A/N: Most of you will recall other stories and thus can guess what Tychicus is about, but if not, I refer you to TFC: Luckless.

Chapter 26

She thought at first she was going to have trouble borrowing another horse. The stable's ostler looked at her with the gimlet eye of one who has never lent anything in his entire life. Exhausted, disheveled, and no doubt flushed darkly from the fever that seemed to have started a few minutes previously, Varanu must surely be a disreputable sight. "What for?" he demanded.

Then, through the fog of fatigue and aching pain, inspiration struck. "I have to find my Altmeri friend," she said. "I think something might've happened to him between here and Anvil. Maybe you know him. His name is Esgeriad."

"Oh, sure," said the Nord, scratching his stubbly beard. His lumpy nose had seen better days. "Everybody knows Esgeriad." He shot her another, and only slightly less suspicious glance. "Be leaving that black horse 'til you get back, will you?"

"Of course," Varanu said, and rode off on a chestnut that was worth substantially less. If she knew Dibella's Knight even a little, he was doing exactly the same thing she was doing with a lot less practice surviving both sleep deprivation and disease. He may be older than I am, but he's never been under a pile of zombies. Well. Not 'til yesterday. He'll figure out I must've caught what he has and ride out to try and rescue me, or warn me, or some other silly thing, and I give him about halfway before he falls off his horse. And that only because a good enough mage can fortify his own fatigue. He far surpassed her in every school of magic but Destruction, but if the Altar couldn't or wouldn't heal her, it likely hadn't healed him, either.

Gods, I hope I get to him before some bandit does.

---

Tychicus Varen watched her leave the Chapel without surprise. If he was at all offended by her rudeness, his bland Imperial face did not show it. He turned and went down into the Undercroft. A Breton priestess with a light step and a cheery expression was on her way up the stairs. Varen did not know her well. She had come in the wake of the deaths of his brethren. She seemed very young to him, but he did not generally question those who chose to serve his own god.

"I beg your pardon, Sister Laure," he said. "Is there anyone else in the Undercroft?"

"Not at the moment, Brother," she said. "Why?"

"I need the use of it for a few moments," he said. "A Knight of Arkay came to me with a disease the Altar could not cure. I believe I can derive something which will serve, but I must do so quickly."

"Then with a will, Brother," said Laure. "I'll see you're not disturbed." She waved him on and went her way up the stairs. Tychicus Varen went quickly inside the Undercroft and barred the door behind him. He did it with surprising haste for a man of his short stature, as if the heavy bar weighed nothing at all. Then he went to a small cupboard on one wall, took out an empty pewter bowl, and blew on it. The metal frosted over instantly. Less explicably, it stayed that way, though the room was not at all drafty.

He rummaged for a moment with his free hand and came up with a small knife. He blew on that, too; ordinary steel would not be sharp enough without enchantment. Frost salts will not do for what I intend. They are too far removed from the first essence of daedric magic. No, this will require something more... vital.

He double-checked to make sure the door was locked before he cut into his wrist.

If anyone saw the blue light under the door to the Undercroft, or heard the crack of breaking ice, they never mentioned it.

---

Typically for her, Varanu had credited Esgeriad with somewhat less common sense than he actually possessed. He got off and walked before he reached the point of falling off the horse. The beast was content to amble along slowly, ignoring the feverish Altmeri clinging weakly to its right stirrup. Every so often he spoke to the horse, but for the most part he went in silence.

Esgeriad had never been afflicted with sickness. He'd cured illness in others, of course. That was his duty to all of the Nine, not merely to the Lady. And, given how spectacularly unlovely sickness generally made people, he was sure Dibella must surely be pleased by it. It normally would have depressed him intensely to consider what he no doubt looked like, flushed with fever and with his hair damp and stringy. At the moment he was too busy bending his entire will toward moving, one step at a time, up the dusty road toward Bruma. The sun was very bright on his head, beating down far more warmly than was comfortable for an afflicted mer in heavy armor.

