The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (36 page)

“Jack?”

“I’m all right. I wasn’t expecting it to be so dark.”

“Try not to be afraid. And keep climbing.”

The rungs were evenly spaced, the ladder was firmly attached to the wall and didn’t wobble, and Jack forced himself to keep going. Below, invisible, Wytt made a chirping noise that he recognized as Omah laughter.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny!” Jack hissed.

How far he had to climb, and how long it took, were questions that he couldn’t hope to answer. Wytt reached the bottom first and let him know, so he wouldn’t be surprised. It did feel strange when his feet finally touched a level floor again. When at last he let go of the ladder, he was trembling from head to toe.

“Made it!” he sighed.

Gallgoid joined him in a moment. Jack heard him fumbling around until he lit a little oil lamp. Its light, down here, seemed as bright as the sun’s.

“We’re now below the oligarchs’ archives,” Gallgoid said, “and no one can hear us if we talk. This passage will take us out beyond the city wall.”

“Is it far?”

“About a quarter of a mile.”

The passage floor was hard-packed earth. It had brick walls encrusted with some white substance. Heavy timber shored up the roof. It reminded Jack of the cellar beneath the cellar of the ruined Temple in the Old City—only now it was the palace whose incalculable weight sat right over their heads.

“It won’t collapse on us, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Gallgoid said. “This is one of the newer passages, probably no more than a hundred years old.”

“It’s damp down here,” Jack said.

“There’ll be plenty of fresh air at the end.” Gallgoid touched his shoulder. “Come on.”

It seemed a very long quarter of a mile, and deadly silent all the way. “Hard to believe we’re really going to be out of the palace soon,” Jack thought. He felt like he’d been in there half his life.

Ellayne hugged Martis and wouldn’t let go. His own emotions surprised him—but then he was always surprised to discover how much he loved these children whom Lord Reesh had sent him out to kill.

“Where’s Jack?” Roshay Bault asked.

“Gallgoid will bring him,” Martis said.

Night still brooded over the coronation field. Having left his guards at Filidor’s, it had taken Martis hardly any time at all to make his way out of the city. Finding Roshay’s pavilion was the harder task, necessitating many questions of sentries and servants who were up all night, preparing for the coronation tomorrow. More than a few of them thought it was going to rain, and wondered whether it would force a postponement of the ceremony. Most of them had never heard of Roshay Bault. But eventually Martis received directions to the baron’s pavilion. Ellayne woke instantly at the first sound of his voice.

“You trust Gallgoid?” she said, when she stopped hugging him. “He brought me down the mountain safely, didn’t he? But where’s Wytt?”

“With Jack. Wytt found us last night,” Martis said. He told Ellayne and her father all he knew about it. “Gallgoid’s been trying to stop the coronation. Helping us escape is part of his plan.”

“Can he stop it?” Roshay wondered. “It’s scheduled for this coming afternoon. My plan was for us to be away from here before then. I was expecting you and Jack together.”

The shame bit deep, and Martis couldn’t answer. He’d sworn an oath to protect both children with his life, and yet there he was, safe and sound, while Jack was alone in the palace.

He’d failed.

CHAPTER 39

How Jack Parted from Gallgoid

Iolo kept his people working all night. There wasn’t much that could be done about the broken place in the wall: that would have to be defended by a wall of flesh and blood. The arrow supply wasn’t all that might be hoped for, either. But they braced the gate with stout timbers and wagons turned onto their sides. For good measure they braced the wagons, too.

“No getting in that way!” Iolo said.

“My men don’t like being penned inside like this,” said Osfal.

“It’s only until the reinforcements come.”

Osfal snorted. “If there are any reinforcements!” he said. “When our master invaded Obann, he drained the East of fighting men. Things are not going so well, I hear, on either side of the mountains. When the Abnaks revolted, most of the remaining armies were sent to deal with them—and are still trying to deal with them. What does that leave for us?”

“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk!” Iolo glared at the Wallekki chief. “You’ll want to be more careful, if you don’t want to end up impaled on a stake. Our master King Thunder doesn’t like men who expect to be defeated.”

“They say the boy king, single-handed, chased our great armies from the walls of Obann. They say he rode a devil-beast from Hell. That same boy king is here before us now.”

Everyone had heard that story in one version or another. Iolo spat.

“Pah! A fairy tale!” he said. “I tell you as a friend, Osfal—don’t talk like that. It’ll get back to King Thunder.”

Osfal shrugged. “By this time tomorrow I’ll have been dead for several hours. So what does it matter how I talk?”

“It matters how you fight!”

“Oh, we’ll fight, my friend. I can promise you that.”

Gallgoid tugged open a heavy wooden door, and Jack saw stars. It was still nighttime. Fresh air caressed his face. Wytt chattered.

“He says a hard rain is coming, Gallgoid. Look at all those tents! It’s like another city. Half of Obann must be here.”

“One of those tents is Roshay Bault’s. Let’s find it. I have to be back inside the palace before sunup.”

