The small chamber beyond the Sanctum’s doorway opened into a larger, round room containing burial urns, a chest, and a caged area behind which Dagnell could see a number of potions and a fat coin purse. That is coming with me, she thought, and looked around until finding, on the opposite site of the room, a chain that served to open the gate.
“Ugh,” she heard Mercer say. “The stench. This place smells of death.”
“What would you expect, Mercer?” she said as she collected the potions, before she had a chance to stop herself. “It is a tomb, after all.”
He glared at her but, much to her relief, said nothing. Glare away, Mercer, she thought. You’re good at it.
The chest was too tempting not to open.
And she wished that she hadn’t, about a second later, when the lids of two sarcophagi suddenly fell to the floor. Their occupants were draugr – the dead – but they were acting anything but dead. They rose from their beds, swinging swords and eager to dispatch both Dagnell and Mercer.
Dag froze. She had never seen such a thing moving before. These were terrifying, and there were two of them, and she had not much room to move. Suddenly she was fighting for balance; Mercer had pushed her aside. He was a whirlwind, every movement precise and controlled, an eerie red glow emanating from his sword, seeming to draw the very life essence from the draugr. He cut through them like butter.
“How disappointing,” he said, loosening his shoulders.
How arrogant, Dag thought. She stopped long enough to take the coins and a healing potion from the chest. It definitely hadn’t been a prize worthy of the battle.
They worked their way forward. It was stunning, the number of dead interred here, carefully laid on horizontal shelves or upright in sarcophagi. Some of them, wearing full armor, had been positioned upright in open niches at the corners of tunnel branches. Thankfully, none of them were moving; but as they entered a room containing a number of coffins and a large, spiked gate, Dag could see that some had been moving, earlier. They were out of their boxes, on the floor, and showed signs of having been taken down with arrows. Karliah. She shuddered.
“Pull the chain over there and watch out for the spikes,” Mercer ordered. “It looks like Karliah has reset all the traps.”
Dag looked around for the chain. It was just to the left of the spike gate’s left edge, uncomfortably close to it. She would need to back up really fast after she pulled it.
She gave the chain a tug. The metal began to creak as the mechanism holding the gate in place released. Dag scrambled backward – and bumped into Mercer, who had changed position to stand directly behind her.
“Move!” she bellowed at him, pushing backward as hard as she could. The gate whooshed past her, so close that her hair moved in its wind, so close that she could almost taste the metal. It slammed into the opening to the next room, scattering empty urns that had been placed near the doorway, and then clanged back to its original position.
“Don’t do that again,” Mercer growled at her.
“Likewise! I could have been killed by nothing more than a gate!” Dag snapped back.
She drew her swords; that gate had made an enormous amount of noise and she didn’t know what it might have raised in the process. She and Mercer both went into a crouch and crept forward into a passage that led down and to the left.
There were two upright draugr in the next opening. Dagnell stopped before one of them and stared at it. Its eyes were not open, and it wasn’t breathing, not exactly, but there was something about it that gave off a distinct impression of life. Suddenly it shifted just a bit, as though it was waking up.
“Shor’s beard!” she yelped, jumping, and reflexively drew her swords and attacked it with both of them. The draugr snarled as it died, slumping to the floor, its eyes giving off an eerie blue glow before flickering out. The second draugr, on the far side of the room, was stirring. She sprinted across the room and stopped it with the same circular dual sword attack she’d used on the first. It hadn’t been a difficult battle, but she had shudders running up and down her back.
“Mercer!” she hissed. “How can you tell which ones are alive?”
“They’re moving,” he replied.
She wanted to beat on him.
“Really. Thanks for that. I’ll keep it in mind.”
Mercer sneered.
