I Take You With Me

by robinwitch1

A story about love, loss, and acceptance, set fifty years after Skyrim concludes, told by Shahvee the Argonian. What if the Dragonborn hadn't been that hunk in the YouTube preview but a slender Breton girl who could scarcely hold a sword? Where would she have found the strength to go on? From a sense of duty, surely. But also from the love of her partner and her daughter.

I take you with me

Down the road of my desires
To the oceans of my peace
Through the fueling of my fires
Until my yearnings cease
I hear your voice
I know you
In your arms I sleep
My love, wherever I go,
I take you with me.

(Melissa Etheridge, "I take you with me.")

I had never been up the Seven Thousand Steps to High Hrothgar. Vivian had wanted me to visit, to affirm our bond there as elsewhere, name me before all of them as her chosen. I loved her for that, but it wasn't really necessary. Neither of us had anything we needed to prove to others, not then, not ever. If the Greybeards were as wise as they were supposed to be, they would understand; if not, did it really matter?

But now I was climbing, a cold clear day, with Vivian's ashes in an urn in my hands and a quiet heart. Our daughter Shah'issol walked beside me, still half-dazed by grief and her quick trip from family business in Black Marsh, her mind still trailing behind, lost in the sky over Tamriel. Odahviing, Vivian's house-dragon as she used to jokingly call him, had offered to fly there and bring her back home, so that she might be on time for the funeral, and Shah'issol had never flown before. Neither had I, but that was to change soon, I knew.

Aela the Huntress, grey-haired but otherwise seemingly ageless, came along to keep the wolves and trolls at bay, with several other of the Companions I knew less well, but in the end there was no need for their protection. The air was supernaturally clear and still; the mountain and all that inhabited it stood at attention, an honour guard. Foxes trotted beside and before us, the foxes that Vivian had once told me, half-apologetic to my merchant instincts, she never hunted or skinned, a private vow to Kynareth. But the wolves that she had harried constantly were there to pay their respects as well, silent on the ridges until we passed and then beginning to howl, a low moan at first, then a wailing that followed us up and up, echoing all around as if the mountain itself were giving voice.

Half-way up, two frost trolls appeared on the path before us. Aela tensed and nocked an arrow to the string of her bow; behind her, I heard the faint pop and crackle of a mage-trained Companion preparing a fire spell. Aela looked toward me and I shook my head. She understood, and lowered her weapon. This was a day for the celebration of life, not for struggle and pain. And as we closed the distance between, the trolls did not charge but simply stood there, their heads bent and their hands limp at their sides until suddenly, as we were about to pass, they began to pound their chests and wail, and then they were gone, loping off down the slope with their cries trailing behind them.

We paused to allow Shah'issol to catch her breath. I wrapped another shawl around her; the poor girl must have been freezing, coming so quickly to a snowy mountaintop from our ancestral marshes. I thought she was shivering, but in fact she had begun to cry again, so I held her for a long time until she quieted. One of the Companions asked if they should build a fire. Shah'issol shook her head, impatiently, almost fiercely.

"No. I'm holding you back. I'm sorry."

"It's all right. We're making good time. You've never slowed anyone down." Then I stopped and held Shah'issol for a long while, stroking her head. And remembering.

I had no warning at all. Vivian wasn't even supposed to be in town. She'd been off to Dawnstar in her capacity as Thane there, to help terrify a nest of pirates into submission. Some people never learned.

But here she was back, crashing through our long-suffering front door in Whiterun as if it were a Stormcloak barricade in battles long past, still in full armor, laughing and crying at the same time, remembering only at the last moment to pull off her Dragon Priest mask, ancient and ugly, before unceremoniously grabbing me and kissing me up my neck to the gills, where she knew it excited me the most. I do envy human beings their soft lips... but then, it all evens out; I have a few specialties of my own. Love finds a way.

"Ouch!" I cried out, trying to wriggle into a position where the kissing could continue but I would be in less peril of penetration by the sharp spikes of her dragonscale cuirass. "It's still business hours. A customer could wander through the door any minute. What on earth has gotten into you?"

Vivian stopped for a moment and straightened up, her face serious.

"It's not good news in a way..."

By now I was utterly lost.

"But for us... and for... You'll see." She smiled and leaned down to kiss me again, very gently. Then she straightened up, spun around, and pulled the door open.

"Hjorfell! Bring it in!"

A huge rough Nord encased in well-worn iron came through the door. I had seen him once or twice before; he was a guard captain up in Dawnstar, one who had a better attitude than many of his kind to us of whom they still call the beast races. He was carrying a small basket in both of his enormous hands, with the elaborate and meticulous care very large and strong creatures adopt when dealing with something tiny and precious. And inside...

Inside the basket, nestled in layers of cloth and felt, was an Argonian egg, a healthy size, and from the faint movements in the leathery surface of the shell, only a few days away from hatching.

Vivian told me later that I screamed. I don't remember. All I can remember is Hjorfell handing me the basket, oh so carefully, with a palpable sense of relief at having fulfilled his trust. I sank to the floor and felt myself, body and spirit, wrapping around this new life. Our homeland of Black Marsh is a merciless place; Argonians are no strangers to orphans and adoption, and our maternal reactions trigger almost instantly at need. I knew that by the time this egg hatched, my body would be ready to feed and nurture it.

But how? Where had the egg come from?

"Not one of the pirates," Vivian my dear love said softly, guessing my first fear, that they had had to kill the mother. "They were just the usual, local rabble led astray by the hope of quick gold. Most of them ran, anyway, and we didn't bother to pursue far. It was on our way back...Hjorfell spotted blood on the snow, I don't know how... It was so far off, in the dark too..."

"Not I. It was Mara's hand," Hjorfell said, a slow and very deep voice. He raised one hand to an amulet on his neck, and for a moment this giant seemed almost shy. "I had a mind to go courting, you see, it's time I started a family, and I was there at her temple in Riften last month for this." He touched the amulet again. "The priest there, he took me aside, and I was fearing he found me not suited, but it was not that, thank the gods. It was something else, that I didn't understand at the time, but he told me to be sure not to forget."

Hjorfell paused and thought a moment, with both of us sitting at his feet now, like children listening to a story.

"It is strange, but I cannot remember his exact words... But it was something about that I should follow my heart, that before me would be a chance to do some great good but I must trust my instincts and not think too much... I did not see the blood. Not at first. It was off the track, and there was no light there. I thought I heard a cry on the wind, faint. I knew at once it was what the priest had been speaking of. And so the little one comes here."

He stopped abruptly and took a huge breath, and I thought with a touch of amusement that it was probably the longest speech the poor man had ever given in his life.

Vivian stepped in to spare him the task of relating the rest. "I was a bit surprised when Hjorfell took off into the dark off the trail without a word of explanation, but his men and I long ago learned to trust his, um, inspirations. He moved ahead of us, fast, and slashed at something that yelped when it was hit. Wolves. Of course we charged straight ahead when we heard that..."

She closed her eyes, and I could see she was reliving the scene, the way she had done so often in my arms at night, clinging to me as she related the details of some scene of horror in a soft monotone. Begging me to hold her tight, not let the memories take her, sobbing like a frightened child until she cried herself to sleep. They say she got used to it. To the blood, the pain. It's not true. She never got used to it. She just hid it, from everyone, all her life, everyone but me.

"The wolf Hjorfell killed was the only one still alive. There had been a camp there, four or five Argonians and a couple of Wood Elves. Traders. Or migrants. Hard to say."

Vivian took a deep breath. Then she went on.

"But the wolves hadn't killed the people in the camp. I don't know...but it looked as if they had been attacked by bandits first, and then, some time afterwards, the wolves had set on the bandits. They were all dead, travelers and bandits. All but one."

She swallowed hard, and the distant look came over her face again, stronger, the look that I dreaded. She was in the true realm of nightmare now, remembering real horrors, not dreams that would be driven away by the dawn light.

"In one of the tents. The mother. She must have been asleep when the attack came, and have curled herself by reflex around her egg...gods only know why she was traveling in that state...they must have been fleeing something."

Another deep, shuddering breath. "The bandits decided to have some fun with her...to get her to uncurl, give up her egg, her child...they hurt her, burned her, slashed her tail... Her back was one long wound and they'd put salt into it...her arm was broken...her eyes were gone. Her eyes."

"She couldn't see us. I don't think she could hear. I don't know how she knew that it was safe to uncurl when she sensed we were there. Hjorfell says that Mara told her that her child would live, that she could depart now. That she had done her duty and could rest."

Vivian sat silent for a moment, bent over, shaking her head. Then she looked up and her face was hard, glittering eyes.

"I know his name. The bandit chief. I found his diary. Proud of himself, the fool. He's done things like this before. There is a debt, and I will see to it that he pays." Her voice was a winter beyond all hope of spring. I remembered that Vivian was on first-name terms with more than one of the Daedric Princes, and wondered, chilled to the bone, if she would be petitioning Molag Bal or Peyrite to see that the souls of the bandits were bound to eternal torment in Coldharbor or the Pits.

She shook herself, closed her eyes briefly. Trying to pass beyond the anger.

"She whispered one word, only one, before she died. A name. Shah'issol. It was a shock...my love, so close to your name, Shahvee. I thought she was going to say your name. Her name? The name she had chosen for the child? I don't know...We didn't find any documents on her or the other dead, nothing at all. We'll never know who they were."

But at least the child had a name. Our child.

Vivian drew herself up and turned to Hjorfell. Her voice was formal now.

"A moment before you leave, please. You have brought us a gift whose price is beyond all reckoning, and we must find for you some small token in return."

She went into the back room and returned with a Dwemer casket, intricately worked in warm yellow metal, one of the ones she had brought from the Dwarven ruins years ago that had been too beautiful for us to endure melting it down.

"Two diamonds, two emeralds, two rubies, two sapphires. Each flawless, as your service has been. For the eyes that saw our child in the darkness, the strength that fought to her, the heart that gave a true response to Mara's summons. May your marriage be blessed with a multitude of children, and yourself and your kin with long life and health."

Her voice was not just formal now; it was incantatory, a casting. Hjorfell took the cask, bowed deeply to Vivian, then to me, gave a long final look at what he had brought us, bowed again, and left.