They climbed outside. Behind them towered the walls of the city. The entrance to the passage nestled in a bank of earth that rose above a little trickle of a stream. Stunted trees crowded the door, concealing it.

Wytt danced and waved his stick.

“Can you find the baron for us, Wytt?” Jack asked. “Ellayne is with him.” Wytt chattered back at him, and Jack smiled. “He’s insulted that I asked,” he told Gallgoid.

They followed Wytt. Every few steps, the Omah stood on tiptoe and sniffed the air. How he could pick out Ellayne’s scent amid so many men and horses and cooking fires, Jack couldn’t imagine. But in a fraction of the time it had taken Martis, Wytt found the way to Roshay Bault’s pavilion.

Some of the men who were awake were pointing up at the sky. Clouds raced in from the west, gobbling up the stars.

Wytt pointed to a tent that was lit inside. Some smaller tents clustered around it, with a line of horses tethered.

“We’re here!” Jack said. “I wonder if Martis got here yet.” Wytt chirped: he had Martis’ scent, too.

“Then I’ll leave you,” Gallgoid said.

Something about the way he said it made Jack solemn. “Thank you, Gallgoid,” he said. “Thank you for saving us.”

“Tell Martis that, whatever he thinks, I serve the king,” said Gallgoid. “God be with you, Jack.”

He turned and left without another word. Wytt bolted for the baron’s tent and Jack ran after him.

With a joyous shriek that nearly made her heart stop, Wytt leaped into Ellayne’s arms. Jack, several steps behind, pushed his way into the pavilion. There stood the baron and Ellayne and Martis, all of them still stunned by Wytt’s sudden appearance.

“Can we go home now?” Jack said.

That broke the spell. Ellayne threw herself into his arms, and Wytt had to jump away quickly to avoid being crushed between them. She babbled—just like a girl, Jack thought. She’ll start crying next. But his own vision was already blurred with tears.

The baron gave him a good squeeze, too, as best he could without detaching Ellayne. “I can hardly believe my eyes,” he said.

“I thought I’d never see you again!” Ellayne finally managed an intelligible sentence.

“Where’s Gallgoid?” Martis said.

“On his way back to the palace,” Jack said. “He wanted me to tell you, Martis, that he serves the king—whatever else you think of him.”

“I stand rebuked,” Martis said. “I wonder what he means to do in the palace. I wish he were here instead.”

“You said he’s trying to stop the coronation,” Roshay said. “But it seems the weather will do that for him.”

“It does seem a shame to leave without seeing the ceremony,” said Ellayne.

Wytt let loose a series of angry chirps and chitters. The two men smiled, but not the children. Ellayne let her arms slide off Jack’s neck.

“Father, Wytt says we have to go. We have to go now, he says—and fast, as fast as we can. He says there’s something bad that’s going to happen. I’ve never seen him so afraid of anything!”

“It’s that thing,” Jack said, “the thing that Goryk Gillow brought with him from Silvertown. It’s something left over from the ancient times. It makes people blind.”

Martis nodded. “I saw them use it on the Zeph. They keep it with them at all times, inside a covered box.”

“Yes, yes!” Wytt agreed. How could he make these poor dull people understand? Frustrated, he hopped up and down.

“He says it’s all over the palace, everywhere,” Jack said. “I don’t know what he means by that. He doesn’t have words for a lot of things. It’s not really words at all.”

“No matter,” Roshay said. “It was always my plan to leave as soon as we had you and Martis with us again. We do, and so it’s time to go. I’ll wake Kadmel, and we’ll get the horses saddled.” He went out of the pavilion.

“I don’t like just running away,” said Ellayne.

“Gallgoid risked his life so we could do just that,” Martis said. “He knows about Goryk Gillow’s little treasure from the past. I told him what I saw it do.”

“You were right about those things being dangerous, Martis,” Ellayne said. “The little one that we had, the thing with the picture of a lady in it—”

But here Roshay stormed back into the tent and told Ellayne to gather up her things. “We’ll be on our way as soon as the horses are ready, and they’ll only take another minute or two. Let’s be miles from here before the sun rises.”

“If it doesn’t rain first,” Jack added.

CHAPTER 40

The End of the Night

It began to rain before the sun rose. The sound of it against his shutters woke Goryk Gillow.

Unusually for him, he’d slept like the dead. He woke Mardar Zo, who always slept soundly.

“Rain,” Goryk said, “and by the sound of it, we’ll have to crown the king on the palace steps. Merffin Mord will make a fuss about wasting all the money they had to spend on holding the coronation outdoors.”

Zo sat up in bed. “Will the king come for his crown?” he said. “Maybe he’s too sick to come out in the rain.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

Goryk’s first shock came when he found no Dahai standing sentry in the hall. The pair he’d left on night duty should have been there. He went to the next door down and pounded on it.

“Where are Changar Fonn and Ergun Sudir?” he demanded, when a sleepy Dahai opened to him. The question woke the warrior instantly.

“What’s happened, boss? Aren’t they out there in the hall? They’re not in here! It’s not time for us to get up and relieve them, is it?”