For a moment Dardeh thought that Sayma was heading toward the building off to their right, a small structure with trees at each corner and a beam of blue light reaching skyward from its center. He would have welcomed that; even a lifetime of working in the hot and stuffy interiors of mines hadn’t prepared him for being in this degree of brutal heat with the sun beating down on his head. But Sayma veered off to the left of the building and headed toward one of the many tall and slender pillars that dotted the landscape. She didn’t seem especially concerned by the heat, dashing down the far side of the dune and out toward the expanse of reddish sand.
Dardeh sighed and picked up his pace. I’m too big, this armor is too heavy, and my Nord blood is looking for snow right now. I wonder if I could… What in Oblivion is that?
At the ridge of the next dune a coppery-colored creature appeared, crawling up from the far side. It reminded him of the chaurus he’d encountered in dark caverns, but it was much bigger. In spite of how hot he was, he shivered inside his ebony shell. He drew his sword and caught up with Sayma, who had readied her bow and was taking aim on the beast.
“Dune ripper,” she murmured. “Nasty things. They shoot fireballs.”
“Oh, good,” he grumbled as she let fly an arrow that should have skewered the creature. At the last moment, though, it turned to its left and the arrow flew harmlessly over its back.
“Damn,” Sayma hissed, readying another arrow.
This time, Sayma’s shot pierced the dune ripper’s side and took it down instantly. Dardeh sheathed his sword and followed her down the slope toward the carcass.
“Bryn was right. You are good,” he said as they reached the beast. “And this thing is huge!” It was, too; it was at least half again as large as the biggest chaurus he’d ever seen, with mandibles that he was happy could no longer pose a threat.
“Thanks,” she grinned, retrieving her arrow. “I’ve had lots of practice. Sometimes the best way to take out a target unseen is from a good distance away.”
Dardeh shuddered inside his armor again. “Um, yeah. I keep forgetting what you do. Of course you’re good.”
Sayma slipped him a sideways glance. “I learned the bow a long time before I came to Skyrim, Dardeh. I wasn’t really planning on following in Father’s footsteps, you know. I was perfectly content helping the Guild rearrange the Empire’s wealth.” She pointed forward and started trotting up over the next enormous dune by way of the slight valley between swells of sand. Dardeh did his best to keep up. “I wasn’t expecting to be chosen by … well I don’t know what you would call the Night Mother, but she picked me and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Dardeh grimaced. “I know what that’s like. I never asked to be the guy who had to battle Alduin. It just happened.” He sighed. “I was just about to take off my armor, too, and run in just clothing. Glad I didn’t do that. Those dune rippers don’t look like something you just casually fight.”
Sayma laughed. “That’s for sure. Bows are good to have around here.” She started up the side of the next dune; Dardeh followed, wishing that he couldn’t feel trickles of sweat running down his sides under his armor. Sayma must have sensed his discomfort. She turned and said “I’m sweating up a storm, too. But don’t worry. Where we’re going is in a very shaded spot.”
“Excellent,” Dardeh said, grinning. He would be happy for shade, since the cacti and tufts of tough brush told him they weren’t likely to find trees any time soon.
It seemed to him as though they were circling slowly to the northwest, around the edges of a large sandstone hill that rose from the surrounding desert. But he wasn’t sure. For all he knew they’d turned northeast again. It was disorienting at best; everything was in shades of orange or beige except for those few shriveled-looking cacti bravely reaching skyward under the blistering sun. There wasn’t enough of a breeze to cool them, but when a stray drift of air did pass it brought nothing but the scent of dust and heat with it.
Sayma stopped just before one of the cacti and peered up at the sky, shading her eyes with her hands. Dardeh did the same. There were large birds, perhaps vultures, circling around the peak of the hill next to them.
She waved him forward.
“Down here. And watch your step. I landed on my face coming down this slope the last time I was here. That sand looks soft but it’ll take off your skin real easy.” She took a few steps forward and disappeared.
Alright then. What’s this?
Dardeh eased himself toward the edge of what turned out to be a deep depression – a trench, almost, leading down and into the side of the sandstone hill. The flag marking its entrance was low enough into the passage that he nearly missed it. He darted down the path after Sayma, into the deep shade, and breathed a sigh of relief as he wound his way through the boulders and the temperature dropped markedly.
Up ahead of them he could see trees, and a structure of some sort. What drew his eye, though, was a bright blue-white spot in front of the building. They slowed to a walk; and as they drew closer he saw that the spot of light was in fact a figure.
