Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  To his left, a heap of broken building blocks littered the floor, under them, some kind of cloth -- though the room was so dark that nothing came into focus readily. Did he feel dizzy? Not really. Stunned, certainly. But not dizzy. Checking his other senses, John believed he was seeing as well as the light in the room allowed. He could smell -- hardly an unmixed blessing in that damp place. Touch, taste? No reason to think those senses had been altered by his passage ... to where? From under the stairs in his home in Kansas City to ... Stil-de-grain? For unless he was having a vivid dream, he'd landed in that other "reality." Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more.

  Except for not knowing where he was, John felt ... wonderful! Healthy! Powerful! That if he were to jump, his might bump his head on the ceiling.

  Reflexively, John looked up to see that the ceiling stretched for more than a single floor and that it had a ragged hole in it, a patch of somber, yellow sky showing through. Directly beneath that hole lay the shattered blocks. And that made sense. (In the unreality of the situation, he needed something that made sense.) The ceiling stones had fallen in, crashing to the floor, Platinia saying there had been an earthquake, there in ... Stil-de-grain. After a moment of sluggish thought, John corrected himself. Here in Stil-de-grain. If this whole experience didn't turn out to be a dream.

  Thinking more clearly, Platinia still standing stoically behind him, John remembered something else. The Mage. Where was this Melcor the girl had talked about? Even more importantly, where was Cream, John looking about the room for the cat, trying to stare into shadows, bending down to look under the slab table to his right? No Cream. Just like that damned cat to be somewhere else when he needed her, he thought. And he couldn't wait for her, not and get back to his part of the universe before the static charge had left his body. He stood up again, peering about the room.

  To the left, his eyes adjusting to the gloom, a second glance produced another "fit," one that made him shudder. For what he'd thought was cloth under the pile of ceiling rubble, was a form. A person robed in white. White cloth ... with red stains ...

  Reason said this was Melcor. The ... Wizard.

  John glanced back at Platinia; motioned to his left, her eyes following his point but remaining expressionless.

  Finding he could walk, John made himself approach the body and bend over it. Could the man still be alive? Thinking this was a possibility, John began to wrestle the thick, rock hunks off the fallen man, heaving the broken slabs to one side, the crash of stone on the unyielding floor thundering about the rounded room. If anything, John was amazed at how light the blocks felt -- for their size -- the rocks looking more like limestone than frothy volcanic rock. It was just that the way he was able to tumble them about made them seem -- unreal -- somehow. Movie set rocks, made of foam? Was someone playing an elaborate joke on him? ..... Impossible. No one could devise such a perfect illusion.

  Removing the last substantial chunk, John looked over at Platinia, the girl still in the same spot. Saw wonder on her face. Not, John felt, because she'd just noticed the man on the floor, but because John was able to hoist such heavy slabs off the man's body. Curious. Could it be that the victim was not the Mage? John looked over at her again, trying to see her face through the gloom. "Is this Melcor?" Even asked gently, John's voice made a quick, sharp echo around the walls.

  The girl nodded.

  Squatting down to look at the body, it didn't take a medical degree to tell that no one survived a pulverized chest -- bone fragments sticking through -- blood everywhere.

  No help possible for the hawk nosed man with the grey-white face.

  Glancing over at the girl, John shook his head. ... No reaction. Why? ... Because she was dazed? (John thought he might be, too.)

  Forcing himself to look down again, just to be sure, John noticed a pendent beside the dead man's body. Whatever the man's fierce look, when Platinia was fully conscious of her friend's death, it might be important to her to have this keep-sake.

  Thinking that, John reached over and picked up the ornament by its chain, the "jewel" a flat, two inch in diameter, amber colored disk of what looked like glass, the man apparently wearing it when the roof collapsed on him, the blow knocking off the necklace.

