The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (29 page)

“I, too,” he said.

While she was talking with Shingis in the palace, Gurun missed something that happened just outside the city, under the walls.

Three horsemen rode up to the East Gate. It was still being repaired, and there were guards on duty, but the horsemen didn’t try to enter the city. They stopped before the gate, and one of them produced a brass bugle and blew a challenge on it. The workmen stopped working, and the sergeant of the guard came out to confront the horsemen.

“Our business is with the King of Obann,” said the rider in the middle, a tall man in a black cloak, on a black horse. “Let him come and hear a message from our master the Thunder King.”

“Maybe you’d like to hear a message from my archers,” said the sergeant.

“We are heralds. It is not lawful to harm us.”

Ryons was at his lessons when Obst came for him. One look at Obst’s face told him that he brought bad news.

“It’ll be necessary for Your Majesty to be brave,” he said. “Three men are at the East Gate, claiming to be heralds of the Thunder King. I’ve seen them and spoken with them; I believe them. They will speak their message to no one but you. I’ll go with you, and I’ve sent for Hennen, Uduqu, and Shaffur. You won’t be alone.”

Ryons shuddered. Once before, in Lintum Forest, he’d faced one of the Thunder King’s messengers. Then the message was that the Thunder King would put out Ryons’ eyes and cast him into a prison for the rest of his life.

Obst remembered that. “Be brave, my king,” he said. “You have brave men all around you to protect you—and better than that, you have God’s protection.”

Ryons stood up. “At least I’ll get some fresh air!” he said. “I’ll listen to the message, Obst. But will I have to answer it?”

“Who knows? But you are king in this city—no one can force you to say anything.”

For the first time in a long time, Ryons took Obst’s hand, and they walked out of the palace hand in hand. Obst was the teacher: he would know what to say, Ryons thought, even if no one else did.

“God won’t let them put my eyes out,” he said to himself. Aloud he asked, “Where’s Gurun?”

“I don’t know, Sire.”

“I want someone to ask her to come to the gate with us.”

“As you wish, King Ryons.” Obst bade a servant to find Gurun and bring her to the king; but they couldn’t stop to wait for her.

Standing on the wall over the gate, with Obst at his right hand and Uduqu, Hennen, and Shaffur at his left, Ryons looked down on the three messengers. Two of them he recognized as Wallekki; but the tall man in black looked Obannese. How could that be?

By now the whole wall was lined with people, all of them waiting to hear the message from the Thunder King. Ryons wondered how far the messengers had had to come. Much of Obann, especially to the east of the city, still swarmed with invaders.

“So this is the king of Obann—the boy king!” said the man in black. “What kind of nation has a boy for a king? Couldn’t you find a man?”

“He was man enough to shatter your king’s army,” said Uduqu. “It took us a long time to bury all the dead.”

“Since when do Abnaks speak from Obann’s city walls? Why don’t you let the boy king speak for himself, Abnak?”

Ryons knew he had to answer, with so many of his people watching him. For a moment he forgot he was a king, and answered as Ryons the slave-boy would have answered, when he was under Obst’s protection.

“They told me you had a message for me,” he said, “but I haven’t heard you say anything yet. Why so bashful?”

“Then hear this—king!” The herald raised himself straighter in the saddle and pulled a roll of parchment from under his cloak. From this he read:

“To Ryons, who is called the king of Obann, from the god, the Thunder King, master of the nations—

“Come East, little king, to the foothills of the mountains, to the headwaters of the River Chariot. Come East, with whatever following you can raise, and we shall look upon one another face to face.

“Let the city of Obann know that if you will come to me, I will break down the city of Obann and burn it with fire; but the people of the city I will remove alive, and settle them in other cities, and let them live.

“But if you will not come to me, little king, then I shall come to you; and I shall destroy the people of this city, man, woman, and child. I will come with my full power and leave no soul living in this place.

“Trust not in the God of Obann, for I am a god who conquers gods; and your God shall join all the other gods in my captivity.”

The herald rolled up the parchment. “Those are the words of my master and yours, the Thunder King,” he said. “Do as he bids you. Why should all the people die because of you?”

The crowd along the wall was silent. They remembered the vast armies that the Thunder King had sent against them in the summer. But General Hennen spoke up sharply, his words shattering the stillness like the crack of a whip.

“What is your name, fellow? Unless my eyes and ears deceive me, you’re a man of Obann, the same as any man within these walls.”

“I am,” the herald answered. “I was at Silvertown when the Thunder King destroyed it. I made my submission to him, and he took me into his service. Goryk Gillow is my name.”

“And in addition to being a traitor to your country,” Hennen said, “do you believe this mere Heathen man to be a god? That would make you both an apostate and a fool.”

“Do you think so?” Goryk said. “It’s not my god’s temple that lies in ruins, is it?”

“Enough!”

Obst’s roar was like the sound of a mountain splitting in two. “You have delivered your foolish and abominable message, and now you may go.”

“And what about my answer, greybeard?”

At that moment a soldier helped Gurun up onto the ramparts, and she stood there in her yellow dress, and the rays of the sun were like a golden fire on her hair. Goryk looked up at her and turned pale. Without another word, he wheeled his black horse sharply and spurred off into the east. His two Wallekki comrades were hard-put to catch up to him.

