22
Revna's dream.
Why this? It could have been any other traumatic event in her life, but it had to be this one. She had, somehow, learned how to block out this dream, this memory, years ago. Waking up in the middle of the night, sweating no matter the weather. It wasn't as if she blocked the memory itself, that was always still there, but the dream of it was always too painful for her mind to allow it to replay.
She remembered each and every part of this memory. The burning fire, stacked up with logs. The shadows flickering against the walls. Her Hearth-Mother, lying on the bed, hoarse breathing coming and going in fits and starts. The open wound in her stomach weeping continuous blood through the makeshift bandages.
"Stendarr's mercy, girl! Your back!" Corhan, the irascible old hunter had managed to bring her Hearth-Mother here, safe, but dying. "Let me see to those cuts."
"Leave them." She had been stern, but not dismissive. "I'll be fine. How is Mama?"
She hadn't seen the old man, but she knew that he had been staring at the criss-cross lacerations in her back. She remembered feeling the blood trailing from them, matting her fur. Dripping on the dirt floor of the lodge. But the physical pain was nothing to the pain in her heart. She dropped to her knees, putting the bloodied Jotnbann aside, and clasped her Hearth-Mother's hand.
"There's nothing I can do, girl." Corhan stepped to the other side of Asta, Revna's Hearth-Mother and began replacing the bandage. "If I could get her to a healer, but she'd never survive the journey."
"Mama?" She held her Hearth-Mother's hand to her bare chest and moved a lock of hair away from her mother's sweat sodden face. "I'm here, Mama."
"Revna. My dear, beautiful child." Her mother's eyes appeared to stare at the roof, but she could see nothing, now. Her ragged breathing made talking difficult. "Adira! Where is your Shield-Mother?"
"She's dead, Mama. I couldn't stop them. Mama. They killed her with her own sword! They didn't even let her fight!" It was Revna's turn for her voice to break and she realised she was holding her mother's hand too tight. "But I killed them, Mama. I killed them all!"
"All of them?" Corhan's head had snapped up. "But there must have been twenty or more ..."
"Would you like to go and count them, old man?" She had been vicious then. Taking out anger on someone who didn't deserve it. "Go! See! I tore out their throats with my teeth and claws! I gutted them and took their heads! Go! Look if you must!"
"Revna, my sweet child." The anger subsided at the sound of her mother's cracking voice. "Did you take her sword? Adira's sword? My beautiful Adira!"
"I have it, Mama." Revna lifted Jotnbann from the floor and placed it into her Mama's hands. "I took it from their dead hands."
With some reserve of strength, Revna's Hearth-Mother gripped Jotnbann, her hands twisting against the leather wrapped grip. One hand fluttered out and, finding Revna's hand, brought it up to the grip of the sword, patting it when she had done.
"So she feasts in Sovngarde, Jotnbann belongs to you, now, Daughter. Carry it with pride. Be a true daughter of Skyrim. For Adira. And for me." Her Hearth-Mother's sightless eyes turned to face Revna, a hand lifting to stroke Revna's cheek. "Be good, little bird."
A final, long, haunting breath escaped her Hearth-Mother's lips and life left her. Revna had wanted to scream and to shout. To tear through this lodge. To go through the entirety of Skyrim slaughtering anything and everything in her path.
But she had slumped. Her fingers slipped from the grip of Jotnbann and she sobbed into her Hearth-Mother's chest, inconsolable. She had knelt there for such a long time. Ignoring the pain in her back. Ignoring the cramping of her legs. She only wanted to stay with her mother for a little while longer.
"A true daughter of Skyrim?" The voice was Corhan's, but the words were not what he had said. "You will never be accepted by Nords. Never!"
"Stop." It seemed possible it was to do with how she had controlled this dream before, or that it was because she, in her sub-conscious, remembered her friends' dreams. She knew this wasn't real.
"You don't have the strength! You are not a Nord! You ..."
"I said stop. I know who you are." She rose to her feet looking around the room, searching for something that was not supposed to be there. She found it. A shadow that did not move with the flickering flames of the fire. "You are Dukhat. The mage. Öenthir's mentor. You invade our dreams, bring us to these terrible times, and for what? Amusement?"
