IV
That someone was not entirely human, but then again, not so inhuman as to be monstrous in its appearance. No one could know for sure, nor was it likely anyone ever would; the risk of a slow, painful, and certain death was too great. Even discounting this, there was also the superstition that had arisen around the vessel on which that someone stood, whose creaking planks and torn sails exuded that same death like an evil stench—or, perhaps, a silent spirit who kept eternal watch over the ship, punishing anyone who dared to uncover whatever dire secret it might carry within its hull.
The true name of the vessel had been lost to time centuries ago—there were none alive who could remember such an obscure piece of history, and the name it had gained in the years since was the only recognition it would ever need. Even the being who commanded it knew precious little of this ship; it simply guarded its secrets too well. Likewise, the dragon that was currently hovering into view would know precious little. Though they were much older than even this ship—indeed, quite literally as old as time—such trivial things lay beneath that proud species; they cared little for names save for those they bestowed on themselves and others like them.
The faintly discernable figure on top of the dragon, however, was a different story—to the commander's knowledge, no dragon in existence had even been so humbled as to let themselves be mounted like some common horse. It did not matter, however; she had ensured that even these ancient beasts could not assault this ship, let alone a mortal being—whether or not they could command a dragon at all.
As the beast and its rider continued to draw closer, the commander became aware of a sudden noise: a low, long moan, initially indistinguishable from the shuddering noises of the red-stained timbers, then building into a sepulchral wail that sent a spine-tingling chill through even the commander—which was a sight to see in and of itself, even if no one else was around to see it. It lasted for roughly ten, fifteen seconds—before gradually dying down into a piteous groaning noise, melding once again with the sounds of the ship.
Again?
The commander glided belowdecks, navigating the companionway with ease. Within seconds, the source of the noise soon came into view—the heart of the ship, so to speak. It was clearly agitated—perhaps it, too, had sensed the dragon the commander had seen merely moments ago. Such an awesome creature would indeed be a threat—but the dragons, again, cared little for anything that did not directly concern them. For this reason, therefore, they wouldn't trouble themselves with the half-rotted remains of a thousand-year-old ship, and the commander instinctively relaxed.
A faint smile appeared, and she caressed the half-rotted, decaying timbers of a ship that still lived and breathed. She stared longingly at the object of her interests, knowing that it could feel every touch she made upon the rude wood.
As another somber moan echoed throughout the vessel, whispered words—of a language that had not been heard in near a millennium, whose meaning only she could divine—floated up from her core, and appeared upon her lips. She began to sing softly to the ship as if to a lover, continuing to stroke its crimson planks like she was fondling her very own child:
Mirror, mirror,
Canst thou see,
Mirror, mirror,
Stand with me …
Slowly, as though the commander's lullaby carried some unknown magic within its words, the dismal whine faded away, until it was lost beneath the sound of the waves that slapped against the creaking hull. Soon, a lonely silence reigned aboard the ship—as it once had for so many centuries—but still she continued to caress the wood, as though determined to touch every inch of its length and breath with the nails of her pale fingers.
Inside her mind, she still continued to sing:
Mirror, mirror,
This day of shame,
Send them all
To Oblivion's flame.
Above the Pale
"So this is the Crimson Ship, then?"
If Colette heard Grimnir's muttered observation, she did not show it—not that the Arch-Mage could blame her; to look upon such a blood-spattered piece of Tamriel's history was not something that happened every day. Though he could not see Colette's face under Hevnoraak, the iron mask did not waver even an inch from the vessel anchored outside the bay that the town of Dawnstar had been built around, even as Odahviing glided over it.
"I remember hearing the stories about it, when I grew up in High Rock," Colette murmured as she gazed at the ship, almost unheard over the wind. "A part of me was hoping they'd be just that. To see it with my own eyes … "
"Let's hope that's the closest we'll have to get to it," Grimnir said, giving the sight one last look before motioning to his steed. "All right, Odahviing. Someone down there in Dawnstar is bound to have seen us by now. Drop down so they can get a good luck at the three of us—hopefully that should stop anyone from raising a panic." These people have had enough of that already, he added to himself.
Odahviing dipped his head again in silent agreement. Seconds later, he angled his wings into a controlled descent, and Dawnstar slowly began to grow under them.
As his steed curved through the sky, Grimnir pointed out something else to Colette. "No guards," he said. "The entire town looks deserted." A frown crossed his concealed face. "Maybe they already evacuated?"
Colette took the time to glance downward at the town below them for a moment before she spoke. "I'm not so sure that they did. If the entire town had evacuated, then we'd have seen the signs of it—horse prints in the snow, cart tracks, and things like that. Besides, that snowstorm we flew through never made it this far west—so it couldn't have wiped away any traces of where they might have gone. As far as we know, they never left. Maybe a few of them could have taken their chances on foot—but if this really is the Knahaten Flu … "
She exhaled, and let the silent implications sink in.
"The only question is," said Grimnir, as the temple he'd pointed out to Odahviing loomed nearer, "is there enough left of Dawnstar to evacuate at all?"
Colette did not answer. That was enough for the Arch-Mage.
"Fair enough," he said. "We make treating the town our top priority. Once we've got a plan of action, and once we've taken care of enough of the townsfolk for Dawnstar to get back up on its feet, we'll deal with this Crimson Ship. I think I know how I can do that—but I may need your help on that end, Odahviing."
"Zu'u fen hon, thuri." A grin could barely be seen on the crimson steed's jaws. "Make ready—mu dah wah golt."
Grimnir instinctively grabbed hold of one of Odahviing's spines. "Here's what I need you to do … "
Dawnstar
"No, honey," Seren was saying in the meantime to Rustleif as he approached the pot for what must have been the third time in the past hour. "This batch is going to need at least another hour before it's heated up enough."
The Redguard was hovering dangerously close to her husband as he resumed his pacing about their house—only a few feet away, but that was enough for Rustleif to get anxious about his wife standing so closely to the one thing in Dawnstar that might help save their town—or at least, keep enough of them from dying that there would still be a Dawnstar when the College arrived to assist them. Hopefully.
But distance—whether a few feet or a few hundred miles—mattered little when your loved ones had been the latest to fall under the taint of the most horrific disease Tamriel had seen in nigh on a thousand years. That one of those loved ones had taken it upon herself to help as many people in Dawnstar as possible before learning that she'd been infected had made the awful news that much harder to stomach. The worst blow of all, though, was that the baby had been responsible for infecting her in the first place.
In that first hour since learning the horrid truth, Seren had been inconsolable; the moment she had seen the telltale red rash of the Knahaten Flu spreading across her breast, she'd hastily covered herself up, grabbed Makela, and disappeared into the baby's room. She refused to come out for any reason, not even to eat—which had left Rustleif to deliver the waiting batch of chicken broth to the residents of Dawnstar, spooning it out into crude wooden bowls for men and women, young and old—all of whom looked so wrapped up in their dirty scraps of cloth that they might as well be draugr already.
