Fakhriya and Jenassa returned to Whiterun so Fakhriya could pack up the alchemy ingredients she had promised to Angeline Morrard. She left instructions with her housecarl, Lydia, to have the ingredients shipped to Solitude and she left Ulfric's Thalmor dossier in Lydia's care. Then Fakhriya and Jenassa traveled to Riverwood to deliver the evidence Delphine requested that proved the Thalmor had not been responsible for raising Alduin.
Delphine was shocked to learn that Esbern was still alive. Fearful that she would be easily picked up by Thalmor operatives if she sought out Esbern herself, she asked Fakhriya and Jenassa to go to Riften and find him.
Riften was the capital city of the Rift, a hold in southeastern Skyrim. Located on the shores of Lake Honrich, the city was a shadow of its former self. Riften had seen considerable unrest in the second century of the Fourth Era. The assassination of the Jarl in 4E 98 resulted in the installation of Jarl Hosgunn Cross-Daggers, who imposed staggering taxes on the population and spent most of the revenue on a considerable palace, Mistveil Keep, which still served as the Jarl's residence. A rebellion in the 4E 140s nearly razed the city. Although the physical rebuilding of the city had been completed almost 50 years ago, Riften, which was reputed to be the base of the Thieves Guild, had still not regained the prosperity it once enjoyed.
Fakhriya and Jenassa traced Esbern's whereabouts to a hovel deep in a network of sewers and tunnels under Riften's city streets and boardwalks. In the Ratway, as the sewer network was commonly known, the women were not surprised to encounter hostile thieves and thugs, but were alarmed to encounter several Aldmeri soldiers. They had arrived barely ahead of the Thalmor and had little time to find Esbern and extract him from his hiding place.
From what she figured must have been the lowest level of the Ratway, Fakhriya climbed a stone staircase slick with wet moss. From inside a room located near the staircase an old man wildly waved a dagger and incoherently insisted that he would gladly stab all comers. Fakhriya tried not to make eye contact or provoke the man as she passed the doorway. When Jenassa reached the top of the staircase, she turned to walk backwards with an eye on the doorway to make sure the man would think twice about advancing. When Jenassa turned back around, Fakhriya had already reached a thick wooden door in a dark corner.
Fakhriya knocked loudly on the door and asked for Esbern.
"Esbern?" replied a masculine voice from the other side of the door. "There's no Esbern here. Get away from the door and be on your way."
"Delphine sent me to find you, Esbern," Fakhriya insisted. "We don't have much time. The Thalmor know you are here. We have to leave now."
"I don't know any Delphine," the man replied. "You must have me mistaken with some else. Besides, how do I know you aren't Thalmor yourself? Get away from here. I will not let you in."
"We don't have time for this," Jenassa hissed nervously to Fakhriya. Fakhriya nodded.
"Delphine gave me this message for Esbern: Remember the thirtieth of Frostfall," Fakhriya said with growing desperation.
After several seconds of agonizing silence from the other side of the door, the women could hear the man undoing a surprisingly long series of locks. The door suddenly swung open.
"Hurry up before someone sees you," said a tall, balding Nord with a white beard as he indicated with a waving arm that the women should enter. After Fakhriya and Jenassa stepped into his living quarters, Esbern secured the series of locks.
"Delphine made it out of Cyrodiil alive?" Esbern asked as soon as he had finished with the locks. "That is good news. I shouldn't be surprised. Delphine always had been crafty. I thought I was the only one of us left. Thanks to the Divines that Delphine lives."
"Delphine needs your help," Fakhriya said urgently. "The dragons have returned and she needs you to help her stop Alduin."
"Alduin?" Esbern repeated. "So the prophecy has come to pass. There is nothing to be done now. Alduin will consume this world and herald the birth of the next. Even if Delphine had an army of Blades at her disposal and not just an old man such as me, there is no way to stop Alduin if he has already risen. If only she had believed me. I saw the signs of the prophecy years ago, but no one would listen. 'Just the ramblings of an old man,' they all said. But I knew better. I saw the signs."
