Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) Page 11

  CHAPTER 21

  A New Prophecy

  Martis had started some days behind the children he sought; but he was on horseback, and he knew he must be catching up. He was so sure of it that when he came to the hermit’s cabin and found it empty, he decided to wait a day or two for the hermit to come back. Compared to camping on the hard ground in the rain, the cabin was a haven. He’d traveled hard and needed rest.

  He spent a night there and all of the next day. He was amazed to discover that the hermit had a whole Book of Scripture. A book like that, if it could be had at all, would cost a good deal of money. How had an impoverished hermit come by it?

  Martis was a well-traveled man, but he’d never met a hermit; this would be his first. He wondered what would make a man, in this day and age, sequester himself in the woods with only the Scriptures for company. It was unusual enough hundreds of years ago, unheard-of now. He hoped he’d have some time to question the hermit about it.

  It wasn’t the hermit who came to the cabin on the evening of the second day, but two men together.

  “Who’s that in the cabin?” someone called. Martis had heard them coming, but hadn’t come out to greet them. Now he did, with his skewer hidden in his hand in case he needed it.

  “Who are you?” demanded a fat man with a hard face, when Martis appeared in the doorway.

  “Why, a servant of the Temple, come in search of his spiritual brother,” Martis said, displaying his red and gold braid. “I am disappointed to find him not at home. Perhaps you have news of him?”

  “He’s traipsing around in the forest—” the taller of the two men started to say; but the fat one swatted him in the belly, and he gulped back the rest of his words.

  “I see by the way you eye my horse and my clothing that the pair of you are lawless men,” Martis said. “Is everyone in Lintum Forest so? I would much prefer a peaceful visit and friendly relations all around. But I must tell you that the last two outlaws I encountered, who sought to steal my horse, are dead, and by my hand. Take that as a friendly warning.”

  The younger man’s nostrils flared. He looked as if he’d like to put Martis to the test. But the fat man, older and more experienced, chose caution.

  “I reckon I know a killer when I see one,” he said. “Don’t try anything funny, Tumm. Our elder brother here has killed more men than you and me together. It’s in his eyes. Obann’s a long way from here. They must’ve picked up some pretty strange habits in the Temple, nowadays, to employ a man like this.

  “My name is Bort, elder brother, and this is Tumm. We’re making our rounds, collecting dues for Latt Squint-eye, the chief of all the free men in the forest. You must have heard of him.”

  “His fame has not spread to the inner chambers of the Temple, I regret to say,” Martis answered. “Well! Now that we understand each other, why don’t you come in and sit down? We can break bread together, and I’m sure you’ll want to stay the night.”

  Bort grinned. “Just so we really understand each other—no tricks, eh?”

  Martis smiled back at him. “I promise not to kill you unless you try to rob or kill me. As a servant of the Temple, I always keep my promises.”

  Obst that night taught Jack and Ellayne how God made the first man and woman and then peopled the whole world. It was all new and strange to them. But in olden days, he said, children learned these things before they learned to walk, and there wasn’t a soul in Obann who didn’t know this story.

  First there was the Isle of Eness-Ateen, at the very center of the world: the spot where God’s words first brought life up from the earth. From this place, the Navel, life spread out like ripples on the surface of a pond—but much, much faster—until it covered the surface of the world, and swam in the waters, and flew in all the skies.

  “God made the man and woman last,” Obst said, “and He kept them there on Eness-Ateen because it was the fairest single place in all the world. ‘And you are the jewels in this My treasury,’ He said to the Man and the Woman. And He gave them names; but they lost their names when they became disobedient.”

  God commanded them never to drink from the Spring that bubbled up from the ground in the center of the island, in exactly the spot where God’s first word of life struck home. It was the only commandment that He gave them.

  “Only one,” said Obst, “and yet they disobeyed it. The Nameless One appeared in the form of a great worm and tempted them. ‘Drink of that water but once,’ said the worm, ‘and you shall be as great as God, and He must give way to you.’ So they drank: first the Woman, then the Man.

