Dale stared westward along the coast, unfocused and unmoving. He was still trying to make sense of what he’d learned about Tamara’s actions before becoming the Sovrena of Coldhaven, and what he would tell Agryn and Vyctyna about her now that she was dead. Who might have sent him the note via that poor, doomed courier? Could it have been Sicara? Or might Babette have learned about Coldhaven and wanted him to understand it? No, that made no sense. None of it made sense.
One thing was certain: the courier’s note might have led him to some enlightenment about the Coldhaven vampires, but it had also given him important time to think about the Brotherhood, the Crimson Scars, and the contract he hadn’t completed. Time to avoid returning to the Sanctuary at Dawnstar.
He didn’t think Sayma was dead. Not really.
It had always been the case that he’d felt, at some deep level, a connection to his targets that he didn’t truly understand – a connection that ended along with that person’s life. Maybe it had always come from the Night Mother, in the same way even mad Cicero had felt Sayma’s presence and had known when her connection to the Brotherhood was severed. He had also felt that thread when he’d reluctantly accepted the contract for Sayma on Nazir’s behalf. That’s why he’d gone to Riften, looking for her; that’s where she’d been. And then it had changed.
When Brynjolf told me she was gone, I listened to him, and I listened for her. Brynjolf was telling the truth. Sayma, the former Listener, is gone. That connection, that thread between hunter and mark – that is gone. Sayma, Brynjolf’s wife – that person no longer exists.
But there’s something else. Something left. Some… one, left. And I don’t understand it.
He’d been surprised to feel as much relief as he’d felt. He really hadn’t wanted to accept the contract. He hadn’t wanted to kill Sayma – Qaralana’s mother – even given the guilty delight he felt in telling Brynjolf he had “business” with Sayma. Brynjolf was astute enough to have guessed what the business was. When he’d then told the man “I’m glad,” he’d meant it.
And yet there was a nearly overpowering sense of incompleteness about the whole affair. Threads were dangling. He was certain that the Night Mother would forgive him for abandoning that contract, though he wasn’t sure why he was so certain of it. He would continue acting on her behalf as required as he sorted out what his approach to the Brotherhood would be, including the Crimson Scars. If she would accept the Coldhaven Sanctuary as well as the Dawnstar one, why was he so on edge?
Maybe it’s Nazir. I don’t know whether he’ll accept it, that Sayma “got away.” She did, after all, violate the Tenets, more than once. But the Night Mother could have exacted punishment on her, any time during the past twenty years and she didn’t. It must mean something! Mustn’t it?
He frowned as he crossed ice floes, dodged angry horkers and headed west toward the Sanctuary. There was something about Nazir’s having invoked the Tenets that bothered him. It bothered him a great deal, and he couldn’t quite get hold of it – the tendrils of logic and argument slithered through his grasp every time he thought he had them firmly in place.
Maybe it’s just that I’ve had too many unwelcome surprises recently. My mind can’t quite deal with all of them.
Even that thought was distressing. He’d never had a problem with thinking things through before. What had changed? Something in the battle with Potema? Had she done something to his mind? Or was it the forced absorption of ancient, long-dead vampires’ life forces that had affected him in ways he hadn’t yet fully discovered? Or maybe there was something about becoming Listener, or having had Molag Bal himself laughing in his mind that had changed him. It was distressing. It was surprising. And he didn’t like surprises.
He’d been trotting down the shoreline absorbed in his own thoughts, but as he neared Dawnstar something out of place slowed him to a halt. Off the tip of land that held the Sanctuary’s black door, on a tiny ice floe that had never distinguished itself in any way, someone had pitched a tent.
A tent. On the ice. And I see a person standing outside it. What in Oblivion is this?
The person who had set up camp in such an unlikely spot must have specifically wanted to be seen. There wasn’t any other reason he could think of to purposefully lay one’s bedroll down on a sheet of ice and hope to get any rest at all. He started walking again, slowly, with an eye on the figure standing on the ice, trying to figure out what it meant.
