Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (35 page)

Yes.

Glancing at his torch to find it had gone
completely out, John realized the sole light for some time had been
the approaching column. Dim, but putting out enough radiance for
him to keep the heavy field piece within the mitered edges of the
road.

Glad not to be burdened with the torch, John
fumbled the handle under his wire-woven armor and into a deep, robe
pocket.

In the increased light, John saw that the
cadaverous trees to either side of the line of march were even more
barren. Why? ... Because, here, the force of the tempest was so
great it had twisted off their branches, the trees little more than
limb-stubbed trunks.

Continuing to lurch along, occasionally
straining in an attempt to see past the denuded tree stumps into
the phantom forest beyond, John's only additional discovery was
what had happened to the tree's severed branches, seeing them here
... and there ... in wind-tangled piles.

How long had this storm been raging?

Perhaps forever? ... No, or the trees could
not have grown at all.

Flash-Boom!! -- John able to turn away from
the nearby hit in time to save his sight, no tree limbs above the
trail in this blighted place to fall on him in the aftermath of a
direct hit.

John felt ... exhausted.

A number of things had drained his strength
-- pulling the gun carriage -- the weight of his homemade armor --
the unusually heavy gravity of Azare -- a buffeting wind.

Bone weary, panting, John stopped to catch
his breath.

Looking down the dirt track, shading his
eyes, John was surprised to realize that the light shaft was not
that far away ... a hundred yards? ... the trail about to level out
as it converged with the perpendicular blaze.

Staring at that overwhelming, vertical light
-- still seeming no thicker than a spear -- John thought he saw a
dark ... something ........

What?

A ... something at the level of the road ...
black-framed against the brilliance of the vaulting flames. ...

A platform?

If so, could the cross like shadow on the
scaffold be ... a man, a man so near the fiery column that he
glowed with the penumbra of the column's glittering light?

Flash-Boom!!

Another strike, this one off target,
exploding behind John and to the right, John tracing the lightning
strike to the dais up ahead!

Firing these salvos must be ... Auro!

John stood for a long moment, refusing to
believe what his mind told him must be true.

Bizarre. ....... All of this.

Surrealistic. ......

Shaking himself out of a bemused lethargy,
John knew something else. That at maximum elevation, Auro was
within range! It was time to fire the cannon!

That decision putting John's thoughts in
order, John could act again.

Letting go of the rope, the rope whipping in
the wind like a wounded snake, John fought his way to the gun.

Bent double to untie the fuse-sack, John
wrestled the wind-whipped bag to the ground.

Squatting clumsily in his armor, John felt
inside the coarse, flapping sack until he'd located the small
screwdriver. Pulled it out.

Close enough to the radiance of the fire
pillar to see in detail, John stood up to locate the metal screw in
the fuse hole at the back of the gun. Found it; slotted in the
screwdriver; backed the screw out, the wind blowing the screw away
as it cleared the last thread-turn. ... No matter. He no longer
needed the screw.

Flash-Boom! Auro now hitting the blighted
woods in the hope that a blast-propelled hunk of timber would take
John out.

It was also possible that Auro was trying to
topple trees across the trail to deny John access to the road.

No time for further speculation.

Squatting down beside the gun carriage,
sticking his arm in the wind-blown bag, John got his hand on a
short piece of fuse; dragged it out, the wind twisting the thin
rope around John's arm.

Using both hands, sliding the fuse cord
through his fingers, John found one end.

Ready at last, John attempted to stick the
detonator cord in the hole at the back of the cannon.

Failed the first time.

Tried again.

No luck.

And again.

Boom!!

Another explosion by the roadside, this time,
followed by a stab in John's upper back as a blast-propelled
splinter punctured the open weave mail of his armored cloak.

Pain!

That John stubbornly ignored.

If anything, the wound sharpened his mind,
the cold burn of it urging speed.

Using both hands to protect the barrel hole
from the wind, John made another attempt to insert the fuse.

Failed again.

Bending close, looking at the hole and at the
end of the firing cord, forcing himself to keep his eyes open in
spite of the sting of wind-driven dust, John found the
difficulty.

The detonator cord was too big. .....Too big?
But John had made sure the fuse was the right size! Had test fired
the gun using the same diameter powder cord.

Too big?

Ignoring the wind's thunder-gusts, blinking
rapidly to clear his eyes of grit, John examined the cord end,
carefully. ......

Found that it was not the fuse, but a similar
sized piece of rope!

He had to think.

Must think .....

About anything except the ice pick in his
back that blazed with the agony of a blowtorch .......

He had to face the truth. Someone close to
him had substituted an ordinary length of rope for the powder
impregnated fuse; the transfer made after the cannon was loaded on
the ship.

Someone, but who?

A shadow formed behind John's eyes: the dark
image of an intimate companion ... dagger in hand ... plunging the
knife blade into John's chest!

The traitor!

So -- the search for John's would-be assassin
had narrowed to the catamaran's passengers and crew. Still a long
list of suspects, unfortunately.

A traitor.

Spy.

Assassin.

Failing to eliminate John by more direct
means, John's secret enemy had been clever enough to find another,
subtler way to end John's life, by depriving John of any chance to
win the approaching duel with evil. Pulling the plug on John in
such a way that John would be unlikely to discover he was powerless
until too late.

Clever, edging into the diabolical.

Placing his complete confidence in his
cannon, he was neatly trapped.

He couldn't fight.

And he couldn't run since hauling the useless
cannon had drained him of his "heavy-planet" strength.

Nor could John stay where he was. It was only
a question of time before an Auro-exploded tree hammered John down,
the dark Mage then able to come forward and dispatch John with a
rock!

Desperation flaring into anger, John was
furious with himself for having come back to this unfathomably
dangerous world. Was maddened that one of his own had betrayed
him!

