Chapter 12 – Lost & Found
Dusk fell swiftly, and still Raziel did not return. In the darkness, the shrine was even more imposing, and I wanted nothing more than to get as far away from there as possible. Eventually, as the last moments of daylight faded, the possibility that Raziel had actually abandoned me for good began to sink in. Though I didn't want to believe my guide would just leave me to the mercy of the Ashlands, the longer I thought about it the more likely it seemed. After all, who would miss me? There was no-one waiting for me back home in Cyrodiil. If anyone enquired about me, Raziel could simply have told them I had perished. Eaten by cliff racers. Gone without a trace.
As panic set in, I tore open my pack and fumbled around for my Almsivi Intervention scroll. I needn't have bothered. Raziel had packed it away with her own after I refused to use it at Bthanchend. A cold realization settled over me. I was alone now, defenceless, in the heart of the Ashlands. However, I had the tent, and a few days' provisions left. With no escape and nothing to lose, what else could I do but carry on?
Assalkushalit was nigh impossible to navigate in the dark. I knew we had come across a rope bridge to reach it, but as I wandered around trying to find it again I thought I took a wrong turning and retraced my steps, only to find myself in another unfamiliar area. Eventually I came out onto something vaguely resembling a path, and since I had no intention of going back, I followed it. Soon it forked off in opposite directions, but with a strange kind of certainty that whichever path I chose would lead me somewhere else, and that somewhere would be better than where I was now.
I turned left, and soon the outline of the Ghostfence appeared out of the night, a faint purple beacon that made me nearly cry with relief. The rhythmic throbbing sound I had grown so accustomed to soon followed. Funny how something so seemingly foreign can become a source of comfort when you most need it.
Somehow I managed to erect my tent by lamplight. Raziel and I had used up much of our oil keeping our makeshift shelter lit in Bthanchend. Raziel had taken the rest of the oil with her too, and by the time I finally settled down on my bedroll I barely had enough light to scrawl down the day's events, my hand shaking as I recounted our fight in my head.
I awoke with a start to utter darkness, disorientated and with no idea whether I had been asleep for hours or mere moments. Somewhere outside the noise of stones clattering jolted me upright. The noise faded, and though I strained my ears, the sound of my heart pounding filled my head, making it impossible to discern whether the noise had been real or if I was still half-dreaming.
All doubt faded from my mind when I caught the unmistakable noise of footsteps drawing closer. Had Raziel come looking for me? Or had the Corprus-infected man I had saved from her arrows found me instead? I huddled in my corner, hoping, praying it wasn't the latter. The tent shook violently as the tent flap whipped open. The next thing I knew, a flickering orange light flooded in as Raziel stuck her head through the doorway, looking thoroughly dishevelled.
"You didn't half give me a fright, you old fool!" she gasped, clambering through and dumping her pack – and her sputtering lantern – on the floor, before collapsing in a heap on the other side.
"I could say the same thing to you!" Raziel was too occupied with rooting through my pack to pay any notice to my retort. After a while she gave up, muttering obscure Dunmer swear words under her breath.
"I've run out of lamp oil," she explained, hastily snuffing out her lantern and plunging us back into darkness. "I went back to the ruins just after nightfall, thinking you'd still be there. Lucky I had a light on me at all. I don't fancy the idea of sleeping in the open all the way out here." I felt my face flush with guilt at this, although it had been Raziel who left me .
"How did you find me?"
"Sheer luck."
"Sorry." There was an awkward pause in which neither of us moved, not wanting to break the silence first. Eventually Raziel sighed.
"No," she began, carefully, as if testing the words before saying them. "I was wrong to just leave you like that. And you're not a s'wit."
"Well, I should hope not –"
"–I mean, anything could have happened to you, you could have had a cliff racer tear your arms off, or fallen into a foyada and broken your neck…" I shifted uncomfortably.
"Well, we're both here now–"
"–Or wandered into a pack of starving Kwama–"
"Yes, alright! I get your point. We'll stick together from now on!" It was only after we both settled down to sleep that I realised that, somehow, Raziel had made me feel guilty about her transgression.
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Chapter 13 – Truth at Last
The hours passed slowly, and we lay awake in silence. There were many things I wanted to say to Raziel, not the least of which was the hardest thing I could say, a secret I had not revealed to anyone. Somehow, I felt it had to be said, but neither could I just blurt it out, or try to undermine it. I certainly couldn't lie to her any longer.
"So, did you track him… it … down?" I said weakly. There was no need to elaborate; I knew Raziel was thinking about the same thing. At first she didn't reply, but simply stared up in the direction of the tent roof. I could imagine her crimson eyes narrowing ever so slightly in the darkness. When she did speak, her voice was quiet, all of her usual – almost masculine – confidence having melted away.
