Chapter IV
Stay Awhile and Listen
Shadowmere. An immortal horse of Daedric origin that preferred to eat meat and the flesh of her enemies. She'd be a powerful ally and it surprised Bricca that Astrid would give up the horse so soon and easily. Then again, the matron did not ride her often and always was skittish around the beast. Perhaps Shadowmere was too tangible a part of the spiritual side of the Brotherhood that Astrid liked to forget about. All Bricca had to do was break into the Night Mother's coffin and hide among Her remains, defiling them with her very presence. A transgression like that would not be easily forgiven by the Night Mother, but neither would Cicero's possible plan of an uprising.
Bricca left her room very early in the morning. All of the others were soundly asleep by now, as the new year had come to pass tonight. It had been celebrated by a lot of food and drink, in which everyone but Cicero had taken part. Only Babette was still awake, but Bricca had shaken off the girl by telling her she was going to take a long walk outside. Instead of heading for the Black Door, she turned into a small corridor that led to the room housing the Night Mother's coffin. Despite the spider webs still clinging to the earthen ceiling, Cicero had cleaned up much of the debris and junk that had been in the room before, when it was only used for storage.
The Night Mother's coffin was made of heavy iron, placed on a raised stone slab in front of a dirty stained glass window that depicted Sithis Himself. Cicero had scrubbed the floor and placed candles in a circle around the slab, which had already melted down to little stumps. Lots of wildflowers lay scattered around, masking a thick and pungent smell. Some of the flowers were bound in bundles and a large wreath covered the steps towards the coffin. The whole place breathed something like sanctity, courtesy of the dutiful care of the jester. Careful not to crush any of the flowers, Bricca tiptoed towards the coffin. Everything was going to be all right. She'd hide in here, listen to Cicero chatter to himself, and pop out once he left. It was better not to think of the alternative, the one where Cicero discovered her and made a big scene. At least the hinges on the coffin were oiled already and allowed her to open it silently. The pungent smell suddenly couldn't be masked any more by the flowers. It wafted forth from the mummified corpse inside and burned her nostrils. Bricca suppressed a cough, scuffling around as she backed into the coffin, wondering what Cicero had to do to keep the corpse behind her in a somewhat representable state. Shelves on the nearby wall held some large bottles, all labelled in the jester's spidery writing, containing embalming fluid. She remembered Cicero's instructions that nobody was to touch them under any circumstances, lest the precious fluid be spilled or wasted. In complete disregard of all his warnings, she knew that Veryn and Babette had nicked a bottle not long after the jester had arrived to use for their own experiments.
It was hard trying not to touch the Night Mother's body, leaving Bricca to fidget around, but once she shut the coffin she had to take a few steps back. The dried out hands, almost claws, of the Night Mother nudged her back as she peered through a tiny crack between the lids, a thin trickle of light allowing her to see the contours of the room. The time to wait had begun.
In the distance she heard the faint rushing of the small waterfall. Arnbjorn's hammer suddenly started to make soft thunks and thuds on his anvil. Eventually she heard people say good morning to each other, their voices far away, and then, finally, someone started humming nearby. Cicero had arrived.
The Jester was talking to himself, muttering under his breath. Bricca could only hear one pair of feet softly hitting the floor, and only the beating of one heart. In the end, she probably had been right where Astrid was mistaken: the mad Cicero was merely talking to himself. Then, without warning, Cicero started yelling. Bricca took a step back in surprise, the corpse behind her clanging awfully loud against the back of the coffin. For a second she feared that Cicero had heard it, but he was too busy making noise by himself.
"The others... I've spoken to them. And they're coming around, I know it. The vampire who served us since old, the wizard Festus Krex... perhaps even the Argonian and the Un-child. But what about you? Have you... have you spoken to anyone? No... No, of course not. I do the talking, the stalking, the seeing and saying."
