Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series)

by Lee Duigon

  He might have, had the old man commented on anything he said. But Obst held his peace, listening intently. To Lord Reesh, his patron, Martis would never have confessed to a single moment of weakness. Reesh would not have had the patience for it: Martis’ feelings could be of no use to him.

  Only once did Obst speak, and then only because Martis asked a question.

  “I hardly understand myself anymore,” he was saying. “The little girl was nothing to me. I couldn’t abandon my mission for her sake. But now she haunts me. I keep hearing her say, ‘There is a book missing.’ Why did she say that? What could it mean?”

  He paused there, and at last the hermit spoke.

  “But surely you know what she meant,” he said. “Were you not schooled in the Temple? Haven’t you studied the Scriptures?”

  Martis shrugged. When Reesh took him into his service, he was little more than a boy, a cutpurse and a pickpocket on his way to a short career as a thief, and then the gallows or the slave pens. Reesh taught him to read and write, but made no scholar of him.

  “I never studied to be a reciter or a prester,” he said.

  “Then know this,” Obst said. “There were bad times during the age of the Empire, and worse times between the fall of the kingdom and the rise of the Empire. Not only did the Temple lie in ruins. There was a great falling away from faith, and persecution of the faithful.”

  “Yes, but the Temple was rebuilt—”

  Obst overrode him. “Not all that was put away has been recovered,” he said. “To this day, there are writings that are mentioned in the Scriptures but that no one has read for two thousand years. That’s what the girl was telling you. There is a book missing—a Book of Scripture. It’s been missing for all this time, but it will soon be found again. That’s what she meant.”

  Martis rebelled. “Absurd! How could a mere child think of a thing like that? A toddler, a baby—”

  “Babes and children, old men and old women, and slaves, and the wretched of this world: they shall all speak words of prophecy,” Obst said. “They’ll all receive visions from the Lord, when the day of the Lord is at hand. Didn’t you know that? Why else do you suppose Jack and Ellayne came up this mountain? Not scholars, not presters. A boy and a girl!”

  Obst cited fascicles and verses from the Wisdom Songs and half the books of the Prophets. Martis listened, stunned.

  Reesh should have told him this. Why hadn’t he? Was the First Prester’s unbelief so fragile that he had to protect it by pretending not to see or hear?

  “I suppose there is much you haven’t told me about yourself and your reason for coming here,” Obst said. “No matter. God brought you here. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Your terrible bird would have devoured you. And God meant for you and me to meet and have this conversation.

  “But I’m tired now, and I want to go back to sleep. I suggest you do the same. Wake me at moonrise, and I’ll tell you how to find the children.”

  The old man rolled onto his side and shut his eyes. In his imagination Martis heard Lord Reesh shouting, “Throttle him, you fool! Prod him with a heated knife, and make him tell you now!”

  For the first time in his life, Martis didn’t listen to his master. He shut his mind and was soon asleep under the shelter beside the hermit.

  CHAPTER 37

  Night on the Mountain

  Jack and Ellayne found a place to sleep that might have been created for that very purpose. High boulders sheltered it on one side and a towering scarp on the other. Tough grass grew there in thick tussocks. They cut armfuls of it to cushion them against the stony breast of the mountain.

  All around this place were King Ozias’ signs, carved into the rock.

  “What a pity we can’t read it!” Ellayne said.

  “But I’m sure this must be the spot where Ozias spent his night on the mountain,” Jack said.

  “It says in my book that King Ozias had more adventures than Abombalbap, and harder ones.”

  “Does your book say what happened to him after he came down from the mountain?”

  Ellayne shook her head. Jack wished he knew the Old Books better. Ozias was the last king, the very last, and the only one of the latter kings who pleased God. That was what Ashrof said. “Blessed forever, say the Scriptures. King Ozias the Blessed.”

