Stairway to Forever

by Robert Adams

  thing that doesn't, itself, want to be seen by me. There're plenty of guns and ammo in the cabin, more here in the house. Gus spent thirty years of his life using firearms and teaching others to use them properly, he'll make you a good instructor.

  "But as concerns Pedro Goldfarb . . . Look, when I get back from my trip into those hills, f 11 give you a definite answer, a yes or a no. Let's let it go at that, for now."

  When he had carried up and stowed the last of the supplies, Fitz ran the bike up the planks onto the main deck of the sand yacht, disattached the sidecar, then stowed both before going back to the stern cabin and preparing to pack and set aside gear and supplies for the trip. Thanks to his discoveries of ample, potable water sources on the other side of the sandy plain, at least he was not going to have to take up a lot of the limited space by packing along gallons of drinking water; a quart canteen or two should be more than ample to his needs and there were certain to be more springs and streams in those hills, else they would not be so heavily forested.

  After carefully cleaning and lubricating the carbine, he filled the under-barrel tube with ten big rounds of .44 magnum, then he inserted the weapon in the custom-made, padded-leather scabbard. He might never need it or the revolver; probably, he would not, but still he felt it was better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them. That could be fatal. He uncased, lubricated and assembled the lightweight drilling gun, then shoved a shell of number four shot into the left barrel, a shell of number six shot into the right, completing the loading with a .22 magnum cartridge in the third barrel. This would be his pot-hunting

  gun, carried in the sidecar along with its pouch of shells and cartridges, fit for the taking of birds or small game of any kind. Living off the country, or mostly off the country, would mean that he could travel lighter, supplies-wise, and thus pack along more fuel to extend his range on each trip, for the hilly country looked extensive and there was no way he could cover it all at once, not unless he could tow along a tanker of gasoline—that, or somehow alter the engine so that it would run on pure water or air. Or maybe—he grinned at the thought as he carefully tucked the air mattress in its place, then tightly rolled the trail sleeping bag—in this land of impossibilities, I could turn this bag into a flying carpet substitute and fly wherever I want to go. He chuckled at his own silliness, then grimaced as he drew the straps as tightly as he could and added the rolled bag, mattress and weatherproof cover to the growing pile of gear.

  When he had done all he could, all but the last-minute things, he mixed an iceless highball, drank it in four gulps, then turned out all the lanterns save one, turning it very low, that he might not trip over scattered bits of gear in the dim light of dawn. Then he extended himself on the cot and drifted off to sleep.

  And, all at once, Tom was there on his chest and belly, his eyes reflecting the dim glow of the gas lantern. Tiredly, exhausted and needing sleep, Fitz said a little brusquely, "All right, I'm headed for the hills tomorrow. What do you want me to do, roll out of this cot and saddle up tonight? If so, forget it, I'm tired and sleepy."

  "And very irritable," added the cat, or so Fitz thought... or dreamed he thought. "While it might be better if you crossed the Pony Plain at night, since

  the Teeth and Legs lack the proper vision to hunt on all save the brightest of moonlit nights, it might be more dangerous for you to try a crossing tonight, tired as you are, your reflexes slowed. No, cross tomorrow, but cross fast and be your most wary, for I have found fresh spoor of a big Teeth and Legs in the very area you must go across in the shortest line from here. Don't be so foolish as to try to outrun it, though. If it finds you, not even your three-wheeled thing is so fast; no, use your noise-fire-pain thing to kill it—kill it, or it will assuredly kill and eat you.

  "Once you have knowledge of your full powers, of course, even the Teeth and Legs will pose no danger to you. Then, you will have no need of your noise-fire-pain things, ever again, or of your three-wheeled thing, either. You will be free, master of all, in this world and in the other, as well. But ere that happen, you must go deeply into the hills and meet the Dagda. He will set all aright with you, with her who is yours and with the other, the keeper, as well."

  "What the hell are you babbling about now?" muttered Fitz. "What's a Dagda? A keeper, keeper of what?"

