The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) Read online

  “Yes.”

  Wytt stepped up to Fnaa and touched his hand. The boy winced, but didn’t snatch his hand away.

  “This is good boy,” Wytt chirped.

  “He likes you,” Ellayne said. “He knows about people, what they’re like inside, so that’s a point in your favor.”

  “But we oughtn’t to go all the way to Obann, just us!” Jack said. “We ought to take Martis with us. He should come, too.”

  “Except he’s not here!” Ellayne said.

  Martis swore an oath to protect Ellayne and Jack for as long as he lived, for which the king had given him the honorable title of Knight Protector. But with the children safe at home in Ninneburky, Martis got involved in other things as well: and for that reason he was out of town just now, somewhere up in the mountains on some kind of secret business. “Just when we really need him,” Ellayne muttered.

  “Listen, Fnaa—you’ll have to tell us more,” Jack said.

  “My mother told me I was to be very careful, even with you,” Fnaa answered.

  “But what does Ryons have to be saved from?” Ellayne asked.

  “Me,” said Fnaa.

  Chapter 3

  How They Set Out for Obann

  The story Fnaa told them, Ellayne thought, was like something out of the tales of Abombalbap. What would her father think, if he could hear it? But Fnaa refused to see the baron.

  “No one who knows the king must see me, no one but the two of you,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me you came here all the way from Obann with no one seeing you,” Jack said. “All kinds of people must have seen you, who’ve seen the king.”

  “Well, I got past them all right.”

  “How?” asked Ellayne.

  “I’ll show you.” Fnaa moved a little closer to the lantern, put his hands over his face for just a moment, then took them away.

  “Wha—?” Jack sputtered; and Ellayne said, “Oh, my!”

  Fnaa now looked like the most pitiful half-witted simpleton ever to stumble into a doorpost, blank-faced, goggle-eyed, daunted by the task of remembering his own name. When he stood up, he wobbled and almost tripped over his own feet.

  “Wan’ my mumma,” he babbled, and then began to snivel.

  You wouldn’t have known him. And while Jack and Ellayne stared at him, he stood up straight, relaxed his features, and suddenly went back to being just Fnaa.

  “How do you do that?” Ellayne cried.

  “My mother taught me. She didn’t want me to be taken away from her and sold, so she taught me how to act like a simpleton so that no one would ever want to buy me.

  “My mother is the daughter of a chief among the Fazzan people, away out East. Some Wallekki stole her and sold her, and then she was sold again to some people in Obann. I was born there. The people who own us think I’m a half-wit. That’s what gave them the idea to murder King Ryons.”

  Ellayne’s mother came out on the back porch and rang the dinner bell. That didn’t mean a late supper; it was her way of summoning Ellayne to bed without having to go look for her.

  “We have to go now,” Ellayne said.” If we stay out, my father will want to know why, and he’ll come out to see.”

  “But where’s he going to stay tonight?” Jack said.

  They decided the stable would be best. There was an empty hayloft above the stalls. Wytt could stay down below and warn him when the groom came in the morning with the horses’ food. There was no reason for the groom to go up to the loft.

  “We’ll sneak out some breakfast for you in the morning,” Ellayne said.

  “I don’t eat much,” said Fnaa. “Just don’t tell anyone I’m here. You have to promise.”

  “We promise,” Jack said, and wondered, “What are we getting into?”

  Of course they couldn’t sleep that night. Jack lay awake wondering what Ellayne was thinking, and she lay in bed wondering what he was thinking. At just about exactly the same time, each got up and went to see if the other was asleep. They bumped into each other in the hall and tiptoed to the drawing room, where no slumbering adults were likely to hear them. To be on the safe side, they whispered. There was enough moonlight coming in through the windows to keep them from knocking over any chairs on their way to the settee.

  “Well?” Jack said. “Do you believe him?”

  “Of course I do—who would ever make up a crazy story like the one he tells? Besides,” Ellayne said, “things like this used to happen sometimes, in the olden days.”

  Abombalbap be hanged, Jack thought. But he said, “Oh, it all sounds like such rot! A bunch of rich men doing away with the king and putting Fnaa in his place so they can tell everybody, ‘Poor King Ryons, his wits are gone—he can’t be king anymore.’ Really!”

  “But it’s a clever plan, if they can get away with it,” said Ellayne. “No one would ever suspect the real king had been replaced. And with some poor half-wit on the throne, sooner or later people would get tired of it, and then the schemers could bring back the Oligarchy. No more kingdom.”

  “But Fnaa isn’t a half-wit.”

  “They didn’t know that. That’s what was wrong with their plan,” Ellayne said. “They must have been mighty surprised when Fnaa gave them the slip.”

  “I’ll bet they’re hunting for him all over the country,” Jack said.

  “Probably—but I don’t think they’ll find him. “They’ll be looking for some poor booby who doesn’t know where he’s going.”

