A/N: Does anybody wonder why there are only human undead around Cyrodiil? The game mechanics at least make it possible for other races to become vampires, but there are no pointy-noised Khajiit zombies or shrivel-tusked Orcish liches. I'm sure the real reason is Bethesda Softworks's desire not to make all the extra meshes, but surely there must be some sort of lore explanation somewhere?

Morrowind escaped this particular type of stupidity. There were no zombies in the game to cause that inconsistency, there were beast race vampires even among the NPCs, and the Sleeper cult were all Dunmeri because it was a movement among natives of the province and intimately tied to the Dunmer culture and history. Oblivion causes itself not a few inconsistencies of this type by being less creative with its lore, and even M'aiq the Liar has no sarcastic explanation for this one (meaning the NPC who sometimes says apologetics for the gaming company, not the screen name of the person on this site).

Chapter 30

"You explain," Goneld said to Laure. She looked at him in apparent surprise. "I've never seen one," he said patiently. "Whereas you're a priestess of Arkay. Right?"

"Not any more," she said. "But... I've only seen one lich, and that after it was fully dead. I was only an acolyte. They let me into the ruin when it was all over." She shook her head as if to clear it, then turned to face the two Dremora more squarely. If she had ever been afraid of them, it was not now apparent. But then, she's been traveling with a frost atronach. She hasn't been seeking out ordinary company. "A lich is a human or elven undead," she said. "Some are left from the time of the Ayleids. Some are very new. The Ayleids are often more powerful, but all liches are fearsome. A person who dies can be made into other sorts of undead by a necromancer. One must choose to become a lich. That gives them power and it lets them retain more of a grasp on thought and sanity than zombies or ghosts usually do. Their bodies are just mummified corpses, not very strong. The trouble is that they're extremely powerful spellcasters and it is very hard to get close enough to them to do physical damage. They can hover above the ground, and they tend to collect magical artifacts."

Ebel-Merodach snorted. "Then they are krynvelhat. If there is such a creature inside, it will not be more powerful than Sodrinye."

"Very likely," said Laure dryly. "If she can easily repeat what I just saw."

"For a little while longer," said Sodrinye. "Then unless I can find a living soul to take, I will sleep."

"Not much chance of one of those down there," said Menien Goneld. "And I wasn't planning to volunteer." Ebel-Merodach looked at him, then at Laure. He raised one heavy eyebrow. Goneld felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. They're not human. There's no reason to expect them to act as if they were.

"No," he said aloud. "She's not an enemy. She stayed of her own free will."

"What?" said Laure. Then she must have realized what he was talking about. Goneld gave her credit for quick intelligence; she turned a little pale, but it was Sodrinye she looked to for the answer.

"I will not harm you," said Sodrinye to Laure. She laid a hand on the caitiff's arm, as if for support. "Nor will Ebel-Merodach. The atronach knew this, or he would not have left you here."

"Why?" said Merodach. "We owe nothing to this creature, and she has nothing to offer us." His tone was not angry, merely curious. He did not shrug away Sodrinye's hand.

"That remains to be seen," said Sodrinye. "I think it will be better for Menien Goneld to have one of his own kind nearby." Which was very near to what Goneld had been thinking himself, though not half so bluntly. "And he has shown you already that she has information he does not have. Laure, will you swear not to harm Ebel-Merodach?"

"I swear," said Laure bemusedly. "I don't imagine I could if I wished."

"And will you swear not to harm Menien Goneld?" Sodrinye went on, ignoring this. Goneld watched as Laure recognized, much as he had, that the Sleeper was deadly serious.

"Yes, of course," said Laure.

"Then you will have our protection for as long as we are able to give it," said Sodrinye. "Come. We will go inside."

---

The largest chamber inside Fort Ashen had once been a mess hall. Now it was half full of water. The lake side of the great building had settled considerably more than the other one, lending the great square room a distinct tilt. The air shaft in one corner was half-choked with vines, but it let in a small amount of dim blue light. Fungal growths at the water's edge added a tiny bit more. A thin mist crept across the lapping surface, reflecting the light as it moved.

