The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain)

by Lee Duigon

  “May I take it out?”

  “Of course.”

  With slow and delicate movements, he withdrew the scroll and set the jar aside. He handled the treated sheepskin as if he feared it might crumble to dust in his fingers. He’d probably had that experience, Martis thought.

  By light of fire and lantern, he spent some long minutes poring over it.

  “The paleography is perfect for the Late Kingdom period,” he said, mostly to himself. “Of course, there are dozens of men in Obann who can imitate that kind of writing. But surely a forger would have aged the skin, or used a bit of ancient material that had no writing on it.”

  “But can you read it?” Jack said. “What does it say?”

  “I’ll read it better by the light of day,” the scholar said. “The ink has faded just a little; and, as is typical of this period, there are no breaks between the words. But it appears to be some kind of itinerary—I think these must be the names of towns along a route traveled by the writer. But I can’t do it justice by this light.” He sighed and put the roll back into the jar. “You say you have more of these? In sealed jars like this one?”

  “Lots of jars—thirty-seven of them, counting this one,” Ellayne said.

  “Where are they?”

  “Under the Temple,” Jack said, “in a cellar underneath the cellar.”

  Occus stared at him. “But that would be part of the original Temple!” he said, as if he thought it impossible that any part of the First Temple could exist.

  “We think it is,” said Martis.

  “But this is incredible! You’re not scholars. You’re refugees in Obann, a man and his grandsons, chased out of your country by the Heathen. And yet you came here, to the Old City, to the ruined Temple—and found the remains of the First Temple. I think you ought to explain how you came to do that!”

  “There’s not much to explain,” Jack said. “A prophet sent us.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Remnants of the Legion

  Helki didn’t trust his men, who not so long ago were happy enough to follow Latt Squint-eye. But he trusted the Abnaks and their woodcraft. While the rest of the army followed him to the castle, he sent Abnaks out on scouting and foraging missions. He would much rather have gone foraging himself and let Andrus lead the way to the castle. But it didn’t seem wise, just yet, to leave the army to its own devices. Those Heathen who were unused to woodlands grew more and more restive the farther they got from the open plains. Still, they did enjoy the venison that Helki’s hunters brought them.

  Once they arrived at the castle, the great task would be to get all these people settled down somehow.

  “I’ve got plans for this place,” he told Obst. “We may not be able to build it up into a proper castle again, but we can build a town around it with a stockade around the town. You can see the settlers have already gotten busy with their axes.

  “Folks will need a safe place, and the king will need a place to hold his court. It might as well be here. There’s plenty of water, plenty of game in the woods, and the land, once cleared, ought to be good for raising crops. Otherwise nobody ever would’ve put a castle here, I reckon.”

  The same evening Martis met with Dr. Occus, three of the Abnaks brought to the castle a dozen militiamen with a sergeant, survivors of the lost battle in the south. These had been wandering in the forest for days and were in no condition to fight. They might have, had they known the reputation of the Abnaks. But they were farm boys from the land around Trywath, far out to the west, and they’d never heard of Abnaks. They came with the scouts willingly, bringing the news of the destruction of their legion.

  “Are there many more of you?” asked Helki.

  “I suppose there must be,” said the sergeant, a grey-haired man named Vord. “Once our front line broke, everybody started running. It was kind of shameful; but I thought I might as well run, too. The battle was lost, no mending it; and I had to stay with these boys.

  “But who are all these people here? They look like the enemy!”

  Helki grinned. When Obst translated for the chieftains, they laughed.

  “They were the enemy,” Helki said, “but now we’re all together in the forest, trying to survive. But we’re not so badly off. We’ve got a teacher, a prophet—and a king.”

  Now everyone knew that Obann had kings in ancient times, as told in Scripture; but to speak of a king today was unheard-of. The sergeant’s jaw dropped.

  “Don’t let the oligarchs hear that you’ve set up a king for yourselves,” he said. “You’ll swing for it, that’s certain.”

