Dardeh shook his head as they stepped through the portal, back into the forest of Falkreath Hold. He stretched his arms out and took a deep breath of the cold, crisp air.
“Ahhh! You know, I almost felt like a Redguard for awhile there, but there’s nothing like Skyrim mountain air. I feel human again.”
“Yeah, and I’m going to freeze for a little while,” Sayma laughed. She looked up and down the road, for what, Dardeh wasn’t sure. “I can’t decide, Dar. I have an idea…”
“Don’t need to decide anything right this second,” he said, grabbing her arm. “There’s a nice warm house with a sauna and everything not too far down the road. I’m for a bath and a good night’s sleep before anything else happens. Come with me. I need to talk to you about some stuff, anyway.”
Sayma nodded. “Alright. We’re going in the right direction, anyway, if we head to your house.”
They started down the steep slope of the road that would eventually pass the town of Falkreath. Sayma gave Dardeh a sideways glance and sighed.
“So, what is it that you need to talk about, Dar?”
“It can wait,” he tried to say. “I want to know what your idea is.”
“Nope, it can’t wait. May as well get it out now, Dardeh. I think I know what you want to ask. You’re already feeling better, now that we’ve talked to Jine. I can see it on your face. Let’s get the rest of this taken care of so that you can go back to Roggi without worrying you’re going to slip the leash at any moment.”
Dardeh snickered. “You know, I always felt bad as a kid that I didn’t have any siblings to play with or talk to. Just Ma. Now, my Ma is just about the best person you could ever have met. Well, except for the fact that she and Dadarh cheated on your mother, I guess…”
Sayma grinned. “Well, yeah, but I won’t hold that against either of them anymore. Look what resulted.”
Dardeh chuckled in embarrassment. “Thanks, Sayma. Do you know, I told Roggi, before I even knew who you were, that I thought the person I met outside Whiterun would be a good sibling.”
“I said the same thing to him about you,” she said with a smile.
“Really?” He smiled. “I guess we recognized each other in spite of everything, huh. Well, anyway, the point I was trying to get to is that now instead of just having my Ma to nag me I have a whole family. Roggi’s just an awful nag. And you, and Brynjolf, and the girls. I miss having Lydia around to nag me, too. She was the worst. All of you nags.” He hazarded a glance at Sayma, snickered at the obvious temper that was rising in her expression, and poked her in the ribs with his elbow. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel cared about. It’s really something.”
Sayma relaxed. “But you still want to know about the Emperor, don’t you. I can tell.”
Dardeh nodded. He’d been utterly shocked when Jine had made his comment about the Emperor, but there had been so much happening at that moment that he had lost track of the issue.
“Yeah. You… are the one?”
She nodded. “And you can’t tell a soul, because that would put me in the most difficult situation I’d ever be able to imagine. It was the last order I got from the previous head of the old Sanctuary. It didn’t come from the Night Mother, like the things I’ve done since then. I don’t know whether it was pure greed, or whether Astrid just wanted me out of the way and thought I never would be able to pull it off and would get killed, or what. But I did it. Carrying wee Bryn, no less. I swam out to the Emperor’s boat and just … took care of them.”
Dardeh wasn’t sure which was more disquieting, the words she was saying or the dispassionate way she was saying them. They took the spur of road that bypassed Falkreath, and continued westward while he struggled with his own reactions.
“I… don’t even know what to say.”
She looked up at the sky and shrugged. “I don’t either, truthfully. Right then, Dardeh, I was just about in the same state you were when you came to our house a couple of days ago. Angry. Confused. Afraid, even. Father wouldn’t stop telling me to kill. Or at least I think it was him. I don’t know.” She paused a moment, frowning. “I left Brynjolf behind and changed my face because I was afraid I was going to hurt people if I didn’t. It’s funny that Andante and I ended up working together, because he said the same thing to Bryn at the very end. He let himself die because he was afraid he would hurt people he cared about. I wasn’t willing to die. Not me. But I had to get away.”