Only the corner of the room furthest from the lake was anything like level. Even then, the furniture had had to be nailed to the floor. Anything that was dropped would roll immediately into the water.

For the most part, this was not a problem. The valuable books were stored in another room where it was drier and flatter. The room's sole inhabitant had delicate hands, shriveled and leathery though they were, and death had spared to his fingers what it had robbed from the jerky scraps that served him for leg muscle. His nerves were ordinarily as steady as only a prolonged and thoughtful unlife could make them. And the locus of all the dark magic that centered on this place was here, making it an irresistible place for him.

He could not imagine what it was that had made him drop the only thing that was truly important to him and let it slide away into the darkness. He had not been so foolish as to transfer his mortal soul into anything fragile, but even stone might be ground away by stone. Moment by moment he imagined it being rubbed and chipped away by the action of the water. It frightened him. And nothing had frightened him in threescore years and more.

He dared not dive in after it. He could not swim. Though he would risk any damage to his undead flesh, which he could heal by magic if it did not regenerate, he feared his half-blind groping might knock it away into a deeper crevice from which he could never retrieve it. He clutched at the empty setting on his necklace, long black nails scraping the metal. He had feared the jewel was working loose from its setting, and his probing had made fear become reality – and he had been too slow to catch it.

His name was Adanatir. He cursed himself by it as he paced the platform, forevermore hunched and limping when he chose to walk on two feet. He dared not send any of the others after it. The ghosts would not go into the water no matter what the threat, and even if he could make a zombie understand, they were far too clumsy. The skeletons were better, but without palms to their hands they could never hold something so small and round even if they could find it.

It was after some hours of pacing and fretting that he heard noises up above his chamber. Adanatir stopped, deferring damnation in favor of immediate threat, and drew power to himself. It lifted him easily above the floor. He glided across the water toward the air shaft, listening to the voices and the clash of weapons.

That went on for a while. Some of it was very interesting, far better than the nervous adventurers he had occasionally heard from the courtyard. He had not seen a Dremora in years, for he had not summoned them in life. He had not summoned anything in a long time. Why should he? Fort Ashen was full of those who would easily succumb to a more powerful will. Those one or two who were unsusceptible had been amenable to persuasion.

Sodrinye caused him some concern. He had never heard of the subrace of Sleepers before, but he recognized the likelihood that he was about to meet a spellcaster as powerful as himself (or more, he admitted silently; Adanatir had less ego than most liches). He could feel the tendrils of power that extended into the air around her, disrupting the borders of his own aura even from so far above.

Adanatir loved a puzzle. Perhaps he could convince them to talk to him. He hadn't talked to anyone in a very long time -

There was a smaller human with them, he realized suddenly, listening to the voices. A girl. Someone who would have sharp eyes and, and this was the whelmingly important part, small and dextrous hands. Someone mage-trained, by the Worm! This was better and better. Maybe they could solve his problem for him.

Adanatir turned and paced again, this time hovering over the water. He knew himself to be a being of less than usual guile. And Dremora were supposed to be cunning. They would know if they could overpower him easily. All his companions here in the dark would be a bit more of a problem, of course, if he could but convince them of that – and if they did not attack him on sight, of course.

Toward that end... Adanatir coasted back toward the door to the room, sending out a mental summons to the foremost of the bone men. Skeleton guardian was what the other necromancers would call this special revenant, though that designation would mean little to the being himself. He could not speak aloud, and in mental communication he called himself by what he could remember of his born name.

Carcharus, my friend, said Adanatir silently as the wooden doors creaked open. The skeleton in the iron cuirass stood in the doorway, his rusty claymore dragging the ground beside him. There will be four beings entering the ruin from above. Do not let the others harm them. Lead them to me.

"Kshhh," said the skeleton, though Adanatir had never seen any shred of vocal cords clinging to his spine. Inside Adanatir's mind he said, You want them for something, old mage?