Now this was becoming interesting. Bricca was convinced there wasn't a second person in the room at all, but Cicero's words reeked of a will to change some things around in the Dark Brotherhood, and she wasn't entirely convinced that was a bad idea. She heard the jester take a deep breath. With nobody else around she had gotten an inkling of whom the madman was talking to.
"And what do you do? NOTHING! Not... not that I'm angry! No, never! Cicero understands. Heh. Cicero always understands... and obeys."
The manic screaming stopped as sudden as it had begun and it almost seemed to Bricca that Cicero had started to cry instead. It was actually pretty sad. The man was so alienated from the rest of the Sanctuary that he resorted to talking with a corpse. Even if no one here had accepted her, she would never sink that low.
"You will talk when you're ready, won't you... won't you – sweet Night Mother?"
Bricca could picture him in her mind, kneeling in front of the coffin with teared up eyes, wringing his hands together while he begged for someone to talk to him.
"Poor Cicero." This time it was Bricca who clanged against the coffin in fright. That voice did not come from somewhere outside, but rather from inside her head. Her stomach lurched at the mere thought of a supernatural something hiding in her mind. "Dear Cicero", the voice continued. Its tone was low and rasping, but not like that of the Dark Elves. No, to Bricca it sounded as if it belonged to something long dead and rotten that had just crawled out of one of Morthal's many sludge fens. "Such a humble servant, but he will never hear my voice, for he is not the Listener."
Outside, Cicero bristled on, his pleas falling on deaf ears. Inside the coffin, Bricca started to fear the worst. "What are you?" she thought back, quietly whispering the words under her breath. The voice laughed, raising the hairs on her arms on end.
"I speak. I weave. And now I speak to you, who shares my iron tomb, to give you my task. Journey to Volunruud and speak with Amaund Motierre," the voice rasped. Cicero's pitiful sniffling penetrated the coffin and momentarily drowned out the Night Mother. "Tell Cicero the time has come. Tell him the words he has been waiting for all these years: Darkness rises when silence dies."
Then, all of a sudden, it was silent again, the haunting voice disappearing into the Void. Bricca's thoughts were reeling. That voice, speaking in her mind, had it truly been the Night Mother, or was she going insane? Perhaps someone was playing an elaborate joke on her, but that was a thought she quickly discarded. No one in the Dark Brotherhood would dare to incur the Wrath of Sithis by misusing the Night Mother in such a way, even if they no longer abided by Her tenets. She also quite doubted she had gone mad, which left only one option: the Unholy Matron had truly named her Listener. Bricca was used to unlikely things happening. She had been there when the Oblivion crisis had taken place, her lover at that time rising to become the Champion of Cyrodiil. He had been in the Dark Brotherhood too, and in those years the Night Mother had spoken to him as well. She had named him as Her Listener during some strange events that had taken place in the sancta sanctorum: Her Crypt in Bravil.
Strange things always seemed to happen to Bricca and the people around her, as if she was a lantern and they were moths, attracting change wherever she went. And hadn't there been those great changes in the last few years? The Great War had ended up driving her back into the arms of the Dark Brotherhood, and most recently the dragons had returned. More than a year ago the town of Helgen had been sacked in its entirety by a large, black, flying lizard, the first to be seen in centuries. There had always been rumours of course, of a dragon serving Nulfaga of Daggerfall two hundred years ago, and hadn't she seen Martin Septim turn into a great golden dragon with her own eyes? But this black dragon was very real and very dangerous, and the people of Skyrim spoke of more dragons rising from the earth. If wild dragons turned out to exist after all, and there were people like Veryn who could use their magic, it wasn't that much of a stretch to believe that the Night Mother had finally broken Her silence. Strange events never happened entirely on their own, despite how strange or impossible they seemed to be at first.
Then, without Bricca reaching out for them, the lids to the coffin suddenly burst open as if they had a will of their own. Bricca found herself standing face to face with an incredulous Cicero. Like a jack-in-the-box, the Jester launched himself upwards, jumping at her with two daggers at the ready.
