The Necromancer's Tale

"Interesting. Something that old Caius Cornelius seems to have missed."

I looked up from the dusty volume before me on the table to meet the inquiring gaze of Gongar Grob-lek, the orc mage presently in charge of the Arcanium at the College of Winterhold. It is something of a tradition there to have an orc as the head of the research library, and so Gongar has stayed on even though nearly all of the other members of the elven races have long since returned to their native provinces.

"Oh, that book. I thought I recognized it. The Fall of Vithern. Probably the only one in all of Tamriel, though we've got it on our list for recopying, sooner or later. One of the unique works that the Hero of Kvatch brought back from the Shivering Isles. The library bought it from a dealer in Cyrodiil and brought it here soon after the Oblivion Crisis was over. As you know, the portal to the Shivering Isles disappeared long ago, so I don't think we'll be getting another one any time soon. What was it that just caught your eye?'

"Oh, a very minor thing, really," I replied. "It seems that the Lord of Vithern, an old rival of Sheogorath in the Shivering Isles, married a female Argonian named Sheen-In-Glade and the two of them had at least one son. Caius was never able to settle definitively whether human-Argonian couples could produce children."

"Not a perfect example, though," Gongar remarked with a smile. "Anything done under the aegis of Lord Sheogorath is liable to have his finger in it somewhere, though perhaps that's not the most tasteful metaphor to use in this context. Still, you're right, it is interesting. I'll make a brief record of it and slip it into our copy of Caius' Supplementary Notes, now that we have one. Thank you again for that."

As part of my preparations to return to Cyrodiil, I had donated a number of duplicates to the Arcanium, including an extra copy of the Supplementary Notes that had been given to me in Windhelm by the author's grandson, to be passed on to any major collection that lacked one. That was how it had ended up in the Arcanium collection, one more curiosity for what has always been Skyrim's largest and best library, in some areas more complete than that of the imperial court itself.

Gongar stopped to think for a moment and then continued, in a reflective tone, talking half to me and half to himself.

"The Hero of Kvatch and the Dragonborn. Old Urag used to wonder how many parallels there were between them. But the Dragonborn, for all the questions surrounding her, is still the easier to study. The Hero of Kvatch isn't that much further into the past, but with all the violence and destruction at the end of the Third Age and the beginning of the Fourth, we know much less about her."

"Both young women," I remarked, "Both prisoners, both placed in a hero's role more or less by accident, early lives a mystery, deeply involved with both gods and Daedric Princes. Both known by their titles rather than by their names. Both loyal to the Empire, ruthless at times, willing to do anything to succeed. Both a success, of course. But no one ever found out what became of the Hero of Kvatch. Soon after the Oblivion Crisis was resolved, she vanished. There were rumors, but no one knows the truth of them."

Gongar nodded.

"Urag believed that the Hero of Kvatch had fallen heir to the throne of one of the Daedric Princes, and that was why she simply disappeared from the face of the earth. I don't know about that. I've never heard of any of the thrones being vacant, for one thing. It's not as if the Princes die and are replaced, like mortal rulers. She seems to have had quite a few dealings with Sheogorath, and the portal to his realm disappeared about the time she did, but whether she went that way, to serve at the court of the Madgod – who will ever know? And for that matter, what was the fate of the Dragonborn after her death? Did she become a ruler in the next world, or a vassal, or a slave?"

As good a time as any to get into my main line of inquiry, I realized, and turned the conversation in the direction of the Dragonborn. I asked Gongar if he had knew of anything that Urag, Librarian of the Arcaneum in the Dragonborn's time, had said about her.

"That she understood where the library fit," Gongar replied, immediately. "Why it was important, how it held things together. He said that she treated books like a priest, with reverence. High praise from that fellow."

"She knew a lot about rare books," Gongar added after a moment of thought. "Of course, she was just about the only human being that we know of who had traveled to Apocrypha and seen the library there; more than once, I understand. The Black Books she used to make the trips ended up here after her death, in storage, of course, not on the shelves. We wouldn't want casual readers to suddenly vanish into the daedric realms, though from what I've heard of Hermaeus Mora, he might find it amusing. In any case, the Dragonborn told Urag that the books don't work on the mainland; they have been crafted for Solstheim and it seems they lose their magical powers too far away from their focal points. I suppose that's one way that old Herma-Mora made sure they didn't stray too far."

"She had quite a bit to do with the daedra and other spirits, didn't she?" I asked, and told Gongar the story of the bard I had met on the way to Winterhold and the insulting song that he had composed on that theme. Gongar shook his head in amused disbelief.