  But all that the cat replied was, "Sleep, my good old friend."

  Fitz did. Immediately.

  And suddenly, once more, he was atop that rocky crag that the tall old man with the long, grey beard had climbed, bearing Fitz and another child in his arms; tight-pressed, he had held them under his cloak, against his fine bronze armor. All hacked and scarred had that armor been, though, Fitz remembered, its enamel decorations chipped away in places and the glittering stones gone, many of them, from the places wherein they had been set.

  Then Fitz was within the warm, brightly lit chamber that lay within the huge boulder that the old

  man had caused to open with a peeled wand of willow wood and a formula couched in the Old Language. The old man now stood naked in that room, stripped of cloak, armor, sword, clothing, everything. Despite the age that showed upon his face, his body was still that of a warrior, a vital man. The naked old man was talking to an old woman, the same old woman who had welcomed them into the chamber from the cold mountainside beyond the boulder.

  "But if you render me, too, a babe, and exchange me on that future world as you and I did the young prince and princess, that will leave you alone here to face the Strangers when the Dark Ones finally have penetrated this fastness. You are one of the wisest of us all; I cannot see you sacrificed for me/'

  She shook her almost-white-haired head. "Never you fear, Keeper, you have done your duty well, so far. Are you to continue so, you must live and be near to your assigned charges. This way, my way, you will live and will be near to them . . . well, at least in the same world and time. As for me, I have ways to protect myself that not even the power of the Dark Ones can penetrate."

  "But if I am to be rendered a helpless babe again, even as were my charges, how can I protect them ... or even find them in that weird world so filled with Strangers and oddities that we just visited?" the naked old man protested. "And who will there be to tell their father, if still he lives, where they and I, too, have gone?"

  "Their father will be informed, soon or late," she replied. "As regards the finding them and the care of them that you owe, think you: you are a man-grown, full of your great powers, so although made a babe once more, through my different powers, you will come to the full memory and use of your powers

  very soon after your new body is become that of a full man.

  "The little prince and princess, on the other hand, were not that much more than mere babes when once more they so became. They will require long years to remember, if ever they do, indeed, without help. You will need to seek them out, find them by their auras, and then guide them as well as you can, prompting them until they start to remember how to realize their full powers and make use of them. I was a Keeper, too, once, long ago, you may recall; so I, too, will go into that other world if I can and I'll be of as much help as I can to both you and them.

  "Now the Strangers are at my gate, they are bringing up a poor, sad prisoner, one of our kind, to try to make her open the stone, so let me render you, quickly, and take you into that other world."

  The warm, comfortable chamber faded away and Fitz found himself outside, on the mountaintop, before the huge boulder all carven with symbols so old and weathered as to be barely perceptible as other than mere natural disfigurements of its grey surface.

  A knot of men stood before him, obviously unable to see him as he could see and hear . . . and smell them. They were a scruffy lot, Fitz thought, but still possessed of a look of dangerous, violent, brutal men. A couple wore byrnies of mail that reached from shoulder to knee, but most had as body armor only rough jerkins of hide, strips of horn and bone sewn onto them here and there for added
protection. A few showed the blood and tattered, filthy bandages of relatively fresh wounds. They were armed with steel swords, mostly, axes, spears and long knives, though one had as weapon nothing save a wooden club, the bark still on part of it.

  The clothing beneath the protective items was

  Robert Adams

  mostly of poor quality and as long unwashed as their stinking bodies, ragged, hopping and acrawl with vermin. But each and every one of the mangy pack wore a silvery amulet hung on his chest from a chain. In addition, they sported such outre* items as golden torques clasped about dirty necks, arm rings and finger rings of gold, electrum, copper, bronze and gems, brooches of brightly enameled bronze and copper, strings of pearls, pins and ear-bobs set with brilliant stones. A single look at the contrasts spelled but one word to the observing Fitz—loot.

