The Threads of Destiny - Chapter 21

Chapter 21: New Friends

They didn’t continue for long after the doorway. In fact, it looked like everything to the statue room was a big, open landing, and the statue room might have been the entrance to the second floor, opening into the rest of it through the hallways beyond the room with the teleportation rings. Osric hadn’t seen it at first because a good part of the roof had collapsed in this section, making it look like it was another hallway at first.

As they got around the collapsed column of roofing, they found what looked to be the remains of a stairway.

Calling it a stairway didn’t do it justice. It was wide enough for four people to walk abreast and looked to have finely carved banisters on either side. While one was broken off halfway down, so all he could see was the stone support, the other remained. At the top of the stone pillar was a finely carved into some kind of creature Osric had never seen before. It even still had some kind of jewel in one of its eyes.

Unfortunately, that was almost all that remained of the stairs. Two steps down, the stairway had broken, giving way to a gaping void that plunged down hundreds of feet to where the main floor of the temple had settled.

“Damn,” Rowan said.

Grace was trying to reach around the carved banister top, using a knife to pop the jewel in the statue’s eye out, but it stuck forward, its long neck making it hard to reach while keeping both feet firmly on the ground. Especially for someone of Grace’s short stature.

Her foot slipped on some loose rock at the edge, sending a shower of small stones skittering over the side. Rowan’s hand snaked out and caught the thief by the back of the shirt, hauling her in right before she followed the stones over the edge.

“Watch it,” Rowan said.

“I just wanted to look at it.”

“We have bigger problems than that, Grace,” Osric said. “Look around. This platform, or whatever, is this broken stair on one side and the blocked doorway to the statue room on the other. Unless we can figure out how to get all the way down there, we’re stuck.”

“We have rope,” Grace offered.

“We have, what, maybe a hundred feet? And we’d have to tie several together. Besides, the only thing to anchor it to is this banister, and the whole thing wobbled when you leaned on it. I don’t trust it to hold our weight while we try to climb down a spliced-together rope. Even if we did it one at a time.”

“There are spells that will let us float down,” Talia said excitedly, before deflating. “I don’t know them though.”

They all fell into silence, looking over the edge. Even Cinder seemed depressed by the sudden realization that they were trapped here.

“So that’s it?” Grace said, kicking a bigger rock over the side. “We come all this way, fight our way in, almost get smushed by statues, to get stuck on this platform where we’ll all starve to death?”

“We’ll probably die of thirst first,” Rowan said.

“You’re not helping. Either of you,” Osric said. “Come on, there has to be a way down. We can’t just hit one obstacle and give up.”

“Like what, Osric?” Grace said. “Where do you want us to go? Through that stone wall? Dig out that doorway and get killed by the statues? Jump and hope the bottom floor is made of feathers? What do you want us to do?”

“Like maybe act like this is important and give a damn about it. Some of us are trying to do something to stop the world from ripping itself apart, not just steal anything that isn’t…” Osric started to shout at Grace before stopping, holding up a hand for them all to be silent.

A faint scrabbling noise came from the other side of the room. For a moment, Osric thought it might be the statues digging their way out, but it wasn’t coming from the doorway, but instead from a corner of the room where there was a gap in the wall of the cliff itself, where the building had wedged against it, almost like a dark recess or alcove.

Osric stared in that direction, listening hard, trying to figure out what the sound was when a small furry head poked out of the opening, its large eyes blinking at them. It was the skivver they had seen earlier, or perhaps another of its kind, it was impossible to tell. The creature made eye contact with him and then pulled its head back in, disappearing into the darkness, maybe realizing it had been spotted.

“I think it’s the same one from before. It might have been following us,” Osric said, taking a few steps toward the opening and kneeling down.

The creature poked its head out again, whiskers twitching in the air. Osric remained perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. At first, the Skivver just looked at him, its little head cocked to the side, as it considered him. Then, surprisingly, it crept out of the hole in the wall, cautiously, its nose wiggling back and forth.

Osric shifted slightly, almost unconsciously, and the creature skittered back a few steps, but then stopped, and looked at him again.

“It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you,” Osric said in as gentle a voice as he could manage.

To Osric’s surprise, the little creature made a series of chirping, squeak-like sounds, almost as if it was answering him. Osric was no woodsman, but he’d spent his life in The Great Forest, and that meant being surrounded by animals of all types. Yet he’d never seen behavior like this, except from Cinder, who was unnaturally intelligent, maybe through a gift from the gods.

“Friends,” Osric said, testing it again.

The creature let out a single squeak that, to Osric’s ear, had the pitch and intonation of the word he’d said. Osric glanced back at Talia.

“You did that thing, at the lake, so we could speak to the thing that got trapped there. Does that work on animals?”

“No. The spell lets us understand languages, but it’s very specific that it only does that for actual languages and not things like animals or plants. There are references to other spells that will let you talk to animals, but … I don’t know that.”

“But … is it possible he’s using a language? It sounds like one, kind of. At least, the rhythm of it is like language.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I can try.”

“Please,” Osric said.

