Dardeh stopped at the base of the mountain, just before reaching Ivarstead, and looked up. It was a daunting task before him, but he had done it before and would undoubtedly do it again more than once. Still, his legs ached in sympathy with Klimmek’s. What a good man Klimmek was to deliver supplies all the way up there just because it was the right thing to do.
He had had a joyful reunion with Lucia and Lydia in Whiterun, even though both of them were disappointed to learn that he would be leaving again so soon. He had sat Lucia on his lap and told both of them about fighting the dragons.
Lucia was fearful. “I don’t want you to get burned up, Papa,” she said quietly.
“Well neither do I, little one,” he laughed. “Do you want to see what I can do? We have to go outside the gates so that I can show you.”
Lydia tilted her head at him. “What?”
“Let’s have a picnic. Come on, grab a snack and let’s go for a walk.”
The three of them made their way out the gates of Whiterun, Lucia chattering about Braith and Lars and her fox. When they were far enough away, Dardeh turned to them, grinning.
“Ok, wait here. I need to make a pile of rocks.”
“Dardeh, what exactly are you doing?” Lydia laughed.
“You’ll see. Hang on a moment.”
He built up a cairn, a tower of loose, good-sized stones, fairly tall, then nodded in satisfaction and turned to them, grinning in anticipation. I am now going to show off, how about that.
“All right. I’m going to show you what I can do, which is one of the reasons you don’t need to worry about me, OK?”
They both smiled and nodded.
He backed up a good distance from the tower and gathered his breath.
“FUS—RO DAH!”
The tower of stones exploded, flying away from him in a shower of dust and landing in a soft pitter-patting downrange in the grasses. The Shout echoed across the tundra, even reverberating off Whiterun’s outer walls.
He trotted back to Lydia and Lucia, who were staring at him in awe.
“Wow,” Lucia said. “That was really… loud.”
Dardeh laughed. “Yeah. Oops. I forgot how loud it really is.”
Lydia was more solemn. “I knew you were Dragonborn but to see it with my own eyes.”
“And hear it,” Lucia said, nodding.
Dardeh laughed. “I’m sorry. The dragons are so much louder than that, I don’t even really notice. Want to see another one?”
Lydia sighed. “Dardeh…”
But Lucia giggled. “Yes! Show me!”
So Dardeh turned, made sure there were no living things in his path, and Shouted a large plume of frost across the grass. Lucia clapped her hands and giggled.
The three of them sat on the ground and ate apples and cheese, and talked about what he would be doing next. He pointed at the flat spot three-quarters of the way up the huge mountain called the Throat of the World and told them yes, that’s where High Hrothgar is and I have to go back up there next, and then I don’t know what happens after that. He didn’t tell them about Alduin. They were frightened enough as it was.
And so am I.
“Do you need a companion, Dardeh?” Lydia had asked him. “I don’t like the idea of you travelling all that way without anyone having your back and, well, I’m good at that. I’m sure that I could ask Ysolda from the marketplace to look after Lucia for a few days.” She had looked so hopeful, so eager to accompany him, that he’d felt truly sorry to turn her down.
“No, Lydia. The most you could do would be to follow me to High Hrothgar and I don’t know how the Graybeards would react to having an unexpected guest. Besides, I have this group of crazies trying to kill me…”
Dardeh had been attacked again on the way back from Sky Haven Temple by the Miraak cultists and had done well to escape them in part by using every bit of power he could squeeze from Unrelenting Force. He described them to Lydia, told her how they’d been dogging his every move, and then shook his head again.
“I don’t want to risk losing you. Not only for my own sake but for Lucia’s. I’m sure Ysolda would take care of her for a few days if we asked nicely. I also am sure she’s a young woman with a life of her own, and we couldn’t ask her to take on a child permanently if something happened to us.”
Lydia had agreed, albeit reluctantly.
When he had set out, he had gathered her into a warm embrace and held her close for several long moments. This is as close as we’ll ever get, Lydia, but I love you as though you were my own sister. Thank you for being the person you are. Lydia could just as easily have been surly, accepting her duties just because he was the Thane; but instead she was willing, and cheerful, and he considered her a friend. She considered him… more than that, he was sure, even now, judging by the look in her eyes as he had released the hug and told her goodbye.
____
Arngeir seemed pleased to see him until he began to describe his reason for being at High Hrothgar.
“I need to learn the shout used to defeat Alduin, when he was banished before.”
Arngeir’s eyes flashed.
