Chapter 7

"Insolent wretch," said the kynval. And then she shot him. Merodach was not at all surprised that the arrow punched right through the right shoulder of his armor and out at the back. The sheer force of the blow staggered him before he ever felt the pain.

He righted himself and drew his mace, but he could feel his arms growing weaker. His feet were already numb. Harrada. Of course. The kynval watched without slacking her hold on the bow until he dropped the mace. Then she put it up, but did not come any closer until the creeping numbness reached Merodach's knees and he fell. He knelt hunched over on the translucent floor of the upper platform, watching his own blood leak out around the arrow's shaft. The platform of the corpse masher was up, hiding the clannfear beneath.

"You cannot kill me," he said. He saw the kick coming from the corner of his eye, but was too slow to dodge it. The kynval's boot impacted squarely on his pierced shoulder, and the numbness there dispersed as if by magic. He bared his teeth at the pain. It did not occur to him to roll with the blow. That would have been too much like yielding.

"And why is thatworm?" said the kynval. "Take your time. You have a few minutes before the poison paralyzes your lungs and you suffocate." She drew her belt knife.

"I do not belong solely to my Lord any longer," said Merodach.

"And why should that prevent me from ending your miserable life, caitiff?" said the kynval. "Particularly since that makes you a traitor?"

"I am debtsworn to Sodrinye the Sleeper," Merodach said, with a certain vicious satisfaction. He watched the light of realization slowly dawn the instant before a massive static charge came out of nowhere and blasted the kynval some thirty feet into the wall. "Nowhere" coalesced into the ragged form of the dark kynaz. Sodrinye watched, swaying as if she lacked the strength to stand, as the kynval started to rise. Then she raised one hand. A fireball as large as Merodach's entire body took form in front of her fingers and flew to the kynval while the officer was still trying to get up. It struck with a heavy boom. The entire Sprawl shook. Merodach, now unable to hold himself upright, fell over.

Lying with his face against the cold floor, he could see where the kynval had been. There was nothing left but a drift of ash. Even the daedric armor was gone.

"You're in for it now," said the voice of Menien Goneld behind them. "Everybody within half a mile must've heard that."

"We must go," Sodrinye said. She collapsed next to Merodach, reaching for the arrow. He was about to ask what she thought she was going to do when it suddenly vanished. Blood flowed freely from the wound, barely visible against his armor. Sodrinye touched one finger to it and then to her tongue. "Harrada," she said. "Nothing more." Then she laid her hand on Merodach's shoulder. She blinked once. Merodach jerked as power shot through his entire body, violent as a shock charge and scarcely less painful.

But when it was over, the wound was gone. Merodach realized abruptly that he was again able to feel his fingers and toes. "We are undone, woman," he said as he stood up. He seized Sodrinye by one shoulder and hoisted her onto her feet.

"Not yet," she said. She turned and went to lean on the cage bars, far too slowly for Merodach's liking. "Menien Goneld, you must make your choice now. It is unlikely you will have the chance to leave this cage again."

"We're going to die," Goneld said. "But at least it'll be quick. Do what you're going to do, demon."

Sodrinye reached out toward him between the bars. "Then give me your hand."

Goneld looked at her for a long second, ignoring Merodach's very close scrutiny, before he slowly held out his own hand. Sodrinye surely could not have much in the way of a grip, but he did look slightly surprised at how hard her palm was. She held out the other hand to Merodach. "Your arm," she said. "You may need your weapon. I cannot control where we arrive within the continent."

"Wonderful," Goneld muttered. Merodach proffered his left arm as he drew his mace with the right. He supposed grimly that he was about to have an experience few kyn had ever had. Not that many have ever truly desired complete annihilation.

The hairs along his spine rose as the charge of magicka in the air shot suddenly far above normal background. Sodrinye the Sleeper still stood leaning against the bars. Her eyes were closed, but her expression was otherwise undisturbed – because, Merodach began to suspect, she was partly elsewhere, inside whatever place contained the things she had called dreams in that strange other tongue.

The platform under his feet began to vibrate. Ebel-Merodach, veteran of the destruction of more than one citadel, kept his balance. Menien Goneld fell to his knees, but did not lose his grip on the Sleeper's hand.