"Yes, she did work with the daedra, and with the gods as well. She'd read at least two of the Elder Scrolls – the two that went back to Cyrodiil; we kept the third in the library here after all the fuss was done. And she'd been to the Soul Cairn with Serana, it's said – again, the only mortal known to have made that trip and lived to tell about it. If you're interested in those aspects of her career, you need to talk to our resident dean of necromancy, Julio Invictus. He'll know more, if he can be persuaded to communicate the information. He's been a bit moody lately."

-o-o-o-

Winterhold itself was a much larger place than it had been when the Dragonborn was there, a few years after the Great Collapse. The town had been rebuilt and expanded, and its relations with the College were much closer now that the elves had departed and nearly all the students were from the human races, with the exception of a few Khajiit and Argonians. After an hour or two of hunting around, I ran Invictus to ground at a table in the Northern Mage, the new inn that had opened in town only a few years ago and was providing stiff competition for the Frozen Hearth, which had been there since long before the Dragonborn's time. I myself had taken a room in the Frozen Hearth; the newer establishment was too noisy for my tastes.

I introduced myself and gave Invictus a general outline of my project and a sketch of what I had discovered so far. He questioned me in detail, showing a surprising knowledge of the Synod and the political ins and outs of the Emperor's court. I didn't need to tell him much about where I had been and what I had been doing: he had heard the bulk of it before. Not for the first time, I realized the truth of the folk saying, "Tell one mage and you've told them all."

"Do you know," he said suddenly, "I once tried to summon her. The Dragonborn. That was when I was much younger than I am now, and much less cautious."

He chuckled.

"If it had been a success, I'd be rich and famous today. Or famous and dead. But it wasn't, so here I remain, a humble grave-rifler among the ranks of the magical elite."

"Why did you make the attempt?" I asked, in as offhand a tone as possible. Necromancers instinctively avoid the light, and I was afraid of scaring him off by letting mine shine too brightly, but he responded at once.

"Partly because it was a challenge. And partly just because it was there. I had discovered some things that others didn't know, and wanted to find out how far I could go with them. A lot of spells are cast from nothing more than idle curiosity, or reassurance - can I do this? Or at my age, can I still do this?" He chuckled to himself again. "Like some old fellow dropping in at the local whorehouse to see if he can still get it up. Magic is very personal, and mages are notorious for their egos. They don't take failure easily. One of their greatest weaknesses."

"Was that why you tried? Just to see if you could..." My voice trailed off.

"See if I could get her up, so to speak?" He laughed again. "Well, when I think about it, I suppose it was mostly because of what I had found in the Arcaneum. Or perhaps it would be better to say, what had been found for me. It was quite a while ago, as I said, decades and decades, and Urag was still running the library then. Pity for you that he isn't here now. He would have had a lot to say about your Dragonborn. Or maybe not. Depending a great deal on how he thought you would use the information. He respected her immensely, you know."

Not for the first time, I silently cursed the Synod for dawdling so long, decades, before starting this investigation. I should have had more eyewitnesses than just the vampires, useful as they had been. The Synod had been playing a waiting game, betting the situation would improve, but instead it had become steadily worse, to the point that with the exception of a few orcs, whose loyalty to the Empire was unquestioned, nearly all the members of the elven races had left Imperial territory and returned to their homelands. The only major exceptions were the Falmer or Snow Elves, but they were in any case a people apart, still recovering from their enslavement by the Dwemer, and scarcely ever venturing out of their underground caverns and halls. The internal strife that had crippled the Aldmeri Dominion soon after the Dragonborn's death had prevented the outbreak of another war; Talos was openly worshiped again all across Skyrim, and the Thalmor were long gone, their old Embassy up north near Solitude a burned-out shell. To the Nords, never been famous for being able to see beyond the ends of their noses, it has been the answer to all their prayers. But the Empire is in no better shape for all its victories. Imperial unity is a fading dream. Tamriel has become tribalized, and sooner or later, there will be a war of each race against all the others. It is probably only a matter of when.

But there was nothing to be done about all that, and so I turned back to the task at hand.

"So, if I may ask, what was found for you?"

He stood up suddenly.

"It's probably better to show you. Let's go back to the College. I have some souvenirs for the Synod. They're valuable, I think, and it's not entirely wise for me to keep them here any longer."

-o-o-o-

Invictus knelt before a small statue of Mara in his quarters in the Hall of Attainment, after a quick check to ensure we were alone and hadn't been followed. This he accomplished by suddenly disappearing from sight. There was a whisper in my ear, "Back in a bit," followed two or three minutes later by the man himself, still glancing around with a somewhat furtive look.

