Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (40 page)

Coluth cleared his throat. "If we continue to
climb, we will be trapped." Not said fearfully. Not complaining
about John's leadership. Just mentioning a fact he thought should
be called to John's attention.

Ah!

John could understand what was being
said.

Though you couldn't tell in the dismal byways
of the crumbling stronghold, it had to be up-light outside, the
light magic translating Coluth's Stil-de-grain. Now, John could ask
a whispered question. "How did you get into the castle?"

"From a hole in the roof of an outside
garderobe," Golden called softly, Golden padding directly behind
Coluth as they climbed. "But that was on the other side of the
castle."

"If I'm going in the right direction, there's
a similar way out on this side," John whispered back.

Entering a large chamber, corridors forking
off from it, John stopped to get his bearings, the other men coming
to a halt beside him.

Which way? ......

The glow that filtered through a high window
slit needed to be brighter before John could decide.

A pause was in order anyway, all of them
panting.

Sucking in a quantity of air as quietly as he
could, John held his breath to listen.

Heard ....... nothing.

They were safe for the moment, at least.

"Tell me," John asked, keeping his voice low
as he waited for up-light to get stronger, "since they took me
captive on the dock, where have you all been?"

"In the dungeon," Coluth said, in his quiet
way.

"I figured that," John said, nodding. "You
disappeared and no one said where. The king was upset."

"Young Yarro," Coluth said, sadly. "What will
become of him now, controlled as he is, by the new Mage?"

"How did you escape?" John asked, as much to
get Coluth's mind off his young charge, as to hear a tale of
derring-do.

"Golden came for us."

John turned to Golden. "Through the
ventilation window? The one where we bent the bars to get out?"
That episode had been on John's last trip to this benighted
world.

The black-haired young man shook his head.
"There was no need, sir. I had already positioned myself within the
palace, there to usher in Philelph and also Orig." At that, the two
sailors grinned. No one could have been more eager than they to
rescue their captain. "There were only two guards."

John nodded. As John remembered, there had
been two guards at the station outside the massive dungeon door
when he'd been incarcerated in that foul hole.

"Though keeping our distance, we have been
trailing you, great Mage. First, from Xanthin Island. Then, by
cable barge across the Tartarzine. Waiting for the chance to come
to your aid."

"I'm far from a 'great Mage' now," John said
dryly.

"You will always be the Mage," Coluth said
seriously, bowing.

Now that the light was stronger, John could
see that Coluth was dressed the way John had first seen him: in a
sailor's tunic, a common seaman's leather more in tune with his
rough hands and weathered face than his Navy Head's robe. In other
ways, too, Coluth looked like John always thought of him. Plain.
Unpretentious. Steady.

"You have only to regain your power," Coluth
continued in his matter-of-fact way. "I have a ship waiting. At
Canarin. Perhaps a trip to Orpiment in the beak-ward region would
be advisable. There, to rebuilt your strength. Stil-de-grain must
not be left in the hands of the Malachite. Young Yarro ...."
Thinking of how much he missed the child king, Coluth broke off
suddenly.

"Or we could go cross-band to Realgar,"
Golden added. "To the Claws. There to raise an army. The loyal
forces of Stil-de-grain would come over to you if given a chance.
To you and to Nator."

"Nator. What happened to Nator?"

"He scouts the Stil-de-grain Army, which
approaches."

"The army's still under the command of Forsk?
It was Forsk who arrested me at the dock."

"Yes." Golden nodded solemnly. "But if
allowed, the army would follow Nator. As would Forsk, if I am not
mistaken."

"And Leet?" What happened to Leet?"

"He has returned to Malachite to warn his
people about the new Mage."

John's questions answered for the moment,
looking around, finding the window light stronger still, he knew
he'd been here before; recognized the tapestries of hunting scenes;
the age-dark stones; even the damp smell sifting in from the
hallway to the left. The corridor straight ahead should take them
to the tower.

