Under The Stairs

by John Stockmyer

  Sadly, these hopes had been idle ones. Fifteen up-lights had passed with no indication that the Mage planned to wield his power here, any more than he had used it in Stil-de-grain to extricate himself from Yarro's dungeon. Why? Pfnaravin was still in hiding. Keeping the yellow Crystal of Stil-de-grain covered at all times. (Only if you knew it was there around his neck, could you see the outline of it beneath the Mage's green striped tunic.)

  Might it be possible that a Mage of one Band could work little magic with a Crystal from another? Golden knew next to nothing about Mages.

  That afternoon, the tavern was almost silent. Even at night when filled with riotous drunkards, the gaiety would be forced. In his guise as entertainer, Golden had been to Malachite in better times.

  Taking another sip of wine to still his hunger while he waited for the Mage to gobble down a huge helping of boiled potatoes and cooked meat, thick bread with yellow butter, honey beer and fruit ... plus sweet nuts for desert ... Golden knew that what was wrong started with the light. Instead of bright emerald, the sky of Malachite was off-color and too dim. Golden had noticed this on the first day the Roamer had tied up at Bice's crowded peer. It was also true that he (as well as others) had more difficulty in lighting torches in that faded light. It took more thought. More concentration, the torches giving less light than usual, occasionally threatening to wink out!

  "What about those men over there," the Mage whispered suddenly, a potato piece on his knife point dripping with rich grease. With a quick shifting of his luminous green eyes, the Mage indicated two young men who had just appeared inside the door, the newcomers blinking their eyes to adjust them to the dark.

  "I do not think so," Golden said quietly. "Though they have the look of soldiers, they stand like civilians." The Mage was still fearful of pursuit from Stil-de-grain.

  "And you said that, to the best of your knowledge, no one here is looking for us?"

  "In my guise as soldier, I could find no one knowing of three fugitives from Stil-de-grain." Under his long cloak, Golden was still wearing the soldier's uniform, stolen so that Golden could do the Mage's business: inquire about a possible pursuit.

  The Mage satisfied, Golden returned to his own thoughts.

  Though eager to come to Bice at first, Golden now knew they must leave this sad band. Disaster was in the dimming of the sky; in the failing of the magic.

  The dark Band. That was the source of all this evil. And every day, they risked a worse thing happening!

  Stopped at the harbor's mouth, eventually allowed in, they had rowed within the great, encompassing land-arms that protected the Bay of Bice to find that the piers across the gulf were packed with naval ships, many newly built, all being readied for attack. Along the docks, carpenters were fitting new made oars into oarlocks. Mounting heavy duty sweeps.

  On shore, they had passed additional cruisers in dry-dock (covered by canvas in an attempt to conceal them) stored there because there was no space along the wharfs. Nor could anyone hide the frantic sawing and hammering from cordoned off construction yards. Could this be anything but a mad rush to match the larger naval strength of Stil-de-grain?

  Off the docks, the town was alive with Sailors and marines. Bice -- the classic picture of a naval build up.

  War! But against whom? The evil Band? Possibly, though more soldiers than sailors would be needed for that venture.

  If not already too late, they must leave this place. Return to Stil-de-grain. Ship out for Realgar. Take a boat bound for mystic Cinnabar! Go anywhere but here!

  Golden shuddered and drank deep. If only he could find a way to take back his council that they come to Malachite!

  To the anxiety he felt growing with each day, Golden must now add his fear of the task the Mage had set for him that afternoon, Golden's fear intensified by not understanding why the Mage wished that "favor." The Mage had tried to explain. About what the Mage called "static electricity." But Golden had not understood. Nor had the girl.

  No ... that was not entirely true about the girl. For the Mage had spoken directly to her about this, mentioning some machine the Mage had possessed in the other world, a wonder that the girl had seen. And she had seen it. Golden could tell.

  The Mage had asked about a magical way to make hair stand on end in this world. Which, from anyone but a Mage would be a silly thing to ask -- the beginning of some kind of joke. But with Mages .....

  And Golden, like a fool, said that for magic (as if a Mage needed magic) common people might consult a Weird.

