The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) Page 6

  If the Omah’s mind were more like a human’s, he might have wondered why big people had so little feel for their surroundings. Being so high off the ground, they didn’t see things that Wytt saw easily. They didn’t seem to hear very well at all. The constant stream of interweaving scents and odors that fed Wytt a feast of information had nothing to say to Jack or Ellayne. They were, in their way, more helpless than the pinkest little newborn Omah suckling at his mother’s breast. They needed a great deal of looking after.

  While Ellayne slept that night—Gurun had provided the children each with a nice bedchamber in the palace—Wytt hopped onto the windowsill and climbed down the stone walls as easily and silently as a lizard. Once on the grass, he began to follow wherever his assortment of keen senses led him.

  He wished to find out about Ryons and the dog, because the humans couldn’t do it. He was in an inner courtyard faced by stables, kennels, cages for hawks, and coops for chickens: a place where an inquisitive Omah could learn much.

  He went first to the stables, then to the kennels. Animals cannot talk; neither could Wytt—at least, not as we know talking. But God has given to animals and Omah senses and perceptions of which human beings know nothing. So when one of the hounds caught Wytt’s scent, and got up and growled, Wytt chirped at him and the dog stopped growling. Wytt crept close to the cage so that he and the dog could sniff each other. That’s what it would have looked like to a human, but there was much more to it than just sniffing.

  Wytt came away from the encounter with the knowledge—or rather, with the picture in his mind—that Cavall had gone away with a man who’d let him out of his kennel. This was not just any man, not one of the men of the palace. This was a Man who shone in the dark and had a sweet and soothing scent that the dogs liked. It gave the hound pleasure to recall it.

  The dogs had neither seen nor smelled Ryons that night, so he must not have visited the courtyard. Wytt understood that Ryons slept in a particular room, just as Jack and Ellayne were doing. The dogs knew nothing about that, so he went on to the mews where the hawks were sleeping. Ordinarily no Omah would dare approach a hawk. Along with snakes, badgers, and wildcats, hawks preyed on the little people. But these hawks were safely confined in stout mesh cages, so Wytt didn’t hesitate to rattle one of the cages with a stick.

  The two hawks in the cage woke with harsh protests, beating their wings at Wytt and wishing they could sink their beaks and talons into him. But they were tame hawks, captive-bred, who had never fed on Omah, and eventually Wytt was able to calm them and communicate with them.

  The hawks, too, had seen the softly shining Man come for Cavall. He didn’t disturb them or alarm them, but they saw him—and they would have liked to have seen more. More to Wytt’s purpose, they knew the window in which King Ryons’ face most often appeared; and the Man, that night, had appeared in that window, too. All the birds had been awake that night and seen the Man’s light seeping through the crack between the curtains. They had hoped he would come back down and visit them, but he didn’t.

  Wytt climbed up the palace wall, the rough stone offering him an easy climb. There was no light in Ryons’ room tonight, but Omahs see much better at night than humans, and even before he reached the window ledge, he smelled Ryons’ scent, which he knew as well as he knew the boy’s face.

  Parting the curtains, he hopped into the royal bedchamber. Ryons’ scent was all over the room, along with odors left by servants and bodyguards; but the strange shining man had left no scent at all. There was no trace of him that even an Omah might detect.

  Wytt sniffed the floor and baseboards for rats, but there weren’t any. Rats might have told him something, if they didn’t attack him at first sight. He went to the door and heard people in the hall outside.

  Had an enemy come into that room, had there been a struggle there, had Ryons been provoked to intense fear, Wytt would have known it. Those things left traces in the air, on the floor, in the bedclothes, traces undetectable by human beings but plain to animals and Omah. Their absence told Wytt that Ryons had left the room peaceably and unafraid.

  With a satisfied chirp, he climbed up the curtain and back outside. No one saw him scramble down the wall. A dog barked—just a friendly greeting—as he scurried across the yard and then back up another wall. In another minute he was back in Ellayne’s bedroom and snuggling up against her.

  Gurun kept Fnaa with her all day in her room, letting no one see him, sharing her supper with him, and teaching him what to say tomorrow to the chiefs. He looked so much like Ryons that sometimes she forgot for a moment that he wasn’t Ryons. He even sounded like the king.

  “You’ll do well,” she told him. “Just remember that you can’t remember anything! The people on the streets, when they see you, will never guess there’s anything amiss.”

  “The servants in the palace will,” said Fnaa.

  “Maybe—but not right away.”

  The boy was intelligent, she thought. He would be able to do everything she told him.

  “They’ll all be mad when they find out they’ve been fooled,” he said.

  “But they won’t find out tomorrow,” Gurun said.

  She let him sleep in her bed that night—it was big enough for her whole family, after all—and woke early to hide him in her closet. When a maid brought breakfast, Gurun shooed her away quickly, feigning a bad temper.

  She had to solve the problem of Fnaa’s clothes. He ought to be wearing some of the king’s clothes. There was only one way to take care of that.

  “Eat,” she said, “and if you hear anyone at the door, hide under the bed. I have to get some clothes for you. I won’t be long.”