The sight had chilled the Nord to the bone in a way that even the welcome warmth of the broth could not hope to soothe. On his trek back home, therefore, he'd kept on walking even after he'd stepped through the door. Rustleif had only paused twice: the first time to listen to the muffled sobbing of Seren in her room as she continued to cradle their sick daughter, and the second time to ready the next batch of saving broth for the townsfolk to drink.
Since then, Rustleif felt as though he was a puppet on strings, forced by some divine hand to walk from one end of the house to the other, a thousand times on end. Each lap he'd made felt like a nail being cruelly thrust into him, reminding him of what he'd done—for he'd blamed himself for the state of Seren and Makela in the first place.
I should waited for her to stop nursing before we left, he'd thought through hot tears, over and over again. Makela had been in danger the moment Seren had stepped outside with her, Rustleif now knew; the baby's exposed skin must have come into contact with the Flu from there, and while she continued to suckle at her mother's breast, she'd transmitted the disease to Seren herself.
Rustleif did not know how long he'd been pacing when Seren finally came out of Makela's room, her body fully wrapped up again, so he could not tell how long it had been since she'd stopped crying. She'd changed the baby after feeding her, Seren told him (in a hollow, wooden voice that made the nails in Rustleif's insides twist further still), and put her back in her basket so that she could sleep. That had been roughly ten minutes ago, now, she'd come back out after briefly checking to see how Makela was doing—and noticed Rustleif making another beeline for the bubbling pot in the fireplace.
"We have to let this boil for at least two hours," she was saying to him. "Not only does that help the broth go down better, but it also gets rid of anything that might make these people even sicker."
Rustleif knew she had a point there; who was to say the chickens that were being slaughtered every day so that he could keep on making this broth weren't themselves getting sick with the Knahaten Flu? Then again, though, who was to say it wouldn't make a difference?
"I just don't know what else I can do, though," he said to Seren, slumping into a nearby chair for the first time in what felt like all day, while his wife continued to hover around him. "I can't go outside to work on Skald's sword"—how trivial a matter that seemed now! he thought bitterly to himself—"and I can't well comfort my own wife and child, either—even though they could be dead by sundown!"
"Don't you dare say that!" Seren punctuated her outburst with a stamp of her swaddled foot—which was mitigated somewhat by a hissed intake of breath as she clutched at her leg. There was a few tense moments of silence.
"We're going to make sure no one else has to die from this sickness," she eventually said, her voice quieter, hardly audible over the pot of broth that continued to bubble in the kitchen. "I've had my time to grieve for myself—and for Makela—but I still won't give up hope. I bore our child into the world, Rustleif. I will not be the one to bury her in it."
A part of Rustleif noted the clenched teeth through which Seren delivered that vow—but the rest of him had already risen to his feet. "Seren, you're already sick," he protested. "There's nothing more you can do! I know you don't like being cooped up at home when there are sick people to take care of, but I have to do this myself now! If something were to happen—"
But he could not force the words out of his throat. "Until the College of Winterhold comes to Dawnstar," he said, pointing to the pot, "that broth is the town's only hope of survival—and even then, it's only to keep us on our feet long enough until they do. If the pot carried the Flu with it because you weren't careful enough—"
"I know what I'm doing!" Seren said heatedly. "No one in this town knows more than me about the history of my people and this awful plague! I want to help these sick people because I want to make amends for what my ancestors did in those days—how they ignored those dying sailors simply because they didn't want to die either! None of them wanted to take the risk—none of them wanted to put their best foot forward to be a hero!"
Rustleif sighed. "Seren, that was a thousand years ago. No one could possibly hold a grudge against your people for that long!"
"This isn't about a grudge anymore!" shouted the Redguard.
"Is that it, then?" Rustleif asked, approaching his wife. "Are you just trying to play the hero you think Hammerfell should have had a thousand years ago?! This is no time for make-believe, Seren! We're not kids anymore—we can't afford to get lost in our own little fantasy world just because we don't think we're doing enough!"
"Rustleif—"
But the Nord waved her off. "The fact is, you have done enough, Seren. I've learned a lot by watching you cook this—I can pull my own weight in helping this town and our family at the same time! But I can't do it while you're hovering over my shoulder, always wanting a chance to help me—even if I don't need it!"
He took a breath, ignoring that the Redguard had drawn herself to her full height, stiff as a board and very silent indeed—even with the plague that was inside her body. "For the Nine's sake, Seren, please trust me on this one," Rustleif said. "Don't do any more than you have to—if you try and do too much while you're sick with this Flu, then you're going to work yourself to death before it even has a chance to kill you!"
The words echoed strangely throughout the walls of the tiny house, and for a moment the only sound that could be heard was the sound of the crackling flames as they licked the pot full of broth above them. It was only at that point that Rustleif noticed how quiet Seren had become, and how still she was standing—and the weight of what he'd said suddenly registered.
"I'm sorry," he said, bowing his wrapped head. "I went too far—I shouldn't have said that at all." He moved to embrace her, but thought better of it, and returned to his chair to watch the pot continue to boil.
He did not know how long he remained there—it might have been seconds, perhaps entire hours. All he knew was that he'd seen a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and Seren had squatted down next to him, mere inches away. Instinctively, Rustleif shied back in his seat—partially on account of the fact that he'd just shouted at the woman he loved, partially because that woman was probably sick enough by now that touching her wouldn't be a good idea anyway—no matter how much Rustleif wanted to embrace her and apologize for what he'd said to her.
He need not have worried, though. "I don't blame you, dearest," Seren said, her concealed face gazing at the fire. "I know I was working hard for all of today—but the fact that I've got to sit back and watch from now on … it pisses me off," she suddenly spat, causing Rustleif to do a double take at his wife—she hadn't used that sort of language in the house ever since Makela had been born. "It's just … can you imagine having to go through all the trouble of making a plan to save your town—your home—only to have it all be for nothing in the end?"
Rustleif slowly nodded. "Aye. Like I said, I'm sorry I shouted at you. Bad enough when it's a Jarl who's on your back for deadlines about a single sword," he huffed, "but having the weight of an entire town on your shoulders? That's even tougher—and it's why I love you as much as I do," he said genuinely to Seren, looking at her in the eye—or at least, as much as the cloth strips around their faces would let them. "You can shoulder weights that I could never even dare to lift. You can be a hero in ways that I could never be."
Seren's posture slowly relaxed; though Rustleif could not see his face, he imagined that she was smiling at the compliments, and again he dearly wished she was alive and well so that he could see that smile again.
The poignant moment was broken at that moment, however, by the cries of Makela, barely audible through the walls that separated her room from the living room. "It doesn't matter if you end up saving every one of us in Dawnstar, or just one of us," Rustleif said, nodding pointedly to the bedroom door, "but I will always call you my hero."
And he slowly embraced his wife, no longer caring whether or not the fabric would protect him from the onslaught of the Flu. He felt Seren tense up a little beneath his arms, then slowly melt into him.