Karliah had definitely been there ahead of them. She had laid bear traps out on the floor, placed cleverly in the shadows where a person would be most likely to step without thinking. Dag crouched down and disabled them as quietly as possible, then looked to the far end of the room. There was a single standing draugr there, and she wasn’t going to wait to find out whether it was one of the living ones. She drew her bow and shot; the draugr crumbled to the floor, the blue glow from its eyes revealing that yes, it had been a threat.
“There are two more ahead,” Mercer told her. “Be careful.” He had keen senses, for certain, she thought. And he’s been here before. I wonder why the draugr didn’t come out to play that time? She didn’t have time to ponder the question, though; she heard the snorting, growling sound she’d heard earlier, coming from an area to the right of the draugr she had just destroyed. She was swapping her bow out for her swords when Mercer rushed past her, yelling “your death will be my triumph!”
For all of his arrogance, Mercer in battle was a ferocious thing. He was brutal. The draugr were done as soon as they came within range. Every motion was precise, controlled, its energy put to its greatest effect, and his dwarven-make sword was deathly sharp.
She would not want to end up in a battle with Mercer Frey.
Another chain-operated gate led down a set of stairs to a room with several long strands of what looked like human pelvises, hung from the ceiling.
“Bone chimes. Rigged to wake the Draugr no doubt. Don’t blunder into any of them. ”
That’s the second time, she thought, drawing her bow. No, I won’t blunder into anything, Mercer. There were three upright draugr and a closed gate beyond them on the far side of the room, the only other exit. Just as Dag was setting an arrow to the bow one of the three draugr stirred. Mercer rushed past her into the room, yelling “I’ll spit on your grave!” His shout brought the other two out of their slumber to attack him.
Dag tried to get a bead on any of them but Mercer was moving so fast that she was afraid she would hit him. She watched in fascination as he obliterated them. Sure enough, that sword of his was draining the life from them. That in addition to his natural abilities made for a frightening combination.
Through the next gate was another flight of stairs downward into a narrow corridor that made Dag uneasy. She inched forward, pulling out her bow. The corridor emptied into a large room with a central, elevated landing of some kind. As they emerged into the opening, the lids of several sarcophagi on that landing burst open and draugr erupted. And Dag’s blood froze. These were not the same type of draugr they’d been fighting. They seemed more well-preserved, and some of them were speaking. She didn’t know the language, but just the fact that they were speaking was enough to set her completely off-balance.
One of them raised a fist and summoned a very obvious ice spell. She pulled her bow and slammed several arrows into it as fast as she could; it dropped, but not before getting off one blast, one horrid ice spike that caught her in the arm. Dag groaned but whirled to find her next target, hoping the circulation would come back to her arm quickly.
Mercer had run into the room. At the top of the stairs, a draugr rushed toward him; several more were surrounding him from behind and the side. Dag flew at the nearest of them, pulled her right-handed sword, and chopped him down, then ran toward the second. Mercer had taken down his first adversary, and calmly pivoted and sliced the next draugr in half as though it was nothing at all.
Dag just stopped and blinked.
“That wasn’t a fight, that was an execution,” Mercer said over the remains of the draugr.
This is getting tiresome, she thought. He was worried about me making too much noise and all he’s done since we got here is talk. I mean, you earned the right to brag about that kill, Mercer but my gosh do it later. Or silently. Thump your chest if you must, but be quiet about it.
There were two sets of stairs, one on either side of the platform where the draugr had been. Dag decided to explore the left side up, through a winding corridor, and finally to an open, square room that held a thing she simply must have.
On a pedestal, in the middle of the room, was an exquisite model of a ship. She would have darted into the room to grab it but for the familiar, pungent odor of oil. The center of the room had a slight depression in the floor, and it was full. Just above the model ship was a hanging firepot. A trap. There were no tripwires, no other obvious mechanisms for dropping the firepot, which meant only one thing: the ship was sitting on a pressure plate.
She knew Delvin would want this ship. She was certain of it. And she wanted what he would pay her for it.
