Chapter 4

Dree stopped just before the doorway to the first chamber to listen. Water ran somewhere else in the cave, but that seemed to be all. There was no moaning, or shrieking, or footsteps, or organs working, though those would have been hard to hear over the water. At least, Dree told herself so. She was beginning to suspect no sound could drown out a beating heart as far as she was concerned.

She was in the process of having this thought when the smell hit. She no longer breathed unless she was talking, but air would work its way into her nostrils eventually just the same. Well, now I know I can't throw up either, Dree thought. And whoever was in there is definitely dead. There was no mistaking the smell of fresh blood, but it was mixed with the excremental stench of death and the sickly sweet reek of rotting meat. She stood for a long time before she could force herself to walk inside.

The room was not very large, and the strong mixture of odors made it seem crowded. There were tables lining the walls, and some of them had alchemy equipment, and some had bones. Some had other things at which Dree was not inclined to look very closely, because that was where the rotting-meat smell seemed to come from. She looked around for the necromancer, trying not to dread what she was about to see.

The body lay in the center of the room. He ran away from the table he was working at, and Gogron met him here. The middle-aged Breton was undoubtedly dead. Very definitively so. At least, I hope to never see a living man with his head five feet from his body. The intervening space seemed to be splattered in drying blood, and a very large pool had spread out around the body. Dree stared at it for a moment. It was easy to forget how much blood a body could hold. People like Vicente would talk about it as though an entire person needed only enough blood to fill a wine bottle.

Dree shook herself, and went around. The passage to the next room was narrow, and it wound back and forth several times before she stepped out into a larger chamber. The sound of rushing water was louder here – a narrow channel ran ran from one wall to the other, carrying a swift stream. Dree had thought the previous dead man had prepared her for what she was about to see. This turned out to be exactly wrong.

White hands reaching up from a steaming pool of blood, pulling her under -

Dree jerked, and the vision faded. She pulled back into the passage for a moment, closing her eyes. It wasn't real. It wasn't real.

She turned, very slowly, and looked at the cavern again. Someone might be able to count eight necromancers here, but it would take some time, and also some totaling up of what body parts belonged to whom. It is conceivably possible to kill someone neatly with a sharp sword or a dagger, but it simply cannot be done with an axe. Gogron hadn't even tried. Some of the bodies looked as though he had kept on hacking at them after they fell. Until they stopped twitching, Dree thought. At least three of them were women, and two were Altmer. It was too hard to tell about the others. The blood pool here was dozens of feet wide, soaking the bedrolls that neatly lined one wall and turning the hair and garments of the dead into an awful, sodden mess. The stream was clear until it reached the center of the room, where a crude arch of stone bridged it. From there until it vanished under the cave wall, it was dark red.

Dree tried not to think about the smell. Gogron sat against the opposite wall, slumped sideways against a large rock. If she worked at it, she could make the blue glow go away, could see him in very good detail even in the dark. His helmet lay on the ground beside him, dropped or removed, there was no way to tell. Small puddles of blood lay here and there around him, though his armor looked clean. His face was turned half away. The eye she could see was closed, his heavy jaw slack.

"Gogron?" Dree said. He did not stir. She tried again, raised her voice to be heard above the stream. Nothing. I know he's alive, or he wouldn't be glowing. Besides, I can still hear him breathe. Slowly, maybe. So he's not faking it. He's not going to jump up and hack me to pieces with that axe, Dree told herself. The axe lay next to the helmet. It was no longer possible to tell what it had originally looked like. It was completely coated with stop saying that word, curse you. Dree edged carefully forward. Nothing moved. The smell showed no sign of abating, and if it was possible to get used to the scent of death and – don't say it again - it wasn't happening yet. White hands reaching -

"No," Dree said out loud, but the water drowned her out. She walked quickly forward, stumbling in sudden weakness, but managed to steer around the biggest part of the mess. She crossed the bridge without falling off, which was good, because she could not stand the thought of being carried downstream into the red water. "No," she said again, and made it to the rock and fell to her knees. She could hear Gogron's heart beating now, driving the blood no don't say it through the vessels, and she was very thirsty and the white hands kept trying to seize her and pull her under, and if that happened she would never rise again. "No."

