by Lee Duigon
“They’re horrible!” Ellayne cried. “Why don’t they go away?”
Obst went on for a little ways, then stopped and bent over. He seemed to be washing his hands, and then his face, but Jack couldn’t see what he was really doing.
He straightened up and turned to Ellayne.
“Take these leaves,” he said, offering her a handful. “Crush them in your hands and rub the juice on your face. It’ll keep off the flies.”
He plucked some more and passed them to Jack. The children followed his instructions. The juice from the leaves had a nasty, greasy feel and a strong smell that was not unpleasant—just strong.
“It smells almost like the mint that my aunt likes to put in her tea,” Ellayne said.
In a minute or two the flies ceased to trouble them. Obst put his hands to the small of his back, stretched, and sighed.
“Are you all right?” Jack said.
“Only feeling my years.” Obst smiled at him, but there were shadows under his eyes. “Let’s move on.”
Before long their trail widened, and Jack thought the light grew stronger. He looked up and saw big patches of blue sky, more sky than he’d seen for days. He even thought he felt a breath of wind.
A little farther and he could see gaps in the trees straight ahead, revealing strips of sky.
“We’re coming out of the woods!” he cried.
And soon they were out, entering a region of widely separated trees—most of them pines with beds of soft needles underneath—and huge, lichen-spotted boulders planted in the earth. In the near distance rose the bare, purple crags and palisades of the mountains, and a delicious breeze caressed their faces.
Ellayne waved her arms in the air and dashed ahead of Obst. “At last! Urrah!” she exulted.
Obst said nothing, only sank wearily onto a stone and closed his eyes.
“Finally!Room to move around!” Ellayne began to do a little dance. Just like a girl, Jack thought. His own legs were too tired for a dance.
Refreshed by the sunlight and the breeze, he let go of Ham’s lead and wandered, examining this place that was so different from the woods that had hemmed them in for days. One of the boulders caught his eye. It had a funny shape to it, tall and narrow, with straight sides. He walked up to stand in its shade.
Taking a closer look, he found something that surprised him.
“Obst!” he called. “Come and see this!”
The old man groaned and got up. Jack paid no heed to that, although he might have been alarmed if he could have seen how unsteady Obst was on his feet. But at the moment he had eyes only for the stone.
“What is it?”
Jack startled when Obst laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Look at this!” he said.
Obst looked. The rock was dark, discolored by moss. On its dark side, away from the sun, carved deeply into its surface, were designs that Jack thought must be writing. He couldn’t read this kind of writing, whatever it was, but he was sure he knew writing when he saw it.
“It is writing, isn’t it?” he said. “Can you read it?”
Obst’s fingers tightened on Jack’s shoulder, digging in.
“Yes. I can.”
Ellayne finally noticed what they were doing, left off her dancing, and joined them. “What are you looking at?” she said.
“Shh!” Jack answered.
Obst’s hand began to quiver. Jack turned from the rock and tugged at Obst’s robe.
“What is it? What does it say?” he cried.
Obst pointed with his staff. “Do you see that group of markings there—the ones enclosed in a kind of square? That is King Ozias’ name, written in characters so ancient that we know them only from the oldest fragments of the Scriptures.
“That much I can read for certain. As for the rest, I doubt that any man can read it fully. Just a character or two, that’s all I can recognize. And there’s the words for ‘the king’s road.’ But it doesn’t matter what else this inscription says. We now know for certain that King Ozias came this way. There’s no doubt of it! And that means we’re on the right path, too, and our quest is not in vain.”
With that he dropped to his knees and prayed, rapidly, in the ancient language of the Scriptures, and became oblivious to all else. Jack reached for Ellayne’s hand, and they squeezed each other, hard.
“We’re practically there,” Ellayne said softly.
“In King Ozias’ footsteps,” Jack said.
CHAPTER 33
The Flail of the Lord
Dulayl, used to wide-open spaces, did not like traveling under the trees. Martis had to fight him all morning. He would shy at things that rustled in the underbrush, too small and furtive to be seen. Doubtless they were nothing more than mice or wood rats; but Martis wished he could see them, whatever they were.
The horse almost threw him, and he almost let himself be thrown, when they came unexpectedly upon two men hiking toward them on the narrow trail. The men pulled up short, and one of them drew a knife.
“Ho, wait!” cried the elder of the two. “Can’t you see he’s not a Heathen? Your pardon, stranger—we didn’t mean to startle your horse. We don’t see many horsemen up here.”
Martis got Dulayl under control. He sat erect in the saddle so the men could see his Temple colors.
“No offense taken,” he said. “Who are you, and why were you in such a hurry?”
“We could ask the same of you!”
“Hush, Tom. Will you put that knife away? This man comes from the Temple,” the older man said. “Sir, we’re all that’s left of a trapping party, a day’s climb up the mountain. Heathen killed the rest. They didn’t bother to take our pelts, so they must’ve been scouts, not raiders. I guess the war we’ve been hearing about is going to start soon. I wouldn’t go any farther up, if I were you.”
