by Lee Duigon
“Burn you—no!” the man cried, shaking his head. “That other fellow was a friend of ours, Hesket the Tinker. We don’t know who killed him. But who are you, who comes riding a horse out here where no one ever rides? Hesket had a donkey, but whoever killed him took it.”
Martis twitched his cloak aside to show the red and white braid on his shoulder. He seldom wore it, but he thought it might be useful to him in this mission.
“As you can see,” he said, “I’m in the service of the Temple. I’ve come a long way, and I’m not in a good mood, so you’d be wise to try to please me. First tell me your names, and what you and your friend are doing here.”
“Bless you, elder brother, we’re thieves, my partner and I. That’s Osrhy, who you’ve killed. Thieves we are, but no murderers. My name’s Oolf.
“As for our being out here, well, our friend Hesket was to meet us, and he didn’t turn up, so we went out to look for him in case he was hurt or something. We know the way he always goes, so we went out to find him. And find him we did, but too late to do him any good. When we saw you coming—not knowing you were from the Temple—we thought we’d try for your horse. I confess we meant to steal him from you. We wouldn’t, if we knew you were from the Temple. And that’s the truth, elder!”
Martis believed him, although he was a little surprised to find so much reverence for the Temple in a country that didn’t have a chamber house, let alone a prester. He must remember to tell Reesh. But to move on to more important matters:
“Answer truthfully, Oolf,” he said. “Have you seen or heard anything of two children traveling in this country? They would have come down from the north and crossed the plains.”
“Children, elder?” The thief seemed genuinely puzzled. “Nay, I’ve not seen any children round these parts, traveling or otherwise. It’d be a very remarkable thing to see children around here, elder.”
“Who do you think killed the tinker?”
“Bless me, sir, I don’t know. There wasn’t anyone I knew but liked Hesket and bartered with him. Nor do I reckon he’d be an easy man to kill, either. He was a very cautious sort of man and full of tricks.”
“You’re sure you’ve heard nothing of the two children?”
“Oh, very sure indeed!” Oolf said. Martis decided the thief was scared enough to be telling the truth.
“I’m a stranger in these parts, so perhaps you could advise me,” Martis said. “If you were looking for two children who’d crossed the plains, but you weren’t sure exactly where they’d crossed, where do you think they’d be most likely to be seen by people? If they came to the forest, say, and then turned east. Think carefully. I very much want to find them.”
Oolf was beginning to think that he’d neither be killed nor sold into slavery if he answered all the questions honestly. That was just what Martis wanted him to think.
“Elder,” he said, after a long pause, “there’s one man in these parts who stays put and knows better than anybody what’s what. He’s a hermit named Obst, and he’s been here longer than anyone can remember. Sooner or later, he gets all the news. His house is not far from here. I can tell you how to find it, if you like.”
Martis thought it would be wise to consult the hermit. Oolf gave him directions to the hermit’s cabin, and Martis repeated them to be sure he had them right.
“There’s one more thing you can do for me, younger brother, before we part,” he said. “Please retrieve my skewer from your partner’s chest, wipe it clean, and hand it up to me—there’s a good fellow.”
Oolf obeyed; and when he held up the skewer, Martis took it with his left hand, and with his right, crushed the thief’s skull with the iron-shod mace. Oolf went down without a murmur, dead before he hit the ground.
Martis dismounted to wipe his mace clean on Oolf’s clothes. He stuck his skewer back into his cloak, mounted up again, and rode on, leaving two dead men behind him.
CHAPTER 20
The Dues Collector
Obst knew the forest like Jack knew the streets of Ninneburky. The paths he chose never petered out in the middle of a bramble patch, or a miry spot of ground. He taught the children how to make a good shelter in a few minutes, just by bending saplings into arcs, anchoring them to the ground, and piling leaves and ferns in the right places. He knew which mushrooms and tubers were good to eat and how to set up snares to catch his supper. Best of all, he knew how to start a fire without matches, needing nothing but a sharp stick, a chunk of rotten wood, and some dry duff from the forest floor—all of which you ought to keep ready to hand, in case it rained and you couldn’t find anything dry. The first night out, he taught them and let them try to make fire; and Ellayne squealed with delight when she was the first to get a flame going. Trust girls to make a fuss, Jack thought.