“A ghost?” he whispered to Sayma.
“Yes,” she said quietly, giving him a quick smile. “Someone you’ll recognize, I think, given the stories you’ve told.” She made her way to the house and called out to the figure seated there.
“I’ve brought him, as you asked.”
“Thank you, Dagnell,” the low rumble responded.
Sayma chuckled and shook her head.
Dardeh felt a shudder roll up his spine. He knew the voice as well as he knew his own. In fact, the two of them sounded very much alike, as they had each of the other times he’d met Jine in dreams. But his dreams had shown him how Jine had appeared as a living man, not the translucent figure nodding a welcome to him in the middle of the Hammerfell wastes.
“Jine,” he said, climbing the stairs to stand before the ghost. He recognized Jine’s broad chest bared above the close-fitting barbarian armor. His hair was the same, the torque about his neck the same, and everything about him as Dardeh remembered. But he could see the wall of the stucco home through Jine’s chest. “This is so strange.”
“Son of my son,” Jine greeted him. “You had not seen me as I am, before, but as I was. Only my thoughts could reach you before now. This is the place where I have remained for longer than I could say.” He rose to his feet and turned toward the door. “Come,” he said, disappearing inside the house.
Dardeh shook his head and turned to Sayma, questioning. “He called you Dagnell?”
Sayma grinned. “Yes. He wasn’t taking no for an answer when Bryn and I met him, either. For some reason I don’t mind. Let’s go inside. I know what he wants to show you, but I don’t know what he wants to say.”
“Alright. This isn’t the very strangest thing I’ve ever done, but it surely comes close.”
“Trust me, I understand. I never thought I’d be coming through a corner of Coldharbour to get to this place the first time.” She grabbed Dardeh’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I don’t know why you and I have had these things happen to us, Dar, but I’m sure there’s a reason. Let’s see if we can find out what it is.”
Dardeh had to fight to contain his surprise as he stepped into the home’s large single room. The specter of Jine stood looking down at a skeleton stretched out on the bed. Dardeh took the opportunity to examine Jine again. Seeing him in the light of day, in what he hoped was wakefulness and not just another dream, was different; and he was surprised.
He’s no taller than I am. He seemed so – huge – in my dreams of him. But look at him. He’s got lots of muscles, that’s for certain, but he’s like me. Short, and wide. And he looks almost sad.
“Here I have lain for many an age,” Jine said quietly. “Why these bones have not dried and blown away in the winds, I do not know. Why I have been cursed to stay with them is a matter only Sadraaka could tell. But the curse has been lifted; and now, if my bones are laid away, I may rest.”
“Sadraaka? Who’s that?”
“Bryn found a book about her. She was a mage,” Sayma said, “back in the time of High King Harald. Fairly powerful, but jealous of Archmage Gauldur’s superior power. She tricked Gauldur’s sons into killing him, thinking that she could be Archmage in his place, but Harald exiled her instead. Her tomb is just north of here, Dar. When the Yokudans came to this part of Hammerfell they established a city there but broke into her tomb and…”
“She wasn’t happy, I take it.”
“Not at all. All the people there died and their spirits roamed the city ever since.”
Dardeh wrinkled his brow. “Jine just said the curse was lifted.”
Sayma nodded. “Brynjolf and I found the place when we were here before. It was…” she paused, frowned, and then shook her head. “It was a near thing. We almost lost him. So many angry spirits, Dar. But we got through it and managed to defeat Sadraaka and break the curse.”
“Ok,” Dardeh said, “but what does this have to do with us, now?”
“Sit, Dardeh,” the ghost said, waving at the small table nearby. “And I will try to explain.”
Dardeh sat on one side of the table and watched as Jine took the other seat and Sayma wandered around the room. He remembered sitting across the table from his father, in a dream. That had been strange. He remembered sitting in a chair next to his very angry father, in a different dream, and that had been unsettling. This was both; for not only could he see Jine in the chair across from him, he could see the chair behind Jine’s back and could look through Jine and out the open door of the house. He tried his hardest to focus on the man and not his ghostliness, but it was difficult.
