It didn’t seem too long a drop, though Dag couldn’t tell how deep it had sunk into the mountain. It creaked and came to a stop in an alcove much like the one far above. Dag moved cautiously forward and into the corridor that wound to the right. Then she heard the slightest sound. Murmuring. Two voices, one deep and the other much lighter. It had to be them.
Rounding the corner, Dag found Brynjolf and Karliah at the foot of the stairs, before a closed Dwemer door. When Brynjolf turned to face her, she noticed that he was carrying in his main hand, instead of his glass dagger, a truly wicked-looking ebony sword. I don’t want to be on the sharp end of that thing, she thought.
Karliah looked up at her. “I hope we’re not too late. We need to catch up to him.”
“Those bandits back there?” Dag asked. “Were they…”
“Mercer’s doing. They were like that when we got here. We should tread carefully, I’m sure he’s left us some surprises.”
Brynjolf was looking back toward the entrance chamber. He spoke, almost as if to himself. “Mercer will pay for this.”
Dag watched Brynjolf for a moment, trying to make sense of him. He says we are to keep their blades clean whenever possible. He doesn’t like having to handle the disposal of bodies. And yet, he’s told me, specifically, to kill anyone who gets in my way. She had no doubt that he was capable of doing so himself, though she’d never seen him in battle. I don’t understand you, Brynjolf. But you obviously feel strongly about this, so I’ll just go with whatever you tell me.
Dag looked around. Neither Brynjolf nor Karliah was moving. Ok, I guess I’m taking point again, she said. This is what they meant by being a leader? Leading us into disaster. She pushed the door open and ducked as a hanging morning-star dropped down just in front of her face. She turned around and looked at Karliah.
“You were right.”
On the opposite side of the hall was a stone pedestal, with items placed on top of it. She stepped up to it. Three lockpicks, laid out in a carefully spaced row. A bottle. She picked it up and looked at the label: Black-Briar Reserve. In the spot where the bottle had been, the shadowmark for the Guild had been scratched into the stone.
“Look at this!” she snarled. “Look at it! He did this just to taunt us! Three lockpicks – three Nightingales, three thieves, the Guild, and a bottle of mead. I’m going to kill him.”
“Unless one of us does it first, lass,” Brynjolf growled.
At the end of the hallway, they stepped out onto a balcony surrounded with high grating, looking out over a vast chamber.
Karliah ran forward to the grates. “Wait a moment, look, down there! It’s Mercer!”
Dag followed her. On a platform below them was a camp with several huts, conical at the bottom, supported by poles that met above, made of some material she had never seen before. In front of them squatted several of the most hideous beings Dag had ever laid eyes on. They were gangly, pallid, and in spite of very long elven ears they were in no sense as handsome as any race of mer she knew, not even the Orcs. They had no noses, just slits for their nostrils. And they were clearly blind. There were swellings where eyes would be, but no lids, no movement of the swellings, nothing that would indicate sight at all.
Falmer. So this is what had become of the Snow Elves. They’d been imprisoned and tortured by the dwarves until they withdrew from the world above and became these creatures; and neither the Dwemer nor the snow elves had survived to the present day.
Several of them were squatting at the lip of the platform, and a dark shape was approaching from behind them.
“I’m on it, lass,” Brynjolf said, pulling his bow and running up and down the width of the grate; but there was no opening big enough for an arrow shot. “Dammit, there’s no way through!”
Karliah snorted. “He’s toying with us. He wants us to follow.”
Dag watched in something akin to horror as the dark figure slipped up behind the nearest Falmer and killed it. The Falmer never showed any sign that it had heard anything at all. He was, indeed, the shadow that kills. There was a feeling crawling up Dag’s spine that she couldn’t quite identify. Some of it was horror at what a formidable foe Mercer was, that he could have killed so many people by stealth. Some of it was something else.
Brynjolf spoke. “Aye, lass. And we’ll be ready for him. There will be blood today. I can promise you that. Let’s keep moving.”
There you go, said the voice in the back of her head. There will be blood today. Shut up, Dag told it. But there was a fluttering feeling in the pit of her stomach that said “the hunt is on, Mercer.”