So they had their fire, supper in their bellies, a leafy shelter over their heads, and dry leaves to nestle down in. And Obst sat on his heels and peered straight out into the night, and didn’t say a word. His lips moved constantly, but the children couldn’t hear anything.
“He’s doing it again,” Jack said. “I hope he’s still our friend when he snaps out of it. I hope he doesn’t change his mind again about killing us.”
“Oh, stop it, Jack! He’s praying.”
“It’s no kind of praying I ever saw in the chamber house. It isn’t even the kind of prayer we did up on the hill that night; and I’m sure we weren’t doing it the right way.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking or making noise.”
“He isn’t listening. I don’t think he can hear us.”
It made them uneasy to share the shelter with someone who was doing something they didn’t understand. Ellayne could hardly imagine what her father the chief councilor would think of Obst. And outside in the dark, unseen animals and birds made unearthly noises: a whoop here, a clatter there. Jack and Ellayne both thought of the horrific animal they’d seen carrying half of a knuckle-bear in its enormous jaws—thought of it, but didn’t talk about it. Wytt crawled under Ellayne’s coat and went to sleep in her lap. Tethered to a nearby tree, the donkey slept, too.
“We ought to give him a name,” Ellayne said. Trying to name a donkey would be much better than just sitting there, waiting for who knew what.
“He’s a good donkey. He deserves a good name,” Jack said.
Ellayne wanted to give him a name out of a storybook—Gallaweyk, after Abombalbap’s horse, or Lleffrew, after somebody who’d killed a one-eyed giant once. But Jack held out for the name of Ham, after an older boy who’d taught him how to make a slingshot. This time Jack got his way—and with it, a tiny pang of homesickness.
“I wish my father would’ve let me go out to the river and play with you and your friends,” Ellayne said. “I wonder why he kept me home all the time!”
Just then Obst sighed and stretched his legs. He shifted to a more comfortable position, cross-legged.
“You needn’t stare,” he said. “I’ve told you these spells are a gift God gives me. It’s how He talks to me.”
“God talks to you? What does He say?” Ellayne asked.
“He doesn’t talk like we talk, in words. At least, if there are words, I don’t remember them when it’s over. I suppose if I were a prophet, such as prophets were of old, I might be able to remember them and repeat them to God’s people. But I’m not a prophet. The words are in my heart, somehow, but not in my mind.”
“How did you learn to do it?” Jack said.
“It isn’t something you learn,” Obst said. “It just started happening after I’d been out here for some years. I would read the Scripture, and meditate, and pray, and it was like a brook feeding into a larger stream. I don’t suppose the brook knows how that happens. There it is, trickling along, and the next thing it knows, it’s part of something greater.”
“But who is God, really?” Ellayne said. “It’s so confusing! Who is He?”
Obst stared at her. “What an extraordinary question!” he said. But Jack was
glad she’d asked it.
“You say He talks to you, like a person, but without words,” she said. “And in my books, presters and hermits and even knights are always talking about God, but they never say who He is or what He’s like, or why they’re interested in Him. People nowadays don’t talk like that. They go to the chamber house on Assembly days and the prester says, ‘God bless the nation of Obann,’ or something like that, and nobody knows what it means.”
“And I asked my teacher,” Jack put in, “and he said I’d have to wait until I was old enough to read the Scriptures.”
Obst shook his head. He put his hands over his eyes, then let them fall with a slap against his thighs.
“The world is worse now than it was in the days of the Empire’s greatest wickedness!” he cried. “Children, you walk on God’s earth under His sky. You breathe His air and drink His water!
