She looked around, trying to fathom what she should do next, trying to think over the howling wind and thunder.
Escape Coldharbour. That doesn’t narrow it down very much.
She had taken a moment to creep down the slope to the water’s edge and look around. The water was dark, reflecting back the purple of the sky and the black of the stony islands in it. She could see several of them, protrusions of the black rock up through the inky waters; some were only a few splashes away from the shore on which she stood and others were out at the limits of her sight, but none seemed to have any lights or civilization on them. As far as she could tell and in spite of Molag Bal’s statements, she seemed to be alone in this plane of Oblivion. Just the idea of it had the cold claws of panic sinking into her chest. She fought to keep control of herself.
I wonder if this is what the Soul Cairn is like. Is it this odd color? Does it sound like this – cold, and loud, and bleak? It almost has to, doesn’t it? It’s part of Oblivion, just like this is.
For a moment, she heard Brynjolf’s voice, flat and dead, telling them about his friend Dynjyl as they’d sat numbly around the table in the Dawnstar Sanctuary trying to come to grips with how suddenly everything in their lives had just changed. He’d told them how Dynjyl had been soul trapped when he died more than twenty years before. He’d told them how, because they were vampires, he and Andante had been able to travel to the Soul Cairn and find Dynjyl’s spirit, caught there for eternity. She hadn’t understood, then, the enormity of what Andante had offered to do for Brynjolf. She had not known what Nocturnal had promised. All she had known was the hopeless sound of Brynjolf’s voice explaining to them all who, and where, Dynjyl was.
That’s what he meant when he said “another person I’ll never see again, thanks to him.” Andante made him human again. He can’t go back to the Soul Cairn to see Dynjyl’s ghost. He’s not a vampire. No wonder.
She turned back to look at the Dark Anchor and get her bearings. What she had thought was a simple array of black spikes was in fact a portal with Daedric lettering, the twin of the one that had brought her here. It would serve as an excellent landmark. So would the two odd land masses beyond the Dark Anchor; they looked like inverted mountaintops, plateaus balancing precariously on thin rock points.
I don’t know where I’m going. I guess I’ll skirt around the shoreline and see whether anything looks likely.
It didn’t take long before she was forced to turn back inland, toward the Dark Anchor, for the beach ended abruptly at a sharp, steep protrusion of rock into the water. She couldn’t tell whether the rocks were slick with water or simply shiny, and the shadows cast by the whirling ring of debris above her head played havoc with her vision. She simply didn’t trust herself to find solid footing or handholds on the black rock. Moving uphill and around the higher end of the rocks, she could see for the first time that what had looked like inverted mountaintops were actually huge masses of land floating in mid-air. A shiver ran up her spine.
It’s so strange. It’s too strange. I’m afraid.
She was able to return to the shoreline and creep along the water’s edge, waiting for something terrible to happen. The bare-branched trees were black. The pebbles were black. Even the tufts of grass were black. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
I hate this. I hate it.
She jumped quietly to the top of a boulder and a light caught her attention. A few hundred paces away, at the end of a spit of sand, was a burning brazier with what appeared to be a chest resting in front of it.
It’s probably a trap. But it’s the nearest thing to a clue I’ve seen here aside from that Dark Anchor, so I’ll go check it out.
She approached the chest slowly and warily, stopping every time she heard a noise, the hair on the back of her neck rising. There was nothing at the brazier, though, aside from the chest; and it was a normal chest, with a few coins and gems inside and nothing else to give her any direction. She stretched out her shoulders to try to shed some of the anxiety that was building in her, and then stretched her neck.
“This is foolish. There’s nobody else here and I’m not going to die. I just need to keep looking.”
Nobody answered. Sayma hadn’t really expected an answer, but hearing a human voice had seemed important right then, even if it was her own. She nodded to herself and continued working her way along the shoreline. There were more land masses visible from this area and all of them across stretches of water from her. If worse came to worst, she decided, she would swim to one of them to look for a way out. Eventually she had travelled far enough to be able to spot huge bonfires burning at the base of several of the chains from the Dark Anchor, and she frowned.
Someone or something is keeping the braziers burning. And the bonfires. Maybe Molag Bal wasn’t lying to me after all.