Dardeh frowned. “Yeah. Strange. I know that feeling. I couldn’t go report in to Ulfric after Fort Greenwall. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold back, between how angry he makes me in the first place and the voice telling me to kill him. And I just couldn’t do that to Roggi.” He chewed on the inside of his mouth for a moment, as a realization struck him. “But you know what? I feel a lot calmer now. It was good to talk to Jine – really talk to him and not just get snippets of sentences here and there. There was one time…”
He told Sayma about Skuldafn; about being certain he was going to die but feeling the presence of someone helping him to move forward. “I swear it was him. I wish I’d thought to ask him about it. But I’m sure it was, at least his energy felt the same to me. Very strong, and safe, and calm. And I feel calm now. Like that.”
“That’s really good, Dar,” Sayma said. “I do too. I’ve felt calmer since I had wee Bryn. I don’t know whether it’s related to everything else Jine was talking about or not, but somehow killing and killing again stopped being the thing my mind turned to every second of every day. It’s more just a business, now.” She paused, and looked troubled for a moment. “What I don’t know is what’s going to happen with the Empire. I’m afraid Jine was right. I did something that is going to have ripples that we can’t even imagine yet.”
“Won’t someone else on the High Council be named Emperor?”
Sayma nodded. “You would think so. But, um… one of the other people I, uh, removed, was one of the people on the High Council. He was the one who paid Astrid for the assassination. So far as I know they haven’t replaced him yet. I can’t imagine they can choose a new Emperor with one province in civil war and an empty seat on the Council.”
Dardeh wrestled with that in his mind for a bit, but his mind refused to untangle its knots. “Nope, I can’t see what will happen. It was hard enough dealing with dragons. Hey! Where are you going?”
Sayma had dropped off the side of the road onto a path that wound steeply down to a dark pond. At least that’s what he could see. He followed her down the slope, past the pond that looked more like ink than water, and down a short path. There Sayma stood, in front of a door that was the same type he’d first seen in Dawnstar.
“What is this? Is this the old Sanctuary?”
Sayma nodded.
“Yes it is. I don’t know how much is left in there. I didn’t see what happened, at the end, because it was all burning. I was in the Night Mother’s coffin with her, and that saved me from the fire. But I have a feeling.”
Dardeh frowned. A feeling. What sort of feeling, Sayma? There are so many of them flying around right now I can barely keep them straight. Oh, wait. Could it be?
“I was just about to say something sarcastic. But are you thinking this might be where he is?”
Sayma looked at him and nodded solemnly. “Does that make sense? There used to be life here. It was life devoted to death, but it was alive and there were people here. And once upon a time, one of those people was Father. It’s where he would have gotten his last contract, the one he failed, to kill Ulfric. I don’t know whether it was Astrid who gave him the assignment, or her predecessor, but this was all that was left of the Brotherhood in Skyrim and he never worked out of Cyrodiil as far as I know. It’s worth checking, don’t you think?”
Yes it is, but… Dardeh felt the anger and resentment he’d always felt whenever his father was mentioned start to rise. But Jine said we must end it. We. I need to help Sayma do this and if he is in there it’ll probably be my last chance to talk to the man.
“It is. Lead the way.”
Sayma leaned in to the door and whispered something, and then pushed on it. The door swung open obediently.
“Huh. I’m surprised it still works. Well, let’s go.”
__
Sayma’s heart started pounding as she pushed open the Black Door and the scents hit her full in the face. Burned wood. Moldy burned wood, at that, for one of the features of this Sanctuary was the waterfall in the main room. It had supplied the moisture for an abundance of fungi, when she’d first started coming here; those were some of the things Babette had used to make her remarkably virulent poisons. Now all that moisture had nowhere to go but into the remnants of the bookshelves, and tables, and bedding that had once been home to a small but accomplished group of assassins. It was all turning moldy.
The worst, though, was the smell of rotting, burned meat that served as an overtone to everything else, even after all this time. She almost gagged as she tried to make her way down the familiar entry stairwell. Poor babe doesn’t like it either. Otherwise I wouldn’t be quite so ill, I think. Her stomach had been especially sensitive when she was pregnant with young Brynjolf; and it was following suit this time.