"You know nothing of me or of what I want." The voice from the shadow sounded distorted, indistinct.
"You cannot take this from me." Revna waved a hand at the scene around her. "This is precious and you will not sully this memory. You have no power here."
"Do I not?" A movement from the shadow. A wave of the hand? Corhan, the memory of him, rose from beside Revna's Hearth-Mother, taking Jotnbann in his hands and raising it above his head, about to strike at her.
"No. You do not." She closed her eyes.
ii. Revna.
She woke up to the noise that she had come to expect in Corhan's lodge. They had been stuck in the hut for two days, now, as the snowstorm had returned with a vengeance. Corhan didn't like company at the best of times, but with three people he didn't even know, it was causing aggravation and tensions were high.
She wiped her brow. She hadn't sweated as much as she used to do when that dream had played out, before she had learned how to break the dream, but she still found that her fur was slick with moisture. She washed herself down with the bowl of water that Corhan had provided before getting dressed and joining the others.
"You know what you've been short of, girl? A few slaps on the arse when you were a young 'un!" Corhan, bare chested, his once muscular body, now wrinkled and and loose skinned, towered above Tilly, his beard jutting out and his eyes fit to bursting.
"Go ahead, you old bastard!" Tilly, her head not even reaching Corhan's chin, stood before the old hunter, standing her ground, defiant. "It's probably the closest you've been to sex for fifty years!"
"You cheeky little ... Is this how you repay my hospitality?" He clenched his fists a few times and then turned away, storming towards the door to the lodge, collecting his wood axe on the way, and left, slamming the door behind him.
Tilly watched him leave with a smug smile on her face and then sat down beside the fire, picking up a scrap of bread and stuffing it in to her mouth without a care in the world. Revna sighed and sat down next to Öenthir. She looked over the mage's shoulder at the book in her hand. The pages were empty.
"What was it about this time?" She looked over at Tilly, slouched in the chair, chewing her bread.
"Tilly practised her knife throwing against his favourite stuffed head." Öenthir nodded towards a tattered wolf's head mounted on a piece of rough wood on the wall.
"Dammit, Tilly, can't you just try to get along? At least until this storm breaks?" She rubbed her forehead. It was too early for this kind of thing. "I know he's not easy to deal with, but ..."
"What do you mean 'get along'?" The dark elf tossed the last nub of bread into the roaring fire. "I think he's brilliant and he likes me, I can tell."
"But you've done nothing but fight and argue since we met him." Öenthir closed her empty book and tucked it away into her satchel.
"Oh, that's just play fighting. We have an understanding." Tilly winked at Öenthir.
"Just so long as your 'play fighting' doesn't end up as real fighting." Itagaki had been sat silent in the corner, far from the fire. Revna hoped that this wasn't a sign that her injury had caused a fear of fire in general. The Redguard had said nothing about it, either way.
"I had my dream." Revna made a simple statement. It seemed as good a time as any to bring it up with Corhan outside. Everyone immediately began paying attention. "I don't think it's Dukhat who's entering our dreams."
"How do you know?" Öenthir placed her hand on Revna's arm.
"He said so. Kind of. I confronted the shadow in my dream. It, he, was still hiding his face. If it was your old teacher, why would he bother to hide?" She stood, moving to the fire and poured some tea into a mug from the pot on the hearth.
"So, you're just going to take this man's word for it? I'm sure people who invade dreams are highly trustworthy." Tilly had a way of simplifying things. Of getting to the heart of everyone's thoughts, but Revna felt her friend was wrong this time.
"If it is not Öenthir's mentor, who is it that is doing this?" Itagaki had moved closer to the others. "Who else could it be?"
"Well, Dukhat did mention the 'Three Headed Dragon'. Perhaps he was referring to him and two others?" Öenthir rummaged in her satchel and pulled out a book, flipping through the pages. "And here, the leader of those men we fought outside Riften, they had tattoos of three dragon heads in a triangle. I did wonder if it signified one person or three, at the time."
"Wait. You've been writing all of this down? In a diary?" Jumping up, Tilly tried to get a look at the book in Öenthir's hand, but she clasped it to her chest, fast, hiding the words. "What do you say about me?"
