The Gray Quarter in Windhelm is a dismal place, what with the poverty, the weather, and the miasma of hopelessness exuding from the people. On the other hand, it’s no worse than where I grew up. We had better weather, worse oppression. I’d take snow any day.
Last time I had been in Windhelm, there had been a rumor all over town that someone was trying to summon the Dark Brotherhood. It was a slim lead, but it was the only one we had. The place for rumors is taverns, so we sat ourselves down in the New Gnisis Cornerclub, ordered a couple of meads, and asked about the rumor that the Dark Brotherhood had taken over the city.
The proprietor scoffed darkly. “Rumors have a way of spiraling out of control,” he said. “What you may have heard about is the Aretino kid. The story I heard was, he’s squatting in his family home, all on his own, and praying to the Night Mother. Don’t know if it’s true. No one goes near the house.” He chuckled another time, as though to make light of a foolish superstition. Durz and I chuckled along with him.
I leaned forward, and in a conspiratorial whisper, I said, “I’ll be honest with you—I wouldn’t go near it either. Which house is it?”
“Just on the edge of the Gray Quarter—two story place built into the wall, arches over the road. You can recognize it at night by the flickering lights in the windows.”
We finished our drinks at a leisurely pace and left. Aretino—that was a Southlander name. The description of the house was pretty distinctive and it did not take long to find it. The door was unlocked (by my standards, anyway), and we let ourselves in and closed the door softly behind us.
The door opened into a staircase leading up into the main living quarters. From there, we could hear a young boy’s pitiful voice, half chanting, half sobbing, "Sweet mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me for the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear. Sweet mother, sweet mother…" He repeated the chant several times before breaking off to cry out, “How long do I have to do this?”
Chills crept down my spine. I led the way silently up the staircase, and around the corner, following the voice. When I saw him, it brought me nearly to tears myself. I froze as I absorbed what I was seeing. Candles were set in a circle. In the center of the circle, the boy had laid out a rough skeleton made of old bones, a skull, a human heart, and certain herbs. I’d rather not think where or how he got them. He was crouched over the bones, clearly exhausted, and he was ritualistically stabbing the heart, over and over. A book lay open on the floor near him.
I crept up behind and read the book over his shoulder. Yes, this boy was attempting to contact the Dark Brotherhood, using a ritual he found in a book, and apparently they had not answered. This lead was a dead end, but this boy needed help.
I reached out gently and touched him on the shoulder. He jerked to his feet, startled. His initial fear turned quickly to excitement, though. “You came! You came! Finally! You came!”
Horror gripped me when I realized what he thought. “Oh, child, I’m not who you think I am.”
“Sure you are,” he said. “I did the ritual over and over… with the bones and the… things… and I thought you’d never come, but here you are! Now you can accept my contract!” He sounded like his grandparents had just arrived for the Solstice. I think this was even more terrifying than his earlier desperation.
While I thought about this, he launched into the details of his contract. “…They call her Grelod the Kind, but she’s not. She’s a horrible old crone who doesn’t care about us at all. Could you please kill her quickly? As much as I hated it there, I miss my friends.”
I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually, Durz took me by the shoulder and led me out of the house. “I left some food and water on the table. I don’t know what else to do for him,” he told me.
“We can’t just leave him squatting there in the house with the bones and the things,” I objected.
“The only thing to do, I suppose,” said Durz, “is to go to the orphanage and let them know where to find him.”
“Orphanage?” I asked. “I wasn’t listening.”
“Honorhall Orphanage in Riften,” he explained.
“He made his way here from Riften alone?” I asked. “That poor kid!”
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