  Golden had never done so. It was unwise to associate with people of shamanic power. (Feeling that way, what an irony that, at this very moment, Golden was sitting next to the man with the greatest Wizardry in all the Bands!)

  Weirds.

  Some called them female Mages. And there were resemblances. Both Weirds and Mages had the use of magic. Both had Crystals, the Crystals of Weirds (Golden had heard it said) being of the same flat, disk shape as a Mage's Crystal -- but larger.) Large crystals in which the Weird could see ... pictures ... of the future, of the past, of the present. Enchanted images.

  There was a Weird in Bice. Golden had heard someone tell about her the last time Golden had been in the Malachite capital. And, like a fool, Golden had said that to the Mage. All this happening while waiting for their food!

  Now, Golden must locate her. A prospect that gave Golden prickly skin. There was enough trouble in this dispirited place without association with Weirds!

  "Platinia and I will go upstairs to see if the room is clean," said John-Lyon-Pfnaravin, finally finished with his lunch. "If you could run that little errand for me now ...?" Golden nodded, fear waves climbing his neck.

  The others going upstairs to wait, this left poor Golden to stagger out into the street to question passersby about the Weird, a task -- given the dark looks that Golden got for asking -- that quickly sobered him.

  Even the few who admitted to knowing of the Weird, gave incoherent mumblings, mutterings about the failure of the magic and of how the Weird of Bice had foretold disaster.

  At last, tipping one old man a silver and bribing another with five coppers (getting the same location of the Weird from each) Golden returned to the tavern.

  And, of course, as Golden feared -- in spite of the lateness of the day, fog wisps, even now, nosing down the town's twisting innards like blind, white worms -- the Mage, on hearing of Golden's success, insisted they set out to find the Weird, Golden to lead.

  Starting in a barely familiar part of town, the three of them entered a quarter of the city unknown to Golden. Here, sidling past buildings packed together so tightly that many shared a common wall, they wove through streets clogged with sodden litter. There was also an evil, Azare wind in this place. Golden could feel the panting of its foul breath!

  Picking their way along dark, garbaged by-ways, they passed pathetic people huddled in the deeper shadows of dilapidated doorways.

  From those people, Golden witnessed ... another thing. A thing ... for which he had no words. For how could anyone account for the strange ... sounds ... coming from these huddled, helpless creatures? Sneezes. As if they had inhaled the most expensive pepper of the Cinnabar! (Which, in their poverty, they had not!) Out of their eyes trailed tears ... that were not tears. Tears also dripped down from their noses!? Golden heard coughing -- probably from wind-blown dust?

  What did this mean?

  Because of his confusion, without thinking, Golden blurted out a question to the Mage. "What is wrong with these people, sir?"

  "Wrong? What do you mean?"

  "They sneeze. They cough. They have water coming from their eyes and noses."

  "Perhaps the flu." And what did the Mage mean by that?

  "I do not understand."

  "Some of these people are ill."

  "What is ill?"

  At Golden's question, the Mage looked as startled as Golden felt at the many questions of the Mage.

  "You don't know the meaning of the word ill
?" Golden shook his head. "Unwell?" Golden looked blank. "Indisposed, unhealthy ... ailing?" None of those words held meaning for Golden.

  It was the Mage who now seemed at a loss for words. "All these words -- mean that something is wrong with your body."

  "Tired?"

  "Yes. You feel tired. But not from overwork. You've caught some kind of virus. A disease." Golden just shook his head. Explaining the word "ill" led to other words that Golden did not know. Still, something the Mage had said caused Golden to remember ......

  "I have heard of this happening in the Great Mage War. At that time, the combating Mages hoarded Sorcery, no magic left for common people, it is said. And ... something ... happened. To the nose and throat and chest. People became ... tired. They hurt. Their eyes ... leaked water. Not everyone, but some. And there was no Wizardry to ... mend them."

  "You have never had these ... feelings?" They were talking quietly as they walked through puddles and around nameless, fetid things, the fog licking past them like moving, melting tongues -- the girl trailing. But ... John-Lyon-Pfnaravin had asked a question. Had Golden ever felt this way? Perhaps ... now and then .......

