Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  In spite of the possibilities of what might be done to him here, John was unnaturally calm. Was probably still suffering from that peculiar form of numbness he'd experienced from time to time since coming to this "reality." It was certainly not that he didn't know the desperate nature of his circumstances; it was just that he couldn't get himself to care.

  A thundering broke the silence, the dungeon door grinding out, light from the hall dazzling in, men bringing torches, the flames radiant in the murky dark. Many torches, held by guards surrounding a shadowy, bull-necked man, the light gleaming from the man's blue robe.

  Holding the torches high, the guards led the man to the line of chained captives, the armed party going past John to the women. There, the man in the middle motioned to a colossus of a jailer, the brute squatting before the first girl, grabbing her face and twisting it up for the thick-necked man's inspection. Shifting from woman to woman, the process was the same, the huge man grasping a girl beneath her chin, tipping up her face for the rich man's approval. Until -- the squad approaching Platinia -- a shout of triumph rocketed from the hardened walls. "This is the one," barked the nabob, the dungeon growling back, the man chuckling wickedly, the ugly noise rippling around the hollow room. "Take the rest away. They will serve me, now. See to it!"

  Fumbling up a key tied to his wide belt, the bare chested man began unlocking the manacles on the wrists of the other women, the loose chains clanking back against the wall.

  When all in the line but Platinia had been released, the soldiers dragged the other women to their feet, some shrieking, uncertain of their fate. Getting behind the captives, the soldiers shoved them along, then through the open door, the sound of sobbing and the tramp of boots fading down the palace labyrinth.

  Leaving the blue-robed man and five others as his guards.

  The lavishly dressed man approaching John, he looked at John with curiosity and contempt. "Is this the one?"

  "Yes, King Yarro," said the officer.

  "And you think," the potentate growled at John, "that because you possess a Mage's Crystal, you are a Wizard?" His voice was all sneer. An easy man to dislike, this Yarro of Stil-de-grain. "Give me the Crystal ...," the king continued, his voice throttled back to a rough purr, "... and you will be released unharmed. On my word as a king."

  John laughed. If history demonstrated anything, it was that little came from the word of kings.

  "Do you hear me!?" the sovereign barked, his voice abruptly higher, louder. "Give me the Crystal or I will have you torn to pieces!"

  There was a pause, one that John allowed to grow before he spoke. "No."

  "You will regret that!" the king shouted, his face showing purple even by flickering torchlight.

  An interesting thing about this situation, John found himself thinking, was that the king had asked John to "give" up the Crystal. Could there be a taboo attached to stealing the ornament?

  Time for a bluff. "If you think you can," John said in a voice as cold and level as he could manage, "I challenge you to take the Crystal!" And there it was! A shifting of the kingly eyes!

  Followed by vast silence in the room.

  "To our sorrow," the king said at last, his buck teeth leering evilly, "we have learned that Mages can be crushed to death. That being true of real Mages, you should reflect on the many ways a pretend Mage can die."

  The threat delivered, Yarro turned to stalk down the wall to Platinia, the girl sitting on the floor, hands beside her at the end of the chains that bound her to the wall. "You will not escape again," said Yarro, softly. A pause. "Did you plot to leave me?" A shorter pause. "Answer me!" The girl said nothing. "If you were taken against your will, I will be lenient." The girl just sat there. "In time, you will beg to tell me anything I wish to hear!"

  Satisfied for the moment with making threats, the king wheeled, as did his party, the men following him out the heavy door, the cell guards thudding the barricade into place.

  After the rumble of the door, quiet. And pitchy black, before John's eyes adjusted to the dark once more.

  Silence ... except for a raging in John's mind!

  John may have gotten what he deserved for tampering with elemental forces. But what had little Platinia done to deserve her fate?

  Adrenalin pumping through him at last, John was surprised to discover how good he felt. Strong! As strong as ......

  Irrational as it was, John thought of the old testament character, Sampson. Blind, bound to temple columns, Sampson was alleged to have found the strength to pull the sanctuary down.

  John's eyes fully adjusted to the gloom, he examined the iron clamps that had been snapped around his wrists, the burley man using the same, simple key for all the women's manacles. Not that it mattered since John had nothing to use for a lock pick.

  From the cuffs, a rust scaled chain ran to an iron ring set in the wall.

  Rust?

  Determined to try something, John grabbed one of his chains with both hands and yanked -- savagely! -- with no result.

  Snubbing up on the chain, wrapping it around both hands, facing the wall, John jumped, bringing up his feet to brace them against the side of the wall.

  "Walking" his legs wider for better support, he pushed with his back, his arms fully extended. ... Pain! ... The chain cutting into his hands!

  Wham!, the grating sound coming too late to warn John that the wall ring was pulling loose, John sprawled to the hard floor!

  Lights flashed inside his eyes! He had hit ... hard!

  He also felt pain in the wrist still chained to the wall, that wrist's chain jerking him sideways as he fell.

  Sitting up carefully, breathing hard, John gathered the loose chain, sliding it through his hands until he felt the ring and its attached wall pin, finding that the shaft had been flattened on the end -- like a nail head -- the flared end of the spike inserted in a hole drilled in the wall, mortar troweled in to keep the iron peg in place, John's final heave pulling both shank and mortar through the hole.