"Thank you," he heard the Redguard say, even though there were no words needed for this moment. Then—against all odds—she laughed. "You should probably let me go sometime soon, Rustleif—Makela needs her hero."
"That she does," Rustleif smiled back. "I'll keep an eye on the broth while you tend to her."
Seren, nodded, although she waited inside her husband's embrace for a moment longer before Makela's whines finally tore her away, and she disappeared into the bedroom, allowing Rustleif to hear the baby for a few moments while the door was open.
But something was wrong, Rustleif soon noticed. When the door closed, Makela's crying should have been muffled once more—but instead, he was hearing the whining noises just as loudly as if she was in the same room.
And was it his imagination … or was her crying getting deeper in pitch and tone?
No, a tiny part of his mind thought—the only part of Rustleif that hadn't suddenly turned icy with dread. It wasn't crying he was hearing.
It was roaring.
Nine, take me now … His entire body seemed to have gone numb inside and out. On top of this damnable plague, they'd add on to our woes even more?!
In an instant—forgetting all about the simmering pot, and the disease that had stricken his wife and child, the Nord had barged into the bedroom after them with a ferocity that belied his age; a desire possessed by many fathers—and even more mothers—to keep their family safe.
"Get to the cellar and close the door—now!" he growled at a terrified Seren—right as a deafening gust of wind, horribly familiar to the family after so many near misses in the past, whooshed over the roof. "It's a dragon attack!"
And sure enough, an earsplitting roar echoed the skies, drowning Makela out completely as her cries grew into a shriek of her own. Seren's head had whipped upward—the noise had sounded as though it was right above them!—and even Rustleif felt his knees knocking as he imagined the devastation a dragon could bring to a town too wrecked by disease to even raise arms against it.
He herded Seren out of her bedroom—Makela in the Redguard's arms—and into the spare room of the house, where rested a tiny trap door barely wide enough to admit one person at a time. Such features were common in a house these days, especially in ones that would barely stand up to the all-consuming flames of those great beasts. The simplest of them—including the one Rustleif had put in his house—was little more than a earthen pit and a few holes to the outside world so as to allow them to breathe, even in the midst of the carnage around them, and stocked with a few days' worth of supplies, enough to last until they were found.
Rustleif had dug the hole himself, using his pa's old shovel—pulling out the stones and roots in his way with little more than his aging fingers and the muscles he'd gained in the blacksmith's trade. The result was ten feet square, padded with a primitive bedroll of cloth and straw large enough for the three of them.
As he gently laid Seren onto this bedroll—taking extreme care to not overly jostle Makela as the baby clung to her mother—he kept an ear cocked to the ceiling above them, closing the trap door as he did so.
But he heard no sign of the dragon laying waste to its surroundings—no explosions of fire or frost, no screams of panicked civilians. In fact, he could not even hear the dragon roaring at all—
No. There it was: a low, bellowing noise—but it was farther away than he'd expected. Had they gotten lucky? Rustleif wondered as he exchanged a worried glance with his wife. Had the dragon simply passed over them, in search of bigger and better prey than a sick and dying town?
Or was it simply biding its time?
Nightcaller Temple
Unbeknownst to the consternation they had caused in the house some distance away, Grimnir and Collete had dismounted from Odahviing, who flew up to the pinnacle of the fortress, where he gracefully alighted on the weathered stone and looked out to sea—just as Grimnir had instructed him to do before they'd made their landing.
Almost immediately after both mages had set their boots in the snow, however, pandemonium erupted: apparently the fort where they'd chosen to make their landing had been deserted for some time, judging by the trio of frost trolls shambling towards them, grunting and growling in an obvious territorial challenge. All three eyes of the beast in the lead were staring straight at Grimnir—and already the beast was raising a hairy white fist, ready to pound his prey to a pulp.
"Yol … Toor SHUL!" Grimnir roared in response, expelling a vast column of fire from Morokei's mouth. The troll had no chance to turn back; the Shout hit it full in the chest right as its fist had begun to swing downward. A harsh, burning smell soon settled over the hillside; it was all that remained of the luckless beast. This did not appear to faze the remaining two trolls, however—perhaps they were simply too stupid to realize that they were up against a pair of mages from Winterhold—master-level mages, no less.
Even as the remains of the first troll settled on the hillside, Colette was sending a stream of sparks at one of the others from one hand. The electricity raked the troll's ugly face every which way; one of its eyes burst as an arc of magic sliced across it, and it howled in a combination of rage and pain as it swiped at the Breton, who nimbly dodged away from the attack with scant inches to spare. With her free hand, Colette quickly conjured a portal to Oblivion, whereupon a slim, graceful flame atronach emerged to promptly engage her foe.
Grimnir, meanwhile, was in no mood to toy around. The first blast of his own lightning magic had hit the third troll right in the groin, perforating the beast straight through its spine. The troll toppled face-first into the snow, paralyzed from the waist down, but its arms continued to flail helplessly at its perceived prey until two more thunderbolts—one to each shoulder—blew them right out of their sockets.
By the time the severed limbs had landed some twenty feet away—in opposite directions—Colette had already dispatched the third troll. It was already blinded and bleeding—the beast's three eyes were nothing more than a mass of reddish-black pulp in their sockets—but her flame atronach finally finished the job with a pair of well-aimed firebolts: one to the chest, another to the face. The troll's body rolled down the hillside, leaving a trail of blood and an even more disgusting smell than the first casualty.
Colette smelled it, too, and gagged. "Ugh—you'd think these dragon priests would've enchanted their masks to keep them from smelling their own dead bodies," she commented, waving a hand over Hevnoraak's face.
"Odahviing probably won't mind, though," Grimnir replied as the two resumed their journey towards Dawnstar. And indeed, the red dragon seemed to have sniffed the awful odor from up on high, and dived down from his perch just long enough to grab one of the trolls in his jaws, before launching himself back to the top of the temple to feast on his meal.
The town of Dawnstar was built in a U-shape, along the rough, rocky beach of the inlet that made it one of Skyrim's three port cities—and the smallest of the trio by a country mile. The residents of the town lived less than a stone's throw from the lapping waves of the bay; the more important buildings, like the tavern, the guard barracks, and the Jarl's keep, were situated further away, on an outcropping of rock behind the beach—and below a sheer precipice of rock and ice that rose some two hundred feet into the air at its highest, where the ruined fortress called Nightcaller Temple had been built for whatever purpose it might have served, then sloping downward like a descending bird to the western edge of the town proper, where its unofficial entrance was situated.
It was along this precipice that Grimnir and Colette made their way to Dawnstar; they had decided against Odahviing landing in the center of town so as not to disturb the populace—who, if indeed they were sick with Knahaten Flu, had quite enough problems to worry about without an incoming dragon, Colette had reasoned. The cliffs were too risky to risk a descent on foot, and so they had been swiftly discarded as a shortcut. Fortunately, however, the snow beneath their feet was worn enough in places that Grimnir knew it must be a route to the town, and so he and the Breton had started their journey from there, leaving Odahviing to his disgusting meal.
