Dale ran through the desert night, wrestling with the tangle of his thoughts. Why had someone set him on the path to discover the Sovrena’s history? Who had alerted Tenerio that he was the new Listener, and sent the Sister to the ice floe outside the Sanctuary? Why had the Night Mother not told him that there was another Sanctuary here in Hammerfell, another man taking contracts on behalf of the Brotherhood? Why was it that Camryn, in the Coldhaven Sanctuary, had readily accepted him as Listener and clearly had the Night Mother’s approval? Tenerio’s status, though, seemed tenuous at best. Dubious.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured. “What is going on?”
He shook his attention back to the present as he spied a structure in the darkness ahead. It was a large shrine, much like the one where he’d ended the Argonian earlier. This had to be his destination. It would be easy enough; he’d locate the monk, part him from his worldly existence, and be back to Tenerio before daybreak. He approached, cautiously, extending his senses in a search for the target.
His face creased into a frown that grew deeper as he realized his problem. There was nobody there.
Nothing was alive, either inside the shrine or outside it. After several minutes of searching the surrounding area he gave up, sinking onto a stone bench inside the shelter.
He pulled out the rough map Tenerio had given him and groaned. It looked as though he had gone far more south than east. It would be a long run, still, before he reached what Tenerio had called the “Lucky Lantern.”
“Gods, I’m tired,” he muttered aloud, more to break the solitude than anything else. “Went the wrong damn way. When this is done I’m going to tell Tenerio I need a break, that’s all there is to it. I can continue later.” Besides, he thought, I need to take time to consider my next steps.
He pushed himself up slowly, raised his hood, and ran north until once more a line of stone pillars marked a path to the east. Underfoot were steep hills with rocky outcroppings and scrub brush just waiting to trip up errant feet. While he could easily have taken on his winged form to fly, Dale didn’t have any idea what to expect – or who. It wouldn’t go well if somehow, one of Tenerio’s contacts saw that he was a vampire. He therefore went on foot, slowly and carefully.
Just short of a dune’s crest he stopped to look up, and smiled. It was so clear that he could see nearly every star and constellation in the sky; one of the crescent moons hovered just behind a stone pillar. He enjoyed the view for a moment, and then realized that stopping for the moon had also saved him from a truly treacherous descent between two rocky hills. He took the dune slowly, slipping in the loose sand here and there in spite of himself. When he reached the bottom and looked up for the next pillar his eyes opened in surprise. There was a structure ahead, to be sure; but it was surrounded by a forest.
A dead forest.
All but a few tenacious trees near the building were skeletons, stripped down to nothing more than sand-blasted, blackened bones, hard to distinguish from stone pillars in the night. It seemed a very odd place for a religious pilgrimage. This was the area his map pointed toward, though, so he dropped into a crouch and proceeded in utmost caution through the bottom of the dunes’ bowl and back up the other side.
This structure was more elaborate than the other two he’d visited. It was square, with octagonal, cupola-topped towers on each corner flanking wide, arched openings blocked by ornate metal grills. None of these gates appeared to be open, but Dale could see a lantern resting in an open-topped gazebo in the center of the structure. He wondered idly what good such a thing was if you couldn’t reach it to light it. Of more importance, though, was the fact that the person he sought wasn’t and could not be inside, and therefore must be nearby.
He circled around the entire building, keeping low to the ground and extending his senses in all directions as he went, listening and waiting to feel the warmth of life. It wasn’t until he’d nearly completed his circle that a heartbeat, weak at first but increasing in strength, reached him. It was coming from near his point of origin, and had to be the monk – for who else would be here in a dead forest in the dead of night? Dale prepared his swords and drew the shadows in around him, then pressed forward and around the fourth corner of the building.
There, at the base of the steps leading up to the shrine, was a person in a monk’s robes, muttering to himself. The sounds were too low to decipher actual words but Dale could imagine from the monk’s stance and the occasional tsk that this was a frustrated person who wanted to be let in but didn’t know how. It didn’t matter. Dale’s task was to relieve that frustration, once and for all. He crept up behind the monk and, with just a few quick blade strokes, took him down.