"Sorry about the invisibility," he said. "Necromancers aren't supposed to meddle with high-level Illusion spells, but I made a point of mastering that one. Can't be too careful, even here. My grandfather was an Altmer from the Summerset Isles, and they're beginning to pay attention to such things, the fools. Oh, not much here, yet, not in the College. But the idea's beginning to spread beyond the Ulrich-worshiping lunatic fringe that only purebloods, Nord purebloods, should be allowed in Skyrim. Imbeciles. They're even looking askance at Bretons because of their elven ancestry, distant as it is. My grandfather fled from the Summerset Isles because he knew the Aldmeri leadership were too belligerent to keep the peace and too quarrelsome to win a war, and he was right. What's to become of people like me? Carve myself into quarters and distribute them appropriately?"

The shrine tilted back as he eased open a hidden lock with some furtive manipulation and a muttered incantation. There was a cloth-wrapped bundle inside, which when unwrapped on the table proved to contain a thin book and a long-bladed dagger in a black leather sheath that looked vaguely ominous.

"Dark Brotherhood?" I said, nodding toward the blade.

He shook his head.

"They wish. That's one of the reasons I'd like to see it gone."

Reaching out my hand, I glanced at him. He nodded his consent, and I drew the dagger out of its sheath to examine it.

I had never seen anything remotely like it. Instead of the hard glitter of good steel, or the paler, softer hue of silver, or the translucent green of glass, the slender blade shone an icy blue-white, even in the warm glow of candles and lamps. It almost seemed to glow, though a quick check in the darkness under the table confirmed it shed no light of its own.

Invictus stretched out his hand and took it from my grasp, very carefully.

"I don't suppose you've ever seen one of these," he remarked.

I shook my head.

"Stalhrim, I would guess. I've examined a few pieces of Stalhrim in the Imperial Palace collection, armor and swords, but never a weapon like that."

"Then if you're not familiar with the material, you won't have noticed that the blade has an odd shape for a Stalhrim dagger. Much too delicate. Doesn't look very durable. Which it is, of course; you could probably split rock with it. But it's not the shape that's the most unusual thing. It's the edge."

I looked it over again as Invictus held it out, under the light. It did appear extraordinarily sharp.

"Wouldn't care to cut myself with it by accident," I said, half to myself.

He smiled. "Well, that's the interesting part, as a matter of fact. How it cuts. Or joins together."

I didn't understand. Joins together?

"Let me show you," he said.

After moving the books in front of us to a side table, Invictus put the dagger down for a moment, and exposed his left arm. Then, with a casual sweep of the blade, he carved a long wound in his forearm, from near the elbow almost to the wrist. I instinctively recoiled in shock as blood splashed onto the table, almost covering it, but the front of my tunic was still splattered with red.

It had been so sudden that I could not think straight. And the strangest thing of all was that Invictus seemed to be feeling no pain at all. Indeed, he was wearing a sardonic smile at my near-panic.

He let the gaping hole in his forearm gush blood for a moment or two, nonchalant, as if it were a leaky wineskin. Then he took the dagger and lay the flat of the blade at the end of the cut nearest his wrist, where he was bleeding the fastest. He drew it up his arm once more, this time holding it crosswise to the cut and bearing down with the flat of the blade, as if he were a workman applying plaster to a wall, and as the blade moved, the wound sealed behind it. Not merely sealed – the skin and flesh were restored to their original state, without even a scar. Only the blood, on his arm and clothing and covering the surface of the table, remained to testify that the whole thing had not been a very clever trick from the school of Illusion.

"The only problem is that it doesn't clean up after itself," Invectus remarked, with the same casual air he had maintained throughout. "I'll have a job with the table afterward, and I'm afraid my tunic is completely ruined. Sorry that a few drops got on you as well. I just wanted to give you a good show. I hadn't meant to cut quite so deep, but it's hard to judge when the blade is so sharp and there's no pain. Does a good job of closing up the wound, doesn't it? It works equally well with wounds inflicted by other objects. You can even remove scars if you hold it at the correct angle and move it slowly."

It was no ordinary blade, of course – that had been obvious from the way Invectus had reacted to the gash he had made in his arm. He should have been in agony, but he had scarcely seemed to notice, or care, what he had done to himself. I had heard of spells that numbed wounds as they were closed, or put a sufferer to sleep temporarily – some of the most skilled physicians used them when pain reached a level that would interfere with successful treatment. But I had never seen or heard of such an enchantment put on a weapon.

