The shade didn’t last long.
There was a short, tiled corridor roughly twice Sayma’s height. They were covered to the extent that they were out of the direct sunlight, but they were not out of the heat. She eased her way forward through the entrance and gasped at the sheer size of the structure before her.
Before them was a large, very bright, open plaza, its center corridor made of sand. Next to the huge walls of the structure on either side were planters created by wide tiled platforms and filled with flowering cacti, palms, and grasses. The building itself was constructed of variously sized smooth stone blocks that reached up at least four times the height of the entry passage through which they had just come. Midway up the walls over each planter was an inset: a large single block of stone with inscriptions in Daedric lettering.
Three tall columns atop the tile platforms graced each side of the courtyard. These had red stone bases and capitals covered in horizontal Daedric writing, and yellow sandstone shafts with vertically inscribed words. Sayma had no idea what any of it said, but she watched the vertical lines appear to waver and wriggle as the intense heat rose from the surrounding stone and sand.
They were about halfway down the central sand pathway when a desert wolf hurtled out from behind one of the palms. It didn’t take long to put it down, between the two of them; but they were both dressed completely in black and that much exertion in the heat of the day had Brynjolf’s face bright red and Sayma’s soaked with sweat by the time they’d finished it.
She dashed for the building’s entry door and turned to wave Brynjolf along behind her.
“Let’s get in here before we melt.”
“Aye. You’ll get no argument from me.”
They stepped through the door into Al Shedim proper and breathed nearly identical sighs of relief. It was very dark, the narrow corridor lit only by a row of low candles on either side. More importantly, it was very cool, the thick stone walls on all sides and overhead serving to keep the interior a constant, dry, comfortable temperature. Both Sayma and Brynjolf sipped water in silence while they waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. After a few moments she turned to him.
“Ready? We’re looking for a key in here.”
“I’m right behind you.”
“I’m going to guess it’ll be a bit of a maze. At least it’s cool.”
“Truly. I guess we’d better get used to doing things at night here.”
She grinned in the dark, knowing that he was unlikely to be able to read her expression. “I thought you were used to that sort of thing, Red.”
Brynjolf snorted. “I had better night vision then. And bigger teeth.”
Sayma crept forward. The hall turned to the right and then left, to a well-lit area. She stepped out into the light and nearly collided with a skeleton patrolling the area, brandishing a scimitar. She reacted out of sheer instinct, barreling into it with swords drawn; and as was often the case with skeletons it simply collapsed into a pile of bones on the floor.
“Wow,” she muttered. “I guess I’d better be paying more attention.”
“Look at these,” Brynjolf said from behind her. The area she’d just passed through was, it turned out, a small room with a large pillar in the center. Alcoves along the walls contained pedestals with Daedric inscriptions, and some of them were topped with burial urns. Brynjolf had already examined a couple of the urns and pulled out a substantial amount of coin and several fine pieces of jewelry.
“If the whole place is like this…”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s why there’s a chest of gems and such back in the house,” Sayma said, grinning. “The entire route I took to get there was lined with urns and chests and strongboxes and every one of them filled with wealth. Can you do the collecting?”
“Of course,” he said, slipping the coins into a purse and the gems into one of the pouches on his bandolier. “I like the sound of that many coins rubbing together.”
Sayma chuckled and turned back to the route before her. In the wall opposite the entrance, a staircase led down to another narrow corridor. She could see an urn at the far end, resting in an enticing shaft of light atop a pedestal; and she would have run forward to open it if not for the odd shape of the hallway itself. There were two areas jutting out into the passage, as if meant to act as doorframes, but there were no doors. Something made her look down just as she was about to pass through the first, just in time to stop before tripping a pressure plate set onto the floor. She looked ahead and saw a second such plate just inside the second door frame.
“Careful, Brynjolf,” she called out. “I don’t know what these trigger but there are plates on the floor. Two of them. I don’t think we want to find out.”
“Thank you. Be careful you make the jumps.”