“Nice,” she heard Dardeh say in a sarcastic tone behind her. He coughed a couple of times. “Real nice. You used to work out of this?”
“Well it wasn’t burned, then, Dar, and there was decent air flow all the time. It was actually a pretty nice place. You can thank the Penitus Oculatus for what we see in here right now.” She started to gag, herself, and shook her head to clear it.
“You ok?”
“Yes, I’ll be fine.” She stepped over burned timbers and broken masonry and pushed through the entryway where she’d so often seen Astrid awaiting anyone who’d been sent out on assignment. She stopped, for a moment, when a wave of pure anger washed over her.
Damn you, Astrid, for thinking you were more important than the Tenets of the Brotherhood. Then she sighed, and shook her head. I probably wouldn’t have believed in them, either, if not for having the Night Mother speak to me. But why couldn’t you just pay attention to Cicero, and to me? Why would he have brought that enormous coffin here all the way from Cyrodiil if she was not real? Just a tiny bit of humility would have…
….wait…
“Dar,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I see something. Look down there.” She pointed through the arched doorway, into the room that had once held Astrid’s map table, and a bookcase that had been full of interesting tomes and other bits and bobs related to the Dark Brotherhood’s history. “Do you see it?”
Dardeh moved up beside her shoulder and was silent for a moment.
“Yeah. It’s him alright. Let’s go.”
Standing beside the map table – upon which the almost miraculously untouched map of Skyrim still rested – was something that she realized she’d become accustomed to seeing: a specter. This one had a familiar size, and shape. Suddenly Sayma felt herself five years old again, wanting to run to him and wrap her arms around his knees, to be comforted and made much over as she had been so many times, back on Stros M’Kai.
“Papa?”
Behind her, she heard Dardeh’s sharp inhalation. That’s what his girls call him. This will be hard for him.
The ghost of Dadarh at-Jine peered at her through narrowed eyes. “You aren’t my daughter. You don’t look like her and you don’t sound like her.” The voice was so familiar, so much like both Dardeh’s voice and Jine’s, but with its own distinctive sharp edges, that Sayma found her own eyes filling.
“Oh, Papa. It is you. I’ve missed you so very much. I know I look different but it’s me. It’s your little Dag. And you’re my Papa.”
“How can I trust you? I don’t recognize you,” he replied.
“How can you not know it’s me? You’ve been in my head for years, telling me to kill Ulfric, Papa. Nobody else would have told me that. Not even the Night Mother has told anyone to kill Ulfric Stormcloak.”
“What? You’re…” He stepped closer to her and stared at her for several long moments. “You’re wearing Dark Brotherhood armor. Some of it, anyway. And I haven’t told anyone else about Ulfric except for…”
“Except for me,” Dardeh rumbled, stepping up to stand beside Sayma. “Dadarh. It’s … very strange. To see you again. While I’m awake, that is.”
“You!” Dadarh sputtered. “You refused me when I asked you to finish it for me.”
Sayma half expected Dardeh to explode, as he had in Jine’s house in Hammerfell. Instead, his voice became very quiet, his tone very clipped. She shuddered. It sounded more dangerous than simple anger.
“You didn’t ask me to do anything, Dadarh. You demanded. And by what right? You never even came to see me when I was a kid. Not once. Not a single time. The only decent thing you ever did for me was to tell me my mother had done well raising me. The first time I ever felt like I had a father was running across the desert with the ghost of an ancestor who called me ‘son of my son.’ So don’t give me grief, Dadarh.”
Sayma reached out to Dardeh, put a hand on his arm, and shook her head no. “Please, let’s not fight. It’s not worth it to fight at this point.” She turned back to Dadarh.
“Papa. Your son is the Dragonborn. He’s the reason the world is still here right now. You should be proud of him. We all are. He’s…” She stopped and looked at her odd-eyed, short and short-tempered brother and smiled, realizing how glad she was that he’d persisted in searching for her all that time. “He’s very special. To me, to his husband, to my husband, and to everyone who knows him. Even to Ulfric Stormcloak.”
“What are you telling me now?” Dadarh growled, his eyes narrowing. “You’re actually helping that man?”