"What treachery! Defiler! Debaser and defiler! You have violated the sanctity of the Night Mother's coffin! Die, you filthy whore! I'll have you scream!" Cicero's voice skipped over as he screeched in her face, wildly swinging his daggers. Bricca dodged out of his way immediately, but the point of one of the blades nicked her leg. She cursed and reached for her boot knife, circling around the Jester. Cicero pirouetted at the spot and then tumbled through the air like a street acrobat, landing softly on his feet behind her. Bricca waited for half a second, hoping to lull him into a false sense of security and between the moment he lunged at her with his daggers and the moment they would have reached her back she spun around and rammed her knee between Cicero's legs. The daggers went awry and the jester buckled over. With her forehead Bricca collided with his nose and she felt a satisfying crunch as it broke. Then she grabbed Cicero's wrist and twisted it until the jester dropped one blade. With her own knife she reached out towards his throat, pressing the blade against his flesh.
"You want to hear me scream because Mother is silent to you?" she hissed in Cicero's ear, glaring warily at the door. The other Sanctuary members stormed inside in alarm, staring wide-eyed at what was going on: Nazir, scowling, Festus who for once had discarded his book, and Gabriella looking worried.
"What is going on?"
Collectively everyone looked at Astrid who had entered last. Her tone was brusque and she did not look happy. Not at all.
"That bitch! That whoreborn wench! She defiled the Night Mother! What she did is unthinkable!" Cicero's voice was rising higher and higher. "Oh Mother! Cast down thy wrath on the unbelievers! Bathe them in the blood of-"
"Enough!" Astrid snapped, sending a pointed glare at Bricca. It was clear to her what the matron meant. She was on her own here. Even if Bricca told on Astrid's plan in front of everyone, they wouldn't believe her. She scoffed. Instead, she was going to tell them something even more incredulous. Slowly she removed the knife from Cicero's throat, ready to break the news of the Night Mothers reawakening. She had hoped to tell them in a different manner, maybe talk it over with Astrid first, but this had to do.
"Yes", Bricca said, trying to keep her tone as casual as possible. "I did visit the Night Mother in her coffin." She managed to let it sound as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do.
"Why, in the name of Sithis and all that is unholy, would you do something like that?" Gabriella's slanted red eyes flared up as if they were burning coals. Bricca rolled her shoulders, forcing a smile. Her thigh hurt where Cicero had nicked it and she still was trying to come to terms with a ghostly semi-divine entity talking in her head. She had to keep up the appearance that she was entirely unfazed by all that however, in order to lend credibility to her words.
"Actually," she continued, "it was less my doing as well as Her bidding. You see, the Night Mother called me to Her, and named me as Her Listener." Her smile grew slightly when she took in the shocked, incredulous expressions of her fellow Brothers and Sisters.
"Liar!" Cicero bellowed, his puffy face contorting in rage. He attempted to launch himself at her again, but Nazir and Gabriella stepped in on time to restrain him. His spittle mixed with the blood still streaming from his nose dripped in a gooey red mess on the ground. "She only speaks to the Listener, and there is NO Listener!" The shriek he let out was ear-splitting.
"The Night Mother said she thought you served her well, Cicero, and that there were some words you might be interested in. Darkness rises as Silence dies." Bricca hoped the words sounded solemn enough. It was hard not to burst out in a fit of nervous giggling, so absurd was this whole situation. Cicero was staring at her incredulously as if he could hardly believe what he had just heard, and then, to the great amazement of everyone, the jester burst out in laughing and dancing. The world had definitely gone insane, Bricca thought to herself.
"Enough of this!", Astrid hissed. With her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed her face was the epitome of annoyance and anger. "What is the meaning of all this?" She pointed at Cicero, jabbing her fingers in the jesters chest. "What is so important about those words?"
Cicero made a backwards somersault to escape the prodding, causing the little bells at the points of his cap to tingle softly. When he landed on both feet again he grinned at Astrid.
