11 – A Fool’s Funeral Dirge
Next morning we was halfway across the Pale and I was rapidly losing my mind.
“My brother – I forgot my brother’s funeral!”
Somewhere in the drunken depths’a the night Eran n me had procured horses, one a chestnut mare I borrowed from couple Cloakers outside Shor’s after we couldn’t get Sylgja’s door open, the other this huge, muscular, black, evil-lookin stallion which silently bore Eran along the hills with flames billowing from its snout n its red eyes glistenin.
Person’ly I reckoned there were a problem with Eran’s horse, horses oughtn’t do that, if you steal a horse and it starts blowin fire out its nose y’might want to very speedily reconsider yer career as a horse-thief, tether the beast to the nearest sturdy tree, change yer name, move towns, n devote yerself to the study of godly way.
Eran dun seem bothered. We’d been trottin along quite pleasantly before I’d recalled Margeth. “It’s all right,” he says as I panic, “I’m a priest of Mara – I can go through the ceremony with you if you’d like.”
I glance hopelessly at him. “What use is that gun be? Funeral’s in Riften.”
He regards me sternly over the stallion’s corded neck. “You tol me yer family was gone to Mowwowind. Who else is going t’be at the funeral, aside fwom you and the pwiest of Mawa?”
Mow. Wow. Ind.
Despite meself I start to relax. I’m laughin too much not to. “Well. I guess so, but we dun have no body nor no Hall’a the Dead.”
“Isn’t he somewhere on the south Border, your bwother?”
He has a point. “Ayuh.”
Eran takes this as his cue to relapse into his best priest’s voice. “If we don’t have a body, then we don’t need a place to put it. I’ll go through the words of the ceremony with you and you can pretend you’re back in Riften.”
This seems to be the best offer going, and it sure beats trottin back ter Riften on a couple stolen horses, especially since the last time I did that. With snow meltin at the black stallion’s hooves, we dock at a spruce and tether the beasts. There we stand in reverent silence beneath the towering spruces.
They creak in the breeze. Eran has an apple in his hand, courtesy of the stallion’s saddlebags. The northern breeze tousles the snow. There’re no yetis and no dragons, and no wolves neither. Just peace.
Erandur breaks it.
“Dear friends. We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of,” he tips his red eyes to me.
“Margeth Stone.”
“Margeth Stone, a hearty, hale young Argonian of the most ambitious calibre. He will be missed, both in thought and in scale, and no longer will his voice boom through the dockside warehouse, and no longer will his spawn swim gaily in the waters of Lake Yorgrim, and no longer shall he shed his skin in the springtime rockeries.
“It is in mournful celebration we remember him this Second Seed eve, consoling ourselves only that his memory lives on in his parents,”
Again he glances at me. “Hassellis and Wand,” I say.
“His thirteen siblings,”
I have to think fast for this one. “Including Bodilla, Froda and Skole.”
“And his eight hundred juvenile offspring, too numerous to be named. Mara be with you, Margeth Stone.”
He then throws the apple high amongst the branches, moving with the utmost reverence and grace, and when the apple plummets back down to Nirn it buries itself in a foot of fresh snow. Erandur pushes in the crater with the side of his sandal.
We bow our heads in silence. I wonder what in Oblivion I just heard. Presently, Erandur says, “I hope you don’t mind – I didn’t know the details of your brother, so I just went with the last ceremony I performed.”
I nod. “It was fine.” Somehow befitting my wayward brother. “Thanks.”
Then I start to cry. Not really for Margeth. For the useless, addiction-riddled, thieving, bumbling future he coulda had. For myself, and the grievous future Margeth’s final actions had led me to. I turn away from Erandur, but the stupid tears keep rolling down my face. We should have both died old fools, Margeth n me, old fools driven senile from too much drink and indecent livin. Now he was a poor young dead fool and I was a livin sober one.
Erandur ducks in front’a me. “You’ll be okay.”
I nod. It’s all I can do. If any dragons showed up now I’d just let em eat me. Yet I’m not upset as I was, and somehow I get it that as close as Margeth n me was, with all our stupid plots and pranks, that he’s gone, and I’m here, and I can live with that.
And so I pull it together. Erandur passes me a handkerchief. I blow my nose loudly and hand it back to him.
He shakes his head. “Keep it.”
It is kinda mucus-y. I stuff it into my pocket. Okay. Now t’muscle me way through me embarrassment; cryin in fronna another man like that! The shame.
