Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series

by John Stockmyer

  Stopped in his tracks, shivering now, John couldn't seem to find the nerve to by-pass ... death.

  Across the widened hallway from the dead soldiers was the heavily-braced door. The exit John had thought was the postern gate.

  Needing to stop looking at the dead men, grateful to have something else to do, John unfolded the map again. Consulted it.

  According to what he thought it showed, the fortified door was, indeed, the postern gate to the castle. Now that he was closer to the door, could look at it with something more than quick peeks from a distance, he saw it was barred and chained, three massive rusty padlocks fastening it shut. How the lock and chain arrangement opened, he didn't know. It didn't matter anyway since he had no key.

  The situation was beginning to "fit," at least. It was through that back door that the soldiers were going to take the body.

  Assuming that theorization held up, one of the dead men must have a key to the locks.

  An idea John could verify -- provided he had the stomach to search their bodies.

  Only he didn't.

  Or it could be that the third man -- the one he'd knocked out down the passageway, had the key.

  None of which mattered.

  Sooner or later, he had to lead his party past the slaughtered soldiers, in spite of the knowledge that out there, somewhere, was a killer!

  The passage of time helping him pull himself together, John motioned to the women.

  And they were off again, sidling past the bodies, John's knapsack scraping the left wall, the bulk of the pack causing him to slip on the blood-slick flagstones.

  Unknowingly holding his breath, John panted out his relief when he'd finally passed the dead soldiers.

  The others clear as well, John shifted his carryall until it was as balanced as possible, then led the retreat into blackness, John's single torch the only light, once again.

  John's emotion now? Elation! Elation that he was still alive! (Not admirable, but entirely understandable!)

  Though wanting to hurry now that the map showed them close to their goal, John had to go slowly enough so the women and the zombie-like Army Head could use the torch's guttering light to keep from tripping on an increasingly uneven floor.

  All that mattered, John told himself, was discovering the Mage-exit -- and finding it quickly, a task made more difficult because John kept pausing every second step ... to listen.

  He shook his head; reminded himself there was no time to lose. And yet, he stopped again. ....... Why?

  Because he imagined he heard noises in the dark? Rustlings? Footsteps that dogged him down the corridor, moving when John moved, stopping when he stopped? ...........

  Refusing to give in to paranoia, John set out again. .......

  There!

  Certain he'd heard something following him, John stopped cold and raised the torch, in the same instant pivoting quickly, his eyes gnawing at the shadow edges beyond the crude circle of throbbing light. ... Saw ....

  Eyes! Glowing red! Near the floor just beyond the torch's circle! ... Small eyes. Narrow eyes that suddenly went ... out.

  A rat.

  Nothing but a rat, human presence disturbing the loathsome creature in its foul domain.

  Relieved to have an explanation for those haunting sounds, John waved the group on and was immediately rewarded with ... the other door! Right where he thought it should be! (Besides gaining confidence in his ability to read the map, John was beginning to get a sense of scale from the paper's markings.)

  Motioning to the rest who came up to cluster around him -- the Army Head still sightless -- John creaked up the door's unlocked, wrought iron latch and shouldered the door forward, its rusty hinges squealing, the rough, wood slab moving steadily, if noisily, inward.

  Yes.

  Stairs.

  Spiraling down.

  Stepping through the doorway -- the rest staying close to take advantage of the fuzzy circle of light of John's elevated torch -- they began the dizzying, cylindrical descent.

  The narrow stairs a corkscrew, John concentrated on placing each foot on the triangularly irregular stone steps, at the same time, wondering how the mesmerized soldier behind him could feel his way without falling. Apparently, even "asleep," a hypnotized man was "awake" to danger.

  Down and down. To wetness and to increasingly foul air. Until ... they hit bottom.

  Everyone off the stairs, John stopped to unfold, then refold the map so that only the basement of the castle showed, the sturdy thickness of the folded page helping him hold the map still in the weak light.

  Taking his time, John studied the "vault" part of the page.

  As nearly as he could tell, another twenty feet should take them to a heavy barricade: the door to the dungeon of the castle? It didn't matter. If John read the map right, they didn't go through that door, anyway, but turned to the left to slide through what looked like a narrow, side corridor.

  After that, ten feet further on, they should come to the object of their search: the opening to the secret exit, the start of a tunnel that slanted up and out of the castle.

  Sweating, John made weak from the strain of wandering through dank passageways with real (or imagined) enemies on every hand, from carrying the pack, from having to breathe miasmal air, he forced himself to move.

  To turn left.

  To pace off twenty steps.

  Yes. The monstrous door.

  Turning left again, taking ten more steps, John lifted the torch to find himself in a widened spot in the hall, an area that, surprisingly, seemed to provide both better air and better light.

  Looking up, expecting to find a wall torch or, in this older part of the castle, one of the iron, fire baskets, John saw a faint, direct light slanting down from some kind of shaft.

  The secret passage!

  To gain perspective, John backed the width of the "swollen" hallway until he was pressed against the opposite wall.