It was possible, he thought, that a Dawnguard or Vigilant or someone working for them was out there, keeping watch on the Sanctuary door and waiting for him to approach. It would give such a person a perfect, unimpeded shot with a crossbow. The implications were terrifying, because that would mean that not only the Sanctuary’s location was known – and thus compromised – but that someone else knew he was the Listener and was a vampire, and could recognize him at a distance. Dale wasn’t normally one to panic but he felt anxiety rising in his gut. He stared at the figure on the ice, looking for signs of a weapon. The closer he got, the deeper his frown became.
That’s not Dawnguard armor. And it’s not a Vigilant’s robe, either.
What he saw, as he reached the very tip of the promontory and waded into the sea, was a woman wearing the shrouded armor of the Dark Brotherhood. But this was nobody he recognized. For a moment he thought that somehow it was Sayma and had a flash of dismay that now there was no way to avoid the contract he’d been given, but then her head swiveled and he saw that her skin was pale, not Redguard brown. She stared at him and made the tiniest motion with one hand, beckoning him toward the campsite. Clearly, he was meant to speak to her. With a resigned sigh, he slipped into the deeper water and made his way across to the floating campsite.
He clambered up onto the ice and shook himself off, trying not to look too unhappy as he met the woman’s gaze. She was definitely wearing Dark Brotherhood armor, and while her expression was solemn she seemed friendly enough.
“You’ve gotten my attention,” he said quietly. “But it seems odd that you would want to meet me out here in the sea. Who are you and why are you here?”
“I am Lucya,” she said, smiling, “and as you see, I am from the Brotherhood. There is a temple in the Alik’r desert. Someone is waiting for you. Take care, Listener.”
She nodded, and stopped speaking for what became an uncomfortably long moment. Finally, Dale tsk’d.
“Would you care to elaborate? You clearly know who I am, but I don’t know you and I’ve heard of no Sanctuaries in Hammerfell.” Not even Babette has ever mentioned a branch there, and she’s been around longer than any of the rest of us. “If you have some reason to be sending me on a trek to another province, you’d best show me on the map exactly where I’m going.”
She shook her head. “It is not on a map,” she said quietly, “but in a corner of the desert most people have never seen. I will tell you how to reach the place and you must speak with Tenerio.”
Dale stood there, trying not to look completely astonished, as Lucya told him of an isolated corner of the world he’d never heard of before. A portal outside Falkreath would take him there, she said, and then taught him how to open it with magic, to reach a town called Ben Erai. Leaving by the nearest gate and circling the rocky hill outside the walls would lead him to the Black Door.
“That’s not much to go on,” he told her. “And I’m still not sure I understand why it is important that I go there. But,” he added, glancing toward the spit of land he’d been on his way to visit, “I’ll consider it.”
He was surprised to realize that he meant that. He’d been pondering, the whole time she spoke. First, it was important that he learn why this woman and Tenerio thought they were part of the Brotherhood; that seemed likely enough or they’d never have found him, but it made him uneasy that he’d never heard of them. If the temple there was in fact a Sanctuary, it was important that he bring it under his control as he had the Coldhaven Sanctuary and the home base before him.
I can’t believe I’m even thinking this way. It hasn’t been all that long since I was doing tasks for Agryn, living in a cellar in Falkreath.
He bade Lucya farewell and slipped back into the sea, but found himself heading for the western shore of Dawnstar’s port, not the Black Door to the east. It seemed he had already decided to follow up on this new development. It would take him away from Skyrim, for a time. It would give him more time to think, and to plan his future guiding both the established Brotherhood and the newly-discovered Crimson Scars.
He reached the shoreline and made his way through Dawnstar. As he ran south on the snow-covered road that would take him back to Falkreath, he realized something else. He wanted to pursue this task not only to satisfy his curiosity and possibly his duty, but also because it would delay the inevitable. It would keep him from needing to speak to Agryn Gernic. It would also keep him away from Nazir.