  Standing, chain in hand, John walked back to Platinia, John still feeling unnaturally light on his feet. "I'm sorry, Platinia," he said, hoping the girl didn't break down. "But Melcor's dead. There was nothing I could do. It looks like the roof fell in on him during the earthquake." The girl nodded, accepting the fact of the man's death with as little emotion as John, himself, felt. They were both stunned, a cushioned state that nature's kinder side supplied to accident victims. "Here," John said, stretching out the pendent to her. "Something of his."

  At that, the girl's reaction changed dramatically! Calm about the death, she shied away from the necklace as if it might burn her.

  Odd.

  But, then, neither of them was reacting normally.

  Looking at the girl, John realized Platinia had lost her static charge, her hair no longer standing out. Knew that he was no longer electrified, the field of current drained away in the damp climate of the circular room. And that meant that John was trapped in this other place!

  John's mind began to whirl with the activity of an animal newly caged. He was ensnared in this other "reality" until he could generate enough static to get home!

  And in spite of that realization ... he still felt ... little.

  Shock. Enjoy it while you can!

  To get the pendent out of the way, John put the Mage's chain around John's own neck.

  "Melcor is dead," said the girl suddenly, her voice magnified by the room's hard walls. "I am your slavey, now." And what did John say to that? Give her a civics lesson on Lincoln freeing the slaves? Slavey might mean something else to her, of course ...

  For now, finding himself as helpless on her home ground as she'd been on his, John had the feeling he would need all the help this solemn girl could provide.

  "What do you suggest I do now?"

  "Summon Chryses."

  "And who is ... he?"

  "Chryses is the castle Head." Melcor's butler?

  "How do I go about getting him?" The girl looked startled. What he'd thought was a simple question was as much nonsense to her as her "babble" in his hallway had been to him. "Will you get him for me?"

  To that, the girl bowed quickly, turned and glided from the chamber, going through a darkened archway behind him.

  "Dying" in Kansas city, the girl had been miraculously healed by coming home to ... Stil-de-grain ... a place that had cured her of whatever had been wrong, a fact John added to a growing list of impressions that made no sense.

  With the girl's departure, John was alone. If you could call being the sole, living person in a room, alone.

  Alone to do what? Something. But what? To ... look around the room.

  A fairly small room, round, seeming smaller than it was because its ceiling was so high. A room constructed of limestone blocks set on top one another without much, if any, mortar. Both walls and floor were dark with age, the floor almost ... "muddy" ... its thick dust coating moistened by rain falling through the hole in the roof, was John's bet. A ruined room. By the look of it, little used.

  An arched passageway leading to a tunnel was the room's only exit, a cramped corridor that twisted out of sight. Nothing else in the room. Except the stone table to the right, narrow slabs along both sides for benches.

  John now focused his attention on what he'd barely noticed before: tapered, giant-sized notches, spaced at regular intervals around the room's walls. For some reason, cross-like slits had been chiseled at the back side of these wedges, these slits cut completely through to the outside. Crosses? Cut clear through? Something about that rang an historic bell.

  Then he knew. The purpose of these man-sized wall-wedges leading to slits .... was for archer defense of a castle. Archers would stand in the wedges to fire arrows through the slits, the V-
cut space providing the archer with shoulder room, the cross shaped cuts giving him a range of vertical and horizontal fire. The narrowness of the slits, in turn, minimized the risk of an attacker's arrow coming through to strike the archer. Very medieval. Very.

  Taking inner stock, John discovered he was no longer as numb as before, his system back to normal. Though he'd realized it earlier, it was beginning to sink in that he was entombed in this other place; unable to get home. So much for his get in -- get out theory. He was stuck here -- at least for a time. (Just where he was and in what kind of trouble, he didn't know.)

  About the only thing John had accomplished was to get little Platinia home. At least, he'd done that.

  Remembering the other reason he'd put his neck in this "other worldly" noose, John began sliding across the floor, quietly, feeling his way as if the floor might give way beneath him, his course taking him around the room's perimeter. "Cream?" John called softly, the room echoing eam. "Here kitty."

