Bill could hear Brianna huff from the bed behind him. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better not to be too friendly towards their elegant Varman landlady.
“Well, we need to get down to the basilica, anyway, to meet Rasha,” Bill said, changing the subject like a pro.
Brianna sighed. “Poor little bugger,” she said, “I hope he’s okay. For all we know, he didn’t get beyond the first set of railings and is back at that ruined farmhouse, waiting for us.”
“Maybe we should have insisted he wait for us there anyway, I had no idea the city was so vast and so crowded. I can’t see how we’ll keep him out of trouble,” Bill said.
“First things first, we need to find him and then we can work out how we’ll avoid ending up in one of the city gaols.”
Bill opened the door and stepped onto the landing. He was just in time to catch, out of the corner of his eye, the swish of a quickly moving lavender dress as it cleared the bottom of the stairs.
Darkness came early this time of the year, even in the south, so it was gloomy streets that greeted Bill and Brianna when they left the guesthouse. They’d chosen the basilica as their meeting point because every Varman city placed it dead centre with the major streets radiating outwards from it so, in theory at least, it would be easy to find. Bill was more worried about finding their way back to Natana’s, so he made a mental note of the street name and tried to fix its direction relative to the great east-west road that bisected the capital.
It took half an hour at a brisk pace before the basilica rose from the main town square as they rounded the final corner.
“Right, there it is. I only hope we explained it well enough to Rasha,” Bill said.
“‘All sewers lead to the basilica’,” Brianna whispered, “let’s hope there’s truth in that saying.”
Bill turned to her. “Come on then, we said we’d meet near the statue of Fornicopus.” He scanned the square in front of the basilica, lit now by hundreds of torches. “Good grief, look at the size of that!”
“Keep your voice down,” Brianna hissed, following the line of his arm to a position in mid-air, “wow!”
Bill scowled although, in the dark, it lacked the desired impact. “It’s what you do with it that matters. Or so I’m told.”
Sniggering, Brianna ran across the square with Bill following reluctantly. She stopped between the huge bronze feet of Fornicopus and peered around. Bill couldn’t help himself and looked up. “I’m glad it isn’t raining,” he said.
“My friends!” cried a voice coming from a grate beneath them.
Brianna knelt down and peered through the ironwork to see two green eyes looking up at her. “Rasha! What are you doing down there?”
“You said to meet you at the statue of the big man and Rasha found this drain to hide in so he could wait.”
Bill and Brianna pulled on the grate which creaked as it swung upwards on its rusted hinge. “Rasha must say,” continued the goblin, “he has seen some things in the hours he has waited here that he wishes he hadn’t seen. He is going to find them hard to forget.”
Brianna cast another glance upward at the god of fertility in all his glory, grabbed Rasha’s arm and pulled him up onto the pavement.
A couple of minutes and a quick scurry across the square later, they were huddled behind one of the four lions that marked each corner of the basilica.
“I’m glad you made it, Rasha,” Bill said, puffing a little, “was it difficult?”
Rasha nodded. “Oh yes. There are many, many peoples in the ways beneath the city. And not only peoples, neither.”
“Plenty of rats and mice, I imagine.” Brianna said, shivering.
“Not just animals,” Rasha replied, “Rasha has seen peoples like those on the road that chased friend Bill.”
“Dwarfs?” Bill said, astonished, “There are dwarfs beneath the city.”
Rasha shook his head. “Not only dwarfs, but also other small peoples. And goblin-folk, Bill, though not from my world.”
“Goblins?” Bill said again, even more astonished, “How can there be goblins here?”
“They are not my people, they are goblin-folk,” Rasha said, “I have spoken with some, though their speech is strange to me. They say they is always being here. They say they stay out of sight and humans leave them be.”
Bill sat against the pillar holding up the lion. “How is this possible?”
In the light of the flickering torch, Brianna’s face wore the sort of expression generally reserved for sentences that begin “You know the man you always called uncle Andy?”.
