Stairway to Forever (13 page)

The bruising ride seemed to go on forever. But at last, with the ponies exhausted, stumbling, nearly

foundered, the old, long-bearded man let the pair halt, to stand with their big heads hung low, their dripping roan flanks heaving like smiths bellows, their heated breaths rising in white clouds from their distended nostrils.

Wordlessly, he leaned down from the war saddle of his tall horse and gathered the two young children from the cart-bed up, into his sinewy arms. Then he turned the horse about and rode on, up the steep hill, on a path that would have been impossible for the ponies and the cart, where even the horse stumbled now and again on loose rocks.

At last, it became too steep and precipitous for even the sure-footed horse and the old man dismounted and proceeded on up, bearing both Fitz and his sister in his arms. Pushing through high, dense brush, among the thick trunks of ancient trees, he finally came to a boulder higher than his head, on which were carvings so weatherworn as to be unidentifiable.

Setting down the two children at his feet, the aged man took from beneath his cloak a wand of peeled willow wood, raised it, and began to speak. The rapid spate of words were couched in the Old Speech, but were so fast and slurred that Fitz could only understand snatches of the formula.

From far down below, on the lower slope of the hill, there came sounds dim with distance—the thudding of many hooves, the shouts of men, the winding of a horn, then the agonized scream of a pony.

Fitz, looking up, saw the old man grip the hilt of his fine bronze sword in its enameled sheath so tightly that the knuckles stood out from the hand like snow-white pebbles, but he calmly continued the formula, his willow wand never wavering.

Then, all within the space of an eyeblink, the

center of the huge old boulder ceased to exist, leaving in its place an oval opening some six feet high and four feet broad. Light and warmth poured out from the opening, along with the good smells of something savory cooking with herbs and onions and garlic.

Just as he swept the two children back up into his arms and made to step through the opening, the war-trained destrier down below them screamed out his challenge, another horse screamed with pain and there rose up, much closer than before, renewed shouting of men. But when they were through the opening, having taken but a step or two, the noises were become so muted that Fitz had to strain to detect them and, after a few more steps by the old man, he could not hear anything at all, save the clumps of boots on stone and the ritual greeting words of a woman.

"It finally came to open battle, just as I said it would," stated the old man without preamble. "We lost that battle, for the arts of the Dark Ones are powerful, so the ownership and rule of the outer land is passed to them, though I doubt their strengths sufficient to penetrate this lower land, as well.

"What became of the king is just now unclear. Some say he died on the field of battle; some say that he went under a hill; others, that he was transported to The Isle of the Blest. I've had not the time to scry out the truth.

"The queen is dead, raped and murdered before she and certain others could get under the hill. The Strangers are doing the like to every one of us they can catch aboveground—men, women and children, it makes no difference to the brutal Strangers and the Dark Ones."

"You knew that this would happen, didn't you?"

asked the woman. "You knew and tried to tell the king and queen, your nephew and niece, but they would not heed you in their pity for the Strangers."

"Yes," the old man nodded, his dripping grey beard waggling wetly, steam arising from his sodden cloak in the warm chamber, "I knew. I sensed over the long centuries what was to be, what had to be. But my nephew was only two hundred years king, then. He and my niece would take in orphaned beasts, and they took in the Strangers in the same way, out of the same emotions. Now they and too many of us are repaid for their misguided charity done so long ago.

"But we may not have long. The power of the Dark Ones might seek out and find and let them enter here. I have brought the prince and princess of our kind. They must be kept from harm, kept from out the cruel, deadly clutches of those we befriended, now become bitter enemies. Will your doorway go to an under the hill anywhere, or to The Isle?"

"No," she sighed, "not without a lengthy period of resettings. It now goes only to the The World That Is To Be."

"Well, then," said the old man, "that is where we will have to take these precious ones. We will take them both back to infancy, first, though. That done, we will exchange them for other infants in that other world, as has been done before. What chances with them there will be in the lap of the Highest, but we will know and cause others to know where and how they may be found when our world once more needs them and is become safer for them."

Fitz awoke to the sound of the gate bell. He jumped up, drew on his robe and pushed his feet into his slippers, then padded into his office and thumbed

on his newly installed intercom. "Yes, yes. Who is it, please?"

