Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series

by John Stockmyer

  "You're not ... dissatisfied with the home, then? Because everything is legal about the sale. Let me assure you of that." Said in a rush.

  "Why should I be dissatisfied?" A disbelieving pause on the line. "No. I just want to check on the previous owner."

  "Oh. Well, all right then." The ample smile was back in the ample woman's ample voice. "I do believe you're right. That that was the Van Robin property, Mr. Lyon. I was able to list the property ... oh ... several months, before you bought it." Make that several years if what John had learned about the house was true. The sale of haunted houses had to wait for just the right -- translate naive -- out-of-town buyer. "Such a charming old place. Now, of course, if you're ready to move up, I have some wonderful homes to show you, all in the very best of neighborhoods. And with the interest rates the way they are today ......"

  "I'm quite content with the Van Robin place. All I want is to know the location of Mr. Van Robin."

  "Well now." Said a bit huffily. "I don't know if I'm at liberty to give out that information."

  "I wonder if a call to the Better Business Bureau might help me. Do you know if they provide that kind of location service?"

  "Ah. Ah. ..... Come to think of it, I do believe Mr. Van Robin was living in a nursing home, somewhere."

  "And the name of that nursing home?"

  "I believe it might have been ... it might have been 'Silver Lining Care.'"

  "Thank you."

  Hanging up before Madge tried to sell him industrial real estate, John mulled over what he'd learned. First, that he was so lonely he'd talk to a realtor. (The only woman he'd been close to lately had been Platinia, a girl so small that all he could see himself doing with her was snapping a leash around her neck and taking her for walks.)

  His woman problems would have to be solved another time, however.

  On track at last, John looked up Silver Lining in the Yellow Pages. Found it. Dialed.

  "Silver Lining Care," said the voice of an older woman.

  "I'd like to speak to someone about one of your patients."

  "We call them 'friends' here at Silver Lining. For they are our friends."

  "Right."

  "You would want Ms. Cousins in our Life Care section. I'll transfer you, now."

  Click.

  "Janett Johnson, care unit." Younger. Efficient.

  "John Lyon here. I'd like to speak to Ms. Cousins, please."

  "Ms. Cousins is away from her desk at the moment, sir."

  "Maybe you can help me, then. I'd like some information about a Mr. Van Robin."

  Silence. .......... As if the line had gone completely dead. No click, no buzz.

  "Hello?"

  Nothing.

  "Hello?"

  "If this is the ambulance service again," said the same voice, coldly, "we have no further information."

  "This is not the ambulance service."

  "The mortuary? We still have no further information."

  "Sorry. There must be some mistake. All I wanted was to know if a Mr. Van Robin was your patient. And if he might have died just over a week ..."

  Click!

  They'd been cut off.

  Redial.

  Ringing. .... "Silver Lining Care."

  "This is John Lyon again ...." Click.

  Redial with more care.

  Ringing. .........

  No answer.

  A recheck in the Yellow Pages. Dialing with the care of a five year old.

  Ringing. ..........................

  No answer.

  Strange ......

  But not that strange, John decided. The phone system hadn't worked all that well since deregulation. The airlines hadn't for damn sure! In the entire world, only five airlines were in financial trouble -- all of them in the United States!

  No matter. John would call Silver Lining Care, later. He was just trying to satisfy a curiosity itch, anyway. Something he could do any time.

  By the next morning, John's interest in Van Robin had been replaced by something more important: the dream he'd had that night. A bad one about someone threatening Platinia. This, in spite of going to sleep quickly, the expected storm blowing up in the form of a lulling rain.

  The following night, John had a similar, rainy nightmare.

  The next night, no dreams that he could remember.

  The fourth night brought rain once more -- and another, frightening dream.

  Three bad dreams in four nights, each ending with Platinia pleading for John to return and save her.

  * * * * *

  "Still not sleeping?" Dr. Paul said, after John had admitted as much by grunting when Paul asked him how he felt. It was another, early morning, the two of them alone in the office, awaiting the arrival of colleagues and students.

  "Does it show?"

  "Yes. You look like you've been 'rode hard and put away wet.'"

  "I fall asleep and it's like I'm there again: a prisoner in King Yarro's dungeon on Xanthin Island. Or I'm sailing the fresh water ocean they call Sea Minor, going to Bice. Or I'm trying to get across the Malachite Desert and run into the gravity traps."

  "It's not surprising that those experiences are coming back to you in dreams. What you went through is unprecedented. Your psyche is, no doubt, using dreams to help you come to grips with what's happened to you."

  "That's what I think, too. It's just that the dreams all end with Platinia wanting me to come back."

  "Platinia? The girl you said had special powers? I believe you called her an Etherial."

  "Thought had special powers. From the perspective of this world, she seems nothing more than a slip of a girl who needed my protection."

  "It may take some time for your unconscious to work all this out."

  "Right."

  What John didn't tell Paul was about dreaming of the time John had threatened Platinia, aggression that was totally unlike him. Stroking the gem while willing it to do his bidding, he'd terrified an already perpetually frightened Platinia. Forced her to talk. To tell him she was some kind of sacrificial princess. That she was an Etherial -- whatever that might have meant to her.