Dardeh growled back at him. “Yes. I am. It’s not what I would have chosen to do if things were different but the fact is that the world has changed since you died. All of us have changed. The Thalmor are trying to overrun the whole Empire and in my opinion the only way Skyrim is going to avoid being completely destroyed is if she has a strong High King.”
Dardeh looked at Sayma and nodded, and then turned back to his father.
“I don’t know who told you that Ulfric needed to die but they were wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. I’d take the greatest pleasure in striking that man’s head from his shoulders or Shouting him into a pile of ashes but he is the best hope we have.”
Dadarh had been standing with his arms crossed glaring at Dardeh, but at Dardeh’s admission that he’d be happy to end Ulfric, Dadarh’s eyes sparkled.
“You hate him, too?”
“You’d better believe I hate him. I also admire him. He’s a strong, smart, capable man and his soldiers – most of them anyway – really love him.”
Sayma sighed, sensing what was behind his words. “But not Roggi, I take it.”
Dardeh shook his head. “I hope not, sis. I truly hope not.” He looked back at Dadarh. “Listen. You need to stop with the ‘kill Ulfric’ thing. You need to rest. We’re all adults now. We can handle it.” He took a few paces back and forth and then shrugged. “I never knew you when you were alive but my mother never had anything but the fondest possible words to share about you. And for her sake, I want you to rest. Stop tormenting yourself, and us.”
Dadarh stared at him for a moment, looking almost anxious.
“But I can’t! Who will look out for the Sanctuary? Someone has to be here for all the other brothers and sisters!”
Sayma stared at him and then swapped a startled glance with Dardeh.
Somehow, he’s not aware of what happened. He doesn’t see it. He thinks we’re still all situated here. He’s not … sane.
“Papa,” she said quietly. “Look around you. The Sanctuary is gone. Burned. The Penitus Oculatus double-crossed Astrid and they double-crossed me, and they came here and burned the place. I was lucky to get out of here with Babette and Nazir and the Night Mother.”
“What? No, Babette is right over here,” he said, wandering into the Sanctuary’s main room. Once, this had been a vibrant place, with stairs up to Babette’s laboratory, and alive with the sound of Astrid’s husband Arnbjorn working at his forge. Now the stairs to the laboratory were blocked by stone that had been weakened by the flames and had collapsed. Dadarh tried valiantly to walk up the stairs but couldn’t get past the debris; he looked around himself, frantically moving to one side of the rubble and then the other. Finally he stopped and made a distressed sound.
“No! What happened here?”
Sayma stepped up beside him. She almost laid a hand on his shoulder out of reflex, but stopped when she realized that he was not solid.
“I told you, Papa. There was a fire. Most of the old Brotherhood died in the flames. Only Babette and Nazir and I survived. And Cicero, the Keeper, who used to be in Bruma, and then Cheydinhal. He brought the Night Mother here. We took her to the new Sanctuary in Dawnstar, quite a long time ago.”
“You… have the Night Mother? Here? In Skyrim?”
“Yes, Papa. It’s been a long time since you and Mama died. I’m taking care of the Brotherhood now. I’m the Listener.”
“You!” His eyes widened. “You’re… the Listener? But it’s been so long since we had a Listener…”
Sayma nodded. “Yes, it has. A very long time.”
Dadarh grabbed for Sayma’s arm; but his hand, of course, passed right through her. He stopped, and stared at his hand, and then back at Sayma, and it seemed to her that she could almost see his sanity return. It reminded her of the moment Cicero had snapped at her, saying “I’m mad, not stupid!”
“Oh,” he said quietly. “I’m… dead, aren’t I?”
“Yes, Papa,” she said, feeling her eyes begin to sting. By all the gods, no matter how many years go by that never stops hurting. “I don’t know who sent the bandits after us but you and Mama died many years ago. I hid, and they left me alone.” Everyone left me alone. I was all alone.
Cut it out, right now.
Sayma smiled to think that her inner voice, the one that had been so obnoxious for so many years but had been quiet for a long while now, still lurked within her.
Yeah, yeah. I know.
“But what about my contract?” he said quietly. “I wasn’t able to finish it.”