Sayma hopped the plates and stepped into the large room beyond. Like its smaller counterpart at the top of the stairs, this room was essentially an open square surrounding a central, square block. Its walls were covered in Daedric inscriptions, and there were pedestals and tables along the interior walls, some holding urns.
There were also skeletons. She could see two in one direction, and the distinctive creaking of bones told her there was at least one more that she couldn’t see. She rolled forward and slashed at the nearest one, taking it down; out of the corner of her eye she watched Brynjolf striding toward the second with his bow drawn. He shot at it while she swung her flame-enchanted Bosmer short sword at it, and it went down easily. Brynjolf started laughing and drew his wicked-looking Daedric sword and an ebony dagger; he swung around the central structure and slashed at a skeleton Sayma hadn’t seen. One more skeleton moved out from the darkness; and while Brynjolf took down the skeleton he’d engaged she struck down the last, its residual soul exploding and rushing in to fill one of her empty soul gems.
While Brynjolf collected the spoils of the room, Sayma took stock of where they were. Exits to the left and in the far wall were barred, but the remaining exit, a right hand turn from their entrance, was open. A skeleton rattled about just beyond one of the sets of bars; it started descending stairs beyond her vision, and she fired an arrow, catching but not killing it before it completely disappeared. It rushed back to the bars.
Before she could fire another arrow, Brynjolf ran to meet it.
“Good, I could use some practice,” he growled, drawing his sword and striking the skeleton through the bars. It took only one blow to drop the creature.
Sayma turned toward the open doorway and took stock of the upward staircase beyond. “This looks uncomfortably familiar,” she grumbled. “I would like to have the hours back that I spent looking for ways to lower bars like this in the Halls of the West.”
Brynjolf had come up closer behind her than she’d expected, and she almost jumped when he spoke.
“You’ll be good at it, in that case,” he said. “You’re a lot better with those swords than you were the last time we fought together, with Karliah. And you got a good drop on those bastards, too.”
“Uh…thank you,” she said, feeling unaccountably embarrassed. I thought I was a pretty fine swordsman back when we were chasing Mercer, but I guess I have gotten a lot faster with these blades in the meantime. I’m surprised he noticed. “I can tell you’ve been doing a bit of practicing, too. We seem to make a pretty good team.”
“Aye. That we do.”
She couldn’t help but smile as she climbed the two flights of stairs up to the next level of the monument. The second flight emptied out into a huge space with regularly-spaced arches throughout. The small amount of light in the room diffused through a dense mist that filled the area, making it difficult to see; but she definitely heard the shuffling, creaking sounds of more skeletons ahead.
One of them passed directly in front of her. As she tackled it, Brynjolf ran past her and barreled into a second. It took no great effort on their part to fell the skeletons, but they then stopped, staring at each other, as the room shook. The sound of stone dropping onto stone filled the area, followed by a great grinding noise and a second impact that shook the room.
“What in Oblivion is that?” she whispered.
“Not a clue. There’s light up around the corner there. Can you see anything?”
There was a hallway extending to Sayma’s right from the far end of the room. She found it lined with candles; and when she turned to look down it the light clearly revealed a square stone resting on the floor ahead.
“Pressure plates. Two of them, again. Something must have triggered one and that’s what we heard. I’m not sure what it is, but it involves stone and it’s heavy.”
“I don’t think we want to find out exactly what it is, do you?”
“Nope. But whatever it is took care of a few skeletons for us.”
She leaped the plates and slid into a warren of medium-sized rooms. Neither the left room nor the one straight ahead held anything of interest; but they didn’t know that until they had wandered into each and been faced with skeletons and mummies. Sayma was grateful that there were two of them fighting, and that Brynjolf had more gold to collect.
The third area, to the right of the stairs, wound through several doglegs, into small rooms, past another set of pressure plates on the floor, and finally into a very dark, winding corridor. Sayma ground her teeth.
It’s just like the Halls of the West. I hate this place.