“May whatever god you were trying to worship see you to the next life,” Dale murmured, even while knowing that Sithis was welcoming another soul back to the void as he spoke. At least, in the Void, the monk’s soul wouldn’t be used for someone else’s purposes. This didn’t matter, either. He’d been given a task and, in spite of his reservations about how legitimate a task it was, he’d completed it quickly and well. Saying a few words over the corpse of a monk seemed a respectful thing to do.
And then it was time to make the long trek back to Tenerio. He was truly fatigued, and increasingly annoyed at being asked to carry out such simple assassinations. Even the greenest initiate could fulfill a contract in the dark, in such an isolated place, where nobody but the hunter and the hunted would ever know what had happened. Even before becoming Listener he had been well past this level of assignment, able to take down the target in a crowded marketplace and never be seen or even suspected.
So it was that he reacted to Tenerio’s smug “Yes?” with more than a little weary resentment.
“I disposed of your monk,” he said flatly.
Tenerio smirked. “Praying to the gods didn’t help him much, did it? Perhaps praying to Sithis would have been a better choice.”
This man’s a fake. There’s no more doubt in my mind.
“Perhaps, though of course you know that we don’t truly pray to Sithis – as he is not a god, per se.” Dale thought he saw the tiniest of flinches from the Imperial.
Maybe he realizes his mistake and is beginning to fear my mistrust. He ought to, if he doesn’t.
“Well, we’re beginning to be… remembered… around town,” the man said, seemingly ignoring Dale’s observation. “I managed to recruit some new blood for us. Feel free to train them if you want to.”
“Of course,” Dale said. Because that is, after all, my decision to make, isn’t it – just as it was Sayma’s before me.
“But let’s get back to business,” Tenerio continued. “An Alik’r warrior has been chosen as your next contract.” He grinned. “Probably a good soldier, but a very good target, too. Kill him. He is probably walking around Ben Erai as we speak. Spread the word that the Dark Brotherhood is back.” He gave Dale an oily smile.
Probably. A convenient probability, isn’t it? You know exactly what the situation is with this man and could easily have taken care of him yourself.
“I shall,” Dale said with a nod, “but not before resting. I’ve run a very long way this past couple of days and I need to sleep. I’m sure the target won’t go anywhere that I can’t track him.”
“I see. Well there is a place for you, right here. In the other room you will find a hatch. Below it is a bedroom which you may have to yourself.”
Dale paused for a moment, surprised. “My most sincere thanks,” he said. “But I would not wish to put you out.”
“No need to worry,” Tenerio said. “I prefer to stay near to the door.” He nodded toward the other side of this dimly-lit space and Dale saw that yes, in fact there was a simple bedroll spread out to the side of the entry.
Dale went in search of the hatch, not knowing which side room it might be in and intrigued by the idea of “new blood.” If only he knew, he thought with a grin as he followed the sounds of hammering. To the right of the entry in a central location before two torture racks, a slim Redguard man pounded out a piece of metal in the compact crafting area.
“Ah. Good to see you,” the initiate told Dale, smiling as he approached.
“Likewise,” Dale said, nodding. “I’m … from the Skyrim Sanctuary,” he added, deciding at the last minute not to reveal his rank quite yet. “And you stay where, in the next room?”
“Aye, that I do, across the foyer and down at the other end. Or at least I will. I’m new here.”
“Perhaps I’ll be seeing more of you later, then,” Dale said, giving the man a grin and proceeding to the other end of the sanctuary. It was a regular dormitory with space for four initiates, neat and tidy if not luxurious. He’d seen worse. The hatch Tenerio had mentioned was set between the two end beds, and the ladder beneath led to a truly comfortable chamber.