And then she was cut off from the beach once again. She decided to return to the portal where she had started, and work her way up the other side of what more and more seemed like only one of many islands in Coldharbour. She took a chance and ran inland rather than hugging the shoreline, and spotted something curious: at the crest of a hill and along a direct line from the portal to the Dark Anchor there was another of the cruelly spiked posts like the ones around the portal.
Some kind of directional post? I wonder. Maybe there’s something on the other side of the Anchor but along the same path? It’s almost like something you’d use to line up a bowshot. I’ll bet whatever I’m looking for is along that line.
The far side of the island was just as dead and bleak as one she’d started on, with one exception. There was another brazier with a chest a goodly distance ahead, on the far side of a rock outcropping. This one, though, had a bonfire just up the hill from it. She would have to be careful. She passed two other chests along the shore as she moved toward the bonfire. Neither of them had anything terribly exciting in them, but she took the coins anyway, and then moved to the top of the rise, hoping to avoid travel over the rock.
There was something moving at the base of a bonfire, farther in toward the Anchor.
Sayma dropped into a crouch and crept slowly up the hill to get a better view. It was not just one thing but two, both humanoid and both seemingly very tall in relation to the bonfire. As she watched, one of them moved, walking a few paces and turning back toward the flames, and as it did she caught a flash of vibrant red.
Molag Bal. Coldharbour. Oblivion. These have to be Dremora of some kind and I am in big, big trouble. That red has to be a Daedric weapon of some kind. Or Daedric armor. Or even the Dremora itself. I am not prepared to deal with that.
She turned and skittered back down to the shoreline as silently as she could, her heart pounding in her ears. No matter how hard she thought, she could not picture how a small Redguard woman in the very light armor of the Dark Brotherhood could stand up to one Dremora, much less two. Even with her deadly swords she would be at a serious disadvantage. She would just need to avoid them.
Well, he did say not to kill them. I don’t really much care about the reward for not killing them but I do need to get past them.
She was once more facing the brazier and chest she’d seen earlier, the one with a bonfire just uphill from it. It was only a tiny splash across a finger of water from her position, and she decided to head for it. Rather than get wet, though, she decided to climb over the boulders at the water’s edge and skirt around the edge of the sand.
But she slipped.
Sayma had been right; the rocks were not just shiny but slick, and she slipped on the first one she tackled, landing squarely in the inky black water.
And she screamed.
The water burned. It burned with a pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and it froze, and it drew her life from her faster and faster with each second that passed. Her limbs didn’t want to move, but she fought them out of pain, and out of terror. She struggled and heaved her body up out of the damp and onto a tiny sliver of sand nestled in the crook of the rocks, trying to stop screaming but not able to. She collapsed against the rock and began casting healing spells, all the while tears rolling down her face. When her energy dwindled she reached into her pack and pulled out every potion that might conceivably help her and emptied the bottles one after the next, throwing the empties into the sea and screaming at them, incoherent noises that were still no match for the howling winds and claps of thunder.
It drains life! The water is the trap. That is why I can’t get away! I can’t swim across. I can’t even get my feet wet. The water drains life from you! Just like… just like…
She scrubbed the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand, but they kept coming.
Like a vampire. It drains life like a vampire.
She put her arms across her knees and her head down on them and sobbed.
Of course it does. Molag Bal.
The feeling of her life draining away wouldn’t leave her, even though she knew she was no longer in danger. She thought of it, and she thought of Andante, always so careful to maintain the appearance of a normal Imperial man so that nobody could see the terrifying creature under the mask. He did that because he knew what a frightening thing he was. I suppose I should be grateful for that.
Then she thought the look on Brynjolf’s face when he’d stopped himself just short of talking about draining victims himself. The hungry, angry look in his eyes. He’d looked at her that way with his golden eyes, too, before Andante had given his humanity back. If not for Roggi’s intervention he’d have drained her the way he drained his other targets. She sobbed thinking about it, wondering how it could ever have been the thing that Brynjolf had chosen to do, thinking about what his victims must have felt as their life drained away from them. She shuddered, remembering the sound of his voice when he had talked about being a Nightlord vampire. When she had said the darkened sun was terrifying, he’d replied “It was supposed to be.” He had wanted it, desired it, fed on the power of it as much as he had fed on the blood of his victims, and when it was taken away from him he had felt empty. That was clear from everything he’d said to her since Dawnstar. It was terrifying.
Why? Why would he have wanted that? I don’t understand. I don’t know what to do with that. I just don’t.