She rounded the darkest of the corners and found herself in a relatively well-lit corridor. There was another hallway branching to the left; and on the wall before it a huge circular stone bearing a large symbol. She stopped and waited until Brynjolf caught up to her and then whispered.
“Daedric?”
“Yes. It’s ‘G’. I don’t know if it stands for anything special but that’s what it is.”
She glanced at him sideways. He gave her a frustrated look in response.
“What, it surprises you that I know a few things?”
“Not at all, Red. It just surprises me sometimes, the particular things you know.”
He made a disgusted noise.
Every time I call him Red, that’s what I get. I think I like it.
There was a matching stone mounted on the other side of the doorway to their left. Beyond it was an odd room full of mist, its walls almost wedge-shaped, leaning in toward the ceiling. Unlike the rest of what they’d seen in Al Shedim the stone tiles were large, and square, and devoid of markings. Only small vertical candle niches broke the monotony of the space. Sayma could hear skeletons moving about. She saw one of them, near the far side of the room, and dispatched it with a carefully placed arrow. Two others rushed out from their hiding spots on either side of the doorway; they too were easy to take down as the door served as a choke point, and they seemed oblivious to her presence until they were almost on top of her. Her swords broke them apart easily.
Behind them, though, were both a skeletal archer that took up position at the rear of the room, and a mummy that had hurled itself soundlessly toward them. The mummy was not nearly as stupid as the skeletons, and was not only aware of Sayma but very good with its scimitar. Sayma pulled out her swords and laid into it, rolling past it only to collide with a second mummy that had appeared seemingly from nowhere. She bounced off it sideways and scrambled to regain her footing and heal the gash that one of them – she didn’t know which – had opened in her arm.
“No mercy for the weak!” Brynjolf shouted, pushing into the room to slice at the second mummy. His greater mass and confidence helped him down the creature with only a few strikes. He turned without missing a beat and began slashing at the other mummy. Sayma stood, drew her own swords once more and delivered a crushing overhand blow to it with her Daedric sword; the room exploded in sound as its soul rushed to fill an empty gem. The skeletal archer had advanced on them while they were slaying the mummies, and Brynjolf took it apart with one powerful swipe of his sword. “That’s the end of that,” he said once it was down.
Sayma made a quick circuit of the near portions of the room before heading back to its far end. In a triangular niche was the thing she had expected to find: a chain pull mounted to the wall.
“Here we are,” she said as she pulled it and heard the unmistakable sounds of a mechanism releasing. “My guess is that we return to the big room at the beginning and we’ll find one of those sets of bars down.”
“Aye. Let me check all these urns and we’ll go.” Brynjolf was quick about it, and rejoined her before she’d made it all the way out of the room. He was stuffing some gems into a pouch when he said “You know, at this rate I’ll have enough to buy Proudspire when we get back and still give that whole chest of wealth to the Guild.”
“Proudspire?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “In Solitude. Vitus owned a mansion there. He told me that Volkihar Castle was to be Serana’s. He didn’t say a thing about Proudspire. I want it. There are things of his there, and…” He trailed off.
“Maybe that would be a good place to take the children? If…” Sayma started offering the notion as they walked back through the darkened hallways, trying not to trip over bones and dropped weapons. But as soon as she said it she realized what a foolish thought it was. “Never mind. If war breaks out Solitude will be a hot spot. Still, I suppose I can’t blame you for wanting his things.”
“You can’t imagine the wealth he had stashed away there, Sayma. He never let on to any of us but he was probably worth more than the Guild and the Brotherhood combined.”
“So why did he work for us?”
Brynjolf shrugged. “He wanted to. It’s the only reason he did anything at all.”
I guess I really didn’t know him very well. He certainly had me fooled, all that time.
“At any rate,” he continued, “I’m sure that if I offered Elisif enough money she would gladly sell the place to me. She wouldn’t necessarily know that there’s more than enough in there to make up anything I would give her for it. I just need the funds up front.”
Sayma nodded, peering around the corners to make certain there were no more skeletons, and watching for the pressure plates. It wouldn’t do to be halfway back and become a casualty by being careless. “Falk, you mean. He’s the one you’ll need to bribe.”