"Fair warning, sister," said Sodrinye's voice, high and cold, as everything went dark. "I am coming."

---

At that same moment, a priest in the great Chapel at Bruma twitched suddenly upright. The others present – there were many people praying at this time of day - stared at him. He was a stolid and a tranquil man ordinarily, not given to any kind of sudden movement, but he had risen from his knees as if levitating. He stared at the Altar of the Nine for a long moment, and an alarmed priestess realized his shoulders were heaving.

"Brother Varen?" said Sister Laure. She rose from the pew, where she had been trying to give comfort to a Nord widow, and stepped forward. The stocky priest did not seem to hear her. For a long moment the rasp of his breathing was loud; and then the sound dropped away suddenly, the line of his shoulders smoothed, and he turned from the Altar.

"Please, forgive me," he said calmly, and walked down into the Undercroft. Laure hurried after him, avoiding the curious glances of worshippers. She was relatively new to the Chapel, but she had already learned how unusual it was for this particular Imperial to show any strong emotion at all.

"Brother, what's happened? Are you all right?"

"I'm perfectly fine, Sister," he said. He did not turn around as he said it. She watched as he went to a small cupboard on the wall and extracted a satchel. "I'm very sorry if I gave you any alarm."

"Where are you going?" said Laure. "Are you about Arkay's business? Shall I come with you?" Her heart leapt into her throat. She had not yet been called upon to perform any Rite more dramatic than the laying to rest of the Nord's dead husband, who had been quite old and died of entirely natural causes.

"Thank you," The priest said. "But I'm afraid this is rather my own business than the Light Bearer's, except in the sense that it is an unclosed circle." He looked into the satchel, nodded once, and slung it over one thick shoulder. "I do not think anyone will ask after me while I'm away."

"When will you be back?" said Sister Laure.

"I may be some while," said Tychicus Varen.

---

There was no sensation of movement, no apparent lost time. The ground stopped moving very suddenly. Merodach flinched as a painfully brilliant light flared up around him, and then he looked down at the ground and realized it was green. There was a soft thump as the Sleeper fell over again, but this was hardly worthy of remark. Merodach shaded his eyes with his free hand and forced himself to look around in the unwholesome glare of an alien day.

Some sort of grass stretched out around him in every direction. Most of it was one shade of green or another, perhaps the least appropriate color Merodach could imagine for a plant. There were larger green-topped plants off in the distance which he could not identify, covering what seemed to be the beginning of hilly terrain.

"You'd better look after your friend, demon," said Menien Goneld. Merodach glanced sideways in time to see him get to his feet. "I'm not sure she's breathing."

"She is not my friend, mortal," said Merodach, but the weight of his debt dragged him to his knees. He did not sheathe his mace, but he had to shuck one gauntlet to check the pulse in the Sleeper's throat. If her chest was rising and falling, it was so subtle as to escape his notice.

Goneld was staring around him as if he could not believe his eyes. "Dibella's tits," he said. "She really did do it."

"She lives yet," Merodach said. The beat of blood under the skin was weak and thready, but it was there. He was more relieved than he would have cared to admit. If he was going to be trapped in Nirn, it was far better to be trapped here with a mage who was, incidentally, also a fellow kynaz (however freakish and deformed) and not another of these incomprehensible mortals.

Merodach looked fully at the human. "And so the question remains. Is there some form of honor among your kind, Menien Goneld?"

"Ha," said Goneld. "That's funny, coming from one of you." He looked around again. "Though I can't say I'm sure just where we are. It's too flat to be the West Weald, and I don't see any flowers. We must be East of the City somewhere."

"What is east?" said Ebel-Merodach. The mortal had spoken in the Kyntongue, but the words West Weald and East were in Cyrodilic.

"I don't know how you'd say it," Goneld said. He shaded his eyes as he stared off toward the foothills. "East is toward the sun - "

"Another meaningless word," growled Merodach.

"I can't help it that your godsdamned plane doesn't have one," Goneld snapped back. "It's right up there. Look." He waved a hand at the blinding sky. Merodach risked a glimpse upward, squinting his eyes nearly shut. There was a glaring round something up there, but it left stinging afterimages to try and look at it.