I saw him only once again, many years later. He attended Vivian's funeral, a very old man, but strong and active still, accompanied by his wife, his four sons, his five daughters, and their sons and daughters.

"Wake up, mother!"

Shah'issol's voice snapped me back to the present.

"You're thinking about things again, aren't you?"

I winked at her. "Guilty as charged, dear. Let's go on."

-o-o-o-

The light was shading to evening when we turned one last corner and saw a dark stony mass looming up against the grey and white of the snowy cliffs. High Hrothgar.

Aela and two of the Companions, both fellow-members of the Circle, were still with us. She had sent back the others as it became clear that nothing would block our passage today. When High Hrothgar came into view, these last three halted to give us their farewells.

"I'm not sure if the Greybeards would be all that pleased to see us on their front doorstep," Aela remarked. "You know how they feel about violence, and we live for the hunt, as human and as beast. If they sensed the beast blood in us, it might be... awkward... to explain. I know they let the matter pass with the Dragonborn, but she was different. Best we go no further."

I nodded, but their reluctance saddened me. Always this shame at what one was, at what was inside, even if no evil had ever come from it. Always making new fetters for the mind. Such a load, so much strength wasted.

"Vivian was not ashamed," I replied. "She spoke of it to them, I am sure. It is a rare gift, and difficult to explain to ordinary persons, yes. That's why she never told the good citizens of Whiterun. Still, how can there be any shame, if there is nothing shameful done with it? She didn't transform often. She did once for me and Shah'issol, years ago, to show us how it worked, but I don't know if she ever went through the change after that. But she told me more than once that she was proud of being considered worthy of becoming a part of it, proud of the Circle, and proud of having you as her beast-sister. She was never, ever ashamed."

Aela did not reply, but hugged first me and then Shah'issol very tightly. Her eyes were gleaming, and I tried not to notice them, to save her having to think up some excuse about how the wind was causing them to tear up.

"Besides," I continued. "She had no desire to end up with the honored Nord dead in Sovngarde anyway. You have to remember she'd been there, done that, and hadn't been very impressed with the average Nord's idea of bliss eternal." We laughed together.

"She said she could take it or leave it," I continued. "That the people, or the spirits I suppose, were considerate and respectful, but that all they did all day and all night was sit around feasting and boasting about battles that were long fought and done. She told us that it was like being trapped in a snowbound mountain inn full of nostalgic old soldiers trying to forget that the world had passed them by. And that the architecture was tacky, the great hall like something a back-country Jarl might build if Sanguine or Sheogorath got him drunk and traded him a new silver mine or two in exchange for every trace of his good taste."

Aela and the two others were helpless with amusement at the picture, and even Shah'issol began to giggle. We lived among Nords, for the most part, and it would have been tasteless to poke fun at them constantly, but the temptation to do so once in a while has always been hard to resist.

"Will she hunt with us over Hircine's fields, I wonder," Aela said when she finally managed to stop laughing. "Or do the gods and Daedric Princes perhaps have other plans for her spirit?"

"Who can tell? But I'm certain she'd rather be out hunting than eat and drink and trade stale gossip all day. She talked about it a bit at the end, but everything happened so quickly..." I looked out over Skyrim as twilight slowly enveloped it, running my eyes down the slopes that Vivian had coursed like a ghost on the prowl for year after year, and again, remembered.

She had always dreaded a sudden collapse of her health, not that her fear had ever slowed her down. Dragonborn was a fate that shaped her life into a larger mold than her slightly built frame could easily endure. The soul of an immortal dov and the body of a mortal human were uneasy bedfellows at the best of times, and on top of that there was her beast blood, a heady mix, but wearing, a constant siren call to challenge the limitations of her humanity. As a Breton born and bred, she was well equipped to stand up to the strain of spellcasting and spell-turning, but she had always fought as much with sword and dagger and bow as with magic. Her battle lust would have put an orc to shame, but her lovely slender body had all too little of the tough muscle and bone that an orc is heir to by nature. Years before, a fellow Breton, a mage of the Restoration school, had told me she couldn't expect five years' longer lease on life if she kept on at the pace she was setting. She would burn out. She beat that prediction by more than three decades, but in the end, the mage's fears came true.

It wasn't just battle. Her impatience had made the relative peace of the past two decades almost as perilous as war for her. It took her over mountains rather than around them; I lost count of the scars she had from falls, except that there were always new ones for me to discover in the lamplight after she had staggered home from some encounter, happy at getting the job done but always so worn, so weary, as soon as the door closed and there was no longer a need to put on a show of cheerful invincibility for the eyes of others. She would collapse on the bed with scarcely enough strength to help me get her armour off; by the end of the process, she would be asleep and I would be left to hold her all night, restless in the dark, kept from joining her in sleep by the knowledge there might be a day when she did not come home at all.

It didn't happen that way in the end, praise Zenithar. The mercy of the gods gave us a chance to say good-bye. Had the whole sad journey to this snowy slope really commenced only less than two weeks ago?

Vivian had returned from Riften, a peaceful trip for once, "Thane pain again" as she flippantly labeled it, attending in her local official capacity the installation of a new Jarl to replace his predecessor, who had died of natural causes late the previous year. And Riften was always special; it had been where we had gotten married, so long ago. I suggested going with her, but my business made it hard for me to leave on short notice. She promised me a trip later in the year, when we could enjoy ourselves free of stultifying court ceremonial. In all our years, I think that was the only promise she ever made to me that will never be kept.

She came back from Riften unnaturally bright of eye, restless, with a slight fever. At first, I put it down to the dankness of that waterlogged excuse for a metropolis and the unhealthy surroundings in which some of her friends there lived. The former head of the Thieves Guild was not going to escape drinking a few rounds in the Ragged Flagon on a visit to town, but even a water-breathing Argonian like myself could be put off by the damp on that tavern's walls. Between the new Jarl and her old gang, I wonder if she slept at all during the trip.

Such passing fevers were common enough. She dismissed it with a wave of her hand, and I told myself not to worry. But later that night I woke with her burning and shivering next to me. I sent urgently for the court leech, to whose services she had a right in her capacity as Thane of Whiterun; his craft reduced her fever for a time, but she still seemed to waste away, almost by the moment. I drew him aside and he said nothing, only shaking his head, grim-faced.

At dawn, Vivian woke again, calm but... how can I describe it? speaking from a distance already, as if a decision had been made somewhere and it remained only to implement the details.

"Shahvee, love... I need to go to Dragonsreach to summon Odahviing. Go ask leave of the Jarl for me, please... I've discussed this with the Jarl before, he won't ask too many questions. No need to oil the chains this time." She smiled briefly in wan amusement. "The people will talk, but it can't be helped. And at least after Dragon's Peace, no one will try to take a shot at Odahviing, I hope."

Dragon's Peace, what the people called it; to the court scribes, the Compact of the Children of Akatosh. Her proudest achievement, she always told me, the treaty that saved the dov from a slow, squalid grinding down and the mortal races from constant attack by drawing a line between their realms that neither has since crossed. Nearly twenty years ago, the end of her longest war.

"If they remember me for anything," she told me the night the treaty was concluded, "let it be this. For this peace, not victory in battle. Let the Ten Races be One once more, as they always should have been, and the dov take their true place as kin and friend of man and mer, not their eternal foes. There is world enough to hold all."

"Mother?"

"Yes? Oh..." I had drifted off again. Aela gave me an indulgent smile, and turned to Shah'issol.

"You will have to forgive us older people. The haunted forest of memory has as strong a call as any earthly hunting ground."

Shah'issol bowed to Aela and the two others, formally. "For my family and myself, I thank you for your aid. May your journey back be safe and swift." Then she addressed herself more specifically to Aela, "I will carefully reflect on what you have said, Companion, and when our mourning period has passed, we will speak of it again." Aela nodded, her face serious.

Now what was that all about, I wondered. But the Companions were already gone, loping down into the blowing snow and gathering gloom, and Shah'issol was scrambling up the slope to read the last of the inscribed plaques that had appeared at stages along the route. I walked up to where she knelt in the snow puzzling out the old-fashioned writing.

She turned as I approached, and blinked, puzzled. "It says that the Greybeards taught the Dragonborn, Tiber Septim, the Voice and he became Emperor. Guess they'd gotten a lot less ambitious by the time Mom got up here."

"Well, there was an emperor when she came here," I replied. "Position filled."

"By a Thalmor puppet," Shah'issol snapped. "Who was later terminated under mysterious circumstances, and replaced by someone even more inclined to accommodation. The throne might as well be empty. Then and now."

Even without a blood link, our daughter has somehow managed to inherit Vivian's drive and intensity as well as, thank goodness, my business sense. I shrugged and changed the topic.

"What was that with Aela? Have you contracted with the Companions to supply something?"

Shah'issol hesitated a moment before answering.

"She's... they've asked me to join them. As a member. A fighter. Not a merchant."

I began walking up the path to the temple stairs again. Shah'issol called after me.

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think you are completely out of your mind," I replied, too numb and frightened to be diplomatic. "You're not a fighter. Unless you've taken to bashing people over the head with your abacus, or sandbagging them with sacks of gold."

"Oh mother, mother... you have to get out more. Don't you talk with the people you trade with? Skyrim's been more or less at peace for years, but the rest of the Empire is a snake pit. Even Black Marsh isn't safe for me any more, and other places are much worse. I've killed three people since I left home on my last trip... and all three of them would have killed me if I hadn't. It's coming apart again, getting closer and closer to our borders. And now there's one less holding off the darkness here." Shah'issol reached out to me to stroke the rim of the urn I was carrying. "I have to do something, or we're going to lose everything she lived for. The Companions are as good a place to start as any. Besides, they asked me. And I've gotten pretty good with a dagger and a short sword. If you ever find yourself in Oblivion, you can ask the last fellow who tried to rob me."

"A good place to start? What do you mean?"

Shah'issol trudged on, looking stubbornly ahead, to the dark iron doors of High Hrothgar.

"Well, I don't know if I am cut out for it, do I? Not yet. But even if I'm not a good fighter, I can still help keep the Companions solvent. They told me they need someone they can trust with their secrets who can also count."

"And if you are cut out for it?"

