The Stair Of Time (Book 2) (18 page)

Beyond the Mist

On step number eight hundred and twenty-three, Andaris finally broke out of the mist.  There was no gradual transition as one might expect.  One moment he was above the line, with his head in the clouds, so to speak, and the next moment he was below.  He came to a halt, mouth agape, eyes wide.

The
cause for his sudden discomfiture lay before him like a dream, a dream that could easily become a nightmare, too fantastic to be real, too real to be denied.  Apparently, the circular stair on which Andaris now stood was only one of many—
very
many.  As a matter of fact, there were stairways all around, as far as the eye could see, identical in size and design to his own, swaying lazily in the breeze as though in time to some silent lullaby.

The air was literally clogged with them.  Most hung vertically as his did, but some went diagonally, and even horizontally, connecting to other stairways via broad platforms.  Some platforms had only two or three stairways sprouting from them.  Others had many score.

And a
s if this weren’t enough, as if the afore described spectacle weren’t capable of eliciting the desired degree of stupefaction, in the far distance he spied, betwixt squinted eyes, a stairway that appeared to be wholly inverted.

But why?
he thought. 
What’s it all for?

All around
him hung a tangled confusion of steps and wrought iron railings, not unlike the branches of an enormous tree, the entirety of which was growing within a space of unfathomable size and purpose.  The only illumination came from above, from the mist.  If there were walls and a floor, they were beyond the watery light’s capacity to clarify, blanketed in a deep darkness that his eyes could not pierce.

For a long time
, Andaris just stood there, expression of wonder frozen onto his young face, his medulla oblongata scarcely possessing the wherewithal to maintain even the most rudimentary of autonomic functions—trifling things like the beating of his heart and breathing.  The scene before him was a difficult thing to wrap his mind around, to say the least.  Perhaps if he waited long enough, he would discover that his eyes had been deceived by some trickery or another—smoke and mirrors, as Gaven called it.

About an hour and a half later, when no such ruse presented itself, he sat down, opened his pack, and pulled out the map box.  After pausing to gather his nerve, he lifted the hasp and—

T
he box suddenly became too hot to hold!

He
dropped it to the step below and backed up.  The symbol on the cover, the circle within a circle bisected by a vertical line, began to glow, blue as the sky after a storm.  But what was at first lovely, grew brighter and brighter, until finally he had to turn away.  As he did so, his nostrils caught the unmistakable smell of burning wood, the pungent sting of which was beginning to make his eyes water.  Soon his cheeks were damp with tears.  He coughed and wiped his runny nose.

Damn box,
he thought. 
It’s been nothing but trouble.
 

B
linking against the smoke, Andaris shielded his eyes with his hands and scrambled up the steps.  A low hum filled the air, resonant enough to vibrate his teeth.  A few excruciating seconds later, and the blue light just winked out, rendering him momentarily blind.  The hum carried on defiantly until, gradually diminishing in decibels, it too was gone.

Andaris turned, peeking from between splayed fingers
, afraid of what might happen next.  The box was still there but…changed.  There was no longer a latch, or even a line separating the top from the bottom.  It now seemed like nothing more than a solid block of wood—the sort which typically sits gathering dust in the back of a carpenter’s shop, awaiting the saw.

With one notable exception.  The symbol on what used to be the lid was
also still there, a ringlet of smoke rising innocently from its center.  Indeed, not only was it still there, it was etched more deeply than before, inset beneath the surrounding surface by a good inch. 

When his heart
quit dancing its maniacal jig in favor of a more measured waltz, he stepped down and, with experimental diffidence, touched the tip of his forefinger to the box.  To his relief, the surface was cool.  Upon closer examination, his hands confirmed what his eyes had so readily conveyed.  Beyond cleaving the box asunder, which he doubted would even be possible—being that it had been magically sealed and all—he now had no way in.  He fingered the symbol, its dark lines not only deeper, but wider.  His finger came back clad in a fine coat of soot.

