Dag took a couple of hours to complete the errands Vex and Delvin had given her to do. The mine overseer’s house was easy to get into during daylight; everyone was busy working at the mine or the smithy, or guarding one of them, and she let herself in while they were all occupied. She scooped up the three items Vex had asked her to get, and slipped back out again. The other task was more complicated. The Hag’s Cure was the local apothecary, tucked into an old Dwemer home in the side of the mountain, and she was to alter its books for Delvin. There would be no escape other than the front door if things went wrong. Dag purchased an invisibility potion and spent a bit of time at the alchemy station fussing about. Have to look like a legitimate customer, she thought. Then she found an out of the way alcove, and hunkered down to wait. When the proprietor moved out of eyeshot, Dag downed her potion, slunk to the ledger, and quickly scribbled the numbers Delvin had given her.
“What are you doing there?” the woman yelled at Dag as her invisibility ceased.
“Oh, I, uh… “ Dag thought frantically, then palmed a piece of lavender from the top of the alchemy station. “I dropped this and it fell over here.” She stooped, then stood and showed the woman the lavender. “I’m having a case of butterfingers, I guess. Sorry. I’ll be going now.” She scurried up the steps to Markarth before the woman could stop her.
Should have waited until night for that one, Dag thought. But it worked out, and now I have to go see Calcelmo.
Understone Keep was aptly named. It extended back into the very heart of the mountain, its ceilings taller than several normal homes atop each other. Dag could barely see the audience area, far ahead of her; between her and it were paths through what obviously was an excavation in progress. It must have taken eons to build the keep in the first place, and then to excavate it again after whatever catastrophe had filled in the entryways. It was, simply put, enormous and intimidating.
Dag wandered past the mounds of dirt to an intersection with a set of polished stairs leading up and to the right. There was a guard stationed outside a doorway flanked by ornate carvings in the shape of dwarven helmets – stylized threatening faces. At the foot of the stairs, a Nord in steel armor was shouting at a priest, something about not being able to visit the dead.
Visiting the dead is such an odd preoccupation of Nords, Dag thought, particularly since the dead seem to be walking around with weapons these days. Most cultures revered their past, but Nords in particular seemed obsessed with the physical remains of it. She shook her head and walked past them to the stairs.
“Halt,” the guard said. “The Dwemer museum is closed by order of the court wizard, Calcelmo. If you want to get in, you’ll have to talk to him. He’s across the way in the excavation, during the day.”
Dag nodded. It was clear that this man was going to take his job very seriously. Better still, he’d just told her what she needed to know.
She wandered toward the area in question. What had to be the upper reaches of the city’s main river roared through the cavern, almost deafening in the enclosed area. A bridge ran across it to a closed Dwemer door. A full magic station with both enchanting and alchemy stations overlooked the river, and a mage was bent over the enchanting table, deep in study. Several books were piled on a small table near the enchanting area. She picked one up and flipped it open to the title page. Dwarves, v.1, written by Calcelmo of Markarth. She smiled and returned the book to its table.
Calcelmo was an Altmer mage, that much she could tell from his height alone. When he turned to face her, his golden skin also revealed his racial heritage. When he spoke, his voice told her that he was quite elderly. Given the long lives of all the elven races, that made him a very old man indeed.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped at her. “The excavation site is closed. I don’t need any more guards or workers.”
Yes, it’s a lovely day, thanks for asking, she thought sourly. My goodness, I seem to have a talent for finding foul-tempered men in Skyrim.
Dag smiled. “No, no, I wasn’t looking for work. I was actually looking for you.”
“You idiot! Do you even know who I am? I’m the most recognized scholar on the Dwemer in all of Tamriel, and you people keep bothering me!”
Dag stood and looked at him, grinding her teeth. I am not going to get angry with an old man, no matter how obnoxious he is being. I just won’t.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” Calcelmo said. “I got too excited. I’m in the middle of some very stressful work and I shouldn’t have yelled.” He straightened up and looked at her. Yes, very old, but she could see that he’d clearly been a handsome Altmer indeed in his youth. He still retained a regal presence, even if his voice was querulous and thin.