The turret room that, fortunately, served his
friends' interests as well as his own. The trick was to get them
safely out of the way before he rescued the hand-cranked generator
from its hiding place and climbed the static electric "stairway"
home.

Time to reassure them. "Where we're going --
and I think it's straight ahead -- there's a way out. The room I'm
headed for also has a caved in roof. It's one of the castle's
towers. All you've got to do is throw a grapnel up through the
hole, snag one of the roofing blocks and you're on the castle roof.
That's probably the best you could do if you got out the exact same
way you got in."

Coluth nodded.

"Once on the roof, we are away," Golden said
with the hint of a smile, his black eyes reflecting points of
light. "Few can follow where I lead. Unless I wish them to." It was
John's turn to nod. "Fortifications," Golden added, "are meant to
withstand forced entry, not to prevent the exit of those
within."

"For now," John said, crossing his fingers --
an action he could tell was a complete mystery to the others --
"let's go that way and hope."

And they were trotting off again over the
rough stone floor; past large rooms open and small rooms closed;
jogging between sweating walls of gray stone blocks; through
shadowy chambers covered with musty smelling tapestries. Going ...
up.

Until John was certain of his surroundings!
They were in the twisting final corridor to the tower room!

Rounding the last, sharp bend, John burst
into the ringlike room, wedge-shaped cuts around the walls giving
access to cross-shaped arrow slits.

Instead of being elated, though, John was ...
confused ...

Was this the room? ......

Yes! It was that he'd never been in the
turret at such an early hour, the shaft of light through the
squared off hole in the roof lighting a different quadrant of the
room. It was the tower room, however, the atmosphere excessively
damp as a result of the night rain showering through the collapsed
ceiling.

The floor was like no other -- wet and slick
with gray-green mold.

On John's right was the stone table with its
parallel slab benches. To his left, the scars in the lichen
mantled, flagstone floor where the ceiling tiles had come crashing
down.

Golden and the rest had stopped at John's
heels.

Reassured by John's nod that this was the
right place, Coluth and the two sailors, their boots threatening to
slip on the wet floor, moved to the left to look up at the gap in
the roof, Orig shifting the long loops of rope from his shoulder to
the floor, recoiling the rope carefully, the rope's two-pronged
grapnel in hand.

Coluth came back to stand beside John. "There
is a difficulty," Coluth whispered in his quiet, sober,
sea-roughened voice, speaking softly so he did not alarm the
others. "The blocks still remaining, seem ... loose."

John looked up at where Coluth pointed. Took
a couple of steps in that direction. .... Saw that the ceiling
stones around the break slanted downward.

A problem for Coluth and the men. But also
one for John's plan to get the others up the ropes and on the roof
before he took the generator from its hiding place. No sense having
anyone else around when he attempted to build the static which
would take him home.

In the silence of the fetid room, John heard
a noise. The sound of ... soldiers boots ... thumping down a
far-off corridor. He also thought he heard a distant shout, though
that could have been his imagination.

John had been expecting pursuit. Was glad it
had taken this long to materialize.

Still, Coluth and the others needed time to
work out the roof problem.

To the side, Golden caught John's eye, the
sober young man making a motion toward the entranceway to make sure
John had heard the "baying of the hounds."

Time. To think of a way to stretch what
minutes they had left. .........

"Golden! Coluth!" Using what police called a
"command" voice had always gotten the attention of the people of
this realm. "We need to delay Pfnaravin's men. Down the corridor
are doors. Behind the doors, rooms. Let's see if there's anything
in the rooms we can use to block the passageway. Furniture,
bedding."

"That will not halt the guards for long, I
fear," Coluth said, his colorless eyes downcast.

There was a cry in the room, followed by a
crash, John whirling to see Orig rolling on the floor!

In an instant, John saw what had happened.
Orig had tossed a grapnel through the roof hole. Had tested the
rope with his weight, only to have another large stone come
crashing down at him, Orig still nimble enough to leap to the side
and roll out of the way.