He stood on an empty pathway in Falkreath, wondering whether he was being watched and would be either attacked or completely embarrassed by what he was about to do. There was nothing remotely resembling a portal here: but because Lucya had insisted he cast the spell, he sighed and gathered his energy.
The spell exploded, noisily, leaving him in a hazy, purplish cloud. He blinked, confused, staring at a stone pillar that hadn’t been there a moment before. Lucya had told him to touch it, that it was the portal; but now that he was here, he hesitated.
Then he heard it: the roar that could only be a dragon. He glanced up and behind him; he didn’t see the beast, but the rush of wings told him that it was nearby. He didn’t want to deal with a dragon right then – if ever. He reached forward and touched the pillar. As he had expected, his world went black.
I should be used to portals by now.
When the light returned to his eyes, he found himself in an old Imperial fort, standing before a circular portal stone. It was exactly as Lucya had described it to him; as she had also given him directions to leave it and the town behind, he scurried out of the building, past a man in desert robes, and into incongruity.
It was clearly an Imperial fortress and an Imperial camp, but it sat on deep sands dotted with palms and other unfamiliar trees. The air was very dry, but very warm. He’d entered the place at night, and even so he was uncomfortable. It would be good to get out of the walled city and into the open air as quickly as possible.
It was surreal, running through the desert. He could see buildings in the distance, one of them enormous – but he knew that wasn’t the place he was heading for. Instead, he hugged the barren rocks, keeping them on his right. He needed to circle around to the mountain’s eastern side, and then hope he could locate the door.
I’m crazy for doing this. Or maybe I’m just a coward, putting off my responsibilities as long as I can.
I never asked for any of this. I only wanted to help Agryn and Vyctyna.
As he rounded the hill, he discovered a line of tall, slender stone pilings, arrayed in a straight line that ended near the mountain. They almost seemed to be guideposts, or pointers, or something similar. In fact, as he passed between the nearest pillar and the rocks themselves, a familiar sight caught his attention. Embedded deep into the stone, nearly obscured by the surrounding sand and rocks, was the skull imprinted with the black hand that meant only one thing: Dark Brotherhood. Oddly, though, as he approached the door he did not hear the familiar, eerie sound that the Sanctuary’s door made.
Is it a real sanctuary if there is no challenge, no password to enter? Or is this just a door, made to look like the real thing? I suppose there’s only one way to find out.
He pushed the door open and stepped through.
The interior was very dimly lit. Constructed from enormous blocks of sandstone brick, only a few banners broke the monotone appearance of the place. One of these, Dale noted, was a nearly pristine Dark Brotherhood banner, and another was a smudged copy of the Tenets, mounted over a tall sandstone table. Behind the table, leaning up against the wall, was a man in shrouded robes.
“This must be the place,” Dale murmured, removing his hood and approaching the man slowly. He’d been expecting a Redguard, really, here in Hammerfell, but as he neared the desk he saw that Tenerio – for he assumed this was his contact – was an Imperial like himself.
Rather, not like myself. I’m the Listener, and he is not.
“You’re Tenerio?” he asked. “I was told to come here.”
“Listener?”
The man’s voice was deep, and accented, but with what accents Dale couldn’t tell. He clearly was not from the highlands of Cyrodiil. Dale nodded.
“Listener! You made it. Welcome to Hammerfell. This is a Dark Brotherhood sanctuary, lost in the Great War. It remained empty, until now.”
There was something about the man’s voice that rubbed Dale exactly the wrong way, an oily, sycophantic tone even more annoying than Brynjolf’s ‘lad.’ He tried to shrug off the unease; he couldn’t, however, shrug off the more important issue at hand.
“Interesting that neither the Listener nor the Speaker have heard of this outpost before.” He wanted to say more. The oldest remaining members of the Brotherhood, from before the original Sanctuary in Skyrim had been destroyed, hadn’t mentioned this place – even though Cicero was happy enough to speak of the former Sanctuaries in Cyrodiil. The Night Mother hadn’t mentioned this place. Camryn, the nominal leader of the Crimson Scars, hadn’t mentioned it to him. Dale wanted to challenge Tenerio about this, but decided to approach the problem circumspectly, the way Agryn would have him approach the politics of Coldhaven.