  “But the worm had lied to them. That which is created can never become the Creator. When they drank that water, they drank only Fear and Confusion and Shame. And God cast them out of Eness-Ateen, and moved it upon the waters to another sea where no man shall ever find it or even come in sight of it. God took away their names and gave them new names, making them forget the old ones. And the Man’s name was Khash, meaning Lost; and the Woman’s name was Sorrow.

  “God removed them to an island called Caha, which was a mighty island. There they had to learn to hunt, plant crops, and tend herds. There they had many children, and those had children of their own, until all Caha was populated. Lost and Sorrow died because they had been cast out of the Island of Life, but their descendants were very numerous.

  “So a long age passed,” Obst said, “and the people of Caha learned wickedness and violence because the Nameless One came often among them, in many disguises, and they always listened to him. They hated God because He had cast them out of Eness-Ateen and taken it away from them, and they had to work for their food and suffer heat and cold and weariness, and in the end, they died.

  “Only one man, Geb, still loved God and never listened to the Nameless One. He had more children than any other man, and he taught them all to be faithful to the Most High. For this the people hated the Children of Geb and plotted to murder them and offer their blood as a sacrifice to devils.

  “For this reason God sank the entire land of Caha under the waves of the sea and drowned every living thing; but the Children of Geb He enabled to walk upon little islands like stepping-stones all the way to the mainland. And there they became the ancestors of all the nations of men. As for the stepping-stone islands, God removed them so that no one could ever find a way back to the place where cursed Caha once rose above the waves.

  “That’s enough for now,” Obst said. “I’ve greatly shortened the tale in my telling. Someday you ought to read it in the Scriptures.”

  Jack and Ellayne had questions, dozens of them.

  “I thought all the stories were in storybooks!” Ellayne said. “I never knew the Old Books had stories, too.”

  Obst gave her a stern look. “These are not stories,” he said. “They are the record of what was, and the explanation of what is, and signs for what shall be. They are the Word of God, transmitted through His prophets. They are to be taken seriously, and believed.”

  Jack had so many questions that he couldn’t get one out. Ashrof, he remembered, had sometimes mentioned the Children of Geb and the drowning of Caha. But why hadn’t Ashrof ever told him the whole story?

  He did manage to blurt out something.

  “What happened to the Nameless One? I never heard of him! What was he? And why did God punish the people and not him?”

  “Oh, ho! I’d be up all night trying to answer that question,” Obst said. “There’s no short answer. In ancient times fathers and mothers taught their children from the Scriptures, and the prester in every chamber house and the reciters in every little village read to the people from the Old Books one day in every five. But even then, that would have been a hard question to answer.

  “Let me sleep on it, Jack, and ponder it all day tomorrow. And the next time we camp, I’ll try to answer. I’m too tired now. I need my sleep.”

  He settled into his bed of leaves, closed his eyes, and was soon asleep, snoring softly.

  “I can’t get t
o sleep just yet,” Jack said.

  “Nor I,” Ellayne said. “I do love a good story, Jack. I wonder why my father never told me any of the stories from the Old Books. Why didn’t he teach me anything about God?”

  “Maybe nobody ever taught him.”

  “He says things like, ‘God only knows how much money that’ll cost,’ or ‘Why in God’s name should I do that,’ but he never really talks about God. He prays when everybody else prays, on Assembly days at the chamber house—and that’s all.”

  “What are you getting at?” Jack said.

  “Well, we’re going to climb Bell Mountain and ring the bell because God wants us to, and maybe when the bell rings, the whole world will come to an end—I mean, we ought to know why,” Ellayne said.

  That was more than Jack could answer because he simply didn’t know why. But they’d hiked through the woods all day, and now their fire was dying down, and before too much longer, they were both asleep.

