The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain #7) Read online

  “Maybe it is,” Vannett said softly.

  Ellayne spoke up. “Jack and I will go and tell Father. Wytt and Martis can come with us, so we’ll be safe enough. And you, Mother, must send messages to Lintum Forest and to Prester Jod. They’ve got to be told about this!”

  “I’ll go, too!” Fnaa put in quickly. “And Trout, too, to help watch over us.”

  It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Vannett to say, “No, absolutely not,” and she almost did. It was what her husband would have wanted. But it came to her that her daughter and adopted son had done many harder journeys in God’s service. And if Martis, Trout, and Wytt couldn’t protect them, who could? Besides, she could hardly leave it up to Ellayne to write the letters. It wasn’t every day that the First Prester of the Temple got whisked off into another country. Indeed, it had never happened before. Those letters would take a lot of thought.

  When she spoke again, she spoke more as a baroness than as a growing child’s mother.

  “Hlah, you must stay a little while and help me write the letters,” she said. “Ellayne, Jack, and Fnaa, you must promise to do everything that Martis and Trout tell you to do, and not stray out of their sight. Give me your word on it!”

  All the children promised. Vannett didn’t know Fnaa, but she supposed that if he could be trusted to masquerade as the king and hold his place for him, he could be trusted in this, too. As for her own children—well, they weren’t just little children anymore. In truth, they both knew more about these things than she did.

  “Very well,” she said, “I’ll let you go, all three of you. Ellayne, find Martis and bring him to me. You’d better set out first thing in the morning.”

  “I ought to go, too,” Hlah said. “It was I who gathered the Abnaks to hear Lord Orth speak. I fear for him.”

  “Naturally,” said Vannett, “but you’re all done in and not fit to undertake another journey until you rest. Oh, I knew this would happen! Or something very like it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  A Treasure Trove That Guards Itself

  Ysbott and Hrapp made their way swiftly across the plain between the rivers, following the trail of Ryons’ army. Even Hrapp could have followed that trail, had he thought of it. But some of the men of Ninneburky hadn’t thought of it, and so far Ysbott and Hrapp had overtaken no one on their trek.

  “I wonder where they all went,” Hrapp said.

  “Most of them left before we did, and we haven’t caught up to any of them yet,” Ysbott said. “But I’m afraid some of them just took off in various directions, all wrong. Too bad for them.”

  Still, by the time they came to the first upturning of the hills, the end of the plain and the beginning of the wooded country, they had overtaken half a dozen gold seekers out of Ninneburky. Ysbott gathered them into a group and made himself their chief. He’d always been a leader of outlaws, never a follower. It came naturally to him, and these townsmen responded to it.

  “We ought to stick together,” he said, “in case there’s any danger on the way. And six men can carry away much more gold than one or two.” Lying came to him even more naturally than leadership. “I’m just an ordinary fellow like the rest of you. For the past few years, I’ve been a trapper and a fisherman, up and down the great river, so I know a thing or two about living off the land. My name is Tobb.”

  Not that Ysbott’s name was well known in Ninneburky, but he deemed it best to be careful. He had already warned Hrapp never to speak the name of Ysbott.

  “Don’t worry—I won’t,” said the cobbler, not needing to mention his firm belief that Ysbott would stick a knife between his ribs if he crossed him in any way.

  Ysbott urged his new followers to speed. Soon they found the Thunder King’s road and were on their way to the Golden Pass.

  Roshay Bault’s progress was slow. He had to keep sending out patrols, some of them all the way to the banks of both rivers, to round up any of his townspeople who’d gotten lost. Before he was even halfway across the plain, his riders had brought in a good fifty of them.

  “You cusset fools and butterheads!” the baron growled at them, when they all stood sheepishly before him, under guard. “Half of you would have wandered here and there until you starved, and the rest would have found more original ways of coming to a bad end. For your own protection, I’ll have to force you to come with me and make yourselves useful.”

  One man, bolder than the rest, objected.

  “We’re not slaves, Baron! I remember when you were only the chief councilor. Who are you to forbid any man from trying to better himself? Why should you have all that gold—eh?”

  Under their breath, the townsmen murmured their agreement. But Roshay turned such a fierce look on them, they subsided almost instantly. His rages had long been known in Ninneburky as something to avoid.

  “I know you, Donn Decker—once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker! It was a bad day for me when I let you out of the stocks—and with only half a flogging, too.” The baron’s face was getting red. With an effort anyone could see, he swallowed his wrath.

  “That gold belongs to King Ryons and to all the nation of Obann,” he said. “We have to get it so that the Thunder King will never get it back. It’s not for me—and it’s cuss’t well not for you, either! It’s for rebuilding towns that were ravaged in the war, and houses, barns, and boatyards. It’s for equipping more soldiers to defend us, because the Thunder King will come again. Strong walls and deep ditches: every town will need them. Or would you rather the Zephites came and took you while you were gambling away the last of your riches behind the nearest ale-house?”