She shook her head to clear it. Focus, Dag. Pay attention to what’s in front of you. What was in front of her was a door at the rear of the balcony they were on. She pushed through it, followed by the others.
Brynjolf inhaled sharply. “Look at the size of this place! Have you ever seen anything like it, lass?”
“No, I don’t believe I have,” Karliah answered. “Can you imagine the riches that must be hidden here?”
This area opened into a large side chamber with a horseshoe-shaped balcony along three of its sides, dropping down via staircases at either side to a long hallway with a barred gate at its far end. There was a Falmer hut just to their right, at the rear of the room, and several more at the far end on the lower level. Directly in front of and below them, at the base of the near stairs, were a damaged Dwarven spider, a dead Falmer, and one that was very much alive.
The Falmer was squatting, nearly motionless, doing nothing and apparently oblivious to its surroundings. Brynjolf looked at Dag and Karliah and pointed at the Falmer, then at himself, then raised his sword and wiggled it. They both nodded.
Brynjolf crept up behind it. He was nearly as good as Mercer at stealth, but not quite; as he got within sword reach of the creature, it stood and turned to face him, raising a hand and gathering magic in it.
Brynjolf stood, took one more step toward it. Its head flew across the room.
Dag gasped. “Stendarr’s great shiny balls!”
Karliah chuckled. “Indeed.”
Brynjolf had just calmly decapitated the Falmer, with one swift backhanded sword stroke and no fanfare of any kind. He looked back at her and tilted his head in the direction of the exit. Time to move along.
Dag was a bit shaken. She’d never seen Brynjolf fight before. She knew he was big, her shoulders remembered how strong he was, and his build said he was probably powerful in a full-on fight, but this she had not expected. He was dangerous.
She would not ever be getting into a fight with this man if she could possibly help it.
In fact, a moment later Dag got to see Brynjolf in action again. There were a couple of Falmer tents set up, on either side of the gate, and Dag’s exclamation had brought out their residents. He started down the central path toward them. One darted up the path, but stopped short as a Dwemer whirling blade popped up and cut it in two.
“Brynjolf! Look out!” Dag shrieked. She’d seen what those blades could do to guards in steel armor and didn’t want to see what it would do to him.
Brynjolf barely missed a beat; he jumped atop a pile of rubble on the side and rolled forward, avoiding the blades and reaching the open area nearest the gate. The whirling blade dropped back into the floor. One of the two remaining Falmer charged him, swinging a war axe that looked like a wicked talon. He whirled, using his mass to add to the momentum of the sword. It sliced the Falmer open, dropping it neatly onto the floor.
“And that’s why I’m the best,” he said.
Dag couldn’t help it; in spite of the incongruity of the situation – or perhaps because of it — she giggled.
Brynjolf started toward the second Falmer, which had raised what looked like a magical staff and was gathering power into it. Dag went for her bow. Magic staves could be brutal, and he might well need backup. Before she could get it fully into position, though, Karliah placed an arrow through the Falmer’s head. Brynjolf’s voice floated back up to them.
“Damn. Just as I was getting warmed up!”
Dag walked around the perimeter of the room, searching for a mechanism to open the gate, smiling to herself. It was a precarious situation they were in, but still Brynjolf managed to be full of himself, whether he meant it seriously or as a break for the tension. It was amusing and somehow oddly comforting.
At the end of the balcony, she found a lever much like the one that had lowered her from the doorway of Irkngthand to meet the others. She pulled it; there was a whirring sound and gears set behind the lever began to turn. Nothing happened at the gate, however. She walked around to the far side of the room. About halfway there, the whirring sound stopped; looking back at the lever she saw that the gears had ceased moving. There was a second lever and gear setup at the far side of the room, directly opposite the one she had activated. Ok, Dag thought; I need to pull both of these and I need to do it quickly.
She called down to Brynjolf and Karliah. “Stay where you are. I need to do a bit of a sprint here.”
