It wasn't until they neared Dawnstar that the demon horse whinnied sharply and turned off the road, skirting the town, passing a place that the map told them was Nightcaller Temple, and slowing to a stop in the middle of seeming nowhere.
But the wolf had caught the scent that had drawn the demon horse, and her glowing green eyes narrowed in fury. Cicero's cart horse lay in a pool of blood and... other things, having been eviscerated by Arnbjorn's claws. The poor mortal beast had probably foundered at being driven so mercilessly by Cicero and the understandable terror of the roaring werewolf at the horse's heels.
The snow here was scuffed up. Signs of a fight, and blood; other than the horse's there was also werewolf and human, which told the tale. Her clever Crow had made it this far before he had been forced to fight back. And things had gotten ugly.
The blood trails led around the city, to the place where Arnbjorn now sat, slumped in the snow, bleeding from a wound in the side. He was only a few yards away from the Sanctuary door. Whether the injury had weakened him into returning to human form, or he had shifted back in an attempt to heal it, didn't matter. He was still clearly too weak to do any more fighting.
"Should have figured Astrid would send you," Arnbjorn managed to dredge up a sneer for old times' sake.
Kriivah eyed him for a split second, and then knelt down next to him, digging into her pouch and producing a now cooled healing potion. "You're hurt…"
"Ha! What gave it away?" he grinned wolfishly, then gave a ragged laugh. "Yeah, I've got to admit that little jester is good with that butter knife. But don't worry, I have as good as I got. He's in there! Through the door." Arnbjorn pointed unnecessarily, his hand wavering badly before dropping. Kriivah's wolf could see and smell Cicero's blood leading into the Sanctuary, but chose not to insult the Nord by stating how obvious it was. "It's some old Sanctuary, by the looks of it. I would have followed him, but I don't know the phrase."
"I know the phrase. I'll get Cicero; you drink this health potion and go home." She pressed the bottle into his hands. He eyed it briefly, suspicious, but she offered him a grim smile, "No tricks. No nasty surprises. It will heal you, I promise. If we settle our differences, it will be in a proper fight."
Arnbjorn knocked it back, and his expression relaxed a little as the wound began to close, "All right, you convinced me. Doubt I'd be much good to you anyway. The little fop cut me pretty deep. But I slashed him good. May have even severed an artery if I'm lucky. Don't know what you're going to find in there... but you can probably just follow the blood."
The Breton nodded and approached the door.
"What is life's greatest illusion?" came the unearthly whisper from the door.
"Innocence, my brother."
"Welcome home."
The black door closed behind Kriivah and she glanced warily around to make sure she wasn't going to be ambushed right at the front door. That concern was quickly put to rest; a trail of blood led deeper into the Sanctuary. Arnbjorn really had gotten him good.
Let me finish the hunt, the wolf rumbled.
Not bothering to hide her surprise, Kriivah asked, You?
Yes. He is my Crow friend…. And hopefully, your mate. It is time for the inevitable end to the hunt. I have run, and he has pursued. Now it is time to catch him.
Who says wolves don't have a sense of romance? Kriivah grinned.
The wolf snorted, and did not answer. Kriivah double checked that she still had the bottles tucked into her pouch. Yes, they were still there: the faint slosh of liquid inside was music to her ears. Then she slid back and let the wolf take over.
As she eased further in, Cicero's familiar voice called out; "Listener! Is that you? Oh I knew you'd come. Send the best to defeat the best." He gave a faint chuckle. "Astrid knew her stupid, overgrown, sheep dog couldn't…" his voice broke and the next words were hissed through teeth in pain, "...slay sly Cicero."
The wolf in Breton's skin moved slowly, keeping her footfalls silent and shooting the ghostly sanctuary guardians from a distance with her bow. Now was not the time to be sloppy; she needed to be able to get to him and she couldn't do that if she charged in without thinking.
"Oh, but this isn't at all what Mother would want." The jester continued, "You kill the Keeper or I kill the Listener? Now that's madness."