“Right,” I say, tryin to sound like my cahones are level with me knees, “You said y’had summin t’do in Dawnstar? Some sorta problem with a Temple?”
Erandur, roundin on the black stallion, freezes. “Er.” He turns stiffly to me. “That’s right. Mind you, it’s not so much a problem as a challenge. Er.”
I slap my mare on the rump and hop onto the saddle. “What’s the challenge, then?”
“Well all right, it is a problem.” Erandur climbs awkwardly onto the stallion, slides back to the snow, tries again, fails again, takes a running jump the third time and hauls his carcass onto the saddle. The stallion bears this with a patience born of righteous fury. “You see, the town of Dawnstar is built in a rather, guess you’d say inopportune spot. Right down the hill from Nightclubber Temple, ach’ly. The problem is there, I’m sure; there’s just something eewie about Nightclubber Temple, weally eewie. Ev’wyone in Dawnstar’s started having these terrible nightmares. Obviously the Temple is implicated somehow.”
“If the Temple’s the culprit, why dun the town guard mosey on up and place it under arrest?”
“It isn’t that swaightforward. The Temple’s abandoned; there’s nobody for the guards to awwest. No, solving this case will take a detective of the metaphysical. Since Dawnstar’s my awea, you know, where I was born and all that, and as I’m a pwiest of Mawa, the duty to investigate is mine.”
The horses start off through the forest at a steady trot. I frown at Erandur. “It’s your duty to investigate a temple near Dawnstar, so you went to Riften for a holiday?”
“Yes.” Eran gives a solemn nod. “I’m ach’ly what you call a coward. I sort of – I mean, the pwoblem,” he sighs. “I just can’t bwing myself to go it alone.”
Well, dungeon diving is always better with a friend. Or an army.
“It turns out I’m also a coward,” I say to him. “The Greybeards tol me I was the Dovahjun and all I could think to do was run for me life.” I gesture around the quiet, cold forest. “That’s why I’s here. I oughta be in Whiterun, discussin with His Jarlness how t’kill every Argonian with wings. But it ain’t gun happen that way. I just .. I just can’t do it.”
Erandur regards me curiously. “Surely you would be welcomed as a hewo. And you would have all the support you could wish for. Ev’wy army in Skywim would be alongside you!”
We’d talked a lot through the night about the dragons (or dwagons). Erandur was happy to talk about what I was doin, about my potential siring by a dragon, about the attacks on towns and what the great plan would be to stop them. He made a few vague illusions to this here “challenge” in Dawnstar; more than anythin emphasisin how we needed to get to Nightclubber Temple toot-sweet.
He’d done me a favour. Two of em. He’d listened, and he’d given Margeth his last rites. And now he was givin me an excuse not to do my duty.
“Bein a hero ain’t just about fightin dragons,” I tell him, “It’s about reachin out to the everyday Skyrimmer. It’d be my honour to help you.”
The Dunmer hesitates. “It could potentially be dangewous.”
“More dangerous than fighting dragons?”
“Ah. Maybe not.”
“Then lead the way.”
Dawnstar comes into view a couple hours later, a small clutch of buildings on a frozen bay.
It’s one place I never bothered tryin to scam nobody, if only cause they’re all broke tough as runt skeevers and anyway I never cared for ghosts, and in Dawnstar and the Pale such stories of the restless dead abound.
Erandur however seems right at home. He hums a cheerless little funeral dirge as we round the final bend into Dawnstar. The horses we leave reigned to a couple of wiry spruces on the outskirts of town. Eran, humming, intent, leads us up to the inn. A few of the guards greet him along the way.
“This is Skole, Thane of Whiterun,” he tells them each time, “He’s going to help me with my investigations.”
“Oh, good,” one guard replies along with a heartfelt sigh. “I can’t take much morer these nightmares. Night after night, the same thing ... I’m afraid to go to sleep!”
Her partner mutters his agreement. It’s a similar story inside the Windpeak Inn. People look haggard, on edge, dozing into their tankards before rising sharply to glare about them. A cloud of murmurs tags us to the bar.
“Just lettin you know I’m back,” Eran calls to the barkeep, “This is the Thane of Whiterun, Skole. He’s going t’help me figure out the cause of these nightmares.”