She pulled the first lever and waited to be sure the gears were turning. Then she dashed to where the stairs were, down one set, across, up the next, and then down to the far end of that arm of the balcony. She threw the lever and stood panting, watching in satisfaction as the bars slipped down into their slots, and then took a moment to search a nearby chest and relieve it of two rings and some jewels.
Beyond the gate was a path through a tangled mass of debris, with bear traps placed along its length. Dag snorted. Really, Mercer, she thought as she disabled them. Really? Did you think we wouldn’t see these? Does it make you feel good to leave insults along the path as you go?
The passage opened into a cavern; a big one, with a great many piles of rubble blocking it. There was a sizeable metallic dome directly in front of them, sitting at a crazy angle where it had landed after collapsing. A number of curving ramps lead upward, one of which they could reach by following a trail up a debris pile to the left. There were also Falmer huts in the cavern, and she could see several of the creatures moving about. A path wound through the huts toward the far end of the cavern.
Dag followed the Dwemer ramps with her eyes and found the doors to which they led. “Up there,” she whispered, pointing.
“It looks like we can take the low road, or the high road. Your choice, lass. We’re right behind you,” Brynjolf murmured. Dag nodded and started up the ramp of dirt to her left. High road, thanks. She was fairly sure that Karliah and Brynjolf could sneak past the Falmer, but was not so sure about herself.
She had crossed about half the length of the cavern when it started to vibrate. A deep-throated rumble was followed by a gargantuan crash that shook the entire area. Dag had to put out a hand and steady herself against a collapsed pillar to keep from falling. After checking to make sure Brynjolf and Karliah were still with her, she crept forward. Not far ahead, she spotted another great dome, collapsed in the center of the cavern, dust still rising from around it.
“So this is what we heard!” Brynjolf exclaimed. “The entire tower collapsed. If he’s able to do that … Gods.”
Karliah shook her head. “I told you, Brynjolf, it’s the Key. In Mercer’s hands there’s no telling what he could do.”
Dag was almost at the base of the Dwemer ramp when it all went wrong. Her foot found a loose stone, which went flying, making a sound which would probably not have been noticeable under most circumstances, but which felt like a fanfare of trumpets here. Dag saw Falmer stirring in the lower levels of the chamber. A Falmer sitting atop the first dome spotted her and sent an arrow flying her way. The sound it made hitting the ramp alerted all the other Falmer in the area, and suddenly the three of them found themselves in a pitched battle.
Dag flattened herself against the wall and began firing arrows at the several Falmer above her, as fast as she could; but speed sacrificed accuracy and it took her twice as many arrows as usual to take any of them down. She could hear Karliah shouting supplications to Noctural as she fired her bow at more Falmer, and Brynjolf was below, taunting them, egging them on, slashing and turning and taking them down right and left. One of them rushed Dag; she pulled out her sword and whirled at it. Think Dwemer blades, Dag, she told herself again. It helped; the Falmer dropped without landing a blow on her.
Suddenly there was a cry of pain. Dag had never heard him in pain before. She whirled. He had stumbled off the lower edge of a ramp and fallen hard, and a magic-wielding Falmer was rushing him.
“Bryn!” she shrieked.
Dag sprinted at the Falmer, swords high. It turned just before she got to it and fired a frost spike at her. Always with the frost magic, she thought with a part of her mind as it caught her in the leg and she yelped. She stumbled forward, but had enough momentum to carry her to the Falmer, and she set to on it with a flurry of ill-timed, inefficient slashes. It was just enough to knock the creature over, just long enough for Karliah to sink an arrow into its brain.
All three of them stood panting, looking at each other.
Brynjolf stood and brushed himself off. “It’s alright, I’m fine.” He started for the ramp again, but was limping. Dag grabbed him around his chest with one arm to prop him up.
“No you’re not, Red. Hold still.” Dag pulled together all of her healing magic and threw it at him until it was exhausted. “See if that helped.”
“Thank you, lass,” he said, walking a few paces to be sure that he was better.
Karliah leaned close to Dag.
“Red?”
Dagnell grinned, even knowing that Karliah couldn’t see it under her Nightingale mask.
