The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) (12 page)

“Well, there may be something to what you say. I wouldn’t mind if there was a god somewhere who didn’t bow down to King Thunder. What have we Abnaks to do with some new god out beyond the lakes? Our own gods stay inside the trunks of trees where they belong. I never did like the idea of foreigners chopping down those trees and hauling them east to be put into a prison.”

“The true God is not like that,” said Obst; but before he could make a lesson of it, a tattooed warrior thrust his head into the tent and spoke to Uduqu.

“Bring the old man,” he said. “The chiefs will see him now.”

Ryons went along with them to the big tent. Obst wondered whether it was safe for the boy to go anywhere near that tent again, but he supposed Ryons knew the ways of the Heathen infinitely better than he did.

“Look how busy everybody is,” Ryons said. “They aren’t usually busy at night.”

“The army’s ready to move west,” Uduqu said.

Men and boys were leading horses this way and that; women were snatching meat off drying frames; and children—most of them slaves—scurried about like ants, on a thousand different errands. Warriors sharpened their weapons.

Inside the big tent the air was thick with smoke and unusual odors. The light, provided by torches and braziers and fat-burning lamps, was feverish and fitful. Uduqu forced his way through a crowd of chiefs and subchiefs and halted before a group of heavily decorated chieftains sitting on stools. Obst recognized Szugetai, the chief of horsemen, and a clan chief of the Abnaks whose name was, simply, Spider.

“Here’s the old man,” said Uduqu, and the murmur of voices in the tent died away quickly. A tall, bearded Wallekki stood up from his stool.

“We, the high chiefs of this host, have taken counsel together,” he said. “Each of us speaks for all his people in this camp. There are twelve of us. Together, from now on, we will consult for the good of the army. Whenever there is great need, we shall choose one of our number to be chief of chiefs until the need is past.”

With stiff formality, each of the twelve rose and made a speech. Spider spoke last.

“I am Spider, son of Dloq; I speak for the Abnaks. If my people don’t like what I say, they’ll choose another speaker. We are here of our own free will. Now I will let Shaffur speak again.”

That was the tall Wallekki chief, an imposing figure of a man, Obst thought; but of them all, Szugetai the horseman and Spider the Abnak struck him as the most dangerous.

“Tomorrow we go west,” Shaffur said. “We have lost our mardar, but we will march without him. It is what we all came here to do, and the other armies expect it of us.” He grinned. “They might get nasty if we don’t do our part.”

He pointed to Obst. “The mardar is dead because of this old man, who serves a powerful god. This god of his has not yet been subdued by King Thunder, so we’d be foolish to offend him.

“You, old man, shall speak to your god for us. Find out what sacrifices he desires, and we’ll provide them. Ask him how he’d like us to pay him due respect. We shall treat you well, for we are going into your god’s country. Ask him to help us to make wise decisions and to favor us in battle.

“But if you pray to him to curse us or if you try to run away from us, know that your manner of death shall be as unpleasant as we can make it. Is all this agreeable to you?”

Obst was speechless. The harder the chieftains glared at him, the harder it was to find words. Surely they had no inkling that what they proposed was outrageous beyond words.

“My chieftains, please be patient!” Ryons said. “My master even now is communing with his god, and he will answer you as soon as the god answers him.”

One of the chieftains nodded to another and remarked, “Just like the mardar—only not so ugly.”

Obst had to say something. Ryons was going to get himself roasted on a spit if he didn’t learn to hold his peace. Didn’t the fool boy realize he was playing with fire?

“Brave warlords,” Obst stammered at last, “my God is Lord over the whole earth, from one end to another, and everything in it. He is not to be appeased by sacrifice. What can you give Him that He doesn’t already own?

“God has heard every word you’ve spoken, all of you, from the time you were infants. Because He is all-powerful, He can afford to be all-merciful. He understands that you don’t know Him. He sent me to you so that I might make Him known to you, according to my own poor knowledge.

“He will surely defend you from this false god, this blaspheming Thunder King, if you put yourselves under His protection. But it won’t be in return for roasted bulls or horses. It won’t be in return for gold or silver.”

“What does he want, then?” asked Szugetai. “Women?” The other chiefs laughed, and it took all Obst’s self-control to remember that the man was only a Heathen who didn’t know any better.

He prayed they wouldn’t kill him, or Ryons, for anything he said.

“No, my chieftain, that’s not what He wants,” Obst said. “From each and every one of us, He wants devotion—to Him and to His laws, which He laid down of old. He wants you to know Him and put your trust in Him: in Him alone.”

“What are this god’s laws, old man?” Shaffur asked.

Obst spread his palms. “How can I teach you, in a single night, the wisdom of the ages? His laws are many, and yet they come down to only two. You are to love Him and fear Him and honor Him as the only true God; and you are to observe all His laws in your dealings with one another, doing no evil, even as you wish no evil to be done unto you.”

“That’s all?” wondered a chief of a faraway people.

“It’s a very big ‘all,’ warlord.”

“Yet if we do these things you’ve mentioned,” Shaffur said, “your god will protect us from the anger of the Thunder King?” Obst nodded, and the chieftains all stood up.

“I think we have our answer, comrades,” Shaffur said. “The army moves tomorrow, so let us get what sleep we can.”

To be invited into Lord Reesh’s private study was a mark of singular favor. Reesh made sure Orth knew that before he had the preacher come up.

“It’s my own little museum, Prester Orth,” he said. “Look around, take your time. I’m interested to know what you think of it.”

“I am honored, First Prester,” Orth said.

It was a small room, with all four walls lined with shelves packed solidly with books and scrolls; a thick, felt carpet on the floor; and a single narrow window through which a shaft of afternoon sunlight slanted down at an angle. A wide table took up most of the floor space.