The barkeep is noticeably relieved. He gives Erandur a worried smile and me a nod. ‘Thank the Divines fer that. Irgnir n Fruki were in here again this mornin, complainin. Way this is goin we’ll have to shut down the mines.”
“Why d’you say that?” I wonder.
The barkeep pours two drinks as Eran and me straddle our seats, and slides them over the counter to us. Somewhere off to the left a girl is strummin a lute. Talk about a nightmare. “Karl in the Iron-Breaker Mine stuck a pick in his kneecap he was so drowsy. And Borgny fell asleep in fronna the smelter, nearly burned himself to death. Without sleep we can’t work.”
“It’ll be sorted out today,” Erandur says quickly. “Last night’s nightmares were your last.”
“I hope so, ey? Good luck to yer both.”
Another patron calls for the barkeep’s attention, and he hurries away. I face Erandur. “The nightmares; have you figured out what’s causin them?”
Erandur nearly chokes on his mead. I thump him between the shoulder blades until he stops spluttering. He throws me a hasty glance. “What causes them? I know. I wish I didn’t.”
While Erandur is wonner the cheerfullest Dunmers I’ve ever met (I’d say only cheerful Dunmer, but Romlyn down in Riften ain’t half bad at sportin a bloke a drink), he has his people’s habit of becoming instantly overwhelmingly depressing. I’s can almost see the black lines of melancholy writhin above him.
“It’s Vaermina,” he says softly, in his most solemn priest’s voice. “The Daedric Lord residing in the heart of Nightclubber Temple. She devours memories and leaves nightmares to fill the void in subconscious. If she isn’t stopped the people of Dawnstar will be permanently demented.”
The barkeep is returnin. Erandur snaps out of his mood. He drains his glass n slaps it on the counter. “Thank you, Thoring. We’ll be off now, wish us luck.”
Thoring bows over the bar. “Good luck, and God speed.”
Outside the breeze is cool and the snow shines brilliantly on the rooftops. Erandur leads us between buildings and heads uphill. I feel a little warmer for the mead, and braver for my desertion of Whiterun. Oh yer Jarlness, I really had to help in this perilous quest, fer the sake’a aller Skyrim... some such lies I’d tell him.
“Nightclubber Temple may be in ruins.” Drawin me from my thoughts, Erandur gestures to the crumblin black tower gripping the peak above the bay. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.”
“Well it is the temple of a fairly evil Daedric lord,” I point out, “I din think it’d be no walk in the park.” Although these days, a walk in a Skyrim park would likely involve bears, dragons, and at least one bloody civil war.
Eran looks at me, seems on the verge’a sayin somethin else, but thinks better of it and goes back ter hummin the funeral march. We fetch the horses and goad them up the hill, snow up to their knees. The chill turns the bay water to the palest blue. Soon the white slope broadens into a sweeping avenue opening onto the ruined temple. I can see somethin large moving around outside the doors. I nod to the movement as we tether the horses to a decaying barbican.
“Frostbite spiders,” Eran puffs. He pauses for no more’n a second. “Righto. Nothin we can’t handle.”
The spiders spy us a hundred yards from the Temple. Three of em. I’m not too bothered. Gimme spiders over draugr any damn day. They cross the avenue with gruesome speed, skimmin their fat behinds across the snowdrift, multitudinous legs groping for purchase. I read that in a book once, always wanted to use it. Pity it was happening to me-
I have my sword out and I take a swing at one spider as it jumps for me. Another darts sideways and knocks me ass-over in the snow. It rushes me again, mandible twitchin, black eyes glitterin like a pestilent sun hitting the exposed guts of somthin not yet dead. I raise my sword and a jet of flames strikes the spider and bashes it into a fallen pillar.
“Heads!” sings Erandur.
I bite the snow. The sword scratches my belly. Flames roar overhead. The air is filled with cracklin fire and spider screams. In moments it’s over. I lift my head t’see Eran in a kung fu pose n the three spiders smoulderin in the snow. He gives me a hand up, and a high five when I discover I’ve not disembowelled meself, but in truth he has eyes for the temple and the temple alone.
“I built a small shrine to Lady Mara at the entrance,” he tells me darkly as we approach the door. “So far it’s not done much. That’s part of the reason I visited Riften; I hoped Lady Mara herself may inspire a solution.”
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
Eran puts his hand against the temple door, and looks at me.
“Well I am.”
“You are,” he agrees at last. “Let’s just hope you’re still here when we finish.”