Brynjolf chuckled. “Yes. I see you know them well, too.”
“I had to infiltrate the castle to get to the Emperor. Or at least the one we all thought was the Emperor. That’s a tale for another time.”
They made it back to the large entry room and found that the bars through which Brynjolf had killed a skeleton had dropped down into slots in the floor, as she had expected. The staircase beyond its remains was intensely dark, and they eased their way down it slowly. Around a corner to the left they found a huge vaulted vestibule with pillars flanking a staircase up, on which stood three skeletons. Sayma pulled out her bow and took them down, silently, with three quick bow shots.
Up the stairs she went, around a corner, and into a large, quiet room with a mummy resting quietly in its open coffin. She stabbed it just to be safe, and its collapse back into itself told her that it had still had the spark of life, the capability to rise and fight. Beyond it, and around another corner, was a warren of tiny alcoves to either side of a long hallway mined with pressure plates, leading to yet another staircase descending deep into the darkness.
At the base of this long stair was another doorway with huge circular stones on either side. Sayma looked back at Brynjolf, who was close behind her.
“B,” he said without prompting.
“Alright then.”
There was another of the odd, almost pyramidal rooms beyond this door, nearly identical to the first. As with the first it was full of skeletons and mummies. Once again the two of them waded into the battle, directing each other only with the briefest of glances and motions, and making short work of clearing the room.
By the gods we still work well together. And he has no fear. He’s just all business.
I suppose if you’ve been dead and lived to tell the tale, fear is relative.
Sayma grinned at him and trotted to the far end of the room to pull the chain.
“There’s that. Let’s go find out what’s down that last hallway.”
They’d only made it halfway up the longest of the staircases when Sayma heard a skeleton moving off to her right. She frowned, and turned to Brynjolf in confusion.
“I don’t remember a doorway heading in that direction, do you?”
“No, but I wasn’t looking for one.”
The passage, as it turned out, was beside one of the pressure plates they’d needed to leap over on their way through. Sure enough, there was the distinctive row of metal grooves into which a set of bars had fallen, opening the way to a fairly well-lit set of descending staircases. A skeleton waited for them at the bottom.
Sayma stopped at the landing midway down, pulling out her bow while Brynjolf raided the chests in the niches to either side. She took careful aim at the skeleton. And then something happened that froze her heart nearly solid. Just as it had happened in Cragslane Cavern so long before, an arrow that should have dropped her target cleanly and without fuss caught, inexplicably, on the edge of the stairs before her.
It dropped onto the stones. Click.
The skeleton turned to fix her in its deathly, blue gaze.
Suddenly, where there had been a single skeleton, there were at least six. They seemed to erupt from every corner of the space before her. She froze, just long enough for Brynjolf to run, snarling, headlong into their mass.
She shook herself back into action; but it was hard to know where to aim. In the dark, with as many forms as there were, it might easily have been Brynjolf she hit with an ebony arrow, not a skeleton. She did manage to drop one who stepped back from the group for just a moment; the lighting behind it made its bony outlines clear. Every few moments she heard Brynjolf grunt, and she knew he was taking damage. She gritted her teeth and fired as quickly as she could at the targets at the back of the pack.
Just as she thought they were making headway, a pair of mummies emerged. One joined the skeletons hacking at Brynjolf and the second, an archer, stood at the back of the room and fired at her.
Brynjolf cried out, a sound of exhaustion and pain, and she stopped thinking. She swapped her bow for her two swords and rushed down the second flight of stairs into the room. There was one skeleton in the stairwell behind Brynjolf, struggling to regain its feet; she slammed her Daedric blade down on it and rushed past as the sound of the soul trap exploded around them. She pushed past Brynjolf and whirled behind the mummy he was fighting to attack it from behind; it too exploded in a riot of blue energy and dropped to the floor. Both of them turned on the final mummy, firing arrows at them from behind an urn at the back of the room. It took a few moments, but with both of them hammering at it, the creature finally dropped.