  “I don’t think so,” Helki said. “Anyhow, it was God’s doing, not ours.

  “Look around you, Vord. The whole world’s changing. You heard the bell, didn’t you? Out on the plains, there are birds as big as horses. Here in the woods, there are animals that have no names. A couple of little kids climbed all the way up Bell Mountain and rang King Ozias’ bell—and God heard it.

  “When this war’s over, if it’s ever over, there might not be any oligarchs. There might not even be an Obann City. Might not even be a Temple. But we have a prophet who says God means to give Ozias’ throne to this king of ours, and we believe her.”

  Vord shook his head. “The country’s full of prophets, nowadays. They all talk moonshine.”

  “Ours doesn’t,” Helki said; and saying it, he finally believed it in his heart: Jandra was indeed a prophet and spoke the words God gave her.

  There might be hundreds of militiamen still alive but lost in the forest, and Helki wanted to round up as many as he could and add them to the army. If there ever came a day when the army would have to emerge from the forest and give battle, Helki wanted it to be as strong an army as possible. But first these militiamen would have to be won over to King Ryons.

  Before presenting Vord and his men to the king, Helki told them Ryons’ story.

  “He was the lowest of the low,” he said, “a Heathen slave, and only a child. He was about to be sacrificed to one of the Heathen gods when the true God struck the priest dead in front of all the chiefs.

  “This was once an enemy army come to Obann as invaders. But the other Heathen hosts turned against them, to wipe them out. So they put their trust in God, and He saved them. Of their own free will they chose this slave boy to be their king. That’s when the prophet spoke.”

  In an open space within the castle’s walls, the chieftains pitched their big black tent. Helki brought the militiamen there to meet the king. Abgayle brought Jandra, and Jandra brought her bird with teeth.

  Ryons had no throne, just a square-cut building stone to sit on. The chieftains sat around him on their stools, in all their finery.

  Making a show of it had been Shaffur’s idea. “If we’re going to call this boy a king, we ought to treat him like one,” the Wallekki chieftain said. He’d once visited a real king, in a city far to the south in a great oasis in the desert, so he knew how a king’s court ought to look. The other chieftains agreed with him: no royalty without a show of royalty. For Ryons this meant a thorough scrubbing in cold springwater. “I’d almost rather be sacrificed!” he said; for Helki and Uduqu administered the scrubbing, and their hands were hard. But he looked more like a king now that he was clean, Shaffur said.

  He sat on his makeshift throne and received the militiamen. The chieftains had draped him in a scarlet cape, and Shaffur laid a sword across his knees. And Obst taught him that a king, more so than other men, was a servant of the Lord. “Always remember that, my boy,” he said. “To whom much is given, from him much will be required.”

  Ryons understood very little of it; but he did understand that the fierce men who had made him a king could just as easily unmake him, and he had no desire to provoke them.

  “Your Majesty,” Helki said, “these are men from one of Obann’s legions. Their sergeant, Vord, is a veteran man of war. They’d be a very useful addition to your host.”

  “Here, now!” Vord said. “I never said we wa
nted to join up.”

  “Then we’ll have to send you away,” Helki said. “You’re in the forest by the king’s leave. There’s no oligarchy here.”

  “But he’s just a boy!”

  “So were all the kings of Obann, once,” said Obst. “But he’ll be a man someday. And someday he will have Ozias’ throne.”

  The militiamen looked at one another. Few in Obann had ever read the Scriptures for themselves, but all knew the name of Ozias, the last of the anointed kings.

  “The Temple preaches that this war is a holy war, by God’s will,” one of them said. “If we joined up with you, we’d be going against the Temple. And that’d be going against God, wouldn’t it?”

  “What do we care for your Temple?” Chief Spider said. “But we do care very much for God, who gives us victory over our enemies and protects us from the Thunder King. I thought He was the westmen’s God, your God—but it seems you care more for the Temple than you care for Him.”

