The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (22 page)

Ryons used to be afraid, most of the time: afraid his master would beat him, or that the other slave-children would gang up on him, or that he would be sold into some barbarous country where even worse would happen to him. He learned to keep to himself and do as he was told, and he became the kind of boy to whom people paid no attention. His fears subsided.

But then he met Obst, and he began to speak up whenever the spirit moved him, and these past few days had been by far the best days of his life. When he was seated among the chieftains, with feathers in his hair and a golden chain around his neck, he would not have believed life could get any better. Only a very great God could have done such things for him; and so he believed in Obst’s God, who’d saved him from the mardar.

But now he was afraid again.

The chieftains sent all of the warriors and subchiefs out of the tent so they could closely question Obst and the big westman with the staff. The woman stayed, too, holding the sleeping girl in her arms; and some kind of monster with both teeth and feathers stood guard over her.

They all had their eyes on Ryons because it was he to whom the little girl had spoken. He didn’t think it would take much for Shaffur to order him burned: the Wallekki lived in mortal fear of witches. It didn’t seem to matter that there weren’t any.

Obst tried to explain.

“King Ozias was the last anointed king of Obann. He lived two thousand years ago. After usurpers drove him from the throne, your ancestors, warlords, burned his city to the ground. Ozias himself fled into exile, no one knows where. But on his way, he climbed Mount Yul and erected a bell on its summit. That’s how it came to be called Bell Mountain. I was with the two children who climbed the mountain and rang the bell—the bell that Ozias believed God would hear, if someone rang it.

“But Ozias was more than just a king. God loved him and blessed him. Ozias wrote most of the Sacred Songs that are included in our holy books. We believe God inspired him to write them; that’s why they’re sacred to us. We also believe, because various prophets said so, that God promised Ozias that his kingdom would endure forever: that if it ever departed, it would be restored again. That it might sleep, but would never die.”

“But this Ozias,” Szugetai said, “did he not die? Or did he become a god and live forever?”

“Certainly he died! No man can become a god,” Obst said.

“And you say God used this girl to speak to us—like the Great Man spoke to us through the mardar?”

Obst shuddered. “No, no—please! The Great Man is only a man, and a very wicked one. But if we could actually hear the voice of God, it would be too much for us. No one has ever seen God; only a chosen few have heard Him. God would choose a little child like this so that we would know that it was really Him speaking to us, and not some clever trickery. This girl is much too young to make up the kind of things she said, or even to learn them by heart. I knew it was prophecy as soon as I heard her.”

“But she spoke to this boy!” Shaffur said. “Why? Who is he, that God should speak to him?”

I’m nobody at all, Ryons thought. Besides, he hadn’t understood a word the girl said.

“Who was your father, Ryons?” Obst asked, gently.

“I don’t know. I hardly knew my mother. My master sold her away when I was little.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know that, either. I don’t know anything.”

Obst turned to Helki. “What can you tell us about this girl?”

“Not much,” the big man said. “I found her wandering the plain, all alone, and I had to take care of her. I reckon her ma and pa were settlers in the hills, and something happened to them. So I took her with me, back to the forest.

“She gets these spells, like you saw. She says things no one understands, like you heard. That was not her normal way of speaking.”

“She can’t be more than three years old,” the woman put in.

“How can we know it’s not witchcraft?” Shaffur asked.

“Chieftain—would a witch speak of God?” Obst said. “It’s out of the question! You can be absolutely sure she spoke prophetically. Alas, that’s all we can be sure of.”

“God speaking to us does not seem to have done us much good,” said Szugetai. “What does it matter what God says, if we can’t understand Him?”

“I don’t think it’s so hard to understand,” said the woman. “God says He will give this boy the throne of Ozias. We all heard it, as clear as a bell. This boy will be King of the West someday, a king like Ozias. What else could it possibly mean? It means what it says.”

At the moment, Ryons would have almost preferred to be a slave again. Him a king! What could it mean? He knew perfectly well that slave boys do not become kings. And king of what? He wasn’t even sure he knew what “two thousand years ago” meant. Beyond thirty or forty, he didn’t know much about numbers.

Old Chief Spider chuckled. “None of our Abnak gods would ever think of anything like this!” he said.