That so-well-remembered voice came through the wires to warm him and his chilly office. "Mister Fitzgilbert? I . . . it's Dannon Dardrey. I know it's late, but . . . Mister Fitzgilbert, I just drove down from the city, I must speak with you. Please."

"Okay." Fitz pressed the button that now unlocked the gate. "Drive your car inside, don't leave it parked out there. Some of my neighbors . . . well, some of the lads hereabouts don't like me very well and are light-fingered, to boot."

The Dannon he let into his front door looked not one whit so calm and self-assured as had the attorney with whom he had spoken only a few hours earlier. She looked worried, harried, more than a little confused.

"That's a long drive," he said. "You could've phoned me, you know, you didn't have to come clear out here at almost midnight. Am I in more trouble than you thought?"

"You may well be," she answered enigmatically, adding, "and me, too."

"Well, then," he waved at one of the leather chairs, "sit down and fill your pipe while I get some clothes on. Would you like a drink?"

"No, damn it!" she almost shouted. "I don't want a drink, I want youl I don't even know why I want you, but . . . but it's like you're a ... a part of me that has been missing forever and . . . and now I want it back, I've got to have it back. Do ... do I make any sense to you? I don't to myself. I'm a perfectly respectable, fifty-five-year-old widow and I rank high in my chosen profession, if I say so myself. I just don't do mad, impulsive, immoral things like this, Mister Fitzgilbert. But there's ... I don't know,

there's . . . something about you, hell, maybe it's me, maybe I'm having a nervous breakdown or something. Do you understand any of this, Mist ... oh, hell, if I'm going to have sex with you, and I am, I might as well call you Fitz. Please tell me there's a sound, logical reason for the way I feel about you, a man I never saw before today. Please tell me that, Fitz."

Gravely, Fitz said, "From the first moment that I touched your hand this afternoon, I've felt strongly and very strangely drawn to you. The immediate feeling that I had then was what I thought was a feeling of kinship, but a much stronger feeling of kinship than I ever have felt for any real relatives in the past. I felt as if you were the other half of me, long ago sundered, and that I had to have you back, no matter what it took to get you. When the time came for Gus and me to leave, it was all that I could do to make myself tell you goodbye and then turn and walk out of that office. Leaving the proximity of you was like tearing off a piece of my body, Dannon."

Her eyes became misty, and she nodded slowly, "Yes, I know, Fitz, I could hardly bear to part from you, either, this afternoon. I suppose that I knew, even then, that I'd drive out here tonight. That's why I fought it so hard and for so long. And my name is Danna, it was once Mary Diana Flaherty. My late husband's name was Dardrey. I passed the state bar as M. Danna Dardrey,, but some clerical error made the middle name into Dannon and I've kept it ever since."

"All right," said Fitz, "now, do you want a drink?"

She shook her head. "No, I want directions to your loo. I'm going to take a shower, if you don't mind. Maybe that will give me back enough sanity to leave here before I commit mortal sin with you."

Much, much later, as they lay very close on his rumpled bed, her red-brown hair lying in disorder over his arm as it pillowed her head, she gasped out a long, shuddering sigh and said, "I pray God that it was as good for you as it was for me. I loved my young husband, Kevin, Fitz, I loved him with all my heart and soul, and I took inordinate pleasure from pleasing him as he pleased me. But now I know that that long-ago lovemaking was but a pale, almost-invisible shadow of the real article. It hurts me terribly to have to so speak of that poor, brave young man, but it's all truth and it must be spoken, regardless."

"You never had other lovers, Danna?" he asked.

"No, Fitz, since Kevin, there has never been another . . . until you, my own. We had been married for almost two years when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I tried my damnedest, along with his folks and mine, to persuade Kevin to hold off his passion to enter the military for only six months, until he had his degree and could go in as an officer, but he had to disregard us all and enlist, leaving me with our year-old son, Kevin, Junior. I saw him three whole times after that, before he was killed in North Africa, at the Kasserine Pass, never having been allowed to get even as close as ten thousand miles to the Japanese he had joined the army to fight. Four months after he had died, I gave birth to our younger son, Richard.

