The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) (37 page)

“But never mind that! Obann must be told that there is no Thunder King—that it’s all lies. That’s why I have to get down from this mountain. Never mind your poor blind man. No one can save him.”

“We can try!” Ellayne said.

Martis ignored her. “Your master, Lord Reesh, must think you’ve failed him, too, Gallgoid.”

“Reesh is an old man who doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It may be that he matters to me,” said Martis.

In the end he and the children and Wytt went up and Gallgoid went down, alone. They gave him some of their food to help him on his way. Gallgoid grinned at Martis.

“It’ll be too bad if I don’t make it,” he said. “But maybe it’s better if you and I don’t travel very far together.”

“He may not get there, Martis,” Ellayne said, a few minutes after they’d lost sight of Gallgoid. She’d had her way, but now she didn’t feel quite right about it.

“He’s stronger than he looks,” Martis answered.

“But didn’t you believe him—about the Thunder King?” Jack said.

“No one in his right mind would ever believe Gallgoid. And Lord Reesh has a very subtle mind. He could invent a story like that. But it may be Reesh isn’t up there, after all—and never was. But we’ll see what we can do for Chillith.”

Against the habit of a lifetime, Martis felt friendship for the Griff. Maybe they could find some way to save him. With Wytt to scout for them, Martis had little fear of being taken by surprise by any enemy.

But also in his heart, despite his refusal to take anything said by Gallgoid as the truth, was a desire to see if Reesh was really there at the end of the road. And if he was … he left the thought unfinished.

“He didn’t seem like such a bad man to me—Gallgoid,” Ellayne said.

“He’s an assassin. A creature of Lord Reesh. And a most artful and resourceful liar.”

“So were you, Martis,” Jack said.

To that he had no answer.

As Gallgoid said, the Griffs are great walkers. You’d believe it if you could see Chillith striding along, straight up the road. He never stopped; he never slowed: just kept putting one foot after the other, over and over again. He barely felt the cold.

He didn’t see as you see, with your eyes. He saw things he had done wrong in his life and things he’d done right, things he’d thought beautiful, or good, and other things he’d thought sad, ugly, or shameful. But most of all he saw himself, in his mind’s eye, as proceeding down a wide and shining path with a great light at the end. That light drew him on his way and would not let him go. Nor did he want to be released from it. He wanted to come to the source of the light.

He went faster than Martis could go with two children to hold him back, but Wytt caught up to him before long.

Wytt understood that Ellayne and the others were following this man, trying to catch up to him. Maybe he understood more than they knew. Instead of trying to delay Chillith or distract him, Wytt ran far ahead of him and made sure the way was clear. He found nothing a lone man on foot ought to fear. The snow was deeper the higher up you went, but it wouldn’t be too deep for a tall man like Chillith.

Wytt kept going until he saw a high wall stretched across the pass, at the top of the mountain. Some effort had been made to clear the snow so that the gates in the wall could be opened and shut freely; but the snow had defeated that effort, and now the gates had to stay open or no one would be able to get them open again.

This was not a nice place, Wytt decided. The mountains were heaped high with snow, and the grey sky promised more to come. Certain scents in the air, issuing from behind the wall, made Wytt’s hackles rise. He wrinkled his face and bared his tiny fangs—at what, he didn’t know.

This must be where the tall black-haired man was going. He wouldn’t have any trouble getting there, and Wytt left him to it. Chillith never saw or heard him pass as he scampered back down the mountain.

“We’ll have to stop soon and find a place to camp,” Martis said. Most of the afternoon was gone, and they were tired. But they’d picked up Chillith’s tracks, and it would now be very easy to follow him.

That was when Wytt came back and told them they were almost to the end of the road, where there was a wall across the pass.

“Bad things there,” he reported.

“Can we catch up to Chillith before he gets there?” Martis said. “He must be nearly there already.”

“Wytt says he’ll be there very soon,” Ellayne said. And once Chillith went behind that wall, she thought, that was that: no one could help him then.

“We could keep going. It isn’t far,” Jack said. “I’m not tired. We could at least see what’s what—and maybe we could do something to help Chillith.”

“Are you crazy?” Ellayne said. “The Thunder King’s up there. What do you think will happen if they catch us?”

“You’re the one who wanted to follow Chillith in the first place!”

Martis interrupted. “We should make camp,” he said, “and I’ll go up alone at night, with Wytt.”