"Well..." Shah'issol paused for a moment in her climb up the final flight of steps. "Let's talk later tonight. Too much to get into on such an important doorstep."

She pushed the doors open, holding them for me, and we entered.

-o-o-o-

"You must remember that for the dov, mortality is the one concept they cannot comprehend. They were saddened by the news of your bereavement, to be sure, but also stunned, you might even say terrified. She was the Dragonborn, who had begun her career by bringing death eternal to so many of them, and had then crafted the accord by which the survivors have been confirmed in life unending. Alduin's bane become the savior of the dov: death in the left hand, life in the right: it was an irony that never ceased to intrigue, even obsess them. When they heard the Dragonborn herself had fallen to that which she had preserved them from...you can imagine their confusion and pain, on top of the grief and loss all of us shared. She summoned Odahviing a few days before the end, as you know, and flew here one last time to say farewell; Master Paarthurnax sensed her coming, and sent for me to climb to the peak, the Throat of the World, to spare her the trip down..."

Arngeir slowly shook his head. There was something there, I could see, that was too much for him, a final mystery. Why had she spent her last strength in such a tiring journey? Simply out of concern for what her passing might mean to her dov kin? But how had the trip helped?

"What did she say to you?" It felt too much like an intrusion, but I had to ask. Arngeir's response was mild enough, though.

"Not much, though what she did say was a comfort to hear. She thanked us for her early guidance, in turning her from the ways of unthinking violence, and our help in negotiating the truce between the Imperial Legion and the Stormcloaks so that the threat from the World-Eater could be met with success. And, of course, much later, for our assistance with the Covenant of the Children of Akatosh. But we merely hosted the meetings; the Covenant itself was nearly all her work."

Stroking his beard, more white than grey now, Arngeir shook his head.

"Apart from that, she told me that you would bring her ashes here to be scattered over Skyrim, and asked me to advise you and your daughter, but about what, she would or could not tell us. If the time came, I would know, was all that she said. She and Master Paarthurnax talked for a long time, but I know nothing of what they might have said. Ever since she left, he has been silent."

We sat in our own silence for a long while. Perhaps, I thought, everything that could now be said had been, and it was time to sleep.

But Shah'issol had a last question.

"Will she return to Skyrim, to Tamriel? Or is she gone forever to all but memory?"

It was a bold question, in a bold tone. A tone that brought a wave of sadness with it, because of the mark it bore, the tone of my love lost to me. It was Vivian's voice from my daughter's throat; my dear one would have skirted disrespect by just as narrow a margin. And it was a tone that told me the worry-sick nights and anxious days would be there for me again in the future, only this time for a beloved daughter rather than for a partner and a lover.

Arngeir was silent for a moment. Finally he said, "Most returns are less than happy, you know that well. A punishment or curse, as with the leaders of the Dragon Priests that your mother killed to a man."

"They served evil. Do the good come back?"

Rising, Arngeir shook his head doubtfully.

"I do not know. That knowledge is not part of the Way of the Voice. But if such a return were to depend upon desire, passion, focus... and impudence, something your mother certainly had no lack of..." He smiled, "...perhaps we have not heard the last of her. Or if not her in person, at least the her that she left for us in you." Another smile. "The morning comes soon and the dov are early risers. Let us go to our rest now."

-o-o-o-

Our quarters were cozy, but like the rest of High Hrothgar, night-dark. The building seemed to cling to its grim slate-grey as self-assertion in the face of the brilliant white snow that surrounded it on all sides. It was a deep, stubborn dark, soaked into the walls and ceiling, impervious, almost brooding.

We dressed for our night's rest, and with a mother's reflex I began to tidy our day clothes and ready them for tomorrow: not really necessary, as Shah'issol pointed out in an amused voice, but a comforting ritual to calm toward sleep after the stresses of the day. When I came to Shah'issol's sword belt, though, I hesitated and then slowly drew her dagger half out of its scabbard. I knew that blade from somewhere...

Yes. I couldn't take my eyes from it for a long moment. Mehrunes' Razor, one of Vivian's favourite weapons, reforged before her eyes by the Lord's power and used as soon as whole again to stab the man who had first set her onto its track, condemning his soul to Oblivion. Stabbed at Mehrunes Dagon's express command, though the poor fool had made it easier for her by trying to strike her down first.

"What are you thinking?" I whispered, my voice hoarse with fear. "This belongs to the Lord of Destruction, not to any mortal. You can't just lug it around like some pretty blade you buy at an armourer's stall. These things aren't owned, they're lent."

"I know," Shah'issol replied. She reached out, slid the blade out of its scabbard, and tossed it up in a glittering arc, catching it again as it fell back and resheathing it in a single deft, seamless motion. When had she learned to move her hands so fast and so sure? "Mom took me to Dagon's shrine just before I began my last trip, when we realized how dangerous it's getting out there. We asked Lord Dagon's leave for me to carry his weapon, and he granted it. In fact, Lord Dagon was in such a merry mood that he made his dagger twice as deadly."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Shah'issol dropped her gaze to the floor.

"Mom was afraid you would be worried," she finally replied, in a soft voice. "She always felt she'd been unfair to you, dumping all her pain and grief into your lap again and again and expecting you to take it all and make things right again. When the path of my life began to bend toward the roads she had taken..."

I began to cry. The limitless unfairness of it all...the Dragonborn curse outliving its first victim and catching another generation in its claws. Never satisfied. Always another task, and another, never ever ever ending. Why not someone else?

"No, no," I sobbed, interrupting my daughter, who responded by taking me into her arms and holding me gently. "You can't. You aren't Dragonborn. You aren't the one that they fear," I said, imitating the pretentious tones of long-dead Esbern, so often lightly mocked by my dear love when we had had time to relax in the evening and she had told humorous stories of the strange variety of men and mer she had encountered.

Shah'issol brushed away my tears and put her hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes.

"Yeah, I'm not Dragonborn. Must be just my dumb luck that there's no need to kill dragons any more, I guess. And I know I'm not the one that they fear. Not yet, anyway. But maybe I'm one of the ones that they will fear."

She gripped my shoulders tightly.

"They have to fear someone, mother. That's the price that has to be paid for our peace. At least until a real emperor takes the throne again. Until that happens, we're on our own. I'm not looking for adventure but I'm not going to stand by and watch everything that you and Mom lived and suffered for burn in some bandit's fire. I'll see them burn first, even if it means binding myself to all of the Nine Divines and a baker's dozen of Daedric Princes into the bargain. To Oblivion and back!" and I recognized the line from another of my dear love's old tales, one that had featured a puffed-up guardsman who had shouted that slogan but turned tail and run at the first sign of danger. "Yeah, a lot of people say it. The difference is that I mean it. If that's what it takes."

We sat down on our beds, facing each other, holding hands.

"There's a bit more," Shah'issol said. "Nothing very bad, I promise."

"Yesterday evening," she began, softly as if speaking half to herself, "I was going through the armour and I came upon Mom's Nightingale set. I didn't put it on or anything, just got out the map and made a mental note that I'd have to get it back to Nocturnal's shrine some time - though the Lady of Darkness doesn't have a priesthood and so I'm not sure what I would do with it there. Hope to locate another Nightingale, I suppose."

She drew a deep breath. "Well...the Lady came to me in my dreams. I would have thought she was angry, but I remembered Mom saying she's always like that. She scolded me, told me that I seemed to be in an awful hurry to get rid of her armour. I apologized and told her I was just trying to behave with the proper respect, but I should have known...that just made her angrier. 'I'll decide what you do with my gear,' she snapped at me. 'And you'll be wearing it quickly enough if I need you for something, so you might as well get some practice with it. Your mother never let me down, and you won't either, if you know what's good for you.'"

"But Nightingale isn't hereditary," I said. "It's more like a Thieves Guild rank or offshoot, their equivalent to the Circle for the Companions."

"You know, I considered pointing that out, mother. But I don't think the Lady would have been very pleased if I had. And trust me, you don't want to be arguing with Nocturnal. Even in a dream. Especially in a dream."

We both laughed, and then Shah'issol suddenly yawned enormously.

"By all the gods, I hope no dreams tonight. I need my beauty sleep."

I swung my legs and tail up onto the bed and snuggled down. So many memories in such an everyday motion... "Not behind these walls, I think. Probably why they're so massive, to make sure all outside stays outside." No answer. She was already asleep.

-o-o-o-

Perhaps nothing could come in from outside. But I carried enough with me, good as well as bad. Tomorrow would be the end of our journey together, at least in the daylight world of touch and taste and smell and sight, and so the night before, naturally enough, I went back in dreams to when it had all begun.

I remember the weather. Clear and very, very cold. The hides were frozen and dressing them on the tanning rack was all but impossible. No other work to do that day, though; it was the dead of winter and no ships had come in for three days, thus no loading or unloading.

I've always tried to put the best face I could on things. Usually that isn't too much of a challenge. Even back then, every time something came floating along face-down in the river, it reminded us all that there were a lot of people worse off than dock workers. Except that we had to retrieve the body if it got stuck by the docks or grounded near the city wall. One more job that our Nord neighbours found to be beneath them.

And to add insult to injury, if the body was a Nord, they would let it into the city, but they wouldn't let a live Argonian past the gates, let alone a dead one. Or a Khajiit, for that matter. No "beast people" allowed.

Still, we were used to that. As Neetrenaza used to say, "The Nords don't appreciate us, but so what? I don't appreciate them right back." We worked for too long for too little, but living was cheap in our dingy bunkhouse with the grand name, the Argonian Assemblage, and all of us were managing to put a bit away every month, not always with the full knowledge of our employers. Crumbs. But even crumbs accumulate if you gather them carefully.

What had me down, a little bit...more than a little bit if I let it...was how exposed and vulnerable we were out here on the dock. The guards stuck near to the ships, and the thieves who sometimes visited in the dusk or when the dry snow was blown up in great clouds by the wind knew it. They wouldn't be pursued, and on top of that the guards on the docks had only swords and maces, not bows. Snatch and run was low-risk practice for apprentice thieves. And so one of them had grabbed my amulet of Zenithar from the table where I had left it for a moment when I had had to change into rough clothes to go into the water to help clear a half-rotted troll carcass from the landward end of the dock. The guards, the same ones who had insisted on us dealing with the dead troll at once when it might have drifted on down stream by itself if they had been patient, didn't see the thief coming and didn't pursue him when he ran off. After all, he hadn't taken any Company property.

