The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  Hlah said, “You should have seen the Heathen host that laid siege to Obann. They were as many as the leaves in this forest. And you should have seen the great beast that God sent to scatter them! If you’d seen that, you’d have hope.”

  “We’ve seen another miracle,” a woman said, “an Abnak leading us to safety! Who would have ever thought a thing like that could happen?”

  At last Ryons and Perkin came to the edge of Lintum Forest. Ryons didn’t know it, but he’d returned to the exact spot from which he’d first come out of the forest a year ago on his way to Obann. Cavall knew and barked for joy; but he didn’t know how to make Ryons understand. It was very hard to make humans understand anything.

  Baby, a creature of the plains, didn’t like the forest and his neck feathers stood up uneasily. Angel was invisible in the foliage aloft, but she came down whenever Ryons called her. There was good hunting here, she tried to tell them. Cavall and Baby understood, but not the humans.

  “Now we have to find Helki, and he’ll tell me why the Lord wanted me to come back to the forest,” Ryons said. “I do love it here! I missed it, in the city.”

  “Your ancestor, King Ozias, was born and raised here,” Perkin said. “It’s natural for you to be happy here. But how do we find Helki? Or will he find us? I have to admit, Your Majesty, that I don’t know my way around a forest.”

  “It’s all right. Cavall does!”

  It had been more than a year since Ryons left the forest. In all that time, he’d had no news. Everyone in Obann City took it for granted that Helki was putting down the outlaws and making the country safe for honest folk. And so he had, to a degree. The settlement he’d founded at the ancient castle had survived the winter, and now the people there had cleared the land and planted crops. Helki’s rangers patrolled the woods in bands of six. They were expert archers, all of them, and lawless men had learned to fear them. Helki was called the Flail of the Lord, and many of his enemies had surrendered to him. But there were always more to take their place.

  Ryons would have been surprised to know that, as he and Perkin spoke, many miles away at the opposite end of the forest, Helki crouched in the middle of a blow down while two dozen men hunted for him all around it, eager to take his scalp.

  Helki had a secret path into the heart of the blow down, and another secret path out. It was one of his hiding places, three or four acres of dead wood all jumbled together years ago by the freakish tantrum of a mighty storm. All but the smallest animals would go around it, no matter how far out of their way they had to go. A few bare, white trunks still stood, here and there; all the rest was a vast tangle.

  The men who hunted Helki were no ordinary Lintum Forest outlaws. Someone had sent them down from Silvertown, several hundred of them. They were real woodsmen, trappers, who’d grown up in the forests on the skirts of the mountains. They were Obannese, but now they served the Thunder King. They’d come to Lintum Forest for no reason but to murder Helki; this he knew from one he’d captured alive.

  Helki smiled to himself as he heard them calling to one another. They were beginning to consider setting fire to the blow down. He had to applaud their skill in following him here. Things would get interesting if they resorted to fire. They wouldn’t be able to control it, once it started. “That man in Silvertown must want me pretty badly,” he thought.

  By the calls of blue jays and purple peeps, he knew pretty much where all the men were. They were spread out thin, trying to surround the blow down. “Reckon it’s time I stirred up some excitement,” Helki said to himself. “Only two hours of good sunlight left.”

  As silently as the little red-backed salamanders that crept around the leaf mold under all the dead wood, Helki began to creep toward the edge of the blow down. In his garment of sewn-together patches of every color you could salvage from other people’s worn-out clothes, he was almost invisible. He didn’t want his enemies setting fire to the blow down: it was one of his favorite places in the forest. But they were spread out too thin for their own good, and they would pay for it. He allowed himself an hour to get to the edge of the blow down without making a sound. The birds considered him a creature of the forest like themselves and didn’t comment on his movements. Possibly they couldn’t see or hear him.

  As he neared his exit from the blow down, Helki sniffed the air. He was in luck: only two men were anywhere near him.

  When he emerged from the blow down, they weren’t ready for him, and he gave them no time to get ready. “Helki

  the Rod!” he roared; and they had just enough time to hear his voice before his staff descended on their heads and ended their hunting days forever.

  “Two for me and none for you, my boys!” he bellowed. “Better get back to the mountains while you can!”

  That ought to bring the rest of them running, but he wouldn’t be there when they came. He fled into the greenwood. They’d never catch up to him by nightfall. And tomorrow would see another day’s sport.

  Chapter 24

  How Jack Stole Noma’s Magic

  The second day after Jack and Ellayne joined him, Noma encountered bandits, half a dozen Wallekki on horseback who galloped up and made him halt his wagon. Ellayne noticed he didn’t seem the least bit afraid of them. She was, though. The men looked tired and hungry, and ready for anything.

  “Wanamalaki,” Noma said, or something like that. Whatever it meant, the men lowered the points of their swords and spears, and the one with the most feathers in his headdress replied at length. The children didn’t speak Wallekki and had no idea what was being said. Noma wasn’t being given many chances to answer.

