"Nam?"
"Name."
"It Zwicia." The old woman's withered, bird-claw hands were waving as if beyond control.
"I will ask you only once," Leet said, his voice as deadly as a dagger drawn. "A hideous fate awaits you if I even think you lie. ... Where is the Mage, Pfnaravin?"
"Mag'?" After that single word, the crone began to mutter to herself.
"Tell me where he is or pay the price!"
"Don' kno'. He go. But he com' bak'."
"When is he coming back?"
A pause. More hand waving by the hag. Mumbling.
Insane.
The perfect selection. Her mind already gone, she would die quickly. Painlessly.
Thinking these thoughts, Leet resolved he would be the one to hold the woman for the priest. Attempt to snap the harridan's wrinkled neck ....
Leet felt shame redden his dark face. Formerly the proud Head of cohorts, he had been overjoyed to be summoned from obscurity; had been gratified even to receive this doomed command. Now, he knew himself for what he was. The executioner of crones.
Stripped to the savage truth, there were no other tasks a crippled soldier could perform.
-2-
"And how's the Mage of Stil-de-grain today?" growled Paul Hamilton, papa bear to a small department of historians at Kansas City's Hill Top College. Paul could play fast and loose with what they both knew must remain a secret because only the two of them arrived that early in the morning. John Lyon -- Crystal-Mage of Stil-de-grain. A far cry from John Lyon, junior member of the "Hills" history department.
Paul hung up his overcoat on the door hook, then turned to thump down heavily in his creaking swivel chair. For all his bluster, the big man had the killer instinct of Gentle Ben. "Still having trouble sleeping?" Quick, topic changes was Paul's specialty.
Not sleeping.
Insomnia was the way this improbable adventure had begun.
The first hint of the bizarre had come early in the semester, right after John found he'd been conned into buying a haunted house, not haunted by ectoplasmic apparitions, but by noises emanating from a triangular-shaped storage space beneath the front hall stairs. Rain sounds came from there and a faint, ululating atonality that John recognized as chanting. The noises, plus the sudden feeling that a "presence" was shadowing him, had John questioning his sanity -- not a prescription for a sound night's sleep. (Supporting a "mental difficulties" explanation of John's noises, was the trauma John was suffering from his parent's recent death.) What was certainly the case was that he "heard" those strange noises -- sometimes by day, sometimes by night.
Adding to John's discomfort was the parched atmosphere in the long abandoned house; with the predictable, static build-up on everything and everybody. Sparks of static snapped ominously whenever John walked across his nylon carpet. Static sizzled in his cat's thick coat when he petted her; crackled with cold-fire anger when Cream galloped after imaginary mice.
It was when his static-charged Persian had vanished into that storage space under the stairs that John began to hallucinate the possibility that the harmless looking space might be linked to "another reality." Could this hollow under the stairs be a kind of "tunnel" through which electrically charged objects -- Cream had disappeared under there -- traveled to some other place? A speculation that led John to the ultimate question: if he were sufficiently electrified, could he crawl under the stairs to another world?
Crazy!
Crazy, but enough of a possibility for John to borrow a Van de Graaff generator from Hill Top's Physics Department (allegedly to recreate some electrical experiments of Benjamin Franklin.)
What had finally given John the courage to make the attempted passage, was a promise to himself that, if the experiment failed, he would check into Tri-county's mental ward! What he'd certainly never expected was the girl, Platinia, to be transported from the other world's Stil-de-grain to ....
With a start, John realized his department chairman had asked him a question. About John's health.
"I'm doing OK, Paul. Not sleeping too well. More from the strain of having so many preps than for any other reason. Next semester's got to go better."
"Teaching Western Civ's a bitch," growled the Hawaiian-shirted, big man. "So much to cover. Having the dates back up on you for half the course while you're in the B.C. period."
"If I can get through it once ...."
"You're right. The first semester's the dragon. Slay that, and the rest's a breeze." The chair groaned again as the chairman rotated it toward John. "Which reminds me. You remember my telling you that, last spring, the administration got the notion that we should all plunge into "community service" -- start giving talks to men's clubs -- that kind of thing?"