  The king’s bedchamber was a ways down the hall from hers. He wasn’t in it, so there was no need for anyone to guard the door.

  She met a servant hurrying along on some early-morning errand.

  “Wait!” she said. “I want you to find Chagadai the Ghol for me and bring him to my room within the hour—if you please.” The man nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and went off in the opposite direction. Gurun waited until he was out of sight and she could hear his footsteps no more.

  Ryons’ door was not locked: there was no reason to lock it. Gurun dashed in and snatched some clothes out of his closet, taking a moment to make sure they were some things he’d been wearing recently. She stuffed them under her dress and hurried back to her own room, meeting no one on the way. Half an hour later, she thought, and this hall would have been far too busy for her to do this.

  Fnaa was hiding when she entered the room and locked the door behind her. “You can come out,” she said. “I have some clothes for you. Put them on.”

  He changed clothes behind a screen. They fit, of course. It wasn’t the custom to dress Ryons in royal robes, but the clothes Fnaa had were much humbler than anything in the king’s wardrobe. In other words, thought Gurun, they were sensible clothes.

  “Chagadai will be here soon,” she said, when Fnaa was dressed. “Don’t be afraid of him. He and all the Ghols belong particularly to King Ryons, and protect him. They call him their father.”

  “They won’t like it when they find out I’m not him,” said Fnaa.

  “Be brave,” Gurun answered, “and leave everything to me.”

  “A tall order for a girl from Fogo Island!” she thought. But what else could be done? She prayed a silent prayer: “All-Father, be with me now to guide me.”

  In his short life, Fnaa hadn’t had many opportunities to be brave or cowardly. He was so used to playing the fool in his master’s house that it was second nature to him. But playing the king terrified him.

  The chieftains—barbarians all, and one more fearsome-looking than the next, with all their scars and strange attire—made his blood run cold. Chagadai the Ghol, who called him “father,” had slanted eyes and a livid white scar across his face. If Gurun hadn’t been holding his hand, Fnaa would have run away. As it was, this formidable man seized his free hand and kissed it. />
  Gurun and Chagadai took him to a room where all the chiefs were seated around a glossy table, and there Gurun told them the story she’d invented. They listened with unsmiling faces; and when it was time for him to speak to them, Fnaa’s mouth went dry and Gurun had to squeeze his hand to get him started. “If only she’d told them the king has lost his wits, not just his memory!” he thought.

  “My lords,” he said, very slowly, “it’s just like she says. I don’t know what happened to me. I woke up in a closet and didn’t know how I got there. I didn’t know anything at all! I didn’t even know who I was, until she told me. I don’t remember you, and I don’t remember how I got to be a king. I’m sorry.”

  The hard faces softened. A tall old man with a grey beard got up and laid a big, knobbly hand on Fnaa’s shoulder.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, Your Majesty,” he said. “You were ill; it’s not your fault. The men in this room, and Queen Gurun, will take care of everything. God made you king, and God will heal you. Then you’ll remember.”

  One of the chiefs, a swarthy man who wore a wolf’s head for a headdress, jabbered excitedly in a foreign language. And yet to Fnaa it seemed a familiar language, somehow.

  “Chief Zekelesh, of the Fazzan,” Gurun translated, “is afraid that some witch has put a spell on you.” So that chief, Fnaa thought, was of his mother’s people. Fnaa’s mother sometimes sang Fazzan songs.

  The old man shook his head and said, “Not so, my lord! What power could such heathen mummery have over God’s anointed king? I tell you this is an illness that’ll pass. You’ll see.”

  “Well, we’ve got him back, at least,” said the chief of the Wallekki. “If he had a fever in his brain, we’re lucky he didn’t die on us.”

  “Not lucky, Chief Shaffur. It was God’s blessing,” said the old man.

  “I think the king ought to rest now, in his own bed,” Gurun said. “It should help him to spend time in his own room and enjoy some healthy sleep. The people can be told that he was sick, but is now getting better, and they will see him soon.”

  “I’ll see that the word is put out,” said Obst; for that was the old man’s name.

  And so Fnaa went off to bed in King Ryons’ bedchamber, in one of the king’s nightshirts, and Gurun sat beside the bed and told him he’d done just fine with the chiefs. He might have enjoyed it if he weren’t worried that they’d kill him, by and by.

  “That is foolish,” Gurun said. “None of those men will ever hurt you.”

  “What about my mother? When will she be here?” Fnaa asked.

  “As soon as I can arrange it. Tell me her name and what she looks like.”

  “Her name is Dakl and she looks like me, with black hair and brown eyes, and she’s the only grown-up woman who’s a slave in that house.” Fnaa paused. “She was born Fazzan, like that man with the wolf’s head. She never told me that the men wore wolf’s heads.”

  “I’ll see to it that she’s kept safe,” said Gurun. “And you may as well try to take a nap.”

  Chapter 12

  A Wanderer and His Baby

  It was a frustrating day. Jack and Ellayne urgently wanted to see Gurun, but she and Fnaa were busy all day long behind closed doors. But at long last they got to see Obst, who came to them where they were waiting by the stables.