"There must be something we can do," Fakhriya insisted as she cut Esbern off midsentence. "She wouldn't have sent me to find you otherwise."
"Only a Dragonborn has any hope of stopping Alduin," Esbern stated as if he were correcting a defiant child. "Emperor Martin Septim was the last Dragonborn. Akatosh has forsaken humankind and left us to our fate."
"I am Dragonborn," Fakhriya announced. Jenassa pointed at Fakhriya to add emphasis to her words.
The look on Esbern's face went from surprised to hopeful as Fakhriya's words sunk in.
"You are Dragonborn?" Esbern said. His smile was sincere but his eyes were a little crazy. "That changes everything. The Divines may not have forsaken us."
Esbern clapped his hands together and spun around. Like an orange dartwing zipping among river weeds, Esbern flipped through books and papers scattered throughout his living quarters while rambling absent mindedly about what must be done if there is a Dragonborn to face Alduin and how much could have been done already if only someone had listened to him sooner.
Fakhriya watched nervously as Esbern wandered in circles and talked to himself about dragons and prophecies and all the people over the years who had ignored his warnings. Jenassa's patience finally reached an end.
"We have to leave now," Jenassa yelled. "Right now. Not after you find one more thing, but right this moment. The Thalmor will be here soon. If they catch us down here, there will be no stopping Alduin."
"Yes, yes, you're right, of course," Esbern said dismissively as he continued to root through piles, selecting some things to bring along and discarding others. "There is information here the Thalmor would like to have, but I won't let them have it."
Jenassa shrugged in frustration and disbelief as Fakhriya gave her a look that urged her to calm down. Both women sighed in relief when Esbern finally announced that he was ready to go.
Fakhriya led the way out the door with Esbern right behind her. Jenassa followed Esbern to make sure the old man didn't fall behind.
The party had not ascended far in the Ratway when they stumbled upon Thalmor soldiers who were on their way down. Fakhriya unsheathed her sword and stood her ground to protect Esbern. To her surprise, a frost atronach suddenly appeared with its back to her. Firebolts darted past her head and made quick work of one of the soldiers. Jenassa's arrows took down another and the frost atronach dispatched the third and then took a place behind Esbern.
The old man looked nonplussed as Fakhriya turned and smiled at him.
Even without the threat of encountering more Thalmor, exiting the Ratway proved to be challenge. The party got lost several times before they surfaced on a wooden plankway at the canal level below the Bee and Barb Inn. They took a wooden staircase to the street level and nearly broke into a run towards Riften's north gate. Fakhriya and Jenassa had gone into the Ratway at sunrise to find Esbern. It was now nearly sundown as they left the city. Fakhriya wasn't fond of traveling at night, but with the Thalmor on their heels, she knew that Esbern had to be reunited with Delphine as quickly as possible.
Outside the city gate Fakhriya offered a carriage driver double his usual fare to get the party to Whiterun as quickly and discreetly as possible. The driver happily accepted and made a show of not watching as his charges climbed aboard.
Fakhriya, Jenassa and Esbern ate their supper on the moving carriage and then settled in for the overnight ride. Esbern offered Fakhriya a book to look through during the journey. Fakhriya accepted the book when Esbern offered it, but had not intended to read it. She had hoped the rocking of the carriage would lull her to sleep, but at some point in the night, the rocking that had been so soothing became disruptive. Fakhriya moved to a position closer to the driver to take advantage of the lantern that hung on a post mounted near his seat and read through Esbern's book.
The book was treatise on the Dragonborn written in the fourth century of the Third Era during the reign of Pelagius Septim IV by a prior of the Order of Talos, as the Blades were also known. The book described how the gift of Akatosh became associated with the Reman and Septim bloodlines and speculated on a prophecy that was commonly ascribed to an Elder Scroll.