Raving at himself for his pig-headed belief
that Twentieth Century knowledge must prove invincible -- berating
his lack of foresight and faulty planning -- John felt ...
stronger.

Adrenalin. A life extending drug for the
stupid and unwary.

If John could get close enough to the dark
Mage to rush him, grapple with him ....

With at least some semblance of a plan, John
let the wind blow him, stiff legged, to the front of the gun
carriage, the thick, hemp pull-rope fluttering there like a
wind-whipped pennant.

A quick decision.

Should John leave the -- now useless --
cannon behind? ..........

No.

John wanted Auro to worry about why John had
been dragging that "great beast" so laboriously.

Resolved to keep going no matter what, with
difficulty, John caught the waving towrope; dragged it over his
shoulder, John setting out again, grafted to the gun as if it was
his ugly -- now dead -- Siamese twin.

Down and down, the scene at the bottom coming
into focus as John approached; gaining detail like film developing
in photographic fluid.

At 70 yards, the light pillar looked like
what it was: electric fire. At 50 yards, that the source of the
light was a jagged sinkhole -- electric fire streaking skyward from
that pit.

If so, the reason for the light-chasm before
him was clear. Since the collective magic of the other Mages was
blacking out Auro's sky, the dark Mage had used his minions to dig
this crevasse, thereby releasing his own, internal source of power.
Viewed this way, it seemed plain enough that tapping into the
underground supply of force was what gave Auro the light to work
his magic!

Certain he understood the "game" at last,
John concentrated on the platform to this side of the light shaft's
edge, John having to squint more and more as he narrowed the gap
between the trail and the flash-bulb brilliance of the light.

A dais. Curved to circle the power shaft. No
matter which direction Auro faced, it seemed, the evil Mage wished
to be immersed in light, Auro a back-lit shadow on the twenty foot
tall scaffold, easy to overlook in the dazzle of the light that
encompassed him.

Auro.

Aware, of course, of John's approach.

The dark Mage silent.

Stationary.

No longer hurling lightning bolts.

Just standing there; flooded by luminescence;
seemingly content -- for the moment -- to monitor John's
approach.

It didn't matter.

Crash!! .............

John returned to consciousness with quavering
flares of light tattooed behind his eyes.

Though almost blind, John had the shadowy
impression he was surrounded by trees ........

Trees, but no path.

Straining to remember, all that was clear to
him was that he was lying in the woods, an explosion of
overwhelming force blowing him into the forest, the dark Mage
"shooting" him with amplified power.

Even protected by his metal garb, John had
been blasted into the defunct forest ... with no idea how to get
back to the trail.

Slowly, testing each joint experimentally --
all painful but functioning -- John began to feel his way through
dry grass and brittle twigs, blindly stumbling into a pile of brush
the wind had tumbled between two, close-set tree trunks.

Groping about, he chanced on the right sized
branch fastened to a felled trunk, John snapping the limb off with
the parched crack of age.

Dredging his lighter from the small pocket
under his ring armor, shielding the tiny blue flame from the ground
wind, John soon had the branch-end flaming brightly.

Everything was tinder dry in this dead band,
he warned himself. The tiniest spark .............

And that was the solution!

A way to strike at the dark Mage!

For the first time, John smiled. Shook his
head ... stopped because the sidewards motion savaged him, John
staggering to the nearest tree trunk, hugging it until the
giddiness passed and he could think once more.

About ... fire.

With the wind racing toward the pillar of
light, the black mage on his raised platform, a dose of real fire
in these dry woods would be a powerful ally.

Feeling steadier, John eased out from behind
the tree to scuttle off at an angle to the wind, pausing frequently
to touch the flaming torch to flaring patches of dry grass, the
fire spreading quickly until it was devouring piles of brush,
shooting skyward in exploding cylinders of long dead trunks. A fire
that burned out as soon as it advanced, the flames sweeping the
forest clear of entangling vegetation, leaving behind a width of
dirt and blackened ash and smoldering, smoking trunks.

Turning back, John followed the charred out
skirt of woods until he came to the place where he'd first set the
fire, blundering on to step out of the mummified forest onto the
woodland path.

To one side was the gun, the heavy device
hunkered down at the trail's center. Looking down the road, John
could still see an edge of orange down the trail, the fire burning
off the last of the dry vegetation, the smoke disappearing quickly,
the column of "electric" light visible once again.

Just the light pillar.

No platform.

No dark Mage.

Nothing between John and that rippling shaft
of soaring luminescence.

John's fire had consumed everything between
him and the light source.

John's head was throbbing so badly he
couldn't reason.

His only impulse ... to go on.

Backtracking to the gun, John shouldered the
lead rope and began to drag the cannon forward once again, pulling
mindlessly like a beast, John clanking on toward the bedazzling
light shaft.

John stopped.

Even with his head bowed, he could see the
burned out ruins of the dark Mage platform ... not ten yards
away.

Cupping his eyes, peering out through cracks
between his fingers like a snow-blind Eskimo, John saw he'd been
right: the light source came from a kind of pit, hand-dug at what
must have been incredible, human cost.

Though his head still hurt, John's mind
seemed to be clearing.

Of course! The shaft of light explained the
dark-Mage force. Trapped in his blacked out band, Auro had regained
his powers by digging into the earth to release this underground
light, light the source of this world's magic.

There could be little doubt that Auro mounted
his attacks on Stil-de-grain from this very platform -- now an
ashen ruin -- the former dais bathed with sufficient light to
permit magical usage on a grand scale! This constant supply of
light-magic also made clear how Auro could launch bolts at
Stil-de-grain, even in the night. Another mystery solved!

As for Auro, had John's flames consumed the
evil Mage? Backing away from John's too-real fire, had he fallen
into the shaft of light? Or simply run away?