  One of the men in a byrnie, his head and neck covered by a bronze helmet of splendid construction and decoration, banged a few times on the face of the boulder with the pommel of his sword. Then he showed rotting, yellow-brown teeth in a grimace.

  "This is where the he-witch went, sure enough. See, the tracks lead right up to it. But mere steel doesn't work on it. Where's a priest?"

  The other man in a byrnie answered, "Not caught up to us yet, Id imagine. He and the others have only cold-bred mounts, rounseys and worse, most of them."

  "Then bring the blonde witch-woman up here," snarled the first. "She'll either open it or I'll have her evil head off, on this spot."

  Presently, the man with the club half-dragged a near-naked blonde woman of, Fitz estimated, about twenty years, up the trail onto the top of the mountain, to shove her before the rock and the two men in byrnies. Her hands, feet and parts of her face were blue with cold, her fair-skinned body showed the clear evidences of cruel use and abuse—whip-weals on her shoulders, back, buttocks and legs still fitfully oozing blood and serum, both her breasts showing savage tooth marks and one nipple torn

  raggedly off, dangling by only a thread of flesh. She stood before the two mail-shirted men with her head of dull, matted hair hung low, the look in her eyes dull and apathetic.

  "Here, witch-woman," rasped the first man, "open this rock and let us all into the under the hill and you'll be given your freedom."

  Raising her battered head, one eye swollen almost shut, she gazed upon the face of the rock for a moment, then said, "This is a gate, but not a gate to the under the hill, Master. There is most likely only a cave behind it, the home of one of the Old Ones. I might have been able to open it . . . once, but after all that you and the other Strangers have done to me, after the burning water that the Dark Ones poured upon me, I no longer have the power to do such."

  With a roar of pure rage, the first man grabbed a handful of the dirty, matted blonde hair, whirled his sharp steel sword on high, then swung it hard, driving it completely through the slender neck of the woman, so that he still held the head with its staring blue eyes and its open mouth, while her body— spouting high-soaring jets of ropy-red blood from the neck, legs and arms jerking—was beginning to collapse at his feet.

  Tossing the severed head away to go rolling and bouncing down the rocky slope of the mountainside, the murderer bent to tear the last shreds of tattered clothing from the headless body and used it to wipe clean his precious steel sword-blade. Then he snapped to one of the other men, "Go down there and mount and ride, take my horse, too, but find that priest and bring him back as fast as horseflesh will travel. Go!"

  The men stamped and paced back and forth and

  blew upon their cold hands for a while. Finally, two of them gathered such wood as they could find on the mountainsides below, then brought it up to where the second man in a byrnie had kindled a tiny blaze with tinder and stray, windblown twigs and dry leaves. After it had begun to blaze, the first two squatted beside it and the others gathered as close around the two leaders as they dared.

  Fitz felt neither the cold winds that rufiled and jerked at the ragged clothing of the men, the slow, misty rain that continued to drizzle slowly down out of the leaden skies, or the fitful warmth of the small fire. He knew, without really knowing, that he was not on that mountaintop, not really; only his mind and his senses were there.

  The fire still was sputtering its way through additional, damper wood, when there came a staccato clatter of hooves from below, down the mountain trail. In a few minutes, the man who had been sent out came panting up the steep slope, followed at a few yards' distance by a big, burly man clad in a long, black, woolen robe, the hood of it thrown back to reveal a plain steel cap and a red, sweaty face. The chain about his neck was heavier and the amulet on his breast was much larger than those of the others, but he wore at his side a cross-hilted sword of steel and helped his progress up the trail with a shepherd's crook of some very dark wood, shod with a wide band of steel near its butt. The shaft of the crook showed nicks and splintery dents all along its length, as if it might have recently been used as a weapon.

  To Fitz, the man looked cleaner and more civilized than those he was climbing up to join, but as he neared, the watcher could see in his eyes a blazing fire of fanaticism that was awful to observe. This man

  might not be a brutal, savage barbarian by nature, but he could be every bit as cruel as the worst of them; this Fitz knew without really knowing.

