A/N: for those who have noticed a difference in capitalization, it's not an error – I'm assuming a difference between "kyn" and "Kyn" similar to the way one might say "men" for a group of individuals and "Men" for the entire human race.
Chapter Five
"Wake up, ugly one," said Merodach. ""If you wish to see the mortal yourself, now is the time." He had been less careful moving the Punished this time. One side of it hit his knee every time it pulsed.
"Yes," said Sodrinye, slowly opening her eyes. "The corridors are clear. Why?"
"Mishael has challenged Abednego for his office," said Merodach. It did not occur to him to say and his life, because it did not occur to him that anything else could be assumed. The concept of "first blood" was not very compelling to an effectively immortal race, and "surrender" simply not an acceptable idea to a kynaz. "Everyone who is not on guard duty has gone to watch." That was not so very many. Even now, the Citadel was sparsely occupied and amusement was scarce. The kyn prisoners had not lasted long at the hands of churls and caitiffs, who were mostly not very refined in their torture techniques.
"You will have to carry me," Sodrinye said. "It will take too long for me to walk."
"I knew it," Merodach said. He leaned forward and seized her around the waist and slung her over his shoulder. He did not do it with much care. He disliked having to touch her at all, and he knew now that her skin would not easily bruise. Trapped inside a skin as stiff as bone, muscles atrophied from inaction, it was a wonder she could stand upright at all. He supposed it was too much to hope for that she would grow fat from the blood fountain and crush her organs from the inside.
He went carefully at first, watching and listening as he tried to move quietly under the Sleeper's weight. After the second time he paused at a juncture of corridors Sodrinye said from behind him, "Why do you stop?"
"Your debtsworn is trying to keep you alive, loathsome one," growled Merodach. "This will not be possible if we are seen."
One dangling elbow bumped into his armored back. "Now we are invisible," Sodrinye said. "Go faster, if you can."
"If I can?" Merodach said.
There was a pointed silence from behind him. He walked faster, rumbling under his breath. It did not take long to reach the walkway to the Reaper's Sprawl. Merodach nudged the door open with one boot and started out onto the narrow, arching stone bridge between the main keep and the thin tower. If the dark kynaz had any comment about the view, hanging head-down with the abyss beneath her, she gave no sign.
Merodach reached the other door at last. This one he opened carefully with his free hand, to avoid unbalancing himself. Then it was a mere matter of hauling a hundred and forty pounds of dead weight up a slippery slope to the glassy platform at the top of the Sprawl. He glanced down once. The clannfear at the bottom of the shaft were all in amongst the spikes of the corpse masher, staring upward. Merodach spat at them and turned to walk with measured tread the last few steps to the top.
He dropped Sodrinye a safe distance from the cage. He couldn't see her, of course, but but one curly horn made a clink noise as her head bounced against the floor. The prisoner turned quickly in the cage, eyes moving unerringly toward the sound. "Show yourself," he said.
There was a noise that sounded something like bamf, and Sodrinye snapped into view in front of Merodach, sitting half-crumpled on the floor. As he watched, she gathered herself and lurched upright.
Merodach observed the prisoner curiously. He'd heard that some mortals were protective of their women, a trait largely incomprehensible to him. Dagon knew, Merodach wouldn't have been dragging around the awful little Sleeper had he not been debtsworn.
The mortal's eyes narrowed momentarily, a movement so brief and so slight that it might easily have been missed. "What's this, demon? A new strategy? Or just some entertainment?"
Merodach looked down at the swaying, ragged kynaz beside him. "You have no idea of what you speak."
"Which of us is in a cage?" said the mortal.
"Oh, we are both caged, or I would be seeking my way through the void even now," Merodach said. Sodrinye raised her head slowly. Near-black eyes regarded the prisoner. They were very large, and pale-rimmed in a way not at all ordinary in a kynaz – not, in fact, unlike the look of the human's. She blinked in the red daylight from the open roof.
Sodrinye took a step toward the cage, then another. Merodach seized her by the shoulder. She stopped.
"Do not increase my shame by causing your own death," Merodach said. "He is not so weak he could not harm one so feeble as you."
"He will not harm me, and I need to see him closely," Sodrinye said. "My eyes, too, are feeble."
"You are warned," Merodach said, and released her. He went to stand near the cage in hopes that the human would move to the other side of it. The prisoner fixed him with a flat stare and remained where he was. Merodach's brief conversation with the Sleeper had been in the Kyntongue, but Merodach suspected he had understood at least part of it.