"Probably nothing good, little elf." Revna dragged Tilly away as the dark elf tried to pull the book down to look at what Öenthir had written. "So, we've all been visited in our dreams. Now what?"
"Now we continue in our task. There is nothing else we can do." Revna caught even Itagaki making a curious look towards Öenthir's diary.
The door to the lodge opened, allowing the frigid winds from the storm to blow inside, snow wafting in with the wind. Corhan entered, a big stack of firewood in his hands and his axe atop that. Using his shoulder, he forced the door closed and it clicked onto its latch.
"Storm'll break by tomorrow, I reckon." He dropped the firewood next to the fire and picked up his axe to stow away beside the door. He nodded his head towards Tilly. "Them horses of yours need feeding, girl."
"Why me? You could have fed them while you were out there, you daft old goat!" Tilly flopped back into the chair, stubborn, refusing to move.
"Old goat, is it? Old goat?" Corhan rumbled. "I'll give you 'old goat'!"
"I'll feed the horses." Revna stood, sighing. She hoped the storm did break soon. She didn't think she could handle much more of this.
Without bothering to collect her cloak, she opened the door and stepped outside. The pricking of the cold and the whistling of the wind felt good against her fur. It was calming to her and, listening to the shouts coming from the lodge, even over the wind, she knew she would need to remain calm as long as Tilly and Corhan were near each other.
iii. Itagaki.
The old Nord hunter was almost exactly correct in his prediction. The snowstorm ended during the night and preparations to continue on to Deep Frost Barrow were soon made in the morning. Itagaki didn't look forward to being out in the cold again. The scar on her face seemed to throb in the chill, despite it being, as far as she could tell, all but healed. It was only another ache, though, to go along with the old wound in her side. Another story written in her body.
For some reason, known only to himself, Corhan had elected to join them on the journey to their next destination. On foot. The sight of the ancient hunter jogging alongside them was, in truth, a strange one. At times he would jog alongside Revna, chiding her about not using Jotnbann, her family heirloom. At other times, he would be beside Tilly, continuing the bickering rapport they had fomented between themselves. Still other times, he would disappear into the snow covered landscape, only to return with a rabbit or a bird of some kind that he would then tie to Revna's horse.
By mid-day they had made surprising progress. The old hunter would lead them off the road, often citing that it would be easier through a gap between some rocks, or that following the edge of a copse of trees would save them time and the energy of fighting through the new, soft snow drifts left by the snow storm.
"I'll stick to riding the horse, thank you very much." Tilly, responding to the taunts of Corhan, disparaging their need for horses and decrying the lack of mettle in the 'young of today'. "And just how old are you, anyway? Three, four hundred years old?"
"I'm older than the grass, younger than the mountains and I can still outrun you, missy!" It was a funny relationship the two very different people had. Itagaki didn't understand it and she doubted Revna or Öenthir did, either. "If you'd been my daughter, you'd have been made hard by these lands, not soft like them Morrowind buggers."
"If I was your daughter, I'd have died of old age centuries ago." The dark elf looked down at the old man beside her, pretending to sneer at him. It was possible Tilly needed an antagonistic relationship? Now that she had finally accepted Revna's friendship, she had no-one to argue with. The old Nord filled a gap.
Leaving them to their back-and-forth, Itagaki sped up to join Revna at the head of the group.
"At least I think they are not likely to kill each other, sister." She nodded her head back at Tilly and her new friend. "But, you look troubled."
"I think we have a shadow." Revna's ears pivoted this way and that. "The old man noticed a while back."
"Bandits? More followers of the Three Headed Dragon?" Revna shook her head, reining in her horse. She dropped to the snow covered ground and pulled her double-headed axe from her weapons roll. Itagaki dropped down, drawing her long sword.
"Finally noticed it, eh?" Corhan fell in beside Revna, patting her horse's neck. "Took your bloody time. It's been on our scent for a couple of miles."
"What is it?" Öenthir had joined them, now, whispering. Tilly remained on her horse looking completely unconcerned.