He wasn’t sure what he hoped to accomplish through this, but he didn’t have any other ideas and it’s not like they were doing anything else. Talia’s hand began to weave. It was quick and short, like at the lake, and like then, the air seemed to shimmer between him and the creature for a moment.

“Can you understand me?”

The creature froze, its head turned to the side, its large eyes opened as big as they could get.

“You can. Can’t you?”

“You speak <squeak>?”

As with the spell at the lake, he could hear the skivver making the squeaking sounds as before, but in Osric’s mind, they came out as words. Except the last one. Whatever it said, even the spell couldn’t translate it.

“No. My friend, she has … magic. Abilities that let us understand each other.”

 “Ohhhh ... What’s magic?”

“I, umm, it’s a special thing she can do,” Osric said, not sure how to explain magic to the creature. “My name is Osric. We mean you no harm. We’re just trying to find a way down to the lower levels of this temple.”

The skivver’s nose twitched rapidly as it took another tentative step forward.

“You ... not like others. Not like who come before.”

“Others? You’ve seen the Brethren? Men who come down, take the elevator ... umm, moving cage down the side of the wall, to the bottom?”

The creature let out a series of agitated chirps. “Yes, yes! bad <squeak>. Hurt us. Trap us. You not them?”

“No, we’re not with the Brethren,” Osric assured the skivver. “We’re trying to stop them, actually. They’re, um, very bad and hurting the whole world, and there’s something at the bottom of the temple we hope will stop them.”

The skivver’s head cocked to the side, considering Osric’s words. It took another step forward, its nose twitching as it caught a new scent. Suddenly, Cinder emerged from behind Osric, curious about the small creature. The skivver let out a terrified squeak and darted back toward its hole.

“Wait, wait!” Osric called out, holding up a hand to stop Cinder. “It’s okay. This is Cinder. He’s a friend. He won’t hurt you.”

The skivver paused, halfway to its hole, trembling slightly as it eyed the large wolf. Cinder, for his part, sat down, his head tilted curiously.

“Cinder, no eating the skivver, okay?” Osric said firmly.

The wolf let out a soft whine but didn’t move. Slowly, the skivver crept back out, its eyes darting between Osric and Cinder.

“Friend?” it asked hesitantly.

“Yes, friend,” Osric confirmed with a smile. “Do you have a name?”

“Blip.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Blip,” Osric said. “Do you think you could help us? We really need to get to the lower levels.”

“I don’t ...”

The skivver seemed hesitant, looking back at the hole. Osric had an idea and reached into his coin purse, pulling out a small silver coin. Blip let out an excited series of chirps, its eyes fixated on the shiny object.

“Would you like these? As a gift, for helping us?”

Blip’s eyes widened to an almost comical size. It darted forward, snatching the coin from Osric’s hand and cradling them to its chest like precious treasures. It let out a series of happy chirps and squeaks.

“Blip, is there a way for us to get to the lower levels?” Osric asked.

Blip nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes! Blip show. But ... must ask <squeak> first.”

“Must what?”

“Come. Come,” Blip said, and dashed into the hole.

Osric crouched down, peering into the hole Blip had disappeared through. The skivver’s bushy tail flicked once before vanishing into the darkness.

“You can’t be serious,” Rowan said. “We’ll never fit through there.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Talia asked, already shrugging off her pack. “Unless you want to try your luck with those statues again.”

Rowan made a face but didn’t argue further.

Osric took a deep breath and started squeezing into the tunnel. The rough stone scraped against his armor as he wriggled forward, feeling like he was going to get wedged stuck at any moment.

Ahead, he could hear Blip’s claws skittering across the rock.

“Why’d we let the big guy with armor go through first,” Grace said somewhere behind him. “He’s going to get us stuck.”

“Less talking, more crawling,” Jasper grunted.

They inched along in near darkness, the tunnel twisting and turning with no end in sight. Osric felt they were going down, the tunnel feeling like it was carved on an incline, but it stuck in here, in the tight confines, it was hard to tell. Several times, his armor got caught on a jagged protrusion and he felt like he might get stuck. It occurred to him that there was no way he would be able to turn around, and on an incline, it would be very hard to go backward, especially with the turns.

Just as he was beginning to think this might have been a trap, and they were going to die down here, the tunnel opened up and Osric found himself tumbling into a massive cavern, lit by some kind of moss or plant along the wall and at the end of poles, much like a torch.

This wasn’t part of the temple. The walls were rock and stone. The skivver, or maybe something else before them, had dug away from the temple, into the earth. Maybe under the dead village, if he had his directions right.

The cavern stretched farther than he could see, the ceiling lost in shadows high above. But it was far from empty. Intricate structures rose from the stone, built from bits of scavenged wood, metal, and cloth. Ramps and bridges crisscrossed between the towers, creating a multilevel city.

And everywhere, there were skivvers. Hundreds of them. They swarmed over the structures, gathering in small groups, or darting across rope bridges. Their squeaks and chirps became excited at the appearance of humans.

One by one, Osric’s friends came out of the tunnel behind him, stopping in awe at the unexpected sight.

