Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (8 page)

And then the shrieking stopped.

The Omahs stood up and chattered quietly.

“I didn’t want it to hear you,” Jack said, “—whatever it was.” He took his hand away, and Ellayne took a deep breath.

“God defend us!” she said (that was how the prester ended the Great Prayer that everyone in town prayed together, once a year). “Do you suppose it saw our fire? What if it was wolves? Wolves kill people!”

“I don’t think wolves would want to come too close to a fire. And I don’t think our little friends would live up here if wolves came up. See—they’re not afraid. That’s a good sign.”

She was relieved that the Omahs hadn’t run away, that they were slowly sitting back down.

“Oh, Jack! I wish we could talk to them, and they to us. They’d tell us what it was that made that horrible noise.”

“The country’s not so empty as it looks,” Jack said. “Maybe it’s not good for us to stay in any one place for too long. I’ll be glad to be moving on tomorrow. There’s a long way to go to the mountain.”

“I wish we had swords and spears and armor,” Ellayne said.

“And seven hags to teach us how to use them! What happened, Ellayne? I want to know! I never heard a story like that. The only stories I know are a few from the Scriptures that Ashrof taught me. He kept promising to teach me more, when I was older.” Jack grinned. “Ha! I guess we’ll have a story of our own before we’re done.”

The horrible howl was not repeated. Ellayne tried, but she couldn’t pick up the thread of her story. Nestled together against the cold, the children fell asleep at last. The last thing Jack remembered thinking, before he dropped off, was what a host of stars shone over them and that God, who put them in the sky, knew the names of each and every one of them.

They woke early, chilled and stiff, and got busy right away to warm themselves. They repacked their bags, refilled the waterskin, ate a breakfast of bread and cheese, and made sure they knew which way was south before they climbed down to the plain. It was a clear day with the mountains rising in the east, looking close enough to reach out and touch.

Getting down the weathered, gully-stricken slope of the hill, without taking a hard fall, occupied their full attention. Stickers clutched at them on every side. The sun was well above the mountains by the time they stood on level ground again.

“Well, that’s that,” Jack said. “Let’s see if we can make the next hilltop before sundown. If they’re all ruins, maybe they’ll all have water, and walls to protect us from the wind.”

“The next hill looks mighty far away,” Ellayne said.

Something chirped, making them jump. Up from a grey tussock, practically at Jack’s feet, sprang an Omah. It carried a sharpened stick like a spear and wore Ellayne’s hair around its neck.

“Look who’s here!” Jack said. Ellayne beamed. “I think he wants to come with us,” she said. “I’m sure he does!”

“Let’s find out.”

They set off, and the little furry man scampered along with them, chittering merrily, finding his way effortlessly around the tussocks.

“Fellow, we’re very glad to have you,” Jack said.

“Jack, you can’t just call him ‘Fellow.’ It’s impolite. We have to give him a name.”

“Maybe by the time we think of one, he’ll have left us,” Jack said.

But the Omah stayed with them all day, and Ellayne decided to call him Manawyttan, after a hero in one of her old tales.

“The name’s bigger than he is,” Jack said. “Let’s just call him Wytt.”

They made good progress that day. Sometimes Wytt disappeared, but never for long. Under a low bush coming into purple bloom, he showed them a nest with eggs in it, pale green with dark green speckles. Jack put them carefully into his pack. Wytt broke into one with his sharp stick and sucked out the contents.

“I hope we don’t have to eat them like that,” Ellayne said.

“I’ll boil them if we have enough water,” Jack answered.

The next hilltop drew them on, and by pushing hard, they got there late in the afternoon. But they didn’t go up to the top. At the foot of a deep gully about halfway up the slope, where they would have missed it in the shadows, Wytt showed them a hole that turned out to be a man-made cave in the side of the hill, with a flat stone floor and a curved roof of tightly fitted bricks.

“Do you think we should stop here for the night?” Jack said. The Omah whistled and bobbed his head.

“I think he understands every word we say,” Ellayne said. “If only we could understand him! We probably don’t have time to get up to the top and set up camp before dark. I suppose it’s best we stop here. But I don’t like being underground.”

They had to prepare their fire right away, while they still had light. The slope was overgrown with brush, with some big pieces here and there that had fallen off trees. Jack used two more of his matches to get the fire going, and wondered how much longer they’d last. Maybe they’d come to a town where they could buy some more—if things like matches were for sale out here, far from the great river that carried most of Obann’s commerce.

Night fell before they’d finished their supper. The rabbits were splendid, and the eggs would serve for breakfast. While they were still eating, Wytt went off somewhere.

“Probably having a look-round,” Jack said. “I think he can see in the dark. If there are Omahs on this hill, he’ll want to find out about them.”

“Do you think the Omahs on different hilltops know each other?” Ellayne said. “Maybe they go on visits from one hill to the next.”

Jack made a torch. “To see how far back this cave goes,” he explained, “and what else is in it.”

“Hadn’t that better wait till daylight? What if it’s dangerous?”

“It’ll be just as dark back there by day as by night. And I’m not sleepy.”

Ellayne didn’t want to be left behind; and as they were already in the cave, going farther in wouldn’t be that much worse, she thought. She made a torch, too, and they went together.

“Watch out for holes in the floor,” she said.

