by Lee Duigon
Ryons slowly turned, trying to see everything he could. Tall, rectangular columns supported the ceiling. The vast floor, what he could see of it, was bare. Except for their voices, silence reigned here. A Wallekki would have called this place the palace of a djinn, and died of fright. But in the wordless awe that filled the boy’s heart, fright had to stand aside, powerless to move him.
And then Perkin astonished him by dropping to one knee, taking one of his hands, and kissing it.
“King Ryons,” he said, “accept my homage!”
“How did you know?” Ryons asked. He’d tried to deny it, but those denials hadn’t fazed Perkin, who remained kneeling.
“An old man told me you’d be coming and how to know you when I saw you,” Perkin said. “He was a servant of God, and he knew everything that was in my heart. I never met anyone like him before.”
“I know him, too,” Ryons said, nodding. It didn’t occur to him to doubt a word of it. “He told me God wanted me to go to Lintum Forest. He helped me get out of the palace without anybody seeing me. And then he was gone—just like that. But why didn’t you tell me you knew who I was when we first met?”
“I didn’t want to scare you. I thought it best to give you some time to get used to me. And I wanted to be sure of you. A king should have courage—which you have.”
“I don’t know about that!” Ryons said. “So many crazy things have happened to me. I wish I knew why I’m supposed to go to Lintum Forest.”
“God knows why,” Perkin said, “and you’ll know, too, when God thinks the time is right. But we’d better be on our way again. Come, let’s see if we can find Baby. I’d hate to lose him.”
Chapter 16
A Night on the Plain
Martis returned to Ninneburky the day after Roshay Bault received the letters from his daughter and Gurun.
“Don’t get comfortable,” the baron said. “You’ve got to go straight to Obann—but first read these!”
Martis read Gurun’s letter first, and the last paragraph twice: “I am not entirely sure the children mean to go straight back to Ninneburky, so I have sent two trackers after them, two of my Blays, who will protect them. I cannot think where they might go, if not to Ninneburky. Maybe I worry for nothing. I pray that you will see them soon.”
“I’d give gold to know what was the important service that those kids performed in Obann that had to be kept a secret from me, her father,” Roshay said.
“Ellayne has a valiant spirit,” Martis said; but there was already, he sensed, something in this to be dreaded.
“I’ll give her a valiant spirit!” Roshay grumbled. “I’m responsible for the defense and good order of this entire district. I can’t go chasing my daughter all around the country. But here, read her letter.” And Martis read:
“Dear Father, Jack and I can’t come home yet. Please don’t be angry. If you can, please send Martis after us. Maybe he can pick up our trail. He should go to Obann and see Queen Gurun first. Maybe she will tell him something that we’re not allowed to tell.” There was more, but that was the important part.
“I should have been here,” Martis said. “I should have kept my oath.”
“It’s her fault, man, not yours. Just find her, if you can.”
“I would have had to go to Obann in any event,” Martis said, almost to himself. “There’s devilish trouble brewing in the East.”
“I know,” said Roshay. “That’s why I have to stay here to raise and train militia. I suppose another Heathen army will be coming this way soon.”
Martis shook his head. “They aren’t ready to send another army yet. But what they couldn’t win by force of arms, they hope to win by treachery. Be on the lookout for any man who preaches the New Temple.
“The Thunder King’s armies are busy now, trying to stamp out revolts throughout the East. Before he sends them our way again, he hopes to divide and weaken us somehow. I’ve heard all sorts of rumors, but I couldn’t stay to find out how much truth there was to them. Hlah will have to do that, if he can. For me, the only thing now is to find those children—which I will do, Baron, or die.”
Roshay sighed. “If only I’d known they’d gone to Obann! My riders could have caught them. What in the world are those cuss’t kids up to!”
What they were up to at the moment was trying to sleep in the daytime, in a shady little hollow under a clump of wild pecan trees.
Wytt insisted on it. During the day, he said, there were men on horseback riding up and down the country. “See! Look! They make tracks; they make a smell.” He made his point by showing Ellayne a pile of dung she’d almost stepped on without noticing.
“We’re far from the road,” Jack said. “The Attakotts won’t be patrolling around here. No more towns, no farms—I don’t think anybody lives out here. We don’t want to meet any of those men on horseback.”
Ellayne knew geography a lot better than Jack did. Wytt had been following Cavall’s tracks and scent all the way from Obann, and by now Ellayne thought she knew where they were going.
“If we keep on this way,” she said, “we’ll wind up in Lintum Forest. And I’ll bet that’s where Ryons and Cavall are going.”
“Why should they go there?”
“We’ll have to ask him when we see him.”
Wytt went hunting and came back with a grasshopper impaled on his sharp stick, and news. He ate the grasshopper; Ellayne looked away and tried to ignore the crunching noise. Then he delivered his news.