Invictus was wiping the blood off the blade with the front of his robe, evidently having abandoned all hope of salvaging anything he was wearing. I nodded towards it and asked,

"Who developed the spell on that thing? Someone at the College? Or was it a lost formula that you found mention of in some old book or scroll?"

Sheathing the blade and putting it down alongside the books, since the table was still soaked with blood, Invictus replied,

"It's not a spell. It's how it was made, and where, and when. That's where it connects with the Dragonborn. Right at the very end of her story."

I couldn't at first imagine what the connection might be. The Dragonborn had been Skaal-friend, among her many other honors, and so it would be no surprise to find that one of their smiths had made her some unusual weaponry. But I had also read that the Skaal usually chose frost magic to enchant their weapons, since it was particularly suited to the nature of Stalhrim. And besides, Invictus had said that it wasn't a spell or enchantment that gave the blade its powers. What else could there be?

As I thought the matter over, becoming more puzzled by the minute, Invictus changed into clean clothes, and with a resigned shrug dropped his stained robe over the table to conceal it and to soak up what blood was left. He then turned back to me, with the book in his left hand and the sheathed dagger stuck casually in his sash like any ordinary blade.

"I prefer the Northern Mage for drink, since they have a better selection and the clientele is less... rustic, but the Frozen Hearth serves an excellent horker stew. And that's where you're staying as well. After losing that blood, I need something substantial to eat. We can talk over dinner. It's early still, and the middle of the week, so I doubt if there will be enough people there to inconvenience us."

I must have looked as if I were in two minds about the suggestion, though I would have followed him just about anywhere to get the explanation of this mystery. He grinned at me again and said in a brisk voice,

"Come along now. It's very decent stew. They're careful not to let it get greasy. You look as if you need some sustenance as well. And I promise not to bleed on anything, if that's what you're worrying about."

-o-o-o-

"So, at the end of her story. Something to do with the dragons, then? When her partner and her daughter scattered her ashes over Tamriel?"

"Closer," Invictus replied, "but leave the dragons out of it. They're not directly involved."

We were having dinner in the Frozen Hearth, a bit apart from the other guests, who spent most of the evening loudly arguing about something – hunting dogs, I think. On a whim, my host had turned our discussion into a sort of riddle game rather that giving me the story straight out. It was tedious, but I tried not to let my irritation show. Besides, the stew was as good as any I'd ever tasted, so the evening couldn't be counted an entire loss, whatever happened.

"Think of all the things the Skyforge is used for," he suggested.

"Well..." I leaned back and thought for a moment. "Making weapons of course. But also the cremation of high-ranking members of the Companions after their deaths. And..."

I paused again, but the pieces were falling into place now.

"And when a Harbinger or other notable is cremated, it's always been said that the weapons made at the forge immediately after the cremation have special powers, determined by the character of the one who has passed on. They absorb a lingering aura, so to speak, and bear witness to its quality. That's fairly well known among armorers and historians. But I hadn't heard..."

"Of any Dragonborn blades? You just saw one in action. Their existence has always been kept quiet, since some of the Companions feel that their creation was irregular and should not have been allowed. There are only a half-dozen of them in all, of which our friend here..."

He flourished the blade dramatically, but kept it in its scabbard, I was relieved to see.

"Our friend here is the longest. The others were about half the length of this one. I don't think anyone knows now why one was made different from the others. Perhaps it was meant for some special use, or perhaps the smith was just testing his mastery of the material."

"That's the part that doesn't make sense," I interrupted. "I don't think there has ever been a single smith in Skyrim proper who could forge Stalhrim. There are few anywhere, I've been told, and all that we know of are Skaal out on Solstheim, not much contact with the outside world. The Dragonborn was Skaal-friend, that's true, but that doesn't tell us how the blades were crafted. She didn't rise from the dead to do them herself."

"Well, I do understand that forging Stalhrim was one of her many talents," Invictus remarked. "But of course someone else had to make them."

He reached down to the bench beside me and put the book he had taken from the shrine of Mara onto the table in front of us. It was bound in faded black cloth, and looked very old; the spine was too narrow to have a title, and there was nothing on the front cover.

"I called it something that had been found for me," Invictus said, laying particular stress on the for. He tapped the cover of the book. "By old Urag. He gave the book to me, told me it was safer not to have it in the Arcaneum, but that I could do what I pleased with it. The blade's history, and the information that allowed me to find it. The book might as well go to the Imperial collection now. If it isn't safe there, it won't be safe anywhere. Likewise with the blade itself. There may be some use for it, and at least it will be out of mischief there."