He used spells to fortify and restore himself once or twice, but his magicka seemed stunted, less ready and slower to recover than before.

He was beginning to be angry. Not only with himself, because he'd been angry with himself for some time now, but with his aedra. Was it truly so very wrong, he asked himself, that he had done thirty years' worth of good deeds for entirely the wrong reason? Were those good things therefore of no effect? Had he really deserved to be dying on the road to finding a woman who emphatically did not love nor want him and would certainly send him right back to Anvil even if he did make it to -

There were hoofbeats from up ahead. Esgeriad tugged at the horse's bridle, and it obligingly came to a stop.

Esgeriad stared blearily up at the object of his desire. He was too tired to be very surprised to see Varanu. She swung down awkwardly and started toward him. He held up a hand to forestall her.

"I'm not sure to what I owe the pleasure, Knight of Arkay," he said. "But you must not come nearer. I am ill."

"Thanks," she said. "But so am I. Why'd you think I came looking for you?"

He blinked and looked at her again. Her gray skin was darker than usual, though the fever-flush did not show well on a Dunmeri complexion. Nor has she slept any more than I have, or she could not have been here by now. She was upright, but she did seem to be fighting a tendency to list.

"I was looking for you," he said lamely.

"I thought you might be," Varanu said. "But since you didn't expect me to be sick, I'm not sure why."

"I refer you to my earlier statement," he said. "The one I made yesterday."

She had that stunned look again. She took a step toward him and actually staggered physically. Esgeriad reached out to catch her, but was too weak to hold her up; they ended up leaning on each other, barely balanced. Esgeriad's left shoulder was pressed uncomfortably against the horse.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I suppose I assumed you would not take ill as easily as I."

Varanu opened and closed her mouth once. He could only see the top of her head, but he heard her teeth click. "It's not a normal disease," she said finally. "Come on, let's get back to Bruma. Varen thinks he can help."

"I doubt whether I can go so far," Esgeriad said gently. "Perhaps you should return and cure yourself first."

"Don't be an idiot," Varanu said. She pushed away from him, swayed, and righted herself sternly. "You'd be dead by the time I could get there and back. If exposure didn't get you, some robber would."

"You will never be rid of me otherwise, you know," he said. He smiled. "You won't kill me, and I cannot cease to follow you. That is entirely clear to me now."

"You really can't pick a good time to say these things, can you?" Varanu said.

"I'm afraid my customary sense of timing deserts me in your presence," he said dryly. "I am told the condition is not uncommon." He shook his head to try and clear it.

"Get out of the armor," Varanu said. "We'll put it on your horse."

"And then what?" said Esgeriad.

"Then we'll put my armor on it, too." She was looking down, away from him, as she fumbled with her cuirass buckle. "You can ride behind me on my horse, and I'll keep you from falling off. It's better than walking. If your customary reasoning skills hadn't gone the way of your sense of timing, you'd have thought of it yourself."

Esgeriad sighed and began to remove his own cuirass. It was a relief to be rid of the weight. His feather amulet seemed to be losing its effect. "There really is no hope at all, is there?" he said.

"We have a decent chance," Varanu said. "If I know Tychicus, he'll try and send someone out after us if we don't make it."

"That is not what I was referring to," Esgeriad said acidly. He was aware he was not completely himself, but he had a strong feeling that failing to pursue at this point would be fatal to his cause.

"Oh." Varanu dropped her cuirass onto the dusty roadbed. She looked at it for a moment. Then she sighed in turn and raised crimson eyes to his. The force of that contact was like being hit in the stomach. Dibella's greatest blessing. Dibella's greatest curse. "This isn't exactly fair," she said. "I'm not very good at this kind of talk, Esgeriad. I never have been. Gods and daedra, the last time I was in love with someone was probably ten y -"

"What did you say?" Esgeriad said. His heart was making a serious effort to leave his body via his throat, and it couldn't all be the fever.

"I said I'm not very good at - "

"After that," he said.

