The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (24 page)

Obst sat alone in a tiny clearing in the woods, thinking.

Ozias as a child fled to Lintum Forest with his mother. He stayed there, hunted constantly but never caught, until he was old enough to lead men, conquer his enemies, and claim his throne. But the wickedness that was Obann in those days raised up new enemies against him; and he was the people’s last anointed king.

Now the boy Ryons was a king, and hiding in Lintum Forest like Ozias. But king of what? A ragtag host of Heathen with nowhere else to go and only lately come to God. And yet the girl, Jandra, speaking with the authentic voice of prophecy, said the Lord would give this boy Ozias’ throne.

But there was no throne to give him! The Obann that came after Ozias never had a king. No one knew, exactly, how the Empire rose, nor how it fell; but in the intervening thousand years, Obann never had a king. It had tyrants, warlords, a multitude of petty princelings, and now the oligarchs.

What could the prophecy mean?

Just that day the army had crowned Ryons King of Lintum Forest—crowned him with a circlet of oak leaves. Against Obst’s advice, Helki added his assent to theirs.

“The oligarchs won’t like it,” Obst said. “They’ll have you up for treason.”

“Oligarchs—hah! They never gave a snap for anyone in Lintum Forest. They let the woods fill up with outlaws. And the same goes for the Temple.

“Well, I’m going to use this army to scour the place clean of outlaws. And if there still is an oligarchy when this war is over, we’ll see what they have to say about it. Just be thankful they didn’t crown you Prester of the Forest.”

And so there was the wretched boy with a crown of oak leaves on his head, hailed as king by outlaws and barbarians—what was this world coming to? He thought of a verse from Scripture: “Your wisdom is foolishness with me, says the Lord.”

Helki said he knew a castle in the middle of the forest where the king could hold his court and no enemy could get at him. From there, he said, detachments of the army could strike out in any direction, putting down the outlaw bands, dealing with any force from the outside that invaded Lintum. How so many men were to live in the forest, Obst could hardly imagine; but Helki said it could be done. “Some will have to hunt, and some will have to farm, and the settlers will have to feed the rest. They won’t mind: they’ll like having a king and an army to protect them. And once it’s all been sorted out—” Helki grinned—“I can go back to living on my own.”

Obst doubted that would ever come to pass.

Martis couldn’t go down the crack; he’d have to stay behind to pull the children up again.

He tied the vine around Jack’s body, made sure of the knots, and then Jack began his descent. He had to force himself not to hurry. In a few minutes he was standing beside Ellayne, holding up his torch and looking all around.

“What do you think?” she said.

He didn’t answer. He was looking at tables, their tops littered with cups and other objects, stools, and shelves stacked along the walls with earthen jars lined up on them. The floor was clear of rubble: it had all been piled up in several columns to support the roof. Someone had come down here and done that; and yet there was dust all over the floor, undisturbed.

“Well?” Martis called.

“Just a minute! There’s a lot of stuff down here,” Jack said.

He handed Ellayne his torch and undid the vine, then helped her out of hers. He wanted a closer look at one of those columns of broken stone between the ceiling and the floor.

“This must’ve been a lot of work,” he said. “It’s all jammed tight. They must have pounded it tight with mallets, to keep the roof from coming down. I guess all this stone came from the ceiling when it cracked open.”

“But who could’ve done the work?” Ellayne said.

“Maybe the Omah know. See if they’ll come down.”

She called Wytt. Soon he and several others clambered down the vines. “It’s all right for them to be here now,” she said, “as long as I was the first one in. Wytt, ask your friends if any other big people have ever been here.”

They chattered among themselves until Wytt had the answer.

“No—all the time Omah have been here, no one ever comes into this place. No one can come until you come in.”

“But all this furniture,” Ellayne said, “these are all things that big people use. Someone must have brought it down here. And someone must have piled up these stones.”

“Omah never see this place before,” Wytt said.

So the little men, who had lived here since the city became a desolation, knew nothing about this cellar. That meant the work had all been done before there were any Omah living in the ruins.

“A thousand years ago!” Ellayne said.

Jack wasn’t even sure of what a thousand was. He supposed it had all happened so long ago, it might as well have been at the beginning of time.

“Whoever they were,” he said, “I’ll bet they didn’t come down here through that crack. There must be another way in.” He asked the Omah if it were so.

“Other ways all blocked, all filled with stones,” Wytt said. “This is the only way.”

There were hallways leading out of this room, but it didn’t take long to discover that all of them were filled with rubble. “A mouse couldn’t get through,” Jack said.

He tried to sit on a stool, but it snapped to pieces when he put his weight on it. After that they were careful about touching anything.

“What do you see down there?” Martis called. Because of the irregularities of the crack, they couldn’t see him when they looked up; but a little bit of light from his torch reddened the stone, so he wasn’t all that far away. It just seemed so.

“There’s a lot of furniture and things,” Jack said.

“Please tell me exactly what you see!”

So they did, and he thought it over for a minute, then said, “See what’s inside the jars—but be careful.”