She shook her head slowly. “But what are they doing down there? I mean, you couldn’t get less dwarfish than Varma, there’s not a mountain within a hundred miles.”
“Forget about the dwarfs,” Bill said, “what about the goblins? How in the hells did they get here?”
“Oh, they was always here, I think,” Rasha said, “goblins were the first peoples, or so our legends say. Life began underground.”
“I think the legends of every race say that they were first,” Brianna said, “but I can’t believe that goblins have existed for all this time without anyone noticing.”
Rasha sighed. “Goblins knew, dwarfs knew, many people knew. Perhaps different names, but always goblins. Maybe invisible, but always goblins.”
Bill gazed across the dark square, past the giant statue and at the small groups of people moving backwards and forwards on business of their own. He just couldn’t believe that, living like termites beneath their feet, were invisible people. Varma was famous for its sewers but this was much more than that, what Rasha described was an underground society entirely ignored by the people, mainly humans, living on the surface.
“Look, Rasha,” Brianna said, evidently having shelved the more existential issues for later, “we have to concentrate on what we’re here for. Bill and I will visit the library tomorrow but we daren’t risk taking you back to where we’re staying to hide.”
Rasha smiled, exposing yellow canines, “Do not worry. Rasha has made friends down below, he is safe there. He will meet you here next night,” the little goblin said, before casting a glance across the square, “but not near the three-legged statue. Rasha does not want to go there again.”
“You’re not the only one,” Bill muttered, ignoring Brianna’s smirk, “we’ll meet here, by this lion.”
The little goblin nodded before slipping away. Bill and Brianna watched as he edged towards the corner of the basilica, stooped and then seemed to vanish into the ground.
“It’s just as well we can trust him,” Bill said, “just imagine the trouble he could stir up down there.”
Brianna said nothing.
Chapter 7
Snow lay on the garden of Gramma Tickle but the old woman was out and about, hobbling around the vegetable patch like a particularly careworn grizzly bear in fur coat and wellies.
“If I didn’t like Russell’s Sprouts15 so much, I’d leave the bloody things out ‘ere,” the old woman grumbled.
Badger, her black terrior16, regarded her with his usual patience. He’d lived with Gramma for long enough to know that the best plan was to simply let her do her thing and be supportive. Currently, he was achieving this by watching her through the glass of the warm front room of her cottage. He wasn’t a bloody idiot after all.
Gramma snapped off a couple of stalks, turned and stomped back in through the front door. Badger shivered momentarily as an icy wind filled the little house; a presage, he suspected, of a more pervasive and rather richer breeze that would creep through from the bedroom tonight.
The old woman heaved off her coat, showering the floor with snow, and glanced over at Badger as he trotted towards her. “‘Ave you been sitting on the back of my chair lookin’ out the window again?” she said, looking at the suspicious dent in the cushion. “If I find another skidder when I come to sit down, there’ll be hells to pay.”
Badger raised his nose to indicate his offence at such a
remark before giving his arse a quick lick, just in case. It didn’t hurt to remove the evidence, after all.
The old woman had barely reached the kitchen when there was a loud knock at the door. Badger climbed up onto the back of Gramma’s chair so he could look out of the window again. There, in the snow, was a neat line of footprints. Two feet, if Badger’s keen canine senses, and basic arithmetic, were anything to go by.
Try as he might, however, he couldn’t see who was at the door, which meant that whoever it was, they were either invisible or very small. Neither was an encouraging thought.
The old woman grumbled her way to the door. “‘Oo the ‘eck is martherin’ me at this time of the year,” she said, reaching the spy hole and looking through it.
“I can’t see nobody. If it’s those bloody kids again, I’ll show ‘em everoo messes with me only messes wi’me once.” She pulled at the iron lock and edged the door back. Badger watched her peer through the crack, and then, after a moment, look down.
