The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (23 page)

“I was thinking we’d be going down a flight of stairs,” Jack said.

“We might,” said Martis. “There are still some stairways left, here and there. But most of them are broken.”

“Does the new Temple have a cellar?” Ellayne asked.

“The new Temple extends deep into the earth; it has enormous cellars. We keep some of the archives down there, plus storerooms for all kinds of things—including the First Prester’s wine.” He didn’t mention two or three little rooms where the First Prester kept people who’d displeased him, but for one reason or another were not to be killed.

“Do they keep any treasure?” Ellayne asked.

Martis laughed. “The Temple’s expenses don’t allow much treasure to be accumulated,” he said.

The day was overcast, with a threat of drizzle in the air. Up and down they climbed over heaps of shattered stone. Some of the stones were seared pale grey, and bits of it flaked off under their shoes. Whatever had destroyed the Empire Temple, Martis thought, fire had been a part of it.

The Omah brought them to an expanse of flat pavement strewn with small stones, under the shelter of a piece of standing wall. It didn’t stand quite straight. Below it gaped a square black hole.

“This is the way down,” the Omah told Wytt. “Omah know many ways, but only this way for big people.”

Jack, Ellayne, and Martis stood over the hole in the pavement, looking down. They saw stone steps, cracked and broken in the middle.

Ellayne hugged herself against the damp. “That could lead anywhere!” she said.

“We can’t try it without torches,” Martis said. “And lamps would be better.”

“I wonder how far down it goes,” said Jack.

“We’d better not attempt it today,” Martis said. He would have been glad not to attempt it at all. “We ought to set up camp here, and spend the rest of the day making torches. Who knows how many we’ll need? And maybe we can find some vines strong enough to serve as ropes. I might have to cross into the New City to buy some lamps.”

Jack would have preferred to descend those stairs right away. He should have been afraid, and he was; but he felt an even more powerful urge to see the cellars. They’d come a long way for this.

“This is where we’re supposed to be,” he said. “This is where we’ll find the missing book, if that’s what we’re supposed to find. Where else could it be, but in the Temple? And this is where King Ozias’ Temple was—under all this.”

“From King Ozias’ bell to King Ozias’ Temple—it must be right,” Ellayne said. “It’s like an old story, in which all these things fit together in the end. A story about Ozias that began two thousand years ago and isn’t finished yet.”

“Story” was hardly the word for it, Martis thought: God’s hand is in this. After all these centuries of lords and presters and merchants and peasants going about their business as if there were no God, suddenly we feel His hand on us. Or has it been there all along, and we knew it not?

Martis shivered, too; but he wasn’t cold.

Once they were decided on it, the Heathen lost no time in moving into the forest.

Ryons had not yet learned how to ride a horse without falling off, so he marched on foot, sticking close to Obst and the big man with the staff. The man’s clothes, a patchwork of every crazy color you could think of, fascinated him.

The little girl went back to being an ordinary little girl—which was a relief, because she took a liking to Ryons and always wanted to be near him. He hadn’t much experience with small children, but he liked it when she took his hand and swung it and sang silly little songs that made no sense. Even her strange bird seemed to like him; at least it didn’t hiss or snap at him when he came near it. But it still struck him as a thing more like a snake than a bird, and he never ventured to touch it.

Being a king with no power to command was easy. The chieftains still decided everything. Still, it made him uneasy that the Abnaks insisted on calling him King Ryons and touching their foreheads before they spoke to him.

“It’s a grand thing for us to have a king,” Uduqu told him. “We Abnaks never had a king before. You must always remember, O King, that it was our own Chief Spider who first said it would be a good thing to make you a king.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Ryons said.

“Cheer up, Your Majesty!” Helki said. “I knew a low-down bandit chief who called himself the King of Lintum Forest, and he’s king of nothing now. But as it’s someone else’s doing that you were called a king, I reckon that’s a different story.

“Look at me. I never wanted anything but to be left alone, and here I am, marching with an army. There’s several dozen people in the forest who look at me like I was their father, and sixty outlaws who have me for their chief—and none of that was my idea.

