The Stair Of Time (Book 2) (16 page)

Lonely Descent

Gaven and Andaris stayed very still, hanging onto opposite ends of the same railing until the stairway, for the
most part, stopped its vertiginous lurching.  When they turned around, they were more annoyed than shocked to discover that there was no sign of the door. 

Of course, given past experience, th
ey had considered this possibility.  After all, it was a magical entrance out of a magical forest into a magical city—which meant pretty much anything goes
.
  Still, they weren’t entirely without surprise.  Turns out recognizing something as a possibility and having it actually
occur
are two very different things.

Andaris stepped to where the door should have been, moving slowly
, not wanting to start the stairs to swaying again.  Once there, he reached up and ran his hand along the dark, misshapen surface of the wall.

“Feels like…dirt,” he told Gaven, his tone managing to be bemused and unnerved at
the same time.  “It’s moist and smells kinda…musty, like potting soil.”

“Do you feel the outline of the door?” the big man asked.  “I heard it shut.  It sounded like wood against wood.  Seems like the dirt would have muffled it, but even so—”  Gaven sighed, interrupting himself.  “
Try the secret knock.  See if Gramps can hear us.”

Recognizing good sense when he heard it, Andaris nodded and proceeded to bash his fist against the wall hard enough to make a thudding noise, dirt raining down onto the landing.  Three times he tried, knocking and waiting just as Gramps had instructed, and three times there was no response.  Knowing
full well what this likely meant, Andaris’ heart sank.

“Let me give it a go,” Gaven said from behind, words armored in steely determination.

“Maybe he’s just too far away to hear,” Andaris suggested.  “I mean, he wouldn’t expect us to knock right after he closes the door.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Gaven, drawing his sword and placing its tip, about waist high, against the wall
.  “But I don’t think so.”

Andaris was about to ask what h
e was doing when, with a mighty grunt, Gaven thrust the length of his blade forward, burying it to the hilt.  After twisting the sword around a bit, he gave another grunt and yanked it back out, dislodging a rather impressive chunk of earth which, after landing and turning onto its side, came to rest against his right boot.  The big man wiped his blade clean on his pant leg before resheathing it, then peered into the hole as though searching for something to throttle.

“See anything?” Andaris asked, feeling sure he knew the answer.

“Nope,” replied Gaven. “Just dirt, dirt, and more dirt.  Oh and…there’s also some dirt.”

“Yeah, ha, ha,” said Andaris.  “You get funnier all the tim
e.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Gaven.  “I take it back.  I
do
see something.  Seriously.  There’re worms in the back of the hole.  They look like regular groundworms but…longer.”

Never having
cared much for things that crawl and slither through the earth, Andaris said, “Maybe you shouldn’t poke around in there.  Could be
anything
in there.”

“Hmm,” said Gaven, sounding unimpressed.  “You know what I wonder? 
If a fellah was to start digging’ through this wall, would he eventually break out into the open?  Like maybe we got turned sideways, and the surface is straight ahead.”  Laughing, the big man stuck in his arm to the shoulder.  “Wouldn’t that be somethin’, if we busted outta the dirt at Gramps’ feet?  Why, he’d be tellin’ that story for years to come, and with no need for embellishment, neither.”

Watching a dozen or more worms squirm from the hole, displaced by Gaven’s meaty arm, Andaris found himself struck momentarily speechless.  A couple of the squirmiest ones plopped onto the landing and, together with the largest centipede he’d ever seen, began slithering and crawling towards him.

“I don’t know, Gaven.  Sounds pretty unlikely to me, but then who’s to say in a place like this?  Either way, I think we should try going down the stairs first, leave the fun stuff like digging through the bowels of the earth for later.”

Andaris
brushed his attackers, which were now only a few inches away, over the side with his boot.  It was unnerving how they had gone straight for him like that, and at a pretty good clip, too.

Once Gaven had determined that there was nothing of any further interest in the hole, they turned around, braced themselves for whatever might lay below, and began the descent, Gaven taking the lead.

At first, fearing everything except their own
shadows, and
that
only because it hadn’t occurred to them yet, their progress was slow.  When it became evident that nothing immediately untoward was going to occur, their pace quickened.  Until, of course, they reached the mist.

It was extremely unsettling for Andaris to be so close to what he hoped he had merely imagined.  What would he do if a mistship, or a dragonsnake burst from the surface?  What
could
he do? To be sure, it was not a pleasant thought, the dire implications of which served only to reinforce his natural reticence, rendering him temporarily immobile.  In other words, he found himself incapacitated, unable to take another step, to see his boot disappear beneath the shifting surface into the unknowable, mysterial substratum.