“Yes.” I’m not explaining it, Karliah. You figure it out. Dag led them up the ramp toward the Dwemer doors, slightly embarrassed at how badly she had panicked hearing Brynjolf cry out. And she was also fairly sure that he really hadn’t needed her to hold him up, but she had grabbed him anyway. He hadn’t been that badly injured.
The doors opened into an empty room, empty by virtue of Mercer’s having killed the lone Falmer inside. To the right was a small antechamber, doors open, with a Dwemer chest at the far wall. Dag trotted into the space, but found that all the chests and shelves had been looted save for a few scrolls. Mercer. Just like a thief to leave no valuables behind. As she turned to leave, the light reflecting oddly off the back wall caught her attention and she leaned closer to examine it. Just above the opened chest were words scratched into the wall, the text written backwards. She stared at it for a moment, trying to work out what it said.
One step… One step … ahead. –Mercer.
Dag turned around and snarled. “That son of a horker! He’s taunting us!”
“What does it say, lass?”
“It says ‘One step ahead – Mercer.’ That bastard.”
“He won’t be, for long,” Karliah said quietly. It was startling to Dag how much menace she could convey with her quiet little voice.
Through the gate and a short passage filled with more bear traps were doors that opened into a huge cavern. Dag froze. Directly before them was something she had seen before, in Markarth: a Dwarven Centurion. This one was enormous, far and away larger than the Dwemer Museum’s specimen.
“Shor’s bones!” Brynjolf breathed. “Will you look at that monstrosity!”
“It’s a Dwarven Centurion,” Karliah said, “and it’s very deadly.”
“We can take the beast on or sneak around,” Brynjolf said. “Your call, lass. We’re right behind you.”
“Sure, make me decide,” Dag muttered.
She looked around. The room was huge, multi-leveled, with stairs at the far end leading to balconies on either side. It was clear that they needed to get to a landing at the far side, but collapses had blocked the direct access to it; they would have to go around and up some other way. She looked up. Above them and to the left were the metal grates surrounding the spot where they’d first come in and seen Mercer. Dag sighed. All that and they were only back where they’d started.
Well, we’re sneaking past this thing if at all possible. I’m not fighting it. She jumped off the platform, to the right, and began edging along in the shadows.
She’d gotten about halfway down the length of the cavern when a hiss and clanking noises nearly made her heart stop. Something had caught the attention of the Falmer and they, in turn, had activated the Centurion. It lurched into motion and began swinging at the Falmer, which massed about it and began fighting as hard as they could. “Come on!” Dag hissed, and dashed for the stairs at the end of the room. Up, left, up another half-flight and left again, onto a ramp that spanned the cavern and ended up on an enclosed balcony. She looked back just in time to see the Centurion crash to the ground. It had taken out all but one of the Falmer, and that one was badly injured, but it had itself finally succumbed to numbers.
There were more bear traps along the balcony and the ramp leading down from it. Dag looked below them. There were five or six Falmer and an equal number of frostbite spiders on the landing below, and they would need to get rid of them all to get through the room. But this was where Mercer had been. She could see where he’d gone. They needed to get him.
“This is where we saw Mercer,” Karliah said. “We’ll need to be very careful.”
Dag nodded, and pointed at the targets below. She and Karliah pulled their bows and picked all of them off, methodically, with no problems. Dag couldn’t hear the sound her arrows made slamming into the spiders but she could picture it well enough. Splat. Splat. Splat. It felt like good practice for Mercer Frey. She led them down the ramp and through the opening at the far end of the cavern.
“Ugh,” she heard behind her. “Do the Falmer also lack a sense of smell? The stench. This place reeks.”
Dag grinned. It does, Brynjolf, but you live in a place that smells of mold, stagnant water, and unwashed men. Really, is this that much worse?
“It must be their hive,” Karliah whispered. “We’ll have to remain silent to avoid attracting their attention.”
Then be silent, Dag thought. Please. Just stop talking. She wasn’t going to say anything to either of them about it, though. Maybe she would be able to lead by example.