“It’s probably just food that’s all turned into dust,” Jack muttered, as they crossed to the nearest set of shelves. These were made of wood, and they were careful not to break them as Jack removed a jar. “It’s heavy,” he said. “But not heavy enough to be full of money.”

“Don’t drop it,” Ellayne said.

He set it on the floor. They were all big jars, tall, narrow at the top, with closely fitted stoppers. Something had been poured over this jar’s stopper to seal it, some substance now black with age. Jack had to use his penknife to scrape it off, but even then the stopper was fitted so tightly that he couldn’t pull it out. He told Martis.

“Listen, Jack—I’ve seen jars like that before, in the First Prester’s collection of antiquities. The ancients used earthenware jars to store their writings. You have to break off the top of the jar to see what’s inside. Do you think you can do that without shattering it?”

Ellayne said, “Why don’t you pull us up again, and we’ll bring the jar with us? We can open it when we’re outside in the sunshine.”

“I could break off the top right now,” Jack said. “You just don’t like it down here, do you?”

“No, I don’t! Do you? There’s something about this place that feels like no one ought to be here. Can’t you feel it?”

Had Obst been there, he would have said the place was holy, set aside by God for some very special purpose. But Ellayne knew little of such things.

Jack passed up a chance to quarrel with her and just stood still, listening: not that there was anything to hear.

“You’re right,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s wrong for you and me to be here. We only came because God sent us.”

“Are you coming up?” Martis asked.

Jack went up first, leaving his torch with Ellayne so he could carry the jar. He bumped his head once or twice as Martis pulled him back up through the crack, but he didn’t drop the jar.

Once he was on his feet again, in the cellar of the Empire Temple, he understood more clearly what Ellayne meant. There was something special about that older place below. He could feel the difference, even if he couldn’t say what it was.

Ellayne came next, and after her the Omah, swarming up the vines like squirrels. Martis had to light new torches.

“That does look just like one of Lord Reesh’s jars,” he said.

“But let’s get a better look at it outside.”

Their first exploration of the Temple cellars had taken longer than Jack thought. It was early morning when they went down the cracked stairs, and just after noon when they came up. The sun had driven away the morning mists, and birds were singing somewhere: it was a relief to hear them. By the light of day, and by comparison with the dark places down below, the ruins of the Temple seemed a safe and cheery place.

Martis sat on a stone, cradling the jar on his knees, studying it. But there was nothing to see: no decoration, no inscriptions.

“Whatever was put inside should still be here: you found the seal intact,” he said. “Like as not it’ll be some kind of tithing record, or an inventory.”

“Stop talking and open it!” Jack said.

Martis couldn’t budge the stopper with his fingers, nor could he insert his knife between it and the rim of the jar. “It’s sealed, all right,” he said. “They must have coated the stopper with wax or tree-sap before fitting it in, and when that hardened, it made a perfect seal. Whoever did it must have wanted it to remain sealed for a very long time. We’ll have to break it open.”

He tapped and tapped with his knife, harder and harder, until finally he cracked the jar around its rim. Prying with the point, he soon broke off the whole neck. He reached in with his fingers and slowly drew out something rolled into a cylinder and tied with a black cord. The knot fell apart with his first tug on it.

“That’s a scroll, isn’t it—what they had before books were invented?” Ellayne said.

“A sheepskin scroll, I think,” Martis said.

The children leaned over his shoulders. Writing covered the scroll, in brown ink that had once been black.

“I was afraid this would crumble to dust if I unrolled it,” he said, “but I suppose the seal was perfect. The skin’s in very good condition. Lord Reesh would pay a fortune for it.”

“Never mind him,” Jack said. “What does it say? I can’t quite make it out.”

“I can’t read it, either,” Ellayne said.

“Nor can I.”

“Well, what good is it if nobody can read it?” Jack said.

“We can’t read it,” Martis said, “but there are men who can. There are many of them in the Temple, just across the river.”

Ellayne clenched her fists. What if Martis just took this scroll to Lord Reesh—and took her and Jack with it? What was to stop him? He was Lord Reesh’s servant once; he could be again. She backed away from him.

“What’s the matter?” Jack said.

“She’s afraid,” said Martis. “Afraid of me. And who can blame her?

“You’re wise not to trust me, Ellayne. I’m no good. I’ve done too much evil ever to be good.”

“I was only thinking—” she started to say; but he held up a finger to stop her.

“I know what you were thinking,” he said. “But if you can’t trust me, then trust the white hairs of my beard. God put them here: He could just as easily have struck me dead. He still could, at any moment He pleased. That’s what I’m afraid of. Every breath I draw is on trial, so to speak. I stand on God’s scaffold with His rope around my neck. I wouldn’t dare betray you.”

She believed him. She let out a sigh.

“Even so,” Jack said, “we can’t just walk into the Temple and ask someone to read this for us.”

Martis smiled sadly at him. “No—we can’t,” he said. “So the scholar will have to come here. You can leave that to me.”