Through a short tunnel, there was a wooden bridge. Her eyes flicked to the ground and saw a pressure plate. Carefully, she extended a leg ahead of her and stepped sharply on the plate, then leaped back.
There was a click and a delayed sssshhunk as several steel spikes shot out of the wall ahead of her on the bridge. An unlucky fool who stepped on the plate and kept going, or perhaps, dove forward in hopes of being missed, would have landed themselves directly in the path of those spikes.
"Ouch! Pointy pointy! My home is well defended, Listener. I always have been a stickler for details. Get it? 'Stick-ler.' Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, I slay me!"
Kriivah groaned silently.
"Jester, come out." The wolf called, "You only delay the inevitable."
There was another pained hiss from somewhere ahead. "Cicero thinks not. Clever Kriivah is on the hunt, and what kind of prey would Cicero be if he comes willingly to her hand? No, no, if Cicero is to be hunted, then Kriivah must be a professional assassin and do what she and her wolf were born to do."
Down a set of stairs and at the bottom she spotted a trip wire. Freezing, she traced the rope with her eyes and saw four fire pots at the ceiling. Cautiously leaning forward, she spotted the rainbow slick that covered the ground.
Clever. If she were to foolishly run after him, she would find herself in the middle of an oil slick that would turn into an inferno, with two more sanctuary guardians waiting to polish off whatever the fire failed to terminate. Well, she wasn't prone to rushing, so…. She tripped the wire, and stood back as the pots plummeted to the floor. The rushing roar of the flames almost drowned out the shocked cries of the ghostly guardians.
A bit further and she found herself in a dim hallway.
"You're... still alive. Cicero respects the Listener's abilities, of course, but could you at least slow down a bit? I'm not what I used to be. Heh." The blood trail was growing heavier, which could only mean the man was bleeding even more heavily.
"Afraid not. As much as I enjoy matching wits against a Crow, the thrill of the hunt must end at some point," the wolf murmured, though she wasn't sure whether the Keeper was close enough to hear from whatever hidden spot he was currently observing from.
More hallways and a locked door. It would have been a dead end, if the wall hadn't been smashed open and an ice tunnel hadn't been dug.
"Brrr! Chilly! You'll enjoy this. Not an original part of the Sanctuary, per se. Let's call it a 'forced addition.' Forced by what? Oh, come and see!"
The floor was littered with bones and the half eaten remains a goat. A troll's grunts made the wolf lift the Breton's head and peer into the shadows. There. There it was. The black fur made it blend, but the creature's three golden-green eyes drew the eye in the dim light, where they glowed like candles. A poisoned arrow to the face put the creature down.
This place was a royal mess.
"Cicero, did you truly try to break the Fifth Tenet?" the wolf called.
"No! No! Cicero didn't… Well…" Cicero's pained voice ground to a halt from what seemed to be just ahead of her. "All right," he took a deep, agonized breath, "so Cicero did attack that harlot, Astrid! But what's a fool to do, when his mother is slandered and mocked? Violated the First Tenet she did! She did! The Pretender said that the Night Mother's mummified remains were good for nothing but kindling to keep her arse warm on a cold night, and that Cicero should accept that the Old Ways were gone." His voice sounded a little desperate. "Surely the Listener understands why Cicero went a little… crazy?!"
She nodded slightly. So that was why Cicero had attacked. And, as she suspected, Astrid had triggered him. Astrid would pay, but later.
Down a hall, to a pair of doors.
"And now we come to the end of our play. The grand finale." Kriivah's heart dropped as Cicero made a pained noise from the other side and wet cough. She heard the splatter of someone spitting liquid, likely blood, onto the floor.
Through the doors, she found Cicero laying on low platform, on his side, clutching his wound, and surrounded by blood. If anything, he looked worse than Arnbjorn… of course, he didn't have the werewolf's healing abilities.