  For now, John decided to take Paul's advice: John taking some time to let his experiences in the other world ... fade.

  Except that, night after night, he found himself, as if compelled, dreaming of the Bandworld's circular countries, the sky over each band a different color: from the rim inward, red, orange, yellow, green and -- formerly, blue -- the sky over Azare now blacked out by Mage-magic.) A flat world at war. The green-skied Malachites fighting alongside the evil Mage-King of Azare -- because they must? Stil-de-grain, Realgar and the outer rim of Cinnabar, allied to stem the tide of evil.

  Thinking about when he did and didn't dream, John got a possible new insight: that his dreams might be connected to Kansas City's weather.

  While it was common to have Midwest thunderstorms in the summer, it was rare to have them in late November, this November uncommonly rainy, these late fall storms not only producing rain, but also abnormal lightning.

  Could lightning be connected to John's bad dreams? Possibly. For lightning was nothing but a majestic form of static electricity -- static electricity John's "link" with the other world.

  Time to walk his fingers through the Yellow Pages once again.

  * * * * *

  The actual installation of the lightning rod had taken less than an hour. John knew that because -- mindful of what Professor Fredericks said about the danger of badly installed lightning rods -- John had watched the man do the work.

  Basically, all there was to a lightning rod was a sharp pointed, iron spike fastened above the highest point of the roof, a heavy-duty copper wire going from the base of the rod to an iron stake the man drove into the ground. Grounded. That was what a lightning rod did: diverted to the ground the electrical ions that might build up on a house during a thunderstorm. Drained them off before they could "draw down" the opposite charge of lightning from the clouds.

&nb
sp; Not at all concerned about a lightning strike, John's interest was in the rod's ability to drain away a thunderstorm's static build-up, John having the idea that storm/static was making him dream about the other world. His hope was -- no electric charge on the house -- no dreams of the other world.

  It was after he'd gone to the expense of putting up a lightning rod, of course, that the weather turned cold again. A dry cold. No clouds; no lightning; no static build-up for the rod to drain away. A period of time in which the bad dreams disappeared -- a correlation that seemed to support John's static-nightmare theory. Still, it would take a rainstorm for John to be able to test his static/dream thesis.

  So much for dreams -- at least for the time being.

  John had developed another worry, anyway.

  While working on dream-banishment, John had begun to get that old feeling of being spied on, a sensation he'd first had prior to going to the other world. (That was before the glitch that had sent Platinia through to John's house, John using the generator to take Platinia back to her own world.) It was not until John was in the "other reality" that he'd discovered that the Wizard, Melcor, had used magic to see through John's eyes; even let Platinia, Melcor's slavey, have a look. No wonder John felt he was being spied on! He was!

  This time, the sensation of being watched was different in two ways. First, because John got that odd feeling when entering or leaving his house. Second, instead of John feeling the "spy" was inside John's head, John had the notion he was being watched from the fringe of woods that ringed his house, John even thinking he saw someone lurking there. An ... old man? With long, gray hair? At least, that was John's impression.

  So much for the week and a half since getting his lightning rod installed.

  It was not until Friday of the second week that storm clouds gathered from the west.

  Good! He'd finally get to see if the lightning rod could "dream-protect" his house.

  He'd go to bed early; fall asleep with rain on the roof and lightning in the sky.

  "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

  Maybe.

  -5-

  On hands and knees, the old man crawled up the warped steps. Still on all fours, dragging the blanket that was his only protection against the night's increasing cold, he labored across the paint-flaked, splintery porch, collapsing beside the house wall, partially shielded there from the wet bite of the rising wind. Over him, the door loomed tall, its handle impossibly far away.

  It had taken more life than he thought remained -- using two rocks -- to abrade the vertical wire.

  Exhausted, lying on his side, his back to the smoothed, rock wall, the old man summoned a last effort to pull the blanket over his frail body.

  He coughed, doubling up with the violent hack of it, after the spasm, gasping in a ragged breath to keep himself alive.

  His life nearly spent, only his black eyes glittered in the dark.

  As some strength returned, he found he could feel again. Feel the wind and the approach of rain, not the nighttime shower of his homeland, but rain that, day or night, lashed into the narrow, earthen cave he'd dug for himself in the woods.

  How long had he searched -- long years and more long years -- for the means to take him ... home.

  With mummied fingers, the old man clutched the blanket close.

  He was too drained to curse the ill luck he'd had in coming to this place; to curse the simple fools who, even hearing who he was, had not bowed down to him!

  That was at the start. Before discovering that, awe inspiring as the name Pfnaravin was in his own land, it was known to no one in this place where every slavey thought himself a king!

  Nor could he punish the others for mocking him when he could not speak their barbaric tongue. Stripped of power, he had become as much a slavey as the rest.

  How often had he railed against himself for journeying to this hideously, artificial land! Yet, he was not to blame. How could he have known that, in coming here, he would be shorn of crystal-magic.