Among the nations represented in King Ryons’ army was a little band of men from the flatlands north of the Green Snake River; and these spent only one day in the forest before deciding they wanted no more to do with the enterprise. Attakotts, they were called: small, wiry men with curly hair, swift and tireless runners, experts with the sling, and a bad reputation for being quarrelsome. A man named Looth spoke for them in the council of the chieftains, but he was not really a chief. On the morning of the army’s second day in the forest, he brought his people’s complaint to the council.

“We don’t like being under all these trees,” he said, speaking the Tribe-talk with a singsong accent. “It isn’t natural. We don’t like being under a king, either. We’re going to go back across the mountains to our home.”

“You swore an oath to follow our king,” Chief Shaffur said; but the Wallekki took oaths very seriously.

“I did,” Looth said, “and I’ll stay here if I must. But none of the rest of the Attakotts swore.”

“You’ll never get across the mountains,” Szugetai said. “The whole country is full of the Great Man’s armies.”

“Why did you take the oath,” Shaffur said, “if your people never meant to honor it? What kind of chieftain are you?”

“Foo! What do the Attakotts know of oaths or chieftains? Back home, we have neither. Once a man is a man, he does as he thinks best. We only joined this army because our people feared the Thunder King. His mardar came among us and spoke the secret names of our ancestors, a thing which no man knows. But he knew, so we were afraid.

“We are the best fighters among the Attakotts. Our place is with our own women and children. Our place is out in the sun, not under a lot of trees.”

The chiefs could not convince the stubborn little man to keep his people with the army. He couldn’t, he said; he had no authority over them, but only spoke for them among the chieftains. Old Chief Spider nodded.

“We Abnaks have always known the Attakotts,” he said. “There’s no other people we’d rather fight with. They take our scalps, we take theirs: it’s always been so. No one understands better than the Attakotts the joy of fighting for its own sake. We take home no horses, no furs, no gold from them—because they have none. The only thing they have that’s worth having is the bravery of their warriors. I would be very sorry to think that someday they would be no more. But King Thunder will exterminate your people, Looth. There will be no place in his kingdom for a people who don’t have chiefs. And after you, it’ll be the Abnaks’ turn.”

The chiefs fell silent, pondering his words. Better than Obst or Helki, Ryons understood what Spider meant. He’d seen the Wallekki, his masters, swallow their pride to serve the Thunder King. Every nation did what the Great Man demanded of them, because they were afraid. There was not a chief in this council who wouldn’t have cut off his own fingers, one by one, or put out his own eyes, if the Great Man’s mardar commanded it. Was not the Great Man greater than their gods?

Had he taken a moment to think about it, Ryons would not have spoken a word. But the words came out before he had a chance to think.

“Chief Looth! Why don’t you give God a chance to protect you? The God who struck the mardar dead before your eyes, who gave you victory over the army of the Zeph—why not put your trust in Him?

“Chief Spider’s right. The Thunder King will swallow up a people like yours and never spit them out again. But I think the real God will swallow him before he gets a chance to do it!

“Besides, you won’t have to stay in the forest all the time. You’ll be out scouting on the plains, along with the Wallekki and Chief Szugetai’s horsemen. We can’t just sit here in the woods and not know what’s happening anywhere else. And I don’t think we’ll be staying in the woods forever. There’s a throne waiting for me in Obann—but I’ll never get there without you and all the other people in the army.

“I know you’d all go home, if only you could. But you can’t! The only way you’ll ever have a chance to go back is if you trust God and try to do what He wants. Tell them, Obst. You can tell it better than I can.”

Ryons suddenly felt dizzy, and he almost fell off the tree-stump that served him as a throne. What was he doing, speaking like that to chieftains?

“He’s right, my lords,” said Obst. “The enemy will empty the Eastern lands. Army after army will come, rolling in along the same route we followed over the mountains. You can’t possibly get back. Your only hope is in God and in the courage that He gives you.”

Looth looked all around, catching the eyes of all the chieftains. Spider grinned at him.

“It’d be a great shame to us Attakotts,” Looth said, “if we ran away while a lot of tattooed Abnaks stayed. They would tell their women and children, who would make up shameful songs about us. Their men would not want our scalps anymore.”

He turned to Ryons and clapped, a gesture of respect among the Attakotts.

“Very well, Boy King!” he said. “I think I can keep my people here a little longer. I’ll tell them what you’ve said, and give you their answer.”

And he was back by noon, with his men’s decision: the Attakotts would stay, as long as they were sent out onto the plains on scouting missions. Ryons thanked him. There weren’t many Attakotts in the army, but he was glad not to lose them.

“You did mighty well, young king,” Helki told him afterward. “It’s a hard thing, when a man’s home calls to him and he can’t come.”

“I don’t know,” Ryons said. “I was a slave. I don’t think I know what a home is. I can’t imagine wanting to go back to the Wallekki country. I’d much rather be here.”

“You could do a lot worse for a home,” said Helki, “than this forest.”