Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  A trailing squad of ten now drummed across the bridge, their footfalls changing to thuds as they hit the dirt ramp, the unit halting before the commander, the platoon's leader clicking his heels, his fist rapping his chest in salute. "The chamberlain told the truth," reported the lieutenant. "We have found the grave of the Mage, Melcor. Dug it up. It was the Mage as the old man said. With my own eyes, I had seen him at Xanthin. There can be no mistake."

  "And his Crystal? Yarro will demand that."

  "The old man said that he," the soldier pointed at John, "wears the Crystal, now."

  Salutes exchanged, the lieutenant's men joined the prisoners' guards.

  Meanwhile, at the captain's signal, the bulk of the army formed up, commands barked. John could see files of soldiers peel off at the back, the army's main body beginning its withdrawal from the castle.

  The thin faced captain now came up to John and tugged open the neck fold of John's tunic (more gently than John expected) to peer inside at the pendent next to John's chest.

  "That also is true," the leader muttered to himself, releasing the tunic, patting it back over the necklace. "It is not my wish to bind a Mage, sir. It is the king's order. I, as Head of this detail, must obey." Ah. Once more, the universal respect for Mages was being evidenced.

  "Is it necessary to tie the women?" John asked, trying to press his "Wizardly" advantage, a show of confidence, even of arrogance, seeming to get results.

  "I regret that, sir. But, again, I only follow the king's commands. All prisoners are to be bound -- especially the women." The man stared over John's shoulder now, his eyes unfocused as if seeing visions. "Not long ago, an entire unit of Yarro's special forces disappeared on a similar mission to this quadrant of the Band. We live in dangerous times."

  With that, the officer took one step back, pivoted, and marched through the guard perimeter where he became the captain once again.

  At the leader's orders, squads of ten formed to make a rear and a van guard, John and the women marched to the edge of the keep's plateau, the party eventually entering the dust cloud kicked up by the withdrawal of the main army.

  With nothing else to do, John looked around him as he walked, seeing little more than shattered boulders, plus some lichens clinging to rocky cracks.

  In the distance, John could see dwarfed trees against a golden firmament.

  Though John wasn't sure how it had happened, it had finally sunk in that he was a prisoner of the King of Stil-de-grain. More bad news to be learned later.

  A half hour of tramping down difficult terrain found the women lagging, the bedraggled caravan slowing, the women's pathetic weeping mingling with bird calls from distant pines.

  The pace slackening noticeably, the captain sent a runner to tell the army in front that, though the women could not keep up, to continue so that all could cross the Tartrazine in good order. A river?

  The path continuing to plunge, John had no time for further speculation, needing to concentration on keeping upright on the loose dirt and shale decline, the soldiers assisting the women to keep them from falling.

  Still going down, the squad passed the army's siege engines, the trail steep enough to make the catapult crews slow their clumsy machines' descent with ropes.

  There was some good natured bantering between the officers of the "artillery" and the squad leader and his lesser "Heads," mostly about how lucky the squad was to have its own women -- the first time John had seen anything that could be called a sense of humor in this place. A positive sign, he hoped.

  The terrain beginning to flatten at last, John marched along with nothing to see but the steadily increasing sweat stains on the uniformed backs of the guards in front, the women exhausted.

  Finally -- one woman falling and unable to rise -- the squad leader called a halt, the rest of the women sagging to the ground in the middle of the trail.

  Though the guards were also tired, the captain ordered the soldiers to remain alert, men detailed to watch the captives, others to keep a lookout on every side.

  Able to look around, John saw that they were now in a gentle valley of grassy knolls, flowers adding color to the grass. John heard bird calls and the underlying drone of insect life, the air sweeter here, less dusty.

  What time of day was it, John wondered?

  Seemingly less tired than either the women or the soldiers, John used the rest stop to look around -- first, behind him at the receding mountains, their jagged bones reduced to lines of gray and purple, seeming to float on the horizon.

