Bell Mountain (The Bell Mountain Series) (20 page)

She kept turning to fix the position of the clump of bushes that marked the camp. The fire having died out, that was all she had to keep from getting lost. But here the land dipped up and down, and whenever she went down, she lost sight of the bushes. But she always found them when she came up again.

Ah! There it was—a little pool of water at the bottom of a swale, with starlight spattered on its surface.

She had to be careful where she put her feet. As she approached the water, toads hopped in the grass, getting out of her way. She couldn’t see them clearly, but she heard them: swish, thump, swish, thump.

And there they were, scores of them, sitting in the puddle, chirping and trilling. Ellayne smiled, and squatted for a better look.

They hopped into and out of the pool, splishing and splashing, blowing themselves up into little balls to force out their music. Ellayne could have grabbed twenty of them as they hopped around her—but she didn’t, of course. She’d only come to watch them. The grass was alive with them.

But then she heard something else that drove all thoughts of toads out of her head—

A snort, a clop of hooves and a jingle of harness, and men’s soft voices talking.

Ellayne turned, slipping to her hands and knees, and looked up. She saw several riders silhouetted against the night sky, men in flapping cloaks and tall headdresses. The wind carried their speech down to her: she couldn’t understand a word of it.

Heathen?A raiding party from across the mountains? She’d heard her father speak of such things. They came looking for slaves and for illegal trade with no tax paid to the state. And they were between her and the camp. If they saw her, she would never see her home again.

Ellayne crept farther down the swale, avoiding the pool, looking for a place to hide. The riders halted to talk among themselves.

There was no place to hide. No, wait—beyond the pool, the land sloped farther down. There were low trees casting dense, dark shadows, exactly what she needed. She aimed for the darkest of the shadows, thankful for the noise made by the toads.

It was waiting for her, a pit of darkness framed by two old bits of wall. She’d be safe there, if only she could reach the place before the riders happened to look in her direction.

Ellayne passed between the ruined walls and found herself on a hard-packed path sloping downward into deeper darkness.

“Wa-la-la-hruuu!” she heard a rider cry. And not waiting to see whether that meant they’d spotted her, she turned and fled into the dark.

Down and down she went, expecting at any moment to hear the horses’ hooves behind her. Once she ran into a wall and had to turn to the left. That taught her to go slowly. She knew she’d entered ruins.

Overhead, she saw the stars. It was a relief to know she wasn’t underground. Again and again walls rose up in front of her, forcing her to change direction. And as she heard nothing of the riders, her panic died away until at last she dared to stop and listen.

Nothing. They must not have seen her after all. From where she was now, she couldn’t even hear the toads. Which meant, she supposed, that she’d gone farther into the ruins than she should have.

Now all she wanted was to get back to camp and go to sleep, so she turned and tried to retrace her steps.

It was impossible.

“Idiot! You got lost!” she muttered to herself.

It was too silly for words. There was the open sky, right over her head. And there she was, between two walls that were too smooth to climb. It was that smooth stone that one so often encountered in these ruins. The walls were too high for her to jump up and grasp the top. If only she had a little something to stand on, so she could climb to the top of the wall and see the way out.

Ellayne tried to find the way, but the endless corridors led around and around, this way and that, and nowhere in particular. By the time her legs were too tired to go another step, her situation no longer struck her as silly.

She slumped down against the cold stone wall, seated on the hard stone floor, hungry and thirsty and ready to cry. She felt tears running down her cheeks. There was no way out of this. She would have been better off whistling to the riders and walking right up to them. Unexpectedly came a memory of her mother tucking her into bed when she was sick, and feeding her nice, hot broth a spoonful at a time. The tears flowed faster.

“God,” she said, “I don’t know how to pray, but Obst says all we have to do is talk to You, and You’ll hear us. I hope You’re listening! I’m lost in here, and they don’t know where I am, and I can’t get out!”

Once she started, she just kept going—talking to God as if He were another person sitting there across from her: another person, listening. She poured out her heart to Him.

She must have fallen asleep praying because the next thing she knew, her mouth was dry, she was stiff and sore all over, the sky above was as blue as the stones in her mother’s turquoise bracelet, and she could see.

Not that there was all that much to see: just the bare stone, as clean as if it had been swept. Here and there she could make out ghostly traces of writing on the walls, too faded to be read.

She got up slowly, achingly. There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink; and if she stayed where she was, she would die.

It was a ruin, burn it! There must be someplace where the wall had fallen down, where she could climb out. All she had to do was to keep going until she found it. Once she got back out on the plain, even the water that the toads lived in would be as good as a long drink from the freshest, cleanest, coldest spring.

Ellayne forced herself down the empty corridor. She must have covered miles last night, she thought. Her legs ached, and she didn’t dare think about how hungry and thirsty she was. Just keep going, she thought. There had to be a way out.

She wondered what kind of place this was in ancient times. Why was there no roof? If it had had a roof once, and the roof had fallen in, the floor ought to be covered with rubble.

And suddenly she emerged into a wide open space.

Most of it was still in shadow. Surrounded by walls, the space had more entrances from more different directions than Ellayne could count. And it was huge. A strong man might throw a stone from one side to the other, but she couldn’t. Everyone in Ninneburky might assemble there, with space left over.

What was this place? Ellayne forgot to be tired or thirsty, pondering its mystery.

Slowly, gingerly, she walked out toward the middle of the empty space. It felt like she was the last person left in all the world. She tried not to make noise, but even her light little steps echoed hollowly.