When misrule takes its place at the eight corners of the world
When the Brass Tower walks and Time is reshaped
When the thrice blessed fall and the Red Tower trembles
When the Dragonborn Ruler loses his throne and the White Tower falls
When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding
The World Eater wakes and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn
Rather than help her fall back to sleep, the tome and the prophecy it contained sent Fakhriya's mind reeling. Fakhriya understood that she was a Dragonborn, but she hadn't realized she was the last Dragonborn. Perhaps in the Third Era the final line of the prophecy seemed cryptic, but in the third century of the Fourth Era, it was all too clear that Alduin, of course, was the World Eater and that the Wheel, as it were, turned upon Fakhriya. Fakhriya slept fitfully for the remainder of the ride to Whiterun and nightmares were the dominant feature of what little rest she got.
Upon arriving in Whiterun, the party immediately set out in the predawn hours for Riverwood. Although she had grown fond of the doddering Esbern, Fakhriya was quite anxious to deliver the old man to Delphine, as if their arrival in Riverwood would magically end the Thalmor's dogged pursuit.
Only a bard and a bartender occupied the common room when Fakhriya, Jenassa and Esbern entered the Sleeping Giant Inn. The bartender called out to Delphine when he recognized the women. Delphine entered the room wearing leather armor rather than the innkeeper's garb she typically wore. Esbern pushed past Fakhriya and Jenassa when he saw Delphine.
"Esbern?" Delphine asked as the old man approached her. She could barely contain her emotion as the two embraced as tightly as father and daughter. After exchanging a few brief words with Esbern, Delphine refocused on the matter at hand.
Jenassa took a seat at the bar as Delphine led Esbern and Fakhriya into her private sleeping quarters. There was a removable panel inside the wardrobe that concealed a staircase leading down to the basement. This was not Fakhriya's first trip to Delphine's secret hideout.
Delphine brought Esbern up to speed on the events that had transpired since Alduin attacked Helgen. Esbern took a moment to chastise Delphine for failing to believe him when he had tried to piece together the prophecy years earlier and Delphine sounded sincere when she apologized for that mistake. Satisfied that he was finally vindicated, Esbern described a temple abandoned long ago in the canyons of the Karth River valley that might contain an ancient carving that could be of some help in determining how Alduin might be defeated. Delphine thought that location Esbern described might be Karthspire, a mountain to the northeast of Markarth.
Delphine told Fakhriya that she and Esbern would head out immediately for Karthspire to determine if that was, in fact, the location of the temple and that Fakhriya should join them as soon as possible in the Reach.
Delphine seemed to linger as she closed the panel in the wardrobe. She grabbed a bag she had already packed and followed Esbern into the common area. She put the bag on the floor at Esbern's feet and walked behind the bar to embrace the bartender, an intimidatingly large dark haired Nord. Fakhriya had never seen the bartender smile before, but his expression warmed as he held Delphine.
"The place is yours, Orgnar," Delphine said as she released her embrace. "I won't be coming back here again."
"You take care yourself out there," Orgnar replied.
"I will," Delphine said.
Delphine picked up her bag and headed for the door. Esbern followed without a word. Orgnar resumed his work behind the counter.
Fakhriya broke the silence by placing twenty septims on the counter.
"We'd like a room, please," she said. Fakhriya wondered how Esbern had the stamina to leave with Delphine for the Reach after traveling all night from Riften. Fakhriya would have preferred to sleep in her own bed in Whiterun than at the inn in Riverwood, but the thought of traveling even the short distance to the hold's capital seemed daunting.
The bard struck up a tune when two regulars came through the door.
"Let me know if there's anything else you need," Orgnar said as he left the room he had just sold to Fakhriya and Jenassa. Jenassa closed the door behind him.
"Two ales and two beef?" Orgnar asked his customers as if today were just like any other day.