  It seemed to Jack that he’d hardly drifted off when there was a loud cry that woke him up, the fire was out, the light was grey, and Obst was thrashing around beside him, scattering dead leaves and groaning. Jack tried to grab an arm and shake him, but only got clouted for his pains.

  Ellayne scrambled out of the shelter. Wytt hopped around beside her, chattering, whistling, and brandishing his sharpened stick.

  And Obst sat up with a groan.

  “What’s the matter now!” Jack said, still smarting where the back of Obst’s hand had struck him across the cheek.

  “Oh! Your dream, Jack—I’ve had your dream! It’s terrible!”

  He shook all over. Ellayne crawled back into the shelter and put Hesket’s blanket over him. He pulled it tightly around his shoulders. Jack heard his teeth chattering.

  “It was just the way you told it, child,” he said, stammering. “The great voice of the bell, rolling down from the mountain, filling and shaking the whole world. Aah!”

  “I had the dream, too—once,” Ellayne said. “It was bad, but not that bad.”

  Obst ran off a long recitation of Scripture in the original language. Jack didn’t understand a word of it. But it made Obst’s teeth stop chattering.

  “You haven’t changed your mind again, have you—about helping us get to the mountain?” Ellayne asked.

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t dare. Let someone else defy the will of God. I’m too old to try. But I grieve for the world, that it should sink into fire as Caha sank into the sea, and be no more.”

  “Sink into fire?” the children cried together.

  “After a protracted period of tribulation,” the hermit said. “As Prophet Ryshah said, ‘Art thou mad, to wish for the day of the Lord?’”

  A hot flash of anger tore through Jack’s heart.

  “I don’t believe it!” he said. “I don’t believe King Ozias put that bell up there so God could destroy the world as soon as somebody rang it and burn up all the good people with the bad! And He wouldn’t need us for that.”

  Obst looked long and hard at him, as if Jack had just uttered a new prophecy in the ancient language of the Scriptures.

  “What’s wrong? What did I say that was wrong?” Jack said.

  “I’m not sure,” Obst said, very softly indeed. “All I know is that my fear has been removed. It’s all gone—God’s mercy to an old man. And maybe more than mercy. Maybe I need to listen more carefully when children speak.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Three Guests, No Host

  The lifeline of Obann was the Imperial River. Along its banks, from the mountains to the sea, the Oligarchy and the town councils saw to it that there was law and order. Ore from the mountains, lumber from the forested hills, bales of wool and sacks of grain—all found their way to market by transportation on or along the river. To keep this traffic flowing, militia patrolled, inspectors inspected, and work crews maintained the roads and docks.

  Once there were roads through Lintum Forest, and taverns and hostels where the roads met, and the king’s reeves to keep the peace. Once there were hunting lodges and summer pleasances for the rich, and foresters to mind the deer.

  But that was before the Empire fell. Now the land was wilderness, abandoned to the likes of Bort and Tumm and their patron, Latt Squint-eye.

  Martis spent a pleasant night with the two outlaws. They knew where the hermit kept hidden a clay jug that held more than water: it was a kind of berry wine he made, just the thing for keeping warm on a cool, clammy evening in a country not yet touched by spring. Bort served them only a cup of wine each, then carefully put the jug back where he’d found it.

  “I see you hold this hermit in high esteem—otherwise you’d have helped yourselves to all his wine,” Martis said. He took a sip and found it better than good. “How has he earned your respect? Tell me all about him. The Temple is very interested in him.”

  Bort sat by the fire. “We all like Obst,” he said. “He’s a healer, and he doesn’t ask questions or take sides. His house is a safe place for anyone who visits it. All he asks is peace, so there’s no fighting, no killing here. If men have a quarrel, and they end up here, they set it aside for a little while. More often than not, Obst patches it up between them. We think a lot of him for that. Makes life easier for everyone.”

  Humbug, Martis thought. “I can hardly wait to meet him,” he said. “If I set out after him tomorrow, do you think I might catch up?”