“I’m looking for an old man with two children,” Martis said. “It’s Temple business.”
“As long as it’s Temple business, I’ll tell you: we left them at our camp. The old man said they were going to the top of the mountain.”
“They’ll never get there,” Tom said. “And why would they want to?”
“That’s a matter for the Temple,” Martis said. “I’ll thank you to put me on their trail.”
The men gave him directions to their camp. There weren’t many trails that would take him there. As long as he bore north, he wouldn’t be likely to miss it.
“Were you able to tell which nation the Heathen scouts belonged to?” Martis asked.
The older trapper shook his head. “Not without their finery—and I can’t tell one dialect from another. My guess would be Abnak Shaar. They’re closest.”
Martis thanked them and went on his way, and they on theirs. As long as Dulayl could negotiate the trails, he now had an excellent opportunity to overtake the children. This was the closest he’d come to them since he’d started.
But he would have to be careful to avoid the Abnaks. They occupied a poor land along the base of the mountains on the east side, having been forced out of better lands by other nations more numerous; and they were hard to deal with, hasty and combative. They might be allied with the Waal Kota to make war on Obann, but they wouldn’t feel bound to honor Chief Mway’s friendships. As it was, they had a bad reputation for not respecting the amenities of civilized discourse.
The Temple knew the war was brewing. Every few generations, the Heathen found a leader who could unite their nations in a common purpose. This time it was a prince of the Kuraash, a faraway people who dwelt by the Great Lakes on the eastern edge of the known world. The Temple hadn’t yet learned his name—all Obann would know it soon enough, Martis thought—but it was said he possessed a mighty fetish that had been lost for some centuries: an ancient sword belonging to the War God, or some such thing. “Religion is an excellent thing for the common people to believe in,” Lord Reesh always said, “as long as it’s harnessed to the service of the state.” There would be no undirected religious
enthusiasms in Obann while he was First Prester.
As for Helki, he strode across the plain from sunup to sundown, his long legs eating up the miles. He followed Martis’ trail to a place where it met the trail of four horses. Three went west from there, and one north.
So the Heathen had given Martis one of their horses; that explained why Helki had seen two of them riding double. He wondered how Martis had managed that.
He was surprised when he found the track of Martis’ horse turning abruptly to the east. That stopped him.
Why had Martis turned? Had he seen something that made him change his plans? Helki was still pondering it when he saw something that forced him to change his.
It was a child, a little girl all alone, walking straight toward him. She must have been hidden in a dip in the land, or he would have seen her sooner. Not many things unnerved Helki; but the way this child seemed to have appeared out of nowhere came close to doing it.
She was a bit younger than those children who were with Obst, much too young to be walking alone.
“Here, now—what’s this?” he spoke to her. She looked at him and kept coming. He went to meet her.
Such a little thing, he thought. Something must have happened to her father and mother.
Helki picked her up. “You shouldn’t be wandering around like this,” he said. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at him. She had green eyes. Helki looked into them, but didn’t find much.
“Don’t feel like talking, do you? Well, maybe later.” She didn’t answer, but at least she didn’t seem afraid of him. That was something. “Do you want something to eat?”
She shook her head.
Well, he couldn’t follow Martis any farther, not now. Helki had no children of his own, but he had friends who had children, and he knew what was right.
“I’d best get you to people who can take care of you,” he said. “I know a family who’d be very nice to a little girl like you. I’ll take you to them. They’re honest folk who live in a part of Lintum Forest where there are no bad men. It’s a long way, though, and it’ll take us quite a while to get there. But we’ll get there all right.”
He watched her carefully as he spoke, and was satisfied that she understood him.
All he could think to do was to deliver her to some settlers he knew, good people who, with a few others, had cleared a little space in the forest and started farms. They were good to their own children, and they’d be good to this poor little thing. Helki certainly couldn’t keep her—not with Squint-eye sworn to kill him. She’d have to be kept away from that part of the country.
So Helki dropped his plans and turned back because children had to be taken care of. Even the birds and the beasts knew that, and Helki knew his birds and beasts.
“I hope you’ll start to talk to me sometime,” he said, as he carried her in long strides across the plain. “I’ve been kind of lonely out here all by myself.”
She snuggled up against his shoulder and fell asleep.
He made a camp for them on the plain, wished he could provide more shelter for her. The fire would have to do. He was lucky to find a spotted snake, which he cooked for her, letting her have all of it. He served it to her bit by bit, and she ate it without a word, licking her fingers after each mouthful.
“Now you mustn’t be afraid tonight,” he told her. “We’ve got a nice fire, and I’ll keep it going all night long. If any animal comes too close, he’ll feel my rod. All you have to do is have a nice sleep.”
He’d cut some sheaves of grass to make a bed for her, and he put his shirt over her for a blanket. He’d have a cold night of it, but that would at least keep him awake and alert.