  God had a funny way of showing blessedness, Jack thought. Of course, he didn’t know the whole story of Ozias’ life, just the bits that Ashrof had taught him. How the usurpers tried to kill the queen before her child could be born, and how she’d had to flee to Lintum Forest where Ozias was born. How his enemies hunted him all the days of his life, and how he finally became king, in spite of all of them. And he gave thanks to God, and ruled with justice and mercy, and beat down the Heathen, and composed so many of the Wisdom Songs. But the rebels made a compact with the Heathen and drove King Ozias from his throne. They sought his life. They hunted him up and down Obann, he and his little band of faithful men. But he escaped them always, time and again—

  And that was all there was to it.

  “It isn’t right that he just disappeared,” Jack said. “Where did he go from here? How long did he live, and how did he die? Ashrof wasn’t even sure Ozias climbed this mountain. He said the Scriptures don’t say, one way or the other.”

  “Well, we know he did because here are his signs,” Ellayne said.

  “He went up and came down—and that’s all that anybody knows. There ought to be more to it,” Jack said. “There ought to be an end to the story. It shouldn’t just stop before it comes to the end.”

  Ellayne looked up at the grey sky, and shivered. “We’d better get the fire started,” she said.

  They found a sheltered bay among some house-sized boulders, and there they built their fire, spread their grass, and had their supper, the rest of the marmot. Ham munched happily on the mountain grass. Wytt, who’d been riding atop the firewood all day, scurried off to explore.

  It was going to be a cold night, but the children had their winter clothes, the wolf pelts, and their fire. And when the last trace of daylight fled, the stars came marching out in endless armies. Jack and Ellayne looked up at more stars than they’d ever seen in their lives; looked and looked, and always more to see—until clouds rode across the sky and hid the stars. In a moment it was as if the stars were only something that they’d dreamed or just imagined.

  Jack couldn’t bring himself to speak. His mind was carrying one big thought and couldn’t carry any more.

  Tomorrow they’d be going to the top. Climbing up into the cloud that hid the summit, passing out of sight and knowledge of the world; and there they would find King Ozias’ bell—the bell that God Himself would hear when they rang it.

  Under the stars, Martis toiled along the trail to the summit, sometimes riding, mostly leading Dulayl where the way was steep. He probably should have left the horse behind, but then he would have been alone.

  Being alone had never troubled Martis. He’d been alone all his life. The closest thing he had to a friend was Lord Reesh—a thought that brought a wry smile to Martis’ lips. Dulayl was more of a friend than Reesh could ever be, and Dulayl was only a horse. Martis knew that the day he ceased to be useful to Reesh, the First Prester would find a new assassin and tell him to bury the old one. That was how Martis had gained his position in the first place.

  Being alone troubled him tonight. He was more alone than the mad old man he’d left dying in a lean-to.

  “But I’m not alone,” Obst said when they parted. “My Lord is with me constantly. I’ve never been so close to Him.”

  Which was all very well for the likes of Obst, who had not been taught by the First Prester himself that God was at most “a part of us that strives to be more than flesh and blood”—but how could it comfort a man like Martis, who believed he knew better? What was prayer but a form of talking to oneself?

  Well, at least the signs were where Obst said they’d be, and there was enough light provided by the moon a
nd stars to see them. And the labor of the climb made for an effective protection from the cold. Martis’ hands and face got a little numb, but the rest of him was warm enough.

  He was sure he was making better time than the children could have, if only by virtue of his longer strides. He had to discipline himself not to try too hard, lest he use up his strength before he reached the summit.

  The one thing he couldn’t control, and couldn’t fight, was a sense of being exposed. Like a spider crawling across a spotless tablecloth, he thought, with no hope of escaping notice the moment someone chanced to look in his direction, and no sooner seen than killed. He felt more exposed here than he’d ever felt on the plain. This sensation preyed on him and turned every trick of the wind, every echo of a footfall, into a nameless menace.

  “Losing my nerve, Dulayl—that’s what’s wrong with me,” he said. “Next thing you know, I’ll be praying like that poor old man. His nerve’s just fine, thank you!”