"They are the Binding Words! Written down ages ago in the Keeping Tomes. Cicero has been a good Keeper, and Cicero brought with him what is left of them, if the matron wants to read. They are the signal so I would know... Mothers only way of talking to sweet Cicero..."
Astrid seemed entirely lost with the situation. She looked from one to another of the assassins gathered in the room, clearly noticing the looks of suspicion mixed with awe that Gabriella and Festus gave Bricca. With her teeth clenched, the matron spun around.
"You're all dismissed. Bricca, I want to talk to you tonight, immediately after dinner. I need some time to think this over right now."
Hours later, Bricca was seated opposite Astrid again, listening to the matron's complains.
"I am not happy with this. This was not supposed to happen. By Sithis, I'd almost would think you were conspiring with Cicero behind my back if you hadn't been away on your contract."
"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" Bricca plucked at a few stray locks of hair. She had spent the day trying to read the ancient Keeping Tomes Cicero had brought with him. They contained centuries of Dark Brotherhood lore, but reading them was though and slow. "Astrid, this is coming as a huge and not entirely pleasant surprise to me as well. I am named Listener, out of the blue, and I somehow have to try and make it work. Oh, and I have the voice of a dead woman in my head." It sounded a bit more acerbic than Bricca had meant it, but it managed to shut Astrid up.
"What did the Night Mother say to you?" the matron asked eventually while pouring herself a glass of ale.
"She didn't say as much as I'd have liked her to say, but She wants me to find a man named Amaund Motierre in Volunruud. I suppose you would like me to go after him?"
Astrid grunted when she answered, sounding piqued. "Listen, Bricca. I don't know what is going on here, but you still take your orders from me, and I don't want you to go after Motierre yet. I think, in fact, that it might be better if we part ways for a while. I have a contract for you. It is not a quick one, nor is it easy or entirely what you're used to. You see, I've been corresponding for a while with someone who is affiliated with the College of Winterhold. You will go there and infiltrate the place while carrying out the orders of my contact."
Bricca frowned, glaring at Astrid with repugnance. "I'm not a mage. Why don't you send Festus or Veryn? Because you want to get rid of me?"
"Because Festus has been banished from the College after a series of unfortunate incidents involving his students and various gruesome deaths. And secondly, because my contact belongs to the Thalmor, so I cannot send Veryn either." Astrid smirked slightly. "And I want you because you were born as minor nobility and can play the part. To get into the College requires a certain kind of... class."
Bricca's frown deepened meanwhile. "Why doesn't he ask his own assassins? The Thalmor have those and they seem quite effective if you count all those dead worshippers of Talos."
"Ancano wants to keep his project a secret. The Thalmor have a tendency to stab each other in the back in order to take credit for the accomplishments of someone else. To avoid that he has asked us to do his bidding. You are a Breton, your innate magic abilities should be enough to fool them for the duration of your stay there." Astrid looked Bricca in the eye. "There will be enough people around for you to feed on. I will give you the paperwork that will guarantee your entry. You'll be enrolled under a false name, obviously. You will be a young widowed Breton noblewoman who now wishes to spend the remainder of her life studying magic, away from the busy cities of High Rock. As I promised, you may take Shadowmere from her stables. Don't fail me or Ancano, Bricca. You've seen the result of angering the Thalmor with one of your Dark Brothers."
Until seventy-five years ago the city of Winterhold was the largest city in the north-east of Skyrim, easily dwarfing Windhelm and rivalling even Solitude. But then, in 122, an unimaginable disaster took place. For years after the eruption of Red Mountain large storms battered the coast of Skyrim, until in that fateful year an aftershock of the volcano caused a storm surge to beat at the steep rocky cliffs. All along the coast small fishing villages were washed away. The cliffs of Winterhold broke away as well, collapsing into the sea and taking most of the city with them. In one night, more than half of the population of the city had died. In the following years many of the survivors moved away, to Windhelm or Dawnstar in order to leave this doomed place and their dead family members behind.