I was...well, devastated to find the amulet gone. It wasn't just what it had cost me, though that was quite a bit in my limited circumstances at the time. It was the... how could I put it?...the insult to my hope of becoming something more one day than a petty thief or a dock worker. Zenithar is the god of honest effort and rewards gained through hard work: everything that I had finally decided I wanted for my future. I felt as if I had lost my future. Ironic, isn't it? I had lost my future, for someone else to find and return to me, and with far from the consequences I feared at that time.

I cried myself to sleep that night and a few nights after. The others were good to me. It helped, a lot. We've always stuck together like that. And we were all in the same boat, so to speak: all of us four steps forward, three steps back. The evening of the fourth day, I was still sad but beginning to accept...and wondering if I dared calculate how long it would take to get another amulet at the miserable rates we were paid... when Scouts-Many-Marshes came through the door and sat down. He kept shaking his head and muttering something to himself, and I felt a stab of panic. Had he been robbed as well?

I jumped up from my bunk, rushed to the table, and took the seat across from him. He stared at me for a moment and shook his head again. I felt strange: I could see that he wasn't angry, at least. What had happened?

"Did you walk into a swinging boom or something?" I said. "You look as if someone hit you over the head with a hammer."

All he said in reply was, "That would not have been a surprise. This was."

"WHAT surprise?" I was beginning to get annoyed.

Scouts-Many-Marshes didn't answer at once. Instead, he produced a coin purse and dropped it onto the surface of the table.

We both stared at it for a moment. Then Scouts-Many-Marshes said, "Shatter-Shield raised our wages. To what he pays his Nords. Nearly."

"How..." It was my turn to be stunned. Thorsten Skin-Flint had had a change of heart?

"Do you remember that Breton woman who I was talking to down on the docks, oh, a week ago? The one who was doing some job for the East Empire Company?"

"I don't, actually..."

"Oh." Scouts-Many-Marshes blinked. "I thought she talked to you too. Anyway, she caught me in a bad mood and I went on and on to her about the cheap old bastard and the semi-slave wages he was paying and she said, 'Do you want me to have a word with him for you?' And of course I said yes, and of course I expected... nothing. Though I did wonder why she even bothered to offer."

Another blink. "And she did it. She came back this morning and told me the matter was settled. And it was. When I went to pick up our week's wages. He was there himself. He even apologized, said he had not paid proper attention to our complaints because of his grief at his daughter's murder... First I heard of that. Lose a child, to violence, horrible. But he's never paid us properly, you know that as well as I do, it's not just recently. The excuse of his grief saves face for him, I suppose."

"I suppose. Let him pretend whatever brings him a little peace now." Pointless, meaningless death all around us. I'd never met Thorsten's daughter, but it was still too close for comfort.

Before I went to sleep, I calculated how long it would be before I could buy a new amulet of Zenithar after our raise. Eleven weeks. I hadn't even bothered to complete the calculation before; it would have been too depressing. Eleven weeks was not too long, I thought. Long enough for my whole life to change, I should have known that.

A day two weeks later, more or less. I was happy again, without the dubious comfort of reminding myself how badly things went for others; happy at a little more coin and a sunny day, hides that were unfrozen and mostly free from flaws, and the subtle change that had come over the atmosphere on the docks now that there was no reason for things to get "lost" quite as often as before. Nine weeks to a new amulet, though it might be longer than that actually finding one from the Khajiit or the other traders who bothered with us in our position outside the city wall. Happy that even though I had lost His amulet, Zenithar seemed to have answered my prayers and given us at least a little more for all our efforts.

They'd caught the murderer of Thorsten's daughter as well. The guards said that it had been the Breton woman who had nosed him out. Some of the guards called her the Dragonborn, though what that strange phrase meant I had no idea at the time; others referred to her by a title, Thane of Whiterun. She took him down just as he was about to kill another young woman, they said, nodding in appreciation.

It turned out that the murderer had been crazed by the death of his own beloved sister and had gone deep into necromancy, building her anew from the blood and bones of his victims, trying to force her spirit back from the Void. I shook my head. Grief breeding grief, death producing death. And unless someone takes a stand, it just goes on forever.

The better-quality hides that day were a temptation to take more care than required over the product. I was holding the tanning knife with a light grip, experimenting to see how smooth a surface I could produce, and so when I did run into a flaw, a healed scar in the leather, the knife slipped clean out of my hands and went clattering along the stone surface of the dock.

Too cheerful to be seriously annoyed - though it was an embarrassing thing to do in front of everyone - I turned to chase down my errant blade only to find it being handed to me.

I couldn't see her face at first, since she was wearing one of those impassive Dragon Priest hooded masks that covers the entire head, with only slits for eyes. The rest of her was leather and straps: Thieves Guild armour that I recognized from my days as a rogue. But her hands were bare. Slender hands more fit for an artist than a fighter, long fingers that I reflexively identified with picking pockets and locks. And ghost-pale skin, almost translucent, scarred in several places with marks that deepened the paleness like gouts of wax from a glowing white candle in a temple.

"Here. I think you dropped this." Her voice was soft but a bit hoarse. And tired, perhaps? I reached to take the knife from her and she quickly turned it so that I could grasp the handle easily.

"Thank you very much. It was a silly thing for me to lose my grip on it like that. You can see I'd never make a warrior."

She reached up and pulled off the mask, shaking her long black hair free. Her face was as pale and finely drawn as her hands, and her eyes were a deep blue, startling in its intensity. She smiled shyly, almost like a child at a first introduction.

"Oh, I lose my sword all the time," she confessed. "A lot of the stronger draugr can shout it right out of your hands. That's why I like to summon a sword or bow instead. They can shout all day and it won't do a bit of good with those." She grinned impishly. "And they look so...offended when they give you their best shot and you come right back at them and bash them over the head with the sword you're not supposed to have any longer. It's worth the trouble of fiddling with the spell."

I shook my head. "I can't imagine it. I'm sure I'd die of fright. The only undead I've ever seen were a few skeletons wandering near some old tomb up in the hills, and I got away from them as fast as my feet could carry me." I shuddered at the memory. They'd actually been one of the main reasons I'd reconsidered my future as a thief and grave-robber, and decided honesty was the safest policy after all.

"Goes with the job," she said, and shrugged. "Right now killing them off isn't the main thing. I just take out the ones who get in the way. Maybe later there'll be time for a clean sweep."

She pulled up a stool and sat down beside me.

"I'm being rude. Never even introduced myself. Name's Vivian. Also known as Thane of Whiterun, Thane of Riften, Thane of Dawnstar, and maybe one or two others by now. I tend to lose track... Not bad for a nice country girl who first crossed the border with no more ambitious idea than borrowing a horse or two and riding like hell back to High Rock." She paused a moment, then went on with a touch more sarcasm, "Oh, and let's not forget Dragonborn. Big fat cherry on the top of the sweet roll, that one is. My crowning achievement, and I didn't do a damned thing to earn it."

"I wondered at that," I replied. "What does it mean, anyway?"

"Means that if I whack 'em, they stay down. Otherwise damned dragons are like fetches from Oblivion. Kill them as dead as you want here, but they'll come back sooner or later, probably sooner, large as life and twice as pissed off. I take their souls as well as their bodies. My one real talent, inherited, inborn... whatever. The rest is just spell-books and swords...and luck."

"Luck..." I repeated, and shook my head.

"You people don't exactly have a surplus of it here, do you?" She hesitated. "I'm glad I was able to do something about the pay anyway."

"Thank you for your help. We have not fared well outside our native Black Marsh, but still..." I reached out without thinking and touched her arm, "there are good people everywhere."

Instead of flinching, the way so many humans do when we touch them, she brought her other hand across and ran her fingertips over the back of my hand. It felt good.

"That's such a pretty green," she said softly. "Like an emerald. Emeralds are my favorite gemstone, but they're hard to find."

I drew my hand back and we sat there in silence for a moment, neither of us moving. I think I was a bit stunned. Of all the words an Argonian expects to hear from human lips, "pretty" must be close to dead last on the list. Vivian seemed a bit embarrassed as well, but she continued to smile.

Finally she said, "Scouts-Many-Marshes told me someone stole an amulet from you a little while back. That you were crying for days. We can't just let that pass."

I was surprised, not by the fact that he would tell her - obviously he hoped she could do something about this problem the way she had about the earlier one - but by the tone of her last few words. Sad, and...resolved. As if she was bound to avenge my grief. Later on, of course, I would see this again and again, with all manner of people from Jarls on their thrones to children met by chance at the side of the road. Taking up the causes of others because she could not endure hearing of a wrong and not acting, as if the salvation of the world and the honour of the gods was hers and hers alone to accomplish and affirm. Impractical, ridiculous even, but in the end she set so many things right by her stubbornness. And perhaps shortened her own life, not that she ever counted that cost.

I never had any choice about loving her. Not that I knew the future clearly at our first meeting. Or could express what I felt, even to myself. I just looked away shyly and said, "If you find it anywhere... And you know, your eyes are pretty as well. Like sapphires."

When I brought my eyes back to her face, a bit afraid of how forward I had been, she was wearing an enormous happy smile, like a child with a new toy. She tossed her hair back and looked directly at me again.

"We're a regular jewellery shop then, aren't we? Hold that thought. I like it."

From across the river, a long, dull roar. I jumped up and strained to see into the distance, fighting back panic. The guards were pointing and peering as well; two or three men came out of the East Empire Company offices, hurriedly stringing bows and readying arrows. But the snow was blowing in huge white clouds on the opposite bank, and none of us could see clearly where the sound had come from.

One of the guards came running up to her and blurted out the question that was in everyone's mind, "Is it a dragon?"

Vivian turned to me and smiled again, this time a bit ruefully, I thought.

"They're playing my song. Damn. But I'll be back. I think I know where your amulet might have ended up." She reached up and pulled the metal dragon priest mask over her own face again, and turned to speak to the guard. Her voice was crisp, professional.

