Chapter 14

The pink sparks cleared, leaving Laure staring at Tychicus Varen's broad back with her heart pounding in her ears. A dark red stain was still spreading from the arrow under his right shoulder. It was dim around them, and the blue Ayleid light had gone, replaced by a golden glow. Laure stared around wildly. They were in a low room with stone walls, and candles on the wooden tables, and a small fountain on the back wall. There were no windows, robbing her of any context – No, wait. I know that hanging on the wall. We're back in the Undercroft in Bruma.

She shook herself. Essentials, girl. Pay attention. "Brother Varen, shall I remove the arrow?"

"If you would," said Tychicus Varen. "I don't believe it is barbed."

"Er... would you like to sit down first?" said Laure.

"No, thank you," said Varen politely. Laure waited for him to set his feet. Then she braced one hand against his left shoulder blade, took hold of the upward-jutting shaft with the other, and pulled. Varen did not so much as tense the muscles in his shoulder, and the arrow came free fairly easily. It hadn't sunk in far. That man was firing down the stairs. The angle can't have been very good.Brother Varen had not made a sound.

Laure stepped back as he turned around, and the residual charge from his healing spell felt like static on her skin. She took a deep breath. She felt suddenly sick, as if the bottom had dropped out of her stomach.

"Are you all right?" said Laure.

"Oh, yes," said Tychicus Varen. "I'm not easily harmed. Are youall right, Sister Laure?"

"I think so," said Laure. She straightened under the gaze of those unblinking eyes, determined not to make him ashamed of her. "I'm... I'm not hurt anywhere, I don't think."

"A little ill, perhaps?" said Tychicus Varen gently. Laure blushed. "You have not been accustomed to violence, and you are very young, for a Breton. It is only natural."

"I'm sorry that I wasn't more help," said Laure.

"You were no hindrance," said the priest. "That's not a bad start. The fault in this case was mine, not yours." He went slowly to the cupboard and put up his satchel. Laure pulled out a chair at one of the long tables and slung down her pack as she sat. Tychicus Varen came and sat across from her, folding his blunt hands on the table. "Are you sorry that you followed me?"

"No," said Laure truthfully. Shaken as she felt by recent events, she knew herself well enough to know that the torment of curiosity unsatisfied would have been worse.

"Nor am I. Let us say no more about that. I am sorry that I exposed you to danger when it could have been avoided. Had I been less quick to mistrust Menien Goneld..." Varen opened his hands briefly. "For that I truly am sorry."

"What are we going to do now?" said Laure.

"Vision fails me in the presence of a Sleeper," said Tychicus Varen. "I will wait here, and mend my robe, and pray. Perhaps I will be able to divine again presently. I suggest you return to your ordinary work, if you are able."

"And then what?" said Laure.

"I don't know," said Varen simply.

It was something she'd never heard him say. Laure felt faintly uneasy as she watched the atronach priest turn to make his way up the stairs into the Chapel proper. And in the meantime, there are two more daedra loose in this plane. What might they do, before he recovers his insight?

The voice of the unknown Imperial played in a loop in her head, over and over. Next time you hit me from behind, you'd better kill me. And what if he had shot her, instead of Tychicus Varen? What if she had bled to death before there was time to heal her? Laure shivered. It was not without reason that the priest had put her so quickly behind him.

"May the Light defend us," said Sister Laure.

It was not particularly reassuring that there was no answer.

---

Menien Goneld ranged silently ahead of the two Dremora, trying to recover his calm. They were on their way East from the Ayleid ruin, a direction chosen because it led away from the Imperial City and deeper into the wilderness. The day was bright and calm, with only a faint breeze disturbing the grass between the trees.

Their pace was necessarily slow, largely because even now Sodrinye could not walk very quickly. Goneld remembered how hard her skin had been, when she had taken his hand to bring them here, and began to suspect that might have something to do with the stiff way she moved. And why the big caitiff treats her the way he does. If her whole skin is hard as a rock, she won't bruise easily.

