The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (2 page)

Martis spoke no more. He could barely think. He remembered coming up the mountain, hurrying after the children, toiling in a blinding cloud, unable to see more than a step or two ahead, in a fog thick enough to force its way under your clothes. Now, coming down, they fared in the full light of the morning sun. Every pebble on the trail, every scratch on every boulder, stood out bright and clear. The neighboring peaks, glistening with streaks of ice and snow, looked like you could reach out and touch them, pick them up and take them with you.

He was cold, a deep-down cold that went all the way to the core of his mind, freezing thoughts before they could take shape as words. And yet with every faltering step he took, the sun caressed his face and each step was just a little stronger. He could not remember the last time anything had felt as good as that sun on his face.

They hustled down the mountain as fast as they could, anxious to reach camp before nightfall. No one felt like talking. There was too much to think about, and too much to see. Bell Mountain’s cloak of clouds was gone.

No one had ever seen the peak; clouds had always shrouded it. Down below, growing up in Ninneburky, Jack looked up at the mountains every day of his life; and on every one of those days, Bell Mountain’s peak hid under that bank of clouds. What were people thinking down there now that the cloud was gone? What did the mountain look like now? Jack wished he could see it.

But even more on his mind was the question of when the world would begin to end and what that would be like. He couldn’t put those thoughts into words: they were too big. More than anything else, he wanted to sit down by a fire and have something to eat. He was terribly tired.

And in good time, there it was, their camp, with Ham the donkey still there and little, hairy Wytt, no bigger than a rat, hopping up and down and chittering to greet them. There was a horse hobbled, too.

“Is that your horse?” Ellayne asked the man from the Temple.

“Yes.”

“Let’s get a campfire started!” Jack said. He was shivering all over.

Their camp was just a wide spot in the trail, with some huge boulders well-placed for shelter from the wind and the firewood they’d brought up with them; but it felt like coming home. Jack got busy right away, making a fire. If he used up the last of his matches, he didn’t care; and anyhow, Ellayne knew how to start a fire without matches (Jack had never gotten the hang of it). She passed out drinks of water, and the man sat down and sighed.

Wytt stood in front of him, chattering, brandishing his little sharp stick. The man stared at him.

“Jack! Wytt’s talking to us!” Ellayne said.

He paused. She was right—it was a kind of talking, not just scolding like a squirrel in a tree. It wasn’t words, like human speech. Nevertheless, Jack understood it.

“Wytt’s met this man before,” he said. How Jack knew that, he couldn’t have said; he just knew. “Well, of course he has. That’s how the horse got here.”

“He’s telling us this man is all right,” Ellayne said. “That’s funny! We never used to understand him. But that man in the forest, that Helki—he said he could talk with the little hairy folk. And I always thought Wytt understood most of what we said to him.”

“He’s been with us long enough. We ought to understand him by now,” Jack said. He was too tired for a miracle, just now. He got the fire started, finally, then looked up at the man. “You haven’t told us your name, mister.”

“My name is Martis. I’m a servant of the Temple.”

With the fire going, and food in their bellies, and Wytt cuddled in Ellayne’s arms, they finally got the man to talk. And he had much to say.

“I’ve been following you for a long time,” he said. “Lord Reesh himself, the First Prester, assigned the mission to me. He wanted me to see if you could find the bell. He wanted to know if there really was a bell. But I was not to let you ring it. I was to kill you.”

It would be the easiest thing in the world for a grown man to kill a pair of children. Jack knew that. There was nothing to stop this man from killing them now.

“Don’t be afraid!” Martis said. “Everything’s changed. I wouldn’t hurt you now, not for anything.”

“But the First Prester!” Ellayne cried. “He’s a great lord, and a man of God! Why would he—?”

“Because he was afraid.Afraid of you, afraid of the bell. Most of all, he was afraid God might be real, after all. I understand that now.”

Martis shook his head. He looked desperately sad, Jack thought.

“I never thought Lord Reesh believed in God. He always said there was no God; or if there was, it didn’t matter. He said the only things that matter are order and progress: wise men moving the world forward, he always said.

“Was everything he taught me just a lie? Everything? He must have known it was a lie, or he never would have sent me to stop you from ringing the bell. He must have believed God would hear it, just like the Scripture says. He must have feared God would bring the world to an end. He had dreams about it.”

“But how could the First Prester not believe in God?” Ellayne said. She was more upset about it than Jack was, being much better educated. “I mean, he is the First Prester! He’s holy.”

Martis laughed quietly, a kind of laugh with a lot of pain in it.

“I was the servant of that holy man,” he said. “He took me off the streets and taught me everything I know. And can you guess how I served my holy master?

“I killed the people that he wanted killed, and found false witnesses to speak against persons that he wanted cast into prison or hanged, although they’d committed no crime. I stole the things he ordered me to steal. I doubt I could tell you half the crimes that I’ve committed—but I did them all by his command.”

“Then you must be a very wicked man!” Ellayne said. “You must be as bad as he is, or worse.”

“That can’t be denied,” Martis said.

“But it really doesn’t matter,” Jack said, “seeing as how the world is going to end.” That silenced them all for some moments, until Ellayne spoke up.

“But it doesn’t feel like the world’s about to end,” she said. “Instead, it feels more like everything is just about to start. It all feels
new
.”