Tenerio nodded. “The Dark Brotherhood’s presence in Hammerfell has been, well, next to none in recent times. There was no more active Sanctuary, and less contracts every day. This situation needs to change and I’ve heard of what you’ve done in Skyrim.”
“Fewer,” Dale murmured absently, his mind running at a feverish pace. Perhaps he speaks of Sayma. He can’t possibly have heard of me.
Tenerio’s eyebrow rose. “What was that?”
“Not a thing,” Dale answered, smirking. “No more active Sanctuary, and yet here you are, in some sort of desert temple with what looks very much like a Brotherhood door.” Again he felt as though he might be pushing his luck. No sense in antagonizing the man until he had a sense of what was going on here in the desert. “So what exactly do you need from me? You’re hoping to rebuild, here?”
“Yes,” Tenerio said, looking as though he had finally gotten through to a slow-thinking subordinate. “We have a Sanctuary now,” he added, waving to the mostly-empty confines of the temple, “and we have a few contracts one of your Keepers gave us. And we have you: the Listener. All we need to do is rebuild our reputation, and things will go as smoothly as they used to, before.”
Alarm bells were sounding in Dale’s mind. There was not a chance that Cicero had given this man contracts. Cicero had been the singular Keeper since before Dale was even born, and he had an excellent memory for things that had happened before and during his time as Keeper. It was possible that Tenerio had meant to say ‘Speaker,’ not ‘Keeper’ – but again, Nazir was the lone Speaker at the moment and had been for decades. The Keeper did not award contracts to initiates or Silencers, the Speaker did. Still, Dale held his tongue.
“Again, what would you have me do?”
“I give you a contract, you kill the target. It spreads news around town that the Dark Brotherhood is back, and you get rewarded. Simple, isn’t it?” Once again Tenerio’s tone was that of a teacher instructing a slow-witted student.
Dale raised one eyebrow. “Indeed. It reminds me a great deal of the days when…” He trailed off. He’d been about to say something about the days when he’d been just another initiate, doing the bidding of the actual Speaker, Nazir. But that would be giving too much away, and wouldn’t tell him what he needed to know. “Never mind. Just tell me what I can do to help.”
Tenerio smiled. “Nice. Then here’s your first contract. A merchant is currently staying at the Ben Erai Outpost, just northeast of here at a small oasis. Someone wants her dead, because of a bad exchange they made. Go there, kill her, and come back.”
Dale nodded. “I know how it works,” he said dryly. “I’ll be back shortly.” He turned and exited the temple, trying to maintain his composure.
Explaining to the Listener how an assassination contract is completed? What have I gotten myself into here?
“Northeast, then,” he muttered. “I don’t trust this. Not at all. He has contracts, but how did he get them? If they were from before this Sanctuary died off, the targets would also be dead. It makes no sense. None at all.”
He ran out into the desert, hoping he was judging direction properly. On the endless, featureless sand dunes, with the haze of nighttime warmth over the land, he couldn’t be sure where he was. He couldn’t be sure, that is, until he crested a dune and realized he’d almost run headlong into the oasis. He stopped abruptly and backed up over the dune, circling around to his right to get a good vantage from which to assess the situation.
It was small, alright. A single, large, Imperial-make tent with a large blue awning sat next to a diminutive pool of water, with palms and shrubs taking full advantage of the moisture. The disappointingly well-lit camp revealed two people outside, likely catching such cool air as was available. Two. That would make sneaking up on the mark more of a challenge, though it was easy enough to see which one was a female merchant and which was not.