Her sobs began to die down. She raised her head and looked around, finally remembering that there were Dremora about and that she had just been making some of the loudest sounds she’d made short of childbirth. Thankfully, Coldharbour was nothing if not a jarringly loud place.
Silence of Coldharbour my fanny.
Well, it doesn’t matter how confused I am, I still have to get off this damned island or I’ll never see my son again.
She wiped her face off again, pushed herself up to a standing position and walked the tiny concealed beach a few times, to make certain that her legs were operating properly. Then she readied her bow and pushed around the corner into the open. Movement on the second hillside beyond the brazier caught her attention; there was another bonfire near a rocky peak and a Dremora stood near it, at the ridgeline. Another paced up and down the slope beneath it. Sayma froze for a moment but then realized that unless she did something absurd, her black armor would completely camouflage her form in front of the black rock. She turned left and flinched, for there was a third Dremora at the ridge nearest her. That one was far too close to outrun.
Sayma crept down to the water’s edge, nervous about being so close to the liquid death but needing to stay low and out of the line of sight. She wasn’t expecting anything exciting to be in the chest she had seen and wasn’t disappointed. Still, she took the coins and jewelry and continued on.
The farther from the portal she got, the more Dremora Sayma was aware of. She couldn’t see anything specific, but it occurred to her that the ground sloped continually upward toward a large mountain at what appeared to be the land’s edge.
There’s something up there. That’s where I need to go. How in Oblivion… Literally.
A moment later she realized that she was going to have no choice but to go there, whether she wanted to or not. The beach ended at a sheer cliff face. The life-draining water lapped hungrily against it. She shuddered and turned back. It was time to climb a hill.
The problem was that she couldn’t take the easy route, up over the sandy hills and toward her destination. She tried that; as soon as she was high enough up for her head to be seen the distorted, gurgling voice of a Dremora shouted “I … smell… weakness!” and she ran back to the shoreline, using her Nightingale powers to vanish until it wandered away.
There was no choice for her other than to climb up the face of the rocks, as far out of sight as she could. It took what felt like a lifetime. Sayma was a decent rock climber. She’d even been able to run almost straight down a cliffside to flee from the first dragon she’d ever seen. But she was tired, and deeply shaken, and still feeling the effects of concentrated terror from the near-death by seawater. Every handhold seemed not deep enough; every time she placed a foot it would slip and she would cling to the rock, her heart pounding, waiting for the sound of a Dremora and then slowly repeating the process.
Finally she was able to squirm over the crest of the hill and drop down the other side onto a shallow beach. She turned and looked back up at the whirling debris beneath the Anchor, marveling at how long it had taken her to go such a short distance; then she turned back to the shoreline and continued along it.
She thought she was free and clear. Then she came to a spot in which the rocks were precariously near the water. I can jump this, no problem, she thought. It’s only a tiny leap. Even if I step in that little bit of wet sand I should be fine.
She was wrong.
Once again, her foot slipped on a rock and she landed in the sea with both feet. It was very shallow there, no more than a skim of water across the sand, but she shrieked as the life force poured from her in an agonizing rush of pain. She cast healing spells on herself and gritted her teeth, tried not to make more noise as she was nearly to the place she needed to be and was certain there were Dremora on the ridge above her. Again the tears of pain streamed down her face until, finally, she was able to catch her breath. She moved forward, around the base of a cliff. It was very dark, and she was still very near the water; so she hugged herself as close to the rock as she could until finally, out of frustration, she cast a light spell.
I’ll deal with the Dremora. I can’t take that water again.
In front of her was a post, half-collapsed into the sea, with a mustard yellow flag affixed to the top. Sayma knew that sign. It was what miners and bandits used to mark a mine, or a cave.
Or a vampire den.
She shook her head and scooted around the corner, where a brazier marked the opening of the cave.
Inside, the cave was unremarkable. It was small. It had a brazier for lighting. There was a chest, with a scroll, an empty soul gem, and a couple of pieces of armor inside. Sayma took the smaller items, closed the chest, and frowned.
Well I was clearly supposed to come here. But why? There’s nothing here. There’s no hint, no exits, no…
Wait.
There are no obvious exits, she thought. But maybe there’s some long-forgotten secret passage in here? Something that goes up to the top of the mountain over my head? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve encountered such a thing. She cast Ancient Vision and looked around the cave, eagerly searching for just such a secret passage.