  Their old friend rejoiced to see them and hugged them close.

  “But what are you doing here?” he cried. “I never heard that you were coming, and no one told me you were here—otherwise I would have seen you right away!”

  This was awkward. Fnaa would not have wanted them to tell Obst anything about him. Only Gurun was supposed to know.

  “You want to tell me something; I can see it in your faces,” Obst said. “Well, here I am.”

  Jack blurted out, “Is it a sin to tell a secret, when you promised not to tell—but you know you should?” Ellayne glared at him. “Blabbermouth!” she thought.

  But this was Obst, who’d led them up Bell Mountain and almost died doing it. They would never have gotten there without him. Besides, he was a holy man.

  “Jack, I can’t answer that,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If you’d seen us when we came to the door of this palace yesterday, you’d know,” Ellayne thought. But she said, “What do you think of Ryons? Do you believe he’s really lost his memory and doesn’t know who he is anymore?”

  Obst shrugged. “He says he has. Why should he say so, unless it’s true? But it’s good to have him back, in any case. We feared for him.”

  Wytt darted out from the stables and chattered excitedly at Obst. He knew Obst and trusted him. He was telling him what he’d learned during the night; but of course Obst couldn’t understand him. He could understand every human language spoken in his presence, but only Jack and Ellayne could understand Wytt.

  “What’s he saying, children? It sounds important!”

  “It is,” Ellayne said. “But if we tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Not unless we say you can.”

  “Then let’s move over by the chicken houses,” Obst said, “where no one will be able to overhear us.”

  When they stood among the clucking fowl, Jack began: “First, the king is not the king. He’s a boy who looks like Ryons. And we know, because we brought him here.”

  They told him everything they knew. He was most interested in Wytt’s discoveries.

  “A shining man!” he mused, absentmindedly twisting his beard into knots. “A man who didn’t make the dogs bark, and who entered Ryons’ room by night, in spite of the bodyguard at the door—and yet the boy was not afraid of him. How does Wytt know these things?”

  “He knows!” Ellayne said. “He has ways of knowing things that people don’t know. But he doesn’t know how to make things up.”

  Obst began to pace, annoying the chickens. “Ryons left here of his own free will,” he muttered. “Cavall let a stranger take him out of his kennel and lead him somewhere. And just in time, you arrive with Ryons’ look-alike!” He stopped pacing. “There can be no doubt of it: these things have been ordained by God for some purpose of His own, of which we as yet know nothing.” He shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “And what are we to do? Where has Ryons gone? Is the shining man still with him, or is he on his own, but for Cavall? But I do think the man was heavensent—although for what reason I can’t imagine!” He looked down at Wytt, who was fascinated by the chickens. “If the man were evil, I think Wytt would have known it. So we may with reason presume that he was good.”

  “But do things like that happen?” Jack said.

  Obst smiled at him. “You of all people shouldn’t have to ask! But yes, those things happen. God has not changed since the creation of the world. Did He not hear Ozias’ bell when you rang it? Is He not shaking the earth in our time, even as we stand on it? I hardly think He’s finished with us. Do you?”

  “I guess not,” said Ellayne.

  Ryons and Cavall were crossing the great plain that stretched between Lintum Forest and the city of Obann. They’d crossed it once before, the other way. Then as now, it was an empty country. Closer to the river there were towns and farms, but this far south, there was nothing. A thousand years after the Day of Fire, the plains of South Obann were unpopulated.

  Here and there rose hills that were not hills, but all that remained of the great buildings of the Empire; and the bigger hills had once been cities. From Jack and Ellayne, Ryons knew that most of these ruins were inhabited by Omah; but he was not afraid to camp there. With Cavall present, the little hairy men chose not to show themselves.

  “It’ll be good to be back in Lintum Forest,” he said to Cavall, several times a day. But why did God want him back in Lintum Forest? His ancestor, King Ozias, was born there. His friend Helki was there, hunting down outlaws. And he himself had been happy there, for the little while he’d stayed there.

  Once upon a hilltop, just as he and Cavall were about to go
down and resume their trek, Ryons spotted a cloud of dust, and then the horsemen who were raising it. By their headdress and their mode of riding he knew them for Wallekki; but he very much doubted they were any of his Wallekki, so he crouched behind a bush and didn’t get up until they were out of sight. It was a reminder that the land was still full of deadly enemies, remnants of the vast host that the Thunder King sent into Obann last year.

  “Close call!” he whispered to Cavall. He didn’t want to think about what such men would do if they captured him and realized who he was. “Off to Kara Karram to get my eyes burned out!”

  The country was unpopulated, but not barren. Wild blackberries grew everywhere, and Cavall caught unwary ground-squirrels and rabbits. Springs bubbled up from the ground. Wildflowers painted the landscape with glorious color. Ryons’ favorites were the pale purple maidens-kisses, which attracted pale purple butterflies, and the brilliant vermilion huzzahs, which didn’t grow east of the mountains. So, on the whole, it was a pleasant journey, as long as one could avoid the Heathen stragglers by day and the gigantic hunting birds that came out at night.