Then Jine began to speak, and Dardeh forgot to think about the fact that he was a spirit. His voice seized Dardeh’s attention in a way that he thought he should recognize. It reminded him of… something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
“I told you once how you are the heir to a long line of those with power. Power over serpents. Power over others. Great power that has felled anything that stood before it, though it has manifested in different ways through the ages. Some generations were quiet. Our ancestor Avik charmed snakes – an amusement at best, but one that he did skillfully, and one that nevertheless brought him wealth. Some generations were warriors. I came here with the Yokudans who conquered this part of Hammerfell – or thought they had. But always the power has repeated itself, has carried itself through the years, on and on.”
Dardeh was mesmerized by Jine’s low, hypnotic tones. Yes. I can hear it now. Charming the snakes. Charming the people, the power of the voice. The power of… the Voice.
“It has been a never-ending cycle, son of my son. The years of anger and revenge, of birth and of killing, have repeated over and over through the generations, one act feeding the next without end or hope of end.”
“Is that why my father is haunting both of us?” Dardeh asked. “Because there is no end?”
Jine shrugged. “In your father, the power was twisted. It is hard to know why. Perhaps it was too strong in him, too close to the end. Perhaps a part of him knew the change was about to come and fought against it. I do not know. But in him, the power became hatred and darkened his mind. His work fed into that. It has kept him in this world beyond his span of years. Our people tell the story that even though the hunger of Akel caused Satak the world-snake to bite its own heart and die, the hunger refused to stop and the cycle repeated; likewise, Dadarh’s hunger was too strong to die even though his body met a violent end.”
Dardeh heard a hiss and looked up to see that Sayma had sat down in a chair in the opposite corner of the room, and was shaking her head. That has to have hit close to home for her, he thought. Father was in the Dark Brotherhood and now she is the Listener.
“So what can we do, Jine?” he asked quietly. “We can’t just let this go on. It is killing me from the inside out. I am losing my mind. I don’t want to end up like him.”
“That is why you must end it.”
Dardeh’s frustration exploded. “I have to end what?” he bellowed, tossing his hands up. “What, exactly? And how am I supposed to do this? Why me? WHY ME? All I want is to live my life with my family!”
“Dar,” Sayma said softly. He turned to look at her as she shook her head, and shook his own in return, feeling ashamed of himself for the outbursts that seemed to come more frequently with every moon that passed.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Jine. But ever since my Ma passed my life has not been my own! And I thought it would be the opposite. It’s been years now! Everyone wants something of me. Everyone expects…” He ran one hand up over his head, surprised for a moment at the bushy hair he found where there were normally tight braids. I don’t even recognize myself any longer.
“Everyone expects the Dragonborn. One of the greatest men ever to have lived,” Jine replied calmly.
Dardeh sank back into himself with a nearly audible thud, completely chastened. “Not a bad deal,” Neloth the Telvanni mage had told him. “The second-strongest Dragonborn ever to have lived.”
I need to stop this, if nothing else.
“You have already ended part of it, Uetonga do Ueetonga,” Jine said formally. “You have caused one of the great cycles of time to stop, at least to the extent that any of the great minds are able to foresee. The World-Eater died by your hand. All things felt his end. What is beyond, we cannot know.”
Dardeh snorted. “Well sure. And Paarthurnax told me that maybe this world was supposed to be the egg of the next. Well, if it was, I’ve certainly managed to break it wide open.”
“And if it was not, you have still ended a cycle of misery,” Jine answered, his voice flat, his tone allowing no room for argument.
“Well what else am I supposed to do, then?” Dardeh snapped. “End our line? I’ve already done that, just by being born, Jine. I’m married to a man. There will never be another male in our lineage.”
Jine looked across the room at Sayma. “I think you are wrong,” he said softly. “I have seen a young boy, born to a Nord father and a mother of Yokudan heritage. A favored mix, the same one you possess, Dardeh. You and your sister share many things. A father. Power. And you are both setting things right.”
“What do you mean, Jine?” Sayma asked quietly, her hand resting softly atop her belly where, Dardeh realized with some amount of embarrassment, the next generation lay waiting for its turn. Of course there was another son in their line. His name was Brynjolf.
“Both of you are ending the circles within circles, daughter. You could call them curses, perhaps. Dardeh ended Alduin’s cycle. You and your red Nord ended the curse of Sadraaka. You both are playing parts in ending the war that never really ended, what your teachers the Greybeards called the unending season of violence. And those close to you are bringing cycles to an end as well.”
Dardeh squinted at Jine. His head hurt, trying to keep track of it all.