“Where did you learn of that? Who have you been talking to?”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction. I guess there really is quite a grudge between the Blades and the Graybeards. How am I going to approach this…
“It was written on Alduin’s wall. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Or rather, it was drawn, etched, on Alduin’s wall. It’s a pretty amazing sight.”
Arngeir made a face. Then he did something that was completely remarkable to Dardeh: he began to rant. Loudly, like a foul-humored old man instead of a Master of the Way of the Voice, a man of peace.
“The Blades. Of course. They specialize in meddling in matters they barely understand. Their reckless arrogance knows no bounds. They have always sought to turn the Dragonborn from the path of wisdom. Have you learned nothing from us? Would you simply be a tool in the hands of the Blades, to be used for their own purposes?”
Dardeh saw red for a moment, and had to stand and breathe quietly to regain control of himself. A tool? You dare call me a tool?
Incongruously, his mind suddenly presented him the image of the dark Redguard man standing in the tower outside Markarth. What? Who is that and what does he have to do with this? The man had radiated strength and defiance, in that dream. Perhaps that’s what I need right now.
“Master Arngeir,” he began slowly. “The Blades consist of one middle aged woman and one old man. That’s it. There are twice as many of you as there are of them. They are the ones helping me, not the other way around. They can do exactly nothing about Alduin unless I do it for them. They cannot kill dragons. I can. It is my Voice, coming from my body, that is being used to do it. It is my decision, and mine alone, what to do and whether or not to do it. But,” and he pointed his finger at Arngeir, “you are the one who knows the whereabouts of the places where I can learn Shouts. I do not.”
He paused for a breath, considering his next words carefully. Then he nodded.
“I cannot decide what path to follow if I do not know where the paths are. If I don’t know that, I am making no choice at all and am as much a tool of the Graybeards as I am of anyone else.”
Arngeir had the good grace to look embarrassed at himself.
“No, no, of course not. Forgive me, Dragonborn. I have been intemperate with you. But heed my warning. The Blades may say that they serve the Dragonborn, but they do not. They never have.”
Dardeh nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. However, they haven’t said a thing about serving me. They want me to help them stop Alduin. Regardless, though, can you teach me the Shout?”
“No. I cannot teach it to you because I do not know it.”
For the briefest of moments Dardeh wanted to scream.
It seemed that Paarthurnax, the leader of the Graybeards, was the only one who could possibly give him any information, and that he lived in seclusion on the summit of the mountain. It took a great deal of discussion before Dardeh finally determined that he needed to learn yet another Shout before he could reach the summit. Arngeir led him to the courtyard and pointed to a gate beyond which ferocious winds blew and clouds obscured the path.
“I will show you how to open the way.”
He pointed to the ground and spoke three words. “Lok… Vah… Koor.”
Dardeh watched the words appear, in the dragon language he had seen before, and the meaning of them together was “Clear Skies.” He knew this as surely as he had known Force.
“I will grant you my understanding of Clear Skies,” Arngeir told him. “This is your final gift from us, Dragonborn, use it well. Clear skies will blow away the mist, but only for a time. The path to Paarthurnax is perilous, not to be embarked upon lightly. Keep moving, stay focused on your goal, and you will reach the summit.”
Dardeh nodded, then turned to approach the gate.
He got too close to the mist, just a tiny bit, and was driven to his knees by the blood-freezing cold of it. He cried out in spite of himself and stumbled backward a few paces.
So this is why I need the Shout, he thought as he waited for his limbs to work again.
“LOK—VAH KOOR!”
There was a huge, percussive sound that threw him and the goat running ahead of him off-balance for a moment. The mist dissipated, revealing a path.
Well here we go.
____
He rounded the final turn of the path and saw a word wall, and nothing else. It was white there at the top of the mountain, and silent, with the exception of the wind.
And then it wasn’t. There was the familiar sound of great wings flapping overhead. Dardeh looked around for cover and there was none, aside from the word wall itself. He didn’t dare move. He looked up to see a great white dragon descending vertically, in what might once have been a graceful fashion but was now hampered by the tears and tatters of its enormous wings. Dardeh froze, waiting for the attack, gathering his own power to Shout. But nothing happened. The great dragon crashed to the ground, looked him over, and then spoke, in a great thundering voice the likes of which Dardeh had not heard save for that of Alduin himself.
“Drem Yol Lok. Greetings, wundunik. I am Paarthurnax. Who are you? What brings you to my strunmah – my mountain?”
Paarthurnax – is a dragon? Really?
“I was expecting someone… shorter,” he said weakly, not knowing what one should say when speaking in Tamrielic to a dragon.