"You know, they call them Corprus stalkers."
"Who?"
"Oh, you know. Everyone."
"You mean the temple?"
"Mmm." Raziel turned her head towards me. "They'll call them anything, just to dehumanise them." She gave a hollow, mirthless laugh. "Azura knows, it works. I always thought I had no pity whatsoever for the poor bastards. Then you come along, with all your refined 'live and let live' mentality. You wouldn't last a day out here on your own." She paused for a moment, wriggling around in her bedroll, trying to get comfortable despite the rocky ground beneath us. "Don't ever change," she said softly.
"What?" I turned towards her, not sure whether I had heard her correctly. She went quiet once more, and I knew that if we lapsed into silence again I would never be able to say what I had to. "I should apologise too," I began hoarsely, my mouth suddenly dry. Again Raziel made no reply, so I took her silence as my cue to continue.
"I haven't been completely honest with you. About my reason for coming on this journey." I fumbled for the right words, but now I could see I had Raziel's attention. The silhouette of her head was raised slightly. She was watching me. "I'm a very ill man, Raziel. In fact, I'll be lucky to live to see my sixtieth birthday."
"You don't look sick." There was no judgement in her voice; she was just stating the obvious.
"I know, I don't – at least, not yet. But I will. The doctors tell me my health will start to deteriorate soon. I'll grow weak and tired. I won't be able to walk. Eventually I won't be able to so much as lift a quill. Finally I'll just… die, I suppose." Raziel sat up slowly, her expression unreadable in the darkness.
"You're apologising for this?"
"Well, would you really have agreed to accompany a dying man around Red Mountain? 'The dust-bowl of Morrowind'?" Raziel laughed quietly. "What's so funny?"
"All this time I thought you must be suicidal, since you seem so eager to throw your life away for that book of yours. Now it turns out you're just trying to live ." She lay back down with a sigh. "We should get some sleep. We've got a long way to go." Bewildered, but feeling lighter than I had done in days, I followed suit. Within minutes we were both fast asleep.
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Chapter 14 – Onward
Day 9 – 22nd, Last Seed
Raziel said nothing of our conversation from the previous night, nor did she give any indication she remembered our fight. We retraced our steps back to the crossroads I had found myself at the night before.
"Would you call it cheating if we were to take advantage of a road following the Ghostfence?" She mused, rubbing her pointed chin. We were standing in the bottom of what had been a wide foyada, which had been whittled down to a smooth path by decades of grit-laden wind. It curved round towards the south, and sure enough, the Ghostfence did too, never straying out of sight.
"I'd certainly call it an opportunity well taken." I told her, and she nodded in agreement.
"Looks like it's settled then. Let's go."
We made good progress, though the sun beat down on us mercilessly and my injured hand still felt as though it were on fire – the salve Raziel had mixed for me had nearly run out, and there were no more ingredients to make another batch. We had run out of most things by this time. In fact, we carried little more than the tent, our remaining rations and the two extremely battered Almsivi intervention scrolls. However, I felt as though somehow a huge burden had lifted from my shoulders. Raziel was slightly less optimistic.
"I can't help but feel something's amiss," she complained when we stopped at midday. "We haven't been attacked or injured, and this path is so convenient . It makes me wonder if we haven't taken a wrong turn somewhere."
"You're right. Do you suppose the cliff racers are all waiting at the other end, waiting to ambush us?" Raziel's mouth twisted into a half-sneer.
"I mean it!" I didn't argue any more. It was impossible to argue with Raziel's pessimism, especially since she usually turned out to be correct. Besides, as a Dunmer her attitude was as much a part of her identity as her ancestors, and I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to change it.
That night was cool and clear, and with it brought the same deep silence I was once so fearful of. We went without our lanterns and sat outside by starlight, not only to save the little oil we had left, but also to savour the respite from the hot sun. Though we had not been able to build a campfire since our journey began for fear we would attract hostile attention, I felt more at home out under the stars now than I ever could beside my fireplace in the Imperial City.
"I've never seen a falling star," Raziel's voice shook me out of my thoughts. She turned to me. "I expect you have, back at the Arcane University, with all your fancy machines and telescopes," she added enviously.
"Well, as a matter of fact, 'falling stars' aren't actually –" I began to explain, but stopped myself a second later, not quite sure how to continue. Scholars have dedicated their whole lives to the study of astronomy and yet we know so little about the sky above us. And here I was, about to fill Raziel's head with talk of tears in space, and Aetherius, things I barely understood myself. Opposite me, Raziel leaned in closer.