"What is this?" Merodach said. He turned his eyes away from it, resolved not to let Goneld blind him.

"As far as I know, it's a hole in the sky," Goneld said. "Supposedly you can see Oblivion through it, and that's where the light comes from. It's the same with the moons."

Ebel-Merodach firmly rejected the word moons as irrelevant. "Do you or do you not know where we are?"

"I think I do," Goneld said. "Pick up your whatever-she-is and start walking. We've got to find cover before dark."

All of the words were familiar, but Merodach was puzzled to hear him speak of darknessas something chronological. This, too, was irrelevant for the moment. He sheathed his mace, picked up Sodrinye the Sleeper, and slung her over one shoulder. The ground seemed to sink slightly underfoot at each step. He glanced behind them as they started toward the foothills.

"We are leaving a trail," Merodach said. Bent grass stretched out behind them.

"It'll disappear pretty quickly," Goneld said. "Most of the grass will stand back up again. Not all of it, with those boots you're wearing." He made a face. "I'll have to find or make some shoes soon. Bare feet won't take this for long."

"So we can be tracked," Merodach said, ignoring the latter part of this. Sodrinye's right horn kept bumping into his lower back.

"By a professional or an Argonian, yes," Goneld said. "By someone looking for us specifically. Not by just anyone."

"What is an Argonian?" said Merodach.

"I know you must've killed some, demon," Goneld said. "They're mortal. Scaly. They have tails."

"The clannfear-men," Merodach said in the Kyntongue. "Yes."

"They also have a very keen sense of smell," said Goneld. "Better than a human's. Probably better than yours."

"Hm," Merodach said. A kynaz can find spilt blood from quite some way off, if not necessarily by scent. He did not care particularly to elaborate on the mechanics of kyn senses to someone who might be an enemy at some point in the near future. Menien Goneld had not pronounced himself debtsworn. As barbaric a creature as a mortal human probably did not recognize the concept, even if he did have some idea what honor and debt meant as translatable words.

That was for the future. The present appeared to contain a lot of walking. Merodach growled to himself, adjusted Sodrinye's position on his shoulder, and settled in for a long haul.

---

Far to the Southwest, in a small shop in the city of Anvil, another kynaz sat up suddenly on her slab. "Onesimus," she said.

Behind the shining steel counter nearby, a hook-nosed Dremora in velvet green armor turned to look. "What is it?" he said.

"I told you there would be others," said Drurinye the Sleeper. Tiny sparks fell over her feet and the hem of her robe from the great crystal ball at the foot of the slab. Varicolored balls of fire sat on shelves or hung in the air near the ceiling, creating an odd but very bright illumination. Onesimus did not mind, and Drurinye craved the light.

"You did," said Onesimus. He set down the knife he was polishing and came to stand beside the marble slab, looking down at the other kynaz. Her hair and her robe were pale purple, and her horns were short. It was not an attractive contrast to Onesimus' orange-black skin, but if either of them was aware of this, they gave no sign.

"They are here," said Drurinye.

Onesimus looked around quickly, reaching for the weapon at his back.

"Not here," said Drurinye. She subsided back onto the slab, taking a deep breath. "Here in Nirn."

"How many, and where?" demanded Onesimus. Drurinye, tired from a long morning of enchanting new weapons, did not seem likely to answer. Onesimus sat on the edge of the slab and shook her shoulder. "Woman, wake up. I will need to know."

Drurinye opened her eyes. They were purple as well, pale and shot through with jagged pink. "One Sleeper," she said. "One debtsworn caitiff. One mortal."

"Her debtsworn is no more than a caitiff?" said Onesimus. He shook her again. "Drurinye. Speak."

"Yes," she said. "But I am not certain how long they will last. I am not the only one who sees..." She closed her eyes again. Onesimus sighed in exasperation and went back to polishing weapons. There was no talking to her at a time like this. Eventually she would be awake enough to speak coherently, but it would be some hours (as he had learned to count it in this plane).

Pity is not a common emotion among the Kyn, but if possible, Onesimus felt a little sorry for that caitiff. He has no idea into what he has fallen. Poor fool.