Paarthurnax’s snout wrinkled, in what Dardeh hoped was a smile. Otherwise I’m dead. He noticed the cracked and missing teeth and dulled eyes and scales. Paarthurnax is ancient, he thought.
“I am as my father Akatosh made me. As are you … Dovahkiin.”
Dardeh nodded. “Indeed. Although I do not know my father.”
The dragon tilted his head to one side. “Do you not? But there are formalities which must be observed, at the meeting of two of the dov.”
He just called me a dragon.
“By long tradition, the elder speaks first. Hear my Thu’um! Feel it in your bones. Match it, if you are Dovahkiin!”
Paarthurnax turned toward the word wall and roared, and Dardeh heard the words within the massive, keening sound. Yol. Toor. Shul. Fire Breath, the same Shout Alduin had used to destroy Helgen. A word on the wall began to glow not in the blue familiar to Dardeh from other word walls but in a bright, flame red. He ran to it and immediately recognized the writing. Yol.
“A gift, Dovahkiin. Understand Fire as the dov do.”
Paarthurnax released some of his power toward Dardeh. It swirled around him and entered him, as the gifts of the Graybeards had done but with the flavor and strength of the dragon souls he had absorbed. He closed his eyes and took it in, smiling, exhilarated, feeling it merge with him and give power to the word he had just learned.
“Now show me what you can do,” the dragon rumbled at him. “Greet me not as mortal, but as dovah!”
And Dardeh felt the word rise up from within him. He felt no dread or hesitation as he had the first time he had Shouted. This word came to him in a rush of power and he Shouted, jubilant, knowing in his every fiber that he was in fact of the same stuff as this enormous beast before him.
“YOL!”
It was only one word of the Shout, and yet a substantial ball of fire erupted from him and crashed into Paarthurnax, who reacted with the same pleasure he had felt in creating it.
“Ahhhh! Yes! Sossedov los mul. The Dragonblood runs strong in you. It is long since I had the pleasure of speech with one of my own kind.”
They spoke for a long time, Dardeh and Paarthurnax, after Dardeh confirmed that he wanted to learn the Shout used by the ancient Nords to defeat Alduin.
“Why do you want to learn this Thu’um?”
“I need to stop Alduin,” Dardeh said without hesitation. “He wants to end the world.”
“But why? Why must you stop him? Perhaps this world is meant to end. Maybe this world is the egg of the next. Would you keep it from being born?”
Dardeh stopped to think. How could he put it?
Because there is a little girl with a pet fox who calls me Papa, who hasn’t had a chance to live yet. Because there is a beautiful woman who protects her, because of me. Because there is a sister, who I have yet to meet. Because somewhere there is a man with blue eyes and golden hair who I need to know, must know, before it is too late. And because there is a reason this has happened to me. I don’t know what it is, yet, but there is a reason.
Patience, Dar. You’ll know when the time is right.
I know, Ma. But thank you for reminding me.
“I like this world, Paarthurnax. I don’t want it to end. The next world… will just have to take care of itself.”
He discovered that the Shout he needed, Dragonrend, was not a thing that the mind of an immortal dragon could comprehend, for it carried in it the idea of mortality. Because to learn a Shout was to take it into one’s own being, Paarthurnax could not know it, did not know it any more than Arngeir had. But he had an idea for Dardeh. The ancient Nords who had defeated Alduin in ages past had used both the Shout, which had crippled Alduin by bringing him to ground, and a thing called an Elder Scroll – an artifact that existed “outside of time,” he said — to disrupt the flow of events, at the very spot they stood speaking now. That was how they had rid the world of Alduin; not by destroying him, but by casting him adrift in time.
“You see,” the dragon told him, “time was shattered here. I knew where Alduin would emerge, but not when. So I have waited here for thousands of mortal years.”
If Dardeh could find an Elder Scroll, and read it here, Paarthurnax suggested, he might cast himself back in time and learn the Shout from those who had created it. But he did not know where to find such a thing.
Paarthurnax also allowed Dardeh to learn more about Yol, as other students had over hundreds of years.
“In your tongue, the word simply means ‘fire.’ It is change given form, power at its most primal. That is the true meaning of Yol. Suleyk. Power. You have it, as do all Dov. But power is inert without action and choice. Think of this as the fire builds in your su’um – in your breath. Su’um ahrk morah. What will you burn? What will you spare?”