"Sabre Cat, lass. Better stay behind these two." Corhan pulled her out of the way as Revna stepped out into the open. Itagaki joined her, eyes searching the trees and rocks for the coming attack.
"Wait! You don't have to kill it. There's been enough of that, don't you think?" The little Bosmer pulled away from Corhan, stepping up beside Itagaki and Revna. "Just keep it occupied and I'll make sure it can't attack us. Trust me."
Itagaki wasn't sure what the wood elf had in mind, but Revna shrugged her shoulders. The Khajiit circled to the right, staring at a spot a short distance away, so Itagaki circled left. She couldn't see what Revna could see, but she focused her attention to the same spot.
Then the snow moved. The Sabre Cat, four hundred pounds, if it was an ounce, brilliant white fur with grey/black stripes, pounced between the two warriors. By the looks of it, despite its size, the winter had not been kind to the animal. It was almost skin and bone, had not eaten in weeks, by the look of it. Itagaki had no stomach to kill it and hoped that Öenthir was true to her word.
She and Revna kept the desperate, hungry cat between them, taking it in turns to taunt it. Forcing it to look at one and then the other, not giving it time to decide which one of them it would attack first. She glanced over at Öenthir and saw the mage weaving a spell with her hands in the air. It was then that the Sabre Cat decided to leap.
But it found itself held. A circle of glowing blue sigils had appeared upon the ground around it. It tried, several times, to leap towards one or the other of the companions, but the glowing circle held it firm in place. Itagaki turned to Öenthir, impressed.
"Rune Prison. New spell." The mage was breathing heavy and bent almost double trying to catch her breath, her hands on her knees. "Wasn't ... wasn't certain I could cast it."
"How long will it last?" Revna tested the circle and almost lost a hand as the cat swiped at her. Things could go in, but the Sabre Cat couldn't get out.
"I don't know. Couple of hours. More or less." The mage seemed very pleased with herself, and so she should be. This new spell could, it seemed almost certain, come in handy.
"Eh, lass." Corhan shook his head and sighed. "You've done that animal no favours."
The old hunter strode towards the imprisoned Sabre Cat. The cat roared and swiped towards him, but it couldn't pass the edge of the circle. Again, Corhan sighed, reaching behind his back and pulling out a long knife. Without his hand passing the edge of the circle, he waited for the right opportunity and plunged the knife under the cat's jaw, burying it deep into the animal's brain, killing it in an instant.
"No!" Öenthir screamed. "I did that so we wouldn't have to kill it! Why?"
"All you did was make it an easy target." The old man struggled to pull the big cat from the Rune Prison circle. "There are other animals need to feed around here. This poor thing would have been savaged before we disappeared out of sight. It was a mercy. And I can get good money for this pelt."
Itagaki took hold of Öenthir, gathering her up into her arms. The mage was in whirl of emotion. Rage and sadness fighting for the chance for expression. She held the mage's arms tight. After seeing her cast the Rune Prison, the little Bosmer was, it appeared, becoming stronger in her magicks and they still hadn't seen what the other new spell she had learnt could do. But they had all seen what she could do when rage took control of her. The Kotu Gava brood-mother had suffered her wrath on that occasion.
The last thing Itagaki wanted to see was that rage taking over again and seeing Öenthir use her power against the old hunter. Especially as she agreed with him.
iv. Tilly.
She didn't know what all the fuss was about. Either Revna, Itagaki or even Tilly herself would have had to have killed the Sabre Cat if Öenthir hadn't have trapped it with the spell. It would have killed them, given half a chance, but the Bosmer mage was still furious at the old hunter. And, besides, he had been right.
Even from this distance, they could hear the sounds of wolves in a frenzy as they fought over the cat's remains. At least Corhan had killed it with a relative lack of pain. The wolves would have torn apart the cat, trapped and unable to defend itself, and it would have suffered.
It was only an animal. Animals die all the time.
"You've not made a friend there, old man." She looked down at him as he kept pace with her horse.
"Don't see as I rightly care." Corhan had attached the pelt to Tilly's horse and wasn't going anywhere far from it. "That cat had a right to die properly. Besides, I don't need friends, but I do need the money that pelt will get me."
