The Last Banquet (Bell Mountain) Read Online Free

agree to take her to Obann. “I can’t help it: the whole thing makes me more curious than I can stand,” he said.
    He had two donkeys to carry his pelts and his gear, and he and Gurun went on foot. From the River Winter to the city of Obann was a long, long way to walk. Gurun found it hard to imagine such distances on land.
    “Anyone we meet,” Tim said, “we’ll tell them you’re my sister’s daughter.”
    “Why?”
    “Because there’s already too much going on these days to make people uneasy, without me telling them you’re a girl who got blown down here from a country no one knew existed. In a boat, no less! Nobody in his right mind would take a boat out on the sea.”
    “What are these things that are making people uneasy?” Gurun asked.
    “Funny things! For instance, they’re still talking about the bell—the bell that rang in places where there ain’t no bell for miles and miles around. Prophets said it was God’s bell, ringing in the end of the world.”
    “What’s a bell?”
    He had to explain. He’d been to Obann once, where there were many bells, and he’d enjoyed listening to them. The chamber house in his own little town was too poor to have even one bell.
    “So that’s what it was!” Gurun said. “We heard it, too. Everybody heard it, on all the different islands, all at the same time. Nobody knew what it was—only that, for a little while, it made the whole world seem fresh and new. And since that morning the fishing has been better than anybody can remember.”
    It wasn’t the kind of thing you would forget. Winter still had the islands in its clutches that morning. And then, from out of some unknown corner of the heavens, or from out of nowhere at all, sweet music rang, waking the people in their beds and the livestock in their stalls. From that moment on, winter yielded to an early spring and the waters teemed with fish.
    Nobody knew what it was. There were no chamber houses in the islands, nor presters to preach in them. Reciters studied the Scriptures and went from dwelling to dwelling to teach and recite Scripture at district meetings, weddings, name-days, and funerals. There wasn’t a bell to be found in all the islands. Some said the music was produced by angels. Others thought that maybe some spirit of the sea itself had decided to sing. A few said it was mermaids.
    “Well, the whole world’s going funny, and people are scared,” Tim said. “Up north there are giant shaggy monsters that no one’s ever seen before—they wrecked a town. Ain’t seen one myself, but that don’t mean that everybody’s lying.
    “Still, I’ve got to say the trapping was more than fine this season. I’ve taken more pelts in a few short weeks than I ever took before in a whole summer. Whatever it is that’s happening, it can’t be all bad.”
    It took them a week to hike to Pokee, where they had to stop while Tim sold his pelts to an agent who would resell them up and down the Imperial River. The trapper didn’t get the kind of prices he’d hoped for.
    “Sorry,” said the agent, “but you know there’s a war on, and it’s going badly. I can’t sell furs to people who’ve been burned out of their homes by the barbarians. It’s one Heathen army after another coming over the mountains, all heading down the river to Obann itself. They mean to take the city.”
    “They’re fools,” said Tim. “Ever seen Obann’s walls? Ain’t no army can take that city!” But the agent wasn’t so sure of that.
    Tim found reasons to tarry in Pokee for longer than Gurun liked. Yes, it was interesting to see people farming, raising crops like corn and grapes and melons, which had never been grown in her country. It was interesting to see so many people living in wooden houses built on the ground instead of under it. But she was eager to reach the city and see the king, even though Tim said Obann had no king.
    What with one thing and another, summer was almost over by the time they headed