After about five minutes' worth of trekking through the snowy path, Grimnir and Colette had reached the "main gate" of Dawnstar. It was not a gate at all, of course—only nothing more than a length of fence that turned a corner at one point to enclose a very small plot of farmland.
Here, however, the mages found a surprise waiting for them: a group of Stormcloak guards, six in all, who appeared to be standing guard either side of the road that led into Dawnstar. Like most guards of the province, their heads were completely concealed by the cone-like helms they wore, and Grimnir noticed that not a single inch of flesh had been exposed. He also saw that several of their wooden shields carried a four-pointed star—the sigil of the Pale, used by the guards who patrolled this hold. It had fallen out of favor ever since the conclusion of the Stormcloak uprising, being largely replaced by the crude but portable hide, or the slightly more superior iron or steel that was often used by their soldiers.
A pair of guards noticed Grimnir and Colette making their way towards them. Quick as a flash, they drew their swords, and advanced on the pair of mages. "Hold there!" one of them shouted. "This city's off-limits to visitors! Orders from Jarl Skald!"
Colette stepped forward, giving Grimnir a brief look that—even under the heavy iron mask of Hevnoraak—plainly said let me handle this. "I am Colette Marence, Master of Restoration at the College of Winterhold—and Grimnir Torn-Skull, Arch-Mage of Winterhold and Thane of Whiterun! We are here under special dispensation from Varulf Blackmane, Harbinger of the Companions and High King of Skyrim!"
She said all this in a loud, clear voice that showed little fear of the sword points aimed in her direction. The guards brandishing those swords, meanwhile, had begun to exchange looks, while the others within earshot of Colette's greeting were muttering amongst themselves.
"You are with the Dragonborn?" One of the guards—seemingly the commander of the lot—lowered his blade, and his companion did the same. When Colette nodded: "You were not expected until tomorrow at the earliest. It is a long way from here to Winterhold."
"We were given to understand time was of the essence," Grimnir said, sweeping a hand backwards towards the distant tower where they'd landed. Odahviing was still visible amongst the low-hanging clouds; occasionally, his crimson wings would flap once or twice at the air around them, displaying his scaled bulk for all to see.
"I see," said the guard, turning away from them and beckoning them to follow him. "Well, you'd be right about that. Bad situation this town's in. Jarl Skald sent a hawk out to Fort Dunstad early this morning. Told every able-bodied soldier what called himself a son or daughter of Skyrim to seal off the roads that led to the city. No one in or out, so we've been told—save for the pair of you. He sent hawks to the surrounding holds, too: Whiterun to the south, Solitude to the west, Windhelm to the east—even Winterhold, so I heard—told every town to bolster their border patrols so as not to let any travelers into the Pale."
"He closed the borders of his own hold?!" Colette said incredulously. "It sounds like he's declared martial law! Why would he do that?"
Grimnir had to agree with her—this was a drastic action Skald had taken. Even the ax of Knahaten Flu that was hanging over the collective head of his town was surely not enough to warrant the Jarl of Dawnstar going this far.
They crossed into Dawnstar proper. The sheer silence that emanated from the town was unnerving to Grimnir—all he could hear was the persistent lapping of the waves against the shoreline.
"Whatever this sickness the town's been having," said the guard, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "it's killed off most of his guard. What's left of them are all in the town barracks now, trying to recover from this disease—but from what I've been hearing, it's turning into a charnel house. So many of them are dying that … "
He shivered, and did not finish his sentence. There was no need to, though, as a second look exchanged between Grimnir and Colette told them both that the Pale guard had let on more than he realized he'd been telling them.
Skald hadn't told them that Dawnstar was sick with the Knahaten Flu. Why this was, neither mage could fathom; perhaps he was skeptical that such a deadly disease had returned after being gone for so long. If that was the case, Grimnir reasoned, then why go to such lengths to keep everyone from entering or leaving his hold, so as not to catch the sickness themselves, and risk spreading it to the four corners of Skyrim—and possibly even beyond?
Or perhaps Skald did indeed know that his town was being ravaged by a serious plague—and simply was unable or unwilling to find hard evidence that this was the Flu. Either was a likely answer—the Jarl of Dawnstar was known for being a notoriously prickly person to stay around for very long. Obstinate and blunt, Skald had been a staunch supporter of Ulfric even before the former Jarl of Windhelm's uprising—and he was deeply critical of anyone who did not share in his black-and-white sense of the world around him.
They passed the tavern of the town—a building whose creaky sign revealed the faded letters "Windpeak Inn". It sounded deadly silent—as though no one was inside it at all. "Where is Skald now?" Grimnir asked.
"Inside the White Hall," replied the guard, "along with his housecarl. The court mage—Madena—and Frida in charge of the Mortar and Pestle have been the only people allowed in or out of the place since the Jarl sent out his messenger hawks. I've heard he's even barred himself from leaving his own hall—just because he wants to avoid getting sick."
"As opposed to the rest of the town?" Colette's query came through clenched teeth; she sounded less and less pleased with Skald's decision-making by the second.
"He's left that to Madena and Frida—I'm given to understand they and a couple more of the townsfolk have been trying to do their best to treat the rest of the city. Not sure how much good it'll do, considering—"
The guard broke off here, coughing slightly. "Sorry. Stench takes a little while to get used to."
"What stench—?"
But it hit Grimnir before he could finish his question. The smell was easily the most ghastly thing that had invaded his nostrils in a long time—including all the nightmarish events he'd been through the previous year. It hit him like a dragon at full speed—within seconds he'd dropped to one knee, retching through Morokei and breathing heavily.
Colette fared little better; her experience as a healer meant that she could still stand up to the onslaught of the awful odor, but it was plain that she was no less nauseated at it than the Arch-Mage.
"What in the name of Julianos is that smell?!" she demanded.
The guard thumbed towards the building they were passing—a squarish, two-story building that was half made of stone and half of wood. "The guard barracks," he said simply. "It's where the worst of the guards are being kept. Everyone inside that building is infected with the plague. No one's allowed inside without covering up like we are—no exposed skin at all—and anything you're wearing has to be either burned or boiled to clean it up."
"Wait a minute," Colette said. "You're just keeping them in there? No one's even trying to treat their illness?!"
"People are trying," said the guard, as the White Hall came into view, "but there's so few in the town who can that they're spread way too thin as it is. Only three people in this entire place have been trying to heal them—and that's nothing to do with nobody wanting to, it's that they're the only ones who know how!"
"Well, I'm glad we could come along to help." Hevnoraak, thankfully, muffled Colette's words enough that the acid tone in them was slightly diminished.
Suddenly, she stopped. "Grimnir?"
For the Arch-Mage had stopped in his tracks, gazing at the guard barracks. He seemed to be deep in thought.