“Gods,” Jasper breathed. “An entire civilization, hidden away. This is so unexpected.”

Blip reappeared, bouncing eagerly in front of them. It gestured for them to follow, scampering off across one of the bridges. Osric glanced at the others and shrugged before setting off after the diminutive creature.

As they made their way deeper into the skivver city, Osric couldn’t help but marvel at the ingenuity of it all. Scavenged parts, probably all from the temple, had been repurposed into all manner of contraptions, including clever pulley systems.

Talia had said she couldn’t communicate with animals, that that was a different spell, and the one she used was for understanding languages. When the spell worked, Osric thought maybe Talia had misunderstood the book she’d learned the spell from. Now he saw that she had not. It took intelligence to do this level of work.

Skivers ran and hid as they passed, their large eyes peering out of doorways of the buildings made of discarded bits. Blip led them to the base of the largest structure that looked almost like a pyramid, atop of which was an ancient-looking skivver perched on a throne of polished stone, metal, and glass.

Tufts of gray fur stuck out around its ears and its whiskers drooped with age, but its eyes seemed bright and sharp.

 Blip scurried up to the throne, his tail twitching with excitement.

“Skitter, Skitter! Look what I found! New friends from the upper place!”

The old Skivver, apparently called Skitter, looked down at Blip with an expression Osric read as annoyed or angry.

“Blip, what have you done? Why have you brought these dullsnouts to our home?”

Blip’s ears drooped. “They’re not like the others, Skitter. They’re good dullsnouts. They want to help us, to get rid of the bad ones who’ve been hurting us.”

“After all the harm their kind has caused? Have you hit your head?”

“No. I watched them. They killed one of the dullsnouts near the metal cage. They gave me a trinket. See!” Blip said, holding up the coin Osric had given him.

Skitter’s eyes went wide and there were chitters and squeaks all around them, from the closest hiding Skivvers.

“Ohh,” Skitter said, almost in spite of himself, before regaining composure. “And what do these... friends of yours want in return?”

“They need to get to the lower place. They’re looking for something, something important. They said it was important. They promised to get rid of all of the dullsnouts who hunt us if we show them.”

“He tells the truth,” Osric said. “We apologize for intruding in your home, but we are desperately searching for something at the bottom of this place and need help getting there.”

“It would be protected by a group of … uhh, dullsnouts who have been hiding in this place. People we call the Brethren.”

Skitter’s ears went back and his nose twitched. “Yes, we know of them. They kill us if they see us. The dullsnouts have been coming here since the time of my father’s father. They stayed mostly in the lower place, so we rarely go there.”

“But do you know how to get to the lower place?” Osric asked.

“Yes, there is a path. But it may not be safe. Not long ago, something changed. There was a great sound and screams. My people did not get close enough to see what was there, too afraid to find out what makes dullsnouts scream. More and more dullsnouts came, trying to get to where the others were, but few left that place. They’ve been trying to get back in ever since, but something stops them. Something dangerous.”

“In Godfrey’s office, a letter talked about sending more men to deal with... something, I don’t know what,” Osric said, turning to his friends. “The same letter mentioned that I’d escaped Eldham with the ring. Could whatever happened here have been at the same time as the ring came through?”

“Could they have lost control of something?”

“Maybe,” Jasper said. “Although I think it’s more likely that if someone used a rift to send the ring through, it could have caused other rifts. Especially if it was tied to the parts of this paper you’re looking for. You said the ring took you to one half, tied by a piece of the veil. But it didn’t take you to this one. Maybe in coming through, this part broke, ripping a tear here and letting something through.”

“Or maybe it was only tied to that part. The Sage said there was a protective enchantment on it.”

“It doesn’t matter either way. It all but confirms this is where the letter to Godfrey was talking about, and the timing suggests it’s connected. That’s all that matters,” Osric said, and then turned back to Skitter. “Can you show us this place?”

“We stay away from there. Too many of us have been lost already.”

“We understand, and you wouldn’t have to go there yourselves. We don’t want to put your people in danger, but we have to get down there. It’s the only way to stop the Brethren and protect everyone, including your people.”

Skitter was silent for a long moment, his tail swishing back and forth.

“And what do we get in return?”

Osric turned back to his friends. “They like things, right? Trinkets. What does everyone have?”

“You too,” Jasper said, pulling Grace into the small huddle as she tried to back away. “You too. Unless you want to live with the Skivvers, give it up. I know you have something.”

Grace looked sullen but said, “Fine.”

They each had small bits of things. Pieces of metal, a piece of glass, a few particularly shiny coins. Grace, however, had the most, including small pieces of jewelry she was reluctant to part with, only giving it up after Jasper scolded her a second time.

“We offer these gifts, to you and your people,” Osric said, turning back to Skitter and laying the collection of objects in front of the Skivver.

Skitter chittered excitedly, bouncing up and down on his throne.

“Yes, yes! This is good. Very good. Blip! Show the dullsnouts to the lower place.”

“Thank you, Skitter,” Osric said. “We won’t forget this kindness.”

“Just remember your promise. Get rid of the bad dullsnouts.”

“We will. You have my word.”