  One down, and one to go!

  John got his feet under him ... stood ... slowly ... testing himself. ... Shaken. Bruised. ... A little strain between his shoulder blades. But nothing broken.

  Ignoring the chain that dangled from his freed wrist, John grabbed the other chain; wrapped it around both hands; and jumped.

  Bracing his feet against the wall as before, he kicked back ... to feel the pain of the chain cutting into his palms ... the stake pulling free like the first one, John ending on his back again.

  Recovered, John got shakily to his feet; began getting the chains out of his way by wrapping each around its wrist, tucking the end of each chain through its respective coil, pulling the whole mass tight.

  And he was free -- if having five foot chains wound about your wrists and being locked inside a torture room could be called free.

  But first things first. For now, what was important was to free Platinia, John considering the girl to be his personal responsibility. He was not going to leave her to the "tender" mercy of King Yarro. Literally, John would rather die!

  Rather die? Though that was the way John felt, he was surprised that his concern for Platinia was that strong. On the other hand, had he ever been completely sane since he'd arrived in this other world?

  No matter. Whatever the reason, John knew how it must be. He wasn't going to leave her.

  That decided, John looked down the wall to find the girl staring at him, her eyes glowing in the dark like cat eyes. His imagination?

  The question was, were her chains set in the wall as carelessly as his had been? John finding the answer to that question to be yes, John using the same, chain pulling technique to pull Platinia's chains, taking the punishment each pull cost him. (After the last chain was out, it took him several moments even to stand.)

  Meanwhile, Platinia had followed John's lead by wrapping her chains around her wrists.

  To get a better perception of the dungon, John walked to the center of the room, the girl tagg
ing behind him, relying on him.

  Closer to the far wall, John saw other chained men, so weak they were collapsed on the floor. All but one man who was standing there in the dark, chained as John had been. Not a large man but compact, poised.

  Though John sympathized with these other poor bastards, John couldn't spend time freeing them. In the first place, John's strength was gone. And in the second, there was no reason to assume these others were as innocent as Platinia and John.

  Crossing the room to examine the door, more by feel than by sight, John discovered that five, heavy, hammered hinges supported the door's massive, age hardened beams. Even if John found a way to overpower the guards outside, the door was too strong to be forced.

  Were there other options? John searched his memory for anything ... everything.

  He remembered reading a novel in which a man had gotten out of just such a dungeon by prying stones from the floor, digging out enough dirt beneath them for the prisoner to hide in the hole. Lying in the depression, dragging the stones back over him, the captive waited until the guards had entered to find that their prisoner had "disappeared." Rushing off to catch him before he got away, the convict had made his getaway through the door the jailers had left open in their mad pursuit of the "escaped" prisoner.

  Hardly more than the fevered imagination of a fiction writer, there was no practical way for John to make such a plan work.

  Was there a place to hide? A wall angle to duck behind from which he might spring out to surprise a guard? John paced the room again, approaching each wall to discover there was no hiding place.

  Could he climb the walls to "disappear" overhead?

  Examining the walls more closely, John saw they were built of three foot stone blocks set on top one another with no particular care, slabs jutting out here and there as the wall climbed. Hand holds? It was ... worth a try.

  Approaching a likely looking place on the wall, jumping, John got his fingertips over the top of an outset block above his head. Scrambling up the slippery wall with his feet, he found a crack for a toe hold. Resting a moment, he reached up with the opposite hand to find a higher slot for his finger tips. Pulled himself up.

  It was while stretching up again that his foot slipped, John able to push off so he didn't scrape against the wall as he plunged, even then banging forward into the wall.

  Crouched on the stone floor, ears ringing, knees skinned below his tunic, all John could think about was how glad he was that he hadn't climbed higher.

  "May I know your name?" came a whispered voice from across the room. A soft voice. Steady. Melodious, as it sighed from wall to wall.

  Startled, John whirled around to look. ... The man. The standing man.

  "John Lyon," John answered quietly, regretting any contact with someone he'd decided not to help. It was easier to be callous to the faceless, to the nameless. Motivated by the fevered patriotism of war, soldiers never shot at men; instead killed huns, japs, slope heads, commies, and gooks.

  "Were I free, I could climb that wall, John-Lyon."

  "Perhaps," John said, no hope in his voice.

  "From your vantage, can you see how big is the window?"

  "Window?" Of course! There had to be a window up there somewhere through which the room's faint light was filtered. John backed away, looked up.

  "I can't tell."

  "Large enough for a man to pass through?"

  "Maybe."

  "How high?"

  "Could be a window at, what I'd estimate as fifty feet. At least the light's stronger there."

  "An easy distance."

  "I tried and couldn't make it."

  "You are ... strong. I have observed that. I saw you pull the chains. But I have my uses. I can climb."

  "Why are you in the dungeon?"

  "Too long a story for the shortness of the time."

  "I'll bet."

  "Though I could not hear the talk, it appears that you, also, have angered the king."

