The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (6 page)

“I do,” he answered, in a voice just a little louder than the rustle of a moth’s wings. “Come closer, and I’ll tell you what it is.”

He did, and Prester Orth didn’t sleep that night.

They found a strange squarish hill rising all alone in the middle of the plain, covered with a few smell-trees. By now the children were well-traveled enough to know that if you dug into the sides of that hill, you’d find something from the days of the Empire. It was no natural hill, but all that was left of some mighty work of ancient man.

“Race you to the top!” cried Jack. “Last one up’s a toad!”

The climb was almost straight up, and if it weren’t for the roots sticking out of the earth, and tufts of hard grey grass, no one could have climbed it. Ellayne was right behind Jack, grousing: “You cheated! You started first!” But soon they were both breathing too hard to talk.

Once Jack grabbed something that looked like a root, but it left a rust stain on his hand, so he knew it was a metal rod. If he’d been able to turn and look back down, he would have seen Martis’ face grow pale with fear. The climb was more dangerous than it looked, and if Jack had been a little older, he would’ve thought twice before attempting it. But he was tired of the plain, and he wanted to get up high above it, like a bird.

Panting, he reached the top and pulled himself over, to lie facedown in the coarse grass. A minute later Ellayne’s hand appeared. He offered to pull her up, but she did it herself. Down below, Martis heaved a sigh of relief.

“I win,” Jack said.

“Only because you cheated!”

“Never mind—you must be the only girl in Obann who could’ve climbed up here.”

Ellayne snorted, and forced herself to stand. She was the first to do that, at least.

“Ooh!” she said.

The climb was worth it, Jack thought, when he stood beside her. You could see for miles and miles in all directions. The vastness of the plain, dotted here and there with clumps of trees, took one’s breath away. Wind rumpled their hair, dried the sweat on their foreheads.

They heard a sound of puffing and chunking, crept to the rim and looked down. Martis was coming up after them, using his knife to gouge out hand-and footholds. His foot slipped once, but he had a firm grip on a root and didn’t fall. It took him a little longer to reach the top than it had taken the children.

“That was a foolhardy thing to do, racing up this hill!” he panted when he’d joined them. “What if one of you fell and broke a leg?”

“You sound like my father,” Ellayne said.

“I ought to give you a tanning, like he would.”

She looked alarmed, but Jack laughed. “You’re up here, too, Martis! What if you broke your leg?” Jack’s stepfather, Van, had never bothered to whip him. Van just said he wouldn’t feed him if he didn’t do his chores. “I guess Ivor’s the only one of us who has any sense.” The refugee was still down below, waiting for them. Jack waved to him, but he didn’t wave back.

“I came up for the view,” Martis said. “Let’s see what we can see.”

The top of the hill was flat, the trees that grew there stunted. There wasn’t much room for three people. While they were exploring it, Wytt joined them, effortlessly scrambling up the steep slope like a squirrel, chattering.

“He doesn’t like this place,” Ellayne said, “but he can’t say why. Just that there’s something bad about places like this. Omah don’t live here.”

“Never mind that,” Martis said. “Look!” He pointed eastward. “Do you see that dark smudge on the horizon? I believe that’s Lintum Forest.”

Jack had noticed it before, without realizing what it was. He whistled. “So we’re almost there! It’ll be good to see Obst again and Helki.”

“It looks far away,” Ellayne said. “I wonder how far.”

“I’m a city man: I can’t tell. Not too far for us to get there, at any rate,” Martis said. “But look there, to the north. That cloud of dust, I’ll warrant, is an army on the march.”

“I think we’d better get back down,” Ellayne said.

“Don’t be afraid. They can’t see us. They must be miles away,” Martis said.

“Is it one of our armies, or one of theirs?” Jack asked.

“From what the Wallekki riders told us, it must be one of theirs, marching to Obann,” Martis said. “God knows how many armies they have. I hope the city’s well-provisioned.”

“Will they take the city, Martis?” Ellayne asked. She was thinking: just before she’d run off with Jack, her mother and father were thinking of sending her to school in Obann. “I mean, with fire and magic …”

“Who can say?” Martis answered. “Come on, let’s climb back down and make our camp. And be careful!”

Deep within that grey-green smudge on the horizon, men and women were laboring to turn an old, ruined castle into a place of refuge; to clear the forest around it so they could raise crops; and to build houses. Crops couldn’t be planted until next spring, so others scoured the forest for stocks of food that would take them through the winter. Meat could be smoked or salted, berries could be turned into preserves, and of course the nuts would keep.

Helki, nominally in command, knew but little how to manage any of this; but by now he had plenty of settlers around him who did, and he left them to it. In his heart he yearned to go back to his solitary, wandering life.

“This is killing me!” he confided to Obst. “I can’t hear myself think with all these people around me. And I have to do more talking in a day than I’m used to doing in a month.”

“You and me both,” said the old man, who’d spent most of his life as a hermit and wished he could go back to it. “But God has put us where we are, and we have to make the best of it. I believe this is the work we were born to do.”

Obst’s work was to teach a Heathen army how to be God’s people. Helki’s was to keep the army occupied so it wouldn’t turn into a lawless mob.

They had Wallekki from the eastern plains, proud and touchy; and Abnaks from the wooded hills, wild, crude, and free; and Fazzan from the valley of the Green Snake River, some of whom loudly lamented their homesickness every night, a custom which others found irksome. There were other nations present, too, with equally exotic customs.

