The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (22 page)

So she pressed on through the rain, anxious to reach the city while it still existed.

Lord Reesh dined alone that evening, and his food had no taste for him. He meant to sit alone until he went to bed, but it was not to be.

“My lord First Prester, there is a disturbance.” It was Gallgoid, in his habit as a lowly sub-secretary, which concealed his true role as Reesh’s confidential aide and assassin. “If you come to the balcony over the Presters’ Porch, you will see what it is.”

Knowing Gallgoid wouldn’t have troubled him without good reason, Reesh rose with some assistance and went with him down the long, deserted marble hallway. Gallgoid opened the door for him, and Reesh went out onto the balcony.

Below, a crowd was gathering at the stairs before the Presters’ Porch, one of the main entrances to the Temple. At the top of the stairs someone was speaking to the people. Reesh could have advanced to the rail and looked down to see who it was, but he didn’t want anyone to see him. He stood in the doorway and listened to the speaker’s words.

“There is no rescue for this city, people of Obann! But if you obey the Lord your God, you shall have your lives. For the Lord says, ‘Open the gates and go out to the Heathen, submit to them, and deliver up your city for destruction; and they shall burn the city, but they shall not burn you.’

“Hear me, people of Obann! I am the last of the prophets in this city. The Lord has sent you many prophets, but He will send you no more after me. Your rulers killed those prophets, who were the servants of the Lord. Their blood is on this city.”

Reesh thought he knew that voice. He turned to Gallgoid. “Isn’t that Prester Rhunwigg?” he said. “I was going to give him the chamber houses of Cardigal.”

Gallgoid nodded. Reesh listened for another minute before his blood began to boil.

“Put a stop to that!” he said. “Silence him—but let no one see the Temple’s hand in it. Do it now!”

“Yes, Excellency.” The assassin bowed, turned, and hurried off.

Reesh remained where he was, unable to stop listening. Rhunwigg was a scholar, a man of great promise. Now he’d gone mad. Under Orth’s direction, the Temple preached victory; and here was Rhunwigg, undoing it. Reesh clenched his fists and gnashed his teeth.

“Hear the word of the Lord,” said Rhunwigg: “You call this house the Temple of the Lord, but it is not My temple. Your priests speak lies in My name, but I have not spoken to them, neither have I sent them. It has been many lifetimes of men since they knew Me, nor have they sought for Me. But they have sought after their own desires, and made My people strangers to Me.”

It was insane, Reesh thought—a prester of the Temple denouncing the Temple. Rebellion! And what was taking Gallgoid so long? Was he going to let the fellow rant all night? Meanwhile people were flocking to the Presters’ Porch. Tombo’s men would be along soon, but they had no jurisdiction on Temple grounds. It was going to turn into a devilish situation indeed.

Rhunwigg raved on and on, mad as a herring, accusing the Temple of murders, thefts, and blasphemy. What would be the point of building a new Temple in the East, if the people lost their allegiance to the old one?

But at last another voice was raised, interrupting the self-anointed prophet.

“Here, now, what’s this? Surrender to the Heathen, and be marched off into the East as slaves? Surrender, when we crush them every time they come close to the walls? Surrender when we’re winning? Not cuss’t likely!”

The silent mob began to murmur. Reesh recognized Gallgoid’s voice, but no one else would have—not when he spoke in that coarse North Country accent.

“You’re talking treason, you—and you a prester of the Temple! How much did the Heathen pay you for it? Let’s all see the money!”

His concentration broken, Rhunwigg made but a feeble answer.

“My people, I have only spoken truth!” he said. “For too long you have been deaf to the voice of the Lord. You listen to lies, but turn away from truth. You have rejected the compassion—”

“Reject this, traitor!”

The crowd roared. Reesh didn’t dare move forward to see what had been done. Let the mob get one glimpse of his face, and it would turn on him—a false prester who killed the prophets. So he stood in the shadows and listened to the sounds of tumult. But he heard no further word from Rhunwigg.