"I don't think it will be crazy enough to fly right up to the city walls, but if it does, get everyone under cover and fight it with archers from the battlements. You're sitting ducks on this dock, and there isn't really room for it to land so your swords and maces are going to be useless. It's probably just teasing, but I'll go over there and take a look anyway."

She glanced back at me one last time. Not knowing what else to say, I settled on the hopelessly banal "I enjoyed our talk." But it was true.

"I did too. We'll talk again. Oh well...bath time, I guess..."

What she meant by those last few words became immediately clear as she ran down the dock and dove cleanly off into the icy water. The guard stared open-mouthed after her. A second guard came up.

"They say she's always like this, Talos preserve her. She goes everywhere at a run. Even into the mouth of a dragon. We're lucky to have her."

The first guard grunted. "I don't envy her husband, though. Imagine trying to keep up with her." Typical Nords, I thought. The men always trying to be better than everyone else, especially their women.

On the opposite bank, we could see her haul herself out and shake herself like a dog to shed some of the water before it froze. Then, with a last wave, she was running off into the billowing whiteness.

I sat and watched the opposite bank for hours, until it darkened into evening, but she didn't return. I knew she would be back soon, but I really wanted to know when. I wanted her to call me pretty again.

-o-o-o-

"Mother!"

I sat up. Grey dawn was here, as was Shah'issol with a tray, two steaming mugs and some food. She put the tray down on a low table and sat on my bed,

"Arngeir says no rush. You can even nap a few hours more if you want. The dov are still settling some questions of precedence. He's a bit put off with them, I think. Ever a race that loved to dispute was the way he put it. But they should be ready by early afternoon."

"How many of them have come?"

"All that still live, Arngeir says. More than forty. There hasn't been anything like it since the Covenant was concluded. That's part of the problem. Figuring out who does what when. None of them wants to be last."

Shah'issol paused in thought.

"I asked Mom once why she hadn't finished the job," she began. "Why she hadn't just killed them all. She'd ended the lives of more than half, after all. I can see why she would spare Paarthurnax and Odahviing, but the others... All they'd done was eat cattle and attack villagers. By the end they were just helpless, she could kill them with one hand tied behind her back. And the Blades were always at her to make a clean sweep, even to kill Paarthurnax. I asked her...she just said it would have been wrong and wouldn't discuss it further. I was going to ask again some time later but..." Her voice trailed off.

"Vivian, my dearest love, your parent...she killed a lot of men, mer, creatures of all kinds. Sent them back, or away. You know that. You know, too, I think, that killing never gave her pleasure," I began. "You saw how she was after some great 'victory.' It frightened you sometimes, when you were young, to see my love, your mom, exhausted and hurt and crying. Do you remember? I would hold her, when you were very small, and you would climb up and snuggle into her arms and she would hold us both and then she would stop crying. Only then."

Shah'issol nodded. I don't think she trusted her voice.

"She told me once," I continued, "that she would never be Death's thrall. That Death was her servant, one whom she would dismiss forever if she could, one day. And so the Covenant. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. They all said it would be impossible... even Arngeir...but she made it happen. Part payment for some of the things she had done in the past, she said once."

Shah'issol nodded.

"She had served Sithis, the Dread Lord, just as she served all the Daedric Princes at one time or another. She was Listener to the Dark Brotherhood as well as head of the Thieves Guild and Nightingale... and even more deadly roles... Looking for knowledge, power, anything that would give her an edge. Never hesitating. Some of that was before our time together, but she told me all of it. Whispering, in the dark. Some things were... hard to understand."

Shah'issol nodded and replied.

"When I went to Dagon's shrine with her... I was frightened of course. I tried not to show it, because Mom really wanted me to have that dagger... she was convinced it would protect me... still, to summon one of the most powerful of the Daedric Princes from Oblivion?" She breathed deeply and paused a moment, thinking back. "And then it was all so... well, everyday when we got there. Though we did have to fight our way onto the platform in front of the shrine."

"What?"

A bit startled by my exclamation, Shah'issol gave a dismissive wave.

"Just a formality, Mom said. Lord Dagon's way of saying hello. Of showing he still cares. He is the Lord of Destruction, after all. He dropped a couple of Dremora Kynval on to us when we got to the top of the last flight of stairs, but Mom shouted both of them off the other side of the platform and sent them tumbling down the mountain. I took one of her bows and filled them full of arrows before they were able to struggle up to our level again, and that was that. And you know how Mom was – even before I'd loosed the last arrow, she was teasing Lord Dagon, telling him that the quality of his servants was sadly declined in these latter days and was no longer anywhere near adequate to properly reflect his majesty. He didn't seem to mind much."

Impudence, Arngeir had called it. He didn't know the half of it, I thought, a bit dazed. For the outside world, from Daedric Prince to penniless beggar, an absolute confidence, unbroken and unqualified, saucy and direct. Which had been the true Vivian, that, or the thin, scarred, trembling form who had so often doubted herself, so often cried herself to sleep in my arms? I closed my eyes and shook my head slowly.

Shah'issol leaned over and kissed me gently on the top of my head, between my eyes, and then stood up.

"I think I'll explore a bit. Interesting place. Who knows when we'll be back? You get a bit more rest. Bet you were dreaming all night anyway. I'll be sure to call you in plenty of time."

I nodded silently, and turned back to my pillow and my memories.

When it had become clear that nothing could be done, Vivian my love had dismissed the healer. The last journey to the Throat of the World had taken nearly all her remaining strength; she had had to be carried back from Dragonsreach the evening she returned, while the people of Whiterun watched silently from the shadows. She sent everyone away, everyone but me, though I could sense the presence of a gathering crowd around the small house that we had come to after marriage and never left for long. She lay in our bed upstairs, holding my hand tightly, never relaxing her grip, a single lamp burning on the night table. Talking constantly, fever-driven, only pausing for me to reassure her that I was indeed listening before beginning again, voice growing fainter as the hours passed, but never halting for long.

First, and longest, came the guilt. All the times when her restlessness and shame told her she could have done better. Or should not have done something at all. Or might have done something that might have had some effect that might have been better or faster or more moral...an endless, echoing hall of mirrors, haunted by images that formed and dissolved in the flickering light of the fever consuming her.

"Boethiath...that braggart in Morthal...forget his name...stupid fool wouldn't let me be, thought he was tougher...had to pick a fight with me...I knocked him off the dock and into the water... second punch...and that just made things worse, he started to follow me around like a dog...said he wanted to serve me..."

My love's voice trailed off. She tried to laugh, but it turned into a long, hacking cough. She raised her hand to cover her mouth, and it came away red with blood. I dabbed numbly at her hand with a damp cloth, but she seized both my hands and held them in a tight grip, trying to find the energy to go on with her story.

"Gods forgive, I laughed inside at the time," she continued. "Oh yes yes yes he could help, there was something he could do for me, and you know...they all say they will be true unto death... death is just a word over mead in an inn late at night when half their mind is on the work at hand and the other half is calculating what the chances are that they can fuck you later on..." She began to laugh again, a thin, wheezing chuckle this time. "Live in hope, die in despair, as they say...I never had a chance to give him the bad news that I just wasn't into guys...he was hugging the sacrificial pillar before that and I was sticking something into him ...turn of fortunes, the biter bit..."

"I should have said no right at the start," she continued, and I knew she was no longer talking about her hapless and short-lived male admirer. "When I was standing there with Boethiath's pathetic followers piled dead all around and she puppeted up one of the corpses to speak with me. To ask for another corpse, a sacrifice. Should have told her to just go away. I didn't even want her stupid poison ebony armour, I never wear heavy armour anyway...Boasted...she did... said the Princes were stronger than the gods...but the gods don't need us, the Princes do. They all needed things from me. Beggars... Couldn't even repair a dagger or fix up a shrine without human help... I was such a whore. Should have sold myself dearer..." and she began to cry again, quietly and hopelessly.

I took her in my arms, wrapped in the blanket, and began to rock her like a child. She was so light now; no effort at all to lift. She continued, the note of terror and despair mounting ever higher.

"I'm afraid, love. They'll be waiting for me. On the other side. All of them. I've performed sacrifices, killed people on altars, worn Namira's ring and sat at her banquet as guest of honour...honour..." She tried to laugh but could only cough a bit. "Honour among thieves ...no, murderers, I served the Night Mother and marked others for death at her call without question...beat a priest to death again and again to earn the mace of Molag Bal, the King of Rape raised him and I killed him again, breaking his bones until he promised his soul and how Molag Bal laughed...I accepted the Ebony Blade... that was meant for your throat...yours..."

This had gone on long enough. I shook my love gently to bring her back from her self-torture and turned her a bit to look her full in the face.

"The Ebony Blade. Still as rusty and decrepit as the day you received it. You never did 'restore' it with the lives of those that trusted you, did you? And the child you released from thralldom to the Dark Lady behind that blood-spattered door is now our Jarl of Whiterun. You see? Don't you see? There were things you would not do."

She didn't answer, only whimpered softly and curled up tighter, burrowing into my arms as if they were an invincible fortress. If only they had been, if only.

I went on, trying to keep my voice calm, objective. Convincing.

"And if those you offended are waiting on the other side, who else is there? How many did you save, how many avenge, how many bring to some sort of final peace? How many dying men and ghosts were there whose last words were to thank you or call down a blessing on your head? You paused one war between men, and ended another between men and the dov. How many were spared death by that last action alone? You cannot sum your account by ignoring all but the red ink. Those who loved you..." My voice began to break in spite of all my efforts to keep it steady. "We will be heard. No matter what it takes. We will be heard."

She shook her head stubbornly. Like a child, I thought. Convinced in spite of all that punishment must come.

I held her without speaking for a long while, watching the flickering shadows on the walls and ceiling. Then I remembered.

"Helgi will not have forgotten you. She'll want to play hide and seek again. And if anyone presumes to judge, they will have her to answer to."

Vivian my love stirred slightly, turning to nuzzle at my breast. In a sleepy voice she replied,

"Helgi? Oh...Morthal again. The little girl who died in the fire, the one the vampires were after. I remember...her ghost. I sorted out some things for her. She thanked me. And then she was gone."