  Not so much as glancing at the pitiful, naked, headless body or at the humbler men, he strode to stand before the two byrnie-clad men, who had arisen from their squats at sight of him.

  "Why have you sent for me in such haste, my son?" he asked of the first man, in a tone of equal speaking to equal, but with a bare tinge of condescension, too.

  The first man waved an arm at the boulder. "Yon-der's a gate, Father. The tracks of the he-witch we were chasing went right up to it and stopped. Her," he pointed his bearded chin at the white, drained body lying grotesquely sprawled, "we brought up here and she affirmed it to be a true gate, but said she couldn't open it, so I slew her, the damned witch.

  "But it must be gaped, Father, are we to catch that he-witch and wipe out the breed of the witches for good and all and make the world safe for the worship of Our Gentle Lord, Jesus Christ, Savior of all mankind."

  A grim, purposeful look on his hard face, the man in black nodded. "You did well to send for me, my son. Yonder portal of evil will be opened, never you fear. The power of Our Lord will gape it even in the very face of the damnable evil that assuredly lieth within."

  The black-robed man strode over to stand before the boulder's face. Standing with his bare, round-muscled legs spread wide apart, he took the shepherd's crook in both his big, hairy hands and held his arms high, then began to chant some words in a language that Fitz could not understand, though he

  nonetheless thought it not to be the Old Language, such as the old bearded man had used with his willow-wood wand to open the stone.

  The stone did finally open, suddenly, but not gendy, invitingly, as it had earlier. With a thunderlike clap of noise, the face of the boulder split down its entire face and chunks of it burst away to roll, crashingly, down the mountainside to either side of it.

  Armed with bared weapons and grasping blazing brands from the fire, the men filed into the narrow, jagged-walled cleft in the rock to find only a cave chamber, but slightly wider and higher than the passage through which they just had entered. The cold, musty place in no way resembled the warm, well-lit chamber that had been there so short a time before. There were no lamps, no carpets, no other comforts of any nature, only a tick of straw in a corner, a circle of sooty stones surrounding a pile of long-cold ashes, and some bundles of dry, crackly herbs hung from twigs driven into small cracks in the walls. No living thing, other than the intruders, was within that cave, and the only thing at all familiar that Fitz could see was the very faint glow of a single section of one wall of the place.

  Although he could see it, obviously the black-robed man and the barbaric warriors could not. After searching every nook and cranny, jerki
ng down and scattering the dried herbs, tearing apart the tick of moldy straw and kicking the fire stones out of their places, they all departed, cursing.

  Just before he—whatever there was of him—was no longer there, Fitz thought he saw the green-eyed face of the old woman protruding from the stone wall of the then-empty cave room, the face appearing near the center of the glowing rectangle.

  Fitz could hear Tom purring loudly before he opened his eyes. But when open them he did, the cat was not lying upon him, although he still could hear the purring. He thought he sat up then, swung his legs over the side of the cot and looked around the cabin. Then he sat frozen for a moment.

  Lying in typical feline posture on a stretch of floor only bare feet from him was a something that, save for its solid-grey color, he would have taken for a leopard, a very large leopard. Just as he sat up and looked at the creature, it yawned, showing a fearsome number of big, sharp-pointed cuspids and a full complement of carnassials and molars, all white and gleaming against the background of red-pink gums and tongue.

  Since first he had had that eerie feeling of being watched, here in the sand world, Fitz had slept with one of his three big magnum revolvers hung from a corner of the cot. Now, moving very slowly, he recovered from his momentary shock at sight of this obviously dangerous visitor and began to ease his hand toward the holstered gun.

  He had just gripped the butt and was unsnapping the strap with his thumb, when this cat, too, spoke, in Toms voice.

  "Don't do that, old friend. I've been shot once, that was enough and more than enough for me, thank you; you wouldn't believe how much the metal pellets from those noise-fire things hurt before finally you die and stop hurting. Being crushed to death by one of the huge four-wheeled things is much easier to bear, believe me, I know."