The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (13 page)

“You’ve raised a fine dog,” said Edwydd. “What’s his name?”

Cavall was no Wallekki name, so Ryons had to lie some more. Lying came easily to a former slave. Obst said you shouldn’t lie; God didn’t like it. Ryons was sorry for it, but there was something about Edwydd that made you think it was best to lie to him.

“I just call him Dog.”

“What I don’t understand,” the man said, “is why a boy who ran away from the Wallekki would want to go to Obann, which is where all the Wallekki armies are going. They’re probably there by now. Aren’t you afraid of them?”

“Well, I’ve got to go somewhere!” Ryons said. “Maybe I could get into the city and find a place to live. What else can I do?”

Just then Cavall tried to spring to his feet. His sudden movement broke Ryons’ grip on him. But his paws skidded on the earth, his legs gave out, and with a muffled howl he fell over on his side. Foam seeped from his jaws. Panting shallowly, his legs twitched and his eyes fell shut.

“What’s this!” Ryons knelt beside him, but before he knew it, Edwydd seized him by the collar and pulled him up.

“Looks like Dog ate something that disagreed with him!” the rider said. “Meanwhile, my lad, you’ll go to Obann—with me.”

“Let me go! You poisoned my dog!” Ryons struggled, but the man was much too strong for him. He tied the boy’s wrists together with a leather thong, dazed him with a blow to the side of the head, and flung him over the saddle on his horse. He vaulted into the saddle and trotted off with Ryons slung before him like a sack of grain, his aching head joggling up and down and his whole mind in a tangle.

When Obst first saw the scrolls, he went weak in the legs and had to sit down. He would have fallen if Martis and Helki hadn’t caught him. They lowered him gently to the ground, but his hands trembled so that he couldn’t unroll the scroll Jack had given him. It was some moments before he could even speak. The chieftains looked on suspiciously, wondering what was wrong with their teacher.

“Two thousand years!” he said at last. “After two thousand years, God has allowed his servant King Ozias to speak to us again! This is grace beyond all hope!” And tears flowed from his eyes so that he couldn’t see.

“To think that we carried this treasure on a donkey!” Martis said. After all those days and all those miles, now it dawned on him that the scrolls were a treasure worth more than all the gold of Obann. Bending all his energies just to getting safely to the forest, he’d hardly given the scrolls a second thought. But now he began to understand, and it took his breath away. God was not just a word, or an idea, bandied about by theologians. God did things!

It was enough to take anyone’s breath away.

Jack and Ellayne exchanged a look. Jack hadn’t been thinking of the scroll as anything much more than a piece of sheepskin in his hand. Obst made him see that he’d been holding God’s own word. He almost dropped it.

Obst looked up at the chieftains. “Let the army stop here and make a camp,” he said. “We must hold a celebration of thanksgiving, with a feast and songs of praise and prayers. For the whole human race has been given a gift today, a gift beyond price; and for the time being, we are its custodians. God has honored us!”

Chief Zekelesh grinned. “We not own much food to make feast,” he said in his bad Tribe-talk, “but we feast as we can—yes!” He and the rest of the chieftains hurried off to make arrangements.

“When are you going to read the scrolls?” Jack asked.

“When my heart stops beating like a drum and my head stops buzzing like a beehive,” Obst said. “Jack and Ellayne, it was a blessed, blessed day when the two of you first entered Lintum Forest!”

He pulled them into an embrace, held them tight, and kissed them again and again. Because they loved him, they allowed it. Ellayne began to cry because she missed her father.

“What’s the army doing out here on the plain?” Martis asked Helki.

“Burned if I know,” said the Rod. “Going to Obann, I guess. At least that’s what my little peeper said we have to do; and she was speaking as a prophet, so it was really God saying it.”

“Where’s the king?”

Helki took Martis’ elbow and led him a little way off. “No one knows where that boy is!” he said. “He ran off into the woods one day, and before we could fetch him back, we got our marching orders. Peeper says we’ll see him again, someday, who knows when—and he’ll still be our king, and King of Obann. I can’t calculate what any of it means, but the old man seems easy enough in his mind about it. I reckon God tells him things the rest of us wouldn’t understand.”

Martis went pale. He lowered his voice so only Helki could hear him.

“We were lucky to escape from Old Obann,” he said. “There are servants of the Temple scouring the plains for us. I’m sure they know about the scrolls, too. If Ryons comes out of the forest, he’ll be in worse danger than you know.”

“Ain’t much we can do about it.”

“I’d like to know what you’re going to do when you get to Obann,” Martis said. “All the Heathen armies will be there.”

“I reckon we’ll just have to think of something.”

“You’re mighty calm about it!”

Helki sighed and twirled his staff. “Might as well be calm,” he said. “I’m supposed to be the Flail of the Lord. It wouldn’t do for the men to see me fretting.”

The army traveled light, so it wasn’t much of a feast. What they lacked in extra food they made up for in gusto. The men may not have understood what they were celebrating; but a mood of rejoicing settled over them, and as the sun set, songs rang out boisterously in a dozen different languages.

A mound of earth had been heaped up and tamped so that Obst could stand on it and everyone could see him. They made bonfires, half a dozen big ones, and danced around them merrily, waving swords and spears. The subchiefs of the Abnaks danced backward, spinning round and round without getting dizzy. It made Jack dizzy just to watch them.