"She thanked you for bringing peace to her and her mother. You released them to go on their journey, you did what no one else could do. And now she is already there, where you go. Do you think she has forgotten? Do you think her mother has forgotten? The dead remember good as well as evil. If there are debts to pay, you will not face them alone. There will be a host there to stand between you and any threat...not like here. Not like here. I'm so weak here...I can't keep you safe. I can't do anything..."

I wanted so to be brave and comforting, but it all fell to pieces then and I began to cry, uncontrollably, I suddenly felt stupid and useless and defeated. Vivian and Shah'issol were my life; one was far away and the other soon to depart on the journey from which there is no return. It didn't matter how tightly I held my love. She would slip away. Like water through my fingers, like air. I would wake up in the morning and she wouldn't be there, ever again. I did not feel brave and confident any longer. I just cried. Then I felt selfish for indulging my own feelings, but that only made me cry harder.

Vivian stirred against me as I sobbed helplessly, turning, moving her own hands to my shoulders, pulling gently, raising herself up. That's it, I thought, feeling even stupider and more selfish, now she's going to comfort me as if I were doing the dying and she were holding my hand on the journey. This is so important and I'm making such a mess of it...

My self-indulgent misery abruptly vanished as I moaned, as much in shock as anything else. Vivian, crazy horn-mad Vivian, was kissing me along the gill slits, teasing, light and persistent. Damn, she knew me so well. Just the spot... Reflexively, I reached to unhook my top before the lovely absurdity of the situation registered.

"Vivian, love, we can't. It'll kill you. Whatever has gotten into you...has Sanguine been messing with your mind? You're the craziest person I ever met...gods, I love you so much but we shouldn't..."

She shifted slightly, to kiss me under the chin and on my neck, as she whispered.

"Damn, I must be losing my touch...was sure I could get you going before you recovered enough to say no...you think of yourself too little, my sensible, caring, and only love..."

"You're insane."

She giggled, so weak but so merry, and reached up with an effort to brush her hair clear of her face.

"I want to fuck you. Sanest thing in the world. Only sane thing in the world."

She made a face, then continued in a whisper so soft I had to bend a bit to hear, "But I guess you're right. It does seem a bit... deficient in practicality. Darn." She stuck out her tongue at me. "There. You know very well what I'd like to be doing with this. But that will have to be good enough."

She slumped back into my arms, completely relaxed, and closed her eyes again. I suppose I must have tightened my grip in alarm, because she opened them almost immediately and looked toward me again.

"Not tonight, love," she whispered. I knew at once what she was talking about. "Remember when I told you about what the Emperor said when I came to assassinate him... that he knew... it was fate, he could see the hour of his death before it happened. For a long time, I wondered what it must feel like. I think I know now..." She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before continuing. "Tomorrow. Not tonight..." Then she fell silent and seemed to drift off into a light sleep, her shallow breathing scarcely visible in the motions of her chest.

I must have dozed off too, because the next thing I remember was the room dark and the lamp burned out. Vivian was still asleep in front of me, still faintly breathing. I rose to refill the lamp, but she put her hand out to stop me.

"Don't light it again. Not yet. I feel safe in the dark with you here."

I took her hand in both of mine and we sat in silence for a while. Then she began to speak again, haltingly, as if her energy had declined still further.

"I don't know where I'm going... soon... but I dreamed of the Nightingales. Perhaps Nocturnal will have me, or her sister Azura, Lady of Roses, Queen of Dusk and Dawn. They are hard masters, but just, and... I think they understand love. Gallus and Karliah are together again now in the Shadow, and in the years before she passed herself, Karliah often told me that she could feel Gallus with her, that he would come to her unseen, as the shades of Nocturnal's dead servants do, place his hands on hers and guide her. She was always so... happy isn't quite the right word... at peace, serving Nocturnal in this world until she was called away. She told me that... Gallus was always there, not just in memory, but... as a presence. A caring. After we restored the Twilight Sepulcher and the path to Nocturnal's land was clear, she was never alone again."

Vivian snuggled against me, a saucy little wriggle for all her weakness.

"I think you'd like that. My hands on yours? And I think I know just exactly what I'd be doing with them if you got sad or lonely..."

The night passed quickly. We dozed off, and woke again, side by side still. Her path was clear to her now, and clear to me as well. I would take her with me wherever I went. I would never be alone; we would never be apart. She was just a bit ahead of me on the road, the way she had always been, the adventurer running in front and then stopping to wait with an ironic smile on her face. But she would wait for me. She always had. She always would.

When I woke again, it was just before dawn, Azura's hour. A thin light was filtering in from a red sunrise. In the light, I could see Vivian's eyes were still closed but her lips were moving, though I could hear nothing of what she said. She was talking with someone whom I could not see.

At last, her eyes opened again. She seemed to be struggling to say something, so I leaned over to listen closely. Then yelped softly, as she mischievously slipped her tongue into my ear.

"People will think I'm crazy if you haunt me and do things like that," I complained gently.

She replied, her voice now the softest of whispers, "I saw Helgi in my dream. She had all sorts of ideas about how to tease you. You know how little girls are..."

"You didn't get that idea from a little girl."

Vivian giggled soundlessly. "No. Just my incurable raunchiness again. It'll survive death, I'm warning you now."

A brief pause. Then she said, "I think it's time, love. Tell our daughter that I love her too, when she gets back. That I will always be mother to her, just as I will always be lover to you. I wish I could stay until she returns, but...Not that I'm really going anywhere... just to borrow the Companions' forge for an hour or two. My body will make them a nice hot fire. I wonder what my spirit will do to their iron?"

I nodded. It was just another journey after all. She had won her last battle, giving me the strength for that faith.

She curled around to look at my hand, bringing her face close to it, stroking it. "Pretty, pretty," she whispered. "The green, so pretty. I love you. Why would I ever leave you?"

"I love you too. Forever."

She nodded and smiled, closed her eyes, her face against my hand, and passed.

-o-o-o-

Skuldafn. A mountain top, a waterfall and small lake, and a huge, brooding temple, perpetually snowbound, inaccessible except for those who could call wings to their aid. Site of Alduin the World-Eater's portal to Sovngarde, the long home of Norse heroes. Grimly held by unsleeping undead, from skeleton bowmen to Draugr Death Overlords in glittering black armour, wielding enchanted ebony battleaxes. My love Vivian had been here once and once only, while chasing Alduin to his doom. She hadn't enjoyed her stay. I had never expected to set foot there at all.

But now I was unhooking myself from the leather harness the Greybeards had had made, so that I and Shah'issol could ride Odahviing in safety together. She was already off and talking with our mount. I looked at her: so casual, so sure... so like her mom, dear Vivian. I would always be a guest in this high, cold world of divine and demonic powers; somehow, without my noticing, she had become one of its citizens.

"It is a sad occasion, but not one of fear, like the day I came here with your mother. Then it was truly uncertain whether I would see her again, or have to face alone the wrath of the World-Eater. But she never failed us. The dov still cannot fully comprehend she has departed."

"Neither can we," Shah'issol replied. "But perhaps that is because she still lives in us, the example she set and the deeds we do shaped by it. While peace endures between mortals and dov, so long shall her hand guide ours. May its touch never grow light."

Odahviing bowed his huge head briefly. "I will await you here. There is in any case no peril. It is not only the dov that contend to do your mother honor. Those who reside here are to us as night is to day; they serve death, while we are strangers to it. Yet on this day, their need to pay respect seems as profound as ours. Would that we could come together as easily in happier times."

Shah'issol nodded, and turned to me.

"Do you remember Mom telling creepy bedtime stories about this place when I was little? Chasing and being chased by Death Overlords round and round the pillars, up and down the stairs?" she began. "And me being so frightened afterwards that I couldn't sleep in my own bed but had to wriggle up under your covers and between you two before I felt safe enough to close my eyes? Dragons and draugr, darkness and wind and snow. Now look at us..."

I smiled at the wonder in her voice, and at myself, because I felt it too.

"It's sunny today, at any rate," I replied.

Shah'issol looked around.

"Wait here a moment, mother. I need some flowers, and I thought I saw a few down by the edge of the water. I had an idea I might be wanting a wreath at the end here, and I couldn't bring enough materials with me. High Hrothgar isn't exactly in the middle of lush green fields itself."

I found a smooth boulder close by and sat down on the warm stone, with my love Vivian's urn by my side, while Shah'issol scrambled down to the water's edge and began picking blooms. Odahviing appeared to be dozing. I looked up at the dark, deserted battlements, with their grim carved eagle heads, and wondered what would greet us there.

The first I had heard of our unexpected side trip had been yesterday afternoon. Arngeir had come with the news that two of the dov, those who helped guard the portal at Skuldafn, had felt it impossible to leave their post and had requested we come to them instead. He confessed himself mystified, not so much by the request itself as by what it seemed to imply. "They are hinting of something unfinished, Master Paarthurnax says, but they cannot or will not be more specific," he related to us, pacing impatiently up and down. "Only that it requires your personal attention."

"Not a battle, I trust," said Shah'issol, with a wry edge to her tone.

"No, no, no...nothing like that...though I confess I cannot imagine what it might be. But Master Paarthurnax believes it important enough to delay the final ceremonies here a day. With your consent, I have arranged for Odahviing to take you both to Skuldafn this afternoon." He paused a moment, and frowned. "It is a strange place, and I know nothing for certain of how it came to be. What does the mortal world need with a gate through which the living can reach Sovngarde? And then to situate that gate in a place that one needs the wings of a dragon to reach... Alduin used it, but it was not constructed by him, or at his command. I have heard whispers that it was built to serve heresies so old that no one now remembers them, that the draugr there are the last undead remnants of an army once intended to storm the halls of the gods. That would at least explain why those that remain are so formidable, and why the dov have watched at the portal since time immemorial."

"I think..." Shah'issol began, and then suddenly stopped.

"What is it, daughter of the Dragonborn? Words and ideas do not come by accident. Tell us what you heard." Arngeir had stopped pacing about, and his voice was soft and gentle. As if encouraging an infant to take her first steps, I thought.

"Well...Mom went through the portal, but she didn't go back the way she came, did she? Tsun shouted her back when she'd had enough of Sovngarde and wanted to come home. Maybe something at Skuldafn was left unfinished?"

