The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 24: THE BELL RINGS

BOOOOOONG.

The sound came again, rolling down the mountain like a slow wave. Adrian felt it in his ribs. In his teeth. In the burned skin of his hands. It was the deepest, oldest sound he had ever heard, as if the mountain itself had opened its mouth and was trying to speak.

Then it faded. The echo ran away across the valley and died somewhere far off in the dark.

Silence.

Nobody on the hillside moved. A bucket lay on its side in the grass, water still dripping from it. The fire behind them crackled and popped. But every face was turned up toward the tower, and every face was full of fear.

"Someone rang it," the old tea house woman whispered again. "God help us. Someone rang it."

Adrian did not hear her.

He was looking at the tower. At the small light moving inside it, passing from one window to another, like a firefly in a jar. And slowly, very slowly, something was coming together in his head, the way pieces of a broken pot come together on the shop table under Helen's careful hands.

The fire.

The nailed windows.

The whole town running up the hill with buckets in the middle of the night.

"They did not only want to kill us," he said quietly.

Helen turned to him. Her face was still black with smoke. "What?"

"The fire. It was not only for us." He pointed up at the tower. "The old woman said the elders guard that tower. Nobody goes up without their permission. Victor's men tried twice and were stopped." He looked around the hillside. At the old men in their sleeping clothes, carrying buckets. Gray beards. Bent backs. "Where are the elders now, Helen?"

She looked around too. And he saw her understand.

"Here," she whispered. "They are all here. Fighting the fire."

"And nobody is watching the tower."

Two birds with one stone. Burn the West boy and his wife in their beds. And while the whole town runs to save a burning house, walk up the empty hill and take what you came for.

It was clever. It was cruel. It was exactly the kind of thing Victor Han would do.

Adrian stood up. His legs almost gave way under him, and he grabbed the wall of the burning house to stay up. His feet were bare and bleeding. His hands were red and raw. His chest still burned with every breath.

"Where are you going?" Helen said. But she already knew. He could see it in her face.

"Marcus is up there," he said. "I know he is. They will need him to read whatever that bell has woken up."

"You can barely stand."

"Then I will crawl."

Helen looked at him for a long moment. Then she turned to the young man from the town who was still kneeling beside Old Lu.

"Please," she said. "Can you take care of this old man? Keep him warm. Do not let him sleep too deeply. Make him drink water."

The young man nodded. "Yes, Miss."

Then Helen looked down at Adrian's bleeding feet. She turned to a farmer standing nearby with an empty bucket, an old man with a gray beard and a kind, frightened face.

"Sir," she said. "Your shoes. I will pay you anything."

The farmer looked at her. At Adrian. At the burning house. Then he looked up at the tower, where the strange light was still moving.

Without a word, he took off his old cloth shoes and held them out.

"Go," he said in a rough voice. "Whoever rang that bell, go and stop them. Before something terrible happens."

The path up to the tower was steep and narrow, made of old stones that moved under their feet. It went up between the last few houses, then out onto the open hillside, where there were only rocks and wind and tall dry grass.

Adrian climbed in the farmer's shoes. They were too big, and the inside was rough, and every step sent pain up through his cut feet. He did not stop. Helen climbed beside him, one hand on his arm, holding him up when he swayed.

The wind was cold up here. It came straight down off the peaks and cut through their thin clothes. Behind them, far below, the fire was getting smaller as the town fought it with water. Ahead of them, the tower grew taller and darker against the stars.

Halfway up, Helen stopped.

"Adrian," she said. "Look."

At the bottom of the tower, the old wooden door was standing open. Two shapes were sitting on the ground in front of it, their backs against the stone wall.

Old men. Two of them. Their hands were tied behind them with rope, and there were rags pushed into their mouths. One of them had a bleeding cut on his forehead. When they saw Adrian and Helen coming up the path, their eyes went wide, and they began to make angry, muffled sounds.

The elders. The ones who were supposed to be guarding the tower.

Helen ran to them and pulled the rags from their mouths. Adrian knelt and started working on the knots with his burned fingers.

"City men," the first elder gasped, as soon as he could speak. "Six of them. Seven. With guns. They came out of the dark while the bell was still asleep. They tied us up like goats." His voice shook with anger. "And they carried something up the stairs. Something heavy. Wrapped in a blanket."

"What did it look like?" Adrian asked.

"I did not see it. But I heard it." The old man looked up at the open door, and fear came into his face. "It clanked. Like metal. Like an old chain."

The clapper.

The Hans had owned it for twenty-eight years. Robert Feng had sold it to them when he was young and did not know what it was. And tonight, Victor had brought it home. Carried it up the hill in a blanket. Hung it back inside the bell where it belonged.

And for the first time in one hundred years, the bell had its tongue again.

"Stay here," Adrian told the elders. "When the town comes, tell them what happened."