“Papa…” she began.
“Oh! Oh my!”
Dardeh’s voice interrupted them, and both she and Dadarh turned to stare at him. He had moved away from the two of them and was standing in front of the odd, curved wall that Sayma had noticed, back in her early days here, but had never really paid much attention to.
“What is it?”
“It’s LUN,” he said; and when he pronounced the word the room vibrated, dust falling from unsettled spots in the cavern around them. “Oops. Sorry about that. It’s a word wall, Sayma! Here in the old Sanctuary of all places, a dragon word!”
Sayma’s skin tingled. “Yes, I guess you’re right,” she said quietly. “It’s ‘leech,’ isn’t it?”
Dardeh whirled to face her. “Yes, it is. That’s what it means. Can you actually read this?”
She moved to stand beside Dardeh, in front of the curved stone panel. She stared at it, looking for anything that looked like a pattern. Finally she sighed and shook her head.
“No. All I see is a bunch of scratches. But I heard you say ‘leech.’ In the dragon way, that is. Please don’t do it again while we’re standing in here. I don’t want the whole place down on our heads.”
Dardeh ran a hand over his head and looked embarrassed. “Yeah. Sorry. Neither do I.”
She turned back to their father; but instead of a brightly shining spirit she saw only rock and ashes. She swapped a startled look with Dardeh and then started checking the corners of the room.
“Papa? Are you still here?”
There was a cry – surprise mixed with grief – from nearer the main entrance. Both of them ran for the sound.
Just off Astrid’s map area had been her and Arnbjorn’s private quarters; a bedchamber and a smaller, more private room that Sayma remembered with a great deal of discomfort. Dadarh was in the larger of the two spaces, crouched over a body that had been burned beyond recognition, its tendons contracted into the fetal position.
“Who is it?” he moaned. “Is it Astrid?”
“I don’t know for certain who it is, Papa,” she said gently. “I’m sure it’s not Astrid, though. Astrid died in here.” She walked slowly across the space, into the smaller room where the circle of candles Astrid had used to array herself into an offering, the Black Sacrament, still lay in the same spot she had placed them. Astrid’s body was nowhere to be seen, and Sayma considered the likelihood that Nazir had taken her away, quietly and without speaking to anyone else, and had laid her physical body to rest after she had done Astrid’s bidding and sent her soul to Sithis. Dadarh followed her into the room and stood in the circle of candlesticks, looking around with a grim expression on his face.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“This looks like the Black Sacrament.”
“Yes, Papa. She made herself into the Sacrament.” Sayma shuddered, remembering the almost indescribable form she’d found laying on the floor, surrounded by candles. She’d been burned in the fire, and could barely croak out the words for all the smoke she’d inhaled, but she had begged Sayma to send her to Sithis in atonement for her failure to keep the Brotherhood true to its tenets. Sayma found her jaw clenching as she remembered it.
Damn you, Astrid. You hated me, you hated the fact that the Night Mother chose me, and you made me play the part of your executioner. But I did it, and I got us out of here, and the Night Mother continues to tell me when there is a legitimate contract to be carried out. We don’t kill people just for the fun of it, and we don’t do it for just anyone. We wait, and we watch, and we listen. I… listen. Only me. You should have paid attention to Cicero when he tried to tell you but you didn’t. I don’t know what happened to your soul after you died and I don’t care.
She sighed, and looked at the ghost of her father. “She had violated the Tenets. She tried to get rid of Cicero, the Keeper. When the Penitus Oculatus came here and killed most everyone here she realized how wrong she had been and she asked me – the Listener – to sacrifice her. So that’s what I did. I obeyed my orders.”
Dadarh looked around the room, sadly. “If she was not true, she was not truly the leader,” he said quietly. “And that means that her orders – and mine – were not true, either.” He paced back and forth, wringing his hands. “And I’ve spent so long trying to force my own children to kill.”
Sayma swapped an anxious glance with Dardeh, who shrugged, clearly not knowing how to proceed.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Dadarh said, finally. “I would have killed anyway. I wanted to do it. I enjoyed doing it. It’s a hard thing to admit, but it is true.”