She turned her back to him, and edged over to the other side of the rock, and put out the lights. Everything, mercifully, shut itself off.

---

Dree's eyes snapped open at the sound of someone saying her name. Gogron was kneeling beside her, looming in the dark. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Dree ignored the sound pointedly, but the awful images seemed to be keeping their distance for now.

"You all right?" Gogron said. He sounded a little tired, but entirely calm.

"How long has it been?" Dree said as she sat up. Thirty hours since the last time, said a very strict internal clock, the same one that kept insisting her throat was dry. Shut up, you, she told it.

"Not sure," Gogron said. "I tend to lose track." He must have cleaned himself off before he woke her. The axe was strapped to his back again. It gleamed faintly red over his shoulder, but it was a magicka red, a bound spell red.

"Can we leave?" Dree said.

"Sure. I've already been through and there's nothing worth taking with us. I've already got a better mortar and pestle than these idiots were using."

"You searched the bodies?" Dree said as she got up. She did not look at the area where the bodies were. The smell was, if anything, worse.

"Not to worry, I washed up afterwards," Gogron said, rubbing the top of his head. He seemed to have a couple of small scratches, but he could have gotten those from the cavern wall.

"Oh, good," Dree said.

"It's important, you know. Necromancers handle dead bodies all the time. You never know what they might have." Gogron turned to cross the bridge. "Are you sick?"

"No," Dree said. "I'm fairly sure the only reason I didn't throw up is because I can't, though."

"Only it's dark in here, so I can't tell so much, but you're looking a little. Ah. Peaked."

Dree raised a hand to her face. She could feel lines where lines had not been before, and she immediately remembered what Vicente Valtieri had said: Perhaps you are not familiar with the paradox of our strengths... She didn't feel stronger than before. But then, she hadn't felt stronger than when she was a Bosmer in the instant when she broke the lock on that well, either.

"I thought I told you to stay up top," Gogron said.

"I'd have to see all this sooner or later," Dree said.

Gogron raised a dark eyebrow. "I figured you could take that, or I wouldn't have brought you. The problem is that I'm not sure even a vampire could hold me off if you'd come too soon. That's why I told you to stay there."

"You didn't move for a long time," Dree said. "And I could tell everyone else was dead."

"Yeah? How?" Gogron said.

"Things that are alive look blue. They glow. I can turn it on and off, but when it's on, I can see it even through the walls. Actually things that aren't alive, too. Ghosts. Zombies. Things that move on their own." They were coming to the necromancer she had killed. Apparently Gogron hadn't come up this far, because the daggers were still very visibly stuck in the body.

"Ah, so one did get by me," Gogron said. He paused to inspect the body with clinical interest. "You shouldn't leave the knife in the body next time. Never leave anything of yours behind."

"I'm sorry," Dree said. "Next time I won't." She steeled herself and reached for the dagger in back, the dagger that was hers. It's all congealed. I can handle it, she told herself firmly.

"It's all right this time," Gogron said. "I found you a better one."

Dree straightened, trying not to look relieved. "You did?"

"Yeah. The old Altmer down there had it." Gogron pulled a leather sheath out of his belt and handed it to her. Dree accepted it gingerly. It seemed heavier than the one in which she had kept the steel dagger. She unsheathed the weapon and looked at it. This was another dagger, but it was thinner, the blade slightly curved. The handle was carved with symbols she could not read, and as she tilted it to and fro a green glow crawled over the surface.

"I don't know what it does, but I figured you could test it on the dummy back at the Sanctuary," Gogron said.

"Thank you, Gogron," Dree said.

Gogron shrugged. "I can't use it anyway, unless I want to hold it with two fingers. Better put your hood up. It's probably still day." Dree obediently pulled the hood up over her head as he reached for the wooden door. Light streamed in. Gogron grunted as he looked out. "Hm. The horse is still there, anyway. I knew it was worth it to bring that picket – Dree?"

Dree had moved faster than she had previously thought possible, darting back down into the dark hall. Even in the shadow, she felt steam rising from her burning skin, her entire body roasting as if over an open flame. "Close the door! Please!"

The light vanished. Dree stuck her head cautiously around the corner. The door was closed, and Gogron stood with his back against it.