  Jack had thought their adventuring days were over. For the first time in his life he was living in a nice house and sleeping in a real bed. He had real shoes. He played chess, and his reading and writing were coming along just fine. If he wanted to, when he was old enough, he could take part in the family’s lumber business along with Ellayne’s two brothers—the baron said so. Someday he would have a house of his own. All of those things made adventures seem less attractive to him.

  “We’ve got to do it,” Ellayne said. “King Ryons is our friend, and it was God who made him a king. Those men who are plotting to get rid of him—well, they have to be stopped.”

  “And all we have to do is get Fnaa into the king’s palace without anybody knowing. It sounds easy enough!” Jack said. “Only I don’t see why you and I have to do it all alone. Not when your father could order up a company of militia and take us to Obann in style.”

  “Fnaa won’t trust anyone but us. If my father gets involved, Fnaa will run away.”

  Jack didn’t like it. He especially didn’t like not being able to have Martis’ help. As a former assassin in the First Prester’s secret service, Martis knew all about this sort of business.

  “We should wait until Martis gets back and have him take charge of this,” he said. “We’ll just have to convince Fnaa to go along with that.”

  “Only we don’t know when Martis is coming back. Nobody knows,” Ellayne said. “We can’t wait all summer for him.”

  Jack had to give in. After all, you couldn’t let people plot against the king. And it was only a trip to Obann in the summertime. They’d done many harder and more dangerous things than that. Compared to some of those, this hardly counted as an adventure at all.

  The next day they spent getting ready. Ellayne would need boy’s clothes and a pair of scissors so that Jack could cut her hair. Roshay Bault would be looking for a girl and a boy, but they would travel as three boys.

  They had to find shoes and decent clothes for Fnaa—those came out of brother Dib’s closet—and a pack for matches, rations, and money. The hardest part was to keep Fnaa up in the loft all day, where it was hot and stuffy.

  When she was alone, Ellayne wrote a note to her father.

  Dear Father—Please don’t be angry, but Jack and I have to do something very important and we’re not allowed to tell you what it is, or where we’re going. But if you show this note to Martis, he may be able to pick up our trail without our breaking our promise not to tell. This thing was not our idea, but we have to do it a
nd we have to keep it a secret, even from you. But at least it’s not dangerous, like when we went to Bell Mountain, so please tell Mama not to worry. We will be back as soon as we can. Love, Ellayne

  P.S., Don’t blame Jack, I had to talk him into it.

  “There!” she said to herself. “He’ll understand. Really, it’s God’s business we’re going on, so we can’t say no.”

  Jack made sure he packed his slingshot, and a big knife that was almost as good as a sword. His worst thought was that the baron and the baroness would think he was ungrateful and would never trust him anymore.

  “You can’t tell anybody,” Fnaa said again, when they brought him Dib’s shoes. “I don’t know how many people are in the plot. I don’t know all their names, or who they talk to, or where they all come from. My mother told me not to trust anyone except the two of you and the king himself.”

  Jack and Ellayne had agreed not to argue with him until after they were on the road. Later on, maybe, they could talk some sense into him.

  “It’ll be nice to see the king again,” Ellayne said. “When we first met him, you know, he was as raggedy and dirty as you. I don’t know how anyone could tell the two of you apart.”

  “Have you ever seen the king, Fnaa?” Jack asked.

  “No, but my mother has. She’s seen him riding down the street with his Heathen horsemen all around him. She says I look just like him.”

  They decided to leave in the middle of the night, when the household was asleep. Getting out of Ninneburky wasn’t as easy as it used to be, because now there was a stockade around most of the town and pilings laid aside where they could be put up quickly in case of trouble. But some of the wall had been taken down in the spring, at the request of herders and carters, and there were several streets leading out of town that no one bothered to guard in peacetime.

  With regrets, they decided not to take Ham, their donkey, who’d gone most of the way up Bell Mountain with them. Children leading a donkey would be more conspicuous than children without a donkey. But Wytt would go with them: they couldn’t have kept him from coming, anyhow. Fnaa had made friends with him during his night in the loft.

  “You’ll see,” said Jack, “he’s good at sniffing out danger before it catches up to us. I can’t tell you how many times he’s saved us.”

  Still, Jack didn’t like it. Here and now, with the crickets chirping and the katydids tattling in the trees, the stars strewn like dust across the sky, and the three of them setting out with packs and blankets on their backs and Wytt racing ahead, scouting, Jack still didn’t like it. Something felt wrong, and he was sure they were headed straight for trouble.

  What was the point of having a father and a mother, he wondered, if you don’t trust them with things that really mattered—didn’t even tell them, when such things came up? Jack’s own father, a militia man, died in a battle right after Jack was born; and his mother died a few years ago. He knew Roshay and Vannett Bault weren’t truly his father and mother. But they’d taken him into their house and treated him like a son, and it made him feel mean and low-down to be sneaking out on them. Nor was he at all happy about marching off without a word to Martis, although that couldn’t be helped.