He looked around in surprised gratitude. It was spacious and nicely-appointed with a large bed, attractive area rugs, plenty of storage, and even a well-ventilated cooking spit. Not that he would need such a thing. If they’d been expecting the Listener they’d have expected a human Listener, not a vampire. It made no difference to him at the moment, though. He sank gratefully onto the soft bedding and, just before drifting into sleep, had a thought that made him chuckle.
“New blood, indeed. Wouldn’t it be funny if I did ‘train’ him?”
Dale woke from sleep, discreetly downed a blood potion, and left the comfortable quarters in the sanctuary. The waning sunlight had lowered the temperature enough that he was only mildly uncomfortable as he rounded the base of the mountain and approached the palms of Ben Erai. It was still hot enough, though, that most of the town’s population was still safely indoors, awaiting the cooling that would give them incentive to come outside for the evening. Aside from the two guards Dale passed on his way through the gates, the place was nearly silent.
There was, however, one man in the town center, one man in Alik’r warrior’s armor leaning against a railing, his head protected by the lightweight blue turban that kept blazing sun off a person’s neck. This was, undoubtedly, Dale’s target. He approached the semi-enclosed plaza as silently as he could; the man didn’t seem to take note of his presence at all. He stopped just behind the warrior, frowning. He hadn’t planned on draining the man, but that was doubtless the most efficient way to kill without the mark crying out. He also hadn’t planned on needing to work around a turban. Still, the task had to be accomplished.
He turned slowly, making a complete circle and checking for prying eyes in all directions while getting a sense of the town he’d only seen for moments before. It seemed clear and there were plenty of escape routes. Not even the guards he’d passed had a line of sight to him; they were busy watching for desert wolves and dune rippers outside the gates. Dale knelt, to be as low to the ground as possible, and inched forward behind the railing’s stone end post. Then, in one blindingly fast movement, he rose, pulled aside the man’s turban, and sank his fangs firmly into the exposed throat.
The Alik’r had only enough time to register surprise with a “hmm?” before his vocal cords were crushed and his blood eagerly consumed. He dropped to the sandstone pavement and Dale, eager to remove himself from the area, scurried away. It was a shame to leave such a mess right in the center of town, and the evidence of a vampire attack was indisputable. Depending on how closely Tenerio followed up on the kill, he’d learn how the warrior had died, and that would make things difficult; at this point, though, Dale was not sure he cared.
Tenerio seemed embarrassingly excited when Dale reported in. His eyes sparkled and he made a noise of such satisfaction that Dale almost pulled away from him in disgust.
“Mmmm,” he said. “I can almost feel the fear in peoples’ eyes as they hear that the Dark Brotherhood is back!”
Dale felt one eyebrow rising. “Indeed. Although I don’t know that we necessarily need to create fear. People know the ritual to perform to reach the Night Mother, and they know I, the Listener, will listen to her will. That in itself is frightening enough.” He knew no such thing, but saying it and watching the moment of doubt in Tenerio’s eyes was satisfying, nonetheless. This was clearly the first time he had considered that Dale might realize how illegitimate these contracts seemed. Dale smirked, knowing that he’d produced real fear – at least in Tenerio – without a threat, even though he was considering making one.
He was considering calling Tenerio out on his own lack of motivation toward completing such simple, initiate-level jobs. He was considering calling the man out for having the utter audacity to order the Listener around like a hired hand. But before he could formulate the words, Tenerio spoke again.
“I have one more contract for you. Her name is Laurentina. She’s an Imperial who works as a guard inside the Ben Erai fortress. Kill her, and show the world that no one is safe from the Dark Brotherhood.” He handed Dale another substantial coin purse, and Dale sighed.
I certainly have no complaints with the payments I’m receiving. I’m sure I’ll be able to put all of this gold to good use back in Coldhaven.
He was halfway out the door when he realized that he’d not been thinking of Agryn and Vyctyna just then, in terms of Coldhaven and their wishes for it. He should have been – Agryn was his sire. He shook his head.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on here and I don’t know what I think about it. But that was a strange conclusion that I just made.