  “You said you had a prophet,” Vord said. “Show us this prophet.”

  “You’re looking at her,” Helki said. He bent down to touch the top of Jandra’s head. She was sitting on the stony ground, intently watching a beetle. “This is our prophet. God speaks to us through her.”

  Vord’s lip curled. “This is foolishness!” he said. He might have said something more cutting, but one look at the chieftains’ faces restrained him. “But you can’t be serious!” he said. “She’s just a little girl. You can’t expect us to believe she’s a prophet and this boy a king.”

  Some of the chieftains scowled at that. Ryons quieted them, holding up his hand.

  “Let these men go, Helki,” he said. “We can’t make them believe. I don’t think I was made a king just so I could make a slave of someone else. Show them the way out of the forest.”

  Helki made no answer, but bowed—as Shaffur had taught them all to bow when receiving a command from the king.

  “As you wish, Your Majesty,” he said. “We’ll give them a meal and a night’s rest and send them on their way tomorrow morning. Andrus, take them away and give them something to eat.”

  When the militiamen were gone, Ryons looked uneasily at his chieftains.

  “I didn’t say the wrong thing, did I?” he asked.

  Spider shook his head. “We didn’t need them, Majesty. Let them go and lose more battles for their Temple.”

  Even so, when the militiamen departed the next morning, three stayed behind to serve the King of Lintum Forest.

  CHAPTER 36

  King Ozias Speaks

  As soon as it was light enough for him to read, Occus bent over the scroll and studied it.

  There was something about him that made Ellayne uneasy. Maybe it was the gleam that came into his eyes when he touched the scroll: you’d think he was going to eat it. And since his arrival, Wytt hadn’t shown himself, nor any of the City Omah. She doubted they were afraid of him; he’d be more likely to be afraid of them. But she was a little bit afraid of him—which was silly, with Martis here to protect them.

  The scholar didn’t say a word until Martis finally prodded him. “Well, doctor? Can you read it?”

  “Of course I can read it!” he snapped. “As I suspected when I glanced at it last night, it’s an itinerary. The narrator journeyed up the river, and he lists the cities and towns he visited. Some of the names are familiar to me, and some aren’t. He also mentions various persons, local officials and the like. Now do be quiet!”

  Jack wandered off a little ways, out of earshot. Ellayne joined him.

  “What do you think of him?” she whispered.

  “I’m thinking Wytt doesn’t like him for some reason—I can’t imagine why,” Jack said. “And I’m thinking that at the rate he’s going, we’ll be all grown up by the time he reads all the scrolls.”

  They went off to tend to Ham and Dulayl, still hobbled outside the ruined Temple. Omah watched over them, although none were anywhere in sight just now—which didn’t mean they weren’t there. Jack slipped the hobbles, and they led the beasts to a hole in the pavement where Martis had found good water and then took them for a walk to stretch their legs. By the time they returned to camp, Occus had finished reading the scroll.

  “You say there are thirty-seven of these?” he said.

  “I counted them,” Ellayne said.

  “I need to see more. I’d especially like to see the place where you found them.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Martis said. “The way in is safe enough for children, but would be dangerous for a grown man. My grandsons will have to bring the jars up to you.”

  Jack and Ellayne exchanged a look, both wondering why Martis had said that. He doesn’t quite trust Occus, either, Ellayne thought. But Jack thought it would just be too hard for Martis to haul Occus up out of the ancient cellar.

  “I must see the site as it is,” said the scholar. “There might be suspicions of fraud, otherwise. You do understand that a skillful person, with no more knowledge than I have, might have fabricated these scrolls.”

  “Of course,” Martis said. “But we would need a long and sturdy ladder to get you down into the crypt, and we haven’t one.”

  “Then I suggest you go back across the river and buy one! This is important work, and it must be done properly.”

  Martis promised to get a ladder the next day. “But in the meantime, I think we ought to open another jar. We don’t know that there are scrolls in all of them.”