“Oh, aye, there you are!” she said, opening the door to admit a pile of snow which shook itself off on the hallway floor and revealed itself to be a very small person.
The visitor bowed, his woolly hat depositing another few pounds of snow into Gramma’s hallway. He took his hat off and placed it on a peg. “Thank you,” he said, “my name is Skiver Skjeggestad and I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Now then, has anyone else arrived yet?”
“What?”
The dwarf looked from Gramma to Badger and back again as if working out who was in charge. He decided, on balance, to stick with the old woman.
“You are Gramma Tickle, are you not?”
“I am,” Gramma replied.
Skiver gestured at the door, “And that is your door?”
“Of course it’s my bloody door, this is my ‘ouse!”
The dwarf looked rattled, but ploughed on regardless17, “That is the door I was told to knock at; the door behind which the meeting would take place; the door with the sign upon it.”
“Sign? What sign?” Gramma, approaching her wits’ end (not a long way at the best of times) stomped to the front door and pulled it open again. The blast of cold air caused the fire in the living room to flare up as the old woman saw the large G rune carved into the wood.
“See,” Skiver said, “G for Gramma.”
“What the bloody ‘ell is goin’ on?” she said, slamming the door shut and confronting the dwarf. But before she could speak, there was another knock.
The old woman opened the door in a flash and two small figures fell onto the floor at her feet. They scrambled up, showering more snow on the already sodden slabs, and bowed. “Lopher and Slakker, pleased to make your acquaintance,” one said, before spotting the first dwarf behind Gramma and nodding curtly, “Skiver.”
“Slakker,” Skiver responded, “there seems to be some confusion, our hostess seems not to have been informed of our meeting here tonight.”
Slakker slapped his forehead, “I knew we shouldn’t have asked Shirka to arrange things, I bet she hasn’t even been up here to inspect the facilities, let alone inform the stool.”
Gramma felt as though she was at sea on a stormy day. “What the ‘ell is the stool?” she bellowed, her mind having picked one issue at random.
“Well, you are, of course,” Skiver replied, “as the stool, it is your task to run the meeting, ensure that agreement is reached and decisions made.”
“And provide cakes,” added a voice that turned out to belong to the hitherto inert Lopher, “and ale.”
Badger inched his way behind the old woman’s chair. He wanted to see what happened next but not be part of the collateral damage.
“Right, that’s it,” Gramma said, grabbing Skiver by the lapel and pulling him into the kitchen, his dirty boots dragging on the stone, “now, I want some plain answers. Let’s start with what the bloody hell are you doin’ in my house?”
Gramma let the dwarf go, and he gasped as he drew breath again. “I don’t understand the confusion,” he wheezed then, after a moment’s thought, “may I ask how long you have been the occupier of this residence?”
The old girl’s brain gave up trying to work out what was going on and, for its own preservation, decided to simply answer the strange little man. “It’ll be fifty years next spring.”
Skiver smiled as he finally understood. “Then that explains it, our last meeting was nearly sixty years ago. You are a witch, though, aren’t you?” he asked, nervously.
Gramma brought her face down to his level, grimacing as she bent. “If you don’t explain yourself pretty bloody sharp, lad, you’re going to discover just how much of a witch I am.” The kitchen darkened as a large, twiggy branch swung into view outside the window and remained there, shivering.
Skiver cast a glance over at the window. “I represent one of the thirteen families of dwarfs that mine in the Butterlins Mountains,” he said, rattling off the words, “Lopher and Slakker are from two more and the other ten will be here shortly.”
“Thirteen? How the ‘ell am I supposed to fit thirteen of you lot in my lickle ‘ouse?”
Skiver shrugged, “We’re dwarfs,” he said, “we don’t take up much room. And we’ve met here before, or at least our predecessors have.”
“Well, what’s the meeting about?”