An
acrid cloud of wood smoke still hung heavy in the air.  He coughed and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, wishing there was more of a breeze.  Convinced that the box meant him no direct harm, that its metamorphosis had merely been triggered by its proximity to this place, he picked it up and examined the other side, noting that it was much heavier than before, as if…well, as if it were a
solid
block of wood with no hollow to house magical maps.  Perish the thought, for without the maps, he was adrift, at the whim, yet again, of the changing winds of fate.

Andaris was
surprisingly unsurprised to discover that the bottom of the box now bore an elaborate inscription, twelve lines of florid text burned into the wood.  It read:

Twisting, turning, toiling track,

On th
e backs of mice we all run back,

Gray and blue and red and green,

We lift our skirts and try to scream.

A ball is a ball unless it’s sad,

A
yellow kajone is hopping mad,

How many ladies can an old man drink?

How many cards are in your sink?

Trust to the reaper before the crow,

He’ll te
ll ya true as his crops do grow,

I am a traveler filled with fame,

I spend my time eating shame.

Okaaay.  So…what the heck does that mean?
he thought, frowning at the inscription with both bemusement and distaste.  Just exactly what was he looking at here?  Was it some kind of weird riddle, or just pointless gibberish?  As if in answer, his brain began to offer up an assortment of decidedly uncharitable suggestions, making full use of words such as balderdash, poppycock, and twaddle.  That last one he didn’t even know he knew until he thought of it. 

But why seal the box and then burn such a…
twaddling verse into it?  To what end?
 
It’s definitely gibberish,
he decided.
  The question is, is it
also
a riddle?

Andaris pondered the meaning of this peculiar
rhyme, or lack thereof, for as long as he could stand it, i.e. until the sheer inanity of it all threatened to split his skull straight in two.  He had a vague impression of something that might explain something hovering at the very far corner of his mind.  Perhaps if he didn’t scrutinize it too intently, it would come close enough to be identified.

“
If ya can’t remember what you ought,” his grandmother had once told him, “just forget about it for a while.  Fool it into believin’ you don’t care, and then sure as water runs downhill, it’ll be there, usually when you least expect it, starin’ ya right in the face!”

Spurred by the m
emory of his grandmother’s half-pint frame and forthright attitude, he put the block back into his pack, stood up, and continued down the stairs, fervently hoping that he hadn’t just strapped a bomb to his back.

Eight hundred and twenty-
four,
he counted,
eight hundred and twenty-five, eight hundred and twenty-six….

The Old Man

Andaris had counted to one thousand three hundred and eighteen when he reached the first platform.  Judging by what he’d seen from above, he’d expected to need a torch at some point.  But by some obscure sorcery or another, the light was progressing with him, always keeping the gaping maw of the encroaching gloom at bay.  The farther he got from the mist, the more it resembled sky—a cloudy, bluish-green sky with countless stairways disappearing into it, but sky nonetheless.

He found it especially curious that, of the hundreds upon hundreds of stairways entering the mist, his was the only one that made it topside.  The platform on which he stood, was home to a modest nine stairways—five vertical, three horizontal, and one inverted. 

Since he had no way of knowing which way to go, he decided to roll the dice—literally.  From his Pack of Everholding, he retrieved the two six-sided cubes that Gaven had given him one evening after besting him at a hand of knights and swords, the big man’s favorite card game.

He assigned each staircase a number
, two through nine, held his breath, and rolled.  The dice were made of solid jade, faces flaunting black lacquer pips.  They skittered across the grating, bouncing and rolling with abandon, coming to a stop on double sixes. 

He had decided
, should the sum be more than nine, to subtract eight in order to give each candidate roughly the same chance.  So, four it was, which meant one of the horizontal stairways.  He assumed some magic must keep the traveler from falling off.  Even so, the juxtaposition must be nauseating.

He smiled at himself. 
Sometimes, when you roll the dice, you realize you have a preference after all.
  So, number
three
it is.  After marking the stair he’d been on with a piece of green chalk, he chose to continue the descent, choosing one of the five vertical stairways. 
One thousand three hundred and nineteen, one thousand three hundred and twenty, one thousand three hundred and twenty-one, one thousand thr—

He stopped counting and perked his ears to the distant call of the trumpet’s dawn.  On cue, the sky, as he’d decided to think of it, changed from blu
ish-green to pale orange.  He took out his pocket watch, an ingenious device recently invented by a Rogarian man named Chadwick Greentoe.  The time piece combined magic with a revolutionary spring technology in order to keep track of the hours, minutes, and even seconds when one couldn’t see the sun or stars, like say, for instance, when one is lost in underground caverns or trapped atop endless staircases.