Dale was used to moving silently, though. He crept down over the dune and inched up behind the woman seated at a round table outside the tent. The man in Hammerfell garb, standing outside the awning on the side of the next dune, was engrossed in a tankard and staring out at the desert, half-asleep by the looks. Dale was nearly close enough to touch the woman when he stopped moving, alerted to a potential third presence inside the tent. A quick glance told him that was also a male. He backed up, out of the light and into the deep shadows.
After a few moments of waiting and steadying his breath, he drew his bow and nocked an arrow. With luck, a simple elven-make arrow would take this merchant out, and he’d be done with this novice-level contract.
But luck was not with him. He heard the arrow contact her armor, heard her cry out, and saw her rise from the table, frantically searching for the danger. The others in the camp started calling for help – a ridiculous thing to do, so far out in the wastes – while the merchant herself bolted directly toward Dale’s position.
He wasn’t sure she could see him, though. He was in black, with magic muffling his passage, and crouched on the hilltop. She had been sitting beneath bright lamps and couldn’t possibly have passed her night blindness yet. He drew his bow again and this time the arrow flew straight and true and stopped the woman dead in her tracks. She dropped like a stone and Dale backed uphill until he could no longer see the other merchants. Once his heart had slowed again and all was quiet in the camp, he snuck halfway back down the dune to where the woman’s body lay. He was hungry and tired, and he was certain that it wouldn’t do for Tenerio to watch him drain a blood potion. The small amount of cooling blood he took from her was the perfect refreshment.
Crossing back over the dune, Dale realized that he could see at least one of the stone pylons. He approached it and then saw the next, up against the mountain. He’d not been very far away at all, and his vampiric speed made the return trip seem shorter yet.
Not far away at all, and yet Tenerio couldn’t be bothered to complete the “contract” himself? Presumably he is also an assassin. Why did he need the Listener to do this?
Tenerio looked almost bored when Dale reached him. “Yes?”
“I’m back,” Dale answered dryly.
“And I suppose the merchant is dead.”
“Indeed.”
“Great!” the man said, smiling and handing Dale a hefty sack of coin as payment. “You’re just in time for your next contract. An Argonian, a self-proclaimed hero, has been roaming around the Lantern of the North lately. Someone wants that ‘hero’ dead, and he’s counting on you for that.”
“I’m sure he is,” Dale said, weighing the coin purse with a strange sense of deja vu. It was as though his elevation to Listener hadn’t happened. Take a contract; earn some coin. “And where will I find this place? You’re more familiar with the area than I am, after all.”
He hoped that his quiet sarcasm hadn’t registered with Tenerio. He couldn’t suggest that he doubted Tenerio’s credentials, after all. Tenerio didn’t so much as blink. He gave Dale a rudimentary map of the region, marking the spot he thought the Argonian would be.
“Have fun,” he told Dale.
Dale gritted his teeth and formed them into the nearest thing he could to a small smile. He gave Tenerio a small half-bow, backed up a step or two, and then left. It had cooled off considerably, outside, and he was grateful for that, for his temperature had been rising along with his temper.
He sighted the path north along the stone pillars, just to the west of the huge temple, Al-Shedim. In theory his destination was there, in the north, and he needed to get going. What he wanted to do, though, was scream or change form and rip someone’s throat out, neither option even slightly useful. Finally he pulled his hood up, took a deep breath, and started loping down the hillside and out onto the sand.
Have I always had such a suspicious mind? Such a short temper? I didn’t think so, but…
Then he remembered meeting Serana. That hadn’t gone well; they’d taken an almost instant dislike to each other. Tamara had set his teeth on edge, making him suspicious almost from the beginning. He’d felt the same about Brynjolf. In fact, the only people that he could remember liking, since leaving Cyrodiil, were Cicero and Babette, Qaralana – and, oddly enough, her mother Sayma, however briefly.
How did I become such a sour, angry man? Is this something I inherited from… Vitus?