A Fazzan chieftain spoke up, too excited to use the common language. The Fazzan were a river valley people who seldom ventured out of their own territory, and were almost never seen west of the mountains. But Obst understood every word he said, and translated for the others.

“Chief Zekelesh is sorry to change the subject,” Obst said, “but he would like to know how many hostages you would require before you let this army into Lintum Forest. He and his people know nothing of kings; but since the way back to their own country is blocked, they would rather be in the forest than out here on the plain.”

Helki didn’t take long to answer. “Tell him I’d be ashamed to take hostages from people who serve God and have you for their teacher, Obst. As far as I’m concerned, they can enter the forest as friends, and I’ll help them all I can. Maybe they can help me with a thing or two.”

The chiefs were all agreeable to that, although Shaffur the Wallekki had his doubts.

“Why should you trust us?” he asked. “My people have sold some of your people as slaves. Why would you not take vengeance on us?”

“I don’t reckon God would like it if we did,” said Helki.

“My horsemen aren’t used to forests,” Szugetai said. “We came here to win fame and to get rich by sacking cities. Now what shall we do?”

Ryons startled when the monster bird, which had been quiet for some time, suddenly squawked and shook his feathers. It was a loud and piercing cry, but the little girl slept on.

“Warlord Szugetai,” said Obst, “we are all in God’s hands now. We’ll have to wait and see what He calls us to do. As for becoming rich and famous, we shall all do well just to stay alive.”

The horse-chief nodded.

“Well, that’s settled, then,” said Spider. “Meanwhile, as long as everyone else is against us, East and West alike, I would like for us to take this boy to be our king.”

The other chieftains stared at him.

“Have you gone mad?” Shaffur sputtered. “Are we to be commanded by a child?” And Helki laughed out loud.

“Not that kind of king!” Spider said. “But he could be something to hold this army together through the hard times that are bound to come. And you heard what the little girl said. If God is going to make him a real king someday, we’d be wise to be his men.”

Shaffur couldn’t answer that, but the Fazzan chieftain broke into a broad grin.

“I am Zekelesh: I speak for the Fazzan people from the Green Snake River,” he said. “I accept this child as my king! As long as we’ve broken with the Thunder King and thrown in with the westmen’s God, let’s hold nothing back.”

Another chieftain spoke, the captain of a little band of copper-colored, black-haired people called the Dahai, who came from a faraway country Ryons never heard of.

“I, Tughrul Lomak, chief of the Dahai—who will never see their homes again—also accept this child as my king. As long as the Great Man means to destroy us, let’s see how angry we can make him first.”

One by one, eleven chiefs swore loyalty to Ryons as their king. Ryons, knowing how changeable they were, could only shudder. Their making him a chief had something of a joke in it; but they weren’t joking now.

The big man from the forest swore, leaving only Shaffur. The tall Wallekki glared at all his fellow chiefs.

“Very well!” he said. “Since you’ve all sworn this oath, then in the name of the Wallekki in this army, so do I! We’re flaming fools for doing it, too.” He fixed his angry stare on Obst. “Well, old man? Have we succeeded in pleasing God? Was this what He wanted us to do?”

Ryons felt sorry for Obst, having to answer such a question. But this time Ryons held his tongue.

“May He have mercy on my soul for saying so,” Obst answered, “but yes—I think it was.”

That first night in the Old City was not one that Ellayne would have liked to repeat.

Jack and Martis fell asleep right away, but she couldn’t. She was used to sleeping outdoors; she could hardly imagine, anymore, what a real bed felt like. She’d heard owls before, too; they didn’t scare her anymore.

Wytt squirmed out of her arms once, snatched up his little sharp stick, and stood there sniffing the air and trembling all over. When Ellayne asked him what was wrong, he didn’t answer. Two or three minutes passed before he relaxed.

“What was it?” Ellayne whispered. “Did you hear something? Should I wake the others?” But she hoped she wouldn’t have to do that. She wouldn’t want them thinking she was imagining things and scaring herself.

Wytt made chirps and chock-chock noises that, ever since she and Jack heard King Ozias’ bell, Ellayne understood as if they were words.

“Something bad here—don’t know what,” he answered. “Should be many Omah here, but only a few. They won’t come close to us. Very quiet Omah.”

“Are there bad men around?”

“No men nearby. Maybe much farther off.”

“Is it animals, then? Dangerous animals?”