  The only thing that eased him was when Ellayne said, after they had just taken up their packs but were still in the stable, “We ought to pray before we start out on this journey.”

  “What? Go to the chamber house at this time of night and wake the prester?” Fnaa was incredulous.

  “No, no—of course not,” Ellayne said. “I mean a quiet little prayer, just the three of us.”

  “We never went to the Temple, my mother and me,” Fnaa said. “The master and his family always went, but my mother says the Obann God doesn’t care about slaves and our people’s gods are too far away to do us any good.” He paused, then added, “But we heard that King Ryons has men from Fazzan in his army and they now worship Obann’s God.”

  “We’ll explain it to you later,” Jack said. “Say us a prayer, Ellayne.”

  She and Jack closed their eyes, as Obst the hermit had taught them, and Ellayne spoke softly, knowing God would hear her even if she didn’t speak aloud at all: “God, please keep us safe on this trip to Obann, and let us get there in time to help King Ryons. You made him king, but wicked men are out to get him.” And she and Jack both whispered, “So be it.”

  “That was a prayer?” Fnaa asked. “But you were just talking.”

  “That’s all you have to do,” Jack said. “A holy man taught us. All you have to do is talk to God, and He hears you.”

  “Sounds funny to me,” Fnaa said. “Can we get started now?”

  Following Wytt, who made less noise than a rat, the three children crept out of the town of Ninneburky in the middle of the night. Jack felt a little better for the prayer, but still misliked sneaking off like a housebreaker.

  For the first time, but not the last, he wondered if Fnaa was really who he said he was, wondered if Fnaa’s outlandish story was really true, and wondered how soon it would be, and how unpleasant, for them to find out otherwise.

  “Lord God,” he prayed silently, as they passed out of the town and saw the Imperial River in the near distance with starlight shimmering on glossy water, “if this is a trick or a trap, please watch out for us!”

  Chapter 4

  How Martis Sought for Tidings

  Martis went up Bell Mountain to assassinate Jack and Ellayne and almost perished on the summit. When he came down, his beard had turned white and he had sworn an oath to protect the children with his life. His beard was still white, his hair still brown, and he still bore the same faintly sad, pensive expression on his face. He did not look like a killer, but he was.

  He had not forgotten his oath, but with the children safe in Roshay Bault’s care, they didn’t seem to be much in need of protection. Martis soon went back to doing some of the same kind of work he used to do in the service of the Temple. Not the murdering—not that, ever again, but there was plenty of work these days for a man who knew the Heathen countries on the other side of the mountains. Martis knew those lands and peoples about as well as any Westerner, and so made himself useful to the kingdom.

  The vast army that the Thunder King sent against the city of Obann was utterly destroyed, and the Thunder King himself buried in an avalanche. But everyone in Obann who was wise knew that that did not mean peace, but only a breathing spell. There was a new Thunder King, and he would raise new armies, and there would be war again.

  Martis’ work was to help Obann make ready for that war. That was why, instead of being in Ninneburky when Jack and Ellayne needed him, he was many miles to the east, in the foothills of the mountains. On the night the children set out for Obann, Martis was sitting by a campfire in the forest, conversing with barbarians.

  “Yes, it’s true—the last of the Thunder King’s mardars in our country have been killed. Their scalps flap in the wind over the camps of the Turtle and the Beetle clans. Not one escaped alive.”

  The speaker was an Abnak: shirtless, tattooed all over, with his head shaved clean but for a thick lock of black hair dangling from his scalp. The Abnaks lived on the eastern slopes of the mountains, and for hundreds of years used to come raiding into Obann. But now there were many of them in King Ryons’ army, and the good news was that the whole nation had revolted against the Thunder King.

  “The Thunder King will want revenge for that,” said the third man at the campfire, a young Abnak named Hlah. His father was Chief Spider, who had been the first Heathen to proclaim Ryons as his king. Hlah now lived on the west slope of the mountains, with an Obannese wife named May. Like the rest of the Abnaks in King Ryons’ service, he now worshipped the true God.

  “I’ve heard the same sort of tidings from the Wallekki,” Martis said. “It seems all the peoples between the Great Lakes and the mountains have risen up against the Thunder King—except for the Zephites in the north and some of the Griffs.”

  Many survivors of the
Thunder King’s lost army had found their way back across the mountains, bringing word of their total defeat under the walls of Obann. This, more than anything else, had shaken the Thunder King’s rule over those countries.

  “He’ll only conquer them all again,” said Hlah. “Those nations will never be free until they know the true God and put their trust in Him. Obann must send men to be God’s messengers.”

  The older Abnak—his name was Shoosh—gave him a sidelong glance.

  “I knew your father, old Chief Spider,” said Shoosh. “It’s hard to imagine him having anything to do with Obann’s God. He was no dreamer!”