Kriivah tried to stifle a gasp of dismay within the wolf's mind. The man looked so vulnerable; so… at odds with the lively man who cracked jokes and played with his ebony dagger as though it were a child's toy.
The wolf kept her distance warily, watching for any sign of the weapon. Even now, the man could pull a last ditch strike that would ruin her day. It took several confused seconds for her to realize that he was unarmed.
She had never seen him without his ebony dagger.
Never.
Sweeping the room with her eyes, she realized that his blade was on the ground next to her, out of his reach and inaccessible to any but the most desperate of lunges. She could only guess that he had weakened enough to have lost his grip on the thing, and didn't have the strength to pick it up again. That, more than anything, frightened them both and drew the wolf's whine from her still human throat.
"You caught me! I surrender!" he wheezed, then gave a weak laugh, acknowledging how pointless surrender would be at this point. "But killing me would be a mistake! Oh yes. You would displease our mother, hmm? You wouldn't want our Dark Matron to be without her Keeper, would you? Listener?"
The wolf narrowed the Breton's eyes slightly at the emphasis he placed on her title. Perhaps desperation, pain and blood loss made him think that they had forgotten the Night Mother's voice.
"It is not the Listener who comes for you today, Cicero."
His eyes widened in shock when he saw that her eyes were filled with green, and that he was speaking to the wolf, not to the Breton. "The wolf? Why the wolf?" Then his mouth fell open; "Has Cicero discovered a secret? Does the wolf do all the hunting?"
"No." The wolf gave him a predatory smile. "Just you."
"May Cicero suggest another ending to this dance? You could just walk away! Let poor Cicero live! Tell the Pretender, Astrid, you did the job! Stabbed, strangled, drowned poor Cicero! One little itty bitty lie!" Cicero looked up at her with his now dark eyes; almost black… like Nazir's. They were also oddly lucid now that he as bleeding out in a dark Sanctuary, far away from home.
The pair gave him a tight smile. "We don't strangle or drown our victims, Cicero. You know that."
He let out a long breath, and his expression turned bitter. "No. No you don't. Do what you will, then. Cicero has no fight left. In the end, Sithis will judge us both."
"Hm. Is that an offer?" The wolf murmured, pulling a bottle out of a pocket and giving the contents a light swirl to undo any separation the ingredients might have experienced. She wanted the bottle at full potency when she used it. " 'Do what I will….' I admit, that is quite… tempting."
"Oh, does the deadly wolf plan to bless poor, humble Cicero with one of Kriivah's deadly poisons?" The man was watching her with weary delight, "To be honest, Cicero didn't think that he would be granted such an honor as to go out with the taste of the clever, deadly Listener's notorious mixtures."
"You are daft in ways I can't even fathom," the wolf rumbled, and shook her head in bewilderment. "To think anyone would be so eager to drink one of her concoctions, especially knowing where her talents lie."
Cicero gave a little laugh, and then winced, "If Cicero is destined to travel to the Void, he will gladly-ulp!"
Stepping forward, the wolf had pulled the cork out and knelt next to him, one hand lifting his chin ever so slightly, the other pressing the bottle to his lips.
Blessed silence fell as the red liquid poured past his lips and into his mouth. He swallowed automatically, eyes startled and staring into the glowing green eyes as she kept the bottle pressed firmly to his mouth.
"Drink it," she ordered, putting on a stern and commanding scowl. "All of it."
The pain was leaving his face, and Kriivah felt something inside her loosen. His gaze sharpened, apparently spotting the relief as she knelt over him. Then the wolf's eyes suddenly narrowed.
"I have a different sort of death in mind for you… Jester." The growl in her voice deepened briefly, looking past the man at something deep inside him.
Kriivah jolted in shock when she saw something in his eyes… a sickly green… something that moved abruptly and disappeared.
"There you are!" The wolf snarled suddenly, and Kriivah gasped as the wolf plunged into the connection between them, and left the Breton, feeling very human and suddenly alone inside her own head.