  “Ought to catch up easily, you being on horseback and him with two children to take care of.”

  Martis took care to reveal nothing beyond a mild curiosity about the children. But this was splendid news! His mission was all but accomplished. He’d found them. Now all he had to do was follow them up Bell Mountain and see what they found at the summit.

  “Are they safe with the hermit?” he asked.

  “Safe enough,” Bort said. “He has a safe-conduct from Latt. But that won’t stop someone from grabbing the kiddies, someone who doesn’t care what Latt thinks of it. I admit there’s some like that.”

  “Funny about that donkey, though,” Tumm said.

  “Donkey? What donkey?”

  “Oh, the kiddies had a donkey that looked like one that belongs to a friend of ours, Hesket the Tinker,” Bort said. “Obst said it belonged to the kids. I’d say they must’ve stolen it from Hesket, only you couldn’t steal as much as a wink from him. He’s the best thief in the country. Anyhow, Obst wouldn’t steal, not even from a thief.”

  Martis didn’t tell them that their friend the thief lay dead on the plain. The children must have picked up the donkey as it wandered loose without a master.

  They were prospering, he thought. They’d acquired a beast of burden and a guide. As a pupil of Lord Reesh, Martis did not attribute this to God’s watchful benevolence. But there was such a thing as good luck, and it seemed these children had it.

  By and by, as the fire in Obst’s hearth burned down, the three men unrolled their blankets for sleep. Martis closed his eyes but kept his ears open, pretending to slumber. He could tell by the sound of him that Bort was pretending, too—although Tumm did drop off, soon enough. Martis wondered if all three of them would still be alive by the morning. He knew he would be.

  As the night wore on, his thoughts wandered to the old volume of Scripture that the hermit kept on his shelf, and from there to older books that Reesh had in his private library, relics of the days of the Empire.

  “There are secrets in these books, Martis,” the First Prester said, when he showed them to his servant. “I’ve kept these secrets, and you must keep them, too. They are secrets of a glorious age—glorious days that will come again, if we do our work well.”

  The books contained marvels, he said: things that the world had forgotten. His eyes glowed as he spoke of them.

  “Ships that traveled to the farthest isles without the need of sails. Enormous carriages propelled by fire. Weapons to demolish a city’s walls in an instant.

&nbs
p; “And things that seem impossible—miraculous! Things we haven’t yet begun to understand. The ancients built devices that were capable of flight, like birds. And they knew a way to speak to one another over great distances as easily as I’m speaking to you.

  “It was all lost, Martis, destroyed in the ruination of the Empire. But we can find it again, if we can unlock the secrets contained in these books.”

  Very, very quietly—but still making enough noise to interrupt Martis’ reverie—Bort and Tumm got up and collected their blankets. Martis had his knife in his hand, but he didn’t need it. Almost soundlessly, the two outlaws crept out of the cottage and retreated into the woods.

  Then Martis permitted himself to sleep.

  Obst said they would have to collect more food before they could move on and that this was a good part of the forest for it. He showed Jack and Ellayne where to dig for edible bulbs while he went off to set snares. “A pity you couldn’t have come during berry season,” he said.

  He’d just gone off, and the children were poking sticks into the ground to loosen the roots, when a deep voice behind them said, “Hello! What’s this?”

  It was a great big man, a huge man, and they hadn’t heard him coming: not a whisper of a leaf against his thighs, not the least crackle from the dead leaves on the forest floor. He stood right behind them, with a long staff in one hand and the other on his hips, tall, with wide shoulders and a barrel chest. He wore clothes that seemed to be made of nothing but patches, and no two of them the same color. His fair hair was a thicket, complete with burrs and bits of leaf.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing in my woods?” he said. “Speak up!” And he shook his staff at them.

  Jack’s tongue froze. Obst had told them not to speak to anyone they met. But where was Obst?