As usual, Gaven broke the spell with action, stepping down with nary a pause.  When his legs were covered to the knees, he turned and said, “It’s kinda weird feelin’, sorta cool and tingly, but not unpleasant.  Not half bad, really.  The only thing that’s gonna bother me is not being able to see.  Wonder how far down it goes?”

Not in the least bit comforted by the big man’s words, Andaris had to will himself to speak.  “I…don’t know, but if we’re going to go, and I don’t see that we have any choice, let’s just go, before I lose what little nerve I have.”

Noting the perspiration that had popped out on his friend’s brow, Gaven nodded and walked down into the mist.  Andaris followed, pleased when his legs chose to do his bidding with only the slightest hesitation.

“Don’t get too far ahead!” he yelled.  “It would be easy for us to lose each other in this.” 

“I’m only a few feet down,” came the big man’s booming, surpri
singly close, reply.  “Waiting.”

Andaris continued counting steps as he went, reaching thirty-five upon total immersion.  As Gaven had said, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.  The mist was cool and tingly agains
t his face, a thousand bluish-green fingertips caressing his frayed nerves with the utmost care, almost as if someone, or some
thing
, was aware of their intrusion, was in fact grateful for it, welcoming them like dear friends after a long absence.

Trumpet’s Dawn

“Keep talking so I don’t bump into you,” said Andaris.  “I’m holding onto the left
hand railing.  Where are you?”

No reply.  Just the
bluish-green mist swirling about him, luminous and strangely beautiful. 

“Come on, Gaven.  Stop fooling around.  It’s not funny.”

In the far distance, somewhere below, he heard the echoing caw of what sounded like an enormous bird, the same caw they had all heard shortly after opening the door.

“Gaven!”

Still no reply.

“Okay, fine.  It
is
funny.  Whatever—just say something.  I don’t like the sound of that thing.  I think it would be best if we got moving.”  Arms outstretched, Andaris began to feel around for his roguish friend.  Nothing.

A shiver ran up his back. 
What if he’s not responding because he can’t?  Because he’s hurt or…not here at all.

The bird cawed again, this time sounding
much
closer.  In fact, Andaris now thought he could hear the flapping of great leathery wings, and the whoosh of displaced air.

Maybe that’s why he isn’t responding.  Maybe my voice is drawing the bird.  But if that’s the case, then why didn’t he find me while I was talking?
  Andaris stayed very quiet and very still, trying to not even breathe. 
As long as I stay in the mist, I’m safe,
he reasoned. 
It can’t see me in here.

But could it smell him or
sense him in some other fashion?  He knew it would be foolish to assume something about a creature with which he had no previous experience, especially one that lives in a place like this.

Andaris waited for close to half an hour, muscles taut, mouth closed, ears perked.  In that time he heard no sign of the bird, if indeed that’s what it was, or of Gaven. 
Assailed by roughly an even measure of relief and disappointment, he climbed back up the steps and out of the mist—praying he had waited long enough.  Everything was as he remembered.

After a few more minutes
had passed, he once again began to call out for his friend.  And once again, there was no reply. 
He’s really gone,
he thought.
  But gone where?  And how?

Andaris sat down on one of the steps and put his head in his hands, concentrating on taking deep, steady
ing breaths, fending off panic by only the narrowest of margins.

What to do?
he thought. 
Think.  The thing is, if Gaven was taken by something, he would have fought and I would have heard.  If he fell or was pushed over the side, he would have cried out, and I would have heard.  So, the only logical conclusion is that he went through to…another place, or that I did, even though it looks the same. 

Either way, he’s probably okay.  And now it’s just a matter of us finding each other again.
He heard Gaven’s voice in his head:
Well, if that’s all, then what are ya worried about?  Gettin’ all worked up over a little thing like that, and you a man grown.  Hey, I know.  Mayhap if ya cry loud enough, yer mommy will hear and come a runnin’!
 

He decided
, for the time being, the best thing to do was to stay put.  Let Gaven try to find his way back first.  If, after a few hours, there was no sign, he would walk to the landing and try to contact Gramps.  Failing that, there was only one thing he
could
do—go back down into the mist.

