The Fugitive Prince (Bell Mountain) (18 page)

“Just because we saw it doesn’t mean it’s magic,” Jack said. “There’s no such thing as magic.” She was getting tired of him saying that.

“Then why was it against God’s law to be a witch?” she demanded. She’d heard Obst say this once or twice, but she had no idea where to find it in the Scriptures.

“That doesn’t mean that witches really can do magic,” Jack answered. “It’s against God’s law to worship idols, too, but that doesn’t mean that idols can really do anything. But it’s the same kind of law.”

Wytt crouched beside them, watching with a twinkle in his eye. His head went back and forth from one to the other: you might have thought he understood what they were saying. But who can say he didn’t?

“All right—how did that man make light shoot out of his hand last night, if it wasn’t magic?” Ellayne said. It was like talking to a tree stump, she thought.

“Just because I don’t know how he did it doesn’t mean beans,” Jack said. “I don’t know how they make matches, either, and matches aren’t magic. If I knew how, I could make light come out of my hand, too. Don’t you remember what that man Gallgoid said? The Thunder King’s servants tricked and cheated people and made them think it was magic! That business last night was just more of the same. Once a cheater, always a cheater!”

“Oh, now that’s really smart!” Ellayne said. But it was true, what Gallgoid had said. The only thing Ellayne could say was that she’d seen this magic; but if she said that again, they’d wind up fighting about it.

“Those were only barbarians who got fooled,” she said.

“They’re not cuss’t stupid!” Jack answered. “Anyway, those were our own people who got fooled last night.”

Suddenly the argument lost all interest for Ellayne. Anew thought struck her—hit her so hard, it almost took her breath away.

“Look here,” she said. “Does it even matter whether it was real or not, if people think it’s real? Don’t you think someone ought to grab that little fat man and make him tell the truth?”

Jack saw, right away, what she was getting at, and he abandoned their argument, too. “It’s too bad we’re so far from the city,” he said. “You’re right—somebody ought to stop that cluck before he’s got the whole nation fooled. I’ll bet Uduqu could get that man to tell how he does his trick.”

Ellayne saw the next step. “It means we ought to go back, doesn’t it? All the way back to Obann! They’ve got to be told what’s going on out here, and we’re the only ones who can tell them. It has to be us.”

“I thought we came out here to find the king,” Jack said.

“Well, we can’t be in two places at once!” Ellayne shook her head. “He’s headed for Lintum Forest, anyhow. We can tell them that. He’ll be safe in Lintum Forest. He won’t be there long, before Helki finds him.”

“They ought to send out all those Ghols on horseback and all the Attakotts on foot and catch that fake magician before he gets a chance to do his stuff again,” Jack said.

“They’ll catch him, all right,” Ellayne said, “once we tell them.”

After that, they really couldn’t sleep. They couldn’t bear to sit in the gully all day, waiting for the night, so they decided to risk some daytime travel and just keep going until they were so tired that they had to sleep. Ellayne said they could find their way back to Obann by the position of the sun. It didn’t occur to Jack to doubt her.

Wytt didn’t comment on their change of plan. He would have, had he been a human being. He just went on ahead, scouting out the way. The children soon lost sight of him.

Toward the end of the afternoon, they saw smoke ahead. “Someone has a campfire,” Jack said. It was right in front of them somewhere, so they halted.

“If it’s Heathen with horses …” Ellayne started to say; but there was no need to finish.

Wytt popped up from the grass. “One man, with a fire,” he reported. The man had a cart, too, with a single ox to pull it. There was no one else around for miles, Wytt said.

“Want to sneak up and take a look?” Jack said.

“As long as we don’t get too close.” She didn’t have to remind him of Hesket the Tinker, who’d drugged them and would have sold them into slavery. Wytt killed him while he slept.

Wytt led them to the campfire, keeping upwind of the ox in case the beast should catch their scent and give a warning. Soon they could smell the fire. They dropped to their hands and knees and crept cautiously through the tall grass.

Fire, cart, ox, and man were in a low depression with a spring-fed pool. Jack and Ellayne peered through the grass.

Ellayne almost cried out. “It’s him!” she hissed through her teeth.

It was the little fat man who’d done the magic, peaceably boiling tea in a tin cup over the fire. He wore buckskin pants and a much-stained linen tunic that had once been white. His hat lay beside him, full of blackberries. He had sandy hair as short as stubble, a reddish beard, and whistled a cheery little tune.

“If we spy on him,” Ellayne whispered, “we might find out how he does the magic. Maybe Wytt can go through his things while he’s asleep. It’s a golden opportunity.”

“A golden opportunity to get caught!” Jack thought. He pinched Ellayne’s elbow and signed to her that they’d better back off a ways, so they could talk. She understood, and they crawled back some fifty yards the way they’d come, stopping behind a screen of bushes.

“We’ll never get a better chance to find out what he’s up to,” Ellayne said. “Heroes take those chances when they come.”

A grown man with good sense would have taken Ellayne by the hand and walked away, fast. But Jack was not a grown man; and compared to some of the things that the two of them had had to do over the past year or so, spying on a fake magician didn’t seem like much. Still, he thought, they ought to do it right.

