Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (10 page)

“Jack can’t talk much,” Ellayne said. “That’s why we’re going to see the hags. They’ll know how to heal him and make him just as quick in his wits as anybody else.”

“They must be a remarkable bunch of hags,” Hesket said.

Jack’s head swam. He wanted to stand up and say they really had to be on their way; but when he tried, his legs buckled. He was asleep before he hit the ground, and never felt it.

Cold woke him—that, and someone tugging fitfully at his wrists.

He opened his eyes and saw stars. Night! How could it be?

Wytt chittered at him. Then he saw that the Omah was standing on his belly, jerking and chewing at a scratchy rope that bound his wrists.

Ellayne lay next to him, asleep on her back, wrists and ankles tied. For just another moment, Jack was confused. Then understanding came to him with a jolt, and he almost sat up—which would have bucked Wytt off him just as he was trying to set him free.

“Hurry, Wytt!”

The little man chattered loudly, like an angry squirrel. Clearly he was doing the best he could, as fast as he could, and didn’t want any scolding. Jack waited, and silently wished the Omah wouldn’t make any more noise. Wherever Hesket was, Jack wanted to be free before he came back.

A few more minutes passed, and Wytt broke through the rope around Jack’s wrists. Jack sat up to untie his ankles.

Only then did he see Hesket lying on his back a few paces away.

The fire was out. At first Jack thought the man was sleeping. But sleeping men breathe, and Hesket wasn’t breathing. His mouth gaped open. He was dead.

The moon and the stars gave light enough for Jack to see dark blood dried all over the man’s face, and Wytt’s sharp stick protruding from Hesket’s left eye. It had been driven in deep enough to kill. The man’s dead hands clutched mittfuls of grass, and one of his knees stuck up.

Panting, Jack fumbled at his ankles until he got them free. Stiff and sore, he rolled onto his hands and knees. Nearby, the hobbled donkey watched with only mild interest.

Who killed the man? There could be only one answer.

“Wytt!” he cried. “I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve saved us. Good boy!”

Wytt hopped over to Ellayne and pulled at her bonds. Jack crawled to her. Between them, they woke her.

“Jack?”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Lie still so I can untie you. That man put something in our tea to make us fall asleep, and then he tied us up.”

“Where is he?”

“Shh! You’ll see.”

When Jack untied her and helped her to sit up, she yelped when she saw the dead body.

“Wytt did it,” Jack said. “He must’ve waited till he fell asleep, then stabbed him through the eye with his stick. And I’d say it’s a good thing he did.”

“But he’s dead—”

“And that’s the end of him. Your father told you this country’s full of outlaws. I guess Hesket was one of them. He had something nasty in store for us. Sell us into slavery, I guess.”

“He drugged our tea.”

“He won’t be doing it to anybody else. And we’re the richer by a donkey.”

They didn’t want to stay there with Hesket. Having slept since midday, they thought it best to move on. The North Star would show them the way. Jack recovered his bag and gave Wytt a piece of bread. Before they started out again, Wytt yanked his stick from Hesket’s eye and wiped it on the ground to clean it. Ellayne shuddered.

“It isn’t going to be just a nice adventure, is it?” she said. “It’s going to be hard, and other terrible things are going to happen, and we’ll be lucky if we make it to the mountain, let alone all the way to the top.”

Jack nodded. “I’m afraid so. But King Ozias always said he only came out alive through so many dangers because God was watching over him. Maybe He’s watching over us, too. If He didn’t mean for us to get there, He wouldn’t have sent me the dream.”

They paused to pray that it was so, and then went on. Jack led Hesket’s donkey, and Wytt ran along beside him.

By the time Jack and Ellayne actually reached Lintum Forest, Martis had been in Ninneburky long enough to find out what he wanted to know and to write a report to the First Prester. This is what he wrote.

Martis to Lord Reesh, greetings—

I have questioned the parties involved, and I must tell your lordship that the two missing children are probably the most intelligent persons in this village.

The girl’s father, the chief councilor, has sent horsemen up the river, working the roads along both banks, without them meeting with any sign of his daughter. He has also had militia searching the country round Oziah’s Wood, to no avail.

He says his daughter has no knowledge of Scripture, but is of an adventurous spirit and has lately shown signs of discontent. The girl’s mother is too overwrought to add to this. I am persuaded the girl simply ran off with the boy, for some reason known only to them.

The boy’s teacher at the chamber house, one Ashrof, reciter, confesses that he taught the child something of the Scripture, which he ought not to have done. That he taught him the verse in Penda, to wit, Ozias and the bell; but that he never mentioned it until after the boy told him of his dream and craved an interpretation. The boy had the dream many times before Ashrof told him about the bell. Reciter claims that when the boy voiced an intention to climb Bell Mountain, he did everything in his power to dissuade him.

The boy’s stepfather, a carter, by all accounts cares nothing for him and was unaware of the boy’s intentions.

Your lordship may take it that the boy instigated this action. How the girl came to join him in it, no one seems to know. If the reciter is to be believed, and I believe the man is honest but not wise, the dream came to the boy many times before he ever heard the verse from Penda.

I believe the child outwitted the authorities here. Expecting that they would try to capture him, if only to save the girl, he was shrewd enough not to follow the river up to the mountains, nor to pass by Oziah’s Wood. If he had, they would have had word of him by now.

I believe he went south, as that would offer his best chance of eluding the militia, and any witnesses. That being the only route the militia has not investigated, I shall commit myself to it tomorrow.

If there is a culprit in all this, other than the boy’s imagination, it is the old reciter who interpreted the dream. Farewell from your obedient servant, Martis.

Martis handed the letter to the local prester, who promised to send it to the Temple by his swiftest courier.