Nothing like this had ever been built in Ninneburky. The front of Ellayne’s house was brick, but not like this. These bricks were as smooth as glass to the touch, and they fit together perfectly. A tall man on tiptoe couldn’t have touched the curved ceiling of the passage.

“Look at this floor,” Jack said. “It’s all one sheet of stone and as flat as a slate. It’s like they melted the rock and poured it out. How did they do things like that?”

“And rusty somethings stuck in the ceiling,” Ellayne said, holding her torch over her head and looking up. “What was this place?”

“Who knows? Something they built in Empire days.”

How far they went, they couldn’t have said. It was all the same: a straight passage into the side of the ruin, unvarying in its level floor and glassy brick. Their shadows capered along the walls, distorted by wavering torchlight. The children plodded on and on, and began to wonder if the passage would take them clear to the opposite side of the hill. But it didn’t.

Jack stepped on something that crunched under his boot. That stopped them. Until then, the floor had been as clean as if someone swept it every day.

He moved his foot and looked down.

“All over the floor!” he said. “I think it’s bones.”

Ellayne choked back a cry and clutched his arm. She didn’t speak, but pointed ahead with her torch.

Jack caught his breath.

Just ahead of them, bones choked the passage almost to the ceiling. It was as if someone had dumped them by the cartload—many cartloads. They lay in heaps. And many of them were skulls, round and white with black eye sockets, broken teeth, and fleshless jaws gaping. Out of the midst of the bone pile rose an iron staircase with a rusted handrail.

“This is as far as we go,” Jack said. Ellayne nodded, not daring to speak. They backed away together until darkness swallowed the bones, then turned and hurried back to their fire.

The fire had almost burned out while they were gone, and it took some doing to build it back up without using up another precious match. Not that they needed the warmth, Ellayne thought. She was sweating like mad, but without feeling at all overheated. She saw it dripping off Jack’s forehead, too. But to do without a blazing fire just now would be unthinkable.

“I don’t know how we can sleep here tonight,” she said.

“We have to sleep here. There’s nowhere else,” Jack said. “Think I like sleeping by all those dead men’s bones? But I’ll bet there were plenty of dead people on the other hilltop, and it was all right. We just didn’t see them.”

“Well, I wish we could say prayers. It’s too bad we don’t have a prester.”

“Ashrof says you don’t need a prester. You just say a prayer, and God hears it.”

That almost made Ellayne forget the bones. “He said that? But how can you pray when you’re not in the chamber house and you don’t have the prester to lead you?”

“He did say the prester wouldn’t like it if he heard him saying that,” Jack said. “But Ashrof says that’s how it is in the Old Books. When people in Old Obann wanted to say a prayer, they just said one. I guess we could, too.”

Ellayne thought about the bones, shivered, and said, “Yes, let’s! We can pretend we’re in chamber.”

They took off their hats and stood together. Not having a prester to say a prayer that they could repeat after him, they couldn’t help feeling they were doing something improper. But what was proper in a cave full of dead men’s bones?

“God, please watch over us and keep us safe tonight—and help us get to the mountain,” was all Jack could do. Ellayne prayed, “And don’t be angry with us for not having a prester.” And they both said, “So be it,” which was how the prester always finished a prayer in chamber.

It did make them feel better. They sat down by the fire and looked out the entrance of the cave at the stars above, at the plain below. A hard day’s hiking, a good supper, a few moments of intense excitement, a cozy fire, and a prayer—that was enough to send them to sleep much sooner than they would have expected.

Jack woke up wide awake with the grey morning in his eyes and the song of Bell Mountain ringing in his mind.

He’d had the dream again, clearer than ever. His whole body tingled. The fear that always gripped him when the mountain sang released its hold as soon as he opened his eyes, leaving him with a fierce desire to see the mountain. He got up, stiff and sore, but too excited to notice.

Ellayne slept on. He did notice Wytt was back, curled up beside her like a pet cat.

Never mind—he wanted to see the mountain.

With his breath making white puffs in the predawn chill, Jack scrambled up to the top of the hill, bulling his way through barricades of wiry underbrush, sometimes crawling on his hands and knees, racing up the slope. He came out on top and turned to the east.

Silent now, Bell Mountain towered proudly over the others with its crown of clouds taking on a tint of gold as the sun rose beyond the wall of peaks. Jack stretched and took deep breaths. The cold air was like a drink of water to a thirsty plowman.

Ashrof was right, he thought: you didn’t need a prester. God heard those prayers we said last night, he thought. Heard them and wasn’t angry, and sent him his dream again to prove it. He knew the mountain was far away, a march of many, many days—but there it was. And he was going to climb it.

“Thank you, God,” he said.

He turned to face south, to get a first look at the ground they’d have to cover that day. The grey plain rolled on below him with other isolated hilltops visible. And something else—

A shadow, a dark shadow, just barely visible, due south.

Lintum Forest.

There is not much to tell of that day’s journey. As hard as they pressed to reach the next hilltop, it was too far away, and they had to spend the night on the plain.

It was not as bad as they’d feared. Wytt led them to a place where a trickle of clean, cold water welled out of a crack in the earth to become a little pool. Trees grew all around it, providing some shelter from the wind. Once Jack had the fire going, and they’d piled up dead leaves, dead reeds, as much as they could gather, to make their beds, “It won’t be so bad,” Ellayne said. They slept under the stars, and aside from a little extra shivering and stiffness the next morning, they were well able to continue their trek.