"I know." It was all John could do to keep from moaning.
"Forget it."
..... "What?"
"I said, forget it."
"It's off?"
"Unfortunately, no. It's off for you, though."
"But just yesterday, I saw the dean when I was in the mail room, and he asked me what I was planning for community service."
"Sure. But that's the dean talking. This is your department chairman speaking." Paul scowled ominously, his high forehead wrinkling with pretended menace.
"I hear, and I obey." John salaamed.
It was impossible to overstate the positive influence Paul Hamilton had on John. Officed with the big, sloppily-dressed bruin meant John could get instant advice from the only member of the department who could be said to "have it all together." Dr. Paul -- historian hero. The one man John would eventually like to be. If for no other reason than Paul was married to the elegantly beautiful artist, Ellen -- the two of them having the statistically perfect, 2.4 children. (Correction. Since another month had passed in Ellen's pregnancy, closer to 2.6 children.)
"The rest of us, of course," Paul rumbled after a period of introspection, "are stuck with it. You too, next semester -- if this latest fad isn't replaced by yet another administrative aberration."
"I'm favored because ...?"
"Because I can still remember how much I had to sweat to be a productive teacher when I was just starting."
"But the dean ...."
"Be assured. You are covered, my boy, by the mantel of my protection."
The most telling evidence of the force of Dr. Paul's persona, was that he was respected, not only by students and colleagues, but by librarians, administrators, and by the most important people in the successful operation of any enterprise, custodians. "Actually, I've given little talks here and there and it's not too bad," the chairman continued, Paul more hopeful than convinced. "Projecting yourself into the community does make favorable propaganda for the college."
Paul rubbed his forehead with the fingers of both, giant hands. Then grinned. "On a grander scale, have you thought about approaching the "National Enquirer" with your off-world experiences? I can see the headlines now: History Prof. Becomes Pfnaravin, Crystal-Mage of Stil-de-grain!
Pfnaravin!
The dreaded name! Recalling the childhood chant: "I'm rubber, you're glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you."
After passing (to his almost complete surprise) into the "other reality," John had been mistaken for the other world's lost Wizard, Pfnaravin. Nor could John do anything to dissuade the simple folk of that most medieval place he was not Pfnaravin, Mage of Malachite. (How he also became Mage of Stil-de-grain was a tale he didn't even want to think about.)
Was Paul right to assume it was this same Pfnaravin -- pronounced by Kansas City locals: Van Robin -- who had built John's house in the long ago after "coming through" the other way? Built the house to protect the "gateway" between "here" and "there"? Could this be the Van Robin who'd showed up in the obits as dying recently at a local nursing home?
"Hi there, good people," said a high, baby soft voice.
John spun around. Who ...!?
"Claud," said Paul smoothly, pivoting his chair to face the n
ew arrival, "meet John Lyon. Since the difference between the two of you is literally night and day, I don't believe you've met."
John knew the name. Claud Jiles. Night school specialist -- while John taught only in the daytime.
Getting up, John shook hands with the bouncy, younger than middle-aged man, Jiles grinning at him with vacuous enthusiasm while shaking John's hand with an almost European pump.
Paul grinned. "So -- the vampire walks by day."
"Just wanted to report my community service project."
"Make it easy on yourself with that. With luck, it may blow over."
The formalities over, John sat again. As did Paul. Still standing in the doorway, Jiles gained detail as a round-faced, rosy-cheeked man in a black and white checked sports jacket with black bow tie, the pockets of his jacket looking ... greasy ... as if that's where Jiles kept his uneaten pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Under his arm was a brown paper sack. A bag to hide his ripple?
"No, no," Jiles was saying eagerly, "I'm not complaining. Have a look!" Taking the wrinkled sack from under his arm, fumbling inside, Jiles extracted a handful of framed, photographic blow ups.