"Kevin had had both GI and civilian insurance and his mom and pop were relatively well-off for those days. With Kevin dead, I just kept on living with them and invested most of the money, saving out only enough to go to college and learn enough to become a legal secretary. That was the work I did

until the boys were both old enough to fend for themselves, then I quit work and went back to college, taking my law degree in 1957, just prior to my own thirty-seventh birthday."

Fitz raised his head so he could better see her face. "You were born in 1920? Damn, so was I. You sure as hell don't look like any fifty-five, Danna. Or do you dye your hair and go in for face lifts?"

"I've never had a need for hair dye or even rinses, Fitz, and my face is just the way God made it, thank you. But you don't look to be your actual age either, Fitz. Until I got into your records, I had taken you to be no older than your early forties, if that," she said bluntly.

"How did you pick up the name Danna, Danna?" he inquired. "It's an odd one. I don't think I've ever heard or even seen it before."

She laughed throatily. "My mother's name was Mary, too, so I was called Diana, the middle name on my baptismal record. My eldest brother—I was the firstborn child in the Flaherty household—when he was very young couldn't say Diana, so he called me Danna and the name just stuck from then on. I've already told you where and how I came by the Dannon name; I keep it because it confuses the hell out of your average, staid, stodgy, chauvinistic businessman or attorney who telephones or comes to the office to see M. Dannon Dardrey. I freely admit that I derive a sadistic thrill from hearing or watching them squirm."

"What do your sons think of having a top-flight tax lawyer and an admitted sadist for a mother?" he chuckled, then wished he'd said anything else but those words when he saw the infinite sadness that came upon her face.

In a low, grief-laden voice, she said, "They were

very proud of me when they were still alive, Fitz, and I of them. Kevin, Junior, went to West Point, he graduated in 1962, and his brother and three of his grandparents and I were all there to see it. So was the sweet, dear girl who became his bride within weeks of his graduation. By 1970, he was a captain of infantry 7 in Vietnam, with medals for his inherited bravery, others for his competence in his profession and still more for his combat wounds. Then, one night while he was sleeping, some soldier—a disgruntled troublemaker Kevin had had disciplined, I've been told—threw a hand grenade into the place and killed my boy and severely wounded another officer. The murderer was almost immediately shot and killed by yet a third officer . . . but that couldn't bring back my Kevin.

"Dicky always had to be different from his older brother, it was like an obsession with him, so when Kevin was accepted for West Point, he set about trying to get an appointment to Annapolis. Failing at that, he went to a college that had a naval cadet program and did so well in it that he was awarded a regular Navy commission upon his graduation. Not quite a year after his older brother was murdered, Dicky was stung by a scorpion fish while skin diving for pleasure and died before he could be gotten to medical attention.

"Kevin and Barbara, for some reason, never were able to have any children, so I was denied even the small solace of grandchildren. I'm very much alone . rather, I was alone until today, until you.

"But you, you're a widower, aren't you? Care to talk about your life?"

He told her. He told her all of it, from beginning to tragic end. And she cried for him, for his long years of suffering, and what could he do but comfort

her. Comforting caresses and kisses led to deeper kisses and more intimate caresses, each of them re-exploring the so familiar yet almost strange bodies. They they made soft, quiet, tender love again . . . and yet again.

They awoke to sun streaming through the tilted slats of the blinds. And then they made love again, saluting the new day with worship of life and of each other and of their new-found oneness, completeness, wholesome wholeness.

That weekend was the most beautiful, most fulfilling period of time that Fitz had ever spent anywhere with anyone in all his life. When he saw Danna into her eight-year-old Jaguar XKE 2 + 2 on Sunday night, let her out the gate and returned to the house, he did not feel lonely, as he had expected and feared. Danna was still there. She remained in everything she had touched or seen and commented upon. The invisible, welcome presence of her sat in the chairs she had used, lay still upon the bed whereon they two had experienced such joy and wonder in each other. Best and most thrilling of all, she still was with him, in him, truly a part of him, and he knew that now nothing—not time, not distance, no, not even grim death, itself—could ever again part them, one from the other, as they had lived for so many years before these last magical days and nights of reuniting two parts into one whole. He knew that he and the unbridled joy he felt had never, could never have been, more complete.