  Beloved crystal!

  Green gem of the Malachites!

  Precious stone that would not leave its homeland.

  So he had become marooned. Searching, ever searching for a crystal with the force to take him home.

  How long had he been trapped in this vast band calling itself America? More than a century, as these rustics reckoned time. Long enough to see them seized by the madness of machines. Long enough to see himself decline to be the shadow-shell of the man he was that day when, stroking his green disk, muttering the sacred words, he'd shaken the bedrock beneath Hero Castle to build the flow of transformation fluid that had launched him to this other place.

  The old man sighed as memories, like waking dreams, continued to flood his mind.

  He had been so clever!

  Knowing that Melcor, that blundering fool, would be away on other business, Pfnaravin had journeyed to Hero Castle. There, overawing Melcor's functionary, followed by Pfnaravin's apprentice, he had ascended to the tower room.

  Concealed in the circular stone chamber, safe from the prying eyes of the absent Melcor, he had taken the hallowed book from his pack. Opened it. Found the passage he sought: combined the green crystal-force with the book's chanted spell to shake the very earth!

  Triumphantly, taking the path the Hero had blazed in the long ago, Pfnaravin's hair bristling, he had passed ... through ... to this other land.

  But ... arriving without his Mage-disk.

  Where was Pfnaravin's crystal now!? Where was the sacred book of the Crystal-Mage of Malachite!?

  Left behind.

  Both left behind in Hero Castle in the band of Stil-de-grain.

  Now lying against the front wall of the house -- near to the spot of his Wizardly arrival -- he thought of the many infamies he had suffered here, first to have to bend his mind and mouth and tongue to the rude speech of these others so he might order them about.

  Order them about? Sadly, he'd discovered that, without Magus power, he could not control them in the least.

  In the end, he bore these travesties well; had learned to turn a smiling face to those who would revile him; acquired the trade of a common builder so that he might eat!

  All this he pondered as his breath returned, as the sky clouds thickened, the night sky growling like a rabid beast.

  Resting, husbanding his fitful glow of life, he thought on the first days of his entrance to this world. Remembered the stone marker he had set ... here ... to guide him to this place where he must be to ride the magic back to Stil-de-grain.

  Remembered how, later, he had built this house around the place that was the Hero's ... bridge ... between the worlds.

  This house where, to his shame, he had grown ... old.

  It was also here in his self-built house of stone that others had come when he was old and ill, to take him to the house of beds where the old of this world went to die.

  It was then that he'd known despair! Despair because he was dying like the rest. He, Pfnaravin, Crystal-Mage of Malachite!

  Dying. With no crystal to be found in this maddening world where people rode over the earth and through the sky in dangerous, metal monsters of their own creation. No crystal with which to build the transformation fluid that would take him ... home.

  Recently, a man had come to the house of the beds of death, the man telling them of the terrifying flashes that rent the windy, rain-soaked sky. (Yes. Long ago, Pfnaravin had learned the nomenclature for the nameless terrors of the sky: Sun. Moon. Stars. Wind. Lightning.

  He had learned the words. But did not know the ... substance ... of these frightening ... entities.

  More to the point, he had not realized that lightning was what was meant in the legend of the Hero, folklore saying that the Hero, "blinded by sky" rode home to Stil-de-grain.

  Able to draw, again, a surplus of breath, the old man chanted to himself the rhyme of the Hero's travels:

  The Hero away

 
In Stil-de-grain day

  The earth shakes him free.

  Blinded by sky

  In tower high

  Back, back came he.

  Pfnaravin had pondered that rhyme (said so casually by every child in every band), to finally puzzle out the hidden meaning to the line: "The earth shakes him free."

  The earth shakes him free! Only the Crystal-Mage of Malachite had penetrated to the meaning of that line! And he had been right! With crystal-power and with spells, he had made that "earth shake" under Hero Castle, the result to build the force of transformation fluid in that curving, tower room. The force that had vaulted him to this other world.

  To be marooned without his crystal! A castaway because he could not decipher the second tristich! The third line of which must contain the essence of the Hero's vault from here to home again!

  Long, long, had he thought that if he could divine the second strophe ....... But he could not.

  He had learned one thing and one thing only. That the Hero had used other means than crystal-magic to return. For while there were things called crystals in this world -- even great spheroids that the pretend prophets of this land called crystal balls -- none could be stroked to build the flow of transformation fluid.

  "Blinded by sky?" Clearly, that line was the key to the understanding of the final stave.

  How he had despaired when the man and woman from the government had come and taken him away. Too old. Too sick to manage his own life.

  There, to perish with the rest. Or so he'd thought ... until that slavey came to tell them of the lightning.

  Lightning. The blinding, awesome streaks of white that tore into the wild blackness of a storming sky!

  The man had talked of this two weeks ago -- as this world counted seven up-lights as a week. Talked of its power. Talked of ... static ... which, pitifully, Pfnaravin himself had discovered -- but in such small quantities it was mockery even to consider it as transformation fluid.

  Lightning.