  Noting how far they'd come, John searched for clouds that might cool what was left of the day, finding instead, the uniform yellow-gold canopy he'd first discovered above the walls of the castle garden.

  The flatness of the plain giving him greater breadth of vision, glancing to his left, John was shocked to see a different band of color at the sky's horizon! Green. Pivoting to the right, saw a strip of orange sky at the opposite sky line.

  It was as if the group traveled beneath a vast rainbow whose iridescent colors hued the firmament. Orange. Gold. Green. Each color ribbon seeming to have a light source of its own.

  And another thing .... Where, in that wildly technicolor sky, was the sun!? No ... sun. Were the color bands comprised of multi-pigmented clouds that hid the sun? It didn't seem so, yet ....

  Then came the order to march on, soldiers dragging the women to their feet; the rear and vanguards forming.

  And they were off again, the numbness of the march, once more, replacing thought.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  The day of his captivity, John and the women were driven, first through heat, then into a thickening fog, all that time seeing no one on the trail except an occasional old man with staff and pack.

  Near dusk, they were detoured down a misty, branching path that ended at a squat inn (five or six open mouthed loafers sitting before it on a rough bench, their feet and legs swirled in mist.) Instead of being taken into the tavern, though, the soldiers hustled them around back and into an outbuilding.

  There, untied to be fed and allowed to use a primitive outhouse -- they were retied (loosely, hands in front this time) and bedded down in straw.

  As before, the "magic" failing with the light, the dusk turned the women's pitiful talk to babble.

  Despite drunken singing that filtered back from the tavern, John fell asleep quickly, but awoke in the middle of the night to soreness in his arms and legs, drifting off again to the sound of a gentle rain sluicing off the building's thatched roof.

  The next day, untied to eat a cold porridge of grain and milk that an old servant woman brought from the inn, hands tied behind them again, they were led off into another fog that soon melted under the warmth of the multi-colored sky.

  They met more travelers that morning, men dressed in dull colored tunics and leggings, soft cloth caps on their heads, walking sticks in hand, some with cloth covered bundles strapped to their backs, others leading parcel laden ponies, the soldiers refusing to answer the shouted questions of the passersby, keeping the prisoners well away from the travelers.

  Traffic picking up as they continued, they found themselves competing with merchants and their loads, pony carts, and other wheeled vehicles, the soldiers calling a halt for a lunch of bread, sliced meat, and fruit.

  After traveling several more days, the trail ended in a splintered dock jutting out into a stream.

  Wagons were lined up on both sides of the river, most of them four wheel affairs loaded with grain, sheep, chickens in coops, wooden crates, and barrels in many sizes. One wagon was piled high with hay, the mound laced down with ropes. There were also two wheeled carts packed with bolts of cloth, others containing large, clay jars that were probably filled with oil or wine. In every case, ponies pulled the conveyances (depending on the vehicle's size, two, four or eight of the shaggy little animals harnessed to them in tandem.)

  At the far end of the dock, a cross-braced tower jutted up, parallel ropes from t
he tower top stretched across the river to a similar structure on the other bank. Passing each other in the stream were two flat boats, each hooked to one of the cables, sweating river men poling the boats from bank to bank.

  The incoming barge docked at last and its cargo of carts off-loaded, the guards walked the captives down the pier and up a portable gangplank to boat deck.

  The soldiers and their charges aboard, the ferrymen poled the boat away from the dock, the current bowing the elongated raft to the downstream side until the barge arched back to thump along the dock on the other bank.

  Debarking across the river, the captives were marched on again, foot traffic increasing as other paths forked in to broaden the track into a wider, hard packed road.

  Day's end saw John and the women herded down another foggy side road and into the courtyard of a larger inn, this way station swarming with twenty to thirty people in worker's tunics, the men unhitching teams or unpacking ponies. Fat children played underfoot. Grizzled old women scolded one and all from the safety of the tavern stoop.

  Again, the prisoners were taken to the back to be jogged down rickety cellar steps to the inn's basement.