“I don’t understand you, Jine. Speak plainly. By the gods I’m helping in the war, yes, even though I swore I’d never do it because I hate it. I want it to end. I want people to be able to live their lives and the killing to stop. But what do you mean Sayma is? And who else? Roggi, my husband?”
Jine nodded. “Daughter, you put in motion events that will end a cycle hundreds of years long when you slew the Emperor.”
Dardeh’s eyes widened, and he turned to stare at Sayma. “What…?”
She frowned, and nodded without speaking.
“Dardeh, your husband is ending his own circle, a violent circle that involves the one called Ulfric and which is bound up in the war. This I have seen. You are helping him to do this. It is part of why your mind is so uneasy, my son,” Jine said. “And your Nord,” he continued, looking back at Sayma, “struggles to end a cycle of violence of his own, a smaller circle to be sure but one no less painful for being small.”
“All of you worked to put the spirits of the Yokudans to rest here,” he continued, his voice becoming ever more powerful and commanding. “You put the spirits of the honored dead at ease in Sovngarde. You ventured to a plain of Oblivion and brought the spirits of your husband’s former lovers to their peace. You freed Solstheim from repeating a cycle of bondage. You have put to rest the spirits of many of the dragons. All of these things were hard, and painful, and yet you all have persevered.”
He waved one hand at both Dardeh and Sayma.
“Now I ask you to help put me to rest. There is a place, to the northwest. A temple. Take my bones there and I will be able to sleep, at last. I will lead you there.”
Dardeh sighed.
“Yes. We can do that. Is that why you needed to speak to me? Is that why I left Skyrim in the middle of a civil war to come here?”
To his great surprise, Jine grinned at him.
“Yes, in part. But you needed to understand, son of my son. You are not mad. Your mind is troubled, but that is merely a sign of your greatness. You have an important role to play in this life. And both of you must find Dadarh. You must talk to him. You must convince him. It is not for him to slay Ulfric Stormcloak. Ulfric himself is part of much larger events that must yet come to pass. So are your husbands, both of them. Just as you have done for all the other spirits, so you must do for your father. You must end it.”
“But … where is he?” Sayma asked. “How could I even begin to search? The last time I saw him was on Stros M’Kai and I was a small child. That was more than twenty years ago, Jine.”
“I cannot see the place clearly,” he rumbled. “It is a dark place. Empty. There once was life but now there is nothing. The unfinished task connects him to this place. You must put him to rest so that events may unfold as they must, and to bring peace to your own minds.”
Dardeh sat staring in awe at the ghost of his ancestor. His words may not have been Dovahzul, the kinds of words Dardeh himself used, but they nonetheless moved him in more than an emotional way. He felt almost compelled to do as Jine asked. And somehow, much to his surprise, he felt calmer. He looked at Sayma and nodded, and she smiled and nodded back.
I don’t know where he is or what we’ll say, but we’ll do it.
“Alright then,” he said, rising from the chair. “Let’s see what we can do about packing these bones for the trip.”
He glanced at Jine. He thought he saw a smile.
__
It was still beastly hot out on the unsheltered surface, and Dardeh was even more uncomfortable for having a large bag of human bones on his back as he ran. Things in front of his eyes appeared to undulate as waves of heat rose from the sands. He glanced back at Sayma; while there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead she clearly was not in as much discomfort as he was. Up ahead of them, Jine ran effortlessly. It wasn’t just that he was dead, Dardeh thought. He ran like a man of the Alik’r, easily, with a gait that spoke of acceptance of and love for the land around him.
Something about that thought made Dardeh relax. He might be in a shell of ebony but fighting the land, and the heat, would only make matters worse. It seemed to him that the weight of his armor and weapons, and the bones of his ancestor, and his own stocky body suddenly lessened. He smiled to himself; and to his surprise, Jine turned and grinned back at him almost as if he knew what had just passed through Dardeh’s mind.
This is no stranger than anything else that has happened to me in the past few years.
They ran in companionable silence for a good long while, making a gentle northwest circle around the far side of the mountain that contained Jine’s home. An enormous stone building off to the north came into view as they neared the far edge of the mountain. Sayma pointed at it, and called it Al Shedim, and said that she and Brynjolf had spent a lot of time in it.
“We’ll be passing close by that, the way we’re heading. I’d just as soon never step into it again, though,” she laughed. “There are way too many ways to get killed in there.”