This suspicion was confirmed when the mortal said, "I don't see why you think I won't." His speech in the Kyntongue was accented but discernible. Sodrinye reached out a hand to the bars, testing their stability, then leaned her shoulder against them carefully. With this accomplished, she let her head fall back and looked up at the man. Peripherally, Merodach saw her shoulders move as she sighed, but most of his attention was on the mortal.
"The Kyn neither pity nor spare the weak," Sodrinye said. "Some mortals do. I think you are one such."
"Some mortals, yes," said the man. He edged back slightly, shooting an ironic glance at Merodach, and squatted so that he was close to the Sleeper's eye level. "You know something about us. Most of your kind wouldn't know enough to qualify that."
"Most of us do not care," Merodach muttered. Both of them ignored him.
"As I sleep I see many things," Sodrinye said. "The Kyntongue has no word for it. In your language they are dreams, Menien Goneld."
The man stood up suddenly, stiff as if he had been struck. Merodach jerked Sodrinye away from the cage as he interposed himself between her and it. She did not resist him, nor react as he hissed over his shoulder, "Little fool! This is a fighting man. If you do not want me to have to kill him, do not toy with him."
Sodrinye steadied herself against Merodach's back. He resisted a strong urge to swat her as she moved back around him. "I will do him no harm, body or mind," Sodrinye said. She stepped back around Merodach, leaning on him as she went. "It is as I told you. We need him."
"Need me for what?" demanded the man called Menien Goneld. He had remained self-possessed through everything so far, but the loss of his closely-guarded name had visibly shaken him. He stood taut as a bowstring, practically vibrating.
"We are going to Nirn," said the Sleeper.
The ground seemed to have opened up under Merodach's feet. "What?" he said.
"Your invasion failed," Menien Goneld said firmly, as one who needs powerfully to believe in something. "There are no more gates."
"It is possible to move between planes without a gate," Sodrinye replied.
"What?" said Merodach. Once again, both the prisoner and the Sleeper seemed to be ignoring the armed kynaz – one because he appeared more or less stunned, and the other customarily impassive.
"It will not be easy," Sodrinye said. "It is possible I will fail, and lose us in the void. But I have been hoarding magicka for this a very long time as you would count it."
"Doesn't mean a thing," Goneld said. "Maybe three mages in the whole world've ever been good enough to try that. None of them came back."
"Nor do I intend to return here," Sodrinye said.
"Impossible," Merodach said, having recovered himself enough to do other than snarl inarticulately. "And when we die in Nirn – because I assure you any mortals who find us will kill us - "
"I would," put in Goneld.
" - We will be lost," Merodach said. "The voice of Dagon is not heard in the voidstreams. You know this."
"He's right," Menien Goneld said. "Much as I hate to be agreeing with one of you. If there's only two of you, you've got no chance. You won't pass for human, mer or beast with horns on your forehead, girl."
Merodach laughed harshly and entirely without humor. "Girl," he said, repeating the Cyrodilic word.
"In your terms, I am as old as you are," Sodrinye said. "Though that is no age at all to one of us, perhaps ten souls if my own count can be trusted."
Merodach considered the fate of Belteshazzar and added that to the possible reasons for caging a kynaz who was mostly unconscious anyway. "I am sure it can," he said.
"I am Sodrinye the Sleeper," the dark kynaz said. Her tone was still high, flat, unvarying. "This is my fifth incarnation – my fifth body – and it is the oldest age I have ever reached. In this body alone I have been beaten, caged and raped, Menien Goneld. Merodach has only two incarnations, and twenty-five hundred souls in this one. He is cautious, moderate for a kynaz. And he would gladly have killed me had I not placed him in my debt by saving his life."
"I assure you, I am contemplating it even now," said Merodach, by this time dwelling lovingly on the thought of wringing her thick-skinned neck. He'd never told her his age, either.
"Each time I return through the void it is to no purpose," Sodrinye said. "Those to whom I have spoken say my chances in Nirn are better than they are here." She was leaning against the cage bars again, head drooping. "The same is not true of this caitiff, of course. I would leave him if I had any choice."
"So what do you want me for?" Goneld said, eyeing her with a disturbed look that Merodach immediately recognized.
"To your own people you are already dead," Sodrinye said quietly. Her voice was level, but it was losing volume. "We will need a guide. That plane is very different from this one, and Merodach will have enough to contend with."
Goneld sank to one knee, looking at her closely. "You're not like him," he said. "What are you, exactly?"
"Merodach will tell you," said Sodrinye.
Merodach rolled his eyes. "And what am I to do with you? You have waited too long. We will never make it back now." He reached out to gather her up as she slumped.
"The shaft," Sodrinye said faintly.
"The shaft is full of clannfear, foolish krynvelhat."
"I know," she said. "Do it."