The Glass Bridge (Bell Mountain #7)

by Lee Duigon

  “God knows I would like to be there with my people,” Buzzard said. “My sons’ sons must be warriors by now. I’d like to see them again before I die. But we’ve given our word to remain here, and I do not lightly break my word.”

  “I liked that First Prester,” Zekelesh said. “He struck me as a great man.” He took off his wolf’s-head cap and fiddled with it. “Maybe we ought to ask the prophetess what God wants us to do.”

  “You know she only speaks when God would have her speak,” Tughrul said. “She’s just a little child, otherwise.”

  “It won’t hurt to ask,” said Zekelesh.

  They sent for Abgayle, who came leading Jandra by the hand. In her other hand she carried a book of Scripture—not Obst’s volume of the Old Books, but a present given to King Ryons by Lord Orth: one of the first copies of the Lost Book of Ozias. Jandra’s toothed bird stalked after them, glaring at the chieftains.

  “Abgayle, we would ask—” Zekelesh started to say, but she held up her hand and didn’t let him finish.

  “Read to the men what you read to me,” she said to Jandra, and handed her the book.

  Jandra sat on the ground and opened the book. The chiefs fell silent. They’d seen her like this before, grave and solemn as no child of her age could ever be. She was going to prophesy, after all. God was going to speak to them. It made them feel like Jandra was the adult, a great and famous woman, and they were the children. Not one of them would dare to speak or stir—not now.

  Jandra turned the pages slowly, one by one, found the page she wanted, and began to read. Her voice was not the voice of a child.

  “The Lord said to me, I have established your seed forever, and it will not fail. It shall sleep sometimes, but it shall never die.

  “If your sons and your daughters forget me and turn away from me, I shall prune the tree of its unfruitful branches and cast them away; but not the root, for I have planted it, and it shall live.

  “And I shall raise up your throne again, and bless it, and endow you with mighty men to be your servants. They shall go out when you bid them to go out to war, and come in when you bid them to come in, and they shall stand still when you bid them to stand still. And my blessing shall be upon all of them that serve you faithfully, and I will hold them dear, as my servants.”

  Jandra closed the book, then closed her eyes and fell asleep sitting up. Abgayle gathered her into her arms.

  “There, Chieftains,” she said. “I don’t know what your question was, but now you have your answer.”

  When she went away to put Jandra to bed, Zekelesh sighed and put his cap back on.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess we stay.”

  Tughrul nodded. “At least for now,” he said. “Until King Ryons calls for us. I think he will, before the end.”

  Enith couldn’t help asking the baroness, “But how was that common farm boy able to cross the bridge, but not the knights? It doesn’t make sense!”

  For the same reason, Vannett thought, that Ellayne and Jack had been able to climb Bell Mountain. But that wasn’t something she could say to Enith.

  “Why do you think he could do it?” she said.

  “I don’t know! I thought Abombalbap was going to do it, or some other knight.”

  “God doesn’t see as we see, Enith. He saw something in that boy that he didn’t see in any of the knights. And we know from the Scriptures that He likes using the weak to defeat the strong, and He likes to exalt humble things, and humble people, over things and people that we think are grand and important. And I’m afraid,” said Vannett, “that’s all I know about it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  A Heap of Stones in Griff-land

  Trout’s prediction came true, and it rained heavily the very next day. He and Martis made a camp beside the road with shelters that kept out the rain, or at least most of it. There could be no more traveling until the rain stopped.

  Halfway up the mountain, Roshay Bault tried to continue his march, but could not. There were muddy places in the road where the horses slipped dangerously, and the men were miserable. That was when everyone realized they hadn’t brought tents. Roshay could only command that they all get to work constructing lean-tos and whatever other kinds of shelters they might devise, nowhere near as good as the ones Trout and Martis made. The baron set a good example, hacking at saplings with his sword and arranging them as best he could. When the men saw he was no better off than they were, they thought the more of him. Sergeant Kadmel and two troopers offered to improve his lean-to for him, but he wouldn’t allow it.

  “See to your own shelters,” he said. “I hate it, but I don’t suppose this cusset rain will kill me.”

  Fnaa kept his companions entertained with stories of the capers he’d cut while he pretended to be the king in Obann. “I had to make out that poor King Ryons had gone all simpleminded,” he said. “Queen Gurun thought I’d be safer if those men on the council thought the king was just a fool. But they didn’t like it when I threw the tax money to the people in the street! How they scrambled for it! I enjoyed it.”

  There was no such amusement in the baron’s camp—only wet clothes, cold rations, and short tempers. All of those men had much to learn about campaigning as soldiers.

  But on top of the mountain at the Golden Pass, things were quite different.

  “This rain is the best stroke of luck we’ve had yet,” Ysbott told his men. As an outlaw in the forest all his life, he was used to rough living. “Roshay Bault will have to stay put until the sun comes out again, but we won’t.” By now they were all too afraid of him to do anything but obey.