  Calling Cream wouldn't do any good. He knew that. Still, it gave him something to do. Something other than think about that long, white lump on a length of bloody floor.

  Hearing the soft slide of footsteps at last, John turned to see the girl rounding the abrupt turn to slip back into the room, the girl followed by an old man, tall, straight, clean-shaven except for a short, snow white mustache. Bushy, white eyebrows topped the old gentleman's faded eyes. Fuzzy white hair thinned out of the top of his pinkish head. He was wearing a black, formal coat over a loose garment that draped just below the knee, a slash of yellow scarf diagonaled across his chest.

  Meanwhile, retreating to the far wall, Platina was standing there rigidly.

  Inside the room, the old man paused as if to get his bearings, then came to attention.

  Next, not even looking in John's direction, the man bowed stiffly, one hand across his waist, formally, the other hand making an elaborate flourish above the man's head. He could have been a courtier at Versailles, John found himself thinking, the old gentleman as out of place in this setting as a tuxedoed banker at a weenie roast.

  "Chryses," Platinia said from across the room, her voice a low echo in the hushed room. "This is ..."

  "Pfnaravin," the old gentleman said, bowing his most formal bow. "We have awaited your return ..."

  "My name is John Lyon." Though John had a hint why people here might mistake him for Pfnaravin, it was a bad idea to have them think it.

  "Of course, great Mage." The man made his hand flourish once more. "If you prefer."

  "I don't prefer," John said. "That's my name."

  "As you say, most powerful one," replied the chamberlain, complicated hand and finger movements punctuating every statement. Clearly, John had done nothing to convince the old man that John was not the great Pfnaravin.

  Seeing this, John had second thoughts about disillusioning these people. If for no other reason than that the name Pfnaravin got respect!

  "I'm afraid there's been an accident," John said, rallying, motioning toward the man on the floor. Surely, John thought, no one would blame John for Melcor's death.

  "I fear ... I do not understand ... for which I most humbly apologize," said the chamberlain or butler or whatever he was. Again, John pointed to the body of Melcor. And again, the old gentleman refused to see, looking off into space as he had done since he entered the room.

  "And your name is ... Chryses?"

  "The very same, sir."

  "Well, Chryses ... if you will look over there," again John pointed, "you will see for yourself. I'm afraid the roof has collapsed and, unless I miss my guess, has fallen in on someone called Melcor."

  "We await your orders, most revered Wizard," was the only response John got. With the mandatory flourish, of course.

  And what was John to make of the butler's indifference to Melcor's "passing?" Probably, that the girl had already told Chryses; that the news of the Mage's death came as no surprise.

  That the butler still thought John to be a Wizard of some kind, was clear, a respectable thing to be, it seemed. On the other hand, if Wizards had some function, if some kind of "magic" was expected of them, what would happen when John couldn't deliver ...?

  For now, the best course was neither to admit to being someone special nor to deny it -- until John could learn more about just what kind of mess he'd gotten himself into. The old man was waiting for direction? John would give it.

  "Tell me, what is the custom under the circumstances? A man is dead over there on the floor. Just what does one do with a dead man on the floor?"

  The old man cleared his throat, his pale eyes looking straight ahead; as far as John could tell, at a blank wall.

  "Shall I direct the castle slaveys to attend to it?"

  John was intensely aware that both Platinia and the chamberlain were expecting something from him, judging him.

  "Though this is an uncommon event, we should follow the proper course."

  Fortunately, that politician's response seemed to satisfy them ... both nodding.

  "Of course, sir," said the old man. "That would be the case. This is an unusual circumstance. A most unusual circumstance. And I believe that it will soon be down-light."

  The old gentleman waved an elegant hand above his head, presumably at the sun's rays that were still penetrating the shattered room, but at an increasing angle. "Do you, great Lord, wish to take up residence in the chambers of Melcor?" the butler asked.

  Good -- this was the first indication John had that there were no immediate plans to kill him!

