The Stair Of Time (Book 2) (22 page)

Worlds on a Shelf

After carefully considering his options, Andaris determined that there was but one thing to do: sit and wait for the absent staircase to return and follow it to wherever it led.  Initially, he passed the time by preparing himself a light meal—walnuts and linberries washed down with several healthy swigs of mead, followed by a piece of chocolate cake made especially for him by Mandie’s nursemaid, Molly.  “No matter where ya goin”, she had said with her usual south-warren charm, “ya can’t go wrong with a bit o’ my chocolate cake.”

Eventually, Andaris
grew drowsy and fell asleep, this time having the presence of mind to use his pack as a pillow.  He liked the triangle pattern just fine, found it quite attractive really, just not tattooed into his flesh.

When first he woke, it was to the rumbling of two staircases detaching from the platform and spinning off into the distance.  One of the two was replaced seconds later,
its whirling twin coming to within five feet of the platform.  Just when it seemed inevitable it would crash, it stopped and docked with a solid, metal-on-metal clunking sound, presumably the Titan One locking clamps engaging.  The other landing remained as conspicuously empty as his own.

He didn’t know how he knew the name of the clamps, only that he did.  And for some reason he didn’t find that especially odd, which, in turn, he found sort of odd.  When he had the time and mental wherewithal, he certainly did have a lot of things to sort out.  Indeed, the list appeared to be growing longer
by the minute. 

Just as I suspected,
Andaris thought. 
Only the staircases move—not the platforms.
  Feeling surprisingly calm and sophisticated about the whole thing, he yawned and went back to sleep.

When next he woke, it was to the rumbling of
what had the potential to be
his
staircase.  It executed the same breathtaking maneuver, and then, like its counterpart on the far end of the platform, locked into place. 
Would hate to see the magic
fail at the wrong moment,
he thought, taking a step back.

It had docked in the correct spot. 
Upon closer examination, however, he found the troubling absence of a chalk line.  Provided he was the one who had drawn the arrow, which at this point seemed all but irrefutable, he would have left a mark not only on the landing, but on the staircase, as well.  He was sure of it.

The only thing he could deduce by
its absence was that this, no matter how demoralizing, was not
his
staircase, after all.  Andaris suppressed a yawn. 

Why am I so tired,
he wondered?  He knew he needed to keep his wits about him.  I mean, even if the stairs did move from platform to platform on a preset schedule, the schedule could obviously change without warning, and with catastrophic results.

Considering the
seriousness of the situation, it was strange to feel so at ease.  He stretched and this time did yawn.  His eyelids felt far too heavy to hold open.  He fought back the sudden fatigue for a few more minutes and then, bowing to the inevitable, surrendered.

M
ay as well rest while I can,
he told himself, trying not to dwell on the danger. 
No telling when there’ll be another chance.

He hoped he
didn’t have to wait long.  Presumably, at some point he would grow tired of napping and have to resort to less ambitious pastimes, things such as the twiddling of thumbs and tapping of toes.

If he were to be completely honest with himself, he would have to admit that
the situation was really quite dire.  The trouble was, there was no way to know when the arrow mark had been made, much less what sort of rotation the stairs followed.  Which meant his wait could be five minutes or five years. 

Fortunately
for him, he found being completely honest with himself dreadfully dull just now.  Years of introspection be damned!  Much better to remain positive, or, depending on your particular philosophical bent, delusional—no sense in splintering one’s personality when it could be so easily avoided.  He just had to trust that somehow things would magically work themselves out.  Besides, all else aside, he had a good feeling about this.

Surely, i
t wasn’t
that
outlandish.  I mean, this platform was a main hub, so his stair would have to eventually return.  Right?  Really, it was just a matter of time.

No problem there,
he mused, drifting off to sleep, resisting the urge to pull out his pocket watch to see if the hands persisted in being not only inaccurate, but by his count, downright cavalier.  He smiled, visualizing them moving in opposite directions of one another, once again struck by how calm he felt.  It was almost as if he had been through all this before and some part of him
knew
that everything was going to work out all right.