  Only to have his hopes fall. From that vantage point, what he'd taken to be an escape passage was nothing but a four foot high, narrow window, a small shaft that slanted up and up until emerging into what had to be the light of day. A faint light at best, down-light nearly upon them.

  John consulted the map again. Saw what still looked like a tunnel at this location. It was just that, what the map showed to be a passageway was, in reality, a 40-inch-wide, 10-inch-high window -- ten feet up the wall.

  Shocked, angered -- John thought furiously, John not coming this far to give up easily (the strength of his determination bolstered by having no back-up plan.) "Hold the torch, Platinia," John said, trying to keep dejection from his voice, the girl, always obedient, coming forward to take it. "Hold it high."

  Swinging the pack off his back, lowering it to the ooze-slick, rubble-stone floor, John crossed the space (Platinia coming with him.)

  Standing again before the window-wall, John found that the partition was roughly constructed of stacked, three feet blocks of dark, moss-grown rock, little, if any, mortar.

  Glancing up, John saw that the builders had formed the ceiling of the corridor by continuously wedging in the upper wall blocks until the thick slabs gradually pinched in to touch overhead, a more primitive method of roofing than either post and lintel or arch-dome-vault construction.

  Back to the first business of all captives. Escape!

  Though he didn't see how it could help, John decided to climb the wall in order to get a more direct look at the window that, on the map, still seemed like the entrance to an escape "hatch."

  Putting the toe of one foot on the jutting edge of a lower block, finding finger holds higher up, John stepped up on the wall.

  Stabilizing himself, he scrambled to the edge of the next block to find a higher finger niche. Pulling up again, he discovered he was already head-high to the window.

  Scraping with his boots until he'd found secure toe holds for both feet, getting the fingers of his left hand through the clammy window slit, John turned to look down at t
he girl.

  "Hand me the torch, Platinia."

  Stretching up as far as she could, the girl pushed the torch up to him.

  Holding tight with his left hand, bending down as far as he could without slipping, John grabbed the torch by its fire stone head, his fingers buried in the cold magic of its flames.

  Straightening, flattening himself against the wall, John then made small toss/catches of the torch until he had it firmly by the handle.

  Ready at last, holding the flames before the window slit, taking a deep, mind clearing breath of the window's fresher air, John peered through the window slot to be surprised by something that couldn't be seen from the floor. Instead of a uniformly narrow opening sloping up at 45 degrees until it cut through to the outside world at fifty yards, the space behind the meter-thick, window-wall took a radical plunge. To become a passageway, a corridor both wide enough and tall enough for someone to negotiate: the Mage-exit as marked on the map!

  Posing the question: why wall up this end of the escape way, leaving only a window slit on the castle side?

  Only one reason seemed possible. To disguise the fact that this was the way out! From the corridor floor, there was no way to tell that beyond and below the window was a man-sized, underground tunnel. To discover the space behind the window-wall, someone would have to climb the wall as John had done and look directly down through the window space, something no one would do -- unless having a reason to suspect there was a tunnel here.

  The problem now was how to get past three feet of solid stone wall, John not even sure a stick of dynamite would penetrate that barrier.

  Mages.

  And their secrets. ............

  Secrets not only known to Mages, but also to .........

  In addition to Melcor, the long dead architect who built this fort had to have known its concealments; would likely have been the person who designed the keep's intricacies -- probably the same man who'd drawn this map. The man who'd constructed the tower room ........

  It was worth a try!

  Letting go with his hand, John jumped down the three to four feet, hitting the unyielding floor hard enough to jar him, but not hurt him.

  Taking a step back, holding the torch high, John tried to see some kind of ... irregularity in the wall .. .... the faint light of the magic flames making that difficult.

  Handing the torch to Platinia again, John stepped forward and began to run his fingers over the cold, wet wall, feeling around the mossy edges of the blocks.

  Felt here. ............ There.

  Until John stretched his arms to encompass a two block width of the wall, his fingers seeming to find a "fit."

  Hoping this was what he was looking for, digging in, John pulled. Straight back.

  Nothing ....

  No.

  Not nothing!

  Imperceptibly at first, then noticeably, John felt the wall ... shift ... felt the blocks above and below the stones ... move!

  Yes! Just like the slab hiding the secret cavity in the tower above, a stone door could be pulled directly out into this underground corridor, coming out more easily all the time, until an entire, jigsaw section of the corridor wall had cleared the building blocks to either side, John then able to drag the stone door to one side.

  To reveal a narrow tunnel hacked out of living rock, slanting up to end in a hole of light fifty yards further on!

  The wily Melcor's escape route.

  In the dark, John grinned. goodbye, Hero Castle!

  At least for now!

  -14-

  The old man was still trapped, there in the cavern, there in the dark, his anger building that such a thing could happen to one so elevated! Down-light almost here, he could see past the people he had been trailing, all the way to the cave mouth.

  Even if he could get by them, what then? With hostile Malachites in command of Hero Castle, who knew what else the Azare-Malachites might control in Stil-de-grain?

  Still, it galled him that he was still a captive.