She paused and looked directly at Arngeir, who stood quietly stroking his beard. "And why that title? It is an honour to have such a parent - such parents - " she said, with a look in my direction, "but it brings no special powers or knowledge. I am only a merchant, though I may be other things in the future."

Arngeir nodded, more in acknowledgement than agreement, I felt.

"We shall see. But perhaps we should go to the courtyard and greet Odahviing. Time passes, and I am not sure how long you will need at Skuldafn."

Shah'issol turned to me, excited, eyes bright as a child.

"Come on, Mother! Flying again! This is going to be fun!"

I looked up. Shah'issol had finished her blossom-gathering and was wandering slowly back, weaving a wreath. By the time she reached my side, she had finished.

I looked at her quizzically. "I don't suppose you know where exactly we should be going, do you?"

"Over the bridge and follow our long Argonian noses, I expect," she replied. "Up the steps, through the temple, and to the portal. Should have a better idea of what is going on when we get there. I don't feel...I don't really feel we're going to get lost. Not today."

We walked under the first squat arch and across the bridge to a flight of stairs leading up to the other side, Shah'issol always a little ahead of me, setting a brisk pace. Half-way across the bridge, she pointed up and to the left, "Look, the dragons and the portal." Sure enough, two dragons perched motionless on pillars at the apex of the temple, a glittering pillar fading off into the heavens between them. The streaming light of the portal was much brighter from this angle...or perhaps it was strengthening as we approached? From where I had been sitting, it had scarcely been visible.

The stairs ended at a flat strip of land below the outer walls of Skuldafn proper, ancient pavement slowly yielding to weeds and flowers. To the left, we knew it was a dead end; to the right, it led up more stairs and under another, taller arch to the courtyard in front of the South Tower and the base of the main temple stairs. From the left, there was the distant roar of a waterfall; through the arch, the courtyard stood empty and waiting. Long ago, when Vivian my love had come here alone in darkness, this was where the serious fighting had begun, wave on wave of draugr. Today, there was only bright sunshine and a blue butterfly hovering briefly in the arch before flitting away.

Shah'issol stopped and smiled for a moment at a scene only she could see.

"Do you remember back when I was seven or eight years old, just beginning to understand how dangerous Mom's work was, and we went out on a picnic to the Western Watchtower? Just the two of us and some friends, Bettha, the little Nord girl and her mother the alchemist...the one who lives in Dawnstar now...Mom was away, up north, fighting someone or something. And you were talking about how she had killed her very first dragon there and how difficult it had been without any proper armour or weapons...Bettha and I were very frightened, and she whispered to me that her mother had told her once that blue butterfly wings were used to enchant armour and make it stronger...and so we spent the whole afternoon chasing blue butterflies and caught a lot of them and gave Mom all the wings in an old bowl when she came back..."

"You two made her very happy," I said, remembering. "And she had to replace her armour so often...the wings you gave her probably did save her life, more than once. So many times..." I shook my head, "so many times she returned with her armour slashed through and just a little more yielding and she would have lost an arm or a leg."

"It's hard to believe there was ever any fighting here," Shah'issol replied, scanning the temple walls and the mountain peaks behind them. "This place is so away from everything. Or maybe Mom did manage to kill them all. Maybe we're just here to lock the doors and put out the lanterns."

"A better guess than you might think, Daughter of the Dragonborn, an excellent guess. Though some of us do remain. You have something, more than a little, of your esteemed parent. The influence shows, indeed, impossible to mistake."

It was a soft, dry hiss of a voice, a bit hesitant, a voice more used to threats and challenges making tentative steps onto less adversarial territory, a voice that reached out not quite sure of its reception or effect. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, from inside our heads.

Vivian had described the Dragon Priests, even the lesser ones, unmasked, as being uncannily fluid in their progression, floating with the aid of magic, flicking and sliding about, rather than clumping along step by heavy step as did even the most formidable Overlords. It was one of them, indeed, moving swiftly and effortlessly... even gracefully... around from our left to position itself before us. Ancient dry limbs and features, scaled iron armor, and black robes that moved a bit by themselves even when the figure was at rest, like cobwebs above an oven.

Shah'issol, who was still a step or two ahead of me, gave a quick glance back to me. She whispered, "Not armed," intending it as reassurance, no doubt, but it wasn't necessary. The cool shape of Vivian's urn in my hands was guarantee enough of our safety.

The priest hovered, waiting for us in the centre of the lower courtyard, silent. As we approached, side by side, it greeted us with a low, formal bow, and began to speak again in its eerie, omnipresent whisper.

"We who have been here since before the beginning, and now remain beyond the end, we greet you, kin of our sometime foe who preserved in life our lords and kin, and removed from us the occasion for conflict between the Ten Races and those allegiant to the dov. In the years since the Covenant, the last that still remains of the ancient Dragon host, those who pledged their loyalty to death and beyond, service eternal as the succession of night and day, have gathered here, leaving the ancient tombs and halls across the length and breadth of Tamriel to spiders and dust, awaiting the final call. With the passing of the Dragonborn, our own way is shown clear to the end of what began four thousand and more years ago."

"To the portal, then," Shah'issol replied, her voice low but steady.

The hovering form bowed again, silently, and then turned to lead us onward, up the broad stone staircase that gave access to the temple proper. There were two broad flights; our host led us up the one to the right, and then on a path slanting first left, and then left again, and then right, avoiding places where the towers or arches had collapsed under the weight of endless winters. Everything was empty, silent except for the whistle of the wind through the stone, palpably uneasy under the bright sunlight: it was a place made not for day but for darkness.

We reached a massive black iron door that I recognized from Vivian's descriptions. Our guide paused at the entrance to allow us to catch up and catch our breath, an inconvenient physical necessity that I suspected it was long past needing to attend to. Pausing at the door, I turned momentarily to look back, only to find that we had been followed.

It was a host, hundreds if not more, moving in perfect silence and ranks as straight as the shattered condition of the stairs and courtyards allowed. Those in the forefront shone glittering black, angular and formidable, Draugr Deathlords and Death Overlords; behind them were others that I guessed were lesser draugr; to the rear were files of skeletal infantry. Shah'issol turned as she heard my involuntary gasp, and her cooler head saw what I had at first overlooked.

"None of them that I can see have any weapons, mother," she said, and nodded, turning to our guide. "The host of which you spoke, no doubt, priest."

"Indeed," the soft answer came. "All are here, the call for which they have waited for so long. And they have brought no weapons, because the time for sword and bow and battleaxe is at last behind us."

I nodded, still a bit numb, thinking thank the gods for Shah'issol, for this was not my world and would never be. She was on my love Vivian's path now, heir to her position if not to her powers. Or at least not all of her powers.

The priest opened the huge iron doors for us, and we entered Skuldafn Temple.

Inside now, warm, stale, and dusty, but not as dark as I had expected. There were candles and torches everywhere, the flames standing up straight in the still air. Our host led us on, past altars and tables, pillars and puzzle locks, spider-webbed passages, and dim blue-misted catacombs, sometimes pausing to silently indicate the trigger for a trap that we had to avoid. The black sarcophagi had each a silent draugr within them, awake but unmoving. Apart from our own footsteps, the only sounds were the faint, nagging whining of the outside wind, carried to us down shafts who knows how long, and the almost imperceptible crackle of the flames from torches and braziers.

Our journey seemed endless, though the ever-repeating series of traps and obstacles would have made fast passage difficult in any case. A room with another puzzle lock, left open ever since my love Vivian's hands had been on the lever, led to still more passages that curled in on themselves, first crossing the floor of a room and then passing through the same room on an elevated bridge. A spiral ramp led up to more passages, and more opened doors, until we stood in front of the word wall within Skuldafn, where my love had long ago learned the last word of the Storm Call shout.

Shah'issol paused before the Wall, squinting at the dragon script in the dim light. "Qethsegol vahrukiv sahsunaar do daniik vundeheim..." She met my enquiring glance. "Mom taught me the alphabet, and I studied a bit on my own. Never thought I'd use it on this inscription, though."

"Do you know what you are going to do when we get to the portal?" I asked.

She nodded. Hesitated, just an instant, and then said, "Mom's been talking to me. Not talking but... you know. A feeling. Inside. There was something she didn't do. Like I said to Arngeir. It wasn't her fault, but it still has to be done. I'm not exactly sure yet. But I'll know it when I see it."

"Only a little way now," she added, and took my arm. "Lead on, sir priest," she said to our guide, who had paused, watching us, silent and impassive. "We're nearly home."

The last door, the last steps up to the platform overlooking the portal and its swirl of shattered fragments of stone seal bathed in light. It roared like a waterfall, but with a higher and purer note than water could ever attain. The Dragon Staff of old Nahkriin, last of the mask-bearing Dragon Priests to fall to my love, remained fixed in its socket at the top of the final flight of steps, silhouetted vertically against the brilliant column rising toward the sky. From either side, the two guardian dov watched us impassively; on the left, bronze and ancient, on the right, the white body and black spikes of a frost dragon.

All that was left of Nahkriin, ancient guardian of the portal, rested at the foot of the final flight of steps. The ashes and dust were long gone, cleansed away by Kynareth's wind and rain, no doubt; all that was left was the metal framework of its armor, worn and bleached, like the skeleton of some sea animal washed up on a beach, stubborn and pathetic in its ruined persistence. Shah'issol walked up to the remains, knelt, and ran her hand over them gently. Then she took the wreath she had made and laid it at the feet of the figure, standing again to bow her head in silent prayer.

"Let Nahkriin stand for you all," Shah'issol finally said, raising her head and addressing herself to our guide. "For all who mingled good and evil, loyalty unquestioning to a cause that was undeserving of your long devotion. We know too well of all the evil, but we cannot close the balance on this final day unless we likewise acknowledge the good that was interwoven with it."

The dragon priest replied in a whisper even softer than it had used before, "Peace can be found in this, and cessation. Yet one thing remains. Our overlord Nahkriin never lived to reclaim his staff, which commands us all, and so the portal remains open. You, Daughter of the Dragonborn, and you," turning to me, "the keeper of her heart, can now do what she was prevented from doing by Alduin's machinations and the clumsy courtesies of the Nord divinities. After so many years, the time has come."

Shah'issol nodded. She turned to me.