"You'll want to read it yourself," he continued. "But to sum it up, the blades were made by a Skaal master smith who had attended the funeral of the Dragonborn as one of his people's representatives. The smith – his name isn't recorded anywhere – was troubled by strange dreams in the days before and after the funeral, and their shaman, the leader of the party, told him that he should remain in Whiterun until the meaning of the dreams became clear to him. Being a smith, he naturally wandered up to the Cloud district to look over the wall at the Skyforge, and somehow he talked his way past the guard and into the forge itself. There he encountered the armorer of the Companions, and the two men being masters of the same craft, they were soon confiding in each other.

"It seems that the armorer had been dreaming as well, that a man from the far north would come to his door and ask his leave to do a thing never done before that would never be done again. The Skaal smith realized that this must refer to forging Stalhrim on the Skyforge, which had certainly never been done before. But of course he had no Stalhrim with him; it had been a funeral, not a work assignment, and their party had not even worn armor. The smith of the Companions then remembered that the Dragonborn had given him some pieces of raw Stalhrim several years before, just as a curiosity, he had thought then. So, he fetched these and gave them to his Skaal counterpart, and with him working the bellows and the Skaal smith at the forge, the Dragonborn blades were crafted, of which this is the longest and the most...potent, I suppose is the best word. It was the first time the forge had been used since the Dragonborn's cremation a few days earlier. There were six of these blades in all, and what happened to them after they were created is a mystery. The account here..."

He tapped the cover of the book, "...only goes as far as the creation of the blades and a description of their qualities. I believe the Temple of Kynareth in Whiterun has one, or had one, and for a long time the chief surgeon to the Jarl of Whiterun's court had another – you can see how useful the qualities of the blade would be to a leech. I'd rather not say too much about how I got my hands on this one. Just that I was very young then, and given to what I thought was quick, decisive action when an opportunity arose. It's done now anyway, and time for the blade to move on, as I suppose was always its destiny."

"How does all this tie in with your attempt to summon the Dragonborn's spirit?" I asked.

"Oh, that. Well, to summon someone's spirit with any hope of success, you need something that was as close as possible to them in life. Remains, bones, are ideal, but of course there were none in this case. So I thought..."

He hesitated and picked up the sheathed blade again.

"I thought that this, at least, contains her spirit, or an aspect or reflection of her spirit. It's such a perfect expression of what she was in the world. Don't you see? Destroyer and healer, battles and treaties, fear and hope, outlaw and lawgiver. Crafted from a material that is in itself a paradox, a never-melting ice as hard as steel. All her contradictions symbolized by a single object that can painlessly smooth away the scars on the face of a burned child – or be the deadliest weapon that any assassin has ever cut a throat with. That last is what's worrying me now."

He leaned forward and continued in a low voice,

"The Brotherhood knows about it too. That it exists and is in Skyrim. They're very interested in it. You can guess why. Before they learn more and I get my throat painlessly but fatally cut with my very own Dragonborn blade, I'd like to see it safely gone. Besides, I think it's getting restless. She was always on the move in life, never staying in one place long. Perhaps the blade has inherited that quality as well."

After a pause, he added,

"Oh, and the summoning? As I said at the beginning, a complete, absolute, rather humiliating failure. No response of any kind. Might as well have been talking to myself. Whatever the blade's link with her, it can't be turned to that purpose."

-o-o-o-

I had been tempted to refuse Invectus' offer of the dagger, though not of the document on its history. The thing made me a little nervous, and I wasn't a delivery boy. Besides, it would be at least a month before I went back to the Imperial City, and I would have to carry it around for all that time. However, in the end, fascination won out. To possess a weapon like this, even for a short while, was to touch the hem of the real tale, the mysterious powers that had made the Dragonborn what she had become – the powers that were the chief reason the Synod had sent me here. Invictus' talk of the Dark Brotherhood hadn't been good for my nerves, but he had seemed convinced that they didn't know the exact location of the blade or who possessed it. Moreover, I would be presenting the picture of innocence, still wandering around Skyrim from place to place, searching for traces of the Dragonborn. If I set off back to Cyrodiil the next day, my haste would suggest I had something to hide. But if I just kept to my schedule, no one would be the wiser, even if someone was keeping an eye on Invictus, and that hardly seemed likely.

So that evening, I returned to my room in the Frozen Hearth, with the dagger and the book wrapped up in a piece of cloth. I put the small bundle into a knapsack, where it would not be immediately evident to anyone who entered or looked into the room, and settled down to sleep. I was feeling more hopeful than I had for some time. Perhaps the blade's presence would send me a dream or two that might provide me with more leads, I thought as I closed my eyes.

It was a fairly accurate premonition, except for the part about dreams. That part was quite off the mark, as I was soon to learn.