He went to the door. Inside, it was dark. A narrow stone staircase went up and around and around, like the inside of a shell. The steps were worn into deep dips in the middle from hundreds of years of feet. A cold wind came down from above.

And with the wind came voices.

Adrian and Helen climbed. Slowly. Silently. Pressed close to the wall. Each step was a small mountain of pain for Adrian's feet, but he did not make a sound. Around and around. Up and up.

The voices grew louder.

"...read it again. Slowly this time."

"I told you, I cannot see it properly. The light is bad. The marks are very old."

Adrian stopped. His heart jumped into his throat.

He knew that second voice. Thin and tired and frightened. He had heard it every day for two years, across a small table covered with old books and cold tea.

Marcus.

Helen's hand closed around his arm. Not yet, her fingers said. Not yet.

They climbed the last few steps on their hands and knees. The staircase opened up into a round room at the very top of the tower. Adrian lay flat on the top step, with just his eyes above the edge of the floor, and looked.

The room was wide and round, with a stone floor and four big open windows looking out at the night sky. The cold wind blew straight through it. In the middle, hanging from thick wooden beams under the pointed roof, was the bell.

It was enormous. Taller than a man. Dark green and black with age, covered in carved patterns of clouds and waves. And hanging inside it, from a shining new chain, was a heavy, ugly piece of old bronze shaped like a long tear.

The clapper.

But that was not what made Adrian's breath stop.

When the bell had rung, the walls had changed.

For one hundred years, the inside of the tower had been covered with a thick layer of old white plaster. Now, all around the room, the plaster had cracked and fallen away, shaken loose by the great sound. It lay in white piles on the floor, like snow. And underneath it, carved into the gray stone walls, was writing.

Lines and lines of old writing, going all the way around the room in a great circle. Small, neat, ancient marks. And between them, here and there, little pictures. Mountains. Rivers. A door.

And a crane, with one wing raised.

Adrian could not breathe. The bell had not been broken all these years. It had been a lock. And its voice was the key.

It is not broken, Lu. It is waiting.

There were five men in the room. Four of them were big men in dark coats, holding flashlights, shining them across the walls. The fifth man stood near the bell with his arms crossed. He was tall and lean, dressed all in black.

And over his face, he wore a black mask.

The thief. The man from the first night. The man who had torn the jade from Adrian's fingers in the Feng garden and jumped over the wall like a cat.

And tied to one of the wooden posts that held up the roof, with his hands behind him, was Marcus.

He looked terrible. Worse than at the pier. His broken glasses were held together with tape. His face was swollen and bruised. His shirt was torn. He was squinting at the writing on the wall, his lips moving as he read, and his whole body was shaking from the cold.

"Read faster," the masked man said. His voice was calm. Bored. "Or I make a phone call. And the girl in the ambulance does not get her medicine tonight."

Marcus closed his eyes for a second. Then he opened them and looked at the wall again.

"It is a path," he said weakly. "The floor. Look at the floor."

The men looked down. Adrian looked down too.

In the middle of the room, under the bell, the stone floor was different. It was not one smooth piece. It was made of square tiles, maybe twenty of them, in rows. Each tile had a small mark carved into the middle. A mountain. A river. A cloud. A fish. A crane.

"The writing says only one path is safe," Marcus said. "You must walk across the stones in the right order, to reach the bell. Under the bell, there is something hidden. But if you step on the wrong stone..."

"What happens?" the masked man asked.

Marcus did not answer.

"I asked you a question."

"It does not say," Marcus lied. Adrian could hear the lie in his voice. Two years of sitting beside him, and Adrian knew every sound Marcus made. "It only says to follow the right path."

The masked man walked slowly to the edge of the tiles. He looked at them for a long time.

"Then tell us the first stone," he said.

Marcus looked at the wall. He looked at the tiles. His lips moved silently.

Then, slowly, his eyes lifted.

Past the men. Past the bell. Across the dark room.

To the top of the staircase, where a pair of eyes was looking back at him from the shadows.

Marcus saw him.

Adrian watched it happen. Watched his friend's face change. The fear went out of it, just for one second, and something else came in. Something warm and sad and very brave. Marcus's eyes filled with tears. His lips moved, very slightly. No sound came out. But Adrian could read it.

I am sorry.

Then Marcus turned back to the masked man. And when he spoke, his voice was suddenly loud and clear and strong.

"The crane!" he shouted. "The first step is the crane! In the middle! Step on the crane!"

Adrian's heart stopped.

That was wrong. He knew it was wrong. He did not know how he knew, but he could see it, the way the marks on the wall were set out. The crane was never first. The crane was always last. Always at the end of the road.

Marcus knew it too.

One of the big men stepped forward, onto the tile in the middle of the floor, the one with the crane carved into it.

There was a sound like a deep sigh.

Then a crack.

Then, all across the middle of the room, under the great green bell, the stone tiles began to tremble, and shift, and drop away into a black hole that went down, and down, and down into the dark heart of the tower.