Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (30 page)
Read Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) Online
Authors: Lee Duigon
“Oh, Jack! Look!”
Ellayne jumped up. Jack opened his eyes.
“There’s no more cloud!” she cried. “It blew away! Look—you can see everything!”
Jack stood up and looked. At the same time, miles and miles away, men and women and children, Temple and Heathen, looked up and wondered what had happened to the cloud upon Bell Mountain. For the first time since people started keeping track of time, the bare peak gleamed under the morning sun against a bright blue sky.
But Jack and Ellayne looked down, not up; and that worn-out, weary world that was like a dirty carpet, that world that they’d looked down on so many times on their way up—that world was changed.
“What happened?” Jack said. “The colors are so bright!”
The grey plains were now an emerald green, the steely grey river a shimmering blue. The forests that had yesterday looked like old scum piled on a stagnant pond, today bloomed lustily in more shades of green than Jack had words for, and bright red where the trees were just coming into bloom.
They were too high up to see people or animals or even towns, but if this was truly the same world they’d left behind when they entered the great cloud, it had since received a very thorough cleaning, buffed and washed and polished till it shone.
“It looks new,” Jack said.
Martis swooned before the bell stopped ringing. It was as if he fell into a black pit and just kept on falling and falling, forever.
Now he opened his eyes. He lay on solid ground, falling no more, with one side of his face pressed into snow and the other side receiving sunshine. The effect was so strange that it blew the panic and the madness out of his head. He pushed himself up with his hands and looked around.
He saw that the bell was down, its supporting framework ruined. He saw the children pointing this way and that, and heard them chattering excitedly about a new world. He saw that he could see now: the cloud was gone.
His first thought was that he’d failed in his mission. They’d rung the bell, and it would never ring again. He’d failed to stop them. If he ever returned to Obann, Reesh’s new assassin would kill him.
And his second thought was this: “Everything Reesh taught me was a lie.” All those people he’d killed, all the hard missions he’d completed—probably those people should have been left alive and those missions left undone.
His whole body ached, and he stood up with a sigh. The children wheeled, and saw him.
“Who are you?” the boy demanded.
Martis laughed. “You don’t know what you’re asking me, young sir! But to answer you briefly, the Temple sent me to make sure you didn’t ring the bell. I was sent to kill you. But you needn’t reach for your knife. I won’t hurt you now—or ever.”
“Why should we believe you?”
“Because I can’t stop you from ringing the bell, now that you’ve rung it.Because the man who sent me on this mission was a liar. And because I doubt very much that God would let me hurt you.”
Jack and Ellayne stared at the man from the Temple. Ellayne recognized the Temple insignia on his torn, stained coat. Jack thought the man looked ill—or maybe just worn out close to the point of death.
“If it’s any help to you,” Martis said, “I’ve followed you all the way from Ninneburky. I know your names are Jack and Ellayne. I met a man named Helki, who saved my life. I met your friend, the hermit, Obst, and parted from him in friendship. I’d very much like to see him and talk to him again, if he’s still alive. It was Obst who taught me how to read the signs, so I could find you.”
Jack and Ellayne exchanged a look. Obst! In all the excitement, they’d forgotten him.
“We want to see him, too,” Ellayne said, “more than anything in the world.”
“Then we’ve got to go back down the mountain,” Jack said. “There’s nothing more for us to do up here. We’ve done it!”
They all went down together.
This is the end of the story of how Jack and Ellayne climbed the mountain and rang King Ozias’ bell. When they came down from the mountain, of course, they had many more adventures. But these are told elsewhere.
Table of Contents
A Stuck-Up Girl and an Ignorant Boy
The Theologian and the Assassin
“It Was in My Heart to Slay You”