  Having done it many times before, Ysbott made himself a snug little shelter that kept out the rain. “Just do as I do,” he told the men, but gave them no more help than that. What they built was only a little better than nothing.

  “While the baron sits idle, we’ll be able to move some of this gold a mile or so down the mountain and stash it in the woods. They’ll march right past it, and whatever else may happen, that gold will be ours—enough to make us all rich for as long as we live.”

  So Ysbott explained his plan, as far as it went, and the townsmen thought it was a good one. Some of the gold sheets were thin enough for several men to carry. Just one would be enough for all ten of them to live comfortably from then on. “Imagine what ten sheets would do!” they encouraged one another. Nothing else would have ever gotten them to toil up and down the mountain in that pouring rain.

  “How will we find it again?” Gwawl asked, as they buried the first of the sheets under leaf litter, deeply enough so that no glint of gold could escape.

  “I’m a woodsman. You can leave it to me,” Ysbott said. These town chickens would lose the gold and then get lost themselves, if you gave them half a chance, he thought. At best, they’d know enough to follow the road back down to the plain—empty-handed and half-starved.

  Up and down they toiled in the rain, lugging sheets of gold, manhandling them through stubborn trees that showered still more water on them. It took all day to transport and cache four sheets. “When we’ve got the mountain to ourselves again,” Ysbott said, “we can bring a cart up here to carry our gold the rest of the way down.”

  By the time they stopped for the day, they were thoroughly exhausted and even more thoroughly soaked. Ysbott was the only one who could get a campfire going, having taken the precaution, before it started raining hard, of collecting dry firewood and stowing it in his shelter. The others had to do without, although he let them take turns sitting by his fire. Otherwise they’d be useless in the morning. As it was, it took them all the next day to move and cache three sheets. By evening, the rain began to let up.

  “I’ve never worked so hard in my life!” Hrapp said. “But once we’re safely home with all this gold, none of us will ever have to work again.”

  It rained on Griff-land, too, but not so heavily. King Ryons’ army, having advanced another day’s march eastward, erected another cairn to bear witness to G
od’s name.

  They had just finished it when they had visitors, a band of Griffs from a nearby encampment—women, children, and a few old men. All the warriors, they said, had gone south to fight the Abnaks. They were afraid of the army, but their curiosity outweighed their fear. Obst received them as welcome guests, although they cast uneasy glances at Ryons, Gurun, and the chieftains.

  “We can’t defend ourselves from you,” an elder said, “but we have nothing worth taking. We have barely enough food to keep ourselves alive. Some Zephites passed through here a week ago and ate up most of that.”

  “We won’t take anything that’s yours,” Obst said, “nor will we harm a hair of your heads.”

  “What means this heap of stones you’ve made?” a woman asked. “It seems a strange thing for anyone to do, to pile stones like that.”

  “Tell her, Tiliqua,” said Obst. He thought they might be more receptive to the message if they heard it from a fellow Griff.

  “We come in the name of the only true God, who has made us His children,” Tiliqua said, speaking to them in Griffish. “This is the God of Obann, and now our God, too. These cairns we have made so that everyone who sees them will know that we came here in His name.”

  “But why have you come?” asked the elder.

  “To set you free,” said Tiliqua.

  “Ask them about those Zephites,” Shaffur said.

  “My men will go out and find them,” Looth said.

  “The Zeph had a poor harvest last year, so now they come down and raid us for food,” the elder said. “They’ll give you a hard fight if you meet up with them. We and they alike are subjects of the Thunder King, but he doesn’t protect us from the Zeph. He has taken away our fighting men, and we cannot defend ourselves. The Zeph could kill us all, if they wished to.”

  “Our God will take away the Thunder King,” Tiliqua said. “Your young men will come home.”

  “Will you make this boy our king? Is that why you’ve come?”

  Obst spoke up. “This is Ryons, King of Obann by the grace of God. He seeks nothing that is yours, neither lands nor people.”

  “I crossed the mountains westward with the Thunder King’s great army,” Tiliqua said. “God destroyed that army. Surely you have heard the news.”

  But they hadn’t heard. No man of that army had ever returned, until now.

  “Don’t you know,” Tiliqua said, “that the Thunder King himself went up to the Golden Pass and perished there?” He pointed to the mountains in the west, dyed purple by a setting sun. “We came down by the same road that he built. There was no one there to stop us.”

  They remembered the cavalcades of wagons bringing gold and provisions and other supplies up the mountain, and the great show made by the Thunder King and his mardars when they passed through Griff-land. He never came back down, but they had never heard that he had died.

  “How else do you think we could have come down King Thunder’s road?” Tiliqua said.

  “But he couldn’t have died! Not him!” said a woman.

