The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) by Lee Duigon Read Free Book Online

scent is here. They pick him up and take away. Eight men come here, but only seven leave.” To the troopers it sounded only like a lot of chittering and chattering, something like a scolding squirrel. But to Ellayne the meaning was clear.
     
    “No sign of Martis, Wytt?”
     
    “Whiteface never set foot on ground—not here.”
     
    “Which way did they go with Jack?”
     
    “That way.” Wytt pointed with his sharp stick. “That way, into woods. Easy to follow.” And before Ellayne could say another word, he dashed off into the trees. The men shied back from him, like housewives afraid of mice.
     
    “What’s he doing, Ellayne?” Kadmel said.
     
    “Oh, he’s gone off after the villains. I wish he wouldn’t do that!” Ellayne said. She repeated all that Wytt had told her. “He knows we have to stop for rest, but he’s raring to go. He’ll be back.” Times without number in their travels, Wytt raced off alone, and half the time you never knew why. Omah seldom ask for explanations, and even more rarely provide them. “I ought to be used to it by now!” Ellayne thought. But she doubted she would ever get used to it.
     
    “Can that thing really know all that much, just by sniffing around for a few minutes?” asked one of the men. Ellayne glared at him.
     
    “He’s not a thing, and yes, he can know all that,” she answered. “He’s a person, and you’d all do well to remember it. Not a human kind of person—but he’s not an animal. There’s nothing to be afraid of!”
     
    It was embarrassing to them to be told off by a girl. Ellayne wondered how many of them believed the Little People would capture a man while he slept, and drag him down to their underground kingdom and keep him there; and when he finally escaped and came back up, the moment the sun first shone on him, he’d turn to dust. And yet she doubted any of these men had ever seen an Omah all their lives.
     
    “Let’s rest while we can,” the sergeant said. “We may have a lot of hard riding ahead of us today.” And they unsaddled and tied up the horses, unrolled blankets, and caught what sleep they could. Ellayne doubted she would sleep at all, but the river sang a lullaby that closed her eyes before the first pink glint of the sun crept into the sky.
     

     
    In Lintum Forest, Helki the Rod sat on a fallen tree trunk, talking softly to a little girl with long, fair hair. He had a small frog perched on his outstretched finger; it curled its toes around his finger like a bird roosting on a twig. The frog had been grey a minute ago, but now it was green. The child watched it, fascinated.
     
    “This is what we call a tree frog, Peeper,” he said, “because it lives in trees and bushes. He’ll eat right out of my hand, if I offer him a bug. If it was going on nighttime, he’d probably sing for us.”
     
    “So pretty!” said the girl.
     
    She was Jandra, God’s prophet: only four years old, guessed Helki. Not old enough to understand that she was a prophet—but God speaking through her had made Ryons king of Obann. Helki had found her wandering alone on the vast plain between the forest and the river, an orphan, and had brought her back to Lintum Forest for safekeeping. She still called him “Daddy.”
     
    It would be hard to imagine him as anyone’s daddy—huge, with wild hair that had never known a comb, and clad in a stained garment that seemed to be all patches, no two of the same color. For all his bulk, he moved as silent as smoke through the densest thickets in the forest, and as dearly as he would have loved with all his heart to live alone again, he was responsible for the settlement at Carbonek, and for the safety of the king.
     
    But this morning he set aside his duties and took Jandra to a place where tree frogs lived, because the little girl loved him and he felt a need to spend some time with her. He could not have told you the nature of that need. He’d lived alone too long to understand