Sayma and Brynjolf stood gazing at each other, panting.
“Are you alright?”
“I will be,” he said, pulling out a water skin and taking a drink. “Give me just a moment. A couple of those hit pretty hard.” He cast a light healing spell on himself.
Damned fool probably was a lot more hurt than he’s letting on. I wish he wouldn’t rush in like that. But I was just standing like some kind of statue, what else was he supposed to do?
While Brynjolf was tending to himself Sayma moved around the edge of the room looking for a pull chain, or a strong box, or something that would reveal the reason they’d just come close to death in the stairwell. She found nothing.
“It’s not here? You mean there’s more?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Stendarr’s balls.”
Brynjolf chuckled. “If you say so.” He scouted the room and pointed toward the left wall. “Down here. There’s another staircase. And one of those stone circles.”
Sayma crept down the stairs with swords drawn, ready for another onslaught. The disc – with the letter “D” according to Brynjolf – and the chain beneath it were the only things in the room, though; she pulled the chain and they retreated back through the ruined skeletons, and up the stairs toward the first large room.
She’d passed almost to the end of the hallway when the sound of grinding stone was followed by the shaking of it crashing to the floor. She froze; her heart leapt into her throat.
Brynjolf. No. Oh no. It can’t be.
Her mind started racing, and her eyes began to fill with tears. He’d caught a pressure plate and been killed by the falling column of rock. She’d led him to his death and she was going to be killed herself when she reported it to the Guild. She was alone. Her pulse was racing, pounding in her ears. Her body felt frozen; but she forced herself to turn, slowly, expecting to watch the stone rise and find his crushed body on the floor.
The stone rose, shakily; and beyond it Brynjolf stood, glaring at it.
“Damn pressure plates,” he grumbled. “I just barely got back in time. I need to keep my eyes open.”
Sayma tried to catch her breath and to stand on legs that suddenly felt like water. She reached up and wiped the tears away from her eyes as she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She wanted to run to him, embrace him just for being alive, still; but she didn’t dare presume.
“Yeah. That was close!” She smiled a shaky smile at him and turned around, to continue onward.
He’ll never know what I felt like just then.
It’s probably just as well.
They wound their way back through the maze of rooms to find the descending staircase beyond the final set of bars that they’d lowered. Halfway down, Sayma could see three huge stone circles mounted on the far wall of the next area.
She stopped, looked back at Brynjolf, and pointed. “See those? Four letters on each?”
“Aye.” He ran his hand over his chin. “Hmm. I’ll wager it’s some kind of puzzle. Like the animal symbols in the old Nordic barrows. Turn them somehow to get the right answer.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “I’ll bet you’re right. Great. Well at least we can see these pressure plates clearly,” she said, pointing at the floor. “Mind your feet.”
The room was long and narrow, and held four open caskets with mummies resting peacefully. Sayma drew her swords. I give it ten or fifteen seconds before they rise and shine and try to kill us.
Sure enough, as she passed near the left-hand side of the room the first mummy growled and rose slowly. Sayma attacked it, and noticed the second pulling itself up to a sitting position as she did so. Brynjolf took that one on, calling it pathetic and making short work of it. Just as the first mummy went down, the pair on the opposite side of the room rose from their caskets. Brynjolf harrumphed and ran for one of them, and Sayma sighed and took on the other.
There was a table of sorts at the end of the room, with four turn handles embedded in it, three of them in a row and the fourth by itself at the far side of the table. A curious vertical slab just beneath the three huge stone circles bore Daedric lettering, the central letter huge and prominent. Sayma turned to Brynjolf, eyebrows raised.
“Any idea what it means?”
“Well that middle letter is ‘O’ and I’d assume it stands for Oblivion, seeing how it’s Daedric. The bottom part says ‘Alik’r’ – see the apostrophe? And the top is a bit hard to read but I’d guess it says ‘Nirn.’”
“Well, I’m impressed, Red. Any ideas what we do with these?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but rather pulled the left handle. The left-most of the great stone circles turned clockwise, moving the Daedric symbols around.