Holding them all together was the certain knowledge that in the eyes of the Thunder King they were traitors and vermin, marked for death. There was no going home for any of them—not while the Great Man lived and held sway over the entire East.

But there were two things more that held them. They loved the king they’d chosen for themselves, the boy who’d been a slave; and they loved the mysterious, invisible westmen’s God who gave them victory in battle. Indeed, they were all amazed to be still alive.

“I wish you’d send someone to my cabin to fetch my book of Scripture, if it’s still there,” Obst said. “King Ryons must learn to read it.”

“I wish I could go myself,” said Helki. But in the end he sent one of his woodsmen.

As for King Ryons himself, he was safe amid his bodyguard of loyal Ghols, glad not to be going into any battles for the time being—and bored. There weren’t many other children in the encampment, and most of them had parents who preferred them not to be the playmates of a king.

Jandra liked to tag after him with her hideous bird, the hissing monster with teeth in its beak. But she was just a tot, hardly old enough to prattle, except when she was making prophecies. She wasn’t the best company for a boy of his age—not that Ryons knew how old he was. He was nice to her: he loved her in his way; but he couldn’t rough-and-tumble with her or engage her in stone-throwing contests.

Worse, he carried a secret, one he couldn’t share with Obst or Helki or with his most doting bodyguard.

Ever since that last battle on the plain, a temptation had been growing in him, stronger every day, every hour: a temptation to be a king no more and simply run away.

Obst was teaching him to pray: it would be a source of strength to him, the old man said. “There’s no trick to it,” he said. “Just find a place where you can be alone, and talk to God. He’ll hear you.”

But finding a time and place to be alone was a trick. He did manage, one day, to slip away from his bodyguard, and from Jandra, into the roofless stone chamber that served him as a throne room; and there he tried to pray.

“God, do I have to stay here for the rest of my life?” he asked. “I’m not really a king. It’s just a joke the chiefs are playing on the Thunder King—but it won’t be funny if he ever catches me! He’ll have my eyes put out. Then I’ll be a slave again, but blind.

“Would it really be so wrong if I just ran away? Helki can be king. Obst says you sometimes answer people when they pray. I wish you’d answer me.”

He waited for he knew not what: a voice from the sky above or from the earth below. He waited for a good while but received no answer. He sighed. “I must have been doing it wrong,” he thought. And then one of the Ghols peeked in and said, “Oh, there you are, my king! Would you like to come out and practice with your sword a bit?”

The temptation grew a little stronger.

The first of the Heathen armies came unescorted to Obann, and Lord Gwyll led Obann’s army out to meet it. Just out of sight of the city walls, he won a total victory and scattered the barbarians in all directions. There was loud rejoicing in the streets when he returned, but he got a different kind of reception at home.

“God speaks to you, Lord Gwyll—hear Him!” It was Nanny Witkom, glaring at him from the rocking chair. She reminded him of a serpent coiled to strike. Her eyes glittered—not like Nanny’s kind old eyes at all.

“Your life and the lives of your household, these will be given you as God’s gift, if you get out of the city. For I shall smite this city and cleanse this place from all the pollution wherewith the faithless people have polluted it. My prophets speak to this city, and the city kills them. Therefore shall the swords and spears of Obann be as child’s toys, and no might shall be found in her.”

He tried to answer. “Nanny, I hardly think God would ask a soldier to desert his post and a general not to do his duty.” But she didn’t hear him.

“Soldiers’ valor cannot save this city,” she said, “nor will I help those who help the ungodly. I have set my face against this people, for they have made My house a house of merchandise. Will you buy and sell the name of God? Your priests speak lies in My name, but I shall speak their destruction.”

She stopped when Rhianna came into the room.

“I just dropped in so you could see I’m all right and know we won our battle,” Gwyll said. “But I have a High Council meeting before I can have my supper.”

She threw herself into his arms, and they held each other close.

“You’ve always been a soldier,” she said, “but this is the first time you’ve come home for supper the same day that you fought a battle. I never thought the enemy would ever get this far.”

“One of their armies, at least, won’t be getting any farther,” Gwyll said. Rhianna kissed him and sent him to his meeting. As he shut the front door behind him, he heard Nanny resume her ranting. For once he was glad he had a council meeting to go to.

Even Lord Ruffin was elated by the victory. He grinned and rubbed his hands together.

“Gave them a good dusting, didn’t we!” he said. “Well done, Lord Gwyll!”

“Thank you, Governor-general.” Gwyll looked around the council chamber, saw an empty seat at the big table. “Where’s Lord Chutt?”

The oligarch in charge of revenue, said Ruffin, had gone off on an emergency inspection tour of the northern towns and cities.

“He ran away,” added Judge Tombo. “We’ll have to replace him.”

“Which means we’re all here and ready to hear your report, Lord Gwyll,” Ruffin said. “Please be seated. We don’t want to keep you longer than necessary.”

This was the executive chamber, down the corridor from the oligarchs’ assembly hall in the great, domed building that dominated Government Plaza. The dome, nearly two hundred years old, was sheathed with copper that had turned green. Most of the oligarchs were in the city now, but this meeting was for the ruling council only. It was every oligarch’s dream to sit at the polished hardwood table in this room.