  Rain again that night, the convict party set out through the inevitable morning fog as sleepy travelers emerged from the inn to strap packs on the backs of frisky ponies, the little beasts tossing their shaggy heads and snorting mist trails into the cool, wet air.

  Pony and foot traffic in both directions increasing throughout the morning, the captives crested a rise of ground to see an estuary stretched out before them.

  Their officer halting the group near a welter of wooden carts parked along and to either side of a stone quay, John could see an island beyond the inlet, past the island, an extensive body of yellowish water. Ships of various sizes lined the jetty, all in the process of off-loading or on-loading cargo.

  After a rest, the soldiers threaded the captives through the waiting merchants, the detainees herded over the dock to be tramped up a gangplank to the deck of what probably passed for an ocean going boat in this culture, the vessel twenty yards long and broad of beam, the shallow draft vessel resembling freight boats that plied the Missouri before the invention of the paddle wheeler.

  Though the ship was only partially loaded, the soldiers ordered the dock hands to cast off -- getting black looks from the ship's sailors who would be losing money by traveling light.

  At shouted commands, wharf hands slipped off thick, braided hawsers of hemp, sailors on board dragging in the lines, coiling the stiff rope at both boat ends. The boat cast free, dock hands used wooden poles to push the ship away from the pier, the ship drifting out and around into more open water.

  Gaining maneuvering room, teams of sailors manned the oar handles, the crew walking forward and backward to push and pull the oars until a kind of tide caught the vessel to drift it away from shore.

  The rowing stopped, sailors used fore and aft sweeps to guide the ship toward the island, steering the vessel on a sharply twisting course, much like a sail boat veers when under tack, John unable to tell how the boat was propelled unless, like a river, there was a current in the sea, the sweeps providing direction. He'd never seen a body of water meander in this way, almost as if there were vast, but gentle, whirlpools in the sea, the boat rowed-steered from one clockwise "rim" of circling water to the counter clockwise "rim" of the next -- "gaining ground" like a bug might make progress in a given direction by hopping from the rim of one rotating gear to the edge of the next, counter-rotating cog in a train of gears.

  Zigzagging around the island, the boat entered a harbor on the far side, a city built on a hill beyond the bay. Xanthin city, John heard a sailor say.

  Approaching a ship-lined quay, finding an open space beside the boat crowded wharf, sailors spun out ropes to dock men who pulled the ship in, cleating the ship fore and aft to moorings, the boat tied within a line of similarly fastened vessels.

  The craft secured at last, the guards herded the prisoners down a gangplank that had been lifted into place from the jetty, small boards crosshatching the splintered plank to provide a secure footing, John and the others marched along the quay, berthed ships to either side serviced by sweaty stevedores.

  Along the anchorage, laborers rolled barrels up gangplanks or ported wooden crates on their heads. Muscular longshoreman packed trade goods on their backs or pushed three wheeled carts loaded with heavier merchandise.

  Weaving through this jumble of toiling workers, the soldiers marched the prisoners off the landward end of the mole, into a noisy crowd of passersby: sailors, merchants, idlers, and animals competing for space with pony carts and hand pulled wagons.

  Constricted by the press, the soldiers and their captives labored through the crowd as best they could.

  The overwhelming sensation was of noise! Cows bawled! Ponies whinnied! Sheep bleated! Pigs grunted! The animal sounds added to the thud of hooves, the rumble of iron shod cart wheels, the squeak of heavily laden wagons.

  Fighting their way through was appeared to be a Medieval city -- sellers and shoppers on either side -- almost as if by a magical transformation, the crowds thinned as the captives were marched down a barren street that up a hill that ended with a turreted wall at the far side of an empty concourse.

  Arriving at the rampart, a soldier pounded on an iron door, a bolt shot back from within, a shutter opened to reveal an eye peering through a small, grated window, the door unbolted, the soldiers pulling the door open. An action performed twice more before, ahead of them, was a multi-storied building of white limestone, blue silk pennants draped from its peaks, towers gracing its four corners. Clearly, a Palace. The stronghold of King Yarro of Stil-de-grain?