“That’s quite all right,” Dag said. No it isn’t, but I’ll just lie to you because it’s not important enough to bother with. “I understand you’re something of an expert on Falmer.”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I am nearing the completion of my magnum opus, a complete translation of the Falmer language. Calcelmo’s Guide to the Falmer Tongue. It will be quite exciting once it’s finished. I expect it to revolutionize the understanding of the Falmer.”
“Well,” she said, smiling and trying her very best to be persuasive, “I’d love to have a look at your research. I’m quite an admirer of your other works. The first volume of Dwarves was a favorite of mine.”
He smiled, just slightly, but shook his head. “While I appreciate the sentiment, I still have to decline. Being an admirer, I’m sure you can appreciate the need to keep my research a secret.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” she said. “I do understand, though.” Calcelmo nodded and turned back to his enchantments.
Dag growled internally. Yes, I understand. You’re just exactly as Enthir described, a cranky old piece of work. Damn, now what. I could pick the lock, but I would need to get past that guard first, and I don’t have an invisibility potion. Her eyes scanned the room and came back to the three volumes of Dwarves. There was something else there, she noticed, and walked to the table. Partially hidden under the edge of Volume Two was a heavy dwarven key. Perfect. If this didn’t work – and she suspected that it would – she’d try something else. She looked around to see whether anyone was watching, but Calcelmo might well have already forgotten she’d been there, for all the attention he was giving her. She swept the key into her palm and walked across the wide hall, grinning.
The guard was ready to puff up his chest and stall her again, but she waved the key and said “Calcelmo gave me the key.”
He frowned, but he stepped aside and allowed her to enter.
The Dwemer Museum was in a large, fully-excavated room, filled with display cases and tables of artifacts. There were thick bars of Dwemer metal, various cogs, plates, and levers from the fantastic, steam-powered machinery that was the hallmark of so much of the ancient Dwemer’s handiwork. Various locked display cases held copies of Calcelmo’s treatises and samples of the most valuable artifacts, such as gems that had been used to power some of the Dwemer robot constructs. The highlight, though, was on a pedestal in the center of the room: a fully-intact Centurion. It was a huge, human-shaped robot holding an oversized dwarven axe, easily the size of two men combined, and had it not been inert Dag was convinced that it could have run roughshod over the entire contingent of Keep guards without a moment’s hesitation.
Those very guards were talking about how Calcelmo had pulled all of his excavation workers to guard his research up in the tower. It was a waste of manpower, they thought, but at least the museum job was safe. Uh-oh, Dag thought. Was that because of me, or is someone else trying to get this information as well? Mercer, for instance? Just because she and Karliah had the journal didn’t mean they had the only source of Gallus’ ideas. He might well have left other notes in Falmer in a place where Mercer could get to them.
The guards looked her over warily as she walked in, but she waggled the key about in the air. It was good enough to get her across the room, because, as the guard outside had said, one needed Calcelmo’s permission to enter. But Dag didn’t like the way they were behaving. I’ll bet they usually get word from him, she thought, and it’s only a matter of minutes before they double-check and figure out that I stole the key.
There were rooms to either side, and her brief glance told her that she could become very wealthy in a short period of time, here, if not for all the guards. It would have to wait for another day, though; the staircase behind the Centurion was where she needed to go. She hoped to infiltrate the place quietly and sneak her way up to the tower. She sauntered around the room, peering at each display and nodding sagely from time to time just as though she knew what she was doing; then, once the guards’ backs were turned for a moment, she dropped into a crouch, crept up the stairway, and picked open the metal doors to Calcelmo’s laboratory.
Things did not go well after that.
She had just had enough time to register the voice ordering “Kill any intruders on sight” when a metal gate to her left opened and a guard strode into the room. Dag had no chance to hide; and, while there was an oily patch on the floor that might have helped burn the man, she didn’t want to chance setting fire to it. Instead, she pulled her bow and sank an arrow into his neck just as he came directly opposite her.
She bolted into the next room, only to be met by two more guards. With no distance between her and them her best choice – her only choice, really — was her swords. The one thing that worked to her advantage was the placement of the thick, ornately-carved stone supports throughout the room. She ducked in and out behind them, forcing the guards to come at her single file. She whirled and slashed and blocked; and while she took several deep gashes, the guards fell relatively easy. Still, it was a nasty bit of business; the floor was now covered by oil and blood. It was an oddly lovely juxtaposition of colors, she thought: the deep red of the blood and the orangey-pink, glistening oil.