Later it was reported to him by the chamberlain of the grounds that some common man in the crowd that thrown a stone at Rhunwigg and knocked him down the steps; and the inflamed mob trampled him to death, somehow. Judge Tombo’s men came in time only to carry away the body.

“It is a pity!” Lord Reesh said to the chamberlain. “What evil could have poisoned Prester Rhunwigg’s heart? May God have mercy on his soul.”

That night he sat up in bed, carefully weighing the words he would have to say to Mardar Kyo. If the Temple was to be reborn in the East, with the right men in charge of it, there was no more time to lose.

Obst sat up, too, reading a scroll by lantern light. He’d read these passages during the day, but he wanted to read them again. They troubled him.

This was what Ozias wrote, when he was an old man hiding in the ruins of the Temple: “Woe to the temple; woe to the priests! For you confine My name within your walls, and stop the people’s ears against My voice. You have made a prison for My words, and it is your own words that the people hear.

“Woe to the priests who are no priests! Therefore will I speak to a people who are not My people, and therefore shall My wrath break down the prison. I shall overflow like the waters of a flood, I shall rage like a fire in the forest.

“For the incense that you burn to Me is an abomination, and your prayers are vain repetitions that offend My ears: you rob Me of My honor, and make My people to forget Me. For these sins and for more, I will not spare your temple.”

Obst paused and rubbed his eyes. Why should Ozias have written this, after the Temple he knew was destroyed? Was this a prophecy concerning the fate of the Imperial Temple, or this temple in the new city?

“Isn’t it time you went to bed, old man?”

It was Uduqu. Obst hadn’t heard him come up. The burly subchief lit a dried bean in the flame of the lantern and sat down beside Obst to smoke.

“I never used to see the sense of reading,” Uduqu said. “We Abnaks never bother with it. What do you have there, that keeps you up so late?”

“The Word of God to King Ozias, foretelling the destruction of the Temple in Obann,” said Obst. “But I don’t understand whether the prophecy refers to the Imperial Temple or our own. It could be both.”

Uduqu blew a puff of smoke, a quizzical look on his fiercely tattooed face. “Can God, and a king who died hundreds and hundreds of years ago, really talk to you out of that piece of sheep’s hide?”

Obst nodded. “Yes! They speak to me in their own words, as if they and I were face to face.”

“And if those words mean that the Temple that’s in Obann now will be destroyed,” said Uduqu, “the enemy couldn’t do that unless first they took the city. Which makes me wonder why we’re going there.”

“Me, too,” Obst admitted. “But I trust God will make it clear, in time—maybe even in another one of these scrolls. I still have two or three more to read.”

“Ah, well—give me a sharp axe, and room to swing it. That’s what I say. Even so …” Uduqu paused, then lowered his voice as if he feared to let anyone but Obst hear what he was going to say next. “I wonder if you could teach me how to read—I mean, if I’m not too old to learn. But I think I would like to be able to read God’s own words. I mean, if He doesn’t mind.”

Slowly, Obst smiled at him. He felt like hugging him. He felt like springing up and rejoicing. But he only said, “He won’t! Indeed, it would greatly please Him, Chieftain.”

Uduqu grinned. “I’ll be the first Abnak who could read!” he said. “Now, then—how do you do it?”

So Obst began to teach Uduqu how to read, and the two old men were late to their beds that night.

The best thing they could do, Martis thought, would be to go back to Gilmy.

“And we’ll be lucky if we make it,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re looking for, but the enemy has scouts all over this country.”

“Can’t we catch up to Helki’s army?” Ellayne asked.

“We don’t know where it is.”

It was a long way back to Gilmy, three days’ march with Martis on foot and Jack and Ellayne riding Dulayl. It rained all day the first day, and when they happened on an abandoned barn—the farmhouse had been burned down—they decided to stop there.

“It’s two hours earlier than I wanted to stop,” Martis said, “but I don’t think you’ll want to camp out in the rain.” He was worried that the barn might also appeal to enemy scouts seeking shelter from the rain, but he decided to risk it. He’d heard somewhere that children would get sick if they stayed out in bad weather.