"Go on, I'm listening," she urged.
"Er, well, falling stars… as I was saying, they aren't really stars at all, but matter – that is, rocks and such – falling from the sky, and…" I trailed off again. Raziel's disappointment was clear even in the dim light.
"Rocks?" I could have kicked myself. Mere hours ago I had called the woman a pessimist, and now here I was, shooting down the first idealistic thing that had come out of her mouth. I really was a fool. "They're not lucky then?"
"Well, that I couldn't say," I said hurriedly, eager to smooth things over. "Besides, don't the Ashlanders say we make our own luck?"
"That is true." Raziel's mouth curved into a wry half-smile. "I can't say much for Ashlander wisdom, but they've managed to survive this long, which is an achievement in itself." She shook her head suddenly, as if she were stirring herself from her thoughts. "I don't believe it, anyway," she declared. "How can painting your face and dancing around some fire be any luckier than visiting your family shrine, or praying in a chapel?"
"Or watching a rock falling out of the sky?" I finished for her, and she smiled, her pointed teeth glinting in the starlight.
"Exactly."
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Chapter 15 – Disaster
Day 10 – 23rd, Last Seed
We set off as soon as it grew light again. We couldn't afford to lose any more time, not with our supplies running so low. At least the sky remained cloudless, and with our spirits lifted even more, even Raziel could find nothing to complain about as our destination grew ever closer. We could never have imagined that our fortune would turn so quickly against us.
It was late morning when the path began to curve back away from the Ghostfence, and after a brief assessment of the contents of our packs, we decided to leave it and return to following the fence, though the path was rockier and to my regret, our progress was slowed by the fact I only had one good hand to climb with. Eventually we reached a steep hill that took us to the very top of the Ghostfence, where a rocky outcrop had formed from years of wind erosion. Eager to take our first peek out over the fence since we entered Ghostgate, we scrambled all the way up and drank in the view with awe.
The land around us was little more a vast expanse of lifeless grey desert, but it took my breath away. The air rippled off sun-baked rocks, distorting the faint green sliver on the horizon that marked the Grazelands.
"You know, one wrong step and you'll be on the other side of the Ghostfence in no time." Raziel had the blackest sense of humour I had ever encountered, even amongst other Dunmer, and was proud of it. Her spiky smile was back again, too.
We were so captivated by the scenery, we never even heard the Corprus stalkers climbing the slope behind us – until one of them slipped on some shale. We both spun around at the noise, and in one fluid motion Raziel unsheathed her blade and lopped off the head of the nearest. The sheer weight of the blade made her stagger, teetering dangerously on the edge of the outcrop as the beasts lunged at her, wailing in their blind madness. Again Raziel swung the sword in a wide arc in front of her, and they shrank back, giving her just enough time to regain her balance. The next thing I knew, she reached backwards and planted a heavy shove in my chest, sending me tumbling down the rocky cliff. Searing pain shot through my burned hand, and everything went black.
When I came to, it took a long moment for me to remember where I was. An odd stillness had settled once more, but when I pushed myself up on limbs that felt like scrib jelly, my head swam sickeningly, and I very nearly fainted again.
"Take it easy, old man. You took quite a knock to your head." Raziel's voice floated over to me, and when I finally mustered enough strength to turn over, I found her sitting cross-legged opposite me with her back against a rock, just as she had been the night before – only now she was nursing a bloodied forearm, a crimson red stain slowly seeping through the strips of fabric she had ripped from her shirt to serve as makeshift bandages.
"One of the bastards bit me," she explained through gritted teeth. "And we've no healing potions. I used the last one to fix your head, since you bashed it open on your way down." Instinctively I reached up, but all I found was a painful lump. "Sorry about that, by the way."
"We have to get you to a temple," I decided, trying unsuccessfully to climb to my feet. The world span dizzyingly around me, and I fell onto my backside in the dust.
"What's the point? There's no cure for Corprus." I felt my heart drop into the pit of my stomach. Raziel busied herself with gathering up her pack. Avoiding my gaze, she held out a hand to help me to my feet, and once she was satisfied that I could at least walk on my own, she started to walk back up the rocky slope to where the Ghostfence stood, marking our route.
"What are you going to do?" Raziel didn't turn around, just gave a noncommittal shrug and trudged onward. Somehow the gesture seemed more helpless than any answer she could have given. "Well, maybe you're not infected. Maybe…" I trailed off as her words came back to me –
"If you catch Corprus, I'll kill you in a heartbeat. And I'd expect you to do the same for me."
All I could do was shuffle along behind her and pray to every god I knew that it wouldn't come to that.