Bending over Paul, Jiles lined up the pictures on Paul's desk, leaning the top of each cardboard frame against the length of books at the back.
Taking a look -- John saw a weather-faded barn, a shot of the Eastern Kansas Flint Hills, and an elderly tractor, a farm cat nursing kittens in the tractor's rusted seat.
John liked the cat.
Half-turned to look at the photos, Paul said,"Nice."
"And here's the little baby that did the trick." With a crackle of paper bag and a rattle like broken glass, Jiles pulled out what had to be a costly camera, putting it on John's desk, also dragging out a telescopic lens, some metal-rimmed disks inset with colored glass, and other expensive bric-a-brac that would only make sense to a camera buff. "An SLR Minolta 3000i with a Maxxum AF 35-105mm lens. That, and my good eye, plus the use of the best photo lab in town is what makes my photography, art." He pointed enthusiastically at his pictures. "Especially my input to the lab boys."
Though John wasn't particularly interested in photography, he found himself staring at the camera's machine tooled gadgets. Felt himself unnaturally attracted to them. ... Why? ... Because these gizmos were finely made? Because they were expensive? ........... Though John couldn't explain the items' fascination, he thought it might be some reference to his sojourn to the other world, a place where circular countries were called bands, gravitational forces shifted as you crossed from one band to another. A disorienting world where time spent there, failed to translate into time spent here. A fogbound world in which that waif-of-a-girl, Platinia, had attached herself to him ............
John shook his head.
"Going to give a talk about photography at the Elks Lodge next Tuesday night before class," Jiles, babbled. "Maybe, sell a picture or two."
Ah. Back to the real world of the profit motive.
* * * * *
At home that Monday afternoon, John made a decision. The one he'd been putting off: to return the borrowed Van de Graaff generator to the Physics Department Chairman, Jason Fredericks. John had promised to bring back the sleek machine within a week. A deadline he'd just missed.
True, John hadn't felt well on his return to "this world," John suffering from what the other world called "band-sickness": the feeling of heaviness caused by crossing from a lighter gravity band (country) to a heavier gravity band.
Though feeling better, he still hadn't returned the Van de Graaff.
Laziness? Or something ... else.
Upon his return, John had been so sure he'd never go back that he'd nailed shut the wedge-shaped, storage door.
Was he again considering ...? No.
Time -- past time -- to add a period to that "other worldly" chapter in his life.
John put on his heavy coat, wrapped the short power cord about the Van de Graaff's shiny metal "head," picked up the machine, and thumped out the front door with it.
Outside, struggling the "droid-shaped" static maker into the back "seat" of his battered Mazda, he got in and revved up the sports car's rotary to roar off down his private access road to 72nd.
Throttling back to 45 through the 30-mile-per-hour suburb where John lived, he opened the car up again on Highway 1, braking to enter the circular drive that surrounded Hill Top's bucolic campus.
Lugging the generator through the long, empty halls of the Science and Tech. Building, having doubts about not calling first, John was glad to see a light shining through the door of the physics lab at the end of the corridor.
Doing an "about-face" so he could push his way into the lab without banging the machine, John backed in. Pivoted to face the front of the room.
"Hah," said the old physics prof from his desk at the room's other end. Above them, parallel fixtures of fluorescents shown down on empty rows of tablet arm chairs, the light also reflecting from Fredericks' head.
Coming into this artificial brightness from the dimly lighted hallway called up a stray fact: that you needed a filter to shoot pictures in fluorescent light. Otherwise, the colors would come out wrong. Accounting for one of Jiles' filters.
"So," Fredericks called, interrupting John's thoughts, "you brought it back on time ... almost."
With all the "deliberate speed" the Supreme Court musters when rendering decisions in favor of the poor, Fredericks began to sort papers, no doubt making John pay for being late by extending the time John had to hold the heavy generator.
"Get your Franklin experiment done, did you?"
"Actually, I got busy and didn't get around to it. Maybe, some other time ...."
Finished with his "paper punishment," Fredericks stood to saunter back to take the machine, hoisting the generator to its place in a line of scientific equipment on a high shelf.