  "Apparently," John admitted. "Though I don't know how."

  "It is not difficult to incur Yarro's wrath," the man said matter-of-factly.

  "I can believe that," John said, taking a couple of steps toward the man but keeping far enough away to be out of chain reach.

  The man didn't look frightening. Was well muscled, but small of frame.

  "Are you a Malachite?" the man asked.

  "No."

  "Realgar?"

  "No. From no place you've even heard of."

  "Watching you at the chains, John-Lyon, I can believe that." Even in desperate straits, the man didn't fawn.

  "I'm not sure I could free you, even if I tried. I'm about pulled out."

  "It would not take your great strength. There would be two of us to pull." Smart, too. At the very least, the fellow was a thinking man's criminal.

  "Probably. But let's suppose that we got you loose. That you can actually climb that wall. When you get to the top, how does that help us?" John motioned to Platinia.

  "That, I have been thinking about," the man said, reasonably. "Have you noticed the rack?"

  "Actually, I've been trying to ignore it." A feeble joke, but one that made the man smile, anyone in chains who could smile, not a mass murderer, surely.

  "The pulleys are run with rope. Quite a lot of rope. Climbing, I could secure the line from above. You could climb the rope?" John thought it over. "Working together, we could drag up the girl," the man said, sensing John's hesitation.

  And it was a chance. Not much of one, but more than John had by himself. Then, too, though the fellow might be dangerous, not escaping was fatal!

  The balance tipped in favor of freeing the man, working together, John and the man pulled the man's chain-pins from the wall in short order, the man following John's and Platinia's example by wrapping his chains about his wrists to get them out of the way.

  Using one of the "fireplace tools" as a pry bar, they stretched the rope off the pulley system on the rack, a long rope, traveling, as it did, around many pulleys. Dragging people apart at the joints took serious leverage, after all.

  Assuming the man could climb the wall, was the line long enough to reach from the window to the floor of the dungeon? It might be ... all that mattered at the moment.

  Coiling the rope around his body, the man backed away to see up the wall, coolly taking his time, as thoughtful as a mountain climber planning a precipice ascent.

  Deciding how to attack the wall, the wiry little man made an amazing jump, at the top of the leap sticking to the mossy wall like a squirrel to tree bark!

  An orienting pause, and he began to climb, hand over hand, higher and higher into the shadowy air, John feeling both admiration for the small man's daring and ... shame. Shame that John could not watch from the safety of the floor without breaking into a sweat!

  Sooner than John would have believed if he hadn't seen it, the "monkey" man was high above the floor, light shining on him, the man opposite the window.

  John would now learn the answer to the question he'd kept himself from asking. Would the man lower the rope ... or .......

  Yes! That hissing noise was the rope coming down the rough wall!

  John could breathe again.

  Until ... the rope stopped a good twenty-five feet above the floor.

  "Can you give me any more?" John called softly.

  "A little."

  For half a minute, there was frantic wave action in the rope, the rope settling several feet lower." Still twenty feet too high.

  "Any more?" John whispered?

  "No," echoed the answer. "Finding the window bars too narrow to squeeze through, I first tied the rope to a bar." John had a quick thought about how the man could be so precise about the bars' width. "At this time my legs are through the bars. I am holding with my knees. The rope end is in my hands. That is all the length." John could picture it. The man above, feet up, body stretched down the wall, rope at arms length.

  "I can't come up to help bend the bar
s if I can't reach the rope," John called up, frustrated.

  John had a thought. "Can you unwind one of your chains and tie the rope to the end of the chain?"

  "Good," came the whisper.

  A rustle of metal over head; the rope jerked about; a pause; the rope snaking down four more feet.

  "Still not enough. It's about eighteen feet up the wall."

  "Can you climb the wall to the rope? It is only a short way. You were up the wall almost that far, before."

  "Maybe." John had climbed a ways on his own attempt. But ....

  Behind John, Platinia waited, watching like she always did, the only sound from her the occasional clinking of her chains, the girl lightly dressed, shivering in the dungeon cold.

  Using a chain length had worked once, perhaps it would again! "Platinia," John whispered, motioning the girl to join him by the wall, the girl coming up. "I've got to climb again, to reach the rope. You understand?" She nodded. "I'm going to take you with me. Don't worry." She looked up at him, her eyes in shadow so that he couldn't tell what she was thinking. If he ever could. "And here's how we do it. Unwrap the chain from your left arm," the girl doing as she was told, the lengthening chain clinking softly to the floor, making a metallic puddle beside her, John then unwrapped the chain from his own left arm.

  Stooping, John tied the chain ends in what he hoped was a square knot, John now spliced to the girl with seven feet of chain.

  If he could climb the wall high enough to get both hands on the end of the rope, there was a chance he would have enough strength both to climb and help to pull the girl up by the chains tied between them. Another long shot, but ...

  With renewed hope, John approached the wall, this time weighted down by a chain wrapped around his right wrist, the other wrist chain trailing to Platinia who had come up to press herself into the wall to give him as much slack as possible.

  Sweating at the thought of what he was about to do, John had to pause to wipe the sting out of his eyes. Not a good omen.