Around a corner and below them was a small room filled with torture devices. Racks, one of which still had a body attached, took up most of the space. There was a table laid out with embalming tools and other implements Dag didn’t want to ponder too closely, and which also held numerous potion bottles. Two Falmer were squatting on the floor.
Dag spied something familiar near them. There were two of the slots she had come to associate with whirling Dwemer blades. There was a lever just in front of her. She didn’t hesitate, but threw the lever open. It took only seconds before the Falmer were in pieces on the floor. Dag looked up to see Brynjolf and Karliah staring at her. What? she thought. I used the tools at hand. Wouldn’t you?
The body on the rack was a thief, and he had a note on him that read “I’ve seen them! The Eyes of the Falmer are real!” He was with a friend, it says, who escaped through the collapsed tunnel; he himself had been captured. That made no sense at all; they’d just come through the tunnels and there was a clear exit all the way back.
They pushed forward, through passages burrowed into the piles of debris from partially collapsed rooms. Dag jumped as Brynjolf touched her arm and murmured “I think we should prepare for the worst.” She hadn’t been expecting his voice, and to have him touch her as well was startling.
Karliah spoke up. “There’s a mass of Falmer in this chamber. We can sneak through or take them down. I don’t care, as long as we get to Mercer.”
“Aye,” Brynjolf agreed. “Whatever you want to do, we’re with you.”
Dagnell looked at them both in consternation. Would you both please just shut up? I get it. We’re after Mercer. I’m leading, you’re following. We can’t be silent if we’re not silent!
Getting a bit testy, are we? observed the sarcastic voice. Yes. Yes we are. And we’re getting closer to Mercer, I can feel it. I don’t want to be stopped by a bunch of misbegotten former snow elves that are guilty of nothing more than existing, just because everyone else feels compelled to comment on the situation.
The chamber before her was long, narrow, dark and full of steam. What seemed like dozens of Falmer huts lined each side. A pathway down the center was flanked in most spots by what smelled like rich soil; Dag moved in and to the right, and discovered that the soil was covered with mushrooms of every type that normally grew on soil. Agriculture? Were they farming the mushrooms for poisons?
This time the three of them managed to move silently through the mass of huts. Falmer moved in and out of them, intermittently; every time Dag caught motion out of the corner of her eye she froze, and so did the others. Eventually the mound of dirt on which she walked rose up, almost as a ramp. She crept up it, cautiously, and found herself looking at a network of huge Dwarven metal pipes.
There was one more section of Falmer hive to move through. Dag inched forward enough to see that the pipes ran just below the roof, all the way to the end of that room. She turned and made sure Karliah and Brynjolf saw her pointing at the pipes. They nodded and moved forward. They were able to scoot along the top of the pipes to where they disappeared into the rock.
Beneath them, Dag saw one Falmer, a magic user by the looks, and something she’d never seen before: a huge, flying insect of some kind. I don’t know what that is, she thought, and I don’t want to know. She crouched, silent, for several minutes watching the two creatures walk back and forth until she’d worked out their pattern. She dropped down and pushed through a strange gate made of ribs, or scales, or some sort of chitin. And she held her breath hoping that Brynjolf and Karliah wouldn’t alert the Falmer behind her. They didn’t, praise all the gods.
They snuck past two more Falmer as they worked downward through a dirt-filled room and into a winding tunnel. This place was almost filled by Dwemer pipes, and with the sound of water.
“I can hear water rushing through these pipes,” Karliah murmured. “We must be under a lake.”
The path wound around the pipes and downward, until at last they reached a ramp, with collapsed stone pillars on either side and dwarven metal doors at the end. Dag heard sounds from beyond them, and held up her hand for Brynjolf and Karliah to stop.
Clank. Clank. The sound of a hammer and chisel on metal.
She turned back and pointed at the door.
“It must be Mercer,” Karliah whispered.
“Then this is it,” Brynjolf said, rising from his crouch and striding toward the door. “We do this for Gallus, and for the Guild.”
Dag’s heart started beating faster. He’s close. We’re going to kill him. He’s going to pay for this, for making them hurt, for everything they’ve suffered. At last. She pushed the door open.