  "In the night, I have sometimes felt an ... itching ... of the nose. Have been awakened sneezing. My throat was ..."

  "Scratchy? Sore?"

  "Yes. Those would be the words."

  "But only in the night?"

  "Yes. In the day, the magic ..."

  "I see," said the Mage, light flashing from his emerald eyes. "Daylight magic kills the disease." Since "disease" was also a word Golden did not know, he could not answer. "And you have never seen people with these symptoms in the daylight?"

  "Never."

  "But we see them now."

  "Yes."

  "Could that be because the light is less strong here, than in Stil-de-grain?" So, the Mage had noticed. "And with a weaker light, less magic?" Golden nodded.

  "So like all the other 'evils', the black band causes colds?"

  Colds?

  "Which leaves the important question: how is the black band able to control the light?"

  "I ... do not know."

  For long moments after that puzzling conversation, the three of them trudged on through the dark and ruined, fog-swept street.

  It was cool. Too cool for a warm band like Malachite!

  "Tell me, what's your version of how the Black Band got to be the Black Band?" asked John-Lyon-Pfnaravin, as if the conversation had never stopped. "I understand that it used to be called Azare."

  "It is well not to speak of these matters ..."

  "But I want to speak of them. I must understand," said the Mage.

  Golden glanced about, nervously, people-shadows seeming to stalk them.

  "So, tell me. How did the evil Band get to be black?"

  Golden paused to let an elder who was not a shadow, hobble past. Except for that bent-back dotard, the lane seemed deserted.

  "At the end of the Great Mage War," Golden whispered, "the winning Mages used their Crystal power to stop the light above the Azare Band. So that the Band was in darkness."

  "How did they do this?"

  "I do not know." Golden's voice would go no louder in this place.

  "And in the dark, there is no magic in the Black Band, is that it?" Golden nodded, not wishing even to whisper of these iniquitous things.

  "Is it your contention that the king of the Black Band has found a way to retaliate, some way to shut down the light over the Band of Malachite?" Though Golden could not get his thickened tongue to answer, John-Lyon-Pfnaravin did not seem to notice. "Clearly a case of, 'Do to others as they have done to you.'"

  Saying this, the Mage smiled so broadly that Golden could see a flash of teeth even in the grayness of the building-shaded, mist-bound lane.

  "I am not a Mage and do not know these things," Golden whispered, an answer that he hoped would stop this dangerous talk!

  It was then that the street ended suddenly in a crumbled structure, so that they had to plunge down another, even smaller path that left-forked off on its torturous way. Yes, left at the ruined building! So had said both informants after Golden paid them.

  Turning left, it was only a short way into that twisting warren that Golden became aware of people. Real people. Gathering behind the gaping jaws of doorways. He could not so much see them for the dark and fog as hear the noises that they made. The shuffling of their feet, the whisperings, the ragged breathing. Concentrating, he could also smell them. The carrion of this quarter little more than vomit behind the doorways' teeth!

  Thieves!? Murderers!? Or had people along the way overheard the conversation of the Mage? About the evil Band? Because of this, had the three of them been marked as spies?

  Whatever the danger, they had to get off the street!

  Thinking these dark thoughts, ahead and to the right ... Golden saw the solution. The dilapidated building with a blue door was the Weird's den. "See, John-Lyon, we have found the Weird's home at last." Golden pointed.

  "This is it?" the Mage asked, their arrival taking Pfnaravin's mind off the discussion of evil as Golden had hoped.

  "Yes."

  Twenty steps took them to the small shack-of-the-blue-door, the narrow building even more crooked than the others in the block. Though made wealthy by the fees they collected for giving Crystal-counsel, Weirds lived in such places, it was said. Their power tinged with evil, they did not wish to live ostentatiously, thereby further antagonizing the masses. At least, that was the "common" wisdom about Weirds. And that they were always ancient women. And that Crystal-staring drove them mad.

  By this time fearing the street more than the female Mage, without knocking, Golden opened the house door, the three of them ducking within to find themselves in a pitchy hallway, a violet light flickering at the back.

  Nowhere else to go, they moved toward the gleam, touching the greasy walls as a guide, stepping gingerly over unseen objects on the black, hall floor.

