Echoes of the Lost Voice

The Two Thieves

Height vertigo was a most unheard-of phenomenon among Khajiit, but from the way the tiered, stone-bound Markarth seemed to swirl at her when gazing down at it, Shadya knew she'd spent too long among the people of civilization. Too long pretending to be one of them.

Not that she'd ever been a mountain cat, either.

Her paws gripped harder on the jagged edge of the escarpment as she drew herself onward, resolving not to look down before she'd reached the top. She bristled against the sopping mists that clung to the higher mountainside, fixed her gaze on the point on the cataract where the waters tipped down. Finally, she reached the even plain, and, catching her breath, looked back down at Dockside. The city, torches and braziers dappling its streets, was a harbor of light in the fold of darkness, the stars and the moons above throwing their celestial glow into the mix. Altogether, there was plenty of light for her to steer herself by in the misty gloom.

Cutting through the fog, Shadya hopped over the stream and followed its path toward the other brook, the one which fell beside the keep entrance. The riverbed had furrowed itself into the stone over thousands of years, with the patience of inanimate nature that ever eluded the comprehension of living beings. She already couldn't wait till she no longer had to look at it.

Eventually, she came to the point where the two streams forked, a wider stream reaching farther into the mountains, emerging from the suspended miasma of vapors that was swallowing the entire range beyond. She followed it, keeping an eye out for a point where the wide riverbed made a diverging path to her left. She felt certain there would be one. Had to be.

Yet, after minutes of walking she still had not stumbled onto one. Just the one unbroken, ever widening boulder-strewn riverbed rolling forth from the unknown obscure perpetuity.

Come on, now. Come on!

Dreadful doubt started gnawing at her when, after some more walking, the stream still insistently held to its uniformity. Looking back toward where she came from, fog now obscuring visibility that way as well, she tried judging the distance she'd come. She felt certain that she was well past the bounds of the keep now, though somehow having her vision restricted seemed to discombobulate her sense of time as well.

Chagrined, she was getting ready to just give in and turn back, when she spotted it. A little further upstream, the tiniest of cracks in the southern flank of the riverbed had grown into a tributary as wide as her arm was long. It ran on for about a dozen paces until seeming to vanish altogether. Encouraged, she smiled and increased her pace, slogging to where the tributary dove underground. She knelt beside it and peered into the narrow fissure through which the water disappeared. A hollow purl echoed in the darkness. The deep, constricted, wet darkness . . .

Shadya sighed. Once again, no turning back. She shucked off her tattered-hemmed cloak, tucking it under a boulder lying by the stream. There was no way for her to get through the narrow furrow without having the cloth snag on its jagged walls. In place of her usual single strap knapsack, she was carrying a small leather messenger bag, which she kept slung over her shoulder. She would need that, unlike the cloak.

She stopped to stare into the gloom, seized by apprehension. Once she got in there, there was unlikely to be a chance to turn back. So . . . head first, or feet? Should she get irredeemably stuck and die by drowning or starvation—whichever came first—would it be better to be caught head upwards or downwards? Well, if you happened to be at a sharp enough angle, then head-down you might have the mercy of passing out before—

Stop that now! Thinking about it wasn't going to help, she decided. Electing to dive in head-first—which did seem the more logical choice—she went on her knees into the shallow water. A good dose of regurgitated skooma helped her tolerate the cold water, or rather to ignore it altogether. Suspending thought and reflection, Shadya begun inching her way forward in the dank tunnel.