The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (13 page)

“He hasn’t told me, so I can’t tell you.”

“Tell me about Jack, then. What’s he like?”

“You don’t give up easily, do you?”

Enith smiled, then got serious. “There’s something about you,” she said. “You’re not like anybody else I know. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something. You can’t blame me for wanting to find out.”

“You’d never even guess!” Ellayne thought. And the truth was that it galled her not to be able to tell anyone about the things she and Jack had done—all their adventures, from the top of Bell Mountain to the cellar beneath the cellar in the ruins of King Ozias’ Temple. She wanted to be famous: “There she goes—the girl who rang the Bell!” What was the good of being a hero, if no one knew about it? But her father and mother and Martis told her, over and over again, that it couldn’t be. It wasn’t safe to let people know about those things.

“It wouldn’t be just you and Jack who’d be in danger,” Martis explained, often. “It’d be your family, your friends, and everyone who knows you—including King Ryons himself. The Thunder King has spies everywhere.”

“You can try,” she said to Enith, “but you won’t find out from me.”

“But I will!” thought Enith. “I will!”

No king had been anointed and crowned in Obann for many an age. Ozias himself, the last of all the kings, never had a formal coronation, although Penda the prophet had anointed him. But long before Ozias’ time, great King Kai, as told in the Book of Thrones, had had a splendid coronation. That was when Obann became the chief of cities, and the country was named for the city. Since the most ancient times, many peoples had been added to the Tribes of the Law, including those conquered and converted by Kai himself. And the Tribes of the Law became the nation of Obann.

That was the old city of Obann, now a mountain of ruins on the south bank of the river. As great as it was, even that great city could not accommodate all the people who came to see the coronation. So it was held on the north bank, where the present city of Obann stands now, and a temporary city was created there—a city of pavilions in every gorgeous color you could think of, and humble booths for humble people, and great spreading tents for the multitude of presters, and more tents for the kitchens and the artisans, with feasting and music all throughout the day and night. And only when all the people were gathered there, and fed, and preached to, was King Kai anointed with the holy oil and crowned with a jeweled crown that beamed like a many-colored fire in the sun.

Merffin Mord studied the fascicles that told of it, so that he would know how to stage a spectacle that would lure King Ryons back to Obann. And because he considered the First Prester a simple man, and easily deceived, he consulted with him.

“The man’s a simpleton,” he said to Aggo, his confederate. “But if he’s with us, so much the better. No one will suspect him—”

“Of treason against the king,” Aggo finished for him. “That’s what we’re planning.”

“It’s no treason,” Merffin said, “to restore the proper order of things. I won’t have you call it treason. We never asked for a king. All we want to do is to return to the way things were.”

When he was just a high-ranking prester, and Lord Reesh’s favorite, Orth lived in great estate in Obann and cut a lordly figure. He still lived in his elegant townhouse, but now he hosted simple dinners for the poor instead of sumptuous banquets for the very rich. He used to be famous for his opulent wardrobe. Now he dressed simply, and when he wasn’t preaching sermons in the open air, or talking to people he met on the street—as if carters and cobblers and cooks ought to have the First Prester expound the Scriptures to them!—he spent much of his time at the seminary, encouraging the students and the scribes who were copying the holy books. Sometimes he lent a hand in the work. It was not the way any First Prester had ever behaved, and that was, in Merffin Mord’s opinion, because his mind had come unhinged. When all was said and done, Merffin thought, Lord Orth was no more than a puppet for Prester Jod in Durmurot. All the same, Merffin thought he could make use of him.

“A coronation?” Orth mused, when Merffin had him as a guest for a private luncheon at his house. “But how could we ever hold a proper coronation? The Crown of Kai, of Obann, has been lost for centuries; even King Ozias couldn’t find it. Nor has anyone mixed the anointing oil since long before Ozias’ time.”

“We have goldsmiths and jewelers in this city who can make a new crown every bit as royal as the old one,” Merffin said. “And isn’t the recipe for the oil given in the Scriptures? I’m sure it is.”

“Only for the oil used to anoint the High Prester, in the age before the kings,” said Orth. “For that we know the ingredients, but in what proportions is not recorded.”

“Don’t you want the king to have a coronation?”

“Ryons is already king by God’s election. He rode the great beast and delivered the city out of certain destruction. There is nothing we can add to that.”

“But would you be averse, as First Prester, to anointing the king with oil and placing the crown upon his head?”

Orth sat and thought. Merffin had hoped to impress him by serving him the daintiest of dishes for his meal, and yet the First Prester had eaten them like biscuits—Orth, who once was famous as the greatest gourmet in Obann. Whatever had happened to him during his absence from the city, Merffin thought, only a shell of a man remained. “But if all turns out well,” he thought, “we’ll soon have a new First Prester, too.”

