Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (27 page)

Praying didn’t seem like such an odd thing to be doing, under the circumstances. All you had to do was talk to God, Obst said, and He would hear you—even if you didn’t talk out loud. By and by Jack prayed, too: silently.

God, he prayed, I still don’t know why You’ve sent us here to do this. I don’t know why You sent me the dreams and picked me and Ellayne to ring Ozias’ bell. Why us? We’re only kids. Couldn’t you find a grown-up man to do it, or a hero?

But I’m glad you picked us, even though I’m burned if I know why I’m glad.

He wondered what he would do if God talked back to him, like Obst said He did sometimes. He wondered why Obst wasn’t terrified when that happened. Jack was sure he’d be, if it happened to him. God’s voice, coming out of nowhere—

“Jack!”

He startled, but it was only Ellayne.

“Are you all right?” she said. “You didn’t answer me.”

“I was praying.” And how foolish that would have sounded not too long ago. But up here on the mountain it didn’t sound foolish at all.

“I was just wondering how we’d ever have found the right way without the signs,” Ellayne said. “Look over there—up a ways.”

Jack looked where she pointed and saw there was a deep gorge between them and another shoulder of the mountain. That way was as smooth as glass and tilted upward at a very sharp angle. Above it towered steep crags like a stone wall built by giants.

“No getting up that way,” he said.

“We’ll have to stop soon and make a fire. The sun’s on its way down. There’s already a chill in the air.”

“Let’s go just a little farther. Just until we find a better place to sleep.”

For a moment Martis thought the old man lying in the shelter was dead. But when he squatted down beside him, the man opened his eyes and said, “Hello!”

“Are you Obst, the hermit?”

“I am. And you wear the insignia of the Temple. That’s funny!”

That remark irritated Martis, but he ignored it. “Where are the children?”

“On their way to the top of the mountain. But you must know all about that, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Young man, you look all done in. Jack and Ellayne are quite a few hours ahead of you, and you’ll never catch up to them unless you rest first and recover some of your strength. I have food here and a place to sleep. Have something to eat and rest yourself; and then I’ll tell you which way to go. There’s only one safe way to the top.”

“I’d rather you told me that now,” Martis said.

“You’d only go stumbling off to your own destruction. Rest first. You look worse than I feel, and I’m dying.”

Ordinarily Martis would have used force to make the old man tell him the way, with no more thought than he would have expended to squeeze the last few drops of water out of a damp rag. Pain was always a powerful persuader. But this time he refrained from violence—why, he couldn’t have said.

“I want to be there when they ring the bell,” he said.

“It’ll be a clear night tonight with a nearly full moon,” Obst said. “You can make your climb then, and make up the distance while Jack and Ellayne are sleeping. The cold will be cruel, and you’ll need all your strength. But I think you’ll be there when they ring the bell if God has brought you this far. Meanwhile, you should rest. I can see how badly you need it.”

Surprised at himself, Martis acquiesced. There was a small store of fresh-caught game. Martis started a fire, spitted a skinned squirrel, and roasted it over the flame.

Perhaps because the old man was dying and would die up here and never repeat it to another living soul, Martis found himself telling him all that had happened to him since he set out from Ninneburky. Once he’d started, he couldn’t hold it back. He could not remember the last time he’d talked so much about himself—or if he ever had. He couldn’t stop.

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.

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 and 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.