Today, Winterhold counted less than five thousand souls. The buildings were eclectic, composed from the ruined fragments of what once had been a magnificent city. Stone and wood alternated and everything was covered by a thick layer of snow. Even in summer, only a few species of wheat grew in this cold. Bricca came across farms that had planted nothing but endless rows of snowberries: small spots of red dotting the otherwise bleak landscape. Large, flat areas of concrete were spread throughout the city, the foundations of what once had been temples or market halls. Now they housed wooden frames with the spread out hides of horkers and giant elk. Near the cliffs, some buildings abruptly ended as if they were split in two, and others precariously protruded over the edge. Down below there was a small harbour, filled with fishing ships that lay frozen in the ice. The local hunters, almost specks in the distance, dragged forth large sledges with more carcasses tied to them. Even Falkreath Hold, with its isolated farms and lumber mills, had more grandeur than this. The only exception to the desolateness of city was the College. Rising high on a roughly circular piece of cliff that stood freely in the sea it towered over Winterhold. Small arched bridges connected it to the main land, held up above the abyss by sheer magic. The place was impressive to see, an ages old fortress of magic crowning the frozen sea.
Early the following morning, Bricca started the long walk towards the college. She had left Shadowmere at the local stables, where the stable hand had ensured her the horse would be well cared for. Behind her, a lanky Nord boy followed, carrying some of her luggage. Bricca hauled the rest herself, looking forward to settling down at the College for a while. She didn't speak much, although the boy had many, many questions. It was a rare opportunity for him to find out something about the world beyond his town, a world he would probably never come to explore. Maybe he would visit Windhelm once, or perhaps join the Stormcloak Rebellion, but he would never come to see the White Gold Tower of the Imperial City or the breathtaking mosques of Hammerfell. Beyond the gates of the College lay a large, circular courtyard. In the middle stood a statue of a mage, his arms spread wide and his head tilted back as if he was casting, and at its feet was a magicka well. Small groups of students sat on the edge, conversing with each other. Others hurried across the courtyard, carrying books or scrolls, the fine snow under their feet turned into one thick, compacted layer. The main thing about the place that struck Bricca was its relative lack of colour. The light grey stone, coupled with the white snow covering almost everything, gave a serene look to the College. The Nord boy looked around in wonder, gaping at the towering buildings. Bricca herself looked around as well, but she was trying to find someone who could tell her where to go. She ended up asking a nearby Khajiit. The giant cat twitched his whiskers slightly and smiled at her.
"How can J'zargo help the nice lady?"
Bricca smiled back at him. "Could you please tell me where I can find Mirabelle Ervine?"
Mirabelle Ervine turned out to be a fellow Breton with a slightly stingy face and thin lips. She took Bricca in quietly and then looked over the paperwork with a slight frown, reading everything closely.
"Everything seems to be in order," she said finally. "Welcome to the College of Winterhold. Please follow me so I can show you around the grounds."
A few days later, Bricca was sitting at her desk in the Hall of Attainment. The Hall was actually more of a tower, large and circular, with the student bedrooms in its outer circle. The rooms were small and sober, with a bed, a desk and a wardrobe, but not much more. A stack of books lay nearby. Mirabelle had said that everyone at the college was free to pursue such research as they wanted, and thus Bricca had fetched some literature on genealogy the day before. Famous Families of Greater Betony and Nature's Nobility: A Breton Genealogy had given her the information on Amaund Motierre she had been wondering about. The name had sounded familiar to her. It was no surprise that it did, because the Motierres had been one of the first Breton families to take a seat in the Elder Council. They were rich, powerful and influential, and apparently one of them now wished to contact the Dark Brotherhood. It was beyond interesting to think of what they could have offered, but Astrid had to throw the spanner into the works. The Five Tenets forbade Bricca to disregard the orders from a superior, and so she was stuck here at the College. Suspiciously she peered at the sealed scroll that had suddenly appeared in her room after she had returned from an Alteration lecture given by an old man that went by the name of Tolfdir. It was made of thick parchment and sealed with dark blue wax, stamped with the sign of the Thalmor. Clearly, Ancano knew about her presence in the College now, and as she expected the letter summoned her to his office at night.