Ryons stared at Gurun. “He was afraid of you!” he said.

“Was that the messenger?” she asked. “What did he say?”

“Never mind that now,” said Obst. “Come, we must call the chiefs together. Rumor is a fire that burns quickly in this city! You come, too, Gurun.” He smiled at her. “He truly was afraid of you. I saw it, too.”

Before the chiefs could meet together, a vast crowd gathered around the palace. Many had heard the herald’s message, and spread it in the blink of an eye and the flap of a lip, from one end of the city to another. You could hear them through the thick stone walls, a sound like a swarm of bees buzzing.

“Why are they so fearful?” Gurun said. She sat beside Ryons at a table, where they were waiting for the rest of the chiefs. Hennen, Uduqu, and Shaffur were already there. At the head of the table sat Obst, with his eyes closed and his lips moving silently. “And what is Obst doing?”

“That’s how he prays,” Ryons said; he’d seen it many times before. “Two men could jump on the table right now and have a sword fight, and he wouldn’t know it. He’s talking to God, and God speaks to him. He is a very holy man.”

“The people are afraid because they don’t want to die,” Hennen said. “This summer, it took a miracle to save them. I don’t suppose they can expect another miracle.”

Chief Zekelesh of the Fazzan came in, and a man named Hawk whose skin was dark, almost black. Chiefs of Griffs and Attakotts and other peoples Gurun had never heard of: they came in and took seats at the table.

“The question’s a simple one,” said Hennen. “Do we stay, or do we go?”

“Stay!” Shaffur growled. “Do they think we’re simpletons? It’s a trick to get us out into the open, so they can destroy us.”

“But it’s a subtle trick,” Hennen said. “If we stay, it may look like we value the king above the people. It will look like we’re afraid.”

Chief Zekelesh spoke some impassioned words in a language no one understood. Uduqu jogged his elbow and pointed to Obst. With the translator unavailable, so to speak, Zekelesh fell silent.

Ryons listened to the muffled noise of the crowd. It must have been very loud indeed, if they could hear it in here.

“It is shameful for a man to say he is a god,” Gurun spoke up. “You may be sure God will destroy this Thunder King.”

“It seems we have a new member of the council of chieftains!” Shaffur interrupted. “I don’t remember when she was elected.”

“Obst asked her to come—and I want her, too,” Ryons said. “Please, Chief Shaffur—didn’t you see that herald’s face when he saw her?”

“And he fled like a berry-picker from a she-bear!” Uduqu added, grinning.

At that moment Obst’s eyes opened and he slipped in his chair with a grunt. With another grunt he pulled himself up straight. All of the chiefs had seen him pray before.

“Did God answer you?” Uduqu asked.

“Not in the way I expected,” Obst said. He looked at Ryons. “The Lord wishes to see what the king would do.”

Shaffur shook his head. He would never get used to asking a boy for a decision—not that Ryons blamed him.

Gurun said, “Is it right to force him to decide?”

Obst shrugged. “He is God’s chosen.” He looked at Ryons. “Maybe tomorrow, Sire, after prayer and meditation, and a good night’s sleep?”

But Ryons already knew what he should do, and what God wanted. Indeed, he’d known it as soon as he heard the herald speak.

“I’ll go,” he said. “Listen to those people outside! But it’s not to please them. I don’t know how to say it right, but we can’t just wait here for the Thunder King. There won’t be another great beast to chase away his army this time.”

Uduqu nodded. “Yes—that would happen only once.”

Ryons struggled to explain himself. It wasn’t so long ago that he was a slave, an orphan, of less value than a goat. But then Obst came, speaking tongues, and God struck down a mardar just as he was about to study Ryons’ entrails for omens of the future. Everything since then, Ryons thought, had been a miracle. Sometimes he imagined himself and his men as a herd driven by God with sure and certain wisdom. The herd didn’t know where it was going, but the shepherd did. And sheep should trust their shepherd.

“I have God’s promise to protect me,” Ryons said. “I believe He will. He always has. And the Thunder King is not a god. I don’t know what’ll happen if I go to see him—but neither does he.”

Chief Zekelesh stood up and slammed his wolf’s-head hat on the table. He spoke passionately; and Obst translated.

“What can we accomplish sitting here?” he said. “How are we ever to see our homes again—or make new homes—just by sitting here? I say that if any man is fool enough to offend the true God, we do ourselves dishonor if we don’t go out to fight him! What is the point of talking and talking about it, when we all know what to do?”

The chiefs, all except Shaffur the Wallekki, pounded the table and growled their assent.

“He really is a king!” thought Gurun.

But Ryons thought, “How far will we get, I wonder? It’s a long way back to the mountains.”

Up in the Golden Pass it was snowing steadily, day and night. A multitude of slaves kept clear all the area around the Thunder King’s golden hall, the other halls and cabins, the great gates, and the new road down the mountain. But up above the hall, snow piled up on the shoulders of the mountains. Without the unending toil of the slaves, neither man nor beast could have used the pass until well into the spring.