There was straw in the barn for Ham and Dulayl to eat, and plenty left over to sleep in; but Martis wouldn’t let them build a fire. “It’s just possible someone might be able to see the light shining through a chink in the walls,” he said.

So they couldn’t get dry, couldn’t get warm, couldn’t eat hot food, but could only nestle in the straw and listen to pigeons cooing in the rafters overhead. Martis had brought along extra rations, so they had bread, cheese, and a mouthful of smoked fish for supper. Rain rattled on the roof, but the barn didn’t leak too badly.

As uncomfortable as they were, they were still too tired to stay awake for long. They didn’t wake in the morning until Wytt screeched and jabbed Martis with his stick—just moments before the wobbly door flew open with a crash. Wytt dove into the straw and disappeared. Dulayl kicked his stall and whinnied loudly, destroying any hope they had of hiding.

“Show yourselves, or it will go worse with you!”

Morning light poured through the open door. Crowding into the doorway were a dozen Griffs, knives drawn, ready for a fight. But Martis couldn’t fight twelve men. He took the children’s hands, and they rose up together out of the straw in which they’d slept. Jack’s heart sank when he recognized the two men who’d run away when Martis and Dulayl attacked them. One had his shoulder thickly bandaged; Dulayl must have given him a bad bite. “We’ve had it now!” Jack thought.

“Men of the Griff,” said Martis, “surely you can’t hold it against a man for rescuing his grandsons from slavery. Any one of you would have done the same.”

“You are unlucky today,” said their spokesman, in good Obannese. “Outside with you!”

Martis kept hold of the children’s hands and meekly led them out of the barn. The rain had stopped. It was a bright, clear morning, and raindrops shone like diamonds on the green grass.

Martis was shocked to find a hundred Griffs waiting for them, a few of them on horseback. Their captors made them stop before a mounted man who looked very different from the others. All his hair was shaved off, and the top half of his face painted dark blue. Griffs did not so decorate themselves, but this man was a Griff: Martis recognized the raised scars on his forearms that marked a Griff of chief’s blood who’d been initiated into the secret rites of shamans—those who communed with the devils that served the Griffs as gods. But even shamans didn’t shave their heads. Among the Griffs, long hair, elaborately piled, was the fashion.

“So you are the man who drove off three of my warriors and took these children from them.” This man spoke perfect Obannese. “Not a bad day’s work for a man with a white beard!”

“Your honor speaks our language as one born and raised to it,” said Martis, “and yet your honor is a shaman among the Griffs.”

“And you are well versed in polite speech, as it is practiced among us,” answered the Griff. “In my youth I sojourned in your country and served in your militia as a scout. What’s your name, grandfather?”

“Martis.”

“I am Chillith, son of Maglag the chief. I have the honor to serve the Thunder King, the lord of all the world: I am one of his mardars, albeit a lesser one.

“It is not permitted, Martis, to kill a man who serves the Thunder King. We might have been friends, otherwise. I like a brave man who speaks well. But for your actions you must die very slowly and in great pain. Your cries of agony will comfort the spirit of the man you slew and please my lord the Thunder King. I’m sorry, but that’s our law.” He turned to some of the men on foot. “Strip him, then bind him.”

The men took only one step toward Martis when Jack cried out.

“Stop!Stop!” He hardly knew what he was saying. All he could think of was to save Martis. “You don’t know who we are!

“Didn’t you hear the bell ring on Bell Mountain? The whole world heard it, so you must have, too. And it was the three of us who were up on top of the mountain—we rang the bell. God Himself sent us!”

Ellayne chimed in. She’d paid a little more attention than Jack had to certain things that Obst and Helki and others had talked about, and she knew what a mardar was.

“You can’t just kill him!” she said. “He had a brown beard when he went up the mountain, and God turned it white, just like that—it was a sign! He’s under God’s protection! And he was a servant of the Temple and knows all its secrets. Terrible things will happen to you, if you harm him!”