He was beginning to gain some understanding of these two, and that bothered him. He'd observed the Kyn quite a lot while he was caged, even to the point of learning their language, which was not in itself very easy. It had been something to do to keep his mind busy and himself sane. For two years – and it had seemed much longer – he had seen no sentient creature without red eyes and two horns. For two years he had accustomed his eyes to the dim and his skin to the feel of hard metal, his body to near starvation. And now here he was, in the clear light with clothes on his back, and it was driving him nearly insane.

Why?Menien demanded of himself, not for the first time nor the second. Why didn't I just tell the two priests I was a prisoner, and run away and come back with the Legion at my back? There are surely those surviving in Kvatch who would recognize me, even the way I look now.

Goneld stopped at the top of a small rise, watching and listening for any ambush, and then glanced back over his shoulder. Sodrinye was looking around herself, shading her half-blind eyes as she walked. Ebel-Merodach went beside her, pretending not to be carefully watching in case of an unexpected stumble. Goneld was not a spiritually perceptive individual, but he could almost sense the debt-bond stretching between them. He was beginning to see it almost as ordinary. There were moments when he caught himself thinking thathe was debtsworn, doggedly bound to follow Sodrinye the Sleeper until he died. But he wasn't Dremora. He was human.

Goneld snorted softly as he turned and went on. Yes, and humans don't always pay our debts. Even now I can't claim that's better than the way they do things. They'll lie to each other and stab each other in the back and torture one another to death, and it's all part of the big game. Nobody loses a life without getting another one and a chance at revenge. It never ends.

But this... This surely was the endgame. By his own count, Menien Goneld was forty-two years old. That was old, to be no more than a corporal in the Kvatch City Watch. Goneld smiled grimly to himself. He had been an Imperial Legionnaire four years ago. Water under the bridge. He'd never married, after he was busted back to private and his enlistment ran out. Thank the gods for small mercies. And now here he was, tearing across the countryside with a pair of daedra from the nearest thing to Hell one could find in Temple theology.

It didn't have to be this way. If only he hadn't tied my hands, maybe I wouldn't have lost it... Goneld clamped down on that memory and a great many more, lest he lose his concentration and start twitching again. He'd been tied up and beaten too many times. Every time he saw something bondlike coming at his hands, he couldn't stop seeing the red boots coming at his ribs. Sometimes they had paralyzed him first, too. There were plenty of krynvel – plenty ofmages, he insisted to himself – who could do that. They hadn't even really asked him any questions, after the first time. They'd just done it because they could.

It was also what they would have expected from him, if they had been hisprisoners. He understood that now. He wished he didn't. He wanted desperately to go on hating them with every fiber, but that would require him also to hate Sodrinye the Sleeper, who had saved him. Further, she seemed to understand what was wrong with his head, something he doubted he could have explained even to another human. She might exploit that, but if so she would not do it while pretending otherwise. That might be a Kyn way, but it wasn't hers.

And he could not hate Ebel-Merodach, who for all his malevolent drive was stuck exactly where Goneld was. Only worse, in one way. Debtbond is real to him, as real as love and hate are to me.

And so Menien Goneld, who had once given his all for his fellow mortals, found himself on the side of the demons. He should have died in the cage, he thought miserably. None of this would have happened then.

And the worst of it is that the Sleeper is right. I dowant to live, gods damn me.

The sound of footsteps stopped behind him. Goneld turned quickly. Sodrinye stood with her arms wrapped around herself as if she were cold. "It is time," she said. "Merodach, stand by Menien Goneld."

"Why? What's going on?" Goneld said.

"The life I took is gone," Sodrinye said. She knelt in the path with a soft thump. "And I must drink. There is no time to hunt now, and the one I summon will not want you close by."

"If you are eaten it will be entirely your own fault, loathsome one," said Merodach, but he came to stand beside Goneld.

"Xivilai do not eat the flesh of Kyn," said Sodrinye, and raised one hand.

"Xivilai?" said Menien Goneld, and then there was a flash of golden light and a form coalesced out of the air beside the Sleeper.