“Two men on foot,” he said, “all dead now. Horsemen killed them. They made a fight first, killed one of the horsemen.”
“Where?” Ellayne cried. Her pulse raced, and all hope of sleeping fled.
“Not far.” But it had all happened some hours ago, and the horsemen had ridden off in another direction. There was no danger, for the moment.
“What did the men on foot look like, Wytt?” Jack asked. But to Wytt all big people, except the ones he knew personally, looked alike. “They had a drink with a funny smell,” he reported. The children would have recognized it as the smell of tea, but not Wytt. And of course they couldn’t know that those were the two Blays whom Gurun had sent to watch over them.
“Well, we knew it might be dangerous,” Jack said.
“I wonder if we could get back to the road,” Ellayne said. Jack shot a look at her. A remark like that wasn’t like her, not a bit.
“If you want to go back, we will,” he said.
She sighed. “No—I guess not. Ryons is out here, too, with just Cavall for company. We can’t give up on him.”
“We’ll be safer, traveling by night,” Jack said.
Ryons and Perkin camped that night on a hilltop, under a lofty, lonely oak tree. They had a cheery fire. Perkin said the Heathen wouldn’t come any closer to these hills than they had to. “They have their own stories about the Day of Fire,” he said. “They know these aren’t natural hills. There’s a curse on all such places, they believe.”
But the presence of the oak tree was a good sign, he said. It meant they were getting closer to the forest. “Oaks don’t normally grow out here. A bird must have dropped an acorn on this spot, once upon a time. That acorn came from Lintum Forest.”
Baby took some time settling down. He stalked the hilltop, looking for nobody knew what. The smell of roasting rabbit finally lured him back to the fire. He rattled his feathers and settled down beside Perkin, probably tired because he’d had to climb the hill. And after supper, Perkin told the story of his life—some of it, at least.
“I wasn’t always a wanderer,” he said. “I was born and raised in Caryllick. Ever been there? It’s a nice town. We have a lovely chamber house and our own little seminary. I was a student there. My father was a reciter in the chamber house and wanted me to be a prester someday.”
They studied the Commentaries, the New Books. It awakened in Perkin a desire for the Old Books, the holy Scriptures themselves.
“But they wouldn’t teach us from the Sc
riptures,” he said. “I never understood why. It seemed the preceptors couldn’t be bothered with God’s word. They said we wouldn’t understand it. We’d have to go to the great seminary in Obann, they said, if we wanted to learn about the Scriptures.
“And I got to wondering why, for all my studying, I wasn’t getting to know God any better. In fact, I got to wondering if there even was a God. He certainly wasn’t in our seminary.
“So I left. I didn’t know, anymore, what I wanted out of life. I went out onto the plains to be by myself. Don’t know why I did that; it just seemed the only thing to do. That’s how I became a wanderer.”
Ryons thought of Obst, who left his seminary studies in Obann and went to Lintum Forest to become a hermit. But Obst had brought a Book of Scriptures with him and spent years and years studying it.
“Out here,” Perkin said, “the thought crept up on me that there really is a God and that we never hear Him because we don’t know how to listen. We never see Him because we don’t know where to look. And I remembered a verse from Prophet Ika, a famous verse that’s cited in many of the Commentaries: ‘Because they will not honor me, I have drawn a veil of folly over their eyes so that they cannot see, and put a buzzing in their ears so that they cannot hear, and clouded their minds with self-love so that they cannot understand. But one day they shall see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand their faults; and all shall be astonished, and some shall repent; and I shall save them.’”
He talked like Obst, Ryons thought; and in his own heart, now, he hungered for the Scriptures. But he hadn’t yet learned how to read them. Everyone was so busy in Obann, and there was never time for anyone to teach him.
Perkin went on. “I don’t know how it happened. Walking all around, seeing what there is to see, trying to count the stars by night, listening to the birds by day, being out in all kinds of weather—well, it was sort of like I just woke up one morning and knew that God was here, and that He’d been here all the time, and always would be. And for God, ‘here’ means everywhere.”
He sighed, leaned back, and rested against Baby. Pleased, the great bird shut its eyes.
“I still haven’t read the Scriptures, though,” said Perkin. “Never had a book, you see. Ain’t likely I’ll ever see one, either.”
I know where we can get one,” Ryons said. “I mean, in Lintum Forest.” Obst had a cabin in the forest. He meant to take Ryons there and teach him the Scriptures, but never had the opportunity to do it. Maybe the book was still there. Helki would know. “Could you read it, if we had it?”
Perkin grinned. “I’d make it my business to read it, Your Majesty!” There was something about the way he said “Your Majesty” that made Ryons laugh out loud, and the way Ryons laughed made Perkin laugh. Cavall raised up his head and wagged his tail.
Down below on the plain, in the dark, some creature howled: something much bigger than a wolf. Cavall stood up and went stiff all over. Baby opened one eye.