On the floor under the broadened sky-hole was
a broken roofing slab, beside it, a deep, white mark where it had
gouged the stone paved floor.

The situation stabilized, John returned to
the problem at hand. "Don't worry," John said to counteract
Coluth's concern. "I have a means of slowing the guards. But first,
we've got to plug the passageway."

Coluth nodded. Not enthusiastically, but with
the resignation of the loyal follower. Golden's expression was
unreadable.

The sounds of the chase still faint, John led
his party back into the narrow, curving hall, the indistinct noise
of the chase indicating that Pfnaravin's "running dogs" had made
little headway -- were probably being slowed by their need to
search every room off every hallway. Depending on the number of
searchers, this should give John and his men the time they needed
-- if the upstairs rooms contained the furnishings John hoped they
would.

A speculation that turned out to be sound,
when, in the first room, they found beds, dressers, chairs, chest
of drawers, blankets -- the five of them lugging what they could
carry into the narrow hall, shoving out pieces of furniture that
were too heavy to lift, John's party tumbling the contents of that
room (plus the furnishings from two others) to make a pile that
blocked the passageway from floor to ceiling.

Unfortunately, an unavoidable outcome of
their efforts was noise, enough noise to alert their pursuers, the
guards below shouting, the sounds of the searchers growing steadily
louder as they pounded up the stairs, the "dogs" now using sound to
trail their quarry.

Though John and company had made a
substantial junk pile in the hall, it wouldn't stop a determined
attack for long.

Not in the blockade's present state,
anyway.

"All right," John gasped, everyone sweating
with the exertion of the frenzied attempt to jam the corridor.
"That'll have to do. The rest of you get back to the tower and find
some way to secure a grapnel through the hole. Pull down as many
loose blocks as necessary but find a stone that'll hold. I'll stay
behind, for the moment, to set fire to this pile."

There was an awkward pause as the others
looked at one another and at John. Set fire to the pile? What was
the Mage talking about? You could make fire stones flare up just by
thinking. But ... furniture? Bedding? Anyway, even if Mage-magic
could cause the furniture to sprout flames, what good would that
do? The guards could just scramble through the cool, magic fire
....

It was amazing what could be said with a
look!

Then came the other look. The one that said,
no matter how foolish a Mage might seem, you did not question a man
of awesome power. The look that John had been counting on!

Responding to orders, Coluth and the sailors
turned. As one, raced back for the tower room.

The sailors ... but not Golden.

"Fire?" Golden said, his elegant eyebrows
raising. "Do you wish me to collect fire stones from hall
torches?"

"The kind of fire I'm talking about doesn't
need fire stones. It's not the sort of magic fire this world
understands," John continued -- knowing, at the same time, that
anything he said would be meaningless to Golden. "A different kind
of fire. A lethal kind this world knows nothing about." Damn
Golden, anyway! John didn't have time for this!

"But without your crystal ..."

"What about my crystal," John said, feeling
that, even though the attackers were clawing at their throats,
Golden was about to say something too important to miss. At the
same time, John was intensely aware of the sounds of the chase,
finding that the guard noise seemed to have grown ... weaker.

John smiled. Apparently he was not the only
one who could get lost in the maze of Hero Castle.

"Great Mage ...," Golden began, the young
man's voice cracking in his throat.

"Go on."

"Great Mage ... seeing that your arrest was
imminent ...."

"You knew I was going to be arrested?" In
spite of John's best intentions to view Golden as a friend, the
suspicions John felt toward Golden came flooding back.

"It was only at the last. When I saw that the
sub-Heads of the squads of guards were from the bandit pack. Those
who attacked us in the Malachite forest. Also, that the soldiers at
the quay wore the green uniforms of Malachite."

Of course! John had sensed something was
wrong at the dock, just hadn't had the wit to figure out what. Now
that he thought about the officers, he'd been uneasy about them. As
for the soldiers being dressed in green military tunics, John had
been in this world long enough to know that everything was color
coordinated!