It took him some time to locate the fortress in Ben Erai again, having seen it only in full darkness before. The town’s pathways wound in and out around various stucco homes and businesses, and more than once he found himself at a sandstone wall rather than an Imperial-make one. At last, though, he spied the opening into the fortress grounds. Aside from one or two soldiers hauling water from the nearby well to a hearty-looking vegetable garden, the place was quiet. Feeling a bit conspicuous but knowing that he could grant himself invisibility if needed, he made his way to the door of the keep itself.
There were people moving about inside, but nobody seemed to pay him much notice as he approached an open door at the main floor’s rear. Through the door were stairs: first, to the right, ten steps up to a short hallway and then, to the left, another ten steps up. A final flight of ten took him to a large, open space where he stopped and crouched, ready to pull in the shadows if necessary.
This was an officer’s living space, by the looks. While not ostentatious, the room had decent, comfortable furnishings and ample storage, with a large Legion banner serving as a headboard. A woman in Imperial officer’s armor lowered herself onto the bed as he watched. Across the room from her was a table laden with food with another armored woman, likely the officer’s personal guard, intent on enjoying it.
This must be Laurentina. Let me introduce myself, my dear.
Dale pulled his hood back over his head. While he certainly didn’t need its extra protection here inside, the less chance someone could identify his face the better. He slid into the room. Slowly, agonizingly slowly but with the patience of a man accustomed to becoming one with the dark, he oozed around the edges of the room, passing close enough to the sleeping officer to hear the blood murmuring through her veins. He continued past her, to just before the closed door at the room’s far reaches and then across to the shadows just behind the feasting Imperial guard.
He took a moment to savor the aroma of the freshly-baked bread the woman had before her. Then he leaned in and quietly took her life blood into himself. The woman cried out loudly before collapsing, and the officer stirred; but Dale immediately pulled darkness around himself and calmly crept back to the doorway, down the stairs, and out into what had become a new day.
On his return to the sanctuary, Tenerio greeted him with a short “Yeah?” and nothing more.
“It’s done,” Dale told him.
The man smiled an insincere, oily smile and followed up in an insincere, oily voice. “Listener. You’ve done so much for the Dark Brotherhood. Thank you.”
“Indeed,” Dale said calmly. This man had no concept of how much he’d done for them. Even the Coldhaven Sanctuary wasn’t yet aware of what he’d done for them.
“This sanctuary is now thriving, and we get more and more contracts. The Dark Brotherhood is back in Hammerfell and no one can stop us! No one can stop you!” His voice took on a quality that put Dale’s teeth on edge. He half expected Tenerio to start laughing maniacally.
Dale smiled, though, and took the very large sack of coin he was offered. Then he chuckled. “I wanted to ask about that, actually,” he said in as friendly a tone as he could manage. “It seems odd to me that more contracts are coming in, given that while the Listener is here, the Night Mother, the Speaker, and the Keeper are all in Skyrim. We’re usually aware of all the contracts sanctioned by the Night Mother and the Brotherhood.” Part of what he’d just said was an outright lie – not everybody knew everything – but he smiled while he said it. It was a friendly smile, he thought, but one that likely conveyed his meaning well enough.
Tenerio laughed nervously. “Well, as I’ve said. Your actions have spread the word. People are eager to rid themselves of unnecessary entanglements. And speaking of that,” he continued quickly, neatly avoiding the subject at hand, “do you remember Lucya, the initiate I sent to you in Skyrim? She is the one who asked you to come here.”
“Of course. It’s only been a few days, after all.”
“She’s been searching for an artifact here in the Alik’r Desert, but she hasn’t come back yet. With all these contracts on my hands,” he added with another nervous laugh, “I already have a lot of work to do. What would you say about investigating this one for me, Listener?”
Dale couldn’t help himself. He snorted out loud. “Of course. I have noticed how very busy you’ve been while I’ve been taking care of your existing backlog.”
Somehow, Tenerio didn’t seem to notice the obvious and very pointed sarcasm. “Great! She was investigating a small village in the desert. As far as I know, that’s the last place she went to.”