  Sometimes he looked up at the dense cloud that concealed the journey’s end. God lived in a cloud like that, he thought, or so the children of Geb believed, thousands of years ago, according to the Book of Beginnings.

  That’d be a laugh on me, he said to himself, if God lived in this cloud and I walked right into it!

  And God would prove to be the biggest of all the killer birds, with gaping beak and burning eyes, and a man and his horse would go down in a single gulp.

  Jack woke to a sense of having passed through some moment of indescribable sweetness, but he couldn’t remember what it was. A dream that blew away like smoke the moment he stirred his eyelids—no hope of calling it back. He looked up into a pearly sky that was like a bowl of milk.

  Ellayne was already working to restart the fire, still huddled in her wolfskin. When Jack sat up, she turned and grinned at him.

  “What a s-s-sleepyhead!” she said, with her teeth chattering a little. “I don’t know how I slept at all last night, but I did.”

  “Look at the sky,” Jack said. Now that he was up, he felt the cold. “I wonder if it’s going to snow.”

  “That’s not the sky. It’s the cloud.”

  “Oh.”

  Ellayne got the fire going, fed it, built it up. Jack stared into the cloud. It covered the whole sky.

  “I hope we’ll still be able to see once we’re inside it,” he said.

  “King Ozias and his men went into the cloud and came out again.”

  “I’m just thinking it’d be too bad if we couldn’t find the bell once we were up there.”

  “I’d give anything for a cup of hot tea, with honey in it,” Ellayne said.

  Jack helped her stoke the fire. Once they’d had their breakfast, a mountain squirrel, and then moved around a bit, they stopped shivering.

  “I think we’d better leave Ham here,” Jack said. “There’s grass for him and some shelter if the weather turns bad. We don’t need to be carting a load of firewood to the top. This is where we’ll stop again when we come back down.”

  Wytt popped out from a cozy nest he’d made among the baggage. He chattered at them. Ellayne chattered back, and he came to her. She picked him up and held him.

  “You don’t have to come up to the top, Wytt,” she said. “We’ll be coming right back down again.”

  He replied with a long string of barks and whistles.

  “He’ll do as he pleases. He always does,” Jack said. “Maybe he can keep Ham company.”

  “Do you really think we should leave Ham?” Ellayne cast a worried glance at the donkey, who was feeding again.

  “It’s only for a little while. He might be afraid inside the cloud.”

  “We might be afraid, too! But I suppose you’re right.”

  They made their last few preparations, dressing as warmly as they could, taking nothing with them but the big knife and a couple of stout sticks. Jack wished they had some rope, but they didn’t. The last thing he did was to hobble the donkey and kiss its muzzle.

  “We’ll be right back, Ham,” he said. “You rest. It’s your day off.”

  Wytt hopped away from Ellayne and burrowed into her wolfskin. Just his face stuck out. He blinked at them and showed his teeth.

  “That’s that, then,” she said.

  And Jack said, “Let’s go ring the bell.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Into the Cloud

  As the new day crept up on the high peaks of the mountains, all the broad lands below them still lay wrapped in night.

  The rivers flowed as always, seeking the sea; and the sea’s waves lapped the shore; but these things knew no season. All along the Imperial River, the towns and ports lay with their doors shut and their streets deserted. No laborers toiled on the docks; no herdsmen gathered their herds together; no carters drove their carts along the roads. In the great city of Obann, a few watchmen in a few great houses yawned and looked forward to the sunrise when their watch would end. Soon enough the towns, the villages, the farms, and the logging camps, and the great city itself would rouse to the rising of the sun, and the people would go about the business of another day.

  For Jack and Ellayne, high up on the mountain, the day had already begun. While the people in the lowlands slept out the remainder of the night, Jack and Ellayne followed King Ozias’ trail.

  The going was steep, now, very steep indeed, and they soon felt it in their legs. No more grass grew anywhere; the only sign of life was lichen plastered to the rock. All under their feet was bare rock, here and there carved with Ozias’ signs to keep them on their way.