“Ma said you were a brutal man,” Dardeh said quietly.
“Did she? Well, she was right, I suppose. Your mother was a beautiful woman. And perceptive. And wise. Even though I had a wife who was also all of those things, I could not keep myself from her.”
Sayma watched Dadarh’s face closely. He was back to himself, now, or at least it seemed to her that he was aware of himself and his situation, and what reality was. He did have a cruel cast to his eyes. She remembered seeing that same sort of cruelty from some of the other old Brotherhood members. Festus Krex, for example, had been an old man, very polite on the surface but fond of carrying out the most horrific experiments on his marks. For that matter, it occurred to her, she’d seen flashes of that same cruelty from Andante when he’d not realized she was looking. And even from Mercer Frey. There was a brutal quality about it, a desire to cause pain, a hunger for suffering. She’d felt it herself, once or twice, when she’d first been approached by the Dark Brotherhood. It made her sad to see that flash of brutality on the face of the man she remembered as being the most loving of fathers.
I was just a baby. I wouldn’t have known any different, not for years and years later. Dardeh is actually lucky that he didn’t have to think his father was wonderful, only to learn that he really wasn’t.
But I don’t feel that in myself any longer. I don’t. I’ll kill if the Night Mother asks me to, as a transaction; I’ll kill if I have to in order to save myself or those I love. But now I feel more like … the Grey Fox. Not a killer. A thief. The person I started out to be from the time I was a child. Like Brynjolf.
She smiled to herself. I’m going to need to talk to the Night Mother soon, to make sure this is clear between us.
Dardeh’s voice finally broke through her reverie and brought her back to the present. He had moved to face the ghost of his father and was shaking his head.
“Well, Dadarh, it doesn’t matter whether or not she was right. It has to stop. It has to stop. We can’t kill Ulfric. If Ulfric doesn’t win the war everything any of us ever believed in will come to an end, because the Thalmor will take over. Oh, sure, the Empire will claim victory; but sitting right beside General Tulius is Elenwen, the Thalmor Ambassador, and I’ve never seen anyone have a general so firmly by the short hairs before. It’s just a matter of time, if they win, until we are all their slaves.”
Dadarh’s eyebrow rose. “Indeed. And what if Ulfric crosses the line and becomes the bastard everyone thinks he will be?”
Dardeh laughed.
“Ulfric’s already the bastard everyone thinks he is, Father. But he is a capable leader. He’s smart. He knows that he needs all of the people to keep Skyrim together. I promise you this, on my name and as the Dragonborn, that if Ulfric crosses the line I will kill him myself.” He turned to Sayma and smiled. “We will kill him, together, the two parts of the dragon blood that have come down through the years, through you. Believe me. But you, Dadarh at-Jine, must rest. You must let this rest. You must let us rest.”
Dadarh studied his son, looked him up and down and nodded. Then he turned to Sayma.
“Perhaps your child will be the one to complete my last contract.”
Sayma sighed, and shook her head.
“No, Papa. That contract ends here. Young Bryn will be raised as a Nord, the same way my brother was raised. His father is a Nord. We want it to end, the violence and the killing. If there is any dragon blood in him he will be guided by the best men in the world, Papa. He’ll be guided by his father, and by Dardeh, and Dardeh’s husband Roggi. They will teach him when it is right to kill and when it is not. I can’t teach him that. I’m too much like you. But they can. All of them can, for they have made mistakes, and learned how to tell the difference. And if Ulfric crosses the line, or his heir crosses the line, we will make sure that my son will know when and how to strike.”
Dardeh took a few steps closer to his father and cleared his throat. He stared at the ash-covered floor, looking to Sayma as though he was having difficulty deciding what to say.
“I want you to know something. I went to Sovngarde, to kill Alduin. One of the things that got me through that was discovering that I had the same kind of strength you have, that same fire. There was nothing that was going to stand in the way of my ending him. That was the day I knew that I was your son, really knew it.” He looked up, then; he and Dadarh stared at each other. “When I told you I had seen that part of you that was in me I was angry, and appalled. Now I understand it better. Now I know how to use it. Now I’m ready to say that yes, I am half Redguard; and I am proud of it. Trust me. If the day comes when it is truly necessary to finish Ulfric Stormcloak I’ll see it done.”