Before Colette could get his attention any further, however, she heard him whisper three Words: "Laas … yah nir."
The Breton was no expert at the dragon language, but she knew enough to understand that Grimnir had uttered a Shout: a series of three Words of Power that commanded the ancient magic of the Thu'um—the Voice that all Nords carried, but which very few could wield, and fewer still master.
"Colette," Grimnir spoke suddenly. "Do you see anything?" His eyes had not wavered from the barracks one bit.
The master of restoration followed his gaze, confused. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Do you see anything?" Grimnir asked again. "Anyone?"
And suddenly Colette understood what he was asking. She exhaled, gathering a quantity of alteration magic in her gloved hand. The Breton let it flow over her body, up past her neck and face, and finally into her eyes, where the energy concentrated itself into a special scrye that would let her—
She let loose a small gasp. She could not see anything—or anyone—inside that building.
"No," she said simply, shaking her head in reply to Grimnir—feeling the awful truth sink in.
Grimnir waved her aside. "Then you'd best stand back," he said—and before the guards knew what he was about to do, he'd hunkered down, taken a deep breath—and Shouted.
"Yol … Toor SHUL!"
Scarcely had the last Word left his mouth when the inferno rushed out of Morokei's mask for the second time today. This time, it did not wash over the stinking flesh and flea-bitten hair of a troll—but wood and stone, flesh and armor. The support beams of the barracks were vaporized in the fiery breath of Grimnir's Shout, causing the wooden deck above them to collapse to the ground, where it, too, burst into flames, blocking the door—which itself began to smolder from the fire.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Colette heard the guard roar, but she knew it was already too late—in more ways than one. The flames were already licking the thatched roof of the barracks within seconds. In less than a minute, the entire building was ablaze.
Then—without warning—a loud WHUMP detonated from inside the barracks, and a massive column of fire and smoke exploded from the burning building. What little remained of the roof now fell in on itself, and the whole second story of the barracks went with it. Colette thought she saw a long, thin shape toppling into the raging inferno—exactly as long and thin as the average human body.
"Seize them!" the guard bellowed, oblivious to what she had seen. "Seize them both!"
But the damage had already been done, Colette knew, even as she felt the rough hands of the guard's subordinates binding her; a grunt from Grimnir told her that several guards were doing the same to him. The damage has already been done, she repeated in her head; there was nothing that could have been done.
All that remained was to find out if things would get better from here … or worse.
The guard holding Grimnir's wrists knocked three times upon the door of the White Hall. "Who is it?" someone asked—a female, by the sound of it.
"The Dragonborn and his companion for the Jarl!" barked the guard in reply. "And you'd better be snappy about it—they've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do to old Skald for what they just did!"
There was silence from the other side of the door. Then, Grimnir heard the prolonged sounds of what sounded like a large amount of furniture being pushed aside—had Skald barricaded the doors? he wondered. What good would that do against a plague—let alone the Knahaten Flu? He exchanged a look with Colette; she merely looked his confusion, shrugging at him imperceptibly before hissing in discomfort at the grip of the guards holding her.
Then the doors opened, and Grimnir had his first look at who he assumed must be the court mage of Dawnstar: a small, slender figure not unlike Colette—likely another Breton, too, he suspected. Every inch of the woman had been wrapped head to toe in various shades and states of whole cloth, over which she'd donned the navy robe and cowl that signified her station.
"Madena," she introduced herself; true to his suspicion, there was a distinct Breton cadence to the woman's words. "I'm the resident wizard of Skald's court—if you can call it that. The man doesn't like me much; I turned down every request he made of me to fight in the Stormcloak rebellion. I did enough fighting in the Great War."
She sounded unusually bitter; clearly, Colette was not the only one who was being critical of the way Skald was reacting to the presence of the Flu in his town. "I know who you are," Madena said. "Only one person in all of Skyrim wears those robes. I'm very glad you were able to come help the people of Dawnstar, Master Torn-Skull—but I thought you wouldn't be here for a while longer?"
"We came by dragon," Grimnir grunted, jerking his head at Colette—unable to use his hands to indicate his fellow mage. "Varulf was very insistent that we come quickly."
"Dragon?" Madena peered outside, appearing to scan the sky in apparent alarm, before she uttered a quiet "ah" and subsequently relaxed. "Of course—that would explain the one we heard a few minutes ago. You gave us all a scare—this town's got enough on its plate already without having to deal with dragons and the like."
She stepped aside. "Send them in," she said to the guard. "You should get back to your posts soon—it's dangerous to stay here for very long."
"No can do," the guard said. "These mages need to answer for what they did to the barracks of Dawnstar—and all the guards who were in them!"
"What are you talking about?" Madena pushed past him, turning left—and then freezing in her tracks at the sight of the burning husk that had become the town's barracks and jail, now fully engulfed in the results of Grimnir's Shout.
"Get inside," she said. Her voice had become tight-lipped. "All of you. Now."
Grimnir and Colette had little choice but to let the guards shunt them into the White Hall—none too gently. Colette was being treated far less gently than he (perhaps the guards knew better than to get on his bad side? Grimnir mused) but the Breton grit her teeth and bore the rough treatment without any sign of protest.
"What's the meaning of this, Madena?!"
Only one person in all of Skyrim was grating and choleric enough to have a voice to match such a mood—and sure enough, Grimnir saw Jarl Skald the Elder—stooped, hoary, but still possessed of a fire that even the best soldiers in the Empire, however diminished it had become, would be hard-pressed to imitate.
"I thought I said no other people in this castle besides you and Frida!" Skald barked at his court wizard. "What's all this, then? And what the hell's that burning I'm smelling?"
Madena sounded as though she wished she were in the depths of Coldharbour rather than here. "It's the barracks," she replied. "The town barracks is on fire."
"What?!" Skald moved faster than Grimnir would have expected for a man of his age. He might well have made it out the door had Madena not stepped in his way.
"My Jarl, remember." She spoke in a hushed voice, casting a look at the guards; evidently she didn't want them to hear the truth about the disease either.
Skald, for his part, gave a low, long grunt that was the epitome of reluctance. "Eh … all right," he said eventually, jerking his head at the guards. "Get back to your posts, then. Don't want you catching cold out here."
"But, my Jarl!" the lead guard protested. "The Dragonborn burned your barracks to the ground! He has to answer for mass murder!"
"You WHAT?!" Skald thundered, inches away from Grimnir's face before he could even blink. "Those were sick guards in there—scores of them! I brought you here to heal them all—not kill them! And you!" He rounded on Colette. "Why didn't you stop him, eh? Had a right laugh, did you—seeing us this weak and defenseless?"
The Breton hissed under her breath, and Grimnir saw her gloved hands curl up into fists. The air between them was tense enough as it was—he had to intervene.
"There was no one in there!" he blurted out before anyone could stop him. "Everyone inside that building was already dead!"