“Look at Obst. He’s like me, just wants to be left alone. And what happens to him? He has to be a father to all this host of Heathen. Be thankful you’re only a king!”

The woman who took care of Jandra spoke up. “At least be thankful you’re not Helki,” she said. “He’ll have to get all these Heathen settled in the forest. They’ll need houses, and food, and water. Some of them have probably never even seen a forest before. They’ll need taking care of.”

Uduqu grunted. “Not Abnaks,” he said. “We know how to hunt. We come from the forests on the hills.”

“Then you can help us keep some of these plainsmen alive,” Helki said.

“We’ll help. It shouldn’t be too hard, as long as there’s fighting sometimes. Men with no one else to fight will fight each other.”

“That’s one of the things that worries me,” said Helki.

Even as they spoke, there was a battle south of Lintum Forest. The legion sent out by Lord Gwyll lost the battle, and many were the survivors who fled into the forest to save their lives.

Relay riders brought the bad news to Obann, and it was all over the streets before the oligarchs could muffle it. Rumor made out the defeat to be worse than it was, and in spite of Obann’s mighty walls and thousands of defenders, the mood of the city verged on panic.

“You must do something about those crazy prophets in the streets!” the governor-general told Lord Reesh.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing for it but to hang one of them,” Judge Tombo said. “We can’t have them going all around the city preaching the end of the world. But a public hanging might steady the people’s temper.”

“Or shatter it,” Reesh said. “Lord Ruffin, you must give my ministers more time to preach the holy war.”

“It’s not a good idea to kill a prophet,” Lord Gwyll grumbled; but his was the only dissenting voice.

This was the last thing Reesh wanted to do. Not that he had any objections to hanging anyone; but he thought that would make the situation worse, not better.

“I will not have the Temple’s name attached to this, my lords,” he said. In the end, he and Gwyll were the only councilors who voted against it. But in spite of their disagreement, he still rode home in his friend Judge Tombo’s carriage.

“Don’t worry,” Tombo said. “The charge will be creating a public disturbance in time of war, and sedition. I’ll make sure it doesn’t reflect on the Temple.”

“It can’t help but reflect on the Temple,” Reesh said. “There are too many instances in Scripture of prophets being put to death by ungodly rulers. This will only make people take those fools more seriously.”

“I know what I’m doing,” the judge said.

Overnight a gallows was erected in High Market Square, near the public stables and quite far from the Temple. In plain clothes and in a covered litter, Lord Reesh came to see the hanging; and he made sure nobody saw him. Their attention focused on the event itself, the gathering crowd paid no attention to him.

In due time the prisoner arrived in a cart. It was a nondescript old man who had once been someone’s doorkeeper. Guards led him up the scaffold, where a herald read out the charges against him:

“For disturbing the morale of the city in a time of war, for alarming the public with false rumors and seditious fabrications, and for treason, the prisoner having been duly convicted by a court of law, sentence is hereby executed upon him. Prisoner, have you anything to say?”

This was what Reesh was afraid of, and there was no avoiding it. Not even Tombo could change the custom, hallowed as it was by centuries of use.

“Only this,” the old man said, in a cracked voice that somehow managed to carry to the limits of the square. “Woe to you, you false and hard-hearted nation! The Lord has looked for righteousness, and not found it in this city, nor in all the land. The sword, the pestilence, the famine, and the end of days—woe to you, for the terrible day of the Lord is at hand! He has numbered your sins, and they are like the multitude of ants in the earth, which cannot be counted for their multitude. The bell has been rung, you wicked nation, and the Lord has heard it—woe, woe, woe to you!”

He might have said much more, but as soon as he paused to catch his breath, the guards clapped a hood over his head, put the rope around his neck, and hanged him. And the crowd made a noise like thunder rumbling on distant hills.

Tombo, you fool! Reesh thought. The people might have ignored this wretched lunatic, but now they won’t.

