The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (38 page)

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.

“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.