beside the monster cat, which dared not look up at him. When he answered, his voice was like silk.

  “Now, what shall I do,” he said, “to a man who blasphemes me to my face? It’s not the sort of thing a god can pardon. Besides, you’ve ruined the banquet. But there is one guest here who hasn’t feasted yet—and now he shall have his portion.”

  Chillith did not see the Thunder King, although he heard his voice. He didn’t see him unsnap the chain from the great cat’s collar.

  What Chillith did see cannot be told here, or anywhere. There are some visions too wonderful, too overwhelming, for words. He still stood before the Thunder King, but in reality he was already somewhere else—somewhere he never dreamed existed.

  But Reesh saw the Thunder King unleash the cat; and all the mardars saw it, too.

  “What is he doing?” he muttered to Kyo. “He can’t do that in here!”

  But he did. He did release the cat, and with a terrific roar, it leaped forth to devour King Thunder’s enemy.

  The mardars were only human. When the cat roared, some of them tumbled out of their seats. A few got up without falling over, threw open the doors, and fled outside into the night.

  The great cat charged right past Chillith without touching him and followed the fleeing mardars out the door.

  And there stood the Thunder King, looking like a fool.

  Following Chillith’s tracks, Martis and the children pushed on, their way lighted by a reflection from a sliver of moon peeking through the clouds. Wytt kept telling them they had not far to go; but he also told them that Chillith had already passed through the gates.

  “Then there’s nothing we can do,” Jack said. “Should we go on? We’re almost there.”

  “Shh! Sound carries on a night like this,” Martis said.

  “That’s that,” Ellayne thought. “There’s no point in going on. There’s nothing we can do for Chillith.” They hadn’t been able to keep him from going where God had called him to go. Maybe they shouldn’t have tried.

  The snow was knee-deep on Martis, but Chillith had broken a trail for them: otherwise the children could have gone no farther. How they found the strength to keep going at all, Ellayne couldn’t imagine. How they were going to get back down again was even harder to imagine.

  They practically walked right up to the gates before Martis looked up and saw the wall. He held out a hand to halt the children. “If there are any watchmen up there, we’re lost!” he thought.

  But no sentry challenged them. Instead, at some undetermined distance, they heard a noise of men yelling, with a scream or two thrown in. It sounded like a riot.

  Before they could decide what to do next, something like a mass of living darkness burst out through an open gate—straight at them. Jack had just time to realize it was an animal, a deadly beast with eyes of green fire, fangs like swords. Martis had just time to throw himself in front of the children: his life for theirs. And Ellayne had only time to scream.

  No one can scream quite like a girl of Ellayne’s age, and her whole soul poured out in this one. Piercing, shrill, and more than that—her scream filled the whole pass and caromed off the clouds above.

  The charging beast veered and tore off into the woods.

  And above the golden hall, the mountainside began to move.

  For a moment they could only stare. It was as if the world itself had shrugged its shoulders. Weeks’ and weeks’ worth of heavy snow began to slide down from the mountains’ slopes—slowly at first and with a low growl that you felt to the marrow of your bones.

  The Golden Pass was the bottom of a funnel. The snow had nowhere to go but there. Martis suddenly snapped to life.r />
  “Run!” He turned and pushed the children, almost knocking them down. “Run for your lives!”

  The snow’s growl turned into a roar, louder and louder—loud enough to burst your head right open.

  And they ran, all three of them, as fast as they could run—which in the deep snow on the road, could be by no means fast enough.

  At first Lord Reesh thought he was hearing the beginnings of a mighty thunderstorm. The whole hall vibrated. The panicked mardars suddenly stood still, amazed right out of their panic.

  But no one saw the end except Helki’s hawk, Angel. She hated traveling by night, and was sleeping in his arms when something woke her—she never knew what. She flapped her wings and went aloft.