  After an inner struggle, Occus agreed to that. He’s greedy, Ellayne thought. He can’t wait, even if he knows he should.

  “Wait for us here, doctor. We won’t be long,” Martis said.

  “Can’t I come with you into the cellars?”

  “Not until we get a ladder for you.”

  “What if he runs back to the city while we’re down here,” Jack asked, as Martis prepared to lower him into the cellar beneath the cellar, “and comes back with a bunch of people from the Temple?”

  “He won’t. Believe me, he has no cause to trust the Temple. The last thing he wants is for any other scholar to see these scrolls—not until he’s seen them all.”

  So Jack went down and got another jar. They were all exactly alike, so there was no reason to choose one over another. And Occus was still there when they came up again. Martis handed him the jar, and he examined the seal.

  “The ancients made a special glue to seal these jars,” he explained. “Very few have been found intact. Jars do get broken, after all. We’ll have to break this one open. But wait!”

  He’d been turning it over in his hands, and he did something that Martis hadn’t thought to do with the first one: he looked on the bottom. What he saw excited him.

  “Look!” He jabbed at it with a finger. “This jar is stamped with the insignia of the royal house of Obann!”

  Stamped into the clay was a circle enclosing a figure of a king’s crown and a shepherd’s crook. It was a small thing, easy to miss. Martis picked up the first jar, looked at the bottom, and found the insignia there, too—only worn away a little.

  “Open it!” Jack said.

  Occus hemmed and hawed, muttering something about anyone being able to make an earthen jar and stamp a seal on it. “Doesn’t mean it’s genuine,” he said. But when Martis offered to crack it open, the scholar got busy with his knife. Finally he drew out another rolled-up sheepskin.

  “It’s either a forgery,” he said, “or in an excellent state of preservation.”

  Jack and Ellayne traded a look. They knew it couldn’t be a fake. Had anyone been in the ancient cellar, the Omah would have said so.

  “Read it,” Martis said. “Aloud, if you can.”

  Occus read slowly, tracing the words with his finger.

  “The testament of Ozias, the son of Halgar: So says the Lord, you are old and you shall die here, and be gathered to your fathers—” He looked up from the scroll.

  “It can’t be!” he said.

  “Re
ad,” said Martis.

  “Nevertheless, you have written down all the deeds you have done under the sun. I have led you by the hand through many countries, and swept away your enemies before you. And I said, Yes, Lord: they have not profited from the evil that they did to me; I have seen the destruction which you visited upon their heads, and there are none of them left upon the earth.

  “I have obeyed your commandment and wandered east and west, and sojourned with the heathen; and now I am indeed old, and have returned. Behold, I have planted my seed where none shall find it; and now I plant your Word where none shall read it.”

  Occus stopped again. His face shone with sweat.

  “What’s the matter?” Martis said.

  “You are asking me to believe that I hold in my hands the last writings of King Ozias—that he came back to this place after the Temple was destroyed. Impossible!”

  “Why impossible? Scripture doesn’t tell us where Ozias died, or when, or how—only that he fled into the East, across the mountains, and was never seen again. Why couldn’t he have returned here, many years later?”

  “If I were to present these scrolls to my colleagues,” Occus said, “I’d be laughed out of the city! Who knows that better than I?

  “There have always been legends about Ozias. God translated him into Heaven, so he never died; God removed him to an island on the far side of the sea, where he enjoys eternal youth. Or this one, that he came back to Obann as an old man and saw the ruins of the city. But those are tales for simpletons and children! Who else would believe them?”

  Ellayne thought of her book that chronicled the adventures of Abombalbap, which her father always said were make-believe. “Don’t your scholars believe the stories that the Scriptures tell?” she asked.

  “You mean the Children of Geb crossing the sea on stepping-stones miraculously raised up for them by God?” he snarled. “Or those tales of Bron the Giant? Or maybe the one about the Imperial River parting so that Arza and his wives and daughters could escape from the chariots of the pagans!