“There. That’s it. You’ve put the ‘G’ on top, see?” Brynjolf murmured, coming to stand behind her so closely that she could feel the heat radiating from him.
“If you say so. What if it’s supposed to be on the bottom? Or the left?”
“We’ll find out. But I’m sure that’s the right choice. That was the first letter we found.”
“Oh! Right. That makes sense.” She reached for the center handle. “What was the next one?”
“B. Here, let me do it for you.” He pulled the central handle twice, to align the proper symbol at the top, and then without pausing adjusted the final circular dial. “There you go. Ready to try for the prize?”
Sayma glared at him. “Yeah. Right. Well, stand back. I’ll pull the thing from over here and duck if something bad happens.”
She pulled the handle and twisted it. Nothing at all happened for a moment, just long enough for her to start wondering how the letters were supposed to be aligned, and then, slowly and noisily, the great stone slab that said Alik’r on the bottom began to sink into the floor.
“It worked!”
“Yes. I wonder what’s in the next room.”
“Well it had best be that key we’re looking for after all this.”
What lay beyond the stone door was a tunnel: a narrow, dark tunnel descending through the dirt just like thousands she’d seen before.
“You’re kidding.”
She heard Brynjolf chuckle behind her and whirled to glare at him. Then she proceeded down the tunnel. It was a short one, a tunnel that emptied out into a rocky cave. There were ledges along both sides, as there had been in the caves she’d passed through on her way to Ben Erai. One held a burning brazier and the other did not; she climbed onto the dark one half expecting to find a chest of wealth. There was no such chest but from the ledge’s vantage point she saw what they’d come for.
Beyond the cave was a three-sided room, stone, with four pillars like those they’d seen at the entrance of Al Shedim. A large coffin rested in its center, at the top of a raised platform. Behind it, on the far wall, a lighted niche held crossed Alik’r scimitars.
This must be the resting place of that Alik’r the door mentioned.
She crept forward, hoping to look at the chests and urns on either side of the casket; but she hadn’t even made it to the platform’s base when the sarcophagus lid flew open and a mummified corpse lifted itself out. Sayma rushed forward to strike with her flame-enchanted sword and nearly fainted when she reached the mummy.
It was enormous. Nearly twice her height. It wielded a cruel-looking scimitar and a shield almost as long as her torso, and its eyes shone cold and blue. Sayma hesitated for a moment and then struck at it with her Daedric sword just as Brynjolf rushed it with his; the creature blocked with its shield and jumped back up onto the edge of its coffin. It growled, then, and moved its shield aside for a better look at them; and that was its mistake. Brynjolf brought his sword around in a massive, sweeping slice that knocked the creature off the coffin, sending it flying headfirst into one of the pedestals at the side of the room. Sayma was standing near it. Even though she was fairly certain the fall had sent the Alik’r back to Oblivion she stabbed her sword down into its body to be sure. She grinned at Brynjolf.
“That was well done. I thought we’d be fighting it for ages.”
“It was big. But it was stupid. Don’t open yourself up like that.”
They sheathed their weapons and began searching the room for valuables. Sayma examined the crossed scimitars. There would be no taking them; they were securely fastened to the wall in some way that she couldn’t determine. Beneath them, though, was a chest; and when she opened it she found the item they’d been looking for since entering Al Shedim.
“Here it is. Finally,” she said, pulling the key out. “This is the key to get us into the oasis where the Cowl is. That’s what I was told, at any rate. It had better be right.”
“Aye, let’s hope so. I got everything else. Let’s get out of here.”
It took them a fair amount of time to find their way back through the cave and out the maze of stairwells and chambers. Eventually, though, they emerged, back into the great open plaza. It was evening once more, cool and clear. Sayma looked at Brynjolf and smiled.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Time to go see some cheetahs about a piece of jewelry.”
“You do realize that sounds ridiculous?”
“Yeah.” She chuckled and moved out onto the dunes, heading north.