When darkness fell at last, the men sat down and Obst climbed up on the mound. They cheered him uproariously. He had to stand with his arms spread out for several minutes before they settled down.

“Men and brethren, children of the living God—rejoice, for God is with you!”

He told them about the scrolls: how King Ozias, inspired by the spirit of God, wrote them; how they remained hidden under the ruins of Old Obann for many lifetimes of men; and how God today had brought them to light so He could speak to His people again, as He used to speak to them in days of old.

“We do not know yet what is in the scrolls, what God will say to us. But we know that God’s bell on Bell Mountain has been rung and that you who were heathen are the first generation of a new people of God. Just those two things alone are miracles.”

They should rejoice, he said, because they were part of something new. God had chosen them to play that part. They must put their trust in Him and be courageous. Scripture was full of heroes who did impossible things because their God was with them.

“They were not giants. They were men like you. King Ozias himself grew up in Lintum Forest, a fugitive with a price on his head and no father to protect him. Abeka the Lame, with just three hundred men to follow him, routed ten thousand armored men hired by the apostate King Jiraz. So shall you do exploits, too, for the power of God is with you!”

He led them in long prayers. Abnaks from the wooded hills, proud Wallekki, savage Attakotts, and men of other nations little heard-of in the West: they all followed him in prayer, and many wept for joy. It amazed Helki to see hard old Uduqu’s tattooed cheeks shining with shed tears. Helki prayed his own prayer, under his breath: “Oh Lord, I don’t know what I’m doing here! I surely hope you do.”

It was decided Obst would read the scrolls while the army continued to march. The Ghols made a litter for him, to be carried between two horses, so he could sit and read all day. They gave him leather packs in which to store the scrolls and keep them out of the sunlight.

Jack and Ellayne insisted on riding alongside of Obst, although Helki thought they should either be sent home to Ninneburky or back to the castle in the forest.

“Nothing doing!” Jack said. “We went to an awful lot of trouble for those scrolls, and we want to know what’s in them.”

Martis looked at Ellayne. “I thought you wanted me to take you home,” he said.

“Not yet!” she answered. “I’ll stay here as long as Jack does.”

“I reckon you two will be getting married, once you’re old enough,” said Helki.

Ellayne blushed violently, and Jack made a face as if he’d just bitten into a ball of soap. What either of them might have said will never be known, for Obst distracted them.

“I thought I might have trouble reading these,” he said. He had a scroll in his hands, partially unrolled. “After all, it’s been a long time since I studied any of the ancient scripts. But I can read it, after all! Listen:

“‘I, Ozias the king, testify that in obedience to the Word of God that came to me in the wilderness of Shilmer, I placed a bell atop Mount Yul. I took it from the temple that was in the city of Kahalla: there we slew the apostate priests and brought down their tower. But the bell I caused to be saved, for the Lord commanded it.’”

Obst read it easily, but had to pause to catch his breath.

“A scholar from the seminary in Obann said he had a great deal of trouble reading these,” said Martis.

“Nevertheless, it seems clear enough to me,” said Obst.

“Read more!” Jack said.

So as the army marched, he read the entire scroll, pausing now and then to hold it up to the light, or squint at it close-up, because there were places where the ink was faded.

“We must find scribes to make as many copies of these as possible!” he said.

“I’m afraid all the scribes are in Obann, under siege,” Martis said.

“Even so, copies must be made somehow. If need be, there must be a few men in this army who can do it—at least get the work started.”

“A traveling scriptorium!” Martis said. He smiled at the mental image of a tattooed Abnak warrior trying to be a scribe. “Well, if it comes to that, I can read and write. I could do some copying.”

“Now we know for sure,” Obst said, “that it was Ozias’ bell you children rang, up on Bell Mountain, and that the king came down from the mountain and journeyed into Heathen lands. But there’s much more.”

He read from the scroll: “I shall give you knowledge of things that are to be, says the Lord, in the days after the bell is rung. For in those days I shall do mighty works on earth, and then they shall remember that I am their God.”

“It doesn’t say anything about the world coming to an end, does it?” Ellayne said.

“No, not at all,” Obst said. “Certainly nowhere in this scroll. It appears I was wrong about the end of the world.”

“And I was right!” Ellayne stuck out her tongue at Jack, but he just laughed. He liked being right, but didn’t mind being wrong about the world coming to an end.

“They act like they’re married already,” Helki muttered to Martis.

Cavall rose up with a raging thirst and a terrible taste in his mouth, and his head spun when he struggled to his feet. Then he was sick, but after that he began to feel much better.

Without being able to put it into words as a human being would, he knew he’d been poisoned and that the man with the horse had done it. Cavall hadn’t liked the look of him. And a few sniffs of the ground revealed that the man had put Ryons on the horse, after a struggle, and ridden away with him.

Well, it would be an easy thing to track the horse, the scent was fresh enough. And if he found the horse, he’d find the man. Cavall allowed himself the luxury of a quiet growl, then set off on the horse’s trail. Used to loping after deer, he paced himself so he could keep going until after sundown, when the man would stop. He paused only to take a long drink from a water-seep under a patch of waxbush. The horse, he could tell, was not being put to any speed. He would overtake it shortly after nightfall.

Cavall didn’t love the boy. He loved only Mary, who had raised him. But he would stay with the boy forever, and if need be, lay down his life for him—because Mary had told him to.