  One of the gold seekers forgot himself and raised a cheer, and all the rest joined in. Donn Decker was silenced. And when the cheers died down, the baron spoke again.

  “It’s going to be mighty hard work, bringing all that gold down from the mountain. Naturally, every man who helps to carry it will get a share of it, paid enough to make it worth his while.” He looked down from horseback at the men he’d rescued from their folly. “Even you ninnies,” he added, “if you don’t blunder off and get lost again.”

  That night Helki sat alone by the ruins of the hall, listening to the wind make ghost noises. In the distance some animal cried out—once, twice, and then no more. It was the cry of no beast that Helki knew, and he knew them all. Maybe it was that creature that hunted in the trees, the one that had stalked him once before.

  No other living thing came anywhere near the site.

  Sooner or later, according to the plan, Roshay Bault would arrive to take the gold. Helki had explored the heaped ruins. “It’ll be a tricky job,” he said to himself. It was snow that had destroyed the place—flattened it, disarranged it, choked it. When the snow melted, it left gaps and cavities among the heaped-up stones and timbers, and left many pieces precariously balanced, one atop another. One false step, Helki reckoned, and there would be another dead body lying crushed amid the rubble. As it was, you didn’t have to probe very deeply to find human bones. Even with no one touching the pile, you would occasionally hear a low rumble, a high-pitched creak, or even an explosive snap as the ruin shifted under the pressure of its own weight. Had Helki grown up in a house with toys to play with, he might have likened it to a gigantic game of pick-up sticks—devilish hard to remove one stick without jiggling the others and losing the game.

  Some of the gaps and cavities were big enough to admit him, should he try to crawl in and explore further. Those lightless spaces tempted him: no telling what secrets they might hold. That was by far more tempting to him than the gold, but he resisted. “Not worth getting buried alive for,” he thought.

  As the night wore on, he decided not to wait for Roshay Bault. The baron had a good head on his shoulders—no need to warn him that this place was dangerous. “It needs no guard,” Helki thought, “because it guards itself.” Much better, he decided, to move on, southward, and see if there was anything happening among the settlements that King Ryons oug
ht to know about.

  CHAPTER 16

  A Witness in the Heathen Land

  Wytt was happy.

  Perched atop the pack on the back of Ham, the children’s donkey, he drank in the smells and birdcalls of the early morning. Ham was happy to be on the trail again, with Jack leading him and Ellayne treating him to pieces of an apple. Ham and Wytt had climbed Bell Mountain together, almost to the top, and visited the ruins of the Old City of Obann when the children and Martis found the lost scrolls of King Ozias.

  Martis rode ahead on his Wallekki horse, Dulayl, with Trout striding beside him, following the plain trail of Ryons’ army and the baron’s militia. Martis and the children had been to the Golden Pass before and had seen the avalanche bury the golden hall. None of them would have liked to go there in the winter ever again.

  Fnaa scampered here and there, occasionally getting pointers from the men on how to read a trail.

  “But anyone could read this one,” Trout said. “All those horses make a mess.”

  “The baron isn’t making very good time,” Martis said. “At this rate we’ll catch him before he’s halfway up the road. I wonder why he goes so slowly.” They didn’t know the baron was busy rounding up gold-hungry townsmen. “It’s just as well. We’ll save him from chasing off after the First Prester.”

  “Chief Foxblood will keep him safe, if he can,” said Trout. A horse would have been provided for him, but he’d never ridden one before and didn’t want to start learning now. Martis led a spare horse for the children, should it be needed.

  “I’d rather walk,” Ellayne said. “The time I rode to Obann, I got saddle sores.”

  Ahead of the baron, and now with eight men in his following, Ysbott found the road he’d heard about.

  “No lollygagging!” he warned the others. “We want to get there first.”

  “It won’t do us much good to be there, once the baron gets there, too,” said one of them.

  “We’ll still have time to take some for ourselves—enough to make us rich,” Ysbott said. “The more time we have up there by ourselves, the more time I’ll have to think of something.”

  “Tobb’s a thinker; you can count on that,” Hrapp said. Ysbott favored him with an indulgent smile.

  “They said it’d take an army of men to bring down all that gold,” said someone else, “and there are only ten of us.”

  “If you want to turn back, Gwawl, there’s no one stopping you.”

  None of them wanted to turn back. They were tired of working for pennies, all their lives, and the occasional silver. Visions of wealth danced through their heads, unimpeded by any practical considerations. This one wanted a townhouse in Obann with servants to call him “my lord”; that one wanted a beautiful young wife who wore mink stoles.

  As for Ysbott, he hadn’t thought of something yet. His thoughts were like a swimmer plunged suddenly into cold, dark water without knowing the location of the shore. But the shore had to be somewhere, and it was up to him to find it. He no sooner hatched one plan than he had to discard it as unworkable and come up with another.

  “Can’t you march any faster?” he goaded the men. “Anyone would think you were going to a funeral.” Spurred on by faith in him and dreams of sudden wealth, they did indeed march faster, despite its being all uphill.