While the crowd was dispersing from High Market Square, Martis prepared to lead the children into the depths of the ruined Temple. They had vines coiled around their shoulders for use as ropes, and bunches of chopped vine for torches. Jack used the last of his matches to light them.

“Ready?” Martis asked.

“Not exactly,” Ellayne said; but Jack said, “Let’s go. I want to see the cellar.”

Wytt and a few of the Omah went down first, springing lightly from ruined step to step. They could see in the dark. Martis went next, carrying in his heart a sense of dread, then Jack and Ellayne. The stairs sagged in the middle, but seemed solid enough. But it was best to climb them using hands and feet.

“It’d be really something if we found a treasure,” Ellayne started to say; but she didn’t like the way the sound bounced off the walls, so she said no more.

“I wonder if anyone else has been down here, besides the Omah,” Jack whispered.

“Over the course of a thousand years, it’s possible,” Martis said. “But there can’t have been many here before us. The Old City has been mostly left alone.” Because the shadow of God’s wrath still hangs over it, he thought, even after all these years.

They descended slowly, carefully. Little by little, the square patch of sky above them grew smaller. It was another grey, overcast day; but now that little patch of sky seemed most enticing, Ellayne thought. It would’ve been nice to stay up there. The air down here was close and clammy. The torches gave light enough, but the darkness seemed to press on them, like an animal waiting for the moment to pounce on its prey.

How far down they went, or how long it took, there was no way to tell. They just kept going until their feet rested on a level floor and they could stand again. Overhead, the entrance looked as small as a lady’s dainty handkerchief.

The Omah chattered among themselves. “They’re saying this whole space used to be filled with bones,” Jack told Martis, “but the Omah took them out so they could use it.”

“Dead men’s bones,” Ellayne said. She didn’t like to think of it.

There was more darkness and more space than their torches could light. Jack turned slowly, holding his torch above his head, to see all he could.

Except where it was piled with rubble, the floor was flat and seamless, as if it were all one impossibly great stone. Stout pillars held up a high, flat ceiling, although a few of them had fallen. Everything looked stained and splotched, old and dirty. Here and there, Jack saw empty doorways piercing the wall, pits of sheer blackness in the murk. They must lead to other rooms, or corridors that hadn’t seen light for a thousand years.

“We should’ve brought lamps,” he said.

“Paint would be useful, too, to mark our trail and keep from getting lost,” Martis said. “But I can cross over into the New City and get anything we need.”

“I got lost in a place like this, once,” Ellayne said. “Good thing it wasn’t underground! Wytt found me, and Jack and Obst pulled me out. It must’ve been a cellar like this, once, and it somehow got unburied. There was a great big room in it, bigger than this one; and on the floor was a map, that Obst said was a map of the whole world, with lands beyond the sea.”

Nobody said anything. It had been a thousand years since anyone in Obann had sailed across the sea. Whatever lands and peoples might be found there had no names that anyone remembered.

“Well,” Martis said, “there’s been a lot of water down here, and fire, too, from the looks of it. Any decoration has been worn away.”

Jack addressed the Omah. “Wytt, there should be another cellar like this one, underneath all this. Ask the Omah if they can show us how to get down there.”

The Omah chattered for several minutes before Wytt gave an answer.

“He says there is another place below,” Jack said, “but the Omah never go down there. It’s hard to understand just what he means: something like, ‘All these places belong to Omah, but not this place.’”

“Bad air, maybe,” Martis said.

“No, that’s not it. They can’t go there because it’s not allowed.”

Wytt added something: “Girl with sunshine hair can go there. Omah say this place is for her, always.”

“I don’t like the sound of that!” Ellayne said.

“What do you mean, Wytt?” Jack asked.

“Omah always know that someday the girl will come and see the place that belongs to her. Now she is here.” That was the best he could do by way of explanation.

“They might as well show us where it is,” Jack said.

