Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (2 page)

“I’m off,” Van said, snatching his hat and cloak from the peg on the wall. “Mind you do your chores.”

Jack did do his chores and would have liked it better if he’d had more of them. Van was proud of his home—a four-room cottage, each room smaller than the next—but as small as it was, it didn’t take a lot of cleaning. Van always wanted the plaster and the floors kept clean in case he had company.

Most of the houses in the village of Ninneburky were just as small. The village itself was more than grand enough to be a town: a real town, with an archon and a seat on the Oligarchy. It had more people and newer and better buildings than the town of Caristun, to whose archon the village paid dues.

One thing Caristun had, which Ninneburky didn’t have, that made all the difference—a wall of dressed stone to defend it. Ninneburky made do with a stockade of timber. There was nothing quite so costly these days (Van said) as a defensive wall, what with stonecutters, masons, laborers, the stone itself, and the cost of getting it there. Ninneburky might have its own new Chamber of the Temple, lovely fine houses for all the members of the council, a livery stable, and a militia that drilled with spears, with a real sergeant to instruct them—but it did not yet have a wall of stone. The chief councilor swore he’d build a wall and be an archon, or die trying. To that end the dues on craftsmen, loggers, shopkeepers, carters, marketers, and herdsmen were rather high. Jack knew because Van complained about it frequently.

In the afternoon he went to the chamber to see his teacher, Ashrof. Jack used to go to him to be taught his letters. The old man was Mother’s great-uncle, and Jack had had to promise her that he’d see him. She was the only family Ashrof had in Ninneburky.

Jack didn’t think there was a word for “your mother’s great-uncle.” But after Mother died, Jack came to think of the old man as the only family he had—more family than Van would ever be, at least. Besides, Ashrof had more to teach than letters.

Jack saw him come out of the chamber building with another one of his pupils—the stuck-up little stink who was the chief councilor’s daughter. The chamber was going to open a regular school soon, where all the children who needed to learn their letters could learn them at the same time, probably from someone younger than Ashrof. Until then, Ashrof taught those who came to him.

Jack stopped and the girl walked right past him as if he weren’t there at all: didn’t even look at him. For two bits he’d trip her. Then she’d look.

“Bucket! What’s the matter?”

Jack’s mother called him Bucket as a pet name. She said it was the first word he learned how to say, after “Ma-ma,” and he used to say it so much that it’d make her laugh. Now Ashrof called him Bucket. No one else did. Jack turned and joined him by the bench next to the chamber door.

“That girl makes me want to stick a moth up her nose,” Jack said.

“Poor Ellayne!” Ashrof said. But his white beard jiggled, which meant he was chuckling under it. He dropped himself on the bench and patted the boards. “Sit down by me a while. The day’s finally warmed up enough to enjoy a bit of sun.

“You mustn’t mind Ellayne. Her mother wants her to grow up to be a great lady in Obann, an archon’s daughter. Her father would sell his soul to go to Obann and be the archon—but he hates the very thought of his daughter living there. It will never be possible for Ellayne to please both her mother and her father.”

“She acts like I’m not here,” Jack said.

“Her head has been filled with a great deal of foolishness,” Ashrof said. “Now how about your head, eh?”

“I know what you mean. Yes, I had the dream again last night. Why won’t it go away? Whoever heard of having dreams about a mountain? A mountain’s just there. It doesn’t matter.”

“King Ozias said, I shall hang a bell atop Mount Yul, and when it shall be rungen, maybe the Lord shall hear. And Penda the prophet said, He shall surely hear.”

Ashrof had his eye on the mountain now, Bell Mountain. It seemed he was reciting the words not to Jack, but to the mountain. Bell Mountain, with its rocky shoulders, its snowy shields gleaming as the sun began to decline westward, and the perpetual clouds that masked its crown—it towered over the valley. Anyone in town could simply look up and see it. Until he’d started having the dreams, Jack never gave it a thought. It was just there. It had nothing to do with anything in his life.

“What was that you said?” Jack asked.

“A bit of Scripture—the real Scripture, from the Old Books.” Ashrof continued to study the mountain. “Not much call for the Old Books nowadays. There are presters who have never read them.

“But I have. I knew there was something about your dream that reminded me of a verse I used to know long ago. It took me a long time to find that verse.

“It’s from the Record of Penda, 50th fascicle, verse 16: the part that tells how the last rightful king of Obann, King Ozias, had to flee his refuge in the forest—the one we still call Oziah’s Wood. How some of his followers betrayed him to his enemies. They thought he’d try to make for Lintum Forest because he was born there; but he tricked them again. He went up the mountain, which in those days was called Mount Yul, or Mount Cloud.” He pointed to the mountain and finally looked back down at Jack.

“The Scripture doesn’t say whether he ever got to the top of the mountain and put a bell up there. No one ever saw him again, dead or alive. And after him there were no more kings. Just the long years of the Interregnum, out of which arose the Empire—God forgive us!”