There was no such passage. What did appear was a strongbox, nestled beside the chest she’d just investigated. It wasn’t locked; she opened it up to find a substantial amount of gold that she took without hesitation. Under the gold was a large, ornate key and an amulet with a small piece of parchment wrapped about it. The key was important; that much was obvious. The amulet, though; that was curious. Sayma pulled the piece of parchment off and held it up to read. “The Right Eye of Coldharbour sees everyone,” it read.
“Ok, then. Interesting.”
Ancient Vision made its typical exploding noise as it dissipated, and as it did so Sayma realized that she was bone weary. She’d not really slept since sliding off Shadowmere’s back, and she had no idea how much time had passed between then and now. This was a quiet, reasonably safe place as far as she could tell; it was protected from the winds and had warmth from the large brazier. She sat down near the chest, leaned back against the wall, and closed her eyes.
Again she heard the sound of Brynjolf’s voice. “I was very good at it,” he’d told her. “It’s a powerful feeling, being able to…” She shuddered.
What was it that could have made him want that kind of life for himself? When she truly thought about it, Sayma was certain that Andante – no, Vitus – would not have taken Brynjolf against his will. He was far too respectful of authority. It had always seemed amusing to her, during the time she’d known him, the degree of deference he had shown her because she was the Listener. Learning that he was Vitus and had known the previous Listener from the time he was a child made it much more understandable. He’d been raised to respect authority figures, and he worked for Brynjolf. No, he’d have never turned Brynjolf on his own. It was something Bryn had wanted for himself.
But why? Why did he feel that he wanted to change his life, to become something like that? What was he missing?
Her eyes flew open.
She suddenly remembered Roggi, his normally jovial tones gone cold and hard as he’d told her about needing to nurse Brynjolf back to health. She remembered Delvin glaring at her as he said she’d almost killed him, indirectly. And she remembered Brynjolf’s quiet, controlled, dispassionate tones as he’d told them all about losing Dynjyl, how he felt responsible because he hadn’t scouted ahead carefully enough.
He already felt guilty because of Dynjyl. He’s carried that guilt for decades. And he felt guilty about Mercer fooling him and almost ruining the Guild. And then I walked away from our marriage and left him holding the bag and he needed something else because he felt guilty, and empty, and alone.
It was me. He was missing me. I was the last straw. It’s my fault.
She wanted to cry again, but was too exhausted to cry. Instead, she sat numbly staring at the floor, trying to puzzle out what else was important about this.
It’s Dynjyl. He’s trapped in a place just like this, if not worse. And Bryn feels responsible for that. It’s been eating at him, and eating at him, and seeing Dynjyl’s shade in the Soul Cairn must have made it even worse. He wanted revenge. He wanted power, and meaning, and revenge. On himself.
Thank the gods Vitus made him human again. But Dynjyl is still trapped.
Her skin crawled. She was close to being trapped, herself, and the panic wanted to rise up in her just thinking about it. He’d been in the Soul Cairn since Brynjolf was a young man. “He was very young,” Karliah had told her.
Sayma closed her eyes again. She had no place to be concerned about Brynjolf’s love life, either before or after he was with her. After all, there was Coyle, and there was Roggi, and she had no right to pass judgment. But Brynjolf was torturing himself over something that really, truly wasn’t his fault.
Vitus knew that, and tried to do something about it. That’s why Dynjyl is important.
That’s why freeing Dynjyl is more important than anything else. I owe it to him. I owe it to all of them. But mostly I owe it to Brynjolf.
She closed her eyes and saw the face of her son, looking so much like a tanned version of his father, and another thought occurred to her.
Brynjolf didn’t just take life away. He helped to create it.
This time she did cry, for a bit.
I’ll do this for you, Red. I’ll find the damned Cowl and I’ll have Nocturnal free Dynjyl’s spirit or I’ll die in the trying. I’ll do it for all of you. Let me do this.
And finally, having exhausted her tears and herself, she fell asleep.
___
It was night when she emerged from the cave. It hardly seemed possible, but the place was darker than it had been before, and thus the return trip around the rocks was even more terrifying. She didn’t dare cast her candlelight spell for fear of being seen, and each time she took a step she expected to feel the burning, freezing pain once more. But it didn’t happen. She managed to return to the spot nearest the Dremora she’d seen earlier and hesitated.
May as well try this out.