Jine led them to a small oasis, where Sayma submerged herself into the water. Dardeh took off his boots and waded in, and then splashed water over his head and neck; but he didn’t want to take the time to get out of his armor and then back into it. It was just as well. They paused only for a few minutes and then started across the sands again, this time slightly more north than northwest.
As they topped a dune not too far from Al Shedim, they ran across the carcass of a dune ripper. Sayma pointed at it and shook her head.
“Brynjolf killed that one. I’d have thought its carcass would be gone by now.”
Dardeh was working himself up to a snide comment about the desert being as dry as a bone, and then considered how very tasteless that would be given the bundle he was carrying, when Sayma pulled out her bow and dropped into a crouch. She pointed ahead and downhill and fitted an arrow to the bowstring.
There was a live Duneripper on the next slope ahead of them. In fact, Dardeh realized in dismay as he squinted into the distance, there were several of them. If they hadn’t been moving, he might easily have missed their presence until he’d wandered into their pincers. He pulled out his bow as well and watched to see what Sayma was going to do. Glancing to the side, he saw Jine pull a spectral bow; and he blinked in surprise, wondering yet again how a ghost could kill a live creature.
Sayma’s first arrow struck home cleanly, but did not kill the first of the rippers. It rushed them as she fired again, overshooting it as it moved forward. She swore loudly.
“Come on!” Jine shouted, firing a spirit arrow at the creature and striking it in the side. Dardeh found himself rushing alongside Jine, trying to get his bearings; but the dune ripper was hurtling toward them too quickly. He reacted out of instinct.
“FUS- RO DAH!”
The creature was caught by the force of his Shout and flipped down the hill, onto its back, flailing wildly to right itself. Jine rushed down the slope after it, shouting “Die, beast!”
I’m never going to hit this thing with an arrow while it’s squirming. He drew his swords and followed Jine.
An arrow whizzed past his ear on the right. Sayma was shooting from the top of the hill they’d been on. Dardeh watched it fly straight and true; but the dune ripper wiggled at the last moment and the arrow buried itself into the coppery sand below. Dardeh turned to look back at Sayma and watched as she loosed another arrow, her pale eyes narrowed and eerie against the black of her hair and clothing. This time the shot felled the creature – an impressive feat to Dardeh given the distance it had run from them.
Dardeh put away his weapons and followed his sister as she began trotting once more to the northwest. They crested the next dune.
Things got weird.
The dune ripper they had just killed had been running for an outcropping of rocks. It turned out that in a gully beneath that outcropping of rock no fewer than eight more adult dune rippers had taken up residence. They were everywhere. Their eggs lined the area. They crawled up out of their den, one after another, and began attacking.
Dardeh had thought the battle at Fort Greenwall was confusing, and so it had been; this was worse. He and one of the dune rippers fought, Shouts against fireballs, while he unloaded arrows as fast as he could, screaming at the insect and screaming at the pain of the fire it spewed. Jine ran ahead into the gully and began slashing at others with spectral scimitars. Sayma stood at the crest of the hill and fired her bow, again and again. Dardeh heard Jine shouting in Yokudan and he answered with Dovahzul, trying everything he knew against the beasts. Unrelenting Force threw the dune rippers backward, but not for long; Ice Form slowed them down, but only for a moment. When the creatures spat fireballs, the explosions ricocheted between the sandstone walls of the gully, amplifying their effect, making his ears ring, and adding to the chaos.
At some point he heard Jine yelling “I’ll crush you like a bug!” and laughed out loud in spite of himself. Some quiet corner of his mind wondered whether this was what it would have been like to have a father – to have a male relative close at hand while he was growing up. It was just a fleeting thought, though, because the dune rippers required his full attention. But he reveled in the experience in spite of the danger, running side by side with his ancestor, fighting a common foe.
He kept checking over his shoulder, to make sure that Sayma was safe. Sayma was as strong a woman as he’d ever met, but she was carrying a child. He didn’t want her to come anywhere near one of the fireballs, or risk herself to those mandibles. He listened for the twang of her bowstring, the raspy sounds of her shouts and oaths, and he fought as hard as he could to make sure his sister could stay back and use her archery skills from a safe distance.
It seemed to go on for hours. It was probably only ten minutes. Finally, just as Dardeh was pushing himself up through the sand on the far side of the nest, toward the last dune ripper, he heard Sayma shout from behind him.
“Dar! Duck!”
He crouched. An arrow flew over his shoulder and caught the beast squarely in the head. It shuddered and dropped to the ground, sliding downhill in the loose sand.
