The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (31 page)

“Wytt, Martis won’t be able to climb up here. He’s too big.” Jack was finding it hard to stop his hands from trembling and catch his breath.

“Wait,” said Wytt.

Getting Merffin calm enough to sit down took several minutes. They lost much more time discussing who might have taken the crown and where it might be hidden.

“This is idle,” Mardar Zo said at last. “Can you not make another crown?”

“In two days?” Merffin cried. “There are great and costly jewels in that crown that can’t be replaced.”

“No one will know if you use colored glass,” Goryk said. “It seems the real jewels were more of a temptation than one of your artisans could resist.”

“It wasn’t one of them—it couldn’t have been,” Merffin said. “But a crown of colored glass? We paid a great deal of money for those jewels, and I want them back! A lot of that money was my own!”

“This shrewd man has become a miserly fool,” Martis thought. But he didn’t speak.

“I would imagine the king, or eventually his substitute, would only wear the crown on ceremonial occasions,” Goryk said. “As long as no one is given the opportunity to examine it too closely, why not use a facsimile? Surely your craftsmen can make one in two days.”

“Do you have any idea what all those jewels are worth?” cried Merffin.

“But the jewels are not what matters,” Goryk said, making a visible effort to keep his temper. “The crown doesn’t matter. It, like the coronation itself, is only for show. What we want is for the Oligarchy to be ruling Obann once again—a council of oligarchs headed by you, my lord.” Merffin had no right to be called “lord,” but maybe someday he would own the title, Martis thought. “In the end, we won’t need king nor crown.”

“And in the meantime we can keep on searching for it,” Martis said, “and maybe find it.”

“Well said, Jayce,” Goryk said. “Someone knows where it is. Find that someone, and we’ll find the crown. But just in case we don’t, we’ll need a facsimile. There’s no way around it.”

Merffin fumed and sputtered, but his argument had nowhere left to go. In the end he got up to go and order the swift production of an imitation crown.

“Devil take him and his jewels,” Goryk said after Merffin left. “That is a man who doesn’t know what’s important!”

“I would rather deal with a fool like that than with a wise man,” Zo said.

By and by, Martis got up to return to his room for sleep. “We’ll all need sharp wits from here on in,” he said. “Good night, my lord First Prester.”

“Good night, Jayce.”

The Dahai guard unlocked Martis’ door to let him back into the room. It took Martis a moment to realize Jack wasn’t there. But that was impossible. He looked under both beds, and anywhere else the boy might be hiding, but Jack was gone.

This was alarming. He almost called the guard. Maybe Jack had escaped—although how he could have done so was inconceivable. Maybe Goryk had ordered someone to take Jack away while they were all palavering about the missing crown. But why would Goryk do that?

Could there be a secret passage somewhere? From his years of service in the Temple, Martis knew all about secret passages and how to find them. He made an expert search: no secret passage here. He stopped searching for one and sat down on his bed to think.

“Gallgoid again—it must have been him,” he said to himself. “Suddenly he’s very busy.” How Gallgoid could have spirited Jack out of the room, with its one door locked and a guard in front of it, was a mystery.

It would be an even deeper mystery, he thought, if he waited until the morning to say anything about Jack’s disappearance. Let the guard think Jack was still here. Let him think Jack had vanished in the middle of the night, while Martis slept. “It won’t be hard to appear to be utterly mystified, myself,” he thought.

He fell asleep at last, but not for long. Something pinched his cheek. He almost slapped at it.

It should have been pitch dark inside the room, with the lamps out and the shutters closed. But the shutters were open and moonlight poured over his bed. Martis could see. A few inches from his nose, Wytt crouched beside his pillow, softly chattering at him. After just a moment of confusion, Martis grinned.

“Where’s Jack?” he whispered. “Do you know?”

Ellayne had taught Wytt to bob his head for “yes.” He bobbed emphatically and jerked his stick up and down.

“Is he safe?”

Yes, Jack was safe. “If only I could understand your talk!” Martis said. “I’d have a lot of questions for you.

“But if you can understand me, listen. Ellayne and her father are here, with some of the men from Ninneburky.” Wytt, of course, already knew that, but he didn’t interrupt. He didn’t understand Martis as well as he understood Jack or Ellayne, but he understood enough. “If Jack can get to them, he’ll be safe. Can you get Jack out of the palace?”

Wytt made a movement that was almost a shrug. When he did it, he looked eerily human. He didn’t know whether he could get Jack out, Martis supposed.

“Well, see if you can find a way out. But in the meantime, keep him safe. Don’t let anybody see him.”

Wytt hopped onto the windowsill and beckoned Martis to join him. Martis watched him scurry up to the next higher window. He stood on the sill and chirped, and in a moment Jack leaned out.

“Ah! There you are!” It was a relief to see him, but Martis didn’t dare raise his voice. “Will you be all right up there?”

Jack nodded and waved. He was afraid to make any noise. Martis understood. “Stay until I come for you—tomorrow, if I can.” He wished he could ask Jack how he’d gotten up there. He didn’t like to think of the boy climbing the wall.