Jack didn’t know how to answer. Ashrof had taught him a little about some of these things. He knew there was an Empire, with the city of Obann as its capital, a very, very long time ago. And that the Old Books of Scripture were even older than the Empire. That was about all he knew.

“Why did you say ‘God forgive us’?”

“Because the Empire was hopelessly corrupt and wicked, and God destroyed it,” Ashrof said. “Obann’s Empire ruled the world. Up and down the coast of the Great Sea, and many islands far out to sea. Down to the deserts of the south, and far to the north, well beyond the River Winter. Wasn’t so cold up there in those days. And way out east beyond the mountains. Obann conquered all the Heathen lands out to the Great Lakes. It was a bigger world then, Bucket, and the whole world did homage to the Empire.

“But God destroyed it, all in one day, the Day of Fire foretold by all the prophets. Nobody knew what they meant, you see. There was no Empire yet, while the prophets were alive, and wouldn’t be for hundreds of years. So no one believed, and no one listened. Nevertheless, God did destroy the Empire, leaving nothing but ruins to this day.”

“Why did God do that?”

“I told you—because it was wicked and corrupt, and merciless,” said Ashrof. “And now you come along with your dream about Bell Mountain. I find it very troubling!”

He had to explain to Jack that a bell was like a great bronze cup that, when struck, could be heard for miles around. “Just the same as if you clanked a tin cup with your knife, only thousands of times greater. There are bells in Obann City, which they ring for special occasions—when the oligarchs vote to go to war or the First Prester dies.

“Well, if someone rang a great bell from the top of Bell Mountain, it might well seem that the mountain itself was singing. And the other mountains all around would catch the sound and magnify it so that it filled the whole valley. That’d be a rather terrifying sound, especially if you’d never heard the like of it before. I think it’d be just like the sound you hear in your dream.”

“But why should I dream that!” Jack cried.

“I don’t know, my boy. I burn’d well don’t know.” Ashrof suddenly shook his head, like a dog shaking off water, and hugged himself. “Stinking cold last night, though, eh? I find this sun today doesn’t quite warm me as it should.

“Come back again tomorrow, Bucket. I really must have time to think on this. And pray.”

Chief Councilor Roshay Bault, Ellayne’s father, lived in a fine house with all the bedrooms on the second story and a carved oak stairway to get you there and back. Van’s whole house would have fit in the formal room and the parlor without encroaching on the kitchen, dining room, and the rest of the ground floor. But because Ellayne had lived in it all her life, she didn’t see anything wonderful about it.

It seemed much less than wonderful just now because she was listening to her mother and father wrangle over her. They were at it when she came home from the chamber house, and didn’t hear her come in, or they would have stopped. Ellayne stood in the hall listening as they argued in the parlor.

“The girls’ school in the city is a perfectly respectable place, and we can well afford it now,” her mother said. “She’ll be with girls from the best families in the land, and it will advance her more than anything we could possibly do for her in this place.” Ellayne’s mother, tall and thin, had a reedy voice that carried a long way, like notes played on a human flute.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Vannett? The answer is no!” That was her father’s bass drum voice, the one he used at council meetings when he had to raise the dues. “Those girls from the best families will only laugh at her. Their fathers are archons, or at least related to archons.”

“Pooh! We can buy and sell half of them. They won’t laugh at our wealth.”

“That’s exactly what they will be laughing at!”

“Do you mean to keep her here in this miserable village forever, Roshay? Learning her letters from a doddering old fool who should’ve been put out to pasture years ago! And someday marry her off to a shepherd, or a cotter, or a cobbler?”

There was a great deal more of it, some of which Ellayne didn’t understand, but all of which made her feel like kicking her new shoes off and throwing them down a well. It used to make her cry, but she’d learned how to stifle that.

She crept to the kitchen and out the back door. The cook and the maid were busy in the kitchen and pretended to be too busy to notice her. The cook used to give her treats, but didn’t anymore. Ellayne passed them and went outside through the back door.

She used to watch her brothers in the yard playing with sticks, dueling: playing outlaws. They were too old for that now, and too old for her. Dib spent most of his time now handling bits of business for Father, this deal or that. And Josek went from town to town doing politics. Ellayne didn’t see much of them anymore.

For no reason at all, she thought of the boy she saw on the street as she was leaving the chamber house today. She’d seen him before. He was probably one of Ashrof’s pupils, like her. Only his clothes were so shabby it was hard to imagine why he’d need to know how to read and write, or how his family could pay for the lessons.

Well, whatever his life is like, she thought, it’s sure to be more fun than mine. When his lessons were over, he probably ran out to the fields to play with his friends. They’d be stalking one another through the woods, exploring ruins, or splashing around one of the fords in the river. Playing outlaws, probably.

Ellayne was allowed to do none of these things. She used to be; but now she was old enough, her mother said, to have to behave like a chief councilor’s daughter.

She wished her father were a cobbler. Then maybe she might have friends.