Chapter 21

They didn’t continue for long after exiting through the doorway. In fact, it looked like everything outside of 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 made their way 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 in place. At the top of the stone pillar was a finely carved creature of some kind that Osric had never seen before. It 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 away, 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 reaching around the carved banister top, trying to pop the jewel from the statue’s eye using a knife, but the creature’s head stuck forward, its long neck making it hard to reach its eye while she kept 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 her 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, has this broken stairway 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 went 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 there.

“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, it was coming 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 seemed to consider 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 spell, 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 any of them.”

“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 wasn’t 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, 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. An ability that lets 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. 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.