He’d noticed something, since his mother died. He’d never really thought much about Vitus when she was still alive and they shared the small home south of Bruma. He’d always been nothing more than a name, almost a fictional character his mother had made up to entertain him with. But since meeting people who had known him – having the fact of his parentage presented to him with every face that said you look like your father…
It’s not just that I look like him. It’s so divinely perverse that I inadvertently followed his footsteps, even knowing nothing about him aside from some unsavory anecdotes from Mother’s point of view. By all the gods, she loved that man. And he left her there.
And the fruit to top the cake is that I would welcome his knowledge and guidance right now. He was in the Brotherhood as a younger man than I am now, before it was driven out of Bravil. I might even glean some wisdom from Brynjolf, if I could keep him from slitting my throat just for resembling my father. I suspect he has a great deal of experience with who to trust and who to trip up and snare. Not that I’m likely to ask.
And he couldn’t ask Agryn for his wisdom on the matter of the Brotherhood, either, because that would require him to reveal the presence of the Crimson Scar in Coldhaven and his own status as Listener. For some reason, he felt certain that was a very bad idea.
Gods damn it.
He suddenly realized that he’d passed the gigantic temple. The small shrine just ahead could only be the Lantern of the North, and that meant he needed to calm his mind and approach his prey silently. He stopped just behind a small rock outcropping; it wasn’t very tall but it did give him some cover while he tried to sense where the so-called “hero” might be. He saw no movement and heard no sounds, not even a nighttime snore. He edged closer to the shrine until, at last, his heightened senses registered the Argonian’s slow heartbeat. He was inside, just out of sight, on one of the stone benches that rested against each of the solid wall panels.
Dale took a deep breath, readied his blades, and dashed into the structure. The Argonian had only enough time to register his presence and rise halfway to his feet while shouting “Never should have come here!” Then Dale’s blades neatly scissored the scaled, horned head from its body. It flew up into the air, coming to rest atop the stone sill behind the bench that had held it just seconds before.
Dale stared down at the body. “I hadn’t intended to behead you, my friend,” he muttered. “But with all that blood making its appearance just now you’ve given me a real appetite.” He knelt to refresh himself and then breathed deeply as he rose. Better.
It had been quick, and while it hadn’t been neatly done it was uncomplicated. The wolves and birds of prey he’d seen circling overhead would clean up the remains of his five minutes of work, and he felt much better for having burned some of the angry energy he’d been accumulating.
“Sadly, I now need to go back where I came from. It’s not as though there is a wide range of entertainment possibilities out here in the desert. At least now I won’t be tempted to tear out his neck; I’m satisfied.”
He felt nearly in a good mood on his run back to the sanctuary. That mood evaporated the instant he stepped inside and saw Tenerio, still leaning against the wall with a disinterested gaze that didn’t change as Dale approached.
“Listener?”
“Yes, I am,” Dale said, unable to keep a sneer from his face and praying the Imperial couldn’t see in the dark as well as he could. “And you’ll no doubt be pleased to know that the Argonian is dead. Quite mad, I think he was; poor fellow just lost his head when I approached.”
Tenerio chuckled. “Not as much of a hero as he claimed to be? Too bad.”
“And I suppose you have another ‘contract’ for me?” Dale asked, placing a slight emphasis on the word.
It wasn’t that these weren’t contracts. Someone was obviously paying Tenerio to kill targets for them. The problem was that these contracts had not come from the Night Mother. Babette had told him stories of the time between Listeners, when people paid, directly, to have the Brotherhood kill. It had kept them in business for those long years. The problem was that many of the clients thought that the Night Mother herself had sanctioned the kills. She had not. Not until Sayma. Taking those clients’ coin under false pretenses had kept the dwindling society’s members alive, but it had been woefully dishonest.
“Of course,” Tenerio said. “Your next target is a monk. He has been traveling inside the desert for… religious purposes, shall we say? I don’t know who wants him dead, but I don’t really care. It’s your time to shine, again.” He gave Dale another large coin pouch and showed him the general area the monk had been seen last.
Dale simply nodded, this time, and stepped back out into the night.
“I’ll bet you know exactly who wants these targets killed,” Dale said, starting out eastward, this time.