Upon this table Lord Reesh displayed his relics, his curiosities, collected from all over Obann, but most from in or near the city itself. Orth stood over the table, marveling at them. Reesh kept silence, letting the preacher’s thoughts take wing.

Some of the artifacts, the really fragile ones, were under glass. Others simply lay on the table; Reesh had found them to be durable.

Finally Orth spoke. “My lord, what are these things?”

“Shards and fragments of a bygone age, prester. As to what they were—who knows?” Reesh moved closer to the table and picked up an object, displaying it in his hands. He offered it to Orth, who hesitated to touch it. “Don’t be afraid, Orth. You couldn’t break it if you wanted to.”

At first glance it might have been a wheel, albeit a very small one. It had a hub, rounded on one surface and flat on the other, and only two thick spokes that connected seamlessly to the rim. Its color was a shiny dark blue, of a shade that few men had ever seen before, with an unreadable symbol in red and white inlaid in the center of the rounded surface of the hub. The whole was just a foot and a half in diameter. Orth handled it gingerly.

“What would you say it was made of, prester?”

That was a question no one had ever been able to answer; nor could Orth, although he examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands.

“My lord, I cannot tell,” he said. “It’s not any kind of metal, nor is it any kind of wood or stone, or leather. One might guess polished horn, but there’s no grain to it. Nor does the blue color appear to have been painted on. There’s a chip, right here, that shows you that the thing is blue all the way through. And it’s not heavy.”

“Try to bend it,” Reesh said; and of course Orth couldn’t.

“It’s an exceedingly strong material, my lord. I suppose it might have been a wheel for some kind of small conveyance that had to bear a heavy load. I can’t imagine what.”

“We haven’t even a word for this material, Orth. But it must have been in common use throughout the Empire. People are always finding pieces of it, digging in their gardens, tearing down an old house.

“As you can see, I have other relics made of the same material. It has been found in every color you can think of—and some you can’t—and in all kinds of shapes. Look at this.”

Reesh picked up a tiny figurine, a perfect little miniature horse with all four legs intact, although the tail was broken off. The little horse was a bright and cheerful pink, and where the tail used to be, you could see it was actually pink through and through. Orth’s hands trembled as he studied it.

“Think of it,” Reesh said. “These things are a thousand years old, at least, and they’ve been dug up from the ground. All that time they lay there, no effort being taken to protect them. And yet there’s no pitting, no rot; and once you clean them off, the color is as fresh and bright as ever. The only thing that can hurt this material is fire. Then it melts.

“I have many more such specimens. I’ve had to set aside a separate storeroom for them. Some are obviously instruments of various kinds, although no one knows what use was made of them. Others are obviously pieces of something bigger and more complicated, now mostly lost.

“And of course there are all sorts of metal objects, more or less corroded, whose purposes I can’t even guess, no matter how hard I study them. And I do study them—intently. For they have something important to tell me.”

“What do they tell you, my lord?”

Reesh retreated to one of the two soft, padded chairs in the room, and sat down. At this point in his life, he couldn’t stand for long. But Orth remained beside the table, captivated by the objects on it.

“Like any educated man, Orth, you know that certain fragments of writing have survived from those days,” Reesh said. “With great difficulty, we can read some of it. There are even scraps and shreds of printed paper.

“Plus there are traditions—some recorded in the New Books and the Commentaries, some just old wives’ tales—that add to the picture. A determined scholar can amass a fair amount of information, using all these sources.”

“Yes,” Orth agreed, absentmindedly stroking the smooth surface of the wheel, which he had not yet put down. “Yes, I know my lord. It’s said the men of those days traveled in coaches without horses, and spoke to one another over great distances, and called down fire from Heaven that could destroy an enemy city in an instant. It’s said they knew how to fly through the air like birds and travel under the sea like fish.

“But it’s also said they were abominable sinners, addicted to every kind of wickedness; and God wiped out their glory.”

Reesh sighed. “That’s as may be,” he said. “Who can know the mind of God? I don’t pretend to.

“But it’s obvious from these few poor relics, and the traditions, that they were a great and glorious people indeed. Compared to them, we’re savages.”

“Yes, First Prester.”

“Do you know what I believe our mission is upon this earth?” said Reesh; and his eyes grew hard and fierce. “It is nothing less than to make the steep, arduous, dangerous climb back up to the pinnacle of that glory, prester. To rekindle its flame. To be mighty, as the men of the Empire were mighty. To rediscover all their secrets, and make use of them!

“These days, a man is considered old if he lives to be sixty. A man is deemed to be well-off if he isn’t starving and his roof doesn’t leak. But it was not always so; nor will it always be so forever.

“Of course, if we are to climb any distance at all up the pinnacle of glory, we first have to survive this latest invasion of the Heathen. That’s why you’re here, Orth. Sit down.”

Orth returned the wheel to its place and took the other chair. Reesh judged the man prepared for what was coming next.

“It goes without saying that the Temple must survive,” he said. “Therefore, I wish you to compose some new Scripture to ensure that it survives. You’re a strong scholar and the most eloquent man I know. Will you do it?”

Orth was shocked—but not as shocked as another man might have been. He forced a smile.

“Are you asking me to tamper with the holy Scriptures, First Prester? That might be construed as sacrilege. Perhaps even blasphemy.”

“Hah! You’re not a child, Orth. You know it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has been done. And it’s in the greatest and noblest cause—Obann’s survival.”

“I am familiar with numerous verses of Scripture that are said to be interpolations,” Orth replied. “Said to be, my lord, but not proved to be. The people, and the ordinary presters and reciters, accept them all as genuine. But in our own time, no one has dared to do this.”