Dag took a moment to heal herself and relieve the dead guards of a satisfying amount of coin and a couple of keys that might go somewhere important. The room they were in, as well as the next, might be considered beautiful if she’d really had time to admire them, and she was desperately interested to see what she might lift from the various Dwemer cabinets and off the tables. But she could hear voices ahead and up a small staircase.
“What do you suppose this is?” a male voice asked.
“Probably another trap,” a woman replied. “We lost another group of men, the other day, to the steam.” Indeed, there was steam in this hallway, and she could hear clunking and an occasional hiss. It would seem that the Dwemer machinery wasn’t all as inert as the Centurion in the museum.
She crept quietly up the short flight of stairs and found herself at the head of a long hallway containing what looked like a Dwemer mechanical defensive device. There was a long slot running the length of the hall. Spaced at regular intervals were posts, with what appeared to be fan-like blades folded along their sides. Dag wasn’t sure what she was seeing, but the blades certainly looked sharp.
Dag frowned, ducking behind one of the support pillars at the near end of the hall, wondering how she was going to get past the two guards. They were patrolling back and forth the length of the hall, and while there were a couple of spots where she might otherwise have hidden, there was no possibility that she could time her passage to avoid being seen. She drew her bow. One, at least, could be taken out that way. That would give the other time to rush her, though, and she didn’t much care for the odds of that option. Then she saw the valve, at the far end of the hall.
It was a big valve, painted red so as to leave no doubt of its importance. Nobody could miss that valve. I wonder, Dag thought. That guard was just complaining about losing people to steam. There’s steam in the hall. I can hear it hissing. I just need to get these two out of the way for a few moments. What do I have to lose? She turned and faced the doorway through which she’d just come, then fired an arrow; a short shot, just enough to draw the guards toward the sound and give her a chance to dash down the hall.
“What was that?”
“Did you hear something?”
She inched back and around the far side of the support pillar, keeping it between herself and the guards as they headed for the doorway. They weren’t going to move out of the hall completely, that much was clear. When the second guard got close to the door she bolted for the valve.
“Now you’ll be sorry!” the female guard yelled.
Dag ducked just ahead of an iron arrow that would have buried itself into her neck, and grabbed for the valve. She yanked it open.
There was a louder hiss, nearby. The vertical shafts in the hallway raised themselves up higher, and the petal-like blades unfolded themselves. They started traversing the hall, moving along the slot, whirling as they went. There was no place for the guards to go, any more than there would have been a place for Dag to hide.
It was, again, a messy business.
Dag simply stood and stared for a moment, marveling at what a lot of carnage a set or two of whirling blades could create in such a short time. Then she closed the valve and watched the blades fold themselves up, sink back down into the slot, and turn off. She searched about until locating the pieces of the guards that held their coin purses, relieved them of their money, and pressed on.
Around a few more corners, Dag found herself at the near side of a dead-end hallway. There was one other opening; one of the metal cage doors stood open on the left, and from that direction were voices. She couldn’t really make out what they were saying for the steam hissing all around, but it sounded like more discussions of intruders and guarding. She needed to get a better look at what was going on below, so she crept slowly down the hallway to its far end. There was another valve, just beside the grating. If she could sneak past the open door she’d at least have a place to hide while she cased the area.
Dag slid down the hallway, hugging the far wall, then stood as far as she dared and peered through the metal caging into the room below. It held several work tables, an enchanting station, and a desk at which stood a mage engaged in conversation with the several guards. What caught her eye, though, was the pair of slotted blades, at rest, seemingly harmless. Dag grinned, and turned the valve.
There was a huge explosion, followed by the now-familiar sound of whirling blades and screaming.
“What? No!” That was the mage, who had escaped everything else by virtue of his position in the room. He came rushing up the steps and turned to his right, obviously intending to bolt for reinforcements. Dag aimed her bow and dropped him neatly from the back.
“There we go,” she muttered, closing the valve.