“What was that?” Ryons said.
“Don’t know. But it won’t come up here while we have a fire, so don’t be afraid. The Lord will get us to Lintum Forest, sure enough.”
Ryons believed, and his fear subsided.
Hiking by night, Ellayne and Jack heard something very similar and froze in their tracks. Wytt stood on tiptoe, sniffing the air.
“Big animal,” he chirped, “with bad smell.”
“What kind of animal?” Jack whispered.
“Don’t know.” That he didn’t know troubled Wytt deeply. “I go see.” And before Ellayne could stop him, he scampered off through the tall grass.
“Fry him!” she said. “What does he think he’s doing?”
He’s doing the same kind of thing we did in coming out here in the first place, Jack thought, but didn’t say so. “He’ll be all right,” he said. “We’d better wait for him.”
They sat down, hoping the grass would hide them from any hunting beast. Ellayne wanted to say more, but Jack convinced her not to: “We’d better be as quiet as we can.”
They listened hard, but the howl was not repeated. Jack looked up and saw a shooting star. After an inordinately long time, Wytt startled them by jumping out of the grass right in front of them.
“Do you have to do that!” Ellayne hissed.
“No fear, animal’s gone,” was his answer.
“What was it? Did you see it?” Jack asked.
“I saw.” According to Wytt, the creature was something like a bear only much bigger, with forelegs much longer than its hind legs and massive, wicked jaws like a badger’s. It smelled like a badger, too, Wytt thought. Jack didn’t like the sound of that.
“I wonder why it howled,” he said.
“Oh, who cares! Let’s get going,” Ellayne said. “We have to find a place where it’ll be safe for us to sleep tomorrow—if we can. I wish we had some weapons!” They had knives and Jack’s slingshot, but they didn’t count, Ellayne thought. She would have preferred something like Abombalbap’s great sword, along with an armored knight to wield it.
Chapter 17
The King’s Procession
“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” Fnaa said.
“Just keep your feet in the stirrups and your legs clamped tightly against its body,” Gurun told him. “And wave at the people and look happy.”
The king had been sick long enough, and it was time his people saw him; so today Fnaa was to make the king’s regular ride around the city. Gurun would be right beside him, and several of his Ghols close by to keep him safe. How they would keep him safe from falling off the horse, Fnaa didn’t know.
Dakl had seen King Ryons on several such occasions. “Don’t worry,” she told her son. “The king himself never looked at ease on horseback. And everyone knows you’ve been sick, so they won’t expect too much.”
At the appointed time in the morning, Gurun took Fnaa down to the royal stables, and old Chagadai practically lifted him onto the horse. Happily for Fnaa, she was a wise old mare who had learned to be patient with the boy king’s clumsiness. Her name was Dandelion, for her yellow mane and tail.
It was a small procession that rode out of the palace. A servant in gorgeous red and silver livery led the way on foot. His job was to call out again and again, “Make way for King Ryons, King of Obann by the grace of God!” Then came one of General Hennen’s men in shining mail, mounted on a great black charger and carrying the royal banner, and after him a pair of knights with gleaming swords.
Fnaa and Gurun followed, side by side, with Chagadai and half a dozen Ghols bringing up the rear. No shining mail for them: they went in worn-out leather leggings and tunics, with their bows in their hands. The people of Obann didn’t like them, but there was no leaving them behind. The boy king was their “father,” and they went with him wherever he went.
“Smile!” Gurun said.
They paraded down the middle of the city’s broadest streets. People stopped to watch and cheer and wave. “Queen Gurun! Long live the queen!” was what Fnaa heard most often. Still, there were more than a few glad cries of “Ryons! Ryons!” And several men and women cried out, “Feeling better, Majesty?” It wasn’t long before Fnaa didn’t have to force his smiles anymore. He almost forgot to worry about falling off the horse.
“They like us—they really do,” he thought. True, it was Ryons that they liked, not him. But they thought he was Ryons. No one seemed to have the slightest doubt of it. The people waved at him and Fnaa waved back. With Gurun and the servants and the chieftains to do all the real work, he thought, being king wasn’t such a bad arrangement. It was better than having to play the fool all day in Vallach Vair’s house.
The little procession had just turned onto Market Street when someone, somewhere, sounded a harshly blaring horn. The people along the street looked up, for the sound seemed to come from above. Fnaa looked up, too—just in time to see a human body flung from the roof of a warehouse.
It never hit the ground. There was a rop
e around the neck, tied to something on the roof, and the body jerked to a stop and bounced against the wall. Bystanders screamed. Fnaa stared. The procession halted.
“A man has hanged himself!” said Gurun. And the Ghols crowded around Fnaa to shield him with their bodies and nocked arrows to their bowstrings. The two knights with the swords made their horses rear up, which kept the people at a safe distance.