Dardeh turned and left Astrid’s small chamber. Sayma followed him, for a few steps, and then turned at the opening of the room to look back at Dadarh. He hadn’t moved from his place in Astrid’s circle of candlesticks.
“I suppose it’s time, then,” he said, standing with his arms crossed. “Just as well. I’m tired. This,” and he gestured around him, “has been an unpleasant surprise. It means I’ve been waiting and waiting for something that was never going to happen in the first place. I’m going to leave now. But you two had best keep your promises. If he does not live up to your expectations you’d best rid the world of him or I swear to you I will find some way to return, and I will make your lives miserable.”
Sayma sighed in disappointment. Oh Papa. Dardeh was right about you, wasn’t he, and so was Jine. That’s no way to treat your children.
“We will, Papa. I promise.”
She dropped her gaze for a moment, once more sadly scanning the scorched and ruined remnants of what had been Astrid’s furniture. She could still hear the screams of Brotherhood members and Penitus Oculatus alike, could hear Arnbjorn’s howls and snarls as he tried and failed to use his werewolf strength to save them. A shudder ran up her back. She was glad they had been able to establish a new base, in Dawnstar. No amount of cleansing would ever have erased the horror from this place.
When she looked up again, the room in front of her was empty.
“Papa?”
She looked in all corners of the room and found nothing.
“Dardeh. Is he out there?” She went to Dardeh, who had been standing in Astrid’s main chamber; he shook his head.
“No. He’s gone. I was watching over your shoulder. One second he was there and then he wasn’t.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t exactly a fond farewell, but I already feel, uh…”
Sayma took stock of her own sensations at that moment. There was a lightness that hadn’t been there before, an absence of an uncomfortable pressure in her mind that she’d gotten used to over the past few years.
“He’s gone. I feel it. Or, I guess, I don’t feel it anymore.” She looked at Dardeh and smiled. “We’re free, Dar.”
Dardeh nodded. “At least for the moment. But I don’t doubt him a bit. He’ll find some way to come back and haunt us if we let Ulfric step out of line.” He shook his head; then a slow grin broke over his face. “By the Nine this feels better. I understand what was going on inside me, now, and that helps. Gods know there will still be more killing than I ever hoped to see but at least now I will know that it’s me who is doing it, by my own choice.”
Sayma smiled. “Yes. I feel it, too. Funny. I would have thought I’d be sad that he was gone but I guess he’s really been gone for a very long time. And he wasn’t really the person my small child memories said he was.” She patted Dardeh on the arm. “You said something about a bath and a comfortable bed? I could go for that now, Dar.”
He chuckled. “Alright then. Let’s go.”
They left the old Sanctuary; and when Sayma closed the Black Door behind them she felt certain it would be the last time she saw the place. The rest of the walk to Dardeh’s home was uneventful, and quiet; they enjoyed the cool forest air and the sounds of birds and animals in the brush off to either side.
Just as they were turning up the path to Mammoth Manor, a skinny man in lightweight green clothing came running up to them.
“Wait,” he called. “I’ve got something for you. Your hands only,” he said, passing a note to Dardeh. “Boy am I glad I found you. He said it was time-sensitive. I was afraid I’d be facing that guy again. I really didn’t like the sound of what he’d do to me. Well that’s it. See ya!” He turned and dashed down the hill.
Sayma grinned at Dardeh. “Who’s it from, do you suppose?”
Dardeh flipped open the note and read it. “Roggi. Of course. Leave it to him to be scary if he really wants something done. Apparently the Stormcloaks are gathering in Haafingar and they need me there right away. But I’m not going anywhere until I get a good night’s sleep. If they need me that much they can wait a few hours more. Shall we?”
“We sure shall. I’m ready.”
The two of them spent the rest of the day bathing, washing their clothing, and relaxing in front of the fireplace. Neither one of them spoke about their father, or his sad, prolonged existence as a specter, or their relief that he was finally gone.