The outburst was followed by one of the loudest silences the Arch-Mage had ever experienced. He and Skald stood there, looking one another in the eye—neither man wavering or backing down from the other. Then:
"Out," Skald said, jerking his head at the guards again. His voice was low, growly. The guards seemed to take this as a sign to heed his word, and left the White Hall without any sign of acknowledgement at their Jarl—or indeed, any word amongst themselves. Colette sighed in relief, rubbing at her wrists where the guards had been holding her.
"Explain," said the Jarl of the Pale, this time to Grimnir—and the single word did not invite debate. The Arch-Mage knew he had to explain himself as best he could without rousing Skald's anger. Already he was wondering if he'd done the right thing by committing the act he had—but there was nothing for it now.
"When your guards told me that the majority of the soldiers who patrolled your town had been stricken with a sickness that was killing them in droves," he said, "he mentioned that they were being kept in the barracks. The stench of the place was terrible—so bad that I believed him when he told me that people were dying in there.
"So I decided to see how many people were still alive inside—just to find out how well your guards might be faring." His voice was hard as steel. "I used a Shout that reveals the life force of any being within a certain distance around me—living, undead, or otherwise animate in some way."
Slowly, he approached Skald, now looking him in the eye. "There was nothing in that building," he growled. "No life force whatsoever. Everything and everyone inside that building had died from the Knahaten Flu."
"He's right," Colette piped up beside him, a little more prepared to speak now that no guards were around to restrain her. "Right after the Arch-Mage did that Shout, I performed a scrye just to make sure he didn't miss anything." She slumped a little. "He didn't. So he Shouted again … "
" … and made sure that the damnable plague they were carrying died with them," finished Grimnir. "You vastly underestimated the severity of the situation, my Jarl—not to mention the danger of this disease. Are you not aware of the history this Flu has? The entirety of Tamriel suffered from it! The Khajiit of Elsweyr were forced to burn entire cities to the ground—and it still didn't slow the spread of the Flu!"
"Your point being?" groused Skald.
Grimnir ignored the underlying message of the question—that Skald was either unable or unwilling to rouse himself to care about what he likely deemed ancient history that had nothing whatever to do with Skyrim or its people.
"My point, Jarl Skald—and I mean this with all due respect," he said, "is that from my point of view, you have acted incredibly—laughably—irresponsibly in dealing with the return of the Knahaten Flu! Colette and I journeyed here expecting to heal the sick and dying—but we find most of those sick and dying have been left to their own devices, while the man who is meant to look out for their well-being is holed up inside his own palace, in fear of his life!"
"You mind your tongue around your elders, boy!" Skald shot back. "Don't you think me for a fool—I know damn well what I'm doing in my keep and with my hold! The last thing I want is for Skyrim to be in a panic so soon after last year—the Black Worm plot, the assassination of Ulfric! If word got out that this disease was gripping Dawnstar, there'd be mass hysteria. So I closed the borders to make sure no innocent people would catch it and spread it through the province—and I called back the soldiers from Dunstad to replace the ones I lost to the Flu! Aye, I didn't tell them it was the Flu," he admitted, his voice softening a small amount, "but would you have done the same if you didn't want to leave your town a sitting duck?!"
"For what?!" Grimnir wanted to know. "What kind of fool has a death wish to attack a town that's already dying?"
The silence that followed was even louder than the first one. Instantly Grimnir could tell that his query had struck a chord among everyone inside the White Hall. Madena was nervously looking back and forth between the Arch-Mage and Skald—and the Jarl, Grimnir was surprised to see, sounded nervous for the first time in his memory.
"That's a good question, Dragonborn," Skald said, his voice unnaturally quiet. "A very good question—and I'll give you the answer, aye. It's the kinds of fools what are already dead in the first place."
"Dead?" That threw Grimnir for a loop. "You mean like draugr?" But already he suspected that wasn't the answer—the emaciated husks of warriors he was used to seeing inside Nordic tombs were far older than even the first, deadliest incarnation of the Knahaten Flu.
"Like ghosts," Skald said. "That was how this all started, aye. Yesterday, one of the sailors on a ship what makes port here—the Sea Squall; small little ship that does a route between here and Winterhold—claimed he saw a figure called the White Widow. Supposed to be the ghost of a woman who died on her wedding day—mauled by a bear, the story went—and she's apparently made out to be this harbinger of doom to anyone what sees her."
"You don't sound like you put a lot of faith in this story," Colette pointed out. "Ghosts are one thing—those, we know can exist—but 'harbingers of doom'?"
"That's what I thought at the time, aye," grunted Skald. "The old codger's shipmates thought so too. He and one of the others came to blows after he came back babbling about the Widow, and his captain had him carted off to the town jail. I saw the guards carry him past Rustleif's house—the town blacksmith. Coughing up a storm, he was—looked like he'd taken a hard punch to the gut.
"I didn't think much about it till this morning," Skald went on. "I woke up to see that giant red ship dropped anchor outside the bay. The Sea Squall was gone—it sailed into the ice fields, I heard; no one's seen it since. And old Guthrum, the sailor they'd thrown in jail … "
The Jarl's face grew uncharacteristically green at that moment, and he did not finish his sentence. Nor did Grimnir think he needed to; he could guess what had happened from there. This Guthrum person had been the first to be infected with the Knahaten Flu—as to how he'd got it, the Arch-Mage did not know; the story of this "White Widow" sounded a little too fanciful to be anything more than a tall tale. One way or the other, however, Guthrum's time in jail had allowed the Flu to spread out from his body, like a spark to dry kindling. Before long, every guard in town had been infected with the disease, because of how they had to change posts on a regular basis. They were all infected—and now, they were all dead.
But that wasn't right. If this really was Knahaten Flu, then the guards should not have died so quickly. The Flu needed anywhere from a few days to a week before its symptoms proved fatal—yet it sounded as though this disease was capable of killing in less than a day—far too quickly to be the Knahaten Flu, Grimnir thought, and far too rapidly to spread among so many people in such a short time, and kill them all in more or less the same way.
Something wasn't adding up here, he mused—but it could demand his attention later. The situation in Danwstar had changed—he would have to enact his plan much sooner than he'd anticipated.
"For the sake of argument," he therefore asked Skald, "is there anyone in town who's actually seen this White Widow? Anybody living, I mean to say—anyone who can tell me everything they know about it?"
Skald considered. "I wasn't there personally," he said, "but Madena sent word along that old Rustleif the blacksmith had seen it after he'd left his house earlier today—maybe a few hours before you came along. He and his wife, Seren, were helping to take care of anyone who'd already come down with the Flu. It's just him now, so I heard—less than a minute after he met the Widow, his wife took ill with that damned disease … along with his baby daughter."
Grimnir felt a horrible pit form inside his stomach at the mention of what had happened to this Rustleif's family. "I should like to speak to him later today," he said, quickly driving it out of his mind. "But there are more important things to take care of first."