  With hope that he had a future, what was John's best course of action? Could he learn something from Melcor's rooms? Perhaps. But ... he just couldn't move into the quarters of the man on the floor, the man with the crushed chest, the man with ribs sticking up like twisted teeth, face ashen, life blood ..... Not yet. Probably, never.

  "No. I think not," John said, hurriedly. "Is there somewhere else for me to ..."

  "Most assuredly. I shall conduct you there, personally."

  "Good. And I'd like to go now."

  "If you will follow me, sir?" the butler said, pivoting on his heel, pausing as if to align himself with the arched doorway, clearly expecting John to accompany him. As an after thought, the old fellow turned back. "And the woman? You will wish to chain her?"

  Chain her? "Certainly not."

  "Not?"

  That was ... interesting. Not wanting Platinia restrained had surprised the old man.

  What kind of place was this, anyway!? And did this mean that Melcor had held Platinia by force -- had actually had her chained? If so, why? A rush of other thoughts came to John. Did this explain why Platinia didn't seem to care that Melcor was dead? Was Melcor's cruelty the reason no one cared about him, that explaining why the butler showed as little emotion at Melcor's death as the girl? Or did all of this translate into something else entirely, something too foreign for John to understand? Just another indication of how careful John must be until he knew more about the customs of this other "reality." Trying to see the brighter side, whatever John's long run prospects, his desires seemed to have priority at the moment.

  "No. She will go with me."

  "Yes, sir," the butler said. Anything the great Mage wants seemed to be the one, fixed rule here.

  And with that, the old fellow turned to lead the way into the tunnel, John following the butler, Platinia trailing, John discovering that the corridor was only the first of several narrow, sweaty passages, some dimly lighted by high windows or by torches. Halls led through anterooms then down spiral stairs cut in living rock, Chryses leading, now and then trailing his fingers along the moldering walls, John still feeling almost "magically" energetic.

  Until finally, they stopped at the end of a narrow hall, Chryses opening a solid, wooden door so they could enter a room on the right.

  Beyond the door was a chamber with a canopied bed, the elaborate affair placed on a raised platform in the room's center. An open window past the bed provided the room'
s light.

  It was then that it occurred to John that, if he was going to try to "fit in" here, the more he looked like the "natives," the better. "Is it possible for me to have a change of clothing?"

  "Of course, great Lord."

  With that, Chryses moved to one side and knelt beside a coffin-like chest, opening the lid, feeling inside, taking out what looked like one of the draped costumes (this one in white) like the butler himself was wearing beneath his formal surcoat.

  "And shoes."

  "Yes, Lord," Chryses fumbling about in the chest again, taking out a pair of the same soft leather shoes that both Platinia and the butler were wearing. Shutting the chest lid, Chryses went to the bed and stepped up on the platform to place the robe and shoes on the bed. It was then that John noticed that Platinia had followed them into the room.

  "Pardon, me, great Lord," said Chryses, bowing his bow (which he did with such frequency it was beginning to seem normal.) "But it will soon be time for dinner."

  "Good." Praise seemed to please the old man.

  John turned to the girl. "Will you wait for me in the dining room, Platinia?" She bowed, turned and left the room without a word. "I would like for you ... Chryses ... to wait for me outside the door; to lead me to dinner."

  Another formal bow and the old man spun about with military precision to exit the room, closing the door behind him.

  The next few minutes passed quickly, John stripping off his clothing, putting on what was more of a knee length robe than a tunic, white for the most part, with gold piping. A combination of hooks and a tie fastened the garment about his waist.

  The shoes were surprisingly soft and so snug there was no danger of them coming off unexpectedly; were as comfortable as well worn bedroom slippers.

  Finished dressing, John crossed the room and opened the hall door, finding Chryses there as expected.

  And they were off, the butler in the lead, round and round and down and down, right, then left, John seeming to be floating, as airy on his feet as a dancer. Was he light headed? That seemed to be a reasonable explanation for his strange, weightless feeling. He'd been through a lot. There was no telling how much the jump from earth to ... here ... had affected him.