"You don't need friends, eh?" She nodded towards Revna, a couple of horse lengths in front. "Not even her?"
"I wouldn't say we're friends, exactly." The old Nord's features darkened. "Me and her have history. The kind that holds people together, even if they don't want to."
Tilly could understand that, without prying into what it was that held a grumpy old Nord and a Khajiit together. She felt that she too had that kind of history, now, with her three bound companions. It was possible they may not end up as friends for long after the binding became broken, but they would always have a connection. Some more than others, she mused, but all of them to some degree.
They were making their way through a maze-like structure of ravines and crevasses, made from rocks and ice. There were no pathways here. If any had ever led the way to Deep Frost Barrows, the snow and the ice and the passage of time, had swallowed them years ago.
Corhan quickened his pace and ran to catch up to Revna and Itagaki at the front, leaving his prize pelt behind. Tilly could see Öenthir, sullen, riding on the other side, staring with restrained anger at the old man as he ran.
"Wen?" She tried again to start a conversation with the wood elf. "You have to let it go, love."
"I can't." The wood elf's eyes flicked towards Tilly and then back at the old man, boring into the back of his head. "It was trapped. Helpless. And he just ... he just ..."
"You know he's a hunter, right?" Tilly couldn't believe she was having to explain this. "It's what he does. He does it all the time. Done it all his ridiculously long life. Are you going to be upset about all the other animals he's killed?"
"It's not the same." Öenthir glanced at the pelt behind Tilly, as if she thought it was taunting her.
"It's exactly the same. Only this time it was your trap that caught the animal and not one of his." She shifted in her saddle, feeling herself get a little annoyed at Wen. "Is that what is? You feel responsible because it was your new spell that trapped it? Well, all I can say is, after dismantling some of his traps, it was a damn sight less cruel catching it in yours than one of his."
"It's not the same." Ah, her tone had changed. Reverting to that stuffy way she had spoken when they first met. Wen was angry with her, now, but Tilly could see the mage was already turning what she had said over in her head.
They had all stopped while Corhan talked with Revna and Itagaki. There were some hands thrown out in directions and a couple of looks back to her and Öenthir. A few head nods later and her two companions dismounted with Corhan returning to her and Wen.
"We best make camp here. The barrow is just over that ridge and we don't want to camp too near it at night." The old man took the pelt from behind Tilly, unrolled it and laid it on the ground. The fresh skinned fur was to be his bed for the night.
"Why not camp nearer the barrow if it's not that far?" It was a fair question, she thought.
"Do you want to camp where the dead walk at night? Didn't think so. I'll get some food." The old hunter made his point and then ran back the way they had come with only his knife at hand to find food for the night.
This is it, she thought, the last step before the end. Soon, if they survived, they would return the last gem, lift the curse and get this damned binding broken. And then what? She didn't know. She didn't know if anything was ever going to happen for her and Itagaki. She didn't know where she would go (somewhere warmer than here, she hoped, which wasn't hard). She didn't know if she would return to her calling or retire and become a merchant, like Finds-Things-Not-Lost.
She had no idea what was going to happen.
v. Öenthir.
She found it difficult to sleep at all. The old hunter didn't sleep much, either, but for differing reasons. She'd drift off for a few minutes, here and there, but the intense cold would soon wake her up again, despite wearing both her new coat and her thick cloak. Revna fell straight to sleep after taking first watch and didn't stir for the rest of the night, snoring away even through Tilly's mumbled complaints as she took over.
Itagaki, as ever, seemed to sleep while still being tense and alert. Several times she appeared to be in a deep sleep only to be wide awake and completely aware as Corhan would disappear into the night and return moments later with a dead rabbit or a squirrel, chuckling to himself as he gutted and skinned the animals.
She couldn't get over the old Nord killing the Sabre Cat. It just felt wrong, somehow. The great and noble creature, rendered helpless by her hand, left at the mercy of the man that killed it without any hesitation. She could not abide the ruthlessness with which it had happened. Not callous, though. That she would admit. He did kill it in the least painful manner and she did, in truth, understand the reasoning behind it. She still didn't like it.