  Still guarded by the soldiers, John and his fellow prisoners were directed over a slick, cobblestone walkway that went down the side of the Palace, through lavishly cared for gardens, and around to the back.

  Arriving at the rear, John was surprised to see that the fortified chateau was anchored to a sheer cliff that dropped to the sea, at a distance, the mainland from which they'd come. Climbing to a considerable height, three walls guarding the king's stronghold to the front and sides, this formidable escarpment defended the castle's back.

  Through another massive door of iron, protected inside by guards -- the captives were ushered into the building where they were hurried along an arched, windowed hallway then down, first by inclined plane, then by rough block steps.

  In spite of the uncertainty of his situation, John was impressed. Given the primitive level of the culture, this fort-Palace complex had the "feel" of Constantinople, the triple walled capital of the Byzantine Empire.

  Now below ground, the party's footfalls echoed from solid walls patched with dull green slime, the hallway floor in the underground passageway eternally wet and mossy slick.

  Two soldiers taking torches from wall mountings, the prisoners were herded single file through a black wormhole in the rocks.

  Squeezing forward for several minutes, the cut eventually flared into a tiny anteroom, three hulking men at a decrepit table guarding an iron strapped, timbered door at the chamber's end.

  The sentinels rising to unbar the door, the bare chested warders strained to pull it open, the door creaking back at last so that the soldiers could push John and the woman into what could only be called a ... dungeon.

  Shoving the captives inside, the soldiers lined up John and the women against a blackened wall to the left, soldiers holding their torches high, others, with the help of the jailers, cutting the captive's bonds before clamping wall chains around the prisoner's wrists.

  Down the line, John heard the soft clank of chains against hard walls, the sounds of women crying out in fear, the clack and scrape of soldiers' boots on the stone floor.

  All chained, orders were given for the soldiers to march out, the outer door rumbled shut by the turnkeys, the feeble light that had sifted in from the guardroom sliced off as the great door thudded into its casing.

 
John heard the bars shoot home outside.

  Like black wings enfolding him, the closing of the door left John blind, only John's sense of touch telling him that his wrists were clamped in iron cuffs, the cuffs fastened to five-foot chains pinned shoulder high into a wall of slimy stone.

  Now that the door was closed, the only hint of light in the hell-black pit filtered down from a source high above his head.

  John's eyes adjusting to the gloom, he began to make out ... forms ... to his left, the huddled shapes of the women who, like him, had been chained to the wall, all slumped to the floor by this time, some still sobbing.

  Which one was Platinia?

  Peering into the gloom, John finally found her -- a smaller specter than the rest.

  Looking to the right, he saw other ... bodies ... chains stretched from the walls to felons lying on the rough, cold floor.

  The shock of it all wearing off, John found that the stench of the place was overpowering! Rotted meat. Feces. Urine. John locating a small floor-hole beneath him, to be used for elimination.

  John's eyes continuing to adjust to the gloom, he could now detect ... items of ... furniture ... in the room's center ... a long table with ropes stretched beneath it.

  A rack, a suspect's feet tied to the table, his arms bound to the pulley ropes, a crank ratcheted to stretch the victim's body until his joints were wrenched apart.

  The sarcophagus-like cabinet across the room? Were those spikes inside the open door? If so, the box was an execution chamber, the victim put inside, the door levered closed to sink the spikes into his body, the two at eye level longer than the rest ... Called an iron maiden, this was just another idea the "Hero" brought back from the "other world."

  A large iron cauldron was one of the shadow-pools across the room. For boiling oil?

  On the far wall was a cold hearth, beside it, a number of tools in a stand, these "utensils" (given the room's other "furnishings") used for branding or blinding ... or for something worse. Shuddering, John remembered the fate of Edward II of England who was assassinated in just such a dungeon by having a red-hot poker seared up his anus and through his bowels. Cauterizing as it burned into his vital organs, the story was to have been that the king died of natural causes. No blood. Not a mark on him. ... But someone told.