What was Orth thinking about? You couldn’t read anything from his expression. Maybe his wits were wandering, and he wasn’t thinking at all. He hadn’t even touched his wine, one of Aggo’s choice vintages. Merffin half-expected him to fall asleep. But just before he lost his patience altogether, Orth finally spoke again.

“No,” he said, as if he considered the matter to be among the world’s least consequential things, “I would not be averse to it.”

“Good! Splendid! We’re agreed!” Merffin said, as heartily as he could, successfully masking his exasperation. “Leave the fashioning of the crown to me and the composition of the oil to some of those experts at the seminary. All will be taken care of as it should be.”

“By the grace of God, amen,” said Orth.

CHAPTER 14

How the Zeph Were Quelled

Martis knew the way to Silvertown, but he didn’t just walk up to the gate. Instead, he circled around, climbed a thickly wooded hill overlooking the city, and tried to assess the situation down below. Wytt chattered in his ear, but he couldn’t understand. But soon he saw for himself what Wytt was trying to tell him.

Down the mountain, from the east, a thousand men were marching into Silvertown—Zephites, by their horned headdresses, behind a commander on horseback.

Over the past year, a small but steady trickle of refugees from Silvertown managed to reach safety in the hills and woodlands still controlled by Obann. Collecting intelligence for Baron Bault, Martis had interviewed a number of them, so he already had some idea of the conditions in Silvertown. The people were enslaved, forced to labor on Goryk Gillow’s building projects.

But the main thing was that there was not enough to eat in Silvertown. The city had always been a mining center, the land around it ill-suited for farming. Without the supply wagons that came in almost daily from the Thunder King’s more prosperous domains, the city would starve. Even the Heathen warriors had to tighten their belts, and it was worse for the conquered populace.

“And now they’re bringing in another mob of mouths to feed?” Martis wondered aloud. There was only Wytt to hear him, but he’d fallen into the habit of talking to the Omah. “Well, it shows the mardars aren’t infallible. Unless those Zeph are just passing through, it was a mistake to bring them here.”

At any rate, he thought, now was not the time for him to try to enter Silvertown.

“Find us something to eat,” he said to Wytt. “It looks like I’ll have to stay up here for a while.”

Goryk had lost half his army—the black Hosa and the man-eating Zamzu—when Mardar Wusu led the last invasion of Lintum Forest. They never came back: indeed, the Hosa, Goryk learned from his spies, had deserted and joined King Ryons’ army.

That left him with a mixed force of some two thousand Wallekki, Griffs, and Dahai, and some Obannese who’d followed him into treason. There was no mardar to command them. “I didn’t come here to lead an army, but to advise you,” Zo said. Goryk had quite enough on his plate without taking on the duties of a general, so he’d given that post to Iolo, who’d been a captain of a hundred in Obann’s peacetime army. Lolo spoke some of the various Heathen languages, and his short temper and heavy fists did most of his talking. The fear of the Thunder King’s authority, vested here in Goryk, kept the bored and hungry troops from open mutiny.

Goryk had not known the Zephites were coming to Silvertown until his Wallekki scouts reported it the day before. The news disconcerted him.

“I haven’t asked for reinforcements!” he protested. “Great flaming stars, how am I supposed to feed them?”

“They’ll be very useful, if you plan on undertaking any offensive operations,” Zo said, calm as always.

“Useful my eye!” Iolo said, his face already darkening with rage. He used to be a heavy drinker, but gave it up when Goryk made him second in command. Abstaining from strong drink had made his temper even shorter. “Zephites! Our troops hate them almost as much as they hate the Zamzu. And to step aside in favor of some Zephite mardar? Cuss’t if I will!”

Iolo didn’t know, as Zo and Goryk did, that the Thunder King’s mardars simply made decisions and ascribed them to the Thunder King. They taught people to believe that everything they did was by the orders of their master, magically conveyed to them by the union of his spirit with theirs. That was the secret brought down by Gallgoid when he escaped the avalanche that buried the Thunder King’s hall at Golden Pass. There would always be a man to wear the gold mask of the Thunder King, but only the initiated mardars knew that it was not always the same man. To the rest of his subjects, the Great Man at Kara Karram was presented as immortal.

Which meant that some ambitious mardar had taken it upon himself to bring the Zeph to Silvertown—and Goryk would somehow have to make the best of it.

Now the Zeph were here, and the people of Silvertown watched in dismay as the horned helmets, like a herd of wild bulls, marched into their city. They knew it would mean shorter rations. Their Heathen captors watched sullenly, knowing it would mean shorter rations for them, too.