As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she could see that there was some kind of decoration on the smooth stone pavement—something painted, perhaps. She’d have to wait until the sun was higher in the sky before she could see it clearly.

She could already see that of the many dozens of blank hallways that led to this open space, no two of them were different: no telling one from another. When she turned, she couldn’t decide which was the corridor she’d entered from. They were all exactly alike, and there would be no finding one’s way out of them.

A bird shrilled at her from somewhere, making her jump. She spun around to see it, and it kept on calling. But this was no bird—only a dark thing like a large rat racing across the floor. Starving rats might eat a human being: she was sure she’d read that in
Abombalbap
. If every one of those dark doorways should suddenly teem with rats—but what kind of rat ran on its hind legs? And right at her—

“Wytt!”

Ellayne collapsed when she recognized the Omah. Her legs buckled under her. Shrilling and whistling frantically, he pinched her cheeks and pulled her hair with his hard little hands—pulled it hard enough to make her stop blubbering.

“But how did you find me?” she cried. “And where are Jack and Obst? And where am I?” Then she remembered that he couldn’t answer her.

He stepped back and chattered angrily at her, almost as good as a real scolding. And then before she could stop him, he turned and ran away. He ran to the nearest place where one wall met another and somehow scrambled straight up to the top. There he paused and whistled and whistled until Ellayne got up and came to him. He looked down and chattered at her.

“You want me to wait right here?” she said. She was sure that was what he meant, but his only answer was to run off again. And because he ran along the topsides of the roofless chamber, she couldn’t see him.

“Ellayne!”

That was Jack’s voice. It woke her from a light doze: woke her wide awake, instantly. She scrambled to her feet.

“Jack! Where are you?”

“I’m coming,” he answered.

He was following Wytt, who got there first, jumped down to the floor, and up into Ellayne’s arms. It was a very good thing to hold him again—and even better to see Jack walking along the top of a wall.

“Be careful!”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Obst is coming. We’ll pull you out of there.”

She couldn’t imagine Obst tiptoeing along the top of the wall like a cat on a fence. But if Jack said he was coming, he was coming—provided he didn’t fall off and break a leg.

Jack was right above her now. He dropped to his hands and knees.

“I brought some water,” he said. “Don’t drop it.” He leaned over and dropped the water bag into her hands as Wytt retreated to her shoulder. By the time she was done drinking, Obst was there, too, standing beside Jack.

“Ellayne,” he said, “I’m going to stretch my staff down to you. All you have to do is hold onto it, and we’ll pull you up. But you mustn’t let go.”

“I won’t!” she said.

She had to pass the waterskin up to Jack first, and then Obst lowered his staff so she could reach it. “Use your feet to brace yourself against the wall,” he said. “Ready?”

And before you knew it, he’d pulled her up, and she was standing on top of the wall. It was wider than you would have thought, and no one was in any danger of falling off. Ellayne heaved a great sigh and trembled all over.

“What is this place?” said Jack.

Ellayne was so curious to see it from above that she got up, quaking legs and all.

The view struck her speechless. The whole maze of corridors extended—oh, who could say how far? There were other open spaces in it, but none as big as the open space over which the travelers stood.

In the midst of the vast floor there was an enormous picture that Ellayne hadn’t been able to see when she was standing on it.

“What is it?” she said.

“A map of the world,” said Obst.

She looked up at him. If he truly understood what the picture on the floor was meant to be, that understanding brought a haunted look to his face.

“What’s a map?” Jack said.

“A picture.A chart that shows you how to find your way.”

“And that’s the world?” Ellayne said.

“The whole world,” said the hermit. “Those great fields of blue are the seas of all the world, those splotches of yellow the islands. And the great land masses in brown and green and gold—some are lands that no one’s seen for a thousand years.”

Pointing with his staff, he showed them the part of the map that represented Obann: all the wide lands between the Imperial River and the River Winter, between the mountains and the Great Sea, with the long marches of the Southern Wilds stretching down to swathes of gold that represented deserts.

It was only a small portion of the whole.

“That’s all of it?” Jack cried. “All of Obann?”

“But there’s so much more that isn’t Obann!” Ellayne said.

“When this map was made,” the hermit said, “men of Obann visited all those countries, even the ones across the seas. Then the Empire extended south to the desert and eastward over the mountains to the Great Lakes—you can see them there, those little strips of blue. That’s all Heathen country now.

“But come—let’s leave this place! I’ve never heard of it, but it ought to have been famous. Everyone should have heard of it.”

They could walk single file along the tops of the walls. Wytt scampered away from them; he knew the way.

“I don’t understand,” Ellayne said. “This is such a big place—there must be hundreds of people who’ve seen it. There were riders out on the plain last night. I thought they were Heathen, so I ran in here to get away from them, and I got lost. But if there were riders by night, there must be other riders by day. No one could miss this place in the daytime!”

“You can be sure that many have passed this place without seeing it,” Obst said. “And you can be sure that this ruin, whatever it may have been once, has been here for well over a thousand years. I can only think it must have been hidden until just recently, and lately revealed by the power of God. Maybe floods, great winds, or an earthquake laid it bare. I doubt it’ll be long before the Temple sends scholars to explore it.”

The great open space was not near the center of the maze, but closer to its southern border. Now that the morning was well advanced and the sun well up in the sky, Ellayne could see that the open space wasn’t really very far from the place where she’d first entered the maze.