  But then he held up his hand and said, “Mardar shu!” And the riders all stared wide-eyed at him. They fell silent. He spoke to them calmly, without raising his voice. They kept on staring at him. When he lowered his hand, they put their fingertips to their lips and bowed their heads. Muttering, they backed their horses off, then suddenly turned and galloped away as fast as they could go. Noma watched them, apparently without surprise.

  “What did you say to them?” Ellayne wondered. “Those men looked like killers!”

  She and Jack had been riding in the back of the cart. The bandits couldn’t have missed seeing them, for the canvas cover had been rolled up on its frame. And yet the Wallekki, many of whom were habitual slave traders, had paid no attention to the children. That was very strange indeed.

  “Well, they haven’t killed us, have they?” Noma said. “I just told them we had nothing worth stealing—as they could see for themselves—and that I am an adopted son of a chief in their clan.”

  “Are you really?” Jack asked.

  Noma laughed. “Why, of course! I used to do a lot of trading in Wallekki lands.” Slaves, probably! Jack thought. “You can tell a Wallekki’s tribe and clan by his headdress. Those men were of the Mount Immr clan. They would know Chief Jahi, my adopted father. And truly, they apologized most sincerely for disturbing me.”

  “What if they’d been from another clan?” asked Ellayne.

  “Then I’m afraid I might have had to tell them a lie,” Noma said. She looked for a twinkle in his eye, but didn’t see one. “I really don’t like to tell lies, and I hope you children don’t, either. It’s a very bad habit, and the Temple has always taught that lying is a sin.”

  “You snake in the grass!” thought Jack. He didn’t say it: just fumed, and kept on fuming until they stopped for tea, and he and Ellayne went off to gather firewood. As soon as they were out of earshot of Noma, he grabbed Ellayne by the elbow.

  “Ow!”

  “Shh!” He lowered his voice. “I saw something that Noma doesn’t know I saw—that sneaking skunk!”

  “Saw what?”

  “He had something in his pocket! Something that he took out and hid in his hand as soon as he spotted the bandits coming. I saw him.”

  “Well, it must’ve been something awfully tiny,” Ellayne started to say. But something of Jack’s thought was already hatching in her mi
nd. “Something he could hide in the palm of his hand, where we wouldn’t see it … but those Wallekki saw it.”

  “You bet they did!” Jack said. “Did you see their faces? They were scared! And maybe what they saw was light coming out of his hand—which we couldn’t see because his hand was facing away from us. But when the Wallekki saw it, they skedaddled. And I’d like to know what he really said to them!”

  “Yes—they did act like they were good and scared,” Ellayne said. Her thought raced ahead of her words; she had to pause a moment. “That stuff about him being the adopted son of a chief—that wasn’t what he really said. He told us a lie. Those men were afraid of him—and we probably should be, too.”

  “I’d like to know what he had in his pocket.”

  Ellayne couldn’t imagine how anything you might have in your pocket could make light stream out of your hand. But there were magical implements in stories—things like wands and swords and cauldrons—so she supposed Noma might have something like that, only smaller. Something that would make six armed men afraid of one little fat man; and she didn’t like the thought of that.

  Wytt traveled under Noma’s wagon, catching and eating some of the many insects stirred up by the ox’s hooves and the wheels. Sometimes he rode, but only for the novelty of it. To him it was no hardship to scamper all day in the shade beneath the wagon.

  Wytt knew Noma was a bad man and a liar. He couldn’t speak Wallekki any more than the children could, but he understood the sense of things that people said, regardless of what language they spoke. When Noma spoke to the bandits, he told them he was a big man, bigger than the six of them, and he could kill them if he liked; and fear seeped out of their pores so Wytt could smell it. Wytt understood the questions asked by Jack and Ellayne and knew that Noma’s answers were lies. Why the two of them wished to travel with such a man was more than Wytt could fathom.

  That night after Noma was finally sound asleep, Wytt woke the children. At his urging they stole away some distance from the dying campfire.

  “What is it, Wytt?” asked Ellayne.

  He made fierce jabbing motions with his sharpened stick and chattered furiously, struggling with himself not to make too much noise. “The man sleeps—now we kill him!” was his message. “We don’t, then sometime he kill you. Big men on horses ran away from him, but you stay. Not safe.” That was what he said, without the use of speech as we know it.

  “We don’t want to kill him!” Ellayne answered—almost too loud. “We don’t want to kill anybody!”

  “No, we don’t,” Jack agreed. “But we do want to find out what he has in his pockets! Maybe now’s as good a time as any to conk him on the head and search his things.”

  “What do you mean, conk him on the head? What if you conk him just a little bit too hard—or not hard enough? What are you thinking?”

  “Well, how else are we going to get into his pockets?”

  “Jack, we can’t just rob the man!” Ellayne felt like shaking him.

  Wytt interrupted. “Too much talk!” he growled.