  She saw the snow on either side of the pass slide off the mountains and go pouring down into the space between, with a roar louder than the loudest thunder. In the twinkling of an eye, everything vanished—the golden hall, the outbuildings and barracks, cabins and stables, man and beast—all buried under snow. And Angel had heard Ellayne’s scream, not knowing what it was, but knowing that it dislodged the snow piled on the mountains. Maybe the snow would have come down later, maybe not. But a girl’s scream brought it down that night.

  Not a trace could be seen of the Thunder King’s works in the Golden Pass. The wall held the snow back from tumbling down the road; but it still broke under the snow’s weight and was buried.

  By then the force of the avalanche was spent, and the snow didn’t follow Jack, Ellayne, and Martis down the road. It had done what God willed it to do, and now it rested.

  Martis and the children didn’t get far. Ellayne and Jack could pump their legs no farther. Martis sank into the snow beside them. Wytt urged them to get up, keep going. “Can’t stop here—too cold!”

  They would have died there, but they didn’t. Helki, hurrying up behind them, found them before it was too late.

  Many miles away, Jandra prophesied to King Ryons’ army. It was encamped for the night, but the chiefs assembled quickly when Abgayle summoned them.

  Once again the grown-up voice issued from the toddler’s mouth:

  “Hear the word of the Lord. Remember my servant Chillith, the Griff, and write his name in your books: for tonight he is seated at my table with the saints.”

  That was all. Jandra fell back asleep in Abgayle’s arms.

  “Chillith the Griff?” Chief Shaffur wondered. “Who in the world is that, and why should we remember him?”

  “We will surely know, in due time,” Obst said.

  CHAPTER 54

  How Some Adventures Ended

  Winter passed. Spring came, and most of that passed, too.

  Jack lived at Ellayne’s house now. Roshay Bault insisted on it. “But what about Van?” Jack said, when Roshay first proposed it.

  “I’ll give him back his job as municipal carter,” the chief councilor said, “and he can owe that to you.” So that satisfied Jack’s stepfather, and neither of them missed each other.

  Martis had a long rest in Ninneburky. He needed it.

  Helki went back to Lintum Forest; but what with so many fugitives from the shattered Heathen host drifting into Lintum and setting up as outlaws, Helki didn’t get much rest. But thanks to him, the settlers did.

  King Ryons’ army returned to Obann with him. Most of them doubted they would ever see their native lands again, so they made new homes there. Chief Spider died in Obann City and was buried with honors befitting a benefactor of the nation. Nanny died, too. The chiefs voted her a monument.

  Gurun remained with the king, and everyone in Obann called her Queen. She couldn’t stop them from doing it.

  Obst took charge of copying the rediscovered books of Scripture and disseminating copies far and wide. There was an enormous amount of work to be done—enough to keep a hundred seminaries busy for a hundred years. He was amazed that he was still alive to do his share of it.

  Toward the end of spring, the king and queen invited Jack and Ellayne to visit them in Obann, together with Ellayne’s family and Martis. There Roshay Bault was dubbed a baron of the realm. He would never achieve his dream of becoming an oligarch because there was no oligarchy anymore; but being the first man to receive baronial honors more than made up for it.

  Martis received a knighthood and a special title, Knight Protector. He was at first moved to decline the honor.

  “Do they know the things I’ve done in the service of the Temple?” he wondered.

  “No—and no one wants to know them, either,” said old Uduqu, now a permanent adviser to the king. “Do you think God didn’t know about those things? But He chose you to protect those children, and He chose well. After all, they’re still alive.”

  As for Gallgoid: he went far enough to meet Helki’s army coming up the mountain, and they saved his life. He told his story to Roshay, and later to King Ryons, Obst, and all the chieftains. His exposure of the Thunder King was proclaimed up and down the land by heralds; but his revelations of the treason of Lord Reesh and others in the Temple, Obst argued, would be better left unpublished.

  “Many will refuse to believe it,” he said, “and many in the Temple who are innocent will be unjustly thought to be guilty. Let the evil that Lord Reesh did, die with him.”