He stepped forward. "Jarl Skald, please forgive me when I believe that you could have handled this situation much better than you have so far. It is clear to us that the College's help is gravely needed here." He paused. "However."
Skald frowned, clearly suspicious about something. "Well, spit it out, boy!"
Grimnir chewed the ravaged skin of his lip for a few moments while he considered how best to explain what he was about to do. "Thanks to your efforts, I believe that stopping the Knahaten Flu at its source takes greater priority now than merely treating the unfortunate men, women, and children who have fallen victim to it. I'd hoped to wait to do this until after we were certain that the people of Dawnstar were out of danger—but we cannot afford to waste any more time."
At a nod from Colette, he took another step forward. "I intend to destroy the Crimson Ship anchored outside the town—by sinking it, scuttling it, or doing whatever it takes to rid Dawnstar of its tainted shadow. I believe—and Colette agrees with me—that the ship may be the source of the Flu, and therefore, that destroying it may prevent it from ever causing harm to any coastline again."
The Arch-Mage took a deep breath. "I am prepared to do this now," he said, "although I would rather have waited until later. I ask that everyone wait inside until I am done."
"How will we know?" Madena asked.
Grimnir's mask looked her right in the eye. "You will." And he said nothing more on the matter—all that was left to do was hear Skald's judgment on the matter.
The Jarl did not speak for some time. Occasionally, he grunted and groaned to himself—apparently his way of thinking things over. No doubt he was still angry at Grimnir for destroying the barracks of his town—but Grimnir had only done that because leaving it otherwise was just asking for the Knahaten Flu to come inside and feast on the dying soldiers, killing them shortly thereafter—and incubating into enough disease to affect Skald's entire hold, or more.
Finally, Skald gave a grudging nod. "All right, then," he said. "Do what you have to. But we'll be having words when this is done, Dragonborn," he said. "There's going to be consequences for you destroying my town, mark me. I can only pray to the Nine that you're alive to hear them for yourself."
It was a double-edged compliment if Grimnir had ever heard one—but it was the best he was likely to get out of the crusty old Jarl. "Thank you," he said, pounding his breast in a salute, before stepping out of the White Hall—and into a Dawnstar that seemed more silent than ever.
"That man has been Jarl for far too long," Colette growled under her breath the moment the doors to Skald's keep had closed. "He should have stepped down before Ulfric put the whole province into crisis. He's too possessive of his hold—thinks anyone who steps inside its borders that didn't ally with the Stormcloaks is a charge of treason just waiting to happen."
"He knows better," Grimnir said placatingly. "He knew there was no point arguing with who I am. Even if it's a part of me I'm trying to live without … it's who I am," he said again after a short pause.
He cleared his throat. "Okay," he said. "Cover your ears, Colette. I'm going to give Odahviing the first signal. He should have a clear line of sight from here."
Colette nodded, and raised her gloved hands to either side of Hevnoraak's rusted face.
Once Grimnir was certain she'd sufficiently protected himself, he acted. "Lok … Vah KOOR!"
There was a clap of thunder, and a shockwave of transparent energy radiated out from the Arch-Mage's mouth, disappearing beyond the horizon faster than either mage could blink. For a moment, there was nothing, and it seemed that that was all that the Shout could have done.
Then, moments later, a ray of sunlight broke the overcast sky, lancing through the iron-gray clouds and into the dark waters of the bay. A second one followed—then a third, a fourth—half a score, a full score—
The sun burst out from the sky in full force, seeming to obliterate the clouds that had concealed it all day; pushed aside by the force of Grimnir's Shout, they turned into wisps, and even those were dispelled into nothingness. A shadow briefly fell upon Grimnir's gaze; instinctively, he whirled in the direction of its source—only to relax upon seeing that that source was only Odahviing stretching his massive wings, which blocked out the sun from where the crimson dragon crouched atop the ruined temple.
"Can you see anything with your scrye, Colette?" he asked, indicating the Crimson Ship in the distance.
The Breton ummed under her breath for a moment. "No," she eventually answered him. "No signs of life at all. Of course, it could be far enough away that my scrye can't detect anything aboard—and it could be enchanted to resist my magic as well."
"It's the best chance we have," Grimnir told her. "Keep it active until after Odahviing's played his part. If there's anything on board that ship, I want to hear about it from you. Understood?"
"Understood."
"Then I'm going to give the second signal. Stand back."
Colette did so, and Grimnir craned his neck until he was looking straight up at the sky. Again, he concentrated the ancient magic of the Thu'um inside his lungs, breathed in until he felt it inside his throat—then out.
"Fo … Krah DIIN!"
Inside the cramped shelter beneath their house, Rustleif and Seren heard the Shouts—and realized what it meant.
"The Dragonborn's here!" Seren cried out—even through the darkness of the space, the smothering cloths that covered her face, there was no mistaking the jubilation in her voice. "That must have been his dragon we heard back then—that's why it never attacked the town!"
She made as if to make her way back up the ladder to the trap door of their home, a sleeping Makela in tow—but Rustleif was just barely able to stay her.
"Easy, dearest," he soothed her. "Whatever's going on out there, it sounds like some kind of battle. Best we stay inside until it's blown over. If it's the Dragonborn," he added, grinning beneath his wrappings, "then I doubt he'll be long."
"I hope you're right," Seren said as she settled back down on the bedroll, letting Makela out of her grasp to trundle on the soft surface. "I hope you're right."
That was when they heard the second, much deeper Shout.
"Iiz … Slen NUS!"
Aboard the Crimson Ship, its pale commander saw the skyward geyser of frozen air erupting in the distance. A few seconds later, however—before she could make sense of what it was—a much larger missile of frozen air exploded from the dragon that had landed upon the old temple.
This one was heading right for the vessel, and she understood at once what it was meant to do. It was a clever move, admittedly—one that might well have worked a thousand years ago, when this ship still had a living soul within its creaking walls.
But a thousand years could be both a short time, and a long time. There was more to this vessel than met the eye, its commander knew as she stroked its planks with a pale finger, feeling the wood tingle with secret magic …
There was a good reason that Grimnir had requested Odahviing use the Shout he'd just let fly on the Crimson Ship.
Ice Form, the Greybeards of High Hrothgar called it—so named because anything in its path was instantly covered within a thick sheet of ice, as cold as the winds that constantly buffeted the Throat of the World, the highest mountain in Tamriel. In some cases, anyone luckless enough to be caught in the thick of this Shout would be frozen solid—the moment the Shout's effects wore off, they would shatter into a thousand pieces.
This was the outcome that Grimnir was counting on. Fire Breath—such as he'd used on that troll, as well as the doomed barracks of Dawnstar later on—Frost Breath, and Unrelenting Force had equally explosive results. If they hit the Crimson Ship, it might send bits and pieces of the vessel flying everywhere, thereby running the risk of spreading the Knahaten Flu they believed it was carrying to a much wider area than just the city limits of Dawnstar.