"I don't know what happened," Dree said. She made a determined effort to keep her voice steady, though she now ached all over. "I had the hood up."

"Let's have a look," Gogron said. His voice was entirely calm, reassuring. Dree came forward slowly. Gogron reached out to finger the fabric of the hood next to her face, turning it to and fro. "It's still turning color like it's supposed to, so the enchantment's still good. I wonder what the problem is?"

"Nothing's different than when we got here except... Oh." Except for the bad dreams. If she thought very hard she could remember something like that vision of white hands. Back from the day after I first started to change, and I hadn't drunk from anyone. She'd gone to a lot of trouble not to remember that, too. Here, in the dark, was a very bad place to be thinking of it.

"Except what?" said Gogron.

"It's been thirty hours since I drank," Dree said. "That's why my face is changing."

"Oh, right," Gogron said. "I've heard Valtieri say he used to vary like that." He pulled off one gauntlet. "So you get more sensitive after a day or so. We'll just have to make sure you don't have to wait that long." He offered her his wrist. Dree did not hesitate this time, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. It still tasted terrible, but she felt herself heal.

"That's better," Gogron said, peering under the hood at her as he dabbed a sticking plaster onto his wrist. He was prepared this time, Dree noted silently. "I've got a flask here. Want something to get rid of the taste?"

"How did you know?" Dree said, gratefully accepting the metal container. She took a sip and swilled it around inside her mouth, scorching away the taste with the alcohol. She'd only tried liquor once or twice. At the time, she'd thought it was the worst thing she'd ever tasted. This seemed ridiculous, in retrospect.

"You were wrinkling your nose the whole time," Gogron said. "One of the funniest things I ever saw." He accepted the flask back and replaced it somewhere on his armor. "Let's try this sun thing one more time."

The hood worked. A few moments later, they were riding back toward Cheydinhal.

"So we just leave them all there?" Dree said eventually. "That's all right?"

"We're assassins," Gogron said, after a brief pause for chewing. He had been eating out of a sack tied to the saddle horn every since they left the cave. "Cleaning up is a lawman's job. Besides, I doubt anybody's going to go looking for a bunch of necromancers except for the same reason we were."

"So who hired us?" Dree said. "Or aren't we supposed to know?"

"Mostly we don't," Gogron said. "That's Ocheeva's job, or sometimes Valtieri's if we have a new recruit, but we haven't seen one in a while. Ocheeva thinks she and Lucian are bosom buddies, but I'm starting to think he's sending them to other Sanctuaries on purpose."

"Why would he do that?" Dree said.

"Beats me. I'm just a dumb Orc," Gogron said placidly. "Maybe it's part of the Night Mother's plan. That's another thing I let everybody else worry about. Antoinetta does enough of it for at least two people, so I figure it evens out."

"Dumb Orc," Dree said. "Sure." Hacking people into bits wasn't a smart person's kind of job, or maybe even a sane one's, but he had remembered the sticking plaster. And the food, and the water he was drinking. He'd known where to find a hood for her, too.

"At least now you can see why I'd want somebody else there," Gogron said.

"Not enough holes in your wrists?" Dree said.

Gogron snorted. "Very funny. If you hadn't caught that necromancer, he'd probably have gotten away. It's happened before. Then I woke up half dead and had to go chasing somebody all over the landscape, trying to get to them before they got to the law. I'd have all kinds of bounty on my head if it wasn't for that cursed ugly helmet. Wouldn't recognize your own mother in one of these things." He tapped a finger on the helmet where it hung from the saddle. It clanked obligingly.

"I wouldn't recognize her anyway, by now," Dree said. "She sold me for some skooma when I was eight."

"Sold as in slave?" Gogron said.

"We were in Morrowind," Dree said.

"And you ran away," Gogron said.

"That's right."

"How'd you get the bracers off?" Gogron said.

"With sload soap," Dree said. "They were a little big, anyway. And then I wandered around for a while trying not to starve to death, and I hitched a ride on the top of somebody's carriage, and I ended up in Cheydinhal."

"And then you fell foul of Vicente," Gogron said.

"I am going to kill him," Dree said, but it lacked conviction.

"Mm hmm," said Gogron gro-Bolmog.