“And this village would be where, exactly? I’m not a denizen of the desert, after all.”
Tenerio nodded and obligingly marked an area on Dale’s map again. “Somewhere in this general vicinity, but I’m not certain where. Thank you for doing this, Listener.”
Dale took a few moments to walk through the so-called sanctuary again. There were four initiates there now, rather than just one.
A full complement of unseasoned beginners, led by a lazy man who I begin to think is not actually an assassin of the Brotherhood at all. I cannot even imagine what might have befallen Nazir if he’d insisted that Sayma do individual low-level contracts. That’s what people like me are for.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Unless he did.
He frowned. He really didn’t know much about how Sayma, Nazir, Babette and Cicero had ended up the sole remaining core of the Brotherhood, or how they’d conducted business before. All he knew was from Cicero’s ramblings about the Tenets and how they’d been ignored, in the old Falkreath Sanctuary. Could it be that Sayma had been treated with as little respect then as he was receiving now, from Tenerio?
And, now that I think about it – from Nazir, as well. He wasn’t especially delighted by my selection as Listener.
Still, it didn’t seem likely that Tenerio’s existence would have gone unreported. Surely either Sayma or Nazir would have mentioned the man, or the existence of an official Sanctuary in the desert, if they knew about them.
There’s something more rotten about this whole affair than I am understanding. But I can at least go look for Lucya before I decide what to do about this lot.
He stepped through the door and into a stinging cloud of blowing sand. The wind had gone from a light breeze to a malevolent howl in the short time he was inside, and it was busy redistributing the dunes.
Great. It’s going to be hard to look out for this place I’m heading to if I can’t see more than a few paces in front of my own feet.
There were places where the land in front of him blocked the wind just enough to give him a glimpse of the terrain. Most of the time, though, he was heading northwest into a brown, stinging maelstrom. More than once he had to dodge howling wolves or seemingly agitated dune rippers, having nearly stumbled over them in his blind passage. In fact, the scenery was so desperately monochromatic that he found himself up against the western mountains before he’d seen that he was near them.
At least it’s daytime. I guess I should be grateful for that.
He pushed northward along the base of the mountains wondering whether this town even existed. For a moment, trees and cut stone emerging from the sandstorm had him hopeful; but it seemed that it was a Dwemer ruin, inexplicably here at the edge of this pocket in the desert. He moved carefully past the place, keeping a sharp ear open for anything living or mechanical that might be nearby, and climbed slightly up onto the stone hillside to look for anything resembling a town. For a moment the winds shifted just slightly, revealing a boxy building just below his position. It wasn’t a town, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was of the same make as the buildings in Ben Erai and seemed worth a look.
He circled around the building to make certain nothing lurking inside it could catch him by surprise. There wasn’t anything there. Or, rather, there was nothing alive there. As soon as he reached the front of the building he could see that someone had met a bloody demise inside.
Drifted sand half filled the doorway; one would need to crouch to get through. Someone had, though. That someone lay face down on the highest part of the drift, wearing what looked to be vampire armor. Two of the four walls were dark with blood splatters. Dale crawled into the building to verify that it was a vampire: a Nord with amber eyes no longer shining but still amber. A recent kill, too, he thought, judging by the still-supple eyelids. The wind and heat hadn’t yet had a chance to fully desiccate the body. He frowned.
But how…? Why is this one not a pile of ash? Let me check.
He pulled back the corpse’s upper lip. Sure enough, there was a pair of substantial fangs. It was more than a bit odd. But it was clear that Lucya wasn’t here, so Dale stripped the corpse bare and tucked the vampire armor in his pack. At least he’d be able to show Tenerio that he wasn’t completely mad.
He groped his way back to the sanctuary through the unrelenting sand storm, grateful for his hood’s long, attached scarf, which he used to cover his nose and mouth. His eyes, though, were taking the brunt of the storm and he was not pleased about it at all. He was even less pleased when he got lost, twice, and had to backtrack. By the time he stepped back into the sanctuary he was hot, and tired, and even more irritated than he had been when he left.