She did fall asleep shortly after her meal, and Helki sat close to the fire. He let the noises of the night soak into his mind, and didn’t concern himself with the passage of time. If need be, he could be on his feet and swinging his staff before his heart beat twice.
He heard when the bats came out in search of insects, heard rodents pattering along their little paths among the tall grass, and all the vagaries of the wind. The least little break in these patterns would arouse him.
“Helki.”
The girl sat up and spoke his name. He didn’t startle, but he turned at once to face her. He was sure he hadn’t told her what his name was.
“You shall be the flail of the Lord,” she said. “You shall smite the wicked, and they shall flee from you because I have set you over them.” Her eyes glowed like jewels in the firelight.
Helki’s bare skin tingled, but it wasn’t from the cold.
“If you will obey me, and spare the meek, and deliver the humble from oppression, I will preserve you from all evil.”
“I will,” he said, for he knew it was no little girl who spoke to him so. He did not know how he knew. That didn’t matter.
He waited for more, but she only closed her eyes and sank back into sleep. He crawled to her and tucked his shirt up under her chin.
He knew what Obst would say: it was the voice of God speaking to him through this child, telling him things he didn’t understand as yet. Obst talked to God every day.
“Of course He answers me,” he would say, when Helki asked him. “I can’t tell you how. Sometimes it seems I hear Him in the wind, or simply in the air. Sometimes His voice seems to be coming from the earth, or even from somewhere in my own body. And sometimes it’s just as if another man were speaking to me—but of course I can’t see Him.”
“Why not?”
“Because God is not a man, or a tree, or a gust of wind, or anything that I can see. He made all those things, but He is not any of those things. He is spirit. It is not given to man to see His face.”
Helki did not understand what a spirit was; but he reckoned he was now on his way to finding out.
CHAPTER 34
Obst Must Stay Behind
They rested by King Ozias’ Stone, as they came to call it, and they foraged for food. Their first morning there, in one of the snares, they caught a fat mountain marmot that made for a royal supper that evening. Obst showed the children a plant that had tasty roots, a few mushrooms that were safe to eat, and berry bushes that might be in fruit before too much longer: those that caught the most sun were already showing little white blossoms.
But this activity of his was all in little bursts, soon over. Mostly he knelt in front of the Stone. The next day he said Jack now knew enough about the snares to manage without him, and he spent the whole day staring at the carven letters. The children couldn’t get a word out of him. The few times his lips moved, he uttered nothing but lines of ancient Scripture.
“We should get going,” Ellayne said, after they’d failed in repeated attempts to get Obst’s attention. “We can’t just stay here until it’s summer. What if some of those Heathen come?”
“You’re the one who said he needed rest,” Jack said.
“Does he look like he’s resting? I think he looks worse than he did two days ago.”
She was right, although Jack didn’t want to admit it. There were beads of sweat all over his face, even though there was a cool breeze blowing. He’d gone all pale, too. He looked sick, Jack thought. He remembered a time last year when Van took sick and couldn’t work and Jack had to take care of him.
As if to confirm Ellayne’s fears, Obst groaned and toppled onto his side.
“Oh, no!” Jack cried. “Come on, let’s see if we can drag him to the shelter.”
“Are you daft? He’s a grown man.”
“Well, we can’t leave him here with the wind blowing on him!”
They each took an arm. He weighed nowhere near as much as they expected, and without too much of a struggle they were able to pull him to his bed of ferns. Ellayne felt his forehead.
“This is bad,” she said. “He has a fever. Whenever I have a fever, my mother puts me to bed.”
“We don’t have a bed. Put the blanket over him.”
They wet a
rag and wiped his face. Wytt came over and squatted beside him, gravely watching the proceedings.
Jack took care of Van by feeding him soup and keeping him out of drafts. That was all he knew to do, and up here on the mountain, they couldn’t do either.
“What are we going to do?” Ellayne said. She’d gone a little pale, too.
“Burned if I know! Pray that he gets better.”
There were already tears in her eyes. A lot of good that’ll do, Jack thought, ignoring the tears that blurred his own.
They’d left Ninneburky fully resolved to ascend the mountain on their own, just the two of them, without help from anyone. But by now they’d come to rely on Obst, and for all they knew, he was dying.
The old man’s eyes came back into focus, and he startled them by speaking.
“Listen, children,” he said. And they had to listen hard because his voice was none too strong. “I have read the writing on the Stone, all of it. The spirit of the Lord was with me—that, and the studies of my youth. I’ve read it all, and now I know what you must do.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t read it,” Jack said.
“But I can read it now. Listen!
“When King Ozias climbed the mountain, he knew that someday, by the will of God, there would be someone to follow him. So he had his servants carve a message on the Stone, and carve its sides smooth so that someone would notice it.
“Children, the king has marked the way to the summit! You’ll find more stones with signs carved into them to show you the way to go. These will lead you safely to the top—to the bell. You must follow the signs, and go up.”
“We will—as soon as you’re better,” Jack said.