“How could I begin to tell you who God is? An age upon an age ago, Obann was a holy people. In those days the Most High revealed the Scriptures to His people and spoke to them through prophets. God’s words are with us still—but no one listens.
“Don’t you see? That’s why I came to Lintum Forest. I couldn’t find God in the Temple that was built to His name. The presters didn’t know Him. All God’s people have forgotten Him, and He has turned His back on them. Worse! He shall destroy them!”
Tears shone on his face. Jack wondered why he wept. What had they said that was so terrible? Jack was very sure there was not a soul in Ninneburky who would cry over God. But the hermit was at least half a madman: no telling what would make him laugh or cry.
Obst took a very deep breath, then sat up straight and reined himself in.
“Your ignorance is not your fault,” he said. “It’s been a long, long time in Obann since children were taught the truth. So be it!
“I’ll teach you, if I can. A little bit at a time, as we travel. That way you can take it in. I received little enough instruction as a child, and that was a long time ago. Now I suppose there’s no instruction at all, but only the aggrandizement of the Temple in its greed for worldly things.
“Listen, then. To answer your question: yes, God is a person, even as each of us is a person. He made us that way.
“This is the most important thing for you to learn, children. Everything you see, and everything you can’t see, from the stars in heaven to the stones under the ground, the animals, the plants, the sun and moon, and all the people who have ever lived, including you and me—all of that, God created.
“A potter takes clay and makes a pot. But God took Nothing and out of it made Everything.”
He paused to smile at them. “Now don’t tell me that you understand that! Because no one ever has understood it, and no one ever will—not fully. We can only go on trying to understand it for as long as we live.
“What I’ve just taught you is the very first thing in all the Scriptures and the oldest teaching in the world. If we can receive it, then we can receive everything else the Old Books have to offer.
“Now, settle down for the night and try to believe. Try to understand.”
The next day they were up early and made good time through the woods, Obst leading the way with long strides; it was hard for the children to keep up. He’d spoken hardly a word since they woke, but Jack didn’t suppose a hermit was used to talking, having lived alone for so long.
His silence was infectious. Jack and Ellayne hardly spoke to one another. Part of the reason was that Jack kept thinking about all the things the hermit said the last night, especially the bit about God making all the people out of nothing. He guessed Ellayne was thinking about it, too. What did it mean? You couldn’t make something out of nothing; you always had to start with something else. But that’s what the Old Books said God did. Jack wondered why neither Ashrof nor the prester had ever mentioned it.
He was pondering this when Obst, leading the way, stopped suddenly, thrusting out a hand to stop the others.
“Someone’s coming!” he said. “Whoever it is, don’t either of you speak. Not a word.”
Jack heard men’s voices. Just ahead lay a small open space, and two men were entering it from the opposite direction. They spotted Obst right away, and stopped. He lifted his walking-staff to greet them.
“Hello there, old man! Fine day for a ramble, eh?”
“Hello, Bort,” Obst said. “I’m surprised to see you in these parts.”
This was the first man to enter the clearing—a short, fat fellow, almost round, with a round face and a nose like a ball of dough. Most fat people looked soft, but everything about this man was hard—especially his eyes, Jack thought. The man behind him was younger, taller, thinner. Both were dressed in green from head to toe, in clothes much stained and often mended.
“Why shouldn’t we be in these parts?” the younger man said.
“Quiet, Tumm!” fat Bort said. “I guess I know what you mean, old man. But why should I care where I go in all of Lintum Forest?”
“He means we’re not afraid of Helki,” said the younger man. Bort shot him a look that persuaded him to say no more.
“Why don’t you tell us who your little friends are, Obst? It may be we can find a use for them.”
“They’re under my protection. I’m sure your master wouldn’t want you to trouble us.”
“I wouldn’t call Latt Squint-eye my master. We’re all free men in Lintum. But who said anything about trouble? We’re all friends here,” Bort said. “What news from your neck of the woods?”
By now Jack realized these were outlaws, and when he traded a look with Ellayne, he knew she realized it, too. He was glad Obst hadn’t made them talk about Hesket.