The Omah led them into one of the black corridors, and then another, and another. Martis left unused torches on the floor so they could find their way back. They passed by many rooms, some large and some small, some choked with rubble and some empty. Floor, walls, ceiling—it was all flat, smooth, stained, undecorated stone. Here and there, bands of rust ran along the ceiling.

Martis would have given all he had to return to the surface. One chance shifting of the stones, and there would be no return. He thought of the immense weight of the ruined Temple piled over their heads. These cellars had supported it for a thousand years: for how many more days, or hours, would they continue to support it?

At any hour of any day, a thousand men might be found in the new Temple, going about their business. On holy days it might hold ten thousand. But this ruined place was bigger, and once upon a time it had been full of people. They were all dead now, Martis thought. The Omah had carried out their bones. But some vestige of those people’s doom still brooded over the place.

The Omah led them into another big, bare room; but this one had a great crack in the floor, running diagonally from one corner to another. That was the way into the deeper cellar, Wytt said.

“I’m not going down there—not down into any crack in the floor,” Ellayne said.

“Ask them if it’s safe,” Martis said.

“Yes, very safe,” was Wytt’s answer.

“How do they know, if they’ve never been down there themselves?” Ellayne was thinking of rats. There could be a thousand rats down there.

“Oh, I’ll go first, then!” Jack said. But as he prepared to lower himself feetfirst into the crack, the Omah crowded around him and made a noisy fuss. He got back up. “They won’t let me go first. It has to be you.” He didn’t see why. Wasn’t he God’s servant, and Ellayne just his helper?

“It’ll be all right, Ellayne,” Martis said. “The Omah won’t let you come to any harm; and we’ll tie one of these long vines under your arms so we can pull you out again.”

“Wytt, it’s all right if Jack goes first,” she said; but the Omah insisted it had to be her, although they couldn’t explain why. There were so many things they knew, but didn’t know how to say.

If she didn’t give in, their quest could not continue. The books she’d read had made her understand that much. So she had to agree, and Martis tied a vine around her, under her arms. “I’d better tie two together,” he said. That proved difficult, but he finally managed it. “Ready?”

“I suppose I am. As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then start climbing—and take it slow.”

Martis held on to the vines while Jack held both their torches over the crack. Ellayne went down feetfirst, feeling for holds. The floor was an immensely thick slab of that seamless stone the builders of the Empire used, but the edges of the crack were rough. Proceeding slowly, she had no trouble finding footholds. And it was a wide fissure: a grown man would easily fit, with room to spare.

She inched along, downward into the dark, careful not to drop her torch. Looking up, she saw Jack’s and Martis’ faces and the glittering eyes of the Omah. They weren’t really far away. She kept going, an inch at a time, until her feet encountered empty space.

“Hold it!” she cried. “There’s nothing underneath me now.”

“Can you see anything?” Martis said.

“Wait a minute.”

She didn’t like to, but now for the first time she looked down. She clung to the vine with one hand, dipped her torch with the other. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bottomless chasm, or a pool of black water with dragons in it.

“There’s a floor,” she reported, “about ten feet under me. It’s hard to tell because it’s so dark. That’s all I can see.”

“I’m going to lower you the rest of the way, so you can look around. When you’re ready …”

“Go ahead.” Ellayne was too excited now to be afraid. After all, this was a place mentioned in the Scriptures. Kings and prophets had been here, men whose names were in the holy books. “Just take it slow!”

“Slow and steady,” Martis answered.

Jack held the torches steady, but his feet felt like jumping up and down. Martis let the vine-rope out so slowly that he felt like screaming at him. The man’s face shown with sweat.

“All right so far?” Martis called.

“Slower, slower! I’m starting to swing around.”

“Slower it is.”

Jack wondered how it could take so long to lower someone ten feet. And like as not, it’d only turn out to be another empty cave, like the room they were standing in now. He was surprised the Omah could have superstitions.

“I’m at the bottom!” Ellayne sounded like she was at the bottom of a well.

“Can you see anything?” Martis said.

It took her a moment to reply.

“A lot of things,” she said. “I think—I mean—well, it looks like maybe people live here.”