  At the very least, Ysbott thought, these men could carry off more gold than he could ever have hoped to obtain in all his life, if he lived a hundred years and robbed a new victim every other day. It would be easy enough to have all of it to himself. These town-bred chickens wouldn’t know how to protect themselves from his cunning mind, his smooth speech, or his knife.

  But there also had to be some way to hurt the baron—Roshay Bault, who’d hunted him, Ysbott, like a terrier hunts a rat, and whose daughter had nearly blinded him with witchcraft. There had to be a way to make the baron suffer, and his accursed daughter.

  “I’ll find it!” Ysbott swore to himself.

  The Abnaks wasted no time in spiriting Orth over the mountains, out of Obann and into their country. Abnaks travel swiftly in the mountains and the woods, knowing all the paths by heart and expert at collecting food on the run. They broke up into many smaller bands and filtered across the mountains, where war awaited them. The swiftest warriors went first to spread the news: the Obann God would help the Abnaks, and Obann’s greatest holy man had joined them.

  Chief Foxblood took charge of the First Prester, who didn’t speak a word of any language but Obannese, both classical and modern, and had never borne a weapon in his life. But Foxblood spoke good Obannese and Tribe-talk and passable Wallekki. “There’ll always be a few of us on hand who will understand your speech, First Prester—have no fear of that,” he said. “And I must say, you’re a lot less trouble than I thought you’d be. Hlah told me they used to call you Sunfish. Do you mind if we call you that? It’s ‘Et-taa-naa-qiqu’ in our language—much easier to say than ‘Orth.’”

  Orth smiled at him. “Those were the happiest days of my life, when I had that name,” he said. “I’d be glad to have it again.”

  “You’re able to eat things that no dainty Westman can eat, not any that I’ve ever heard of.” Hlah had fed Orth on many things that Abnaks eat when pressed for speed: various roots, fungi, beetle larvae, and other treats that would never have appeared on Lord Orth’s table in the city. “Hlah taught you well.”

  “I owe Hlah my life,” said Orth. “And he was the means by which God restored my soul.”

  On the other side of the mountains the Abnaks gathered again, a great gathering, all of them eager to see the great Obannese holy man, rumored to be a shaman without peer. With Foxblood translating, Orth addressed them.

  “Children of God—new children, who have not yet known their father—the Lord of All has been a long time waiting for you,” he said. “You do not know it yet, but He has plans for you.

  “For the Lord means to build a new Temple, not like the Temple in Obann, which perished. The first Temple, built by great King Kai in ancient days; the greatest of the Temples, the second, built in the days of Obann’s Empire and perished in the Day of Fire; and the third, in the new city of Obann on the north bank of the river, which the Thunder King destroyed—all three, the work of human hands, have perished. But this will be a new kind of temple that cannot be destroyed: a temple not of wood and stone and gold, but a temple of the human heart, whose floor will be God’s earth and whose roof, God’s sky. It will be a temple not just for Obann, but a house of prayer for all the peoples under the sun. The work has already begun. Men and women and children of the Abnaks, you will be as stones built into a glorious temple of the heart—”

  At this the crowd grew noisily excited.

  “They want to know,” said Foxblood, “if God is going to turn them into stones. Don’t be afraid, Et-taa-naa-qiqu. They’re not angry, not a bit. They just don’t understand. But it is the kind of talk they like to hear from a holy man.”

  That put Orth off his stride, but only for a moment.

  “Don’t be afraid!” he cried, raising his hands for silence. “You won’t be turned to stone. There won’t be any stone in this new Temple. It is God’s will that you should live in peace, enjoying your own land and all the good things that God has given you. All He asks is that you learn to know Him and love Him and trust Him and honor Him, as He loves and cares for you. For it is not His will that you should be as prey to the Thunder King.”

  The Abnaks, when Foxblood had translated those words, broke out into cheers and dancing.

  “They’re doing a scalp dance without the scalps,” Foxblood explained, “although they expect to get some, rather soon. They like your words, Sunfish. But of course there’s first the little matter of a war we have to win. But now they want you to bless their axes for them and their spears.”

  So Lord Orth, a man of peace and the greatest scholar in Obann, invoked blessings on the barbarians and their weapons—not entirely sure that he was in the right for doi
ng so, but praying silently that God would make it right in the end. “Give me the words you wish me to speak to these people, O Lord,” he prayed, “and lead me well, because I don’t know where I’m going.”

  At the bottom of King Thunder’s road, in the country of the Heathen, Obst bid the men of the army to gather stones, as many as they could, and heap them into a great pile: “Something that will not be easily removed,” he said.

  “Why?” said Shaffur. “What do we want with a great pile of stones?”

  “Please, my lord—you’ll see.”

  The Wallekki warriors grumbled, but went about the work as hard as any of the others. “Once we would have refused to do this,” Shaffur said to Ryons. The boy king nodded, knowing very well that Wallekki males reserved all such work to slaves. He’d been one of those slaves, not so long ago.

  “Why do you do it now, Chief?” he asked.