"Funny thing about you being here last week," Fredericks said, shutting the storage cabinet door, locking it, jingling his keys into his pocket.
He turned to face John now, getting comfortable by bracing his elbows on the high counter. "Got me to thinking about ol' Ben Franklin. So much so, that I gave a little talk about him. Community project, don't you know." John nodded. "Went to an old folks home. Wheelchairs and all. Some interesting old codgers there. A couple of oldsters poking each other like teenagers in love." Fredericks hesitated. "Not too long before I'll be there myself."
Fredericks paused, his steel-blue eyes staring calmly into an unpleasant future.
"Wanted to look the place over, so I signed on for that talk.
"And a couple of folks really seemed interested. Glad to have anything to think about that'd keep 'em awake, I suppose. Asked a lot of questions about lightning rods." Fredericks smiled. Coldly. "Imagine. Still afraid of lightning, at their age. One old fellow in particular.
"Now me," Fredericks continued, speaking to John again, "I wouldn't have a rod on my house."
"No?"
"Ok, if it's installed right. If not, it does more harm than good. 'Draws down the lightning,' as they used to put it in the olden days."
"Is it true that Franklin tried to roast a turkey by harnessing lightning?"
"Seems to be. The damned fool could have gotten himself killed, messing around that way with that kind'a power. A'course, he never did that kite and key trick."
"No?" Though John made no pretense of being an American historian, he'd always believed in the genuineness of that experiment.
"No siree. Old Ben described how to 'draw down' lightning that way. In a letter. No evidence he ever tried it himself. Some damned Russian did, though. Got roasted for his trouble."
One more bit of conversation as a polite "payoff" for borrowing the Van de Graaff and John could leave. One more remembered piece of trivia ....
"Tell me, is it true that a car wards off lightning?"
"Not precisely. Not precisely. What's true is that no one inside a car is ever struck by lightning, don't you know. A car of
ferrous metal acts like a Faraday Cage." The old man cocked his "egghead" to the side. Fixed John with lance-like eyes. "Heard of Faraday?" John nodded. The name sounded familiar. Barely. "Now that's my idea of a lightning rod. Sittin' in a car during a thunderstorm. Safe as a bug in a rug!"
And that was that.
With the tardy return of the Van de Graaff, John had snapped the final link to the dangerous, other world!
-3-
Platinia had been in the room with all the pretty birds when the strange soldier with the green uniform came to take her away. Even though the birds had a strong smell, she liked to watch them. Birds were so interesting. Sometimes, they sat on perches. Sometimes, they fluttered all about the large cage. They were called messenger birds. They had long, curving beaks. But they did not bite. She also liked to be in the kitchen under the castle. There, she could always find a cat to pet. Cats did not smell bad at all.
It had been a long time since any man had hurt her. A very long time since the priests of the god Fulgur, Lord of Light, had tortured her. Tortured her because she was the Princess of Tenebrae, goddess of the night. Later, soldiers in yellow uniforms had come to Fulgur's temple and killed the priests. After that, she had been taken to be the slavey of Yarro, King of Stil-de-grain. Somehow, the king had known she was more than Tenebrae's Princess. That she was also an Etherial. Knowing this, the king had made her use her strengthening power for his pleasure. When eating. When with women. He had also hurt her. But less than the priests had hurt her.
After that, Melcor, Crystal-Mage of Stil-de-grain, had stolen her from King Yarro. Melcor had taken her to this place, Hero Castle. Melcor had hurt her, too. Like all men! He had hurt her to make her use her power to help Melcor bring the Mage of Malachite, Pfnaravin, from the other world. Melcor had forced her to look into the other world, to see through Pfnaravin's eyes. It was ... terrible! More than that, she could not remember.
It had been when the Mage, Melcor, was using his crystal-magic to bring Pfnaravin from the other world that she had found a way to kill Melcor. After strengthening his power, she had made it go up to the roof above his head.
Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series Page 2