He chattered in a low tone, frustrated because he couldn’t make himself understood. The little hairy men, Ellayne and Jack had come to know, had no words for many things that mattered to human beings. They could only speak of things that they could see and hear and smell and touch. They didn’t imagine things. Their senses were so much keener than humans’ that an imagination might have been a burden to them.

“Are you afraid, Wytt?”

“Yes. A little.”

“Well, so am I,” Ellayne said. “People lived here, long ago—more people than you could imagine. But they were wicked people, and they just kept getting worse and worse until God destroyed them, and all their cities. And this city, where we are now, was the heart of all that wickedness. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were ghosts.”

But Wytt knew nothing of such things; and by mentioning them, Ellayne succeeded only in keeping herself awake an hour longer.

After breakfast, Martis led them to the ruins of the Temple.

“Not the Old Temple, that the Heathen burned—this would be the Temple that was built in its place, the Temple of the Empire,” he said, as they set out.

There was a fog coming off the river, and everything was grey and still. Martis picked out a careful route amid the rubble. Pieces of colossal stone walls towered over their heads.

“Do any of these ever fall down?” Jack asked.

“Sometimes. It’s very old.”

With many a detour, they followed what had once been broad, straight streets. “Lord Reesh says the people of those days used to travel in carts and carriages that propelled themselves without horses,” Martis said. “He’s made a deep study of those times.”

“What did the people do that was so wicked?” Ellayne asked.

“No one knows for sure. Long before that time, the prophets said the people would turn away from God and worship themselves and the works of their own hands. But we know more about Ozias’ time, and more ancient times still, than we do about the Empire. At least some people do. I was never a scholar,” Martis said.

Except for vines and weeds, flying and crawling insects, and a few birds, they saw no other living thing.

“Where are the Omah, Wytt?” Jack asked.

“They watch us,” Wytt answered, from his perch on Ham’s back.

“I don’t see them,” Ellayne said.

“They watch.”

“Will they be friendly?” Jack said.

“Maybe.”

Having made an early start, they arrived a little after noon.

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “Is this it?”

Never having seen the Temple in the New City, nor even a picture of it, he’d been expecting to see a building much like the chamber house in Ninneburky—only bigger and grander, of course, and in poor repair. He’d thought it would be an empty old place you could just walk into and start looking for the way to the cellar.

But this, the ruins of the old Temple of the Empire, was like nothing he’d imagined. It was a heap: it was a wilderness of tumbled stone. Where parts of walls still stood, rubble choked the space between them. The whole ruin towered higher than any building Jack had ever seen. It was too big to permit a guess as to how much ground it covered. It was too big to be seen all at once.

“We’re standing in front of what was once the main entrance to the Temple complex,” Martis said. “Do you see those pieces shaped like giant stone barrels? They were once great pillars that must’ve stood as high as heaven. Beyond them was an open courtyard for assemblies, and then the Temple itself, under an enormous dome.”

“How could anything so big be turned into … this?” Jack wondered.

“No one knows. Lord Reesh says the men of those days had the power to destroy a whole city in the blink of an eye. But there are no writings to tell us of that time. It was all destroyed, even their books. Only the Holy Scriptures themselves survived.”

“Maybe it was an earthquake,” Ellayne said. Her father had told her about earthquakes.

“Some scholars think so,” Martis said, “but they can only guess.”

Somewhere under that mountain of ruin, under those mighty walls and broken stones, there ought to be a cellar, Jack thought. And then another cellar under that. Where else would God have meant them to look, if not here? But the idea of being under all that mass, which might fall down on them at any moment, was not a pleasant one.

“Do you know the way to the cellar?” he asked Martis.

“No. We’ll have to find it.”

“The Omah will know,” Ellayne said. “We could never find it on our own, that’s for sure. We could spend years looking for it. Wytt, see if you can call them. See if they’ll help us. We have to get under
that
.”

Wytt hopped down from the donkey. He raised his head and voiced some piercing, peeping cries. They echoed endlessly, all around. Listening to the echoes die away among the stones, Jack would have found it easy to believe that he and his companions were the only living things left in all the world. The thought that the biggest and most populous city in Obann lay just across the river seemed fantastic.

The echoes died away at last, and silence fell. No one dared to break it. Ham snorted, just once, then looked around nervously, his long ears twitching. Dulayl, born and bred to open spaces, pawed the stony earth, but only once.