Yeah, just
a little thing called time. That’s all.  Nothing to get wound up about….

***

Andaris dreamt that he was lying beside a thrice-divided river of red, green, and silver, a river that looked suspiciously like the twisting band within his favorite marble, Ol’ Blue.  He grinned and leaned his head back against a spongy mound of blue grass, breathing deep of the blue air, staring up at the blue clouds passing across the blue sky. 

Ol’ Blue,
he thought, heart full of contentment, ears perked to the sweet sound of the red, green, and silver water rushing past.  “After all these years, I finally made it inside!”

Sooner rather than later, however, as always seemed to be the case with him, his contentment began to fade.  He began to tire of simply lounging beside the stream, whimsically enchanting though it
may be, watching the colors swirl past, red, green, and silver fish leaping into the air, winking at him.  It was all becoming a bit “too” idyllic.

Fortunately
, this was almost certainly a dream, and the entirety of this blue wonderland was his to explore—not just this one little patch.  And, since Ashel had recently taught him how to control and interpret flights of fancy such as this,” he was excited rather than frightened by the prospect, anxious to see what wonders his subconscious would create next.  It was the perfect opportunity to flex his newfound abilities.

With this in mind,
he rose, stretched, and—bumped his knuckles against something hard.  He drew back, watching in wonder as the sky rippled and then calmed, returning to its previous state.

Tentatively, he reached
up to see if he could do it again.  The tips of his fingers came into contact with something hard and smooth.  And again, like a stone cast into still water, the sky rippled.  But the analogy was imperfect, for it was thicker than water, moving with exaggerated indolence.  He peered at the spot, brow furrowing in concentration as he tried to look through to the other side.

Ignoring the vertigo this caused him, he decided to up the stakes,
as it were, rubbing his palms against the surface of…what?  Why, the inside of the marble, of course.  He grinned again, rubbing his hands all over the inside of Ol’ Blue’s outer shell, delighting in its smoothness, in its concave perfection.  He’d always wanted to touch the sky, and now he was!  Never mind that the inside of the marble should be static.  This was his dream.  He could do whatever he wanted.  So why not explore a marble?  He realized some might deem it a strange choice.  But strange or not, it was better than waiting for the confounded stair to return!

Everywhere he rubbed, the sky
swirled, here and there emitting sparks of light.  The sensible part of his mind told him that this might be a good time to stop.  But he just kept on a-rubbin’, endlessly fascinated by the ever-changing patterns, expression that of a child reveling in his first experience with finger paints.

T
here was a blinding flash of light.  He looked away and shut his eyes.  When he looked back, the sky and clouds had cleared, the area beneath his palms wholly transparent, affording him a spyglass view of the world beyond.  His eyes widened and he drew back, resisting the urge to fully recoil only by the narrowest of margins—quite a feat considering that he and Ol’ Blue appeared to be sitting on some sort of endless mahogany shelf.  And there were other marbles, as well—as far as the eye could see, each cradled in a brass stand, each filled with varying skyscapes.

How terribly odd,
he thought, both proud and unsettled by his brain’s seemingly endless inventiveness when concocting such things.  In another flash that dwarfed the first—this time he did fully recoil—Ol’ Blue’s entire outer shell became transparent.

Beyond the shelf, which had only seemed endless from his limited purview,
he now glimpsed a cozy little study with a low ceiling and built-in bookshelves. The concavity of the shell created a partial funhouse effect, causing the outer edges of the room to appear warped.

So…all these worlds just sitting on someone’s shelf like…decoration? 
For what purpose?  To what end?

The study boasted mahogany walls and was furnished only by a claw-foot desk and wing-backed chair—a padded, red leather number that looked a lot like Uncle Del’s.  A robed figure sat in said chair, hooded countenance bent over a stack of papers.  Andaris could see nothing of his face, but somehow knew that he was looking at a gaunt old man with silver hair.

“The Keeper,” he whispered.