  “Wytt’s right,” Jack said. “And so are you, but I can’t help it. What else can we do? Noma is a servant of the Thunder King. He preaches lies. He’s either a magician or he pretends to be, to fool people and to stir them up against King Ryons. You can wait here if you don’t want any part of this. But I’m going back to do what has to be done.”

  Jack’s pulse raced, and something in his stomach curdled. He’d never done a thing like this before: never even thought of it. He remembered stories in which one glance from a wizard’s eye turned someone into stone, or worse. What if Noma suddenly opened his eyes and put a spell on him? Jack didn’t believe in magic, but at the moment, he had his doubts.

  Noma lay sleeping by the campfire, on his back, with his head pillowed on his bedroll. “Martis or Helki or Baron Bault could do this,” Jack thought. “And so can I!”

  He had a rounded stone in his hand. If it were any bigger, he’d need two hands to hold it. He was concentrating so hard on what he had to do that he didn’t know Ellayne had followed him back to the campsite and was standing close by, watching him.

  “Lord,” he prayed silently, as Obst had taught him to, “if what I do is wrong, forgive me! I’m trying to do right.”

  He sank slowly to his knees, raised the stone, and with both hands drove it into Noma’s forehead.

  The “thunk!” it made when it hit almost made him faint. Noma jerked up and fell back down, gurgling deep in his throat. Blood flowed from his broken skin. Jack’s hands lost their grip on the stone and dropped it. He found it hard to breathe.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Ellayne’s voice startled him back to his senses, but Wytt answered first: “No, not dead. Listen—he breathes. I hear his heart still beating.”

  “Search his pockets, and let’s get out of here!” said Ellayne.

  “Climb into the wagon and empty out his bags,” Jack answered. “See what you can find.”

  Noma had two pockets in his britches, one on either side. They were deep pockets. Fighting off a pang of nausea, Jack reached into one. The body was warm. Noma made a horrible snoring noise. Jack found some matches and a broken comb in one pocket; but in the other his fingers made contact with something round and hard and flat. He pulled it out.

  What was it? About the size of a gold coin—the coin called a “spear” because it was stamped with the image of a spearman—it was much lighter. It weighed almost nothing. Jack had never seen anything like it; and the fire was all but out, and the moon wasn’t much help, so he couldn’t get a good look at it. But it felt very strange to the touch: too light for any kind of metal, perfectly stiff, and perfectly smooth all over except for some tiny round projection in the middle. It fit easily into the palm of one’s hand, and Jack was sure this was the object he’d been looking for.

  “I think I’ve got it!” he called to Ellayne. She climbed out of the wagon.

  “Nothing in his bags but spare clothes and things,” she said. “What have you got?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too dark to see,” Jack said. “Maybe there’s writing on it, or a sign. Wish I had some light.”

  He was feeling the object all over with his thumbs and fingers; and just as he finished speaking, light burst from it.

  Ellayne squealed and jumped a step back. Jack dropped the item. It lay on the ground and a white beam of light poured out of it.

  Jack felt as if he’d accidently grabbed a rattlesnake. He didn’t dare touch the thing again. But Wytt wasn’t afraid. He stood over it and sniffed it—then, before Ellayne could stop him, picked it up.

  “Don’t touch it, Wytt!” she cried.

  “Not afraid. Nothing to hurt,” he answered. To him the light-giving talisman was fascinating, nothing more: a very nice thing, he thought. “Very pretty light,” he said.

  Seeing Wytt take no hurt from it, Jack finally reached out and cautiously took it from him. The light was too strong to be allowed to shine right into one’s eyes for more than a moment or two, but the object hadn’t gotten very hot. How could all that light be coming out of such a little thing, and why wasn’t it burning hot?

  “Be careful!” Ellayne said.

  “I don’t think it can hurt us,” Jack said. And then, without meaning to do anything in particular, he pressed the tiny projection in the center of the object—and instantly the light vanished. Without a sound, without a puff of smoke, it just went out.

  “What happened? Why did it go dark?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Noma groaned, and tried to roll onto his side. He didn’t succeed, but that was enough to remind the children of their danger.

  “We can’t stay here,” Ellayne said.

  “So who wants to?” Jack turned to Wytt. “Lead us away from here, Wytt—to someplace where he can’t find it.”

  Wytt peered closely at the prone body. “He will hunt you sometime. Not dead yet.”

  “We aren’t going to kill
him, Wytt,” Ellayne said. “Just find us someplace safe.”

  The Omah whistled loudly. “Come—this way!”

  As they followed him into the night, Jack carefully put the light-giver into his own side pocket and wadded his handkerchief on top of it so that it couldn’t fall out.

  “Aren’t you afraid it’ll burn a hole in your leg?” Ellayne asked. “Trust me, Jack—there’s no telling what a magical thing like that might do.”

  “There’s no such thing as magic,” Jack said, and tried very, very hard to keep believing it.

  Chapter 25

  An Ancient Vision, and a New One