Knowing that there weren’t any live guards behind her, Dag took a moment to search the room for valuables. There were some gems, coins, and a couple of pieces of jewelry in various Dwemer containers. She wanted desperately to take some of the bits of dwarven metal with her but they were exceptionally heavy, so she passed. Up in the hallway, the mage she’d shot had no valuables, just an astonishing amount of food. Perhaps he’d been bringing it to the guards, who knew. She was just about to move on when something caught her eye: a cube, resting on a small stand in a niche. She picked it up and turned it over, trying to determine what it was, and failed. What a puzzle. It was definitely an interesting trinket, though, she thought. It went into her pack, for Delvin, assuming that she was ever going to see Delvin again.
This room emptied onto a balcony overlooking Markarth. It was a truly secure location; the only access to it was the way she’d just come, through Understone Keep and the maze of the Dwemer Museum and the laboratory. She walked the length of the balcony, enjoying a moment of fresh air and scouting the place. A stone staircase to her right led to what had to be the wizard’s tower, but what caught her attention was a broken section in the balcony wall, just beyond the foot of the stairs. It seemed as though one of the heavy stones supporting the equally heavy stone rail had broken and fallen over on its side, toward the waterfall roaring down from the keep’s mountaintop. She edged out onto it and looked down. The waterfall poured through an opening below, into a pool next to the smithy. Allright, she thought. I know where I am now. Then she turned back to the tower.
There was nobody else in the area. It was just a large room, with a balcony at its far side with no apparent access. She headed down the left side of the room and discovered one more staircase, a short one, leading to closed metal doors.
“Ah,” she said, stepping into the next area. “Here we go.” This room was full of things. Desks, cabinets, magic equipment. There were Dwemer chests, desks, books, and rolls of paper, charcoal, and other writing equipment scattered over several large tables. It was much like the room where she’d killed the mage, earlier, but far more extensive. She didn’t find anything that looked like the language in Gallus’ journal, but it was promising.
A set of doors opened onto the balcony she had seen below. In the center of the balcony was a tablet, carved from a massive stone, topped by a head that might be either a dwarf or a snow elf, but she didn’t know which. There were two sets of markings on the face of this tablet, one on the top and one beneath, and one of them was a match for the writing in Gallus’ journal.
“Well, there’s only one way I’m going to get this information back to Enthir,” she murmured, and that’s to make a copy of the whole thing.” She ran back into the previous area and grabbed the largest pieces of paper she could find and one of the sticks of charcoal from a table, then returned to the tablet and started rubbing. This was going to take a bit of doing.
Her hand was charcoal black and cramping by the time she got to the end of the procedure. She put a second large piece of paper over her rubbing to prevent it smudging, then rolled both up and tucked them into her pack.
The door opened.
“Search the place from top to bottom. Nobody gets out of here alive.”
Damn, Dag thought. I knew they were going to go ask Calcelmo about the key. She wasn’t going to be able to retreat the way she’d come into this room, and there were probably more guards combing the wreckage that she’d left behind in the laboratory. To the left of the stone tablet, the balcony curved around the edges of the room, far enough above the main area that she could creep out onto it unseen. She did so, bow drawn, ready to fire if necessary.
The guards moved into the room and toward the stairs, grumbling about how this was probably just another false alarm. Dag didn’t much like her chances; there were four of them and only one of her. She waited till the last one had moved completely into the main area, then dropped down and dashed for the door.
“Hey!” she heard behind her just as the metal clanged shut behind her. Damn, they were behind her. She had exactly one option, and she ran for it.
It seemed like a very long way down into that pool of water, and the rocks on either side seemed very, very close. And the water was barely warmer than ice. She erupted from the pool and onto the smithy’s path, then fled to and out of Markarth’s main gate as though the gates of Oblivion itself had just opened behind her.
“I need a ride to Winterhold, right now,” she panted at the carriage driver, shoving coins at him.
“Climb aboard, and we’ll be off. Better bundle up,” he said.
Once she was safely aboard, Dag opened her pack and dug frantically into it. The bearskin cloak hadn’t gotten too wet. Best of all, though, between it and the extra piece of paper she had put atop the rubbing, only a few spots of charcoal, on the outer edges where she had extended her rubbing far past the characters, had gotten wet or smudged.
Dag heaved an enormous sigh, wrapped herself in her cloak, and tried to relax.