“Tenerio,” he said, finding the man having seemingly not budged an inch from where he’d been a few hours earlier. “I found the place, though I would hardly call a single abandoned building a ‘village.’ Lucya wasn’t there. But I did find the body of a Nord, wearing this.” He pulled out the vampire armor and showed it to Tenerio, hoping its meaning would be clear to the Imperial man.
Tenerio’s eyes widened. “A vampire Nord? In Hammerfell? Are you certain?”
“I checked his eyes. And his fangs. I’m certain.”
“A vampire in the desert.”
Dale smirked. “So it would seem.”
“Is it… the Crimson Scars?” Tenerio asked, staring at the armor.
Dale fought to keep still as shock slammed him like falling from a high place. He swallowed. Tenerio knows about the Crimson Scars? And thinks they might be here? How? Why?
“They must have followed her from Skyrim. Where is she?” Tenerio continued.
Dale’s mind raced. He clearly couldn’t let the man know he was a vampire, much less that he not only knew of the Crimson Scars but where they were centered. The Sanctuary in Coldhaven had, of course, been operating independently for who knew how long now. They may well have sent someone here to Hammerfell but he not only didn’t know who sent them, he didn’t know why, and he desperately needed to understand both. But for now, he did the one thing he could think of that might, temporarily at least, salvage the moment.
“The Crimson Scars?” he asked, just as though he didn’t know.
Tenerio met his gaze and nodded. “Yes. They are a group of vampires that separated from the Dark Brotherhood during the Third Era. They were eventually all murdered by the Dark Brotherhood – or so everyone thought – but organizations like that are hard to completely decimate.”
Dale nodded. “Just like the Brotherhood itself.”
One of Tenerio’s eyebrows rose; and for a moment Dale panicked. Did he try to destroy the Brotherhood, now or in the past? Is that how he knew to send Lucya after me? … No. Tenerio isn’t bright enough to be the mastermind behind such a plot.
It seemed like a lifetime, but had actually only been the span of a breath when he said “It was down to just a handful of people not more than a dozen years before I became an initiate. And look at us now!” It was a terribly cheesy thing for him to say, but he had a feeling that Tenerio would accept it at face value, and that seemed to be the case.
“Yes. Yes. Of course,” Tenerio said, looking back down at the armor. He was clearly distracted – and apparently terrified by – the idea of the vampires being nearby. “Some of the vampires might want to rebuild the Crimson Scars from the ground up,” he said. “This might have been one of them. At any rate, Lucya wanted to visit both the village and also an abandoned warehouse in the desert, thinking they might be repurposed for the Dark Brotherhood.” He paused and looked directly at Dale. “You… might find her there…”
He trailed off, and Dale sighed. Tenerio clearly had no stomach for following a trail that had already left at least one body behind. He didn’t want to express his own disgust, though. He was faster, stronger, and better suited to survive than Tenerio was and, as it was constantly impressed upon him, he was the Listener.
“Give me the general location and I’ll go.”
All the way back through the sandstorm Dale gnawed on the problem. It had seemed clear to him when he’d spoken with the Night Mother that she had given not just him, but also the Crimson Scars outpost, her blessing. He hadn’t felt any sort of response from her to this place, not at all. Lucya had been stationed within a stone’s throw of the Dawnstar Sanctuary, so it hadn’t occurred to him then to confer with the Night Mother. And he couldn’t do so here; this so-called sanctuary had no shrine to the Night Mother, or Sithis, or anything that he might reasonably count on to consult with her. He could potentially go back through the portal, and likely would – but what to do with these five or six supposed Brothers?
It took entirely too long for him to find the warehouse Tenerio had mentioned. Like the building where he’d found the vampire, it was against the shelter of the rocks, but much farther south. It was also a larger structure that might easily hold several rooms. He approached carefully, extending his senses out as far as he could, but he neither saw, heard, nor felt any signs of life emanating from the building.
Let’s see what guidance this place might provide.