“Well done, daughter,” Jine said, turning to face Sayma as she ran to the carcass and pulled her arrow free.
“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t realize these bastards had a nest down here. That was ridiculous. Are you ok, Dar?”
Dardeh grinned, looking between the two of them. Is this what it would have been like to have a whole family, growing up? I could have gotten used to it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered. “I’m not sure which one of us made the most noise, though.”
Jine and Sayma swapped a glance. One of Jine’s eyebrows rose. Sayma looked back at Dardeh and laughed.
“You did.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Let’s get going,” he said; but he smiled anyway. The three of them settled back into that steady pace that swallowed distances and continued toward the northwest. It was still blistering hot outside, but somehow Dardeh didn’t mind nearly as much as he had earlier.
The sun was preparing to drop behind the mountains when at last Jine pointed ahead of them. Sayma stopped for a moment and shielded her eyes from the glare.
“This temple. I’ve been here before. But there was nothing in there but an open basin, Jine. Where are we to put your bones?”
Jine just shook his head. “Come,” he said, moving forward.
Dardeh ran ahead, just over the crest of the dune, and saw what they were looking at: an elegant temple, its entrance flanked by palms. Movement caught his eye. The temple was also flanked by another pair of dune rippers.
“Gods damn it,” he growled. He pulled out his bow. But before he could nock an arrow, Sayma had taken down the beast on the right. The other flung a fireball at them, which zipped by Dardeh’s ear just a bit too close for comfort. Sayma’s arrow found it just a moment later.
“Stupid things,” she muttered.
Jine led the way into the temple, and the siblings followed behind him. Dardeh stopped for a moment, marveling at the beautiful construction of the building; then he proceeded into the central area, trailing along behind Sayma.
“What’s this?” she said as they reached the structure in the middle and walked inside. “This wasn’t here before. How…?”
In the center of the mostly-enclosed room was a pedestal, covered in brightly-colored tile, surrounded by pillars. It looked as though there had once been some sort of enclosure there, to Dardeh’s eye. On the tile floor, directly in the center of this octagonal platform, there was a plain stone container.
“A coffin?”
Jine nodded. “This is the place, son of my son. If my bones are placed in this coffin I will be able to rest.”
“I don’t understand,” Sayma murmured. “When we were here before there was a basin. An empty basin, like the ones outside in the courtyard.”
“It doesn’t matter, child,” Jine said quietly. “This is a temple built by the Alik’r who came to this part of Hammerfell, so very long ago that I can barely remember it. I helped to place these stones, these pillars…” He ran his hand down one of the sandstone columns and smiled. “Here is a part of my soul, in this place. Here that part of me which stands before you now can take its final rest. Please,” he said, turning to Dardeh and pointing to the bag of bones, “put me in the vessel.”
Dardeh could think of nothing to say. It seemed too solemn an occasion to add his uninformed remarks to the mix. He set the bag down on the floor and moved the coffin’s lid aside, then carefully removed Jine’s skull from the bag and placed it gently into the coffin. Dardeh was confused, as well.
I’m Nord. I’ve always been Nord. But I know that part of my blood is the blood of the ancient Alik’r who came here long ago to try to make a life. This place speaks to me.
Sayma moved to stand beside him and took out another bone. Together they worked, quietly, reverently, reassembling the skeleton of Jine inside the stone coffin. When at last the final piece had been laid out, Dardeh looked up at Jine, questioning.
“We’re done. What now?”
Jine smiled. “I feel at peace, for the first time in so very long. Now, my children, you must close the coffin. I will finally escape this world and begin my journey to the Far Shores. Perhaps I will see you there, some day, when you are done with this world.”
Dardeh waited, caught Sayma’s gaze, waited for her to nod her agreement. Then he reached across the coffin and slid the heavy stone top back over the coffin. It dropped into its final position with a thud.
Jine was already starting to fade. He looked from one to the other of them and nodded. “Thank you, my children. Thank you.”
And then his image dissipated, and he was no more.
Sayma smiled at Dardeh without speaking. She knelt on one side of the coffin and closed her eyes.
Alright. I can do that. I don’t know what Talos thinks of Redguards and their afterlife but if nothing else he will understand me and my good wishes.
He knelt on the opposite side of the coffin from Sayma. The two of them stayed there, quietly meditating for a long time, speeding the soul of their ancestor on his way.
—