“Why should they catch us?” Jack said. “Wytt says nobody comes out of that place because of all the snow. We won’t get there till after dark. Who’s going to see us?” He hated the idea of turning back after they’d come so far, without at least seeing if there was a chance to rescue Chillith. “Besides,” he added, “it’s too cold to camp. We’d only be awake all night, shivering.”

It was lame reasoning, and Martis knew it; but he gave in. He felt a powerful urge to push on. Lord Reesh was there—Reesh, his master and his teacher: Lord Reesh, who’d taught him lies.

“We can go a bit farther,” he said. “But tell Wytt to keep a sharp lookout. We may have to hide in a hurry.”

Just before dark, Gallgoid met Helki coming up the mountain. Actually he met Cavall first, and being unarmed, and much too weary to do anything else, he stood perfectly still while the great hound paced back and forth in front of him, sniffing the air and showing his teeth. Moments later, Helki came up—a daunting figure of a man, with his wild thatch of hair and a hawk perched on his shoulder.

Helki saw a man who’d just about used up all his strength and needed rest and a fire. He hadn’t planned to stop until midnight, but now he would have to.

“Stranger, I’m looking for a man and a girl, and another man with a boy,” he said. “They’re friends of mine, and I wonder if you’ve seen them.”

“I have,” said Gallgoid, “all four of them, earlier today. You’ll find them farther up the road.” He might have said more, but just then his knees buckled. Helki had to help him up.

“Can’t just leave you here, I reckon,” he said. He led the man a few steps into the woods. Here many trees, chopped down to build the road, still lay where they’d been dragged out of the way; many more had been carted off for timber. Helki found a place where two large trunks lay at an angle to each other, creating a nook protected from the wind. He cleared the snow away, cleared off the topmost layer of wet leaves, and used all the skill he had to get a fire going. No one else in Obann could have done it.

He fed Gallgoid—just yesterday Angel caught two squirrels, and Cavall ran down a plump white hare—and revived him enough to get his story out of him. That took some time.

“I’d better hustle up this hill before my friends get into something that they can’t get out of,” Helki said. “You’ll have to go on alone, tomorrow, my friend. But it won’t be so bad. There’s a small army coming up the road behind me. Just mention my name, and they’ll take care of you.”

“I’ll be all right,” Gallgoid said. “This fire and the fresh meat was all I needed.”

“Keep feeding the fire, and you’ll be fine.” Helki suddenly stood up. “Let’s go, Cavall!” he said.

Lord Reesh sat alone in his cabin all day, with no one to talk to and nothing but his thoughts for company. They were not good company.

In the evening Kyo’s servant escorted Reesh to the banquet hall. There as always sat King Thunder on his throne, immovable, with his face behind the golden mask. Below his throne, the monster cat tested its chain. The beast was restless. Its green eyes glared at the mardars assembled around their banquet tables. To Reesh it seemed the monster paid particular attention to him, as if marking him in its memory. He wondered if Gallgoid had been fed to the beast. Having dined on the servant, maybe the creature longed to thrust its butcher-knife fangs into the master.

When all were present, the mardars and Reesh stood and made their prayer to the Thunder King. The ritual no longer troubled Reesh quite as much as it had at first. “He’s no less a god than any other god,” the First Prester thought, “and certainly more than these silly wooden idols he displays around the hall.”

The prayer being said, they all sat down; and slaves brought out steaming tureens of thick, dark soup.

“I hope you don’t object to mule meat in your soup, First Prester,” Kyo said. “It’s been hard to get wagons up to the pass these last few days, so we’ve run a little short of provisions.”

“Mule meat is fine,” said Reesh, who had little appetite for anything these days.

“In the old days,” said Kyo, “it used to be man’s flesh that we ate, when there was nothing better. Our master has discontinued this custom, reserving it to himself alone. I cannot say I miss it. Mule is better.”

Reesh only nodded. The Thunder King could do as he pleased—who could stop him? He was a law unto himself. The God of Obann caused His laws to be written down, long ago, so that all the world would know them. But King Thunder’s law was whatever word came out of his mouth that day. No wonder all the people feared him, Reesh thought.

The soup cloyed in his mouth. The cat paced to and fro, as much as the chain would allow. Why was it so restless? Usually the filthy thing just crouched on the floor and glared.

But then a slave opened one of the doors that separated the banquet from the winter night outside; and the cat stopped pacing.

Chillith couldn’t see that night had fallen, nor did he see the wall that rose in front of him with its gate stuck open in the snow. His face by now was numb, so he didn’t feel that it was colder. But he smelled smoke, and the aroma of cooked flesh, and he knew he’d arrived at the hall.