"I said the last time I was in love was more than fifteen years ago," she growled. "This stupid Altmeri keeps interrupting me."

"Please accept my humble apology," he said. "May I kiss you?"

"No, you may not," Varanu retorted. She lowered her eyes as she began to unbuckle her greaves. "You're obviously delirious. Besides, you'd fall over. And it completely escapes me how you could even consider kissing someone who looks like me. You could have any woman in Cyrodiil, human, mer or beastfolk - "

"I do not want any other woman in Cyrodiil," he said, as firmly as he could manage in his current state. "No other supplies so perfectly what I lack." He stepped carefully out of his own greaves and went to strap them to the horse's saddle, watching her from the corner of one eye. "Besides, you seem to have forgotten that my looks are entirely ruined." He held up one wrist with its bracelet of red scar, exposed now that his gauntlets were off, before he went on attaching things to the horse. Varanu moved to the other side of the animal, out of his sight. "Who would not be horrified by the marks on my back, except the one who has seen how I came by them? Or how many more must I acquire, to be worthy of Arkay's Knight?"

"It's not a question of worthiness," Varanu said. He could just see the top of her head over the saddle. "You would've had me when you thought I wasn't worthy of you." She came around the animal clad in only her linens, barefoot on the hard ground. "That was pretty godsdamned arrogant, by the way." She put one hand on the horse's side and leaned there, watching him warily. The animal huffed, but did not move.

"Yes, it was," Esgeriad said. By this time, he was barefoot himself. The road was rough under his feet. "Unfortunately, it is likely I will be so again. If you give me the opportunity – and I do not ask it lightly - I will make it right. Each and every time."

"Fair enough," Varanu said. "But I'm not going to get any better looking. I don't think I could if I wanted to." She shrugged one shoulder. "Besides..." She looked away again. "What I said earlier hasn't changed. I can't need anyone, Esgeriad. What if you get killed?"

"Contemplate very carefully all of the things I have survived with you in the last two days," Esgeriad said coldly. "Even with the blessing of your aedra, it is doubtful you will outlive an Altmeri. And I will thank you not to patronize me, madam."

"Don't call me - " she began hotly, but Esgeriad interrupted almost immediately.

"Do you hear something?" There had been a faint whisshhh of magicka used nearby, out of sight behind a grove of trees. And not in any small amount. The hairs were rising up and down his spine, an effect independent of his fever.

Varanu shot him a brief and lopsided smile. "I was right." She turned from the horse without so much as laying her hand on her sword. She'd buckled it on over her linens. Esgeriad's dagger was already strapped to the horse. He mostly carried it because it had been a gift, and it was pretty.

A moment later a stubby Imperial in a brown robe came into view around the bole of an oak tree. A faint mist of pink magicka trailed back from his shoulders as it dissipated. Esgeriad had only seen him once before, but he recognized Tychicus Varen.

"I thought we might be seeing you," Varanu said. "I'm sorry I was rude, Brother."

"It is nothing." The man waved a hand dismissively. "I am pleased I found you in time. I am not sure how long the cure will remain potent." He removed a small bottle from his belt. Blue light glowed from inside the glass. "I believe this will serve against the great majority of physical curses. Certainly Molag's."

"I'm certainly game to try," Varanu said, and held out her hand. Esgeriad wondered blurrily how the priest knew Molag was involved. Perhaps the Knight of Arkay had told him.

Someone else might have argued who should try the stuff first. Varanu just took a drink and handed it to Esgeriad. He downed the rest of the bottle. It burned frigidly all the way down his throat.

"Tychicus, are you sure...?" Varanu was saying belatedly. Esgeriad blinked against sudden dizziness.

"I'm afraid there will be some argument between the problem and the cure," said the priest's voice from very far away. Esgeriad took a step forward just in time to catch Varanu as she slumped. His own knees gave way an instant after that. He looked up at Tychicus Varen as he held the unconscious Dunmer. For an instant the man's outline wavered before his eyes, became a towering demon made of ice, but then the illusion collapsed as consciousness slipped away.