They waved to each other one more time, and then Martis drew the shutters closed and fastened them.

“It ought to be an interesting day tomorrow,” he thought.

CHAPTER 34

Iolo in Command

In Silvertown that same night, Iolo received the reports of his scouts with disbelief.

“A whole army has materialized out of the forest, as if by magic?” he growled. “And you knew nothing of it until the next day dawned and there it was? King Ryons’ army?”

“It’s not easy to get close to Lintum Forest,” replied his chief of scouts, a one-time Lintum forest outlaw. Toothless Umbo was his name. “Those little men with the poison arrows make it dangerous.”

Iolo had set up his quarters in the chamber house and commandeered the last intact desk left in the city, along with a heavy, expensively carved chair usually occupied by Goryk Gillow. He sprang out of that chair and grabbed Umbo by the shirt, almost pulling him onto the desk.

“I’m more dangerous to you than anyone from Lintum Forest, and you’d better not forget it!” He shook the scout and shoved him backward. Had he not slammed into the wall, Umbo would have fallen. “Ye gods—what do I have scouts for, if not to provide me with intelligence? Something that you lack! Would it be too much to ask for an estimate of that army’s numbers?”

Umbo didn’t like getting thrown into walls. He’d murdered men for less. Iolo knew that, but didn’t care.

“They’ve got a lot more men than we do, I’ll say that much,” Umbo answered. “Looks like he’s got most of those black men who went into the forest last year with Mardar Wusu and never came out again. Well, they’re out now. I’d say a few hundred of them.

“Also a lot of Wallekki with their horses and bunches of Abnaks, Griffs, Fazzan, and Dahai. I’d guess they’ve got at least four thousand men.”

Iolo ground his teeth: four thousand men advancing against him—“and Goryk had to go prancing off to Obann with the only weapon in the world that could have saved us!” he thought. “That leaves me with two thousand men and a lot of broken-down walls and a townful of hungry slaves who’ll cut our throats if they get half a chance. And the nearest reinforcements on the other side of the mountains.” He slumped back into his chair.

“We’ll have to make a fight of it,” he said. “Are Helki and the boy king with the army?”

“No one’s seen them,” Umbo said, “but, yes, I think they are. I think it’s their whole cuss’t force come out against us.”

“Go and wake Osfal the Wallekki,” Iolo said, “and tell him to saddle up his fastest horses and his three best riders. We’ll have to send East for help, and quickly. And then you and your so-called men can go back out and watch that army. I want to know every move they make, and I want to get a report from you every day. Do you hear me? Every day! I want no more surprises.”

“Aye, General.” Toothless Umbo saluted ungracefully and went off to rouse the Wallekki chief, while Iolo groped for a piece of parchment and a pen. He was too furious to write coherently. With a great effort, he made his hand stop trembling. By the time Osfal joined him, he’d printed out his messages.

“Find the nearest mardar with an army and give this message to him. If he can’t read it, tell him what it says: ‘King Ryons attacking Silvertown with four thousand men. Make haste!’” Iolo paused to take a breath. “Tell him that if Silvertown falls, our master King Thunder will blame him.”

“How long can we hold this place?” the lean Wallekki asked.

“How the devil should I know? Rouse all the crews and put them to work on the defenses—right now. All other work to be suspended.”

“Shall I organize a sortie?” Osfal said. “A surprise attack may slow their progress for a day or more.”

Iolo was a general now, in command of an army and a city. But he’d never served at any rank higher than the sergeant of a hundred spears, and he knew very little about being a general. At the moment, he was acutely conscious of it.

“If you think you can slow them down, Chieftain, I leave it in your hands,” he said. “But remember that we don’t have men to spare. No death-or-glory charges!”

Osfal laughed softly. “Those are good enough for songs and legends,” he said, “but are not attractive, otherwise. There are no men in my following who are ready to die just yet. Not for glory, at least.”

“Let no word of this be spoken to the people of the city,” Iolo said. “I may be only a dumb soldier,” he thought, “but I know that much.” If the people of Silvertown heard that help was coming, they’d make trouble.

With the Wallekki and the Attakotts screening its flanks, and the king placed safely in the center with his Ghols, Ryons’ army marched on Silvertown.

Ryons remembered the first time the army came this way, when he was still a slave and the men still Heathen. The soldiers on the walls had taunted them, enraging the chieftains. But without siege equipment there was little they could do, and after a few ill-considered attacks, they’d marched away. The army that followed after them had towers, rams, and catapults, and they took the city for the Thunder King.

“We don’t have any siege machines this time, either,” Ryons said to Helki, as Helki marched beside him.

“Do you know what Chief Zekelesh says to that, Your Majesty?” Helki said. “He says, ‘We have something better than siege towers. We have the blessing of Almighty God.’ I think that ought to count for something. I’d be right grateful for some catapults: but then who here knows how to use a catapult?”

The army sang its anthem lustily, “His mercy endureth forever.” They’d added a new verse to it, invented by Chief Buzzard of the Abnaks. “He feeds us on victory, while the Heathen eat shame. He preserves our scalps—we glory in His name.” All the nations in the army sang it now.