The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (4 page)

“He said you would guide me to the city and that it would be a long journey.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Tim shook his head. “Just pack up my traps and pelts and traipse all the way down to Obann, where there ain’t no king of any kind. Did he happen to say why I’d do a silly thing like that?”

“No. But a filgya never lies.”

In the end Tim did agree to take her to Obann. “I can’t help it: the whole thing makes me more curious than I can stand,” he said.

He had two donkeys to carry his pelts and his gear, and he and Gurun went on foot. From the River Winter to the city of Obann was a long, long way to walk. Gurun found it hard to imagine such distances on land.

“Anyone we meet,” Tim said, “we’ll tell them you’re my sister’s daughter.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s already too much going on these days to make people uneasy, without me telling them you’re a girl who got blown down here from a country no one knew existed. In a boat, no less! Nobody in his right mind would take a boat out on the sea.”

“What are these things that are making people uneasy?” Gurun asked.

“Funny things! For instance, they’re still talking about the bell—the bell that rang in places where there ain’t no bell for miles and miles around. Prophets said it was God’s bell, ringing in the end of the world.”

“What’s a bell?”

He had to explain. He’d been to Obann once, where there were many bells, and he’d enjoyed listening to them. The chamber house in his own little town was too poor to have even one bell.

“So that’s what it was!” Gurun said. “We heard it, too. Everybody heard it, on all the different islands, all at the same time. Nobody knew what it was—only that, for a little while, it made the whole world seem fresh and new. And since that morning the fishing has been better than anybody can remember.”

It wasn’t the kind of thing you would forget. Winter still had the islands in its clutches that morning. And then, from out of some unknown corner of the heavens, or from out of nowhere at all, sweet music rang, waking the people in their beds and the livestock in their stalls. From that moment on, winter yielded to an early spring and the waters teemed with fish.

Nobody knew what it was. There were no chamber houses in the islands, nor presters to preach in them. Reciters studied the Scriptures and went from dwelling to dwelling to teach and recite Scripture at district meetings, weddings, name-days, and funerals. There wasn’t a bell to be found in all the islands. Some said the music was produced by angels. Others thought that maybe some spirit of the sea itself had decided to sing. A few said it was mermaids.

“Well, the whole world’s going funny, and people are scared,” Tim said. “Up north there are giant shaggy monsters that no one’s ever seen before—they wrecked a town. Ain’t seen one myself, but that don’t mean that everybody’s lying.

“Still, I’ve got to say the trapping was more than fine this season. I’ve taken more pelts in a few short weeks than I ever took before in a whole summer. Whatever it is that’s happening, it can’t be all bad.”

It took them a week to hike to Pokee, where they had to stop while Tim sold his pelts to an agent who would resell them up and down the Imperial River. The trapper didn’t get the kind of prices he’d hoped for.

“Sorry,” said the agent, “but you know there’s a war on, and it’s going badly. I can’t sell furs to people who’ve been burned out of their homes by the barbarians. It’s one Heathen army after another coming over the mountains, all heading down the river to Obann itself. They mean to take the city.”

“They’re fools,” said Tim. “Ever seen Obann’s walls? Ain’t no army can take that city!” But the agent wasn’t so sure of that.

Tim found reasons to tarry in Pokee for longer than Gurun liked. Yes, it was interesting to see people farming, raising crops like corn and grapes and melons, which had never been grown in her country. It was interesting to see so many people living in wooden houses built on the ground instead of under it. But she was eager to reach the city and see the king, even though Tim said Obann had no king.

What with one thing and another, summer was almost over by the time they headed south again, and they still had more than half the journey yet to go. They stopped again in another town, this one with a high log fence around it—more timber than was found in all of Fogo Island. Kantreff, it was called. There they heard bad news.

“You can’t get into the city anymore,” a townsman said, “and no one can get out. Haven’t you heard yet? The Heathen are all around it in a siege—miles and miles of countryside depopulated, people running away in all directions. It’s the end, I say.”

They found a place to stay, an inn with little stuffy rooms. They had supper in the common room with other travelers. These all had the same tale to tell.

“The prophets were right, but no one listened to them,” said a merchant from a place called Cardigal. “My city’s been destroyed. Good thing I was traveling when it happened! But around Obann the barbarians are as thick as flies on a carcass. If you killed a hundred of them every day, they wouldn’t even notice. The prophets warned us, but the presters just said they were crazy and to pay them no mind. Now it’s too late!”

When they were alone again, just before going to their separate rooms to sleep, Tim said, “It’s just no use, lassie. We might as well turn around and go home. We can’t go to Obann now.”

“You can go home,” Gurun said, “but I shall go to Obann. I want to see the king.”

“Burn it all, girl, there ain’t no king! By the time we could get there, there might not be an Obann, either. Don’t you listen to what people have been telling us?”

Gurun shrugged. “A filgya never lies,” she said, “and it’s useless to go one way when the filgya bids you go another. If my father’s grandfather had tried to avoid the man who killed him, he would only have met him in a place where he didn’t expect him.”

“That is a heathenish superstition,” Tim said.

Nevertheless, after they’d been in Kantreff several days, Tim set out with her for Obann.