Dag stood, walked over to the ship, took a deep breath, grabbed it, and ran as hard as she could for the doorway. She reached it just ahead of the fireball that erupted when the trap triggered. So close were the flames that she smelled burning hair and reached up to check her head; it had just been a few stray strands that got singed.
The other set of stairs from the main chamber led to a narrow elevated walkway enclosed by caging. It emptied into a space holding two very tempting chests behind strings of bone chimes, each resting in front of multiple layers of draugr. After what had happened with the first chest, Dag was quite willing to ignore these. A draugr just down the way, though, was not willing to ignore her; and as it rumbled into sword range, two draugr behind the bone chimes stood and rushed them. Dag took two of the draugr with her swords and Mercer took the third.
Around the corner was a closed door. As she approached it, she heard Mercer muttering behind her. “This looks like a good place for an ambush. Be careful.”
Dag nodded, and opened the door. Karliah had set a trap, alright; there were half a dozen large urns piled up and set just behind the door. There had been no way to know they were there, and no way to avoid tipping them over. The hideously loud noise they made as they flew aside brought four draugr out from atop another elevated central platform. One of them was utterly terrifying, taller and heftier than the others, waving an ancient, lethal-looking sword and wearing a great horned helmet. As Mercer rushed into the room it stopped, leaned forward, and Shouted at him.
Dag almost fainted. The draugr Shouted. It was the same sound she had heard Dardeh make, coming from a thing that was supposed to be dead. She wanted to flee. But Mercer only stumbled a bit, then rushed forward and began slashing the thing, his sword draining its life force.
She took a deep breath, then dropped back and picked off the smaller draugr as fast as she could and tried to land an arrow or two on the Shouting one. It was nearly impossible to do; each time she thought she had a shot lined up, Mercer would whirl for another attack and step between her and the creature. A part of Dag’s mind watched in genuine admiration at Mercer’s skill. As unpleasant as he was, she was grateful that he was there. She was certain to have died in there alone.
Dag spotted one more chain at the left side of the chamber, and was about to pull it when the nearest sarcophagus flew open. This was a simple draugr. It didn’t get more than one foot out of its resting place before Dag cut it down.
“Is that it, then?” she said to nobody in particular. “Are there any more of you about?”
“Be quiet,” Mercer said. “You don’t want to alert any others.”
She couldn’t stand it.
“And you haven’t been talking all the way down here, since the moment we entered this tomb? Come on, let’s go.” She didn’t wait to see his face; she just pulled the chain and waited for the gate to lift.
Behind it, and at the end of a long, wide room with ornate carvings on the walls, was something Dag had never seen before. It was clearly a door; but it was rounded, with three moveable rings, each bearing one of several symbols that changed as the rings rotated. Below the innermost ring was a round plaque with oddly-spaced holes in its center.
Mercer walked forward.
“Ah, one of the infamous Nordic puzzle doors. How quaint,” he said. “Without the matching claw, ordinarily it would be impassible. Since I’m certain Karliah has already disposed of it, we’re on our own. But there’s really nothing much to them if you know how to exploit their weakness.” He knelt before the central plate and did something – she couldn’t see what, as his body blocked the view. There was a great grinding sound, dust flew, and the huge stone circles sank, bit by noisy bit, into a recess in the floor.
Dag just stood and stared. That door didn’t look like ‘nothing’ to me, she thought. It looked complex. What in the world is he doing that he can unlock all these complicated doors? I know he’s a thief, but…
“Karliah is nearby,” Mercer said as the final ring reached the bottom of its path. “Be on the lookout.” He stepped back toward the recessed wall, leaving the great doorway open for her to enter.
Dag nodded, drew her bow, and readied an arrow. The room before them was huge, and dark, and anything could be in there. She stepped across the threshold.
An arrow slammed into her chest. Everything she could see looked green, a pale bluish-green. She fell to the floor.
Poison. Karliah used poison. She was an archer and her strength was the element of surprise. That’s what he’d told her.
Dag was going to die.