  “We’d never make it if we had to deal with ice,” Jack said, already panting a little. “I thought there’d be ice. There’s snow on peaks that aren’t as high as this.”

  “I think we might be on the south side of the mountain by now, or near enough,” Ellayne said. “Maybe this part gets too much sun for there to be ice.”

  Jack thought that sounded like rot, but didn’t feel like saying so. There should be snow and ice, but there wasn’t—that was all he knew. Anyway, talking made him realize how hard it was to breathe up here. There was something wrong with the air. Breathing it was like drinking weak tea: it didn’t quite satisfy.

  When you looked up, you could see the trail vanishing into the great cloud. It was like the kind of thick fog that sometimes hung over the river in the early morning. Jack prayed it wouldn’t be any worse than that.

  “How much longer, do you think, before we’re in the cloud?” Ellayne asked. Jack turned to answer her—to snap “How should I know!”—but what he saw, when he turned, made him stop in his tracks.

  Below and behind Ellayne he could hardly see anything at all—nothing but a smoky murk that swallowed up the trail they’d just passed over, the nearby mountains, and the sky.

  “Well?” said Ellayne.

  “Never mind,” Jack said. “We’re already in it.”

  Toiling all through the night, Martis feared his strength was almost spent. He plodded on, wasting no extra energy in speech or even thought. He was like a man walking in his sleep—until Dulayl woke him by neighing shrilly.

  And the bray of an ass answered him.

  It took Martis a moment to remember that the children had a donkey with them. Then he realized that the sky was grey now instead of black, and he could see. Somehow he’d missed daybreak. He really must have been asleep on his feet. But now he was awake, and suddenly filled with fresh strength.

  “Hello!” he cried, and that cry echoed and rebounded all around the mountain. He recalled hearing somewhere, sometime, that it was dangerous to raise one’s voice while high up on a mountain. He took the echoes as a warning not to do it again.

  The ass brayed, Dulayl replied, and Martis pressed on swiftly. In a few moments he came upon a sheltered space where grass grew, and a hobbled donkey wandered from tuft to tuft, feeding. The animal watched him now, twitching its tail and its long ears.

  “Is there anyone here?” Martis said, careful not to be too loud.

&nbs
p; It was obvious that the children had left the donkey behind and gone on to the summit without it. Martis saw a pile of firewood, the remains of a campfire, and a little heap of baggage, blankets mostly. He knelt by the campfire and felt the ashes with his palm.

  Still warm. He’d made good time overnight, and closed most of the gap between himself and the children. They couldn’t be very far ahead of him. He sighed.

  “We’ve done it, Dulayl!” he said. “We’ll have a drink of water, I’ll have a bite of bread, and then I’ll catch up to them. I’ll be there when they ring the bell—if there is a bell.”

  He let go of Dulayl’s reins and sat beside the fire. He’d lost his own water bag, but the children had left one behind. Very thoughtful of them. When he reached for it, something fiercely jabbed his hand. He snatched it back, thinking only that he’d been bitten by a snake. He saw blood.

  But it was not a snake.

  A fierce little face with red eyes glared at him, a hairy face with sharp teeth. It belonged to a tiny caricature of a man, that stood on two legs and menaced him with a little sharp stick with his blood on the tip of it.

  Such things could not be. They were the stuff of delirium. Nevertheless, there it was. And it hissed and chattered at him.

  For the moment, Martis went mad. He cried out and tried to seize the creature, to crush it to death in his hands. Still chattering, it eluded him.

  Martis dove for it on his hands and knees, flailed at it, cursed it; but it was too agile for him. Sometime before Martis’ fury burned itself out, the creature got away from him altogether—either went into hiding, or simply ceased to exist. By the time Martis came to his senses, gasping for breath on all fours, there was no sign of it. Dulayl and the donkey, meanwhile, had both backed away from him and were now watching him intently from a safe distance.

  “There’s a curse on every step of this journey,” he said to the animals. “But let me be cursed myself if I give it up here!”