  “He is as dead as any man can be. The power of God destroyed him and the great golden hall he’d built up there. No army of ours came anywhere near him. God smashed him and his hall under an avalanche of ice and stone.”

  “How could they not know these things?” Ryons wondered, after Obst had translated. Well, the mardars certainly would not have told them. There couldn’t have been any survivors in that avalanche. And no one could have survived the avalanche and come down.

  “Some of you may have known a man named Chillith, who became a mardar among the Griffs,” Obst said. “He lost the sight of his eyes and became a servant of God. Alone and blind, he climbed the mountain in the winter, and in that golden hall, pronounced God’s judgment on the Thunder King. And judgment came. But there are more judgments yet to come.”

  The Griffs needed time to take this in, discussing it excitedly among themselves. Tiliqua translated for the chiefs.

  “A few of these did know Chillith,” he said. “They remember the day he cut off all his hair and became a mardar.” That, of course, was a shocking thing for a man of the Griffs to do: they are famous for the attention they lavish on their hair. “They’re afraid, hearing all this news about the disasters that befell the Thunder King. You’d think it would make them glad! But all they know is that there is still a Thunder King in Kara Karram, and if he died in the avalanche, how can he still be alive in his castle, far away?”

  By nightfall the Griffs at least understood that Ryons’ army meant them no harm. The warriors gave them rations—Looth’s hunters and foragers never came back empty-handed—and made friends with them. The Griffs gathered around Ryons, marveling that a boy should lead an army. They were even more interested in Gurun and could hardly take their eyes off her.

  “How is it that such a maid as this dares to go against the Thunder King?” the elder said. “Is she magical? Are there spells woven around her?”

  “Please—there is no magic in me!” Gurun said, blushing. “God sent me to Obann from a faraway country that you’ve never heard of to stand beside King Ryons. My people are fishermen and farmers.”

  “We’ve never seen your like,” said an old woman. “The Thunder King took our Griff gods away from us, said he would be our only god from now on. He took our goddess, too. We had a maiden goddess named Lucalla. And yet now you come, a girl, and your king is just a boy. There is something about this that we don’t understand! How can the likes of you bring destruction to the Thunder King, when our gods themselves could not?”

  “It is not by us that he will be destroyed,” said Gurun.

  “People of the Griff,” Obst said, “we will move on from here tomorrow, and you’ll return to your own village. Tell everyone, in all the Griffs’ encampments, what you’ve seen and heard today.”

  “We will tell them,” said the elder. “And sometime soon we’ll come back to this place and stand before this heap of stones that you’ve made to your God. We must wisely consider all these things.”

  “If there’s any wisdom left in us,” the old woman added, “after all that’s happened.”

  In the seminary of Obann, in an office whose window looked out on the charred ruins of the Palace, Preceptor Constan read Baroness Vannett’s letter. You might have thought he was reading a list of supplies for the scriptorium, for all the reaction he showed. His students and assistants complained that you never knew what the preceptor was thinking until he spoke his mind—if you could stand to wait that long.

  When he’d finished reading, he sat perfectly still for a while. You might have thought he was asleep, but he was thinking. Constan thought slowly, because he thought most thoroughly. Eventually he wrote a brief note and sealed it in an envelope, then summoned a student to deliver it at once to a certain housemaid in a certain house, who would see that a certain other person would get it without delay. That person was Gallgoid, who came to the preceptor’s house that evening after supper. Constan had sent his two servants out on errands, time-consuming but of no great importance, so that he would be alone when Gallgoid came.

  “Read this,” Constan said. “It’s from the baroness in Ninneburky.” They were seated in his study with the door shut and the curtains drawn.

  Anyone else might have burst out with an exclamation at the news that was in the letter. Gallgoid thought highly of Lord Orth, but didn’t show it.

  “I don’t see what we can do about this,” he said.

  “I’m thinking we had better keep this to ourselves,” Constan said. “She’s sent a letter to Prester Jod, too. I’ve invited him to come and see us.”

  “Good.” Gallgoid paused, then added, “She says Lord Orth went with the Abnaks willingly. That’s to be considered. Did you know King Ryons is across the mountains, too—or should be, by now?”

  “I didn’t know. But I suppose Baron Hennen has been informed of that.”

  “That’s another difficulty.” For a tiny moment, a half-smile crossed G
allgoid’s lips. “I haven’t heard from Hennen for some days. He feared some treachery on the part of Lord Chutt.”

  That news made no more impression on Constan than it would have on a boulder. But that was only outwardly. Knowing Constan’s ways, Gallgoid waited patiently for him to speak.

  “My concern must be solely that the work of copying and distributing God’s word continues without interruption,” he finally said. “That I will do, as much as it lies within my power. But with Lord Orth and Hennen both out of the city, and King Ryons himself gone into Heathen lands, and none of them likely to come back any time soon, if ever, someone must take command here. Who should it be?”