As though summoned, the man sprung to his feet and, quick as a fox chased by hounds, dashed to the shelf.  Andaris scarcely had time to properly cower before an enormous, distorted eyeball eclipsed his world, pupil contracting with frightening rapidity, peering into the glass, examining him with excruciating intensity.  The man said something that was as gruff as it was unintelligible, his voice loud enough to make the blue ground upon which Andaris so meekly stood tremble.  Then he held the marble at arm’s length and, in rather violent fashion, began to shake.

Andaris fell backwards into the blue grass as the ground shattered and fell away, red, green, and silver fish swimming around him in a panic, wide eyes pleading for salvation.

“I’m sorry!” he yelled.  “I can’t help you!  I seem to have lost all control of this dream!”  The fish nodded their understanding and then did him the courtesy of blinking out of existence.

A
nd so Andaris fell…and fell…and fell some more.  It went on for so long, in fact, that he began to wonder if he might not fall forever, perhaps as punishment for some wrongdoing or another.

Weren’t people supposed to wake up in these situations?

And then he saw it—
ocean and continents spinning below, making him want to retch.  As he drew near, he realized he was seeing them as if they were on a map or, in this case, a globe.  There was writing on the valleys, mountains, and seas.  He could even begin to make out some brightly colored illustrations.

The globe began to rotate faster as he picked up speed.  The word
“ROGAR”
appeared, written in big bold letters with an illustration of a mountain, a castle, and eight walls.  Beyond that lay
“The Great Waste.”
  And then forested mountains….  Just before he hit, in not so big and bold letters, he glimpsed the word “Fairhaven.”

Little Brass Bell

Andaris awoke with a cry, coming to a sitting position as a staircase, this one
his
staircase, judging by the green arrow drawn onto the grating, locked into place.

A
bout time!
he thought, too irritable to be relieved.

The
fact is, it was more than a little disconcerting to have his subconscious so utterly turn on him, grasping control of the dream with such frightening suddenness, changing it from idyllic to horrific in an instant, making him feel like he had when he was a boy, when his sleep had been plagued by nightmares—by tall, shadowy figures that haunted his every step, calling to him in a language he recognized but could not quite comprehend.

The worst part was how real it had
seemed to his young mind.  So much so, that most nights he wouldn’t even know he was dreaming until he awoke drenched in sweat, heart galloping in his breast.  He thought he’d left all that behind, along with blemishes and a cracking voice, nothing more than a fading memory filed under “Adolescent Angst.”

O
bviously, he was wrong.  Obviously, something about this place had reawakened something about him that, like as not, would have been better off left alone.

“They’re just night terrors,”
his mother had assured him, sighting elder bark tea and bedtime stories as a sure cure.  “They’re not real.”  She had had night terrors when she was little, too, so she understood, unlike his father and brothers, who had teased him relentlessly.  Unfortunately, he had neglected to pack any elder bark tea, much less any bedtime stories.

Andaris had all but forgotten about the “Tall Men”
until now.  The tea had done its job, putting him under for the duration of the night, leaving him refreshed and, most importantly, unaware of what twisting, sinister paths his mind had trod.

In spite of the very recent evidence to the contrary,
Ashel had clearly believed that Andaris possessed a particular talent for navigating the turbulent seas of his imagination, going so far as to say that one day he might be able to find, hidden amongst the complex quilt of shifting imagery and sound, the occasional bit of insight into current, or even future, events.

And
now, in this place, for better or worse, he felt closer to something of…great power, more connected somehow, both to this power and to certain aspects of himself, as though one depended on the other.  This was new territory for him, undiscovered country that he had not even suspected might exist.  To find his way, he would need to be intuitive as well as logical.

Basically, a
gut check was in order.  He had to make sure his internal compass was working properly if he hoped to find true north, the direction he must travel in order to determine the truth about not only this place, but also himself.

Okay,
he thought,
let’s assume for the moment that I’ve had some sort of vision.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  The question then becomes what to glean from what I’ve been shown.
 
What, for instance, did all the marbles on the mahogany shelf mean?  And what about the continents—Rogar and Fairhaven written on the same globe?

Was it
conceivable that instead of being transported
through
time and space, as he’d always supposed, that he’d been transported over land and sea, from one point to another on the
same
world?

