The Witch's Boy by Kelly Barnhill

Author:Kelly Barnhill
Language: ara, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2014-07-08T19:41:25+00:00

25

The King Over the Mountain

King Ott, benevolent ruler of the Kingdom of Duunin (of course he was benevolent! It said so on banners and placards and all of the money! He even required his generals to tattoo it on their forearms with an outline of his smiling face hovering above), was in a bit of a snit. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scowled.

“Gone?” he said to the red-haired man kneeling before him. His voice, unfortunately, had taken on a petulant whine. Ott was infuriated. Kings, he knew, are never petulant. He cleared his throat and attempted a growl.

“I did not say gone. I said misplaced.” The bandit examined his fingernails. He ran his hand down his beard. He let his fingers rest on a horrible-looking pendant strung around his neck with a leather strap. (An eye! Who wears jewelry in the shape of an eye? Ott was mystified.) And while he did not smile—he did not dare—the bandit’s face still bore the suggestion of a crafty grin. It was as though the grin was waiting inside.

King Ott couldn’t abide craftiness, unless it was his and his alone. He couldn’t abide most things that were not his and his alone. And why should he? He had absolute control of an empire so vast, so mighty, that it boggled the mind to think of it.

And yet.

That minuscule country on the other side of the great, wicked forest. What was it doing there? He asked himself this question every morning before breakfast, and three times each afternoon, and over and over again every evening. He knew the story, of course. He knew his justifiable claim to the land. But that story was so old. Why had the wrong not been rectified? So tiny, this illegal country! So insignificant! And yet there it stands with brazen independence. It drove him mad.

Indeed, “mad” was a word whispered often in the offices of Cabinet members and Parliamentarians and People of Importance. “Mad” was a word riding on the tongues of those who walked the halls of the castle. The land bounded by the empire was so impossibly vast that the advisors to the king were mystified at their monarch’s obsession with that small shoulder of land, separated from the rest of the world by the mountains and the forest. A forest populated only by cursed trees and a ragtag band of bandits. And their numbers were few.

“A nothing!” the advisors cried. “A backwater!”

Still, it was a backwater that paid no tax. A backwater that swore no allegiance to him. A backwater that never had any reason to cower before the might of his armies.

It was a country independent, whole unto itself, and King Ott could not bear it.

When the leader of the forest-dwelling bandits informed him of the existence of magic—real magic, like the magic of the legendary Speaking Stones that was older than the very world—King Ott knew that he would not rest until the magic, and the country, were in his grasp.

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