“I shouldn’t really say until everyone’s here,” Skiver said. Then, finally capitulating under Gramma’s iron stare, “But I suppose these are exceptional circumstances.”
So he told the old woman about what was happening underground to give the dwarfs such concern that they would tolerate each other’s company for an evening. And, as he talked, the knocks on the door continued.
#
It was Varma’s sheer bigness that impressed upon Bill’s mind more than anything. It was hard to imagine that humans, and humanoids, had brought such a place into being. On closer inspection, he’d found that the city was beginning to look a little tatty around the edges and quite a few of the more recent repair works left a lot to be desired. The cobbled streets were, in the main, still intact but, here and there, potholes had formed, many of which had been filled in with little more than sand, cement and straw.
Bill remembered his history well enough to know that the city was now over 500 years old, so perhaps it was understandable that its people took it a little for granted. But it seemed a pity, like an exquisite ornament allowed to tarnish for lack of care.
The Great Library held, it was reputed, the sum of all man’s knowledge18 in written form. That was if you didn’t include the great civilisations of the south, east and west. The Foos of the far west, for example, considered that, as they’d invented writing, paper and printing, all knowledge, therefore, originated with them by default. There were even rumours that they possessed the means of logging and monitoring the work of scribes across the world using the fabled “loot kit” enchantment. Such suspicions were considered, by the intelligentsia, to be nothing more than fear of the foreigner although they conceded that the Foo did, indeed, seem to be damn clever.
“Who are you?” asked the thin-faced clerk with the big nose as he peered through his spectacles at Bill and Brianna, “the trade entrance is round the side.”
Without saying a word, Bill flourished Vokes’s library card. The little man took it, lifted his glasses and peered closely at the lettering.
“And are you Nomenclature Vokes?” he asked with all the satisfaction of a masochistic schoolmaster asking his class to conjugate classical Varman in the past pluperfect.
Bill shook his head. “I am not.”
“Then what is the meaning of this?” said the librarian, his voice making the transition from amused to annoyed in one step.
“I am the grandson of Nomenclature Vokes and the inheritor of both his possessions, including this library card, and his magical abilities.”
The librarian looked at the card again. “It says here that he had achieved full command of the element of fire. Oh he
avens, he was an elemental?” His face had now ticked around to excited delight.
Bill nodded. “He was, and I am,” he said, surprised to hear the pride in his voice.
“You? A fire mage? I very much doubt it.”
Sighing, Bill picked up a piece of parchment from the top of the librarian’s desk and ignited it, watching as the ashes drifted gently downwards.
The librarian was silent for a moment before recovering. “Quite impressive but hardly what I’d call mastery.”
“Will you allow us to use the library?” Bill asked, biting back his anger.
“You may,” the librarian snapped, “she may not.”
Bill fixed the little man with his most impressive stare. “I’d like you to consider the wisdom of refusing the simple request of a fire mage when he’s surrounded by so much wonderfully combustible material.” Just for effect, he pushed some heat into his hands and watched them glow.
“Have you quite finished?” asked the librarian, his eyes fixed on Bill’s hands.
Bill nodded. “Yes, now will you let us in?”
The little man pushed his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose, then he drew himself up and stabbed his pencil down onto the desk. “You Shall Not Pass!” he shouted as, with a hissing sound, dust erupted from the front of his podium and lodged in the eyes of Bill and Brianna before they could blink.
They coughed and felt tears streaming down their faces as they flailed around rubbing their eyes desperately.
“Cry, you fools!” The librarian called as strong hands grabbed Bill by the shoulders and lifted him from the ground.
#
“You know that patience what were wearin’ thin?” Gramma said, “It’s practically invisible, now, so I suggest one of you gets to the point sharpish.”
The old woman sat on her milking stool at the head of a circle containing thirteen cross-legged dwarfs. They’d been at it an hour, she was completely out of barmy cakes, they were drinking their way through her stocky19 supply and she still didn’t know what they were supposed to be deciding.
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