“We won’t see anything, just sneaking around. And we can’t keep up with a wagon, either,” he said. “The only way to do this is to travel with him. Let him get used to us. If we can just stick with him for a few days, that’s how we can find out something.”

“We can tell him we’re lost,” Ellayne said. “We’ll say we came from Lintum Forest, trying to go to Obann.”

Together they cooked up a story. Wytt, of course, would remain in the background, unknown to the magician. If they got in trouble, Wytt could rescue them. Wytt took this in without saying what he thought of it.

They stood up, and hand in hand like lost and weary children, walked back to the campsite.

That was how they became fellow travelers with the man who called himself Noma: who said he came from a little village a few miles south of Caryllick and was northbound for the river. Jack and Ellayne could travel under his protection, in return for helping him set up camp and tend to his ox and wagon. Wytt would be going, too, but Noma wouldn’t know that.

“I like to do a little peddling in the towns along the river,” Noma said, “and a little preaching, too, when the spirit moves me.”

“Are you a reciter?” Jack asked. Noma’s camp was already made; he wouldn’t be moving on again until the morrow.

“No, not me. I’m just a man who loves the Lord, and loves the Temple, and Ipreach for the love of preaching.”

Ellayne bit back her question, “What temple?” She and Jack weren’t supposed to know much about anything. They’d introduced themselves as “Jack and Layne,” two boys from Lintum Forest. “Let him think we’re kind of stupid,” Jack had said. “Just a couple of hicks from the forest.”

After the sun went down, Noma fetched a concertina out of his cart and played some songs. He didn’t do any magic. Before long, and with a smile on his face, he laid his head on his bedroll and went to sleep. After a little while, Wytt came out of hiding and stood over him, listening to him snore.

“Is he sound asleep?” Ellayne whispered.

“He sleeps,” Wytt said, and hopped over to cuddle with her.

“I wonder if we ought to search his cart.”

“Not yet!” Jack answered. “Let’s just keep watching him closely for a day or two, like we agreed. We know he’s up to no good, and that means he’ll be cautious. He might have mousetraps in there, to catch anyone going through his things.”

Ellayne was impressed. “I never thought of that!” she said.

“Because you’re too busy thinking about magic,” Jack said. She didn’t know Van once put a mousetrap in the breadbox, and Jack got his fingers caught when he reached into it. “Noma’s a trickster, and we’ll have to be careful.”

Noma didn’t look dangerous, Ellayne thought. But anyone who could cast light out of his bare hand was not to be treated carelessly.

Jack’s last thought before falling asleep was: “Well, at least he thinks we’re stupid! We never asked him what he’s doing out here all alone, with bandits all over the country.” And a little voice in the background of his mind added, “You’ll see how stupid you’ve been, when we run into some of those bandits.”

Chapter 22

How Fnaa Received a Prophecy

Zekelesh, chief of the Fazzan, took half a dozen of his men to visit Nanny Witkom’s monument and lay a wreath of flowers on it. Nanny was honored as a prophetess. Her monument stood in Lord Gwyll’s garden because she’d lived most of her life in his house and died there. There was also a monument to Lord Gwyll himself because he died in defense of the city.

Zekelesh had trouble expressing himself in Tribe-Talk, and usually needed an interpreter. But he had a secret, which it seemed good to him to keep strictly to himself: he’d learned to understand Obannese. Because no one knew he understood it, he heard things that otherwise would not have been said in his presence.

Today he heard more, as he and his fellows marched down the street.

“Look at them! You’d think they conquered us.”

“Cusset Heathen—the king’s their prisoner.”

“King? They said he was a king!”

“Well, he came here on that great beast, didn’t he? And smashed that Heathen army. Only all these other Heathen came in with him. I never understood that!”

Zekelesh heard such things every time he ventured from the palace. He was hearing more and more of it, a little more each day.

Not that the council of chiefs was unaware of the temper of the city. They knew. Shaffur wanted to move the king and his government back to Lintum Forest. General Hennen wanted them to move to Durmurot, many miles to the west.

“We must stay here,” was Obst’s advice. “The Old Books must be copied and sent out to the chamber houses everywhere. The Lost Scrolls must be studied and copied and taught to the people. The Lord’s real work for us is here.”

“And the day after we depart,” Uduqu would add, “they’ll throw off their allegiance to the king and turn the whole country against us.”

Lord Gwyll’s family had not returned from the west; maybe they never would. Two of Hennen’s spearmen guarded the house, out of respect. They saluted Zekelesh, and he went into the garden. He laid the wreath on the gleaming white stone of Nanny’s monument. Zekelesh had loved her, and he missed her.

“Boss, why do we do this?” asked one of the men. “Does God want us to? Does it make the old woman’s spirit happy?”

“I want to do it,” Zekelesh answered. “Nanny was a great woman, and a prophet.”

“I wish we could go home,” said another man; but they all knew, of course, that the Thunder King would kill them the moment they set foot in the valley of the Green Snake River.