“That looks like the tinker’s donkey,” Bort said. “How did you come by it? He’d never trade that beast, though he’d trade his own mother.”
“It belongs to these children,” Obst said.
“And when are you going to tell us who they are and what you’re doing with them?” Tumm said.
“I’m taking them to their father, who’s working in the mines at Silvertown,” Obst said. “I’m sure you remember Latt has given me safe conduct anywhere in Lintum, since I healed the ulcer on his leg. I’m sure you’re on your way somewhere to collect Latt’s dues for him—but you won’t get anything from Helki, except for a drubbing with his rod. I wouldn’t spend much time around here if I were you. Hasn’t he sworn to kill you?”
Both of the outlaws glowered fiercely.
“You can tell Helki when you see him that I don’t care a snap for his threats.” Bort snapped his fingers. “It so happens we are on our way somewhere else and only passing through. But you can tell Helki that one of these days Latt will hang him from the highest tree in the woods. Let’s go, Tumm!”
Obst and the children made way for them, and they clumped off in a hurry. Obst led the way across the clearing and up the path down which the outlaws had come. He said nothing for perhaps an hour, then stopped and turned.
“That is Hesket’s donkey, isn’t it? I recognize it now,” he said. “And you did mention that you’d already met one outlaw. I think you’d better tell me what happened.”
“Those two men back there were outlaws, too—weren’t they?” Jack said.
Obst nodded. “Bort the Collector is indeed an outlaw, and you’re lucky I was with you when you met him. He works for Latt Squint-eye, who styles himself King of Lintum Forest. Most of the others pay dues to him, and Bort collects them. Those who don’t pay come to bad ends.
“Hesket the Tinker doesn’t work for Latt, but has always been very useful to him. He’ll want to know how you came by Hesket’s donkey. You’d better tell me.”
He had to wait for his answer.
“We didn’t kill him,” Ellayne said.
“But he put something in our tea that made us go to sleep, and then he tied us up,” Jack said. “It was nighttime when we woke, and he was already dead. And we couldn’t just leave the donkey there.”
Ob
st drew the whole story out of them, question by question. Wytt came out of the ferns and stood listening, as if he understood every word. But he didn’t react when Jack told how Hesket died.
“God has provided you with a protector,” the hermit said. “Well, well—the tinker was an amusing man and good company on a stormy night, but he deserved his fate. He would have sold you to the Heathen beyond the mountains—or worse. He should have protected you, but he chose to do evil.
“There is a brisk trade in human souls over the mountains these days. That’s why there are so few settlers here, although the land is rich and fertile. In ancient times, in the days of the good kings, God’s Law ruled in Lintum Forest. Not anymore! Only a mockery of law, imposed by the likes of Latt Squint-eye.”
They made their camp late that day; night almost overtook them. Obst spoke again after they ate.
“I’d planned to take you to Silvertown before we turned north for Bell Mountain,” he said. “Now it seems better for us to change course and turn sooner. I’d rather not trust in Latt’s safe-conduct any more than I have to.”
Somewhere in the dark—impossible to tell how far away—something let out a long, quavering wail. Ellayne shuddered.
“A wolf,” Obst said. “Wait, and you’ll hear it answered. There are more wolves in Lintum than there used to be.”
Another voice took up the howl, and then another, and another. Soon a whole chorus filled the night.
“The world is getting worse, isn’t it?” Jack asked.
Obst didn’t answer. He sat stock-still, muttering Scripture under his breath.
“God’s going to end the world when He hears the bell,” Ellayne said. “He’s going to put an end to the whole world, an end to everything. Maybe we shouldn’t ring the bell.”
But Jack found he couldn’t even think of turning back.
“If God is strong enough to make the world, and strong enough to end it, I don’t see why He’d need us to ring the bell before He does what He wants to do,” Jack said. “And if it isn’t us, it’ll just be someone else. But if God wants me to ring the bell, I think I’d better. I’d be too afraid not to.”