  Everyone knew that the Thunder King and many of his mardars—along with the First Prester, too—died in the avalanche at the Golden Pass. Jack, Ellayne, and Martis brought that news down the mountain with them. Chillith’s name and deeds would be remembered; those of Reesh, Obst prayed, would be forgotten. But somehow the story got out among the people, and the clamor to rebuild the Temple died away.

  At first Ellayne and Jack feared they would be dragged through any number of interminable ceremonies honoring them for this and that, with thousands of strange people gawking at them. They’d had to sit through Roshay’s ceremony, and that had taken hours and hours. But Obst assured them they’d be spared.

  “What you did will all be written down,” he said. “It will be remembered forever. Still, you weren’t brought here to be tormented! Your mother doesn’t want you lionized, Ellayne: she says it would be bad for you. All the chiefs agree, especially those who’ve raised children of their own. And by the way,” he added, “what’s become of that little hairy man who used to travel with you? His deeds should be recorded, too.”

  “Oh, he’s around,” said Ellayne. She was being evasive. Wytt most emphatically did not want to be trotted out in front of a lot of Big People as if he were a calf with two heads. He lived now in the little piece of woods by Ninneburky where Jack and Ellayne first began their adventures. Most days, they went to see him there. And some nights he would creep into Ellayne’s house and sleep in her arms.

  Someday, he said, all the Omah in Obann would gather under the moon and dance at the same time. But that day had not yet come.

  So Jack and Ellayne spent most of their time with King Ryons, who asked for them, and his dog, Cavall. The great hound romped with them. They admired Angel, the hawk that Helki had given him. One of the Ghols knew all about falconry and was teaching Ryons.

  Sometimes they played with Jandra, who was just a little girl again. It had been months since she last prophesied. That horrible bird was still with her, and quite a few of the king’s servants had been bitten. No one would have dreamed of taking the bird away from her.

  Sometimes they played with Chagadai, the captain of the Ghols, who taught them to ride and gave them bows and arrows that he’d made for them with his own hands. They also played with Shingis of the Blays, who taught them how to sling stones. And they spent much of their time just sitting with King Ryons, swapping stories. He wanted to know all about their travels and adventures, and they wanted to know about his.

  “Sometimes I think it must be all a dream,” said Ryons, “and one of these days I’ll wake up and be a slave again. But Obst and Gurun say that God wanted all these things to happen and decided on it ages and ages ago.”

  “Doesn’t it bother
you that all those Ghols call you their father?” Ellayne said, which made all three of them laugh.

  They were still laughing when a servant came to summon the king to the council of the chiefs.

  “They’re asking for you, Sire,” he said, “They’re all waiting.”

  “What for?” Ryons asked.

  The servant looked grave. “It’s an emissary from the Thunder King, Your Majesty.”

  Once again the chieftains were assembled, this time in the old Hall of the Oligarchs. In their midst they had a throne for Ryons. Obst stood beside it on the right, and Gurun on the left. Ryons, having been hastily togged out in his royal headdress and sword, climbed onto the throne thinking how grand it would be if he were still sitting on the grass behind the palace with Ellayne and Jack.

  He was amazed when he saw it was the same messenger who’d come to the city gate six months ago—Goryk Gillow, the renegade from Silvertown. He stood in his black cloak before the chiefs, who sat on ornate stools with weapons in their laps. How did he dare to come again? Ryons could hardly believe it.

  “Have you come to deliver yourself to the hangman?” General Hennen asked. “What business can you possibly have here, sirrah? For your master the so-called Thunder King is dead, and his lies and impostures known to all the world.”

  “No, my lords, not so!” said Goryk, smiling wolfishly. “What—did you truly believe my master, the god, went in person to the Golden Pass, as an ordinary mortal man would do? No, not so, not so! That was but the least of his servants who perished on the mountain, along with a handful of the least useful of his mardars.

  “No, my lords—my master and my god remains at Kara Karram, at the great Temple that’s been built for him. Even now he musters fresh armies. You’ll see them when the time comes.