“I don’t know why I do it,” he grumbled, when they were clear of the town. “Maybe it’s because you remind me of my big sister. She caught a fever and died when I was just a little boy. But she sure did love me; and I loved her.”

“You’ve been as an elder brother to me,” said Gurun, “and God will bless you for it.”

Summer gave way to fall. The farther south they fared, the worse the news. Even so, they still had far to go: they were only halfway to Obann.

The towns they visited were full of refugees. There were no rooms to be had in any of the inns; but camping under the stars was no hardship for a trapper. Tim knew how to build a fire that wouldn’t go out, how to put up simple shelters that kept out the wind and the rain, and how to live off the land. They never went hungry. Gurun learned from him everything she could.

“A hundred miles left to go, give or take a few,” he told her one day. Because of rain, they’d gotten off to a late start. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to getting there! This country hereabouts should be full of people, but we haven’t seen anyone for two whole days. They’ve all cleared out. I wonder if the city’s fallen.”

They were in a land of grassy plains interspersed with woodlands and abandoned farms. Tim had been keeping clear of towns because they were jammed with refugees and conditions weren’t pleasant. People were getting short-tempered, and there was violence. Besides, anybody traveling south would be suspected of insanity, he said.

“Perhaps the city has a king by now,” said Gurun.

“That’s foolishness. Obann is ruled by oligarchs—has been for, oh, a hundred years, at least.”

“What are oligarchs?”

“Never you mind. They ain’t kings.”

It began to drizzle. They put hoods over their heads and tightened their cloaks, for it was getting cold. The grass around them had begun to turn yellow, and few of the trees were still green. Their masses of red and gold leaves struck Gurun as gloriously beautiful. But already a few trees had shed their leaves and were bare.

The cold and drizzle stopped their talk, and they plodded on in silence, making for a wide gap between two stands of trees. They were halfway through it when, with outlandish whoops and howlings, a band of men ran out and suddenly surrounded them.

Gurun didn’t know if they were men or trolls. Darker than Tim or any of his countrymen, short and squat with crow-black hair, they menaced the two travelers with short spears and gabbled at them like a flock of ravens.

“What are these?” Gurun asked.

“Heathen—and they’ve got us!” Tim squeezed her hand, hard. “God help us now.”

There were two dozen of them. They wore leather jerkins and trousers bright with colored checks, red and blue and green. They made a terrible noise, all gabbling at once. After several minutes of this, one of them jammed his spear into the ground and harangued the others, shouting them down.

Gurun didn’t understand their language—if it even was a language. If they were trolls, it would be fatal to show fear. But it seemed that one of them ran out of patience with the speaker and cocked back his arm to hurl his spear.

It was aimed right at Tim’s chest; and without thinking, Gurun stepped in front of him.

“Stop this jabbering!” she cried, holding up her hand against them. “What have we ever done to you that you should harm us?”

The first speaker knocked the spear out of his comrade’s hand and pushed him to the ground. He turned to the rest and broke out in a loud tirade. Gurun didn’t know what he was saying, but it was this:

“Idiots! Fools! Have you learned nothing? Do you all want to die in this miserable country?

“Look at her! Any fool can see she’s different. Is she not exactly what we’ve been looking for? Look at her eyes, her hair, her skin! And she stood between her servant and your spear, Bolok. Would an ordinary maiden do that? Can there be any hope for us without her?”

The men all looked ashamed. One of them muttered, “You’re right, Shingis. See if you can speak with her.”

“If she’s not the one, we’ll know soon enough,” added another.

The man turned to Gurun and made an odd kind of half-bow, half-crouch to her, with his hands balled at his hips. He spoke to her in a fractured Obannese, which both she and Tim could understand.

“Be no angry with us, maiden. I sorry we scare you. My name Shingis; I chief to this band. We are all Blays. We come here from country far-far away. Thunder King send us to fight Obann.

“We fight hard, but we lose. Army all broken now, chased away from city. Boy riding great beast, he scatter us like dust. All Blays died but us.”

He paused to see if she understood. She nodded.

“My name is Gurun,” she answered, speaking slowly. “I come from far away, from the North. Over the sea. This is my friend, Tim. We were going to Obann.”

“No go there now—stay away!” He looked scared; they all did. “Obann god very angry. He sent great beast to trample us. Thunder King be angry with us, too. He take away our gods, so we think he is a god. But Obann god kill-kill his army.

“Please, maiden—you stay with us. Be queen. We take good care for you. You pray for us, maybe find gods to take care for us.”

Tim looked like he wanted very badly to say something, but didn’t dare. But Gurun could see for herself that it would have been dangerous to decline the invitation.

“If I am to be your queen,” she said, “then you must obey my commands. A queen should be obeyed, or she is no queen. Then I will stay with you, and pray for you.” Why they would need someone to do their praying, she couldn’t imagine; but now was not the time to ask.

Shingis turned to his fellows and translated her words. There was some discussion about it.

“You’d better accept her,” he said. “We can’t survive without gods to protect us. We’re all alone in the country of our enemies. This maiden is our only chance—and I say the gods sent her to us: whatever gods there be that the Thunder King has not destroyed. Or would you rather wait for his spells to find us out and kill us one by one?”