  At hall-end, they entered a small room, the room with the light, a grape colored globe flickering in the center of a chair-surrounded table.

  Except for this round, central table, the room was empty. ...... No. .... There was a couch along the wall. On the couch, a form in purple.

  Directed by the Mage, creeping closer, Golden saw that the shape was a woman, a woman on her back, average in size, average in every way except that she was old, a wisp of frizzy hair covering her head. The Weird. Breathing slowly, deeply. Asleep. Perhaps in a Crystal-trance.

  Reaching down reluctantly, Golden shook her, the woman moaning for a moment before awakening with a wild look in her eyes as she saw them bending over her.

  "Leave me 'lone," the woman muttered, her speech slurred with sleep. "Can't fix it. Worl' comin' to th' en'." While Golden jumped back; the Mage stepped forward.

  "Pardon me, Madam," said the Mage, with an encouraging smile. "But we've come a long way to see you. Is it true that you have a Crystal that makes your hair stand on end?"

  The woman rolled her eyes in the Mage's direction, looking at him as if she thought him to be the insane one.

  "We won't trouble you much, Madam," the Mage continued, still with that exaggeratedly polite tone, "but if you could show us how your Crystal works ...?"

  With a grunt, the woman sat up to swing her birdie legs over the couch edge, her large feet thumping on the floor. Rocking back and forth, twice, she launched herself to her feet, swaying woozily for a moment before staggering past the Mage to the table. There, she fumbled out a chair with her veined, spindly hands, flopped down on it, and hunched it forward. On the table before her, looking like a circular pool of purple water, was her Crystal, a thin, tapering disk a foot in diameter. The roundel of the Weird was framed with a ring of iron, a chain attached to that ring. Though bound to be uncomfortable because of its size, the Weird's Crystal -- like the smaller Crystal of a Mage -- could be worn around the neck.

  "Wanna' see th' future?" the Weird asked. "Ya' won't lik' it
. Nobody lik' it. Ever'body blam' me. Nobody lik' 'er future. Ever'body get old. Ever'body die. Nobody lik' 'er future."

  "We won't mind," said the Mage, coming over to pull out one of the other chairs around the table, slipping into it quickly, never taking his eyes from the Weird, motioning Golden and the girl to come over and ease down beside him.

  Golden, wishing he was anywhere but here, sat as ordered, the girl dissolving into the chair on the other side of the Mage. "Ya got a sil'er?" asked the Weird, a solferino flash from the enclosed fire-stone bowl catching the greedy look in her scummy eyes.

  The Mage motioned for Golden to give her the coin, Golden taking it from his pouch, Golden's silvers almost gone. Putting together a considerable sum to make his escape from Xanthin island, he still had the golds, Golden having to hope the Mage's help would yet prove as valuable as he was costing.

  "Actually," said the Mage, "I don't really want to see the future. I just want to see how the Crystal works." The Weird shrugged.

  "Cryst'l sho' th' future. Th' past. Sho' ever'thin'."

  "All right. Just make it work for us."

  At that, after clutching up the coin Golden had put before her and dropping it down the front of her deep purple dress, the Weird picked up the iron-bound saucer, slotting it into a groove in the table top cut for that purpose.

  Looking into her side of the vitreous disk, the old woman's face distorted through the glass, the Weird passed her hands over the Crystal, then began to stroke it, the circle glowing with a cold, gray light that overwhelmed the mauve. At the same time, the Weird's hair rose as if made of writhing worms.

  "Excellent!" said the Mage, Golden startled to hear him interrupt the Weird at such a time. "That's enough. Thank you."

  With a shriek of pain, the Weird stopped her stroking and stared over at the Mage, her grey eyes wide, the glow in the glass dying, the Weird's hair settling down to its former tangle.

  "Stroking is what produces the static," said John-Lyon-Pfnaravin to himself, at the same time rubbing his chin. "Of course! The Crystal behaves like amber." Golden saw the Mage begin to finger the outline of his own, yellow Crystal, hidden as it was under his tunic. "But it would take a large Crystal to produce enough power to ....."