“Don’t bother to try to read it,” Martis said. “It’s written in a cipher known only to the First Prester and myself. If the children return before I do, hold them here for me. I’ll want to question them.”

As he saddled his horse, it gave Martis some pleasure to imagine his master’s reaction to his letter.

“South?” he would cry; and his face would get red. “That’s not the way to Bell Mountain! That is only the way to a bleak and terrible country, an utter wasteland. Has been since the Empire fell! No, no—anyone who wishes to go to the mountain must follow the river.”

Lord Reesh knew the Commentaries, the New Books written in the days just after the Empire fell. He would surely be thinking of one passage in particular, in the Annals of Olf:
And gouts of fire fell on the cities of the southern plain, devouring them all in a night, and burning off the pasturelands so that no life remained to bird or beast
. The land between Lintum and the great river, dotted with lifeless ruins, had lain desolate ever since. No one lived there. No one tried to.

The boy and the girl wouldn’t know that: they wished only to avoid being dragged back to Ninneburky. Martis was impressed by the efforts of the chief councilor’s militia. They hadn’t encountered the children in the north or in the east. Therefore, the children weren’t there. Unless they were headed west toward Obann itself, they must have gone south.

Martis checked his provisions and prepared to follow them.

Following their encounter with Hesket the Tinker, both Ellayne and Jack found themselves a prey to dark thoughts, which they didn’t share.

Ellayne kept wondering what Hesket would have done to them if Wytt hadn’t killed him. Naturally, she had no knowledge of the truly terrible things that certain kinds of persons might do to children if they had them in their power. It wasn’t something her family would have discussed in front of her. All she had were some vague bits from various adventure stories, and those were bad enough. She’d read of witches who pitched children into ovens, cooked them, and ate them, and of outlaws who sold girls and boys over the mountains to the Heathen to be enslaved for the rest of their lives or used in human sacrifices. If she had known the things her father knew, but hadn’t told her, she might not have gone any farther. But she didn’t know, and so she kept up with Jack and the donkey as they plodded across the plain.

Jack had not lived as sheltered a life as had Ellayne. Van sometimes spoke of evil things he’d seen and heard of on the road (especially after he’d had his beer). Jack knew all along that there were people on the loose who did vile things. His plan was always to avoid them.

What worried him were things he didn’t know about, and couldn’t know until they overtook him. That a little creature like Wytt could kill a grown man was a revelation to him. What if they met Omahs who weren’t friendly, who’d slay them as they slept? What other kinds of creatures were at large in the world, bigger and deadlier than the Omahs? Van hated to drive by night, on account of the strange noises that he heard. What made those noises? And what about the things that didn’t make noise?

They plodded on, camped one more night on the open plain, and toward noon the next day won their reward: the sight of a solid rampart of trees blocking the way to the south, stretching east and west farther than the eye could see.

“There it is,” Jack said. “Now we have to decide how close we want to be to the forest before we turn east to the mountains.”

“A lot closer,” Ellayne said, “in case we want to duck in and hide. But not too far in—we’ll want to duck back out again.”

“One thing we ought to do first is lighten this donkey’s load,” Jack said. “We probably don’t need all this stuff.”

“I’d just as soon not keep any of that man’s things.”

Going through the donkey’s pack, they discarded Hesket’s tea; some wrapped meat that had gone bad; a smelly old cloak; a pair of boots that needed mending; a bagful of black, malodorous chewing weed; and some pans and a kettle that were too filthy to be cleaned. Jack found a long, wicked-looking knife, almost a short sword, that Ellayne wanted to throw away, but he decided to keep. They kept the least soiled of a pair of blankets, some air-dried meat, and Hesket’s waterskin, which was much larger than theirs.

Ellayne looked at the pile of discarded things and shook her head. “I suppose this stuff was all he had,” she said. “I wonder what kind of life he had.”

“He drugged our tea and tied us up—bogs on his life!” Jack said. “Come on, let’s load up and get closer to the forest.”

By the end of the day they were near enough to smell the trees when the breeze came from the south. The forest threw clusters of small trees out onto the plain, as if to contend with it for the territory. Around these trees the grass was green, there were bushes with purple leaves, and choruses of birds chirped, sang, and cawed.

“It’s a much nicer country already,” Jack said. “We can make a good camp here. Tomorrow, we head for the mountains.”

In a grassy hollow sheltered by a stand of white birches, they made their camp and built their fire. They hungered for fresh meat, but hadn’t had any since Jack shot the long-legged bird three days ago. Their bread was getting stale, but by now they’d eaten almost all of it. Jack wondered how they’d get on when their bread was gone, if he didn’t get a lot better at hunting. And it was too early in the year for berries.

He worried about Ellayne’s mood. He wanted to be happy because they’d completed an important part of their journey, but he couldn’t be cheerful while she was so glum. He tried to snap her out of it by asking her to tell him a story, but she said she didn’t feel like it. They might have stewed all night, had not sheer weariness sent them both to sleep.

Ellayne shook Jack awake at the first grey light of morning, and shook him hard.

“Jack! Jack! Wake up!”

“What’s the matter?”

She was beaming. “Nothing’s the matter! Except I’ve had the dream. Your dream! I dreamt I was home, and I went out the back door and looked up at Bell Mountain—and I heard it sing. Oh, Jack! You would’ve thought the sound would crack the sky. The bell must be as big as a house! But do get up, Jack. Let’s get an early start—it’s still a long way to the mountain.”

Ellayne went on about her dream all morning, and Jack soon enough got tired of it. He wished she’d be quiet long enough for him to get a shot at something, rather than scare all the game into hiding with her prattle. He’d had the dream first, anyway.