Yes, said Adanatir. I have lost something important which I hope they will recover. Something only a living person could find.

Then you will have it, said Carcharus, and turned to stalk back into the ruin.

---

"That's very strange," said Laure. She watched the luminous whisp drift past them as if it had not seen them. The ghost's shape was roughly humanoid, but it was so old that its memory of its own body had nearly faded; it was reduced to an amorphous and sexless semblance of a person's upper half. "I would have expected it to attack us on sight."

They stood a few yards inside the ruin's front door, moving slowly inward down a broad corridor. The stone floor seemed to slope toward the lake side on their left, making footing awkward. Laure and Sodrinye walked with Ebel-Merodach in front and Menien Goneld behind them.

The corridor seemed to be opening out into a larger room up ahead. There were one or two passages off to each side. As they came closer, Laure saw that one seemed to slope downwards.

A skeleton stood in the doorway. A cuirass of iron, its padding rotted to shreds, hung awkwardly caught on the framework of scapulae and clavicles. One pauldron was askew. It was very still, but Laure felt the breath of spiritual corruption that meant it was undead, not merely a corpse. Besides, it held a rusty claymore in one hand, clasped in bony fingers to which no shred of adhesive flesh clung.

As she watched, the skeleton raised its free hand. One white fingerbone beckoned.

"I don't like this," said Menien Goneld.

"I think someone wants a word," said Laure. "It would explain why nothing has attacked us." The skeleton was turning slowly around in the doorway, facing down the slope. It stood there with its back to them, apparently waiting. The Sleeper cocked her head in the gloom. A flicker of violet glowed in her eyes.

"We will follow," she said. "Ebel-Merodach first."

The big caitiff drew his mace and moved silently toward the skeleton. It moved off slowly down the slope of the corridor. Sodrinye stepped in front of Laure with her stiff, limping walk and started down after Merodach. Laure followed. She heard the soft pad of Menien Goneld's feet behind her. He did not hesitate, though she heard him mutter something as they proceeded down into the dark.

"I can light us," said Laure. Her voice seemed to echo away down the slimy corridor.

"Do it," said Goneld behind her. "We might need Sodrinye later."

"Yes," said the Sleeper.

Laure raised one hand and called up the magicka. A soft green glow sprang up around her. There wasn't much to see as they went on downwards. The stone walls were slick with moisture; they reflected and distorted the light. An occasional white mushroom squashed horribly underfoot. Nothing else could grow down here in the dark.

She had to repeat the spell twice before they reached the bottom of the narrow hall. In apprehension she tested the air for the stench of rotting flesh, the sign that zombies were present, but there was only the smell of damp and mold. The stone might be slowly decaying around them, but that was all. Every revenant here is very old. Those that began as zombies are skeletons now, rotted down to the bones and still walking.

After what seemed like hours they stepped out into a great open space beneath the roof. They stood on a small dais at one end of a great room. The floor was canted sharply away from them, and black water lapped at the stone. Someone had set up a few pieces of furniture at the other end of the platform, and this was too new to belong to the ruin's original contents. From their odd angle with the stone, they must be nailed down. Laure contemplated the inhuman strength this must have taken with misgiving. Then she looked out over the water and saw the lich.

It hovered well out over the surface, out of reach of sword or knife. Like the only other lich Laure had seen, it wore what had once been a leathern robe designed to survive years of hard wear. Now it was rotted into strips that hung about the creature's leathery legs. It wore one armored boot. The other black-nailed foot was bare. Unlike the other one, this lich wore no helm, and a single lock of white hair clung to the crown of its head. A long staff was clutched in one clawlike hand, but the lich held it down at one side, not threatening.

The mummified jaws creaked open. The creature's voice seemed to come from deep and far away, and the quality of dark magic in it raised the hairs along Laure's spine, but the words were clear and distinct.

"I am Adanatir," said the lich. "I have awaited your coming for some time."