A monotone voice told her to come inside when she knocked on Ancano's door. The voice belonged to a bored and haughty looking Altmer. With his smooth golden skin and high arched eyebrows he looked every other of his kind. His hair was thin and white, slicked back so it stuck to his skull. He stared at Bricca, his eyes a pale, gleaming amber in colour.
"Sit down."
Bricca complied, smoothing her College robes as she sat down. She looked around Ancano's office with slight interest. It was as sober as any other room in the college, but on the wall opposite her hung a clock. The dial was painted, adorned with birds and flowing, High Elven, patterns, but the gears and thin chains that formed the clockwork itself were distinctly Dwarven. Mechanical clocks had been around for a long time, and clockmakers made good use of the left over Dwarven technology to adapt it for their own work. Bricca knew that the most fancy of those did not only give the hour, but also the current month and constellation. In one corner stood a heap of luggage, carefully stacked. Clearly Ancano had only arrived at the College recently.
"So you are the assassin?"
Bricca nodded. "I am."
"Very well." Ancano folded his hands on his desk, looking down on her. "I assume you would like to know exactly why I hired your organization, instead of solving the problem myself. My colleagues unfortunately do not understand my need for utmost secrecy when it comes to my personal projects at the College, which is where you come in. As a trained assassin I expect you to know what you are doing, without incriminating yourself or me. I expect full confidentiality."
He glared at her with narrowed eyes. Bricca stared back and nodded. "I understand completely. The Dark Brotherhood has kept confidentiality since its very beginning."
Ancano had spoken only a few words to her, and already she felt an intense dislike for the man, his arrogant manners and his awful pattern of speech. Rather than hiding his accent, Ancano drew it out heavily, making his Imperial hard to understand. The way he spoke it, it sounded as if the tongue was far beneath him, only useful for communicating with the lesser races.
"Let us see to the task at hand," the Thalmor drawled. Even here at the College he wore the grey leather coat of his order, adorned with golden decorations. "What I want you to do is to kill an inhabitant of the College over the course of the next few months. I want you to do this slowly, so it might look like an accident or an illness that will take him to the other side. I will even be so kind as to warn you that the men I wish dead is well-versed with magic and can be very dangerous, would he find out you were sent to kill him." Ancano smiled, but his eyes stayed narrowed. "Obviously, I would not like him finding out either."
"I can assure you that the Dark Brotherhood will deliver its usual quality," Bricca answered, trying to keep up a professional appearance and not let any of her distaste show through. "Now if you don't mind, could you please elaborate on the target?"
Ancano gave a barely noticeable nod. "Of course. You are to kill the Archmage himself. He is a Dunmer who goes by the name of Savos Aren. He is a very respectable member of the local community here at Winterhold. You will have to find a way to get close to him without attracting suspicion." The Thalmor permitted himself a little smile. "I also would like you to find out what one of his protégées is doing here. You will, of course, be paid for the extra work. Oh, don't look at me like that. I know you are a murderer and not a spy, but if you don't do this I will be very disappointed."
He gave a little wink that made Bricca's stomach churn.
"The protégée is a Dunmer as well. His name is Veryn Uvirith and you will be able to recognize him easily by his marred face. I want to know why he has returned to the College and what he has to do with the artefact we have here. It should be easy for you to listen in to conversations here and there, to pick up the little talk in the corridors. It won't cost you much of your time and I will pay you richly for it. And if not..." He sighed dramatically. "Well, you wouldn't want anything to happen to your little Sanctuary in the south-west of this pitiful province, do you?"
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