They aren’t coming, Ellayne thought. But she was wrong.

One by one, without a sound, they came. They appeared out of the mist, out from behind great stones, up out of the earth. They looked like Wytt. As well as she knew him, Ellayne was hard put to tell him from the others.

Two dozen of the little hairy men looked up at them with bright eyes. Wytt began to chatter at them.

“These are my friends,” he let them know. “We come from far away. They ask you to show them the way to a place under the big stones.” He looked up at Ellayne. “Show them your hair. Let them see.”

Ellayne took off her hat. The little men stared at her, and pointed, and began to chatter and cheep excitedly among themselves.

“What are they saying?” Martis asked in a whisper.

“They’re making a fuss about my hair!”

“‘Hair like sun, hair like sun!’ Something like that,” Jack said.

The Omah began to chirp and squeal, they were unnervingly loud; and more and more of them came out of hiding. Dulayl whinnied and tossed his head. Jack didn’t blame him. Martis was afraid; you could see it in his face.

“It’s all right,” Jack said. “They’re happy. But don’t ask me why.”

“I wish we could understand them better!” said Ellayne.

Had Obst been with them, he might have warned them not to be too sure that God only spoke to human beings: that the Omah, too, belonged to Him, and there was no way of knowing how He spoke to them, or what He said. But Obst was not there, and Jack and Ellayne were only children, and Martis an assassin. They knew little of such things.

It took the Omah quite some time to rein in their excitement and produce a spokesman. This was an old male with patchy fur, who stood shivering as he spoke to Wytt.

What he said, in substance, was this:

“Yes—there is a cave-place under the big stones here. We go there when it’s very cold. Big people can go there, if we show them the way. Four-legs can’t go.

“Yes—there are many cave-places like that, under many places of stones. Some go deep, deep into the earth, farther than any Omah knows. Some go so deep, Omah never use them. Bad air! When bad air gets loose, Omah who breathe it die. And some places have good water, but some bad.

“Big people come sometimes. Not many. Sometimes the big stones fall on them and eat them. We know how to stay away from those places. Big people never see us. Sometimes they come here to kill each other.

“Yes—we will help you go down below. She with sunshine hair, we know to be good to her. Omah from far away, we make you welcome. We never before see any Omah from far away. But we know there are Omah everywhere. One day, all Omah everywhere shall dance at the same time.”

And Wytt said, “Yes—my Omah think so, too.”

Martis had not told the children all he knew about the ruined Temple. In fact, he was afraid.

Children who grew up on the streets of Obann heard all sorts of stories about the ruins across the river. There was treasure buried in the ruins, but it all had curses on it, people said. There were entities called gawnks that prowled the ruins, and if they caught you, they would suck out all your blood and you would become one of them—lifeless, grey, and silent, always hungry, never satisfied. The Old City was full of ghosts. And somewhere in a secret chamber under the ruins, King Ozias himself lay sleeping, with all his mighty men around him, to wake again when Obann was no more. Anyone who disturbed them would be turned into dust.

It was all nonsense, of course: but if you’d grown up hearing it, you could never quite dismiss it from your mind. Bits of it clung to dark corners where the broom of reason couldn’t reach.

But even without gawnks or curses, the Old City could be dangerous. Some of the worst criminals in Obann escaped into the ruins, and the patrols never hunted for them there, for none of them ever returned. Martis had visited the Old City often enough to know that the stones shifted, walls fell down, and ancient floors gave way. Freezing and thawing, burrowing animals, and the roots of living trees undermined the stones, wormed their way into cracks and pried them farther apart. Someday there would be nothing left of it but gravel.

So crawling down some passage to the cellar of the Temple was not something that appealed to him. The passage might collapse behind them, burying them alive.

For the sake of the children’s morale, Martis kept all these things to himself. They’d already climbed Bell Mountain, so who was he to hold them back from this?

Martis had learned to be afraid of God—more afraid of God than he was of collapsing passageways. Reesh would despise him for it; but Reesh hadn’t been to the summit of Bell Mountain.

A party of Omah led them into the ruins of the Temple. Dulayl and Ham remained behind, hobbled, munching on tough grass. The Omah scampered up and down the rocks like squirrels, but there was some tricky climbing for the humans.