Jack was about to say that that was just about the stupidest thing he’d ever heard—but was it? Even in this washed-out mountain landscape, weren’t the colors somehow brighter than they were the day before? It was late afternoon; the sun had already gone down behind the mountain peaks, and it was getting dark—but look how bright those first stars shone!

“Oh, what do you know about it!” he grumbled. “I guess Obst knew a hundred times better than you do, and he always said that after we rang the bell, God would end the world. I guess he must’ve known what he was talking about.”

“Poor Obst! I wonder if he heard it when we rang the bell,” Ellayne said. “I wonder what he thought of it before he died.” She wiped away a tear. Just like a girl, Jack thought, ignoring the tear trickling down his own cheek.

“He was still alive when I left him,” Martis said, “very weak, but in good spirits. That was, I think, two days ago.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure of how much time has passed, lately.”

“I wonder if there’s a chance he’s still alive,” Jack said. “Maybe tomorrow, if we hurry …” He turned to Martis. “But how do we know you won’t kill us?”

The assassin shrugged. “You don’t.”

“But Obst was going to kill us, too, at first—he even said so,” Ellayne said. “And then he changed his mind and helped us. We couldn’t have got here without him.”

“But Obst is a good man!” Jack said. “And this is a bad one. He told us so. How can we trust a bad man?”

“I don’t ask you to trust me,” Martis said. “I don’t ask anything of you. But I’ll protect you if I can. I know Lord Reesh. He will stop at nothing to have you brought before him, in secret; and then he will have you killed, in secret. He’ll find another assassin to do his bidding.”

“So you’re going to turn against him? I thought he was your master,” Jack said.

Martis sighed. “Up there on the mountaintop,” he said, “I found another master. I think I came very close to dying. I doubt I would have come back to my senses, if you hadn’t spoken to me.”

“Another master?” said Ellayne.

“One to whom I owe my life—what’s left of it. And to you and Jack, too, I find myself in debt. I wouldn’t know how to turn into a good man,” Martis said, “but perhaps my wickedness can be put to some constructive use.

“One thing I do know now that I didn’t know this morning: God is truly God, and God protects you. He will not let me harm you, and I would be a fool to try. I hope I’ve never been as big a fool as that.”

The following morning—cold, but bright and sunny, without a wisp of cloud—they hurried down the trail, making for the camp where they’d left Obst dying. He’d insisted they go the rest of the way without him. Otherwise there would’ve been no point to their journey.

Two things had changed. It was much easier to see, and hence they could travel faster (not to mention the advantage of going downhill instead of up); and Martis was strong.

“It must be the mountain air: it’s so clean,” he said. “I feel rejuvenated.”

“The world hasn’t ended yet,” Ellayne said.

“Oh, maybe it did, and we just didn’t notice.”

“That’s a stupid joke, Jack.”

“Is it?” Martis said.

“Well, I certainly think it is.”

“I’m not so sure. Maybe Jack has hit on something. It’s too bad Lord Reesh didn’t give me more instruction in theology. There might be some hidden sense in what you’ve said.”

“What’s theology?” Jack asked. Ellayne thought that was funny, but it turned out she didn’t really know, either.

“It’s the systematic study of God,” Martis explained.

“We’d need Obst for that,” Jack said. “He was a hermit for a long, long time, and he was always studying, and reading the Old Books, and meditating and praying. When he prays, you could light a fire under him and he’d never know it. He says God speaks to him.”

They made excellent time, so much so that toward the end of the afternoon, Martis mounted his horse and went on ahead to reconnoiter. Ellayne sighed when he disappeared around a bend in the trail. “I wish we could trust him,” she said.

Riding atop the pack on Ham’s back, Wytt chattered.

“Wytt’s not afraid of him,” Jack said. And to Wytt, “Have you always understood everything we say?”

The little hairy man whistled. It meant, “Not always, but I do now.”

“And we understand you,” Ellayne said. “I don’t see how that can be; it’s not like we can speak your language.” Wytt clicked his tongue to say it didn’t matter.

Jack would not shrug off Wytt’s opinion. They’d met one man on their travels who really would have harmed them, a tinker who drugged them and tied them up so he could sell them into slavery. Wytt killed him: stabbed him through the eye when he lay down to sleep.

“Why aren’t you afraid of Martis, Wytt?” Jack asked.

A long stream of chattering and chittering, punctuated by clicks and chirps, delivered the message: “He is not like he was. He had something very bad in him when he came up the mountain. Now he doesn’t. And he is afraid of you.”

They heard the clatter of hooves on the stony trail, and then Martis reappeared. He swung gracefully out of the saddle.

“I’ve been to the camp, but Obst is not there,” he said. “I searched, and found signs that indicate he left under his own power. I would have thought that was impossible, but that’s how it looks to me. I do have some skill in tracking.”

“But where would he go?” Ellayne said.

“He didn’t come after us, or we would’ve met him on the way. This is the only trail up to the top, and we’re on it,” Jack said. “So he must have gone back down.”

“Without us?”

“I guess so. But you’d think he would’ve waited for us.”

“I wouldn’t have said he had the strength to crawl ten feet,” Martis said. “He seemed very near the end when I parted from him. Nevertheless, he seems to have walked away. He took food with him.”

“But he’s too sick to go anywhere alone,” Ellayne said. “He wouldn’t get far.”