The Thunder King (Bell Mountain)
Read The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) Online
Authors: Lee Duigon
Published by Storehouse Press
P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, CA 95251
Storehouse Press is the registered trademark of Chalcedon, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 by Lee Duigon
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Book design by Kirk DouPonce (www.DogEaredDesign.com)
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2011933788
ISBN-13: 978-1-891375-56-9
ISBN-10: 1-891375-56-3
Table of Contents
1.
Rain
11.
Merry Mary
18.
Helki and the Heathen Champion
19.
New Recruits
20.
Obst Preaches from the Scrolls
24.
Runaways
30.
The Start of a Very Long Journey
31.
“A New Thing That You Will Not Believe”
32.
How Chillith Became a Mardar
35.
The End of a Long Friendship
37.
Cavall Bolts
44.
How CHillith Learned to See
Rain
On one of the last peaceful nights they would know for a long time, a boy and a girl, and a man who had been a paid assassin, made camp under the shelter of three stinkfruit trees, and after a meager supper, looked up at the stars. Hidden safely among their gear were long-lost books of Scripture, which they couldn’t read.
Behind them, a few days’ journey to the west, lay the city of Obann, where the Temple stood, and across the river from it, the ruined city where they’d discovered the scrolls. Much closer, and surely gaining on them, came pursuit. The man was resolved that if the pursuers caught them, he would have to kill the children he’d sworn to protect. They mustn’t be taken alive by servants of the Temple. He ought to know: he’d been one for most of his life.
Far to the east of them lay Lintum Forest, and friends who would protect them. In between were Heathen armies, great hosts marching one after another to the city of Obann, which they’d vowed to destroy.
“The world still hasn’t ended,” said the boy, Jack. “I thought it would have all of a sudden. I never thought it’d be months and months.”
“It isn’t going to end. Everyone was wrong about that,” said the girl, Ellayne, who had become something of a heretic on the subject.
Together, in obedience to a calling that had come to them in dreams and that they believed was a commandment from God, Jack and Ellayne left home and climbed Bell Mountain (a story that has been told elsewhere). There they found the bell that King Ozias had erected on the summit in ancient times, hidden in the cloud that always blanketed the peak. According to what they’d been taught, when someone rang that bell, God would hear it and unmake the world. Jack and Ellayne believed God had chosen them to ring the bell. They obeyed—but the only thing that happened was that the bell fell down and broke; and for the first time in the memory of man, a wind came and blew away the cloud from the top of the mountain. But later they were told that everyone in the world had heard the bell and wondered what it was.
Martis, the assassin, had been sent by the Temple to stop the children from ringing the bell. In that mission, he failed. Out of fear of God, which was a new thing for him, he took up a new mission: to guard the children and protect them from the Temple.
There was one more member of their party, a manlike creature about the size of a large rat. He, too, guarded the children. He was an Omah, one of the little hairy men who inhabited the ruins of great cities that were destroyed in the downfall of the Empire, so long ago. They’d named him Wytt, short for Manawyttan, a hero in an ancient romance that Jack thought, privately, was a lot of nonsense: girl stuff.
Wytt stood up, sniffed the air, and chattered.
“He says it’s going to rain tonight,” Jack said. Since they’d rung the bell, he and Ellayne were able to understand the Omah’s not-quite language. But Martis couldn’t.
“I hate getting rained on!” Ellayne grumbled.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” Martis said. “If it rains hard enough, it’ll wipe out whatever trail we’ve left.”
It rained on Lintum Forest, too. In the old ruined castle that his people were working on every day to turn into a place to live, the boy who was to be King of Obann lay awake on a bed of ferns. He had much to think about.
His name was Ryons, but that was a new name. He’d been born a slave, and if his mother had ever given him a name, no one ever thought to tell him what it was. For most of his life his masters simply called him Gik—which wasn’t a name at all, but a foul and ugly word in their language.
Now he had clean clothes, a horse that he hadn’t learned to ride, and a small army of desperate men from many different Heathen countries. These were the men who called him king—them, and a little girl who made prophetic utterances that no one understood, and a half-crazy old man who spoke all the languages in the world without knowing how he did it, and who’d taught the army to worship God instead of idols and devils. Even if Ryons had grown up in a nice home with parents who told him fanciful stories of olden times, he never would have heard a story half so fabulous as the one he seemed to be living in.