Dardeh thought of Alduin, strafing the town of Helgen. He spared nothing. Not men, women, children or even the goats and chickens. He burned it all. Was that a choice? Or was it no choice at all? And then he thought of his earlier conversation with Arngeir. If I do not know where the paths lie, I cannot make a choice. And somehow, as he thought these things, his fire felt stronger and brighter within him. And so did his desire to use it.
Dardeh thanked Paarthurnax and Shouted his way back down to High Hrothgar.
“So you spoke to Paarthurnax,” Arngeir greeted him. “The Dragonblood burns bright within you. And did you find what you were looking for? Did he teach you the Dragonrend Shout?”
“No, but he thinks he knows how I can learn it. I need to find an Elder Scroll. Do you know where I could find one?”
Arngeir snorted. “Such blasphemies have always been the stock in trade of the mages in Winterhold. They may be able to tell you something about the Elder Scroll you seek.”
Dardeh sighed and excused himself to leave. What an impossible and unpleasant man he has turned out to be.
“Wind guide you,” said Arngeir.
Yeah, yeah, Arngeir. You go back to talking to the sky.
All the way down the mountainside, Dardeh thought about what both Paarthurnax and Delphine had said. Power without action was inert. Arngeir and the others had great power, but they had chosen to do nothing with it. Odd, he thought. They believe they are doing what Paarthurnax wishes in following the Way of the Voice, and yet… Paarthurnax has just taken action, by setting me on this path.
I have no doubt that they could Shout me off the mountaintop and yet by sitting there, doing nothing, they are ineffectual. What sort of wisdom is that?
But I have power. I know it. I can feel it. I will not let it go unused.
Then he thought once again of the Thalmor soldier he had killed in Riften, and the Khajiit he had killed slowly, just to watch her suffer. That was power. That was frightening.
I thought I had no choice. But I do, and I must make it carefully.
________
Dardeh had rented a room at Candlehearth Hall in Windhelm, and had written a letter to Lydia while he sat in the great room enjoying an ale and the sounds of other people. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” he had written. “I have to go to Winterhold and speak to the mages at the College, and who knows where they will be sending me after that. I’m sending three-quarters of my money back to you with the courier. Use it as you need. Give my love to Lucia and make sure she helps you keep things up. Thank you for everything. – Dardeh.”
The courier had raised his eyebrows at the heft of the coin purse. But Dardeh had been practicing using his voice to influence people ever since it had changed from a young man’s squeak into the bottomless deep it had been for years, since long before he’d known part of that ability came from his very blood. He lowered his voice and put as much power into it as he dared. “Don’t even think about it, son,” he’d told the young man. “I know exactly how many septims are in that purse and if even a single one is missing when Lydia gets it, I will find you. I don’t think you would enjoy that.”
The courier’s eyes had gotten huge. “No, sir. No problem at all. I’ll make sure it’s delivered right away.” He had darted away, and Dardeh waited until he was out of sight to burst into giggles.
That was mean, but a voice this deep has to be good for something once in awhile.
And then he had tried to sleep.
Oh, he had fallen asleep, easily enough, and had slept well for a time. But then the dream had come.
Once again, he found himself somewhere in the Reach. The rocks and junipers were unmistakable, though he didn’t know exactly where he was. There was a campfire, and a fur tent, and before them stood a huge Redguard man, dressed in the robes of the men of the Alik’r, with a matched set of scimitars at his sides. He was dark, with rough features and penetrating green eyes without a hint of kindness in them. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Dardeh couldn’t decide what it was.
This is not the man I saw before.
“Son of my son,” Dardeh heard him say from a mouth that did not move, a voice the equal of his own for sheer depth. “You have great strength in you. Use it joyfully. Use it well.”
“Who are you?” Dardeh asked him, although he could not hear his own voice.
“I am Jine af-Avik, son of my son. Of Stros M’Kai. And of a line of those with power such as yours.”
“What are you talking about?” Dardeh tried to ask the man. “Son of my son? Are you trying to tell me that you are my grandfather?”
“There are many sons. We have great power. And when men stand in our way we kill them all. That is our way.”
And the dream faded. But Dardeh saw the first Cultist he had faced, in Ivarstead, and once again saw the man’s head roll down the hill toward the river, while his own scimitar dripped with the man’s blood.
Dardeh bolted upright in the room in Candlehearth Hall, his heart pounding, and saw his weapons leaning up against the dresser next to his bed. A matched set of scimitars, as razor-sharp as he was able to keep them.
His father’s swords.
When he had spoken to Paarthurnax he had said, “I do not know my father.”
And Paarthurnax had looked at him carefully, and said in reply, “Do you not?”
Dardeh shivered.