The morning came slow, as far as she felt concerned and even attempting to read the third spell book was beyond her. The book was complex at the best of times, but, here in the snow covered waste, she couldn't concentrate on it at all. It wasn't a problem, as such. The book and the spell would take months to master. One night wasn't going to change that. She put it away when everyone began waking up and the camp became a hive of activity.
They broke the camp down with practised speed and they were soon on their way, taking the now short leg of the journey to the tomb and, when they crested the final rise, the sight took Öenthir's breath away.
Like the rib cage of some ancient, enormous creature, the structure of Deep Frost Barrows rose out of the snow. A series of stone pillars, topped with crude carved dragon heads, led the way to the main section, where a dais raised before it with unlit braziers either side a stone altar. It was the most impressive of the tombs they had seen, from the outside. Corhan paused the party before they descended.
"See the stack of flat rocks to the West?" He held Revna by the crook of the elbow as he pointed. "Remember that place. The Ancients who built this place put passages throughout the Barrows, ways out without having to go back through the rest of the place. When you get in, it's only one way and that's where you'll come out."
"What did they do that for?" Tilly found it odd to build something that way.
"How the bloody Oblivion do I know?" The old hunter threw up his hands, shrugging his shoulders. "Maybe it's because death is supposed to be one way, there's no coming back from it. Pity they didn't tell the draugr that."
They began the descent, then, nearing the great ancient Nord edifice. The sheer size, the scale of the place, seemed to loom over them the closer they got to the structure, looming like some skeletal harbinger of doom.
Öenthir didn't like it. She hadn't liked the other tombs, either. They were, after all, tombs. But there was something different about this place. Something sinister, as if the tomb itself was giving off a sense of deep, evil malice. Like the Barrows themselves were turning a malevolent eye at their approach.
"Is there some secret, special way to get in?" Itagaki had dismounted from her horse and was examining the doors.
"Aye. You push the doors and they open." Corhan took the reins from everyone as they dismounted and began tying the horses together in a line. "Make sure you've got everything you need as the only way back is to go through. I'll be waiting at those rocks for you."
"How do we know we can trust you?" She didn't know why, but she wanted to get one last snipe in. Revna trusted him and that would be enough for her under normal circumstances. She just wanted to stick the proverbial knife in. "You might take our horses and skin them."
"There's little money in horse pelts, girl." He grinned at her, missing teeth making the grin odd and comical. "Bosmer skin, however, that would get a fine price."
"Hey! No bickering with the old git! That's my job." Tilly grabbed Öenthir's arm and dragged her away.
"All right, that's enough! Corhan, take the horses to the exit at the rocks." It was Revna taking charge instead of Itagaki, for once. The Khajiit checked to make sure Jotnbann was secure on her back. She winked at the old man. "And the horses better still have their skins when we get back."
Öenthir knew she had been ridiculous, foolish even, she felt she needed to say something to the old Nord. Now, however, she had to prepare herself for the descent into the tomb. The others were also preparing.
While Revna checked the edges of her double-headed battle axe, Itagaki went around the Khajiit, checking her armour, tightening straps, making sure every part was secure. Revna returned the favour, checking Itagaki's Redguard armour. Tilly made sure that "Grave's Friend" and "Bedtime Story" were loose and sharp. Even though those enchantments wouldn't work against the dead, the dark elf's daggers were long enough to cause damage without them.
For her part, Öenthir made sure her satchel was set and hanging in the correct position. It would be a pain if it kept bouncing around if she had to run. She made sure she had a tight grip on the staff Revna had carved for her but, despite the few lessons Revna and Itagaki had given her in staff fighting, she doubted she would be any use with physical attacks.
No. Her main use was to be in how well she cast her spells and how long she could keep up the casting before she tired herself out. She knew she would have to hold back using her newer spells until they were needed. The others, her original five spells, she could cast without tiring herself, now, after practicing them all so much and the training she had received from the Sap Speaker.
She was as ready as she could be and she noticed she wasn't the only one taking deep, calming breaths.
Itagaki made one last look to everybody, to make sure they were ready, and pushed at the large, sturdy double doors that led into Deep Frost Barrows.