Seeing how it was brand new and had been working perfectly when he’d put it in his pack, he was disquieted to discover that the second hand was run
ning at twice the normal speed—and the minute hand was running counterclockwise even faster.

Well,
he thought, putting the watch back,
I’m not even gonna try to figure that one out.
  He’d almost forgotten about the thing.  Now he wished he had.  When the trumpet call finally ceased, he resumed his count. 
One thousand three hundred and twenty-two, one thousand three hundred and twenty-three, one thousand three hundred and twenty-four….

Every once in a while as he climbed, he heard a tremendous grinding noise, as if the ponderous gears of some great rusted beast were beginning to turn again.  Sometimes it was near.  Sometimes it was far.  Sometimes it came from below.  And sometimes from above.

Now, at last, he knew what it was.  One of the vertical stairways to his right began to move towards him, picking up speed while spinning around and around like some crazed top.  It was over a hundred yards away when it had begun moving.  When it stopped, it was within ten feet.  Andaris breathed an unsteady sigh of
relief.  For a moment there, he thought it was going to hit him. 

But there must be fail-
safes in place to prevent such things.  Right?  I mean, presumably all this served some purpose, unfathomable though it may be to him.  Surely the Lenoy wouldn’t allow staircases to just go crashing into one another on a whim.  I mean, what would be the point of that?  It would be terribly wasteful, not to mention…nonsensical.

Purportedly, t
hey were an advanced race renowned for their wisdom and sophistication, and as such would have put the staircases here for some logical purpose.  It
must
all fit together somehow.  Perhaps the stairs existed collectively to serve some greater design, like cogs in a machine or…gears in a watch, gears that no longer functioned properly….

He shook his head. 
Don’t,
he told himself.  No sense in borrowing trouble when he had plenty to spare.  He needed to focus on what was, not what might be, and try to come up with a solution for
that.

For instance, what would he do if the staircase upon which he so meekly stood started to move?  As swiftly as the other one had spun, he doubted he’d even be able to hang on.  And what,
Kolera forbid, would he do if it suddenly flipped horizontal, or worse, inverted?

The answer was frighteningly simple.  There was nothing he
could
do.  He was a stranger in a strange land—a fish without fins, a bird without wings.  The only solution was to get off these blasted stairs.  To that end, Andaris picked up the pace a bit, resuming his descent without counting.  This wrought iron prison must lead somewhere.  He just had to keep his head down and feet movin’.

Several hours later, after having passed multiple platforms, he saw a figure walking up the staircase to his left—which, from railing to railing, hung less than fifteen feet away.  The hair on the back of Andaris’ neck raised.  His pulse quickened.  Another person!  He wasn’t alone after all!

The man—
he could at least discern that much—was about twenty feet below, climbing as though the weight of the world rested squarely upon his frail shoulders.  He seemed to have lost all hope, taking step after arduous step merely because he didn’t know what else to do.

Andaris
didn’t know if he was close enough to be heard, but decided not to wait.  “Hello!” he cried.  “Up here!”

The man came to a sudden halt, jerking his h
ead up as if expecting a dragon.

“Hello!” Andaris cried again, waving his arms.  “I’ve lost my way!  Can you help me?”

Without a word, the man began running up the steps, taking them two at a time, a remarkable feat considering his previous pace.

Startled, Andaris backed against the far rail.

As the man drew near, it became clear that he wore naught but old rags, elderly frame gaunt with malnutrition, tip of his gray beard hanging well past his waist.

Poor fellow,
Andaris thought. 
Seems I may need to help him instead.

There was something familiar about this man
.  Wasn’t there?  Something in the way he moved.  Then their eyes met, and though they were the frantic, fevered eyes of a wild animal, he knew.

No,
he thought. 
Can’t be.
 

But it was.  It was Gaven.