Time passed slowly, seeming to resent the delay, being shoved in the back by past and tugged in the front by future.  At first, Andaris distracted himself by wrestling with matters that required serious contemplation.  Important stuff like: why were some people left-handed instead of right?  Why did fire turn blue when it got really really hot? Where did the hawk-billed onochra nest in the Spring?  What was the average weight and height of your average macradon? Just how hot was really really hot, anyway?  As well as a number of other questions of lesser, greater, and equal importance. 

When he
grew weary of these little diversions, he opened his new pack—his
enchanted
pack—and pulled out a block of cheese and some linberries.  After nearly starving to death during his last adventure, the first thing he had done before heading east was buy a Pack of Everholding.  It was three times bigger on the inside than the outside, and weighed half as much as a pack half its size.  He smiled, feeling sure that it would be well worth the ten gold he’d given in trade.  Such items were rare, and typically went for much more.  But, of course, Gaven knew a guy who knew a guy.

After cutting a couple of slices off one end of the cheese
block, he put the food back, examined his spread, and then at the last moment decided he needed some crackers, as well.  Once he had the cheese, linberries, and crackers situated to his satisfaction, he leaned back and began to eat.  He wondered if he shouldn’t add a swallow or two of mead to his meal.  He had just taken his second bite, and was reopening his pack to retrieve the mead, when he heard something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.  It sounded like the distant call of a trumpet, except higher pitched and, seemingly, as time wore on…perpetual, as if the trumpeter’s lungs never emptied of air. 

The lonely call of a trumpet’s dawn,
he thought, immediately regretting it. 
Bestial roars from the bowels of hell.
 
Stop it!
he told himself.  But it wasn’t a trumpet.  It was something lighter and more…melodic, wavering just above and below the same high note.

The mist is changing,
he realized.  It was going from bluish-green to pale orange.  Food forgotten, he stood, making ready to fight or flight.

As it happened
, neither turned out to be necessary.  The note softened, becoming quieter and quieter until, at long last, it stopped altogether.  Andaris sat back down, wondering what, if anything, the change of color meant.  Did it signify something, like the transition from day to night?  Was it on a timer, put in place by a conscious will, left behind to count down the eons?  Or was it something that occurred naturally, like the changing of the seasons?

Hours later, after three naps and two in-between-meal snacks, Andaris finally admitted to himself that Gaven was not coming back.  Which meant it was now time to implement the second part of his plan.  He found the vertigo caused by the swaying of the stairs to be stronger going up than going down.  Once, after a particularly billowing gust, he had to hang on to the railing and cease his ascent until it calmed.

When he reached the landing, he was not surprised to discover that there was still no sign of the door in the wall of earth.  He
was
surprised, however, as he drew his fist near to knock, that the hole Gaven had made with his sword was now blocked by cobwebs.  And beyond the webs, he could make out some sort of…cocoon.

Not wanting to disturb whatever
nested inside anymore than absolutely necessary, he completed the secret knock as fast as he could, and then stepped all the way to the far end of the landing.  When, as expected, nothing happened, he stepped forward to try again. 

Movement from the hole caught his eye.  The cocoon had c
racked open!  Something was wriggling inside, struggling to break free. 
It’s evil,
Andaris suddenly thought. 
After it emerges it will grow to twice my size.  It will follow my trail.  Hunt me.  Drink my blood before I die, warm and gushing from my veins.  It exists because of me, so it is I who must kill it!
He didn’t know how he knew this, only that he did, and for now that was enough. 

It took several tries to relight the torch, but eventually he managed it.  When it was burning bright, he touched
the flame to the cobwebs and, as though in a trance, watched as they were consumed.  The thing inside had almost freed itself by the time it was wreathed in fire.  It shrieked in unholy rage, shooting from the hole like a cannonball.  Andaris just barely managed to avoid being struck, watching with wide eyes as it arced over the railing and dropped, still shrieking, into the mist.

As soon as
Andaris had recovered his faculties, he tried the secret knock again, and again was not surprised when there was no response. 
Only one option left,
he thought, dread rising in the back of his throat and lowering in the pit of his stomach.  He would have to do as the shrieking cocooned beast and, in all likelihood, Gaven, had done before.  He would have to go not only into the mist, but through to the other side—presuming there
was
another side.

Now that
his mind was made up, it was only a matter of moments before he found himself standing on the brink, ready, like so many times before, to take that next fateful step into the unknown.  And so it was, after several deep breaths, that Andaris Rocaren of Fairhaven descended into the pale orange luminescence, the stuff, apparently, of which dreams are made.