She fished the amulet she’d retrieved from the cave out of her pocket and slung it around her neck. There was an odd sound, and suddenly everything was not only darker than, but more purple than it had been before. Even the flames of the bonfire before her were purple. She cringed and her hand reached to snatch the necklace off; but she managed to grit her teeth and forced herself to look around. The amulet, the Right Eye of Coldharbour, had also revealed the forms of the Dremora patrolling near the top of the mountain. That was a problem.
She moved quietly toward the crest of the hill and saw that there were in fact many of these Guardians, just as Molag Bal had told her there would be. They were spread out but too close to sneak between. It was too dark to see where she needed to go, so she carefully removed the necklace; and with her vision returned to normal, standing on the rise, she was able to see for the first time that there was some sort of structure high on the hill, probably directly above the cave where she’d found the necklace.
I don’t know which gods-damned way to go. How can I get there? Maybe if I cross, above the spot where I was before, and climb over the rocks?
She took two or three steps toward the base of the Dark Anchor before the shock spell struck her.
“No one escapes!” the Dremora Guardian challenged.
She turned and fled.
“Foolish mortal!” she heard from just over the rise in front of her. A second Guardian shot its shock spell at her and she yelped in pain.
Not good, not good, not good!
She hurtled down over the hill and back toward the cave, casting healing on herself as quickly as she could.
“Are you prepared for your death?”
“Not today, thanks all the same!” she yelled as she threw herself into the cave and scrambled into the darkest corner she could find. Then she waited.
Well, now what?
Now you go back the long way. Around the shoreline. And then you do what you were thinking about before. Climb the rocks on the other side and see what’s on top.
It took a very long time. Eventually, though, as she was wearily pulling herself up the sandy slope toward a tower of dark stone, she heard the unmistakable pulsing sound of a magical portal.
Never thought I’d be glad to hear a portal, but I sure am.
In front of the tower’s doorway there was another portal with Daedric lettering, in perfect alignment with the one that had brought her here on the far side of the island. The tower itself had an open, outer wall and an inner wall, closed with a wooden door. It was that door, she was certain, that would take the key she had recovered.
She slipped on the Right Eye of Coldharbour and discovered that there were two Guardians just inside the walls. She would need to creep past them to get to the door; and as she had learned, they were nearly impossible to creep past.
Sayma crouched down behind a boulder and rifled through her pack. In it was a spell scroll she had looted from one of the chests along the way. Shroudwalk was like an invisibility spell, with an important difference; even if she touched or manipulated an item and broke invisibility for a moment, she would immediately become invisible again. She decided to use this scroll; between it and her muffled armor she should be able to get through the door.
She cast the spell and crept forward, smiling; for the closer she got to the door the more clearly she could hear the portal inside. There was a chest to her left and from it she took a journal and some loose change. The invisibility broke, for just a moment, and as expected, one of the Guardians turned and shouted “A challenger is near!”
Sayma ducked down and scooted behind a support pillar and prayed that the invisibility spell had worked and reinstated itself. She thought it had, because the Guardian ran past her and toward the chest where she had just been. Still, she was relieved to find a gap between the pillar where she stood and the door she needed to reach. She darted for the door and opened it with the key. She had only a moment to register the flames of the portal on its other side before it caught her and transported her to another place.
The room in which she stood was entirely different from anything she’d seen before: wooden paneling, benches arranged around its mostly circular space, and a table in the center on which a stern-faced bust of the Gray Fox overlooked a silver bowl with a single ring carefully placed in its exact center. She started trembling.
I’m out! I’m out! Thank each and every one of the gods and everything else, I am out of that place and I am never going back.
“Ahh, what a pleasure it was!” Molag Bal said. “So good, so exciting!”
“Well,” she said sourly, “I’m glad it was good for one of us.”
“Congratulations, my friend,” the Daedric Prince replied. “The silence of Coldharbour was not broken. Do you know what? Caio didn’t break it either. See you soon, my pet!”
His raucous laughter filled the room. When it was finished, there was silence.
“So,” she said to the Gray Fox, “is this my reward down here in the bowl? Looks like a nice ring.” She scooped it out of the bowl and slipped it onto her finger. The room went dark; but in each of the several alcoves leading away from the room she saw the glowing shapes of chests.
“Temptations, I see,” Sayma said. “I hope you know that I can find a chest without help.”
She removed the ring and sat down on one of the benches to have a bite to eat before proceeding.
I will do this.