  Who were these rustics clogging the one-torch darkness of the cave mouth? Except for the Malachite Army Head, he did not know. (That the Head was now a prisoner, gave the elder cold satisfaction!)

  Drawing back against the wall, the old man closed his eyes.

  As clever a graybeard as he had been, first to think himself into a heart stopping trance as the means to effect his own escape, then to disguise himself in "borrowed" slavey clothing, the young leader and the women had almost discovered him. (That was the second mischance since escaping from the trap, the first, when he had blundered into the soldiers. Quickly extricating himself from the soldiers' clutches, he had avoided this party by withdrawing into a black alcove as they passed by.)

  Pressed against the rough cave wall, hidden behind a bulge of stone at the end of the steeply slanted, man-made Mage-hole, he cursed silently to himself. If only he possessed his crystal, he could blast these others who were in his way!

  He had been following these slaveys for some time; had seen the surprisingly strong youth kill the soldier; had seen the strange old woman -- definitely a Weird -- capture the mind of the Army Head. After that, trailing them from shadow pool to shadow pool, he had watched them discover the soldiers' bodies.

  Thinking these others would raise an alarm, he was surprised when they continued, taking the route that had eventually led them to the place that was the object of his search: the opening to the escape hole!

  The four of them recently passing through the disguised portal, the leader had turned to draw back the door to seal the secret entrance. (After his passage, the old man had also taken the prudent course of closing the hidden doorway.)

  Thinking further back, while he might be momentarily denied his rightful freedom, he could take satisfaction in being well again. Though violating his person by confining him, the Azare-Malachites had fed him, his body gaining strength quickly in this lighter band. As for the diseases that had infected him in that other, pestilential land, the magic of this world's light had long since banished them.

  There was one puzzlement. How had the Malachite soldiers known he was the Mage ....?

  "Come out of there."

  The nearness of that echoing command stunning the old man, he opened his eyes to see the young leader, torch in hand!

  Nothing else to be done, the patriarch emerged from the recess, careful to hobble pitifully over the irregular floor as he came to stand before the youth.

  "I mean no harm, sir," the elder said, hanging his head, at the same time exaggerating the high timber of his old-man's voice.

  "I won't hurt you. I just want to know who you are and why you're following us."

  "I am ...." The old man stopped short; coughed to cover what had almost been the blunder of saying he was the Mage, Pfnaravin.

  In the other, non-magic, world, he had been unable to pronounce his own name as the native speakers would. In this world, however, day-magic translated every tongue, saying his name in Malachite would translate to perfect Stil-de-grain.

  Though trying to look downcast, the elder's mind was whirring.

  Now that he had been discovered, it might be best to use his otherworldly name. "My name is Robin. A harmless old man, sir."

  "And you're following us because ...?"

  "Because I have nowhere else to go. Nowhere at all. I was lost in the castle, you see. Lost and alone. And when I saw your party, I followed, hoping you would drop but a morsel of food along the way."

  "I think we can do better than that, Mr. Robin."

  "I would work, sir. I would work in order to be fed," Van-Robin said, humbling himself as the best way to achieve his final goal.

  He glanced up to see that the tall youth looked skeptical. No ... sympathetic. Good.

  Standing in the quavering light of the youth's raised torch, Van-Robin made so bold as to stare at the fledgling's unlined face, seeing something that shocked him!

  Green eyes?

  Yes.

  In the
other world, he had seen men with colored eyes, though less piercing than these green ones.

  Green eyes: an indication the leader was from the other world! Though how the youth could have found a way between the worlds when he, himself, had tried for untold decades to do so, was a mystery. Could this puppy have a power that belied his pubescence?

  The younger of the women had now approached, slipping back from the cave mouth on silent feet.

  Did "Van-Robin's" senses tell him this small girl was also a source of power?

  Without his crystal, he could be sure of nothing.

  At the thought of the lost crystal of Malachite, the old man -- affecting to be more painfully back-bent than he was -- suffered genuine torment. He must have his crystal back! He must!

  Controlling himself immediately, it occurred to "Mr. Robin" that he might use this party to help him find his gem.

  Unlikely, but possible.

  The leader -- tall, green-eyed, young -- had known about the Mage-hole, after all. A suggestion, if not of hidden power, at least of impressive knowledge.

  All in all, "Mr. Robin" (as he must think of himself again) could have fallen into worse hands. Had already done so! Had been caged! His soldier-captors knowing him to be Pfnaravin -- though he had strenuously denied it.

  "Come with us," the youth was saying. "We're having something to eat. We're going to stay here during down-light."

  Interrupted from his reverie, the old man nodded with what he hoped looked like gratitude.

  "By the way, my name's John Lyon."

  The man then turned to indicate the girl. "This is Platinia," the girl giving no sign as the elder bowed. ... Could she be deaf? "And the woman up there ...," the youth pointed to the cave mouth, "... is Zwicia. That man," another point, "is a Malachite soldier, Leet. We've ... got him under ... restraint ... for the moment."

  "Quite wise. Quite wise, young sir," whined Robin, bobbing his head in eager agreement. "Malachites cannot be trusted. I, myself, have just escaped their clutches."