"I know what to do now. I know what Mom wants. What they need."

Was this my daughter who had been reduced to helpless tears only a day or two ago, shivering on the slopes up to High Hrothgar? Something was in her now, working through her as she herself grew to meet the challenge. All she had needed was a moment or two to catch her breath, to pause, and listen to it.

She moved quickly. Up the steps to the last platform to stand beside the staff. To put out a hand, and as easily as lifting a straw, draw the staff from its socket and bring it horizontal in front of her as she turned. There was a thunder of stone coming together from behind as the portal resealed, and a sudden darkness as its luminous column vanished. The gate was shut; I knew at once, forever.

Shah'issol came down the steps from the seal, still holding the dragon staff before her, level with the horizon. She walked to the edge of the platform, to where she could look out over the draugr host, and I followed. Their ranks had broken now that they had seen the staff; they surged forward against the base of the platform like water. Like children, I suddenly thought, children who had lost their mother in a crowd and then suddenly caught sight of her again; the faces bent upward, the murmuring. Like children who were tired at the end of a long exciting day, and who wanted at last to stop playing, to go home and go to sleep, safe and warm and loved.

She stood looking over them for a moment, and they quieted.

"You have kept the faith," she said out over the crowd, her voice carrying clear through an absolute silence, even the wind pausing for a long moment. "To the end. None has the right to ask more. Now, go in peace." And as she finished, she brought the dragon staff down with both hands and broke it over her knee with a sharp, metallic crack.

What followed happened so quickly that I am not sure whether my memory is correct, but it seemed that as the staff broke, the host below bowed down as if a wave were passing over it, and dissolved into ash, without flame, rank after rank, like the body of a fetch when its necromantic master is struck down. The dust billowed up in huge silver clouds as the dragons at the top of the pillars took to the air, beating down with their wings, setting their course for the Throat of the World.

There had been no sound as the ranks dissolved. But I thought I heard the merest whisper from behind us, where our guide had been standing, a scarcely perceptible thank you before it joined in dust the dust below. Still, I asked Shah'issol afterwards and she could not remember hearing it, so perhaps it was merely an older person's sentimentality shaping a passing random sound into a pleasing form.

Shah'issol dropped the broken halves of the staff over the edge and stood motionless and dazed – drained. I went to her and held her and she nuzzled against me as if she were a child again herself. "Too much," she muttered. "I'm not used to all this damned drama." I stroked her head and said only, "You did well. It's all over now. It's finished."

Our reverie was broken by a shadow and a thunder of wings, Odahviing soaring up to land on the terrace. I wondered why he had bothered to come to earth in such a cramped spot when we had planned to climb back down to his original landing place, and then realized that the rumbling under our feet had not stopped when he touched down. The stones of Skuldafn were awakening. The tall, slender dragon perches on either side of the portal had begun to sway, small pieces already beginning to crack off them.

We slipped into our harness, and Odahviing launched himself into the air, just in time. As if given the final blow by the downdraft from his wings as he thrust upward, Skuldafn began to fold in on itself, the dark stone merging with the silver ash of its former guardians until the structures disappeared into a shapeless, swirling cloud of dust and debris. Odahviing circled the ruin once, twice, and then left it to find its own peace and turned for home.

-o-o-o-

Evening, two days later. Our last night at High Hrothgar. I had wanted to leave immediately we were done, but Arngeir had insisted we rest first, fearing we might come to grief on the long journey down the snowy mountain path.

Shah'issol was already asleep, curled up in the bed across from me. Driving herself too hard, I began to worry, too much too soon and everything headlong as if she herself were one of the dov soaring across the evening sky... but where had she learned to address life in such a strident tone? In our house, from my love Vivian, from studying her as she faced her fear and despair only to put it aside, again and again. Because it was the right thing to do. Because there was no one else to do what so clearly had to be done. And because she had a love to turn to, to sustain her, my love, always there, always proud of how my pretty eagles soared so close to the sun. Always there. A blessing, not a burden.

Shah'issol and I had scattered my love Vivian's ashes that afternoon, from the back of Odahviing, in a long smooth dive that had begun over Windhelm, over the docks, where we had met that first day so long ago now but still only yesterday, when I first realized I would take her with me wherever I went, whatever I did. The people of Windhelm came out, on the walls, streaming onto the docks, waving and I knew they were cheering us though it was far too far away to hear any sound but the roar of the passing air and the slow steady beat of Odahviing's wings. Behind us, I knew, flew a host never seen before: all the dov, not a single one absent, some flying high, some so low that the thunder of their passing beat the snow from the branches of the trees. All in peace, without fear, all still caught up in wonder at the peace my love Vivian had found for them.

They were close behind as I gave her to the wind, and then at last I realized why they had contended so fiercely for their places in the formation: they would breathe her in, her dust would become part of them, just as it would become part of the long summer sunsets and the salmon in the river, ice wolves and nightshade flowers and the butterflies that hover around stumps in the bog across from the East Empire docks at Solitude. She had cherished it all, and now she would be a part of it all, shifting with the wind and water, forever.

We soared back across Skyrim, slowly working higher, until we returned to circle over the Throat of the World and our companions peeled off in long arcs like flower petals to their home peaks, their reserves, now inviolate. Too soon, it seemed, all were gone, and we ourselves were descending in long shallow curves through the slanting light of late afternoon and finally, it was done.

I could not sleep. Not restless, precisely, but... I put my day clothes back on and began to wander idly through the halls of High Hrothgar. I knew they would not be deserted. The Greybeards seemed largely past the need for sleep; they meditated instead, sitting alert but unmoving, part in this world and part elsewhere, I supposed. But it seemed too intrusive to ask.

Long dark corridors, echoes, secure and warm and detached from the world outside. I emptied my mind and wandered aimlessly, briefly at a null point, all forces balanced, waiting for the new day and whatever it might decide to bring, feeling as steady and quiet as a lamp flame in a room far underground, sealed away from any outside breeze. Around a corner, in front of an eastward-facing window, there was Arngeir, waiting for me. I realized that I had expected him.

"I am glad I am able to talk to you alone before you leave," he began. "There are one or two things that Vivian told Paarthurnax on her last visit that I hoped to discuss with you."

"About Shah'issol." I was taken aback by my own directness, but Arngeir did not seem to notice it.

"Yes, about your daughter. I understand both from what she has said and from what Vivian told us that she is contemplating taking a more active role than she has up to now, perhaps to involve herself with some of the issues that concerned her mother. And I sense that you are not entirely at peace with these developments."

"Perhaps not but in the end," I shook my head, "none of us can do more than use the gifts we receive from the gods to the best of our abilities. I know that I will love and support my daughter wherever she is called to go. This is my strength, and my service. It is all I can offer, and I can offer no less."

Arngeir nodded.

"She has absorbed a great deal from both of you, and in the process, has developed unique talents of her own – talents that she herself is not yet fully aware of. Master Paarthurnax is convinced, for instance, that although she is not Dragonborn, she will find it much easier to study some parts of the Way of the Voice than an average being would. You know, of course, that we here who follow the teachings of Jurgen Windcaller are forbidden to use the Voice as a weapon in the world's struggles."

"Yes, I heard rather a lot about that," I replied, amused by the memory. "Vivian bent my ear about it, more than once. I believe the two of you had some quite heated, um... discussions."

"Well, yes, especially at the beginning of our relationship. We found it difficult to accept that the Voice had once again become an instrument of conflict, no matter how unavoidable that conflict might be. I will never forget how I argued to her then that perhaps it was the end of days, perhaps the gods did intend the world to be destroyed and built anew. It was a dark time, and not I alone felt thus. But not her. She replied, without the slightest hesitation, If the Nine intend the end of our world, there is nothing that man or mer can do to prevent it. But they have never so declared. I choose to take this as a test, to see if we are worthy of the world, their gift to the mortal races. If we refuse to rise to the challenge, why should the gods care what becomes of us? I realized then that while we could teach her much, she also brought wisdom and balance from outside these walls that we had been sorely lacking. The intense concentration needed to pursue our truths to their ultimate depths sometimes exacts its own price, of detachment and an otherworldly disdain for Mundus, the world of which we remain a part. This she taught us, and not this alone."

"And Shah'issol?" I prompted, gently.

"Sooner or later, your daughter will be here to study. She does not have the dragon blood, but by Akatosh's grace enough of her mother Vivian has been passed to her that she can learn in weeks or months what would take others years or decades to master. And perhaps later, she will teach. Did you ever hear of the Imperial College of the Voice that Tiber Septim established in Markarth? It has been closed for centuries, but perhaps the time has come for it to be re-established. Not, of course, to instruct in the Way of the Voice as we pursue it here, but a simpler form of it. A form that might become one tool of many to bring the Empire back to proper order once more. I must admit," Arngeir smiled, "that when Paarthurnax told me that Vivian had suggested this, my instinct was to demur. Old habits die hard. But she was right: the world must be preserved first, and only then can it be perfected. It goes against the grain of scholarly idealism. A mother's wisdom, rather."

"She'll be busy," I murmured. "The Companions in Whiterun have a claim on her time as well, it seems. And more than one of the Daedric Princes."

"Her mother walked all those paths and more without losing her way. With the help of our advice and your love, we can anticipate no less from your daughter."

We stood then for a long time in silence, looking out into the east together, still dark, but always the source of the dawn, each with our own thoughts. I wondered what had impelled him to speak of love. It seemed so utterly alien to the life of the Greybeards, but Arngeir had not sprung from a stone; he must have had a mother once, who had loved and guided him. Perhaps there had been others: a lover or a wife who had died early and left him to the cold consolations of his mountain and its Way. Perhaps that was what Vivian had reminded him of, the heart that joins us all. The one that makes us try even when all hope is gone, the absurd but irreplaceable faith that love can conquer all, the dream that can sometimes come true, but only if you dream it hard enough. Finally, Arngeir bowed to me silently, and disappeared down one of the long corridors, just as Azura's touch began to brush the bank of clouds on the eastern horizon with the first red streaks of dawn.

Even though I've fed my hunger
Even though I've named my fear
I'll never understand it
How the journey led me here
But I have made a promise
That I intend to keep
My love, wherever I go,
I take you with me.