Storm Call, his second-most powerful Shout, was too indiscriminate—if Grimnir used that here, odds were he'd destroy all of Dawnstar before destroying the ship. That only left Ice Form—and Odahviing, being a legendary red dragon, had far superior range, power, and control over such a Shout than Grimnir could ever hope to achieve.
But more importantly, if Odahviing's Ice Form hit the ship—as it was looking to do right now—then the entire vessel would be covered in so much ice that it would sink under its own weight. Masts and rigging would collapse, completely frozen; the decks and ports would collapse under those—and it would repeat all the way down to the keel, which would rapidly flood the remains of the ship, and sink the collection of wood and ice within minutes.
It was clean.
It was simple.
It was perfect.
It was only seconds away from impact—
—and then Colette Marence opened her eyes.
"I'm picking up some kind of magickal signatures on that ship," she said, eyes narrowed. Whatever she was seeing, she didn't look like she believed it. "It's spreading out over the whole vessel … some kind of alteration magic … "
Grimnir was about to press her for more information—and then the next moment, he'd felt his jaw drop in shock as he saw Odahviing's Ice Form pass right through the Crimson Ship.
"What the devil?!" he said out loud, whirling upon Colette. "Tell me that didn't just happen!"
The Breton mage shook her head, clearly unwilling to accept what she'd just seen, either.
"I'll try again," Grimnir grunted. "Fo … Krah DIIN!" A second burst of icy breath spouted into the sky.
"Iiz … Slen NUS!" rumbled Odahviing from high above, expelling his own frigid attack a second time, right for the Crimson Ship. The blast of ultra-chilled air expanded, preparing to engulf the Crimson Ship—
This time, Grimnir saw it: the moment Odahviing's Ice Form made contact, the hull of the entire vessel seemed to shimmer and slightly distort, as though it had been covered in a thin film of water catching the rays of the sun. It was clearly some form of barrier—there was no way of telling anything else beyond that, short of venturing onto the Crimson Ship itself. And if what Grimnir had just seen was any indication, then that was out of the question.
"No sense in doing this a third time," he said to Colette, who had slumped in defeat. "We'd be beating a dead horse. Until we learn more about what we saw from that ship … there's nothing more we can learn. Nothing we can do."
"There's one thing we did learn, though," said Colette. "Someone or something is on board that ship. It wasn't doing that magic on its own—magicka doesn't come from out of nowhere, especially on that scale; it has to have a source."
"Maybe the ship was enchanted," Grimnir mused out loud. "Can't be much different from enchanting a weapon, can it?"
"A ship that big would need an entire Mages' Guild to put even one enchantment on it," snorted Colette. "There's no other way around it: that ship is being piloted—controlled. Whoever or whatever it is has immense magical capability. And you know what that tells me?"
"What?"
The Breton sounded grim. "This is starting to look less and less like a simple outbreak of Knahaten Flu," she said.
Grimnir winced—he could practically hear both his and Colette's stomachs dropping. "Which means dealing with it is going to take a hell of a lot longer than we thought," he realized.
Colette nodded. "We'd better inform the Jarl what happened out here," she said. "He's got even less options now than he did before we came. I think the only thing left to do from here is to—"
She broke off. The Breton's head was turning this way and that. "Do you hear that?" she asked.
Grimnir shrugged. He'd suffered extensive injuries to his ear the previous year—so it was particularly hard for him to hear anything on one side of his body. So he followed Colette's lead, turning his body in a circle, straining his remaining good ear to listen for—
What was that?
Grimnir frowned, trying to make sense of the faint noises he was hearing on the wind. "Sounds like someone singing," he muttered to Colette. "Maybe a woman?"
"Or a Widow?" The Breton sounded as though she was fighting the impulse to run; she'd half turned towards the door of the White Hall, and her hand was twitching slightly.
"Don't tell me you believe that tall tale Skald fed us!" the Arch-Mage huffed at her indignantly.
"After what we saw with the Crimson Ship?" Colette replied, turning back to Grimnir. "I'd believe anything—"
And then she let loose a huge gasp, stumbling backwards so rapidly that she lost her balance, and landed backside-first in the snow. But Colette didn't seem to care; her entire body was trembling, and she slowly raised a finger to point somewhere behind Grimnir.
He turned—and immediately swore as he saw it right there.
The ghostly figure was so close to him that if Grimnir reached out with his hand, he believed he might be able to touch it. But every impulse in his body was telling him not to—to run away from this unexpected apparition, to put as much distance and mass between it and him as much as possible.
And yet … the figure had a strangely soothing air about it, even in spite of its appearance. It was clearly female—the shape of the ghost was distinctly that of a beautiful woman, albeit one of unknown race and age. Her translucent face was hidden in shadow, on account of the white veil draped over the figure's head. A single garment of white covered her pale skin from neck to foot—a traditional wedding dress, a stunned Grimnir thought apropos of nothing, and one that appeared to be spattered with blood and various fluids he dared not think about.
In the back of his mind, he could hear Colette screaming at him, tugging at him and trying to tear him away from the mesmerizing sight. But now the figure was beginning to sing—a low, lilting tune that sent a chill through his bones, and almost into his very soul:
Send them all
To Oblivion's flame
At that moment, Grimnir felt a sharp pain in the base of his spine, and all of a sudden the blissful feeling that he had been experiencing was gone. He could hear Colette yelling in his ear to run—but he couldn't; his legs felt as though they were jelly.
He turned to look at Colette, and his moment of distraction cost him—by the time he'd turned round to look at the White Widow for a second time, the apparition had already gone.
Feeling exceptionally foolish—and yet, feeling empty and cheated—Grimnir allowed himself to be led back into the White Hall by Colette, with no resistance whatsoever.
What was that? his mind kept asking itself, even as the doors banged shut, and Skald's voice demanded an update as though it were thousands of miles away. What the bloody hell did I just see? The sharp jolt that had brought him out of his stupor had now faded as well, and now, all that the Arch-Mage could feel was a terrified numbness seeping into his skin. He felt sullied, somehow … he felt dirty.
As Grimnir Torn-Skull slumped onto the stone floor of the Jarl's keep, he began to cough.
Next chapter: As morale in Dawnstar reaches a nadir, a talk with Madena becomes a ray of hope for Grimnir.
A/N: I'm really, really sorry this wasn't out sooner. For those of you who weren't aware, I had to deal with a bad case of carpal tunnel a few months ago, and I've been trying to keep myself from overexerting my wrists too much since then. Unfortunately, this has also led to a pretty bad creative slump, albeit one that I'm attempting to claw my way out of—slowly but surely, day-by-day, and word-by-word.
I'll be moving into a new apartment next month; I'll try to have something up by then, but I don't want to make any promises—and neither do I want to let any of you down any more than I probably have already. I will say the outline for this ended up being a bit longer than I thought it would be, so I decided to split what I had into two parts; after the second one's posted, the second act of Rain's Hand should be set to begin.
Thank you all for your patience and understanding. Hope you enjoy! – K