His mind spun with the possibilities.  If he’d been on the same world this entire time, perhaps he could make his way back via conventional means,
by way of ship or horse.  As daunting a task as that would no doubt be, he would definitely prefer it to his present predicament.

Just think of it.  What a
relief to no longer suffer at the whims of Ashel and his ilk, dependent on finding his way by magic alone.  How glorious.  His heart soared at the mere thought, taking wing on a sudden updraft of hope, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced for months, not since before he’d begun his fruitless search in the godforsaken archives. 

But wait.  That can’t be
,
he realized, hurtling right back down to good ol’ terra firma. 
If I’m on the same planet, the stars should be the same.  Shouldn’t they?

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling another headache coming on.  That’s something else, beyond bad dreams, which had reasserted itself since he’d left home.  It wasn’t, however, until entering this place, that the headaches had grown so pronounced as to rival the attacks he’d experienced during parts of his, shall we say, less than robust childhood.

Until around the age of ten, he’d been so frail, even sickly, plagued by nightmares and headaches that sometimes lasted for days, curled in his bed with the shades drawn, reading by the flame of a single, flickering candle.

Enough thinking
!
he scolded. 
Just more for the list.  Have to actually make a list at some point, I suppose.  Write it all down before I forget.  But not now.  Now, it’s up these stairs before they move again!

Responding to a sense of renewed urgency, Andaris got to his feet with a groan, gathered his things, and began scurrying up the stairs, adrenaline-filled heart keeping time with his steps, spurred by the crack of the whip at his heels, by the knowledge that, at any moment, the staircase could detach and spin away, dooming him to the same fate as
old
Gaven, sending him shrieking into the abyss with death as his only escape.

Seven hundred and fifty-nine steps later, and Andaris had yet to find any visible end to the staircase—nor, fortunately, to himself.  His legs ached from the exertion, sweat poured from his brow, and still he climbed.  He had gotten back into pretty decent shape since his sedentary stint in the archives, but knew he couldn’t keep up this pace.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to. 
He had been weighing the pros and cons of taking a brief respite, his aching calves presenting a persuasive argument, when the mist cleared and he came to an abrupt halt.  Listing to the left a bit, he grabbed onto the railing for support.  The reason for his sudden loss of agility rose before him like a mountain.  At last, he had come to the end of his stairway, only to be confronted by a colossal wall of doors—a great stone wall that stretched as far as he could see, disappearing into the inky boundaries with the sort of unreality that one expects to find only when immersed in either deep slumber, or deep inebriation.

Andaris
could scarcely believe his eyes.  He had beheld many strange and wondrous things in his time.  But this topped them all.  The eyes were not meant to behold such things.  He was sure of it.  After all, what could be more improbable, more utterly preposterous, than a colossal wall of doors?

Look at them all
!
he thought, reeling at the spectacle.

Indeed, they
must easily number in the hundreds, if not thousands.  And those were just the ones he could see.  For all he knew, there were millions.  It staggered the imagination.  Millions upon millions of doors—each of varying shape, color, and size, some of wood, some of stone, and even some of metal.

Why buil
d such a thing?
he asked the ether.
For what purpose?
But it gave him no more satisfactory an answer than it had when he’d asked about the stairs.

As soon as Andaris regained a modicum of something resembling composure, he sprinted for the top, fearing again that the stairway would spin away at the last moment, his near success making his death that much more tragic.

As he stepped onto
the landing, he was greeted by a bright green door with a little brass bell.  Tacked to the wooden slats of this door in rather haphazard fashion was a note, a smallish piece of parchment on which alien, probably Lenoy, characters were hastily scrawled.  It looked so ordinary, other than the words being written in a foreign language, of course.  As if it read: “Popped out to get some milk.  Be back in a jiff.”

Andaris didn’t know what he had expected, but certainly not this.  Standing there, gasping for breath, he began to laugh.  It was even more a titter than before.  The difference was, this time he did
n’t care.  It was just over-the-top absurd to find such an ordinary thing in such an extraordinary place.  What else, when faced with such lunacy, could one do but laugh?