Chapter 20

Laure walked beside Brother Varen in tense, embarrassed silence. At least, it was so on her side. He seemed little different than he ever was. She had noticed he occasionally frowned, as if he were listening for something, but he betrayed no sign of any real emotion. Maybe he doesn't feel any, she thought. Maybe he can't.

But you know that's not true, don't you, said the treacherous inner voice, reminding her of what he had said about Bruma: It is there that I have found warmth. It was not something a truly unemotional being could say.

He stopped walking suddenly. Laure stopped a second later, when she realized he was not beside her. She turned. "What is it, Brother?"

Tychicus Varen was looking around, very definitely frowning now. "Do you hear it?"

Laure strained after the imaginary sound. At first she heard only the birds, and the occasional rustle of grass under the trees beside the path. Then she slowly became aware of a distant, faint humming noise. It was becoming louder, and then she began to realize it was more than a noise – a thrill of discord ran up and down her spine, like nails scraping a chalkboard.

"What's that?" she said.

"Something is coming through the barrier," he said. "Without a gate."

"You mean the barrier to Oblivion," Laure said, with an abrupt sinking feeling. She looked around, trying to discover the source of the noise, but it seemed directionless.

"Yes," said Tychicus Varen. "It cannot be deliberate. No daedra would choose the uncontrolled approach I sense."

"Out here?" said Laure. "Surely it can't be a coincidence...?"

"I don't think so," said Varen. "It is most likely searching for a familiar object, so that it does not materialize under ground or inside something solid." He glanced at her with a small smile. "In which case, you should stand further away, Sister."

Laure obediently backed toward the trees, still looking around. The sound and the sensation were stronger now, setting her teeth vibrating so that her molars clicked. She called up the magicka and felt it glide up her spine and out to the ends of her fingers. And above Tychicus Varen's head, the air seemed to grow thicker and redder...

Then it caught fire.

Laure opened her mouth to shout a warning, but Varen was already well to one side when the fireball hit. It flared up so brightly that she had to look away for a moment, and when she opened her eyes, he was standing beside her. He didn't see her looking at him. He was staring at the new crater in the bare ground of the path, and suddenly the air between him and Laure was very cold. She turned slowly to follow his gaze. The hole took up the whole path; smoke rose up from the remnants of scorched plants at the outer edges nearest the woods. Within the smoke something glowed like a coal, black aureoled with red.

She was watching for it, or she might easily have missed the groping hand at the edge of the pit. It was no human hand. It had the right number of fingers, but the nearest thing to flesh was coal-black and giving off flames. There were no nails. There was only the fire. Laure stared at it, wondering nervously what would happen were one to encounter a flame atronach in the wild (so to speak). One heard of solitary varieties native to Vvardenfell, but the ones who had come through the gates back during the Invasion had been bloodthirsty and utterly crazed. Only the most skilled or reckless of mages would dare conjure them. Dremora could be reasoned with, in fact were dangerously good at it themselves. Not the atronachs of the Deadlands. Not this.

The hand scrabbled about in the dirt for a moment, then apparently found some sort of purchase. Another one joined it, and then the creature heaved itself out of the pit and onto one knee in the scorched earth. Flame flickered up behind the head, something like an Altmeri coif in shape but nowhere near as comical. The few bits of armor that overlay the foreshortened body were black as well. It glowed red at the edges like superheated metal, although Laure knew for a fact that direct exposure to the atronach's body would melt steel.

The shape of its body was female, like all the atronachs of Hell that had come through the great gates.

The burning eyes behind the mask did not so much as notice Laure. The creature was looking at Tychicus Varen. He looked back, and Laure edged a little away from him – she felt so strongly the body of the atronach straining against the form of man, the millenia of instinct against mere centuries of will.

"Dacha," he said quietly, and Laure heard the daedric echo in the word. She couldn't help noticing his eyes had turned a pale and brilliant blue.

The flame atronach stood up slowly. "Kkhheissed," she replied.

"Do you understand me in this tongue?" Varen said in Cyrodilic.

The voice still emerged as a rising hiss, but the answer was unmistakable: "Yes. I understand."

---

Menien Goneld was distracted from private and miserable reflection by the unexpected silence behind him. He'd grown accustomed to the caitiff's growling voice and the Sleeper's thin one. The sudden cessation twanged at his nerves. He rose from where he knelt in the dust, momentarily abandoning the sign he'd been reading, and went quietly back up the path until he could see them.

Ebel-Merodach stood still in the middle of the path, glaring down at the creature in his arms. The Sleeper looked determinedly into the middle distance, avoiding that fiery and accusing stare. Neither kynaz looked up at Goneld's approach.

"How long have you known this?" demanded Ebel-Merodach.

"You heard me," said Sodrinye.

"Known what?" said Menien Goneld.

"The Sleeper believes I am shortly going to die," said Merodach.

"Are you sure?" Goneld said, looking at Sodrinye. "Visions are tricky, I hear."

"Yes," said Sodrinye. "They can be. But it was his face. I heard his heart stop beating."

"Gods," said Goneld dully, but he couldn't exactly say he was surprised. What, after all, were a Dremora's chances in Cyrodiil? And without the caitiff... He didn't like the odds for the three of them (supposing for a moment that he cared whether he lived or died), but the Sleeper would have absolutely no chance without her debtsworn. Goneld might be able to provide for her, and offer some sort of protection, but he wouldn't be able to carry her far enough or fast enough. "What are you going to do?"

Ebel-Merodach showed his teeth. The gesture bore only a cursory resemblance to a smile. "I am going to die. The little krynvelhat has never been wrong."

"Do you know when?" said Goneld.

Sodrinye shook her head. "It was not here. Inside a courtyard made of stone. There were bones all around."

"What kind of stone?" said Goneld. "Was it white? Another Ayleid place?"

"No," said Sodrinye. Goneld waited, but she had closed her eyes again. He shook his head and turned to continue up the path.

---

The Imperial did not jog on ahead as before. Instead he remained, walking beside Ebel-Merodach. The caitiff walked, stoically enduring the painful glare of the demon-thing the mortal had called sun. It warmed his armor, but not enough to compensate for the chill of his surroundings, and the inert weight of the Sleeper seemed to sap the heat from his limbs. He would have to find something to drink again soon.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Menien Goneld said eventually.

"About what?" said Ebel-Merodach.

"That you're going to die," said the Imperial.

Merodach shot him a look, suddenly experiencing a very clear picture of Goneld shooting him in the back of his helmetless skull from well out of reach. Goneld had even said something about it, once. They'll shoot you through one of those glowing eyes before you ever see them. All that armor won't do you much good, then.

"Why is that?" he said. "Will you kill me?"

Goneld shot him a look in turn. "No. My word is all that's left to me in this plane. I'll keep it."

"Then there is nothing for you to be sorry for," said Ebel-Merodach. Goneld laughed softly.

"To a kynaz, I suppose there isn't," he said. "But I'm what's left of a man."

"Enough is left that I would rather not have you behind me with a bow, Menien Goneld," said Ebel-Merodach dryly. Goneld looked at him quickly, trying to decide how that was meant, and then he smiled.

"Then I can only accept the compliment, Ebel-Merodach." And with that, he turned and padded up the path and out of sight.